Fashion brought an eventful year in 2012. Fashion houses saw a revolving cast of characters: Hedi Slimane replaced Stefano Pilati at Yves Saint Laurent; Alexander Wang took over for Nicolas Ghesquière at Balenciaga, and Raf Simons finally filled John Galliano’s shoes at Dior. There were highlights on the campaign trail, too, with Michelle Obama and Ann Romney subtly communicating their messages through their clothes. See the top fashion news of the year.
There were extreme differences between Ann Romney and Michelle Obama, to be sure, but nowhere was it more obvious than in their sartorial choices. Obama was widely praised for her choice at the Democratic National Convention: a flattering metallic blue and red dress that flattered her arms and seemed, aesthetically at least, to straddle party lines. It was the creation of the designer Tracy Reese, a young African-American designer from Detroit, who announced shortly after that a version of the dress would retail for $500. That night, the first lady paired the dress with J. Crew shoes, in a nod to a newfound restraint in her fashion choices. She also appeared in several recycled pieces (including for her husband's acceptance speech at Grant Park)—and was also the first person to appear in Jason Wu's lower-priced line for Neiman Marcus, which will be on sale in January. Romney, by contrast, appeared in a series of looks that were cookie-cutter first lady: expensive, unsurprisingly appropriate, and not the least bit interesting. Here's to four more years, at least, of Michelle Obama fashion.
Since John Galliano left Christian Dior mired in scandal in 2011, the role of creative director sat empty —until Raf Simons arrived. He began with a bang with a well-reviewed couture collection last summer, and stayed strong for his ready-to-wear debut in Paris last September. “Even as Simons celebrated the rich history of the venerable French brand, his dedication to the contemporary woman remained undiminished,” wrote Robin Givhan after his debut. “At Jil Sander, Simons had begun an intimate dialogue with a woman for whom sophistication, ease, and romance are inextricably linked. Thankfully, he does not desert her at Dior.”
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Miuccia Prada has long been hailed as an exemplary designer of her time—but until May, she had never been the focus of a major museum show. The subject of the Costume Institute’s Spring show, “Impossible Conversations,” put Prada in conversation with the irreverent designer Elsa Schiaparelli (who died in 1973) in a rich side-by-side exhibition that examined their legacy in the fashion industry. Director Baz Luhrmann created a short film in which the two women conversed across time. As Robin Givhan wrote of the show: “Their embrace of feminism left both of them struggling to balance the superficiality of fashion with a woman’s sense of control, authority, and independence. Schiaparelli, for instance, says that men respect strong women, but don’t usually love them. Prada declares her desire to maintain certain feminine traditions without giving up her power.” It was of course accompanied by “The Oscars of the East”—the Met Gala hosted by Anna Wintour, which featured celebrities from Carey Mulligan to Beyoncé on the red carpet.
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It was big news when Stefano Pilati was ousted from his position at Yves Saint Laurent. There was a brief guessing game on who would fill his shoes. But then it was announced that it would be none other than Hedi Slimane, the former creative director of Dior Homme who had all but retired from the fashion world, moved to Los Angeles, and become a reclusive photographer. It was an exciting twist in the narrative: a man practically synonymous with cool (who, by the way, is credited with inventing the skinny jean) coming out of retirement to reinvent a storied old fashion house. It seemed like the formula for something really monumental. But then Slimane debuted his collection to tepid reviews. The New York Times’s Cathy Horyn called the collection “a frozen vision of a bohemian chick at the Chateau Marmont” that “lacked a new fashion spirit.” You’d expect that a brand-new (and notoriously quiet) designer would stay mum after a bad review. But not Slimane: he fired back in a tweeted open letter, calling Horyn a “bully” and a “publicist [for Dior’s Raf Simons] in disguise.” Horyn called Slimane’s reaction “silly nonsense.” Horyn: 1, Slimane: 0.
Photo by Yves Saint Laurent via Getty Images; Jacques Brinon/AP
When Lady Gaga calls, the world answers. That’s what happened with “The Body Revolution” in September, which she ignited through a string of passionate blog posts. She told fans that she has had bulimia and anorexia since she was 15. “May we make our flaws famous, and thus redefine the heinous,” she told her fans, posting pictures of herself wearing nothing but a yellow bra and underwear, with no makeup. (It was an open reaction to criticism over weight gain.) It struck a chord with Robyn Lawley (left), 23, who this year became Ralph Lauren’s first plus-sized model. In a piece on The Daily Beast, Lawley wrote about why the Body Revolution was so important. “I’m so glad Lady Gaga is calling attention to the issue and taking a stance,” Lawley wrote. “People are different. People’s bodies are different. And beauty is found in that diversity. I stand behind her as an advocate for body acceptance, and I hope we can empower both women and men to accept their bodies and embrace happiness once they do.”
