Irenebrination: Notes on Architecture, Art, Fashion, Fashion Law & Technology

Designs to Improve Lives: When Medicine, Science & Technology Take Fashion to a New Level

Around three years ago as the Coronavirus pandemic relentlessly spread all over the world at an alarming speed, quite a few international fashion companies, brands and designers based in different countries offered their help manufacturing in their facilities or ateliers face masks and PPE. At the time, we all genuinely thought that something would have changed in the industry, from the fast fashion rhythms that characterise it to shows and presentations. Some things did change, actually, as, for an extended period of time, everything moved onto digital platforms, but, soon, the industry went back to its pre-pandemic habits.

But what if, rather than the umpteenth beauty line or capsule collection, some houses started using their money to fund and develop medical or scientific projects that could definitely improve people's lives (surely the most powerful groups have money to invest in other things rather than just in the next brand ambassador sitting in the front row)? Or what if some brands sponsored exhibitions (including small and compact ones) about smart textiles and wearables (10-12 years ago such events were trending...) to introduce products that could really improve people's lives?

Medicine, science and technology can offer immense inspirations and news on scientific magazines provide us with intriguing starting points for such products.

For example, the journal Science Advances recently published a study about a smart patch for chronic non-healing wounds. One of the major and rapidly growing clinical complications all over the world, chronic wound healing (think diabetic ulcers, burns and non-healing surgical wounds) is a highly complex biological process. The smart bandage of the study consists in a disposable patch with biosensors, electrodes, and drug-loaded hydrogels and a reusable wearable and stretchable, wireless, bioelectronic system. The latter monitors the wound taking into consideration parameters such as temperature and pH to check if the wound is infected and its levels of inflammation. The device allows for electrical stimulation to be applied, a technique previously found to encourage wounds to heal (that went undeveloped because it was hampered by bulky equipment). The data acquired are then sent to a user interface (computer or smartphone).

The smart patch was tested on diabetic mice, but further studies will have to be carried out, also considering the fact that chronic wounds show great variability in size and in the amount of fluid they produce.

While a smart bandage for chronic wounds may sound like a strictly medical or scientific discovery, product and fashion designers could work alongside medical experts and look into alternative fibers and materials that may help scientists developing more comfortable versions of such products, so there is always a design aspect even in the most technical devices. 

Researchers who may have developed innovative ideas can enter them into the Index Award biennale. Launched by the Danish nonprofit organisation The Index Project, the award promotes the improvement of life worldwide, both in developed and developing countries through solutions that go from wearable devices to keep oneself physically and mentally healthy to the creation of safer spaces.

Among the entries this year there is a neural sleeve for people with multiple sclerosis and cerebral palsy that allows a patient to walk more freely through electrical stimulation, and a wearable textile computer (this is something very important as embedded logic controllers made of textiles are actually an entire new field to explore, as they can lead to smart, fully textile-based robotic wearables) capable of pneumatic digital logic, onboard memory, and user interaction to assist people with disabilities. 

Among the nominees for this year there is also a biofilm band-aid harnessing sweat and converting evaporation into energy to power wearable devices; a foundation formula that creates a film protecting the skin from acid attacks (nobody should ever experience such a thing, but a foundation resistant to such attacks may have other applications as well) and a recyclable translucent PLA brace for adolescents with scoliosis covered in visually enticing fabric-like patterns, that turns a medical device into a fashion statement giving confidence to those who have to wear such a device.

None of us expects to see branded bandages or wearables with prominent logos of famous fashion houses, but the medical and scientific field could offer fashion, and in particular young people entering the industry, the chance to apply their potential to different areas, developing solutions that could genuinely bring positive changes to the lives of people with a variety of ailments.

The Woven Permanence of Instant Selfies: Cindy Sherman's Tapestries @ ARoS Aarhus Kunstmuseum, Denmark

In the last decade taking selfies turned into a dangerous collective obsession: selfies offer many of us the chance to instantly post visual chronicles of every single (un)meaningful instant and fleeting moment happening in our lives, but they also give perennial nightmares to all those among us who hate having their picture taken. Posted on social media or simply forgotten in the recesses of an abandoned smartphone or micro memory card, our selfies remain confined to the intangible digital realm.

Pondering about selfies and the phenomenon of face altering apps, in 2017 renowned artist Cindy Sherman started posting a series of selfies on her Instagram account. The portraits were created using various face-altering platforms available for smartphones that deconstructed and reassembled the image of the artist, creating new grotesques and imaginary personae.

Sherman is known for her photographic series exploring the notion of identity and challenging it: for decades the artist has transformed herself through a variety of ingenious disguises such as costumes and silicone masks. From film star to clown, from housewife to fashion icon, Sherman analysed through her gender fluid images and the typology of faces and figures she explored, the role of women in multiple situations.

Portrait after portrait, Sherman created ambiguous identities, like a clever shape-shifter, remaining always in control of her body, and playing the double role of subject and object.

Yet her selfies were too small in format to be reproduced and upscaled in a high-quality image photography, so, rather than confining them to social media or digital supports, Sherman decided to give them a sort of unexpected physicality and elevate them through a traditional craft, transforming them into tapestries.

Currently on display at ARoS Aarhus Kunstmuseum in Denmark (until 5th June), the tapestries are a way to turn technology into crafts.

There's usually parody, irony and theatricality in her works, but her tapestries take the digital media to a new level as they were created by master artisans in Belgium where tapestry-making has been a highly valued practice since the 15th century.

Translating pixels into stitches actually worked pretty well in this case: from afar the portraits look almost painted, but close up the dense woven patterns are revealed. The cotton, wool and acrylic yarns give the selfies new depths, besides, while we enjoy selfies visually, the tufted effect adds a new tactile value to the original digital format, engaging another sense, the touch, which usually gets neglected when we talk about digital art. 

