By Rhianna Jones

Tall, stunning, happy, confident, cool: these are the words one would use to describe Behati Prinsloo at first glance. This is not, however, the image most of us would project working off of four hours of sleep the day after your best-friend’s wedding in a château in France, but so goes the life of a model. As a newly inducted Victoria’s Secret Angel, Behati is at the Victoria’s Secret Michigan Avenue store this June day, debuting the new VS Pink MLB line. She is joined by fellow Angel Candice Swanepoel, Sox player Gordon Beckham and Cubs player Randy Wells.

A host of prepubescent boys, overgrown boys, Pink-obsessed girls and Chicago sports fans impatiently wait to get a two-second snapshot with the gang. Behati wears a glittery Sox tank, whereas Candice sports a Cubs shirt and pink bat. By now, the Sox have officially shut down the Cubs 10-5 in the first game of the Crosstown Classic. And as a daylong fair-weather fan, Prinsloo is beaming with pride for her team. To most of these fans here, Behati is just another staggeringly gorgeous Victoria’s Secret model. To me, she is so much more inspiring. Read the rest of this entry »

At first glance, Kathryn Kerrigan seems like just another tempting shoe store in Bucktown. However, once you step past the all-glass storefront you’ll notice that the boutique is a bit grander than all the others. Literally, bigger is better at Kathryn Kerrigan; the store only carries shoe sizes 9-13.

Have you ever noticed how, at a sample sale, all the frenzied women are battling for the size sevens, eights and nines while it’s all calm and collected in the size-twelve aisle? Although the majority of women do wear sizes seven-to-nine, as the new store’s owner Stephanie Sack puts it: “women of size are an underappreciated and overlooked market.” And Sack is capitalizing on this notion. Read the rest of this entry »

Walking into the Chicago Fashion Incubator feels like walking onto the set of Project Runway, but there’s a crucial difference: the incubator’s six designers are here to stay. They’re at the incubator for a year—all of them. These designers aren’t competing, and their runway shows are a time for celebration, not cruel dismissals. At a meet-and-greet this week, these designers are all smiles and great outfits, and while their naivete about the fashion industry is quickly disappearing, they still have the enthusiasm and optimism of young, creative entrepreneurs. Read the rest of this entry »

As one of six designers in residence at the Chicago Fashion Incubator, Jonnie Rettele spends her days in a studio with fabric, mannequins and five other designers, musing over her latest creations. But while the scene may conjure up images of a little well-known reality-television show with a former Victoria’s Secret model as its host, Rettele swears life in the CFI is different. “For some reason everyone wants to compare us to ‘Project Runway’,” she says. “[Here], there’s no cattiness. It’s very lonely when not a lot of people are working. When everyone’s here, it’s very exciting—I just finished a wedding dress for a friend and it felt like everyone was on the project with me.”

It’s not couture gowns that Rettele is used to focusing on, after all. Her clothing line, Nonnie Threads, is actually a menswear collection. While she began designing for women when she quit her job as an office and project manager for a web development firm a year and a half ago, she quickly discovered a market for clothing for the opposite sex. “I had men coming to me saying, ‘Will you just make me a shirt?’” she says. Read the rest of this entry »

As the saying says, “it’s all in the name.” And for this contemporary men’s and women’s boutique, the name exudes both the story and the sophistication behind the store, before even stepping in the door. Sir & Madame is a boutique and clothing line founded by husband-and-wife team Brian and Autumn Merritt. The Merritts, however, are no strangers to the Chicago fashion circuit. In 2006, they opened Solemates, which dished up street-smart footwear for those whose urban chic hailed from top to bottom.

They certainly mastered the art of the cool shoe, but closed the store down to embark on a new adventure, moving from their Lincoln Park location over to the even hipper Ukrainian Village. Autumn appreciates being able to “feed off the energy of other local businesses.” Regardless of the cachet of the neighborhood, Sir & Madame holds its own, oozing a sense of nostalgia mélanged with a modern sensibility, or as they call it “classic with a twist.” Read the rest of this entry »

Earlier today, fashionistas fumed when blogger Audarshia Townshend tweeted, “OK, so it’s been brought to my attention that Chicago Fashion Week is NO LONGER. WTF?!” A reasonable premise given the recent demise of Gen Art, who traditionally produced the centerpiece show, and the exit of Melissa Gamble, the city’s fashion honcho, and the thundering silence about this year’s plans emanating from City Hall, which usually gets announced about now. (Last year, Tommy Hilfiger flew in to help announce the events on July 14.)

