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

Maison Moynat’s New Look

Paris Fashion Week starts today, so I’m republishing here a piece I did for another publication about the historical Paris-based malletier Moynat returning with a new shop and a new graphic look to the French capital. 

Founded in Paris in 1849 by trunk-makers Octavie and François Coulembier and by travel goods specialist Pauline Moynat, historical French trunk maker Moynat was recently bought and relaunched by luxury tycoon Bernard Arnault.

The brand, with previous Hermès senior designer Ramesh Nair as creative director, opened a new boutique in Paris’s rue Saint-Honoré, just a few streets away from its original store on Avenue de l'Opera.

The store, characterised by a well-balanced sense of calmness, was designed by Gwenaël Nicolas of Japan-based studio Curiosity, renowned for his architectural projects for stores and for his product designs, including fragrance packaging for famous fashion houses. 

Original trunks in different colours and shapes have a privileged position in the new Moynat boutique, being displayed in a glass column at the centre of the shop that also symbolises with its circular space the theme of travelling; light enters from the glass ceiling inspired by Art Deco shapes and forms, reflecting on the titanium-coated glass mosaic on the floor, while the mezzanine offers a more intimate environment with a salon and a gallery featuring historical Moynat trunks.  

Nicolas also created the graphics for the store shopping bag in a warm brown shade called "Havane" considered as Moynat's trademark colour, and for a limited edition book introducing the history of Moynat and available in an Urushi box shaped like the original curved trunk designed by the iconic malletier.

When you were commissioned to direct the graphic and architectural design of Moynat, what did you know about this historical trunk maker?
Gwenaël Nicolas: It was the first time I heard about the brand, so I was surprised to discover it was established before Louis Vuitton and in fact it was the third most important trunk maker of that period. Not having preconceived ideas about the brand, I was able to discover and look at it with a totally fresh eye.

Were you inspired by any of the Moynat products - by a specific trunk, for example - while designing the shop?
Gwenaël Nicolas: The boutique is designed to be an “écrin” to present the products. To design a boutique you have to place yourself outside the brand and create a process of discovery, wondering what is the first impression you want to express, how you can create a new identity for Moynat that will be relevant to today’s consumers and how a luxury brand can establish itself in today’s world. Looking at the original trunk I realised it was very simple and modern, especially for what regarded the choice of materials, the colour palette and the uniqueness of the shapes that looked quite peculiar to me until I realised the trunks were specifically designed for individual clients with specific needs.

What fascinated you the most about this project?  
Gwenaël Nicolas: It was a very rare project since I had to create everything from the physical space to the graphics for the book. My work is usually very modern and conceptual so it was a real challenge to start with something that already existed, dig into the huge amount of information and extract the essential. It was very important to perceive it as a modern brand rooted in the past, as reference emerges from time to time especially through the display of the products more than in the boutique itself. This project was not developed around a brief but totally as an open book and my task was writing the next chapter.  

While researching for this project, what did you learn about the work of this historical malletier?
Gwenaël Nicolas: I discovered that most trunk makers were doing a lot of pieces on order, so if you had something very precious to carry you used to visit a malletier. Each piece was unique and would fit perfectly to the function: if you had a Bugatti they would create a curved trunk that would perfectly fit in the car for example.

There  seems to be some Art Deco moods in the circular space around the columns, did you take inspiration from the architecture/design that was fashionable in the heydays of this brand?
Gwenaël Nicolas: Paris is very much influenced by the Art Deco period and this is a boutique in Paris. I wanted to make the most beautiful façade in rue Saint-Honoré, very impactful but also very respectful of the place. Moynat’s “havane” colour, the delicate lighting at night and the bronze metal frame give the boutique a strong and graphic look, yet the store perfectly fits in with the environment surrounding it, so it’s designed to last.  

Photographs by Jimmy Cohrssen (Interior) and Masayuki Hayashi (Graphics)

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Toulouse-Lautrec's Moulin Rouge Through Schiaparelli's Eyes

The announced Schiaparelli-Prada exhibition at the Met has by now caused so many people to jump on the Schiap bandwagon that this train – that has mainly been populated in the last decade by a few dedicated fans, researchers and copycat designers – is now overcrowded.