The tapestry medium ends up emphasizing the alterations of Sherman's appearances: aged, sporting a beard, with her arms or neck distorted or morphed into a strange creature with lilac skin and hair, Sherman proves that her characters can't be confined to the image, but can be translated into other mediums.

For Sherman the selfie is another mask, another way to perform her roles, and the medium of the tapestry is just one interpretation of her multiple identities, assumed and genuine, fake and real.

By transforming new, artificial, temporary, ephemeral and imaginary bodies into permanent ones made of yarns through the tapestries, Sherman turns something familiar, ephemeral and superficial yet usually fun as a selfie into something disturbing, disquieting, kitsch, grotesque and even uncomfortable. 

Tapestry, a medium used in previous centuries for decorative panels, artworks and portraits made for nobility and the wealthy, turns in this case into a vehicle to comment on modern personality consumption on digital platforms.

"People might think the use of tapestry is quaint and outmoded," states the curator of the exhibition at ARoS, Juliana Engberg. "But Sherman mines her material for maximum effect, exploring not only identity but also playing with the visual field of abstraction and realism. With tapestry, she has found a material that warps and weaves in partnership with the pixel, and it is exciting to be able to work with and think about these unexpected works. They reveal more and more with looking and thinking," she concludes.

Image credits for this post

Installation photos of Cindy Sherman's Tapestries at ARoS Aarhus Kunstmuseum, 2023, courtesy of ARoS Aarhus Kunstmuseum, Denmark.

Fashion Sense(s): From Cinzia Ruggeri A/W 1986 to Yohei Ohno A/W 23

Printed, embroidered or appliqued motifs inspired by the five senses are not so rare in fashion. Decades after decade, eyes and lips, for example, have often been employed in symbolic ways on both garments and accessories.

In the mid-'80s artist, fashion and interior designer Cinzia Ruggeri explored the possibilities of the five senses through garments with lips, noses and eyes.

Some of the designs featured printed and hand-painted elements to stimulate also the touch; others were characterised by prints of eyes, noses and ears that looked slightly surreal, almost evoking the palette and style of Salvador Dali's "The Persistence of Memory" (eyes complete with eyelashes also appeared on Ruggeri's pumps - View this photo, third pair from the left, but the way they were displayed at an exhibition in Rome last year, without being cleaned or restored, didn't make them justice, you can see the shoes in this video).

The tribute to the senses was also the main theme behind the video for Ruggeri's A/W 1986-87 collection that included garments that smelled like sulphur, edible earrings and models carrying hand-painted canvas panels of an eye, lips and ear.

This emphasis on the senses recently reappeared in Yohei Ohno's A/W 23 designs. Showcased during Tokyo Fashion Week, the collection mainly revolved around sight and touch.

The former was interpreted as large brooches of an eye used to accessorize jackets and dresses. These decorative elements looked broken and fractured, almost like the fragmented canvases carried by models on Ruggeri's runway.

One dress was instead matched with an oversized tufted cape with a pair of eyes: this piece represented a connection with interior design since it was made with a technique mainly employed to make carpets.

Ohno is actually an interior design fan, so this wasn't the only reference to this discipline: during the collection presentation in a gallery in Shibuya, he got some models posing behind a carpet with an elaborate frame and a pair of cut out legs reminiscent of a statue that could actually be positioned vertically, creating an optically uncanny effect.

Besides, for this collection Ohno also moved from Cassina's Dudet chair designed by Patricia Urquiola (View this photo) and borrowed its distinctive curved silhouette to create padded tubing on mini-skirts in tough cotton that pointed at military wear and on sheepskin heeled pumps designed by Ikue Enomoto.

In this way Ohno established a futuristic and industrial link with interior design that was also an invitation to the touch, as the tubings formed an innovative silhouette, but represented also a soft and comforting motif.

Ohno often adds an eccentric note to his creations and even the designs in this collection that verged towards the casual/street/urban moods and featured graphic prints, were characterised by this approach.

Since he doesn't like T-shirts, for example, he transformed them into handbags, and created a purple print of a fake band's tour poster that was used for bags, turtlenecks and dresses.

In previous collections (A/W 2017-18) Ohno referenced the Bauhaus movement, the automotive industry and furniture design by architect Eileen Gray.

But there is always a marked femininity in all his collections even when Ohno leans more onto the industrial side of things: in previous seasons he printed aeronautical engineering plans onto soft quilted dresses, integrated seat-belt straps in designs that put emphasis on the waistline, and turned industrial aprons into sensual dresses. Ohno also applied dinosaur skeleton tails on elegant flat sandals (View this photo) or decorated tops and skirts with three-dimensional rows of dinosaur horns made with organza (View this photo), playing with contrasts and juxtaposing the brutish nature of prehistoric animals with a vision of a modern, dynamic and ironic woman.

In this collection Ohno continued with this juxtaposition, using light organza for his trousers with a round motif around the calf, vaguely reminiscent of Pierre Cardin's 1970 circle pants (that were originally available in white View this photo or in a selection of bright colours View this photo including orange, an interesting parallelism with Ohno's, that come in the same white/orange palette), and creating kinetic cuffs that coiled around the models' arms, looking like crossovers between an accessory borrowed from a sci-fi film and an orthopaedic brace.

It is exactly in these juxtapositions and contrasts of wearable garments and accessories reinvented from industrial products and with a quirky twist about them, that Ohno excels at.

Mystical Bondage: Akiko Aoki A/W 23

It is difficult to think about fashion and moods borrowed from Catholic religion without immediately conjuring up in your mind the architectures of rich Baroque churches, the pomp of ceremonies (and maybe their connections with fashion runways or even red carpet events…), the craft behind sacred vestments, the attire of saints, ex votos as accessories and the influence of priest's cassocks and religious vestments in fashion.

