It’s here! And it’s gorgeous! The first pictures of Chloë Sevigny for Opening Ceremony Resort 2011, Chloë’s third collection for the Opening Ceremony brand, have finally been revealed — and it is simply superb. Prepare yourselves for a big update.
The new collection was presented at an Opening Ceremony Garden Party on the Nolita side of New York early last week (June 8, to be precise), where designer Chloë and Opening Ceremony founder Humberto Leon were of course in attendance alongside a huge bunch of guests and presentation models. Some pictures from the event can be browsed at our gallery.
A couple of reports from the collection presentation. From Style.com:
“Girls buy the same silhouette over and over,” reckons Chloë Sevigny. Her solution, for her third collection with Opening Ceremony? Give ‘em only five, and a reason to buy a couple of each. For Resort, her five dress silhouettes come in five prints each—a leopard, a polka dot, a houndstooth, a paisley, and a floral, which also appear on matching Fogal tights, caps, and sweet little half-moon purses. The frock shapes, from a sleeveless, flared-skirt romper to a pinafore with lace-embellished pockets and a Peter Pan collar, are all pretty cute, but the standouts here are the cropped knits and accessories. In addition to her own shoe line, comprising a few styles with natural wood soles (the platform mule Mary Sue being the best of the bunch), Sevigny and her dedicated O.C. team collaborated with the nineties footwear brand NaNa to reissue and reinvent some classic styles. (At her tea party presentation, held in a sunny courtyard in Nolita, Sevigny herself wore a rejiggered, high-heeled Chelsea boot likely to inspire an immediate waiting list.)
The whole collection was styled to the haute-nineties hilt (one friend-slash-model layered all five prints at once), but it was an eighties provocateur Sevigny had in mind: Robert Mapplethorpe. The late photographer is enjoying a bit of a moment, helped along by Patti Smith’s recent memoir of their years together, Just Kids, and Sevigny partnered with his foundation to create cropped tees screen-printed with his iconic images—a kick in the pants to what she and O.C.’s Humberto Leon see as the faltering of AIDS awareness. It’s a tribute the man himself would likely have appreciated. As Smith recalls in her book, Mapplethorpe made T-shirts into art—literally. He also loved himself a good leather pant, and lo and behold, there were leather jeans and cutoffs. “It’s streetwear, it’s not high fashion,” Sevigny said with a shrug. No apology necessary.
And another report from The Cut:
This winter (or as they optimistically call it in the fashion industry, “pre-spring”), Chloë Sevigny is releasing her third collection for Opening Ceremony. We stopped by the preview-slash-tea-party last night, where the presentation was held at the perpetually gated-off sculpture garden of Elizabeth Street Gallery and guarded by an imposing bouncer wearing seersucker pants.
The mix-and-match collection comprises five prints — polka dot, paisley, houndstooth, floral, and leopard — in five silhouettes, all modeled by Sevigny’s friends and fam (her look-alike cousin among them). We’re particularly fond of the boxy swing dresses, which flattered all of the variously sized non-model models. The designer herself wore a leopard-print swing dress, reversible Chloë Sevigny for Opening Ceremony track jacket, and four-inch Chelsea boots while mingling with attendees.
“They’re all prints I’ve worn since I’ve been old enough to buy my own clothes; I keep coming back to them,” she explained, calling the inspiration “early Benetton.” There were nods to the nineties throughout, including a collaboration with shoe brand Nana (“I wore those combat boots growing up,” she noted) and a flouncy puff-sleeve dress.
“I wanted to keep it fun and affordable; it’s streetwear,” she concluded, surveying the wildly patterned scene. Here, as models tottered about the lawn, our eyes traveled to the daunting runway-ready footwear, a collection of five-inch wooden clogs and open-toe heels — worn with socks, of course — and topped mainly with tan napa leather. (Opening Ceremony owner Humberto Leon said it’s Sevigny’s largest footwear collection for the brand to date, featuring more than 25 styles.)
Streetwear, really? “They’re comfortable because of the giant platform,” Sevigny insisted.
Though the collection is heavy on short, layerable dresses, the five prints are also splashed across jackets, Fogal tights, berets, totes, and handbags. A few guys also milled about outfitted in Sevigny’s new line of collaborative T-shirts from the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, printed with the photographer’s stylized black-and-white photos. (Leon’s featured an artful, albeit distracting, image of a woman’s pubic region.) When the line arrives at Opening Ceremony in December, we predict the tights — if not the jaunty silk berets — will fly off the shelves in New York. Dresses run $300 to $500 and shoes are $250 to $500.
A couple of behind-the-scenes photos from the KT Auleta-photographed collection photoshoot have also been uploaded to the gallery (or pictures from the fitting, to be precise).
Apparently I’m having real difficulty typing Opening Ceremony instead of Celebration today. BlackBook issue February 2008, I blame you. Anyway, what do you think of the new collection?
New Photo Albums:
• Ad Campaigns > Chloë Sevigny for Opening Ceremony Resort 2011 (2010)
• Appearances in 2010 > The Garden Party: Chloë Sevigny for Opening Ceremony Resort 2011 on Jun 8
• On Set > Chloë Sevigny for Opening Ceremony Resort 2011 Photoshoot (2010)
