Category: A

Adrover, Miguel

Adrover Miguel (1965). Spanish designer, living and working in New York since ’91, born in Calonge, on the island of Majorca, in a family of farmers.

Adrover Miguel (1965). Spanish designer, living and working in New York since 1991, born in the village of Calonge, on the island of Majorca, in a family of farmers. When only 12 he quit school to work on his parents’ farm. Before arriving in the U.S. he spent time in London where was influenced by punk rock and the new romanticism.

Adrover first line

Although a self-taught man, his first line of clothes, Dugg, launched.in 1995, drew the attention of New York’s fashion world due to its innovative character and use of color. In the same year, in partnership with Douglas.Hobbs, he started Horn, a store in Manhattan’s East Village. In a very short time it became a meeting place for avant-guard artists and designers such as Alexander McQueen, Bernadette Corporation and Bless.

The “urban” style invented by.Adrover addresses itself to the typical New Yorker embodying his independent and playful attitude. Still famous is his deconstruction of the Burberry jacket.

In Spring 1999 Miguel offered his vision of the urban woman in the show Midtown. He earned compliments from Anna Wintour, the director of Vogue America, and Carly Horn, a writer for The New York Times. In 2000 three collections were enough to.make him the winner of the CFDA Perry Ellis and Vogue Fashion awards as.the best avant-guard designer.

It might also interest you: 

Gucci

Adrian

Adrian A. Greenburg (1903-1959). American designer. He was undoubtedly the greatest costume designer of the American cinema’s golden age.

Adrian Adolph Greenburg (1903-1959). American designer. Born in Connecticut, Adrian Greenburgh was undoubtedly the greatest costume designer of the American cinema’s golden age. He studied art at Parson’s School of Design and in Paris before designing costumes for the theater in New York in the 1920s. His work was discovered by Natasha Rambova, wife of Rudolph Valentino, which led to his first major Hollywood assignment designing costumes for Valentino’s film Cobra (1925).

In 1929 – hired by Metro Goldwyn Mayer – he simply and definitively became Adrian.

Unsurpassed in the graphic game of black and white, he is undoubtedly the greatest costume designer of the golden age of American cinema. The designer did not hesitate to upset the female anatomy for her ideal of absolute sterilization. So, having to ease Joan Crawford’s wrestling shoulders, he decided to exaggerate them even more. He created the padded look that has signified powerful women throughout the past century.

Other costumes he designed for Crawford include the white organdie dress she wore in Letty Lynton (1932), and the graphic black dress with white neck and cuffs she wore in Grand Hotel (1932).

40s fashion and the revival

From this little stroke of genius, 1940 fashion was born and also the revival – exasperated to the point of grotesque – of the 70s-80s. Crawford was one of the stars who inspired him the most. The white organza dress by Letty Lindon (’32) is famous, a meringue of ruffles but without the slightest affectation. And the black one with white collar and cuffs (Grand Hotel, ’32): the secretary style at the epitome of chic. The costumes created for Greta Garbo are quite different.

If the exoticism of Mata Hari (1932) borders on kitsch, those of the.historical films were impeccable. In Anna Karenina (’35) he cleverly sublimated his penchant for military uniforms and in Camille (’36) he managed to avoid any kind of romanticism. Unforgettable those of Regina Cristina (’33), perhaps her highest proof. The chevalier style was perfectly congenial to the great star: wisely ambiguous with touches of modern femininity in the blouses of unparalleled elegance. Jean Harlow’s evening dresses and nightdresses (Lunch at eight, ’33) have an easier and more popular taste: in white satin, on the bias, very sensual and precursors of the lingerie style.

 Adrian last important work

The 4,000 costumes for Marie Antoinette (’36) were Adrian’s last important work. Super rich, with ultra-sumptuous fabrics and an exhausted study of dazzling whites. However, the ensemble of monumental wigs and bloated crinolines was too heavy and excessively Rococo. The advent of technicolor, with its annoyingly pastel or deliberately vulgar colors, makes his aesthetic vision obsolete. In 1939 he left the Metro and opened a high fashion salon. He sporadically returns to design for the theater. He died of a heart attack at the age of 57. His boldly modern style, aggressive proportions, dramatic and futuristic use of black and white are still a great inspiration for fashion creators today.

