Blumarine Takes Flight in Spring 2022 Images by Harley Weir for Numéro Berlin

Blumarine’s Nicola Brognano’s fashion lust is reserved for the 00s but with a twist: “My Blumarine is more dirty, bitchy, sexier.”

Fashion News at AnneofCarversville.com

Creative Director Nicola Brognano arrived at Blumarine in 2019, prepared to invigorate the beloved 90s brand that had lost its luster. Brognano’s fashion lust is reserved for the 00s, a time when the Italian designer was obsessed with Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton and the era of ‘Mean Girls’.

AOC’s reference is important because in the words of the designer to a Vogue reviewer: “My Blumarine is more dirty, bitchy, sexier.”

“I was obsessed with them when I was younger (in Southern Italy),” he explains about Spears, Lohan and Hilton. “Even growing up and thinking about becoming a fashion designer, I have always wanted to make women feel as sexy and powerful as they were.”

When he first arrived at Blumarine, Brognano brought back from the dead Blumarine’s butterfly top. [Did you know that Google also brought back Feedburner from the dead, and AOC is running our RSS feed on it?]. The designer told Dazed that Versace has its Medusa and Blumarine has its butterfly.

By every measure, Brognano’s Blumarine rehab is working out just fine, with pop culture powerhouses like Ariana Grande, Dua Lipa and Rihanna signing on as clients.

Stylist and collaborator Lotta Volkova is always described has having a “sharp and Knowing eye for the cheeky and surreal”, according to Vogue’s Liana Satenstein. That pov about Volkova is universal.

Photographer Harley Weir IG] joined the Blumarine Spring 2022 fashion passion party in Milan, shooting these atmospheric images for Numéro Berlin.

Erdem Moralıoğlu Is Photographer of 'Vintage' for Vogue Poland November 2021

Erdem Moralıoğlu Is Photographer of 'Vintage' for Vogue Poland November 2021 AOC Fashion

“It’s gone by extraordinarily quickly,” Erdem Moralıoğlu says about the 15th anniversary of his brand Erdem. “If I close my eyes, I can still imagine being a student at the Royal College putting together my graduate collection,” reflects the designer who has embraced a poetic femininity with deep roots in the strong, often renegade, women of history.

In fact, Erdem’s depth of historical context underpinning the collections — combined with an overarching respect or craftsmanship and artistry — is unmatched in the world of luxury fashion brands. A key element in the recent evolution of the Erdem brand vision is the extraordinary synergy emanating from Ibrahim Kamara, who has styled all of Erdem’s collections and shows since 2019.

New Vogue Poland editor-in-chief, photographer Ina Lekiewicz invited Erdem Moralıoğlu, accompanied by Ib Kamara, to create this visual masterpiece in the November issue. In a new role, the designer is the photographer for the fashion shoot on location at the 17th-century Southside House in London.

Models in ‘Vintage’ include Florence Hutchings, Lily Nova, Ngozi Anene, Sienna King and Wang Han./ Hair by Teiji Utsumi; makeup by Thom Walker

Celestial Grade Synergy

Now the Dazed editor-in-chief, Ib Kamara is extraordinary adept at upending reticence or plain ignorance in how to weave the visual narrative of race, colonialism and fashion together in a modern way. Gender and sexuality are also key undercurrents in Kamara’s work, but the visionary stylist’s brilliance is his emotional and intellectual willingness to take historical realities and weave them in a web of revised history.

The result is an unabashed modern and progressive vision of a better truth, if you think like we do. Others may shatter a mirror or two over the audacity of Erdem Moralıoğlu and Ibrahim Kamara revising colonial history in a shared vision. In another ironic twist, both talents admire strong women and they seek out unique and unconventional personalities as their seasonal muses.

Kamara makes no attempt to shun the often painful facts of history, being a son of the African continent. Rather, he reweaves them into new visual narratives that travel far beyond their original reality. This revised visual statement says “it didn’t have to be this way.”

Erdem Moralıoğlu is the beneficiary of Kamara’s insights and visual interpretations, and one imagines that the synergy between the two super-talents is nothing less than blinding at times. Born in war-torn Sierra Leone, Ibrahim Kamara benefits from Erdem’s insights as the son of a Turkish father and an English mother. Erdem was born in Montreal, Canada and shuttled between Montreal and Birmingham, England.

