Céline Dion Gives Executive Realness a Couture Twist

Céline Dion lives for couture. Over the last few seasons, the music legend has turned her Paris trips into an annual affair when she indulges in larger than life fashion and a glamorous lineup of events. Out and about this week with her handsome backup dancer Pepe Munoz, Dion has made a splash in the front row showing off her famous legs and an array of diva-worthy outfits. At this morning’s Ronald Van Der Kemp show, Dion put forth her sumptuous take on the power suit in a metallic piece from Van Der Kemp’s sustainably sourced collection. With its high shine silver fabric, nipped waist, and sculptural padded shoulders, her blazer and cropped trousers combo demanded attention—especially when paired with contrasting gold jewelry and a towering stiletto heels.

Dion’s first time in Van Der Kemp was an eventful one. While posing in the Hotel d’Avaray after the show, she celebrated the designer on Vogue Paris’s Instagram asserting that the clothes made her feel “fierce and elegant.” With that in mind, it’s really no surprise that Dion chooses to wear Couture for just about every occasion. As she put it, “It’s is such an amazing way of making people look and feel their best. It helps me to sing, it helps me to feel strong, to be happier, to function in life in a better way—I wear [couture] and it gets me to where I want go.”

The Most Unlikely Winter Pairing Is a Puffer and Heeled Boots

Puffer coats and high heels—hear me out. It’s not completely groundbreaking, nor is it extremely Instagrammable, especially compared to red-hot novelty trends like a pint-size purse. But the two pieces together make a surprisingly stellar visual. I’ve always associated the puffer with casual clothes, a marshmallow silhouette that would call for a heavy-soled sneaker or snow boot. As for heels, they require maybe a long tailored wool coat or a leather trench. The two opposites never matched up for me. They felt confused and even cumbersome. All that puff! All that height!

It wasn’t until I noticed the signature It girls of Instagram stepping out in the look that my mind changed. First, Bella Hadid wore the puffer-and-heel getup in January in Paris. She sported micro sunglasses, a Fendi Zucca logo shirt, a Michelin Man orange puffer coat, and square-toe black leather boots with a healthy heel. More recently, Kendall Jenner wore a similar outfit, choosing a heather green and caramel puffer coat with faded boot-cut jeans and square-toe snakeskin boots. Clunk, clunk, chic!

It’s not so wild that puffers and heels have made their way onto the streets, as the unwieldy coat has experienced a revival of sorts. Take Ienki Ienki, a label from Ukraine, whose funky, exaggerated silhouette is now sold at retailers like Barneys New York. Other puffers of late have come with playful graphic prints, courtesy of Danish label Saks Potts. They have even become works of art thanks to Moncler’s Genius project, as reimagined by Valentino creative director Pierpaolo Piccioli. (Ezra Miller made waves with his recent red carpet look.) So why not dress these puffers up with a pair of heels and quite literally elevate the outerwear? I myself am sold. This winter, find me warm in a North Face and teetering in heeled boots.

Of Course Cardi B and Offset’s Courtside Couple’s Style Is Over-the-Top

For many of today’s top stars, the basketball court doubles as a runway. Whether it’s Beyoncé wearing new-season Jacquemus and J.W. Anderson to the match, or models such as Kendall Jenner opting for archival John Galliano pieces, it’s undeniable that taking in a sports game has become as much a spectacle about who you’re wearing as who you’re cheering on. So, when Cardi B and Offset took in the Atlanta Hawks versus the Boston Celtics match in Atlanta this weekend, it’s unsurprising that they took the chance to show off their over-the-top, matching couple’s style—because that’s half the fun of sitting courtside, no?

For the big event, Cardi wore an unexpected two-piece tweed skirt suit from Chanel’s Resort 2019 collection. With its cream and black colorway and gold buttons, she gave its uptown lady feel a more downtown spin by drippin’ herself with tons of diamond necklaces. One of them featured a blinding neckplate with her name, and pointed black Christian Louboutin pumps rounded out her look.

