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From NY Times Magazine - Florence in Elie Saab Fall 2010 Couture
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Florence + The Machine
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NY Times article -
The Bohemian Fashion Muse
FLORENCE WELCH, the titian-tressed lead singer of Florence and the Machine, has become an idol of the frenetic indie set. But when she received word in December of her first Grammy nomination, for best new artist, she was lounging around her parents’ London home in classic languorous-bombshell mode.
“I was wearing this amazing vintage bright pink Christian Lacroix dressing gown, which was kind of ideal to receive news like that,” Ms. Welch said in a recent phone interview, sounding tired after a lengthy recording session. “It has these incredible shoulder pads, and I sometimes wear it with this feather headdress — it’s like the cowboys and Indians flimsy kind — that my sister made. It makes me feel like I’m in ‘Gone with the Wind.’ ” Ms. Welch, who is 24, almost six feet tall and model-lanky, has emerged as a refreshing new fashion muse on the music scene. Unlike so many of her young contemporaries (Lady Gaga, Katy Perry), who are groomed so glossily that they could double as Comic-Con characters, Ms. Welch wears her hair disheveled and favors loose peasant blouses and billowing cape-sleeved dresses. (Children of the 1970s might be reminded of Carly Simon’s look on the cover of her album “Anticipation.”)
“I’ve always been attracted to romantic secondhand clothes,” said Ms. Welch, who has a strong jaw line, long nose and gray-green eyes that turn down at the corners. “But my style developed as I started going to these strange raves where everybody had these very definitive costumes.”
Ms. Welch was raised in London and developed her bohemian style playing dress-up and “fishing around in secondhand stores.” She and her school friends would pool their lunch money and use it in turns on thrift-store shopping sprees. She later studied art at Camberwell College in London before pursuing a music career.
“I like the idea of taking off like a bird,” she said of the cape sleeves that are part of her signature look. During a December performance of her uplifting single “Dog Days are Over” at Don Hill’s in West SoHo, as the models Karen Elson and Jenny Shimizu shimmied on the banquettes, Ms. Welch worked with the exaggerated silhouette by lifting and twirling her arms in hippie-child ecstasy. “It’s this romantic idea that the music could literally lift me off the stage,” she said.
Fashion companies have been quick to capitalize on this gypsy-like allure. Shortly before the 2009 release of Florence and the Machine’s debut album, “Lungs,” the fast-fashion retailer Topshop approached Ms. Welch about designing her stage attire for the Glastonbury Festival that year. “She’s a born showgirl,” said Topshop’s head designer, Jacqui Markham, who collaborated with Ms. Welch on three costumes, including a bodysuit with dramatically fringed neckline and sleeves. “She has a natural playfulness and innate quirkiness about her.”
Noticeably, since the album became a hit, Ms. Welch’s wardrobe has accelerated to considerably more luxurious looks, including the Roksanda Ilincic asymmetrical black silk gown with lace detailing she wore to the 2010 Brit Awards last February; a peekaboo Chanel black chiffon dress with embellished panels at the 2010 V Festival in August; and a gold floor-length gown with leaf embroidery, by Elie Saab, at the Sundance Film Festival in January. Then there was the stunning long-sleeved Givenchy fall 2010 couture gold lace gown she donned for the 2010 MTV Video Music Awards, which some online commenters deemed too sophisticated for the event.
“Well, I suppose it’s a compliment in a way,” Ms. Welch said of the reaction. “Look, if Givenchy is going to lend you a dress, I’m not going to turn it down. I would wear that dress to just go out and buy a pint of milk if they would lend it to me.”
Since 2009, Ms. Welch has been working with the London-based stylist Aldene Johnson, who is also the fashion editor of Vice magazine in Britain. “The process of working with Flo has evolved,” Ms. Johnson said in a phone interview. Ms. Welch, whom she described as “quite brave, quite up for trying things,” is her first and only celebrity client. “The bigger she’s gotten, the more we can do different things than what we could do in the beginning. On stage, it’s about two sides. It’s always this ethereal white witch meets darkly sexy vamp character. For red carpet, it’s classic and glamorous and never trashy.”
As tends to happen with musicians of the moment, Ms. Welch’s sensibility has also seeped onto runways. Both Valentino and Dries Van Noten used Florence and the Machine tracks for their spring 2011 shows. Mulberry went even further, hiring Ms. Welch to sing at its after-party and putting a parade of models in red wigs on the catwalk, though fortuitous timing also played a part.
