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

Bravo, Bruno: Rediscovering Bruno and Hazel Benini's Work

If fashion is a mirror of society, fashion photography can be considered as a historical document, an indicator of social change, chronicling changes in mood, attitudes and behaviour.

In the case of photographer Bruno Benini, his work can provide us with some wonderful insights into Australian fashion.

Born in Italy but migrated to Australia with his parents in 1935, Benini is considered as one of the most iconic fashion photographers of the mid-20th century in the land down under.

Young Benini actually decided to dedicate himself to photography after he visited Italy in the late 1940s and, upon his return to Australia, he joined Peter Fox studios, occasionally working as a model for Helmut Newton, Athol Shmith and Henry Talbot.

While the style of his first images, featuring glamorous models wearing beautiful haute couture gowns, calls to mind early shots by Pasquale De Antonis, as the years passed and Benini travelled to New York, London and Italy, his style changed and he began chronicling the mod years, hippy trends and the disco scene.

Together with his wife, fashion publicist Hazel, Benini put together an archive that became of vital importance since it follows the developments of the Australian fashion scene, but also historical events such as the role of Melbourne’s Jewish diaspora’s in the production, design, manufacture and retailing of post-WWII Australian fashion.

The archive was acquired by the Powerhouse Museum that is presenting a major survey of Benini’s works and Bruno and Hazel’s collaborations at the exhibition “Creating the Look: Benini and Fashion Photography”, opening during the Sydney Design Festival.

The event follows the 2009 digital projection of 50 images in the “Inspired! Design across Time” and features 400 images by Benini, including Jean-Francois Lanzarone’s digital gallery which projects images and details of the photographs into mirrors, and is accompanied by a carefully researched music and voice soundtrack that includes feedback by Bruno, Hazel and their models.

“Creating the Look”, curator Anne-Marie Van de Ven highlights, will allow visitors to discover Australian and New Zealand haute couture gowns, niche labels and ready-to-wear brands, from Norma Tullo and Hall Ludlow, to Theo Haskin, Prue Acton, Sharene Creations, Sportscraft and Sportsgirl, get to know top Australian fashion models such as Maggie Tabberer, Janice Wakely, Maggi Eckardt and Bambi Shmith, and discover a new generation of Australian photographers and stylists inspired by Benini.

With an archive spanning over 50 years, did it take you a long time to select the images to be included in the exhibition?
Anne-Marie Van de Ven: We secured the archive and began the process of acquiring it into the collection about 2 years ago, though the relationship with the Beninis has been in train much longer, since 1996 in fact. We’ve had less than a year to conduct detailed research, begin documenting the collection, put together the exhibition proposal, and then develop and bring the exhibition to fruition. It’s been pretty intense and a very tight turnaround. I think there are many more amazing works still buried in the archive, so perhaps we will need a Benini part II!

What do you like about Benini’s style?
Anne-Marie Van de Ven: There are three particular styles of Benini’s work that I most admire: first the moody, atmospheric works where the model and fashion merge into a low contrast natural setting in which the background plays a significant function. His treatment of the textures and tones of crumbling old or peeling painted walls, water and seas reflections, clouds in the sky and foliage is really beautiful and it’s in this work that I think we really begin to find the real man behind the lens. Then there are his intimate closely cropped works like the shoe photography he and Hazel created together from the late 1960s onwards, and finally, what I refer to as his ‘white’ works where Benini restricts his palette as far as possible to white, with linear detail – almost ‘Malevichian’ if I can coin that term for Benini’s white photographs – where he captures subtle variations of white, his usual slightly asymmetrical or triangular form, and a really beautiful sense of space.

What did you discover about Benini while researching for this exhibition?
Anne-Marie Van de Ven: I knew from meeting Bruno that he was gentle and modest, but I was surprised to see that, no matter who you spoke too, they all said he was very gentlemanly, well read, kind, talented and very focused, while Hazel Benini is recognised as being energetic, extremely talented and creative. There’s still more work to do on discovering Bruno’s Italian family, though. His father and brother ran an engineering business in Melbourne, the Block and Chain Company, and apparently his maternal grandfather was a well-regarded archaeologist in the ancient small regional centre of Massa Marittima where Bruno was born.

The exhibition also features interviews with Benini’s collaborators, including former models Jan Stewart and Janice Wakely: which are the most funny or intriguing anecdotes about Bruno or his photoshoots that they recounted?
Anne-Marie Van de Ven: Janice Wakely told us a funny story about being in London with Bruno in 1958. For love or money she couldn’t push him into the photographic circles she was moving and working in, such as Terence Donovan, Helmut Newton, Vogue’s and so on. He was simply too anxious to get back to Italy! Jan Stewart had two interesting stories: one about Benini always listening to the opera and poetry. Apparently, she never heard any modern music in the studio, just classical music and opera, everything Italian, also the food, that was always pasta or risotto. Stewart’s story about a 1966 crane shot for Sportsgirl is particularly entertaining. Bruno, Hazel and Jan set out walking down the streets of Melbourne until they found a building site. Suddenly he went “Haa”, that in typical Bruno style meant “This is it”. They spoke to the workmen and off they went into the mud of the building site. Bruno said to Jan “Put your foot on the crane, go up a little bit”. Jan followed his directions, and Bruno started taking the photos quite low, at 6-8 feet, but then he asked the crane operator to get higher, so Jan ended hanging high, with Bruno still going “Do this, do that, stick one leg out…” and Jan asking: “How do I balance Bruno? It’s terrifying! I’m going to lose the bag…what if I fall?” That’s how this photo shoot came about!