You could write lengthy essays about Catholic inspirations going from sacred images of Madonnas, crosses and cherubs recreated in sequins, crystals and gems, to Elsa Schiaparelli's embroidered motifs such as St. Peter's keys or Dolce & Gabbana's use of Miraculous Medals.

Yet you can also look at this inspiration from a more arty point of view or monastic as well, and explore the attire of pilgrims or themes of simplicity and moderation, like Japanese designer Akiko Aoki did in her latest collection.

Born in Tokyo in 1986, Aoki studied fashion at the Joshibi University of Art and Design and at London's Central Saint Martins, founding her eponymous brand in 2014. One of the finalists for the 2018 LVMH Young Fashion Designers award, Aoki is currently considered one of the most promising young Japanese designers.

Aoki was educated at a strict Catholic school from kindergarten to high school and, in her A/W 23 collection, showcased during Tokyo Fashion Week, she looked back at these personal experiences.

For her first show in five years, Aoki opened with ankle-length dresses matched with veils that referenced the Virgin Mary, evoking the vibes of Antonello da Messina's Virgin Annunciate painting.

The religious inspiration was filtered through a deconstructed tailored eye, though, so that, rather than opting for extravagant religious references, Aoki kept it simple.

Antonello da Messina in his portrait of the annunciation dispensed of the archangel and re-shifted the attention on a young woman partially hid behind her veil, opting for a restrained palette and a symmetrical rigour; Aoki did the same, avoiding distractions and going for a rigorous approach with menswear-inspired suiting and fabrics.

As the collection progressed, the religious inspirations continued with monastic and nun outfits with veils that evoked visions of statues embodying modesty and black and white lace designs (was the black lace a reference to the attire of the Virgin of sorrows?), but was also combined with other inspirations.

While recycled garments such as dresses and T-shirts reassembled from second-hand designs (by now a classic on runways) pointed at casual attire and sportswear, towards the end there was almost a hint at military inspirations with ample jackets and coats evoking parachutes, that also included some references to the grandeur of historical costumes in their lace details, voluminous sleeves and belts with large pockets forming pannier-like constructions around the hips.

Besides, while some of the deconstructed designs and in particular the trenchcoats with sleeves forming an unconventional silhouette, almost angel wings from the waist to the hips with pockets around the bra line, still seemed to have a link with the religious inspiration, there was also a bondage twist all over the collection. 

Punk straps on jackets and trousers pointed at sexual constrictions and at creating straight-jacket-like effects, while, quite often, the conservative front of a dress hid a sensual back characterized by cutouts and corset fastenings. Besides, Aoki juxtaposed more sensual or kinky textures and textiles such as lace, faux shearling and black plastic-like materials to her menswear fabrics.

The shoes were a combination of fetish and religious architecture: a collaboration with Three Treasures, the sky-high platform of the shoes (as perilous as Venetian calcagnini) elongated the silhouette of the wearer in extreme ways. The marble effect platform pointed instead at plinths and statues and at architectural elements you may find in churches.

Also the presentation referenced in some ways religion with the runway bathed in circular rings of lights, almost a symbol of blessing, or maybe a hint at a rite of passage towards a mystical bondage aesthetics. 

Be Yourself, Everyone Else Is Already Taken: Pillings A/W 23

It is often the case that the labels favoured by street kids do not showcase their collections during Tokyo Fashion Week. This year, though, something changed and some Japanese labels appreciated by alternative fashion fans, such as Pillings by Ryota Murakami, were part of the main calendar. 

Japan relaxed the Covid-19 guidelines regarding face masks last week, a decision that coincided with the fashion week, and that gave the event a renewed impulse.

A graduate of Coconogacco and a designer at writtenafterwards, pre-Covid Murakami formed a design duo with his mother. After 2020, he renamed his brand from Ryotamurakami to Pillings, but maintained the focus on experimental knitwear (trying to bridge contemporary fashion trends with Japanese handicrafts he also launched a knit school with Keiko Okamoto from Atelier K'sK).

In the previous show presentation (A/W 22) Murakami hung a huge piano upside down from the ceiling, while models in knitted designs covered in cute ants or oversized insects and lobsters, walked on the runway. In that case the ants and insects (View this photo) were used as hints at being laborious, disciplined and at adapting to society.

But Murakami doesn't seem to conform to a cookie-cutter culture: fascinated by this dichotomy between the rules imposed on each of us by society and individual freedom, Murakami usually designs clothes for people who do not want to conform and who express their dissent through eccentric pieces or through subtle details.

During the A/W 23 show presentation everything was tinged with melancholy: the runway was immersed in the dark with multiple streetlights that lit when the models passed under them. The models with their wet hair and pale faces looked cold and seemed to hold together their knits, almost hugging themselves.

The gesture was not done out of modesty but was caused by a functional trick: the models were indeed putting their hands in bizarrely misplaced and misaligned pockets, as a gesture of protection from adversities.

For Murakami putting your hands in your pockets means indeed feeling safe, almost relieved, and that was the main purpose of his designs, offering protection and a refuge from anxiety. 

Yet, by misplacing the pockets and putting them around the chest or at the sides, Murakami also shifted the silhouette, creating in this way new and unusual warped shapes.

As a child Murakami was traumatized when kids took him around for wearing a jumper his mother made. But in this collection, those same imperfections turned into a badge of honour.

This point was also symbolized by a jumper in which musical notes unraveled, almost to represent a dissonant note, a divergent thought in a world that conforms, and people who are simply out of tune.

The contrast between society and the self was also represented by the holes that covered the jumpers and slip dresses in a decorative way (in the previous collection instead holes were a functional excuse to create intricate woven or knotted motifs with ropes View this photo). We often see distressed garments with holes, but here the designer tried to give an explanation for those holes, covering them in three-dimensional oversized wool-hungry crocheted moths.

