In the past 5 years Huarache sandals have been proposed by many fashion designers, but as they continue to inspire even the big fashion labels....

is the trend for this woven footwear destined to peak or fade?

The commercial success of Huaraches in the 80's first inspired Hush Puppies.

More recently Jeffery Campbell revived this footwear style and was followed by a long list of fashion labels from around the world.

Brands that included the worlds oldest fashion house Lanvin that introduced a line of woven Huaraches in their Summer 2011 collection.

Newcomers like Armando Cabral

and established designers like Giuseppe Zanotti alike, presented their Huarache design interpretations as this Italo-Thai colaboration for Thakoon.

Tory Burch.

Dolce and Gabbana.

úkata...The list goes on.

This season Crocs has also released a Huaraches line of womens footwear.

So what about next season in 2014? Will Huaraches continue to be commercial?

Midi skirt is hailed as unexpected fashion hit of summer

Loved by Victoria Beckham and hipsters at Coachella, the length once seen as dowdy is perfect in unpredictable English weather



As the British summer falls flat on its face with yet another false start, a new fashion trend is on the rise. The midi-length skirt – with a hemline which falls below the knee and is most often written off as dowdy – is on course to be the sleeper fashion hit of the summer.
Thanks to an unlikely trio of factors including the blustery weather throughout the spring, Victoria Beckham's much-photographed personal wardrobe and a glut of hipster pop stars pictured at the Coachella festival, in California the midiskirt is being hailed as the skirt of the season.
The shape even scored a red carpet success earlier in the week. Fashion commentators praised the actor Carey Mulligan's appearance at the Met Ball in New York wearing a midi-length dress by Balenciaga at fashion's most high-profile event.
"The midi is grownup but slightly subversive," says Katherine Ormerod, senior fashion news and features editor at the magazine Grazia, "and that is a winning combination."
"It's a length that has been ignored for some time but women are rediscovering it," says Jane Shepherdson, chief executive of high street fashion retailer Whistles.
Retailers across the price spectrum are seeing a steady increase in sales. At the high-end e-tailer net-a-porter.com, sales of the midi length are 10% faster than other skirt shapes.
Meanwhile, insiders at the online fashion retailer Asos report that sales of the midi, which is on the front page of the site as a "right now piece", are up at least 200% on last year.
Part of the midi's success lies in its appeal across the fashion generations. Women in their 20s who are tuned into the celebrity aesthetic of Solange Knowles and Rita Ora are wearing the hemline, as are fortysomething women looking for a more grown-up look for the coming summer.
"It's an elegant length," says Sarah Curren of mywardrobe.com "I think you would be surprised as to who is buying them. It's as much twentysomething women as fortysomething women. The younger women see it on Victoria Beckham as her length of choice and for slightly older women it's a really flattering shape and length."
Fashion commentators agree that the midi trend will outlive the summer. "Fashion at the moment is completely polarised between a hip, street aesthetic, and a minimal ultra-luxe stealth look – both of which have a place for the midiskirt," says Ormerod.
Shepherdson, in common with many retailers, has a vested interest in the look lasting. In the autumn Whistles will stock a midi-length leather skirt which has already attracted a waiting list of fashion insiders. (guardian.co.uk)

Attached Images

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Stealing Style From Granny

Fashion's latest rebellion is co-opting looks from grandma's closet


By ALEXA BRAZILIAN

François Dischinger for The Wall Street Journal; Styling by Paula Knight, Hair & Makeup by Sandrine Van Slee for Oribe at Art Department, Models, from left: Barbara Berger/IMG Models, Bonnie Trompeter/Bella Agency


GENERATION XEROX | Twenty-somethings are taking their cues from 70-somethings, to stylish effect.



Outfit Details: Rochas Jacket, $1,550, barneys.com; Chloé Shirt, $1,795, barneys.com; Pants, $850, Chloé, 646-350-1770; Sunglasses, $190, Stella McCartney, 212-255-1556; Tank Louis Large 18K Yellow Gold, Sapphire and Leather Watch, $9,850, Cartier, 800-227-8437; 18K Yellow Gold Curb-Link Bracelet, $21,500, Verdura, 212-758-3388; Delvaux MM and GM Bags, $4,550 and $6,900, Barneys, 212-826-8900; Shoes, $695, Charlotte Olympia, 212-744-1842


IS CONSERVATIVE THE new radical? The fashion world certainly seems to think so. This season, designers filled their runways with restrained silhouettes that echo the graceful, showing-less-is-more aesthetic of generations past.
Designers are reimagining soignée staples for spring and summer—skirt suits, twin sets, below-the-knee dresses, kitten heels and frame bags—that appear anything but moth-eaten. In fact, fashion's neoconservative coup d'état feels deliciously defiant, given the excessively revealing styles pop culture celebrates. A quick flip through any supermarket tabloid yields an onslaught of oversexed stars and their indelicate fashion choices, which prompted a strict dress code for this year's Grammy Awards. When you factor in over-the-top street style and the all-round oversharing that has become pervasive, the reeled-in restraint of a bygone era looks more and more like a cool, quiet revolution.

