What is style? What makes us look stylish and what is the main difference between style and fashion? In a way it is ironic that very few of us know what “style” truly means in a world in which we are constantly told through TV programmes, articles on magazines and tips on the Internet what we should wear and how we should wear it. Yet this is exactly the real core of the matter: while it’s easy to achieve a fashionable look through tips and advice, it’s almost impossible to become instantly stylish. Style is indeed a sort of personal stamp, the ultimate way to assert your individuality on the rest of the world, so, while you can buy fashion, style is usually created by unpurchasable substances. If you don’t believe these statements, ask artist, writer, aesthete, arbiter elegantiarum and aRUDE magazine editor Iké Udé who is also the mind behind the impressive and elegant volume Style File (Collins Design).
Born in Nigeria, Udé moved in the early ‘80s to New York where he established his reputation as an artist. Best known for his "Cover Girls" series, a gallery of fake fashion magazine covers that explored the issues of race, gender and beauty, Udé launched in 1995 aRUDE, a publication that first set to explore the worlds of art and culture. As the years passed the magazine focused also on fashion, but in a new and stylish way: the photographic albums it featured were carefully selected, the interviews it published were all very inspirational. Style File is part aRUDE anthology, part extension of the magazine: though the book features the best fashion spreads that appeared in the magazine, such as the “Women in Love” photo shoot, with models from different ethnic groups, or “The Dandy” album inspired by The Yellow Book and The Savoy journals, and a selection of the best interviews ever published, the volume is mainly conceived as an amazingly intense journey through style.
Starting from the Belle Epoque, the book examines the style of the prince of aesthetes Robert de Montesquiou and of decadent Italian poet and writer Gabriele D’Annunzio, and admires the image Countess Elisabeth de Greffulhe and Countess de Castiglione carefully created for themselves. The volume then moves onto the interviews: Udé gave the same questionnaire to over 50 pioneer stylemakers, among them actors and actresses, fashion designers, artists, entrepreneurs, editors and writers, who answered to each question in very different ways. The interviewees – among them Marisa Berenson, John Galliano, André Leon Talley, Isabel Toledo, Stephen Jones, Christian Louboutin, Dita Von Teese and Diane Pernet – provided their interpretations of what style is, mentioned their favourite style icons and revealed their style philosophy.
After going through all the interviews, the reader will finally understand that style goes behind mere clothes, and encompasses even art and politics. Iconic legends of style such as Greta Garbo and Audrey Hepburn are mentioned aside historical figures such as Mahatma Gandhi, Fidel Castro, John F. Kennedy, Mother Teresa and Nelson Mandela; elegant and rebellious women often forgotten by history such as Nancy Cunard are rediscovered; works of art such as Jan van Eyck’s “Portrait of Giovanni Arnolfini and his Wife” and Manet’s “The Dead Toreador” are taken into consideration. Through their answers, the interviewees also provide interesting suggestions: many consider Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita as one of the most stylish films ever made, others seem to have a deeper knowledge of what cinematographic style is, as they suggest Luchino Visconti’s The Leopard, Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Conformist and Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon (writer Peter Davies reveals a higher knowledge of what’s style by listing all the films by costume designer Milena Canonero as his stylistically favourite ones).
At regular intervals between the interviews Style File features rare photo albums like Francesco Scavullo’s, famous for creating iconic covers for Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar; Maripol’s, with a selection of the art director and stylist’s seminal polaroids that documented the ‘80s club scene in New York and Seybou Keïta’s, with an album featuring some of the most elegant pictures in the whole book. The volume is completed by a feature on the history of Motown, a piece on the importance of blogs à la Sartorialist and a section dedicated to the late fashion stylist Isabella Blow, an extravagant and talented woman seen as a sort of reborn version of Marchesa Luisa Casati.
Style File also features essays by Valerie Steele, Director and Chief Curator of the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology, New York, and Harold Koda, Curator-in-Charge of the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Both provide great insights into the book, but Koda’s "Style: The Aesthetics of Self-Definition" is particularly interesting as it takes the reader on a journey through the history of style and of legendary icons, from Coco Chanel to Gianni Agnelli, from Millicent Rogers to Diane Vreeland.
After reading all the interviews and looking at the various photographs and albums, you will start seeing fashion as an ephemeral and futile exercise and will realise that nothing can really buy you grace, precision, elegance and class. Style, to quote one of Iké Udé’s aphorisms featured in the book, is indeed "the ultimate declaration of an individual’s sovereignty”.
If you’re ever looking for a Christmas present for somebody truly stylish or if you’re into art, fashion and style and you are going to buy just one book this year, make sure it’s Style File.
Member of the Boxxet Network of Blogs, Videos and Photos
http://www.boxxet.com/my/badgeBN.80.15.js?boxxetId=u23036
Member of the Boxxet Network of Blogs, Videos and Photos
Rispondi