Philip Beesley is definitely among the favourite architects of Irenebrination readers. Fans of his work and of the fashion and architecture connection will be happy to know that a new collaboration between Canadian architect and sculptor Beesley and Dutch designer Iris Van Herpen will be unveiled tomorrow in Paris.
Iris Van Herpen will present her "Wilderness Embodied" Autumn/Winter 2013-14 Haute Couture collection at the Palais de la Découverte, in Paris. The collection will incude designs featuring contributions from Beesley in the fabric details.
Since Van Herpen and Beesley already worked together on the Dutch designer's "Hybrid Holism" and "Voltage" collections, the collaboration should be interpreted more as an ongoing dialogue between them. Beesley says this mutual exchange of ideas has been a real pleasure as they have a lot of common ground between them.
Remember that, if you happen to be in Paris and you like Beesley's work, you can still see his "Radiant Soil" installation, part of the En Vie/Alive exhibition (Espace Fondation EDF, 6 Rue Récamier), while "Epiphyte Veil", a next generation large scale geotextile work, is touring throughout France and you can catch up with it at L’été à Saint-Sauveur Festival, Gare Saint-Sauveur, Lille (until 11th August 2013).
When in the early '50s Italian architect Carlo Scarpa designed the Venezuela Pavilion in the Giardini space of the Venice Biennale, he probably never thought that a few decades later the walls of his structure incorporating three volumes sliding against each other, would have been defaced by graffiti. Venezuela chose indeed to bring to this year's Biennale the urban art that decorates the streets of many of its cities, giving a new look to the rough concrete walls of the pavilion designed by Scarpa.
Curated by researcher, poet and artist Juan Calzadilla, the pavilion is entitled "El arte urbano. Una estética de la subversión" (Urban Art. Aesthetics of Subversion). The graffiti, the videos and video mapping installations that decorate its walls have brought to Venice the energy of youth and creativity and a form of art with no boundaries freed from the confinement of traditional museums and made by those anonymous artists reunited in collectives who are usually denied access to art galleries.
There is also another aspect involved: the works featured in the pavilion are deeply rooted in Venezuelan culture, they indeed hark back to the "pintas", that is phrases, expressions, and political slogans used during the dictatorship of Juan Vicente Gomez by resistance movements and leftist parties to spread messages against the regime and the system and exercise their right to protest and their freedom of expression.
The graffiti crews (3BC, 346, 58C, AAA, CMS, CX3, GSC, IMP, PC, PG, PSC, ROS, SDN, SP, VO), the writers (Ker, Okso, Repe, Shelphyr, Slim), muralist collectives (360º, Colectivo Cultural Toromayma, Comando Creativo, La Kasa para la Raza, Silenciadores) involved in the pavilion prove that the discourse has evolved to more complex forms. The "pintas" have become more sophisticated and new generations of writers have endowed the original Creole graffiti with an aesthetic based on local elements, injecting in them their own codes and language frameworks, and incorporating in them historical landmarks and figures from the Bolivarian Revolution.
As Jorge Vivas, better known as "Shock" - one of the authors of the graffiti in the Giardini and the artist and writer behind the video mapping - explains, contemporary graffiti art is elevated to a socio-cultural phenomenon, and also represents an example of architectural environment.
Surely Scarpa coudn't have imagined to see the colourful graffiti on the simple and urban forms of his pavilion, but, if he had known the background of this form of art, deep down he would have probably approved.
How does the Venezuelan Government feel about graffiti artists? Shock: Graffiti art is completely free and supported by the government. In the last five years the government showed it approves this art and as graffiti artists we have been living quite positive times in Caracas. A while back an organisation working with art groups in Venezuela organised a graffiti artist meeting in Caracas. Quite a few of the communicational brigades in which graffiti artists are organised in Venezuela took part in it and it was then that we found out that the majority of the artists working in Caracas are not criminals or juvenile delinquents, but most of them are actually intellectuals. This is an aspect that quite often remains unknown to a lot of people out there.
Why do you think that in many countries graffiti artists are perceived as vandals? Shock: It's obvious that there are different trends and styles graffiti-wise. Quite often graffiti is perceived in a negative way because it invade sa prominent space such as the façade of a building, or trains, as it happens in Italy. But in Venezuela we strictly keep to walls and an important aspect in mural graffiti that appears in the streets of our cities is the right choice of space where the work will be realised. In order to do this the group takes into account factors that also include the visual-spatial perspective relative to the observer’s point of view, or the environment of the architectural elements with which the mural will interact with. Graffiti may mark an area that belongs to a group of artists rather than to another, but there is no confrontation between different groups, this is just the decided established division.
