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

Dreaming of George Barbier

If, while you’re reading this post you happen to be in Venice, you might have already noticed all over the town the posters of the exhibition “George Barbier – La nascita del Déco” (George Barbier – The Birth of Art Déco) featuring “La fontaine de coquillages” (1914) from the Gazette du Bon Ton. If you plan to be in town for a while and want to run away from the hordes of tourists, go to Palazzo Fortuny and visit this exhibition, as it provides a very interesting journey through the art of one of the forgotten illustrators, costume designers and protagonists of the Art Deco movement.

Born in Nantes in 1882, Barbier moved to Paris in the early 1900s after his studies at the local Ecole des Beaux–Arts. He soon became a versatile artist, working as a fashion illustrator, costume, set and accessory designer. Fashion illustration is actually the art he excelled in as his work for the Gazette du Bon Ton, together with other well-known artists such as Iribe and Lepape, prove.

Soon his fashion illustrations started appearing also on other magazines such as Le Jardin des dames et des modes, Modes et Manieres d’Aujourd’hui, La Ghirlande, L’Illustration, Les feuillets d’art, Femina and Vogue.

During the years before the First World War Barbier enjoyed a great success, designing wallpapers for André Groult’s atelier and collaborating with many designers such as Poiret, Lanvin, Worth and Vionnet. He also started a collaboration with Louis Cartier and, apart for designing a few jewellery pieces, he also created Cartier’s logo, the black panther. 

Apart from illustrating work by famous writers and publishing his own books such as Bonheur du Jour (1924), Falbalas et Fanfreluches (1922-1926), Album dedié à Tamar Karsavina (1914), Dessins sur les danses de Nijinsky (1913), Barbier also designed costumes for a few theatre shows such as Maurice Rostand’s La dernière nuit de Don Juan (1922). He also worked with Erté on various set designs and costumes for the cinema and designed the memorable costumes for Rodolfo Valentino in Sidney Olcott's Monsieur Beaucaire (1924).

Barbier died when he was 50, at the height of his career. A few months after his death his library was put up for auction in Paris, this is why his works are scattered a bit all over the world, and some of them are also preserved in private collectors’ houses. This is the reason why retracing Barbier’s life through his work is rather difficult and. At the same time, this is also the reason why this Venice-based exhibition is extremely important.

“The Birth of Art Deco” features indeed over 200 works, among them sketches, paintings, articles, pochoir plates, photographs and books from the archives of the Palazzo Mocenigo - Centro Studi di Storia del Tessuto e del Costume, from Paris’ Musée des Arts Décoratifs, the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, the Musée des Beaux Arts de Nantes and from various private collections, both French and Italian.   

The exhibition is divided in different themes and starts with Barbier’s first sketches and drawings. This is an important starting point to understand Barbier’s art as it's in this section that the visitor will start understanding how many different sources and inspirations influenced the illustrator’s future works.

The second part of the exhibition focuses on Barbier’s contribution to cinema and theatre and also on his passion for the Ballet Russes. The latter inspired Barbier’s various drawings and were the source for his sumptuous costumes - those marvellous creations in precious fabrics and bright colours decorated with fringes, sequins and feathers - that often contrasted with his sober sets. This aspect of the exhibition will provide people with an interest in costume design with amazing inspirations, while fashionistas will definitely find more interesting the section dedicated to Barbier’s fashion illustrations.

Visitors will be able to admire the pochoir plates made between 1913 and 1925 for the Gazette du Bon Ton, the magazine edited by Lucien Vogel, but also sketches for other magazines such as La Vie Parisienne, a magazine Barbier started collaborating with in 1914. This section of the exhibition is completed by Barbier’s illustrations for advertising campaigns for famous brands.

Despite my interest in Barbier’s costumes and fashion illustrations, I must admit that some of the pieces that really struck me were his almanacs: many of them were dismembered after his death, but, in some cases, the exhibition allows the visitors to see them once again in their integrity. Some of the plates in the almanacs Falbalas et Fanfreluches (1922-26) and Le Bonheur du Jour ou les Grâces à la Mode (1920-1924) could in fact be used as ideas and starting points for very interesting photo shoots (you could easily recreate the illustration for Minuit ou l’appartement à la mode using contemporary accessories and pieces of furniture for example...). Barbier used this almanac to present a sort of history of the costumes of various periods and countries, giving in this way the chance to future generations to get to know different styles and costumes. 

The exhibition in Venice also features period garments from the Pezzato collection, that will contribute to give the visitor a sort of 360° view of George Barbier, contextualising his work and his art.   

Since in early 20th Century Paris, music was very important, “The Birth of Art Déco” is also accompanied by a special concert programme set to recreate the atmosphere of the time. The programme features for example a musical tribute to the Ballet Russes with music by Strawinsky, Satie, Debussy, Arensky, Tcherepnine and Ravel.

If you won’t be able to visit Palazzo Fortuny, you can still learn more about Barbier from the exhibition catalogue published by Marsilio and featuring essays by Barbara Martorelli (curator of the event), Giandomenico Romanelli, Alain Stoeffler, Mauro Nasti, Giuliano Ercoli, Doretta Davanzo Poli, Carine Picaud and Jean Izarn.

