Miley Cyrus, retro Kors and more NYFW highlights
Miley Cyrus is a designer now, y'all!
The pop singer's turn as jewelry crafter was just one of the revelations from New York Fashion Week. There was the "optimistic chic" of Michael Kors' collection and the wild bridal theme of Betsey Johnson. The Associated Press also caught up with David Beckham -- also trying his hand at designing -- and a 13-year-old designer.
Here are the highlights from Fashion Week, Day Seven (just one more to go!).
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MICHAEL KORS GOES RETRO
With embroidered flowers, retro plaids and classic A-line dresses, Michael Kors went back decades for a dreamy collection that could have been classified as "I Love Lucy" chic.
Actually, Kors himself called it "optimistic chic" - clothes that inspire cheer in a dour world.
"It's a crazy world right now; you know, we look at the headlines, and it's pretty tough out there. And I think that spring time ... it's a time that people do feel more optimistic and I think that if you put something on that kind of have some charm to it I think it changes your spirits," he said Wednesday an interview before his collection debuted.
There was plenty of whimsy and charm in his spring 2015 collection, which debuted to a packed crowd that included Heidi Klum, Jessica Chastain, Mary J. Blige and Jada Pinkett Smith.
Flowers played a leading role -- sewn on in color on solid prints, embroidered on linen, and skirts and dresses with incredibly intricate designs.
Some looks were decidedly sexier than what Lucy would have worn; but it was all very wearable for the typical woman - a Kors quality that even his celebrity fans lauded.
"That's what I love about it. Anybody can wear it. He has a little something for everybody. I think that he is one of the most versatile designers that we have," said Pinkett Smith.
Chastain lauded his "casual elegance."
"I like that he designs clothes for real women and that it's easy to move from day wear to evening wear," she said.
-By Nekesa Mumbi Moody and Nicole Evatt
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MILEY BRINGS THE FUNK ... AS A DESIGNER
Miley Cyrus is Fashion Week's latest celebrity designer.
Cyrus debuted her funky jewelry, made of children's alphabet beads, little toys and lots of other colorful stuff, at designer Jeremy Scott's show Wednesday in a downtown Manhattan gallery space. The atmosphere was suitably frenetic - even more so than usual at the bad-boy designer's shows. Beforehand, photographers swarmed Cyrus, dressed in a bright multicolored ensemble of trousers and bra top, along with some of her handmade jewelry.
And after the runway show, in which many outfits included Cyrus' creations - including wildly colorful beaded headgear - Scott came out for a bow, scooped the pop singer up from her front-row seat, and brought her along for a victory lap.
Backstage, Scott explained how the pop singer had come to design for him.
"We live really close to each other in LA, and she had a little party and I came over," Scott said. "And she started showing me these things she was making, and I said 'Wow, this kind of looks like my collection' -- it's colorful and stream-of-consciousness and everything just kind of goes and somehow works. I was like, 'Oh my god this looks so cool, would you think about doing something?'"
Whoopi Goldberg, attending the show along with her granddaughter, said she enjoyed herself. "So much fun," she said. "I could see my granddaughter in everything." Including the Shrek sweater?
"I want the Shrek sweater," she said. "I'm too old, but I want it."
- Jocelyn Noveck
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AND THE BRIDE WORE ALMOST NOTHING
Drag queens and a transgender bride romped down Betsey Johnson's runway Wednesday with same-sex couples, a few "Real Housewives" and the 72-year-old designer's TV dance partner in a fashion show that screamed JUST MARRIED!
And, of course, Johnson did her traditional cartwheel and splits at the end, this time with one of her two adorable granddaughters.
Johnson's New York Fashion Week shows are feel good from start to finish, always flirty and a bit raunchy.
This time, she sent one of her brides down the runway in a short, see-through plastic outfit that revealed all up top. Her final bride threw a bouquet into the audience with a flourish, also half-clothed at the chest, but he was a guy.
Tony Dovolani, Johnson's toothy "Dancing with the Stars" partner, rollicked with the designer and her family before she was carried off by one of her models.
