The fantasy of many museum fans - spending a night rambling around rare collections and exhibits - has turned in the last few years into a possible reality as institutions all over the world started opening late or dedicating evenings to special events and workshops. At times these open nights focus on just one main museum, but things will be pretty different for the Museumnacht 010 festival in Rotterdam.
On 7th March twenty-five local museums and cultural institutions will wecome visitors until midnight for a festive evening of culture hopping. The choice is wide and includes over 65 exhibitions, tours, music performances, meetings with artists and workshops.
The Maritime Museum will offer the last chance to visit the "Sex & The Sea" exhibition, while the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen will take visitors on a special tour of its latest event, "La La La Human Steps".
The latter tackles the human condition via 100 pieces, from classic artworks by old masters to recently acquired video and film installations by new talents, including specially commissioned duets by four choreographers.
Modern art and music lovers will particularly enjoy a performance by Bird in a Glasshouse, winner of the Art Rocks music competition with the track "Multiplied", inspired by Yayoi Kusama's mirror room. Looks like art loving locals and tourists will have plenty of reasons to stay up late in Rotterdam on 7th March.
Museumnacht 010, Various locations across Rotterdam, The Netherlands, 7th March 2015, 8.00 p.m. - 12.00 a.m.
Image credits for this post
1. Museumnacht 010 Poster
2. Visitors looking at Maurizio Cattalan's artwork, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen. Photo: Fred Ernst.
3. Inez van Lamsweerde & Vinoodh Matadin, Kirsten Star, 1996. 101.6 x 75.4 cm. Cibachrome on perspex.
4. Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Tower of Babel, c. 1560. Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam.
5. Bird in a Glasshouse playing in Yayoi Kusama's Infinity Mirror Room. Photo: Syo van Vliet.
A perfect fashion collection is the result of a perfect mathematical equation. You may consider this statement as incorrect if you think that a garment is the product of human creativity, fantasy and imagination. Yet if you shift the attention to the actual structure and construction of a garment, if you look at patterns, measurements and proportions, you easily realise there is quite a lot of mathematics behind what we wear on an every day basis.
High quality, functionality and wearability may be the key words behind Yeohlee Teng's collections, but there is always a sort of emphasis on the mathematical and scientific approach to things behind them.
In the 16 pieces forming her Autumn/Winter 2015/16 collection characterised by a palette comprising black, concrete grey, and white with some red notes thrown in, and by soft but well-defined silhouettes, there is nothing too abstruse or incomprehensible, yet there is quite a bit of mathematics.
The designer has indeed taken her "zero waste" principle to new levels: she employed seven panels of a jacquard for four pieces - skirt, jacket, pants and blouse. The unused pieces and piles of fabrics that resulted were not discarded, but they were integrated in a sweater or were used for the paneling of a pencil skirt.
Yeohlee added a magical element (could we maybe talk about her being a "Mathemagician"?) in those garments in which, rather than using discarded fabrics, she came up with different tricks - such as a black and deep plum reversible double-faced angora coat and a functional raincoat with a zip hidden away under an additional layer that transformed it into a double-breasted coat.
The art element was introduced via graphic motifs à la Sol LeWitt on silk draped jackets and trousers. As a mathematician, Yeohlee may not have broken the Enigma code, but she can definitely decode the needs of her customers and understand that fashion is not about overcomplicated looks, long presentations and complex collections, but about functional solutions revolving around a wise garment construction.
Modern luxury magnates from huge fashion conglomerates currently display their private collections of art pieces in dedicated buildings that have become monumentally tangible symbols of their wealth. But you wonder what will happen in a few decades' time: where will their collections end up and will these buildings still be standing as testaments of their financial power?
An exhibition currently on at Two Temple Place - a neo-Gothic mansion on London's Victoria Embankment originally designed as the London headquarters for the American-born millionaire Lord Astor - may help us making comparisons and future conjectures.
"Cotton to Gold: Extraordinary Collections of the Industrial North West" features indeed several rare pieces collected by a group of Lancashire cotton magnates between 1850 and the First World War.
While the cotton mills boomed bringing development and deprivation hand in hand, these industrialists bought rare and at times eccentric pieces that ended up forming little known collections.
