Calla (Q4001)
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| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Calla |
No description defined |
Statements
Calla Haynes' chow chow, Lilybear, is pretty famous in Paris, where the designer says the little dog is photographed about "20 times a day" outside of her studio in the Marais. So Haynes chose to dedicate much of her Fall Calla collection to Lily, who was the star of not only a gray sweatshirt, but also a series of colorful prints that appeared on dresses, blouses, and even a pair of skinny trousers.But Haynes' references didn't end at the dog, as cute as she may be. "I like to make up a story each season, and this one was about a brokenhearted girl living in Paris, who moves to Nashville," the designer said at her Saturday night presentation. In came the country-Western nods, particularly a skinny suit done in a minty blue jacquard. "It was a fun way to explore more menswear," Haynes said of the look, which was inspired by the style of the late Porter Wagoner, whose variety show, which ran from 1961 to 1981, launched Dolly Parton's career. Simultaneously, Haynes was also thinking about the Memphis Group, whose postmodern aesthetic informed the graphic quality of the prints. She could have cut a few of the looks, particularly a collared number in the aforementioned minty blue jacquard that read too sweet, but all in all it was an exuberant collection that didn't rely on Haynes' penchant for painterly prints, which have defined her previous efforts.
8 February 2014
"This was my first collection about nostalgia," Calla Haynes said of her Spring offering, an ode to early-nineties surf culture. "I was a young teenager at the time, and it was when I first discovered fashion."A silhouette inspired by Body Glove's classic one-piece maillot was the style that unified today's Calla presentation at the always crowded Milk Studios. There was a neon-green swimsuit with an exposed zipper up the front, yes, but that quintessentially nineties brand was also referenced in a kicky skater dress made of an extremely thin fabric called Alcantara, which was ink-jet-printed with a lavender design and then crinkled to give it a worn-in feel.A full, couture-inspired skirt—made modern with a high-low hem—was printed with a speckled neon coral (that totally nineties color that falls right in between hot orange and hot red on the spectrum). Prints, as always, played a major role in Haynes' work, but it would be interesting to see her take on solid pieces in a more serious way. She says she wants her collection to represent a real wardrobe; that's possible, if she mixes it up just a bit.
7 September 2013
Pastels can work for Fall, especially if you know how to use them right, as Calla Haynes did for the 2013 autumn season. Yellow, pink, blue, peach: they were all there, and cheerfully ignorant of the burgundies and forest greens the Paris-based, Toronto-bred designer's contemporaries are currently favoring."You shouldn't be afraid of color!" said Haynes at her Milk Studios presentation on Saturday, the lights brightly shining down on her models. Haynes is big on prints. Not because they're trendy, but because she likes them. Her affinities reflect her situation: being a foreigner based in Paris allows her to breathe, to be a few paces apart from her English-speaking counterparts in New York and London, while having a different perspective than her European neighbors. It gives her an independence, a fresh outlook, which is hard to come by in an era so dictated by buyer desires and peer influence."The collection is about being happy," she said, discussing how one print—which consisted of blue and yellow rectangles stacked haphazardly upon each other—reminded her of a Tetris game. Its effect was a world away from the anxiety that used to result from an intense session on the Game Boy. Used in a pantsuit, the overall result was loud but not brash. Same goes for a bouncy parka done in a graphic yellow-and-gray floral. The coat had a slight A-line, letting it almost float on the model instead of hanging straight. Haynes stuck with that silhouette, except on skinny trousers and a couple of knit miniskirts. It left plenty of room in the hips of the flippy skirts and loose overcoats for her girl to prance around.Another great addition was a rainbow tweed skirtsuit, designed in partnership with French weaving house Mahlia Kent, which Haynes has been collaborating with since her first collection a couple of seasons back. (Before that, she worked under Olivier Theyskens at Nina Ricci and Rochas.) Those textures led her to develop her own hand-woven sweaters, a welcome first this season.In the end, Haynes did add in some black, with success. It's easy to imagine those pieces selling well—the violet print was a bit more commercial than the rest of the collection. Still, her sunny yellow styles were the strongest. After all, what's the use in being up-and-coming if you can't play by your own rules?
