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

Pratt Institute Fashion Design Graduates Special - Part 3 (Interview with Meredith Lyon)

I'm closing today the Pratt Institute special (that started on Tuesday and) that I did for Zoot Magazine, republishing an interview with Meredith Lyon. 

Anti-smoking propaganda slogans have often been criticised for being ineffective, but they hadn't been used yet as the background inspiration to create ironic pop designs. At least until Pratt fashion graduate Meredith Lyon decided of doing so. 

Lyon designed a sporty collection that moved from this theme, coming up with tops inspired by the messages on cigarette packets, light dresses in sheer fabrics with screen printed cigarette butts accessorised with cigarette socks, and white trousers with big brown and yellow speckled designs reproducing a filter.

Designs were accessorised with burnt or nicotine stained shoes and rucksacks reduced to a leather strap incorporating a cigarette packet holder with space for a lighter as well.

Maybe this collection is not the best thing if you want to kick your habit, but it's a good way to mock the smoking industry and the tactics they use to successfully recruit new consumers.  

Lyon was selected, together with her colleague Kate Wilkoff, to compete in the annual Supima Design Competition, which will be held during New York Fashion Week.

Can you tell us more about your background?
Meredith Lyon: I spent my childhood around the Boston area of Massachusetts. It wasn’t until college that I truly left which is when I moved to Brooklyn to study at Pratt.

Who has been the greatest influence on your career choices?
Meredith Lyon: In my opinion, many aspects of fashion are taken too seriously. I am drawn to collections that have a sense of humor in their pieces or presentation. I love how designers like Viktor & Rolf use a subtle bit of humor in their concept. I’m also influenced by more graphic humor in fashion, such as looks created by Daniel Pallilo.

 
What does fashion represent for you?
Meredith Lyon: Fashion to me is a really great tool to express not only yourself individually. Fashion also reflects what is happening politically, socially and economically in the present society.

Can you tell us more about your creative process?
Meredith Lyon: I most always start brainstorming a focus to my collection and then begin sketching. However, I continue to evolve each piece through all the steps of the process.

What inspired your collection?
Meredith Lyon: My collection is a light-hearted take on anti-smoking PSAs and is meant to poke fun at how major tobacco companies often fund anti-smoking advertisements. It’s very print and graphic based so I kept the silhouettes fairly simple and young. I experimented a lot with techniques such as screen-printing, laser cutting and even burning to create my desired aesthetic. It was important to me to have a really light, sexy look to my collection in order to play on the theme of smoking and sexuality. As a result, I used fabrics like chiffon, lightweight cotton and denim. 

 
How did you feel about showcasing your collection at the Pratt fashion show?
Meredith Lyon: Pratt has really stepped up its game in terms of the fashion show this past year. I am extremely grateful I got to participate in it alongside my peers. My collection has been very well received, and thanks to the press at the show, I’ve been able to make a lot of great connections within the industry.
 
What are your future plans?
Meredith Lyon: I’m very fortunate and have been chosen to participate in the Supima Cotton competition this upcoming September. I’m required to make a capsule collection out of their fabrics that will show at Mercedes Benz fashion week. I’m pretty sure that will be keeping me occupied for the next couple months at least!

 
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Pratt Institute Fashion Design Graduates Special - Part 2 (Interview with Kate A. Gross)

I'm continuing the thread that I started in yesterday's post, republishing interviews that I recently did for Zoot Magazine with some of the graduates of New York’s Pratt Institute. Today it's Kate A.Gross’ turn.

Masculine and feminine aesthetics combine with great results in Kate A. Gross’s minimalist designs. The graduate played in her collection with luxurious materials including including fur, leather, alpaca, and cashmere, using a palette comprising beiges, grays, browns and ochre, shades borrowed from a photographic book about Africa featuring aerial pictures by Bobby Haas.  

Yet Gross’ minimalism hides a maximalist attention to details: the patterns for some of her dress shirts include indeed up to fifteen pieces. 

