Bridget Foley Says Raf Simons Was “Dumped”

When it was first rumored that Raf Simons would step down from his job as creative director of Jil Sander after presenting the brand’s fall collection in Milan last week, everyone assumed the next announcement would be of his appointment at Dior. But over the past week the press has started singing a different tune.
Initially, it was suggested that Simons would pass on Dior in favor of focusing on his own collection. With the respect—and loyal following—that he’s earned during his tenure at Jil Sander he’d have no trouble launching an eponymous women’s collection.  The general consensus seemed to be that Simons could do whatever he wanted; after all, it was his choice to leave.  But today, WWD‘s Bridget Foley throws another wrench into the conversation by suggesting that Simons was “unceremoniously dumped” by the Italian brand.
Foley goes on to chastise the handling of the “dismissal,” from Jil Sander’s initial comment that her next project would be announced during the Milan collections to the industry’s reaction heralding Sander’s return before Simons was out the door.  “It’s surprising that Sander would act with such apparent disregard for another designer,” Foley writes.
Does knowing that Simons was fired after the brilliant work he did for Jil Sander cast a shadow over the original designer’s otherwise celebrated return?  Kind of.  But as long as Simons continues designing—whether eponymously or for Dior—and Sander pulls off a triumphant return, everyone wins.

Gwyneth Paltrow Debuts Tom Ford’s Fall Collection

One usually has to wait a couple of months before seeing Tom Ford’s new designs—compared to a few minutes on Getty Images for every other collection—but Gwyneth Paltrow wore one of his fall gowns to the Oscars last night, less than a week after it was shown to editors and buyers in London.  Though the rest of his collection was leather heavy, inspired by Russian spies and rich fabrics, he mentioned that the Vionnet-inspired gown, together with its elegant cape, was one of his favorites.  Click through to see it with the cape!

Jean-Phillipe Delhomme’s Fashion Illustrations on Exhibit in NYC

Jean-Philippe Delhomme thinks the people in the art and fashion worlds take themselves: “I think it’s a good thing to make some humor,” the French satirist says with an impish grin. Since the mid-1980s, Delhomme—a small, bespectacled man who can’t remember if he’s 51 or 52—has worked as an illustrator, gently skewering the pretentions and grandiosity of fashion editors, art patrons and designers. His most recent project, a blog called The Unknown Hipster, chronicles the adventures of Delhomme’s bearded, buffoonish alter ego as he hobnobs with the rich and fabulous.
Dressed for Art, an exhibition at the French Institute Alliance Française’s gallery in New York City, presents Delhomme’s more recent illustrations. The show, which runs through April 14, includes portraits of fashion luminaries, runway illustrations, large-scale paintings and lots of social commentary. One doodle depicts a shirtless Karl Lagerfeld, the powdered-ponytailed designer at Chanel, wearing heavy chains and carrying a sign that says “AAAAAAART.” Another shows a woman in low-rise jeans lifting a tangled collection of rags from a roadside bin; the caption: We found this amazing thrift store in a little desert town where they had early Rodarte!
Not all of Delhomme’s drawings are drenched in irony. “My paintings from the fashion shows, those are not so funny,” he says. Actually, they’re quite lovely. An illustration of a model wearing an embroidered gown by Alexander McQueen, for example, captures the late designer’s poetic romanticism.
For Delhomme, fashion is inseparable from the society and culture that consumes it: “I am interested in fashion as a whole scenario, not just the clothes, but what it tells us about people.”