The style-set is embracing elegant, covered-up looks usually worn by older women that are anything but moth-eaten. Paula Knight explains the trend on Lunch Break. Photo: Getty Images.

</div>This dignified uprising can be spotted on many of today's most influential style setters—British fashion icon Alexa Chung, Russian supermodel Natalia Vodianova and Moda Operandi co-founder Lauren Santo Domingo, to name a few.
"A young girl now doesn't want to dress like her mother; she finds her grandmother much cooler," said Nina Ricci creative director Peter Copping, who designed skirt suits inspired by his own nana. "She wore little smart, tweedy suits. I always had a romantic notion of that." But the designer, who modernized his separates by cutting them in a light-as-air bouclé woven onto organza, also drew inspiration from a much younger source. "Someone told me a story about the [22-year-old] model Eliza Cummings and how when she got her first big money job she went straight out and bought a Chanel suit," said Mr. Copping. "I thought, 'Wow, that's really clued up!' "
What's Old (Lady) Is New Again

Prim with panache, these classics and classics-inspired pieces are the trend's building blocks

F. Martin Ramin for The Wall Street Journal, Styling by Anne Cardenas (5) Click to view interactive.





In his spring collection, Bottega Veneta designer Tomas Maier, who has long imprinted the brand with a classic femininity, crafted sheer cardigans, calf-grazing dresses and a coat in the sort of rose print one might find on the walls of a '50s-era powder room. "I never liked the obvious definition of 'sexy,' " said Mr. Maier. "I actually don't even like the word. I prefer a woman to be sensuous and in charge—definitely in charge of what she's wearing."
Twenty-six-year-old designer Wes Gordon agreed. "In serious times, you need serious chic. Anything cute feels bad right now. A grown-up, covered-up silhouette is the anti-cute," said Mr. Gordon, whose signature long-sleeve gowns and full skirts have been worn by bright young things such as Jessica Biel and Rita Ora. His spring collection had a red skirt suit worthy of Nancy Reagan. Among Mr. Gordon's inspirations: a book of Valentino Garavani's designs from the '70s (the house's current designers, Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pier Paolo Piccioli, are also huge proponents of the conservative-but-cool look) and Greta Garbo. "But late Garbo, when she was running around New York City with a popped collar, hiding from people," he said. "It's good to be a little mysterious in the overcrowded, overexposed world we live in now."

What feels new is being a bit quieter and more discerning.

Even London's resident bad boy Christopher Kane is of a similar mind. "Ladylike is the ultimate sexiness," said the designer. "It's clean, elegant and in control. The famous saying, 'It's the quiet ones you need to watch,' definitely applies to this style."
Although the movement centers on mature silhouettes, it's the accessories that carry it over into phenomenon territory. From the delicate stampede of pointy kitten heels and sensible block-heeled sandals to the flood of frame bags and collar-grazing necklaces, little touches are capable of creating big changes in attitude.
"There is a shift in sensibility happening now—shoppers are moving away from conspicuous It-bags, the vertiginous platform heel and gaudy in-your-face jewels," said Kate Davidson Hudson, co-founder of the newly launched accessories shopping site Editorialist. "What feels new is being a bit quieter and more discerning—having your subtle gold studs, cat-eye glasses, proper box bag and most importantly, the mid-heel shoe."
Zuma Press (Herrera); WireImage/Getty Images (Radziwll)


