Yesterday's post mentioned the Museo Frida Kahlo in connection with the Superfertile + Wixárika collaboration. A cpouple of the pieces resulting from this collaboration are indeed currently exhibited in a room under Frida Kahlo's bedroom and studio, and some readers got in touch to ask if I had some images of the artist's studio. As a follow-up to yesterday's post I'm therefore emclosing here a picture of Kahlo's studio courtesy of Superfertile's Kali Arulpragasam. Enjoy!
Collaborations are extremely popular in the fashion industry, even though they often consist in a prominent and powerful fashion brand or label teaming up with somebody famous, like a hip artist or a trendy celebrity. Superfertile’s Creative Director Kali Arulpragasam opted instead for a real and rather unusual collaboration.
Known for her jewellery collections aimed at raising awareness towards social, financial and political issues such as the world food crisis, countries affected by war, animals in danger of going extinct, capitalism, and the Sri Lankan Civil War, Arulpragasam decided this time to work with an indigenous minority, the Huichol or Wixárika people, a native American ethnic group living in Wirikuta, their Sacred Territory that covers an extension of 140,212 hectares.
For all her previous designs and collections Arulpragasam did quite in-depth researches, but for the new collection developed in collaboration with the Huichol she literally went a long way. Leaving London last January, Arulpragasam moved to Mexico and with, no knowledge of Spanish, she tracked down the Huichol and started working with their artisans.
During the following months she developed with them a series of unique beaded designs characterised by intricate and highly symbolic motifs employing traditional crafts and techniques. Arulpragasam entitled the collection "Gold Diggers", a name that tries to bring awareness about the pressures the natives have been going through.
Though a federal court ordered last year the suspension of all mining activity, there are still a few companies (First Majestic Silver Corp, Universe Project, Revolution Resources, La Maroma, Frisco Group) with concessions in the municipality of Catorce. In a nutshell, mining and the exploration activities of mining companies in the sacred territory of Wirikuta are still on, despite the territory being included in 1998 in UNESCO’s World Network of Sacred Sites.
A survivor of the Sri Lankan Tamil genocide, Arulpragasam knows what it means to see a culture wiped out by people in power and decided to give voice to the voiceless with a project that ties in art, craft, design and fashion, highlighting not just political, social and environmental issues, but also the damages imposed by wealth, power, privilege and racism on minority groups. So far she has definitely won a battle in granting the Huichol more visibility: the "Gold Diggers" collection is currently on showcase at the Museo Frida Kahlo, while two pieces were also included in the permanent collection of the museum.
When did you first develop an interest in the work of the Wixárika people? Kali Arulpragasam: I came across the works of the Wixárika people for the first time 6 years ago, after my "“Tourism" collection was part of a charity auction at the Phoenix Museum to raise money for Haiti. I was in a small shop in Redhook, saw a beaded panther head and was completely blown away. It was love at first sight. I asked who it was by and the assistant said it was by some artisans in the mountains of Mexico. After that, I went back to London and continued with my life and work. For 6 years I felt this constant yearning to find them and often went onto the Internet to look for information about these people called Huichol or Wixárika - the latter is the correct term they use to indicate themselves. In January this year I had this urge to close my studio, get on a flight to Mexico and find them by myself wherever they may be in the states of Nayarit and Jalisco.
What did you do when you arrived in Mexico? Kali Arulpragasam: I did an artist's residency for three weeks, then I got a bus to Puerto Vallarta to try and find my way around. The Wixárika people live in the Northern Western parts of Jalisco and I spent the first three months - from February to April/May - just getting to know the artisans who would come down from the mountains and sell their art to the tourists in Puerto Vallarta. I started to make friends with the Wixárika artisans who were there. The Wixárika people are very secluded and protective of their culture, because they've been attacked for hundreds of years by all types of colonisation, imperialism, diseases, exploiters and gold diggers. Every type of threat has come to them and they have managed to hold on to their culture, religion, language and costumes. In their culture everything is still so pure as it was from the beginning of times.
