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

Water-Cooled Garments and Lunar Landscapes

In the last few weeks I have expanded my researches about the “cooling suits” moving from the Soviet KV0-9 water-cooled insulation garment used by astronauts during their training and mentioned in a previous post.

While looking for further similar suits, I found this 1966 water-cooled undergarment at London’s Science Museum.

This suit was originally developed for RAF pilots to keep them cool during long waits before taking off in their aircrafts.

The garment was cooled by pumping water around the tubes lining it (View this photo).

NASA drew on the RAF experience when designing their own liquid-cooled garments that astronauts wore under their outer spacesuit while walking on the moon to protect them from high temperatures.

The garment successfully maintained the astronauts' body temperatures at a comfortable level by using a battery-powered mini-pump to circulate chilled water through a network of tubes in the garment.

Technology was developed to apply cooling garments for commercial purposes (for example in suits for race-car drivers, handlers of hazardous materials, personnel working at nuclear reactors, shipyard workers and military personnel on duty in desert environments) and for medical uses, in particular with conditions and diseases that can make a person prone to overheating, including multiple sclerosis and in case of severe burns.

The Soviet KV0-9 water-cooled insulation garment fascinated me for the tubes integrated in the suit, while I find the RAF undergarment particularly interesting for its ergonomic patterns that characterise its surface.

Trousers and leggings with padded areas or ergonomic piping reappeared during New York Fashion Week on Rag & Bone’s runway.

Though Marcus Wainwright and David Neville's Rag & Bone collection mainly moved from traditional Inuit clothes (see also the shearling sleeves on coats and geometrically printed tights), tartan and  tweeds, there were elements that looked more like crossovers between motorcycle suits and skiing uniforms à la ellesse's "jet pant" with futuristic twists.

It was possible to spot at times Courrègesian geometries combined with Mondrian dress-like lines, remixed in designs with neutral tones or in colour-blocked pieces in electric blue and vivid red (View this photo).

In general the collection wasn't too cohesive, though it must be said that it perfectly reflected the incoherence of our modern times in which we are constantly bombarded by different stimuli and we rarely and properly focus on just one thing. Yet you somehow wished the designers had developed a bit more the details like the padded motifs.  

Jeremy Laing also displayed an interest for the space with a collection based on relaxed silhouettes and loose garments that essentially moved from the moon (definitely not a new inspiration considering also the late '60s cosmic designs and Armani Privé's S/S 2010 collection) and used it to carve out of fabrics circles and holes in different sizes.

The best designs were the long dresses with prints of the rugged lunar surface (think about the images of the Descartes Highlands by the Apollo 16 and you'll get an idea...). 

The moon reappeared also on a jumper in which the fabric had been elaborated to highlight the undulating lunar landscape and highlands through a three-dimensional effect.

To infinity and beyond then, but, in the meantime, could we maybe ponder a bit about the possibilities the ergonomic details of those '60s water-cooled suits may offer in fashion?

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From Uniform Polyhedra (and Archimedean Solids) to Fashion

 In previous posts I explored the influence of geometry and figures such as triangles and tetrahedrons in fashion, but today I would like to briefly look at uniform polyhedra.

A uniform polyhedron is an isogonal polyhedron with regular polygons as faces and identical vertices.

Uniform polyhedra are regular or semi-regular but the faces and vertices need not to be convex. Among the convex polyhedrons there are also the Archimedean solids.

These 13 convex uniform polyehedra (including truncated tetrahedron, cuboctahedron, truncated hexahedron, truncated octahedron, rhombicuboctahedron, truncated cuboctahedron, snub hexahedron, icosidodecahedron, truncated dodecahedron, truncated icosahedron, rhombicosidodecahedron, truncated icosidodecahedron and snub dodecahedron) can be constructed by truncating or twisting the vertices of Platonic solids.

I find these figures rather fascinating as they could easily be applied to clothes and accessories and be used to create pieces in contrasting colours that incorporate either the three-dimensional shape of these solids or the flattened out version of these figures, as in the ‘click and fold’ woollen flannel cocktail frock mentioned at the end of yesterday's post.

This design completely changeable in colour and in form is part of the project “Fragment Textiles” by Dutch Designer Berber Soepboer, in collaboration with Fioen van Balgooi.

The project is actually based on two designs, one employing square-shaped pieces of flannel and the other integrating star-shaped bits of the same material. These parts can be mixed in new ways to create a variety of styles and colours without using any stitches or zips. 

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Reducing Waste, Wearing Science

New York Fashion Week has officially started, but the debate is rife not only about reducing the number of people invited at catwalk shows (considering also that twenty minutes after the designs are presented on a runway, they usually end up on the Internet and can be enjoyed on a global scale…), but also about the relentless rhythms of the fashion industry and the need to produce more clothes and accessories every few months.

Hands up who hasn’t spotted in the same high street retailer the same pile of cheap shirts or dresses still hanging in the same spot week after week, month after month, a clear sign that ordinary consumers may be tired of these mass produced rags (because in most cases that’s what they are) that usually do not even fit properly since sizes seem to be nowadays completely irrelevant. 

We all know that, if we stopped producing clothes tomorrow, we wouldn’t find ourselves short of garments to wear for the next 15 years or even more, since we have overproduced piles of items that we buy and wear for a very short time, either because they don’t last very long or because we throw them out to move onto the next trend.