"Venice is a city that is both absurd and enchanting. She reminds me of a small case covered with shells, a music box with her sounds, like the insides of a guitar, overflowing with the songs of birds that soar up from the windows, their languid voices quivering and singing over the canals,” Barbier wrote on the Gazette du Bon Ton in 1923.

I’m sure that he would be very happy to know that the town he found so extraordinary has now produced one of the best exhibitions ever organised about his art.

“George Barbier (1882-1932) - The birth of art deco”, Fortuny Museum, Venice, until 5th January 2009.

Member of the Boxxet Network of Blogs, Videos and Photos

Member of the Boxxet Network of Blogs, Videos and Photos

An event not to miss: Beyond Espionage

If you hate Halloween, but you fancy going out tomorrow and you happen to be in London, don’t miss the event “Beyond Espionage: Fashion under Socialism” at the Victoria & Albert Museum.

The event - curated by Renate Stauss, lecturer at the Royal College of Art, and Marketa Uhlirova, Co-founder, Director and Curator of the Fashion in Film Festival - is part of the Late Friday programme and promises to be extremely interesting.

Through nine newsreels and documentaries - all from the ‘50s, ‘60s and ‘70s and from post-war East Germany and Czechoslovakia - “Beyond Espionage” will indeed explore the impact of socialism on fashion.

If you want to know more about the main theme of the event, you can read my interview with Renate and Marketa on the Dazed Digital site.

The piece also features some amazing screen captures from Attention Please: Fashion! directed by Pavel Hobl (1960) and from two fashion shows, one in a Malesice Housing Estate in Prague (1964), and another at the Steel Work Factory Henningsdorf (1951). Images featured in this brief post are instead from the fashion show at an Agricultural Production Cooperative (1955) and from Youth Fashion: Jugendmode 1976 (1976).

Many thanks to Renate Stauss and Marketa Uhlirova for providing great feedback and to Dorcas Brown for sending us the images to go with the Dazed Digital piece.

Member of the Boxxet Network of Blogs, Videos and Photos

Member of the Boxxet Network of Blogs, Videos and Photos

Alienation vs. Isolation: Michelangelo Antonioni and "Anyone but me, anywhere but here" by Olivia Mihaltianu and Rozalb de Mura

In the last few weeks I have neglected the "art" aspect of this blog a bit and haven’t therefore featured a lot of posts on exhibitions about art and fashion. With yesterday’s post, though, I have re-launched the theme, and I hope throughout this week to concentrate only on various exhibition and art events taking place around the world that might be relevant to this blog. One of them is the project entitled “Anyone but me, anywhere but here” by Romanian visual artist Olivia Mihaltianu and Olah Gyarfas, designer of cutting-edge label Rozalb de Mura.

What struck me about this exhibition - currently on at the Contemporary Art Gallery of the Brukenthal National Museum in Sibiu, Romania - is the fact that it starts from a missing scene in Michelangelo Antonioni’s film L’eclisse (The Eclipse). The inspiration for the film came to the Italian director while he was filming a sun eclipse in Florence in 1961. Struck by the sudden cold, the silences, the darkness and the total stillness surrounding him, Antonioni thought that perhaps during an eclipse also human feelings suddenly freeze and are in a way “eclipsed”.

In the film a young woman, Vittoria (Monica Vitti), splits up from her boyfriend Riccardo (Francisco Rabal), an intellectual. She later on meets a stockbroker, Piero (Alain Delon), but this new love affair is doomed to finish soon. There is also a fashion link in this film. I have explored the connection between Antonioni’s films and fashion in a previous post, but haven't yet focused on L'eclisse. 

The costumes featured in this film (by costume designers Bice Brichetto and Gitt Magrini) assume a more important role than in La Notte (The Night) as they are often used as symbols. To symbolise the fact that Vittoria is a static character who never changes throughout the film, she always wears the same boatneck tunic tops with matching skirts. Her smart but simple and often monochromatic look, fits her bored state of mind while the colours of the dresses hint at the dramas she’s living: she wears a black dress when she’s splitting up from Riccardo, a white one during her brief love affair with Piero, a print dress when she finds herself surrounded by the chaos of the Stock Exchange. Vittoria’s style and the geometrical cut of her dresses also match the background and the modern and urban architecture of the buildings of the EUR area in Rome. The style of this film is more fragmented than La Notte and L’avventura (The Adventure) and, since the characters find impossible to communicate between themselves, words and dialogues in L’eclisse are almost used as a commentary to the images.

The alienation and isolation of L’eclisse are just starting points for Mihaltianu and Gyarfas’ exhibition, they are indeed used as ways to explore the relationship between past and present and to analyse identity issues.

The exhibition space is indeed filled with two rails of clothes designed by Gyarfas, by colonialist pieces of furniture and wooden crates and by Mihaltianu’s cases that contain meticulously folded garments, perfume bottles and personal accessories and magazines.

While exploring issues of cultural identity and parallel lives, Mihaltianu’s personal belongings hint at social alienation as they are exhibited in a rather cold way, almost with the accuracy of a scientist, as curator Anca Mihulet states.

Gyarfas’s creations represent the shells left by discarded human bodies, and are also symbols of the designer's attempt to create alternative and conceptual designs and not just simple garments.

I must admit that the more I get to know the Rozalb de Mura label, the more I like its approach to fashion and the fact that its founders actually conceive it as a multi-disciplinary platform that encourages new collaborations between fashion designers, visual artists, musicians and writers.