Does the division of the pavilion reflect the division in groups of graffiti artists? Shock: No, this pavilion does not reflect any specific group or urban division, we decided instead to mainly focus on our roots. This is why one mural says "patamuna" meaning in the Pemón language, that is the original language of Venezuela, "soberanía", sovereignty; another mural spells in arty 3D letters "Abyayala", a word that comes from the culture of the Kuna people and indicates the name they used for the American continent. Then there is a mural with one of the most representative characters of our history wearing dark glasses, Simón Bolívar. For us this figure is not dead, but he keeps on being alive; he is not a character that you can put on a pedestal and treat like an old statue, but he is a person, his spirit lives in all of us and we are very proud of having him and of being able to represent him like that. Inside the pavilion there are videos of the main graffiti collectives and a video mapping that presents a new trend combining animation with graffiti.
In your opinion, what will the future of this form of art be like? Shock: Attitudes towards graffiti have a wide variance. There are a lot of artists all over the world and quite a few of them have showed innovative and exciting paths for this form of art. In France there are artists who have been experimenting with graffiti made with lights projected on the façades of buildings. Since there are different trends when it comes to this art form, I think it will have an exciting future.
Images 1, 2 and 3 in this post by Italo Rondinella, Courtesy of la Biennale di Venezia
Yesterday's post looked at the interpretation of a fashion armour for a futuristic battle. Let's remain in space for another day with a brief post that looks at the video installation "Once Upon a Time" (2002) by Steve McQueen at the 55th International Venice Art Biennale.
The video features the digitised version of the 116 images from the Golden Records compiled by a committee chaired by Carl Sagan of Cornell University and launched into space in 1977 on both the NASA spacecraft Voyager 1 and 2. The Golden Record, including images of life on Earth, accompanied by recordings of human greetings, world music, surf, wind, thunder, and animals, was supposed to act a bit like the proverbial message in a bottle and was intended for any intelligent extraterrestrial life or for future humans who may find it.
McQueen overimposed on the images linguist William J. Samarin's recordings of Pentecostal glossolalia, indecipherable sounds of an invented language, to hint at the hypothetical intelligibility of the pictures, and create a discrepancy between the images compiled by NASA (that had to tell a story of human evolution and knowledge) and a series of meaningless utterances.
Near the entrance of the Pavilion of Latin America-IILA (Italo-Latin American Institute) hosting the collective exhibition "El Atlas del Imperio" curated by Alfons Hug and Paz Guevara for the 55th International Venice Art Biennale, there is a humorous spherical installation by Salvadoran artist Simón Vega.
Entitled “Third World Sputnik”, the sphere is actually a recreation of the Soviet Space Program's Korabl-Sputnik 5 satellite made with found and cheap materials. Cut and assembled aluminum cans recreate the original heat shield of the capsule, while random objects, including a T.V., neon light, car seat, and plastic control panels, are employed for the interior design of the cockpit.
The capsule, that also features sound effects recorded in a popular marketplace in El Salvador, looks at the effects of the Cold War in El Salvador and Central America, while hinting at the disparities between the "First World" and the "Third World", since it juxtaposes technological progress and cultural, social and economic limitations.
Dominik Chapman's portfolio for his graduate collection (showcased in May during the Westminster University fashion show), tells a tale of space conquests combined with military uniforms, Soviet symbols, Prussian eagles, Medieval armour and circuit boards with a urban and sporty twist.
The starting point for the collection was not a space war, but a futuristic battle in which the young designer's warriors fight clad in dynamically modern versions of reinvented Medieval armour integrating in their metallic decorations the patterns of circuit boards.
Can you please introduce yourself to our readers? Dominik Chapman: My name is Dominik Chapman and I live in London. I was born in Leicester and grew up in a small village just outside of the city called Great Glen. I did my foundation study at De Montfort University when I was 18 before moving to London to attend the University of Westminster’s Fashion Design course. During my year out, I designed at Urban Outfitters Europe and Alexander McQueen's McQ line, and I also spent a month in Florence studying Italian.