Meanwhile, Offset chose to complement her outfit by sporting matching colors. He wore a white, black, red and gold sequin sweater, a CC-logo’d Chanel sweater, and simple black jeans—he, too, accessorizing with his signature bold jewelry and silver low-top sneakers. (A special shout-out goes to fellow Migos member Quavo, who was also in attendance, for his multicolored plaid shirt.) A parent’s night out never looked so good.

Lily Aldridge and Friends Celebrate Levi’s Made & Crafted’s New Globally Inspired Collection

“Levi’s® Made & Crafted® line is fashion-forward, but it’s also timeless and cool and a little bit rock ’n’ roll,” said supermodel Lily Aldridge last Thursday night at the celebration for the brand’s Fall collection in Nashville. “And I like a little bit of rock ’n’ roll in my life, obviously.”

Aldridge, the face of the collection and wife of Kings of Leon frontman Caleb Followill, certainly strikes that perfect Southern rock-chic aesthetic. And the event, cohosted by Vogue, followed suit. Held at singer-songwriter Holly Williams’s shop, White’s Mercantile—a retro gas station turned contemporary general store in the burgeoning 12 South neighborhood—the party featured a guest list that included Jen Auerbach, cofounder of skin-care line Clary Collection; musicians Jessie Baylin and Shelly Colvin; as well as the Kings of Leon family.

Attendees enjoyed entertainment in the form of local five-piece alt-country rock group Boy Named Banjo and signature drinks from WithCo Cocktails (including the Ellis old-fashioned, a warming mix of bourbon, bitters, vanilla, cinnamon, and a thick slice of orange peel, which was particularly popular on the chilly autumn night) and Belgian-style ales from Tennessee’s acclaimed Blackberry Farm Brewery. On the other side of the property—from inside a mini vintage blue and white Shasta trailer—the local S’more Love Bakery served grown-up takes on the gooey camp classic with homemade graham crackers, marshmallows, and chocolate ganache. Chain stitcher Tyler Kenneth was also on-site, customizing Levi’s denim totes and Made & Crafted pieces for guests. Between sets, the crowd shopped the Fall collection, which was inspired by Levi’s global design director of collections Nicolle Arbour’s recent travels to Ireland and Thailand.

“I really love the new 501-style Made & Crafted jeans,” said Aldridge, wearing the Navigator leather jacket and black 711 skinny jeans. “They’re so cool and comfortable. The fit is great and looks good on so many people. Just saying 501, you feel cool,” she added with a smile. “These are the kind of pieces you keep forever. The kind you cherish and pass down to your children.”

These Are the 50 Digitally Native Brands You’ll See Everywhere in 2019

At first blush, it may seem like fashion and technology have a cozy relationship. New designers are building their brands almost entirely on Instagram, and for many of us, e-commerce has fully replaced brick-and-mortar shopping. We experience entire fashion shows via live-stream; we juggle emails, Slacks, and texts 24 hours a day; and we really can’t be separated from our phones. In reality, though, there’s actually a great distance between the worlds of fashion and tech—so great, in fact, that both sides are missing out on what the other has to offer. Timo Weiland, who formerly designed his namesake label with Donna Kang and Alan Eckstein (they now run a creative consultancy group together), came to that realization with his friend Noah Gellman, a venture-capital and startup veteran. “We noticed a large gap had appeared between the fashion retail industry and the global Silicon Valley,” Gellman says. “Despite the availability of amazing new technologies and novel business models, we could not understand why the fashion industry wasn’t adopting these innovations or adapting their businesses.”

One reason may be that “tech people” and “fashion people” practically speak different languages. Their worlds are vastly different: Tech is (at least traditionally) objective and straightforward, whereas fashion is subjective, artistic, and emotional. Trying to meet in the middle can feel next to impossible, but Weiland and Gellman knew there was a way to fix this. Their solution is The Lead, which Gellman describes as “the bridge” between the fashion and technology communities. Through The Lead, he and Weiland are producing a quarterly publication; hosting industry events for fashion, tech, and retail leaders; and planning major summits to bring together influential brands, next-generation technology companies, and more of the people who work in those worlds. “We want to know what and how the other is thinking,” Gellman says.