Yet, before jumping off, I have decided that, rather than proclaiming my excitement for an exhibition that more or less will end up juxtaposing the original and the copy (despite talking about connections, links, homages and tribute, putting some Schiap’s designs next to Prada’s only ends up emphasising the strong derivation of the latter from the former...baroque curlicues included) or joining the designer lottery guessing if Galliano will be heading to Schiaparelli's house, now owned by Diego Della Valle (and put further bets on where other "orphans" such as Raf Simons and Stefano Pilati will end up now...by the way, what about sending Simons to Schiap since he came up with quite beautiful pink shades in his A/W 2012-13 collection for Jil Sander?), I have decided that between now and May I will be looking at films in which Schiap’s designs appeared.

From what we gathered so far, from what was published on the Met's Costume Institute dedicated site for the exhibition and from the preview during Milan Fashion Week, the “Schiaparelli and Prada: Impossible Conversations” event, kicking off with the Gala Benefit on 7th May, will be divided into different themes - Waist Up/Waist Down, Ugly Chic, Naïf Chic, The Classical Body, The Exotic Body and The Surreal Body.

The event will have a connection with cinema since Baz Luhrmann will be the Exhibition Creative Consultant and the creator, with Nathan Crowley and Raul Avila, of the 2012 Costume Institute Gala Benefit design. But apparently there won't be any further connections between films, Schiap and Prada (though, unfortunately, we will be have to endure deranged comparisons between Schiaparelli’s collaborations with Dalí and Cocteau and Prada’s connections with - ahem - contemporary artists such as insufferable Vezzoli).

Schiaparelli started working for the movie industry in the ‘30s with Maurice Elvey’s The Tunnel. Shot in 1952, Moulin Rouge was the last film in which her designs appeared. One of Schiap's stronger links with cinema remains the connection with Mae West whose torso also inspired the bottle for the designer's fragrance.

I looked at The Tunnel in a previous post, so, for today, let’s move to Paris to have a look at Moulin Rouge. For its plot and moods, the film is actually quite different from Luhrmann’s movie with the same title.

Directed by American John Huston, Moulin Rouge was the screen adaptation of the eponymous novel about painter Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, written by Pierre La Mure.

The film was shot in Paris, with Huston directing and producing it. Paul Sheriff worked on the sets, while high fashion artist Marcel Vertès worked on the décor and the costumes (in the ‘30s he became well known for his illustrations for many fashion designers, including Elsa Schiaparelli) and Schiaparelli designed Zsa Zsa Gabor’s costumes.

The main palette for the film was originally inspired by Lautrec’s shades, but, since fog filters were applied on the camera and gelatin filters were placed in front of the lights, the final effect obtained ended up evoking the works of the impressionist painters.

The film opens in 1890 inside the Moulin Rouge, a brightly-lit music hall where dancers and singers - including La Goulue constantly fighting with a rival dancer, Valentin also known as “the boneless wonder”, and singing star Jane Avril (Zsa Zsa Gabor) - perform their acts.

The film more or less gives life to the characters featured in Lautrec’s drawings and posters (all Lautrec’s sketches in the film were actually made by Vertès), even Gabor's costumes, often in bright and vivid shades, were based upon Toulouse-Lautrec's portraits of Avril.

Avril/Gabor first appears in a white shirt, orange skirt with a yellow hem and white hat with an orange feather, an attire that calls to mind Lautrec’s 1893 poster of Avril at the Jardin de Paris.

In another shot she wears a bright red dress with a (very Schiaparelli) shocking pink tulle bow, while when Lautrec accompanies her to get a new costume from fashion designer Paquin, she is dressed in a black gown and black hat with a yellow ostrich feather boa reminiscent of the dress and the colour palette in Lautrec's poster for the Paris club and concert venue Divan Japonais.

Avril buys from Paquin a red and black costume with a sequinned snake winding around the curves of her body that can also bee seen in a 1899 Lautrec poster.

In the film the costume is modelled by Myriamme who symbolises the emancipated woman, a model working for a fashion designer (in Huston's movie Lautrec falls in love with her).

Gabor makes her last appearance in the film in a green gown with a matching and feathered hat bizarrelly shaped like a Spanish comb morion helmet. The most distinguishing Schiaparelli features characterising the costumes appearing in this film are probably the voluminous leg of mutton sleeves.

Moulin Rouge won Marcel Vertès an Academy Award for Costume Design; Schiaparelli's role in costuming Gabor went unacknowledged even though she actually got on-screen credit for Jane Avril's costumes.  

As a final connection between art and fashion, I’m posting here a very inspiring lithograph by Lautrec portraying French singer, dancer and entertainer Marcelle Lender, taken from an exhibition that took place in 1947 at Irene Brin and Gaspero Del Corso’s Rome-based Obelisk Gallery.

