The collection is polished, cohesive, feminine, French and très, très chic. We love her use of color, which is exuberant and restrained at the same time. She uses blacks and whites extensively, but when she uses colors, they're deep and rich and sophisticated. There's a slightly retro bohemian 1930s vibe, but the emphasis here is on "slightly." There's nothing costumey about these looks.
Honestly, we rarely see a collection and love every look - and we might have some minor quibbles with a few of the pieces - but this is one of those times where the whole thing is just so gorgeous and so perfectly rendered that we're just awed by the pretty.
Et vous?
(Photos: FirstView)
74 comments:
i don't understand the balloon effect. why do you want to make a girl look wider than she is? especially when she's stick-figured.
I love her colors. I feel like getting on a plane and flying to France.
so pretty!
Gorgeous collection! Thank you for the great pictures, boys!
27 and 29 are uuug.
no way any women in her right mind would wear that unless she was being paid.
How ever the reast of it is very wearable.
loving it.
what a lovely collection. finally a collection that makes sense to me!
Clothing that could actually be worn off the runway - what a concept. Beautiful and feminine, yet clearly high fashion. C' est Magnifique!!!
Some of the dresses are very Kara Janx-y. Love it, though the balloony stuff isn't really practical, of course. But who says all fashion has to be practical?
Love it! Beautiful colors, amazing details! I also love her source of inspiration.
Gorgeous. I vacationed in St. Paul de Vence a few years ago, and she's captured the spirit of the place. The town is a perfect medieval walled village, and is also the mailing address of one of the world's great museums of modern art, Fondation Maeght. It's no mistake that a few of those dresses remind me of Miro and Mondrian works.
(By the way, the only one I don't like is the 3-piece black thing, with the crocheted dress over leggings and a silk balloon coat over top. Maybe each piece would work with something else, but the entire effect is "your grandma's goth look.")
The poster formerly known as wannabe.
Other than the Great Pumpkin top and a couple others, these are delicious clothes. And, as you said, so FRONCH.
It's an very strong collection. I absolutely adore the geometric shapes used in the fabrics; the colors are beautiful. I'm not crazy about the painting-like pieces but they add a nice touch to the runway.
I love this collection! La Malandrino always does prints and color in a way that’s very feminine and fashion-forward.
I love the color palette and the inspiration.
Aww St. Paul de Vence!!! Adorable! Fabulous collection!! I love the garden-inspired runway, the colors, the hair, the makeup, Catharine Malandrino is amazing. I love everything she does. Vive la France! :- )
The ornate glass beads that decorate some of the dresses are GORGEOUS.
I like the collection, but where did she find such ugly models?
I think Catherine Malandrino personifies elegance in its truest form. Thank you for the beautiful pictures, kittens!
Not loving the gigundo ruffles on some of the looks, but all in all, I love the collection-I just might kill for some of those dresses!
Except for the hideous belts, the collection is gorgeous and vibrant. I was at her store the other day and loved everything in it.
I like them a lot. Particularly the ones where she's channeling Sonia Delaunay.
Malandrino
Delaunay
I really love the red layered gown with the mustard bodice - that's an unexpected, but very beautiful, combination of colors.
All in all, her collection leave me wishing that I could afford this stuff!
I just saw a video about this collection where Catherine Malandrino said that she's not afraid to be creative. I really enjoyed this collection. Very refreshing.
I will kill for dress #40. That's a work of art.
I hate the white ruffle sleeve bolero jacket thing, and that dress with the short ruffle/wave sleeve thingies is FUG. It looks like big puffs of toilet paper wadded up on the woman's shoulder.
Some of the other looks are nice, but I'm not as crazy about this as you guys are.
I love that this seems less trend-driven than a lot of collections. She definitely has a point of view. Not everything is wearable, but, as someone already said, not everything needs to be.
Bonus points for using (a couple) models of color. Very rare these days (see last week's Sunday Styles article on the subject).
Alexis
Ladies and gentlemen, we have ourselves a winner!