Curated by Dr Cynthia Johnston from the Institute of English Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London, and Dr Jack Hartnell from the Courtauld Institute, the event proves that collectors had very different and more personal tastes when it came to buying art pieces and assorted oddities, compared to many modern and equally wealthy collectors.
Organised in collaboration with Blackburn Museum and Art Gallery, Haworth Art Gallery and Towneley Hall in Burnley, the exhibition features indeed complete sets of Roman coins, cuneiform tablets, medieval manuscripts and early printed books; life drawings by Millais and Turner watercolours; Tiffany glass and Japanese prints; Byzantine icons and ivory sculptures, a selection of stuffed birds and preserved beetles and even a 12th century mummy (behold, visitors: legend says that it is haunted and that bloodshed occurs every time it is moved).
Unearthed from a cave in the Andes (together with its burial accoutrements) by globe trotting electrical engineer William T Taylor during his travels in 1913, this mummy of an Incan nobleman is now displayed next to Taylor's llama fur bound diary (a very early example of luxury stationery...).
As the contents of the exhibition are extremely varied, "Cotton to Gold" looks like a collage made with objects from different times picked by people with a wide range of tastes, it is a sort a cabinet of curiosities that may prove to modern visitors less cold and clinical compared to more famous collections assembled by contemporary industrialists and entrepreneurs.
Yet, though variety is one of the strength of this exhibition, the main point of "Cotton to Gold" is reminding us all that, too often, budget cuts prevent rarely seen pieces from being displayed, and these items end up languishing in forgotten boxes and archives in the institutions that house them. Food for thought not just for visitors who may be missing out on unusual yet beautiful pieces, but for the modern collectors and luxury market entrepreneurs as well, assembling riches and building temples to their own selves while pretending of being philanthropists.
"Cotton to Gold: Extraordinary Collections of the Industrial North West", Two Temple Place, 2 Temple Place, London WC2R 3BD, until 19th April 2015.
Image credits for this post
1. Two robin redbreasts, one mottled, in case with painted background and collage Booth Collection Towneley Hall Art Gallery and Museum
2. Card case with gardens and riverscapes, 19th Century, probably Chinese, Ivory Eastwood Collection Towneley Hall Art Gallery and Museum
3. John Everett Millais Male nude study, c.1847 Pencil on paper Dean Collection Towneley Hall Art Gallery and Museum
4. J.M.W. Turner Ramah (Rachel’s Tomb), c.1835 Watercolour on paper Donated by E.L. Hartley Blackburn Museum and Art Gallery
5. Mummy of an Incan Nobleman from Chaplanca, Peru, 12th Century Taylor Collection Towneley Hall Art Gallery and Museum
6. Book of Hours, c.1410-20, Northen French Hart Collection Blackburn Museum and Art Gallery
7. Utagawa Kunisada Yoshiwara Lady on Parade, 1855 Woodblock print Lewis Collection Blackburn Museum and Art Gallery
8. Utagawa Kunisada Comic Actor, 1854 Woodblock print Lewis Collection Blackburn Museum and Art Gallery
You know that figure of speech that says "to call a spade a spade"? Well, in the fashion industry it doesn't exist. Or, rather, this expression doesn't exist to describe fashion collections or products linked to fashion houses and celebrities (supported by key editors and other assorted powerful media figures) that may be translated as advertisers' money. To avoid saying the truth about these designs, you usually employ elaborate euphemisms and metaphors, and you publish hundreds of images and videos that help you making sure you do not express your objective opinion, since, after all, life is too short to lose money and risk your job. This action has usually got two main global consequences - you impose on consumers crap products and you stress the planet by manufacturing more questionable clothes and accessories. This is more or less what happened with Kanye West's "Yeezy Season 1" collection for Adidas Originals.
Having convinced himself he is a designer after his catastrophic women's wear presentation in October 2011 in Paris and a collaboration with APC in 2013, Kanye West showcased during New York Fashion Week what could only be described as a risible men's and women's collection (because that's what it would be if his name weren't attached to it).
Staged with the help of performance artist Vanessa Beecroft (but next time make it Marina Abramović, just to take it all to the next level of arty and fashionable coolness...), the collection featured around 50 models of all shapes and sizes in a military formation.