So, while buying vintage has turned into a fashionable option for some, others are looking at new ways of going green and recycling clothes, disassembling and reassembling what they find on the market to reduce waste.

Despite this is a noble way to avoid textiles ending up in landfills and polluting the environment, many feel recycling is not enough, but we should actually focus on finding new ways to reduce waste in the production of clothes.

I was pleased to see that some researchers and fashion designers have already started experimenting along these lines, combining recycling and reducing waste using technology and science.

Some of the results of these researches are currently showcased at London’s Science Museum in a small exhibition entitled “Trash Fashion – Designing Out Waste” that you will find on the ground floor, in the Antenna Gallery area, near the Imax cinema.

The project is divided in different sections each looking at new ways to create fashion designs and each featuring three different items of clothing.

The first section is entitled “Material Desires” and looks at developing via technology new fabrics that can quickly break down without releasing toxic substances into the environment and could be therefore easily recycled.

This section features for example a knitted dress made with a vegetable fibre based on nettles; a dress called “Sugar Rush” (second image in this post) made from ‘Ingeo’, a bioplastic called polylactic acid (PLA) similar to polyester but made from plants such as corn, wheat, sugar beet or sugar cane, and a very intriguing piece, a jacket (third image in this post) made from sheets of sugary biofilm produced by the microbes that ferment in bathtubs of sweet green tea.

You will discover further from the embedded video that shows how designer Suzanne Lee uses bacteria to grow the material to make her designs.

The jacket is actually my favourite design out of this project since, though at the moment the research is still in its early stages (the material generated isn’t perfect and may need the addition of water-repelling molecules to avoid seeing the jacket going mushy if caught in the rain), I find fascinating thinking about the applications that bacterial cellulose may have in future in the fashion industry, but also in the creation of other items, such as books and magazines.

 

The section entitled “Cut It Out” looks instead at clothes characterised by a perfect cut and fitting.

One of the pieces included in this display is a jumper developed by Sandy Black from the London College of Fashion. The item is produced in just one piece on an automated knitting machine that uses individual measurements taken in a 3D body scanner.

 

In this case waste is reduced by producing on-demand, customised clothes that make sure we actually get the clothes we want.

The "Cut It Out" section also includes a made-to-measure jacket (fourth image) developed by Fashion technologist Siddhartha Upadhyaya through a new process called “Direct Panel on Loom”.

The latter is based on weaving made to fit sections of a garment reducing in this way materials and dyes and combining the weaving, fabric-cutting and patterning stages all into one process.

Designer Mark Liu, developed instead a “jigsaw” dress (white dress in the fourth image).

The intricate motifs on this design aren’t actually appliquéd pieces of fabric but the result of a clever solution, carefully designed patterns in which all the parts fit together like pieces of a jigsaw puzzles. When the design is assembled there are no scraps of material left over and consequently no waste.

The next section - entitled “To Dye For” - explores a vital problem, how dyes and finishes release toxic chemicals in the world’s water systems.

One of the solutions suggested is a little black dress (first item on the right in the fifth image) made with a new dyeing technology that doesn’t use water at all, but focuses on colouring the polyester as it is made.

This system was researched and developed by expert in colouration technology at the University of Leeds and founder of DyeCat company Richard Blackburn.

Fashionistas who are into brilliant colours will instead be fascinated by the dress in this section made in Morphotex fabric (same pic, dress in the middle).

The latter is characterised by an iridescent effect recreated by using nanotechnology that allows to copy the nano-scale structure of the cobalt-blue wings of the morpho-butterfly.

The fabric is produced by Japanese textiles company Teijin using 61 ultra-thin alternating layers of polyester and nylon.

The thickness of each layer - between 70 and 100 nanometres – controls the way light bounces, bends and scatters inside the fabric, generating different nuances and colours (could something along these lines be the secret behind the fluidly iridescent fabrics for the designs we saw on Armani Privé’s Spring/Summer 2011 runway?). 

This dress is actually quite interesting because its fabric may open new possibilities in the production of colour-changing materials.

This section also includes another alternative to dyes: designer Kate Goldsworthy’s recycled polyester shift dress that features an intricate pattern made using laser beams.      

 

The exhibition also includes a paper dress made with Metro magazines (first image in this post); a display on digital prints with a violet vintage dress reprinted on a red dress and a piece of fabric left for fifty days underground to show how bacteria ate the cotton hemp but not the polyester parts. 

Among the most interesting pieces there is also a cocktail frock with coloured sections (made without using any toxic dyes) that can be folded and clipped into place, mixing and combining in new ways its structure without using any stitches,(I'll try and look at this design maybe in a future post). 

This exhibition shows that creating without waste but with science in mind may represent a viable way for the future. 

Fashion weeks victims should maybe stop quarrelling about front row seats and follow a bit more the experiments that these designers, researchers and scientists are carrying out.

Chances are that the future of fashion will end up coming from a laboratory and not from a conventional atelier.   

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Fashionable Tales from Imperial China

Reading about court life always proves very inspirational from a fashion point of view, no matter if the court in question is the Elizabethan, the Tudor or the Medici court.