It might also interest you: 

Adrienne Steckling

Adrienne Steckling (1934). Her shortened name was ADRI Born in Missouri in 1934, she attended the School of Fine Arts at Washington University.

Adrienne Steckling (1934). Her shortened name was ADRI Born in Missouri in 1934, she attended the School of Fine Arts at Washington University and in the summer of 1955 became guest editor of Mademoiselle’s college issue. Later she studied fashion at Parson’s School of Design, where she studied under Claire McCardell, an important influence. She worked at B.H. Wragge for several years before beginning a collaboration with the design house Anne Fogarty.

It was in 1972, however, that she began to produce her own line of clothes and accessories, focusing on functionality. The basic idea was to be able to combine the various garments with each other, according to very rigid schemes.

The basis of Adrienne Steckling’s designs was a wardrobe of functional separates often in bold graphic patterns and neutral solids.

Adrienne Steckling
The designer, Adrienne Steckling.

The designer passed away on November 5, 2006.

It might also interest you:

Acconci, Vito

Adidas

Adidas is a brand of the Adidas Group, German multinational company that produces sports articles also with the brands Reebok and TaylorMade Golf.

Adidas is a brand of the Adidas Group, German multinational company that produces sports articles with the brands Adidas, Reebok and TaylorMade Golf.

The origins of Adidas

The history of the company, recorded in 1949, begins in 1924 when the brothers Rudolf and Adolf Dassler founded the Gebrüder Dassler Schunfabrik company. Adidas designs and manufactures sneakers suitable for athlete’s foot. The gold medal won by Jesse Owens in the Berlin Olympics in 1936 was the first great achievement and the beginning of a great story.

Due to some differences in the meantime, in 1947 the brothers separate. Rudolf starts his Puma company, which will become – like its rival sister – a prominent name in the footwear scene.

On August 18, 1949 Adolf gave birth to the Adidas brand, whose name is composed of his nickname – Adi – and the first three letters of his surname. The three characteristic stripes of the logo immediately accompany the brand, while the clover was purchased in 1951 by the Finnish company Karhu Sport.

The history

Adolf Dassler’s shoes were worn by the German national football team and became famous through the victory of the national team at the 1954 football world championships. As early as ’56, many athletes competed in Adidas at the Melbourne Olympics. Since 1967, through cooperation with the French brand Le Coq Sportif, Adidas has entered the sportswear market.

In half a century of life, this brand stood out as the most prominent during some of the most prestigious worldwide sports events. In 1971, as just one of many possible examples, Muhammad Alì and Joe Frazier both wore Adidas shoes during the boxing match called the “fight of the century.” In 1972 the company was the official supplier of the Olympics Games.

Adidas
Muhammed Ali and Joe Frazier during the match in 1971.

Adi Dassler was the first foreigner accepted into the Hall of Fame of the sporting goods industry of the US.

Upon his death, in 1978, the management of the company passed into the hands of his wife Käthe, his son Horst and the latter’s daughters. In 1986 the American rap group Run DMC released the song My Adidas in which video they appear wearing a pair of Adidas Superstars. From this moment the brand becomes a recurring reference of youth cultures and an established brand in hip hop culture. In 1988, the company introduced one of the most recent innovations in the production of sports shoes: the Torsion system.

From 1990 to 2000

In 1990, following a period of crisis in the company, the Dassler family sold 80% of its shares to Bernard Tapie. Tapie was a  controversial businessman. Four years later, in 1994, after the bankruptcy of the industrialist, the.French entrepreneur Robert Louis-Dreyfus acquired Tapie’s shares. In 1995 Adidas became a joint stock company. A year later, at the XXVI Olympics in Atlanta, the three-striped club equips 6,000 athletes from 33 countries and 220 medals, 70 of which gold, are won by Adidas sponsored athletes. The company has an advertising return that leads to a 50% increase in clothing sales. In the same year, the American nu metal band Korn composes a.d.i.d.a.s., a tribute to his favorite brand that consolidates the brand’s position in the imagination and in the youth market.