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Scorsese's Hugo Brings Oscar to Italy

News about the Oscar results are by now all over the Internet, and while I’m pretty happy The Artist got the award for Best Costume Design (costumes by Mark Bridges), I’m even happier that two Italians, Dante Ferretti (production designer) and Francesca Lo Schiavo (set decorator) won the Oscar for the Best Achievement in Art Direction for Martin Scorsese’s Hugo.

Interestingly enough, the films that got most awards were conceived as tributes to silent movies and early cinema and this should maybe prompt us to sit down and think if, in the last few years, we have maybe put too much emphasis on visual stimuli, privileging the image over the word and nurturing skilled and talented digital mavericks, while neglecting the art of screenwriting (who knows, maybe one day we will be intravenously injecting digital images like in a dystopic sci-fi film).

Lo Schiavo dedicated the Oscar to Martin Scorsese and Italy, and it’s somehow important that 50 years after La dolce vita got an Oscar for the Best Costume Design, there is still some Italian talent on the stage of the Academy Awards.

Taken from Brian Selznick’s novel/graphic tale The Invention of Hugo Cabret, Hugo moves from a mysterious automaton to tell the story of cinemagician George Méliès. Both the threads - the world of the automaton and of horology and the visions created by early film director Méliès - are very inspiring from a visual point of view.

The sets are often complicated structures with tunnels, staircases and ladders, elaborate gears, springs and wheels, while towards the end the director attempts a reconstruction of Méliès' film sets for several films including A Trip to the Moon and Jack le Ramoneur (well done to Ferretti and Lo Schiavo for recreating the latter plus Méliès studio so well - compare the second picture in this post with the second picture in this post).

   

Machinery ticks throughout the film, punctuating it and giving it rhythm, linking frame after frame (it could be an interesting comparison with fashion since creating a collection means linking one design to the other in a cohesive and coherent way).

 

Méliès already appeared in quite a few posts on this site and I hope that his magic, this film and its sets will prompt some fashion designers to rediscover him in their own works. 

 
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Protective Vs Cocooning/Fashion Vs Interior Design: Conny Groenewegen

On Saturday I started a sort of Dutch thread, so let's continue it at least for another day with a post that features some pictures of Conny Groenewegen's installation that I took during the latest edition of the Pitti Filati event.

The Dutch Fashion Foundation invited Conny Groenewegen, winner of the Mercedes-Benz Dutch Fashion Award 2011 and of the International Fashion Incubator Award 2011, as a special guest to the Pitti Filati fair that took place in January.

Groenewegen's designs combine traditions and new techniques: in her Autumn/Winter 2012-13 collection entitled “Alchemy”, the designer included garments processed with special pigments that, changing the colours of the yarns employed, give them a peculiar oxydised look. This alchemical process is applied throughout the collection to pieces characterised by minimal and well-balanced silhouettes. 

At Pitti Filati Groenewegen presented an installation centred around a piece that mixed fashion and interior design: entitled “Reversed Nudity” and based on the designer's interest in combining leather with knits, the piece was a reversible coat/rug (last image in this post).

The material of choice for the exterior is leather; the interior is instead made of wool. The choice of materials hints at the "protective Vs cocooning" dichotomy: wearers can wrap the soft design around themselves and feel the warm wool on their skin, while the leather protects them, exposing at the same time the natural structure and texture of the animal's skin.

In addition to this showpiece, Groenewegn also presented during Pitti Filati a white coat and a hand-knitted voluminous jacket made using the same technique. Conny Groenewegen is at Milan's "Pitti Touch!" until today.

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Building Fashionable (Paper) Structures

If all the images about the new collections showcased at the various fashion weeks got your creativity going, but you don't have the skills to make proper clothes or the money to buy the fabric, move from yesterday's post and come up with something entirely made with paper.

I'm posting here as help and inspiration some sketches to make simple paper lamps I found in an old issue of the Italian edition of Grazia magazine (note the difference: in October 1959 they published useful suggestions and advice on how to make paper lamps, now all the editions of Grazia feature a pile of useless news about celebrities - wonderful example of the emancipation of women...).

Italian speakers can easily read also the instructions, all the others, well, just follow the illustrations as they are easy enough to understand. Suggestion: try changing the proportions and the materials and come up with some accessories using these folding patterns. Enjoy! 

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Reflections in Facets: Winde Rienstra

I'm republishing today an interview I recently did for Zoot Magazine with Dutch designer Winde Rienstra about the inspirations for her new collection showcased during Amsterdam Fashion Week.
 
