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Sculpted Fashion

This one-shoulder fitted gown in patterned jacquard fabric from Peter Langner’s 2024 Evening Collection, draped and with a slit in the skirt, captures the designer’s sculpted, architectural sensibility and eye for color and pattern. Courtesy Peter Langner.

Just how talented is German-born, Milan-based designer Peter Langner?

He had no sooner begun his studies at the École de la Chambre Syndicale de la Couture Parisienne in Paris than the school’s director asked the 24 year old to design her daughter’s wedding dress as well as what she would wear for the occasion.

It was a harbinger of things to come, as his bridal brand is a striking presence in 20 countries across Europe, Asia and North America. His uniquely beautiful evening wear caught our eye at Mary Jane Denzer as well. Specifically– the sculpted, architectural way Langner drapes sustainable fabrics, so that lines are always fluid and dynamic. Details are elegant flourishes, nothing is ever overwrought. 

The pink and yellow abstract floral gown above, crystallizes every aspect of the Langner aesthetic, as the jacquard fabric zigs left from one shoulder then zags right to the drapery and slit. Langner honed these skills in the houses of Christian Dior, Emanuel Ungaro, Guy LaRoche and Christian Lacroix.  In 1991, Langner went out on his own, opening an atelier in Rome. In 2015, he relocated his team to Milan, where they currently execute and sell his designs. 

He is quick to note that nothing he has accomplished happens without a team that works with suppliers, seeks new materials and techniques and makes its own embroideries.

“One of my greatest fortunes,” he says at peterlangner.com, “was finding my amazing staff. They believed and saw where I wanted to go. They stood and still stand next to me beyond benefits and compensation. The passion we share is for sure the greatest help I could ever find.”

Peter Langner has an eveningwear trunk show at Mary Jane Denzer – 7 Renaissance Square in White Plains — Feb. 16 through 24. 914-328-0330 

Tags: Peter Langner, Mary Jane Denzer, Chambre Syndicale de la Couture Parisienne, Paris, Germany, Rome, Milan, Christian Dior, Emanuel Ungaro, Guy LaRoche, Christian Lacroix, drapery, embroidery, handkerchief bow, sky palette, minis, ruffles, high-low, jacquard, mikado, 

Happy 80th Birthday, Neil!

If there is one designer who has been associated with Mary Jane Denzer in White Plains more than any other over the last 42 years, it is Neil Bieff. Indeed, so often has MJD featured his delicately textured creations, which both caress a woman’s silhouette and flow around her, that store co-owner Debra O’Shea has affectionately described him as a kind of “in-house designer”.

“There’s something about the timelessness and comfort of his clothes,” added O’Shea, who co-owns the store with Anastasia Cucinella. “We have women who wore his dresses to their children’s bar mitzvahs and bat mitzvahs, who now are coming in and looking at gowns for their children’s weddings.”

Bieff – who turns 80 on Jan. 23 – has kept clients coming back with his sculptural use of fabric and painterly approach to color. He begins with fine, textured fabrics, softly draped or cut on a bias to flatter as they accent a woman’s body – beaded chiffon, pebbly wool crepe with smooth satin, a hand-stitched ruffle here, hand embroidery or a band of sequin colors there.

But what is truly remarkable is the way he uses colors as washes – layered to give the design an opalescent quality; contrasted to heighten tension (much as Vincent van Gogh would juxtapose red and green, what he called “the colors of passion,” or blue and yellow); or gradated so that one color subtly blends into another for an ombré effect.

A native New Yorker based in Ossining, Neil honed his skill with and love of color at Syracuse University, where he studied painting, and abroad in Florence and Paris. (His love of sequins and knowledge of hand embroidery are the results of time spent in India.) He started his fashion career as assistant to couturier Arnold Scaasi, then went on to design suits and coats for Dan Millstein. Neil’s own label was born at his Genesis store on Madison Avenue in Manhattan, where yielding matte jerseys would be a bellwether for the shapely chiffons, velvets and wools of his later creations.

A career highlight was also a personal one – designing a bridal gown and dresses for the wedding of son Gwyn to Ikbal Bozkaya in Istanbul in April 2019. For this, he created a sleeveless V-necked bridal gown that was “a very shapely, very diaphanous mélange of different beads, sequins and alabaster stones on white silk chiffon over white silk charmeuse,” he told WAG magazine.

For the after-party, Neil made the bride a short silver halter dress with a sheer back, antique silver sequins, charcoal silk and trapunto stitching (a kind of quilting technique). “It was very young, very sexy,” he said.

Another Neil design saw Ikbal in a cap-sleeved black print dress, trimmed with black satin, whose V neckline and U-shaped back echoed her bridal dress. 

No appreciation of Neil would be complete without talking about his deep relationship with Mary Jane Denzer – the store and the woman who founded it. He has called MJD “one of the best stores in the country.” 