In your portfolio, you take us through a series of different references, from tribes to sportswear, space attire, and armour as well, can you tell us more about the genesis of your collection and the research behind it? Dominik Chapman: My research for my final collection started with the idea of a futuristic battle and by looking at old Medieval armor and trying to imagine how it would look if reinterpreted into a sci-fi film or futuristic setting. I then progressed to looking at circuit boards and how their patterns could integrate with the shapes of the armour. From there I started looking at modern forms of armour such as bomb disposal jackets and military body armour. It was from this research that I began looking at old German military ponchos and American Ma1 bomber jackets and started fusing them together. My print work came from my research into circuitry and the Prussian eagle from my research into German military. The resulting emblem was a fusion of the eagle and circuitry, which I then printed and quilted onto my silhouettes.
Some of your pieces, especially the capes, have a sort of "urban drama" about them that is almost cinematic, did you watch any specific films while working on this collection? Dominik Chapman: I didn’t watch any specific films. But I do watch a lot of comic book and sci-fi fantasy films, which probably had a subliminal impact on my work. I also used to play a lot of computer games (PlayStation) before I started uni, when I actually had a time! I guess I drew a lot of inspiration from the games I played, in terms of mood and attitude.
Do you feel that we are just putting barriers to creation when we say it's impossible to innovate menswear compared to womenswear? Dominik Chapman: For a runway collection I don’t think there are any limits to what you can show. It's all about trying to create a mood and fantasy that reflect your process when designing. I think with menswear there are many more rules and traditions that can be hard to crack. But they are what make menswear such fun for me to design. It’s exciting to push the rules and challenge the perceptions of what men should wear. Whether a man would wear anything I showed is another question. But in my collection I would like to think I have been able to incorporate a few wearable pieces. I think real innovation in menswear will come more from fabrication and print than silhouette.
Which was the most challenging part of creating this collection? Dominik Chapman: For me I think it was letting go of my original idea. A lot of times when designing you get so attached to an initial idea that you don’t let it grow and develop. As soon as I’d done this, everything sort of flowed pretty smoothly. Timing was a bit challenging, trying to coordinate quilting the capes, printing and crochet, but it all came together in the end.
Is there a designer you particularly like? Dominik Chapman: Massimo Osti was a huge influence when designing this collection and I referenced the book about his work many times. He is a designer who I think has been truly innovative throughout his career and had a massive influence on menswear. Moncler were another brand that I referenced as they are the label you think of when you start researching quilted outerwear.
Were you excited about presenting the collection during a proper catwalk show and how was it? Dominik Chapman: I was really excited and nervous at the same time. It was something that I’d been looking forward to since I first saw the Westminster graduate show when I was on my foundation and had been something I’d been working towards since the start of my studies. The show went really well for me and I was really pleased with how the collection looked on the runway. There were a few things I wish I’d been able to tweak in hindsight, but I think that will always be the case with anything I do!
You did an internship at McQ, would you like to work for such a label in future? Dominik Chapman: I loved my time working at McQ and learned so much about print design and the design process as a whole. If the opportunity should arise I would love to go back to the company and work in a print design role.
Any plans for the immediate future? Would you prefer to sart your own label or to work for a fashion house? Dominik Chapman: Well, the first thing on my "to do list" once I graduate is to get a job, I don’t really have any desire to start my own label now. Maybe in the future if an opportunity was presented to me it would be something I would definitely consider. I’d love the opportunity to do print or outerwear design at an Italian label. In a print design role I think Versace would be an ultimate goal. But any role in which I got to actively contribute to a collection and expand my skills would be amazing!
All images of Dominik Chapman's collection in this post by Simon Armstrong.
Hundreds (or actually thousands...) of fashion-related exhibitions are organised every year all over the world. Most of these exhibitions are accompanied by interesting and well-researched catalogues, that, in some cases, because of lack of funds or of proper time to print them, do not have the aesthetic power of a visually and theoretically rich coffee-table-book.
This is definitely not the case with Artist/Rebel/Dandy: Men of Fashion edited by Kate Irvin and Laurie Anne Brewer and published by Yale University Press in association with the Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). While the volume makes a perfect gift for anybody interested in menswear, it is actually also the catalogue for the eponymous current exhibition (until 18th August 2013) at the RISD Museum.
The exhibition celebrates the dandy and features garments and items from the museum collections and loans from other national and international organisations and private individuals. Both the exhibit and the volume accompanying it try to look at the manifestations of the dandy’s style and persona, while examining issues relating to it, such as identity, creativity, and self-representation, and doing so by juxtapositing historical figures with contemporary dandies.
