Keri Hilson looked stunning and statuesque wearing a Dolce & Gabbana satin ruched dress with a peek-a-boo lace panel.

I love her strappy black sandals.

She was one of the best dresses at this event.

Kelly Price opted for a super casual look of a black cold-shouldered top paired with jeans.

Tamia was by far my favourite at this event glowing in a coral asymmetrical belted dress, which she paired with nude heels an a gold clutch.

Deborah Cox opted for a silver studded look which really didn’t suit her.

I have one word for Keisha Knight Pulliam…WOW.

I will always see her as little Rudy Huxtable.

Melanie Fiona wore a cute silver dress with a lot of draping on the hips.

Her dress was paired with matching heels.

LeToya Luckett was predictable in Herve Leger.

Fantasia Barrino was another favourite wearing a simple black dress with gold Louis Vuitton Cancan heels.

Monica has seen far better days.

Her secretary meets rock chick look doesn’t work for me at all.

Credit: Freddy O

Pier 59 Studios on the West Side Highway is used to being packed with fancy fashion folk. (The majority of Steven Meisel’s legendary shots are taken in these very halls.) But things were particularly crammed at Patrik Ervell’s most recent offering Saturday afternoon. Every single seat in the venue—one of the spacious, silver studios in the building—filled up, forcing some of Ervell’s biggest fans, like Terence Koh and Opening Ceremony’s Humberto Leon, to sit on the floor. (That’ll teach ‘em to get there late.) Perhaps this heightened sense of interest had something to do with the designer’s first steps into womenswear; although Ervell’s designs have been exclusively for boys in previous seasons, this show was the first time a girl has found her way on the runway—not counting the startlingly androgynous long-haired lads common to his cast. Backstage I asked Ervell why he ventured into feminine territory. “I’ve always liked that slim, clean look,” he said, adding that he’s a fan of gender-bending in his collections (explaining the pearl details on one boy’s ski sweater). So are Ervell’s new muses same-sex-oriented females? “Instead of typecasting them as lesbians, I prefer to say ‘butch women that dress like men,’” Ervell clarified. And while more than one girl has shown up in Ervell’s creations off the runway, he’s remaining mum on coming out with an entire women’s line. I guess we’ll have to wait till next season’s packed presentation.Derek Blasberg

Photo: Marcio Madeira

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—Derek Blasberg

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Florence Welch had three wardrobe changes for her performances at VH1’s Divas Celebrate Soul event, which was held at the Hammerstein Ballroom in New York City last night.

The most uncharacteristic was her Emilio Pucci embellished dress from the Fall 2011 collection.

Usually Florence performs in gowns, so this festive ornate velvet dress is quite a departure from her recognisable style.

The glamorous dress, which is elegantly offset with crystal embellishments, was teamed with plum ankle-strap pumps.

Read more…

Creators like Karl Lagerfeld and Marc Jacobs are constantly raising the bar (and the tab) for catwalk theatrics. No wonder, then, that so many designers are exploring alternate ways to show their work, from trendy short films to artistic showroom presentations. German label Bo van Melskens has found an innovative solution to the problem of transmitting next season’s message without breaking the bank: a mobile “showbox delivery” centered around a single piece. The transportable fashion show, sent to various stores and editors, contains variations on a signature fifties-inspired dress silhouette in five different colors, and comes with an inspirational story, a CD with a specially composed soundtrack, and instructions for use, allowing viewer’s to enact their own runway show. It’s a welcome approach—as any editor who has sat through an endless fashion show can tell you, there’s nothing better than a good edit.—Sameer Reddy

Photo: Courtesy of Bo Van Melskens

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—Nancy MacDonell

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Recover is a company based in Portland, Oregon who creates handcrafted wooden skins for Apple products. Recover wooden skins are precision laser-cut from authentic wood veneers.

Each unique piece is hand sanded, stained, and lacquered in Recover’s Portland-based woodshop to ensure long lasting beauty and protection. All skins are constructed with professional-grade 3M adhesive backing that allows for simple and strong adhesion while still allowing for removal if desired. Each one-of-a-kind piece is designed to fit your devices specific model and size.

They offer Maple, Walnut, and Cherry woods in various stains for iPhone, iPad, and MacBook. Custom engraving is also available.

