Dimitris Petrou Spring/Summer 2011

Last year we introduced you to the very talented Greek fashion designer Dimitris Petrou and his deconstructed, monochromatic collection. Continuing in the same spirit, his Spring/Summer 2011 collection entitled Theros (summer in Greek) brings draped silk tailoring, linen denim, his own vision of the classic button-down and tailored shorts and pants in a beautiful brown and navy color palette.

Dimitris Petrou /Theros spring/summer 2011 (promo teaser)

  & heads over at Yatzer for more information

Phoenix consignment buying guide

Although your favorite consignment and resale shops are perfect for finding luxury apparel at wallet-friendly prices, don’t forget that these secondhand-clothing stores are a vehicle for making some extra cash.

Whether you’re finally finished with your Louis Vuitton bag or simply over the Banana Republic dress you plucked from the clearance rack, these unwanted items hanging in your closet can become money in your pocket.

Fortunately, there are resale stores all over the Valley needing your castoffs. But to get the most for your money, it will take more finesse than merely lugging bags of clothes into a consignment store.

Here’s an insider’s guide to what the top consignment stores are buying. Resale experts – from the owner of Poor Little Rich Girl, Catharine Fournier-Raslavsky, to the regional manager of Buffalo Exchange, Mina Alegria – give us the inside scoop on what items they’re looking for now.

My Sister’s Closet

If you want to recycle your designer items or mint-condition mall purchases, this is your go-to consignment store. My Sister’s Closet also is a great place to shop for those who are interested in buying high-end designer items for less. Expect to find half-priced Chanel bags, bargain-priced St. John knits and loads of fairly priced fine jewelry.

Details: Locations Valley-wide. mysisterscloset.com.

Our source: Ann Siner, co-owner.

Payment policy: After your item sells, you have the option of receiving 55 percent of what the item sold for in store credit or 45 percent in cash.

Items that are an immediate yes: Current styles that originally retailed for a minimum of $40 to $50 that are clean, wrinkle-free and defect-free. Such luxury items as Chanel, Pucci, Tory Burch and boutique denim brands also are an instant yes.

How worn is too worn: We are very particular about the condition of items we purchase to sell. Your items need to be in nearly perfect condition for us to consider purchasing them.

What sellers can do to make their items more appealing: Launder them and bring everything in on hangers.

Top-selling brands: Designer jewelry and handbags. Chanel, Hermes, Pucci, Juicy Couture, Tory Burch and designer jeans also sell quickly.

Items you take year-round: We start buying fall items in August and summer items in January.

When’s a good time to sell: We suggest coming early in the morning during the week and avoid Saturdays.

Memorable item that has been sold in your store: Alice Cooper’s family piano.

What separates your store from other resale and consignment shops: The convenience factor. Our store is open every day of the week, and our cash policy is one of the most generous in the Valley.

Buffalo Exchange

If your closet is chock-full of funky youthful pieces and moderately priced mall purchases, this resale shop will be one of the best places for you to recycle your wardrobe. This eclectic shop has a little something for everyone but typically skews young. Think H&M, Forever 21 and Urban Outfitters.

Details: Locations Valley-wide. buffaloexchange.com.

Our source:Mina Alegria, regional manager of Buffalo Exchange.

Payment policy: If you chose cash, you receive 35 percent. If you opt for store credit, you receive 50 percent.

Items that are an immediate yes: We focus on current trends and funky one-of-a-kind pieces. Whether it’s an interesting dress from Target or a high-end designer item, we’re much more concerned with the style of the piece than where it came from or what brand it is.

How worn is too worn: How rare or interesting a garment is will determine how worn is too worn. If someone is selling an amazing leather jacket that has some wear and tear, we’ll take it. But we will definitely pass up contemporary items from the mall that have stains and holes.

What sellers can do to make their items more appealing: We suggest laundering your items before you sell because as soon as we purchase a piece it goes straight to the sales floor.

Top-selling brands: Popular mall brands such as H&M, Gap and Forever 21 do well, and designer denim sells very quickly.

Unexpected items you’ll buy: Vintage clothing, jewelry and small decorative items. We’ve purchased jewelry boxes, old luggage and even aprons. Anything that sparks an interest with the buyer.

Items you take year-round: We buy the best of winter and summer all year. If someone brings in a designer coat we love in the peak of summer, we’ll just add it to our back stock and bring it out to sell later.

Items you won’t take: Anything with severe condition issues.

Memorable items you’ve purchased: A gentleman brought in several unopened boxes of mint-condition women’s clothing from the 1950s, and we bought it all. It’s rare to see such a huge collection of vintage in perfect condition come into the store.

