In a previous post I wrote about my obsession for metal mesh, but I must admit I actually have an obsession with metallic objects and armours.
For this reason Paco Rabanne and his metal designs will always have a special place in my heart.
Born in 1934, Rabanne had moved from Spain to France with his mother and
sisters after Franco's men assassinated his father and, in the early 50s, he enrolled at Paris' Ecole des Beaux Arts to study architecture.
Soon after he started producing accessories for fashion houses such as Courrèges, Cardin, Balenciaga (his mother worked for this fashion house as a dress maker) and Givenchy while Emmanuelle Khanh often employed his accessories in her collections.
Rabanne became popular in 1965 as a jewellery designer mainly employing plastic in his creations (especially Rhodoid) in different colours and geometric shapes.
He showed his first collection entitled "12 Robes Importables en Matériaux Contemporains" (“Twelve Unwearable Dresses in Contemporary Materials”) in 1966 at the George V Hotel in Paris.
His creations showed he was more an engineer and an architect than a conventional fashion designer, two reasons that prompted Coco Chanel to call him “a metal worker”.
In 1966, after using plastic for his dresses, Rabanne moved onto metal disks, linking them together via tiny rings and, two years later he turned to aluminium dresses that incorporated hammered or studded metal.
Though uncomfortable, the dresses were designed wit dynamism in mind since they were perfectly articulated.
In a way Rabanne’s space age designs were a provocation that questioned the future of fashion, wondering what would have happened in future to proper fabrics and textiles.
My favourite Rabanne quote is taken from a 1967 interview published on Marie Claire: the designer said he conceived his clothes like weapons, explaining, “When they are fastened they make a sound like the trigger of a revolver”.
By the way, if, like me, you are a Rabanne fan, you will be able to rediscover some of his works at the retrospective "Paco Rabanne, Designer and Rebel" at Condes Castro Guimarães Museum (from the 1st to the 11th of July), the event is part of the Estoril FashionArt Festival.
Behind this project there is also another inspiration and that’s Fernand Léger and Dudley Murphy’s Dadaist experimental film Ballet Mécanique (1924 – see video embedded at the end of this post) with cinematography by Man Ray and music by George Antheil (the images and the music were actually put together only decades after).
The film doesn’t have any plot, but it’s just a chaotic collage of images and objects.
The title evokes a human ballet, but it actually refers to the quick images that follow one another like perfect dance steps - showing kaleidoscopes, bottles, hats, an enigmatic smile, a wheel, geometrical figures and industrial machines - and to the sound effects that seem to produce a loud and percussive rhythmic symphony created by pianos, propellers (into which musicians would insert wooden poles or leather straps), sirens, electric bells and tam tams.
In this film the sound effects make your ears tingle and I wanted something you could wear that could have produced a similar sound effect, a crossover between this percussive chaos and Rabanne's "revolver".
The photo shoot that accompanies the pieces is inspired by Léger: I spent some time finding scraps of metal and bits and pieces lying around unused in the family garage and at my brother’s, while I made the head for the sixth image in this post using wire mesh (do not attempt this exercise without proper working gloves).
This personal project is also based on recycling: a few months ago I acquired a rather large amount of buckles – yes, buckles (as mentioned in a previous post) – from an Italian company that was closing down and that had worked for different fashion houses and brands.
The financial crisis has so far had a dramatic impact on us of all and I think we all need to stop and think about how to reuse and reinvent what we have rather than keep on producing more stuff from scratch (such as T-shirts with slogans about saving the earth and such likes - what about producing fewer T-shirts to actually save the planet?).
The other point is proving that, with a little bit of time and imagination, we can all produce our own Martin Margiela Artisanal collection for a fraction of the price, the problem is that we are all too lazy to do so (don’t tell me you wouldn’t be able to do something like this…).
The buckles I acquired come in all shapes and materials, from plastic to leather, wood and metal, and for this project I employed only the latter.
I spent a few months thinking about what to do with the buckles, and, while I incorporated some larger ones in clothes and accessories, I put aside the metal ones for the right inspiration to strike.
The first piece I developed a few months ago was rather simple: I used different types of buckles and some metal plates that were part of the buckle stock I acquired (I had to reverse the metal plates because on the other side there is a logo that I won’t show you for obvious reasons).
So starting from Rabanne and Léger I tried to develop a necklace that had something to do also with the Art Deco movement.
Art Deco had a fascination with metal, so that perfectly tied in with my buckles, but Art Deco also had a fascination with the ziggurat shape that I somehow tried to replicate using the gold and silver plates.
I also wanted to have something that looked like a strong yet light armour and that made me feel safe, that's why the piece looks a bit like a breastplate.
Despite all the inspirations behind the necklace, it was actually rather easy to make this piece since I only had to link the buckles and plates one to the other using little metal rings.
I also fashioned two shoulder pieces out of some metal plates that were left to renew a leather jacket, a design inspired by Japanese anime Mazinger Z and the 1936 film Things to Come.
Being not satisfied yet I sat down and started thinking about knitwear and crocheting techniques and how to use the extremely high number of metal buckles I had to create something slightly more complicated like a top.
In the end I decided to use the buckles and the linking rings as if they were yarns and tried to create a pattern with them (yes, I know, airport authorities won’t be happy with me, but I found it irresistible experimenting with this stuff…).
It took me a while to work out the number of buckles I needed, so I first started working on this piece on the floor, then I moved to a table and then on a dummy.
The latter was extremely useful to design the back of the top where I wanted something different, sort of stylish yet with a S&M twist about it.
Now that almost all my metal buckles have gone, I will have to move to buckles made in different materials and I will also have to devise new ways to make things with them. Oh well, I guess that’s the best thing about actually creating fashion, you never get bored. I'm posting here Fernand Léger and Dudley Murphy’s Ballet Mécanique, hopefully it will inspire you some interesting fashion (or film/music) projects.
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When metals are incorporated with fashion, the results will become stellar, just as what is currently being displayed at the museums and fashion shows about this art style.
Posted by: nickel alloys | January 31, 2011 at 07:20 AM