Fall 2012: Chadwick Bell

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2 9 2012

WHO: Chadwick Bell

BIO: NYC-based womenswear designer who developed his aesthetic when working with Chado Ralph Rucci. Chadwick’s lady is prim but adventurous like his mentor, Carolina Herrera.

FUN FACT: Chadwick’s father is a fisherman

ABOUT THE FALL COLLECTION: It must be known: Chadwick Bell has grown up. In just a few months this relatively new designer (once upon a time he was a sales associate on our Fourth Floor) has skipped into the wild territory of a prim lady gone slightly mad. His inspiration? Two portraits. The first — Arlene Gottfried’s Midnight — of a man, wearing blue pajamas, sitting on a heating unit, casually puffing smoke from a cigaret (his face ever so slightly obscured by plumes of gray). Although calm, the man is a bit mad (his is at Bellevue, you know)… which is where the second source of inspiration, Picasso’s Boy with a Pipe, appears wildly through the ether. This is the crux of Bell’s Fall 2012 collection: sitting there, looking calm and casual while mentally entering the absurd, existing in a colorful, other-worldly place.

Chadwick Bell’s is the perfect woman in an imperfect situation. Still polished and refined, she has stepped into an opium den of danger, indulgence, experience euphoria along the way. And it is in this journey that we’ve seen Bell grow up. Still polished to the last stitch, his pieces now dance with vivid colors like indigo, acid green and Formula One Red. Color is new for Chadwick who previously sought his palette in the deserts of Morocco and beyond. Now his woman wears leather gloves creeping up the elbow but her hair is slightly disheveled, even messy. She’s departed on an exotic adventure filled with fur, leather, gold jacquard and velvet, leaving tufts of ostrich plumes in her wake.