It can be a strange and disheartening experience to hear people who had never heard Elsa Schiaparelli's name up until a few seasons ago, suddenly talking about her and "the codes of her fashion house" as if they were experts and scholars. Their behaviour really makes you wonder where these people were while the house was lying in fashion limbo, but this is not the only question that is currently torturing Schiap's genuine fans. The key dilemma at the moment is what Schiap's house is all about.
Critics who were hoping to see lots of shocking pink nuances and Surrealism on the Schiaparelli runway during Paris Haute Couture Week in January were disappointed. The first couture show after 60 years was indeed a bit of a surprise.
Former Rochas designer Marco Zanini was appointed Creative Director at the house of Schiaparelli last September, but the relaunch of the fashion house has been a long process that started in 2006 when Italian entrepreneur and Tod’s President Diego Della Valle bought the label.
In 2012 the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York paid homage to her with the Prada and Schiaparelli exhibition (the first one after the Philadelphia and Paris exhibitions in 2003 and 2004...); in the same year ex-model Farida Khelfa was appointed spokesperson for the label and a year ago the fashion house opened a couture salon for Schiaparelli in Place Vendôme, Paris (where Schiap's store and atelier used to be based).
Last summer Christian Lacroix created 18 Haute Couture designs as a one-off tribute to Elsa Schiaparelli. Speculations were rife when last year Zanini was appointed as Creative Director and for a few months expectations were high, but the final results were a bit puzzling.
Zanini went into a search for an irreverent, cosmopolitan, educated, and daring woman, an elegant non-conformist in a nutshell and, to find her, rather than looking at archival pieces, he decided to homage Schiap's personality.
The show opened with a full-length evening gown characterised by draped motifs and with a shocking pink and white pattern that Zanini dubbed "Ciel ètoile" on a blue background. The mood then switched to masculinity with a black wool tuxedo with loose pants and a jacket that could be turned inside out to reveal frothy white silk ruffles.
The reversible tailored jacket came back also later on, in variations that included panels of ostrich feathers or further chiffon ruches, but the collection featured an eclectic mix of designs including a dark blue bodysuit with gold ivy motifs by the House of Lesage matched with a polka dot navy chiffon robe (dubbed by Zanini as "La pluie de Paris"); playful prints of flowers blossoming into women's profiles; shorts matched with bikini tops, a voluminous green satin duchesse reversible opera coat, and a T-shirt dress decorated in stripes of multi-coloured micro-sequins.
Everything was flamboyant and a bit theatrical, including the sculptural white bride pantsuit with sequinned embroideries and ombré veil.
There were no references to sport and flying suits or to trompe l'oeil knitwear (what a shame) and no collaborations with any special artists. Schiap's Surrealism was replaced instead by absurdism: her trademark leg-of-mutton sleeves were for example taken to freakish and preposterous proportions and attached to a long chiffon dress.
Further Schiap references were hidden in the details such as Stephen Jones' wave-like tricorn hat that hinted at Christian Bérard's drawings for Schiap and a tiara in the Ursa Major formation, a reference to the birthmarks on Schiaparelli's face but also to the connection with her astronomer great-uncle.
The looks were accessorised with flat crocodile sandals decorated with feathers for a touch of sporty tribalism and with Gripoix jewels representing a Venus flytrap ring or ivy leaves crawling up the models' arms. Though eclectic, the collection wasn't certainly coherent and seemed to feature quite a few echoes of Galliano, Lacroix and Gaultier, designers who, in turn, echoed Schiap in their own work, so you ended up getting the impression of experiencing a double déjà vu.
Lacroix's designs disappeared shortly afterwards they were showcased in Paris; Zanini's suit with reversible jacket reappeared a few days ago on Tilda Swinton on the red carpet at the Berlinale. You wonder, though, if that's the only piece we will see from this collection, because if that's the case, the house of Schiaparelli will be a box capable of generating only media revenues, but unable to produce any tangible profits. In a nutshell, if just a few months ago Schiap was a girlfriend in a coma, now she's stirring, but she has woken yet.