What separates your store from other resale and consignment shops: From luxury labels to funky vintage pieces, we always buy a wide variety of styles that appeal to very different tastes. We also donate to local charities. For example, instead of taking a bag at the time of checkout, a customer can opt to donate 5 cents to a local charity. We also have a huge donation bin where sellers can put the items that we don’t buy, and all of those items go to charity.

Poor Little Rich Girl

Here is where you bring your feminine pieces that have a bohemian edge. This is also a great place for those quality, mid-price, classic pieces from places like Ann Taylor, White House Black Market and Anthropologie.

Details: 1576 E. Bethany Home Road, Phoenix, 602-354-5680; 3730 E. Indian School Road, Phoenix, 602-955-0708. poorlittlerichgirlresale.com.

Our source: Catharine Fournier-Raslavsky, owner.

Payment policy: The cash rate is 40 percent, and the trade can range from 50 to 60 percent.

Items that are an immediate yes:Designer jeans, handbags and dresses. We regularly buy Rock & Republic, Citizens of Humanity, Joe’s and True Religion jeans. We also often buy Coach, Louis Vuitton, Dooney & Bourke, Gucci and Chanel handbags. How worn is too worn:We’re very selective when it comes to quality. We prefer garments that look like new, free of pilling, holes and stains. The only circumstance that damage will be overlooked is when the garment is rare or a designer piece and the damage is repairable.

What sellers can do to make their items more appealing: They need to be laundered because the items immediately go out to the selling floor. It’s very important that they’re free of any odor. I won’t take anything that smells of smoke or perfume.

Top-selling brands: Diane von Furstenberg, Free People, Rock & Republic jeans, Coach handbags, Louis Vuitton accessories.

Unexpected items you’ll buy: Vintage coats and handmade jewelry.

Items you take year-round: We take items from all seasons all year, but we will buy more of what’s appropriate for the current season.

Items you won’t take: Clothing from Walmart, Kmart, JC Penney, Charlotte Russe, Wet Seal or Forever 21. Memorable items you’ve purchased:In the same day, I purchased a Pinecone purse and a mink-fur brooch from two different clients.

What separates your store from other resale and consignment shops: We consign local handmade items, and we also have a really generous exchange rate if you choose to trade your items. If you sign up for our trade program, you’ll receive 60 percent of what your items sold for that you can apply to merchandise in the store.

Ivy Boutique

These buyers want quality name brands, contemporary styles and clothes in very good condition.

Details: 1840 E. Warner Road, Tempe. 480-897-1200, ivyontheweb.com.

Our source: Chris Rockwell, co-owner of Ivy Boutique.

Payment policy: It is cash (30 percent) or trade (50 percent).

Items that are an immediate yes: We regularly buy Tory Burch, Trina Turk, J.Crew, White House Black Market and Gucci, Louis Vuitton and Coach handbags. True Religion jeans are always a yes, along with Seven for All Mankind and Joe’s jeans. We’re looking for wedge shoes, Christian Louboutin and Jimmy Choo shoes. We don’t take Forever 21, Target or Charlotte Russe.

How worn is too worn: We’re pretty picky. No loose stitching or broken zippers. We also don’t take much vintage unless it looks contemporary.

What sellers can do to make their items more appealing: Launder them.

Top-selling brands: True Religion, BCBG, Free People, Michael Stars, Anthropologie.

Unexpected items people don’t necessarily think to bring in: Shorts, sunglasses, nice exercise clothes and belts.

Items that sell the best in your store: Coach bags, designer denim and dresses.

Items you take year-round: We’re seasonless if the piece is amazing. We take things like sweaters and wool jackets all year.

Items you won’t take: Avant-garde designer pieces, tween brands like American Eagle and Abercrombie & Fitch jewelry.

When’s a good time to sell: We have a drop-off service beginning at 10 a.m. Tuesday through Saturday. We call when we’re done pricing.

Memorable items that have been sold in your store: Louis Vuitton collection bag and Christian Dior shoes.

What separates your store from other resale and consignment shops: We are an upscale resale boutique. It’s merchandised like a brand-new store.

Tom Ford Winter 2011 Campaign

Yet an other fall 2011 campaign by photographer duo Mert & Marcus. The Tom Ford Autumn/ Winter 11 campaign features Victorias Secret model Candice Swanepoel and Jon Kortajarena shot in London overlooking the Thames River. The campaign is set to appear in September.

Paris haute couture day 1: Galliano-less Dior show fails to inspire

PARIS (AP) – When your collection notes read like an abbreviated history of the art, architecture and fashion design of the 20th century, you know you’ve got a problem.

