For this week’s sale special sale Private Outlet has chosen the combine Fashion with environmental awareness by selecting the brand NU.

NU was founded in 2007 by Maxime Guillon and Jean-Philippe Pete and it mainly offers high quality clothing produced with the utter most respect for the environment. The organic cotton used comes from Turky where it is grown, spun and woven to very strict criteria. The jeans are neither treated nor washed out, as most other brands do. This makes them much more resistant and most of all free of any toxic chemicals. Last but not least, NU also selects buttons, zippers and rivets which contain neither nickel nor heavy metals.

We just love this eco-friendly brand, here’s our selection.

If you’re hesitating between a pair of straight cut, boot cut or slim cut jeans, just pick one of each!

© Private Outlet 2010

There’s plenty for the lads also:  classy straight cuts and various shades for every moment of the day!

© Private Outlet 2010

The NU sale is on Private Outlet until 30^th August for all the nature-loving fashion-addicts out there! So hurry up!

Jean Paul Gaultier recently raised a general eyebrow when he declared last June that he was to start working with the famous Italian Lingerie Designer La Perla.

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Spectators and journalists attending the 2010-2011 Autumn-Winter were allowed an exclusive viewing of 2 pieces of clothing that naturally confirmed his rightful claim that designers’ collaboration was to be natural and logical!

We’re all quite impatient to see what this entire capsule collection will look like when it becomes available in November throughout Gaultier and La Perla stores as well as traditional retail networks.

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Until then, a few words about the models in which you can easily recognize the designer’s unique sense of style: drawstring corsets, high briefs and others glamorous accessories that highlight feminine curves and silhouettes. Some of the most refined models are even hand-sewn!

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The themes and colours of the designer’s 2010-2011 Autumn-Winter collection: sobre, retro, ultra-chic and feminine, loads of black and powdered pink. It’s a collection for independent and secure women who know how to use their charms. This should be adequate enough to pretend being luxurious courtesans along the lines of the frivolously sublime Dita Von Teese.

37 exceptional pieces of clothing, a line which many are waiting on and which will mark Jean Paul Gaultier’s first of (hopefully) many lingerie collections. We just can’t wait to start shopping for it!

Check out Private Outlet’s exclusive Art.23 sale until 30th August!

“Everyone who works has the right to just and favourable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection.” – Article 23 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. From this postulate was born the eponymous brand Art.23

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But one question arises: how does one transpose this concept to the world of fashion?

A French company named La Compagnie du Commerce Équitable looked into it and gave its answer by founding the brand Art.23 in 2006.

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Respecting human beings is the fundament of Art.23’s concept. In a world driven by greedy capitalism, this brand is one of a few that intend to make the concept of solidarity a guideline to every company. The brand works along the principle of Fair Trade and Sustainable Development by insuring the long-term economical and social self-fulfilment of the communities that produce the raw materials. The brand has found its place, a way to live globalization in a much more humane way.

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Nevertheless, the spirit of Art.23 is also that of expecting exceptional quality. All material are carefully selected and completely organic of course which means they abide by respecting life, human beings and therefore also the environment. By travelling around the world the brand has discovered new types of organic fabrics and has sought its inspiration in differences and cultural wealth amongst people from remote areas in order to pass on their ancestral know-how.

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This firm commitment can be tracked from one season’s collection to the next. The brand’s latest symbol: the 2010 Spring-Summer collection inaugurated the first uses of non-violent silk, an innovation enabling the production of silk without harming the actual silk worm the way it the traditional manner does. Stylist Naia Rico has been reinventing fashion for a whole 4 seasons now. Her clothes’ vintage and multicultural charm embody the brand’s particular atmosphere: natural colours, rétro-bobo-chic cuts and freedom of movement are inspired by the sublime and mankind as a whole.

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With stylistic requirements at their height and organic fabrics produced with true respect for human beings, the brand has met nothing else but overwhelming success over the past 4 years since its launching. The brand is currently very present all over Europe, especially in France and is steadily pushing for internationalization and online expansion. Art.23 seduces true lovers of noble materials and timeless fashion.

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More than an art of clothing, Fashion is a perpetual commitment and an incentive to travel. Art.23 offers us another aspect of the World, an opportunity to discover other cultures, an invitation that we should ideally all accept.

Check out Private Outlet’s exclusive Art.23 sale until 30th August!

Dalí, the craziest artist of the 20^th century was not only a painter. He was also a goldsmith.

Come discover his work under a new light through this collection of 37 jewels made of gold and precious stones as well as the 27 sketches he drew from 1941 to 1970.

The Owen Cheatham collection is finally being show in a case worthy of it at the famous Dalí museum of Figueras in Spain. It is being presented as part of the permanent DALÍ exhibition and can be visited independently from the main museum.

Dalí started drawing jewels in 1941. They were then produced in New York in the workshops of Argentinean goldsmith Carlos Alemany. Shiny facets, bright colours, embossed details… the artist’s trademark was quite noticeable and drew attention from collectors all over the world. The Owen Cheatham Foundation bought the lot of them in 1958, but they were then sold a number of times before being donated to the Figueras Dalí museum.

The royal heart (1953)

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Gold, precious stones (diamonds, sapphires, rubies, topazes, emeralds, aquamarines…etc), corals and pearls: Dali used only the noblest and purest materials to design his unique and extravagant jewellery created by his wild imagination. Some of these jewels are even considered part of his life’s major works as an artist on the whole.

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Salvador Dalí once  said that “Without an audience, without the presence of spectators, these jewels would not fulfil the function they were created for. In the end, it is the spectator who is the true artist. His sight, his heart, his mind – and their respective capacities to comprehend the artist’s intention – are what give these jewels life”.

The eye of Time (1949)

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For more information:

Dalí Museum of Figueres. At the corner of Mª Àngels Vayreda and Pujada del Castell. E-17600Figueres.

http://www.salvador-dali.org/museus/joies/en_index.html

Gianfranco Ferré or GFF for friends

Fashion History is full of emotions and Gianfranco Ferré has proved us that much! Also known as “the architect of fashion”, he was undeniably one of the best designers of the 20^th century.

Born in the town of Legnano in northern Italy in 1944, Gianfranco Ferré was initially heading towards becoming an architect as graduated as one in 1969. But he was rapidly attracted to the world of Fashion to which he then turned to for good.

His first designs were accessories and then rain coats; after that he founded his own designing company Baila and presented his first women’s collection in 1978 followed by a first men’s collection in 1982.

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In 1989 his unique talent enable him to join the famous Maison de Haute Couture Dior by becoming its Art Director for the following 8 years. He was awarded a Dé d’Or (Golden thimble) the high distinction in Haute Couture for his first collection produced with a Dior label.

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Following his emotionally rich experience with the Maison Dior, Ferré decided to go back to the capitol of Italian Fashion in order to create his own collection for men and women, with a little more relaxed touch than those create with Dior. Ferré’s collections are sober and balanced but keep that Italian touch that he has so much faith in.

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Gianfranco Ferré had expressed his desire to see his own company be introduced onto the stock market. But the designer, whose beard and suits everyone could recognize, died of a brain haemorrhage in June 2007 at the age of 62

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As an art lover and collector GFF found his inspiration in the works of Gauguin or Warhol, creating unique and marginal pieces. As a perfectionist as well as a fabric- and colour-fanatic his works were first destined to women. He made himself a very select clientele amongst whom Sharon Stones, Sophia Loren, Kim Basinger, Paloma Picasso but also Queen Rania of Jordan Jordanie as well as Princess Diana.

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