This is the coolest kids bedroom I’ve ever seen, and I’d totally rock this room as an adult.

Created by Steve Kuhl of Kuhl Design Build, a Minneapolis area design/build firm specializing in remodeling and unique custom projects, this bedroom is certainly one of a kind. Built for a 6-year-old, the pirate theme was chosen after considering space ship, race car, and castle concepts.

The rope bridge is able to support the weight of an adult. Steve says, “As with many of the things we build, this is was a first. Ultimately we derive great satisfaction out of overcoming odd design challenges. It’s sort of like that good pain you feel the day after a heavy workout.”

For added effect, a steel-doored jail cell serves to contain helpless little siblings — er — prisoners.

Steve Kuhl at the helm (above), which has a rope descending into a closet below:

Detail of the ship’s exterior. The planks are made from 2×12 ribs covered with 1/2 inch of plywood, then faux finished to appear weathered.

Girl-about-town Natalie Joos spends her days casting for shows like ADAM and Yigal Azrouël and editorials for the likes of Mario Sorrenti and Mariano Vivanco, but her passion is vintage clothing. Joos’ blog, Tales of Endearment, spotlights Joos’ “Muses,” impeccably styled girls who share her secondhand obsession. In a new partnership with Style.com, Tales of Endearment’s subjects will preview their shoots right here on Style File.Not too tight, nor too clingy. Those are the basic wardrobe requirements of Natalie Joos’ latest Muse, New York artist Charlotte Kidd. “My thought was, if some wild apocalypse happened, I’d always be able to get away in what I was wearing,” she explains. But this Kidd is more than all right. Her perfect getaway outfit includes a motorcycle jacket, oxfords, and sailor pants, and her wardrobe is complemented by a well-curated collection of eclectic pieces, such as prairie capes and baseball jackets. Style.com caught up with the Kidd Yellin art studio co-founder (she created the compound with Dustin Yellin in 2007) to find out where she nabs her enviable vintage pieces and talk about art’s influence on her sartorial choices.—Kristin Studeman

How did you first become interested in vintage?I was about 12 years old, with not much pocket money, and would go with my girlfriends to the flea markets and Goodwill to hunt.And how would you describe your style these days?Easy and simple. [I'm inspired by] Coco Chanel [and] strong women who are true to themselves.Strong women—and yet in her story, Natalie describes you as a tomboy at heart. What’s the most feminine piece of clothing in your closet?An antique wedding dress!What are some of your favorite pieces from your wardrobe, both vintage and non-vintage?An 1880’s bear coat that used to belong to a hunter, [a] leather jacket, my necklaces of porcupine quills that I got in the Amazon, Givenchy jumpsuits, stripey sweaters, a Louis Féraud white sixties coat, black ankle boots, and countless jeans.Where do you like to buy your vintage pieces?EBay and on road trips. Things are so picked over and everyone knows what everything is worth now, so you have to go off the radar. The Upper East Side, Palm Beach, Palm Springs—places where older ladies give away their Yves Saint Laurent for nothing!What do you look for in particular?Victorian mourning capes, white lace, worn-in motorcycle jackets, old Japanese army boots, 1920’s bathing suits, Americana. How does your fashion sensibility connect with your artistic sensibility?I get inspired by costumes in the films and paintings I’m looking at that moment. [Right now,] Picnic at Hanging Rock, Jules and Jim, Buster Keaton, the coolness of [Michelangelo] Antonioni, the colors of Japanese woodblock prints…Finish the thought: What’s old is new again when…You reinvent it!For more from Charlotte’s shoot, visit Tales of Endearment.