Critics stated Zanini showed he has potential, but he will definitely need more than his sideburns and tattoos to prove he has the genuine irreverence he needs to lead the fashion house with the shocking fame founded by a rebel woman (note - a rebel AND a woman - and consider also the fact that there are currently very few women designers out there...) who broke rule after rule and who wanted to shock the bourgeoisie.
As a follow up to the previous post, let's focus today on structured and tailored garments characterised by a geometrical simplicity focusing on a jacket from Gianfranco Ferré's Spring/Summer 1982 collection.
The designs from this collection were inspired by luxury cruises from the '30s (a decade currently being celebrated by an exhibition at the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York) and featured uniform-like skirt and trouser suits characterised by clear geometrical constructions. The jacket in this sketch was indeed based on a four canvas pattern and featured a white piqué rectangle on the front.
In an interview that appeared on The New York Times Magazine in April 1981, Ferré stated about his geometrical inspirations: "I'm mentally withdrawn into a little space inside me I call 'un quadrato perfetto', a perfect square. That's when I plan. What I always strive for is the perfect balance between simplicity and the need for something important. When I begin to design, I start first with the most elementary of designs, the way they do in the East, in India. After travelling to those countries, I have become totally influenced by their uncontaminated way of dressing. We are moving quickly now toward that kind of simplicity in which all a woman really needs is that shirt, that pant, a belt and a good watch."
There is a lot of talk about parametric architecture and the way parameter-based generation of architectural elements can lead to the creation of grand projects with fanciful forms and unusual curves. But, while we can perfectly apply parametrical definitions to a building, parametric fashion is still uncharted territory.
Yet, if we go back a few years in time and think about the history of fashion, we realise that there was maybe someone who was already working out parametric curves in his pieces, the late Italian designer Gianfranco Ferré.
Dubbed the "architect of fashion" by many critics for his background in this field, throughout his career Ferré used a language that pertained to the semantic field of construction to explain his work, often talking in in lectures and interviews about "structure", "form", "shape" and, above all, "project".
Over the course of his career, one project remained a firm constant - the classic white shirt, seen as a canvas that could be disassembled and reassembled, stripped down to the simplest forms or over-embellished.
An exhibition that opened last week at the Prato Textile Museum explores and analyses this key garment in Ferré's universe.
Inspired by architecture, art, or origami, made in the most disparate materials including taffeta and organza, and highlighting the neckline, the shoulders or the waist, the white shirts featured in the event are not ephemeral icons or symbols, but work in progress projects. Frank Gehry stated that "architecture should speak of its time and place, but yearn for timelessness" and, in a way, Ferré did the same with his shirts.
Rita Airaghi, a close collaborator of the late designer and current Director of the Ferré Foundation, has got a refreshing no-nonsense approach to fashion exhibitions: putting together such an event is for Airaghi not about offering an instant visually pleasing high to visitors, but about giving them the chance to stop and think, take in the details and go home with an idea, a project and a method. This is why Airaghi refers to the curator's notes in the Prato event as "technical-scientific descriptions", reminding us all that a proper exhibition is an occasion to learn and research and not just a photo opportunity.
Can you take us through a virtual tour of the exhibition? Rita Airaghi: The exhibition follows Ferré's white shirt project throughout different interpretations and it's introduced by a sort of oneiric installation, a projection on transparent sheets that shows Ferré's hand moving on paper and drawing. The visiting path then takes you through a selection of images made with an innovative technique that reproduces the shirts through a sort of simulated X-rayed effect. These images by Leonardo Salvini are particularly interesting because they allow visitors to read through the structure of the shirts and study the seams and all the hidden details. This is an extremely important aspect since you can read the technical-scientific explanations written by the curator and genuinely understand all the smallest details they refer to by looking at the X-rayed shirts. As you move on to the larger exhibition room you are confronted by a small army comprising 27 shirts: there are 4-5 shirts on each platform and they represent a group of objects, people and emotions as well. They are surrounded by drawings, photographs and adverts referring to the shirts. Here visitors can follow the process of creation of the shirt from the first sketches to the runway presentations and then the interpretation of the advertising or editorial shoots by Guy Bourdin, Gianpaolo Barbieri and many more. So, if visitors have enough time, they will be able to follow a precise path of discovery for each of the exhibited pieces. At the end of the exhibition there is also a 6-7 minute film that focuses on the shirts throughout Ferré's 30 year long career.
