With confections as a starting point, Mehlinger created a collection that explores desire and consumption in its many forms, finding a locus where desire to consume overlaps with desire for a woman to present herself as beautiful—to be consumed.

Confections focuses on silhouettes like camis, panties, and chemises in silk and mesh, including updates to favorite past looks as well as a new silhouette, the maxi chemise. Color and fabric mixing are a hallmark of the collection, with the Swirl group embracing a candy-cane-like twist of color-blocking that swirls up the body.

Fabrics include combinations of silk charmeuse, chiffon, and mesh, which, together, create a play of opacity mixed with transparency. The looks are both wearable and comfortable to a modern woman, but also give moments of sensual reveal. Colors are reminiscent of fruits and sherbets: peach, crème, mint, lavender, grape.

I’m happy to see some slip-like designs in here – and I’m sure Kelly will digg it too!

More soon on lolahaze.com!

“Times of uncertainty call for a return to the body and an acceptance of imperfection and transience.” For Fall/Winter 2009, New York designer Laura Mehlinger examined the Japanese ideal of wabi sabi, in which beauty is found in imperfection, impermanence and quirks. While referring to this concept, she continued the distinct aesthetics that are the hallmarks of Lola Haze: boldness, play, and the energy of New York City.

One of the visual themes of the collection is body ornamentation. In the Tattoo group, designs inspired by tribal and eastern body ornamentation are hand-painted onto sheer black mesh, a fabric that both veils and reveals the body underneath. The marks, imperfect themselves, caress and frame the body’s natural contours. But these Tattoos are transient ornamentation, and the revelation comes when the tattoos are skimmed off the body, leaving only the natural form.

Ornamentation and surface art appear in the collection also in the Peacock and Imperfect groups, in which luxurious silk charmeuse and metallic lace are appliquéd on top of sheer mesh and silk chiffon.

For Fall/Winter 2009, Lola Haze embraced the simplicity and appeal of one piece dressing: rompers, teddies, jumpsuits, body stockings, and plenty of chemises and slips. Alongside these modern silhouettes are updates to some Lola Haze favorites.

Mehlinger’s collaboration with New York artist Charlotte Pinson, announced in December 2008, continues with a series of quirky, elegant painted silk tops that will be shown alongside the Lola Haze Wabi Sabi City collection.

Mehlinger has been studying, designing and making clothing since the time she could hold a needle. Before launching Lola Haze, she held design positions at Gap, Inc. She received her BA from Harvard in English and was called “Harvard’s Ace Student of Fashion” by the Boston Globe for creating and showing her own line of women’s wear in the only one-person fashion show there in memory. She named her line after the title character in the novel Lolita, which she wrote her thesis about and which continues to intrigue and inspire her.

She finds difference and quirkiness -visual and otherwise- inspiring, and is driven in her designing by the idea of surprise.

“Design is molding juxtapositions: elegance and kitsch, innocence and seduction, playfulness and sophistication, and for Lola Haze, public and private. I love lingerie because it dances between public and private domains. It can be a woman’s own secret that makes her feel special or something beautiful for display. Lola Haze is for a playful, confident woman who loves the transformative power of clothing and dresses for herself. She can wear Lola Haze as innerwear, loungewear, or outerwear.”

The flowing silk charmeuse pieces incorporate Lola Haze’s aesthetic of modern luxury with a playful twist. Designer Laura Mehlinger’s soft structures give flowing form to the liquidy paintings, and her touches of sheer chiffon detailing compliment the delicacy of Pinson’s brush strokes.

Pinson has personalized these lively canvases with imaginative scapes of cranes, sparrows, and figures leaning in for a kiss. Her influences ranged from deco-oriental prints and Japanese kimonos to the lovers on the streets of New York.

Pinson’s hand-painted clothing ranges from her vibrant, eccentric and sometimes humorous one-of-a-kind t-shirts to her psychedelic hand-dyed scarves. The characters that come to life through her painting emit references to saints, ghosts, beasts, intricate textiles, sweeping landscapes and intimate portraiture.

Mehlinger says, “The element of visual surprise is an essential for Lola Haze’s  seasonal intimates collections. I like to integrate playful juxtapositions within the structure of the garments, for example through colorblocking or hardware mixed with silk. Working with Charlotte has been an inspiring experience, and working with a surface artist creates a new element for bringing whimsy and surprise to Lola Haze. It’s also exciting to bring Lola Haze out of the boudoir and onto the street.”

Pinson adds, “I’m extremely pleased with the results of the collaboration. Each design and medium lends itself so well to the other. The end product is a beautiful and elegant garment that both of us took great pleasure in creating. The whole process was a labor of love.”

More info can be found on www.lolahaze.com & charlottepinson.com!

Shop the exquisite collections and meet the designers!  Additionally, a short film (by Matt Sundin) featuring The Lake and Stars designs on NYC ballerinas will be shown at 8 pm.

The trunk show will run through October 5th.

There is limited space, so RSVP to rsvp@journelle.com.