What do you think visitors who will come and see this exhibition will bring back home?
Anne-Marie Van de Ven: Lots of nostalgia! I can imagine them thinking: “Oh I had one of those! I remember that!” Hopefully, they’ll also appreciate the effort, creativity and enormous teamwork the Powerhouse Museum puts in to bringing shows like this to the public. I really hope visitors will also start seeing fashion photography in a new light.

How important is Benini’s work in today’s fashion perspective and in which ways can his work inspire fashion designers, stylists and photographers?
Anne-Marie Van de Ven: There is such a variety of work in the show that there is something for everyone. I think the role of the fashion photographer and publicist is very much to help designers and manufacturers finding a market for their work and doing it by creating joyful scenarios that suggest that, though fashion is changing, it is still a fun and vital, creative, dynamic and expressive part of life.

According to you, which contemporary Australian photographers and artists are at present bringing fresh perspectives into fashion photography? 
Anne-Marie Van de Ven: There are quite a few and it was really hard to select just a few ones to feature in the exhibition. In the end we chose those ones whose work was exemplary or displayed some natural connections with the Beninis. Juli Balla for example trained as an artist, like Hazel, then took up photography and is inspired by film, like the Beninis. Kane Skennar’s work is really fresh, very Australian and quite playful; Fernando Frisoni has got an edge and he’s not frightened of being different. We also have an entirely new generation of short fashion film producers – two of them were selected for this exhibition – and I think it will be really important to watch how things develop in future in this field.

Will the exhibition also offer the chance to follow lectures and talks about fashion and photography?
Anne-Marie Van de Ven: There will be quite a few events, from a surrealist Benini fashion photography mash-up for teenagers, to talks by myself, photographers such as David Mist and Juli Balla, designers, stylists and historians.

“Creating the Look: Benini and Fashion Photography” is at the Powerhouse Museum, Sydney, Australia, from 31st July 2010 to February 2011.


Image credits:
Collection: Powerhouse Museum. © Estate of Bruno Benini. Benini archive acquired with funding assistance from the Commonwealth Government through the National Cultural Heritage Account in 2009.

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LED There Be Light

The last few years showed us that science, technology and fashion go pretty well together. Some of the most successful experiments involving these disciplines regard embedding technological components like wires, connectors, sensors and solar panels into clothes and accessories, or developing electronic textiles, micro-fibres and bio-active materials that can help designers creating clothes characterised by an innovative aesthetic that integrates at the same time new functions.

I’m particularly fascinated by the integration of specific electronic components in clothes and accessories and have been developing a few ideas along these lines for a while now (hopefully I will have the time to dedicate a new post to the results of my experiments sometime soon).

As you may remember, four years ago Philips Design developed the Skin Probe Project, launched to study the possibilities of integrating sensitive technologies into clothes and accessories. 

The first results of these experiments were the “Bubelle” blushing dress and the “Frisson” body suit: both items incorporated sensitive technologies that allowed the garments to behave differently depending on the wearer, thanks to LED projectors that responded in different ways according to skin contact.

The company repeated the experiment also in the jewellery field with Skintile, a project based on electronic sensing jewellery and on the development of a range of wireless, stick-on body sensors.

Around the same time, similar projects involving artists, designers and universities were also launched.

Canadian multimedia artist Suzi Webster experimented with lights and electricity exploring with Jordan Benwick the relationship between lights and tangible and visible thoughts in their "Electric Dreams" (2007-2008) project.

The latter consisted in a garment and headdress incorporating EEG electrodes, micro-controller circuits and optic cables able to read, interpret and amplify the signals of the brain.

Dutch designer Stijn Ossevoort, a consultant at Philips Design, created in 2007 the "Flare" dress, a design decorated with 15 dandelion flowers, each integrating 32 LEDs that lit up following a precise sequence that became more responsive according to the intensity of the wind.

The Hexagram Institute’s Studio subTela, a project directed by Barbara Layne, focused on clothes incorporating natural materials and microcomputers and sensors receptive and responsive to external stimuli.

In the case of the "Jacket Antics" (2007) project, the garments integrated LED arrays that could display different configurations in accordance with the wearers’ actions, tackling in this way issues of social dynamics and human interaction.

Fashionistas and people interested in science and technology will convene that one of the most interesting and successful integration of electronic components in a dress remains Hussein Chalayan’s Autumn/Winter 2007 "Airborne" collection that included a dress that featured 15,600 LEDs.

Combined with crystals, the dress showed through its LEDs short abstract films that evoked the arrival of particular seasons (see the very beginning of the embedded Chalayan video).

The dress was created in collaboration with Moritz Waldemeyer, the German-born but London based innovative genius designer and engineer (I rarely use the word "genius" in my life, but he deserves it...) who has been associated from the mid-2000s on with some of the most original and technologically advanced projects involving architecture, interior design and fashion (among the people he collaborated with there are Ron Arad, Zaha Hadid and Hussein Chalayan).

Waldemeyer’s team is also behind the dress worn by Imogen Heap at the Grammys that was able to instantly receive fan messages and photographs sent via Twitter.

The former scrolled across the flexible LED display contained in the collar of the dress, while the images were displayed on her Fendi handbag via the iPod Touch contained in her bag.