Backstage, Johnson called the show a celebration of freedom in marriage. It's "trendy and transgendy," she bubbled. "Pre nup is a part of the whole world of straight brides, gay brides, transgender marriages, everybody getting married. Finally, freedom."
Some of her brides were rockers, starlets, harlots and hip-hop lovers in multicolored ruffles and foil-like tiers of silver and teal. A few, including Camille Grammer -- a former "Real Housewives of Beverly Hills" -- had strategically placed puffballs, pink in her case.
Age hasn't slowed down Johnson one bit. The new season of "Dancing with the Stars" begins Monday, Johnson and Dovolani included. She's nervous.
"He is unbelievably great," Johnson said. "Now I will really go in panic mode. I know the routine. I'm really good but I could forget in a second. Seventy-two-years-old. Grandma. It could just slip my mind, but I can't wait."
- By Leanne Italie and Nicole Evatt
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DAVID BECKHAM'S NEW GAME
Getting a family of six out the door on time can be quite a challenge -- even when you're a Beckham.
"With me and the boys, five minutes. With Harper, it's a lot more of a process and obviously with Victoria," said the former soccer star Tuesday at an event for his fashion collaboration with British brand Belstaff. "You see her (Harper) every morning getting her clothes out for school or, you know, changing her mind like 20 times."
The famous family has made a name in fashion with Victoria Beckham's high-end collection, which showed Sunday at New York Fashion Week, and sons Romeo, 12, and Brooklyn, 15, gracing magazine covers and Burberry ads. (The couple also has a 9-year-old son, Cruz.)
But it turns out that 3-year-old Harper is the one calling the shots when it comes to Beckham's personal style.
"She will come into my dressing room and she'll be like, `Daddy, wear those shoes with those jeans.' You know she's got her own kind of mind and her own character already. So it's great," he said.
Beckham said he lent much more than his name to the six-piece capsule collection that includes leather motorcycle jackets ($1,950), a pair of distressed jeans ($395) and a classic, white T-shirt ($95).
"I have always been involved 110 percent," Beckham said. "People know that it's what I would wear and that's why people have loved the collection the way they have."
-Nicole Evatt
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AND SHE'S ONLY 13
Waving to her guests like a pro after her runway show Tuesday, Isabella Rose Taylor at age 13 achieved something most designers never will: She made it to New York Fashion Week.
Oh, and there also was her launch last month of the Isabella Rose Taylor line for juniors exclusively at Nordstrom.com.
The Austin, Texas, girl in bright red high-tops has soaked in fashion since she was 8, got serious about it at 9 after taking a sewing class and uses her own paintings as inspiration for some of her prints and designs.
She put graphic clouds with long fringe swinging freely or cute little raindrops on some of the clothes. Taylor called those references and a floral print in loungepants and a T-shirt a "little bit of irony, just because fashion can be taken just a little too seriously sometimes."
"I've always loved creating, ever since I was little," Taylor said of the dream, achieved in the case of New York Fashion Week with the help of sponsor Dell. "I've been painting as long as I can remember and doing fashion since I was 8," she added. "I just love being able to share it."
-Leanne Italie
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NICKI MINAJ UPS HER STYLE GAME
Nicki Minaj, who has recently dropped her colorful and oddball style for a more natural and sophisticated look, says it's because she's more comfortable in her skin.
"I kind of feel now that I look more like my regular old self, like what I look like when I'm at home," she said in an interview Tuesday. "I think there's just a little bit more confidence and so I'm like, 'It is what it is. I am who I am. I look like what I look like.' I don't really have to change much of it anymore."
Minaj's new look includes her natural black hair color versus the wild and bright wigs she's worn that helped establish her name in pop culture. At the Fashion Rocks concert Tuesday in Brooklyn, New York, where the rapper performed, she wore a blazer and skirt that came off like a little black dress.
"I just thought it was really, really sexy, but without being tight," she said. "I thought it was different for me."
-Mesfin Fekadu