Can you tell us more about your background?
Kate A. Gross: New York City is my soul mate; I often forget that I haven’t lived here all, or even most, of my life. I was born and raised in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. In my senior year of high school, I thought I wanted to become a photographer. After I graduated, I spent a summer studying photography at Parsons Paris, where I was inadvertently exposed to their fashion program. My interest in fashion design was always present, however, viewing a display of student work in the hallway, was the first time I realised that it was an interest I could actually pursue, academically. I had previously been accepted to Pratt and planned to continue studying photography there in the Fall. When I arrived, I changed my major to Fashion Design. 
 
Who has been the greatest influence on your career choices? 
Kate A. Gross: Is it too predictable to say that my parents’ influence has had the greatest affect on the career choices I’ve made thus far? Both my mother and father are driven and exceedingly ambitious. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen my mum hesitate…everything she starts, she finishes! All of the designers I admire seem to possess that same persistence.

 


What does fashion represent for you?
Kate A. Gross: The way what one wears influences how they are perceived. We read other people’s outfits in order to deduce more information about them, to categorise and then relate ourselves to them. This human habit can be detrimental and inaccurate, of course, but you can use it to your advantage. Clothing is very communicative. Once you acknowledge the control you have, the ability to dress yourself turns into a tremendous power and this is what fascinates me about fashion.

Can you tell us more about your creative process?   
Kate A. Gross: First, I try to commit to a concept, or at least a general direction in which I want the design to go. Then I sketch, roughly, until my mind is emptied of ideas. I’ve always found the frenzied, output of ideas to be the easier part of the process. The difficulty comes in refining and editing the disorganised mass of designs you’ve come up with into something coherent. After I’ve finalised the designs, I move onto the logistics of constructing them and make changes accordingly, as the piece I’m working on develops.

Can you tell us more about your collection?
Kate A. Gross: Before I started sketching, I knew I wanted the collection to carry a clean, masculine aesthetic. I didn’t want to deprive the wearer of her femininity, but I definitely wanted to focus the fit of the clothes away from the standard points of female flattery. I avoided skirts completely and constructed my dress shirts to visually flatten the chest of the wearer. There is an undeniable air of strength to a woman who wears men’s clothes with confidence. I wanted my collection to communicate that same strength.

What kind of materials did you use to make it?
Kate A. Gross: I pulled colors and textural elements from, Through the Eyes of the Gods: An Aerial Vision of Africa, a photography book with stunning aerial images of desert landscapes. The colors and textures I pulled from there essentially dictated the materials and fabrics I chose. I wanted to incorporate materials with unique visual textures, like fur, alpaca, leather, wool and cashmere.

How did you feel about showcasing your collection at the Pratt fashion show?
Kate A. Gross: I felt (and still feel) exceptionally grateful for the opportunity I was given to present my collection. The show allows us, as young designers, to collaborate and showcase our work at a more professional level than we would be able to independently. I’m absolutely ecstatic about the volume of positive post-show feedback we’ve received. By the time the show arrived, I had been working with my designs in one way or another, for nearly nine months. I was no longer able to view my collection objectively, so it was incredibly difficult for me to anticipate how it would be received. I was deliriously anxious the entire day of show. When I woke up the following morning and saw that Cathy Horyn had mentioned my collection on her New York Times blog, I nearly fainted.
 
What are your future plans? 
Kate A. Gross: There are no more tuition payments in my immediate future and I’m looking forward to working. It’s nice to be a part of a staff sometimes instead of being the entire staff and I’m relieved to be done being the designer, patternmaker, and seamstress. For now.

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Pratt Institute Fashion Design Graduates Special - Part 1 (Interview with Elizabeth Ammerman)

From today until Thursday I will republish interviews with some of the recent Pratt Institute fashion design graduates. I recently did these interviews for Zoot Magazine.

Founded in 1887, New York’s Pratt Institute is one of the world's most prestigious independent colleges, offering both undergraduate and graduate degree programs in disciplines such as architecture, art and design, information and library science, and liberal arts and sciences.

Pratt is also home to the first fashion-design program in the United States and, in April, the institute presented the best work by 17 graduating seniors from its Department of Fashion Design.

The event - part of Pratt’s celebrations for its 125th anniversary - opened with an important award: before the show at Center548 in Manhattan, fashion designer Calvin Klein presented Fern Mallis - creator of New York Fashion Week, former executive director of the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA), former senior vice president of IMG Fashion, and president of her own leading fashion and design consultancy firm, Fern Mallis LLC - with the Pratt Institute Fashion Industry Lifetime Achievement Award. 