Visitors and readers will therefore get the chance to discover the first dandy Beau Brummell, Oscar Wilde, Charles Baudelaire, Cecil Beaton, W.E.B. Du Bois and Max Beerbohm, but also the master and inventor of Pop Art Andy Warhol, punk impresario Malcolm McLaren, United Arrows' Motofumi "Poggy" Kogi and stylist, designer and entrepreneur Ouigi Theodore, among the others.
Short one-page portraits called “musings” by 15 contributors including Glenn O’Brien, Patti Smith, Merlin Holland and Horace Ballard, act as intervals to longer essays by exhibition curators Kate Irvin and Laurie Brewer, fashion historian Christopher Breward, and Barnard College English Professor Monica L. Miller. The latter in particular offers us an enlightening essay about black dandysm and Hip Hop that looks at clothing turning from a mere question of style into a proper form of profit for quite a few Hip Hop artists.
The volume mentions a variety of inspiring characters and sources, from London impresario Michael Costiff of Kinky Gerlinky fame to the Congolese sapeurs (Société des Ambianceurs et Personnes Élégantes), a movement that from Brazzaville and Kinshasa spread to Europe; from the Tweed Run to London-based textile firm Dashing Tweed.
The photographs included in the volume are definitely one of the highlights: coats, waistcoats and shirts are indeed presented not on static dummies, but hanging in wardrobes, while accessories - such as hats, handkerchiefs and collars - are arranged on tables, as if the curators wanted to return all these pieces to the human and everyday dimension, rather than confining them in a museum archive. Readers who may not be able to see the exhibition can still admire the exquisite details of the garments included from these images and discover online on the exhibition site further photographs that are not featured in the volume.
From the images of modern dandies featured in the volume and from the high profile bloggers and street style photographers camping outside the menswear shows and fashion fairs it is clear that there is a renewed interest in menswear and that men are becoming more adventurous in their style choices.
Yet some of the essays really make you ponder about the dandy then and now: Baudelaire stated that dandysim is the last spark of heroism amid decadence, but some of the young men currently filed under the "modern dandy category" seem more interested in showing off their clothes as a sign of affiliation to an elite or as a celebration of their own appearances than in offering us heroic messages, witty aphorisms, and the powerful rebellious legacy or political activism that some of the original dandies left us.
In a nutshell, in some cases the highly disciplined ascetic attention to details of the new dandies does not have any content and even the media generate further confusion in reporting about them. Scott Schuman, known and revered for the style images and portraits on his blog, ends up sounding not as a creative agitator, but as a a cold observer of Luciano Barbera's style in the musing featured in the volume, confusing a man's tailored elegance with a dandy's impeccable, alternative, individualistic yet slightly twisted style (Barbera is first and foremost an entrepreneur managing a family-owned high-end textile manufacturer and clothing design company, and he has a passion for dressing well, but this doesn't automatically make him a dandy).
Two of the essays in Artist/Rebel/Dandy also offer interesting insights about the irresistible satirical cartoons, prints, sketches and literature inspired by the dandy, from etchings by Robert Cruikshank portraying a dandy in a hilarious fainting fit induced by his corseted waist to Pierce Egan's Life in London, from comic cartoon character Ally Sloper as caricatured by W.G. Baxter to Captain Gronow's memoirs.
Satire is bizarrelly missing in our world: nobody seems too keen on making cartoons and fun sketches of some of the reborn dandies populating the streets of many fashion capitals or of wondering why if we are witnessing a rebirth of dandies, we are not seeing a rebirth of the working class.
Maybe the dandy style we are seeing in the streets of many fashion capitals has something to do with the global uncertain times we're living in, in a nutshell with the chaotic disorder of our age. As Baudelaire indeed wrote in The Painter of Modern Life: "Dandyism appears above all in periods of transition, when democracy is not yet all-powerful, and aristocracy is only just beginning to totter and fall".
Time will tell if the neo-dandy represents a genuine form of rebellion or if he is just the embodiment of a standardised exercise in fake sprezzatura. In the meantime, you can visit the Artist/Rebel/Dandy exhibit or read the catalogue: you won't probably be a better dandy afterwards, but you'll definitely have a wider perspective on the art of being one.
Artist/Rebel/Dandy: Men of Fashion is out now; the eponymous exhibition is at the RISD, 224 Benefit Street, Providence, RI 02903, USA, until 18th August 2013.
All images in this post courtesy of Yale University Press
1. Artist/Rebel/Dandy Book Cover
2. W.E.B. Du Bois at the Exposition Universelle International, 1900. Special Collections and University Archives, University of Massachussetts Amherst Libraries MS 312.