There’s a strange architecture, sculpture and digital fascination in the creations of Winde Rienstra. Her designs are almost structural systems, confluences of complex geometries and ornament, performance and aesthetics, modern technology and traditional culture. 

The Dutch designer graduated in 2009 from the Utrecht School of the Arts (HKU), studied in Australia for a while and, upon her return to Holland, did an internship at Iris van Herpen. In 2010 she launched her label and, since then, her collections have been showcased at various fashion events while some pieces were bought by cultural institutions such as the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague.  

Her latest collection, presented at the end of January during Amsterdam Fashion Week, moves from the mathematical paintings of Dutch artist J.C.J. van Schagen and plays with density, deformations and transformations.

Entitled “Reflections in Facets”, Rienstra’s new collection is based on a series of dichotomies, from strict Vs rigid to relaxed Vs stiff, flexible Vs tense and liquid Vs solid. Patterns derive from variations on cubic structures, while traditional materials are matched with more unusual ones including plywood and glass to create designs in which delicate elements interact with stronger and stiffer structures. 

How was the latest edition of Amsterdam Fashion Week that took place at the end of January?
Winde Rienstra: It was great, stressful but exciting. It went really well and I received a lot of positive feedback, plus the heels were a big hit!
 
What inspired your latest collection?
Winde Rienstra: My main sources of inspiration were the mathematical paintings of the Dutch painter J.C.J. van Schagen who for years worked on a series based on hyper or multi-dimensional cubes. The patterns distilled out of these cubic structures allowed me to create strict shapes carved out of thin plywood. The name of the collection comes from the fact that the light reflected by the silk fabric of the dresses alters the way we see these structures: we constantly perceive new patterns when the light changes and hits the facets in different ways. I tried to create further contrasts matching unusual materials, for example silk shines under a delicate corset of thin wood forming through its reflections a pair of ethereal wings. For this collection I mainly used silk, wood, cardboard and glass. I love details, so all the buttons employed are antique glass buttons. The shoes, made out of cardboard, were a challenge because I did not study footwear design. Yet I really enjoyed making them and I hope I will be able to produce my own shoes in future.   

What inspires you?
Winde Rienstra: Most of the time I get inspired by small objects which I try to blow up and use in my collections. Then I start making some small swatches or tests and I also work a lot with draping on the dummy. Most of the time I just run into things when I am looking for inspiration online. I do find Jugendstil and Art Nouveau very inspiring at the moment.
 
Is there an architect you particularly like or feel inspired by?
Winde Rienstra: There isn’t a specific architect I’m inspired by and I feel more like a designer rather than an architect when I create my pieces, but I would love to design a building and be an achitect for a while!

Some of your designs seem to be based on 3D elaborations, have you ever experimented with 3D technology in your collections?
Winde Rienstra: I’m open to all kinds of new technologies and would love to experiment with new ones in future projects. While I’m definitely going to experiment with 3D printing, I’m still fascinated by more traditional techniques and by their applications to my collections in a modern way.  

Is there an artist you’d like to collaborate with?
Winde Rienstra: I would love to work together with an architect, a product designer or even design the costumes for a movie like those from the Star Wars saga, creating pieces for characters à la Queen Padmé Amidala. Yet I must admit that I also like working on my own and making everything by myself since I’ve always been inspired by Leonardo da Vinci and him being a “uomo universale” – a universal man. In some cases, though, it is obviously better to work with professionals from different fields and disciplines who may be able to teach you other skills and techniques.  

Would you like to showcase your collections in other fashion capitals?
Winde Rienstra: In future I would love to show in London, Paris and Tokyo. I would also like to see if I can start producing my own footwear and accessories. In the meantime, I’m trying to focus on combining travelling with designing my collections through an artist residency programme. It would be great since, in this way, I could learn more about the sartorial traditions of other cultures and I could then integrate such skills into my designs. 

Images of Winde Rienstra’s collection “Reflections in Facets” © Peter Stigter

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Lee Bul: From Me, Belongs To You Only @ Tokyo’s Mori Art Museum

I'm republising today a feature I did for another publication about a retrospective at Tokyo’s Mori Art Museum celebrating one of the most vital and visionary Korean women artists, Lee Bul. 
 
Lee Bul is among the most important Korean women artists in the international arena who, expressing themselves in a variety of media, address the dualism between a highly traditional society and tremendous technological advances.

A new exhibition at Tokyo’s Mori Art Museum, the first after two decades, explores Lee Bul’s universe through 45 works, 150 drawings and 50 models.