After Antonioni’s L’eclisse was released some critics saw in it an important message to human beings: rebel to the "eclipse" of feelings that overwhelms and destroys human relationships or you will end up living in a cold and dumb reality. Rozalb de Mura’s message is somehow similar, it’s indeed a call to all the young and talented minds out there to establish a stimulating and innovative environment that encourages the creative development.   

(Special thanks to Dragos Olea for sending me the images for this post.)

“Anyone but me, anywhere but here”, Contemporary Art Gallery, Brukenthal National Museum, 6 Str. Tribunei, Sibiu, Romania, until 9th November 2008.

Member of the Boxxet Network of Blogs, Videos and Photos

Member of the Boxxet Network of Blogs, Videos and Photos

Exegi monumentum aere perennius: on Hussein Chalayan’s art

One of my favourite Latin odes is the one by Horace in which the poet declares he has erected a monument that will last longer than bronze and than the pyramids ("Exegi monumentum aere perennius"). The monument Horace referred to was his poetical art, those poems and hymns that ensured him posthumous fame. Every time I think about this poem, the work of designer Hussein Chalayan springs to mind. I do indeed think that Chalayan is one of the few designers who has already left an amazing legacy worth to be exhibited in museums and to be studied not only by fashion students, but also by people following sociology, technology and science courses.

My comparison with Horace also comes from the fact that, a while back, Chalayan described as ‘monuments to ideas’ three dresses from consecutive collections he did between 1999 and 2000. The first dress, from his ‘Geotropics’ (Spring/Summer 1999) collection, was made in resin and reminded of a chair that cocooned the model’s body, while also symbolised the idea of the itinerant existence; the second ‘monument’ was the airplane dress from the ‘Echoform’ (Autumn/Winter 1999-2000) collection that featured moving flaps activated by a switch operated by the model; the third dress, part of the ‘Before Minus Now’ (S/S 2000) collection, was operated by a remote control that could lift the rigid flaps of the dress, revealing a mass of pink tulle under it.

Chalayan’s three “monuments to ideas” won’t be the only designs on which the first major exhibition that will be held in London about Chalayan will focus on. Opening in January at the Design Museum, the exhibition will indeed analyse Chalayan’s entire career. 
Born in Nicosia, Cyprus, Chalayan moved to England when he was 12 and, in 1993, he graduated from Central St Martin’s College of Art and Design. His graduate collection, called ‘The Tangent Flows’ (1993) featured garments made with fabric Chalayan buried in a friend’s garden with some rusted iron pieces. The outfits Chalayan made for this fabric allowed the designer to explore the concepts of change and decay.

As the years passed, Chalayan’s collections turned into explorations of different themes, from nature to technology and architecture. The designer became famous for taking his inspirations from ideas that are not usually associated with fashion, such as the themes of exile, alienation, nomadism, transformation, individuality, oppression, cultural displacement and visions of the past in the future. Early examples of these themes are the fashion show for his 'Ventriloquy' (S/S 2001) collection with its interplay of virtual and real narratives; the garments from his ‘Medea’ (S/S 2002) collection symbolising with their copious zips and ties and oppressive state of mind and the more technological designs from Chalayan’s recent S/S 07 collection that featured dresses that morphed through different decades - from the early 1900s to 2007 - automatically transforming in shape and style thanks to a computer system designed by the London-based engineering and concept-creation firm 2D3D.

The exhibition will also explore Chalayan’s innovative use of materials and highlight his refreshing approach to fashion and technology. In a way the event will mirror the designer's approach to his  collections: when he designs Chalayan doesn’t work focusing only on the garments, but also on their meaning; the exhibition will do the same, trying to explore the meanings behind his visions of the past and the future.

Among the best pieces that will be exhibited at the Design Museum there are the furniture-morphing dresses from his ‘After Words’ (A/W 2000-01) collection and the ‘Airborne’ laser dress made of Swarovski crystals and LED lights from his ‘Readings’ collection (S/S 08). The former were inspired by the news from Kosovo about people fleeing their houses in a rush during the war, but also by his own experiences as a Turkish Cypriot living abroad; the latter was instead inspired by the culture of sun worship and the cult of celebrity and features over 200 moving lasers and Swarovski crystals. The lights emanating and bouncing back from the dress represent the aura of performance, but are also used to explore the theme of space.

The event will definitely allow visitors to get to know better Chalayan’s work, and while it will be unmissable for his fans, the exhibition will also be relevant to people who have an interest in philosophy, science and anthropology. Art lovers will also find the event interesting: since 2003, the designer has also directed art projects, including the short films “Temporal Meditations”, “Place to Passage” and “Anaesthetics” and, in 2005, he represented Turkey at the 51st Venice Biennale with “Absent Presence”, featuring Tilda Swinton.

Many people conceive fashion as something very ephemeral. But, you could argue, fashion is very relevant to human beings also from a sociological point of view as it has always registered the changes and transformations society has gone through.

Hussein Chalayan has chronicled these transformations in an amazing way, allowing us to ponder on these dramatic changes through his more conceptual pieces while providing us with wearable and timeless designs.   

Hussein Chalayan Works 1994 – 2009, Design Museum, Shad Thames, London SE1 2YD, UK, 21 January – 17 May 2009.

