Los Angeles Fashion Week Fall '09: Mike Vensel
If you’re into basic black, Mike Vensel is the designer for you.
Showing his Fall ’09 collection at BOXeight Fashion Week at the Los Angeles Theatre on March 15, Vensel’s creations consisted of various silhouettes in mostly black knit bamboo fabric that hugged the body.
To add a touch of pizzazz, Vensel, whose background is in architecture and graphic design, added dresses, pants and knee-length shorts made of a gold-sequined fabric.
The show started with a black bamboo mini-dress accented with a Mylar neck wrap. Mylar provided various accents on other pieces, such as on a black dress with Mylar shoulder pieces or another black outfit with a Mylar poncho.
The designer’s inspiration for the collection was the Spanish city of Bilbao, with its futuristic Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, made of glass, titanium and limestone and designed by Los Angeles architect Frank Gehry.
“I was in Bilbao two years ago, and I arrived at midnight,” Vensel said, recalling the inky sky. “The chiffon accents in the show represent the fishing nets and sails of the city, and the sequins represent the fish scales of this fishing community.”
The designer concluded his runway show with a burst of colorful hand-sewn cloth flowers that blanketed a bamboo-fabric dress. The riot of color represented a floral Jeff Koons sculpture outside the Spanish museum. —Deborah Belgum
