Showing posts with label luxury. Show all posts
Showing posts with label luxury. Show all posts

Tuesday, 28 October 2025

Art and Textiles: Scabal Unveils Dalí-Inspired Fabric Collection

Scabal, one of the United Kingdom’s most renowned producers of luxury fabrics, is set to unveil a new collection of twelve exclusive fabrics, each inspired by a different painting by Salvador Dalí. 

The collection is presented in collaboration with LAPADA, the Art and Antiques Fair which returns to Berkeley Square, London from 28 October to 2 November 2025.

LAPADA fair in London's Berkeley Square brings together dealers showcasing expertise across the full spectrum of art and antiques — from fine furniture, paintings, and carpets to tapestries, antiquities, clocks, ceramics, silver, decorative objects, and jewellery.

The launch marks the introduction of Scabal’s Limited Edition by Dalí collection—a line of bespoke suits crafted from the brand’s signature Vision fabric.

Reflecting the vivid hues of both butterfly and figure in Dalí’s The Mimetic Character, this fabric translates the artwork’s surreal anatomy into woven form. A satin weave line evokes the elongated limbs of the insect-like silhouette, while a graceful curved stitch traces the rounded edge that frames its body. The interplay of these elements creates two distinct stripe depths, lending the fabric a quiet dynamism and a sense of movement that echoes Dalí’s original vision.

The collaboration revisits a remarkable moment in fashion history. In 1971, Salvador Dalí envisioned the future of menswear through a series of twelve visionary paintings, created exclusively for Scabal. More than five decades later, the British brand has drawn inspiration from those original works to produce a collection that blends art and tailoring in a uniquely modern way.

Each fabric in the collection captures the spirit of a specific Dalí painting, reinterpreting his surreal colours, forms, and motifs through a contemporary lens. Every suit will be custom-made and finished with one of five exclusive linings, reflecting both the artist’s boundless imagination and Scabal’s exceptional craftsmanship.

Taking its cue from Dalí’s 4 Cravates, this design centres on the striking black-and-white stitching that defines the multiple collars worn by the painting’s refined School Kid. Against a softly mottled grey ground, an irregular white stitch is woven into one of two stripes, introducing a tactile, graphic rhythm. The second stripe features a structured green weave that mirrors the distinctive form of the four cravats themselves, uniting texture, tone, and artistry in a single, elegant composition.

“Dalí’s work was ahead of its time, and this collection allows us to explore how his creativity can continue to inspire modern tailoring,” said a spokesperson for Scabal’s design team. “We’ve revisited the colours, shapes, and intricate details of his paintings to create fabrics that bridge art and fashion.”

Drawing on Dalí’s The Stylish Footman, Scabal’s designers have transformed the ink illustration of a lion’s head—poised on the figure’s shoulder—into a contemporary textile masterpiece. A micro-weave fabric, featuring a repeating motif shaped from the elegant curls of the lion’s mane, lends intricate texture and a refined lustre to a deep, dark blue ground. Subtle red tones, woven through a delicate check pattern, recall the painting’s original palette, creating a sophisticated dialogue between art and cloth.

Founded in 1938, Scabal has long been associated with sartorial excellence, supplying fabrics to leading tailors and fashion houses worldwide. Alongside its textiles, the company produces its own range of made-to-measure and prêt-à-porter suits, jackets, and shirts, available through Scabal boutiques across Europe and Asia.

Still a family-owned business, Scabal continues to operate its heritage mill in England, which has been weaving since 1899. With full European production and direct sourcing of premium raw materials, the brand prides itself on maintaining complete quality control—from “sheep to shop, field to fold, and camel to coat.”

The Limited Edition by Dalí collection reaffirms Scabal’s place at the intersection of fine art and fine tailoring, celebrating a shared legacy of creativity, craftsmanship, and timeless style.

To view the Vision collection, click HERE.  

