By Amanda Gordon – Feb 16, 2011 12:57 PM ET

Designer Bibhu Mohapatra with CFI manager Johanna Stout

High above Manhattan, Bibhu Mohapatra celebrated his Fashion Week outing with cocktails last night on the 46th floor of the Trump SoHo.

Floor-to-ceiling windows offered stunning pictures of the Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges and beyond.

The skyline provided backdrops for guests such as fellow designer Prabal Gurung and model Anjhula Singh Bais, a blogger for Vogue India.

It was a tranquil scene compared with Fashion Week’s Lincoln Center base, where temporary tents were sandwiched between the David H. Koch Theater and the Metropolitan Opera House.

Earlier, the designer’s 33 models sported crow’s feathers at their neck or long gowns in blue and plum. For the woman who needs to be noticed, there was a bolero in long goat hair.

“The collection is about the conflict of extreme opposites that we carry in our minds: good versus evil, darkness versus light,” Mohapatra said.

Bibhu and Alexis Bittar in my studio for a meet and greet

A lovely Visit with Alexis Bittar, jewelry designer in my studio at the CFDA Incubator.

THE EMPERORS OLD CLOTHES

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 17, 2011

Bibhu Mohapatra Fall2011

This collection which took place a couple of days ago at the Box of Lincoln Center was packed to the roof with heavies. All the top stores led by Bergdorf Goodman’s Linda Fargo were jostling through the crush to get a closer look. There were looks for day and evening all cleverly woven together on a central platform. Periodically the models would shift position so that ones that were sitting would walk then stand and vice versa. In this way you saw the clothes move and shift position which showed the collection’s cohesion. Everything was rich in detail. Fur combined with leather over sleek trousers and sexy blouses along with great coats over dresses for day. The mood became more complex for evening with dresses and gowns that were almost cubist in their construction. From one angle some were all artful draping and then from another angle they possessed a series of shifting planes. They looked architectural with a marriage of the solid with the liquid.

Bibhu is one of the few designers who never settles for an easy solution. His interests lie in the studied and complex nature of design. I admire his commitment and the fact that he’s hands on. You can see clearly the love and effort that goes into the creation of his collections. Too few designers today roll up their sleeves and do the actual work.

POSTED BY FLUFF CHANCE AT 1:53 PM
LABELS: BIBHU MOHAPATRA FALL 2011 BERGDORF GOODMAN LINDA FARGO FLUFF CHANCE

AFTER HOURS- W magazine

” I began the night at cocktails for the designer Bibhu Mohapatra to celebrate his presentation earlier that day. By the time I arrived at the Trump Soho hotel’s 46th Floor SoHi space, the bar was ten minutes from closing, so being the clear-headed girl I am (I’d like to add that I hadn’t eaten in 8 hours—4 minutes in fashion time, but still) I made a beeline for the champagne. The room has stunning views across the Hudson and all the way up Sixth Avenue, allowing a glimpse of the Empire State Building and the crowd was a mix of retailers, friends and fellow fashion designers like Prabal Gurung.
After toasting Bibhu, I joined my friend, the hair and makeup artist Alexa Rodulfo, and a group of Mexican and Venezuelan girls in a large SUV and headed to the Bowery Hotel (the gang’s leader Eglantina Zingg needed to stop by a friend’s event). Even 11 hours later, I still can’t explain what was going on there. A few makeup stations greeted you near the front bar and inexplicably in the back was a Disney bouncy castle into which a Lady Gaga impersonator lookalike disappeared after removing her sky-high pink platforms. Needless to say, I didn’t last very long.

Read More http://www.wmagazine.com/w/blogs/editorsblog/2011/02/16/after-hours.htm#ixzz1EEsYwKQ8

Bibhu Fall 2011 Collection
The Daily Front Row

Black magic. Voodoo. Sinister glamour. That is what fall was all about for Bibhu Mohapatra. With Arthur Miller’s The Crucible in mind, Mohapatra presented an impressive collection of eveningwear at The Box February 15. Wool and crepe cocktail frocks in olive, black, and metal took on graphic shapes. Elegant gowns in cerulean, gold, and plum were infused with lacquered tattoo sleeves and black crow feathers at the wrist or neck. It’s easy to see why this designer’s specialty is couture dresses though he did manage to add in a couple black draped wool trousers to round out the collection. Speaking of specialty, Mohapatra spent nine years working with Gilles Mendel so fur is second nature to him as evident by the nail punched leather and lamb pilgrim coat or the long-haired goat creation. All in all, the collection showed a designer who knows his strengths and knows his core customer. “This is the purest of my work,” said the designer. Welcome to the club, Bibhu.

NEW YORK FASHION WEEK
All Eyes on Four Not-So-New Designers
NYT
By DAVID COLMAN
Published: February 9, 2011
IT’S fitting that the movie that fashion people are mad for is “Black Swan.” It’s about a bulimic girl obsessed with perfection, poise and control who is really — really! — dying for her breakout moment at Lincoln Center so the world can see how talented she is. Of course, the film is set next door at a fictional ballet company, and the girl is trying to break out of the corps, not the fashion pack. But every year, as the fashion flock gets larger, it’s harder to spot the cob or pen — boy swan or girl swan, of course — that could rise above the rest, on track to a spotlight in Vogue, a C.F.D.A. nomination and an order from Bergdorf Goodman.
Related

What makes this season special, though, is that, unlike past years when fashion’s searchlights were focused on a crop of 23-year-olds just out Parsons (and 12-year-olds were declaring themselves designers), four of the most anticipated collections are by designers who each have more than a decade of experience and come to their new lines with a track record of making great, desirable clothes.