What prompted you to organise an exhibition focusing only on the white shirts and not on Ferré's career in general? Rita Airaghi: A proper exhibition about Gianfranco Ferré's all-encompassing world would be huge. Ferré could be defined as a bulimic designer: he tackled so many topics, looked at so many inspirations and employed so many materials that one exhibition about him would be a huge monster in which nothing would be studied in depth. I have very different projects in mind and I would like to tackle every two years one topic at the time to make sure visitors benefit from such events. We're not organising an exhibition to tell people that Gianfranco Ferré was a great designer, since they already know this. We have put together an exhibition that allows people to learn, understand and maybe research one topic in depth. I would also love it if young people coming to visit the event would try and grasp his working method.
The idea of simulating X-rays of the shirts is particularly exciting since in fashion exhibitions we are never allowed to see the internal part of a garment, and also calls to mind Frank Gehry's approach of working "from the inside out". Was this idea inspired by Ferré "the architect of fashion"? Rita Airaghi: One of the main aims of this exhibition is evoking a special atmosphere, that moment that happened at almost every catwalk show when the white shirt appeared on the runway and there was always a sort of sensual, poetical and fantasy aura all around. But that moment was also the expression of the designer's will to recount the story of the white shirt project: this garment is indeed the result of a precise project in Ferré's universe that was thought, drawn and conceived with the mind of an architect.
When you see the X-rayed shirts do you ever think about the work of any specific architect? Rita Airaghi: One of the essays in the volume that accompanies the exhibition was penned by an architect who was a university friend of Ferré and who worked with him on his accessory lines, Daniela Puppa. Rather than writing an essay, she preferred taking images of the shirts and juxtaposing them to different architectural elements and design objects to highlight the similarities between lines, forms and curves. We called this chapter "Assonanze e Affinità" (Assonances and Affinities). One of the main things that came to my mind when I first saw some architectures by Frank Gehry was a shirt dress that is actually a shirt and skirt combo. The skirt was made with a pinstriped fabric, while the white fabric of the bustier wrapped around the chest, reached the shoulders and formed another sleeve that rolled up upon itself on one arm. The curves of this shirt-looking bustier are very similar to Frank Gehry's curves and this design proves Ferré had the same frame of mind that allowed him to create solid and powerful yet soft and ethereal architectures.
As you highlighted, the white shirt was a discipline that continuously evolved collection after collection. How was it possible to isolate in this work-in-progress project 27 shirts? Rita Airaghi: It was extremely difficult! We selected them according to forms and project. We obviously went through a lot of shirts and some of them were basic men's shirts embellished with lace, embroideries, and appliqued elements, so they looked like very complex shirts from the point of views of materials, but they weren't interesting for the purposes of this specific exhibition. We found indeed more interesting a crêpe de chine shirt with no embellishments that actually revealed behind it a precise inspiration and story. There is for example a shirt from 2001 that could be described as a sort of blown up collar of an ordinary men's shirt that passes around the breast area twice. I find this project particularly interesting, because it's a bit like a synecdoche since it employs a part of the classic men's shirt to refer to the whole thing.
Do you have a favourite Ferré shirt? Rita Airaghi: I am completely biased and therefore unable to pick just one! When working with other curators and set designers I find it really interesting discovering which is their favourite piece and why. To be honest I don't think there is a shirt that could be elected as the queen of this exhibition, even though I have a soft spot for the first one, because it's the first one, for the shirt that looks like a chalice or a calla flower, because it is poetical and lyrical, and for the collar shirt because I think it's a clever idea. That said, I'm really in love with each of these 27 shirts.
