FashionClick   News²

This installment:

| Inauguration of the Cristóbal Balenciaga Foundation |

| First European Reebok Sports Club |

| H&M Opens Stores in the US and Spain |

Guipúzcoa (Spain) - The Cristóbal Balenciaga Foundation has been presented in the town of Guetaria on May 5th, 2000. Created in honor the late maestro couturier, it will include a museum and an haute couture design center in the future.

On-hand for the event where well-known and top fashion designers such as Hubert de Givenchy, president of the foundation; Paco Rabanne, Jesús del Pozo and Elio Berhanyer, among others.

A small public exhibition featuring some creations and details of Balenciaga's work also opened that day. It will continue until the inauguration of the museum in the year 2003. It will be located at Aldamar Palace, the old home of the marquises of Casa Torre, parents of Belgium's Queen Fabiola and patrons of the designer.

The foundation's sponsors include Queen Fabiola, the Balenciaga family, and fashion designers Yves Saint-Laurent, Gianfranco Ferré, Oscar de la Renta and Emmanuel Ungaro. The King and Queen of Spain are its honorary presidents.

Reebok Sports Club: First European Center in Spain

Madrid - The first European Reebok Sports Club has opened this May at the Centro Comercial ABC located on the Spanish capital's stylish Calle Serrano.

The Club, a 500 million Pesetas investment, covers a 4,000-sq. meter area distributed amongst three floors. Complete and luminous spaces in which members will be able to comfortably engage in attaining and developing their physical and mental well being. Two terraces and large windowed halls offer a beautiful view of the Madrid skyline.

Reebok Sports Club Madrid's installations include: a 1,300m² plus Fitness Hall; a Reebok Cycling Room; a Rockdome with an 18m scaling wall; a 20m pool, solarium and two squash courts; a 700m area for the SPA (which includes a wide variety of beauty and health treatments;) and rooms for collective Yoga, Pilates or Tai Chi classes; a very comprehensive aesthetic treatment area and a medical facility.  

H&M Opens Stores in the US and Spain

Swedish fashion retail company H&M, Hennes Mauritz, has just disembarked in the United States (on New York's 5th Avenue) and Spain. In this country, they have just opened three stores (1 in Barcelona and 2 in Zaragoza) this April. Another one in Barcelona (May) and another two in Valencia and Madrid are scheduled for autumn. 

H&M's stores sell fashion for men and women, children, youngsters as well as special sizes; also accessories, lingerie and cosmetics.

American actress Chloe Sevigny, who appears in the movie  "American Psycho," has been chosen as the image for the company's Spring/Summer 2000 campaign. Inspired in the bohemians of the Riviera during the 1970's, this collection mixes Moroccan mosaic prints and Hindu brocades, crocheted squares and Persia-inspired cashmere designs. The materials are natural such as cotton and linen and with abundant details like crochet flowers, fringe, and mirrors embroidered in the fabric.

The men's collection, whose campaign features Puerto Rican-born actor, Benicio del Toro, is characterized by its simplicity highlighting the shirt-jacket and knit jerseys in a range of sober colors.

Worth mention is H&M's "Clothes" line. Inspired on television's detective girls, read "Charlie's Angels;" it features an elegant, urban style, where the most important pieces are flared pants combined with tight tops and short, fitted jackets in leather, suede and even corduroy. Colors include bone, beige, toasted brown, orange and pastels. High-heel boots and long foulards complete the look.

H&M, whose sales in 1999 where near the 32.9 billion Swedish Corona mark (US 3.77 billion dollars USA, 662.47 billion Pesetas,) sells 300 million items a year, Germany being its largest market. It currently has 600 stores in twelve European countries and plans to open another 90 in the year 2000, of which 10 will be amongst the US and Spain.

New Collection from Designer Helena Rohner

Designer Helena Rohner is fast becoming one of the Spanish jewelers with more presence in the fashion and design capitals of the world. Her originality being one of the characteristics that are most appreciated by her clients the world over.

In Rohner' Spring/Summer 2000 Collection the protagonists are light and color. With this in mind, she searched for rare semiprecious stones from which she has extracted, through artisan cutting, their veins most intense color gamut: the apple green of Russian jade, agate's yellow, all the iridescent tonalities of mother-of-pearl...

She has gone for simplicity in everything, from the fine chains from which her pendants hang to her raised rings including her soft drop earrings, but with a futuristic touch linking her ellipses, hiding in them the stones' chromatic notes. The inspiration is nineteen-twenties' modernism, which continues to be a creative reference the designer is exploring.

She also designs rings, bracelets, cuff links and pendants for men, which, to her, are colorful proposals to run away from monotony.

Rohner also creates objects for interior decoration. In previous collections she had already presented wooden bowls and glasses. She now surprises us with ceramics so light they can be mistaken for porcelain.

Just as in her jewelry, she explores different combinations: noble-wood caps (ebony, sycamore...) for small ceramic containers; walnut plates polished with oils, which sustain soft-colored enameled glasses and cups: old rose, aqua green, natural sand, smoky black...

Helena Rohner's collections are available in Belgium, England, France, Italy, Japan, the United States and Spain among other countries.  

| Berardi: 1st Collection for Exté |
| Virginie Ledoyen Signs with L'Oréal |
| Adolfo Domínguez: More Points of Sale |
| Latin American and Caribbean Fashion Week |
| Joaquín Berao: New Jewelry Collection |