Ibrahim Kamara says about his relationship with Erdem Moralıoğlu:

“It’s very valuable to meet someone with whom you can perform a creative dance. “

To those of us watching, the tango is breathtaking. ~ Anne

Rocio Ramos Seizes the Power of Cardinals for Marie Claire Mexico and LA

Rocio Ramos Seizes the Power of Cardinals for Marie Claire Mexico and LA AOC Fashion

Photographer Rocio Ramos [IG] captures unadulterated-red, fashion passion in the October pages of Marie Claire Mexico and Latin America. Model Dalianah Arekion poses in primal, earth-goddesses elegance styled by Abraham Gutiérrez.

Most fashion media will promote the color red as symbolizing new energy and interest in living with the latest seasonal wardrobe. The message is consumption-oriented — which is understandable, especially if we are looking at the latest, earth-loving sustainable fashion buys.

We doubt that is the case here — that we are looking at sustainable fashion. But there are even higher principles at play in these images. AOC knows for a fact that artist and photographer Rocio Ramos is on our wave-length, and she likes the writing her images inspire.

So we will move out on red, into the fast lane.

Red Symbolism

The color red is most often associated with a passion for living and an embrace of love, but also carnal pleasures. Red is known as an emotionally-intense color that enhances human metabolism and increases respiration rate, while raising blood pressure. The impact of the color red on the human body has been seriously studied.

Culturally-speaking we are in a red-alert moment that transcends fashion runways and embraces the duality of competing narratives about our very humanity.

Red is the color of fire and blood, one often associated with energy, war, power and danger. Red is considered to be aggressive and fierce, but also grounding. In the world of 7 chakras, red is the root chakra, and while it’s easy enough to dismiss red as primitive with its positioning on the chakra chart, it is also responsible for our sense of security and stability.

When apes first stood tall and began walking into humanity, their root chakra was in high gear — literally. Rocks and caves were homes to humanity before we created mobile structures made of mammoth tusks. The setting for Rocio Ramos’ fashion story is perfect, because it embraces the necessities of security, survival and being rooted as the very foundation of our lives.

Stella McCartney's Spring 2022 Collection Inspires a World of Fungi Research

Stella McCartney's Spring 2022 Collection Inspires a World of Fungi Research AOC Muse

Designer Stella McCartney’s Spring 2022 fashion show was inspired by mushrooms. Quite frankly, life on Anne of Carversville has not been the same since I watched on Netflix the 2019 ‘Fantastic Fungi’ documentary that prompted McCartney’s deep dive into the world of mushrooms.

Mushrooms are the visible part of an organism called mycelium, and they are not plants, even though they have a plantlike form. Even more important, until recently, fungi have been part of the botanist’s domain, and they were classified — incorrectly — as plants, writes the American Society For Microbiology in an article Three Reasons Fungi Are Not Plants.

Fungi and Africans: Both Misclassified and Misunderstood by Carl Linnaeus

Fungi were classified as plants for centuries due to an axiom attributed to Carl Linnaeus: “Plants grow and live; Animals grow, live and feel.”

Linnaeus’ delineation of plant activity seems inadequate and overly simplistic, given scientific research on the way in which plants experience sentient activity. We know that plants sense danger and then communicate their information to other plants, seeming to contradict Linnaeus’ assertions around plant life. NOT knowing his connection to racial categorization — I muttered to myself “Oh, right. In the same way some white dudes classified people of color as lesser-quality humans, they managed to ignore the profound distinctive attributes of fungi and mushrooms by calling them plants.”

Eureka! Linnaeus was deeply involved in the science of racial categorization. Rather than taking a sharp right turn in this post, AOC will stay with the fact that fungi can’t produce oxygen via photosynthesis, a core attribute of the plant kingdom.

It’s interesting when fashion, mushrooms and the civil rights movement come together in a single, cohesive thought pattern. Then again, the world of fungi is so primordial and pervasive in our biosphere that mycelium — the network of fungal threads or hyphae that produces the mushrooms we eat — strikes us as the very root of existence.

Stella McCartney is leading the way in working on the development of luxury leather made from mushrooms. The designer wants all of us to become curious about mushrooms, and I am now her dedicated disciple at AOC.