Most of them were clad in layered flesh-tone (yes, agree, very Beecroft) body stockings (of the kind you make by yourself by cutting a pair of tights in strategic places) matched with a series of horridly unfitting sports bras/see-through crop tops that squashed the models' breasts in all the wrong places, baggy sweatpants and shirts or garments resembling bulletproof vests; camouflage or bomber jackets; shearling coats, and military sweaters in tatters. Accessories included oversized bags (copied from luxury accessory brands) and backpacks and the key pieces - sneakers and boots (also in their high-heeled version). So fashion, wow much edginess, the Dogecoin dog may say.
The, erm, good news is that - according to Kanye West - everything will be on sale because we all need a jumper falling into bits and pieces and all the professional dancers out there who usually make their own warm up tops by cutting out old woollen tights will definitely be queuing up outside Adidas stores.
It would have been honest to describe this mess not as "sportswear", but as apocalyptically miserable clothes for all those celebrities who often leave their houses without getting dressed (let Kim Kardashian do so anytime she needs to attract the paparazzi, but avoid imposing this stuff on innocent consumers...), but most critics avoided doing so preferring to highlight how the rapper and designer is all focused on helping people and society.
At the beginning of the show Kanye West played indeed a track in which he told his audience disconnectedly deranged sentences such as: "I want to create something better for you...We have been limited...It's bigger than who I am even in my present living...It's about when I was on earth what did I do to help (…) There's a lack of creativity in every field cos people are afraid..." What's worse, though, is that West has stated in some interviews with the media that he has created "the world's first solutions-based clothing line", with a special aim "absolve consumers of dressing's daily stress by creating a line of high-quality essentials that can be freely combined in infinite ways".
He must be completely removed from society since he doesn't seem to be aware of the fact that garments and accessories can in general be combined in infinite ways; that this trash will be produced exploiting the usual countries where cheap stuff is manufactured, so we won't be in the presence of high quality; and, that, last but not least, if you want to buy essentials and you can afford high quality, you buy cashmere sportswear; otherwise you do what most ordinary mortals do and turn to your average high street retailer for cheap, practical and functional stuff.
So while the only person who expressed dissent to all this mess - funnily enough in the style of the child inAndersen's The Emperor's New Clothes - was 18 month old North West who cried out and threw tantrums at selected fashion shows, from her father's (though in this case the tantrums may have been caused by the mini bullet proof vest she was wearing...) to Alexander Wang's (though she may have done so also because she was sitting in the presence of the forces of evil as incarnated by US Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour right next to her...), the best way to describe this collection is with two words "offensively infuriating".
Apparently it took West 18 months to develop it, even though the seeds of the collection came from the 2011 London riots (that - he has probably forgotten - were driven by an eclectic mix of causes, including boredom, poverty, deprivation and frustration). Students at fashion colleges have got to produce more serious and sensible collections in just a few weeks; they have to justify them to their lecturers and tutors and make sure they come up with a clever presentation to attract the possibility of getting not even a job, but an unpaid internship at a fashion house, where, chances are, they will be exploited for menial tasks.
In a nutshell, there are talented young people out there who will never be given any chance in this industry because they are not vapid celebrities claiming they care for society though all they do is stealing the looks of disenfranchised youth and using them to recreate their own army of sporty people.
This is the main reason why I find this collection offensive and infuriating and why the fashion industry is in desperate need of two things: honesty and integrity (come on, Adidas, this is trash, at least Yamamoto's Y3 line still includes proper clothes and accessories...) and a figure similar to the violently fierce music teacher and conductor Terence Fletcher out of Whiplash so that he could psychologically and physically torture some of these unqualified celebrities to get the best out of them.
The final verdict on Kanye West x Adidas Originals' "Yeezy Season 1"? This is more "Lazy Season" and let's hope it stops at part 1. Let's also hope that West may try and have a genuine impact not on society but on planet Earth by deciding to end his career as designer here.
Last Sunday we looked at an operatic film, The Tales of Hoffmann. Let's continue the trend this weekend by briefly focusing on something equally striking on the audiovisual level that has some cinematic moments as well, but that pertains to the world of the stage - the opera Akhnaten, written by Philip Glass.
The opera opened last Friday at Antwerp's Opera Vlaanderen and it has a fashion side to it since it features costumes by Walter Van Beirendonck.
