Latest news with #BrandonMaxwell
Vogue
04-06-2025
- Business
- Vogue
Brandon Maxwell Resort 2026 Collection
When milestones like 10 years in business come around, it prompts some reflection. Brandon Maxwell has reached such a juncture, and the always thoughtful designer was in an even more contemplative mood than usual during a showroom visit. 'It's taken me 10 years to even know what the hell I'm doing,' he laughed a bit ruefully. Looking back over Maxwell's archive, it looks like he figured out what he was doing about two-and-a-half years ago. Pre-fall 2023 marks a sharp break from—let's call them—youthful enthusiasms like color, print, and Texas-sized drama. Since that 2023 collection, he's embraced a sexy, yet almost austere kind of minimalism, It's rooted in black, white, and neutral-toned sportswear separates, urban but with athletic undertones. Resort continues in this vein. 'I've been revisiting, recultivating a nonchalance,' he said. 'Everything is always in the spirit of my heroes: Ralph [Lauren], Halston, these sort of American classics.' It starts with tailoring, which he's loosened up, cutting roomy trenches with oversize sleeves and floppy epaulettes that dip below the shoulders, and bombers with drawstring waistbands to adjust their proportions. Maxwell modeled a blouson jacket with an adjustable cowled neckline during a walkthrough, pointing out that it can also be worn over the head like a hood or with one sleeve off the shoulder. He also called attention to a checked mac with only one seam, at the collar; all the others are heat sealed— the coat's interior looks just as sharp as its exterior. On the casual end, he deconstructed denim for a fit and flare skirt and cut a traditional jean jacket in cowhide—'each one will be one-of-a-kind,' he said. For dressy occasions, he cut a streamlined dress with delicate straps extending from a double-triangle neckline. It's a long way from his ball gown days.
Yahoo
02-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Rihanna and the politics of the exposed pregnancy bump
In the not-too-distant past, being pregnant on the red-carpet meant wearing Amish-style dresses that concealed not only your tummy, but every inch of flesh. Now, the celebrity bump is more than just present: it is the gleaming, oiled main event. In this era of being Pregnant with a capital P, fabric is little more than a token gesture. Tops are cropped, skirts are low-slung and nobody is in any doubt that a baby is on the way. As evidenced by Rihanna, who was pictured at this year's Cannes Film Festival in an asymmetrical Brandon Maxwell dress with a thigh-high slit and most of the midriff missing. Yes, she seems to be saying, I am growing a person – but I still have better abs than you. The Barbadian superstar, who is currently pregnant with her third child, has made a point throughout each of her pregnancies of encouraging her bump to do metaphorical jazz hands in skimpy lingerie, barely-there dresses and glitter bralettes. Proving how a well-timed pregnancy reveal can boost your career, the superstar had one of the biggest moments of her professional life when she showed off the imminent arrival of her first child at the Super Bowl by performing in a red Loewe jumpsuit unbuttoned to the navel. At the time, she said to the now-head of British Vogue, Chioma Nnadi. 'I'm hoping that we were able to redefine what's considered 'decent' for pregnant women. My body is doing incredible things right now and I'm not going to be ashamed of that. This time should feel celebratory. Because why should you be hiding your pregnancy?' In celebrity-land, at least, it seems nobody is. In the last year, Hailey Bieber has bared her bump in an underwear shoot for W Magazine, Adwoa Aboah has worn a two-piece H&M number with eight inches of bare flesh for a premiere and Margot Robbie has been photographed on Lake Como accessorising her bump with a crop top. This is very much a millennial trend – a natural next step to the confident, body-conscious, overtly sexy dressing the generation has pioneered. But they can't lay claim to inventing the bared baby bump – that accolade belongs to Vanity Fair, which put a naked seven-month-pregnant Demi Moore on the cover in 1991, photographed by Annie Leibovitz. And while it doesn't seem particularly outrageous now, the image would shock and fascinate the world when it was released – which delighted then-editor Tina Brown, who later explained she was tired of any woman past the first trimester only getting head shots. 'Women need this, dammit,' she said. But whereas in the early 1990s this daring new way of celebrating pregnancy lived and died with the famous, in the 2020s, the trend has jumped to the real world. Grace Kapin, who co-founded the maternity brand Storq and lives in Brooklyn, has seen a stark change in the way women dress since she was last pregnant five years ago. (And yes, New York's ultra body-conscious, fashion-forward aesthetic is hardly representative of us all – but where they lead, global trends tend to follow.) 'There has been a transformation on the streets of New York and I honestly think it is down to the celebrities,' she says. 'Suddenly, there are bare bellies everywhere: women are rolling down the waistbands of their jeans and wearing short tank tops and barely buttoned shirts. This would have been considered sloppy or desperate before, but now it is peak style.' For Eliza, 31, who works in PR in London, feeling like she was able to bare a little skin made pregnancy dressing significantly easier. 'I remember my mum being quite shocked when I met her last summer at eight months pregnant wearing a low-slung wrap skirt with a chunk of my belly exposed,' says Eliza. 