“It was a perfect colliding of inspirations,” said Emma Hill, Mulberry’s designer. “I like to design with one girl in mind to have a consistency to the collection, and we found this gorgeous girl from Finland, Julia Johansen, who opened our show. Coincidentally, she has red hair like Florence and we liked the idea that all the other girls would be mirror images of Julia with red wigs and all. It was all quite bizarre.”
Ms. Welch watched the spectacle from the front row, wearing a sheer black blouse from her own closet with Mulberry skirt and booties. “As all the models were filing out, my friend, who was sitting opposite me, was laughing,” she said. “She was like: ‘You should be walking off the runway, too. Go join your fellow girls in the land of ginger.’ ”
Ms. Welch (who will also sing “If I Rise” from the movie “127 Hours” at the Oscar ceremony on Feb. 27) said she hadn’t given her Grammy ensemble for tonight’s award show much thought, preferring to spend hours in the recording studio for her yet-to-be-titled second album.
Ms. Johnson said that the pair had been working on a custom-designed ensemble with Yves Saint Laurent (“A wonderful part of this is that designers are creating specific pieces for Flo now,” she said), but refused to confirm the choice, playing the moment for the suspense of an established A-lister. “I’m in the middle of the selection process and we always have last-minute options,” she said. “It’s all top secret.” But one thing is certain: Ms. Welch will be avoiding the pyrotechnics of her peers in pop music. And if the eyes aren’t pleased, there will always be the ears to fall back on. “She’s not trying to be something,” Ms. Hill, the Mulberry designer, said of Ms. Welch. “There’s nothing manufactured about her. To have no kind of crazy dances or flying trapezes go through the air ... that’s daring. It’s just that amazing voice.”
The Bohemian Fashion Muse
FLORENCE WELCH, the titian-tressed lead singer of Florence and the Machine, has become an idol of the frenetic indie set. But when she received word in December of her first Grammy nomination, for best new artist, she was lounging around her parents’ London home in classic languorous-bombshell mode.
“I was wearing this amazing vintage bright pink Christian Lacroix dressing gown, which was kind of ideal to receive news like that,” Ms. Welch said in a recent phone interview, sounding tired after a lengthy recording session. “It has these incredible shoulder pads, and I sometimes wear it with this feather headdress — it’s like the cowboys and Indians flimsy kind — that my sister made. It makes me feel like I’m in ‘Gone with the Wind.’ ” Ms. Welch, who is 24, almost six feet tall and model-lanky, has emerged as a refreshing new fashion muse on the music scene. Unlike so many of her young contemporaries (Lady Gaga, Katy Perry), who are groomed so glossily that they could double as Comic-Con characters, Ms. Welch wears her hair disheveled and favors loose peasant blouses and billowing cape-sleeved dresses. (Children of the 1970s might be reminded of Carly Simon’s look on the cover of her album “Anticipation.”)
“I’ve always been attracted to romantic secondhand clothes,” said Ms. Welch, who has a strong jaw line, long nose and gray-green eyes that turn down at the corners. “But my style developed as I started going to these strange raves where everybody had these very definitive costumes.”
Ms. Welch was raised in London and developed her bohemian style playing dress-up and “fishing around in secondhand stores.” She and her school friends would pool their lunch money and use it in turns on thrift-store shopping sprees. She later studied art at Camberwell College in London before pursuing a music career.
“I like the idea of taking off like a bird,” she said of the cape sleeves that are part of her signature look. During a December performance of her uplifting single “Dog Days are Over” at Don Hill’s in West SoHo, as the models Karen Elson and Jenny Shimizu shimmied on the banquettes, Ms. Welch worked with the exaggerated silhouette by lifting and twirling her arms in hippie-child ecstasy. “It’s this romantic idea that the music could literally lift me off the stage,” she said.
Fashion companies have been quick to capitalize on this gypsy-like allure. Shortly before the 2009 release of Florence and the Machine’s debut album, “Lungs,” the fast-fashion retailer Topshop approached Ms. Welch about designing her stage attire for the Glastonbury Festival that year. “She’s a born showgirl,” said Topshop’s head designer, Jacqui Markham, who collaborated with Ms. Welch on three costumes, including a bodysuit with dramatically fringed neckline and sleeves. “She has a natural playfulness and innate quirkiness about her.”
