Designer shake-ups, editor switcheroos, and more peplums than you could shake a hip at: 2012 had it all. Herein, we break down the biggest fashion stories of the year, alphabet style. Click through to relive it all — the gossip, glory, triumphs, scandals, and everything in between — in our most extensive year-end recap yet.
Raf Simons says he's working on turning Dior into a brand that everyone in the world will recognize as soon as they see it — sort of like Chanel.
"The Chanel woman? I don't even need to see, I smell her from round the corner, but I don't recognize the Dior woman," Simons said in an interview for the January issue of Vogue UK. "I want to work on that fast. Chanel has the deux-pièces with the pockets, or the bouclé, but what is it for Dior nowadays? I can't say."
Eventually, Simons wants Dior to be something that appeals to a wide variety of people.
"Dior's ultimate obsession is that he wanted [the public] to wear it. I want them to wear it on the street," he said. "If it doesn't relate to the outside, then it would be very theatrical for me."
That mission — to make serious and wearable clothing for Dior — has guided Simons's short tenure at the French fashion house, and even extends to his couture collections.
"I want to get away from couture just being done for a picture, or for a single moment on the red carpet," he said in an interview with Vogue Australia last month. "I want to try and convince women that couture can be worn in the day and that there's a reality and a relevance there, because that's what Mr. Christian Dior wanted. In my opinion, Christian Dior was never, ever theater."
Photo: Simons photographed by David Sims for the December issue of Vogue.
All the bits fit to print here, in our daily news roundup.
The exact circumstances under which Jil Sander replaced Raf Simons as the creative director of her eponymous fashion house were unclear until today.
According to a new profile in WSJ. Magazine's Winter issue, Sander wasn't called back to the house she founded in 1968 just because Simons was on his way to Dior. In fact, Sander entered talks with Onward Holdings Co., the Japanese private equity firm that owns the label, about coming back over six months prior to Simons's departure. Sander left her job designing the +J capsule collection for Uniqlo in September 2011, and it was announced that she would replace Simons at the end of February 2012.
Simons's departure, it seems, came before he officially accepted the Dior job — though when he left, he had already entered talks with LVMH about becoming the house's creative director. And while Simons's work at Jil Sander was a critical success, the profile notes that during his time there, "the company remained solidly in the red." To turn Jil Sander's fortunes around, the label's chairman Franco Pene said he wanted "to get back to the roots of the company — to its DNA. And there was no one more capable of doing this than the original designer."
Whatever the reasoning for her return to the label, where her first two collections have earned favorable reviews, Sander credits divine intervention with steering her back home.
"With all of my history, I feel it's been more like a journey, and driven by something up there," she says, pointing toward the heavens. "This is actually what it has to be. We learn to never go back, never try to repeat, only look to the future. But in this case, maybe this is an exception."
Photo courtesy of Jil Sander
Interviews with Raf Simons are few and far between, but the new creative director of Dior says it's not because he's press-shy. "I don't know where you got the idea that I'm aloof," he says in the December issue of Vogue Australia.
Far from aloof, Simons is almost effusive, touching on everything from John Galliano (he says he doesn't find his designs "relevant") to his vision for Dior's future. He also talks about making the transition from Jil Sander to one of the most coveted jobs in fashion and how he wants to change couture. Highlights from the interview below.
On John Galliano: "I have so much respect for John's technical skill and the fantasy, it's just something that I don't find relevant now, especially when it restricts a woman, because in every other area they have so much freedom now."
On getting the Dior job and his sudden departure from Jil Sander: "I'm not going to lie to you. We [Bernard Arnault, head of LVMH, and Sidney Toledano, president of Dior] had been talking for months about the job, but talks happen all the time in this business. That doesn't mean something is necessarily going to come out of it. . . I felt more like a psychiatrist than a designer in the end [at Jil Sander], just to keep my team's spirits up."
On his final show at Jil Sander: "That final collection was not in any way an audition for the Dior job. It was just something I wanted to do."
On Dior's impact on fashion: "The more I analyzed the pieces, the more I realized how many people have built their careers on Christian Dior's patterns, from Yohji Yamamoto and Comme des Garcons onwards. What he achieved in 10 years at his house is unprecedented."
On what he's trying to accomplish: "I want to get away from couture just being done for a picture, or for a single moment on the red carpet. I want to try and convince women that couture can be worn in the day and that there's a reality and a relevance there, because that's what Mr. Christian Dior wanted. In my opinion, Christian Dior was never, ever theater."
Photo courtesy of Dior, via Vogue Australia.
Much to the dismay of hundreds of Twilight fans everywhere, reports that Robert Pattinson would be the new face of Dior's men fragrances turned out to be nothing but rumors and speculation, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The actor was alleged to have inked a $12 million deal with the fashion house, trumping Brad Pitt's reportedly $7 million deal as the spokesperson for Chanel No. 5. However, the Dior international press offices told The Hollywood Reporter Wednesday morning that there was no truth to the reports and that no contract had been signed. But if Robert Pattinson were to join the Dior camp in the future, he'd be following in the footsteps of other famous actors to promote the iconic fashion house's fragrances, including Jude Law and Natalie Portman.
Those stories and more in our daily news roundup.
Britain's Advertising Standards Authority has banned an ad for Dior's Diorshow New Look mascara after receiving a single complaint, reportedly from L'Oreal UK, that the ad exaggerated what the mascara can do.
The image, which stars Natalie Portman and was shot by Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott, was originally intended to advertise a lipstick, but Dior told the ASA that it was later changed to a mascara ad. The photo was then digitally altered to "separate/increase the length and curve of a number of her lashes and to replace/fill a number of missing or damaged lashes, for a more stylized, uniform and tidy effect." Dior also said Portman wasn't wearing any false lashes in the ad, and that it "did not consider that the post-production techniques went beyond the likely consumer expectations of what was achievable using the product."
Nevertheless, the ASA has ruled that the ad can no longer appear in its current form. Dior has agreed to "amend or withdraw" the ad instead of going through a formal investigation about how it altered the image.
This ban comes on the heels of other beauty ads that were shut down for their altered imagery. Earlier this year, the ASA told L'Oreal to stop circulating an ad for its Revitalift Repair 10 starring Rachel Weisz because it "misleadingly exaggerated" the face cream's effects. In 2011, it banned a Lancome ad featuring Julia Roberts and a Maybelline ad starring Christy Turlington because they were "not representative of the results the products could achieve."
Note: In an interesting twist, the original stories concerning this ad on both The Daily Telegraph and Vogue UK appear to have been taken down. The biggest difference in this case and previously banned ads is that the others resulted from consumer complaints, not reports filed by competitors. Both news outlets alleged that L'Oreal complained about Dior's ad. Might that have something to do with why mum's the word now?
From macarons to fashion shows to Parisian nightlife — and all the Chanel, Dior, and Cos in between — our editors are recounting their top 10 moments from Paris Fashion Week. Get an inside look at how gorgeous it is in the City of Light and what it's like when the sun finally comes up over the Seine.
![Dior Secret Garden Teaser Pre-Fall 2012 [Video]](http://media2.onsugar.com/files/2012/05/18/2/166/1668379/db4195ebad1d0b55_Screen_shot_2012-05-01_at_4.58.19_PM.xxxlarge.xxlarge/i/Dior-Secret-Garden-Teaser-Pre-Fall-2012-Video.png "Dior Secret Garden Teaser Pre-Fall 2012 [Video]")
