Let's continue the architecture and fashion thread that started with yesterday's post by looking at Clover Canyon's Spring/Summer 2014 collection.
L.A.-based designer Rozae Nichols rediscovered in her designs for the next season the Southern California landscape, light and architecture. The collection, entitled "Local Light", features indeed a series of references pointing towards California, and including John Lautner’s iconic building known as the "Chemosphere", in Los Angeles, the work of household modernists Charles and Ray Eames, and light and space artists Robert Irwin, Dan Flavin, and James Turrell.
The collection could be defined as "architectural exotica" since it features engineered prints of indoor spaces mixed with outdoor elements, including swimming pools and gardens. This could be interpreted as a further reference to what architect Rudolph Schindler stated in the '20s in one of his articles for the Los Angeles Times: "Our rooms will descend close to the ground and the garden will become an integral part of the house. The distinction between the indoors and the out-of-doors will disappear."
Silhouettes include Clover Canyon's trademark fitted dresses, bell-shaped crop tops and neoprene bra tops, full skirts, shorts and coats. The theme of light is also tackled via materials such as printed laser cut and perforated neoprene, embossed Latex, see-through organza, silk shantung and burlap.
While working on architectural inspirations, Nichols seemed to focus mainly on structures that project out of a slope or are tucked in sidelong into a slope, hinting at a sort of gravity-defying lightness.
Coats, tops and skirts integrate architectural blueprints by the L.A. firm Escher GuneWardena (Frank Escher is the editor of the monograph John Lautner, Architect and serves on the Board of Directors of the John Lautner Foundation, so Nichols turned to a proper authority in the field).
One of the blueprints is a graphite rendering screen-printed onto linen of Escher GuneWardena's Jamie Residence, a 2,000 square foot single-family house lofted on two concrete towers above a steeply sloping lot in Pasadena. The public areas in this house form a continuous open space, extending through the entire length of the building and providing a 180-degree view of the cityscape beyond.
The Jamie Residence actually brings to mind Lautner's "Chemosphere". Lautner, who trained with Frank Lloyd Wright before opening his Los Angeles office in 1940, mainly designed in his career private houses characterised by experimentation, innovation and a marked individuality. His main construction principles remained harmony and balance. The latter was the key point for the octagonal structure known as Malin House or "Chemosphere".
Built in the Hollywood Hills off Mulholland Drive on a 45 degree slope, the structure appears to defy gravity. The roof of the house has an umbrella or unidentified flying object-like shape and rests on concrete pillars. Some of the dresses in the collection seem to reference both the external part of the structure and its interior with its wood beams vault.
There are other buildings in this collection: a print on a long evening gown calls to mind the Mondrian-evoking façade of the Eames House also known as Case Study House No. 8, though the bright and orange colours that characterise this design seem to be borrowed from Dan Flavin's neon tubing installations.
Frank Gehry’s music hall in L.A. with its metal sheets turning into light, free-flowing forms reappears on short sleeveless dresses, while the grid-like curving shapes printed on some of the designs remind of Harry Bertoia's chairs.
Combining too many references was maybe Nichols' fault, though it proved at the same time she did her own research and knows the themes she employed as main references. And while a blueprint on a skirt or a coat may be a very literal interpretation of the architectural theme, it actually points towards a key fashion issue: iconic buildings last (almost) forever, but, for trend and quality reasons, our clothes only last a few months. Hopefully, rather than just prints, the current interest for architecture will bring back into fashion also the concept of timelessness.
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