Saturday, September 6, 2008

Arrivederci, The Great Mila Schön!


I take time to reflect upon the demise of a great icon of Fashion who recently had gone to join the greater Maker, Creator and Designer. Fashion Designer At the age of 91, Mila Schön has finally left us! Farewell, Mila. Farewell. May your designs be as loved at the other side, as they were, here. Always.

On Mila Schön Wikipedia has this to say:

Mila Schön (1916 or 1917 – September 5, 2008) was a Habsburg Empire-born fashion designer, known for her simple, modern clothes structured along classical lines. She was the most famous designer who declared herself Yugoslavian.

Mila Schön was born as Maria Carmen Nutrizio, in Traù (now called Dalmatia), a part of the Habsburg Empire. Her birthplace later came to be known as Yugoslavia. Today, we now about it in her new name Croatia. Maria Carmen was offspring to very wealthy Italian aristocratic parents who relocated to the Italian peninsula when Schön was a child.

Schön initially gained her love of clothes from Balenciaga, of whom she was a customer for many years. She established her own fashion house in 1959. By 1965 her outfits were attracting a great deal of media attention, and she gained recognition for her stark and severely tailored clothes. The house of Mila Schön is now owned by the fashion group Mariella Burani, although Schön still personally supervised the designs of the house she founded.
Also, I ran across this article:
MILAN, Sep 24, 2008 /FW/ --- Mila Schön was a client of Dior and Balenciaga before she launched her own label in 1958. Over 4 decades later, the Milan Schon label continue to be a mainstay in the fashion world.

She debuted in Milan in 1965 with her haute couture collection, followed by invitations to show in Dallas and Houston by Neiman Marcus.

After that, the she gone from strength to strength, first with the expansion of her fashion house and the development of the "double face" fabric which her company introduced.

During the 1970s and 1980s, the Mila Schön label expanded to men's and women's ready-to-wear, and accessories.

Prestige and modern elegance are the hallmark of the Mila Schön label.

Reference: Fashion Windows
It's a sad day for the fashion industry to lose one not-so-young, but always bursting with fashion ideas! Mila will be remembered for her stylish, classic, prestigious designs.

Well heeled society women, in Italy and abroad, wore the Mila Schön creations according to LA Times and that included Jackie Kennedy and Marella Agnelli, the widow of Fiat auto patriarch Giovanni Agnelli. Mila Schön's smart suits and dresses, with careful attention to color and line, were popular choices for cocktail gatherings and garden parties.

The Mila Schön line includes a distinctive series of men's neckties with a solid color border around the whole necktie and a small stylized "M" near the bottom of the front.

Arrivederci, Signora Mila Schön! You will always be remembered.

Cheap Fashion

when politicians take fashion into their hands and make a mockery of it, that considerably cheapens fashion.

not politics nor any other slimy thing should be allowed to touch fashion.

we have to take up the cudgels then, save fashion, if we have to give our lives for the wonderful industry we live in. to be a plaything for these creatures with dirty hands will be to soil the beautiful memory and magnificent legacy our elders left behind for us to enrich and success to flourish.

theshoplecher