The Institute’s fashion show - featuring both men and women’s wear collections pre-selected by a panel of industry experts and press - started with Theresa Deckner who opened the show with an environmentally friendly collection focused on reducing waste and including designs made with 100% hemp/hemp blend fabrics and upcycled garments, decorated with splashes of acrylic paint and acrylic polymer emulsion.

America, American sportswear and the arts and crafts tradition provided inspiration to different designers: sportswear and the idea of excessive branding was the starting point of Beatrice Weiland’s "BeatriceBeatrice Presents Series 1" collection, with vintage pieces, varsity jackets and militarily urban jumpsuits; Kelsy Carleen Parkhouse’s designs in delicate flowery and patchwork prints inspired by American quilts and the Grand Canyon and made with vintage feed sack textiles mixed with new fabrics from the garment district, won her the inaugural “Liz Claiborne Award - Concept to Product”, worth $25,000.

The differences and similarities between New York and her hometown of Istanbul helped Huner Aldemir developing designs based on dichotomies and incorporating different styles and materials in one garment.

Dichotomies also characterised Emily Kauffelt’s X-ray-inspired pieces, that, subtly referencing the human body and the skeleton, came in sheer and opaque fabrics, and Dana Hurtwitz’s heavy coats decorated with light and colourful rows of feathers.

News pieces and innovative technologies were the starting points for Emilie Cardin and Ruby Gertz’s studies: nuclear fallout and last summer’s London Riots allowed Cardin to develop utilitarian post-apocalyptic uniforms characterised by clean lines and with asymmetrical fastenings that added an element of chaos in the designs; wearable electronics, science-fiction, music about outer space, and the futuristic designs of Apple products mixed with her passion for silkscreening were instead behind Gertz’s cocktail dresses incorporating LED strip lights. 

Evening wear was also included with Ping Hatta’s lingerie and corset-inspired pieces, Stephanie Parks’ dresses made with algae-like strips of fabrics, Lily (Xi) Li’s gowns in delicate sea shades and Kate Wilkoff’s warrior goddess dresses in hand-dyed chiffon and in mainly neutral tones with touches of citron and trapunto satin overlays imitating a warrior’s armour. 

Juan Pozo and Aharon Kolatch had different approaches to menswear: the former reinvented classic pieces from the male wardrobe including the oilcloth jacket relaunched in its short-sleeved version and unisex shearling capes; the latter came up instead with tailored trousers and jackets incorporating traditional fabrics and ACUPAT (Army Combat Uniform PATtern – also known as Digital Camouflage).

Interview with Elizabeth Ammerman

Looking only superficially at Elizabeth Ammerman’s designs wouldn’t have helped you spotting the real themes behind it. The varsity jackets in iridescent fabrics, transparent PVC top and skirt trapping coloured feathers inside it, white mini-skirts and sparkly cheerleaders’ looks in lame fabrics hid more in-depth meanings.

Occult or tarot-like symbols appliqued here and were indeed the cue to the real main inspiration, Alejandro Jodorowsky and Nicky Nichols’s costumes from Jodorowky’s visionary 1973 film The Holy Mountain. There might have been no alchemists in sight, but there were plenty of references to the main characters and their symbolic roles in the movie.

Can you tell us more about your background?
Elizabeth Ammerman: I'm from Amarillo, Texas, a smallish town in the Southern Bible Belt.

Who has been the greatest influence on your career choices? 
Elizabeth Ammerman: I interned for Christian Joy for a few years, and her courageous creativity has been one of the largest influences. She sort of has a “create whatever you want to create no matter what anyone thinks” approach that I identify with.

What does fashion represent for you? 
Elizabeth Ammerman: Fashion represents self expression and rebellion to me.

Can you tell us more about your creative process?
Elizabeth Ammerman: I usually start with a sketch. I design best when I create a fantasy girl with a sassy hairstyle and attitude. I progress from there with designs, until she and the clothes eventually become this entity with a personality.

