The Fashion Doll Chronicles: New York

Showing posts with label New York. Show all posts

Sunday, February 21, 2016

Yahoo! Style and Mattel celebrate New York Fashion Week with a Barbie photo shoot

So Yahoo! has a style magazine. I did not know - who did? Well, obviously Mattel (or more accurately their BarbieStyle instagram account), as they collaborated with them to produce a Barbie photo shoot to celebrate New York Fashion Week. Using the new Barbie bodies (curvy, petite and tall) along with the classic one, the photographer shoots six looks from designers Rick Owens, Balmain, Marc Jacobs, Stella McCartney, Jeremy Scott, and Sonia Rykiel and their Spring 2016 collections. Check them out below along with the original outfits from the runways.

Original Barbie wears a look from Rick Owens’s spring 2016 collection

Yannis Vlamos / Indigitalimages.com for Vogue Runway

Original Barbie dresses in Balmain Spring-Summer 2016

Photo: Monica Feudi / Indigitalimages.com for Vogue Runway

Curvy Barbie wears a look from Marc Jacobs’s Spring 2016 collection - using curvy Barbie here references Beth Ditto's appearance on the Jacobs runway show

Photo: Gianni Pucci / Indigitalimages.com for Vogue Runway

Tall Barbie wears a look from Sonia Rykiel’s spring 2016 collection

Photo: Kim Weston Arnold /Indigitalimages.com for Vogue Runway

Petite Barbie wears a look from Jeremy Scott’s spring 2016 collection

Photo: Yannis Vlamos / Indigitalimages.com for Vogue Runway

Original Barbie wears a look from Stella McCartney’s spring 2016 collection

Photo: Kim WestonArnold / Indigitalimages.com for Vogue Runway

Doll photos courtesy of Mattel/BarbieStyle/Yahoo Style

Tuesday, May 6, 2014

Barbie cakes modelled after Charles James gowns

May 5th 2014 is the date of the Met Gala, this year dedicated to the Haute Couture designer Charles James, one of the best ball gown designers that ever lived. Over at Vogue they posted an amazing article about six Barbie cakes modelled after his gowns. The magazine tasked six skilled cake makers with an iconic gown to faithfully reproduce. Amirah Kassem from Flour Shop inserted Barbie into an ice cream cone cake, covered in wafer paper coated in white chocolate and painted in edible metallic blue. Penny Stankiewicz, from Sugar Couture, researched all the elements of the Clover dress for a complex construction of butter cake and passion fruit butter-cream. Michelle Doll-Olson used fondant with a chocolate truffle filling and edible pearl paint to mimic James’s emerald green silk satin gown from 1954. Melissa Torres of Cake Hero employed a combination of fondant, banana cake, milk chocolate frosting, and a luxurious metal: as she said "the dress is about the subtle play between the red and burnt orange, chocolate colours, so I dabbed tiny bits of gold on the folds to enhance the shimmer.”

Made by Penny Stankiewicz/Sugar Couture

Made by Kate Sullivan/Cake Power

Made by Amirah Kassem/Flour Shop

Made by Melissa Torres/Cake Hero

Made by Margaret Braun/Margaret Braun

Made by Michelle Doll Olsen/Michelle Doll Cakes

All cakes photographed by Grant Cornett - courtesy of Vogue.com

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Madison Avenue (Doll)House - Rex Architects for Calvin Klein

CLIENT Calvin Klein, Inc.
PROGRAM (Doll)House for the “Calvin Klein Woman,” displayed in the Calvin Klein Collection storefront on Madison Avenue during the 2008-2009 holiday season
AREA Dollhouse: 4.0 m² (43 sf); Concept House: 190 m² (2,000 sf)
WEIGHT 450 kg (1,000 lbs)
PROJECT COST Confidential
STATUS Completed November 2008
ARCHITECT REX
KEY PERSONNEL Jeffrey Franklin, Joshua Prince-Ramus, Jacob Reidel, Alejandro Schieda, Eugenia Zimmermann

CONSULTANTS Magnusson Klemencic, Situ Studio

Calvin Klein’s Senior Vice President for Creative Services approached REX to design a concept house showcasing pieces from the company’s apparel, accessory, and home lines. The catch: the house would be realized in miniature and displayed in the main window of Calvin Klein’s Madison Avenue store during the 2008-2009 holiday season. REX dubbed this fusion of concept house and doll house a “(Doll)House.

For a practice committed to using constraints as generative opportunities, the project was challengingly whimsical, presenting an exciting (and fun) opportunity to test the limits of our methodology across multiple scales.

A response to two markedly different scales and purposes, the (Doll)House had to reconcile—in one design—the contradictory constraints of a concept house and a doll house:

1. The concept house had to be designed for the “Calvin Klein Woman,” a professed city-dweller; the doll house typology is traditionally a suburban, detached, single-family dwelling.

2. The concept house had to provide privacy for its hypothetical inhabitant; a doll house has to be open, at eye-level, and easily viewed in the round.

3. The concept house had to respect the minimalist aesthetic of Calvin Klein; the doll house had to be bold enough to attract the attention of holiday shoppers.

4. The concept house required a hypothetical site in New York City; the doll house site was already fixed—a Madison Avenue storefront.

By siting the concept house in the ‘landscape’ above a Manhattan intersection, the competing demands of the two scales begins to reconcile. Suspended in air, the concept house remains a freestanding residence while capitalizing on underutilized urban space. Undeniably frivolous, the Madison Avenue (Doll)House nevertheless contains a kernel of an idea for accommodating growth in rapidly-densifying cities.

Meanwhile, elevated and freestanding within the storefront, the doll house can be seen closely in the round and from afar, and can be opened from all sides for play.

The conflicting constraints that remained unresolved by the selection of the concept house’s site are reconciled by the (Doll)House’s design itself. The design begins as four, minimalist floor plates (dining room, living room, bedroom, and rooftop pool terrace) following the precedent set for Calvin Klein by John Pawson, the store’s designer. The plates are then shifted to maximize visibility into the doll house, and to provide views out for the imagined occupant of the concept house.

To balance the opposing desires for views and privacy, the (Doll)House is wrapped in a cocoon of translucent white textile. Conceptually, this fabric layer operates as a sunshade, outboard of a glass façade.

The interiors and roof terrace are furnished with miniature replicas of pieces from the company’s apparel, accessory, and home lines. These items were designed by the company’s creative directors: Francisco Costa, Calvin Klein Collection for Women; Italo Zucchelli, Calvin Klein Collection for Men; Ulrich Grimm, Calvin Klein Shoes & Accessories; and, Amy Mellen, Calvin Klein Home.

Architect Joshua Prince-Ramus in front of the Madison Avenue (Doll)House

Images Credits: James Lattanzio; Luxigon; Situ Studio

(text from REX Architects)