The Jam Factory, 500 Chapel St, South Yarra
TOPSHOP Fall / Winter 2015
Explore & find out more about TOPSHOP X RECLAIM TO WEAR. Read our exclusive interview with the man himself, Flippo Ricci!
Read up about the lastest styles, trends and colours and how to match them! YESAH Linda Hao! This up and coming Fashion Designer is revealing all for our interview!
Usher in the season with our new F/W collection; Embracing Basics. This normcore inspired collection showcases the versitility of our clothes and helps our fight for zero wastage fashion.
With all the environmental challenges we are facing, The fashion industry is looking for design solutions for the future.
Our design team have worked with Orsola de Castro and Filippo Ricci from Reclaim To Wear, who specialise in creating amazing garments using only left over fabrics from the fashion industry. We spoke to Orsola and Filippo, along with Stephen Mongan, Head of Sourcing and Technical Services, about the project. The Topshop RTW crew also gave us some handy tips on how to DIY your own reclaimed fashion pieces.
What is Reclaim To Wear? [Orsola and Filippo] We set up Reclaim To Wear as a way of using up all the beautiful fabrics left over from designer collections. With all the environmental challenges we are facing, the fashion industry is looking for design solutions for the future. Sometimes, to be really innovative, you have to take the best from the past and bring it to the future.
Why has Topshop worked with Reclaim to Wear? [Stephen] We met the RTW pioneers Orsolo and Filippo at a Sri Lankan design festival a few years ago and were really inspired by the way they work – turning fabric that is considered to be ‘waste’ into amazing, unique pieces of clothing. What were the design inspirations behind the collection? [Topshop Design Team] We had a New York style, clean aesthetic in mind. We took ideas from the fact that we were working with a jersey factory, then got inspired by laces and meshes we found in the basement. A lot of the looks were a happy accident – we had to forget the traditional design process and got very excited by what emerged as the final pieces.
What did you learn from working the RTW way?
Why is the Topshop Reclaim to Wear project so important?
[Topshop Design Team] It was really fun! Using only what we had available to us meant that we suddenly considered fabric combinations that had never occured to us before. Mixing up fabric and colour on even a basic shape can create a very directional piece.
[Topshop Design Team] We have a responsibility to respect the impact we have on the world, so this project is our way of helping out.
What are the key pieces of the collection and how would you style them? There’s a t-shirt dress that is a great example of how the upcycling process determined the final product. It has a bright red panel across the chest because otherwise the dress would be too sheer – but the splash of colour looks amazing! We’d wear it with a favourite pair of 16 hole black Doc Martens.
TREND WATCH e m b r a c i n g
b a s i c s
Be in the know about this seasons’s biggest trends and styles with our TOPSHOP Stylists. We keep you updated with the lastest sickening trends! In This Issue, NORMCORE CULTURE.
What is normcore culture? Normcore is a unisex fashion trend characterized by unpretentious, averagelooking clothing. “Normcore” is a portmanteau of the words “normal” and “hardcore”. The word first appeared in webcomic Templar, Arizona before 2009 and was later employed by K-Hole, a trend forecasting group,in an October 2013 report called “Youth Mode: A Report on Freedom”. As used by K-Hole, “normcore” referred to an attitude, not a particular code of dress. It was intended to mean “finding liberation in being nothing special.” However, a piece in New York magazine that began popularizing the term in February 2014 conflated it with “Acting Basic”, another K-Hole concept which involved dressing neutrally to avoid standing out. It was this sense of “normcore” which gained popular usage. The characters featured on the television series Seinfeld are frequently cited as exemplifying the aesthetics and ethos of normcore fashion.
Normcore fashion Normcore wearers are people who do not wish to distinguish themselves from others by their clothing. This is not to mean that they are unfashionable people who wear whatever comes to hand, but that they consciously choose clothes that are undistinguished – except, frequently, for a highly visible label to impart prestige. The “normcore” trend has been interpreted as a reaction to fashion oversaturation resulting from ever faster-changing fashion trends. Normcore clothes include everyday items of casual wear such as t-shirts, hoodies, short-sleeved shirts, jeans and chino pants, but not items such as neckties or blouses. These clothes are worn by men and women alike, making normcore a unisex style.
Normcore Styling Neutral colours. It’s all about making bland look chic, so think black, white, tan, beige, navy, denim, and gray. Stick with that palette, and you can’t go wrong.
Relaxed Fits Embracing normcore is all about dressing comfortably and effortlessly. If it looks like you had to think about your outfit before you left the house, then you did something wrong. Nothing screams nonchalant like loose-fitting, baggy pieces. And they’ll go perfectly with your trusty sneakers.
White Sneakers Perhaps the most essential piece of the normcore look is the ubiquitous white sneaker. Yup, just like the ones your parents used to wear when you were a kid. Who would have thought your own parents, in their nerdiest outfits, would someday become your fashion role models?
TO PS H OP P R E SE N TS
S AY H I . 2 0 1 5
HELLO HELLO! Hello Linda ! Thank you so much for your time ! For our readers who have yet to know you, tell us, where are you from? Hello Topshop! I’m flattered that you guys wanted to interview me! I was born in Shanghai, China and moved to Singapore since I was 7.
What kind of music do you listen to? I love female vocals from all sorts of genre, from Grimes to Lana Del Rey to Azealia Banks to M.I.A to Air France…and a lot more!
You are one of the more popular muses around! Everyone wants a piece of you. How do you decide who you want to work with? This is TOO flattering! Oh well, I love to work with people who have the same frequency as me. People who are bold, daring, fun and of course people with good taste!
You’re a model, a stylist, a designer, a DJ and now a brand owner. Do you ever sleep? What is pushing you to do so much all at one go? Being a model/stylist/ designer/DJ has always been part time jobs . Now that Ive finally graduated from school, I want to move on and create something that I can call it my own! Passion is my energy, I do feel tired physically sometimes but just thinking about the result of my creation, I get excited again. HAHA Time is pushing me. Some people may not realise how much things you can do in a day, a month or a year but to me time is everything. You never know what happens until you try something different everytime!
Tell us more about your new brand Yesah. YESAH is a multi-label online store that features Chinese indie labels. Supporting my fellow countrymen is in my blood, i can’t escape it! Everytime I go back to China to visit my family, I’m awed by the amazing talents out there whom I’ve never even heard of. It’s really exciting to find all these hidden unknown designers and bringing them out of their homeground.
What do you hope to achieve in your new label?
What would your friend say about you?
SUCCESS, HYPE, SALES, HAPPINESS, SATISFACTION
Linda is : a beautiful chameleon with a sunshine heart! She is funny, crazily creative and she is FULL OF LIFE! <3
You have a very tight community of passionate, talented and very creative friends . How do you inspire each other? We love to talk about our inspirations, how we can be better, sharing ideas to collaborate and we often talk about our dreams.
In 3 words, tell us how you feel right now? Contented, Mature, Anxious Sit tight! TOPSHOP is proud to present a Linda hao collaboration collection in the near future!
TO P S H O P TOPSHOP X RECLAIM TO WEAR 15 LOOKBOOK 2015
NO . 23 TOPSHOP X RECLAIM TO WEAR 15 FIND OUT MORE AT TOPSHOP.COM