Thursday, 28 August 2025

Culture & Fashion: London's V&A to open Marie Antoinette Style, the first UK exhibition dedicated to the most fashionable queen in history

Marie Antoinette (1755–1793), Queen of France, whose reputation as “the most fashionable queen in history” is rooted in the unique intersection of politics, culture, and aesthetics in late 18th-century Europe. Hers is a name that evokes a pastel-hued world of extravagance: silk gowns, towering hairstyles, satin shoes, sweet indulgences and courtly intrigue, overshadowed by the bloody Revolution that ended it all.

Book cover of Marie Antoinette Style published by the V&A to accompany the exhibition of the same name.
Image courtesy of V&A

Marie Antoinette's influence is lasting because she wasn’t just a passive consumer of fashion.  She actively shaped tastes, helped redefine femininity and celebrity, and became a global symbol of luxury, beauty, and scandal.

Now the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) in London’s South Kensington will host the UK’s first major exhibition Marie Antoinette Style, set to open on 20 September 2025.  Sponsored by luxury footwear house Manolo Blahnik, it will run until 22 March 2026, filling Galleries 38 and 39.

Film still from Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette, starring Kirsten Dunst. .
Photo courtesy of I WANT CANDY LLC. and Zoetrope Corp

The exhibition will examine the enduring influence of the French queen, celebrated in her lifetime as a fashion icon and often described as one of history’s first celebrities. Her dress, interiors and decorative tastes, developed during the final decades of the eighteenth century, have shaped over 250 years of fashion, design, film and the decorative arts.

Portrait de Marie-Antoinette à la rose, Élisabeth-Louise Vigée Le Brun © Château de Versailles,
Dist. Grand Palais RMN Christophe Fouin


Marie-Antoinette's Pearl jewels. 
Heidi Horten Collection. © Sotheby's, Bridgeman Images

More than 250 objects will be on display, including rare loans from the Château de Versailles, many of which have never before left France. The exhibition will combine historical and contemporary fashion with immersive displays and audio-visual installations, offering fresh perspectives on Marie Antoinette’s life, her legacy and the fascination she continues to inspire.

 Marie-Antoinette's chair set © Victoria and Albert Museum, London

Highlights will include fragments of her court dress, silk slippers and jewellery from her private collection. Intimate personal effects—such as her dinner service from the Petit Trianon, accessories and items from her toilette case—will be exhibited outside Versailles for the first time.  The exhibition will bring her lavish, theatrical style to life through immersive staging and sensory experiences, including a recreated scent of the royal court and the queen’s own favourite perfume.

Fragments of a court gown belonging to Marie Antoinette © Victoria and Albert Museum, London
Antoinetta, 2005 by Manolo Blahnik

Contemporary fashion will also play a central role, with couture pieces by Dior, Chanel, Erdem, Vivienne Westwood, Valentino and Moschino on display, alongside film costumes from Sofia Coppola’s Oscar-winning Marie Antoinette (2006), starring Kirsten Dunst. The exhibition will also showcase footwear designed by Manolo Blahnik for Coppola’s production.

Moschino runway show,  Fall Winter 2020, Milan Fashion Week, Italy - 20 Feb 2020.
Photo PIXELFORMULA,SIPA, Shutterstock

The V&A’s collection will be displayed alongside international loans, tracing Marie Antoinette’s cultural impact and the designers and creatives she continues to inspire.

Curator Sarah Grant described the queen as “the most fashionable, scrutinised and controversial queen in history,” adding:

“Marie Antoinette’s name summons both visions of excess and objects and interiors of great beauty. The Austrian archduchess turned Queen of France had an enormous impact on European taste and fashion in her own time, creating a distinctive style that now has universal appeal. This exhibition explores her design legacy and the story of a woman whose power to fascinate has never ebbed. The rare combination of glamour, spectacle and tragedy she presents remains as intoxicating today as it was in the eighteenth century.”