Noticeably, since the album became a hit, Ms. Welch’s wardrobe has accelerated to considerably more luxurious looks, including the Roksanda Ilincic asymmetrical black silk gown with lace detailing she wore to the 2010 Brit Awards last February; a peekaboo Chanel black chiffon dress with embellished panels at the 2010 V Festival in August; and a gold floor-length gown with leaf embroidery, by Elie Saab, at the Sundance Film Festival in January. Then there was the stunning long-sleeved Givenchy fall 2010 couture gold lace gown she donned for the 2010 MTV Video Music Awards, which some online commenters deemed too sophisticated for the event.
“Well, I suppose it’s a compliment in a way,” Ms. Welch said of the reaction. “Look, if Givenchy is going to lend you a dress, I’m not going to turn it down. I would wear that dress to just go out and buy a pint of milk if they would lend it to me.”
Since 2009, Ms. Welch has been working with the London-based stylist Aldene Johnson, who is also the fashion editor of Vice magazine in Britain. “The process of working with Flo has evolved,” Ms. Johnson said in a phone interview. Ms. Welch, whom she described as “quite brave, quite up for trying things,” is her first and only celebrity client. “The bigger she’s gotten, the more we can do different things than what we could do in the beginning. On stage, it’s about two sides. It’s always this ethereal white witch meets darkly sexy vamp character. For red carpet, it’s classic and glamorous and never trashy.”
As tends to happen with musicians of the moment, Ms. Welch’s sensibility has also seeped onto runways. Both Valentino and Dries Van Noten used Florence and the Machine tracks for their spring 2011 shows. Mulberry went even further, hiring Ms. Welch to sing at its after-party and putting a parade of models in red wigs on the catwalk, though fortuitous timing also played a part.
“It was a perfect colliding of inspirations,” said Emma Hill, Mulberry’s designer. “I like to design with one girl in mind to have a consistency to the collection, and we found this gorgeous girl from Finland, Julia Johansen, who opened our show. Coincidentally, she has red hair like Florence and we liked the idea that all the other girls would be mirror images of Julia with red wigs and all. It was all quite bizarre.”
Ms. Welch watched the spectacle from the front row, wearing a sheer black blouse from her own closet with Mulberry skirt and booties. “As all the models were filing out, my friend, who was sitting opposite me, was laughing,” she said. “She was like: ‘You should be walking off the runway, too. Go join your fellow girls in the land of ginger.’ ”
Ms. Welch (who will also sing “If I Rise” from the movie “127 Hours” at the Oscar ceremony on Feb. 27) said she hadn’t given her Grammy ensemble for tonight’s award show much thought, preferring to spend hours in the recording studio for her yet-to-be-titled second album.
Ms. Johnson said that the pair had been working on a custom-designed ensemble with Yves Saint Laurent (“A wonderful part of this is that designers are creating specific pieces for Flo now,” she said), but refused to confirm the choice, playing the moment for the suspense of an established A-lister. “I’m in the middle of the selection process and we always have last-minute options,” she said. “It’s all top secret.” But one thing is certain: Ms. Welch will be avoiding the pyrotechnics of her peers in pop music. And if the eyes aren’t pleased, there will always be the ears to fall back on. “She’s not trying to be something,” Ms. Hill, the Mulberry designer, said of Ms. Welch. “There’s nothing manufactured about her. To have no kind of crazy dances or flying trapezes go through the air ... that’s daring. It’s just that amazing voice.”
Jenna-maria
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I love that Givenchy dress and it suits perfectly on her.
ForChicSake
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life
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^
LOVE her outfit at the Givenchy show.
So wish she had of worn that Chanel dress to the Oscars. That Valentino just looks like rags.
LOVE her outfit at the Givenchy show.
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Her outfit looks great in this shot -
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getty, life
I wish that she wouldn't wear head-to-toe looks sometimes. She should add a bit of personal style to her looks. At the moment, she looks like one of those celebrities who has clearly been loaned all of these items. It's pretty evident she will never see those items again in her life!
yeah i kind of miss when flo was a bit more eclectic and a bit more personal with her style. seems to me,ever since her popularity grew in the states her dressing kind of evolved as well. i still enjoy that she isn't over-polished which renders a personal vein....but i would like to see her mix it up a little bit again head to toe.
She's gone to practically every major Paris show. A bit too eager for me. That Valentino outfit is so bad, it drastically washes her out. I don't think the new Valentino aesthetic suits her. Though the Chanel dinner dress is lovely.
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LOVE her @ YSL.
Florence with Karl
dlisted
Florence with Karl
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JunyaSchick
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love her kind of atemporal 70s look
kokobombon
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Is she really 24 yo?
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