A new exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum, provides interesting insights into the world of Chinese emperors during the Qing dynasty, the last ruling dynasty of China (1644-1911).

Entitled “Imperial Chinese Robes from the Forbidden City”, this small but very well organised exhibition on the ground floor of the museum showcases garments and accessories from the wardrobes of emperors, empresses and concubines from Beijing’s Palace Museum.

The 268-year Qing dynasty was regulated by very strict rules applied to the attires of the emperor and empress, but also to the members of the court gravitating around them, from ministers and noblemen to military officials and concubines.

All of them had to change their attires according to the ceremonial occasion.

The exhibition looks at five different categories of clothes for the emperor – official, festive, regular, travelling and military, each divided into summer and winter.

While the bright yellow ceremonial armours featured for example embroidered patterns, copper elements and a metal plate, informal attire was less elaborate, though at times it included inserts of sable.

The empress had fewer official duties to perform than her husband, so she mainly wore informal dresses. The empress’s clothes actually show greater variety, especially when it comes to the cut and the fastenings, cuff shape, choice of fabrics and decorations featuring rich embroideries of flowers, butterflies, grapes and birds. 

Decorations and colours represented the main opportunity court ladies had to express their personality.

One of the garments exhibited - a bright yellow satin robe with an embroidered pattern from the Guangxu reign - is a perfect example, but so are the accessories such as the empress’ festive headdress or dianzi covered in pearls, gold and semi-precious stones.

Different colours and patterns were also very important since they indicated distinctions of class and rank.

Red was the colour designated for sacrifices at the Altar of the Sun; bright yellow could only be worn by the emperor and high-ranking members of the imperial family and was for the Altar of the Earth; blue for the Altar of Heaven and pale blue for the Altar of the Moon.

Bright yellow remained the prerogative of the empress and the empress dowager: she wore a bright yellow robe matched with a sleeveless coat, hat diadem headband, collar ornament, three necklaces, three pairs of earrings and a silk pendant and boots when she offered sacrifices at the Altar of Silkworms (since spinning and weaving were traditionally considered as tasks for women), on New Year’s Day and on the emperor’s birthday.

Travelling robes are also interesting from a construction point of view since they are rather ample with an asymmetrical cut, purposefully designed to allow movement on horseback, while ceremonial armours included also interesting elements such as sleeves with strips of gold thread meant to resemble shining metal.

The exhibition also shows the craftsmanship of China’s textile production: clothing for the Imperial family was managed by the Imperial Household Department, with fabrics produced in weaving mills in Southern China.

All the garments included in the exhibition are characterised by colourful fabrics and textiles and the intricate embroideries, often including woven patterns in gold thread and showing dragons, flowers, swastika roundels and rainbows, are the results of the work of skilled artisans.

The twelve symbols that appear in some of the robes – sun, moon, constellation, mountain, dragon, flowery creature, axe head, back-to-back ji, sacrificial vessels, waterweed, flame and grain – represented the emperor's utmost authority and were worn by him alone.    

When in 1862 China came under the rule of a woman, the 26-year-old fashionable Empress Dowager Cixi who assumed power on behalf of her son, fashion started changing. The empress favoured indeed more informal styles and was fond of the changyi, a loose-fitting outer gown.

The exhibition also marks the reopening of the refurbished TT Tsui Gallery of Chinese Art that - fashion fans will be happy to know - also includes new exhibits such as a case on the Chinese republican period with Shanghai’s glamorous garments from the '20s and '30s. 

You can discover more about the "Imperial Chinese Robe" exhibition on the curator’s blog.

“Imperial Chinese Robes from the Forbidden City”, is at the V&A, London, until 27th February.

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Bewitched by the Colours (and Costumes) in “The Witches”

New York Fashion Week kicks off tomorrow, but the rush to find more connections between film and fashion in the collections for the next Autumnal season has already started a few days ago.

Sofia Sizzi (who worked at Gucci, Calvin Klein, Michael Kors and Jason Wu) will launch during New York Fashion Week her own brand called Giulietta that - as many of you may have guessed - takes inspiration from Federico Fellini.

Film producer Stephanie Danan and screenwriter Justin Kern have instead turned into designers and will be launching Co, a knitwear line, accompanied by a short directed by Daryl Wein and starring Élodie Bouchez.

More cinematic references will obviously resurface here and there on the London, Milan and Paris runways, yet I often have the feeling that this film and fashion connection has been turned in the last few years into the favourite sport of the fashion industry, interested in exploiting the power of cinema to sell (via new means of communication from mobile phones to iPads) rather than to create something truly lasting and memorable.

To get away from the most mediocre aspects of the fashion and film connection (one of the most annoying connection being the “cinematic” trend advertised by some agencies as the "in" trend for the Spring/Summer 2012 season for menswear and knitwear designs...) I took refuge in the world of a '60s Italian film entitled Le streghe (The Witches, 1967).

Produced by the late Dino De Laurentiis, the film was essentially a way to reintroduce his wife Silvana Mangano on the big screen after a period of absence.

The Witches is indeed divided in five episodes all starring Mangano, but directed by five different directors, Luchino Visconti, Mauro Bolognini, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Franco Rossi and Vittorio De Sica.