Will there be a catalogue of the exhibition? Rita Airaghi: Yes, it will be published by Skira and it will feature the X-rayed shirts accompanied by the technical-scientific sheets by Daniela Degl'Innocenti that include information about materials and inspirations, and new photographs of the shirts by Luca Stoppini. The book will also feature a series of essays that focus on Ferré's modus operandi by different people such as designer Quirino Conti, set designer Margherita Palli, and architect Franco Razzi who was a close friend of Ferré since his university years and who provided for us an architect's view on the designer.
Will the exhibition travel abroad as well? Rita Airaghi: Nothing is defined yet, but there are some ideas. I would love to take the event to Rome, but we are in touch with institutions in Berlin, Moscow, Antwerp and maybe London. There are also quite a few institutions in the States who would pay to have such an exhibition in their museums and Qatar may be another option.
In 1982 an exhibition at the MIT explored the links between architecture and fashion through the work of a few selected designers, Gianfranco Ferré included. Why do you think this link hasn't been explored in more recent exhibitions, do you feel we are almost scared of discovering the real structure of things while we tend to focus and concentrate on the most superficial aspects? Rita Airaghi: In my opnion the main explanation is not only linked to fashion, but to the entire system that is focusing mainly on what immediately catches your eye on a visual level and what can be easily recounted without doing any in-depth researches. I always feel sad when I lecture and discover that young people who were born in the 1990s do not know the fashion history from the '70s and the '80s, two key decades for Italian fashion, so they do not know Walter Albini or tell you that Armani is old, but relocate the birth of Italian fashion around the '90s with young brands like Dolce & Gabbana and Prada. But when you explain them things from a historical point of view, they are totally fascinated. Yet, if nobody analyses with them the history of fashion, they will stop at what's visually pleasing at the moment, at what the social networks can quickly and immediately grab and spread around.
Do you feel this lack of historical knowledge, is also the main mistake of fashion institutions? Rita Airaghi: Yes, I do. I'm not accusing anybody in particular, but most institutions encourage students to be extremely creative. But, you see, you can't make a plastic dress if you don't know how to make it, if you don't understand how to make this material work on the body, how to mould it and what kind of seams you should use. Gianfranco Ferré always insisted on the logic and rationality of each and every project. After that you can inject your fantasy and poetry into it, but you must remember that three-legged trousers are not useful for anybody. That's why I firmly believe we must all make an effort to help young people studying history, it is indeed only by understanding the past that they will be able to take fashion forward into the future and be genuinely modern.
New York Fashion Week starts today with the first presentations, but on the Internet you can already read previews in which selected designers explain their influences for the next season. Inspirations come from the most disparate disciplines out there – from art to architecture, geography and literature – and they are usually accompanied by striking images, illustrations or sketches.
The most interesting - and most disappointing as well - thing about these previews is the fact that quite a few contemporary designers seem to focus on references that, with their bold graphic styles, immediately attract the readers' eyes without stimulating their minds.
The late Gianfranco Ferré was probably the last designer who compared the act of creating a new design to that of working on a sort of architectural project, studying and dissecting forms, sculpting the body, analysing its real needs and finding a material to create specific shapes, volumes, proportions and dimensions.
Ferré stated that his designs were described as "textile architectures", a definition he liked because he considered his garments as the result of a balanced combination of form and materials created with the body in mind, structures that became alive when they were put on the body.
These quick previews showing us where the inspirations for the new collections are coming from have replaced more serious concepts and fashion theories with numerous images of works of art, buildings or landscapes casually spotted on the Internet. There is a desperate need to build instead a new fashion glossary based not only on images, but on words and solid concepts to determine new structural solutions for innovative fashion creations.
Image credits for this post: Gianfranco Ferré, Autumn/Winter 1986 sketches and catwalk show. Copyright Fondazione Gianfranco Ferré.
Vionnet's collections so far received mixed reviews and, despite the brand appeared every now and then on the red carpet, the label remained a luxury toy in the hands of a billionaire businesswoman.
