German fashion designer, Philipp Plein, has recently had his name on the tip of everyone’s tongue. He’s been mentioned in a lot of news outlets and gossip circles. Mostly for his over-the-top fashion shows and controversy surrounding his productions. This year alone Plein has produced two spectacular fashion shows Milan and New York City. He also has stores in North American, Europe Africa, Asia, and in the Middle East, and is continuing to open stores all over the world.
On Monday, February 13th Phillipp produced a spectacle of a fashion show, revealing his ready-to-wear collection for New York Fashion Week. This was the first time that he had ever shown a collection in North America. Plein’s show took place at the Fifth Avenue New YorkPublic Library and opened with an impressive performance by Hip-Hop icon Nas. The show featured celebrities like rappers Desiigner, Fetty Wap, and Young Thug walking the runway. There was a massive celebrity presence, not just on the runway, but in the crowd as well; celebrity attendees included Paris and Nicky Hilton, Kylie Kardashian, Tyga, Madonna, Remy Ma, Fat Joe, and Victor Cruz, just to name a few.
Fashion expert and television personality, Bevy Smith, claims that all of the celebrity appeal surrounding Plein’s clothes comes from the fact he financially accommodates them to wear his garments.According, to Bevy, Plein flat out pays celebrities to wear his clothes on runways and the red carpet. She made this statement on The Wendy Williams Show during a segment called “Wendy’s Style Squad”. Bevy is a regular one the segment along with fellow fashion experts Robert Verdi and Llyod Boston. The group was discussing a Philipp Plein design that Heidi Klum wore to the Grammys, Heidi got a nod from the fashion experts, but the dress barely made it out of the discuss alive.
Weeks earlier Plein showed his 2017 Plein Sports collection in Milan. Fellow fashion designer, Alexander Wang, has since called Plein out via Instagram and accused him of plagiarism. Wang pointed out similarities in productions between Plein’s January fashion show and his 2014 Alexander Wang X H&M fashion show. In the post, Wang displayed video of the two shows side-by-side, showing how the runways and the movement of the models were almost identical. He accuses Plein of copying him and changing minor details to make it less obvious.
If being accused of stealing ideas from Alexander Wang isn’t enough, Plein also faces criticism for coming to the defense of Tiffany Trump, the daughter of President Donal Trump a.k.a. Public Enemy No. 1. Plein gave Tiffany a front row seat at his NYC fashion show, but when she arrived to take her seat she quickly found that no one wanted to sit by her. Two fashion editors who were seated next to her refused to take their seats.
Very reminiscent of the 2004 Lindsey Lohan film Mean Girls. One of the editors who didn’t want to be caught near Tiffany was Nikki Ogunnaike who is the Senior Fashion Editor at Elle Magazine. When asked about the incident by TMZ, Plein’s response was “I mean can you blame someone, like a family member, can you blame a daughter for having… a father who has the wrong political direction,”. His main point is that Tiffany didn’t deserve that kind of treatment just because her father is one of the most hated men in America.
Since the fashion show, some of the editors who witnessed the incident have gone back on their original statements and claim that it wasn’t how it looked. Apparently, the empty seats were meant for Plein’s sister and girlfriend, however, there was a seating mix up and a representative had to come over to correct the issue. No one from Plein’s camp has verified these statements and Plein surely didn’t include any of this information while preaching from his soap box about fair treatment during his TMZ statement.
Take a look at a few of the looks from Plein’s NYFW runway show and see if you can spot the celebrities rocking his garments.