From a fashion perspective each of these episodes features some wonderful costumes by Piero Tosi, but also extraordinarily vivid colours.

In the first episode, “La strega bruciata viva” (The witch scorched alive) by Luchino Visconti, Silvana Mangano stars as a famous actress envied by her “friends” who take advantage of the fact she’s not feeling well to remove her wig, make-up and mink eyelashes to cynically laugh at her imperfect beauty. 

In the second episode, “Senso civico” (Civic Sense) by Mauro Bolognini, Mangano is a rich and elegant lady who, pretending to take to the hospital a man wounded in a car crash (Alberto Sordi), uses him instead to run on the roads and reach her glamorous appointment on time without being stopped by the traffic lights or the police. 

In Pasolini’s episode a widower with a comical name (Ciancicato Miao - Italian actor Totò) looks for a wife with his son Baciù (Ninetto Davoli), finding her in a magical alien-like deaf and dumb girl with green hair who keeps on helping them even after she dies.

Nunzia a proud Sicilian woman causes instead a feud of major proportions in the fourth episode, “La Siciliana” (The Sicilian Woman), and, in the fifth, a bored wife dreams of stripping in stadium.

The costumes donned by Mangano and the other actors in the film perfectly reflect the mood and atmosphere of each of these episodes.

There are some extraordinarily glamorous furs and sequinned gowns in the first episode in which Visconti also introduced towards the very end a man with a Louis Vuitton portfolio folder bag used as his own signature (the director often used Louis Vuitton accessories in his films since they carried his own initials – check out this post to know more about the Visconti-Vuitton connection).

Pasolini’s episode is essentially a surreal and comic tale, based on the fairy tale "Il buro e la bura".

The best thing about this episode is the use of bright and contrasting colours: Ninetto Davoli stars as Baciù a young man with bright orange hair who wears throughout the film an azure top and orange trousers, while Mangano is Assurdina (her name meaning ‘the little absurd one’…) his green-haired mother wearing a green dress, azure tights and red slippers.

All the characters move in a set in which red and orange prevail. The story is indeed told from an alien-like point of view that mirrors the title of this episode, “La terra vista dalla luna” (The Earth seen from the Moon).

The bright colours and intense chromatic scale enrich Pasolini’s  tableaux vivants, giving them a powerful dimension.

The colourful costumes of the main characters also distinguish them from the rest of society, characterised by dark colours, and Assurdina and Baciù end up representing everything individualistic and extraordinary in a boring and uniformed society.

Funnily enough Baciù's look is also very fashionable: colour is a key of many menswear collections for the Autumn/Winter 2011-12 season. We have actually seen azure blue resurfacing in Hermès’ chunky knits (with orange - the house's signature colour - used for the sole of classic Oxfords) and bright orange trousers appearing in Louis Vuitton’s collection.

The final episode of Le streghe, “A night like any other” by Vittorio De Sica, is unanimously considered as the most bizarre film Clint Eastwood ever took part in (it also features an irresistible score by Piero Piccioni who wrote the music for the Visconti episode as well; Ennio Morricone wrote instead the score for Pasolini’s).

Reduced to a domestic slave by her estranged husband (Eastwood) in real life, Giovanna (Mangano) finds refuge in her dreams in which she is not an obedient wife, but a glamorous diva in brightly coloured designer clothes, a revengeful vixen clad in a black PVC dress matched with a spiky headdress and the sensual mistress of the most popular anti-heroes of very fashionable ‘60s Italian comics, from Diabolik to Kriminal.

The episode culminates with Giovanna - clad in an amazing black satin dress with a colourful billowing cape formed by strips of fabrics knotted on her shoulders - dreaming of stripping in a huge stadium.

As she undresses, Giovanna reveals underneath the black satin dress more colourful dresses layered one on top of the other, in green, yellow and red, the same nuances of her cape, a terrific trick that concludes this film with a kaleidoscope of colours contrasting with Giovanna's grey and depressing existence. 

You can watch the film live in streaming here, but I'm also embedding it at the end of this post as I'm sure that you will find some of the colour combinations (and looks!) really striking (and Italian speakers will definitely laugh out loud while watching some of the episodes). Hope you enjoy the film! (With many thanks to my brother for lending me an old VHS tape I used for the screen captures). 

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Walking Japan: Chausser and H?Katsukawa from Tokyo

In yesterday’s post I looked at menswear tailoring from Japan, so to complete the thread I started on Saturday, let’s have a look at Japanese footwear brands and designers.

The first one for today’s post is the Chausser brand.

Chausser's footwear is made using vegetable-tanned leather intended to darken and crease with wear from the best suppliers all over the world selected by Yoichi Maeda (who learnt the shoemaking craft from his father and designs for both Chausser and YOH Number Eighty One) and the shoes are actually made in Japan with some limited-edition designs crafted in Italy.

The brand offers sleek and elegant yet practical and functional designs - including high heels, sneaker and lace-up boots - for both men and women that appeal to every taste.

The main principles behind these shoes – also the ones from the lower-priced line called Mukava – are durability and comfort, plus a special focus on draped, rugged and creased leather motifs and colour finish (as seen in the designs from the latest collection).

The brand has its flagship store - Plus by Chausser - near the Ebisu station, not far from the Margiela boutique (check out the map on Chausser's site if you’re heading to Tokyo sometime soon).