In May Rihanna wore at one of her UK shows a new design by Waldemeyer’s engineering team, a dress covered in video capable LED circuits designed by Paris-based couturier Alexandre Vauthier.

Talking about LED circuits, technology and Waldemeyer's projects, the 3D dance movie Step Up 3D is going to be released in a few days’ time, on August 3rd, and if you carefully watch the embedded trailer (around 1:26), you will spot in it Waldemeyer’s latest project, a pair of sneakers covered in flexible LED panels that light up depending from the movements of the dancers.

If you prefer stilettos to sneakers, check out Francesca Castagnacci’s shoes and hats that incorporate light-guiding fibres.

Castagnacci has been experimenting with the possibilities of light-emitting fabrics like the ones produced by the Prato-based company Luminex, but if you are a fashion or interior designer you may want to check out also the Philips Lumalive products (that integrate dynamic LED lighting into fabrics).

I must admit that, while I find such fabrics and the integration of LED lights into garments and accessories rather interesting, it is very easy to use such technologies in the wrong way and end up coming up with the undesired "house decked in kitsch Christmas light"-effect.

The best experiments in this field remain therefore the ones in which technology is used to react to the human moods or brain stimuli, changing, mutating or altering in this way a design.

I genuinely think this will be the new frontier of fashion in future. In the meantime, if you want to start experimenting with LEDs and electronic components, just go on eBay and stock up, but, please, remember to avoid the obnoxious "Christmas lights" effect... 

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La Voie des Masques: from Claude Lévi-Strauss to Bunmi Olaye

Masks are incredibly fascinating objects: among my favourite personal memories involving masks there are research trips to Venice outside the Carnival season during which I often met tourists wearing masks walking around the "calli" or enjoying a gondola tour, as if going around hiding behind a mask in the middle of the summer or winter, were the most natural thing to do.

I guess the change of identity, the aura of mystery that falls upon the wearer is the main reasons that turns masks into irresistible and desirable temptations for most of us.

One of the best books ever written about masks remains Claude Lévi-Strauss’s La Voie des Masques (The Way of the Masks).

The latter tries to demonstrate how masks cannot be interpreted as separate objects, but should be seen as associated to the myths they represent.

The author explored in the volume the myths behind masks, touching upon topics such as the uneasiness and disturbance that certain masks caused him, analysing the differences, meanings, semantic functions and characteristics of the Swaihwe and Dzonokwa masks.

The attributes of these masks are particularly fascinating: the Swaihwe mask is white, with protruding eyes and a lolling tongue and is topped by feathers; the Dzonokwa mask is instead black, has sunken eyes and protuberant lips but no tongue and is trimmed with fur.

The symbolic and ritual use of masks that fascinates so much anthropologists, assumes in fashion new meanings connected with themes such as transformation, disguises and incantations.

It’s not so rare to see models wearing masks both on the runways and in photoshoots: stylists often use masks as accessories to complement a look or turn a model into a mysterious presence.

This means that very often the anthropological meaning of masks is somehow forgotten in fashion, obliterated by more commercial purposes or simply by stylistic choices. 

Yet in Bunmi Koko’s Autumn/Winter 2010 collection, recently presented at Africa Fashion Week, where the label was nominated "Emerging Designer of the Year 2010" in the international category, masks were once again endowed with a mythical power in celebration of female empowerment and domination.

Entitled “Matriarchy”, the collection created by this Nigerian fashion label led by Creative Director Bunmi Olaye, a graduate of the University of East London, and partner Francis Udom, was inspired by the Ekpe (Igbo and Egbo) masquerades.

Since they refer to a men’s cult, Olaye reinterpreted them from a woman’s point of view, using black feathered masks to emulate the masks used in the traditional "Mmanwu" or masquerades of the Igbo people of southeastern Nigeria, acted out by exclusive secret societies consisting only of adult male members wearing masks known as as "Mmuo", to hide their identity from the rest of the village and resemble the spirit of a dead community member.

In the Igbo masquerades, the mask gives to its wearer special spiritual powers and Olaye used feathered masks and headdresses, traditional pom-poms, beads, rayon raffia, bells and ritual sticks as means to represent female empowerment.

Further cultural contrasts were created by tailored silhouettes: the sharp shoulders and sleeves called to mind the shapes of Victorian dress (the designer also developed innovative longitudinal fabric structures to create some of her designs) and were borrowed from the attire of Scottish Mary "Ma" Slessor, a missionary who lived in Calabar (present day Nigeria) for nearly forty years.

In some ways the collection with its strong shades of red and ochre (evoking in this case also the colour of leopard skin), echoed Alexander McQueen's prints and strong silhouettes (Olaye actually worked at McQueen's), while the theme of empowerment seemed to be somehow connected with McQueen's Autumn-Winter 1996-97 collection, entitled "It's a Jungle Out There".

In the latter McQueen moved from the vulnerable Thompson's Gazelle used as a symbol for the cruel nature of the urban jungle we live in, but also featured in his show models wearing jackets with pointed shoulders from which gazelle horns protruded, hinting at the power of a deadly powerful femme fatale who turned from prey and victim into predator.

Looking at fashion from an anthropological point of view can be intriguing and can lead to discover new semantic signifiers behind the clothes and accessories featured in a specific collection.

I just hope that in future there will be more collections exploring the connections with anthropological themes.

One good idea to come up with some interesting inspirations connected with anthropology is definitely re-reading some Lévi-Strauss, but if you plan to go to Paris for your holidays, try seeing the Lévi Strauss collection at the Musée du Quai Branly. 