Member of the Boxxet Network of Blogs, Videos and Photos

Member of the Boxxet Network of Blogs, Videos and Photos

Big mouthed, politically incorrect or just trying to speak my mind?

Maybe it was all Berlusconi’s fault. The Prime Minister has indeed got Italians used to the fact that if you say anything against him, you are automatically sued/dragged to court in a defamation case or fired from your job. Many were the victims of his anger - from comedians to journalists - but I never thought that fear of criticising people would have reached global levels.

I’ve often noticed how the media avoid writing constructive critiques about particular celebrities. We do have enough vitriolic ‘look how thin/fat’ comments in the tabloids, but that’s not what I’m wishing was on the pages of magazines and papers. I would indeed like to see articles that are less condescending and respectful and more cleverly sincere. I used to write a lot of music reviews in the past, but I have stopped for two main reasons: I couldn’t find anything exciting happening in music and, well, I was told by Scotland-based publications that you should tone down your criticisms when you write about local bands. I guess this is why Franz Ferdinand and the now defunct Bricolage were deemed geniuses and not Orange Juice/Josef K copycats or why The Fratellis are a great anthemic band and not just the umpteenth and very loud and untalented guitar band.

Things are just the same in the world of fashion: it can be difficult sometimes to find people who can honestly talk about what they like and what they don't. I find hard to praise House of Holland's supposedly Beverly Hills 90210 inspired S/S 09 collection. Why should I want to praise it in fact? It screams poor quality all over it, it's mainly London-relevant (which makes it unsaleable outside the English capital) and it makes me feel as if a nightmare from my teenage years - high waist trousers with an ankle-length hem - had come back to haunt my stylish adulthood. But most of the fashion mags praised HH and a fellow journalist confessed me she was dreaming of doing a photo shoot with some garments from HH’s latest collection. In her opinion the stuff would have looked extraordinary in a photo shoot (well, maybe she’s a wizard at digitally altering images with Photoshop…), in my opinion the stuff would have just looked extraordinarily horrible as its quality and its cut look horrendous from miles and miles away.

But there is this sad trend in fashion not to say anything bad about somebody even when they’re shit, just in case they don’t invite you anymore to their catwalks and parties, events that seem to be more important and relevant than the actual collections. Which is a shame as many designers acknowledged in interviews how the criticism they received from journalist and International Herald Tribune fashion editor Suzy Menkes helped them growing up and developing their styles in a better way.

There's no doubt about the power of good and sound criticism, take the late Mr Blackwell. Since the '60s he wrote some of the most caustic comments on the worst-dressed women in the world, including movie stars, music icons and European royalty, providing us with endless fun, but opening in many cases people's eyes to some of the worst fashion faux pas. 

Another trend that I'm currently hating is the media inexplicably falling in love with particular celebrities who don’t seem to have done anything really relevant in their lives. Yes, I'm thinking about Peaches Geldof, you guessed it. We all know she’s an absolutely redundant and useless human being with no skills at all. Maybe if we all started telling her how shit she is she might realise it and even refine her extremely poor writing and interviewing skills (see clip). Unfortunately, somebody has convinced her that she's great so she’s all over the place, infesting with her lack of talent the pages of Nylon.

I was convinced though that this lack of criticism was only infesting the media, but I recently realised it has somehow seeped into the conscience of human beings. A few days ago I had a big row with a guy over a popular Italian brand, Diesel. Everything started when I expressed my dislike of the brand and of its policies. I was somehow astonished that offending the brand in front of people entirely unrelated to Renzo Rosso caused a scandal of major proportions. Well, I guess you’re not obliged to like a particular brand, are you? And what if I don’t like their designs, their ideas and ideals, their parties or their branded lifestyles? Or should I feel somehow obliged and indebted to life to companies that invite journalists to see their catwalks by paying them two-day trips to New York and expecting the journalists to go back home and write amazing reports on the mags they write for? I'm actually very annoyed that a lot of space on various magazines is given to such brands, their collections and their parties only because they have the money to buy it. They indeed drastically reduce in this way the space that should be given to independent and emerging designers.   

Making a nasty comment peppered with two swearwords on a powerful brand had the same effect of swearing in front of the Pope and anathema was invoked against me. Soon after I revealed my ideas, the guy I had a row with asked a mutual friend who runs a magazine if I actually wrote on his magazine as if I was a potentially dangerous big mouthed crazy maenad (hmm, I think I quite like this definition...). It was then that I had to sadly acknowledge how something has dramatically changed in Italy: the country where the satire genre was born in Roman times doesn't seem to be able anymore to joke on social mores and attack the rich and their lifestyles. If you have money - it doesn’t matter how you made it, as Berlusconi's political career proved - you are automatically respected. So if you have built an empire like Rosso’s and you're worth billions of dollars and even more, you deserve to be respected, no matter if you are just forcing down people's neck your 360° lifestyle ideal.

So well, maybe next time I'd better shut it. Yet at the same time I'm sure I won't. I don't know what's wrong with me - maybe it's just my big mouth, my tendency to be politically incorrect at the wrong times or to speak my mind - but, hell, you know what? I'll just keep on saying what I think.    