Did you find it difficult to reach out and make them understand you weren't there to exploit them? Kali Arulpragasam: I didn't speak a word of Spanish, but we communicated all the same through art, curiosity and respect. We come from different languages, cultures and religions, but, when the universal language you speak is love, you can understand each other. The visual language of this project can certainly be communicated without words and through love and art. In today's world we don't really get and give time to understand cultures, while I knew I had to give them time. So I spent the first three months building trust, studying their rituals and wardrobes, and researching. The Wixárika are very private people, because they have been under exploitation and threats by wealthy powerful foreigners and, even in their own country, they are subject to the racism of wealthy land owners. They have respect of other people and they were open to me, the only reason why they don't trust you is because they have been exploited. Because of time constrictions and pressures as designers we end up studying these cultures from our living rooms, looking at pictures on Google, printing them and putting them on our boards to start a collection. I didn't face too many difficulties with them because I was very open and wanted them to understand I wasn't interested in money and fame, but I was interested in helping them with my concepts and skills in creating a collection that added value to a culture very much de-valued and disregarded also by the local political forces. These people are so spiritual and create a very personal form of art, I would say the purest form of art since they do it to communicate with the gods. It was obvious that, if I wanted to enter their community, I couldn't be disrespectful, but I had to give respect to gain respect back.
Why is the collection called "Gold Diggers"? Kali Arulpragasam: Before arriving I wasn't really aware of what the Wixárika people were going through as there is very little information about them. When I arrived I finally understood more about the situation: silver mining companies are buying lands to dig them up for silver, and they have cast their greedy eyes on the sacred land called Wirikuta in Mexico. Mining companies inject cyanide into the ground, and this process pollutes the water system, killing life. If this happens to the Wixárika people also the peoyte, the cactus that grows in that area and that they use to communicate with their gods, will be poisoned, severing the tie between them and their sacred land. The Wixárika people have to pass through four areas to complete their rituals and journey towards their gods and one point, Isla del Rey, was sold to tourist developers for $10 per square metre, while another one is being sold for one billion Canadian dollars. I was amazed because such an ancient culture that has been existing for centuries and that belongs to the world and not just to Mexico, is being given away, sold and destroyed. The name of the collection is therefore a reference to the greedy powers who have an eye on this culture - be they tourist developers or mining companies, these arrogant and selfish fortune hunters do not realise the damages they inflict on these cultures.
Each piece in this collection is unique, how did this collaboration work design-wise? Kali Arulpragasam: These pieces surely can't be replicated, they can only be hand-made in Mexico by the Wixárika artisans using techniques that have been around for one hundred years and that are used to tell a visual story through a work of art or a wearable piece. The collaboration happened very naturally; for the first few months I looked at the various different groups of people who could have been given different tasks in accordance with their speciality. For example, a young woman named Gloria is good with 3D flowers, while there are artisans who are better at other things, like 2D effects. I tried to understand what they are comfortable with at different levels and, from there on, we both pushed each other. We grew day by day, trying to find solutions to different problems and issues. Some ideas were difficult to put into practice at the beginning, but new ideas always are. It took us a long time to complete some of the most intricate pieces such as ponchos and scarves, but things got easier after the first designs were finished. Communication got easier too and we've been trying to exchange words and teach things to each other. I also speak Tamil the oldest Indian Language, which is close to Sanskrit, and the Huichols suggested me to learn Spanish, but I said I wanted them to teach me Wixárika words. So, they asked me in return to teach them Tamil words! In a way that's understandable since we both preserved our cultures, even though everything around us has been crumbling or has been destroyed. In my case, the Tamils have been violently massacred and the culture wiped out by the government in Sri Lanka.
Which is your favourite piece out of this collection? Kali Arulpragasam: Each one is my favourite, I'm attached to each of them. I love the coloured Mexican leaves, but I find the black ones also very strong as they symbolise in which ways the life of these natives will be affected if the land and the waters will be poisoned by cyanide, which is used by the miners to break down the silver. Some of the pieces hint at different types of threat: the Wixárika have very secret and colourful symbols, but, in some of the designs, we left empty or blank spaces, lifted the colours or gave the impression they were fading away to hint at the dichotomy between a limitless territory with no boundaries and a place with freedom of culture and religion and a restricted place in which the territory has been damaged and consumed by greed. In this way the collection also represents the struggle of other indigenous cultures all over the world, so it assumes a global meaning. I myself have witnessed the same thing with the Sri Lankan Tamils being wiped out in a violent way - first they blew up our historic library, then the temples, houses, and museums; then they killed the young men and raped the women, attacking our history, identity and our DNA - and the sadness of attacking a culture and killing its identity, art, religion and territory is immense.
