NYFW: RISTO Fall 2011

If ever there was a push for cruelty-free animal prints, I think it would be what reviewers and fashion editors are calling this 'Bambi' print, in RISTO Bimbiloski's Fall 2011 collection. I am not one for animal prints myself, but there is something haunting and poignant about the micro-view of a spotted fawn's pelt. It might subtly suggest that in lieu of the more exotic furs that are still being sent down the runway, there are animals in our own backyards that are very much a part of our visual collective unconscious and perhaps are as endangered and fragile as the rest of the lot. The point being that these are not furs or re-fashioned skins, but a tasteful representation of the beauty and genius patterning of nature under the microscope.

Contemporary fashion that whole-heartedly makes you stop and think is good, provocative fashion in my opinion, whether this be with an aesthetic, political, or environmental twist to the storytelling. Kill us with beauty, not with archaic ideas about luxury and fashioning self. 

This for me is why RISTO's collections always set the stage for covetable and provocative pieces. Add to this the fair-wage jobs that he has created in his homeland of Macedonia, and fashion forward design has yet again seeped a bit further into new and uncharted territory.

*all images via Elle.com,

Imaxtree.com, and Matteo Volta