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Sébastien Meunier’s Body Chronicles

Let’s continue for another day the photographic thread started yesterday with the Guy Bourdin post to focus on another artist and photographer who is being remembered this year with a book about his work, the late Sébastien Meunier.

Born in Nancy, France in 1970, Meunier divided between Paris and Salon-de-Provence, devoting himself to the art of photography since he was a teenager.

A graduate of Paris’ Ecole des Gobelins, he contributed to quite a few magazines, including Wad, Marie-Claire, Dépêche Mode, Trax and Trace, while also shooting advertising campaigns for prominent agencies. The recipient of many awards, he prematurely died in a road accident in Namibia in 2002 leaving behind a relatively small yet interesting corpus.

Steidl is releasing in August a volume about Meunier's works entitled Visual Pollution that seems to echo in its title Virilio’s statement about images contaminating us like viruses, polluting our eyes and minds. I have seen a preview copy of the volume and I think it's the sort of book that will prove interesting for photographers, but also graphic designers.

Meunier mixed different influences in his works, from music to cinema and often put emphasis in his images on the human body, but also on violence and death.

The opening image - taken in what looks like a warehouse full of mysterious dummies among which it is possible to spot a (probably dead) human being - seems to perfectly summarise Meunier's fascination with the human body. 

In his images kids in swim gear are juxtaposed to images of frogs, young men with bodies covered in tattoos or incorporating subdermal implants hint at body modification, while a skeleton seems to be haunting the busy streets of a Japanese metropolis.

Popular brands and logos often appear in ironic illustrations - showing a Star Wars imperial soldier with its armour branded by the Nike swoosh, an alien from Mars Attacks! and an ape from Planet of the Apes in Adidas and Puma spacesuits - or in darkly surreal shots: a Nike shoe is displayed in a glass jar, next to another jar containing a fetus; a body clad in sportswear lies at the bottom of a flight of steps while a Prada bag hides the head of a man tied to a chair.

Meunier's most poetical images remain his last ones taken in Namibia, showing an astronaut in desolately bare landscapes. In the book the images are very aptly followed  by an extract from Antoine de Saint-Exupery's The Little Prince. 

Meunier's fascination with death, dummies and human body alterations makes me think about a few scenes from Mario Bava's Il rosso segno della follia (Hatchet for the Honeymoon, 1970).

I'm embedding a clip from the film at the end of this post (check it out after 05:30 to spot the dummies), hoping it will inspire ideas for Meunier-like photo shoots involving visual deceptions, dichotomies between animate bodies and inanimate dummies, body alterations, fashion and death.

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The Guy Bourdin Palette

“Images contaminate us like viruses,” stated a while back cultural theorist Paul Virilio and it’s somehow impossible to dissent from such a statement.

There are indeed very powerful photographs chronicling specific historical events that are almost embedded in our collective DNA.

In fashion, creating striking images, pictures that can contaminate our minds like viruses is vitally important since the saleability of a product often depends from the power of that specific image.

While there are quite a few fashion photographers out there able to take amazing pictures, I think there are very few ones nowadays who can imbue in their work strong, controversial and even shocking or disturbing messages like Guy Bourdin used to do.

In the 80s, when I was a young girl, it was very easy to find extensively long features about Bourdin not only in fashion magazines in Italy, but also on specialised publications for photography fans and professionals, such as the Italian edition of Photo.

One of my favourite articles about Bourdin was published in 1991 on Italian Photo (the magazine first included images by Bourdin in its September 1975 issue).

The feature was a tribute to the late photographer who had died a month before and it opened with a rare portrait of Bourdin taken by Chip Simons in Paris in 1989.

Simons portrayed him saluting in a dark Parisian alley, the formality of the pose was given an ironic and surreal twist by the clothes pegs clipped here and there on Bourdin’s casual jacket and trousers and by the presence of the Eiffel Tower, reduced to an almost invisible presence hiding in the background.

When his images were first published in the 50s on Vogue, Bourdin shocked its readers both for his themes and format: indeed he dared introducing through his photographs a certain degree of eroticism in fashion while turning the double-page spread into an art form in itself. 

Thirty years after, when provocation was the norm, Bourdin managed to preserve a fresh and controversial approach to photography and inspire other photographers such as Helmut Newton, Rebecca Blake, Cheyco Leidmann, Chris von Wangenheim, Steven Meisel and Steven Klein.

Bourdin's uniqueness stood in his use of colours and in that perfect staging of that mysterious dimension between reality and nightmare, recreated in minimal sets populated by objects, shadows and perspectives in which women were portrayed as the victims or the perpetrators of some unspoken crime.

Sex, decadence and death often seemed to be intimately connected in Bourdin’s images, like inseparable parts of the same fantasy.

At the end of the 70s Bourdin shot a campaign for Charles Jourdan shoes and he told Joe Moore, who at the time was the company CEO, that he was on a continuous quest for the most perfect image, yet the most perfect image in his mind was essentially represented by somebody on the brink of death, a rather frighteningly interesting concept.

For years Chares Jourdan’s shoes were identified with the controversial images produced by Bourdin, who was given carte blanche to take them. Another interesting story involving Bourdin and advertising is the one behind the images for Bloomingdales' catalogue: Bourdin was asked to take 36 images for this catalogue and allowed to have as models the most beautiful, famous and popular girls of those times. 