The Wixárika also collaborated with you on the lookbook: can you tell us more about it? Kali Arulpragasam: The photoshoot included in the lookbook tries to tell the story of these people, revealing who they are, where they live, what they wear and what they create. All the models I chose wear their own clothes, the locations were the places they live in - in Nayarit and Jalisco - there was hardly any re-touching done and no hairstyle artist involved, with very little make up. I did the scouting, I chose the models and the location, researching into the areas before and during my production. But what you see is what I wanted to show - the truth. You could argue that the lookbook is a sort of journalistic documentation, since it's very rare seeing collections being photographed on location by the people who made them, in their environment and celebrating their own culture. Usually you get your products made and then you put them on a model. This is more of an attempt at connecting with the natives and pulling them in, rather than looking at them from the outside, passing by and taking some photos or making a detached film. The way I work is different and it has to be precise: every shot must make sense and deliver my message and my vision.
You just said that the lookbook has more of a journalistic value, so would you describe this collaboration as going behind art, craft and fashion to focus also on other issues such as anthropology and ethnography? Kali Arulpragasam: You can read this collection on many different levels. In the past I always tried to push my work in different directions, tackling also political, social and educational issues. I think design can help us bringing awareness towards certain issues, documenting what is happening right now on this planet. As an artist, I can include these topics in my work, talk about them and question the state of things. Collaborating with these native tribes who are under threat because of people's greed allowed me to become more aware of what these peaceful and humble natives went through and how important it is to respect the ancient heritage of Mexico. People who go and help the natives are subjected to threats and intimidation by the gold-diggers.
The collection has also been showcased at the Frida Kahlo Museum, how did you arrange that? Kali Arulpragasam: I've been trying to go and visit the museum for a long time, since Kahlo is a goddess to me and her museum is a temple, but this time her spirit must have been really guiding me! One day while doing a research on the rituals of the Wixárika people, I took a break and was in a bar in Tepic with my driver and met a person who introduced me to someone working at the Casa Azul. I had an appointment with them, went back to Jalisco to work, and then it all happened. Maybe the conjoined forces of Frida Kahlo's spirit and of the gods of the Wixárika people helped me bringing the collection to the attention of the museum. We displayed 12 pieces there, 8 of them will be showcased until January 12th 2014. We launched the showcase with a press conference that included a panel of Wixárika people with two of my artisans as well, since it was important to give them a voice. It was amazing also because we had quite a few Mexican students with us and I hope it inspired them to be proud of their culture, voice their concerns and not ignore the threats to their territory.
Did the museum decide to display any of the pieces in its permanent collection? Kali Arulpragasam: Yes, the large scarves. The biggest pieces - "Non-Endangered Religion" and "Endangered Religion" - will be part of the permanent collection at the Museo Frida Kahlo, the most spirited heritage driven museum in Mexico. They will be on display in a room under Frida Kahlo's Bedroom and Studio, among her collection of Mayan sculptures. It is amazing to know that the priceless treasures the Wixárika people and I created will be in such an important museum in Mexico for eternity!
Do you feel that fashion can genuinely help us preserving endangered cultures? Kali Arulpragasam: Fashion for me is communication. It's about communicating to the world who you are and I believe that there are good and bad forces in the world. The powerful groups that own all these fashion houses and brands believe in a social and financial pyramid in which only a few people are prosperous and all the rest work as slaves to maintain other people's wealth. That's wrong, but, luckily, there are good people who are always questioning issues and showing the beauty of the world and the amazing results you can achieve when cultures work together creating new things with real human value. I certainly did not come here to advance the gold-diggers of Mexico, but to create art with the Wixárika people in a battle that saw me joining forces with a native tribes against the gold-diggers. The main aim was showing people the value of the Wixárika and I think we have won this battle for them, but also for me as a Tamil.
Where will you be selling the pieces? Kali Arulpragasam: Superfertile and the Wixárika people have the rights to reproduce these pieces. We will take orders and I will be working with my team of Wixárika artisans to make the designs. With this project I have also introduced a business model to help the indigenous people: I've given them the right to continue these pieces to encourage world collaboration, giving them the chance to evolve and expand. I hope they will continue to use and produce these pieces and it is extremely rewarding to know that, after I'm gone, they will develop these ideas, progress and continue for the rest of their existence, this makes me feel proud. I think the time has come to toss aside the most commercial aspects of the fashion industry that have produced so far mountains of waste and pollution, and focus on properly investing in a culture generating projects revolving around interaction and collaboration to rediscover traditional skills and ancient techniques that are dying out and that we, as designers, can incorporate in new pieces keeping in this way alive the genuine treasures of the world. I hope this project can show what a real collaboration should be about.