13 March 2013
Calla Haynes' brand Calla is known for its prints. But this season, like a lot of print-focused designers, Haynes turned her attention to broadening the scope of her line and emphasizing other elements. Texture was key here: Haynes sourced some remarkable materials, including a glossy tweed and fuzzy jacquardfil coupé, and she worked with the legendary couture atelier Maison Lemarié in Paris to create a cocktail dress of feathers and tulle. Frankly, though, the tweed and jacquard didn't feel fully explored or integrated, and the cocktail dress, which could have been extraordinary, was merely very pretty.Haynes did better with her other challenge this season, which was to add some casual zip to her line. The cropped motorcycle jackets in printed raincoat taffeta looked fresh, and a simple sweatshirt and skinny jeans ensemble got a major kick from its terrific, blue-toned foliage print. Elsewhere, back on familiar turf, Haynes turned out a clutch of cheerful minidresses, the best of which featured that foliage print and an almost-bare, tulle-covered midriff. An utterly straightforward A-line sheath in an abstract-expressionist-style print made for another strong look. It may be that Haynes does well with her prints because the weirder, creepier, or more jarring they are, the more they cut the treacle of her girlier looks. At any rate, this collection held a lot of promise for Calla: Haynes is testing her brand, and in the right ways. If the results this time out weren't as confident as the clothes in Calla's New York debut last season, that's understandable. Stretching yourself is hard.
7 September 2012
Think of Calla as the Lindsey Wixson of up-and-coming designer brands: Cute as a button and sweet as pie, but check out thatbody. Designer Calla Haynes' signatures are eye-popping digital prints and body-conscious silhouettes, and she wisely chose to play to her strengths as she made her New York fashion week debut last night.The new Calla collection was inspired by interior design—or, more specifically, as Haynes explained, by an imaginary woman who is an interior designer—and the key prints were a blown-up wood grain and a granite fleck, both rendered in surreal hues. Haynes applied those prints to a clutch of fitted tops and dresses featuring her trademark sewn-in bodice; it's a standard silhouette for her, and it works. She also developed her tailoring, creating a dense tweed with the French house Malhia Kent (a graphic black-and-white tweed coat was particularly good) and a slouchy suit in navy crepe. One of the collection's standouts was a stiff minidress in a pastel daisy print with a spacey sheen; it would have been nice to see more of that material. All in all, though, it was a fine introduction to the New York fashion scene.
10 February 2012
Biography can be more or less relevant to a designer. In the case of Calla designer Calla Haynes, it seems worthwhile pointing out a few things, especially for the sake of those not yet familiar with her two-year-old label. Haynes hails from Toronto, Canada, home of famously nice people; she lives and works in Paris, birthplace of couture. The road from Toronto to Paris included stops at Rochas and Nina Ricci, where she worked under Olivier Theyskens, and stints as a print designer for various emerging brands. All of that background is more or less readable in Haynes' Calla clothes, which are print-driven and friendly with a whiff of couture in the materials and construction.This season, Haynes found her starting point in a serious material—a paper tweed in a bright coral and not quite fluorescent yellow, which she used both on its own, in casual pieces including a boyfriend jacket and kicky, pleated shorts, and as an accent in garments such as a tailored trenchcoat. Her digitized prints echoed the tweed's texture without reproducing it exactly—witness the nubby look of a long, printed chiffon skirt and matching top or the marbling on the gray organza cocktail dress with black underskirt. Print is the strength of this collection. Though a pair of wide gray trousers looked great, in general Haynes' solid-colored clothes didn't stand out the way her printed pieces do. She's also got a great eye for color, as witnessed by a cheerful minidress with contrasting panels of printed yellow and turquoise silk. The unavoidable word iscute. That's not an insult; Haynes does well by her youthful silhouettes. But she clearly possesses the design vocabulary to articulate a richer, more distinctive point of view. These are early days for her brand; give her time.
19 October 2011