Member of the Boxxet Network of Blogs, Videos and Photos Member of the Boxxet Network of Blogs, Videos and Photos

Coloured beads, glass or pixels? A quick note on Hussein Chalayan's knitwear

One of my personal childhood obsessions was making accessories with coloured plastic beads. I could spend hours working on them and I was always asking my mum or my aunts to buy me more beads and materials to keep on creating stuff. I used to love tiny coloured beads, but I wouldn't disregard also larger ones and I still have lying around the house some of the stuff I did when I was a little girl.

A while back I had a childhood flashback when my brother and sister in law brought back home from an antique market fair a Murano glass jar partially covered in tiny multicoloured bits and pieces of glass that looked to me very similar to the beads I used for my necklaces, bracelets and earrings when I was a little girl. Transfixed by the design I couldn't stop caressing the tiny glass beads of the jar as if they were the most beautiful things I had ever seen in my life.

I recently fell into another childhood reverie when I saw some of Hussein Chalayan's multicoloured designs, paired with knitted calf boots, from his Autumn/Winter 2008-09 collection.

I'm in awe of Chalayan as I think he's no ordinary designer. His mechanical and technological dresses - think for example about his laser dresses - aren't indeed just fashion, but they should be elevated to the degree of art. 

For his Autumn 08 collection Chalayan wasn't actually thinking about plastic beads, he was indeed aiming for a more technological kind of effect and used his yarns to give a sort of pixellated quality to his garments, symbolising in his collection the way the computer age has influenced the life of modern human beings.

If you look at the designs from a distance you definitely get that intended pixellated effect Chalayan was aiming for, but if you look better you will realise that it's actually the differently coloured yarns that create that final kaleidoscopic effect. Some of the designs are characterised by a cable knit technique, but when Chalayan used wool chenille yarn in a wonderful boucle effect he obtained an even better pixellated effect.

Yet, the more I look at Chalayan's knitwear creations for this Fall, the more I think about my plastic beads and wonder if I should dig them out again or if I should just go for something slightly more technological and ironic and maybe opt for a piece of out Mike and Maaike's "Stolen Jewels" collection. Well, for the time being, the doubt remains.    

Member of the Boxxet Network of Blogs, Videos and Photos

Member of the Boxxet Network of Blogs, Videos and Photos

Materials I love (Part III): sealing wax

I developed a very personal obsession with sealing wax when I was a young child and my grandfather used it sometimes to seal letters. I was absolutely fascinated by the smooth sticks of red wax, by the fact that they turned into a thick liquid once they came into contact with a flame and they hardened after a few instants, sealing letters and parchments. I also loved the matte/shiny quality sealing wax has: the sticks look usually opaque, but, near a flame, the wax starts sending beautiful shiny reflections and eventually melts.
   
Years ago I did a few experiments with sealing wax, using the material to create stains and decorations on black felt or to make seals that I would then apply on ribbons and wear as decorations for my hair. I remember I also did necklaces and bracelets with black ribbons and red sealing wax. The main reason that pushed me to experiment with wax was my love for this material, but also the fact that I wanted to add an ironic seal of approval (given by my own self and not by anybody else...) to my personal style. Sadly my experiments are not with me anymore (I have in fact worn them out…), but I’m planning to resume my sealing wax line of accessories as soon as I have a bit of time.

Though red sealing wax will always have a special place in my heart, nowadays you can find wax in the most amazing colours, even pearly or metallic ones, so experimenting might even more fun. In fact I’m planning a black ribbon necklace decorated with wax seals in red, black and gold, I just have to dig out my stamp with my initials, though I’m toying with the idea of having a new one made maybe with my blog logo on. 

In the universe of fashion it’s Dutch design duo Viktor & Rolf who turned sealing wax into something rather trendy. Around 8 years ago they introduced their logo, a wax seal disc embossed with the letters “V&R”, that, used like their own very personal stamp of approval, has since then appeared in the backgrounds of their catwalks, on their clothes and even on the box of their Flowerbomb perfume.

Some shiny red tops and blouses from the duo’s Autumn 08 collection also remind me of sealing wax, though it’s their accessories for this season that are really "sealing wax trendy". Called “Frosted Winter Highlights”, Viktor & Rolf’s accessory collection features shoes, boots, bags and clutches in shiny emerald green, black and red patent leather.

Some of their red clutches also bear their wax seal in gold, though the most covetable piece is a shoulder bag in the shape of V&R’s red wax seal logo. I might have experimented with sealing wax, but, well, I never thought about a wax seal-shaped bag. I must admit that I find V&R's bag absolutely charming as it taps into two of my obsessions: red sealing wax and surrealism.   

Member of the Boxxet Network of Blogs, Videos and Photos

Member of the Boxxet Network of Blogs, Videos and Photos

Materials I love (Part II): hairy matters

The first garment I actually touched that was entirely made of hair was a cropped top with thick braids creating a sort of twisted motif on the front and around the sleeves from Sandra Backlund’s “Body, Skin and Hair” (2004) collection. I saw it over a year ago and at the time it was slightly damaged as it was just back from a photo shoot. Sandra was reverentially touching it, smoothing the damaged quiff-like collar, trying to give it back its original shape.

The Swedish designer told me that she had learnt to master the art of making hair garments from a woman she knew and I remember that, though at the time I had previously seen garments entirely made of hair on some fashion books, I had actually never touched them. In fact, I always considered things made with human hair as slightly creepy.

