• Fashion History

    Forget Kim Kardashian, Matthäus Schwarz is the first selfie addicted

    Move over, dear fashion influencers, and aspiring Kardashians! The first and only true fashionista in history is a German man with a serious job that allows him to earn a lot of money, an impeccable sense of style in imagining his outfits to get noticed. At 29, he wasn’t ashamed to pose naked, showing (indeed, highlighting) all his imperfections. The name? Matthäus Schwarz.

  • Fashion History

    BOGNER and the birth of Sports Fashion

    Usually when you think of German fashion there are very few names that have made the history of costume, but among them there is BOGNER, the high-end sports brand founded in the 30s by the Nordic skiing world champion Willy Bogner, who together with his wife Maria Bogner invented the sports fashion. The history of the brand and the personal lives of its protagonists are inevitably intertwined with the most luxury ski slopes, the cinema industry and even the Dolce Vita.     Sonia and Willy Bogner    

  • Fashion History

    Marc Jacobs for Louis Vuitton – The end of a fashion era

    In the last few days all the fashion media mourn the end of the 16-year liaison between Louis Vuitton and Marc Jacobs, whose role as creative director could be given soon to Nicolas Ghesquière, who in turn was forced to leave the same position at Balenciaga one year ago. As usual, the “betting game for the new creative director” has already begun: someone talks about a migration of Raf Simons to Vuitton, leaving his place at Dior to Ghesquière; some others talk about a transfer of Phoebe Philo, who in recent years has launched Celine among the top cutting-edge brand…

  • Fashion History

    Europeana Fashion International Conference in Florence

    Last week Florence hosted the Fashion Industry and the Glam Community International Conference, the event that drew the most important journalists, bloggers and fashion curators in the first capital of Italian fashion, for the official launch of Europeana Fashion, a huge fashion archive with 700,000 digital files coming from 19 museums and archives including the Victoria & Albert Museum and the Antwerp ModeMuseum. The Europeana Fashion project, coordinated by Fondazione Rinascimento Digitale, finally became a reality thanks to the European Commission co-funds and it will be accessible online from this summer with the publication of the first 100,000 digital objects. The presentation…

  • Fashion History

    Martin Margiela, the one and only

    Finally the media stopped talking about Maison Martin Margiela for H&M collection. The web has been flooded with articles and posts about the mysterious designer who is (should be) behind Maison Martin Margiela brand. Honestly I got bored of reading superficial and confused words about it, so I’ve decided to re-build the unique career of that talented Belgian boy named Martin Margiela, who became one of the most important designers of the last 25 years.   Martin Margiela – portrait 1997

  • Fashion History

    Guest post on American vintage fashion by Monica D. Murgia

    JANE STIEG – 1967 April/May in San Francisco on a cable car (credits: Stieg family) Dear readers, today, for the first time, I propose you a guest post from one of my readers. She is Monica D. Murgia (http://monicadmurgia.com) an American girl with Sicilian origins, who often comments the photos of TheFashion Commentator Fb page. Sometimes she writes a post about them adding some interesting links between art, fashion and culture. Monica is an adjunct professor of “fashion and textile courses” at many institutions (recently at the Berkeley College of New York), but her passion for fashion was born since her childhood when she used to look…

  • Fashion History

    Which Versace are you?

    In questo periodo la blogosfera è invasa da post, contest e articoli riguardanti la nuova collezione Versace for HeM. Anche io voglio parlarne, ma a modo mio, analizzando la rivisitazione degli archivi che Donatella ha effettuato per permettere anche alle nuove generazioni di vivere il mondo del lusso anni 90 in cui Versace ha stravolto la visione della donna. Non più la business woman elegante o la signora dei salotti buoni come ordinavano Armani e Valentino. Versace aveva una visione totalmente opposta dell’universo femminile. Gianni vestiva le giovani “amanti” degli uomini di potere, quelle ragazze intraprendenti, barocche, lolite, eccessive, piene…

  • Fashion History

    Tommy Hilfiger: THE PREP STYLE CHALLENGE

    Negli anni ’80 uscì nelle librerie americane “The Official Preppy Handbook”, un volumetto umoristico scritto da Lisa Birnbach, una neolaureata della Brown University, nel quale commentava e ironizzava sulle caratteristiche dei ragazzi preppy e il loro lifestyle. Quel libretto divenne un best seller, molti giovani vi si identificavano, o quanto meno desideravano far parte di quella ristretta casta di giovani stilosi della East Coast che frequentavano le migliori università e scuole preparatorie d’America. In realtà si iniziò a parlare di preppy style negli anni ’50, riferendosi agli WASP, ma con il libro di Lisa Bimbach il concetto si estese a…