'She thought it was too much, but it made me feel good and it meant I could keep wearing my own clothes for much longer.' Eliza was mostly relieved not to be confined to the tent-like pieces her mother had worn in the late 1980s. 'At first, I tried the roomy dresses and tops that looked cool and oversized before I got pregnant but I quickly realised I looked huge,' she says. 'I think it is because there is something so wholesome about being pregnant that you look pretty boring fast unless you do something a bit unexpected, like show some skin.' Gracie Egan, a creative consultant in London who is currently six-months pregnant agrees. 'It is so empowering to see beautiful strong working mothers like Rihanna and Sienna Miller embracing and showcasing their pregnancies. They push boundaries by wearing bold, daring outfits which contradict traditional ideas of how a pregnant woman should 'dress'.' And yet for many women, pregnancy is less a time of glorious fecundity and more one difficult slog to the finish line – and being expected to look sexy and glamorous while growing a person can feel like yet another pressure. 'Honestly, I have never felt less attractive than I did when I was pregnant,' says Jemima, 36, who had her first baby in 2023. 'Throughout the first trimester I felt sick any time I wasn't eating, but all I wanted was bland food like plain cheese on toast. I put on so much weight that I moved up two dress sizes before I even started to show. And as the pregnancy went on, it felt like my body was just holding onto every calorie it could. And don't even get me started on the bloating.' Jemima was eight months pregnant when Miller attended the September 2023 launch of Vogue World with her second trimester baby bump protruding out of a puffball skirt and crop top by Schiaparelli. The one-time boho queen immediately went viral on social media and appeared on the front page of multiple national newspapers. Soon after that, Miller was featured on the cover of Vogue in a very small pair of pants and a jumper. 'It sounds ridiculous but I burst into tears when endless pictures of her appeared on my Instagram feed,' says Jemima. 'She looked so slender and sexy and I felt like an absolute house and only wanted to wear my husband's shirts and tracksuits to cover up as much as I could. I felt like there was something wrong with me.' Pip Durell, the founder of cult shirting company With Nothing Underneath, was pregnant at the same time as Miller and also remembers it well. 'I definitely thought Sienna looked so cool, but I also thought, 'I could never'. I very much believe that you should let your bump out if you want to, but for me it is about choice and I knew I wanted to try and stay true to my own personal style of oversized shirts and jeans. Pregnancy is a time when everything is changing; it was important to me to recognise my own wardrobe.' I too was pregnant in 2023, and I reasoned that if I didn't wear crop tops in normal life, why would I start now? As for Miller, I understand how difficult these comparisons can be as I vividly remember her appearing on a red carpet when both our babies were a few months old: she was slim, vivacious and glowing, while I was a husk of a human, barely surviving on a few hours sleep a night. It's no wonder then, that all this can feel more fraught than it should. Millennials are probably lucky not to be confined to the same Princess Diana floral smocks our mothers were, and to have far more freedom to dress the way we want or to even bare some skin if we feel like it. But I wonder if we have also lost something. Pregnancy used to offer a bit of a break from the usual fashion rules – and from the need to look cool, or stylish, or sexy. Now, the bump is fast becoming so fashionable that the pressure is on to make the most of it. Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
Telegraph
02-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Rihanna and the politics of the exposed pregnancy bump
In the not-too-distant past, being pregnant on the red-carpet meant wearing Amish-style dresses that concealed not only your tummy, but every inch of flesh. Now, the celebrity bump is more than just present: it is the gleaming, oiled main event. In this era of being Pregnant with a capital P, fabric is little more than a token gesture. Tops are cropped, skirts are low-slung and nobody is in any doubt that a baby is on the way. As evidenced by Rihanna, who was pictured at this year's Cannes Film Festival in an asymmetrical Brandon Maxwell dress with a thigh-high slit and most of the midriff missing. Yes, she seems to be saying, I am growing a person – but I still have better abs than you. The Barbadian superstar, who is currently pregnant with her third child, has made a point throughout each of her pregnancies of encouraging her bump to do metaphorical jazz hands in skimpy lingerie, barely-there dresses and glitter bralettes. Proving how a well-timed pregnancy reveal can boost your career, the superstar had one of the biggest moments of her professional life when she showed off the imminent arrival of her first child at the Super Bowl by performing in a red Loewe jumpsuit unbuttoned to the navel. At the time, she said to the now-head of British Vogue, Chioma Nnadi. 