Can you tell us more about your collection, is there a theme behind it?   
Elizabeth Ammerman: My collection was a costume collection. I redesigned the costumes for Alejandro Jodorowsky's The Holy Mountain. I connect with that movie because it delves into all of the things that I'm most interested in. I draw my greatest inspiration from my studies in spirituality and occultism and the symbols that occur within those realms. Each look from my collection was meant to be an archetype in the universe as well as a character from The Holy Moutain. I represented Venus, symbol of appearances and superficiality; Mars, purification through severity; Jesus, spirit through form; Mary Magdalene, and the Moon goddess. The costumes were meant to be fun, and humorous and to awaken within the viewer a sort of soul awareness. Holy Mountain is about finding yourself, the same principle that is also the basic aim of all spirituality, and my collection was meant to recreate this on a micro level. One of the alchemical mantras - V.I.T.R.I.O.L. - is the basis of the collection, translated from Latin it means ‘visit the interior of the Earth and rectifying (purifying) you will find the hidden stone (yourself)'.

What kind of materials did you use for your collection? 
Elizabeth Ammerman: I created prints from alchemical, tarot and Qabalistic symbols that corresponded to the archetypes and got them laser printed for a few of my looks. I also used vinyls, plastics, and iridescent fabrics to conjure up a sense of multidimensional spiritual reality.

How did you feel about showcasing your collection at the Pratt fashion show?
Elizabeth Ammerman: I was super honored to be a part of the Pratt fashion show. It was a definite payoff for the infinite all nighters. Surprisingly enough, Calvin Klein - who presented the Lifetime Achievement Award this year - was into my collection. He came up to me after the show. It's strange because my collection is not in the same realm of what I would expect him to like, since it has got this fucked up freak show nightlife vibe about it, so it’s at the opposite end of the spectrum from minimal refined sophistication.

What are your future plans?
Elizabeth Ammerman: I plan on finding a job, but I'm not sure yet who I want to work for. I still have a lot to learn through experience, but I would eventually like to start my own line. That's the ultimate goal.

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Know Your Material: Sheila Hicks, Fibre Raconteur

When we talk about yarns and threads, we automatically think about handmade  garments, accessories or small objects for our houses.

But yarns and threads could be considered in a more conceptual way as the strands of a story, and therefore as ways to build complex narratives.

This is exactly how American textile artist Sheila Hicks conceives the materials - including natural and synthetic fibres - she employs in her artworks.

The New York-based  Sikkema Jenkins Gallery is currently paying homage to Hicks with a dedicated exhibition.

Born in 1934 in a small town in Nebraska, and educated at Yale where she was taught by Bauhaus teacher Josef Albers, who introduced her to his wife Anni, a textile artist, Hicks lived in Paris since the '60s.

She worked with different media including painting, sculpture, photography, weaving and fabric design, incorporating in her works materials as different as fibres and found objects.

Rather than developing just a language of textiles, she developed an entire semantics, managing to spark new and impossible dialogues between different materials.   

In her career Hicks collaborated with famous architects (she did for example a wall hanging for Eero Saarinen’s CBS building in New York), worked as a textile consultant for companies such as Knoll Associates and with artisanal workshops in Mexico, Chile (in her twenties she went to South America and spent a year working with local weavers and studying their techniques), India (she developed with the Calicut-based hand-weaving workshop Commonwealth Trust, textiles woven on traditional looms) Morocco (where she worked in carpet workshops on upright looms) and South Africa.

In her quest for the perfect material to incorporate in her work, she also helped developing an iridescent steel fiber for a Japanese tire company (ask yourself now, how many fashion designer actually develop/patent any special material in their careers?).  

Hicks' monumental installations during art biennale events and public commissions - among the most famous ones there are linen and silk bas-relief tapestries for the Ford Foundation headquarters in Manhattan (1966-67); hand stitched wall hangings for a fleet of Air France 747s (1969-77), commissions for King Saud University in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, (1982-85) and a cultural center in Fuji City, Japan (1992-93) - are perfect examples of her versatile skills and techniques (stitching, wrapping, braiding, weaving and  twining...).

The exhibition at the Sikkema Jenkins Gallery - including works from 1958 and composed of both natural fibers and found materials - features both larger installations and sculptures and small woven works, the framed abstract  weavings the artist calls “minimes”.

Colour is the key to understand some of her pieces, texture the keyword to unlock the message behind other works, but the best thing is the continuity between the smaller pieces and the free-standing large sculptures.

