Post-Christmas features often include suggestions about what to wear on New Year's Eve. Yet, quite often, daydreaming about a special party frock by picking it out of old magazines or exhibition catalogue makes you feel much better than actually going out and look for something special you can't find or just can't afford.
I've been carrying out this exercise and my personal choice for tonight would be this black silk organza evening gown wth square trail by Madeleine Vionnet. The dress was entirely covered in pink degradé sequins (note: some sequins also came in different sizes, so the degradé effect was actually doubled up) applied by Lesage's atelier.
There is actually a secret behind this dress: Lesage didn't just apply the sequins on the dress, but also coloured them. The pale/intense/shocking pink and fuchsia shades were obtained at the atelier with special dye baths that allowed Lesage's artisans to obtain the exact shades of colour they needed.
Since they are a great source of light, sequins were often employed for glamorous gowns donned by famous actresses on the big screen. These gowns with their thousands of star-like sequins that shone in an irresistible way were capable of making many Cinderellas sitting in the audience dream about a different and better life. This is also Irenebrination's New Year's wish to all its readers: a better life for each and every one of us. Have a lovely New Year's Eve.
Please note: the content and title of this post do not obviously refer to the current Maison Vionnet, unfortunately fallen roughly a month ago in the hands of rich charlatans.
Looks like two years after calling for a futuristic and scientific approach to fashion on this site, designers are finally catching on. The universe and the cosmos have indeed been on the mind of quite a few designers in the last few months. These themes were mainly translated in the clean cut silhouettes or in prints of nebulae and stellar skies.
The latest one to catch the bug was Monique Lhuillier who stated her Pre-Fall 2013 collection was inspired by sci-fi moods. The latter were clear in the rigorous silhouettes of some of her dresses and in her tailored uniform-like coats.
In some cases the textures seemed to imitate universe-related themes: a crinkled jacquard sweatshirt matched with a skirt (View this photo) and a degradé sheath dress (View this photo) mimicked the rugged surface of the moon.
Sci-fi moods were emphasised also in the strong shoulders and were obvious in the separates and A-line dresses with prints of galaxies in copper or in silvery blue hues. For the evening the designer translated the theme into deep blue and silvery gowns with lace inserts, draped motifs, voluminous layers of tulle or beads and metallic discs (View this photo) creating starburst effects over nude chiffon.
Rather than making me think about the cosmo, the burnt copper prints on some of the designs evoked memories of Arnaldo Pomodoro's bronze sculpture "Sfera con sfera" (Sphere Within Sphere).
Pomodoro's art is dominated by a geometric spirit and his spheres that open up to reveal their mysterious mechanisms, symbolise our planet somehow corroded by the advancements of technology. Yet rather than having a negative meaning, the gears inside the spheres seem to have an extraordinary energy that prompts us to hope in a better future.
New York's MoMa is currently celebrating Pier Paolo Pasolini with a cinematic retrospective organised in collaboration with the Cineteca di Bologna that started in December and will end in January 2013. The retrospective is completed by a series of events, discussions, installations and an exhibition of Pasolini’s paintings and drawings.
Some of the films included in the programme are recently restored versions of the movies, others are presented in newly struck prints and the retrospective includes masterpieces such as Accattone (1961), Mamma Roma (1962) and The Gospel According to Matthew (1964).
There is a wonderfully intense connection between Pier Paolo Pasolini and topics such as architecture (think about the camera lingering on the details of a building or showing us landscapes from a distance) or fashion.
Some of these links were explored in previous posts analysing Capucci's work in Teorema (1968) or the elaborate costumes in Medea (1969), the result of an intense and experimental collaboration between Umberto Tirelli's tailoring house and Piero Tosi's design skills.
Besides, each film from "The Trilogy of Life" - The Decameron, The Canterbury Tales, and Arabian Nights - is an orgy of fantastic costumes made at times with rigid felt, at others with soft velvets and even the raw and disconcerting Salò or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975) can be explored from a fashion point of view.
