Darling Magazine

by Lucia Malanga  Milan Fashion Week has now been and gone, and here are some brands that absolutely blew me away with their designs. 1. MSGM If you love monochromatic outfits like me you would love the way MSGM is able to create a  range of monochromatic designs. They were absolutely stunning and contained various black textiles that you would not suspect to go together. They had faux fur  as accessories, like scarves, seen in look 8, paired with an amazing silk dress and fur shoes. This look amazed me because I would have never thought of styling fur boots with a silk dress. The runway designs  felt simplistic even though they were  items that are considered "over the top", like the fur. The colour combinations that shocked me where the Grey, white and silver. You would assume these colors would fade into one another but they do not. The use of various textures for the different colors made it difficult for the colours to fade into one another, they compliment...

by Alisha Bissessur With well over 500 looks and 60 brands, the first-ever Metaverse Fashion Week (MVFW) took the world of fashion by storm in March 2022. Launched by the world’s biggest user-owned virtual world, Decentraland, visitors were able to purchase NFT’s created by notable brands at the digital event - ranging from Guo Pei to Estée Lauder to Tommy Hilfiger.  Despite last year’s absence of high-end fashion giants, MVFW is set to return in 2023 with the curatorial theme of ‘Future Heritage’ to bridge traditional fashion designers and the next generation’s lineup of creators. Within the mere timespan of a year, digital fashion’s grand experiment proves itself to be one of the strongest cases for the metaverse. But many questions are left unanswered; Is this new phenomenon of ‘digital fashion’ synonymous with sustainability in fashion? Will our physical clothes eventually become irrelevant? Or is it all simply a trend waiting to fizzle out?  Ⓒ Placebo Digital fashion has ...

by Carolina Anzalone What should we expect from Pharrell Williams as the new Menswear Creative Director of LV? Hard question, considering Virgil Abloh’s fresh and culturally forward approach for Louis Vuitton, who died of cancer in November 2021 at the age of 41.  Virgil Abloh departed as a revolutionary, leaving a lasting gender-fluid and more cross-culturally inclusive imprint on Luis Vuitton.    " He reinvented the role of a creative director, injecting it with hip-hop's penchant for remixing, skateboarding's sense of community and a desire for social progress ," Business of Fashion writes about Virgil Abloh. We also need to keep in mind that this position has been vacant since Abloh’s death and we should have aspected a new addition to the LVMH family.  The news certainly provoked quite a tempestuous response, met with criticism as well as enthusiasm, with many questioning the decision to appoint a wealthy and established artist and media personality over a young...

by Lara Parry With endless hauls, unboxings and other influencer videos popular on social platforms like TikTok and Youtube, fast fashion has us in a chokehold. Unsurprisingly Shein is the largest fashion retailer in the world, being valued at 100 billion dollars in 2022. This statistic paired with their social media presence makes the idea of purchasing ethical fashion feel impossible, and sometimes even like our shopping habits wouldn’t have an impact anyway.  We all know fast fashion is  bad  - with high levels of co2 emissions, labour rights violations, cheap fabrics used, and allegations of Greenwashing rife throughout the industry it can seem impossible to know where to shop. Of course, it would be great if everyone cut down, with Berlin’s Hot Or Cool Institute proposing the question: Could or would you only buy 5 new pieces of clothing a year?  They have suggested that for fashion to be in line with staying in Paris’ Climate Agreement targets, w...

by Geena Ling On the opening night of London Fashion Week 2023, Vivz World played host to a spellbinding catwalk show featuring the most dynamic looks from a variety of womens, mens, and childrenswear designers.  Vivz Fashion School is a global arts institution based in India, which offers mentoring courses in fashion design, modelling, styling and events management. With such widespread expertise, it’s no surprise that their work translated effortlessly to the catwalk. The fashion show, which took part at Hackney Town Hall on Friday evening, brought a vibrant melting pot of cultural influences from the world to East London. First up was a womenswear collection by Riya Firodiya: The Couture House. Firodiya specialises in bespoke occasion wear with a romantic vibe. She draws inspiration from nature, using flowers to influence her silhouettes and colour palettes. The collection featured flowing, paisley-patterned fabrics in striking magenta, black and white. The looks were made forma...

by Carolina Anzalone Hailing from Bradford in the North of England, the latest Creative Director of Burberry, Daniel Lee, graduated from Central Saint Martins in 2011 and propelled himself towards an incredibly successful career. He has been privileged enough to hold other important positions at high fashion brands including Maison Margiela, Balenciaga, and many other household names, and the iconic Milanese fashion house, Bottega Veneta.    In fact, within his work for Bottega Veneta Lee developed iconic pieces like the Pouch Bag and Padded Sandals that reserved the title of a “New Bottega” fresh look for the company as well as building the designer a strong community of fans that follow his trends and embrace his new vision.   He retained his position as Creative Director for Bottega Veneta from 2018-2021, catapulting it into the spotlight before most recently being appointed as Riccardo Tisci's replacement as Chief Creative Officer at the prestigious British brand, Bur...

by Adria Mirabelli   In the wake of Paco Rabanne’s passing we reflect on important events in the conceptual designer’s career.   On February 3, 2023 iconic designer Paco Rabanne passed away in Portsall, France at 88 years old. The eccentric designer, traditionally named Francisco Rabaneda y Cuervo, was well known for his exploratory futurist fashion design where he utilized unconventional materials such as metals, acrylic and even paper in his work.   His pieces were sculptural couture, -  often made by connecting delicate pieces of metal and acrylic together with metal hoops to form garments and accessories. These innovative material explorations utilized processes that could be compared to that of creating historical chainmail. Rabanne was able to transform seemingly ordinary post-war materials into covetable pieces of high couture. His material choices were extremely modern for the time and paired with 60’s silhouettes created a striking visual code that has becom...