Fashion Funhouse Emporium

Mercedes Benz Fashion Week at Lincoln Center is approaching quickly. Like past seasons, the tents will compete with Milk Studios shows and other off-site locations.  Fashion Funhouse Emporium's credentials as a legit source of coverage have finally been approved. Yay! I suppose this means I can officially talk about who I want to check out with some "street cred!"

Here are the women's designers showing at Spring 2011 fashion week that I am curious to see. Good, bad, and in between, this is what the shows are all about.

YUNA YANG

Photo: Yuna Yang Blog

This New York based fashion designer has two past collections on her site. This season, she'll be showing at Lincoln Center.  When I checked out her collections, I see potential from this Central Saint Martins grad, yet there is some question to who she wants to be as a designer. Her pieces range artsy, structural suits to very basic looking ready to wear. I'd like to see her go full throttle,with Galliano couture, if she's really not focused on selling as her biography states.  We need some more craziness at New York shows.

JENNY PACKHAM

Photo: Jenny Packham

I am familiar with Jenny Packham's lacy and ultra feminine luxury wedding collections from when I worked at In Style Weddings. Of course, I'm ready to see what this British designer (also a Central Saint Martins alumni) will send down the runway for ready to wear again this spring. Her past couple of collections showcased red carpet ready dresses, which isn't too much of a stray from matrimonial gowns. So far, she's a bit of an edgier Carolina Herrera, keeping with the high end evening wear aesthetic.

WILLIAM TEMPEST

Photo: William Tempest

Another Brit on the New York scene, this designer's past collections have been pretty basic geometric influenced body conscious dresses. He's worked with some heavy-hitters, like Jean Charles de Castlebajac and Giles Deacon. He's even designed accessories and clothing for Miss Madge, Madonna to you others. It will be interesting to see this guy evolve, hopefully away from Alexander McQueen/ Balmain style dresses and into his own signature.

PARKCHOOMOO

Photo: Parkchoomoo

So I'm not only giving preference to the British designers this season, enter Seoul, Korea's Parkchoomoo. This designer has been around fashion for a while. Her family owned a children's apparel company in Kimje, in the southern part of the country.  She opened her first retail store in 1988, but since then has had a mostly Asian following. With a less rigid Calvin Klein simplicity, and little less fear of color, she's not about getting better, for shes already established. She's about taking over a new market. I'd like to see what she has in store for the US.

IRINA SHABAYEVA

Photo: Irina Shabayeva

She's trying hard to shed her Project Runway affiliation and become a force in fashion. Last season she crept quietly on to the runway with an off-site show that showed off what she can do with a little financial backing from Tupperwear. I'm assuming this year, she may not be sponsored by the plastics company since she's no longer a newbie. But it is my guess that lack of petroleum based synthetics will not hinder her.  With the imagination showcased last season, as long as she keeps to her own without compromise, she'll be around for more than 15 minutes of reality television fame.

READ MORE PAST FASHION WEEK COVERAGE:

Spring 2011 Men's Designers to Watch

Irina Shabayeva Runway Fall 2010

Fall 2010 Condensed Report A-L

Fall 2010 Condensed Report M-Z

Its the Sunday Funhouse Comics (on a Tuesday!)

I'M A DICK BY CHRIS BROWN

Photo via WWD, Dominique Maitre

WWD- Chris Brown, aka, the guy who beat up his girlfriend Rihanna, thought it would be a good idea to pose next to a bloody and bruised Jean Paul Gaultier for a photo-op during the JPG men's spring show.

Jean Paul Gaultier's boxing theme show seemed to be right up Brown's alley as he likes to beat up people, especially women.  Domestic abuse is never funny.  What is funny is Chris Brown's level of stupidity and fame-whoring. So much so that he stood next to a man with fake blood on his face and took it as an opportunity to ask that someone give him a clothing line. I guess community service isn't really padding that bank account the way Brown would've hoped.