 Crystal flaskwith label ‘Eau de Cologne from the  'Nécessaire de voyage’,  belonging to Marie Antoinette.
© Grand Palais RMN (musée du Louvre) Michel Urtado

The Marie Antoinette Style exhibition will unfold chronologically, beginning with the queen’s arrival at Versailles in 1770 and ending with her execution in 1793. This opening section, Marie Antoinette: The Origins of a Style, will trace how she forged her distinctive aesthetic, from fashion and jewellery to furniture, porcelain and music. Highlights include rare personal effects such as her dinner service from the Petit Trianon, her monogrammed armchair and intimate items from her toilette case, many on loan from Versailles for the first time. Objects linked to the infamous diamond necklace affair will also be on show, alongside her final handwritten note before her death.

Slippers belonging to Marie Antoinette beaded pink silk.
Photo CC0 Paris Musées, Musée Carnavalet - Histoire de Paris

The exhibition will then explore how Marie Antoinette’s image was revived in the 19th century. Marie Antoinette Memorialised: The Birth of a Style Cult will examine the romanticised view of the queen promoted by Empress Eugénie, which led to a wave of collecting and a craze for the so-called “French Revival” style across Europe and North America. Dresses by couturier Charles Frederick Worth and photographs by Eugène Atget will illustrate the enduring fascination of the era.

A third section, Marie Antoinette: Enchantment and Illusion, charts how her image entered the realms of fantasy and escapism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Through Art Nouveau and Art Deco, designers and illustrators such as Jeanne Lanvin, the Boué Soeurs, Erté and Edmund Dulac cast her as a symbol of beauty, decadence and dreamlike allure.

Finally, Marie Antoinette Re-Styled will bring the story up to the present day, showcasing her influence on contemporary fashion, art and popular culture. Couture pieces by Dior, Chanel, Erdem, Valentino and Vivienne Westwood will feature alongside photographs by Tim Walker and Robert Polidori, costumes and accessories from Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette (2006), and works by artists and designers inspired by the queen’s lasting legacy.

Marie Antoinette is remembered as “the most fashionable queen” because she merged aesthetic innovation, personal expression, and political symbolism in a way no monarch had before. She lived at the moment when fashion was becoming a tool of identity and celebrity culture—and her influence still ripples through how we think about style, luxury, and fame today.

Saturday, 20 January 2024

Fashion Weeks: Fashion Network launches mobile App for Fashion professionals

Fashion Network, the Paris-based information website for international professionals in fashion, luxury and beauty, is serving the industries by launching its own application (app), available on IOS and Android, in ten languages, featuring live coverage and photos of the latest fashion shows, as well as news from the fashion, luxury and beauty industries.

This way those in the business who need to keep up-to-the minute on any of the latest Fashion Weeks (be they in Paris, Milan, London, New York, Tokyo, Seoul and Berlin ) and fashion news, will not miss out.

The app is free of charge, with no registration required nor advertising.  It features a free image bank that is updated daily, bringing together the latest creations of 5,000 designers from all over the world.

According to Fashionnetwork.com on their website, several million high-definition photos of catwalk shows are easily accessible, including runway looks and photos focusing on details such as shoes, bags, jewellery and more.  There are also loads of imagery such as backstage photos, official visuals of collections and the best street looks photographed outside of events, that are crucial for those needing to keep tap on trends.

Subscribers will receive an alert when a show goes live and even if the shows are running late. In addition to these live broadcasts, there are tens of thousands of archive videos, including fashion shows, reports and interviews.

The Calendar section is a practical tool for professionals and enthusiasts alike, who want to find their way around the plethora of global events on the calendars of the fashion capitals of the world. 

Read more on their website by clicking HERE.

Monday, 28 January 2019

From Paris to Portland, Première Vision launches new Sport event this August

With the continued popularity and growing influence of the global sportswear and sports footwear market, the organisers of the international Première Vision events for professionals in the fashion, textile, creative and related industries - is launching a new event: Première Vision Sport, not in Paris but in Portland, in the state  of Oregon in the US.