Chalayan brought a wind of change at Vionnet: though her signature principles - ethereal fabrics, draped motifs and bias cut - were still much present, Chalayan turned away from her archives to emphasise an architectural and industrial approach through elements such as spiral staircases and electric wires.
The spiralling theme appeared in the pale layered bias-cut organza dresses with concentric laser cut outs around the hip and leg area that opened the show and that made many critics sitting in the audience wish they had an X-ray machine that revealed where the seams may have been.
Liquid pleated desses were anchored to a collar-cum-harness that looked a bit like a coral, while column gowns with stiff sleeves jutting out embodied the architectural connection.
The printed and embroidered motifs taken from patternmakers' toiles called indeed to mind blueprints and technical drawings in an architect's studio. Necklaces and belts looked like transparent plastic tubes in which coloured electrical wires passed.
The vision for this collection of demi-couture (so called because it requires only one fitting and is priced less than pure haute couture) wasn't always too clear, but it was less shambolic than when Ashkenazi tried to design the collections by herself.
While Vionnet may be timidly looking forward, it remains legitimate to ask if in future we will see an even more coherent architectural and industrial approach to couture. After all, while leaving behind excessive amounts of embellishments and decorative patterns may be a bit too austere, there is a need to cleanse our vision in favour of more sober and less extravagant pieces.
Less than a month ago Marc Jacobs' Spring/Summer 2014 advertising campaing featuring Miley Cyrus prompted a new debate. This time the pop star's twerking skills weren't actually the main topic of discussion.
The media wondered indeed if the young and pretty woman lying stiff next to Miley Cyrus was actually dead. The fact that she looked lifeless with her hair partially covering her face seemed to perfectly prove she had just passed away (View this photo). If that was the intention of photograher David Sims, though, there wouldn't have been much to be surprised about.
Art and literature in the 18th and 19th centuries quite often focused on episodes that involved the death of a beautiful woman: the "beauty in death" theme inspired indeed many artists, turning decade after decade into a popular topos.
The fashion industry has used and reused this connection for ages, tackling the death of a beautiful woman in photoshoots and turning it into something spectacular, glamorous and sublime. But what's interesting at the moment, is the fact that the "beauty in death" theme in fashion has been infiltrated by two other moods, horror and violence.
We have seen in many previous posts on this site that there is a tradition of horror films with models as main characters or taking place in a fashion house, but at the moment there is a combination of dark atmospheres, horror, fear, and - implicitly - death, also in advertising campaigns, that may be proving that vulnerable, passive and dead women are considered as extremely trendy by that same fashion industry that consistently claims of empowering them. Take the recent Alexander McQueen Spring/Summer 2014 campaign featuring Kate Moss.
Shot by photographer Steven Klein in East London, the campaign was inspired by a horror/noir film. The advert is actually a slightly changed version of the incipit of a famous British film, Peeping Tom (1960). Directed by Michael Powell, this psychological thriller focuses on the character of Mark, a young shy man who would like to be a filmmaker, but also happens to be a serial killer.
Scarred forever by the psychological experiments on fear of his father who used him as a guinea pig for his studies on the nervous system, Mark kills his victims - a prostitute, an actress and a pin up - with a spear attached to the tripod of his camera and shows the victims their own murder via a mirror he has attached to the camera. The reflected fear is therefore magnified, while the victim is objectified in a misogynous way.
Klein's advert denotes a certain lack of originality, since it reproduces more or less the first few minutes of the film (PR officers will tell you this is a "tribute" or "homage"; lawyers will define it as "plagiarism and infringement of copyright"...you decide): in Peeping Tom a prostitute is looking at a window shop when the protagonist arrives and starts filming her from behind.
Before following her into her flat, the protagonist films himself throwing in a bin the box of the film he is using. In Klein's advert, Moss is the protitute looking at the window, but the guy doing the filming throws in the bin a doll that looks like a miniature version of the model.
There is actually a rather interesting connection between Peeping Tom and fashion: Moira Shearer starring as Vivian wears in the film designs by John Tullis of Horrockses, while Anna Massey, who appears in the role of Helen, wears dresses by Polly Peck. Both the actresses look elegant, yet their image is still very classic (remember, the film was released in 1960, so the revolution was yet to come). McQueen's designs in Klein's campaign give the advert a darker edge.