Some of these moths were suspended around the knits with metal wire, so that they gave the impression they were flying around the garments, almost attacking the models; but there were also moths intarsia-ed into the jumpers, hiding under the cable knitted braids, damaging and distorting them, and unravelling the symmetry of the knitted patterns.

Murakami interpreted the moths not as something destructive, but as something constructive, even optimistic: moths are attracted by light and hence by hope, he argued, therefore his designs were just a way to see the light at the end of a tunnel.

Another thick and cropped vest that seemed to partially fall into pieces, but was actually held together with a row of hooks and eyes, celebrated another commond pest, the street pigeon: considered as "rats of the sky" by many of us, here the knitted pigeons hinted at urban freedom in a cosy and reassuring way. 

There were more hints at freedom in Murakami's trademark wide-legged wool trousers: loose, thick and wide, they offered a relaxed and comfortable fit, with a surreal and nerdy twist. The lining of the trousers was indeed rolled around the waist creating the illusion that maybe the rolled up material was the bottom of a shirt popping out of the pants or maybe something more intimate, like boyfriend's boxers peeking from the waist of the trousers. 

By eliminating the fashion stunts we got so used to see on the runways of the main fashion capitals, to focus on clothes and off-kilter knits, Murakami proved it is still possible not to conform and follow trends, but celebrate individuality, a concept strengthened by the notes of Frank Sinatra's "My Way" that closed the show.

Murakami's attitude to fashion hasn't change since he renamed and relaunched his label: he still likes to delve into the society Vs the individual dichotomy, fascinated by clumsy, awkward people and creating, as he says, "clothes that serve as attitudes for outcasts".

Nothing was refined or polished in this collection, yet there was no miserabilism, but a dark and subversive twist, a glistening hope in the messy thick jumpers, almost an encouragement to be yourself. After all, as also Oscar Wilde used to say, everyone else is already taken.

Say It with Knitting: Kate Just's Knitted Protest Signs

There were quite a few protests in the news last week: people marched in Paris after the French government decided to force through pension reforms without a vote in parliament; then there was also a demo in Milan against Italy's new rightwing government to restrict the rights of same-sex parents.

Banners and placards with witty or angry slogans are something essential in protests: mainly made at home using a variety of materials, they are usually colourful so that they can attract the attention of other people and the media. At the end of demos, placards and signs are usually discarded, even though some of us keep them as a memento.

American-born Australian feminist artist Kate Just moves from banners and placards to create her series of hand-knitted protest signs.

Knitting in her practice becomes therefore an engaging sculptural medium with a poetic or political twist. Her knitted canvases mounted on a plywood frame, replicate slogans the artist sees on the news, on social media, online or at live protests.

So far, she has knitted banners about a wide range of social and political issues, going from peace in Ukraine and climate change to feminism, sexual harassment, reproductive freedom, LGBTQIA+ pride and racism.

The hand-made banners offer an added value to the protest signs: according to the artist, they invite a close tactile engagement, but, turning the ephemeral slogans into something more lasting, the artist also transforms them into tangible signs of our times even after a protest is over.

Just mainly works with textiles and for previous installations she knitted figures, skins, tools and armours, but also abstracted forms. 

Last year when in June the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, she also came up with a sort of wearable protest sign: she developed the "Keep Your Laws Off My Body" green and white sweater and shirt in collaboration with knitwear company Knitup (a full service digital design platform for knitwear designers).

The slogan was inspired by pro-choice protest signs from the late 1960s and the palette came from the "green wave" – a reference to the campaign for safe and legal abortion in Argentina, which was revived in US abortion protests as a means of demonstrating global solidarity around this issue.

Just conceived the wearable garment featuring a text that wraps repeatedly around the front, back and sleeves of the sweater, as a form of political protest and a fundraising tool. Proceeds from the sale go indeed to The National Network of Abortion Funds (NNAF) that works to remove financial and logistical barriers to abortion access for those that have or need abortions.

There was also a personal story behind the sweater as Just's great grandmother, Lena Michalski, died having a back-alley abortion when the artist's grandmother was just a baby.  

Just has exhibited extensively across Australia and internationally at major public galleries and contemporary art spaces and her knitted slogans are currently part of the exhibition "Unravelling Queerly" at the Australian Design Centre in Darlinghurst.

Closing this week (on 22nd March) the event explores practices such as weaving, crocheting, embroidering, quilting and sewing in connection with LGBTQIA+ artists, makers and designers, and the way these processes and soft materials such as yarns and textiles, often connected with a sense of physical or psychological ease, allow them to create safe spaces, while sharing personal narratives and developing a dialogue on contemporary queerness.

Fashion Narratives in Assemblages of Found Objects & Leftover Materials

In yesterday's post we looked at artists who created works with salvaged materials and found objects, a practice that showed their resilience, tenacity and hope. Let's continue the thread today and briefly ponder on fashion designs based on the same principles, resulting in inventive assemblages of materials.

Writtenafterwards' designers Yoshikazu Yamagata and Kentaro Tamai (who left the label in 2009) often based their collections on these principles.

Writtenafterwards was established by Yamagata (who also founded the Coconogacco fashion design course to allow students to be more experimental in fashion) and Tamai in 2007. Both graduated from Central Saint Martins and served as design assistants, Yamagata for John Galliano and Tamai for Margaret Howell.

The theme of their Autumn/Winter 2009 collection was "Graduate Fashion Show - 0 Points" and the designs were inspired by graduation collections ("0 points" was also a reference to academic grades), starting points for students aiming to become fashion designers.

The designs included in the collection were made with leftover scraps from actual graduation projects at fashion and art schools. This exercise in putting together bits and pieces from a variety of projects represented a metaphor for the designers, a way to try and find the remnants of creativity and unlock the potential of discarded materials deemed to have zero value.