PREMIÈRE VISION SPORT will take place August 14th and 15th 2019, to be held simultaneously and in partnership with The Materials Show, a leading sports footwear material and component sourcing show organised by American Events.

Portland is long established as the "Sportswear Silicon Valley".  Rightfully so as it is where major international American sports brands, the likes of Nike, Under Armour, Columbia Sportswear, Adidas North America, Avia and others are headquartered.  Portland is also located less than two hours by plane from San Francisco - headquarters of Patagonia, The North Face; and a little over an hour from the Canadian city of Vancouver - birthplace of such well-known brands as Lululemon, Arcteryx, Canada Goose and others.

The SPORT & TECH section at Première Vision Paris, September 2018.
Photo © Lucia Carpio.
PREMIÈRE VISION SPORT is a strategic development for the Parisian trade fair organisers which  launched the SPORT & TECH sector at its Première Vision Paris show last September offering a selection of high-performance and technical materials to help and support those brands and designers in search of innovations for the development of high-performance fashion products.

Finished garments on display at the SPORT & TECH section at Première Vision Paris, September 2018.Photo © Lucia Carpio.

The new PREMIÈRE VISION SPORT will bring its exclusive fashion expertise - seminars, colour range - and will introduce a specialized offer for performance and active sports clothing:  including fabrics, components and designs presented by a selection of exhibitors from Première Vision’s Parisian and international trade shows.

The MATERIALS SHOW was created more than 25 years ago by American Events Inc.  The biannual fair specializes in footwear for high-performance sports with a selection of dedicated materials - components, fabrics, leathers - offered by more than 300 exhibitors.

Each year, American Events organizes 4 editions of THE MATERIALS SHOW dedicated
to the footwear and sportswear markets, where representatives from international sports brands - makers and producers walk the show floor to discover what’s leading the market in technology and style.  Two editions (August & March) of the NE Materials Show take place in Wilmington,
Massachusetts, on the East Coast, presenting 200 exhibitors and welcoming some 800 visitors, while two editions (August & February) of the NW Materials Show take place in Portland, Oregon,
on the West Coast, which gathers together 300 exhibitors and 1,500 attendees.

According to figures from Euromonitor International, the global sportswear market has seen continued growth between 2011 and 2016 reaching US$ 280 billion in 2016. American brands dominate the worldwide sportswear market, with the United States representing 37% of global sales, or US$ 103 billion in 2016: US$70 billion of which for sportswear (+4.4%) and US$ 32 billion for shoes (+8.8%).

Pascal Monfort, fashion expert and founder of REC Trends Marketing, a specialist in sports, youth and street culture, said we’re seeing a growing alliance today not only between fashion and sport but also between luxury and sport, leading to the term “athluxury” - a blend of ‘athletic’ and ‘luxury’.
Pascal Monfort 
Photo © Lucia Carpio


Presenting a series of conferences on Sport &Tech at the Autumn 2018 edition of Premiere Vision Paris held last September, Pascal Monfort said: “The inclusion of sport in fashion is no longer simply a trend, it’s a necessity for many fashion brands, whether they come from the fast fashion or luxury worlds.”

In his view, 2020 will be the pinnacle of this success, the ultimate incarnation of the love affair between sport and fashion.

Monfort (pictured above at Première Vision Paris last September) said: “What’s happening today is fantastic. Creativity isn’t dead, far from it. Together, fashion and sports can go a long way and we love that!”

He added that the power of collaborations is incredible "We’re seeing the most unexpected and most surprising ones: Marine Green x Oakley, Vêtement x Oakley… Nike x Off-White for the team Nigeria fielded for the 2018 World Cup (3 million jerseys pre-ordered) … Koché x PSG: even football can become fashionable and cool!"