Megan Fox, MGK by Daniella Midenge Talk Demon Sex in British GQ Style AW21

Megan Fox and MGK (Machine Gun Kelly) made many headlines this week, and it was perhaps exactly as planned. AOC’s friend photographer Daniella Midenge [IG] called her images ‘provocative’. Indeed they are, as Fox is wearing nothing but a harness and pointing a gun at MGK’s crotch in the one below Fashion director Nicola Formichetti works on the shoot with styling by Hunter Clem for the British GQ Style AW21 issue.

Fox described their state of being in the time of the GQ UK interview on her Instagram as: “The tale of two outcasts and star-crossed lovers caught in the throes of a torrid, solar flare of a romance featuring: feverish obsession, guns, addiction, shamans, lots of blood, general mayhem, therapy, tantric night terrors, binding rituals, chakra sound baths, psychedelic hallucinations, organic smoothies, and the kind of sex that would make Lucifer clutch his rosary.”

That’s a lot of information, but I will say that those who condemn the couple’s first kiss as a bust, don’t know what they are talking about. As MGK explained: “We just put our lips right in front of each other and breathed each other’s breath, and then she just left.”

My suggestion is “Don’t damn a tantric kiss if you’ve never experienced one. “

All weekend starting Friday, WaPo’s article Megan Fox and Machine Gun Kelly are trying to be Hollywood’s hottest new couple, but instead are the most cringeworthy by Emily Yahr was in the top five reads. It’s also the lead right now in a Google search.

Positioned ahead of the actual GQUK interview “True romance: Megan Fox and Machine Gun Kelly are Hollywood’s new power couple “is not ideal. But there’s no doubt that all the controversy over these two lovebirds will not hurt anyone’s careers, especially their own — and, hopefully, Daniella’s.

GQ Writer Molly Lambert asserts that Megan Fox is the “ideal cool babe consort for a burgeoning superstar like MGK, a rapper rocker whose new album, ‘Born With Horns, is executive-produced by Blink-182 drummer Travis Barker.”

If you don’t know Travis Barker, he’s Kourtney Kardashian’s betrothed. Lambert writes that Fox believes she and her spiritual love MGK share what she calls the ‘combustible element’ of all celebrities like Kurt and Courtney or Mick and Marianne — except that she and MGK are “trying their damndest to make sure things don’t blow up.”

I’m not sure that they are Hollywood’s new power couple. We’re in a different moment, although eating mushrooms together on a January walk in Bora Bora is sublime. Then again, the Kardashians are in a much better position to confirm the probability of the Fox and MGK as Hollywood’s newest power couple than AOC. ~ Anne

Andrew Gn's Spring 2022 Collection Teams Up With Great Barrier Reef Foundation

Designer Andrew Gn releases images for his Spring-Summer 2022 Campaign, lifted from his fashion show video. The imagery by Bon Parinya Wongwannawat {IG] arrests our senses — including the lavish use of a coral pattern and coral motifs in jewelry., and not for the first time.

Corals have been a recurring theme in Gn’s collections since 2005, and this time he partnered with the Great Barrier Reef Foundation to raise awareness about the TRULY DESPERATE reality of the future of the world’s coral reefs.

The event took place at an Art-Deco palace in Paris, Palais de la Porte Dorée, located in the 12th arrondissement, home to the National Museum of the History of Immigration. There is an intersection between art deco style and colonialism, and we will just park that factoid in this moment — so as not to divert attention from the perilous future of the world’s coral reefs.

The location was perfect for Andrew GN, with his mixed Chinese and Japanese ancestry, his upbringing in Singapore, education at Central Saint Martins in London and Domus Academy in Milan and then working as assistant to M. Emmanuel Ungaro. In his own words, Andrew GN considers himself to be a citizen of the world.

Andrew Gn’s spring 2022 collection was inspired by the memorable wardrobe worn by Elizabeth Taylor in the classic ‘Boom!’, filmed in Sardinia. Working with the Italian label Tiziani, Karl Lagerfeld had a hand in designing Taylor’s on-screen power-woman elegance.

Writing for the NYT in 2001, Amy Spindler called Taylor’s wardrobe in the obscure 1968 film “an irresistible Kabuki Kitschfest”.

As for the state of our coral reefs, it’s no laughing matter. Published in early October, as ‘The Sixth Statue of Corals of the World: 2020 Report, the world has lost 14 percent of our coral reefs since 2009.