Today, rather than analysing an entire film also to avoid helping clueless journalists working for trend agencies to steal ideas and content (I know who you are and I really think it's time for you to start doing your own research...), I would like to take as example of crasftmanship just one specific costume from Edipo Re (Oedipus Rex, 1967).
The most interesting thing about Pasolini's mythological films was the fact that, right because the theme of the film did not imply any precise historical reference, costume designers and tailoring houses were able to play with the characters and find new and unusual solutions.
To recreate his personal vision of the Sophoclean myth, Pasolini turned to Danilo Donati (better known maybe as Fellini's costume designer) and to the Farani tailoring house.
The costume designer and the tailoring house involved didn't buy any fabrics to make the costumes for this film, fabrics were indeed made from scratch using a handmade wood loom secured at the corners with screws and with nails close together across the top and bottom of the structure.
Rather than using wool, Farani opted for waste canvas and for cotton-based materials commonly used to create padded areas in a garment. These materials were cut into strips and then woven on the wood loom with a safety pin.
Jocasta's entire wardrobe was made employing this technique, as you can see from this hand-dyed bright blue strapless costume matched with a cloak that sensually covers only one shoulder of the character. The cloak also appears as a symbol of incest as the camera lingers on it while Oedipus and Jocasta make love.
I don't want to spoil the rest of the film by focusing on other details (the jewellery pieces and the secrets behind them would maybe need another post...), so just go and see the movie if you're in New York, obviously paying attention to the costumesand the accessories and trying to guess which materials were employed to make them.
Oedipus Rex by Pier Paolo Pasolini, Theater 1, T1, MoMa, New York, 2nd January 2013, 4.30 p.m.
If you're reading this, you should be extremely happy: you're alive even though you've gone/you're going through a major global financial crisis; you have survived the announced 12-12-12 and 21-12-12 apocalypses and went unscathed through another Christmas dinner with obnoxious relatives and friends. On top of all this, it's the end of the year and there may not be enough time for the fashion industry to churn out decadent and useless news.
Or maybe there is still time to produce bland and vapid features, in fact Vogue Italia managed to do so right before Christmas to announce a vitally important release, Lapo Elkann's first book.
Scion of the Fiat family and grandson of the late Gianni Agnelli, Elkann, unanimously considered by many magazines all over the world as the most elegant/best dressed man on the planet (well, these are terribly bad times financially speaking and you can't really refuse advertising money, can you?), is the physical embodiment of the stereotypical empty-headed and superficial wealthy and rich immature playboy who manages to make you feel happy about being intelligent and clever though poor, in debt and jobless.
Vogue Italia always had a soft spot for Lapo (and his money), even though you wish they curbed their enthusiasm in a more balanced and credible way: in a feature published on the April 2012 issue of L'Uomo Vogue Lapo is described as a “one man hub of creativity”, the sort of definition a subeditor would remove even from an article about Salvador Dali (who was actually a genuine hub of creativity...).
Previous manager of brand promotion at Fiat Automobiles, Elkann reinvented himself in recent years leaving the family group and launching his own companies - lifestyle and clothing brand Italia Independent and communication and advertising agency Independent Ideas. The former produces the sort of clothes - jackets, sweaters and shirts - that you could buy anywhere else from High Street stores to luxury retailers, including overpriced denim trousers in which cotton is casually mixed with carbonium fibre to justify their price (and not to prove where technology can take you...) and assorted garments more or less copied from other brands and fashion houses Elkann himself wears.
Now Lapo has finally published his first book. Researchers, writers, museum curators and other people struggling to find a publisher for your groundbreaking books because you do not look trendy enough (because that's the main reason pulishers give you nowadays...) stop reading this post now as what follows may hurt you too much your sensibility.
Entitled “Le regole del mio stile” (“The rules of my style”) and released by publishing house ADD, co-owned by Lapo's cousin Andrea Agnelli, this vital 192-page tome (featuring more photographs than text as you may have guessed...) arrived on the shelves of Italian bookshops last Sunday, in time to be used to light up your fireplaces – pardon – to be given away as a Christmas present.