'I'm hoping that we were able to redefine what's considered 'decent' for pregnant women. My body is doing incredible things right now and I'm not going to be ashamed of that. This time should feel celebratory. Because why should you be hiding your pregnancy?' In celebrity-land, at least, it seems nobody is. In the last year, Hailey Bieber has bared her bump in an underwear shoot for W Magazine, Adwoa Aboah has worn a two-piece H&M number with eight inches of bare flesh for a premiere and Margot Robbie has been photographed on Lake Como accessorising her bump with a crop top. This is very much a millennial trend – a natural next step to the confident, body-conscious, overtly sexy dressing the generation has pioneered. But they can't lay claim to inventing the bared baby bump – that accolade belongs to Vanity Fair, which put a naked seven-month-pregnant Demi Moore on the cover in 1991, photographed by Annie Leibovitz. And while it doesn't seem particularly outrageous now, the image would shock and fascinate the world when it was released – which delighted then-editor Tina Brown, who later explained she was tired of any woman past the first trimester only getting head shots. 'Women need this, dammit,' she said. But whereas in the early 1990s this daring new way of celebrating pregnancy lived and died with the famous, in the 2020s, the trend has jumped to the real world. Grace Kapin, who co-founded the maternity brand Storq and lives in Brooklyn, has seen a stark change in the way women dress since she was last pregnant five years ago. (And yes, New York's ultra body-conscious, fashion-forward aesthetic is hardly representative of us all – but where they lead, global trends tend to follow.) 'There has been a transformation on the streets of New York and I honestly think it is down to the celebrities,' she says. 'Suddenly, there are bare bellies everywhere: women are rolling down the waistbands of their jeans and wearing short tank tops and barely buttoned shirts. This would have been considered sloppy or desperate before, but now it is peak style.' For Eliza, 31, who works in PR in London, feeling like she was able to bare a little skin made pregnancy dressing significantly easier. 'I remember my mum being quite shocked when I met her last summer at eight months pregnant wearing a low-slung wrap skirt with a chunk of my belly exposed,' says Eliza. 'She thought it was too much, but it made me feel good and it meant I could keep wearing my own clothes for much longer.' Eliza was mostly relieved not to be confined to the tent-like pieces her mother had worn in the late 1980s. 'At first, I tried the roomy dresses and tops that looked cool and oversized before I got pregnant but I quickly realised I looked huge,' she says. 'I think it is because there is something so wholesome about being pregnant that you look pretty boring fast unless you do something a bit unexpected, like show some skin.' Gracie Egan, a creative consultant in London who is currently six-months pregnant agrees. 'It is so empowering to see beautiful strong working mothers like Rihanna and Sienna Miller embracing and showcasing their pregnancies. They push boundaries by wearing bold, daring outfits which contradict traditional ideas of how a pregnant woman should 'dress'.' And yet for many women, pregnancy is less a time of glorious fecundity and more one difficult slog to the finish line – and being expected to look sexy and glamorous while growing a person can feel like yet another pressure. 'Honestly, I have never felt less attractive than I did when I was pregnant,' says Jemima, 36, who had her first baby in 2023. 'Throughout the first trimester I felt sick any time I wasn't eating, but all I wanted was bland food like plain cheese on toast. I put on so much weight that I moved up two dress sizes before I even started to show. And as the pregnancy went on, it felt like my body was just holding onto every calorie it could. And don't even get me started on the bloating.' Jemima was eight months pregnant when Miller attended the September 2023 launch of Vogue World with her second trimester baby bump protruding out of a puffball skirt and crop top by Schiaparelli. The one-time boho queen immediately went viral on social media and appeared on the front page of multiple national newspapers. Soon after that, Miller was featured on the cover of Vogue in a very small pair of pants and a jumper. 'It sounds ridiculous but I burst into tears when endless pictures of her appeared on my Instagram feed,' says Jemima. 'She looked so slender and sexy and I felt like an absolute house and only wanted to wear my husband's shirts and tracksuits to cover up as much as I could. I felt like there was something wrong with me.' Pip Durell, the founder of cult shirting company With Nothing Underneath, was pregnant at the same time as Miller and also remembers it well. 'I definitely thought Sienna looked so cool, but I also thought, 'I could never'. I very much believe that you should let your bump out if you want to, but for me it is about choice and I knew I wanted to try and stay true to my own personal style of oversized shirts and jeans. Pregnancy is a time when everything is changing; it was important to me to recognise my own wardrobe.' I too was pregnant in 2023, and I reasoned that if I didn't wear crop tops in normal life, why would I start now? As for Miller, I understand how difficult these comparisons can be as I vividly remember her appearing on a red carpet when both our babies were a few months old: she was slim, vivacious and glowing, while I was a husk of a human, barely surviving on a few hours sleep a night. It's no wonder then, that all this can feel more fraught than it should. Millennials are probably lucky not to be confined to the same Princess Diana floral smocks our mothers were, and to have far more freedom to dress the way we want or to even bare some skin if we feel like it. But I wonder if we have also lost something. Pregnancy used to offer a bit of a break from the usual fashion rules – and from the need to look cool, or stylish, or sexy. Now, the bump is fast becoming so fashionable that the pressure is on to make the most of it.