BIBHU MOHAPATRA
It sounds charmingly anachronistic in 2011 to hear why Bibhu Mohapatra, 37, already has a following among actresses and socialites — that is, because of his flair for cocktail dresses and evening gowns. It seems that today’s updates of ’30s gals like Claudette Colbert, Carole Lombard and the screwball heiresses they played are happy to stimulate the economy if there’s a flattering frock in it for them. Then again, after winning an evening-wear prize while at the Fashion Institute of Technology, then spending a decade designing for Halston and J. Mendel, Mr. Mohapatra does know what he’s doing. His clothes, fun and feminine without being fussy or retro, walk a line between youthful spirit and ladylike poise. Moreover, his long-practiced flair with embroidery, beading and lace, a skill that eludes most young designers, gives his clothes a specialness that endears them to customers. The question going forward: Can he make up for a perceived weakness in day clothes, or should he even bother? His presentation is on Feb. 15.

Bibhu with His Ecco Domani Fashion Foundation Citation
02/03/2011

Bibhu Mohapatra spring 2011 from Metro Velvet on Vimeo.

I am Loving this lady’s new jewels…x b

India Hicks’ Empire
by JESSICA IREDALE
Posted TUESDAY FEBRUARY 1, 2011

“A chick who has it all,” is how Jonathan Adler, the quippy, quirky interior designer, describes his friend India Hicks. “She’s absolutely gorgeous, unimaginably provenanced, has four gorgeous kids, a great husband, this spectacularly fab life, but she’s also completely hilarious and unimaginably irreverent.”

Adler and Hicks became close when they co-hosted “Top Design” on Bravo in 2008, three months after Hicks’ youngest child was born. The show was filmed over the course of seven weeks in downtown Los Angeles “with my poor baby stuck to my tit,” says Hicks, confirming Adler’s assessment of her.

On a recent snowy New York day, she and her partner, David Flint Wood (who have never married), were in town, leaving behind their warm, sunny home on the Bahamas’ Harbour Island to meet with retailers and editors for Hicks’ new jewelry collection. So there she sat in the Mark Hotel, eating potato chips and drinking Champagne out of a wine glass while explaining the motives behind her foray into jewelry, which was never part of her plan.

The India Hicks collection is divided into three lines: Initials, Hicks on Hicks (both of which launch in May) and Island Life (out for fall), all done in partnership with M. Suresh, the fifth-largest De Beers site holder in the world. Introductions were made through Christopher Ellis, an old friend of Hicks from London, who knew that M. Suresh was in the market for a personality that represents some kind of aspirational ideal — and that Hicks has the template for a lifestyle to aspire to if there ever was one.

The daughter of the late David Hicks, the iconic English interior designer known for his graphic “vibrating” colors, as India calls them, she’s design royalty and of royal blood. Her maternal grandparents were the Earl and Countess Mountbatten of Burma, and India is the second cousin and goddaughter of Prince Charles, through whom she had her first brush with fame as a bridesmaid in his 1981 wedding to Lady Diana. “That’s me as her bridesmaid, hard at work,” says Hicks, looking through a brand book of photos. “The 25-foot train. Unheard of! And it was a nightmare!” But worth it.

Now she’s a minted expert in royal weddings: She’s producing and hosting a one-hour special on the nuptials of Prince William and Kate Middleton for TLC, scheduled to air on April 24, and will also be reporting live from the April 29 event for the U.K. television channel ITV.

If it weren’t for her candid, uncensored sense of humor, Hicks would be unbearably perfect. She and Flint Wood live full time in the Bahamas with their children — three boys and a girl, all with their mother’s golden hair and good looks. Hicks is a model, a longtime favorite of Ralph Lauren, and most recently Tod’s — she was the face of the house’s fall 2010 campaign. “I turned up on the set and they said, ‘You are the oldest model we have ever had,’” she says in a hilariously bad Italian accent. Yet, at 43, her natural beauty has not begun to fade.

Regardless, modeling has always been a part-time thing, with her focus belonging to her family, her Harbour Island store (the Sugar Mill Trading Company, which sells men’s and women’s clothes and gifts), producing design books, maintaining three guest houses on the island, and, for the last six years, acting as creative partner of Crabtree & Evelyn, where her contract has been extended for another three years.

“I’ve done fragrance, I’ve done houses, I’ve done books, I’ve done island life. I’ve never done jewelry,” says Hicks. “I design, definitely. I’m amateur but under my father’s very imposing eye, by osmosis, I’m very strong in my sensibility — what I like and what I don’t like.”

Originally the jewelry collection was limited to Island Life, a collection that combines organic, island motifs with sterling silver and diamonds, until her father’s design legacy became a dominant force of the line. So now there’s also the 18-karat gold and sterling silver alphabet charm-based Initials lifted from the script on his writing paper, while Hicks on Hicks draws on some of his retro, geometric patterns incorporated into sterling silver, 18k gold and diamond medallions, cuffs and rings. All pieces retail from $200 to $6,000.

“It’s all derivative,” says Hicks. “It was kind of time to reclaim my father’s work. It hasn’t been said in jewelry and it hasn’t been said in the authentic way that I, as his daughter, can say.” That said, she has had to find the balance between her taste for the understated, if “in the way I dress — certainly not in the way I behave,” she says, and her father’s rather loud and distinctive style. She found the intersection of the two in the Bahamian estate, inspired by King Zoser, where she spent time as a child.

“Everybody else had a normal Caribbean home. We had to live in a f–king Egyptian mausoleum,” says Hicks. “But the point is that it was as modern and fresh then as it is today.”