Soon after he started taking images, he realised he didn’t like any of the girls who had been chosen and decided to start scouting for his own models in places such as discos.

The results were collected in the "Sighs and Whispers" catalogue that became a sort of collectors' item as the decades passed since it was considered the only proper "book" featuring his work ever published in his lifetime.

All the images in the catalogue are characterised by a rather eerie quality that he achieved by letting the images speak for themselves and hiding behind them, stating at times that he preferred painting to taking photographs (he produced paintings under the pseudonym "Edwin Hamlan" and signed his drawings simply as "Bourdin").

I recently thought about Bourdin's palette and style while watching a video shot by English photographer Richard Burbridge for Nowness to celebrate the release in August of a new volume, entitled In Between and published by Steidldangin, that will feature 300 images taken by Bourdin and originally published in the British, French and Italian editions of Vogue, on Harper's Bazaar and other assorted fashion magazines. 

Burbridge managed to capture the nuances and atmospheres that haunt Bourdin's alienating compositions, playing with the camera, framing the legs of the swimsuit-clad models suspended on gymnastic rings or the brightly colourful sheets of plastic wrapped around the models’ heads. Hopefully In Between will inspire in the future months further innovative experiments involving the Guy Bourdin palette and aesthetics in fashion, photography and film. 

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New Architectural Fashionscapes at Amsterdam's ARCAM

As promised in a previous post, let's explore in today the recently opened “Fashion and Architecture” exhibition with Flora van Gaalen, Project Manager at Amsterdam's ARCAM.

The late Italian designer Gianfranco Ferré, often highlighted in lectures and interviews that, though he never worked in the architecture field, the discipline in which he had graduated at Milan’s Politecnico, each of his creations had something architectural about it, from the method and analyses he developed to design them to the experimental silhouettes, constructions, cuts and materials he employed to actually made them.

While fantasy is one of the main components of fashion, Ferré created like an architect, projecting into space the volumes, structures and geometries that characterised his designs. Ferré’s working method is somehow echoed in the recently opened “Fashion & Architecture” exhibition, a project launched by Amsterdam-based non-profit foundation ARCAM, Liza Koifman & Tomas Overtoom’s Ontfront and Wouter Valkenier’s V2A architectuur & stedebouw.

The exhibition showcases the projects made by four duos, each comprising a fashion designer and an architect, who collaborated together developing intriguing designs.

Playing with the concept of seasons, and its meaning in fashion and in landscape architecture Mattijs van Bergen and Anouk Vogel created a dress covered in flowers that symbolically brings the seasons to life; Farida Sedoc’s Hosselaer and Nicole and Marc Maurer’s Maurer United Architects developed an installation comprising five block-shaped sculptures inspired by the aesthetic of the De Stijl and the Bauhaus movements, accompanied by a series of T-shirts characterised by angular shapes. Sustainability inspired instead Kentroy Yearwood’s Intoxica & Jeroen Bergsma (2012Architecten)‘s project, a dress created using vacuum cleaner hoses, plastic tubes, iron wire and packaging materials, while Iris van Herpen moved from the imaginary water contained in the bathtub-shaped extension for Amsterdam’s Stedelijk Museum designed by Jan Benthem and Mels Crouwel (Benthem Crouwel Architekten) for her dress in a Plexiglass-based material that gives the illusion of seeing pure water splashing around the body of the wearer.

The contrasts, tensions and similarities generated by these projects, highlights ARCAM Project Manager Flora van Gaalen, shows there is definitely an intriguing dialogue between the creative processes behind these two disciplines.

Is this the first time ARCAM gets involved in such a project?
Flora van Gaalen: Once every couple of years we invite young architects to introduce themselves to the public, and, while the concept behind the “Fashion and Architecture” event is very similar, this is the first time we actually explore the connection between these two fields. But I think that the links between fashion and architecture are just being discovered: a while back there was the “Skin and Bones” exhibition in London and there are a few interesting publications about this connection, but there is much more to say about it and I’m pleased to see that we have a few architecture and fashion students here who are writing their dissertations about these topics as well. 

How did ARCAM get involved in this project?
Flora van Gaalen: The idea for this exhibition actually came from an architect and a fashion designer. The Amsterdam–based fashion label Ontfront by Liza Koifman and Tomas Overtoom was in touch with architect Wouter Valkeneir since they were working on a project together. At the time the architect was doing a project for a coffee bar and needed somebody who could do the textile part and the staff uniforms and that’s where Ontfront came in. After they met and realised they had similar ways about conceptual design and really got it off, they regretted the fashion designers only participated in the project when the architectural design was finished and thought it would have been interesting to see what would have happened if both an architect and a fashion designer would have been given a brief and would have been asked to work together. So they got in touch with ARCAM and submitted us their idea.

Were you sceptical about the project when you first heard about it?
Flora van Gaalen: At first we were a bit sceptical, because, while it sounded hip and trendy to connect the two disciplines, we wondered if there was a need for such a research and if there were any real similarities or differences between the two fields. We actually realised it was vitally important to do such a research, because this connection is really happening and we found several reasons why it’s really interesting to elaborate more on this subject.