THE ORIGINALS | Lee Radziwill, left, and Carolina Herrera



Indeed, low-riding heels—from Louis Vuitton's Magic Square pumps to Miu Miu's squat, crystal-encrusted patent-leather numbers—have been star sellers for spring. There has also been an attendant uptick in popularity for the shoe brands that your grandmother and great-grandmother loved. Roger Vivier, the brand known for its low, pilgrim-buckle pump made famous by Catherine Deneuve in "Belle de Jour," seems more popular than ever, both for its shoes and the book on its 75-plus-year history released last month with publisher Rizzoli. Ferragamo, another perennial ladies-who-lunch favorite, is celebrating the 35th anniversary of the Vara, its sweetly iconic gold bow-topped shoe, with a new campaign featuring of-the-moment women such as Ms. Santo Domingo and Chiara Clemente wearing the classic, dainty-heeled slippers. As of this month, they can be customized to one's liking on the brand's website with a choice of color combinations and materials, and the option to monogram the soles.
One longtime Ferragamo Vara fan is Ms. Chung. "I think one of the first times I was photographed, I literally sneaked into a Topshop [fashion] show and I was wearing a cardigan, some white tights and Ferragamo heels," recalled Ms. Chung, host of the music TV show Fuse News on the Fuse channel, and author of "It," a book on her personal style and inspirations (out from Penguin in late October).
She's also emblematic of a certain brand of young-fogy dressing that has become popular with the next generation of taste-makers, including 27-year-old sister-designers Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, whose discreetly polished and structured bag designs for their label The Row have become industry favorites.
The Granny Pack

Some of today's most-admired style-setters are models of restraint
WENN; Getty Images (2); Billy Farrell Agency; StockholmStreetStyle


From left: The Row designer Ashley Olsen; Model Elena Perminova; TV host Alexa Chung; Moda Operandi co-founder Lauren Santo Domingo; Fashion editor Giovanna Battaglia



The youthful duo's austere clothes have also become the ne plus ultra for tasteful, urbane women of all vintages. For spring, the designers showed ankle-grazing silk skirts and belted jackets in classic shades that looked simultaneously old-school and modern.
Earlier this week, one of the biggest events on the fashion calendar took place. The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute ball celebrated the opening of the exhibit "PUNK: Chaos to Couture." The annual gala has long been considered the sartorial event of the year, and the choice of punk as this year's theme feels particularly poignant. With its shredded T-shirts, creative facial piercings and mohawks, the riotous aesthetic, which peaked in the late '70s and early '80s, couldn't be further from the clean and sober silhouettes surrounding us now, but the motivations behind the two share some DNA.
Fresh from a fitting for the dress she'd wear to the ball (a Victorian-inspired, high-necked, black velvet lace number with sheer panels, from Canadian designer Erdem Moralioglu), Ms. Chung meditated on her demure choice. "It's quite conservative, but this is, to me, more punk," she said. "More people will be showing up in skin-tight, see-through garments, so I feel like I'm rebelling."(wsj.com)

Farmwear label, Pointer Brand, Hits High Fashion Note

by Misty White Sidell Pointer Brand, a 100-year-old American farm wear staple, has recently become popular amongst international trendsetting men. By Misty White Sidell.




Pointer Brand
The classic image of an American farmer, with his thick-ply jacket, rugged jeans, beat-up boots, and John Deere equipment is well-engrained in the minds of many Americans. But it’s certainly not the first thing you think of in relation to fashion.

But now that notion, however surprising, is quickly changing—thanks to Pointer Brand, the 100-year-old private farmwear label owned and produced by L.C. King Manufacturing Company. The onetime go-to brand for sartorial farming staples (like overalls), is now sought-after by male trendsetters in urban American hubs, as well as Europe and Japan, for its classic, non-gimmicky designs. Even famed Tokyo-based designer Junya Watanabe, enlisted the label for an ongoing collaboration.

Pointer, founded in Bristol, Tennessee by Landon Clayton King, was never intended to draw fashionable chatter. The brand’s specific range of clothing was originally designed to accommodate the heavy-wearing lifestyle of the region’s agricultural professionals. And similar to English waxed cotton jackets (which have also grown a fashionable edge), many of Pointer’s garments include utilitarian features, like seed pockets.

“Everything in the clothes is there because it’s supposed to be there,” said Kevin Burrows, co-founder of the popular blog and book F—- Yeah Menswear . “There are no frills, no pretension.” But that pared-down, long-standing heritage aesthetic, partnered with Pointer’s signature high-quality construction, is now drawing a whole new fan base.

The brand’s appeal lies in Pointer’s tightly-edited run of sturdy, well-crafted workwear with a strong heritage appeal. It’s simplicity and fine fabrication speaks to the same popularity enjoyed by classically-geared labels like A.P.C.—but at a workman’s price point. (Pointer’s more popular styles typically range between $130 and $250.) The brand’s four-pocket canvas Duck Chore coat is a favorite of alternative yuppies seeking American-made, rugged finery. “It’s just very minimal, clean, and neat lines,” Burrows explained of the jacket’s long-standing appeal. “I think it’s for a guy who wants to look good, but also really practical.”