At the recent Paris Fashion Week catwalks hair seemed to be one of the main materials used by quite a few designers: as you might remember some of Martin Margiela’s jackets seemed to be entirely made of hair that matched with the models' wigs, a trick that the maison replicated in its tribute design for Sonia Rykiel’s 40th anniversary.

I have already mentioned how Jean-Charles de Castelbajac played with the more surrealist side of hair design, a trick he used like Margiela for his own personal tribute to Sonia Rykiel.
But there is an artist I particularly like that has so far produced extraordinary works of art with both artificial and real hair. I’m talking about Shoplifter, AKA Hrafnhildur Arnardóttir.

The New York-based Iceland-born artist was inspired in her art by a Victorian memory flower that she found in a shop when she was a teenager. Traditionally, in Victorian times, hair flowers were arranged in wreaths sometimes as memorials to a deceased or as memories of families. This form of art was completely reinvented by Hrafnhildur as the images produced for Björk’s album "Medúlla", with the singer sporting intricate hair sculptures by Shoplifter, prove.

Educated at the Icelandic College of Art and Crafts and at New York’s School of Visual Arts, Hrafnhildur explored in depth throughout the years the possibilities of hair sculptures: a few years ago, in her installation "Left Brain, Right Brain", the artist created a sort of hair tapestry that somehow symbolised the essence of a human being through an imagined pattern of thoughts, a sort of labyrinthine vision of the mind's maze.

This theme came back in the "Harmonic Hairdoo" digital prints that I find absolutely perfect for wallpaper (to be possibly used on just one wall...) with their ornate swirls and patterns of braided hair. Shoplifter’s latest project - a collaboration with artists Eli Sudbrack and Christoph Hamaide Pierson from Brazilian artist collective Assume Vivid Astro Focus entitled "aimez vous avec ferveur" – is absolutely amazing.

The installation can currently be viewed in the large windows of The Modern, the restaurant in New York’s MoMA (it will be there through December). The art project was especially commissioned for this location and features neon tubes arranged in front of masses of coloured artificial hair. There’s a sense of overloaded colours as the pleated, braided and twisted groups of artificial hair used by Hrafnhildur clash and contrast one with the other.

The mix of colours immediately manages to make you happy, oozing a strangely contagious optimism. Hrafnhildur used on purpose low-quality and extremely colourful hair to give an idea of excess and fun, but also as a reference to abstract expressionist paintings, pop culture and fashion.

Shoplifter has successfully managed to make me forget about any potentially creepy connotations that hair imply. I'm now curious to see where she will take her hairy art in future. 

Member of the Boxxet Network of Blogs, Videos and Photos

Member of the Boxxet Network of Blogs, Videos and Photos

Materials I love (Part I): a (very) brief history of metal mesh

In the next few posts (I'm planning three) I will try to focus on a few materials that always fascinated me. The first one on my list is metal mesh.

When I was at school I could spend hours looking at the pictures of knights in chainmail armours featured in the Medieval chapter of my history book. I loved chainmail armours for two main reasons: first their weight and consistency, second the fact that they produced a strange noise when the wearer moved. I have often tried to explore in depth the tactile and auditive quality of garments and chainmail armours are characterised by both these qualities. My fascination with chainmail brought an obsession with metal mesh safety gloves, yes, the sort of gloves used by butchers or in heavy duty jobs to prevent stabs, cuts and slashes. I love the fact that they are resistant, but they also provide the wearer with comfort and flexibility.

After Medieval times chainmail was sort of forgotten, but it was employed again into fashion in the late 1800s-early 1900s, when the Whiting and Davis company, established in1896, started producing their metal mesh purses. The bags - available in gold, silver or coloured metal mesh, in all sizes and forms, both in soldered and woven mesh – became so popular that in the ‘30s the company created some designs in collaboration with Elsa Schiaparelli. In 1976 the company celebrated its 100th anniversary with a collection of shoulder bags with portraits of movie stars such as Marion Davis, Charlie Chaplin, Renee Adoree and Clark Gable. Unfortunately the production was destroyed for threats of legal actions from the stars' heirs.

There is a wide selection of vintage metal mesh bags on the Internet and the Morning Glory site offers the chance of browsing a selection of the most interesting models produced by Whiting and Davis.   

In fashion it was Paco Rabanne who, in the mid-to-late ‘60s, rediscovered the application of metal in his futuristic designs. His aluminum plaque mini-dresses were indeed an exploration of the past with a view of the future and soon spawned new trends. After appearing at catwalk shows, metal mesh was employed also for film costumes: Jacques Fonteray designed the bizarrely futuristic outfits for Barbarella, but it was the Farani tailoring house in Italy that made them. Owner Piero Farani made indeed the metal mesh pants and bras with red deerskin leather details paired with a black cotton cape bordered with a metal mesh that Jane Fonda wore in the film. Farani himself actually bought the metal elements to make the costume in Paris.