The book is not a manual, Lapo warns, but it's a platform for him to share his, erm, knowledge about style and give us pariahs his precious advice not about where and how to find drugs and prostitutes or how to survive an overdose, activities he seemed to be well versed in at least until he managed to make us all believe he cleaned up his act, but about how to dress (or how to pile up in your house hundreds of denim trousers in different shades of blue and an assortment of animal print loafers and sneakers).
Lapo surprises his readers in the book by saying things such as “Style means knowledge”, and throwing them into a profound crisis: does he mean that if you're a cultured and educated person you have style or does he identify “knowledge” with notions about which colours go/do not go well together? Because if he thinks knowledge means having read a book, well, he doesn't have any because he probably hasn't read a single book in his life (mind you, he was too busy “writing” a book).
Lapo's book also allows its readers to download extra features and interactive content fom his own site, lapoelkann.com. The latter is worth visiting for a good laugh: the main screen features a sort of compass device to identify where Lapo is at the moment (the only need for this device for me is to identify where he is, find him and try to put some sense into his empty head by beating him violently, but maybe you, my gentle readers, can find a different purpose for this feature...); the people page only include 25 people (three of them members of his own family such as his father who has been helping him a lot during his conversion to Judaism - don't ask me to comment upon this; plus Franca Sozzani and her photographer son). The real gem on the site is a pie diagram that appears if you click on the word “Life” - “passions” gets the biggest slice, followed by “places” and “creativity”, revealing how this man is more about the quantity of clothes in his wardrobe than about actually creating anything.
Former Fiat chairman and style icon Gianni Agnelli is often remembered on fashion magazines as an example of sprezzatura, the art of natural elegance; Lapo grew up thinking he inherited it all - elegance, style, marketing skills and creativity - or maybe thinking that what he didn't inherit he could still buy. Yet while the majority of people gravitating around the fake fashion industry idolises this clown, the majority of ordinary people out there would probably pay to shout at him what French paper Libération told LVMH CEO Bernard Arnault when the latter requested Belgian citizenship to escape President Hollande’s new tax increases on France’s high-income sector - “Get lost you rich idiot!”
Unfortunately for us, this unsufferable character is currently looking for a publisher outside Italy: Wwd.com recently announced “Elkann is negotiating an English version of the book” almost to warn us that, just like the fashion industry, the publishing industry can go lower and lower and almost to remind us that 2013 will see a barrage of books by other obnoxious characters, from high profile bloggers to celebrities such as Alexa Chung. Damn it, right when we thought that having survived armageddon in 2012 was enough...
I don't usually boast about Christmas presents for two main reasons - too many people out there can't afford to buy anything for their dearest ones and I usually favour presents not directly linked with fashion. Yet I felt this present from my brother had to end up on the site since it's a very clever example of “art meets fashion” or rather a rare example of “comics meet fashion”.
The present in question is a portfolio released for a 1996 comic fair including seven prints by Italian comic book artist Vittorio Giardino for Vogue Paris. Giardino illustrated for the December/January 1994-95 issue of Vogue Paris a graphic novel of noir film The Big Sleep. The graphic novel allowed the artist to play with his characters and dress Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart in Versace and Lanvin.
For a long time Vogue Paris' editor in chief Joan Juliet Buck had wanted to include a comic in the magazine, but she struggled to find an illustrator able to create stylish, elegant and sexy characters until she stumbled upon Giardino's “Vacanze Fatali” (Fatal Holidays) series that completely charmed her.
Readers were enthusiastic and asked for more, so for the July 1995 issue Giardino created a new story this time following the vicissitudes of three girls who, coming back from their holidays, find it hard getting used to every day routines and life.
Giardino's work reappeared on the Christmas 1995 issue of Vogue Paris this time to celebrate the magazine's 75th anniversary. For the occasion he drew Vogue's ideal reader clad in glamorous designs according to the different decades.