But most interesting is that Pointer is the “last family-owned clothing brand in America that’s still run by the founding family,” said Jack King, the label’s fourth-generation owner. “People want stuff that’s authentic and you can’t get more authentic than what’s coming out of here.” Operating out of a small factory in the Appalachian town of Bristol, TN with a staff of just 29, King takes care to ensure that Pointer remains steadfast in its use of all-American vertical integration. His garments are constructed entirely of home-grown components, right down to the thread. “Our biggest issue is that we don’t have enough weaving mills left in America,” King explained of the challenges facing American-made brands. “Trying to find great fabric here is really difficult, you have to pay a premium on it, but it’s worth it.”

That authenticity has spurred a growing international interest in Pointer’s designs. While the brand still produces farm-ready coveralls and carpenter jeans in droves, its offerings have grown to accommodate an increased fashionable profile (which has translated to notable year-over-year sales increases).

“There is a slow fashion that happens,” King said of Pointer’s production model. “We listen to our customers when they tell us what they want, and think about developing it.” For that reason they’ll roll out a navy version of the Duck Chore coat in the next two weeks and are exploring new designs for women.

The label has gained an especially strong footing in markets that covet its strong American appeal. “Brands like that always have a hardcore customer and connoisseurs abroad that appreciate its rarity,” said Burrows. In Europe, Pointer is stocked in stores with names like ‘Americana’ and ‘Yankee Doodle.’ And in Japan, where “workwear is a fashion staple,” as King explained, the brand is scooped up by “a younger market, kids that are probably between 15 and 32 years old.”

That Japanese intrigue quickly grown into a larger, high-end ordeal. While Pointer annually sells about $400,000 worth of merchandise in Japan through popular retailers like Rakuten (the country’s answer to Amazon), their buzz inspired famed designer Junya Watanabe to link up with the label in 2004 on a co-opted line of clothes. “He personally contacted us to ship him some products for him to construct and reconstruct with his finesse,” King explained of Watanabe’s deconstructed take on Pointer’s classic 4-pocket jacket, which incorporates contrast seed-stitching and a slimmed silhouette. The collaboration was such a success that it still continues today—sold in specialty stores in Tokyo, Hong Kong, and New York. “We love that we are making stuff that we will never see on the streets here in Bristol but you’ll see them on the street in New York and Tokyo,” said King. “To have something like that come out of a small Appalachian town and go somewhere so different is just fantastic.”

What are your thoughts on this? It's been brewing streetstyle wise for a while and there's something very idyllic and nostalgic about it, I think.

I don't like it when it's overdone with jewelry and embroidery, I find the simple looking ones best.

Here are a few looks google helped me find:



trendmill.com, torontoverve.com, thefunkyfashionistas @ blogspot, mysweetlemon @ wordpress, indulgy.com

Clarks, the shoes that tap to Jamaica's reggae beat

How did the brand, scourge of schoolchildren, become the music genre's footwear of choice? A new book about this strange love affair explains why Kingston's reggae stars regularly travelled to buy up the Somerset firm's wares

DJ and producer Trinity, in Desert Treks, near the Mixing Lab studio in Kingston. Photograph: Mark Read

