La Chaux-de-Fonds / Watch Valley

La Chaux-de-Fonds is a Swiss city in the canton of Neuchatel.  It is located in the Jura mountains at an altitude of 1000 m, south of the French border.  After Geneva, Lausanne and Fribourg, it is the fourth largest city located in the Romandie, the French speaking part of the country, with a population of around 40,000.  

The City was founded in 1656.  Its growth and prosperity is mainly bound up with the watch-making industry.  It is the most important centre of the watch making industry in the area known as the Watch Valley.  Partially destroyed by a fire in 1994, La Chaux-de-Fonds was rebuilt following a grid street plan, which was and is still original among Swiss cities, the only exception being the eastern section of the city, which was spared of fire.  La Chaux-de-Fonds is a renowned centre of Art nouveau.

The site of La Chaux-de-Fonds / Le Locle watching town-planning consists of two towns situated close to one another on land ill-suited to farming.  Their planning and buildings reflect watchmakers' need of rational organization.  Their layout along an open-ended scheme of parallel strips on which residential housing and workshops are intermingled reflects the needs of the local watchmaking culture that dates to the 17th century and is still alive today.  It is also the home of the Musee International d'Horlogerie considered as an important showcase for the history of the timekeeping arts.

These twin manufacturing towns demonstrate outstanding universal value and constitute an exceptional example of organic urban ensembles entirely dedicated to a single industry.  They have been constructed by and for watchmaking.  

Tribute to Karl Lagerfeld

"Embrace the present and invent the future"

Karl Lagerfeld may be gone, but he will never be forgotten.  His legacy looms large over the fashion industry, with designers offering homages this season and his final Chanel collection was presented on Tuesday, March 5th, at the Grand Palais. 

Karl Otto Lagerfeld (September 10, 1933 - February 19, 2019) was a German creative director, fashion designer, artist, photographer, and caricaturist who lived in Paris.  He was known as the creative director of the French fashion house Chanel, a position he held from 1983 until his death, and was also creative director of the Italian fur and leather goods fashion house Fendi, and of his own fashion label.  he collaborated on a variety of fashion and art-related projects.  He was recognized for his signature white hair, black sunglasses, fingerless gloves and high collars.

As a child, he showed great interest in visual arts, and former schoolmates recalled that he was always making sketches "no matter what we were doing in class".  Lagerfeld told in interviews that he learned much more by constantly visiting the Kunsthalle Hamburg museum than he ever did in school.  His greatest inspiration came from French artists, and he claimed to have only continued school in order to learn French language so that he could move there.  Lagerfeld finished his secondary school at the Lycée Montaigne in Paris, where he majored in drawing and history.  

Fashion icon Karl Lagerfeld was renewed worldwide for his aspirational, relevant and cutting-edge approach to style.  He was a force of nature, coupled with an enigmatic persona and an original perspective on fashion and pop culture.  His visionary talent further expanded beyond fashion to include illustration, photography, styling and publishing.

Following health complications in January 2019, Lagerfeld was admitted to the American Hospital of Paris in Parisian suburb Neuilly-sur-Seine on February 18th.  He died there the following morning from complications of pancreatic cancer.  Lagerfeld requested no formal funeral with plans for cremation and ashes spread at secret locations along side his mother as well as his late partner, Jacques de Bascher.

Favorite Quotes from Coco Chanel

Coco Chanel

Fashion designer Coco Chanel, born August 19, 1883, in Saumur, France, is famous for her timeless designs, trademark suits and little black dresses.  Chanel was raised in an orphanage and taught to sew.  She had a brief career as a singer before opening her first clothes shop in 1910.  In the 1920s, she launched her first perfume and eventually introduced the Chanel suite and the little black dress, with an emphasis on making clothes that were more comfortable for women.  She died on January 10, 1971.

In addition to the longevity of her designs, Chanel's life story continues to captivate people's attention.  Chanel's own lifestyle fueled her ideas of how modern women everywhere should look, act, and dress.  Her own slim boyish figure and cropped hair became an ideal, as did her tanned skin, active lifestyle, and financial independence.  Throughout her career, Chanel succeeded in packaging and marketing her own personal attitudes and style, making her a key arbiter of women's taste throughout the twentieth century.

Here are some of her favorite quotes:

"A girl should be two things; classy and fabulous."

"Elegance is when the inside is as beautiful as the outside."

"Simplicity is the keynote of all true elegance."

"Fashion changes, but style endures."

"The most courageous act is still to think for yourself.  Aloud."

"You live but once, you might as well be amusing."

The Givenchy Legacy Continues...

Clare Waight Keller's couture collection for Givenchy fascinated on multiple levels.  