It is indeed this continuity that reveals Hicks' careful observation of her surroundings and her distinctive use of different materials and weaving techniques employed to create innovative tapestry and textiles suspended between art, design, and architecture.

"Sheila Hicks" is at the Sikkema Jenkins Gallery, New York, until 2nd June 2012.
 
Images:

"Oracle from Constantinople", 2008-10
Linen 

"La Clef", 1988
Rubber bands and metal key

"Ardoise", 2006
Mono filament, linen and slate

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And The Cannes Jury Prize Goes To...(The Kilts In) Ken Loach's The Angels' Share

Ken Loach has just got the Prix de Jury at the Cannes Film Festival for his Glasgow-based comedy The Angels' Share, written by screenplayer and Loach collaborator Paul Laverty. 

The film follows the vicissitudes of Robbie, who has just avoided jail, and has promised his girlfriend and their newborn baby to change his lifestyle. Unfortunately for his new family he decides of doing so with a last robbery, albeit a whisky flavoured one.    

I have a soft spot for Scotland (even though, by leafing through Glasgow's local paper The Herald and its terribly unstylish fashion section, you would never guess that Christopher Kane came from here...) and, though I think it will be impossible for me to watch the scenes in this film involving the local court and somehow not cringe (not because I've had problems with the local justice, but because I've worked there as interpreter...), well-done congratulations to the team behind the film and well-done to Loach for accepting the award remembering all those people who are going through hard times because of austerity programmes and cuts. 

That said, now I'm wondering if having Loach's fan Nanni Moretti as President of the Jury and kilt lover Jean Paul Gaultier as jury member may have facilitated the choice. Who knows. Anyway, The Golden Palm went to Amour (Love), directed by Michael Haneke, but you can follow The Guardian's live blog if you want to keep updated with the other awards as they are revealed.

  

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Quick Film (Poster) and Fashion (Advert) Comparison: Orphée Vs Gaultier

The Cannes Film Festival closes tonight, so, while we wait for the winners to be revealed, Irenebrination pays homage to it and to one of its jury members, fashion designer Jean Paul Gaultier, with a quick comparison between a film poster and an advertising campaign.

The poster shows Jean Cocteau's 1950 film Orphée starring Jean Marais as the main character. The film was the second installment in the Orphic Trilogy (including also The Blood of a Poet and Testament of Orpheus).

The advert - different from the more usual Gaultier campaigns with their Querelle de Brest-inspired maritime iconography - refers to Gaultier's Spring/Summer 1988 collection and has a bit of a cinematic quality about it.

Some of Gaultier's collections were inspired by specific films, the designers often displayed in interviews an in-depth cinematic knowledge (apparently, Jacques Becker's 1945 movie Falbalas, and its main star, actress Micheline Presle, prompted him to become a fashion designer...) and in his career he also created costumes for  films.

The ad has got a dreamy quality about it and its mood and atmosphere makes me think about Orpheus obsessed with Eurydice in the Greek myth and in Cocteau's film, while the male model's attire vaguely calls to mind the look of the henchmen riding motorcycles in Cocteau's film. 

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Rediscovering a Banned Sci-Fi Allegory: Interview with Actor Denis Gilmore about Roberto Faenza’s H2S

Exactly a year ago I explored on Irenebrination the disturbing yet fascinating universe of Roberto Faenza’s H2S.

Soon after that post, actor Denis Gilmore, who starred in the film as the main character, Tommaso, got in touch to ask where he could get a copy of the movie since he had never seen it.

A few readers also sent emails asking things about specific parts in the film.

I recently turned their questions to Mr Gilmore who very kindly accepted to take some time to answer the Irenebrination’s readers questionnaire.

Most readers were very curious about the film's connections with Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange and, hopefully, one day we will discover if Kubrick actually watched H2S before shooting his adaptation of Anthony Burgess‘ novel. 

H2S - with its main characters moving in a bizarre world ruled by consumerism, power, technocracy, mind-control and dictatorial university lecturers - is a totally visionary film (please refer to the previous post to read more about it).