The event, entitled "Lee Bul: From Me, Belongs To You Only" and curated by Kataoka Mami, Chief Curator at the Mori Art Museum, takes the visitors through Lee Bul’s aesthetics, looking at her frustrations and yearnings, but also revealing the sublime behind the monstrous.  

Famous for her sculptural and multi-media installations and combinations of new media and innovative technologies, Lee Bul explores through her pieces trends in popular culture, themes of feminine identity, and representation of femininity interpreted in a science fiction fantasy key, such as her “Cyborgs” pieces, a series of coloured smooth silicone sexualised armours with female shapes but with several limbs missing, aimed at analysing the relationship between woman and machine.

Lee's artworks seemingly display a fascination with dichotomies such as art and bioengineering, utopia and dystopia, virtual reality and investigations of contemporary forms of popular entertainment.

Her intricate sculptures and networks of industrial materials, including stainless steel and aluminum chains, copper and PVC, are juxtaposed to her grotesque costume for her outdoor performance “Cravings”, that she used to turn herself into a monstrous creature roaming around in public spaces and addressing her own inner fears and anxieties; images of her 1997 “Majestic Splendor” installation at New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), displaying fresh fish among jewels - the stench and the rotting process gradually revealing different stages of death under the superficial beauty - are compared to her multi-media karaoke pods in the form of futuristic race cars that disturbingly resemble spaceship-like coffins.

Lee Bul’s newly-commissioned work for the Mori Art Museum exhibition “The Secret Sharer” a dog-shaped sculpture of different and highly reflective industrial materials, including mirrors, plastic, glass and acrylic beads, modelled after her own pet of 17 years is installed at the very end of the show.

Set on top of a table in front of large windows overlooking Tokyo’s cityscape, at first glance the sculpture seems to be dominating it softly and silently, yet the vast quantities of materials pouring out of its mouth like vomit hint at the disclosure of all the time and memories it shared with the artist.

Where does the name of the exhibition come from? 
Kataoka Mami: “From Me, Belongs To You Only” was originally a line in a letter sent several years ago to Lee Bul from her lover. She thought the phrase was so warm and lovely that she wanted to share that feeling with all the visitors to her retrospective.

As a curator, what was your selection process regarding the pieces included? 
Kataoka Mami: I focused on her major works that represent her practice in every phase; I also considered the entire flow of the show as well as the contrast and dialogue of the works within the same gallery. Selecting the pieces wasn’t challenging, but it was a very intriguing process.

As a curator, what fascinates you the most about Lee Bul, her hybridic visions, materials of choice, technology employed, or willingness to experiment and break all kind of boundaries?
Kataoka Mami: A synthesis of all of the above as well as her talent for creating forms, strength in fundamental motivation for creation, sensibility of the relationship between the works and the given space, sympathies on predecessors’ vision for utopia and dreamscapes, and sincere attitude for creativity.
 
Do you feel that Lee Bul’s production somehow reflects her homecountry progression from military dictatorship to democracy? 
Kataoka Mami: Social and political history of the environment where she grew up is obviously reflected in her practice and in all details in the most subtle or allegorical ways.

What did you learn while researching this exhibition that you didn’t know about Lee Bul?
Kataoka Mami: Too many things to describe - curating is an accumulation of learning.

Are there any plans to take the exhibition on tour anywhere else?
Kataoka Mami: There has been a lot of interest, but nothing concrete yet.

"Lee Bul: From Me, Belongs to You Only” is at the Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, until 27th May 2012.

 
Photo credits:

Image 1: After Bruno Taut (Beware the sweetness of things) (detail), 2007, Photo: Patrick Gries, Courtesy: Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Paris

Image 2: Cravings, 1989, Outdoor performance, Jangheung, Korea, Courtesy: Studio Lee Bul

Image 3: Cyborg Red, Cyborg Blue, 1997–98, Photo: Watanabe Osamu, Courtesy: Mori Art Museum

Image 4: Majestic Splendor (detail), 1997, Photo: Robert Puglisi, Courtesy: Studio Lee Bul

Image 5: "Lee Bul: From Me, Belongs to You Only" Installation view, Photo: Watanabe Osamu, Courtesy: Mori Art Museum

Image 6: The Secret Sharer, 2012, Photo: Watanabe Osamu, Courtesy: Mori Art Museum

Image 7: Apparition (detail), 2001, Photo: Nakamichi Atsushi/Nacása & Partners

Image 8: Amaryllis, 1999, Photo: Rhee Jae-yong, Courtesy: Studio Lee Bul

Image 9: "Lee Bul: From Me, Belongs to You Only" Installation view, Photo: Watanabe Osamu, Courtesy: Mori Art Museum

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The Korean Wave: A New Space Around the Body

I'm republishing today an interview I recently did for Zoot Magazine with the curators of a London-based exhibition celebrating new Korean fashion designers.