Yet the main moods of Peeping Tom - darkness, suspense and fear - are perfectly replicated in the advert. Moss is not shown as a corpse, but the fast images and close ups at the very end hint at a violent death, making you wonder.
The fashion industry is often claiming of empowering women, yet we have designers dressing women in children's clothes and suggesting us to opt for a glittery world of unicorns and fairies, or adverts suggesting us that a dead woman is sensually desirable and erotically attractive, her objectified body awakening sublime feelings of fear and excitement.
Both the trends essentially emphasise women's passivity and vulnerability, even though the "dead/murdered woman" trend is a bit more worrying since we are implicity told that the image of a woman violently killed boosts sales.
In a way the vulnerable image doesn't even go well with McQueen's own vision of women: though accused of misogyny, the late designer always defended himself, stating in interviews he wished to make women feel stronger through his garments and wanted people to be afraid of the women he dressed.
It is only natural then to wonder why in this campaign the woman can't be more active, engaged and ready to defend herself, why she can't escape the attacker or attack him in turn.
There are some explanations, though, behind the main themes picked for this campaign. In a 1996 interview with Harper's Bazaar, stylist Isabella Blow stated about McQueen's Autumn/Winter 1995-96 collection ("Highland Rape"): "McQueen is like a Peeping Tom in the way he slits ad stabs at fabric to explore all the erogenous zones of the body."
Blow was referencing Powell's film and, in a way, McQueen's complexity and severity to cut could also be compared to Mark's obsession for cutting and combining together the images of his victims.
The voodoo dolls that appear in the campaign dressed exactly like Moss may also be distant references to McQueen's Spring/Summer 1997 collection "La Poupée" inspired by Hans Bellmer's dissected and dismembered dolls.
Yet while we have found out the reasons why Klein referenced Peeping Tom and dolls, it is still difficult to find an answer to the question why is the "beauty in death" theme still so popular.
Besides, will we ever see in fashion representations of women reacting to violence, managing to escape their attackers or even killing a man, and would in case a male corpse sell as well as a female corpse?
The doubt remains, but for the time being, what Edgar Allan Poe stated in his essay "The Philosophy of Composition" - "the death of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world," - is, sadly, still valid and financially profitable in the fashion industry.
In the last few years, as fashion refocused on finance, the word "luxury" stopped indicating artisanal and exclusive products to define corporate and industrial power. Yet, only a few decades ago, luxury indicated not branded items, but pieces made by skilled craftsmen using high quality materials and techniques.
In the February issue of Ural-based magazine WTF (What's The Fashion?), a publication for design, architecture and fashion fans, I talk with independent designer Geoffrey B. Small about his vision of luxury, based on high quality, craftsmanship and ethical principles.
A pioneer in avant-garde design, Geoffrey B. Small started his business in the mid-to-late '70s making clothes with an old Singer sewing machine, becoming a bespoke made-to-measure designer in Boston.
In the '90s Small was also invited to showcase his menswear collections in Paris, where he imported a radically new style, something that could be defined timeless classic yet relaxed with a quirky and twisted historical element thrown in. Think about a character from Luchino Visconti's Death in Venice or from August Sander's collections of portraits who may have stumbled upon a time machine and may have travelled into the future and the past hanging around with artists, poets and dandies, and you may get an idea of what his hand-tailored collections look like.
Hailed as a rising talent by Yves Saint Laurent's chairman Pierre Bergé, in 1994 Small was the third American designer in history to be officially recognised and listed on the official calendar of the Chambre Syndicale. Around the same time fashion started a strange mutation: after the early 1990s Chanel expanded dramatically increasing the fortunes of owners Alain and Gerard Wertheimer, while free-wheeling deal makers Bernard Arnault and François Pinault focused on the rise to the top of their groups by acquiring and merging one company after the other.