PHOTOS: Haute Couture Fall/Winter 2011-2012 | Wackiest looks

Such was the case at Dior’s first show in 15 years without its disgraced former creative director John Galliano. The British designer was fired in March amid a scandal over alleged anti-Semitic remarks, and his former right-hand man stepped in Monday, fielding a fall-winter 2011-12 haute couture collection that cited as influences interior designer Jean-Michel Frank, architects Ettore Sottsass and Frank Gehry, graphic designer Jean Paul Gouda, watchmaker Jean Dunned and fashion designer Marc Bohan.

It was as if Bill Gaytten – who took a bow at Monday’s show, though Dior executives were quick to stress he has not officially taken over the reins at the house – were trying to prove his cultural erudition by shoving all those disparate influences into a single show.

In the days following Galliano’s firing – which came right before the house’s ready-to-wear show after a video showing the designer praising Adolf Hitler went viral on the internet – Dior executives handled the sticky situation with aplomb. Four months on, the same cannot be said.

While Dior was a disappointment, delights abounded at day one of Paris’ rarified haute couture displays – the three-day-long extravaganza where 23 cherry-picked labels showcase their savoir faire by creating wildly expensive made-to-measure garments for the world’s wealthiest women.

Two newcomers to the elite cadre of approved couture purveyors, dramatic Italian Giambattista Valli and Dutch wunderkind Iris Van Herpen each fielded jaw-dropping collections that suggested that despite the dwindling numbers of buyers, couture still has brilliant days ahead.

Displays enter day two on Tuesday with shows by Chanel, Givenchy and Giorgio Armani – the man behind the clean, graphic gown Princess Charlene wore to the wedding that saw her transformed from commoner into Grace Kelly’s successor as the princess of Monaco.

CHRISTIAN DIOR

Four months after Galliano was fired, and with no successor yet appointed, it was with bated breath that the small audience of fashion insiders waited to see how whoever was filling Galliano’s immense shoes would fare.

The reaction was underwhelming: Hoots and thunderous applause erupted from backstage, but the audience greeted the show with a short-lived flurry of halfhearted claps.

The collection simply lacked cohesion. With sections that channeled the fluorescent pop aesthetic of the 1980s, a sort of 1970s Marrakech bohemian vibe, and shiny modernist architecture, the show felt like a bunch of ideas thrown almost randomly together. It was like watching three shows in one – and not a particularly inspiring three shows, at that.

The nipped jackets and pouffy skirts were embellished with the sort of amoeba-shaped appliques in eyepopping shades that were last seen on the costumes of 1987 teen pop sensation Tiffany and worn with oversized plastic cubes or spheres in the guise of hats. Oversized ballgowns made from petals of delicate chiffon were accessorized with the kinds of cheap glitter-covered novelty headbands you might wear to ring in the New Year, and you couldn’t quite tell if sparkly bits on the bodices were part of the dresses or just shreds of confetti.

Gaytten was named creative director at Galliano’s signature line, John Galliano, last month, but Dior executives were quick to point out that he hadn’t taken the reins at Dior, one of the world’s top brands and the jewel in the crown of luxury giant LVMH.

“Mr. Gaytten has done this collection but he is not artistic director.” Dior president Sidney Toledano told journalists backstage in a post-show interview. “We are taking our time because we want to find a long-term solution, and many hypotheses are being explored.”

Given the audience’s tepid reaction to Monday’s show, it seemed likely that Gaytten would prove more of a stopgap measure. Fashion insiders were hoping Monday’s uneven results would push Dior to end the suspense already and designate an official successor to a man who is nothing if not a hard act to follow.

GIAMBATTISTA VALLI

Talk about making an entrance. Valli fairly erupted onto the haute couture calendar Monday with a collection of glamorous sheath dresses and evening gowns that dripped drama.

Valli’s signature retro bourgeois dresses have made his pret-a-porter line a favorite among jet-setting It Girls, and dedicated fans like socialite Bianca Brandolini turned out to support his debut among the elite cadre of Paris couturiers.

With his penchant for beadwork and feathers – which he uses with abandon in ready-to-wear – Valli is a natural for couture.

On Monday, the cap-sleeved sheath dresses sparkled with strips of flower-shaped sequins at the neckline, and their hemlines were densely feathered in black or white ostrich. A cropped jacket was a reef of tiny pieces of Capri coral, and a bustier dress was but the lightest cloud of white tulle.

The flowing chiffon capes that topped off the goddess gowns brushed over the guests’ feet as the models walked, looking like modern day superwomen.