The second designer for today is avant-garde Eiichi Katsukawa from H?Katsukawa from Tokyo, who appeared a while back in a previous post on this blog.

Katsukawa gets another mention for his new collection, a blend of British and French inspirations with a surrealist twist.

The main point of the new collection is looking at avant-garde styles from a new and wearable point of view, while injecting in each pair of shoe a much-needed dose of fun.

An example? The mismatched yet perfectly matching shoes in this picture (hey that could be a trend!).

Katsukawa's focus remains on high quality materials, hand-printed techniques and attention to details (the soles of his shoes usually hide unexpected surprises...). 

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Menswear Tailoring: Japanese Style (Two Approaches)

In yesterday’s post I looked at the transformations Japanese designers brought into fashion in the last 30 years through avant-garde and experimental creations.

Following that thread I would like to briefly focus today on Japanese menswear tailoring and look at the work of two different labels, Takizawa Shigeru and Ryoji Okada.

I admit I’m absolutely fascinated by the way Japanese tailors have been studying the Italian and English traditions, blending the Neapolitan, Sicilian and Milanese schools with Savile Row style and taking the best out of them to recreate a new Japanese tradition.

You may think the result of such experiment is a scary hybrid, but in fact it’s a high quality and impeccably cut product.

Born in 1964, Takizawa Shigeru attended in the ‘80s a school specialised in menswear tailoring and later on founded his brand, training also in Italy and developing products with Issey Miyake's "IM Product".

His designs move from four inspirations: the elegance of horse riding, the functionality of military clothes, the refined grace of the Renaissance court and the elegance of British menswear. 

These inspirations are then combined with the work of Japanese artisans and with state of the art technology.

The textiles used to create Takizawa Shigeru’s creations are indeed produced in two different factories called Iwanaka and Imashin-Keori, located in Bishu, in the centre of Japan.

This area is famous for its ancient textile history and the materials employed to make Takizawa Shigeru's garments are usually based on original textiles made with blends of virgin wool.

Both the factories produce unique textiles based on the Japanese heritage, though the Imashin-Keori factory produces a higher level textile made with a special yarn that apparently looks rough and heavy, but it’s actually soft and light.

The company also owns factories that take care of the smallest details of suits and shirts, such as pockets with 3mm x 3mm piping and perfect shoulder lines, hand-finishing the designs (Takizawa Shigeru has two lines - the fully handmade called 'Purple Label' and the ready-to-wear line 'Black Label') that are then sold to costumers in the Salone Ondata based in Tokyo’s Ginza district.

"A Workroom by Ryoji Okada" is instead a prêt-à-porter label launched in 2010 by Ryoji Okada.

Born in 1971, Okada originally wanted to become a musician and started playing the piano, trumpet and guitar from an early age.

After graduating from Mejigakuin University, Okada decided instead to step into the world of fashion.

He learnt his trade from a bespoke Savile Row tailor and started combining the English and Japanese traditions in his cutting edge designs. In 2002 he opened his own store in Tokyo, becoming the favourite label of many local rock stars, actors and photographers.

His Autumn/Winter 2011-12 collection is called “Hidden Statements” and, inspired by love, passion and rock’n’roll music, features edgy looks that are perfect for the modern dandy.

Yet tailoring is not Okada’s only interest: he still plays music and has also got his own band, the very aptly named “Ryoji and The Perfect Gentlemen”.

Young fashion design students who do not consider menswear tailoring as a viable career, should maybe take inspiration from these labels that are renewing solid tailoring traditions without forgetting high quality materials and impeccable cutting techniques.

Italian tailoring companies who have been sitting, resting and relaxing or looking at the future with very confused ideas (just one mention - Brioni - but the list is long...), thinking they were safe and didn't have any proper competitors, should try instead to wake up from their tailoring slumber as soon as possible and even start looking at collaborations with these designers (actually Takizawa Shigeru already employed in some of his suits Ermenegildo Zegna's textiles).

New competitors are indeed coming from the Land of the Rising Sun and they are ready to attack not with swords and shurikens like samurais or ninjas, but with scissors and needle.

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Last Call for “Future Beauty” at the Barbican

Fashion has gone through dramatic transformations in the last 30 years.

The greatest changes to the fashion system were probably brought by the Japanese wave.

Kenzo and Issey Miyake gained international acclaim in the '70s and, in the following decades, the tradition continued with the arrival on the scene of a new generation of designers, comprising Rei Kawakubo and Yohji Yamamoto.

Through their work they challenged the most established principles of Western fashion, twisting, altering and morphing the shape of the body.

The exhibition “Future Beauty: 30 Years of Japanese Fashion” - on until tomorrow at London’s Barbican Art Gallery but then reopening in Munich - moves from this main point to explore also the work of the newest generation of designers hailing from Japan. 

If you’re heading there today, you’ll actually also get the chance of joining in a design class on flatness and form with designer Julian Roberts focusing on innovative pattern cutting techniques.

I visited the exhibition a while back and really enjoyed it since it's structured in a clever way. Divided in different sections and curated by the Kyoto Costume Institute director, Akiko Fukai, and Kate Bush, head of art galleries at the Barbican, “Fashion Beauty” provides a great insight into Japanese fashion.

