Fashion Fit For Two: Vanessa and Victoria Traina Try Paris

 

 

The City of Light recently added two more well-dressed gamines to its roster. Speculation is that the ever-stylish sisters Victoria and Vanessa Traina are calling Paris home — at least for the summer — as they pursue separate fashion-industry gigs. Victoria is said to be working in Christian Lacroix’s atelier, while her younger sibling, Vanessa, is supposedly clocking hours in the editorial department of French Vogue (in which she was recently featured in a story shot by Craig McDean). Their professional globe-trotting hop should come as no surprise. Vanessa, who is represented by Elite Models, has styled a video for Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsens’ high-end line, The Row, and a few seasons ago Victoria lent her eye to Alexander Wang’s lookbook presentation. Neither girl could be reached for comment.

Marrying Madrid to New York: A New Fashion Alliance

As part of a plan to increase ties to the American market, the Council of Fashion Designers of Spain showed off some talent with “MadridFashionNewYork,” an exhibition in SoHo Thursday night.

Carolina Herrera was among the guests on hand to support the efforts of 11 Spanish designers including Agatha Ruiz de la Prada, Ailanto, Miguel Palacio and Roberto Torreta. Having held its first initiative last fall at the Queen Sofia Spanish Institute in New York, the latest event was planned to help create a solid platform for the promotion of Spanish design in the U.S. 

The exhibition was held at The Trump Group’s offices. Many of the new Trump SoHo hotel’s investors are Spanish, according to a CFDS spokeswoman.

Modesto Lomba, who heads up the CFDS, explained the impetus for the exhibition: “Definitely, New York is the capital of fashion in the world today.”

The Venezuelan-born Herrera is at ease in Spain. Aside from having a factory for her CH Carolina Herrera collection and several stores for the brand there, her daughter Carolina lives there and is married to a Spanish bullfighter. “Really the only way to see them is to have a show here. That way you can see every designer and what they do,” the designer said. “This was the first idea for the beginning so people know they exist.”

She was equally enthusiastic about pulling together an American effort. “We should organize ourselves or any American designer who wants to show in Europe. They should do the same thing with us.”

When Natasha De Santis, the spokeswoman for the CFDS, referred to Herrera as being a queen in Spain, the designer laughed and shook her head. “You have a very good queen in Spain. Queen Sofia — the real one.”

Executives from the CFDS met with Council of Fashion Designers of America president Diane von Furstenberg and executive director Steven Kolb last week to discuss other prospects. From the start of her presidency, von Furstenberg has pledged to make American designers more of a global force. She herself is staging a runway show Wednesday in Florence. The prospect of having some Spanish designers stage a group runway show in New York was among the ideas discussed between the two governing groups. Helping American designers who are interested in selling and marketing their brands in Spain is another possibility, but the talks are conceptual at this stage, said Kolb, who plans to sit down with the Spanish contingency this summer.

Courtesy: WWD

CFDA Fashion Awards Glistened with Fond Memories of YSL

 

The heat was on at Monday night’s CFDA Fashion Awards, as designers and VIPs crowded the area behind the New York Public Library. “This is already fun,” said Francisco Costa, who took home the Womenswear Designer of the Year Award for Calvin Klein Collection. Tom Ford won the Menswear Designer of the Year Award, while Tory Burch was honored as Accessory Designer of the Year. Candy Pratts Price received this year’s Eugenia Sheppard Award. The International Award went to Dries Van Noten, and Mayor Michael Bloomberg was given the CFDA’s Board of Directors’ Special Tribute. The Swarovski awards for emerging talent, meanwhile, went to Kate and Laura Mulleavy for Rodarte for Womenswear, Scott Sternberg for Band of Outsiders for Menswear and Philip Crangi for Accessory Design.

But the fashion crowd paid homage to one of their own in another way as many attendees showed up in versions of the late Yves Saint Laurent’s le smoking. “When I have something important to do I always wear a white smoking,” explained Carolina Herrera, the night’s recipient of the Geoffrey Beene Lifetime Achievement Award. 

CFDA president Diane von Furstenberg chose to wear a jacket Saint Laurent crafted 30 years ago. “I had a dress made for tonight but then I called my country home and asked them to send over all of my Yves Saint Laurents,” she said.

Of course, some people are accustomed to forgoing frocks on such occasions. “The last time I wore a dress was to a friend’s wedding when I was 19,” said Fran Leibowitz, the evening’s emcee.

 

Courtesy: WWD