After the death of Hubert de Givenchy in March at the age of 91, Waight Keller thought it appropriate to make her fall 2018 collection an homage to the founder.  It wasn't her first such statement.  In what may be the most famous dress she will ever design, Meghan Markle's wedding dress, the designer drew inspiration from a 1964 dress photographed in Vogue on Givenchy's lifelong muse, Audrey Hepburn.  

At the core, the play of feminine and masculine the designer has identified from her deep dive into the Givenchy archives and which, despite her take on a more ethereal bohemian romance at Chloe, she has always loved.  The collection started with a strong shoulder that immediately took the fragility out of even the most fluid dresses.  She worked with bold combinations for the look of a modern day warrior princess.  

Of the house founder, Waight Keller said, "He believed in elegance.  He believed in chic."  She believes in the beauty of inner power, and wearing it on the outside.  The most inspiring aspect of her tenure so far has been her kid-in-a-candy-store glee at the atelier she has access to.  She seconded that emotion when two dozen artisans trooped out onstage at show's end.  The best is surely yet to come.

Hubert de Givenchy

Hubert de Givenchy, founder of the house of Givenchy, has Died at 91 at his home.

The aristocratic French designer dressed his friend and muse Audrey Hepburn in films such as "Breakfast at Tiffany's" and "Funny Face." 

The French fashion house confirmed the news on social media on Monday morning, remembering the 
late designer as a "major personality of the world of French Haute Couture and a gentleman who symbolized Parisian chic elegance."

With his perfect manners and old-school discipline, Givenchy had a distinguished presence that colored the fashion industry for over fifty years.  A consummate collector with an impeccable eye for objects as well as the interior decoration of houses, he leaves behind a fashion house that defined the very notions of refinement and elegance.

Givenchy championed the concept of separates with his first couture collection in 1952 at age 25, and two years later became the first designer to launch a high-end ready-to-wear line.  Early in his career, he garnered attention stateside for his artist-muse relationship with Audrey Hepburn, with whom he also developed a close personal relationship, forging a bond between Hollywood and haute couture that still thrives today. 

In addition to Hepburn, Givenchy also dressed screen darlings of the '50s and '60s, including Marlene Dietrich, Elizabeth Taylor, Greta Garbo and Grace Kelly, as well as Jackie Kennedy. During that time, his name was synonymous with ladylike luxury. He made the simple crisp white shirt chic and was a master of the little black dress.

Givenchy is survived by his partner, Philippe Venet, his nieces and nephews, and their children.  His family plans a private funeral and requested that in lieu of flowers, donations be made to UNICEP in his name.  

Louis Vuitton’s ‘Volez, Voguez, Voyagez’ Exhibition Lands in New York

When Louis Vuitton launched its “Volez, Voguez, Voyagez” exhibition in 2015 at the Grand Palais in Paris, the company always intended for the retrospective to travel. In the time since, the exhibition detailing the history of the French trunk maker has made stops in Tokyo and Seoul.

Yet, according to chief executive officer of Louis Vuitton, Michael Burke, it was always destined for the former American Stock Exchange building in lower Manhattan, where it has set up shop from now through Jan. 7.

The New York version remains free to the public, and got the high-tech, social media treatment. Visitors are encouraged to download the Volez, Voguez, Voyagez app, which allows them to virtually tag a subway wall at the exhibition’s entrance, view other messages, and have their note saved by Vuitton.

As with the others, the exhibition opens with the wood room, showing the earliest trunks, including the first trunk that “starts to look like a Vuitton,” an 1886 striped trunk, and the start of monogramming at the house, which began in 1896 as a way to memorialize the death of Louis Vuitton’s father, in 1893.  The “Volez, Voguez, Voyagez” venture is expected to draw close to 400,000 or 500,000 visitors throughout the exhibition’s run in New York. They exit through a gift shop stocking perfumes, travel guides, notebooks and the like.

Ralph Lauren Iconic Style

The name of American clothing designer Ralph Lauren has become associated with class and taste.  In addition to clothing, he designs home decorating products such as furniture, bedding, drapes, towels, rugs, china, and silverware.

The youngest of four children, Ralph Lifshitz was born in the Bronx, New York, on October 14, 1939.  His father was a house painter.  Ralph became interested in clothes when he was in seventh grade.  He changed his name to Lauren in the mid-1950s.  After graduating high school he worked as a salesman and began studying business at night.  He quit school after a few months, spent time in the army, and then looked for a job in fashion.

Lauren started his own company and launched a line of men’s clothing, Polo, offering styles that were a mix of English and American styles.  Lauren’s menswear was a success; and in 1971 he introduced his women’s line.  As the years went by he continued to branch out into children’s clothes, colognes, footwear, home products, and other merchandise while building an American Fashion Empire.