Among the various designs included in this collection there was also an asymmetrical sheath dress made with paper, packing tape, pearls, shells, plastic forks, aluminum foil and two CDs that highlighted the breasts. All these elements didn't form just a decorative surface, but the actual structure of the dress that didn't include any fabric.

There were more assemblages of materials in further collections including "The Seven Gods" (October 2012), in which Yoshikazu Yamagata created a fashion narrative in which Adam, after leaving Eden, decides to become a fashion designer, but also works in a day job, collecting trash every to support himself. Adam makes his first collection, inspired by the "flea market" theme, with the scraps he collects during his job. After showing his collection, Adam dies.

"The Gods of Seven Costumes" - a reference to the Seven Lucky Gods representing different types of luck, that is good health, longevity, wealth, knowledge, happiness, art, and beauty - made their appearance at the end of the writtenafterwards' show.

The designs of the costumes - that looked like accumulations of all sorts of materials - was directly derived from the Japanese tradition of the kumade rake, a symbol of good luck covered in a variety of auspicious objects.

So, remember, there are wonderful narratives in the most unlikely assemblages of objects, you just need to listen to the items you find and allow them to reveal you their stories to unlock your imagination.

African American Artistic Traditions & Visual Storytelling: "Souls Grown Deep Like the Rivers: Black Artists from the American South" @ The Royal Academy, London

From a distance the blue, yellow, pink, green and red flowers in Thornton Dial's "Stars of Everything" (2004) with their simple shapes and 6 or 7 rectangular petals look like something a child may have drawn. Yet, a close-up inspection reveals something else: the flowers are not painted, but they are made with exploded cans and they represent a starry night sky while a spray paint can and a piece of old carpet form a dynamic human figure at the centre of this artwork, an assemblage of recycled and recombined materials.

Dial's artwork is just one of the many intriguing pieces part of the "Souls Grown Deep Like the Rivers: Black Artists from the American South" exhibition that opened yesterday at London's Royal Academy (The Gabrielle Jungels-Winkler Galleries; through 18th June 2023).

The exhibition explores African American artistic traditions and methods of visual storytelling focusing on the South's painful history and looking at enslavement, the segregationist policies of the Jim Crow era, institutionalised racism, exploitation and inequality in the American South, the horror of white supremacy and the Civil Rights Movement.

As a whole, there are 64 works (the oldest piece is from the 1930s and the latest is from 2021) by 34 artists (23 of whom have passed away) from the mid-20th century to the present, some of them on display for the first time in Europe and most of them from the collection of the Souls Grown Deep Foundation, Atlanta, Georgia.

The organization, founded by Atlanta collector William S. Arnett in 2010 and named after a 1921 poem by Langston Hughes ("The Negro Speaks of Rivers"), advocates the inclusion of Black artists from the South in the canon of American art history, and fosters economic empowerment, racial and social justice, and educational advancement in the communities that gave rise to these artists.

The artists featured in the exhibition live and work in the American South, from communities in South Carolina to the Mississippi Delta, in isolated rural areas like Gee's Bend, Alabama, and in urban centres like Atlanta, Memphis and Miami.Born between 1887 and 1965, many of the artists in the exhibition grew up during the Jim Crow era. Their work confronts a series of issues from slavery and the inequalities Black people in America continue to experience while celebrating the African traditions artists inherited or studied. 

The majority of them acquired their art-making skills by learning from family members, mentors and friends or through experimentation. While many of them were low on resources, all of them proved to be high on resourcefulness as their challenging economic situations pushed them to find new creative solutions.

Not having access to conventional art materials, many of the artists included in this exhibition learnt to be creative with what they had and employed salvaged materials and found objects to make artworks that show their resilience, tenacity and hope.

The artworks on display include assemblages, sculptures, paintings, reliefs, drawings and textiles as well, but the key to the exhibition is the strong relation between the materials used by the artists and their stories. In the exhibition there are pieces made with rusted tools and empty tins, driftwood, roots, soil, bones and stones, scrap metal and electrical appliances. These objects, transformed by the artists, form a very personal glossary used to write the story of America's painful past, but they are also employed to show how creativity can prevail over racism and financial adversities, over oppression and social marginalisation.

Thornton Dial's "Tree of Life", for example, incorporates fragments of found wood, roots, rubber tires and air freshener to create a monument to his great-aunt, artist Sarah Dial Lockett. The work also reflects his 30 years' experience as a steelworker in Bessemer, Alabama, where his sons, Thornton Jr and Richard (both artists in the exhibition too) also worked.

The Southern landscape has also got a role in the exhibition as several artists use organic materials like mud and salvaged wood taken from the land around them. Dial commemorates in some of his works artist Bessie Harvey (featured in the exhibition with her 1987 work "Untitled") through the natural materials employed by both of them, including tree roots and branches. But the tribute is also a way to comment about how, in exhibitions, only one artist can usually be chosen for a category, something that set Dial and Harvey against each other.

Ralph Griffin crafted instead a bald eagle from a root and salvaged driftwood; Jimmy Lee Sudduth employed mud, blackberry juice and grass stains to forge a relationship with the earth, while Lonnie Holley created a very peculiar record player with a salvaged phonograph top, a chipped vinyl record and an animal skull with a hollow-eyed stare.

Not having access to formal art spaces, these artists ended up displaying their work in their yards, something that led to the "Yard Show", a deeply rooted Southern tradition that started during the Jim Crow era of segregation as a way for Black artists, who were systematically shut out of the art establishment, to display their work on their own terms. 

One of the best surviving examples of a yard show is Joe Minter's African Village in America, a sculpture garden on the outskirts of Birmingham Alabama. The works in his yard as well as his independent sculptures address 400 years of American history and the violence, injustices and racism that Black people have been subjected to through the centuries.

Another point to note about these artists is that their skills were handed down: Dial, for example, trained his sons Thornton Dial Jr and Richard Dial and nurtured the talents of his younger cousin Ronald Lockett.

