Swinging from the Chandeliers
Designer Jared Gold is back, and he is going to dress you, light up your life and maybe even sleep with you, in a manner of speaking. After taking off the past two seasons — and moving last year to Salt Lake City where he restructured his various collections into a publicly traded company called Dark Dynamite Inc. — Gold returns with expanded lines and an expansive vision: high-end design at budget prices. "Good design doesn’t cost any more than bad design," notes Gold, an agent provocateur who once staged a show of his adventurous gothic-punk Victoriana women’s-wear line in an alley downtown. This mischievous sensibility — he also created brooches out of live Madagascar cockroaches — infuses Pink Chandelier, his first foray into children’s wear.
He’s also launched a still-expanding version of his line Black Chandelier, which currently includes collections of women’s and skateboard wear, with ’tween and men’s to debut in March at L.A.’s Fashion Week when he will show all five collections. And if all that wasn’t keeping him busy enough in Salt Lake — where he’s renovating an 1886 Victorian building and where he recently opened his first Black Chandelier store — he has a home line called The Genevieve (linens, candles, stationery and lighting) coming out this Valentine’s Day. "I still consider myself an L.A. designer," says Gold, who’s currently scouting locations for the Black Chandelier store he plans to open in L.A. in the spring. "I still have the mindset." Black Chandelier is available atwww.blackchandelier.com and Pink Chandelier is available atwww.pinkchandelier.com.
—Kateri Butler
In the Raw
Raw 7’s rock & roll princess-wear can be accessorized by a string of pearls or a studded dog collar. Or both. It’s for the girl who’s naughty-nice. Designer Marisol Gerona —
Raw 7
an L.A. local who cut her thread, so to speak, at Ralph Lauren doing menswear and went on to do floaty froth for Harari — is inspired by skater styles and streetwear.
She works in cashmere and cotton knits, creating a kind of gloriously prim Grace Kelly–type cardigan which is then emblazoned with vintage tattoo flash, pop art and graffiti-inspired graphics. Each piece gets a sprinkling of beads and rhinestones and is sewn up with retro Western-wear embroidery — making it as much a multimedia work of art as something to keep you warm. Raw 7 is available at Intuition and Kitson; the line also includes hoodies, scarves, T-shirts and ponchos.
—Pleasant Gehman
All the News That’s Fit to Carry
Designer Carolyn Polonsky puts a new spin on recycling and vintage: She takes covers of defunct tabloids from the Eisenhower and Kennedy eras and turns them into totes. Unusual touches like steel-cable handles give the bags an industrial allure while the fact that they’re fashioned from plastic-coated tabloid pages means you’ll always have something to read.
With bold black-and-white images of faded starlets and L.A.-noir headlines worthy of a Danny DeVito voiceover ("The Truth About Fetish!" "Sex Habits of Savage Gun Dolls!"), the bags are guaranteed attention-getters.
The tabloid bags
For those seeking an accessory more sweet than sordid, next spring Polonsky will put out an eye-popping line with covers ripped from the heartthrob-filled pages of Tiger Beat and Teen. Available at www.retroviva.net.
—Madelynn Amalfitano