Was it difficult to select the fashion designers and architectural firms that could take part in the project?
Flora van Gaalen: It was a long process and we talked to architects, fashion designers, advisors from fashion institutes and architecture critics, trying to spot people who were open to this kind of work and also looked for teams who may have provided an overview of Dutch fashion and architecture. In some cases we introduced the teams to each other but then we left the discussion open to let them decide if the match really worked. We thought for example that since Kentroy Yearwood and Jeroen Bergsma both focus on sustainability in their work, while fluidity seems to be at the core of Mattijs van Bergen and Anouk Vogel’s work, they would have displayed good connections. Farida Sedoc’s Hosselaer, a streetwear label that tries to get people in contact with place, showed some connections with Nicole and Marc Maurer’s works, based on finding innovative ways to integrate new media into buildings, creating interactive places for people. Iris van Herpen, a fashion designer who works not only with fabrics but also with rather unusual materials such as parts of motorcycles and who spends hours and hours working on one creation, seemed to be the perfect match for Benthem Crouwel, since this is an architectural firm based on finding enduring solutions for complex briefs.

Were you surprised about the final results?
Flora van Gaalen: We hoped we would have got totally different designs and, though wearable, because the wearability was one of the requirements, the results were strikingly different for what regards colours, textures and materials. The most surprising aspect that we didn’t really consider at first was that the whole creative process was completely different for each group: for example, Iris van Herpen was inspired by the imaginary contents of the bathtub-shaped extension designed by Jan Benthem and Mels Crouwel for Amsterdam’s Stedelijk Museum, so, rather than moving from a construction material, she reacted to a concept. Kentroy Yearwood and Jeroen Bergsma’s design didn’t start instead from an idea, but from a process that also involved going to waste processing company Icova in Amsterdam’s Westelijk Havengebied and picking from the garbage useful things to give them a second life.

Which was the most exciting aspect of this project?
Flora van Gaalen: Asking two different groups of professionals to work together, integrating their disciplines and ideas, rather than asking one designer to come in at the end of an architectural project and viceversa. I do believe that such collaborations can actually generate stronger projects and ideas and encourage professionals to think in different ways. 

Do you think the visitors’ perceptions or prejudices about architecture and fashion will change after seeing this exhibition?
Flora van Gaalen: I’m sure that new discussions, thoughts and ideas will be triggered by this exhibition also thanks to the fact that we tried to show the process behind the results to the public. The main installations show the results of the collaborations, but we didn’t want visitors to just come and see an impressive, well-designed installation, so we integrated in it photos, texts and detailed descriptions to show how thing were developed and designed step by step. While I think the main theme of the exhibition is intriguing, the process is of vital importance and it’s a shame that usually the public doesn’t get to see the work-in-progress behind a project. The architects and fashion designers who worked together didn’t know each other beforehand - in some cases not even in name - so they had to go back to the origins of their own disciplines and explore them and I think this aspect will prove vitally interesting for the public and inspire people to discover further these disciplines and develop interesting connections and dialogues. 

“Fashion & Architecture” is at ARCAM, Prins Hendrikkade 600, Amsterdam, until 11th September 2010.

Image credits:

Campaign image: Illustration: Galya Gisca
All other images: Onstaat, Buro-ID19, photography by: Marnix Postma

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Mix, Mesh and Compress: is Nouveau Réalisme possible in fashion design?

Last week young fashion designer Fred Farrow was awarded the Frans Molenaar Couture Award 2010 during Amsterdam International Fashion Week (AIFW) at the end of a catwalk show during which all the collections by the finalists – comprising Denise Esser, Ratna Ho, Tishya Oedit, Marie Burlot and Piotrek Panszczyk – were showcased.

The jury that awarded Farrow’s prize included photographer Loes Geerdink, stylist Ruud van der Peijl and fashion journalist Milou van Rossum.

Farrow’s collection was interestingly characterised by a mish-mesh of fabrics, tied, knotted and mixed together to create strange hybrid-like formations.

Farrow’s starting point was apparently rather classic since he moved from a Chanel-clad girl who goes back home in a dishevelled attire after partying up a bit too much and mixing her clothes with the bartender’s shirt.

Funnily enough Farrow’s party-goer had something rather arty about her, apart from the streaks of paint that seemed to be splashed on her face, tights and on the fabrics that formed her dress. 

In fact, it was almost possible to detect in one or two designs a sort of connection with French artist César Baldaccini, better known simply as César. 

Interestingly enough, Farrow's palette with its predominant orange and white nuances even recalled the rusty shades of César Baldaccini's L'Homme de Figanieres (1964).

In the early 60s, French art critic Pierre Restany used for the first time the definition “Les Nouveaux Réalistes”.

Linked to a “new sensitivity for things happening by chance”, the movement was based on the spontaneous creation of works made with different materials, even pieces collected from waste processing plants and mixed together to create three-dimensional sculptures.

César first started welding together pieces of scrap metal in 1952 and, in the mid-60s, his “expansions” - that is sculptures made out of poured polyurethane - inspired to Pierre Cardin some interesting sculpted draped motifs for his dresses.

The 60s also brought César a new inspiration: after seeing a hydraulic crushing machine in operation, he decided to experiment with it in his sculptures and started mixing and crushing differently coloured parts of vehicles all together, becoming famous for his "Compressions", sculptures made using various compressed parts of wrecked cars mixed together in cube-shaped formations.

While it is not unusual to see nowadays pieces based on a sort of "Nouveau Réalisme" (think about all the recycled accessories - from bags to jewels - that find inspiration from urban life and incorporate discarded elements maybe picked up from waste plants), César’s sculptures made out of assembled scraps of iron could maybe lead to the creation of fashion designs characterised by interesting surrealist shapes.