Do you feel this collaboration has also been a sort of journey of self-discovery for you? Kali Arulpragasam: I decided to do this project almost out of a desire and need, because I wanted to know who these people were, but, out of that, came something that is helping that culture and that has changed me deeply. When I came here I only packed a suitcase of clothes since I thought I was only coming to Mexico for three months and left my possessions on storage in London. I sort of stripped myself of all these materialistic things and went on with my life. On the spiritual level I felt enriched by this experience. The Wixárika people have shown me a lot of things: first and foremost to create beautiful work for the well-being of the universe and to give voice through design and creativity to issues that are voiceless, and not because you want to put them in a small gallery for the joy or a few wealthy people drinking champagne. I feel this has been a very spiritual journey that prompted me to grow up a lot, making me realise I'm the servant of the gods and not of manufacturing and commercial people. Besides, this is also the first time a Sri Lankan Tamil has collaborated with an ancient tribe from Mexico, so it's also a magically historic moment.
Is this a revolution? Kali Arulpragasam: I'm often asked "Are you going to start a revolution?" and I always answer that I'm an artist, not an activist. I will never stop putting things out like this project. This is a revolution by art and not by violence, I protest about bad things going on in the world, using my tools and skills to let the message seep in. Whatever I create, wherever I may go, I will give voice to the voiceless and the de-valued. I think I'm strong and brave enough to do it.
What projects do you have for the future? Kali Arulpragasam: I would love to continue working with indigenous people and bring their techniques back into the modern world. I would like to bring back the show to Europe, since I want it to go round the world and let more people know the story of the Wixárika people and be blessed by their gods.
Superfertile + Wixárika's "Gold Diggers" is at the Frida Kahlo Museum until 12th January 2014.
Fans of DIY fashion rejoice and get ready to shop not for presents but for fabrics this Christmas. A year after releasing the pattern for Giles Deacon's "Troubadour" dress, SHOWstudio's Design Download is announcing a new project by experimental Jonathan Anderson of the J.W. Anderson label.
The good news is that there will actually be two patterns, one for a leather top and one for its matching "balloon skirt", both taken from the designer's Autumn/Winter 2013 collection. While these pieces already offer the wearers a certain degree of freedom as they can pull the ribbon and tighten/loosen the hole of the skirt or alter the dimensions of the sleeve with the same trick, recreating these pieces in different fabrics will allow people to take the garments to another level and be even more experimental.
Like for the previous designs, you can downoad the pattern (available from Christmas Day), make your look and submit images via Twitter (@SHOWstudio #DesignDownload) and/or email (design.download@showstudio.com) them for the chance to see your work displayed online in SHOWstudio's submissions gallery.
The favourite dresses - picked by Nick Knight and Anderson - will be part of a specially commissioned SHOWstudio fashion film (deadline for submissions: 31 March 2014).
Anderson closes with this project his annus mirabilis: in 2013 LVMH took a minority stake in his business and tapped him as creative director for Loewe.
Launched in 2002, SHOWstudio's Design Download initiative encourages people to be creative while discovering also the technicalities of fashion. If you're not convinced by Anderson's top and skirt, you can always try downloading another pattern by Yohji Yamamoto, Maison Martin Margiela, Stephen Jones, Gareth Pugh, Giles Deacon, Alexander McQueen or Antony Price, among the others (check out the Design Download page here). Still there? Go out and shop for fabrics now!
Restricting colour and form to make sure their compositions included only vertical and horizontal lines and primary colours was one of the main aims of the artists representing and supporting the Dutch De Stijl movement.
Among them there was also architect Gerrit Rietveld. The latter produced furniture following the De Stijl principles, also applied to the entire Rietveld Schröder house in Utrecht. For its sliding partitions, open spaces and free-floating wall planes, the house was considered as one of the masterpieces of De Stijl architecture.
Rietveld's furniture was also characterised by function and visual simplicity, and by a sense of movement granted by the use of diagonal lines. One of Rietveld's most famous pieces remains his Red and Blue Chair (1917) that, with its skeletal structure and supporting frame, could be considered as the projection into space and materialisation of Piet Mondrian's grid-like compositions that extended beyond the borders of the canvas.