The Lead’s first-ever summit in June focused on the “Defiant 25,” a group of leaders and risk takers whom The Lead identified as individuals who had successfully used technology to transform their businesses. That group included David Lauren, vice chairman and chief innovation officer at Ralph Lauren; Angela Ahrendts, senior vice president of retail at Apple; Gregory Boutte, chief client and digital officer at Kering (Gucci); and Yael Aflalo, founder and CEO of Reformation, among many others.

The Lead’s next big summit is already coming up on October 24, and Weiland and Gellman are shifting the focus to the brands that are moving the needle—50 of them, to be exact. “Very simply, the goal of this summit is to reveal what’s next [in fashion and technology] and to help this community get ahead of it,” Gellman says. “Researching companies for this list took several months. Our analysts focused on private companies and their execution across innovation, commercialization, media buzz, competition, team, market opportunity, and investor value creation.”

In other words, these companies are multifaceted; they aren’t 100 percent fashion, nor are they 100 percent technology. They’re a cunning mix of the two—and, unsurprisingly, most of them are direct-to-consumer. That doesn’t mean they have the same “D2C” formula, though: Consider M.Gemi, which launched in 2015 and is among the few shoe brands on The Lead’s list. “M.Gemi has always been designed as a lifestyle collection, [which is] a different approach from many direct-to-consumer brands that tend to focus on a single construction,” explains Cheryl Kaplan, M.Gemi’s cofounder and president. “We work with over a dozen family-owned specialty workshops in Italy to drop new shoes every Monday, and because of this unique supply chain, we can respond to customer demand in real time [and] re-stock sellout styles in as little as 30 days.”

For cashmere label Naadam, which recently opened a store in New York, “innovation has meant doing things differently since day one,” says cofounder and CEO Matthew Scanlan. “There has never been a brand like Naadam that uses real economic sustainability to reconstruct supply chain behaviors and relationships to change the product value for consumers. We use transparency to improve our cashmere’s quality and prices, forcing consumers to relate sustainability with [those qualities].”

For Outdoor Voices founder Tyler Haney, it all started with a simple idea: that working out (and buying clothes for it) should be fun. “We’re creating the rules to our own game by building a community of recreationists who believe in #DoingThings—activity for the fun of it, rather than the pressure to perform. We value being human, not superhuman, and to be recognized by The Lead means we’re resonating with a group of people who are active participants in growing our mission: getting more people moving because endorphins make you happy.”

Somewhat surprisingly, consignment retailers like The RealReal and Rebag made the list, too. How to take something old and make it feel so startlingly new? “We’ve removed the friction from consignment by not offering consignment,” Charles Gorra, Rebag’s CEO, explains. “Instead, we provide utmost transparency and instant gratification, both of which have brought much-needed innovation to the luxury goods marketplace. With Rebag, we put the seller first by offering a seamless end-to-end experience that yields payment [for consigned bags] in less than two business days, or within the hour at our stores. We’ve also updated our customer experience to make it even easier to buy and sell online, via our app, or in store. In just one year, we’ve been catapulted into a new, higher tier in the industry where consumers recognize Rebag as the ultimate destination for luxury handbags.”

The RealReal is a little bit different, first, because it stocks everything from secondhand bags to clothing to art to fine jewelry, but also because it offers so many ways to consign. “We make it easy with free in-home pickups, physical locations for drop-offs, and the option to send items to us,” says Julie Wainwright, The RealReal’s CEO. “We’re the only company that accepts and sells luxury pre-owned home [goods], art, apparel, fine jewelry, and watches—not to mention we are the only one that takes possession of goods. We also have a continuous supply of high-quality, beautiful products. We’re like a full-service luxury department store for pre-owned goods! Technology is the underpinning of our entire business—[it’s] what enables us to unlock a supply of $230 billion worth of luxury goods in people’s homes and service a worldwide market.”

All 50 of these brands will be represented by their designers, executives, and/or CEOs at The Lead’s summit, where they’ll participate in keynote speeches, off-the-record roundtables, panel discussions, and structured networking. “By understanding this group of rising stars, leaders across the industry can extract best practices, apply new business models, and anticipate consumer expectation,” Gellman says.