Ukrainian Fashion Week
October 17, 2008Kiev – Turns out there is one perfectly good designer in the Ukraine, and she is Lilla Poustovit, a romantic figure whose collections already retail in some of Europe’s best boutiques. Her dreamy, yet elegantly practical collection shown Wednesday night, opened Ukrainian fashion Week, a 41-show season staged in leafy and historic Kiev.
Poustovit’s spring summer 2009 collection had lots of virtues, from its crumpled chic silk dresses, forgivingly cut yet cunningly draped, great graphic print tops and some very charming polka dot sheaths, draped with aplomb and finished with sophisticated lace detailing. Though clearly influenced by her country’s ethnic traditions, Poustovit is a smart enough designer to know its best to use small doses of tradition leavened in a contemporary silhouette and mood.
“I had in mind an image of an Adriatic sunset when making this collection. So I wanted something romantic, yet clothes women could understand and wear easily,” explained Poustovit backstage.
Lilla also injected an architectural element into her cocktail dresses, with vertical pleats that evoked Grecian columns.
Like all the shows here, Poustovit’s collection was staged in a conference center in Pushkin Park, where TV hosts, actresses, Kievan rappers and local politicians all made the scene.
Also impressing was a cool club girl collection called NB Karavay, a display of posh hippie duds for spring that had sass and humor. Ranging from natty multi-flap and pleated cocktails to street chic short sleeve coats, this collection showed that Ukrainians can make commercial collections that connect with young consumers. (more…)
Guy Pearce
Hollywood made Guy Pearce so anxious he left for the quiet life back home, writes Donna Walker-Mitchell.It’s not often someone stands up to Harvey Weinstein, the bombastic, cigar-chomping, Hollywood studio boss whose rants can reduce men to tears. But Weinstein met his match in Guy Pearce. “You’re one tough bastard,” the former head of the Miramax movie studio and current boss of The Weinstein Company, once told the Australian actor.
When you meet Pearce it’s hard to fathom why the tyrannical Weinstein would offer up such a description.
On a recent afternoon in a third-floor suite in New York’s hip W hotel in Union Square, Pearce, slight-framed and 40, is quietly spoken, gracious and relaxed.
The former Neighbours star lives with little fanfare in the Melbourne bayside suburb of St Kilda, with his wife of 11 years and childhood sweetheart, psychologist Kate Mestitz, and their two basenji dogs.
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