The story mainly takes place in the new city of Akhetaten in Egypt in about 1375-58 BC. Pharaoh Amenhotep III is dead and his son, crowned his successor, opts for the name "Akhnaten" meaning "he to whom the sun-disk is favourably disposed".
Akhnaten introduces a monotheistic cult focused on Aten - the sun-disk - and, together with his wife Nefertiti, founds a new capital and also imposes his ideas for renewal on other areas such as art and culture.
Becoming more and more alienated and isolated from the rest of the population, after a reign of seventeen years, the pharaoh and his family are overthrown by the masses led by former figures of power including General Horemhab, counsellor Aye and the priests. Older and rigid power structures were restored and, as the centuries pass, the devastated city of Akhetaten is dug out of the sand again to become a tourist site.
Written in 1984, Akhnaten is Glass's third full-length opera (it follows Einstein on the Beach, 1976, and Satyagraha, 1980) and it is told via different episodes and scenes.
The soundtrack is particularly intriguing since it is based on repetitive, rhythmic melody patterns that are gradually interwoven.
Rather than moving from his latest designs, for this edition by English director and designer Nigel Lowery, Van Beirendonck's has created costumes that are heavily influenced by his Autumn/Winter 2013 collection originally inspired by David Bowie.
Colours that are historically and traditionally linked with the Egyptian civilisation such as gold, aqua green or turquoise, the latter a symbol of fertility, good luck and protection, are reinterpreted in a Ziggy Stardust glam key in Van Beirendonck's costumes and accessories (see the platform shoes donned by most of the characters).
While gold prevails in most of the opera (see the pleated gowns matched with brightly coloured coats characterised by voluminous silhouettes and made in a material similar to tinsel, but also the gold mummy bandages), lurex remains the fabric of choice, but most garments come in two different colours and textiles almost to hint at a dichotomy between the past and the future (for the future see the Reebok sneakers donned by the Egyptian gods), symbolically represented by Akhnaten, a king and a visionary figure more similar to Sun Ra than to a conventional Egyptian pharaoh.
The colourful make-up, elongated prostetic chins, cheeks and fingers, hip hop jewellery and oversized masks of Egyptian gods worn as helmets add a grotesque element to the opera, but also point towards the trademark iconography of Walter van Beirendonck, giving the show the genuine potential of attracting both fashionistas and an entirely new generation of opera fans.
"Akhnaten" by Philip Glass directed by Nigel Lowery is at Antwerp's Opera Vlaadenren until 22nd February and at Gent Opera from 4th until 10th of March.
We first met artist, illustrator, photographer, and graphic/fashion designer Eugen Laitenberger last year in a previous post in which he introduced us to his debut collection for his GUNEE Homme label.
Laitenberger is busy at the moment working on multiple projects, but he has found the time to celebrate St Valentine's Day. A passionate fan of Japanese music and animation movies, Laitenberger is paying tribute to the country by sending it a very special flower bouquet: the artist and designer has framed an exclusive sample of his "GUNEE Flower" fabric characterised by a modernly cartoonish floral pattern designed by himself on a white background and is offering it to all Japan-based readers of Irenebrination in a fun competition.
Participants will have to retweet this post or advertise it on the social media and send the relevant links and personal details (name, surname and full address) to the email address: competition@gunee-homme.com
The winner will be chosen randomly among all the people who enter the competition (the prize will be shipped within two weeks from the winner's proclamation) and announced on 16th February via Twitter. The competition is open from the moment this post goes live until 15th February 2015 at midnight (GMT time). To keep updated with what Laitenberger is up to, scroll down to the mini Q&A that follows.
What are you working on at the moment for what regards your label GUNEE Homme? Eugen Laitenberger: I'm focusing on the production and sale of the Summer 2015 collection. I've ordered the fabrics and, in the next few months, I will be working on the designs. I know that this is not the correct season in the "real" fashion world, but we are a very young and small label and do not need to follow the stressful "fashion production cycle" for the time being. My plan for the next month is creating the patterns for the Summer 2016 collection and shoot and promote it around November this year. I wanted to start GUNEE Homme with shirts and tie/bow ties and expand the range of articles from collection to collection, but founding a company in Germany can be pretty stressful when it comes to the paperwork, so I decided to save energies and expand the range of articles after the Spring/Summer 2016 season.