The first part of the exhibition looks at the way Kawakubo and Yamamoto’s use of asymmetrical and deconstructed garments calls to mind the principles found in the 1933 book In Praise of Shadows by Jun’ichiro Tanizaki and mainly conceals the figure rather than revealing it.

Among the examples showcased in this section there are Yamamoto’s plain weave designs and Comme des Garçons’s loose cotton jersey blouses with cotton appliqués (from their Spring/Summer 1983 collections) and Comme des Garçons’s S/S 1984 black linen dress.

These designs are juxtaposed to more recent ones such as Undercover's Jun Takahashi’s linen coat made with circular appliquéd fabric (S/S 2006) and Matohu (design duo Hiroyuki Horihata and Makiko Sekiguchi)'s blue-black coat and jacquard dresses from the  “Kabuki-mono” collection, influenced by the art and style of the Keicho Period (1596-1615).

The next section looks instead at the themes of flatness and at the ways in which tailored and sculpted silhouettes were rethought throughout the years in experimental ways.

Examples are provided via Issey Miyake’s 1988 "Pleats" series, with its finely architectural pleats of flat panes of fabric creating geometric shapes and silhouettes.

Naoya Hatekeyama’s photographs of Comme des Garçons’ A/W 1983-84 and A/W 1992-93 designs reveal instead the simplicity of forms behind Kawakubo’s garments, while exploring the flatness/form dichotomy and showing how these items liberate the wearer from notions of gender, age and shape.

Seemingly complex forms reveal themselves in these images as simple and basic panels, Möbius strips of fabric that, wrapped around the body in different ways, create dynamically voluminous looks.

More experimental designs are explored in the part dedicated to tradition and innovation. 

Among them there is also Miyake and Dai Fujiwara’s innovative A-POC (A Piece of Cloth) concept knitwear, created without using needle and thread construction but feeding the yarn into a computerised loom programmed with structural patterns that the consumer could cut along perforated lines, obtaining form-fitting garments.

Watanabe’s A/W 2000-01 "Techno Couture" collection, with its honeycomb or bell-shaped structures and exaggerated yet ethereal ruffs in blue, yellow and red polyester organdie, follows this innovative tradition.

Another perfect example is Koji Tatsuno’s cloud-shaped copper brown nylon dress created by combining two huge circles, each made from nylon net ribbons sewn up in spirals.

The design was used as a costume for the main character of Peter Greenaway’s 1996 film The Pillow Book.

Yet this is not the only cinematic connection in this event: one of the best films ever made about fashion, Wim Wenders’ Notebook on Cities and Clothes (1989) is indeed screened in a special room of the lower floor.

Among the most original designs there are definitely those ones that, moving from Japanese traditions and culture, tried to bring innovations through new construction, pattern cutting, printing and dyeing techniques, from Yamamoto’s S/S 1995 silk crepe kimono coat to Hiroaki Ohya’s polyester film cape that could be folded like a paper lantern (View this photo) from “The Wizard of Jeanz” collection (S/S 2000 - inspired by The Wizard of Oz) and Tao Kurihara polo shirt and craft paper skirt referencing origami art matched with cotton gloves (S/S 2007 - View this photo). 

The final part of the lower floor displays is a joy for the “kawaii” fans since it looks at the influence the Shibuya and Harajuku districts had on global youth and includes designs with popular characters such as Astroboy (Ohya's S/S 2004) and Hello Kitty (Zucca’s A/W 2009) and Naoki Takizawa’s creations for Miyake featuring prints by Aya Takano, a member of Takashi Murakami's Kaikai Kiki.

Tao Kurihara’s knitted lingerie in this part of the exhibition relates to the Lolita and Gothic Lolita trends, while one of the cutest yet over the top designs is Fumito Ganryu/Comme des Garçons's S/S 2008 ivory polyester knit dress featuring  thirty-three cotton dolls.

If you want to take a rest you can also watch on the lower floor clips of fashion catwalk shows and extract from Merce Cunningham (1919–2009)'s dance performance "Scenario" (1997), inspired by Kawakubo’s S/S 1997 collection.

One of my favourite sections from the upper level gallery is the one dedicated to the latest Myake project, entitled "132 5" (please refer to my previous post mentioning it) and featuring a series of folded polygons in recycled PET that can be turned into garments (View this photo).

There’s much more to see on this floor with special sections dedicated to specific designers.

Rei Kawakubo’s features her iconic dresses in stretch nylon fabric with internal extreme padding from the "Body Meets Dress, Dress Meets Body" collection (S/S 1997) in which the designer challenged traditional notions of the fashionable silhouette (a theme that came back also in her recent A/W 2010-11 collection) adding bumps in unexpected areas of the body, almost unifying body lines with the dress while also proposing a new aesthetic. 

Junya Watanabe’s gallery is instead a journey through different materials and techniques including a nylon dressed trimmed with acrylic resin circles (S/S 2001), distressed denim designs (A/W 2002), a padded polyester orange, red and black dress (A/W 2004-05) and more recent creations from the S/S 2010 collection that mainly featured tailored trouser suits.