As for its meticulous founder, Neil recalled his first encounter did not go well as she proclaimed his choice of style and color for one client “a disaster.” But Neil persevered.

“After that, we often collaborated together. Mary Jane did have impeccable taste and an unerring eye. I would like to think we learned from each other, and it always ended up benefiting the client.”

Mary Jane, alas, is no longer with us, having passed in 2015. But her name lives on in the eponymous store, and Neil is set to celebrate the big 80.

So Happy Birthday, Neil – MJD’s “in-house designer” and dear friend.

Tags:  Neil Bieff, Mary Jane Denzer, Debra O’Shea, Anastasia Cucinella, Dan Millstein, Istanbul, Florence, Paris, New York, Madison Avenue, Manhattan, Genesis, Syracuse University

Roland Mouret — from butcher boy to fashionista

When we think of fashion, we don’t think of a butcher’s shop. But maybe we should. The French designer Roland Mouret grew up around his father’s butcher shop in a mountain village in the rural southwest not far from Lourdes, where the Virgin Mary is said to have appeared to the peasant girl Bernadette Soubirous. Today, Bernadette is a saint of the Roman Catholic Church and Lourdes a place where the faithful afflicted come to pray for miracles and bathe in its spring.

Meanwhile, Mouret experienced something of a miracle of his own, leaving the countryside and the expectation of succeeding his father in the shop for a career in fashion in Paris.

But in many ways, his early experience in his father’s shop would be the making of him as a designer, one who remains a favorite of ours as Mary Jane Denzer. Working with meat gave him what his website calls a “fearless” approach to flesh – and cutting and folding. (It’s no surprise that he is known as the “king of curve” and a master of drapery.) His country upbringing also influenced his choice of fabric.

“My clothes are for a city life,” he observes, “yet in the wools and textures of the countryside.”

In other ways, though, the country mouse became a city slicker. He hung out under a streetlamp outside the impossible-to-get-into nightspot Le Palace, wearing a handmade blue “Zazou” suit accessorized by a cigarette, waiting for fate to say, “Come in.” When it did, he worked as a model, stylist and art director. But after 10 years, he needed a change. Mouret found it in London, where he decided to put his knowledge of cutting and talent for drapery to the test as a self-taught fashion designer inspired by Azzedine Alaia and Yohji Yamamoto, for whom he modeled.
“One day, I realized ‘I’m 36 and, if I don’t try by 40, I’m going to be bitter,” he said of his 1997 beginnings.

He expanded and foundered, bouncing back with his Galaxy dress, a timeless signature, and relaunching as RM in 2006. Along the way, he developed a female following – famous and obscure – that was delighted to have a designer unafraid of curves, be they tiny or supersized. Roland Mouret dresses – and now separates and bridal – work with your shape and your foundation garments. They give, as he says, “good bum.”

To these he has added eyewear; shoes; handbags; accessories; a fragrance, Une Amourette; a store and atelier in London’s tony Mayfair section; and a book, appropriately titled “Roland Mouret: Provoke Attract Seduce” (Rizzoli, 2018).

Yet, he remains a country boy, living and working in Suffolk; and, in his own words, an outsider, no matter how many celebrities he dresses. Albeit one who knows how to be invited in from the cold.

From Russia with love – the house of J. Mendel

Classic, sophisticated, feminine: J. Mendel is go-to fashion for our topsy-turvy times – and for us here at Mary Jane Denzer, who have long featured the house’s shimmering, ladylike creations.

“People are trying to save the planet, and they are becoming more aware of their surroundings,” CEO and creative director Gilles Mendel told Vogue. “In clothing [that translates into] an idea of being more conscious of what you wear.”

And what you wear being sustainable not only environmentally but sartorially. Here’s Vogue on what Mendel brings to this concept in his Fall Collection: “Manipulation of materials is the bedrock of Mendel’s practice, and for Fall it was evident in a red mille-feuille pleated dress with an asymmetric ruffle neckline and a confectionery pink princess dress; keepers, both….The best of (the line’s younger looks) were ruffled dresses of lovely lace in a sort of super-lady Batsheva mode and beaded knit openwork tunics; think of them as the dressed-up-lady equivalent of the holey T-shirt.”

Vogue was even more enthusiastic about Mendel’s Spring Ready-to-Wear Collection, inspired by the transparency and intricacy of Venetian glass. (Giles’ father, Jacques, whom he succeeded at the company’s helm in 1981, was a Venetian glass collector.) White lace and print dresses, a white mesh-patterned tulle embellished with cord and beads, a pink pleated dress wrapped in a gigantic bow at its empire waist:  These spoke of the collection’s lucent theme. But, Vogue noted, “The purest expression of Mendel’s craft, and most resonant with his Venetian theme, was a black dress with beaded horsehair appliqués topped by a cape bolero that would be the belle of any ball.”

