Pun Ron Dorff

Calvin Klein X: Nakata, Verdasco, Brooks, Lutz

Style: Big in '09

Liberty prints










Thanks to the green thumbs of labels like Shipley & Halmos (pictured), Obedient Sons, and Liberty of London (which lent its trademark blooms to Steven Alan for shirts, ties, and boxers), look for flowers to have more power than ever in '09.

Shipley & Halmos woven shirt, $170, available at Barneys New York, barneys.com

Unstructured shoulders











Sport coats continue to soften up in '09, especially in their summer-weight incarnations. This example from Bottega—which is essentially crafted from shirting fabric—allows for maximum style with minimal sweating.

Bottega Veneta Bianco Cobalt check jacket, $1,150, available at bottegaveneta.com

Perf's up










Look for a proliferation of perforation in the year ahead, courtesy of everyone from Common Projects to Louis Vuitton (pictured). And that's just footwear. Labels like Duckie Brown, Gucci, and Hermès carried out their holy obsessions above the waist. (Just remember: We said perforated, not mesh.)

Louis Vuitton anthracite richelieu calf-leather shoes, $975, available at louisvuitton.com

Featherweight windbreaker










Sharp-looking, and as an added bonus, it won't take up too much space in that new backpack.

Patrik Ervell nylon windbreaker, $600, available at Barneys New York, barneys.com

Backpacks for grown-ups










Maybe it's because more people are riding their bikes to work, or maybe it's because messenger bags are just dorky, but we haven't seen so many nicely designed backpacks in a while (though we're going to go ahead and recommend you skip the bunched-up trousers look).

Marc By Marc Jacobs washed-ink shiny canvas Arthur bag, $298, available at Marc by Marc Jacobs, 298 W. 4th St., New York, (212) 929-0304

Blucher mocs










Spotted with increasing frequency on the feet of dudes who never set foot on a prep school campus, the shoes that L.L. Bean wrought are on their way to becoming the next Top-Sider—especially now that labels are producing them in more color variations. These Polos, for instance, also come in red and orange.

Polo by Ralph Lauren, $350, available at ralphlauren.com

The beach sweater










The winter of our economic discontent may just be getting going, but summer will return (in meteorological terms, anyway). And when it does warm up, expect to see a lot of these things, whether they take the form of the Baha sweater pictured here or the crewneck version Swaim and Christina Hutson sent down their Spring '09 runway. After all, if you're going to be a bum, you might as well be a beach bum.

NSF Jeff linen poncho, $50, available at Barneys New York, barneys.com

Separates










Seriously, they're not just for Joseph A. Bank shoppers anymore. All-American names like Tommy and Ralph sent the look—by which we mean blazers paired with slightly mismatched trousers— down Spring runways, as did the suiting gurus at Zegna, seen here.

Ermenegildo Zegna double breasted blazer, $2,495, shirt, $395, tie, $170, and dress pants, $425, available at select Ermenegildo Zegna boutiques, (888) 880-3462, zegna.com

Cuffed shorts










We're walking the line between reporting and endorsing on this one, though we'll say this: If pleats are involved, the look is probably best left to runway professionals.

Versace cuffed shorts and crewneck sweater, price upon request. Available at select Versace boutiques worldwide, (888) 721-7219

High-contrast plaid










Some trends mean something. Others just mean some eye-catching new shit to wear. Guess which category this one falls into.

Steven Alan snap-front shirt, $185, available at stevenalan.com

Harrington jackets










after Ryan O'Neal's character on Peyton Place in the sixties, the Harrington is having another moment at the end of whatever the hell we're calling this decade. If you don't already have one, now's the time to buy one. (And if you don't like this polka-dot interpretation from Perry Ellis, both A.P.C. and Corpus—not to mention Baracuta—offer more understated versions.)

Perry Ellis cotton polka dot golf jacket, $225, available at perryellis.com

The realignment of luxe










We appreciate a nice vicuna hoodie as much as the next guy, but it's also a little disorienting the way luxury has extended its tentacles into even the most mundane wardrobe items over the past few years. Well, thanks to the economic meltdown, we're expecting that trend to reverse, pushing luxury and utility into their respective corners in 2009. When you think about it, there's something comforting (if not quite silky soft to the touch) about a sweatshirt that's made of good old cotton and not Loro Piana cashmere. (And, of course, an ultraswank Valentino dinner jacket that looks like something you actually had to save up for.)