Photos: Natalie Joos

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—Matthew Schneier

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As creative director of her family’s business, Selfridges’ Alannah Weston has turned the massive department store on London’s Oxford Street into her private fiefdom of fun with a series of large-scale events that have brought together artists, filmmakers, musicians, and designers in the name of underscoring the store’s retail vision. Wednesday night saw one of the smartest, artiest events yet, to mark the opening of the Women’s Designer Galleries. Curator Emma Reeves commissioned a set of short films to interpret seven of the collections carried in the new space. The single criterion? A strong female character at the heart of each film. For Ann Demeulemeester, for instance, Michael Pitt filmed his fiancée, Jamie Bochert, as a wraithlike figure moving through the desert (top), like a contemporary version of Isabelle Eberhardt, the 19th-century French traveler who inspired the designer’s collection. For Comme des Garçons, Katerina Jebb filmed concert pianist Madeleine Malraux, the widow of cultural nabob André Malraux, still playing at the age of 90. Ruth Hogben made a typically brilliant piece of film for Gareth Pugh (above), a hectic slice of Cabaret-style decadence. She also created a sepulchral German-expressionist short for Rick Owens: harsh angles, shadowy reveals, eldritch textures, and an opera soundtrack. Her grasp of atmospheric moviemaking is so acute it came as a surprise to hear Hogben admit that all she wants to do is take still pictures. I swear everybody’s going to be reading real books again in a few years. Speaking of atmosphere, set designer Simon Costin has made Mars out of molehills, and here he turned the derelict Selfridges’ hotel into an outlying branch of the Overlook, with curtained-off spaces intended to obliquely echo the building’s former use. There were “rooms” with oversize sofas, long dining tables, cracked vanity tables, and huge beds, with the movies projected on the ceiling above them. That was how we got to see an edit of the film Christopher Doyle had made, but not used, as the backdrop for Dries Van Noten’s show for Fall 2005. (Technical issues pulled it at the last minute.) Doyle was the man whose camerawork made In the Mood for Love into the swoonsville date movie of the millennium. A perfect match for Dries’s own romantic leanings. It was kinda nice watching it lying down, too.Funny, only one of the films—the McQueen one—really featured recognizable clothes. The others were all projections, figurative and literal, like Delfine Balfort’s erotic equine dance for A.F. Vandevorst. You can see them all on Selfridges’ Web site, but you’ve got till March 26 to experience them in person. More fun that way.

Erdem Moralioglu is on the phone from London to talk lace, a fabric he’s used season in and season out for years. “I’m obsessed with it!” the designer says with a laugh. “I’ve always been into it, exploring it and experimenting with it.”A quick rummage through the archive confirms his assertion. (That’s a look from his Resort collection, left.) But this year, the designer isn’t alone in his appreciation for the fabric. Designers all over (and their oft-photographed patrons and muses) have embraced the feminine charms of lace, which has shed its occasionally matronly air and feels sexy and chic (Miuccia Prada, as usual, may have got there first—her Fall 2008 collection famously explored the fabric’s erotic undertones). Now there are evening-ready gowns for Resort at Alexander McQueen and Carolina Herrera, along with sportier, even boyish pieces at Giambattista Valli. (And don’t even get us started on lace-accented accessories and cosmetics, like Cesare Paciotti’s new lace-print soles and Dolce & Gabbana’s new Sicilian Lace makeup collection.)So what’s the appeal? “I think people are searching for things that have quite a human hand to them,” Moralioglu says. “It has such a handmade feel. There’s an attraction to owning something one of a kind—I think, as a fabric, lace has that.”Click here for our slideshow of some of the lacy looks, and let us know whether you’ll be playing peekaboo, too, this fall.

The London e-commerce and by-appointment boutique LN-CC is moving quickly from an insider’s secret—it’s name-checked as a favorite by the likes of J.W. Anderson, who included it on a list of his London must-visits in Issue 02 of Style.com/Print, and Phillip Lim—to a retail leader. So perhaps it was only a matter of time before the shop tried out a campaign. The five-part series they’ve created for Spring has launched quietly over the past few weeks on LN-CC.com, but the impact, according to brand director Dan Mitchell, has been immediate. “I’m actually very surprised,” he admitted to Style.com. “The response has been fantastic.” The men’s and women’s shots, styled by creative director John Skelton and shot by the in-house LN-CC team, were lensed not in London but worldwide. The store’s reach may be growing, but it remains an inside player in some respects. Fashion obsessives will recognize one of the men’s models from the first campaign as Robbie Snelders, Raf Simons’ muse and righthand man. A follow-up for Fall is soon to be in the works.—Matthew Schneier

Photos: Ben Benoliel and Rory Van Millingen / Courtesy of LN-CC

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