Word: wools
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...sure, fabric can't talk or cause a scandal or convulse the blogosphere. And maybe there is something fusty and old hat in caring too much about the provenance of a silk shantung or getting all weak-kneed about a suit made of cellophane-backed wool. But the art of couture glamour is ultimately about the connoisseurship of material, and there have always been designers who knew this and obsessively attended to the fabric of fashion...
Indeed, Italy's mills?from the silk manufacturers of Como to the wool and sportswear producers of Tuscany and the cashmere and menswear fabric mills of Biella?are Europe's largest producers of luxury textiles. And, along with the Japanese, Italians are considered among the greatest fabric innovators. "They innovate by constantly looking outside their industry for ideas," says Angelo Uslenghi, a Milan-based textile cool hunter. "There is not much new you can do to yarns and weaves, but you can look outside the textile industry at other industries such as fine jewelry where they use techniques like filigree...
...JUST ABOUT FASHION? No, we design the fabrics too. Because Zegna is also a textile manufacturer, 95% of the fabrics are exclusive to us. We are obsessed with textiles! Everything has a modern twist. We'll take a traditional fabric like wool and treat it with that twist...
...Pressler's penny-pinching may have turned off the Gap's core customers. Sweaters that were once 100% cotton or wool, for example, showed up in stores as acrylic blends, and people noticed. Banana Republic tried to woo the same high-end consumers as J. Crew but didn't go far enough in offering luxury fabrics, like cashmere, that those shoppers wanted. In 2005, while department stores couldn't sell enough $100-plus premium jeans, the Gap skipped denim and tried to push khakis. "Pressler went too far in focusing on costs at the expense of merchandising," says Christine Chen...
...sake. The designers of these garments (weavers, needleworkers and painters) sacrifice the practical for the spectacular. These robes of many colors shimmer with feathers, beads, buttons and metallic threads. An ordinary flight jacket, when encrusted with 25,000 brass safety pins, is transformed into glittering armor. Knitted into a wool jacket, along with abstract images of the sun and its rays, are words by Walt Whitman ("Give me the splendid, silent sun/With all his beamsfull?dazzling"). A book for people who dress to thrill...