The specific portfolio I was gifted features Giardino's works from the May and July 1995 issues of Vogue Paris and portrays the comic artist's heroines clad in designer clothes by Ferré, Krizia, Mugler, Dolce & Gabbana and many more, meeting celebrities and famous actors.
In 2012 we have seen Alan Moore and Malcolm McLaren's Fashion Beast finally being released after 27 years, but we haven't seen any new and exciting collaborations between a proper comic book artist and a major fashion magazine. Guess the time has come to finally rediscover the "comic meets fashion" connection.
Depending on where you are at the moment, 26th December may be Boxing Day, St Stephen's Day or the Second Christmas Day. So today it's still technically a secular or religious holiday, but, unfortunately, marketing laws and consumerism turned this date into the beginning of the post-Christmas sales. Yet there may be more interesting and entertaining alternatives than locking yourself in a shopping mall.
One of them is going to the ballet and opting for a Christmas classic such as "The Nutcracker", a good option even for those ones who may not be ballet fans (there are enough costumes to distract even the most superficial fashionistas...). There are different shows in the main capitals all over the world (some of them celebrating the 120th anniversary of this ballet) by different corps de ballet, and, if you can't find any near where you are at the moment, you can still watch the ballet on YouTube. Enjoy it!
Quite a few posts on this site were dedicated in 2012 to yarns. Hopefully such features proved that the world of yarns has some wonderful arty and at times even architectural surprises behind it and helped readers understanding how important are the materials that make the garments we wear everyday.
To tie in with the yarn theme I'm posting these images of a classic made in Italy Christmas jumper that has been in my possession for years. It's not a designer jumper, but it was handmade by a craftsperson a long time ago and, while, yes, it features maybe too many bits and pieces on the same jumper (there's even written "Buon Natale" - Merry Christmas - around the neckline...), it remains an irresistibly kitsch craft product. Merry Christmas to all the Irenebrination readers!
Previous posts on this site explored the inspirations that early silent hand coloured and stencilled films may provide to fashion designers.
At the beginning of December, The Guardian also published on its site a lovely example of such films, the four-minute short "Le Faune" (The Fairies and the Faun, 1908) shot by the Pathé Brothers and accompanied by modern music composed and performed by Icelandic cellist Hildur Guðnadóttir.
The short was published to celebrate the BFI release of the DVD entitled “Fairy Tales: Early Colour Stencil from Pathé” (£19.99).
This is actually a good option for a present for cinema fans, but also for artists and fashion designers.
Fairy films became very popular at the beginning of the 1900s thanks to the Pathé Frères company.
Though in our digital times some of them may not seem that adventurous especially plot-wise and though some themes often tend to come back (wicked beings, kidnapped maidens, dancing girls, mythical beings and people morphing into butterflies and insects in enchanted and mysterious woods), the true magic of these films does not stand in the story they tell, but in their visual power.
The special effects in these shorts were created through stage illusions, trick photography and striking chromatic juxtapositions of primary shades that were usually hand or stencil coloured by hundreds of women at Pathé Frères' colouring factory.
Thanks to the success of Martin Scorsese's Hugo that celebrated French filmmaker Marie-Georges-Jean Méliès as a "cinemagician", 2012 marked a sort of rediscovery moment for hand-coloured films and this DVD offers a good selection of twenty genuine gems including "La Peine du talion" (Tit for Tat, 1906) by Gaston Velle, "Le spectre rouge" (The Red Spectre, 1907) directed by Segundo de Chomón and Ferdinand Zecca in the tradition of Méliès, Zecca's "Ali Baba et les quarante voleurs" (Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, 1902) and "Le Scarabée d'or" (The Golden Beetle, 1907) and Segundo de Chomón's "L'Antre de la sorcière" (The Bewitched Shepherd, 1905).