For generations of Britain's boys and girls the trip to the shoe shop before the start of term has heralded a familiar argument. Why can't I have these cool ones? Please, Mum? The answer is always the same: you need sensible shoes, darling, something that will last you. Cue the foot-size gauge with the width-fitting tape, and that sinking feeling: it's another pair of Clarks.
But while the name has spelled "total square" to British schoolchildren since the 1960s, for one set of customers across the Atlantic the notion of comfy, well-made English footwear has provoked a very different reaction. In Jamaica – above all among its singers, musicians, DJs and producers – Clarks are king.
A new book, Clarks in Jamaica, tells the bizarre story of how the stolid Somerset firm became shoemakers to the reggae industry. Designed, written and published by Londoner Al Newman (aka Al Fingers), the handsome edition was inspired by one of the biggest and most entertaining reggae tunes of recent years. In his 2010 hit Clarks singer and MC Vybz Kartel not only delivered a hymn to their durability and stylishness, he also included tips for keeping the suede looking tidy, including judicious use of a toothbrush for reaching tricky areas. The tune was massive in Jamaica and beyond, and it set reggae buff Newman thinking about the many artists who have been moved to namecheck the island's favourite shoes in song.
"It is kind of niche," says Newman, with some understatement. "But I thought – it's such a colourful story, it's about time someone documented this. I wanted to focus on the music and the Jamaican musicians who have sung about Clarks. Reggae and dancehall stars Dillinger, Trinity, Ranking Joe, Scorcher, Little John, Super Cat and countless others had sung about Clarks in the past. So I went there just over a year ago to interview and photograph musicians, as well as other people on the street wearing the shoes."
Accompanying Newman was photographer Mark Read, who has shot for National Geographic, and there is something of the tone of that publication in his lush, almost sensual colour images of the music biz dandies of Kingston. They offer an elegant counterpoint to the archive pictures that Newman has lovingly disinterred: dainty line drawings from Clarks advertising of the 40s and 50s; sepia photographs of earnest-looking workers at the company's factory in the town of Street, near Glastonbury – a spot that feels a million miles from Trenchtown.
"It seemed like a perfectly natural thing to the musicians that someone would come from England to write a book about Clarks," says Newman, himself an instrumentalist and remixer on the side. "They were happy to be recognised for their love of the shoes."
It certainly is a love affair that Clarks in Jamaica documents, and it was the desert boot that began it. Newman quotes a report in 1967 from the head of Clarks' West Indies distribution: "Our stockist, La Parisienne in Kingston, sold out a consignment of 400 pairs in five days. Although our boots are priced the highest, the young boys insist on Clarks." What the report doesn't mention is that these weren't just boys, they were rude boys – part of an emerging youth culture in the recently independent Jamaica.
"The original gangster rude boy dem, a Clarks dem wear," producer Jah Thomas tells Newman in the book. "And in Jamaica a rude boy him nah wear cheap ting."
"In the early 70s," writes Newman, "the rude boy/desert boot association became so strong that young males risked a beating by police simply for wearing a pair. 'You must be a thief,' the police would say. 'How else would you afford such expensive Clarks?'" He tells the story of an infamous Kingston police officer called Joe Williams, who carried out a raid on a dance being run by producer and label boss "Sir Coxsone" Dodd. The DJ Dennis Alcapone recalls the arrival of Superintendent Williams: "He tell the DJ to turn the sound down, and he say: 'All who's wearing Clarks booty, stand on that side of the dance. And who's not wearing Clarks booty stand on this side.' Because he knows that rude boys wear them, so that is a way of identifying them."
The Wallabees worn by Alcapone on the cover of his 1971 album Guns Don't Argue (left) mark one of the earliest appearances of Clarks in Jamaican music. In 1976, Alcapone associate Dillinger was the first to sing about the label, on the huge hit CB200, a version of a Gregory Isaacs song in which he rides through town on a Honda CB200 motorbike, goes to the bank, buys some new trousers and finally a pair of Clarks booties. Two years later the DJ Trinity released Clark Shoe Skank, in which his attempts to buy a proper pair are thwarted and he is fobbed off with a "pointed-toe" alternative.
When government import bans made it difficult for Jamaica's emerging music stars to get their hands on their shoe of choice, they soon turned to DIY importation. Singers and producers travelling to the UK would return with boxes of Clarks for friends and family, with the more intrepid descending on the outlet stores in rural Street to buy up whole batches of stock.
John MacGillivray of London record store Dub Vendor says in the book: "When I started the shop in Ladbroke Grove in 1980, a guy called Smithy used to bring our records over from Jamaica, and then take Clarks back. He'd go down to the factory in Somerset and buy them with the money he'd made from the records."
Along with Smithy came a succession of stars, and during the 1980s I-Roy, Dennis Brown, Gregory Isaacs and Dr Alimantado were all to be found clutching discount shoeboxes deep in the West Country. For the final leg of the journey to the Caribbean, the favoured method was to ship the booty in a barrel, to avoid import duties.
Through songs such as Wa-Do-Dem by Eek-A-Mouse, Clarks Booty Style by Ranking Joe, and Squeeze Breast by Mavado, Newman teases out Jamaican culture's fascinating relationship with Britain, the mother country whose products – from Kangol hats to string vests to Clarks shoes – it has consistently adopted and re-purposed down the years.
The Jamaicanisation of sensible Englishness reaches its peak in Newman's tale of the Clarks desert trek boot. Each of these carries an innocent-seeming embossed logo of a hiker with a backpack over his shoulder. To the denizens of west Kingston, however, this was clearly a man fleeing with a bag of swag, and so the desert trek has long been known by a more ghetto-ready name: "the bank robber".
Clarks in Jamaica is published on 19 Nov (onelovebooks.com). Portraits from the book will be exhibited at KK Outlet, London N1 6PB, from 1-5 Nov
guardian.co.uk