Exploring how designers reinvent and reshape the human body also thanks to new materials and techniques is one of the constant preoccupations of the fashion industry. Yet, at the same time, there are also some serious concerns about traditions getting lost in our digitally technological age. A recently-opened exhibition organised at the London-based Korean Cultural Centre UK  manages instead to combine these two aspects in a clever way.

"A New Space Around the Body” celebrates eight innovative Korean designers - selected by curators Ji Hye Hong and Sofia Hedman - through installations inspired by the traditions of their home country.

Symbolic white cotton, Hanji paper and totem poles guide the visitors through the exhibition space featuring avant-garde and conceptual pieces: Minky Jaemin Ha explores the stages of a person's life in capitalism through sculptural garments characterised by dramatic shapes; Juhee Han creates in her knits combinations and clashes of unexpected fabrics and textures, while Ara Jo - whose pieces also appeared in the “ARRRGH! Monsters in Fashion” exhibition - delves into a world inhabited by mysterious creatures.

Physical mutations are tackled by Minju Kim via her fascination with cute Korean girls turning into perfect but cold robots, by Kathleen Kye's unconventional shapes and silhouettes and by Unbounded AWE by Laykuni's conceptual and surreal designs.

Yeashin Kim's orgy of colours and materials including wool and stone embroideries with fraying edges is instead juxtaposed to Yoolhee Ko's architecturally geometrical jewellery and accessories made using natural and modern materials and techniques. 

"A New Space Around the Body” recently won the British Council and British Fashion Council International Fashion Showcase Emerging Talent Award for Best Project.

Is this the first time Korean designers are celebrated during the International Fashion Showcase that also coincided with London Fashion Week?
Ji Hye Hong and Sofia Hedman: Yes, and it is also the first edition of the International Fashion Showcase,  a collaboration between the British Fashion Council and the British Council, part of the Fashion 2012 Cultural Programme, developed to celebrate the year of the Olympics and Paralympics and honour their values of international respect, excellence, equality and friendship. 

Which themes are tackled through the designs showcased?
Ji Hye Hong and Sofia Hedman: This exhibition focuses on the aesthetic dimension of fashion and looks at the transformation of fashion objects into artefacts. Entering the exhibition, you are greeted by eight pine installations, one for each designer, as nature and natural landscapes are recurring themes within traditional Korean folk art. So, embracing the airiness, brightness and openness of Korean craft, the exhibition design invites the spectator to step into Korean surroundings. The installations are visually reminiscent of the aesthetics of traditional Korean doors, with their rectangles and geometric shapes. The walls in the installations are stretched with white cotton to call to mind the traditional Korean white paper called Hanji, made with the bark of the mulberry tree. This is also a reference to people's attire: for centuries, ordinary people wore undied white clothes in their everyday life, it was only during special occasions that official and ceremonial clothes were worn. The exhibition design and the catalogue also include a lot of traditional Korean good luck symbols: to protect our installation and bring good luck, Orlando Campbell and Julius Lightfoot carved for each designer a totem pole resembling Korean Jangseungs. Worshipped as the village protector gods and also known as ‘devil posts’, the totem poles were traditionally placed at the edges of Korean villages to mark the boundaries. Their fierce expression and goggle eyes were created to frighten away evil spirits. The designers' collections are also presented in the visual context of Minhwa, that is Korean folk art paintings, from the 17th century onwards. Minhwa also involved a magical dimension with its symbols and recurring motifs. Traditional art is part of a cultural heritage which contemporary designers either continue or react against. Besides, by studying the old paintings, one gets an insight of how clothes were used and worn. To evoke all these aspects, graphic designer Serge Martynov contextualised and juxtaposed in the exhibition catalogue allegory and experimental fashion. 

What was your selection process regarding the designers featured?
Ji Hye Hong and Sofia Hedman: “A New Space Around the Body” explores the more experimental and artistic dimension of the South Korean fashion system, so, rather than focusing on trends and functionality, we selected designers who bravely challenge conventions with integrity and humbleness. All the selected artists have a very trained eye and they were selected for their remarkable artistic and technical skills, their use of diverse materials, desire to explore the space around the body in an experimental way, extending the idea of what the body can be and disguising it at the same time. 

