ELIE SAAB @ FW2015/16 The Way of The Woods Collection

ELIE SAAB FW2015/16 The Way of The Woods Collection is a mysterious forest taking structured, commanding silhouettes and progressively softening them to mimic natural forms with details of shimmering foliage.

Determined, she ventures into the woods with confidence and strength. Constructed silhouettes frame the shoulders with military precision and solid, broad golden belts accentuate the waist.

High stand-up collars, tweed coats, gilded buttons and open-toed boots capture an aura of ceremony and allure.

Deeper and darker she goes. Elements of her surroundings start to take life, flourishing upon silhouettes, graduating into color and detail. Shades of pine, moss and scarlet speak of nature, dense and profound. 

Hints of golden light sift through the canopy in a graphic print applied in crepe and perforated macramé with accents of peacock blue. Lace this season becomes sprigs and wood grain in relief.

Embroidered leaves branch off into geometric patterns on lace, or emerge on textured jacquard. The Poincaré bag is revisited with laser-cut forestial detail.

She gradually sheds her structured form as nature continues its expansive and feminine influence.

Silhouettes soften with a Juliette sleeve and outerwear evolves into oversized elegance. Forms are freed by open backs and floating panels. Fur lines collars, front pockets and accessories.

Lace liberates the upper legs, where light appears behind poetic turns of embroidered foliage to reveal a diffuse yet feminine form.

The forest envelops her, lovely, dark and deep. It reveals her natural form, with a grace and allure that is gentle and fine. She is awakened.

100 Yen Love

Japanese boxing film is rather unusual genre for its own film making in the past history and when <100 Yen Love> hits the box office that made a success as well as its reputation being nominated as one of the best foreign films in the 2016 Oscar, it is time and worth paying little more attention. Film director Masaharu Take takes an unusual approach in this sports drama genre but unlike the many other boxing films that are testosterone-driven dramas including Scorsese's "Raging Bull" that take centres on a woman and begins it as a black comedy. As the lead character is a female that has never boxed before, but throws herself into this challenging environment with tenacity.

The main plot centers around the 32-year-old Ichiko (Sakura Ando) who lives at home with her parents, passing the days in self-indulgent grunginess. Ichiko's recently divorced younger sister Fumiko has moved back home with her young son. One day, after a particularly heated argument, Ichiko charges out of the house for good. With few employment options to support herself, Ichiko works the night shift at a 100 yen shop (dollar store). On her way home each day she passes a boxing gym where she watches Yuji Kano (Hirofumi Arai) silently practice, developing a crush on him. The pair starts seeing each other and things change for Ichiko, but for a change this film isn’t about winning the bout, but rather longtime loser Ichiko's rematch with life!

This film swept Japanese box office and won the Best Picture Awards in the Japanese Cinema Splash section at the 2014 Tokyo International Film festival and it is a real slow burner (classic Japanese tempo) as we watch the transformation of Ichiko into a dedicated and focused boxer in training. Plus, she found a firm footing in her pat to a new life of personal change. The whole trajectory of her transformation into a solid semi-amateur boxer is very real in depiction, although the story is a bot on the slow side for the first half of the film, but eventually picks up the pace as when Ichiko moves into a new phase of life. This Japanese indie film well suited to international appeal and exposure is the stunning character arc at the film's center and can only hope Western Film Fests and audiences will give this ferociously well-acted winner a shot.

SPORTMAX FW2015/16 Collection

SPORTMAX FW2015/16 Collection winter arrives next season at Sportmax with a crisp gust of wind blowing across the rolling countryside. Nature’s own intriguing textures and warm color combinations provide endless exploration of luxurious materials, while the cold air creates a constant desire for wrapping up.

Fabrics are rich but raw, accentuating their natural provenance. Raw cut seams, hand-stitched blanket edges and fringe trims all bear the mark of human hands rather than cold machines.

 Silk is embossed like crocodile on sculptural coats, extra long alpaca begs to be stroked, while camel coats are cut from glossy pony skin. Knitwear emerges as one of the collection’s key country classics. Its craft roots and stretch quality make it a perfect winter wrapping, either in chunky 3D A ran cable sweaters, cashmere sheaths or moulin twisted yarns frayed and fringed with long rolled cuffs.

A desire for warmth and an effortless ease informs the soft, feminine silhouettes. Button less coats envelope the body like blankets with built-in scarves. Waists are cinched on feminine jackets and double-faced cashmere coats lashed with tubular leather thong belts. Slim knit dresses adhere to the body’s curves. Sweaters roll down naked shoulders and coats open up with shawl fronts to allow for flashes of bare skin, while oversized kilt pins and large hook closures tug cashmere coats off their center.

  

Pattern unfurls this season with a wild floral print of anemones and chrysanthemums whose fragility is encased in bold black outlines. The flowers climb over one side of split-pattern dresses, then become displaced and transformed into black guipure floral motifs adoring tutti frutti sloppy knits and camel cady dresses.

  

Shoes are just as soft and comfortable as the clothes, Lace-up wedges are cut from soft matte leathers, with cow hide placements and chunky crepe soles, creating a spring in the step. Raw cut bucket bags in matte crocodile are lashed together with contrasting lacing and woven knotted straps. The Sportmax woman is cozy chic to go.

ETRO AW2015/16 Menswear Collection

ETRO AW2015/16 Menswear collection creates a world of illusion next Autumn, where military drops the attitude and uniforms get issued their very own personal painters. Etro’s “Never Ending Supper”, iconic advertising imagery created 17 years ago, is as relevant as ever, informing a dreamy world of noble, marble-lined Italian palazzos that now crawl with exotic animals.

  

The collection is as rich and curated as a cabinet of curiosities. Treasures unfurl around every corner, with fabrics zealously transformed. Etro has revived a slumbering colony of artists in Como to rigorously hand-paint the surfaces of clothes, adding dreamy, tone-on-tone layers over horizontal grain corduroy or velvet suits. They look printed, but each of these garments has in fact been transformed one-by-one by a single painter’s carful brush strokes. Silk printed coats, needle-stitched with two types of wool, create a fuzzy 3-D plaid surface. Cotton plaid printed shirts are as beautiful and luminous as silk, while heat stamped velvet suits are scattered in gold dust, recalling the grandeur of Fortuny palazzo in Venice.

Pattern rises and falls, loosing its borders and confines while prints appear and disappear like an illusionistic trick. Trompe-l’oeil and ombre effects happily make you loose track of where you are and what you’re looking at (just like our zoo-filled palazzos!). Painted Paisley flowers and petals swirl around jacket shoulders and on pant legs, barely visible, before evaporating into thin air. Plaids and paisleys, checks and tweeds, meet in an alchemy on mannish wool coats, gently blending into one another. Checked plaids move from small to extra large, as if being viewed under a magnifying glass.

Blanketed in rugged tobacco and leather tones, the clothes possess the formality of uniforms but the comfort of sportswear. Draw-string pants are loosened, like breeches, around the hips and have elastic ankles. The boots have rugged rubber soles but possess the polish of a classics lace-up shoe. Corduroy sunglasses watch the swinging movement of patchwork weekend bags in laser cut velvet and pony. Jackets are elongated and worn with turtlenecks. Shearling lined frock coats and military jackets have luxurious silk linings and printed pony skin under collars. The pocket-front Safari jacket, a staple in the Etro archives, makes its way onto Kean Etro’s runway for the first time, creating a winter safari suit. The worlds of formal and informal collide and explode for evening where tuxedos are wrapped in immense velvet devore pois scarves, and where velvet gold-dusted puffer jackets offer a new dandy uniform after-dark. All of it comes together like a grand wunder-room.