Both Rietveld and Mondrian explored this principle of continuousness, allowing the painting or the object to disperse itself into the spatial field. In their work the grid is a symbol of continuum and free flowing spaciousness, a concept adopted also in Mies van der Rohe's interiors and in Le Corbusier's free plan.
The modern open grid recently re-appeared also in fashion in Yeohlee's Pre-Fall 2014 collection. Intended as a representation of the invisible and continuous field, as explored also in Rietveld's Steltman Chair (1963), the collection includes grid-like prints on trousers and dresses and minimalist lines intersecting with planes on tops and shirts.
Colour is introduced in some of the designs through prints inspired by the abstract Roman mosaic glass technique called murrine. Yet the best pieces remain the ones in which the designer explores the possibility of endless lines and lets them spill out of the contours of her designs, exploring the infinity of space.
Classic Christmas ballets are usually plot-driven and inspired by fairy tales, but there is a plot-less ballet on at the moment at the Royal Opera House in London that, though inspired by something unusual, is equally sparkling, magic and glittering - George Balanchine’s Jewels.
The choreographer created it in 1967 for the New York City Ballet, taking inspiration from the beauty of the gem stones he saw in the windows of jewellers Van Cleef & Arpels.
The piece - the world's first abstract ballet and the first full-evening plot-less ballet, being pure dance with no literary content - is divided in three movements each of them dedicated to a different gem, "Emeralds", "Rubies" and "Diamonds", and characterised by music by different composers, Fauré, Stravinsky and Tchaikovsky respectively.
Each section also salutes a different era in classical ballet’s history - nineteenth-century French school, the modern New York scene and therefore Balanchinian style, and Petipa's Imperial Russian ballet.
The different movements are also characterised by different dance styles and costumes (green tulle skirts, dynamic red stretchy costumes and flat white tutus) and also hint at distinct periods in Balanchine’s own life and at the three dance schools that influenced his career – the Mariinsky Theatre in St Petersburg, the Opéra in Paris and the New York City Ballet.
When it was first staged, the ballet proved extremely successful, with the mid-section Rubies being widely appreciated for its modern dance movements, broken lines, off-centre weight placement and syncopated accents that referenced the rhythms of jazz, hinting at the influence of African-American dance on Balanchine's work.
This new production by the Royal Ballet that staged it already in 2007, features the original costume designs.
A short yet very informative video by the Royal Opera House (embedded at the end of this post) takes the viewer behind the scenes revealing some of the secrets behind the Jewels costumes.
Stones, gems, crystals and sequins may create lovely effects when hit by the lights, but costume designers must also consider the problems, accidents and malfunctions that specific elements applied to a costume may cause to a dancer or to their partner while energetically moving on stage and find practical solutions to sort them out (and this is something that all those fashion designers devoted to over-embellishments should also start considering on a functional level...).
Costume jewellery often appears in ballets in the form of tiaras, crowns and headdresses, but usually it has got a merely decorative function and doesn't add up to the story. In this case instead the jewels become the subject of the piece, assuming an anthropomorphic value and turning into the protagonists of the piece.
Image credits for this post: preparations in the costume department for The Royal Ballet's Jewels. Photo by Rob Moore.
British-American Joan de Beauvoir de Havilland, better known as Joan Fontaine, died in her sleep last Sunday at her house in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California.
Born in Japan in 1917 from British parents, Fontaine started her career in 1935 when she debuted in a production of Call It a Day, taking up in the same year a small role in No More Ladies. After a few more minor roles, she starred in The Man Who Found Himself (1937), appearing two years later in The Women(1939).
She had her big break in Rebecca (1940), starring also Laurence Olivier, and directed by Alfred Hitchcock, a film that won her a nomination to the Academy Awards for Best Actress. Fontaine did win the following year the Academy Award for Best Actress in Hitchcock's Suspicion (1941), which co-starred Cary Grant, beating her elder sister Olivia de Havilland, up for Hold Back the Dawn (Joan and Olivia eventually became the only set of siblings to win lead acting Academy Awards).
Fontaine continued acting throughout the '40s - earning a third best actress Oscar nomination for her role in The Constant Nymph (1943) - and the '50s. Her last theatrical film was The Witches (1966), which she also co-produced, while her last credited performance came in the 1994 television film Good King Wenceslas.