Can you introduce us the work of the designers featured?
Ji Hye Hong and Sofia Hedman: Kathleen Kye’s work is characterised by humour heroically used to challenge conventions; Ara Jo’s obsession with mysterious creatures inspires her sculptural and experimental cuts; Juhee Han uses crochet and macramé to translate interior design surfaces into unique textures for the space around the body; Yeashin Kim's embroidered and appliqued techniques are asymmetrical explosions of different textured yarns, colours and decorative beaded details, mixtures of gloss and matt materials creating both harmony and proportion. In some cases, such as the facial masks by Minju Kim - a designer who conceives fashion a bit like a toy to play with - fashion becomes a substitute for the body, but also something that gives happiness and makes the wearer smile; in others, like in Minky Jaemin Ha’s collection, scuptural non-human forms are explored. Upon encountering the incredible looks by Unbounded AWE by Laykuni and Yoolhee Ko, the viewer enters instead a hypothetic world: both these designers create a parallel universe, a place in which you can escape to during uncertain times. All selected designers work with very pure ideas that are then visually translated into their creations. If one tries to analyse fashion from an economic, sociological or psychological perspective, one will quickly realise that it is difficult to make generalisations from experimental designers like Minky Jaemin Ha and compare them with what houses such as Chanel or Dior stand for today. These designers are presented and consumed differently, they are created for different purposes, have different life cycles and carry different meanings that are interpreted differently by the audience. 

What fascinates you the most about these new designers? 
Ji Hye Hong and Sofia Hedman: All the creations featured in this event have multiple layers and can be read from different angles. When looking closer at the fine details, one can discover surprising shapes, unexpected themes, astonishing textures, fantastic craftsmanship and beautiful explosions of colours. It is fantastic to see all these very eclectic, refreshing and fearless designers side by side with their work creating a vivacious mix, they truly are a feast for the eye and we hope visitors of this exhibition will bring back home their colourful humour and craftsmanship. 

Though each of these designers is pretty unique, they are all reunited by one thing: they all take their inspirations from very imaginative themes, pushing the creative boundaries almost to the limits of surrealism, do you feel this is a peculiarity of South Korean designers?
Ji Hye Hong and Sofia Hedman: Korean fashion is known for its menswear designers, meticulous tailored details and layered fabrics. It is characterised by a simple, neat and elegant design. Our designers' approach to fashion can also be seen in the light of traditional Korean costume, which also uses, captures and forms an extended space around the body, a space that has its own corporeality. There is an older generation of Korean designers whose work is also defined by a very experimental and eccentric approach to fashion that has already managed to get acknowledged in the fashion industry. Finding his inspiration in Korean art, pottery, poetry and calligraphy, internationally known Lie Sang Bong has consistently surprised audiences for over twenty years with his voluminous, geometric shapes and architectural silhouettes. Another designer, Juun J has been showing his futuristic, sharply tailored collections at Paris Menswear Fashion Week. Constantly re-inventing classic menswear, his work is defined by deconstructing and reconstructing existing shapes. Another impressively experimental Korean label is Steve J and Yoni P: the duo’s substitution of real bodies with abstract dolls in their Autumn/Winter 2010-11 collection is a fantastic example of blurring the line between fashion and sculpture.
 
Is it difficult for a Korean designer to be acknowledged in the fashion industry?
Ji Hye Hong and Sofia Hedman: Korean fashion is currently forming a stronger identity. There has been a rising interest in South Korean fashion and this exhibition shows a very exciting new generation of designers all characterised by tremendously strong aesthetics.

What did you learn about these designers while working on this event?
Ji Hye Hong and Sofia Hedman: In the interviews for the exhibition catalogue, the designers spoke of a very vibrant and rapidly developing fashion scene in South Korea. Seul Fashion Week and the fashion scene as a whole is evolving a lot over there and many see it gradually becoming the best in Asia.There are a lot of experimental Korean designers working both in and outside of Korea and all of them have definitely found their own way to express themselves.   

“A New Space Around the Body” is at the Korean Cultural Centre UK, Grand Buildings, 1-3 Strand, London, until 28th February 2012.   

Photo credits:
Image 2: Minky Jeamin Ha, What men live by? – Photo by Louis Park
Image 9: Yoolhee Ko, Reflection – Photo by Zeb Daemen
All other images by Serge Martynov and Ji Hye Hong 

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Fashion Week Stationery: Fashionary Memo Pad

Quite a few journalists may have replaced their traditional notebooks with digital devices at fashion weeks, but paper still remains a best friend in many cases.