The films collected in this DVD - accompanied by an illustrated booklet with introductory essay by the BFI's silent film curator Bryony Dixon - are set to commissioned music by contemporary artists on British independent label Touch, including Chris Watson, Christian Fennesz, Hildur Guðnadóttir, Ryoji Ikeda, Philip Jeck, and BJ Nilsen amongst others, all using eclectic sounds and effects to provide new visual soundscapes for these magical features.
DVD extras include Georges Méliès' "Barbe-blue" (1901), "Au Pays de l'or" (1908) and "Little Red Riding Hood" (1922) by British pioneer animator Ernest John Anson Dyer.
Since Christmas is almost here I'm going to leave you with this starry image taken from a silent film not included in this DVD, early sci-fi story "Voyage autour d'une étoile" (A Voyage Around a Star, 1906) by Gaston Velle.
The film told the story of eccentric astronomer Nigadimus taking a trip to the star he has fallen in love with in a gigantic soap bubble. Lovely plot, don't you think so?
If, like me, you were utterly disappointed by the mainstream being definitely more celebrated than the subcultures and the underground during the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2012 London Olympic Games, you may have rejoyced last week when the Victoria & Albert Museum announced its 2013 exhibition curated by the V&A Head of Fashion, Claire Wilcox, focusing on '80s clubwear.
The event, entitled “Club to Catwalk: London Fashion in the 1980s” and opening in July 2013, will explore the '80s club scene and its influence on global fashion through 85 outfits including creations by designers inspired by the capital's underground clubs (John Galliano, Vivienne Westwood, Katharine Hamnett, Pam Hogg and Stephen Jones among the others) and actual clubbing creations seen at infamous venues such as Blitz and Taboo.
The clubbing wear will be divided according to themes (Fetish, Goth, Rave, High Camp and New Romantics) and will also include some of the Levi Strauss & Co denim jackets commissioned by Blitz club magazine to 22 London designers and originally displayed at the V&A in 1986 (and auctioned in aid of the Prince's Trust in July of the same year; there will also be the denim jacket customised by Leigh Bowery with fringes of hairgrips).
The event will be completed by a series of accessories (by Judy Blame, Bernstock Speirs, Patrick Cox, Johnny Moke to mention a few) and archive magazines (The Face, i-D and Blitz) and will hopefully rediscover rebel designers such as Melissa Caplan, Willie Brown, Fiona Dealey and the rest of the Axiom cooperative and the importance of the “getting ready” concept behind the clubbing scene.
This is actually a vitally important point of that decade: think about the difference between getting ready to go out then and doing it for yourself, and getting ready nowadays and to all the people who do so hoping to be spotted by trendsetters or by high profile style bloggers (think also about the damages we have done by creating an entire generation of “global icons” who only live to be photographed during fashion shows...).
Exploring the creative impact of Britain's clubbing culture is actually very interesting not only from a retrospective point of view, as this theme poses interesting questions also about the future role of London as trendsetting capital.
In the '80s London was still considered as a terrifically inspiring place where everything was still possible not only fashion-wise. In the last few years London has successfully been working towards a total restyling that turned it from irresistibly hip into a moderately conservative place: while gaining ground as a proper Fashion Week capital proudly represented by the Prime Minister's wife Samantha Cameron opting to wear British designers at official events and meetings, and as the underground scenes gravitating around the East End were co-opted by dark market forces and powerful brands, London has somehow lost its more riotous and rebellious subcultural forces.
While punk was about protest (something that doesn't exist anymore also thanks to a clever re-marketing of the Royal Family as inspiring icons of style), the 80s were not only years of excess, but also a place of ideas, a decade during which people who were creating fashion could have actually been working in other creative industries, from art to music. The scene was indeed a sort of creative bubble in which ideas easily passed from musician to fashion designer and from designer to artist and dance performer.
Leigh Bowery was the embodiment of this concept: a sort of constant living art performance capable of physically morphing and passing from one scene to another, Bowery was an artist, costume and fashion designer, someone who easily bridged the gaps between different forms of expression often provoking the audience with his outrageous costumes and behaviour.