The compression technique could indeed be used to incorporate in the same design different fabrics and materials, by stitching, welding or moulding them together in innovative ways. Fashion design students, the challenge is yours: while not trying your hand at working on a collection inspired by "Nouveau Réalisme"?

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oNONO: Brazilian Effervescence

Ademar Ferrera and his brand oNONO first appeared in this blog last year. You can discover more about future oNONO projects in the following interview that came out today on Dazed Digital in which Ademar speaks about his brand's third collection and his plans for a Smart car covered in bold and bright graphics. 

When Ademar Ferrera first started working on developing his fashion brand, he conceived it as a platform to showcase the results of the collaborative efforts between different artists and designers.

After three collections, Ferrera’s dream has turned into reality. oNONO’s third collection, developed in collaboration with different Brazilian artists, was presented with an installation featuring sets by the Fogo Design Studio and music by experimental house band CMYK & Grayscale at Micasa, unanimously considered in São Paulo as the temple of contemporary design.

The collection, accompanied by accessories created by designer Walério Araújo, a sort of Brazilian Jean-Charles de Castelbajac, features dresses, tops and shirts characterised by bold and dynamic prints, a mixture of fabrics and textures, and a touch of Brazilian humour: one design is covered in logos of famous luxury brands while a dress is entirely made of plastic wristbands, a joke on getting an “access all areas” pass in the fashion industry.

All the pieces were developed by Ferrera in collaboration with a creative group including artist, fashion designer and co-owner of a Brazilian contemporary art gallery Juliana Freire, artist Emma Thomas, fashion designer Gustavo Silvestre, artist and photographer Lucas Simões, Goiânia-based artist Pitágoras and Thelma Bonavita and Cristian Duarte’s contemporary dance group Desaba. 

What was the starting point for the new oNONO collection?
Ademar Ferrera: Visual language, conceived in this collection as a universal means of communication, since images, symbols and signs are very powerful media that connect us all. This is why all the garments in the collection are unisex and most of the pieces come in one size and can be adjusted according to the wearer’s body. All the pieces are numbered and will be sold in selected multi-brand stores and through our site. I invited artists to develop the designs with me because I found this collaboration between art and fashion more beneficial to the experimental character of this brand since art can influence and infuse poetry into something more commercial like fashion. Together we created various digital prints and one handmade print. In addition to all the main artists, there were dozens of young professionals involved in the project who helped with the presentation. At the moment we are in the process of giving a better structure to the oNONO project in partnership with two Brazilian studios, Eggs and Estúdio a Produções.

Why did you decide to launch the new collection with an exhibition rather than a catwalk show?
Ademar Ferrera: oNONO is not a conventional fashion brand, but a visual art project and a fashion laboratory, a sort of workshop with changing collaborators, I wanted to highlight this aspect and allow people to really see the clothes closely. One of my main obsessions is finding the best format to showcase a collection. So our presentations will be different season after season. This was the third oNONO presentation, but I must admit that, to me, it was like the first proper one, because I finally managed to introduce the brand’s creations in the way I always imagined.

Did the people who came to see the installation enjoy it?
Ademar Ferrera: They loved it and I guess that’s because the people who like our works are into art and design. Micasa was turned into a beautiful set, a sort of house with clothes hanging everywhere, videos and lots of experimental music. While we still got support from Casa de Criadores, Brazilian textile company Kalimo and Micasa, we created the installation by ourselves and, for the first time in Brazil, Smart/Mercedes-Benz also offered to support us.

Can you tell us more about this collaboration and oNONO’s designs for a Smart car?
Ademar Ferrera: I think it’s very important for a large company to encourage and support local young talents. At the moment we are studying different elements and trying to combine various ideas and visual languages together. We will then run a poll on the website project and the 5 most voted designs will be featured on Smart cars sold in authorised Smart/Mercedes-Benz stores in Brazil.

Which were the best designers you saw during the latest Casa de Criadores/São Paulo Fashion Week event?
Ademar Ferrera: Gustavo Silvestre, Yoon Hee Lee, Der Metropol, Jadson Ranieri and Walério Araújo. The Casa de Criadores event is now the only major event aimed at young Brazilian designers. Events of this type are vital to allow new talents to enter the national and international fashion market.

In which ways would you improve these events?
Ademar Ferrera: We need to become more professional: many talented designers are giving up their careers because they don’t have proper investments. A few years ago, the group that coordinates the São Paulo Fashion Week, Paulo Borges’s Luminosidade, had a new talents fashion week here in Brazil, called The Hot Spot, but that ceased to exist after a short while and that’s a shame. These events need support and sponsorship from large companies and getting funds is always hard.

In which ways will oNONO transform in the next few months?
Ademar Ferrera: As I said, I’ve always conceived oNONO as a platform for creative projects mixing art, fashion, music and lifestyle. I want to take the project to other places, use it as a bridge to bring people together and create new possibilities and an innovative aesthetics. Ideally, I would like to work with talented young artists based all over the world. Once the site will be launched things will be easier since we will reach out to more people, establishing a channel and a global creative laboratory.

You were recently elected “Best Revelation DJ of Brazil” by Brazilian publication DJ Mag: where can we listen to your sets online and do you have any special plans regarding your music career?
Ademar Ferrera: You can check out my sets on Deepbeep and SoundCloud. My sets usually mix different styles together. At the moment, I’m focusing on producing songs with some friends and Brazilian DJs and I’m collaborating with R.R.R. - Roots Rock Revolution, they are an incredible act with some great tunes. We are trying to mix dance music with Brazilian elements to give our tracks a sort of universal flavour. We are from Brazil, but we are also citizens of the world, that’s why we would like our tracks to work on dance floors all over the globe, reaching places as different as New York, Paris and Berlin.