For the quilt-making community of Gee's Bend, learning to sew and make quilts was a creative tradition passed down through generations in their remote Alabama community. "I came to realise that my mother, her mother, my aunts, and all the others from Gee's Bend had sewn the foundations, and all I had to do now was thread my own needle and piece a quilt together," wrote Loretta Pettway.

The all-black community of Gee's Bend, is a key chapter in the history of American art: located at the arc of a bend of the Alabama River within Wilcox County, in the United States, the town of Boykin was originally known as Gee's Bend, after a landowner and slaveholder, Joseph Gee, who in 1816 settled in the area and built a cotton plantation.

After the Civil War, descendants of the slaves from the plantation worked as sharecroppers and, in the 1940s, the land of the former plantation in Boykin was sold in plots by the United States government to local families still living in the Bend.
So, Black and Native residents of the area gained ownership over the same land their families had once forcibly worked within.

With The Great Migration over six million African Americans, forced by economic circumstances, moved from the rural South to the cities of the North, Midwest, and West, but most Gee's Bend's residents remained in Alabama. Many of the current residents are therefore descendants of the enslaved people who worked on the plantation.

Originally Gee Bend's multi-layered quilts incorporating salvaged materials such as worn out clothes and fabric offcuts, were produced for functional purposes and family use, the complexity of their designs reflecting the complex lives of the women who made them.

As the decades passed, the aim and purpose of the quilts changed: in the 1960s, encouraged by Martin Luther King, Jr's visit, community members became active in the Civil Rights Movement, ferrying to the county seat at Camden to register to vote. Authorities reacted by eliminating ferry service, a move that ended up isolating the community and cutting it off from basic services. This isolation fostered a unique environment for their artistic practice.

Local women came therefore together and founded cooperatives with a precise aim in mind - reinventing the traditions and expanding quilting, an art that has often inspired contemporary fashion collections. The exhibition features a selection of works by the Gee's Bend quiltmakers from the 1930s to 2021, including Marlene Bennett Jones who created a geometrical quilt from denim pockets and scraps of red corduroy recycled from a quilt made by her mother.

The oldest work in the show is a quilt from the '30s entitled "Housetop – sixteen-block Half Log Cabin variation" by Rachel Carey George, a continuous tumble of geometric lines that become more intricate towards the lower right. But the display also includes another quilt with a similar name, "Housetop – nine-block Half Log Cabin variation" by Martha Jane Pettway from 1945. In this case the lines form a well-defined optical pattern in a pleasant combination of colours including cream, pistachio green and pale blue with just a hint of lipstick red.

Quite often quilts inspired other works: in his 1997 work "Sarah Lockett's Roses", Ronald Lockett used tin and wood to replicate the formal qualities of quiltmaking, using five colours on interlocked tiles to recreate a quilt-like block of patterns, and pay homage to his neighbour and great-grandmother and her art.

In 2021 London's Royal Academy launched a Decolonial Research Project to investigate the links between the institution and its colonial past, documenting associations between 18th- and 19th-century Royal Academicians and colonial activities and interests, including the ownership of enslaved people or of plantations where enslaved people worked. The Royal Academy ended up uncovering many colonial connections to Academicians. "Souls Grown Deep Like the Rivers" could be interpreted therefore as a further step taken by the gallery towards the decolonisation of this art institution.  

"Souls Grown Deep Like the Rivers" is accompanied by a rich programme of events, with musicians, talks and also a quilt-making mini-course entitled "Gee's Bend and beyond"(13th and 14th May 2023) where participants will be able to learn how to create quilts based on the expressive and improvisational quilting techniques used by the artists of Gee's Bend and a weekend (17th and 18th June 2023) dedicated to the history of fabrics that will offer the participants the chance to explore the distinction between contemporary textile art and crafts and the role of textiles.

Image credits for this post

Thornton Dial, Stars of Everything, 2004. Mixed media, 248.9 x 257.8 x 52.1 cm. Souls Grown Deep Foundation, Atlanta. © 2022 Estate of Thornton Dial / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / DACS, London 2022. Photo: Stephen Pitkin/Pitkin Studio

Ralph Griffin, Eagle, 1988. Found wood, nails, paint, 88.9 x 110.5 x 55.9 cm. Souls Grown Deep Foundation, Atlanta. © ARS, NY and DACS, London 2022 Photo: Stephen Pitkin/Pitkin Studio

Lonnie Holley, Keeping a Record of It (Harmful Music), 1986. Salvaged phonograph top, phonograph record, animal skull, 34.9 x 40 cm. Souls Grown Deep Foundation, Atlanta. © 2023 Lonnie Holley / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / DACS, London. Photo: Stephen Pitkin/Pitkin Studio

Ronald Lockett, Sarah Lockett's Roses, 1997. Tin, nails, and enamel on wood, 129.5 x 123.2 x 3.8 cm. Souls Grown Deep Foundation, Atlanta. © ARS, NY and DACS, London 2022. Photo: Stephen Pitkin/Pitkin Studio

Marlene Bennett Jones, Triangles, 2021. Denim, corduroy, and cotton, 205.7 x 157.5 cm. Souls Grown Deep Foundation, Atlanta. © 2023 Marlene Bennett Jones / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / DACS, London. Photo: Stephen Pitkin/Pitkin Studio

Martha Jane Pettway, "Housetop"— nine-block "Half- Log Cabin" variation, c. 1945. Corduroy, 182.9 x 182.9 cm. Souls Grown Deep Foundation, Atlanta. © Estate of Martha Jane Pettway / ARS, NY and DACS, London 2022. Photo: Stephen Pitkin/Pitkin Studio

Joe Minter, And He Hung His Head and Died, 1999. Welded found metal, 243.8 x 194.3 x 87.6 cm. Souls Grown Deep Foundation, Atlanta. © ARS, NY and DACS, London 2022. Photo: Stephen Pitkin/Pitkin Studio

Fashion Law Trending: Hermès Vs MetaBirkins Saga Continues

Trends come and go, but there's something that remains always en vogue - litigation - especially in fashion matters. This year opened with the Adidas Vs Thom Browne trial, but continued in February with an intriguing battle between Hermès International and Los Angeles-based artist and entrepreneur Mason Rothschild (real name Sonny Estival) over the "MetaBirkins" digital collectible NFTs.

