Lady Dior: The Lady Noire Affair

Back in December Marion Cotillard began her role as the face of the Lady Dior bag in the “One Woman, Four Cities,” campaign.  As an extension of the campaign, Dior is creating a six and a half minute film entitled The Lady Noir Film starring the Oscar winner.  In a move paralleling the Chanel No.5 films, Dior has paired a director with a lady that is his muse, in this case, Marion Cotillard and Oliver Dahan, the director of La Vie en Rose.

Lady Dior: The Lady Noire Affair

The Lady Noir Film is a Hitchcock-esque, film noir thriller featuring Cotillard as a femme fatale, a role that suits the French actress.  Galliano stated: “We wanted to capture the glamour, the intrigue, the heroine and the mysterious allure that radiates around her, Marion has brought the Dior woman to life. She is incredible.”  The Lady Noir Film debuts tomorrow on the Lady Dior website.  For clues to solving the mystery, follow Lady Dior on twitter and watch the trailer below.

Marion Cotillard in Dior Haute Couture

The 81st Oscars took place tonight and one word that summed up the night - from the set design, to the fashion - is CLASSY.  It seems like the actors took heed of all the previous award show fashion critiques because most of the dresses were gorgeous and there weren’t many mishaps.  The set design of the show was gorgeous - the curtain was made from 100,000 Swarovski crystals lit from behind.  The band was brought on stage to evoke the big band era of the 1940’s and the way the Best Actor categories were announced brought a few tears to the eyes.  That said, let’s get to the fashion!  There were definitely some trends - the main one being light, neutral colors like white and beige.  One of my favorite dresses of the evening was Nicole Kidman’s but sadly I don’t have a photo.

Pale Perfection

Pale colors were very popular on the red carpet from Marisa Tomei’s white Versace gown to Sarah Jessica Parker’s “barely mint,” pastels were the color of the evening.

Tarji P. Henson in Roberto Cavalli; Evan Rachel Wood in Elie Saab

Ms. Henson’s flower petal dress is gorgeous and she carries it so well. Ms. Wood’s dress is very sophisticated, and together with her retro hair, her look hearkened back to old school Hollywood glamour.  The dangling earrings and black nail polish were a nice touch.

Anne Hathaway in Giorgio Armani Prive; Jessica Biel in Prada

Both dresses are lovely - my only comment about Ms. Biel’s dress is that no matter how great your figure, no one really needs that much extra fabric in front.

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John Galliano was inspired by Dutch Master painters and the colors and texture of Dutch pottery and tapestries for Christian Dior’s Spring 2009 Couture collection.  The couture collection showed no signs of the recession and Monsieur Galliano did not have a budget to keep in mind while creating.  Really, do couture and budget even belong in the same sentence?  When asked to comment on the state of the economy, Galliano stated:

Of course I’m sensitive to the economy. Of course I’m aware of it. I read the newspapers; I watch TV,” he said Sunday. “But [dealing with it] is not my job. My job is to do the best I can to show the possibilities of Dior. When you’re standing in a hurricane, you have to keep your feet firmly on the ground. If you panic, whew…you fly away.

Christian Dior’s “New Look” also was definitely a reference especially with dramatic waistlines. I also loved the voluminous, architectural sweeps and oh, the hats with elaborate plumage! Read the full story to see more photos and a bit of the inspiration behind the collection.

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I was one of the many, many people glued to their TVs to see what the celebrities (and their stylists) decided they should wear to the Golden Globe Awards.  There were gorgeous gowns, dazzling jewels and coiffed coifs.  Dior seemed to score big with many leading ladies wearing gowns by John Galliano for Dior.  But the biggest trend of the night was in the hair category - so many bangs in face!  I didn’t mind it, more annoying was the constant moving of the hair from the face.  As usual, there were the people that looked great, and people who I just looked at and wondered:  “Really, you have THAT much money and THAT much access to couture and diamonds and THAT’S the best you could do?”  One of my favorite looks of the night was Susan Sarandan in a black tux paired with a corset and long diamond necklaces.  Here’s a brief breakdown of my favorites, trends, and WTFs?

2 Favorite Dresses (minus the silly expressions):

Evan Rachel Wood in Elie Saab & Kate Beckinsdale in J. Mendel

It comes as no surprise that 2 of my favorite dresses would be black and white.  Wood’s dress is evocative of Chanel to me and is glamorous and age appropriate and a good choice for an award’s show.  Beckinsdale’s dress was my favorite of the night for pure dramatic effect.  The neckline was gorgeous and she carried it beautifully.  I didn’t love her earrings but she was smart in skipping the necklace and going with big earrings.  I hate when people feel like they need to junk up their decolletage in a strapless dress with a necklace.