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Beneath the Valley of the Silent and Silly Models, Looking for a New Breed of Vixens

I often feel genuinely disgusted by the fashion industry. While I do believe there are beautiful and interesting aspects worth exploring in fashion, such as art and craftsmanship, I find it difficult to reconcile them with the way an industry that could be used to empower women, too often does the opposite, putting too many pressures on young girls, suggesting them they must be thin, stupid, tamed, silent and buy expensive designer clothes and accessories to become socially acceptable. It is indeed sadly true that appearing is what’s important in this industry.

In a final attempt at looking cool and attract a younger readership towards the dark forces of fashion stupidity, the editor of Vogue Italia Franca Sozzani recently accepted to be in the jury of the next edition of America’s Next Top Model.

In one of her recent posts in her blog she recently stated she was surprised to see how many girls turned up at the main selection for the programme, adding that most of them weren't actually beautiful and - while one of the main requirements to work as a model is actually to be photogenic rather than beautiful - these girls actually looked rather, erm, ugly.

Yet, Sozzani, suddenly highlighted, a real fashion model doesn’t need to fit the traditional canons of beauty, but she must have a slim body and a lot of personality.

After reading such contradicting and rather banal remarks (that could be summarised in: try not to be beautiful, but it would be advisable you weren’t ugly…you should have told them the truth, that is, they must also have a double-zero size body, eat almost nothing and pretend they are “naturally” thin to really make it in this industry), I seriously hoped the author of these posts is actually an incoherent ghost writer Sozzani keeps under her desk, because I refuse to believe the editor of an esteemed fashion monthly can write such crap.

I mean, why not addressing girls who want to be models saying "we are looking for strong and powerful women who can prove their physical and mental strength against tremendous odds” or encourage new readers telling them “we want our magazine to reach out to strong-willed and aggressive women in control?"

For a long time now I have been longing to see in women’s magazines a different type of woman, of the Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!-type rather than a silent, tamed, fragile, almost suicidal woman.

Occasionally, this film actually provided some inspirations for fashion photoshoots, like the one that appeared on Vogue Paris in May 2009.

In this case, though, the film was more an excuse to show some colourful bikinis and summery looks in a desert landscape and the toned up body of Daria Werbowy (pretending of beating up a few men). But the essence of the film – truly homicidal women with curves on a rampage – was essentially removed from the shoot.

You could argue that Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! is a bizarre b-movie with some horror and thriller elements thrown in, shot by “The Father of Softcore Porn”, Russ Meyer, a man with a fixation on big-breasted women, big cleavages, wasp waists and a pin-up aesthetic, in a nutshell somebody more interested in sexploitation than treaties about sex equality.

Yet, what I really hate nowadays is the way we have all fashioned in our minds a new kind of woman, perfect, sensual, tamed, silent and not so "beautiful", though definitely not "ugly".

So, while I’m not condoning gratuitous violence and the behaviour of the homicidal and violent go-go dancers starring in Meyer’s film, there are moments when I truly wish women would have different role models such as statuesque Varla (Tura Satana) in mind when they get up every morning rather than more vapid icons of style.

I often find myself thinking, wondering what would happen if Varla ended up in our days and our times, in a different set than the bare, dry, arid and inhospitable desert. What would happen if she ended up clashing with the fashion industry? Who would she unleash her fury against? Fashion designers, editors or PR agents? Men or women? In which ways would she act and react to the industry's hypocrisy?

I guess that, in a world in which we push young girls to look at icons such as Kate Moss and Lady Gaga, and tell them they can become like them, while warmly reminding them they are too ugly to do so, we desperately need a new breed of women keen on action and on a new kind of uninhibited feminism that doesn't believe in beauty or ugliness, but in intelligence.  

Who knows, maybe Varla & Co, tired of dancing for their vulgar male audiences, will embark once again on a wild rampage of violence in future and, hopefully, they will be looking for a new outrageous team of women to do so. 

As an inspiration, I’m embedding Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! at the end of this post. A final note for the fans of this film: there is a new book coming out in September (you can already pre-order it here) about this cult film, it’s entitled Killing Machines (Creation Books) and it features rare publicity photographs, production details and an illustrated filmography of director Russ Meyer. Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to violence... 

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(The Weeks of) Dasha Invites You

Emil Klang’s ambitious fashion and film project The Weeks of Dasha first appeared in this blog a few months ago.

Dasha’s adventures are currently continuing on the film site, but, since it’s summer, the director is planning a little surprise, a party in honour of Dasha dedicated to all her fans.

If you happen to be in Stockholm on Wednesday 21st July, Dasha will be waiting for you at F12 Salongen from 9.00 pm on.

In the meantime I’m going to leave you with the latest episode from the series.

Entitled "The Forbidden Question" and launched last Friday, the episode focuses this time on Dasha and her friends talking to some enigmatic spirits and features jewellery (check out the beautiful grid-like necklace Dasha wears) by Sophie by Sophie.

The brand was started in 2005 by Sophie Gyllenhammar Mattsson, who mainly works with precious metals and stones, releasing four different collections a year featuring luxury jewels, trendier pieces in a combination of materials, and men and kid's jewellery. 

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