The Project

Dream Collaboration
Fall 2010
By:
Michelle Dylan Lagerfeld

It started with Vivienne Westwood. I kept telling my husband I was working on a line of accessories for Vivienne Westwood’s Fall 2010 show, and my sweet, understanding husband just smiled and encouraged me, as he always does with every ridiculous idea I come up with. (I’ve never met Vivienne and this was all a figment of my imagination, a dream scenario, if you will, to collaborate with such a great designer) So I just kept telling myself in the back of my mind that I really needed to push forward with the line or else Vivvienne would be on my ass. I did not want to piss her off. You do not mess with a Dame.

I kept the charade in my head going and designed about seven mini opera collars based on a mink vintage piece I saw for sale on Etsy. I had fake conversations in my head with Vivianne:

"She gushed over the silver chain enclosure on this one! She wants me to scrap the yellow stitching on the last piece and we got into a huge argument over it. (How exciting to even have a creative argument with Vivviene Westwood!) I wonder how she’ll like the lace detail on this one."

This went on for about a week, when I finally thought, why NOT go a little bit further into my fantasy? The big divide between fashion seasons has been heavily discussed lately, especially since the bloggers have been granted the highly coveted front row positions at many of the biggest runway shows, and the minute the clothes come down the runway they are being discussed. Suddenly it’s a bit strange to have a six month waiting period between the presentation of fall fashion and fall itself. People who want to know can go on the web and see Marc Jacob’s entire line, something impossible before the internet existed. Unless you were an editor or someone important invited to Marc’s runway show, you waited with the rest of the world and saw what came out for fall in the fall.

So I decided to take advantage of knowing what was coming out this fall in the fashion world, choose my 5 favorite lines from the season, and dived into my fantasy world. I adopted a new persona. I was no longer Michelle Kendrick Hartney. I was reborn into the fabulous Michelle Dylan Lagerfeld, the woman who collaborated with the crème de la crème of the fashion world. (Bob Dylan is my ultimate hero and the creator I look up to most so I had to have him in my new persona to some capacity, even though he has nothing to do with the fashion world. This is MY dream world, don’t judge!) Karl Lagerfeld is simply a genius in my mind. (In my fantasy world and in my real world)
Michelle Dylan Lagerfeld designs complimentary pieces at affordable prices that pull elements from each designer’s collection. Perhaps you cannot afford the $4,000 Chanel shirt you are admiring, but you can afford this opera choker Michelle Dylan Lagerfeld created for the Fall 2010 Chanel line.

The (tentative) Fall 2010 “Collborators”:
(I still need to check with Nicolas Ghesquiere to make sure he’s cool with it)
Louis Vuitton
Miu Miu
Comme des Garcons
Balenciaga
Chanel

*photo credits:
Vivienne Westwood
Marc Jacobs
Miuccia Prada
Rei Kawakubo
Nicolas Ghesquiere
Karl Lagerfeld