3. Cecil Beaton, self-portrait as George IV, late 1930s.
4. Richard Merkin, 1978. Eddie Hausner, photographer. New York Times.
5. Michael Costiff wearing Comme des Garçons, 2007. Junichiro Tokumasu, photographer.
6. Sapeurs Firenze Luzolo, Guy Matondo and Ukonda Pangi strike a pose at Parc de Prince in Kinshasa, 2010. Washington Post.
Inspirations can come from the most unlikely places: Colombian artist José Antonio Suárez Londoño started his meticulous drawing practice after author Héctor Abad asked him to participate in a project that consisted in Suárez Londoño drawing a picture a day and in Abad creating, at the end of a month, a text revolving around the drawings.
In the end, Suárez Londoño's prolific output proved to be too much for the writer, but gave the artist the chance to learn how to organise his work and pratice, drawing a picture a day for different texts including the diaries of Briano Eno, Paul Klee and Franz Kafka, and the poetry of Patti Smith.
Suárez Londoño's modus operandi is simple: first he reads the diary or the poems and then he illustrates the images of objects, clothes, accessories, small portraits or figurative studies that they inspire him on a notebook page.
The pages of these notebooks, that he calls Yearbooks (65 so far) represent a dialogue between the artist and the author of the diary.
Sophie Nuttall's graduate collection, that she presented in May during the Westminster University fashion show, moves from stationery and in particular from printer paper and notebooks. In Nuttall's collection a blank page turns into the main material for her dresses that become tangible tools, almost physical words, to start a dialogue between the wearer and the designer.
Very aptly entitled “Pages”, the collection features dresses and accessories in different shades of white and cream, representing the possibility offfered by a blank page. The designs are indeed decorated here and there with ring bind reinforcements and metal ring binders, and can therefore be deconstructed and reconstructed in different ways.
Can you please introduce yourself to our readers? Sophie Nuttall: I was born in a Weir village in Lancashire and went on from studying a BTEC in fashion onto University of Westminster. Going from a village to the capital city was a huge change and I had to adapt pretty quickly.
Can you take us through the creation of your graduate collection by briefly explaining us its genesis? Sophie Nuttall: I have always loved stationery to the point where I would seem to collect paper and pens but never use them and so my collection entitled "Pages" refers back to old fashioned printer paper and notebooks which I remember as a child. The idea of the holes which run down the edges forming the seams and fastenings of the garments is taken from metal ring binders and ring bind reinforcements. I love how blank a page can be, like an idea that is waiting to happen.
What kind of materials did you employ to recreate the rigid shapes and silhouettes of your designs? Sophie Nuttall: I created the whole collection by fusing fabrics together, not a stitch in sight, using mainly neoprene and cotton, in subtly different whites and creams finding each page has its own shade of white. I also used metal rings to attach pieces together signifying ring binders which allowed the garments or rather "pieces" to be taken apart and attached in many different ways; I have always liked the idea that things can be adapted, and that nothing is ever permanent.
The collection seems to be characterised by very clean and pure lines, do you feel that other disciplines inform your designs? Sophie Nuttall: I am always inspired by architecture, one of my favourite books is The London Book, a photographic compilation of London architecture and design from grates to lamp posts, inspired by the simplicity of humble functional design.
Which was the most challenging part of creating this collection? Sophie Nuttall: Having to fight against all the other ideas. It has been so difficult to choose one idea when you feel so much emphasis will be based on your graduate collection as though it defines who you are as a designer. As I have learnt it's who you are as a designer in that space of time and although a designers' philosophy will remain the same, your way of working and inspiration will always change, and that's what makes designing so exciting.
Is there an artist/designer you particularly like? Sophie Nuttall: I worked with Marie Wilkinson who is Design Director at Cutler and Gross, she is consistently passionate about her work and is well informed on all areas of design and culture which she fuses into each collection. My favourite artist is L.S. Lowry, I find solace in his lines and shapes.
Were you excited about presenting the collection during a proper catwalk show and how was it? Sophie Nuttall: I was very nervous as I naturally focus on small details which would not have a visual impact on a catwalk, but it was exciting to finally have some design output released into the world.
What's the best lesson you were taught at the various placements/internships you did so far? Sophie Nuttall: To never give up being inspired, to be innovative always, and not to overlook simplicity.