3 more favorites:

Kate Winslet in YSL, Eva Mendes in Dior, Maggie Gyllenhaal in Lanvin

I love Kate Winslet - she’s smart, funny, strong and a “Dame” in the making.  Her choice in dress reflected her personality - it was sleek, sophisticated and strong.  Eva Mendes was beautiful in Dior (though I was surprised she wasn’t in Calvin Klein - you know, the perfume deal . . .) and her necklace was pretty though I don’t know if I loved them together.  And Maggie Gyllenhaal looked fresh, young and independent in her Lanvin gown.  I thought all 3 ladies had nice hairstyles - I’m a big fan of up-dos for fancy occasions and their coiffs were modern and not stuffy at all.
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Marion Cotillard, the Oscar-winning actress for her portrayal of Édith Piaf in La Vie en Rose, is the new face of the Lady Dior handbag. I was online and found this video of the “behind the scenes of the photo campaign” with Marion Cotillard photographed on the Eiffel Tower by Peter Lindbergh.  This is the first of four parts of “One Woman, Four Cities,” the name of the campaign.  The first part, set in Paris, is set to a hopelessly romantic song complete with soulful singing and violins swooning. Casting Marion Cotillard, an internationally recognized French woman is a smart move for the French luxury goods company. Who better than a woman born in Paris and famous for portraying one of France’s greatest gifts to music? Shooting on the Eiffel tower gave the photos depth, and is immensely appropriate since the pattern on the Lady Dior bag mimics the pattern of the iron facade of France’s most famous icon. The video is only 3 minutes but gives you a great glimpse of the inner workings of a high fashion photo shoot from John Galliano standing by the photographer, to the masters of hair and makeup. My favorite part was seeing the prop stylist polish the letter charms on the Dior bag and placing them just so. You can see the whole campaign and the end result of the shoot and an interview with Marion Cotillard here.

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New York Fashion Week also heralded the opening of FIT’s (Fashion Institute of Technology) Gothic: Dark Glamour, an exhibition at the school’s museum dedicated to
Gothic inspired Fashion, which contained myriad leather, lace, and corsetry, ranging from historical costumes, to theatrical gowns, and gothic street wear, many of which bear the marks of haute couturiers, like Alexander McQueen, John Galliano, and Jean-Paul Gaultier.

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A lot of street wear tees are usually based around the idea of “playing” with a famous logo or piece of art.  It’s not a new concept, people have been doing it forever.  Everything from Tide (early Freshjive) to Warhol portraits (1/2 the brands out there) have been given a twist to further the message of small brands.  The tees I saw in Vegas were no different - but I did feel like there was a giant increase in the number of tees touting very high end brands.  This too is not new, but I felt that this time around there were so many more.  Maybe it’s the economy crunch?  Can’t afford real YSL but I can feel close to the brand by wearing a tee with it’s logo?  Or, maybe it’s a t-shirt brands way of aligning itself with what it thinks is cool, for example, girls that like Chanel should like my brand.  Whatever it is, there were a million (not quite, but almost) of these “designer” tees - I didn’t take pics of most of them but I’d be confident in saying that almost half of the clothing brands we looked at had some kind of designer reference - Chanel and Karl being the most used.  We even saw a shoe that made a designer reference.

Oh, and by the way, word on the street is that Fucking Awesome is coming back and re-issuing the Karl Lagerfeld “Gangsta Situations” tee (Yay!) - you heard it here first.  Check out more pics after the jump . . . .

Brian Lichtenberg for Blood Is The New Black - YSL

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John Galliano is launching his own fragrance after twenty years of having his own label.  In approaching this project, Galliano stated ”We were trying to capture the essence of the Galliano girl.”  He was inspired by romance and played a role in every aspect of developing the fragrance from sketching ideas for the bottle, to the packaging to the fragrance itself.  The scent is floral with a hint of the smell of freshly ironed shirts - a scent that brought stirred Galliano’s childhood memories.  The John Galliano fragrance will have limited distribution in select retail outlets.  The scent debuts in the U.K. in September, in France in October and the rest of the world in 2009.

Images & Info

After much delay, I’m back with another edition of Art HERstory (hope you like the new header )!

In today’s post I want to touch on the importance of a muse and focus on the life of Renée Perle—muse to French photographer Jacques Henri Lartigue and designer John Galliano. Read on…

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