In 1997 Adidas, with a workforce of 10,000 employees, took over the French company Salomon and changed its name to Adidas-Salomon AG. With this acquisition, the brand also becomes the owner of TaylorMade Golf and Maxfli. Thus he gives birth to Adidas Golf, which allows the multinational.to compete with the golf line of its direct competitor Nike.

In September 2000, the first Adidas Originals Store was inaugurated in Berlin. With about 3200 square feet the store at the Berlin-Mitte is intended only for original collections of shoes and accessories and for special editions such as the Crystal Superstar, of which only 100 pairs were produced.

Adidas
One of Adidas Originals’ model, the Superstar.

From 2000 to 2005

In 2001 the company opened its horizons to fashion by starting a series of collaborations with fashion designers. The first collaboration is with the Japanese designer Yohji Yamamoto who presented his first collection, called Y-3, in 2002. Since 2003 Y-3, a luxury sportswear-à-porter line, is sold in the best fashion stores of the important international capitals. It even comes to show on the calendar during New York Fashion Week. The limited edition capsule collection for a selected network of stores, created for Adidas by American designer Jeremy Scott, is from the same year.

In 2004 the collaboration with Stella McCartney was born for a women’s line that brings fashion content to sportswear; the line was launched on the market in 2005 under the name Adidas by Stella McCartney and since 2008 it has been presented during London Fashion Week.

In 2005 Adidas Group sells Salomon to the Finnish company Amer Sports Corporation; in its place, on January 31, 2006, Adidas Group acquired Reebok International Ltd.

Herbert Hainer remains CEO of the new Adidas Group while Paul Fireman, from his position as CEO at Reebok International Ltd., becomes a consultant to Hainer.

Adidas from 2005 to 2010

In 2007 the brand announces the production of lacrosse equipment. In July 2008, he grants the 600 best US college players with the Adidas National Lacrosse Classic. Also in 2008, the Ashworth clothing company becomes fully owned by TaylorMade – Adidas Golf; the same year Adidas enters the English cricket market and sponsors some batters becoming the official sponsor of some Indian Premier League teams. In 2009 he launched SLVR a line of sporty but elegant clothing, aimed at an adult market that combines typically urban elements with the world of fashion.

A year later Adidas NEO was born, a line designed for teenagers. The collection consists of footwear and clothing with special pieces made with the advice of football star David Beckham.

The brand’s best-known line is Adidas Original which, designed on the brand’s heritage, reissues classics of sportswear and sneakers from the past.

Adidas is today one of the two largest manufacturers of sports clothing and accessories, covering all sports disciplines and sponsoring internationally renowned teams and athletes. Its proximity to the world of youth cultures is evidenced by the recent birth of Adidas SB (Skateboarding), a line designed exclusively for skate that boasts a team of international athletes.

In early 2008, the company hired Canadian company Sid Lee as an advertising agency for Adidas Originals. In 2010 Sid Lee became the official advertising agency for the entire brand.

From 2010 to today

On March 16, 2011 Adidas launches its largest global advertising campaign which.for the first time combines the three largest product categories: Adidas Sport Style, Adidas Sport Performance and Adidas Original.

The ADV is directed by Roman Gavras and combines the diversity of the.brand in 30 and 60 seconds of commercials for TV and cinema and in a more extended version of 2 minutes for online. Among the protagonists of All Adidas are great music, film and sports stars.such as Katy Perry, David Beckham, B.o.B, Lionel Messi, Derrick Rose, The Like, Louis Smith, Cyclops, the All Blacks and the Adidas SB team.

Adidas
Lionel Messi x Adidas in an advertising ad from 2018.

Over the years, through its advertising, its testimonials, its collaborations and.the quality of products in specific sports activities, the label has become one of the leading brands on the world market. It has 42,541 employees against the 34,400 of its main competitor Nike Inc.

Adidas recently

In 2018, the sportswear giant set a record on the stock exchange, with increases of more than 7%, ending the first quarter with sales of almost 6 billion euros, in spite of analysts’ estimates.

