In honor of the holiday season, Rome’s new Fendi store (at Largo Goldoni) has donned her formal garb. Brilliantly illuminated with lights that change from pink to purple to blue, the upper stories of the Fendi building are wrapped with an intricately blinged belt that even features the Fendi logo on the buckle. Do they sell those?
Forget the practical gifts! Take a stroll around Rome in these days leading up to Christmas and you’ll find endless fashionable luxury items that will please even the most discerning gift receiver on your list - like these lovely fur boots that photographer Susan Sanders photographed on Via del Babuino just a few days ago.
In celebration of the upcoming festivities, today we’re kicking of a series of posts called “Roman Holidays!” For the month of December we’ll be blogging about Christmas in Rome - its festivities, its elaborate decorations, and the yummy treats associated with the holiday. And for those of you who are looking to please the Ital-o-phile in your life with a special something under the tree, stay tuned! We’ve got some great gift ideas (and do have a look back at our adopt a vine, adopt a sheep, and adopt an olive tree posts for further thoughts about finding that perfect present.)
So, check back often over the course of the next month! It’s Rome for the Holidays!
Starting today, Italian design icon Roberto Cavalli invites H&M customers all over the world to his very own exclusive fashion world. Cavalli has created ladies’ and men’s collection for glamorous everyday or party. The collection, with 20 men’s and 25 ladies’ pieces including underwear and matching accessories, is all about Roberto Cavalli’s expressive and sensual signature style.
The Roberto Cavalli at H&M collection will be available in around 200 selected H&M stores worldwide. A selection of the collection will also be available at www.hm.com in the Nordic countries, Germany, Austria and the Netherlands.
Leopard and zebra is a significant theme in the women’s collection, and features on dresses, tops, coats and lingerie. A tailored jacket is teamed with slim slacks or shorts. A leather jacket is decorated with fringes and laces and a fake-fur jacket has eyelets and studs. An elegant trench coat has piping and metallic studs. A heavily embellished jacket adds instant glamour to tight fitting or wide leg jeans. A leopard-print or black corset top look dazzling on bare skin for evening or over a T-shirt for day, and there are several blouses with animal prints, ruffles and bows. Knitwear consists of a leopard-print or black oversized cardigan and a tank mini dress with ruffles. For evening or cocktail wear: a sequined mini dress, a chiffon baby doll dress in zebra stripe or leopard print, a long metallic pleated halter dress and a long animal print dress.
Lingerie includes leopard-prints and black lace and the accessories such as bone and pearl pendants, a golden cuff bracelet and a ring, a belt and a wallet as well as gold sandals and Mary Jane shoes in a leopard print.
Menswear by Roberto Cavalli at H&M is sharply tailored and masculine. There’s a brown and a black leather jacket, a midnight blue blazer teamed with slim fit trousers or jeans in blue or black, a waistcoat, an elegant black tuxedo, a perfect trench coat and a shawl-collared cardigan. Shirts are black or white and T-shirts are long- or short sleeved with silk front or side panels. Underwear includes both jersey and woven Y-fronts and boxer shorts. Accessories include a scarf, a slim tie, a classic belt, a weekend bag, a wallet and shoes and boots. There is also an extensive range of jewelery including a bracelet, cufflinks, necklaces, a pin and a key holder.
Best of all, the collection comes at a price that’s easy on the pocketbook. The stunning leopard dress shown above goes for a mere 149 euro.
Starting today, October 22nd, Diesel’s Fuel for Life factory is open for business! By visiting the Fuel For Life Factory website, you can spice up your life (or someone else’s) by purchasing Fuel for Life for Him or Fuel for Life for Her, and you can customize the bottle in which your perfume will come!
The bottles come in leather pouches - you can choose from ten different colors! Then decide which of twelve logos is right for you. All in all, there are more than 150,000 possible ways to make the hip Diesel bottle uniquely your own.
Only 20,000 of these customized bottles will be made, so hurry to the website now and start crafting your very own olfactory experience!
Today, a roundup of hot hot heels by Italian fashion designers. Slipping your foot into one of these will certainly liven up a cool fall evening. An Italian magazine is calling this “alien fashion.” We can’t be bothered to come up with a name in our rush to acquire any or all of these shoes.
Above: right, a rhinestone studded heel by Miu Miu, and left, a stiletto covered with metallic mosaic tiles by Roberto Cavalli.
Below: right, metallic lace-up with metal studs on heel by Ornella Boscolo, and left, stiletto-heeled shoe covered with metal plates by Luciano Padovan.
In Rome in the 1980s, you were nobody if you didn’t have a striped Invicta minisac. Now they’re back - a cult object with cross-generational appeal. As school starts this year, look for the Eternal City’s streets to be filled with brightly colored striped backpacks like these as they’re being advertised everywhere, from Vanity Fair to Cosmo and from Glamour to Rolling Stone.
A short post today (it’s a holiday in Rome!) to pay homage to one of the many clever ways that Moschino makes fashion fun. Is it a saucy striped shirt or a shapely shopping tote? Ready-to-wear or shop-til-you-drop?
Either way, it’s featured in one of our very favorite books about Italy: Volare. The Icon of Italy in Global Pop Culture by Giannino Malossa.
We’re totally taken with Momaboma’s Recycle EstEthic! The Milan-based company seeks to invert the world by employing all sorts of discarded materials in the making of ultra-chic bags. Tape measures are woven into striking saddlebags (see above) while old record albums become eye-catching totes.
Sponges and old magazines are standard materials at Momaboma, and they’re even producing bags that are crafted out of first-grade homework assignments and lined with vintage t-shirts (see below).
In 1987, Ennio Capasa launched his launched his first ready-to-wear and shoe collection in Milan, calling it Costume National. This summer he’s teamed up with Absolut Vodka to produce a limited edition bottle available in Italian stores from June to October.
The utterly hip black bottle is aimed at fashion animals eager to restyle their bars or their freezers. We love it. We’re running out the door to get our own and we’ll be serving e-cool cocktails for everyone as soon as we return!
We always love Diesel’s advertising, but we’re particularly enamored of their newest ad campaign, Human After All, which aims to show us what our highly styled lives will look like in the future. They’ve taken uber-human moments and set them in a not-so-distant world.
A goodbye kiss before being transported to the evening’s next hip locale
The difficulties of flipping pancakes in a gravity-free environment
Flight delays in an interplanetary airport
An ugly breakup in Diesel’s version of Gotham City