It came as a shock when Balenciaga’s beloved designer Nicolas Ghesquière, resigned quickly from the nearly 100-year-old fashion house. It immediately ignited yet another guessing game: where was he going, and who would replace him? After speculation that it might fall to Versus designer Christopher Kane, Alexander Wang got the coveted job. But, as Robin Givhan asked of the appointment, can Alexander Wang sell street style at Balenciaga? “What exactly would PPR,” she wrote, "the parent company of Balenciaga, be getting with Wang—a designer whose most memorable garment is a T-shirt with just the right degree of slouch?”
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It’s long been rumored that when Anna Wintour eventually retired from Vogue, she would become a United States ambassador. And now might be her chance: after raising more than $500,000 for the Obama campaign as a top bundler, word got out that she was being considered for an ambassadorship to the U.K. or France, though a Vogue spokesperson said that “she’s very happy with her current job.” While it’s a competitive job to get, The Hollywood Reporter reports that political insiders say that Wintour “might be open” to becoming ambassador to France.
Helen Gurley Brown and Anna Piaggi may have been as different as it gets, but both were fashion-industry pioneers who redefined femininity. Gurley Brown, the longtime editor of Cosmopolitan and author of the bestselling Sex and the Single Girl, passed away in August. She was a “glamorous seductress, sex goddess, vixen,” who gave women advice on how to make the most of single life well before Sex and the City. Hearst, the magazine’s publisher, called her a “true pioneer for women in journalism —and beyond.” Piagg was a beloved Italian fashion journalist. She was one of fashion’s great eccentrics, having staged an exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum in 2006 that showcased 2,865 of her dresses. She died in August at the age of 81.
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It may have been a year of perfectly preened red-carpet appearances, glowing runway reviews, and promotions for several designers—but one particularly juicy story stood apart from the rest: the legal battle between Tory Burch and her ex-husband, Chris. Though they divorced in 2007, he alleges that Tory and the members of her board attempted to sell part of his 28 percent stake in her company. Tory denied the claims and filed a countersuit, claiming that her ex-husband's new company, C. Wonder, features several knockoffs of her items. Vanessa Grigoriadis thoroughly recounted the battle in the December issue of Vanity Fair. "The person who has been at every single appointment over the years is Tory,” says Vogue’s Anna Wintour. “Tory is the one who has always talked to us about her aspirations, and her ideas for growth, how she saw the brand, asked advice on people she might want to bring in—it’s always been, as far as we’re concerned, 100 percent Tory’s business, and we’ve never had anything to do with Chris.”
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For Carine Roitfeld, 2012 was about rebirth. After a scandalous exit from her post as editor of French Vogue, Roitfeld returned in September with CR Fashion Book, a magazine that will come out twice a year and live online. And the first issue was themed, fittingly, around babies: it featured Kate Upton on the cover holding ducklings and, on the other side, a little girl holding a baby. “When I started to work on this issue, my daughter was pregnant, so I was obsessed with pregnancy, with babies, with new life coming,” she said in an exclusive interview with The Daily Beast last September. “It’s become an obsession. Everyone can interpret the theme in a different way: it could be birth, babies, it could be death—It could be so many different things.” Indeed, when her daughter, Julia, gave birth, Roitfeld became one cool grandmother. “Now everything has changed,” she told us. “Grandmother doesn’t mean that you have gray hair and you retire and stay home cooking cakes for your grandchildren. Now a grandmother is young, and she’s still doing a lot of things—a grandmother can wear high heels.”
The legendary hairdresser died in May at the age of 84. Sassoon, who had begun working as a shampoo boy, opened his first salon in London in 1954 and pioneered several modern hairstyles over the next few decades. He shepherded the architectural bob into the mainstream in the 1950s and become famous for redefining femininity at the time. “He created a revolution,” said Vogue’s creative director (and an early model for Sassoon) Grace Coddington. “A whole new freedom for women.” He was later celebrated in a new monograph, Vidal Sassoon: How One Man Changed the World With a Pair of Scissors. “How lucky to be able to touch a human being, to be exhilarated by a craft that is constantly changing, to have that substance which grows from the human form that you can mold to create spontaneous fashion, and yet bring out the individuality,” said Sassoon. “How lucky I have been to be involved in the poetry of change.”
