The trend for organic looking prints and patterns in earthy tones on luxurious fabrics evolved again this season on the New York runways. Simple shapes such as slender legged pants, slim line below the knee coats, softly shaped dresses and narrow skirts only enhanced the impact made by the wide variety of intricate patterns. This is a trend than can be traced back to Alexander McQueen’s preponderance of Charles Darwin for Spring 2009 and his penultimate collection shown for Spring 2010 where the woman/organic matter hybrid was fully fledged. Many NY designers showed a color story made up of earthy neutrals popped by a particular shade of ochre yellow, oxblood and forest green which confirms the Hall Five/Sophicolor Collection color trend for Fall 13, The Good Earth.

A new silhouette emerged during this past week’s Spring Couture shows. In amongst the more expected full-skirted gowns were several long sleeved sheaths. In some instances, inspiration seemed to have come from the modest dress of Middle Eastern women. Possibly, not surprisingly as along with china and Russia, the majority of Haute Couture clients are Arab women .

Image: Valentino

From art to politics and beyond, runway fashion reflects the zeitgeist and accordingly, as long as scenes of war are prevalent in the media, the military trend will be prominent. This was certainly true of the recent European men’s runway collections for Autumn/Winter 13. As GQ pointed out, amongst the more predictable logan green great coats, camo parkas and fatigue jackets, a Napoleonic style is emerging.

After 2012, a year in which digital media continued to radically change our lifestyle, New York consulting firm, MBF predicts the top consumer trends for 2013 will include the importance of story-telling in retail, buying locally and the continued integration of sustainability into our everyday lives…

Founded in 2001 by Berlin-born Manuela Fassbender, MBF Inc. is a New York City-based consulting firm that provides clients with trend and design direction customized to their client’s unique markets.

In recent seasons, a cyclone of dizzying digital prints has blown across the fashion landscape, quickening the pulse of fashion editors and making cash registers ring. Perhaps nowhere did the whirlwind seem stronger than outside the shows, where ‘it-girls’ in graphic, printed pieces by young designers like Mary Katrantzou, Jonathan Saunders and Peter Pilotto made coquettish plays for the attention of street style bloggers. But the Spring/Summer 2013 collections ushered in a new mood, with many designers sidelining head-turning prints in favour of calmer, cleaner clothes.

Tilly Macalister-Smith is a London-based writer and acting fashion editor at Vogue.co.uk
The Business of Fashion

Hall Five partnered with Sophicolor to create an exclusive color palette for Holiday 2013.
Connect the past and the present through color. Unexpected shades of teal, pink, purple and green replace more predictable seasonal jewel tones; while antique gold and gunmetal offer a baroque opulence with an historical feel.

Whether its Oriental Splendor at Harvey Nichols, Disney Princesses at Harrods or “Not Your Usual Christmas” at Selfridges, London’s Holiday windows for 2012 are all about fantasy, luxury and the traditions we associate with the festive season.

For Dante Gabriel Rossetti of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, art and poetry were entwined with his personal life and relationships to such a degree it was all one. His devotion to female beauty in his poetry and painting mirrored his obsession to a vision of ideal feminine beauty in his personal life. That ideal meant long lustrous hair, an elongated sculptural looking neck, heavy eyelids, sensuous pouty lips and skin with a luminous fair complexion.

Despite loving most of the Olympic coverage, the London fashion catwalk cameo segment in the closing ceremony made me cringe. I really wasn’t sure why until I read an article by Lisa Armstrong in The Telegraph . Labeling the catwalk strut by Kate, Naomi et al, “pompous” and “bombastic”, she succinctly expressed my own feelings. Fashion and ouvert sexiness so often go hand-in-hand, but for the most part, London’s style-mongers exist in a sort of parallel universe, where what you wear in public can mean not taking yourself too seriously. Paraphrasing Mulberry’s creative director Emma Hill, Armstrong goes on to say, “If we have a USP, it is (having) a sense of humour. You don’t need to tamper with things too much. Our natural style is very cool.”

“London Bridge is Falling Down” goes the nursery rhyme but in fact the opposite is true as this area of the city’s South Bank has undergone a radical transformation evolving into “London Bridge Quarter” at the heart of which is The Shard. At 1,016 ft tall, The Shard has already transformed the London skyline and when it opens to the public in 2013, with a hotel, apartments, offices and viewing galleries, The Shard will offer the services and entertainments of a veritable vertical city.

The shape of the tower is generous at the bottom and narrow at the top, disappearing in the air like a 16th century pinnacle or the mast top of a very tall ship. The architecture of The Shard is firmly based in the historic form of London’s masts and spires

Renzo Piano

From Sarah Sands of The London Evening Standard , a review of London 2012, what’s to come in 2013 and why she thinks it’s the greatest city in the world.

For S13, many designers in New York and Europe showed a variety of looks in shades of chemical and natural green, mixing and matching them in unexpected combinations, often pieced-in to the same garment. Inspired by this, Hall Five created an exclusive color palette using swatches from our partner, Sophicolor Collections.
L-R: Genny, Pringle of Scotland