Critics said it was a sort of Alice in Wonderland-like allegory, but, considered as a poisonous and violent sci-fi fable (though it was actually a bitter satire upon society...), it was banned two days after it came out. Yet it would be definitely worth rediscovering it, its aesthetic, sets and costumes. Will we ever manage to see it re-released? Maybe. In the meantime, read Mr Gilmore’s answers and let’s all keep our fingers crossed with him. 

How did you get involved in H2S?
Denis Gilmore: A friend of mine was up for the part of Tommaso and Roberto Faenza wanted to see him on screen, so he showed him a film that we did together a couple of years earlier. When Roberto saw me in the film, he said “That’s the boy I want!”. At the time I was working on a TV show in England, so I was flown out to Rome to meet Roberto and do a screen test and I ended up getting the part. 

How was working with director Roberto Faenza?
Denis Gilmore: Roberto was quite young and this was only his second film, it was also quite a young crew, so we all got on really well, it was a lot of fun.

Where was the film shot?
Denis Gilmore: The film was mainly shot in Rome and a little bit in London while the snow scenes were on Monte Bianco in Courmayeur.

Which was the most bizarre thing that happened to you on the set?
Denis Gilmore: When I tried to hang myself in the film I actually passed out and only when they lifted me to take the tension off my neck I woke up…

What do you remember about working with Paolo Poli (starring as the college founder and Tommaso's bride at the end of the film), a famous Italian theatre actor?   
Denis Gilmore: Paolo was great to work with, a real professional spending hours in the make up chair everyday to get aged for his part and doing it without a single complaint.

In the film there are quite a few elements that somehow call to mind the atmospheres and moods in A Clockwork Orange, do you know if Kubrick ever saw this film?
Denis Gilmore: I don’t know if Kubrick saw the film, but with so many similarities I can only assume that he did.  

Did you ever see the final movie after you finished shooting it?
Denis Gilmore: I only got to see the film recently when you sent me a copy.

So what did you think about H2S after seeing it?
Denis Gilmore: I thought H2S was very good, though it was way before its time maybe, and that’s why it got banned. I’m in the process of trying to persuade a well-known director and film historian to do something with the film, so fingers crossed!

What are you up to at the moment?
Denis Gilmore: I’m still in the film industry, on both sides of the camera!

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The First Fashion "Anti-Commercial" With A Financial Impact: Roman Polanski’s A Therapy for Prada

The darkest forces of fashion converged upon Cannes in the last few days turning the place into a bulimic carnival of clothes (let's face it, if you only read the main fashion publications, you would probably never guess what all these celebrities are bloody doing in Cannes, apart from strolling down a red carpet and going to parties…).

Yet, while your average fashion journalist is too busy commenting about floor-length gowns, pondering about cascades of ostrich feathers and crystals on dresses and wondering why female actors are immaculately and impeccably dressed while male actors look extremely scruffy (answers: sexual politics, gender models, and the fact that fashion houses do contracts with female rather than male actors…), Prada and Polanski managed to come up with an entirely new hybridic format, a short film (well, technically a commercial…) described at last Monday’s premiere in Cannes by Polanski as an “anti-commercial”.

Strangely enough, though, the anti-commercial had a strong impact on the financial markets.

But let’s try to analyse the situation from the beginning: as you may have seen/read all over the Internet, Prada got in touch with Polanski who directed for the Italian fashion house a short entitled "A Therapy" featuring a rich and frustrated lady (Helena Bonham-Carter), who visits her psychoanalyst (Ben Kingsley).  

While she talks about her problems, the therapist, bored and mesmerised by her soft fur coat hanging on a hat rack, stands up, starts caressing it and then tries it on. Final message: “Prada Suits Everyone”.

In a way, if you had called your average film and media student you would have probably got something better and funnier, but the film wasn’t meant to be a moment of unforgettable cinematic pleasure. In fact it wasn’t about cinema at all. It was essentially about money.

The day after the film was screened in Cannes HSBC Research upgraded Prada SPA from “neutral" to "overweight", and raised its target price to HK$53 from HK$48 (Barclays raised it to HK$60 and Goldman Sachs to HK$82,3).

Obviously the upgrade is mainly the consequence of the positive results the company had in this past financial year.

The first Italian company who went public in Hong Kong, Prada scored a net profit (for the year to January 31) of 432 million euros ($574 million) and more positive results are expected to come in the future from fast-growing markets in Asia and the Middle East.