What are your future plans? Sophie Nuttall: I would love to work further on accessories as I feel it suits the way my mind works in shapes.
Photographs of Sophie Nuttall's collection by Simon Armstrong.
One of the most exciting things about contemporary jewellery remains the fact that many pieces are suspended between art and fashion and can be showcased in a display cabinet or can be worn to make a statement.
"Dans la ligne de mire" will feature seventy jewellers and silversmiths invited to show their most recent creations alongside Medieval/ Renaissance, 17th/18th/19th Century, Art Nouveau/Art Deco, Modern and Contemporary works.
The event will look at the role of adornment through the luxury industry in France, while examining also the social aspects linked with jewellery through videos, documentaries, photographs and advertising campaigns, allowing visitors to ponder about the changes the role of jewellery went through in the last twenty-five years.
The pieces will be scattered here and there in the museum rooms, and engage in a dialogue with the objects surrouding them (in some cases the pieces will be accompanied by multimedia installations), in this way visitors will also be invited to join in a sort of treasure hunt.
Most of the designers included were trained in art schools, but left behind more conventional materials employed for jewels to inject in their handmade pieces their personal and critical views, questioning issues such as social status and codes, commercial values, aesthetic challenges and more conceptual aspects linked to their lives rather than their practices.
While some designers conceived their jewellery as pieces to shock and amaze, others hide in them symbolic and deeper meanings, generating for example contrasts between rich and poor/conventional and unconventional materials (David Roux-Fouillet's silkworm cocoon piece is definitely among the most unusual ones).
The exhibition will also feature Haute Joaillerie pieces created by Shaun Leane for Boucheron, Pierre Hardy for Hermès and Victoire de Castellane for Dior. Among the other highlights included there will be several interventions by designer Arik Levy inspired by his previous project for Swarovski's Crystal Palace, and a final showcase dedicated to jewellery inspired by military uniforms and camouflage, revolving around the issues of power and violence and addressing body changes and modifications through piercing, tattoo and scarification.
Dans la ligne de mire, scènes du bijou contemporain en France, Les Arts Décoratifs, 107 rue de Rivoli, Paris, 19th September 2013 - 2nd March 2014
Sundays are about relaxing and sometimes about meditating in silence about the few last days while programming the week ahead. So let's move along this lines and consider for today Shary Boyle's "Music for Silence" installation for the Canada Pavilion at the 55th International Venice Art Biennale.
The installation showcases the wide range of media Boyle uses in her practice - sculpture, painting, performance and film - and explores ideas of silence, isolation and solitude, starting outside the pavilion with a mysterious child-like figure, "Ophiodea". The sculpture is perched atop of a column as if it were guarding the building, while weaving a maypole down one of the main columns.
Inside the space three porcelain figurines carry planets and constantly revolve on top of vintage turntables. The figurines hint at the solitude of human beings in the enormity of the universe and at our insignificant roles within it, but also evoke resistance and resilience.
In a black and white film, an elderly woman translates in sign language a moving text by the artist that prompts visitors to consider all the things that can't be spoken and all those people who can't speak: the list is long and includes activists, losers, freaks, the old and the ugly, the mentally frail, people who don't fit in, women who are not listened to and girls who get shot in the head for going to school.
In another corne of the pavilion, in an underwater cave, the plaster figure of a mythological creature with a fishtail, a sort of sea deity, is nursing an infant, but the scene completely changes when mysterious and disturbing collages of images are projected upon it.
Even though the pavilion is quiet, the artist was actually inspired by music while creating it. As she states in a press release: "In conceiving of this installation, I thought a lot about the emotional entitlement we afford ourselves when we are moved by a song. I considered experiencing art as one would music; with trust in perception and intelligence of feeling. Each object is a note; building an arc and repeating; suggesting cycles and rhythms."
While Shary Boyle's narrative is visionary, upsetting and at times hallucinating, and her alternative worlds are inhabited by legend-like hybrid and ambiguous beings, in her work the artist hints at different themes, quite often evoking feminist and social concerns, investigating life and death, reality and the imaginary, and exploring psychological and emotional states.
As predicted, the long Italian Autumn/Winter season of tax evasion stretched into Spring and had its culmination just a couple of days before Summer arrived, on 19th June when a court in Milan declared Italian design duo Stefano Gabbana and Domenico Dolce guilty of evading around 400 million euros.