People into construction will enjoy Yamamoto’s innovative designs in rigid felt (A/W 1996-97) or in polyester printed with grey stripes (S/S 1999), but, if you are into clashing patterns and prints, Jun Takahashi’s "Melting Pot" (A/W 2000-01) collection, inspired by tartan and tapestry, is definitely not to miss.

The next generation of Japanese designers completes the displays on the upper floor. Here you will find Tao Kurihara’s S/S 2010 garments, made without the need for sewing, but with the fabric twisted and knotted together using a technique similar to traditional macramé construction, and Mintdesigns (duo Hokuto and Yao Nagi)‘s creations characterised by strong graphic prints of paper-chain dolls and newspapers.

Designs by Chitose Abe (Sacai), Kazuaki Takashima (Né-net) and Tame Hirokawa (Somarta) are maybe more light-hearted compared to Kawakubo or Yamamoto's, but they still display an equal interest in experimenting with body shapes, silhouettes and materials.

In a message written by Kawakubo in 1997 and commenting about Comme des Garçons' Spring/Summer collection, the designer stated: "Not what has been seen before, not what has been repeated; instead, new discoveries that look towards the future, that are liberated and lively."

Looks like the new wave of Japanese designers is definitely following the values and rules set by this special fashion gospel.  

The exhibition is accompanied by the volume "Future Beauty: 30 Years of Japanese Fashion" by Akiko Fukai, Barbara Vinken, Susannah Frankel and Hirofumi Kurino and Rie Nii.

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Artefact Avant-Garde

Seeing the nine students from the MA Fashion Artefact course at London College of Fashion putting the final touches to their designs is definitely an experience that awakens the senses. Sight, smell and touch are indeed stimulated by the elegant beauty of the pieces and by the textures and smells of the materials employed to make them from the rubbery consistency of silicone to the smoothness of Perspex and the distinctive smell of traditional English leather. 

Alexandra Gross, Charlie Goldthorpe, Hanwen Shen, Kat Marks, Lara Torres, Oliver Ruuger, Vesna Pesic, Wei Wang and Yu Lin Xu, the students behind the “Artefact Collective”, will be showcasing their works in an exhibition launching this week at London’s Victoria House.

Alexandra Gross: For my collection, I was reading about chaos theory and the butterfly effect. While looking at these topics, I considered how a change in the initial stages can create larger, unexpected results. I decided to transpose these ideas into an image of distortion or unbalance in leather goods. So through pattern making and structural manipulation, I created variations of bags characterised by slight twists. One of the main ideas in my collection is to move away from commercialism and the consumer frenzy. I wanted to create something well crafted, made following all the traditional leather techniques that make it long lasting and move away from disposable fashion. At the same time, it was important to me to fuse traditional craftsmanship with technologically advanced processes. All the pieces are made with bridle leather, suede lining and are hand-sewn and the hardware elements were based on traditional closures. In one case, I took a case lock, deconstructed it, redesigned it and had brass laser cut, before assembling by hand.
 

Charlie Goldthorpe: I was inspired by the idea of taking the function and purpose of ordinary objects away. I essentially moved from pieces that were found, collected or donated by different people, including a trunk, a suitcase, an umbrella, a hip flask and a perfume bottle. I found in a scrap bin a locket that was going to be thrown away or melted to make new components and I decided to capture this image in platinum cured silicone, then designed outside it a protective leather case. In the case of the satchel, I found it in a skip and captured in silicone its buckles. I also looked into tattooing and branding the skin in different ways: all my objects bear a number that is relevant to myself – like my date of birth for example – or that are significant to other people, so that they represent an extension of themselves within that object. 

Hanwen Shen: I used to be a jeweller and now I’m focusing on fashion objects. With this project I explored the back area and the erotic power of a woman’s nape. Fashion doesn’t really take into consideration so much the nape of a woman, but, inspired also by the Oriental aesthetic, I’ve done a lot of research about this part of the body. I think the nape of a woman is very sensual and also evokes images of Japanese women wearing the kimono. All the accessories I made are characterised by striking shapes as I want the wearer to feel empowered while wearing them.
 

Lara Torres: My research is entitled “An impossible wardrobe for the invisible” and it’s about memory and clothing.  It was inspired by a project I started in May 2005 that focused on the possibilities of creating garments and objects that formally express the mechanisms of memory and supported my designs with an experimental and conceptual research. The title of my project hints at a lost object, at the documentation of this loss and at the creation of temporary objects. Clothes leave a trace – embodied by the seams – that reinforce the processes of remembering and forgetting. I have documented the designs with a video and, at the final exhibition, I will be presenting seven performances and one object as part of a mixed media installation.

Kat Marks: I consider myself an image-maker and a craftswoman. The media I’ve chosen for my project are Perspex and leather and I use these materials to encase the body or mimic the body, building different shapes upon it. With this collection in particular I focused around the chest area, playing with tribal inspirations and referencing the tuxedo as well. The collection is called “the karass”, after the group of different people who, unknowingly, work together to do God’s will in Kurt Vonnegut’s novel Cat’s Cradle. I developed the collection for a specific muse, a woman that I have in mind, and these accessories represent an extension of her, not something that decorates her. I have also conceived the collection as a tool, a prop in the generation of images for photography and film purposes. I have recently worked with SHOWstudio and Nick Knight producing a film for the exhibition that looks at the material object, at the way it transforms a woman and at the audience’s perception of that woman.