Such positive results were the consequence of a clever pastiche of drive, commitment, retail expansion, the recently opened Met exhibition with long-forgotten Schiaparelli, and befriending the right artists, architects, celebrities and high profile bloggers (do your own little research, you will hardly find anybody on the Internet and in the fashion media saying bad things about Prada fashion-wise…).

Yet it’s extremely interesting how what the director considered as an “anti-commercial”, so something not meant to sell anything, indirectly had a positive financial impact on the market on the day after it was screened.

So maybe, while in the past wealthy and powerful fashion houses picked an artist or an architect for a collaboration, now it's more fashionable to use a short to deliver a message to banks, investors and shareholders rather than just to film and fashion fans.    

Many directors worked for fashion houses - among the others David Lynch, Giuseppe Tornatore, Baz Luhrmann, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Kenneth Anger, and, more recently, Bruno Aveillan (with his visually epic "L’Odyssée de Cartier", aimed at celebrating the brand’s 165th anniversary) - and while some of them claimed they had directed short films rather than commercials, none of them ever claimed they had shot an "anti-commercial" (and none of their adverts/films had such immediate consequences on the financial markets).   

This said, apart from the financial impact, there are some tragicomic  connections here: the funniest one is the "devilish" connection (The Devil Wears Prada/Polanski’s heroine in Rosemary’s Baby giving birth to the devil’s son...); the most disturbing ones are instead more complicated and include the fashion industry being often blamed of sexualising children and currently claiming that grown up women should look like children or extremely young girls to be sexually attractive to men, and Polanski being charged in the late ‘70s with rape upon a 13-year-old girl (while working on a photoshoot for an issue of French Vogue that he was guest-editing).

Yet the fashion industry is quick to condemn (think about Galliano…) and even quicker to rehabilitate, especially when rehabilitation brings money.

You wonder, though, what kind of results Prada would have got if, rather than Polanski, they would have picked Ken Loach (Angels’ Share(s) Vs Devil’s Shares?) to shoot this new short. 

Guess then we would have got a genuine "anti-commercial", maybe with some social (rather than financial) impact, that would have ultimately proven that Prada maybe doesn’t really suit everybody’s style and taste and, above all, it definitely doesn't suit every pocket.

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Living Fashion. Women’s Daily Wear 1750–1950. From the Jacoba de Jonge Collection @ MoMu Fashion Museum, Antwerp

I'm republishing today a feature I recently did for Zoot Magazine about the "Living Fashion" exhibition at Antwerp's MoMu.

Fashion history is a fascinating topic since, by studying specific garments or accessories, their cut and construction, it is often possible to discover important events that left an indelible mark upon society.  

A recently opened exhibition at Antwerp’s MoMu, entitled “Living Fashion. Women's Daily Wear 1750-1950”, looks at the influence of fashion on the everyday lives of middle-class women in Western Europe between 1750 and 1950 and at the impact new activities had on their attires. 

Featuring garments and accessories from the historic clothing collection of Jacoba de Jonge, the exhibition tries to reconcile the gap between fashion ideals of the day and the clothing that people were actually wearing at that time.

While also including elegant evening and formal wear, “Living Fashion” focuses a lot on day dresses, specific apparel employed during new leisure time activities.

In the 19th century, with the rise of the middle classes, each moment of the day became indeed characterised by its own particular dress code: mornings were dedicated to indoor activities, afternoons to walking, shopping or to sports, including tennis, climbing or horse riding. 

The exhibition is divided in 13 different spaces that allow the visitor to explore various attires focusing also on  masquerade costumes, chintz, and altering and remodelling clothes.

The most important section of the exhibition is probably the one analysing dresses worn during pregnancies as they looked still fashionable and perfectly adapted to the fashion silhouette of those times.

Clothes and accessories are accompanied by photographs and by the video "Dresses Undressed" by Dutch artist Bart Hess in collaboration with Harm Rensink, that explores the possibilities of six silhouettes included in the exhibition - a maternity dress, a riding habit, a remade dress, two dresses that could be used in more than one way, and a queue dress.

 

Dutch Jacoba de Jonge started collecting historic costumes when she was 16 with an heirloom from her great aunt. Her collection - currently featuring around 2,500 objects from 1770 to1950 – will soon become part of the permanent collection of the Fashion Museum in Antwerp.  

