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

Nina Donis' Wall of Quotes

There were quotes by Charlie Chaplin, Vladimir Nabokov, Leo Tolstoy, Faina Ranevskaya, Anton Cechov, Evgeny Schwartz, Steve Jobs and many more (with many thanks to Julia Vydolob at Look At Me for helping with the translations!) on the back wall of the venue at Nina Donis' show, quotes that we saw replicated also on a dress.

You will have to stay tuned to discover more about the catwalk show (definitely the highlight of the Cycles and Seasons event in my opinion). In the meantime I can tell you that many members of the audience stole the quotes off the wall as a memento at the end of the show. I must admit it was an irresistible souvenir. I got one from George Orwell's 1984 that says "War Is Peace, Freedom Is Slavery, Ignorance Is Strength" (easily adaptable to some people working in the fashion industry...). Aliona Doletskaya got the "Pioneers, Kiss My Ass!" quote (by Faina Ranevskaya), very symbolical considering her exit last year from Vogue Russia. 

Member of the Boxxet Network of Blogs, Videos and Photos

Member of the Boxxet Network of Blogs, Videos and Photos

Add to Technorati Favorites

A Design for a Lunar Life?

One of the first pieces of news I read this morning was a brief report that said that Russian scientists are exploring the possibilities of starting a colony on the moon.

Human beings could apparently live in the volcanic tunnels on the moon, starting in this way the first lunar colony.

Everything depends from the porosity of the moon and on finding out if the moon has a number of caves that can truly protect from radiation or meteor showers.

So what will it be like living on the moon (and what will be wearing up there)?

Artists, architects and designers often imagined a lunar life in extreme conditions, but, as explained by the Russian researchers, apparently there would be no need to dig the lunar soil as inflatable structures with hard outer shells to close the caves could be built on lunar landscape.

It may take another twenty years to see the first lunar colonies on the moon, in the meantime enjoy this picture showing a detail of the Monument to the Conquerors of Space (1964) in Moscow. I took it a few days ago on an architectural tour with my driver German (who will need a holiday the minute I leave...). The monument has a special dynamism about it, symbolising a rocket hurtling into the sky trailed by a jet stream and it somehow fits in with all the space age themes, astro hoods and rocket-shaped silhouettes we talked about during yesterday's lecture.

Member of the Boxxet Network of Blogs, Videos and Photos

Member of the Boxxet Network of Blogs, Videos and Photos

Add to Technorati Favorites

Rodchenko-inspired Thank You Note

I've mentioned Alexander Rodchenko en passant during today's lecture.

Since we talked a lot about robots, sci-fi and space age and since the lecture took place at the Moscow House of Photography/Multimedia Art Museum, as a big thank you note to the organisers of the Cycles & Seasons by Mastercard event and to all the readers and fashion students who came to see me - in particular Alice (who also brought some very supporting friends with her, so thank you!) and Lisa, I'm posting here an image of the Planetarium taken by Rodchenko in 1932. 

Stay tuned for more Russian adventures...

Member of the Boxxet Network of Blogs, Videos and Photos

Member of the Boxxet Network of Blogs, Videos and Photos

Add to Technorati Favorites

Woman in the Mechanical Age: Manipulating, Morphing and Idealising the Female Body

As anticipated in yesterday's post, I'm currently in Moscow to present my new lecture, entitled "Woman in the Mechanical Age: Manipulating, Morphing and Idealising the Female Body", during the Cycles and Seasons event.

The lecture moves from one main point: contemporary fashion constantly plays with genders, reinventing new identities, creating innovative shapes and silhouettes capable of altering the human body.

This is not new though: very rarely through the centuries women wore garments that highlighted the real contours of their natural bodies.

The popularity of a design was indeed dictated by exaggerated hips, busts and derrieres or by minimised waists: crinolines imprisoned women in cages impairing their walk, Dior’s “New Look” popularised instead cinched waists.

All these trends played with shapes, emphasised a part of the human body, transforming it into a mathematical variable that could be changed and altered according to the times, the structures used to support a design or the fabrics employed to make it.

The lecture will look at how the female body has changed throughout the decades, using images and film clips, exploring the universe of Russian masterpiece Aelita by Yakov Protazanov, iconic Metropolis by Fritz Lang and dystopic Blade Runner by Ridley Scott, and analysing the subtle, scientific, technological, outrageous and industrial mutations that occurred in fashion via collections by Thierry Mugler, Hussein Chalayan, Alexander McQueen and Kei Kagami among the others.