The fact is that fashion designers love sportswear, said Montfort.  The power of streetwear and sportswear designers is overturning norms. The most recent example is undeniably the appointment of Virgile Abloh (Off-White), a multifaceted American designer, as head of the House of Vuitton, an event which created quite a surprise in the fashion world.

Nevertheless, a series of collaborations with the biggest luxury brands and the creation of the “luxury” Nike City Ready line now places Nike on the pages of the leading fashion magazines such as Vogue.

Sunday, 23 July 2017

Want to be holiday-ready? Be sure to pack creative artwork in luxury silk.

Today in a world that often appears to be swirling out of control, it is utterly important to take time off to clear our minds and allow us some peaceful moments on a more controllable personal level.
A Travel Collection, from silk dresses to scarfs and jewellery,
sequin bags and cashmere jumpers ...
 the list of luxury travel essentials goes on
at The NottingHill travel collective event in June.

But with what valuable space we have in our bags when packing for the much-anticipated summer holiday, taking pride of place among the sun cream, hats, swim suits, sarong and sandals must be the all-essential, versatile scarf.

Catering for our varying styling needs, a number of designers have taken the scarf to a whole different level, transferring their creative ideas and inspirations onto beautiful silks that allow us to embrace luxury and benefit from the practical fashion solutions that scarfs offer to the discerning voyager.

So it was great to find among the artwork on display at London's Saatchi Gallery last week emerging London-based designers who have taken the opportunity of the Scoop International boutique trade fair to showcase their illustrious work on scarfs to entice fashion buyers and press.



Showing in the newly launched Scoop Salon space of the fair dedicated to UK and international accessories brands, designer Ira Avezov (originally from Russia) was keen to show her "wearable images" that she had transferred onto her beautifully made silk scarf sold under her IA London label.

Seen here holding one of her designs - the All of Me scarf featuring the many faces of one woman, Ira explained that for every design she makes, she always starts with an image in her mind, and is often a story behind the images, then the imagery she creates will be digitally printed onto luxury silk.
© Lucia Carpio 2017 


© Lucia Carpio 2017 

© Lucia Carpio 2017 
But of course Ira's designs are not just for our summer get-away but for use all year round, having that distinctive fashion forward edge.   Ira layers her designs with a profusion of brush-stroke colours or creates monochrome effects on abstract images.

© Lucia Carpio 2017 
Working with high quality silk and using meticulous UK workmanship, Ira is also transferring her designs onto men's tops launched this summer and has plans to show womenswear in the autumn.  Ira only started her brand a year ago and already has attracted wide attention through other shows such as the London Fashion Week.  Can't wait to see her new collection under development.


Also showing at Scoop Salon was the scarf label DolceRoopa founded by Roopa Sachidanand (in photo at right), originally from New York.

Her luxury range highlights the designer's wanderlust inspiration featuring her travel experiences in Europe, London and New York.




























Roopa said each illustration is intricately watercoloured by hand before being designed  and digitally printed.  The Italian Riviera and Marrakech collections draw upon colour, pattern and the dynamic use of print offering lavish pops of colours for varying styling options.

Elsewhere at Scoop and moving away from scarfs, I was intrigued by the Longstaff Longstaff brand where its silk loungewear are so pretty and soft they should be worn beyond the boudoir.
© Lucia Carpio 2017 
Sourced and manufactured in the UK, the brand was founded in 2014 by Sophie Barnard who has a Russian lineage that led to a passion for bold, highly decorative patterns and vibrant colours.

While modelling one of her kimono designs for me to show its versatility (as shown in photo above), Sophie said she hand-paints her original prints which are digitally transferred onto luxurious silks.
© Lucia Carpio 2017 

She launches her Komo collection this summer with the influence of Japanese art, featuring watery flowers and silver, inspired by illustrations from the 19th century using water and ink.

Poetically, the pinks and reds bleed together in her bold flowers while the petals fade at the edges and drift into the water.

She has used some of her signature prints for scarfs with which she has modeled again for me to show off its wonderful effect.