There is an interesting fashion/costume connection in a romantic thriller Fontaine shot in 1950. September Affair, directed by William Dieterle, is a love story between prominent businessman David Lawrence (Joseph Cotton) and pianist Marianne "Manina" Stuart (Joan Fontaine). David and Manina meet on a flight from Rome to New York and, when the plane is diverted to Naples for engine repairs, they go on some sight-seeing, ending up missing their flight.
As the plane they had to catch crashes into the ocean, and all on board are presumed dead, they decide to begin a new life in Florence, running away from their engagements, worries and fears, starting a love affair based on deception until their past catches up with them.
Fontaine's costumes for this film were designed by Edith Head who used the actress' wardrobe to reflect the changes in Manina's life.
At the beginning of the film Manina is ready to go back to America to star in a concerto and wears a formal skirt dress; when she falls in love with David in Capri we see her in a bathing suit while in Florence she adopts holiday dresses. A formal dark skirt suit marks her return to New York, while she officially re-enters her old life as a famous pianist when she wears a lavish evening gown for her Rachmaninoff concerto.
The elegant gown reappears in the opening picture in this post that shows Fontaine with a doll in a matching dress: Head often used dolls wearing small versions of the costumes she made for her actresses. The dolls were given away as gifts or used for publicity purposes.
Final suggestion: rewatch September Affair paying more attention to the costumes Edith Head made for Joan Fontaine - you will definitely find some lovely inspirations and ideas.
Taking its title from Lou Reed’s 1972 album, the exhibition "Transformer: Aspects of Travesty" organised in 1974 at the Kunstmuseum Lucerne, Switzerland, and curated by Jean-Christophe Ammann, entered history for being among the first ones to explore the relationship between art, society, glam-rock and transvestism. A new version of that same event was re-launched last week at the Richard Saltoun Gallery in London.
The event includes sexually explicit content and works from all the lesser-known artists included in the original exhibition - Luciano Castelli, Jürgen Klauke, Urs Lüthi, Pierre Molinier, Tony Morgan, Luigi Ontani, Walter Pfeiffer, Katarina Sieverding and Werner Alex Meyer (alias Alex Silber).
Rather than a mere commemoration, the new exhibition is a sort of reunion, a way to allow a new and younger audience to rediscover these artists and analyse themes and topics like sexual self-reflection in art.
When "Transformer" first opened in Switzerland, it immediately became influential for the way it explored complex themes of transvestism and the politics and aesthetics of transgressing identity. At the time the exhibition also toured Germany and Austria, and, in more recent years, the event was referenced in further cultural and art exhibitions all over the world.
This re-proposition of the original exhibition has still got the power to shock and enthral the senses: portraits of Luciano Castelli, co-founder with Salomé of punk bank Geile Tiere (Horny Creatures) in the '80s, remain even in our days mesmerisingly controversial; Sieverding's abstract self-portraits, close-ups and superimpositions of male and female portrait photographs employed as a response to the feminist debates of the period, try to subvert and confuse distinctions between genders and assume a new meaning in our age in which boundaries between the sexes are often blurred; Urs Lüthi's photographs tackle the process of personality dissolving in a visually dynamic style, while Walter Pfeiffer's portraits of a young Warholesque cast of handsome young men question and subvert sexual codes.
Even 40 years later "Transformer" still provides us with visually alternative definitions of identity, sex and desire.
Transformer: Aspects of Travesty is at Richard Saltoun Gallery, 111 Great Titchfield Street, London W1W 6RY, until 14 February 2014.
"It is a pity, but today there are no more fashion illustrators," Yves Saint Laurent stated in 2007, adding, "For however much I admire photographers, I have to admit that their work is done to the detriment of the design...In the case of an illustration...the design is well and truly present and alive."
Saint Laurent's words perfectly summarised the state of fashion illustration at the beginning of the noughties. While it is undeniable that fashion illustration is enjoying a renaissance in our days - maybe as a reaction to all the digital and quite often heavily retouched images we are surrounded by on a daily basis - the '40s and the '50s were the heydays of fashion illustration, an art characterised in those decades by a glamorous and elegant style.
More resources were put into photography in the '60s, but there were a few selected artists who injected back some magic into the world of fashion illustration, in the following decades. One of them was Tony Viramontes, currently celebrated in a volume by Dean Rhys Morgan recently published by Laurence King.
Born in Santa Monica, California, in 1956 from first generation Mexican immigrants, Frank Anthony Viramontes showed a strong artistic streak from a very young age. From drawing his brothers playing football, he soon passed to portraying marching bands, cheerleaders and bullfights, performances that inspired him to focus on the details such as the brightly coloured uniforms of the matadors, though women soon started dominating his illustrations.