From crinolettes to cyberbodies, robots and gynoids, the lecture will illustrate how mutating your body is a way to reject traditional aesthetic principles and find new ones through construction, materials, form and concept.

The lecture - preceded by an Aelita-inspired video by Jay Artworx accompanying DJ Batman's track "The Ghost of Anna El-Tour" - is at Moscow's Multimedia Art Museum tomorrow at 6.30 p.m. and I'm looking forward to meeting there the Cycles and Seasons audience.

 

Member of the Boxxet Network of Blogs, Videos and Photos

Member of the Boxxet Network of Blogs, Videos and Photos

Add to Technorati Favorites

A Room with a Russian View

It's somehow uncanny and slightly bizarre re-watching Blade Runner to select some clips connected with fashion from a room located on the 15th floor of one of Moscow's Seven Sisters (the Radisson Royal to be precise) with a window that opens onto a landscape mixing Stalinist architecture with modern skyscrapers, with wisps of smoke rising in the background.

Yet that's exactly what happened to me when I arrived in Moscow last night. Shame I don't have a flying vehicle like the ones you see in Blade Runner, though I do have a Range Rover with a personal driver (I never thought my fame of bad driver could reach as far as Moscow...) taking me around the main locations for the Cycles and Seasons event (though I admit I have hijacked him in between one thing and the other with constant requests of seeing this or that building, displaying in this way a rather unhealthy and annoying architectural obsession...). More about the details of my trip later...

Member of the Boxxet Network of Blogs, Videos and Photos

Member of the Boxxet Network of Blogs, Videos and Photos

Add to Technorati Favorites

Politics and Propaganda in Russian Textiles

History has proved that fashion can be a strong vehicle for propaganda.

There are for example very interesting examples of textiles designed by Russian artists that focus on specific themes, from industry to labour, means of transport, sports and the revolution.

If you go to a library and check out the work of Varvara Stepanova and Lyubov Popova you will find fascinating examples of designs for textiles.

The picture illustrating this post refers to a textile from the late '20s-early '30s supporting the campaign against illiteracy and it's particularly interesting because, through a limited use of contrasting colours and through geometric stylised zigzagging lines, it creates perfectly distinguishable figures characterised by dynamism.

Wouldn't it be interesting to use some of the themes that are driving many of us to the streets to join the protests of the "indignados" and reapply them to textile design in a clever and subtle way? 

Member of the Boxxet Network of Blogs, Videos and Photos

Member of the Boxxet Network of Blogs, Videos and Photos

Add to Technorati Favorites

The Aluminium Vs Duraluminium Challenge

Italian fashion designer Germana Marucelli appeared in a previous post in connection with Kubrick's film 2001: A Space Odyssey.

That post featured designs from her "Alluminio" (Aluminium) collection created in collaboration with artist Getulio Alviani.

One of my research themes for a project that I will reveal in the next few days is the robotisation of the female body and this theme, together with Marucelli's designs, came back to my mind after seeing this dodecahedron in duraluminium at London's Science Museum.

This ornamental dodecahedron was made by Mike Brown, an engineer. He was experimenting with shapes while producing 12-sided dice and objects with cavities. The dodecahedron's angles were calculated using computer aided design (CAD), but it was constructed using traditional methods with a milling machine.

So what's the challenge? Design a piece of jewellery or an accessory inspired by these materials or by the shapes employed by Germana Marucelli and by the engineer who created the dodecahedron. Enjoy! 

Member of the Boxxet Network of Blogs, Videos and Photos

Member of the Boxxet Network of Blogs, Videos and Photos

Add to Technorati Favorites

Return of the Electronic Muse

Daphne Oram, the inventor of the photo-electric music system defined Oramics, has already appeared in a previous post in the role of clever and stylish muse. Since the Science Museum in London is now expanding the exhibit dedicated to her and, since yesterday's post closed with an early '80s synth track, it sounds apt to dedicate a new post to Oram.