The tax evasion charges related to the sale of the Dolce & Gabbana and D&G brands to the designers' Luxembourg-based holding company Gado Srl (clearly, a rather daft acronym for the designer's surnames...) set up, according to the prosecution, to enable the design duo to avoid declaring over 840 million euros in sales to the Italian tax authorities in 2010.
Dolce and Gabbana were acquitted of tax evasion in April 2011 by a lower court that stated there was no foundation for a trial, but then they were charged again by the Italian Supreme Court that overturned that previous decision in November 2011.
According to prosecutors Laura Pedio and Gaetano Ruta, who called for the duo to be sentenced to two-and-a-half years in jail, Dolce and Gabbana engaged in a “sophisticated tax fraud”. Judge Antonella Brambilla, ordered the designers to pay 500,000 euros each in damages, and sentenced each to one year and eight months in prison; co-accused Luciano Patelli, the company's accountant, was also condemned to one year and eight months, while former Gado board member Cristina Ruella, former D&G srl executive Giuseppe Minori, and Alfonso Dolce, brother of Domenico, were all condemned to one year and four months.
D&G lawyer Massimo Dinoia denied the charges, highlighted how the designers were condemned together with four other co-defendants for issues that didn't fall under their direct responsibility, and said they would lodge an appeal. The duo will anyway remain at liberty pending the appeals process, as is customary under Italian law.
There are three interesting points to make regarding the vicissitudes of D&G. The first one is the coverage of this news story as told by the fashion media. Last week Vogue.co.uk published a piece entitled "Keep Dolce And Gabbana Out Of Prison!" While they probably aimed at reproducing in the title the appeal for acquittal of D&G's lawyer, the impression that the average reader not accustomed with cases of tax evasion in the fashion industry may have got was that Dolce & Gabbana were Sacco and Vanzetti. In many ways Dolce & Gabbana have instead the same problem former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi seems to have with courts/magistrates/the Italian justice system - they think judges are somehow conspiring against them (bizarrelly, the design duo and the ex-Prime Minster also share something else justice-wise: Dinoia has also been the lawyer of Karima El Mahroug, the main protagonist of the "Rubygate" scandal involving Berlusconi).
The second issue regards the attitude of the designers. When in the mid-'80s Aldo Gucci, son of Guccio Gucci, who was 81 at the time, was sentenced to serve a year and a day in federal prison for conspiring to evade more than $7.4 million in U.S. income taxes, he broke into tears in the court, told the judge he was deeply sorry for what had happened and added he was closing the last period of his life "very poorly, very negatively", then asked the indulgency of the court in determining the sentence. Yes, there was maybe a bit of fake theatricality in his pledge, but, after the court issued the sentence, Dolce & Gabbana remained defiant. Now, starting to cry in the court may be a bit over the top, but pretending you don't really care and posting happy Instagram pictures of the prickly pear cactuses in your Milanese shop proves you're in a superficially confused state of mind. Or maybe it can be compared to the behaviour of the representatives of criminal organisations who still smile at the camera while the police takes them away to show they're not afraid of the authorities and to remember young and easily impressionable people that the baddie is still cool, even when he gets caught.
The third point is directly inspired by the closing words of the lawyers' statement issued after the sentence. D&G lawyer Dinoia declared the case to be "the paradox of paradoxes" because the amount they were charged with evading "exceeded the income by a large margin". The statement claimed the allegations are untrue and highlighted that "the Internal Revenue Service might proceed with their operations against them, fining them for the excessive and surreal amount of money of more than 400 million Euros. Due to the fact that the two designers do not have this kind of money - as the judge stated today, that they have never earned it - most probably the Internal Revenue Service will attack their most precious part of their patrimony, which is their shareholding in the Dolce & Gabbana Company. We are anxious to even think of what the economic and social repercussion of this act might mean."
Many ordinary people with no global fashion houses à la Dolce & Gabbana who found themselves behind with tax payments (note: they hadn't evaded the taxes, they were behind payments) were sent court orders of payment that they couldn't honour, and, as a consequence of that, lost their possessions, patrimony or companies and, in some more tragic cases, ended up committing suicide. Among them there were quite a few entrepreneurs who committed suicide for sums that were less "surreal" than the one allegedly evaded by D&G, yet nobody issued a statement about "the economic and social repercussions" of their situations.
So the conclusion: there may have been an earthquake yesterday morning that shook the centre-north of Italy reaching also Milan and all those designers putting their final touches to their menswear shows. But there will never be any great earthquakes in the matter of fashion industry-related tax evasion in Italy if the authorities do not carry out in-depth investigations into the fashion industry.