I'm not loving the puffy sleeves on some of the dresses but the rest is beautiful.
"I've seen some good boleros out there. They know what they're doing, tho."
Makes the rest of them look like a bunch of poseurs. C'est magnific!
Lovely. Simply lovely.
Actually, I think Malandrino's balloon or tulip skirts are some of the few I would ever contemplate wearing. They don't look costumey. That "Great Pumpkin" top, though (perfect name, Casey), was not a keeper. But I also love how many outfits she has where she's got the waistline back at a woman's real waistline. Why has fashion ever gone away from it?
wow, so that's what a good collection looks like.
Only 2 quibbles here - hate the Partrigde Family bus fabric that she used twice; the psudo-Southwestern applique is awful.
Marty the Wizard
Love it and let's not forget that this is a collection on the runway, what you'll see at her stores is a much more wearable version of her inspiration/runway show.
So girly! Love the detail.
ANd the dress in pictures 3 and 4 - jawdropping.
" Kara Lang said...
I like the collection, but where did she find such ugly models?"
We hear all the time that "models don't look normal" and when they do, they're ugly. Go figure.
Fabulous! I love Catherine Malandrino. I'll never forget that episode in Paris. She looked divine.
I don't know that it's so much that the models are fugly as that they're not styled well. I'm thinking in particular of the dark-skinned young woman. Her skin is stunning but the two dresses, the blue and the red, don't set it off well, and the hair and accessories don't do her justice, either. She would look much better in one of the lighter outfits or the white and with a hairstyle that didn't look like she had a doorknob sticking out of her head.
The outfit with the white frilly bolero? Keep the bolero but I want those pants! And j'adore the bold graphic prints. Brava!
Some of the gigando ruffles remind me a bit of Laura's French Maid/Couture gown, n'est pas?
-nycowgirl
Aww, so girly, so feminine. One of my favorites.
I thought the belts were something left over from the Peanuts design challenge.
Me2
I'm a huge fan of Catherine Malandrino's designs. I love how she celebrates the female form and highlights certain parts of the body. Not to mention her outstanding sense of color.
I just looked at it again close up. I love the things she does with pleating, gathering and rouching. And are those fleurchons I see!
The models aren't ugly, they're just wearing too much makeup!
love the ruffly sleeves. I want to hang around St Paul de Vence all day long sipping kir royale and wearing these outfits. Instead I am in A RED STATE
CP
I love it, I totally get it. I love the little details as well. I almost hated the pumpkin top but I remembered that I'm making myself a similar style top. Hopefully I won't look like a pumpkin (or in my case, a big blackberry)
I loved most of the designs but scrolling through the photos I too wondered how on earth she found so many unattractive models?
The great pumpkin top reminds me of Bradley Baumgartner. Aw. Remember him?
Anyhoo.... I love this collection and am desperately coveting outfit #2. C'est magnifique!!!
" Anonymous said...
I loved most of the designs but scrolling through the photos I too wondered how on earth she found so many unattractive models?"
Ugly is the new beautiful.
Great collection. I particularly like the dress in the third and fourth picture. That dress is gorgeous and thank you for the detailed picture.
J'adore LaMalandrino!
--Gotham Tomato
tres charmant
I love all the rich, vibrant color. And the two white dresses are nothing short of stunning. Wow.
Oh, I love it! Not all the colors suit me, but I adore her details. Mmm, mmm, mmm!
Clearly I should redouble my efforts at finding a sugar daddy. At least 60% of these pieces need to be in my closet, and I'm trapped inside a student budget for a while yet. Simply beautiful collection.
Not crazy about some of the pieces, but I have to admit that Mlle. Malandrino knows what flatters a woman's figure! And the fabrics flow beautifully.
I love the different necklines--truely made for women that might have breasts. LOL.
A couple of them looked OK, but overall the collection is beautiful with one exception. The blue dress--the model looks like she's slumped over and she's standing up straight. So that line is skewed.