And what about your work as artist and illustrator, are you focusing on any special projects? Eugen Laitenberger: I'm working on a project called "Cat Sequence". I designed the book "Dream Sequence" for my best friend, the photographer Madame Peripetie. After this project and considering our obsession for animated cat gifs around the time we were working on the book, I asked her what she would think about the idea of translating her dream sequence characters into cats. And so this project was born. I will illustrate 6 Cat Sequence characters (3 are done) and make sculptures of them. As I'm not so good at making sculptures, a friend is coming to our rescue, and we are currently working on that. The plan is to finalise this project at the end of this year and organise an exhibition next year, or maybe a small preview this year. Stay tuned!
The current fashion industry could be compared to a turbulent and stormy sea: there is too much much noise and confusion all around and very little chance to find a safe direction. New designers appear on the horizon of the already rather clogged fashion week calendars, fuelling the thirst of the fashion media for something new and visually striking, a vapid search for that spark of innovation that is becoming more and more elusive.
Compared to the sound and fury reigning supreme in the industry, Mason Jung is a solid vessel, calmly sailing on. Born in Seoul, he graduated in Clothing and Textiles from Kyung Hee University before moving to London, where he continued his studies at the Royal College of Art. Restriction, order, convention, discipline and formal wear – themes inspired by his Korean roots and his two-year stint in the Korean army – inspired his graduation collection, paving the way for an in-depth research in menswear that literally subverts certain rules and canons.
Classical tailoring and craftsmanship are indeed mere starting points for Mason Jung's pieces as the designer looks at harmony, balance and proportions and more generally at the rules of construction of key garments to bend them. The results are wearable and desirable hybrid suits, pieces that literally destroy menswear archetypes, garments that lose their restrictive or controlling character thanks to subtle and almost invisible lines. A dress shirt turns into a denim or biker jacket; a coat fuses with a classic jacket; garments get unbalanced by surreal and magnified elements, from welt pockets to sleeves and collars, while specific details like plackets, collars and belts blend together to create continuous lines.
If you go beyond the conceptual research, you realise that Mason Jung is having fun and laughing at conventions, telling us that fashion should not be an empty chaos full of sound and fury, but a subtle and ironic game of sculpturally sartorial transformations.
You were recently featured in the "The Future of Fashion is Now" exhibition at the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam, how was it? Mason Jung: It was an interesting exhibition which suggests various spectra and possibilities of fashion. From my collection Sleeping Suit (2009) and Blanket Suit (2009) were displayed. It was great to show the pieces in a static setting accompanied by narratives and process, which is more suited to communicate the nature of my work, rather than on a runway.
In your opinion, where is the real "future of fashion": in the techniques linked to printing, in specific materials like smart textiles, or will genuine innovations come from new solutions in tailoring? Mason Jung: Innovation will happen in all areas in terms of creation and production. Technical advancement will enable designers to explore greater possibilities. However, what is desired is a different matter. It would be interesting to observe different phases of fashion in the past years to see how certain aesthetics and trends have been appreciated and then disregarded, and how the consensus was formed. Fashion is now more democratised and commercialised than ever, but popularity seems to be the most important measure to judge good fashion. Brands and designers are focusing more on PR activities than genuine contents. I think this has also somehow driven design into easy solutions such as surface decoration which can be readily understood and recognised. Ironically, despite advanced technology we are witnessing the most homogeneous fashion ever seen.
Your pieces reveal a time consuming research into fashion and menswear: do you think that nowadays the rhythms of the fashion industry are too fast and this is why, quite often, what we see on the runways does not produce real and tangible innovations? Mason Jung: I think true innovation is being asked in how we communicate and consume fashion. Now we need to reconsider the fashion cycle - such as seasonal buy-and-clear distribution mechanisms - and wonder whether it is still a reasonable system for the future. In addition, fashion has also got great potential as a communication medium beyond seasonal commodities.
Last year you designed the Möbius shirt - how long did it take to develop such a clean, yet cleverly constructed piece? Mason Jung: Sometimes an idea just pops up in your head like a songwriter conceiving a melody. However, realising the idea and configuring the physicality of a garment takes time. In the case of the Möbius shirt, I got the idea for a one piece garment a long time ago. I managed to merge the front and back of a shirt into one continuous pattern, but then I have been testing for a while how to make garments on different grains (direction of weave) to see how they fall differently and experimented with striped fabrics to maximise the effect of design. The whole development was carried on gradually with consideration over time.