Metal mesh resurfaced again in fashion thanks to Gianni Versace: the Italian designer loved experimenting with different fabrics and, in 1982, the same year he debuted as theatre costume designer, he did a collection that featured draped dresses in a metal mesh that he called oroton. The inspiration for this material came directly from the attire of Medieval knights, but oroton was the result of a long experimentation Versace carried out in the early ‘80s with a German craftsman. This special material was produced by Friedrich Münch’s atelier and its main quality stood in the fact that it could be draped, dyed or printed. The material soon turned into one of the trademark designs of the Versace fashion house and was often re-employed in different collections, such as the A/W 85-86 collection inspired to Klimt, and in more recent years in the panels of the dresses featured in the A/W 97-98 collection.

But where is metal mesh nowadays? It has been mainly re-employed in accessories such as bags, one of the first and most successful experiment was carried out by Finnish duo Aamu Song & Johan Olin who produced the rather successful “Metallica Bag” a couple of years ago.

In fashion it’s definitely Louise Gray who has presented some of the most original items with metal mesh/chainmail elements. For her recent S/S 09 collection she designed chainmail tops, ideal to be worn with bright coloured trouser suits, and cycling shorts paired with minidresses, while her metal ropes and chains provided interesting decorations on dresses and shoes.

Gray's collection looks exciting and proves that, though a lot of centuries might have passed since the Medieval times, chainmail can be re-used in interesting and new ways to create strong and slightly aggressive garments with a rather glamorous but urban edge.

Member of the Boxxet Network of Blogs, Videos and Photos

Member of the Boxxet Network of Blogs, Videos and Photos

In the bowels of a hidden Venice: a visit to the Nicolao Atelier

Venice has undoubtedly many faces: art and history books focus on the city’s grandeur; TV programmes often emphasise the most colourful aspects of this magic place with shots of the Carnival celebrations in St Mark’s Square, the bridges and the picture postcard gondolas taking newly weds on romantic tours; Shakespeare instead summed up the place in three words: blood, pain and money.

But there is a sort of hidden Venice that not many people know - not even Italians - and yet they have indirectly seen it. I’m talking about the Venice of the Nicolao Atelier. Since the ‘80s Stefano Nicolao’s tailoring house has indeed produced costumes for the opera, theatre and for many TV and cinema productions (among them also Gérard Corbiau’s Farinelli, Shekhar Kapur’s Elizabeth, Lasse Hallström’s Casanova and Iain Softley’s The Wings of the Dove). Mr Nicolao also collaborated to music videos: in his portfolio there is indeed also the famous video clip for Madonna’s ‘Like a Virgin’. Throughout the years Nicolao has become an established institution not only in Italy but all over the world.



It was actually costume designer Lindy Hemming (of James Bond and Batman fame) who, a while back, suggested me to contact Mr Nicolao himself while I was doing a research on cinema and fashion, and I must confess I will always be indebted to her for doing so. Months ago, while teaching my Cinemoda course at the Glasgow Film Theatre, Mr Nicolao even supplied me with a few photos and an essay he had written on his work.

Our trip to Stefano Nicolao’s hidden world of wonders started on a Saturday morning when Miss Margherita Cavalli (no relation to the Italian king of tackiness, don’t worry), Namalee and I left Bassano to reach Venice by train. Lack of sleep, a rather basic map and poor communication with the locals (Anna: “How long does it get to go to St Mark’s Square?” Ferry guy: “Ten minutes” – little did we know that the time flows really slowly in Venice as 27 minutes after we hadn’t arrived yet…) made things rather difficult at the beginning. Besides Miss Cavalli and I felt the need to turn into proper tourists with our cameras out, but it was frustrating not being equipped with the typical "perfect tourist" gear (no matching scarves, umbrellas, brooches with your country’s flags and so on…). Anyway, despite looking rather clueless, we got perfectly on time to our appointment (see, we actually KNEW where we were going, we were just trying to have a careless attitude about life…).

Located near the Jewish ghetto, in the Cannaregio area, Nicolao’s atelier is usually closed on a Saturday, but last week it was an ordinary working day for them as there were some costumes for an opera show that had to be completed. From the outside the atelier looks like a textile shop, with cushions, interior design fabrics, masks and costumes in the windows, but as soon as you get inside a dummy wearing an original woman’s dress from 1770 complete with conical powder mask and a dummy in man’s attire from the 1800s, reveal you that this is no ordinary place.

Founder Stefano Nicolao’s main dream was becoming an actor, but, after attending art school and the drama academy, he realised that what was going on behind the scenes fascinated him even more than the action on the stage. So while working as an actor he often volunteered to help with the costumes and, one day, he just decided to give up his acting career to work as a costume designer in Trieste. In the ‘80s he went back to Venice where he opened his atelier and where he started to work with local companies he used to act for. As time passed he began collaborating with many costume designers, concentrating also on TV series and films for the big screen.

Some of the first dresses Mr Nicolao showed us were indeed from the historical parts of the Pirates of the Caribbean. What was striking about them was that the gowns incorporated vintage fabrics and embroidered bits and pieces cut out from ecclesiastical tunics and chalice covers. It was interesting to notice how some costumes that looked rather heavy were actually made in the lightest fabrics by Rubelli, a textile factory that produces high quality fabrics (they also made the fabrics for the costumes in Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette).

A few costumes for operas such as Don Carlos for the Lyric Opera of Chicago were instead rather heavy as they were entirely made of precious damasked velvets in dark colours inspired by Renaissance paintings. Apparently, 1200 metres of this precious velvet were originally produced to do all the costumes for this opera.   