Representing faux-fur Birkin bags, some of them inspired by the works of renowned artists including Van Gogh, Goya, Dali and Hokusai, the NFTs were launched and sold on the OpenSea platform. The initial asking price for the MetaBirkins in Ethereum was around $450 for each bag, but their values increased via the resale market and one NFT was sold for $45,000; the artist received a 7.5 percent royalty for resales of MetaBirkins.

According to the luxury brand, the NFTs confused consumers who may have thought this was an official collaboration between the two parties, so the company filed suit in January 2022.

During the trial that took place in January this year, Rothschild explained how he developed and promoted the project, mentioning the fact that the idea to cover bags in fur was "a commentary on fashion's history of animal cruelty, and its current embrace of fur-free initiatives and alternative textiles."

Rothschild and his legal team made connections between the MetaBirkins and Andy Warhol's silkscreen series of Campbell's Soup Cans, highlighting that artistic expression/artistic freedom is protected under the First Amendment and that MetaBirkins were an "artistic expression" of the Birkin bag. The team tried to prove this point with the Rogers Test.

In the end a Manhattan nine-person federal jury ruled in favour of the French company and against Rothschild: the jury found Rothschild liable of trademark infringement, brand dilution and cybersquatting. The jury also decided that the First Amendment does not bar liability and awarded Hermès $133,000 in total damages. As the jury deliberated against him, Rothschild's attorney, Lex Lumina PLLC's Rhett Millsaps, announced they would have appealed.

The case was closely-watched being one of the first lawsuits revolving around trademark issues and NFTs and the extension of IRL trademark rights to the virtual world.

At the beginning of March, Hermès filed a motion for a permanent injunction, urging the court to permanently block Rothschild's promotion and sale of the NFTs. But on Tuesday this week Rothschild's legal team lodged a renewed motion for judgment as a matter of law or a new trial. In addition to that, counsel for Rothschild also filed their opposition to Hermès' motion for a permanent injunction.

The team highlighted that Hermès did not produce any evidence of concrete harm suffered from Rothschild's promotion and sales of his MetaBirkins artworks. During the trial it was indeed stated that Hermés has sold more than $1 billion worth of Birkins in the past decade in the U.S. alone and Robert Chavez, president and chief executive officer of Hermés Americas, explained that he was not aware of any lost revenue due to the MetaBirkins, so the company wasn't damaged by the project.

In the opposition to Hermès' permanent injunction the artist’s legal team stated that the court didn't structure properly the instructions to the jury. Besides, the team claimed that the First Amendment is not "a defense to trademark claims" but a rule of construction that shapes the plaintiff’s prima facie case. According to Rothschild's legal team, Hermès' cybersquatting claim was also unsupported by evidence and was inconsistent with the First Amendment.

Rothschild's lawyers also claimed that when instructing the jury, "the court failed to [properly] implement the 'Rogers Test'," asking the jury "first to determine whether Rothschild was liable for infringement, dilution, or cybersquatting, and then to turn to the Rogers considerations only after determining Rothschild was liable on one or more of those claims." This means that the court treated Rogers as an affirmative defense, but Rothschild's team states that "Rogers does not create an affirmative defense excusing otherwise unlawful conduct; it replaces the ordinary infringement rules with two and only two considerations: artistic relevance and explicit misleadingness,"

Named after the "Rogers Vs Grimaldi" case (1989; also used in the Nike / Lil Nas X / MSCHF litigation, as you may remember), the test takes into consideration somebody's trademark rights and another person's right to create some kind of creative expression from that. More specifically, the case refers to Ginger Rogers who sued Alberto Grimaldi and MGM for production and distribution of the 1986 Federico Fellini film "Ginger and Fred", that featured a cabaret couple, Pippo and Amelia, emulating Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. In this case the Second Circuit, on appeal, highlighted that Rogers' right to protect her celebrated name was clashing with the right of others to express themselves freely in their own artistic work, and found Grimaldi not liable as suppressing an artistically relevant film on trademark grounds would "unduly restrict expression". According to the team behind Rothschild, had the Rogers test been correctly applied, the jury would have realized that the artworks are protected by the First Amendment."

Rothschild's legal team also challenged the judge's decision to not allow testimony from contemporary art critic Dr. Blake Gopnik, author of a biography of Andy Warhol. According to Judge Rakoff, Gopnik's expertise in art history wasn't based on reliable data or a clear methodology and Gopnik (who supports the thesis that the MetaBirkins can be filed under the "Business Art", a practice at the intersection of art and commerce, even though Judge Rakoff stated that Gopnik never offered a "systemic definition of what is business art") would be the only person who could draw parallels between Warhol's and Rothschild's art.

Gopnik wrote a Washington Post op-ed in February about the case, stating "I couldn't see any real difference between Rothschild and the many artists, good and bad, who made art about our culture's commerce, often by including trademarked goods: there's Warhol and his Campbell’s Soups, Coca-Colas and Brillo Boxes (…) Earlier artists also profited from including trademarked goods in some of their most famous paintings, and I guess Hermès must wish they hadn't been allowed to (...) I still imagined that no jury would actually prevent a young artist from making pictures of pretty much whatever he wanted, whether it bothered a great bag-maker or not (…) I was wrong about that jury but hope an appeals court will realize that the jury was wrong about Rothschild's art."