LOVE THE PANTS!! I'm into pants right now...so LOVE the style of the pants.
And the models are wearing way too much makeup--it distracts from the clothes. That and their hair is too severe..a little softness around their face and the collection would shine!
The white dress in the second row would make a perfect casual but chic wedding dress. Love it!
wow, what an AMAZING collection!! several looks literally took my breath away! damn you malandrino!!
and GREAT pics boys!!
there are very few looks in this collection that i would not wear, and none that i (with a "real woman skinny" frame) couldn't wear! well, maybe the red and mustard halter dress with the tiered skirt, which is NOT for a woman with breasts...
however, every design, even those that aren't to my personal aesthetic, is perfectly executed. yes, you may say that the ruffles remind you of laura's french maid costume, but the issue with her couture dress was that it looked costume-y and ill proportioned. the ruffles, even before they got squashed, looked sloppy and unrefined. it looked like it was made in two days, and it wasn't enough to lift the dress as a whole, which was heavy and bleak looking. malandrino's ruffles, on the other hand, though not for the faint of heart, are perfectly finished and are proportioned perfectly with the wide leg of the trouser. and i know that we're all starting to get a little bored with these pucci-inspired bold graphic prints, but i love the way she used a fabric that had just the slightest hint of sheerness and cling so that the full cut of the garments still had the suggestion of the female form underneath. and it's not like we don't already know that malandrano loves to create blouson looks!
this might have been one of my favorite runway shows i've seen in a couple of years. i literally gasped upon seeing the first photo. i covet that dress and am going to be stalking fabric stores so i can make my own inept, low rent knockoff.
Beautiful collection!
" PaperPusher said...
The white dress in the second row would make a perfect casual but chic wedding dress. Love it!"
I agree. It's a fantastic dress.
I need to save up to buy one of her dresses. They're gorgeous!
Love the clothes, HATE the hairstyles !!!
And a couple of the belts were superfluous or distracting.
But a really great collection and I am not usually so much of a fan of her's.
PS. I claim dress #45.
Anon said: "We hear all the time that "models don't look normal" and when they do, they're ugly. Go figure."
These models don't look normal. There are a couple of attractive ones, but the others look sickly, pinched, emaciated, and bored. These are not normal women. These are ugly women who just happen to have model-type bodies, i.e. human hangers.
I loved the Sonia Delauney bits!
Gorgeous, I love it all except the blouse with the colored squares and the dress with the colored circles.
But, God, how chic is the rest of it. I want it.
I had the honour of attending this show during fashion week. It was so beautiful they played a very modern version of Ave Maria in the background set to a techno beat! The Chelsea art gallery looked gorgeous. The clothes were Brilliant!!!
I looked at this again and it's even better than before the first time. The woman is simply in another whole dimension of thought and design. It's incredible.
And Malan got to go to the show! Hi Malan! Miss you much sweetness.
Magnifique!!!!!!!!!!!
Make petites, please. Ah hell, I covet the dress the girl got on Tim Gunn's show. I am not a dress grrl, but kittens, I'd wear that if it was 40 below (Okay, I'm in NoCal where it rarely hits 40 above, just sayin) :-)
Gorgeous collection! I think she's an amazing designer. Now I'm going to pretend that I'm in Paris wearing one of those dresses. Sigh. :)
Especially after looking at Bradley's show, Catherine Malandrino's designs are amazingly beautiful.
#29 is awful. It looks like Catherine gave someone who regularly wears acid washed jeans with a braided belt and the t-shirt tucked in access to her closet. That person might have picked out some individually okay pieces, but they're being worn as if they were the aforementioned jeans/braided belt/t-shirt.
And that belt is just plain ugly.
But everything else is pretty.
all i can say is: ooh-la-la! :)
(with the exception, maybe, of that charlie brown inspired belt...)
~~zoe
Delicious. I could just SPREAD her on a cracker!
beautiful collection.
mr. weirdo libretti is going to turn him on watching it and remembering his "affaire" with catherino malandrino in the paris challenge.
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