The key word in that sentence may be “horsehair,” for J. Mendel did not begin life as a fashion house but as a furrier in 1870 St. Petersburg, Russia, where Joseph Mendel – the original “J” in J. Mendel – operated under the principles of quality, craftsmanship, luxury and style. Five years later, he was commissioned to create an ermine cape for Czar Alexander II’s wife, the Czarina Maria Alexandrovna, which began the Mendel association with the Romanov dynasty as its official furrier. In 1918, that dynasty came to an end as its last ruler, Czar Nicholas II, his wife, Alexandra, and their five children were assassinated following the Russian Revolution. Two years later, Jacques Mendel moved to Paris – which would be home in the 1920s to many creative Russian expatriates like Ballets Russes founder Serge Diaghilev and choreographer George Balanchine – and went to work for the house of Révillion.

There in the City of Light, Jacques opened the first Mendel fur atelier in 1934. It was relocated in 1970 to the Rue Saint-Honoré, home of the first J. Mendel Boutique. In 1980, Jacques collaborated with French designers Jean-Charles de Castelbajac and Bernard Perris on their fall ready-to-wear collections.

With Gilles’ ascent a year later came not only a change in continent but a broadening of perspectives. He shifted operations to New York City, ultimately launching a ready-to-wear collection (2002), a bridal collection (2007) and a flagship now at 787 Madison Ave. In addition to the fur, couture, ready-to-wear and bridal collections – all produced in New York – there is a handbag collection, made from furs, luxury leathers and alligator by craftsmen in Italy and a home furnishings line.

Meanwhile, Giles’ daughter Chloe has completed the circle with a twist: Her Maison Atia, billed as the first luxury faux fur brand and co-founded with Gustave Maisonrouge, has opened a boutique at 833 Madison Ave.
No doubt Joseph Mendel would be pleased.

Angela Caputi Giuggiù’s playful designs

A gift from the fashion gods: Debra O’Shea meets the charmed and charming Angela Caputi, whose designs live up to their branding and her nickname, Giuggiù.

What do fashion icon Iris Apfel, Queen Mathilde of Belgium and Queen Máxima of the Netherlands have in common with us at Mary Jane Denzer?

We’re all fans of Angela Caputi and her fabulous jewelry, whose designs in rich, lacquered resin bridge the figurative and the abstract, the classical and the modern and, most important of all, the fine and the faux in haute couture costume jewelry.

Ropes of beads as big as red seedless grapes held together by a curling crocodile clasp; abstract floral earrings that evoke the legendary cities of Samarkand and Istanbul; pendants that feature a bust of Michelangelo’s “David” – a signature work of her hometown of Florence – turquoise Buddhas or crabs and scarabs that conjure pre-Columbian and Egyptian designs: Caputi’s pieces live up to their branding and her nickname, Giuggiù, which can be loosely translated, she has said, as playful.

Our selections include chunky bracelets and long necklaces with tassles and beading, which marry the curving and the angular in dark, jeweled colors.

Giuggiù jewelry has been designed from the company’s beginning in 1975 by Caputi herself in a workshop in the 17th-century Palazzetto Medici on Via Santo Spirito – a stone’s throw from the Ponte Vecchio, the bridge that figures so dramatically in “O mio babbino caro,” a signature soprano aria from Giacomo Puccini’s “Gianni Schicchi.” Working with synthetic Italian materials alongside a small group that includes family, Caputi creates pieces inspired by American films of the first half of the 20th century that are popularly priced and yet have been showcased in such august spaces as The Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan and the Costume Gallery in Florence.

A champion of women, Caputi designs for the independent, sophisticated woman that is her client but shrewdly also keeps their men in mind.

“Men appreciate the materials I use and find the jewelry designs very interesting,” she told The Florentine in 2007. “They fall in love with the pieces almost immediately and give Giuggiù pieces as gifts. It is a personal and intimate line, because the pieces are one of a kind.”

We can’t but agree. The pieces make a major fashion statement yet are incredibly lightweight – another fascinating seeming contradiction. Perhaps that’s why whenever MJD owners Anastasia Cucinella and Debra O’Shea are in Paris during Fashion Week, their first stop is the Premiere Classe accessories trade show in the Jardin des Tuileries to see what new treasures Caputi has created for the season.

During a trip to Florence last October, O’Shea had a Caputi treat of a more personal nature. While out shopping, she came across the Caputi boutique. (There are two Angela Caputi Giuggiù boutiques in Florence, along with one each in Milan, Forte dei Marmi, Rome and Paris.) Of course, O’Shea went inside to say hello as well as to take pictures for MJD’s Instagram account. That evening, she and her husband celebrated her birthday by dining al fresco at the Hotel Savoy. Just at the moment she was posting the pictures, she noticed Caputi at an adjoining table. It was such a coincidence – or kismet? – that she couldn’t resist saying “Hello” and showing her the photographs. Caputi was charmed and charming as she posed for a photo with O’Shea – a birthday gift from the fashion gods.