We asked the city to confirm or deny the report and this is the response from Kiran Advani, who does PR for the Chicago Office of Tourism:

“The Chicago Office of Tourism is denying the reports on Twitter and is confirming that there will be fashion shows taking place at Millennium Park in October. A press conference regarding more information about the City’s fashion initiatives and programming is tentatively planned for sometime in August.”

By Rhianna Jones

Ann Taylor is redefining itself. In order to get the word out that this long-esteablished staple for the well-dressed working woman is undergoing a discernible rejuvenation, Laura Pellegrini, the label’s VP Senior Designer, recently visited Chicago to preview its latest collection for select members of media and the city’s fashion circuit.

The cool atmosphere in a private room in Sunda restaurant perfectly complemented the modern sensibility emanating from the clothes on display. In addition to the various media, designers and fashion aficionados, several company representatives—dressed head to toe in Ann—made the rounds, perpetuating the sophistication and wearability of the brand. Read the rest of this entry »

Paul Hornschemeier, the graphic novelist behind “Mother, Come Home,” “The Three Paradoxes,” and “Let Us Be Perfectly Clear,” has launched a line of t-shirts. Every week since late April, he’s posted a new design for sale at The Forlorn Funnies Shirt Shop, your online source for tees, hoodies and infant-sized onesies emblazoned with Hornschemeier’s characteristically quirky (his word: “strange”) graphics.

Hornschemeier has been designing graphic t-shirts since he was a teenager, but a stint contributing weekly cartoons to The Wall Street Journal inspired him to get the shirt shop going. “I realized that while I enjoyed working with the editor there and liked having something popping into the world each week, I’d rather have that something be entirely of my own creation,” he says. Read the rest of this entry »

It may be summer in the Windy City, but in the world of design, it’s a different season entirely. Just ask Donaldo Smith. “Spring 2011!” he declares triumphantly. “[That's when I'll make] my first introduction to the public.”

As the only male designer in residence at the Macy’s on State Street Chicago Fashion Incubator, Smith has been hard at work on his conceptual menswear brand, Killian Gui.

“Come spring, I have high expectations,” he says. “That’s when it will be in stores.”

For Smith, it’s been a long time coming. “I’ve been fascinated with clothing ever since I knew I was going to be able to wear a new piece… to the first day of school,” he says.

Signing up for “any subscription to menswear fashion that [he] could,” the young fashion naif set out on a self-taught path of design. “I was a sales assistant to the Midwest buyer [of] an urban clothing company,” he says. “I thought it was the best thing ever, because that’s how I dressed at the time.” Read the rest of this entry »

“I am a happening!” Michael Hodesh proclaims as he surveys the antique-laden tables in front of his circa-1964 Airstream trailer. On the inside of the door, a sign reads “Dogs and Cats Prohibited” even though he has a regal pup parading around his goods; the outside sign reads “Bar’s Open Late,” but he doesn’t drink. Michael is definitely a character, and seemingly a man of quirky contradictions.

At present he is at the west end of the Randolph Street Market Festival, an antique fair and indie fashion market that graces Chicago one weekend per month in the summer. Hodesh has made the haul from his base in Cincinnati to this fair for years. While driving a truck with an attached trailer full of stuff roughly 300 miles might seem burdensome to some, for Hodesh it’s just part of the job. After being in the “history-selling business” for more than thirty-five years, his passport is just as weathered as the treasures on his table. Aluminum pigs from Mexico, a wooden stool from China, wooden pipe molds from Philadelphia, fashion posters from Paris and some classic Americana advertisements. He travels all over the world for these gems, and he plays no favorites. He is merely a temporary keeper, he says, selling the “story passing” rather than a mere tangible object. He collects these artifacts because he hopes it will be meaningful to the new “foster parent of history” or anyone else who listens to his exuberant tales. Read the rest of this entry »