Spanish shoe designer Manolo Blahnik, will receive the André Leon Talley Lifetime Achievement Award this coming Saturday May 21st at the world-renowned Scad Fashion Show. In an exclusive interview, South talked with Blahnik about our fair city, the ever-changing fashion industry and, of course, shoe design.

One thing will never change about Savannahians—they like a good party. And Between live music, fantastic festivals and a slew of annual special events, there’s no lack of opportunity to let your hair down in this city. In the past five years, locals have certainly enjoyed their hearty share of entertainment as all the major events saw increases in attendees.

South magazine had such an amazing time last week cover SCAD Style REVEAL!  With guest speakers like Kelly Cutrone, Derek Blasberg, Chris Benz and Hamish Bowles, attendees were able to soak up the knowledge and history of the business of fashion! To top it off there was an tremendous trunk show at BleuBelle Boutique featuring Diane Von Furstenberg’s spring collection. All in all it was one of Savannah’s finest 10 days.

Video by Matt Demarko and Stephen Pansano

Some inspiring professionals of fashion helped close the last week of SCAD Style this week. Wednesday we were able to get great insight into fashion from the 80’s until now with a panel including costume designer Michael Schmidt, designer Victoria Bartlett and iconic cover girl Sally Randall Brunger.

Engineers of the fashion and entertainment movement in New York in the 1980s, the three panelists shared stories of the decade and the transition into what they called “Creative ADD” to full on fashion careers.

Sally Randall Brunger of KOL designs and creative director for Holsted Marketing reminisced, “We all knew how to do everything, we immersed ourselves in everything creative which then lent us to have an interesting set of skills.”

photographed by: Sebastian Pinzon

It can be very intimidating yet inspiring to sit across a table from three women who have succeeded in becoming online fashion impresarios. I had thepleasure of interviewing Kelly Framel of the fashion blog glamourai.com, Jennifer Hyman of the incredibly popular website Rent the Runway and Lauren Sherman editor of the fashion trend site fashionista.com.

All three represent a component of the new ways of working in fashion and
are helping define its future. I asked each of them about their
thoughts on how business and fashion are changing with the global push
toward working through the web.

Jennifer was quick to respond with “for me there was no other option than
going online. I wanted the concept of the this democratization of fashion
where women could have fun, experiment with fashion, new designers and new
trends and the only way to provide for the masses is provide it online.”

Julia Reed, longstanding contributor to Vogue, Newsweek and Garden & Gun sat down to South to talk about the past and future of fashion journalism.

South magazine: Welcome back to Savannah.
Julia Reed: I feel like I’m the unofficial mascot of the Savannah Book Festival. I’m happy to serve, believe me. I came here for the first festival 3 years ago. I got to know Matt Prickett, who’s been putting it on, and some of the supporting professionals, and we’ve become really good friends. They love me because I make my author friends turn up.

SM: Now that you’ve been here a few times, what’s your overall impression of the city?
JR: It’s weird because I came to Savannah once to write a travel piece for Vogue back in the day when the magazine had a travel section. It was before Midnight and the Garden of Good and Evil was published, and it was kind of this funky…I think I was at Pinky Masters most of the night…but there was a genteel shabbiness to the place. Now to come back and see what SCAD’s presence has done is amazing…things keep getting spiffier and spiffier.

Photographs by Zac Henderson

South magazine had interviews Kelly Cutrone of PR powerhouse Peoples Revolution, Derek Blasberg, editor-at-large of Style.com, and Cameron Silver, owner of the infamous vintage boutique Decades in Los Angeles Tuesday before their lectures. They answered questions on the future of fashion, how to get ahead in the ever-changing competitive business and what you can do to succeed in it.

Video and editing by Mathew Demarko and Stephen Pagano

Photographs by Zac Henderson

editor note: click the “i” to view names