A fan of Antonio Lopez who became his mentor when Viramontes moved to New York, the young illustrator first studied with Jack Potter, heavily influenced by classic styles and by figures such as Renés Bouché and René Gruau, and then with Steven Meisel at Parsons. The parts of the book mentioning Meisel's energetic classes are particularly inspiring as they shed light on Viramontes' electric and contagious creativity, visual wit and ability to make simple, extremely modern and instantly recognisable shapes in boldly outlined drawings.
Viramontes had his first big break when he met Hanae Mori in New York and she convinced him to move to Paris in 1982. In the French capital Viramontes had his first important commissions, started collaborating with famous fashion magazines and designers and opened a studio that soon became a sort of new version of Andy Warhol's Factory. In his studio he created beautiful images working from life with fully dressed models with the correct hairstyles and make-up posing in front of him.
The volume is divided in sections – Fashion, Women and Men. The first focuses on fashion drawings with illustrations of designs by Chanel, Dior, Givenchy, Hanae Mori, Gianfranco Ferré, Gianni Versace, Halston, Jean Paul Gaultier (who also wrote the foreword to this volume), Yves Saint Laurent, Claude Montana and Stephen Jones, among the others. This part also includes many drawings Viramontes produced for Valentino Garavani's silver jubilee that reinterpret in a modern key the most classic styles by the Italian designer.
The sections dedicated to men and women juxtapose Viramontes' Polaroids to his drawings, trying to find correspondences and contrasts between photographs and drawings.
Viramontes favoured female models - Paloma Picasso, Lisa Rosen, Scarlett Napoleon Bordello, Leslie Winer, Teri Toye and Violeta Sanchez, to mention a few - with marked features such as strong noses, since he thought that pretty women couldn't wear hats. Male models like Mike Hill, Cyril Brulé, Ray Petri, Tanel Bedrossiantz, and Greg Thompson gave him instead the chance to create drawings of muscular and sculpted bodies and to come up with collages that combined photography with illustration.
The volume also touches upon the collaborations with the music industry: Viramontes created indeed the artwork for Arcadia's album "So Red The Rose", drawing portraits of all the band members and of model Violeta Sanchez for the sleeve art (there are quite a few rare images included in the book taken from Nick Rhodes' personal archive and collection) and for Janet Jackson's "Control".
Viramontes' existence was unfortunately too short: after living a hectic lifestyle moving and working during the '80s between the States, France, Italy and Japan, he prematurely died of AIDS in May 1988, leaving behind a series of sophisticated and strong portraits, drawings, sketches and illustrations characterised by a dynamic energy and intensity, an archive of graphic work that perfectly defines the decade in which he lived.
Tony Viramontes - Bold, Beautiful and Damned by Dean Rhys Morgan is out now on Laurence King Publishing.
Yesterday's post celebrated an Italian fashion magazine from the '40s through its cover by René Gruau. Let's continue the thread for another day by posting two rare sketches by Gruau from my archive.
The first shows a revisitation by the Sorelle Fontana of the classic man's tuxedo, matched with a pique shirt and a grey waistcoat with tiny embroideries enriched by an antique chain watch. This ensemble was accessorised with a veiled bowler hat (definitely an idea that should be relaunched).
The same hat accessorised also the second sketch that shows instead a model by Schuberth featuring a swallow-tail jacket decorated on the back with six buttons.
The most interesting thing about the drawings is the fact that the models seem to pose in and out of the frame, breaking in a lovely way the space between the reader and the illustration.
It's easier to create your own fashion archive when you have friends scouting things for you. This issue of Italian monthly magazine Bellezza from February 1949 is the latest addition to my personal archive. It arrived via Silvia Petrucci Dal Co' in Rome who knows I collect old magazines (possibly with some connections with Irene Brin/Pasquale De Antonis - and there are quite a few pieces written by Brin in this issue and illustrated by De Antonis' images).
The magazine is not in a desperately good condition, but it features a lovely cover featuring an illustration by René Gruau (who, at the time, signed his works for Italian magazines as Renato Gruau) portraying an elegant and poetic woman in a wide brim hat. Though simple, the cover is striking as Gruau played with different lines and planes, partially hiding the woman's face behind the magazine title. A lovely present and a welcome addition to my archive.