When did the idea for this exhibit with items from your collection first come to MoMu?
Jacoba de Jonge: The MoMu was interested in the enlargement of the 18th and 19th centuries fashion collection; meanwhile, I was troubled about the future of my collection. In 2009 and 2010 some 40 dresses came already to the MoMu, because my collection was really too large. In August 2010 they asked me if there would be a possibility to take over all of my collection during the next two years with an exhibition in 2012 accompanied by a publication. This seemed a very good solution for my collection. You see, in the Netherlands there are five very large fashion collections without any space left for more acquisitions.

What does this exhibition tell us about the life of middle-class women between the 1800s and the 1900s?
Jacoba de Jonge: After thorough inspection of my collection the curator was impressed by the large overview of daily and normal wear of the better situated women compared to fashion plates and high society or haute couture fashion. So the exhibition tells us how the richer middle class women tried to dress as fashionable as possible, as shown in the fashion magazines, but without too much glamour or decoration. At the same time, the exhibition shows the developments in the life of these women with clothes made for travelling, sports, shopping and so on.

In your opinion what's the most interesting section of the exhibition and why?
Jacoba de Jonge: The pregnancy dresses are certainly the most interesting. During the 19th century pregnancy was un undiscussed subject. Every woman tried to hide it as much and as long as possible. It is not easy to recognise these dresses and they are rarely seen in exhibitions.

Which is the most exciting item in the exhibition, construction-wise?
Jacoba de Jonge: I do love the altered dresses. Altering materials was common practice for women  and there is an entire section on the subject. The most interesting example is a dress from the 1940s made using the reverse of a red silk dress from the 1890s. The bodice of this dress integrates part of the skirt. It must have been a great surprise for a woman in the ‘40s to find inside the original dress this tomato-red shade, a more fashionable colour in the ‘40s. Because of the linining, the red fabric was not visible in the original 1890s dress. 

And what's the rarest piece in the exhibition and your favourite one?
Jacoba de Jonge: Probably the rarest is a bright blue and white striped cotton dress from around 1904, made for rowing or sailing. I do not have a real favorite piece. I wouldn't really know which one is my favourite if I had to choose as I am fond of them all!

As a fashion collector, what fascinates you the most about garments and accessories, the hidden stories behind them, what they can tell us from a historical point of view, the materials they’re made of or their construction?
Jacoba de Jonge: The most fascinating aspect for me is what clothes tell you about the specific historical period when they were worn and the way people lived and moved in those times. Clothes do influence your posture and, as a consequence, your demeanour. Besides, I am always amazed to see - for example in old photographs - how everybody follows fashion, even if they don’t intend to.

Living Fashion. Women's Daily Wear 1750-1950. From the Jacoba de Jonge Collection is at the MoMu, Antwerp, until 12th August 2012.

Image credits:

Exhibition Poster © Paul Boudens & Sebastiaan Van Doninck

Female croquet champion in summer outfit, 1906 © The Bystander

Images of the museum installations by Ronald Stoops

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Clarabelle Cow Digs Paul Poiret

Previous posts explored how comics inspired certain designers, but I recently discovered with pleasure that there are at least some comic book artists taking inspiration from fashion as well.

This image is taken from a story published last week on Topolino, the most popular comic weekly in Italy named after Mickey Mouse (his name in Italian is Topolino) and dedicated to all the main Disney characters.

The story, written by Teresa Radice and featuring drawings by Stefano Turconi, follows Goofy, Minnie Mouse and Clarabelle Cow to a convention of combined fans of aliens, monsters, alternative magic and other assorted and bizarre mysteries. 

In the story, Clarabelle Cow is an eccentric clairvoyant and Turconi dressed her in an Oriental gown à la Paul Poiret.

I was actually pretty happy to see how this comic book artist did his own research to find a dress that would fit Clarabelle while working on this story and, while this shouldn't be so amazing as researching is the best way to create something truly unique, there aren't many professionals working along these lines nowadays.

Having introduced such a special fashion reference in a comic book mainly dedicated to children (even though many grown ups still read it...), Turconi truly deserves to be praised. Well-done!

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