There is another quite obvious category of people in the fashion industry who uses a lot of paper, notebooks and sketchbooks - fashion designers.

Penter Yip, the fashion and graphic designer behind the Fashionary, has come up once again (remember the latest Fashionary collaboration?) with something pretty useful, the Fashionary Memo Pads.

The concept is the same behind the Fashionary, but the purpose and format is different.

Rather than a sketchbook filled with pages featuring join the dot-like templates, here you have practical memo pads with men and women's figures or with templates of men and women's tops and bottoms ($8.90 each or available in mutiple packs from $24.90).

The pads include figure sheets and technical sheets. The latter include indications regarding measurements and other vitally important information and can be used as production notes.

The templates are printed on sticky paper so that you can easily put together presentations, moodboards or looks for catwalk shows. You can order the pads from the Fashionary store.

 

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Clinical Stages of Fashion Alienation

There are still quite a few fashion designers out there who are into enchanting their audiences with some kind of spectacle when presenting their new collections, hoping to take them to another and more fantastic world during their shows.

Yet fashion reflects the society that creates it and, if, as we have seen, the layered, overcomplicated and voluminous looks that appeared on some of the current runways, may be symptoms of chaos and decline, designers opting for clinical looks may be trying to tell us a different story about our society, maybe a tale of alienation and isolation.

During New York Fashion Week models wearing skirt suits and shifts characterised by clinically simple and futuristic clean silhouettes entered and exited the runway using escalators at Alberta Ferretti’s catwalk show for her Philosophy line.      

The designer claimed  her models, with their waists cinched by Perspex belts, wearing garments decorated with crystals trapped in layers of futuristic PVC or plastic-coated coats, represented androids and that the escalators were instead conveyor belts. Somehow there were moments at the very beginning of the show where you could have drawn comparisons with George Lucas’ film THX 1138.

This movie is set in a dystopic future ruled by a rigid and repressive society. Sex is outlawed, people’s minds are controlled through the use of drugs and there is no tangible difference between men and women, all wear indeed the same uniforms and all have shaved heads.

Moving to London Fashion Week the idea of alienation was reinforced and explored in connection with fashion. Richard Nicoll abandoned the traditional catwalk format in favour of an installation at the ICA Theatre on The Mall and, while there were no THX 1138, LUH 3417, and SEN 5241 attempting to escape from a white and suffocating futuristic set here and no dystopic fashion visions à la Rudi Gernreich, the designer tried to make a strong comment on the fashion industry.

Entitled “Modern Times” and featuring streamlined and decorous dresses, pleated shifts and fine cashmere sweaters matched with leather skirts or straight pants in white, grey, orange, navy and yellow, the collection criticised the pace fashion designers are expected to work at.

Models posed on a conveyor belt as if they were the product of a factory in which the fashion designer, the stylists and the photographers are anonymous workers condemned to repeat collection after collection the same actions. A futuristic touch was added via a bag sponsored by Vodafone that charges mobile phones. 

So, while Nicoll explored the alienation the fashion industry is spreading at different levels (fashion designers may feel alienated, but what about consumers constantly bombarded by messages about the latest "must have" piece?), J.W. Anderson moved from a different, yet equally dystopic, interpretation.

His show was entitled “Chamber of Isolation” and revolved around the theme of physical oppression, translated in the clothes through white, black or pinstriped (a hint to men in pinstriped suits, traditionally seen as symbols of power?) quilted vests that were half straightjacket, half fencing suit and played with the constriction/protection dichotomy (mind you, that’s not a new idea: we have seen Nina Donis coming up with padded garments that cleverly mixed medical attire, fencing suits and elegance in an architectural key for the Autumn/Winter 2011-12 season).

The clinical theme was emphasised in the neoprene quilted vests and in the hospital-like patent uniforms, while the fishermen's hats added a somewhat bizarre note to the collection and the long checkered A-line skirts brought back J.W. Anderson’s repressed/oppressed woman in the madness-inducing realm of her house.

Maybe, behind all the superficiality of these fashion weeks, designers are truly trying to say something not only about the condition of modern women, but also about their own conditions.

Most of the times the alienation/isolation dichotomy appears in fashion it is actually treated like another theme for a commercial collection, but there are cases when this topic hides deep undercurrents.

Nicoll’s statement about the fashion designer as a factory worker is emblematic for example and maybe listening to these messages and hints behind some collections would save us from passing from a mild and moderate to a severe stage of fashion alienation, and ultimately lead us towards a slower yet healthier fashion system.

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