The European Court, in June 2019, intervened on the registration of the trademark, declaring its distinctiveness null and void. In 2014, the EU Court had accepted the registration of Adidas with the three parallel strips equally spaced and of equal width applied on the product in any direction. During the following two years, however, he had canceled the registration,.accepting the application for invalidity introduced by the Belgian company Shoe Branding Europe, which considered the brand to be devoid of any distinctive character.

In October 2020 the brand announced the collaboration with Wolford to create ‘Studio Motion’ and ‘Sheer Motion’. Two capsule collections characterized by.performing and supportive garments, made with opaque and transparent knitting techniques to enhance the silhouette.

Adidas is one of the many companies that is committed to implementing the production of eco-sustainable products. Among these companies we can find Aveda, Zara, Stella McCartney, H&M and Asos.

Additionally, the Adidas group has five eco-sustainable collections: Primeblue, Primegreen, Parley, Run for the Oceans and a collection that partly contains recycled materials.

Adidas
Adidas x Parley.

Run for the Oceans, inaugurated in 2017, is an event to raise funds for cleaning and safeguarding the oceans.

Furthermore on October 1, 2020, the company issued eight-year Green bonds that will be listed on the Luxembourg Stock Exchange. This capital will go to finance environmental and social initiatives within the company. The announcement came a few days after the issuance of Chanel and Burberry‘s Green Bonds.

 It might also interest you: 

Adolphe Lafont

Adolphe Lafont. Brand of work clothing launched in France by 1896 by a tailor. Today the brand dresses many workers throughout France

Adolphe Lafont. Brand of work clothing launched in France by 1896 by a tailor of that name in Lyon following his invention of “la poche mètre”. It is a pocket sewn over the pants waist for his father-in-law, a carpenter, who didn’t know where to put his tape measure. Overalls soon followed from this. In 1975 Vogue America dedicated a cover to Lafont’s colored overalls and they soon became the fashion.

Adolphe Lafont
Adolphe Lafont’s patch.

The origins

The history of the brand can be traced back to 1844, when Adolphe Lafont invented the first professional garment.

At the time, the founder had created functional work trousers for his father-in-law, the bigot. It then became the suit (bigot to which a bib was added), whose initial model, the 406 coat, is still in the company’s catalog today, more than 100 years after its creation.

Since then, the brand has continued to observe users in their daily life and work environment. This is with the aim of offering ranges of professional suits suitable for each profession. Regardless of their business sector.

Adolphe Lafont today

Adolphe Lafont today dresses many workers throughout France. This is thanks to a partnership with COET-MOF. Moreover, thanks to the victory in 2019 of the competition “One of the best craftsmen of France“, 230 workers in 17 professional categories have been equipped by the maison.

Thus, on the occasion of the award ceremony of the 26th competition on May 13, 2019, the best artisans in the sector were awarded with awards and medals in Lafont clothing. Strictly with the tricolor collar.

It might also interest you: 

Chasuble

Acrylic

Acrylic. Synthetic fiber created in 1947 in the U.S. It is light, color-fast, acid-resistant and can be used in any climate condition.

Acrylic. It. is a synthetic fiber created in 1947 in the U.S. usually it is light, color-fast, acid-resistant, and can be used in any climate condition. Also it doesn’t become matted or creased,.dries quickly and doesn’t need ironing. Thanks to its property of retaining heat, it is mostly used in winter clothing. Furthermore, its label name changes according to the manufacturer.(Courtelle,.Orlon, Dupont, Dralon, Bayer).

Acrylic
Acrylic.

It might also interest you:

Le Cachemirien

Active Wear

Active Wear. Brand of unisex clothing, from the combined advanced technologies of the Samsonite and Lineapiù of Capalle firms.

Active Wear. Brand of unisex clothing, from the combined advanced technologies of the Samsonite and Lineapiù of Capalle firms. Lineapiù, founded in 1975, is in the forefront of spun yarn testing with 15 worldwide production centers.

