Word: fashioned
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Politics cut heavily into the semiannual fashion giddiness. Paris, besieged by the fear of terrorist bombings, seemed a risk to everyone. Milan and London, not similarly troubled, still fell under the long shadows from France. The Paris shows, held in tents in the courtyard of the Louvre as usual, proceeded in unaccustomed orderliness, with heavier security measures than most international airports and without the playfulness that makes even the silliest presentations tolerable. If la mode were better used to the real world, this might not have mattered so much. But the glass of fashion is a mirror that reflects only...
...similar status is ensured for Rifat Ozbek. He is, quite literally, a young Turk, 32 years old and born in Istanbul. He studied architecture for two years at the University of Liverpool, but dropped out after construction technicalities began to overwhelm his design inspiration. Fashion offered a fresher, faster alternative: he was beguiled by the speed with which ideas could become a malleable reality. He showed his first eight fashion sketches at London's St. Martin's School of Art, and was immediately accepted. "He's an enormously talented designer with an original point of view," says Lydia Kemeny, Ozbek...
...found himself without enough money to ride the Metro, Ozbek receives both salary and commission from Gulf. For a young designer, it seems like a snug setup, but Ozbek keeps things modest. His offices overlook a cranny-like courtyard in Mayfair, his staff numbers seven, and his fashion shows can be like small parties in a studio, with a couple of models strolling out from behind curtains to the recorded strains of music from Lawrence of Arabia...
...designer says "begins with how a woman today moves, how she expresses herself. Women today value their freedom; they do not want to feel compressed or crushed by what they wear." Like Ozbek, Gigli also studied architecture, but he works from individual pieces, not a grand design. The usual fashion practice is to come up with a broad-based aesthetic for each collection. Gigli creates individual pieces -- a lovely evening dress of elasticized linen, for example, that hangs like an unpleated Fortuny -- and fits them into a whole. "Each piece I design has its own life," he says. "Then...
...that standard, a Gigli dress is positively brawny. Wearing one is like being brushed by cobwebs. His fashion has an urbane modernity that stands in stark contrast to the antiquity that enveloped him as he was growing up. Born in the soil-rich region of Romagna, Gigli was "surrounded by books" as a boy. His father and grandfather were antiquarian booksellers, and, the designer remembers, "We always lived in houses full of antique furniture and paintings -- beautiful but uncomfortable." His Milan studio, staffed with six associates, is unfussy; his apartment has lots of white space and green plants, and that...