As a visibly uncomfortable Jean Paul stood there with his hands crossed in front of him, silently saying "don't hit me, you make me sick." Brown told reporters that he wanted to collaborate with a fashion label and added  “It has to kind of blend with what I’m doing because I’m so busy,”

Indeed he is busy. He has a probation officer to meet. (Anyone else wondering what kind of  5 year probation and six months of community service allows you to go to a Paris fashion show???)

"I'm a Dick" by Chris Brown is still waiting for a designer offer.

Who do I have to punch to go to Paris Fashion Week? Just tell me, I'll totally do it.

PRAD DE DA, PRADA!

Changing of the Guards at Fashion Week, Photo: Wizard of Oz

Fashionologie- Anna Wintour and her party planner are excited about New York Fashion Week's move to Lincoln Center. She compares her fashion events to the White House state dinner where two reality stars party-crashed.

When speaking of  her new director of fashion week, Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, Anna says "In essence, Stephanie will be an ambassador. We needed someone who knows who is who and how to handle everything. When we had the incident at the White House in January and some strange people walked in, my first reaction was, 'It would never happen if Stephanie were there.'"

The new fashion week security will require that fashionistas journey to Lincoln Center while being chased by flying monkeys. Once there, they will face the giant floating head of Anna Wintour, who's booming voice will command, "Step forward, you lowly fashion blogger. You dare to come to me for a seat, do you? You clinking, clanking, clattering collection of kaligenous junk!"

I will then pee my pants and run away, but not before the curtain opens to reveal  Winston Wolkoff jamming on levers and yelling into an auto-tuner. I will still flee as fast as my cheap shoes can take me.

SWEAT SHOP OR "SWEAT" SHOP?

Telegraph UK - Jeff Banks, the co-founder of UK chain store Warehouse believes that fashion gives opportunity to those who wouldn't normally have it.  He denounces critics of sweat shop labor and says, "It only takes 10 weeks to train a machinist; better that we train young girls to be machinists than they become prostitutes in Bangkok or somewhere.”

This reminds me of the recent bit of wisdom spewed here in our very own United States by South Carolina Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer. During a town hall meeting, Bauer dropped some knowledge on your asses regarding needy children who receive free lunch in schools. He said "My grandmother was not a highly educated woman [really?] but she told me as a small child to quit feeding stray animals. You know why? Because they breed. You’re facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a person ample food supply. They will reproduce, especially ones that don’t think too much further than that. And so what you’ve got to do is you’ve got to curtail that type of behavior. They don’t know any better,”

Yes, this man is a Lt. Governor.

As a past recipient of both free school lunches and Reagan era government "cheese." I can tell  you two things:

1) No matter how high you turn up the burner, or how long you cook that "cheese" between two slices of bread, it will NEVER, EVER melt.

2) Free lunch, while it was "food," it usually consisted of sponge like pizza, a tiny milk and high fructose corn syrup soaked peaches. Since the meal caused most of its recipients to sleep immediately afterwards, I think  you could blame the lack of nutrition for low test scores rather than the actual act of giving itself. Furthermore, though my parents worked, they still required assistance.

I went on to become a childless college educated woman who pays taxes by doing something I love.

Though, the amount of times I've been asked to work for free in the fashion industry, or the times I've been written bad checks, or have worked over 40 hours a week with out the opportunity to collect health benefits or 401K, perhaps I may have been better off as a hooker or "breeding" more dumb asses like myself?

STILL GOT THAT UNION JACK DRESS?

Crains- Get ready for the Spice Girls musical on Broadway- in all its spandex and platform shoe glory.

Just when you thought there couldn't be anything worse than "Mama Mia."

CEASE AND REPOST!

Photo via rueters

Reuters- An attorney for fashion designers of menswear demands fair coverage of the European men's fashion week. He is upset that the photos the Reuters blogger posted is making it seem as if these fashions are things that men wouldn't actually wear.

I am assuming this is a real letter since it is posted in Reuters "Oddly Enough" section.

And I think some guy, somewhere would wear what is pictured above. Especially if he was into that sort of dungeon and whip type thing.

Do you think this blog will ever get popular enough to get correspondence from lawyers? I kind of hope so.