Telegraph
31-05-2025
- Business
- Telegraph
Good sunglasses are worth the investment. Here's where to start (from £50)
There is no accessory that strikes the balance between glamour and utility quite as well as a pair of sunglasses. While good frames can last a lifetime (as long as you don't leave them on the bus), updating with a new style will enhance all your sunny-day looks. The first question is which kind to go for: aviators, cat's-eyes, outsize, oval… Luckily, the spring/summer 2025 catwalks provided ample sunglasses inspiration. New takes on aviators – which had a conversely retro feel – were a frequent feature, from yellow-tinted lenses at American designer Brandon Maxwell and Saint Laurent to coloured frames at Fendi and Gucci. 'This spring/summer is all about making a statement,' says Daphnée Chartier-Duchatel, chief marketing officer of Jimmy Fairly, the Parisian eyewear brand that has cemented its chic status through multiple collaborations with LA favourite Reformation (the latest dropped earlier this month). 'Oversized frames are back in a big way, aviators have had a sleek upgrade, and we're seeing tinted lenses – from yellow to blue – everywhere,' she continues. 'The style is a little nostalgic and playful. Bold acetates and slim retro metals are proving especially popular too.' For some archival inspiration, look no further than Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, who earned a permanent position on fashion's sunglasses mood board gliding around Manhattan in ensembles that have now come to define 1990s minimalism. Whether in straight-leg jeans or simple bias-cut slips, there was one accessory that crowned Bessette-Kennedy's street style: a signature pair of black oval-shaped sunglasses. These 'Aldo' frames were from New York-based label Selima Optique. You can still buy them today – for a mere £458. A more affordable alternative can be found this season at Ace & Tate, the Dutch label that now has stores around the UK. One question remains: how to choose a pair that suits you? Certain rules relating to face shape are up for consideration – those with a heart-shaped face might do well to go for oval frames, while squarer shapes tend to suit cat's-eye styles, for example. But the best course of action might be to disregard the rulebook and try on as many pairs as possible. 'When choosing frames, don't overthink it – go with what makes you feel good,' says Chartier-Duchatel. 'A softly tinted lens can add just the right edge, while the perfect frame should feel like an extension of your mood, not just your outfit.' And if your mood happens to include going full Anna Wintour and keeping the sunglasses on inside, so be it. Find your frames... Under £100 Under £200 Over £200 Shopping by Sophie Tobin
Vogue
21-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Vogue
Rihanna Adds a Naked Shoe to Her Cannes Wardrobe
By now, you've surely heard that the Cannes Film Festival enacted a no-nudity rule on the red carpet. But does that include naked shoes? Rihanna first hit the Croisette in a bright blue Alaïa bodycon dress—complete with bump-baring cutouts—for the premiere of Spike Lee's Highest 2 Lowest, which stars her partner, A$AP Rocky. Next, she wowed us in another sexy, cutout-heavy dress, wearing a black Brandon Maxwell number with a hip-high slit and a bare midriff on a dinner date with Rocky. Rihanna in Cannes Aissaoui Nacer / BACKGRIDUSA But today, Rih gave us a taste of her off-duty maternity wardrobe on a stroll around Cannes. She opted for a black ribbed long-sleeve Khaite dress with a fringe skirt. While others might style the swishy dress with a strappy sandal, Rihanna broke out a beloved pair of clear PVC heeled sandals from Giuseppe Zanotti. Practically invisible, it almost looked as though she was strutting around town on the balls of her feet. This isn't the first time we've seen Rih in these shoes. In 2017, she wore them with a white shirtdress to a Madeworn x Roc96 pop-up event. Whether they're worn with a tailored minidress or a fringed maxi, Rihanna's naked shoes transcend both time and occasion.