“How glamorous was that show?” gushed Brazilian-born socialite and longtime Valli supporter, Andrea Dellal. “It’s like Valli, but with more of everything.”

The sole flaw in the otherwise stunning collection were the shoes: heels so high they crippled two of the models, who barely made it up the endless catwalk and back.

IRIS VAN HERPEN

The stuff of nightmares became a fashionista’s dream. The Dutch designer plumbed the depths of darkness, spinning it Rumpelstiltskin-style into concoctions of a rare and delicate beauty.

Abbreviated cocktail dresses sprouted an armor of Stegosaurus plates in clear plastic. A halterdress was made from what appeared to be a distended skeleton. Shiny black tubes completely enveloped another minidress, as if the model had been swallowed whole by a vacuum cleaner gone mad, or was being constricted by a luminous ebony boa.

A dress had an oversized skirt that was made entirely out of twisted coils of metal wire. A plastic collar like a giant drop of water hitting a hard surface topped a tiny bustier dress made of leather laces.

The show – which channeled much of the dark creativity of the late Alexander McQueen, for whom Van Herpen once interned – was nothing short of a tour de force. Born in 1984 in Wamel, the Netherlands, she’s among the youngest designers on the official couture calendar – not to mention among the most promising.

BOUCHRA JARRAR

Two very different cultures united by a common sense of aesthetic refinement, the Japanese and the French have long exercised a mutual fascination for one another. So it was fitting that Jarrar, one of the most Parisienne of French designers, should look to Japan to expand the horizons of her graphic, pared-down style.

Jarrar’s sheath dresses and clean-lined pantsuits breathe an effortless elegance that has hit a chord with the French fashion set, and the creme de la creme of the fashion glitteratti here, including the new editor-in-chief of French Vogue, Emmanuelle Alt, turned out for Monday’s show.

You could imagine Alt and others who channel her casually stylish, tres Parisienne aesthetic wearing just about every piece in the collection, from the bustier dress whose only assets were its perfect cut and graphic patent leather piping to the razor-cut pleated trousers, worn with cropped jackets. In fact, it looked like the trousers Alt was wearing to the show, with stilettos and a blue men’s button-down shirt, might just have been Jarrar.

Whereas haute couture tends to be about excess – throw on the sequins, slap on the rhinestones – Jarrar is all restrained sobriety with a hidden dose of kinkiness. With the Japanese undercurrent running through this season – palpable in the kimono-like closures on the dresses, the belts that looked like modified Obi belts and its silks printed with black and white stripes – the collection was more elaborate and worldly than in seasons past.

But it was still an exercise in perfectly calibrated minimalism, in a reduced palette of gray, black, white and electric blue.

ANNE VALERIE HASH

After a brief absence from couture to focus on her ready-to-wear line, Paris’ Anne Valerie Hash delivered a collection of quietly sophisticated luxury. The hybrid show-cum-presentation – with 10 looks shown both on live models and wooden mannequins in honor of the label’s tenth anniversary – was held in the gilded salon of a Paris hotel, and the clothes were perfectly adapted to their surroundings. The pantsuits and dropped-waisted dresses in artfully draped buff-colored silks faintly dripped Parisian elegance. With their asymmetrical, plunging waists and single-strap tops, the ravishing dresses had a vaguely flapperish air about them.

ALEXIS MABILLE

The bourgeois wardrobe got in touch with its animal instincts at Mabille, with a fur and feathered collection of bustier gowns and abbreviated cocktail dresses. A strapless gown in white leopard print sprouted little tufts of fur, while a short little number in brown jersey had oversized fox sleeves and raccoon tails that dangled from a tie-belt at the waist. Feathers that looked like they came from some oversized bird of prey poked out of the tops of the bustier dresses and shot through the models’ bouffant hairdos.

ADELINE ANDRE

Adeline Andre is fashion stripped of pretense, ego and (bad) attitude, just flattering, beautifully made clothes, themselves stripped of such extraneous elements as buttons, zippers or other closures. This season, Andre served up straight-lined wrap coats in citrus shades of boiled wool and long-sleeved kaftans in translucent silk.

Models of different ages and sizes emerged from backstage two by two, walking slowly up a catwalk illuminated by the afternoon sun streaming in through the windows. They gazed shyly at each other and smiled. When a Japanese photographer shouted at them to “stop in the light of day,” they complied, posing in the patches of streaming sunlight.

The meditative pacing and gentle sweetness of the show were a welcome change from the booming soundtracks and willful hardness of most of today’s hyper-produced fashion shows. And sweetness begot sweetness: Instead of beating a hasty exit, the crowd clapped in unison for several minutes, demanding an encore bow from Andre.