Since you started designing, you have been experimenting with "camouflage" and have produced tailored hybrids - the biker jacket/dress shirt; the convertible shirt and the shirt with jacket sleeve - can hybridisation spawn innovation and, if yes, in which ways? Mason Jung: My work started as visualisation of personal thoughts and views. Having spent my youth in a restricted society, it was more of a response to formality and restriction. The series "Camouflage" evokes conventions embedded in menswear. I devised fossilised details that remind of men's unchanged dress codes. The idea expanded into wider aspects of clothing and culture in fashion. The hybrids in the "Assemblage" series are instead the results of questioning categorial definitions of clothing. Hybridisation is a tool to visualise the enquiry and it often produces interesting results.
In your designs we can often detect elements and inspirations that look borrowed from other fields rather than just fashion/tailoring. Do disciplines such as art, architecture or science inform the construction of your pieces? Mason Jung: I don't try to find source of inspirations, everything happens in an organic and natural way. My work has always been a representation of my enquiry adorned with personal aesthetic. But, when it comes to configuration and construction, I do take a more methodical and scientific approach and that often reflects in the designs.
Specific themes and elements have emerged from the latest menswear shows: there is a certain tendency to uniform and erase genders, and some critics stated that menswear looks more refreshing and revolutionary than womenswear. As a designer, would you agree with these points? Mason Jung: I suppose menswear has been more conservative, in other words less explored and also less commercially fierce than womenswear, and this has created room for experiments.
Though you are considered as a menswear designer, some of your features would be great also in womenswear: would you reinterpret them in designs for women? Mason Jung: Some of my work is deeply related with menswear, its conventions and limitations. These designs need to exist in their context to remain meaningful. Likewise, if I were to design womenswear I would start from an enquiry related to women.
What has changed in your design practice since you graduated? Mason Jung: I have been operating a practice-based studio with all designs and manufacture done in-house. Over the past years, efficiency and productivity has been improving as experience and know-how accumulated.
What plans do you have for 2015? Mason Jung: I will continue to expand and add new pieces to my collection. I am also working on a new project which will propose an exciting concept. You can keep updated about future developments on my site.
All images in this post courtesy/copyright Mason Jung.
Nowadays major fashion brands have the power to manufacture all sorts of things, from Haute Couture gowns to skateboards, from beauty products to stationery. But - you could argue - so do independent labels. In fact, quite often small labels come up with more original and stylish ideas than big corporations, a perfect example is French menswear brand Études.
Launched by creative duo artist Aurélien Arbet (based in New York) and graphic designer Jérémie Egry (based in Paris) as Hixsept, the label first worked on a basic wardrobe comprising shirts and blazers, before reinventing itself in 2012 as Études, a sort of umbrella name under which the duo reunites all the collaborative projects they work upon.
Apart from developing their fashion collections, Arbet and Egry have indeed focused together on photography books and graphic design works. Rather than just going to fashion weeks, they seem interested in visiting book events such as the New York Art Book Fair and Offprint in Paris, and have released a series of books by contemporary photographers that started with Danish Nicolai Howalt, American Daniel Everett, and French Nicolas Hosteing. The series forms the Blue Book Collection, comprising volumes characterised by the same format and same number of pages, but with highly different content.
Cross-collaboration and travelling are keys to the projects of the duo as Arbet and Egry are based in different countries. Moving and travelling where actually also among the themes of the duo's Autumn/Winter 2015-16 collection.
The collection featured digitally printed images of urban scapes on suits and raincoats, made in collaboration with Daniel Everett, an artist and photographer fascinated by anonymous architectures, bland structures and marginal spaces, including roofs and parking lots.
Grids were also another motif employed in the collection on shirts and trousers and, while Everett also developed several works with grids, the designers were probably referencing timetable grids. The biggest runway show in the world - the daily commute - was indeed another major theme for this collection, with workers in electric blue coats (a reference to the Blue Book Collection?) decorated with minimalist prints of clocks, or with messages such as "Day To Day" or "In Time" and symbolical serial numbers "24-7-365" scattered on several garments and accessories (read: leather grocery bags) as well.