As we walked towards the warehouse section, we admired various framed drawings, posters and pictures on the walls. There seemed to be a family-like atmosphere in the atelier, as the blackboard warning the staff that there was pasta and tuna on the day's menu proved. A few costumes were neatly arranged on their hangers ready to be shipped to Bari for an opera performance and while looking here and there we followed Nicolao through the opera section, discovering costumes for the Commedia dell’Arte (Comedy of Manners), that included different versions of the Harlequin and Balanzone costumes. There was more to discover as Mr Nicolao showed us Chanel suits that had been dismembered, dyed, torn and reassembled into costumes for the Nabucco and original Oriental kimonos and obis in the most extraordinary embroidered motifs that had been transformed into amazing costumes for a staging of Madame Butterfly.

That would have been already enough, but there was more to come: so we went upstairs to admire rows and rows of shoes, stacks of the most formidable hats - from tricorns to straw hats – shoes in every size, hundreds of belts and box upon box of accessories and clothes (an entire box was dedicated to original bathing suits from the ‘20s). Upstairs there was also a row of dark robes in a sort of rough and rather simple fabric. These were the costumes for The Merchant of Venice and you could spot among them the garments worn by Al Pacino as Shylock during his monologue. Upstairs there were also the costumes for Elizabeth and Farinelli.

Unfortunately, the most bizarre and extraordinary headdresses for the latter were away at an exhibition, but we still managed to see a pale blue coat in washed and stained velvety fabric and the yellow velvet outfit  Farinelli wears during one of his concerts.

Next to the Farinelli costumes there was a white felt suit (a bit similar to Beuys’ in its cut) covered in cables and LED lights worn during the 2008 Carnival show in St Mark’s Square. At this year's Carnival Venice's square symbolised the pulsating brain of the city and so did this technological suit. 

Making costumes for the theatre, opera and cinema is very different, Nicolao explained while showing us around. Before working on a theatrical costume you must make sure you have read the play and understood the part that a particular actor has got to interpret. If you work for the opera you must instead remember you are working on big crowds and must make sure you know how to manage them through their costumes: for example, if you use an excessively overloaded fabric the people sitting in the audience might not be able to understand what the singers are wearing as the nearest members of the audience are still at 15 metres from the stage as there’s always the orchestra pit in between. Besides, some characters might have to stand out, so it might be important to diversify some of the singers' costumes in some ways. Doing costumes for the cinema means instead to consider the story in the film as the reality, therefore you have to make sure that every stitch you make is absolutely perfect. Carnival costumes imply a degree of freedom and fun, but also allow you to understand more about the personality of the wearer: some people hire costumes, others instead have them made to measure, finally transforming themselves in what they always desired to be.

Making costumes though doesn’t mean that Nicolao doesn’t follow fashion: picking up a red and black bustier from the late 1800s he pointed out how relevant it could be even on a contemporary catwalk and reminded us that Vivienne Westwood often takes inspiration from historical costumes in her designs. To reinforce this idea further we explored the cut and details of some men's jackets and coats from the 1800s that wouldn't have looked out of place in our streets today.   

In more recent years, Nicolao created clothes – such as leather bustiers with Renaissance prints, silk waistcoats and jackets with hand-dyed marble-like effects – inspired by historical costumes that have become rather popular among his customers.

Towards the end of our tour, we stopped in front of an all-pink poster for a Parisian show. Mr Nicolao explained us that there was a scene during that show in which a tailor, helped by his valets, dressed up a dame in an extravagant big gown. Then Casanova walked on stage and kissed her and, as she swooned, her skirt overturned becoming a rose, while from her wig and headdress a stem sprouted, so that the dame metamorphosed into a flower.

Before going Mr Nicolao invited us to go and see the Carnival show, which is on at the Teatro San Gallo, just around the corner from St. Mark’s Square, and features some of his costumes. Unfortunately, we couldn't go as we were only in Venice for a few hours.

But all that story about the dress that turns into a pink rose made us dream and before leaving we took some random pictures of the atelier and of a pink sequinned tailcoat suit (complete of waistcoat and bow tie - not included in this pic) that I thought was really irresistible and of some assorted feathered headdresses (note the bizarrely cute black swan hat…).

Our visit at Nicolao’s atelier was more a crash course into costume design than a simple tour of a tailoring house and when we went away our brains were overloaded with inspirations and information so we collapsed in a nearby cafe.

Miss Cavalli had still some energies left so she kindly documented the levels of tiredness we had reached. We eventually managed to drag ourselves back to the railway station and collapsed again on the train.

On our way back to Bassano, Miss Cavalli revealed a scandalously intimate detail: she might not be related to the Italian king of kitsch but her Irish drinking socks were humorously kitsch. By then, though, my sugar levels had dropped to below zero and I couldn’t seem to keep my hands still enough to take a decent pic.

Back in Bassano my mind was still going through all the amazing things we had seen at Nicolao's and my ears were ringing with arias from Farinelli. I'm sure the next time time I watch the film, I'll think again about Mr Nicolao's precious teachings.

All pictures of costumes from operas, films and theatre shows are taken from Stefano Nicolao’s site.

Member of the Boxxet Network of Blogs, Videos and Photos

Member of the Boxxet Network of Blogs, Videos and Photos