Geoffrey B. Small decided to go his own way: as early as 1996 he pioneered the use of recycled design in his menswear collections, launching over thirty technique innovations that were later adopted by many other famous fashion brands and houses. After a licensing agreement with an Italian manufacturer didn't work out, in 2001 he decided to go solo, making special clothes by hand in his apartment in Cavarzere, outside Venice, where he currently produces limited edition collections consisting in 500 pieces per season (made with very special textiles from rare mills such as Fratelli Piacenza and Tessuti Parisotto) for selected shops all over the world, proving that his combination of high quality and smaller quantities worked out pretty well even in times of crisis.
I'm embedding at the end of this post a preview of the magazine to give you an idea of the contents (in Russian) and lookout. With many thanks to Geoffrey B. Small for the wonderful feedback he provided for the readers of WTF about the contemporary fashion industry, tailoring, craftsmanship and textiles.
Image credits for this post
The super limited edition ETWJ04 handmade jacket; one of only 4 pieces of its kind made in the entire world. Of these, just 2 pieces were created by hand for all of Europe exclusively for Persuade in Bilbao. The pieces also feature special buttons in real horn made for the designer in Parma, Italy; cloth covered buttons made in the designer's studios, and real hand sewn buttonholes in luxurious pure silk Bozzolo Milano Reale threads (it requires at least 8-10 minutes to make each of them). Each piece was also hand dyed in the designer's workrooms using a special process that requires over 6 hours for each piece to achieve its unique colours, patina effects and softness. Pieces are hand-signed and numbered by the designer. Courtesy and Copyright Geoffrey B. Small
Chinese New Year started yesterday, but nothing stops us from joining the celebrations today, even while sitting in front of our computers, maybe dreaming of Xiqu, or Chinese Opera.
To celebrate the Year of the Horse, Hong Kong’s West Kowloon Cultural District Authority (WKCDA; the West Kowloon Cultural District is the largest cultural project in Hong Kong, focused on providing a vital district for the local arts scene) launched a programme of traditional Cantonese Opera performances at the Bamboo Theatre, on the future site of West Kowloon’s Xiqu Centre, a venue still under development.
Chinese Opera is a form of art integrating singing, acting, speech, martial arts, gongs, drums and body movements and is also characterised by rich and colourful costumes accompanied by extraordinary make-up. Usually the plots revolve around themes such as mistaken identities, sacrifice, patriotism and romantic love that transcends time.
The Chinese New Year celebrations started at the Bamboo Theatre a couple of weeks ago, with works such as The Lady's Sash, written by Tang Ti-sheng, about jealous military officer Zhao Shizhen whose impulsive behaviour almost ends up causing the death of his wife, and with shows that combined various excerpts from Kunju and Yueju performances (both are Chinese types of opera, recognised by the UNESCO as Intangible Cultural Heritages of the World).
In the next few days the Bamboo Theatre will offer further shows, including the comedy Contention for the Seal (2 - 3 February) written by Lee Siu-wan, starring Leung Siu-ming and Chan Wing-yee, and following the vicissitudes of two generals, Shangguan Yunlong, the son of the Minister of War, and Situ Wenfeng, the daughter of the Minister of Personnel, who fight against each other until an invading enemy prompts them to put aside their differences, and Two Heroic Families (4 - 5 February 2014), written by Poon Cheuk, focusing on marriage, sibling relationships and the complications of love.
The costumes in Cantonese Opera are strictly linked to the main theme of the play and the character role. Costumes such as ceremonial robes, armours, gowns and cloaks, are characterised by fantastically visual palettes and elaborate embroideries and brocades and are paired with matching headgear and hairpieces, footwear and facial make-up.
While each character's make-up has its own distinct characteristics, the main colours employed are usually white colour foundation and red rouge in different shades applied over the white foundation to the cheeks and eyelids.
Fashion constantly borrows different elements from various countries, mixing cultures and traditions, blurring genders and identity while erasing dress codes. It would be interesting to see how some elements of Cantonese Opera costumes would be reinvented and integrated in contemporary fashion.