Valentino one-button, peak-lapel cocktail jacket, $3,576, available at select Valentino boutiques, valentino.com

Madonna for LV SS 09-part two

This was really different,” explains Antoine Arnault, communications director of Louis Vuitton, when asked how Madonna came to front the company’s new spring/summer campaign. “Usually, these things take much, much longer,” he explains; a lengthy process of identifying the right person to embody the fashion and luxury-goods brand, the right photographer, the right look for the campaign, plus, of course, all the deal-making a project like this involves. This time, however, pretty much everything was agreed inside a week.

“On the Monday,” Arnault recalls, “we had a meeting, and Marc Jacobs suggested Madonna. I thought, yes, great idea, but it will never happen. Then, in the meeting, Marc sent her a text saying, ‘Love, would you like to be the new Louis Vuitton woman?’ Five minutes later, she’d replied. He showed me his phone, and she’d said, ‘Yes, I’d love to do it.’” What could be simpler?

Clearly, when a big brand like Louis Vuitton chooses a new face for its campaign, it’s not just a matter of affectionate text messages between Marc Jacobs and Madonna. Men like Louis Vuitton’s CEO, Yves Carcelle, have to agree that it is a good idea, not a whim, as well as, of course, Carcelle’s boss and Antoine Arnault’s father, Bernard Arnault, head of the LVMH luxury-goods empire.

But as Antoine Arnault sees it, “Marc knows the brand probably better than anyone now,” having been artistic director for a decade, during which time Louis Vuitton has expanded massively. Jacobs had seen Madonna in concert the week before, but it wasn’t some “let’s be crazy” decision, Arnault explains, citing how Jacobs had previously picked J-Lo as the face of Louis Vuitton in 2003. “That wasn’t an obvious choice, perhaps, but it instantly put us on the top in the US in one campaign.

“Madonna is glamorous,” Arnault continues. “She has a global image. She’s the ultimate performer and businesswoman, and not someone who is just a famous singer. She has travelled; she has tried to change things.” And if her personal life isn’t perfect right now, “Well, that only makes her more human.” Once the proposal had been made, and provisionally accepted, in both cases by text, “Then we had to agree on a figure, a concept, a photographer.” Yet the whole process seems to have been plain sailing – an object lesson, if you like, in the degree of certainty that people at the top of the fashion industry tend to display about their creative choices.

The figure? Well, just how much Madonna is being paid for what is, in a sense, both one day’s work and the product of many years at the top of her game is a moot point. Some have claimed it’s $10 million (£6.6 million). But Arnault is careful to puncture that, saying, “The figure is really, really lower than that. In times like these, it would be totally irresponsible to pay anyone $10 million.”

The concept? Madonna has been photographed in a nostalgic, Parisian bistro setting, perhaps at that “waiters whistling as the last bar closes” moment in the early hours. “Only it’s in LA,” Arnault quips, not Paris – “One of those French bistros in California where you really think you’re in France” – and it’s daytime and there are hundreds of paparazzi outside. Madonna smoulders quietly, all fishnets and high kicks, with a glamour that gives more than a nod to Dietrich, long an acknowledged influence. She’s wearing Marc Jacobs’ ready-to-wear clothes for Louis Vuitton, styled by Marie-Amélie Sauvé, with, of course, due prominence given to some lovely bags and shoes, those accessories that have long been such steady earners for the brand.

But there is a certain quietness to the images, a kind of gentleness, perhaps, which might also (along with that willingly professed prudence over Madonna’s fee) be a sign of the extraordinary times we live in. Certainly, when I put it to Arnault that the crunch might be changing the aesthetic and that, in particular, a certain kind of flash advertising message now looks passé, even wrong somehow, he doesn’t exactly demur. “Other people can try to rationalise every campaign, but there is certainly a feeling that emerges from designers, photographers, creatives of all kinds, which is maybe something they don’t talk about, but which they can feel.”

