It’s time to put to bed the rumors that King Charles III has died, speculation that has certainly been fueled by his recent cancer diagnosis and the muddled communications about Catherine, Princess of Wales, leading up to the revelation of her own cancer diagnosis. According to Buckingham Palace, the king is alive — and apparently healthy enough to host a fashion show.
On Saturday, an exhibition of clothes made as part of a collaboration between Charles and designers Vin Cara and Omi Ong, who are of Vin + Omi, opens at the Sandringham Estate, the royal family’s private property in England’s Norfolk County.
The designers created the clothes in the ‘Royal Garden Waste to Fashion’s Future’ exhibition, using scraps from gardens at Sandringham and Highgrove House, Charles’ private residence in Gloucester. Mr Cara and Mr Ong have been working with Charles, an avid gardener and long-time champion of healthy urbanism and sustainability, since 2018, when he suggested at a gala that they use discarded nettle from Highgrove as material for a collection they were showing . in London.
Mr. Kara and Mr. Ong, whose followers are said to include Kate Moss, Beyoncé and Michelle Obama have since forged relationships with gardeners on the royal estates. But Charles’ personal involvement in the partnership continued unabated.
“The king is constantly proposing new projects and ideas,” Mr. Kara said in an interview. He remembered how Charles, after taking a walk around the grounds Castle Mey, a former royal residence in Scotland, sent them a supply of cotton found on the property, which the designers used to make dress. “We are now free to experiment with any waste from his estates,” said Mr. Cara.
This freedom has given birth to a number of innovations which are on display at the ‘Royal Garden Waste’ exhibition, until 11 October. Among them is a delicate printed willow cellulose dress created with oak emulsions and other natural materials from Highgrove. A halter evening dress, woven from willow and hydrangea cellulose, also sourced from this estate. and a floor-length case made of buttercup, a plant that proliferates along the lake at Sandringham.
Isaac Mizrahi can’t give up clothes
Isaac Mizrahi has a request: Don’t lock him up. Since closing his first eponymous fashion business in the late 1990s, the designer has pursued pursuits as a QVC marketer, stand-up comic, podcaster, nightclub crooner and occasional actor.
Too much, it seems, was never enough for Mr. Mizrahi, 62, who recently redoubled his focus on fashion, his first and most enduring love. “Most people associate me with clothes,” he said in an interview this week, shortly after unveiling a bold new collection at social media.
The range’s neat gingham jackets and mini skirts. Garden fresh shirts and A-line shifts. flared and cropped pants. and the nautical and polo shirts factor in the kick-ass, no-nonsense aesthetic on which Mr. Mizrahi made his name. It also includes accessories such as earrings and aviator sunglasses, which, along with the clothing, will initially be sold exclusively through the designer Website.
Mr. Mizrahi said the clothes, priced from about $50 to $150, are “more modern than anything I’m doing right now.” Indeed, the items are decidedly more youthful than what he sells on QVC, and their aesthetic happens to blend with a mid-century influence that has recently resurfaced on the runways of pace-setting designers like Marc Jacobs and Celine’s Hedi Slimane.
But Mr Mizrahi, a child of the 60s, insisted his line was “not mired in trends”. For him, the pieces—influenced by the wardrobes of women like Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and Mary Tyler Moore, both of his mother’s generation—have more of a timeless quality.
“These clothes are never going to be anything but classic,” he said.