Time will tell if Rothschild will get a new trial, but nothing changes for artists for the time being: even if Rothschild won, using trademarks for a creative work, including NFTs, remains a dangerous ground. But it is relevant to follow such cases since, in future, as digital art becomes more widespread especially as the use of Artificial Intelligence applications multiply, law makers may have to try and rewrite certain rules.

As for Hermès, settling on a collaboration would have made things easier for everybody in this case: after all, there are millions of Birkin copies all over the world and all over the Internet and it is simply impossible even for them to sue every single manufacturer producing fake bags. But, despite his recklessness maybe in creating, marketing and selling the NFTs, Rothschild may have been an asset for the company as he may have developed desirable NFTs for them.

What's for sure as the "Hermès Vs MetaBirkins" saga continues is that fashion law is trending: looks like there isn't much point in doing all these shows à la Project Runway (Amazon Prime Video) or Next in Fashion (Netflix) about finding the next talented fashion designer as such programs seem so passé compared to the fashion law sagas trending in the courts.

An Unearthed Treasure & A Lookbook from the Middle Ages: Fashion & Costume Narratives Behind an Archaeologically Significant Discovery

Good things come to those who wait, but also to those who patiently search for them and so it was the case that, in 2021, a Dutch historian found a medieval treasure using a metal detector.

Lorenzo Ruijter discovered the 1,000-year-old treasure in the small northern city of Hoogwoud, in The Netherlands. The bounty included four golden earring pendants in the shape of a crescent moon, two strips of gold leaf and 39 silver coins, small pennies from Holland, Guelders and Cleves, the Diocese of Utrecht, and the German Empire. Textile traces on the coins suggested they were originally buried in a bag or wrapped in cloth.

While the coins date from 1200 to 1248, the jewelry, a prized heirloom collection, was already 200 years old when it was buried with the coins. Golden jewelry from the High Middle Ages is extremely rare in the Netherlands, so the discovery was surprising and archaeologically significant.

According to museum researchers, the objects were buried by their owner hoping to protect them since there was a war raging between the Dutch regions West Friesland and Holland in the middle of the 13th century, with Hoogwoud being the epicenter (William II of Holland died in Hoogwoud in 1256). 

The discovery was kept secret till March this year as the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden (National Museum of Antiquities) had to clean, research and date the objects.

The four earrings from the 11th century are particularly beautiful: two of the four pendants have intricate filigree decoration; the other two are engraved with decorative scenes.

The earring pendants are rather large and decorated on one side and have fragile suspension brackets, which meant they were not pierced through the ears but rather worn on a hood or a headband (pael). One of the pendants depicts a man's head surrounded by sunlight rays, which has been interpreted as a portrait of "Sol Invictus" (the "Unconquered Sun").

Given its archaeological significance, the treasure (that remains in the official property of the finder) was given as a loan to the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden where the pieces are on display until mid-June.

This is already an interesting narrative for a fashion collection – an unearthed lost treasure, the story of the people who owned these pieces, and the reasons why they buried these objects.

But the discovery ties in with another exhibition about the Middle Ages at the Fries Museum, in Leeuwarden, entitled "Freedom, Feuds & Purgatory: The Middle Ages in the North" (running until 7th May), that offers further inspirations.

Characterised by an interdisciplinary approach combining together archaeology, landscape, anthropology, architecture and history, the exhibition is a reconstruction of Friesland during the Middle Ages.

At that time, Friesland (Tota Frisia) extended from the present province of Friesland to the Weser River in Ostfriesland, Germany.

Unlike elsewhere in Europe, the Frisians governed themselves, elected their own judges, spoke their own language and had their own distinctive clothing style.

Though compact, the exhibition pays particular attention to women's costumes and body adornment and presents new insights about Frisian attire, showing that, at the time, people who had power flaunted their wealth and dressed in extravagantly rich styles.

The exhibition also includes the 16th century Manningahuisboek (1561) that features beautiful drawings of Frisian nobles in traditional costume with drawings of accessories as well, reminiscent of the jewelry pieces found in Hoogwoud. 

The drawings portraying the attire of noble women are particularly beautiful as they show rich costumes in burnt red covered in intricate gold jewelry. As you may imagine, the final ensembles were extremely heavy and it was difficult to sit or stand while wearing them.

The book resembles a fashion designer's notebook or collection lookbook as it features meticulously detailed illustrations that provide us with wonderful insights on the fashion of those times in the region, reminding us that new fashion narratives can be found in the past and, in particular, in an archaeological discovery.

Image credits for this post

1. The objects found in Hoogwoud. Photo © Archeology West-Friesland/Fleur Schinning

2. Two gold earrings with engraved decoration, 1000-1050 AD. Photo © Archeology West-Friesland/Fleur Schinning

3. Detail of gold earrings with engraved decoration, "Sol invictus", 1000-1050 AD. Photo © Archeology West-Friesland/Fleur Schinning

4. Detail of gold earrings with filigree decoration, 1000-1050 AD. Photo © Archeology West-Friesland/Fleur Schinning

5. Reconstruction on model, gold earring worn on a headband. Photo © Archeology West-Friesland/Fleur Schinning

6. Map of Friesland, Groningen, and Ostfriesland, 1605, copper engraving, A. Ortelius, Fries Museum, Leeuwarden

7. Gold items from the monastery Barthe (Ostfriesland), 1300-1550, Ostfriesian Landschaft, Aurich

8. Fibula with moonstone, 12th century, from Heveskes (Groningen province), Groninger Museum Collection

9. Golden ring with a sapphire in soldered claw mount, 1300-1500, gold, Fries Museum, Leeuwarden, Collection Royal Fries Society

10 -14. Figures from the Manningahuisboek, showing richly dressed women from Osfriesland, circa 1571. The large breast armour, the round side shields and the golden necklace were collectively called "esschart". Private collection.