Rarely in recent years we have seen such flamboyant and disturbing artists, while we have witnessed plenty of official “collaborations” between artists and fashion houses or brands with absolutely no cultural relevance or impact, while music has turned from a place for talented performers to a canvas for brands, designers and stylists.
During an interview in 1984 artist Stephen Willats asked Leigh Bowery if the fact that he was poor at the time made him more creative and ingenious. Bowery stated, "Maybe more resourceful. If I had more money I'm sure I could do even more, but this way, the options aren't so great and so I suppose resourcefulness is a sign of the times as well, when you have to. For us, it's how I wanted to use shag pile carpet, but instead we're using the cheapest fun fur I can get, but I think the effect will be more interesting and also, perhaps it says something about the time I bought it."
Who knows maybe “Club to Catwalk: London Fashion in the 1980s” and The Met's “Punk: Chaos to Couture” event opening in May 2013, will bring back a dose of healthy rebellion, subversion, individual expression and resourcefulness not only in the fashion industry in general, but also among consumers.
Credits: All photographs (c) V&A Images
Dress designed by Willy Brown, 1980,
Fallen Angel suit designed by John Galliano, 1985
Denim jacket, 'BLITZ', by Levi Strauss & Co., customised by Vivienne Westwood, 1986
Sketch for Levi Strauss & Co. denim jacket, 'BLITZ', by Stephen Jones, 1986
Sketch for Levi Strauss & Co. denim jacket, 'BLITZ', by Stephen Linnard, 1986
Sketch for Levi Strauss & Co. denim jacket, 'BLITZ', by John Galliano, 1986
Denim jacket, 'BLITZ', by Levi Strauss & Co., customised by Leigh Bowery, 1986
Sketch for Levi Strauss & Co. denim jacket, 'BLITZ', by Enrico Coveri, 1986
Getting inspired by the past and mixing traditions with technology without copying or simply renewing previous garments by iconic designers is definitely the key to build a better fashion industry.
But while some fashion designers are struggling to understand this or while marketing laws and the fast pace of the industry simply do not allow designers to research specific ideas and themes in an in-depth way, a few companies have fully grasped this concept. Historical Vicenza-based silk factory Bocchese 1908 is among them.
Since it was first established, the company worked in silk reeling; spinning and twisting started as early as the 1920s, followed by high-end silk weaving in the '50s. Yet, though beautiful, luxurious and unique, silk is perceived as a summer fabric, so Bocchese 1908 decided to try and change perceptions and make silk as soft and warm as cashmere.
"We were attracted by the idea of transposition, transferring a summer concept - silk - to a new world of winter warmth," states the company CEO (and Sales and Marketing Manager at the historical Italian knitwear companyMaglificio Miles) Michele Bocchese. "We searched for new special threads that may suit this type of finishing, fine tuning the right treatment. We particularly worked on the finishing of the fabric to make it snug and very similar to cashmere."
The product was created almost by accident: a fabric had been treated by mistake in the finishing phase with a machine never used for silk and the result was a soft, almost impalpable fleece, though still very different from what was going to become the new winter silk fabric.
Presented last year at the Ideabiella exhibition, the final product - a blend of ultra fine cashmere and pure silk - was patented as Soie d'Hiver (PD2011A000287).
Light and soft, rare and precious, the material has already been employed by quite a few fashion companies for their collections (also for menswear garments such as coats and jackets). While helping to re-launch the historical family business, the new material by Bocchese 1908 also prompted other companies to create further products along the same lines, proving that cutting edge innovation and research can also lead to a healthy competition between different companies and foster growth.
After Soie d'Hiver, the Italian company is moving onto further fabric research projects, "Last summer we reviewed the duplicate silk, a classic Bocchese fabric. In that case we modified the looms to obtain effects that could only be achieved by using the shorter looms of the past (70 cm)," recounts Michele Bocchese. "We want to amaze and inspire our clients. Behind each of our products there is a story made of archives, dusty books about entire ranges of products and an experienced team capable of applying creative freedom to an exclusive handcrafted world”.