The photographer in question here is Steven Meisel, rather than Mert and Marcus, who have shot all of Louis Vuitton’s campaigns since 2002, including those amazingly effective shots of J-Lo. “We were very happy with them,” Arnault insists, but all good things come to an end – and, after all, it was Meisel who photographed the wilder, younger, more in-your-face Madonna who leapt off the pages of Sex, the book which caused such a storm back in 1992. So this campaign can be seen as something of a reunion, Meisel additionally having photographed Madonna for Vanity Fair late last year. Jacobs and Meisel are old friends, too, Arnault explains, “from the crazy years of the Eighties”.

And once Antoine Arnault had assembled his dream team? “I think the three of them were in touch with each other on the phone almost every day,” he says of the run-up to the shoot, “talking about ideas, sharing references, then talking about individual shots.” On the big day itself, “About 50 people were on the set, which sounds like a lot, but it’s all in the preparation, in the make-up and the set and so on. Once that was in place, Madonna would come out, get into position, and the shots went amazingly quickly, sometimes in about 15 minutes. It was a delight.”

Madonna did LV ss 09 campaign

When Marc Jacobs found himself in a meeting on a recent Monday morning to brainstorm about Louis Vuitton’s next fashion advertising campaign, inspiration struck. “I just blurted out, ‘I think we should do Madonna,’” said the designer, Vuitton’s creative director, mentioning he’d attended a concert by the pop icon the night before in Paris. “I was totally just blown away by it, and moved by her performance, by what she had to say, and her energy.”

As the meeting went on, Jacobs tapped out a message to Madonna on his BlackBerry, and within about five minutes came the reply: “I’d love to.”

The result is six atmospheric pictures of a smoldering Madonna by Steven Meisel that will break in a range of fashion magazines in February. “It’s a big change from what we were doing. It tells a story,” said Antoine Arnault, Vuitton’s director of communications. “This I think is an amazing coup, but more than that, there’s real logic behind it. It’s very linked to Marc’s fashion show.”

Although Arnault declined to give figures, he said media budgets for the fashion campaign would be on par with a year ago. And he dismissed as “absurd” reports pegging Madonna’s fees at $10 million. “It’s very far away from that,” he assured.

The campaign marks the end of Vuitton’s six-year collaboration with photographers Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott, with the parting characterized as amicable, and another reunion for long-time collaborators Madonna and Meisel. Jacobs last worked with Meisel in his Perry Ellis days. (Arnault noted it’s “very probable” Vuitton’s association with Meisel will continue.)

The campaign takes the very Parisian theme of Jacobs’ hit spring Vuitton collection, with a smoky French bistro the setting, and the sepia-toned images evoking a Brassai atmosphere. “As cliché as they are, I love all these French references,” the designer said. (Although the restaurant, Figaro, is on North Vermont Avenue in Los Angeles).

“I still feel it looks like beautiful, gorgeous Madonna,” Jacobs said about the images. “Excepting the references and excepting the clichés, this still feels very today. And it didn’t feel so much like a fashion shoot, it feels like portraits.”

The shoot wrapped up in less than a day and without incident, although Jacobs said hordes of paparazzi literally “appeared out of the bushes” the moment Madonna arrived. “It went from a quiet street to complete chaos,” he said.

The designer also marveled at the singer’s incredible fitness that allowed her to recline, her back arched, on bentwood chairs, or shoot a leg straight up in the air, no sweat. “She’s so sure of herself as an icon and as a woman. It was her idea to do the fishnets,” Jacobs said. “What fascinates me the most about her is her never-ending energy, and the idea of becoming and changing. She’s an artist who’s unafraid to use her voice.”

Arnault said the fashion campaign would appear “very strongly” in February and March issues and with few changes in media placements. “We’re staying on target,” he stressed.

The first visuals will spotlight slouchy bags in monogram canvas and monogram-embossed leather, along with ethnic-inspired sandals, bangles and sexy ready-to-wear. In tandem, Vuitton will continue to run its “core values” campaign, with spots featuring Sean Connery, the latest celebrity spokesman, continuing into next year. Analysts have estimated Vuitton spends more than $250 million annually on advertising, most of it print-driven.

Bikkembergs underwear

The new campaign of Bikkembergs underwear....just click on the image to en-joy it on bigger size...

ENERGY underwear 08/09 campaign

Kris Kranz models for Italian clothing company Energie. Kris is 23 years old, from Bloomington, Minnesota.

FANTASTICMAG: On the wild side