You can go back to that previous post to read more about her discoveries and achievements since, for today, I'm embedding the short video you can see at the Science Museum in the section dedicated to electronic music and Daphne Oram (it will clarify some of the points made in that previous post - please check out the drawn pattern for possible fashion/print inspirations) and I'm also reporting Oram's favourite quote from Francis Bacon's The New Atlantis (1627): “We have also sound-houses, where we practise and demonstrate all sounds, and their generation. We have harmonies which you have not, of quarter sounds, and lesser slides of sounds. Divers instruments of music likewise to you unknown, some sweeter than any you have, together with bells and rings that are dainty and sweet. We represent small sounds as great and deep; likewise great sounds extenuate and sharp; we make divers trembling and warblings of sounds, which in their original are entire. We represent and imitate all articulate sounds and letters and the voices and notes of beasts and birds. We have certain helps which set to the ear do further the hearing greatly. We have also divers strange and artificial echoes, reflecting the voice many times, and as it were tossing it: and some that give back the voice louder than it came, some rendering the voice differing in the letters or articulate sound from that they receive. We have also means to convey sounds in trunks and pipes, in strange lines and distances...”  

    

Member of the Boxxet Network of Blogs, Videos and Photos

Member of the Boxxet Network of Blogs, Videos and Photos

Add to Technorati Favorites

Neon Makeover

I opened yesterday's post with a picture of the "Honey" shoe, originally created by Ferragamo for Marilyn Monroe and re-launched a while back in the "Ferragamo Creations" line, so let's continue the thread with another pair of shoes.

Many years ago I got a pair of pearly white shoes at the closing down sale of a shop in my hometown. They were part of a bridal shoes stock completely out of fashion so, while they were perfectly wearable (and were also made with high quality materials), nobody really wanted them and they were giving them away at 5 euros.

My main aim was “ruining” them at some point in memory of my ballet school days when we used to dye our ballet shoes to save money, but, in between one thing and the other, I never had the time of doing it. I recently got the shoes out and arming myself with neon spray paint and a couple of neon coloured sport fishing baits I decided to transform them into a sort of Fiorucci nightmare from the '80s.

The story behind them? Definitely neon plastic accessories by Fiorucci and a touch of Liquid Sky madness, plus the yellow dress (a Cinzia Ruggeri creation) and the shoes donned by Antonella Ruggiero, the voice of Italian electro band Matia Bazar, in 1984 on Italian TV.

The best thing about this pair of shoes is that the fishing baits are sprayed with glow in the dark colours, so the "neon shock" effect is guaranteed even in the dark. I'm sure the varnish will crack at some point and get ruined while wearing them, but at least I had some fun at the re-making process. Hope you enjoy vandalising that old pair of shoes lying at the bottom of your wardrobe, but, remember, always wear a protective mask if you want to spray paint your shoes or when you are using paints and glues to avoid any unwanted side effects.

Marylin Monroe and that Italian Connection

As a follow-up to yesterday's post let's rediscover today some interesting connections between Monroe and Italian designers.

In his autobiography entitled Shoemaker of Dreams Salvatore Ferragamo (already mentioned in connection with Marilyn in yesterday's post) wrote:

“The shape of your foot talks to me. I can tell you this, signora: if you have an extremely high-arched foot you are artistic. You can be artistic without possessing a high-arched foot, but you cannot be high-arched and not artistic. The higher the arch, the more pronounced the ability (…) Many years ago, in Hollywood, an unknown girl walked into my salon. As I looked at her foot I said: ‘Are you an artist?’ She shook her head. She was a secretary, she told me, and had no pretensions to film acting or stage acting or any other form of art. ‘Nevertheless,’ I told her, ‘you are an artist, and one day you will find the art that will satisfy you and you will become famous.’ A few years later she wrote Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, her name was Anita Loos.”

In 1950 Ferragamo created for Marilyn Monroe the “Honey” a stiletto heeled shoe with black satin upper and rhinestone decoration.

At the end of the ‘50s, Ferragamo also created for Monroe a pair of red court shoes covered in Swarovski crystals.

In 1957 the Fontana Sisters did instead sketches for designs for Marilyn Monroe (the pink embroidered motifs on the black satin top, trousers, scarf and slippers in the sketch in this post were supposed to be made with hundreds of corals).

They were shown to the actress at New York's Hotel Plaza (the Fontana Sisters' temporary showroom), but the designs were in the end never made.

The original sketches are still preserved at the Fondazione Micol Fontana in Rome.

 Member of the Boxxet Network of Blogs, Videos and Photos

Member of the Boxxet Network of Blogs, Videos and Photos

Add to Technorati Favorites