SHOWstudio.com presents The Karass featuring Edita in A/W 2011 Kat Marks by Nick Knight from SHOWstudio on Vimeo.

Oliver Ruuger: My pieces aren’t subservient to the person carrying them but as designs with a strong presence, as things with a life on their own. For example, my case covered in spikes comes across as an animal or a strange creature rather than a simple bag. This quality allows the objects to stand next to the person carrying them and coming across as equals rather than as inanimate things. This is why I tried to use valuable materials such as ebony, horsehair and leather. Construction-wise I’m quite interested in combining the traditional with the new, this is why I did everything by hand and by myself apart from the metal-hardware. The leather parts are for example stitched together using saddle-making techniques and the pieces are all designed and drawn out in Cad and then laser cut down to the millimetre. Accuracy is very important, but the manual part is quite big as hundreds of hours go into each object.

Vesna Pesic: I’ve been a milliner for quite some time, so this is not my first collection, but I would define it a ‘far-from-millinery’ collection, though it still features headpieces.   It’s called “Poetry in Pose” and it’s a play on words. I used to write poetry in prose and, as you may know, this practice looks at a stronger emotional effect created using heightened imagery. My pieces are created to provoke feelings and empower the wearer through symbolism and abstract art. Though the pieces look quite sculptural they are very light and made entirely out of leather. I employed different techniques to make my designs, using leather as if it were fabric, draping it, but also as if it were clay to give it a sculptural quality. It takes a long time to do these pieces and a lot of patience as well. What I’m trying to achieve through my collection is prompt people to feel first and think later and not the other way around, because we usually tend to analyse things intellectually, while I want people to feel naturally and I want a natural reaction to my pieces.

Wei Wang: My project is entitled “Reworking the Bag” and it looks at employing traditional Oriental ceramics in accessory production. I’ve been working as a sport accessory designer for several years and I felt there is a limited choice when it comes to the materials for bags. While creating sport pieces we indeed tend to think about the function of that specific sport and do not use any fashionable or luxury materials. This is what pushed me to look for elegant and precious materials that can be employed for bags. Ceramics is an unpredictable material as every piece is unique and each comes with its own surface effects. I was fascinated by this quality, but also by another point: the ceramic glaze I used is cracked and keeps on cracking while wearing the bag. In this way the bag becomes a sort of “memory stick”, an object that carries within itself every past and present moment.

Yu Lin Xu: For this project I transferred a classic handbag into a different style. Moving from Picasso’s Cubism I created a classic bag that can be worn in two ways. As you know, you can look at a Cubist painting from different angles and see it in different ways. In this case, though the bag is based on one single and basic shape, it can be transformed by shifting its angles and you can therefore wear it in alternative ways.

The Artefact Collective’s exhibition is at Victoria House (Victoria House Basement), Bloomsbury Square, London, from 2nd to 9th February (12.00pm-7.00 pm).

Credits for images:
Alexandra Gross: Jon Meade; Charlie Goldthorpe: Tim Medley; Hanwen Shen: Zhiyong Jiao; Kat Marks: Paul Hine and Millinery by Niamh Flanagan; Lara Torres: Direction and concept Lara Torres Co-direction Pedro Fortes, Assistant Yann Gibert, Featuring Joana Areal, Miguel Bonneville, Diogo Bento, Yann Gibert, Eduardo Petersen, Sofia Dias, Vitor Roriz, Andrea Brandão, Liz Vahia, Sofia Pimentão, Teresa Nobre, Lara Torres, Sponsor: Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation; Oliver Ruuger: Michiel Meewis; Vesna Pesic: Ashley Low; Wei Wang: Tom Mulvee

 

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Trendy Colours in a '50s film (from the British Pathé Archives)

There is so much talk about fashion and film in the industry at the moment.

Sadly many of the videos (or "films") recently produced do not have any real cinematic value, but are essentially sequences of stylish shots and close ups of clothes that leave you very cold (think about the Miu Miu film "The Powder Room", the first in a series entitled "Women's Tales").

While searching for something else in the British Pathé archives, I stumbled upon this video that, I must admit, looks a bit like a proper fashion film (check out the opening titles - aren't they cute?).

Shot in the 50s and directed by Terry Ashwood, the video is entitled "Paris - City of Fashion" and features designs by Christian Dior, Schiaparelli, Balenciaga, Balmain, Jacques Fath, Nina Ricci, Worth, Rochas and Paquin, just to mention a few.

The film a group of models from the morning till the evening, showing them resting in a park, walking in the street, at the local flower market or taking part in more mundane events such as cocktails and parties.

The designs showcased in the newsreeel - all accessorised with striking hats - are extremely beautiful: most of them are characterised by dramatic silhouettes (please pay attention at the voluminous sleeves and asymmetrical necklines, but also at the batwinged hooded cape and the coat and dress with "a hint of Oriental pagodas").

I particularly found interesting the bright colours of some of the designs featured in the film as they seem to call to mind the nuances in trend for the Spring/Summer 2011 season (check out for example the "Solid States" editorial in the February 2011 issue of Surface Magazine) - vibrant green, red and yellow included. Click on the following image to watch the film. Enjoy!

PARIS - CITY OF FASHION

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