D&G will never go to prison because, even if their appeal is rejected (and they have the right to appeal the verdict twice, so many years will pass before a final decision is taken), sentences of less than three years are served in Italy with house arrest or community service.
Yet, judging from the comments left by many Italians readers on the news articles regarding the D&G case, a swift punishment when tax evasion is ascertained would be a good deterrent to crack down on Italian companies using offshore centres (Luxembourg is among the main destinations to hide money abroad as corporate tax rates can be close to zero there, while they are about 28% in Italy).
Dolce & Gabbana is not the first high-profile tax evasion case (Aldo Gucci remains a "must" in the fashion industry records of tax evasions, but there are many more - in 1996 Armani was fined for paying off tax authorities in exchange for favourable audits; last year we saw the Marzotto case followed by the Bulgari investigation...) and it won't be the last one.
For what regards the fashion industry, tax evasion remains the tip of a larger and more complex iceberg that involves other crimes including labour exploitation and consumer fraud.
The funny aspect in this story? There has always been a trend in Italy for T-shirts with altered logos of famous fashion houses transformed into puns (the "Versace da bere" - literally meaning "Pour us something to drink" - T-shirt is just one of the many examples
View this photo). You can bet the next one will be rather than Dolce & Capanna, "Dolce Condanna" (Sweet Sentence). In fact you may start printing them now: with all the money they are investing in this trial, surely D&G won't have the time and the financial resources to sue you as well.
Cartoon in this post by and courtesy of Frank Boyle
It is always a pleasure to see young students from fashion design institutions all over the world coming up with original and well-researched collections. Sometimes there are students who offer a very literal interpretation of a specific theme or inspiration and there are also others who show here and there their loyalty to a specific fashion designer or house, but usually creativity prevails in the graduate collections.
Yet it's strange how, a few years after some of these fashion students step over into the real fashion industry, and as soon as they turn from young and inexperienced into trendy designers, creativity becomes infiltrated by echoes of iconic images from the past and this generates a series of déjà vu moments in the industry.
A few quick examples: Tom Ford's rectangular patent leather bag that appears in the Spring/Summer 2013 campaign bears an uncanny resemblance with a design seen on Pierre Cardin's Spring/Summer 2013 menswear runway (that was anyway a re-edition of a previous Cardin design).
Thomas Tait's Autumn/Winter 2013 collection features his “Crazies Sunglasses”, with a black or white asymmetrical frame that calls to mind Pierre Cardin's '60s sunglasses (N.B. Remember: buying anything made by Cardin in the last 25 years is terribly uncool, but copying his past designs is terribly cool).
Christopher Kane's Spring/summer 2014 menswear collection includes jersey and intarsia knits and T-shirts with the motif of a wire mesh head that calls to mind the renderings you may be able to recreate on animation programmes à la Blender.
The origin of this wire model may be the cover and video for Kraftwerk's “Musique Non Stop” with its animation by Rebecca Allen (and bizarrelly enough the collection also features a selection of black and red garments in trademark Kraftwerk style).
The fluorescent green version of the same head in its blown up version that sort of merges with the background, generating a uniform landscape and reproduced on a black background on a coat, tops and shorts calls to mind instead Thierry Mugler's "Anatomique Computer" suit (Autumn/Winter 1990-91 collection).
A very last example is then provided not by a fashion designer, but by an editor, Carine Roitfeld with her "fashion design debut" (or was she just trying her hand at the classic automotive fashion theme?).
According to Vogue.co.uk, the fashion editor "created a dress as part of a collaborative project with Mercedes-Benz", which translated means she "designed" a dress for the S/S 14 car company campaign (shot with artistic direction from Stephan Gan).
There are two elements here: the first image of the car campaign is slightly reminiscent of the Citroën CX TV advertisement featuring Grace Jones with some classic Cheyco Leidmann thrown in.
The second point is the dress-cum-cape: there are hundreds of billowing cape dresses in the history of fashion, but this one seems to be a crossover between Tom Ford (remember Anne Hathaway's dress at "Les Misérables premiere in New York?) and some classic Balenciaga.
Yes, we understand, derivation brings innovation, but why is derivation so prominent in creating today's looks and images? Is it generated by pressure, money or the need to produce something as visually striking as possible in the shortest time as possible? Besides, can derivation bring genuine innovation without real dedication and research? Member of the Boxxet Network of Blogs, Videos and Photos