Active Wear made its début in January 1999. Some of the brand’s characteristics are extremely innovative, inspired by certain features of Samsonite suitcases and their industrial design. These include an anti-hail treatment on knitwear; a pocket that in every garment can be turned into a case-container for the garment itself; a neck that can be inflated to become a sort of small pillow to allow rest during trips by train or car; an alarm clock that can be carried in the facings of a jacket.

It might also interest you: 

NIKE

Ackermann, Heider

Ackermann Haider is a colombian designer, naturalized French. He has worked with brands like Neels and Willhelm and he also founded his label.

Ackermann Heider (1970). A Colombian designer born in Santa Fé, Bogotà, and raised in Ethiopia, Chad, France and Algeria. He then moved to the Netherlands where he attended the Academie Royale of Antwerp in Belgium.

While a student he worked with John Galliano but after three years he left the academy because in the meanwhile he had become an assistant for the men’s and women’s Collections of Wim Neels, a designer and his teacher.

He later specialized in drapery.  After he worked with Wim Neels he also worked with Bernhard Willhelm and Patrick Van Ommeslaeghe.

In 2001 Ackermann Haider created his own label and debuted at the Paris Fashion Week.

As a designer he worked for Mayerline, a Belgian prêt-à-porter company.

Since 2002 he has designed his own women’s Collection, inspired by Africa’s ethnic influences and by a European metropolitan style.

Ackermann
Paris Fashion Show by Ackermann Haider.

Ackermann was also the last designer to work with Ruffo in the creation of the Ruffo Research Collection for Spring-Summer 2003.

During his career Ackermann received many collaborations proposals from internationally recognized brands. Among these we can find Dior, for the succession of Galliano, Margiela for the succession of Martin Margiela and Chanel for the succession of Karl Lagerfeld.

In 2014 Ackermann worked on a Mercedes-Benz campaign in collaboration with Tilda Switon.

Ackermann became Berluti’s creative director, succeeding Alessandro Sartori, in 2016. He was with Berluti for only three seasons, the designer left the LVHM‘s brand in 2018.

It might also interest you: 

Louis Vuitton

Adam

Adam. Men’s fashion magazine launched in France in 1925. A year later it referred to itself as the “magazine of rue de la Paix.”

Adam. Men’s fashion magazine launched in France in 1925. A year later it referred to itself as the “magazine of rue de la Paix.” At the time, that street was the symbol for luxury in Paris. For reasons of good taste, it urged caution in the embrace of innovation and oddities. Taken over in 1960 by Condé Nast, it had several ups and downs, changed its name twice (Nouvel Adam and Men Adam) and in 1973 closed for good.

It might also interest you: 

L’Uomo Vogue

Add Down

Add Down. Brand produced by the Milanese firm Comei and designed by Giovanni Chicco. It debuted in 1999 and is now specialized in down jackets.

Add Down. Brand of casual clothing produced by the Milanese firm Comei and designed by Giovanni Chicco (Biella, 1954), known as John G. Grain. It made its début in 1999, showing shoulder-padded clothes for both men and women, with an emphasis on good tailoring and innovation. It has 200 shops in Italy and 300 in France, Germany, Japan, and the U.S. The core of the Spring-Summer Collection is the Add System, focused on the alternate use of nylon, silk and cotton.

What is Add Down

Add Down was born in 1999 with the intention of transforming the vision on the down jacket. From a product aimed at responding only to practical needs to an aesthetically relevant element of the wardrobe.

Furthermore this intention led to the search for fabrics and types of down processing capable of allowing the creation of warm and comfortable garments, but at the same time super-light and with a refined design.

The men’s, women’s and children’s collections are designed to embrace different styles, from minimal moods to more conceptual forms, in the desire to develop a transversal concept of elegance.

Add Down presents itself through 4 concepts designed to define its DNA. Lightness, a tangible feature of the product that at the same time evokes an attitude towards life. Design, in which form and functionality converge, conceived from a fashion perspective but not necessarily trendy. Value, understood as a quality that can last over time, and Embracing, a metaphor to indicate comfort, a sense of belonging, an affirmation of equality. Today the brand is present in about six hundred boutiques and department stores around the world.

It might also interest you: 

Moncler