The shoes with coloured bands by Achilles Ion Gabriel also contributed to give a linear feel to the collection, though the time theme and the commuters looks also hinted at the possibility of populating a "non place" regulated by no time, and at the opportunity of making time (as opposed to the concept of being in time) as the tailored garments included were characterised by informal silhouettes and were injected with a youthful energy (see the layered long hanging shirts and bomber jackets).
The theme of time/work/commuters was also evoked in the space where the show took place, Le Centorial, former headquarters of Credit Lyonnais, and therefore a palace of money and a symbol of modern banking in the late 19th century.
At times Études's French minimalism was forgotten in favour of more maximalist elements and prints, but the best thing about this brand is that, by tomorrow, the duo behind it may have moved onto creating something completely different and possibly - who knows - totally unrelated to fashion.
It is often surprising to read a book about a topic that doesn't necessarily have to do anything with fashion and finding a chapter, a paragraph or just a simple sentence that prompts you to think about the power of the runway.
In William L. Fox's book In the Desert of Desire: Las Vegas and the Culture of Spectacle, the author writes about the Las Vegas Strip in Paradise, for example, describing it as "the most aggressively branded and promoted concatenation of adult theme parks in the world", while pointing out that Las Vegas capitalises upon its position in the middle of the desert "by allowing people to imagine and erect castles on the sand and into the air".
The fashion runway is a bit like a financially florid desert where castles are built, and dreams and desires are evoked, and while it's not big enough to contain entire theme parks, it is a branded entertainment-driven and self-contained spectacle that offers visual stimuli and instant gratification to an adult audience willing to be disoriented in a space (you may be watching a show in a specific city, but the designer may be transporting you through fantasy and imagination to another one) and time (it may be noon outside, but you're plunged into the deepest and darkest artificial night inside the venue) for a relatively short time.
Funnily enough, while the Las Vegas Strip spawned mini-movements identified by Denise Scott Brown and Robert Venturi as architectural pastiches ("Miami Moroccan, International Jet Set Style", "Art Moderne, Hollywood Orgasmic, Organic Behind", "Yamasaki Bernini cum Roman Orgiastic", "Niemeyer Moorish", "Moorish Tudor (Arabian Nights)", "Bauhaus Hawaiian"), the runways give birth to trends and micro-trends that quickly reach out to consumers.
Though a catwalk show is usually a liminal affair for two main reasons, it is not a public event and it often takes place in bizarre locations (in the history of fashion we have seen catwalks in warehouses, car parks, underground stations and supermarkets just to mention a few places), the spaces where the spectacle unravels have become more important to many designers.
At times they help creating links with a collection, at others they establish contrasts, revealing the designers' will for a "urban and architectural fashion planning" that inverts and reverses the purposes of specific spaces: public environments turn for example into temporarily private spaces owned by a powerful house, while secluded locations like private villas or listed buildings become temporarily public.
To prove these points, let's look at some examples of strong connections between spaces and runway presentations during the latest catwalk shows.
As you may remember, Véronique Nichanian, Creative Director at Hermès visualised in her A/W 2015-16 collection a man working and strolling in the city.
Nichanian's models walked down the runway in Paris' Maison de la Radio (a circular building designed by the architect Henri Bernard and inaugurated in December 1963 by President Charles de Gaulle) dressed in muted concrete grey suits or in luxurious garments that borrowed from street and sportswear and reflected a sleek urban environment made of skyscrapers and famous landmarks such as the Eiffel Tower and the Seine.
The models on the runway were idealised versions of the men you may encounter while walking along the lit up streets that could be seen from the windows of the Masion de la Radio.
Concrete may have been one of the inspirations behind Hermès' collection, and the new music hall where Kenzo's catwalk show took place is also a monumental concrete structure.
Designed by French architect Jean Nouvel, but at the centre of an anguished debate between its designer and the client, the Philharmonie de Paris, has an intergalactic spaceship-like look thanks to thousands of aluminum bird-shaped tiles that call to mind paving stones and that cover its roof.
Hosting a program of several events (music genres include classical, contemporary and electro-pop, and in March it will also feature the David Bowie exhibition originally presented at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London), the modernist forms and futuristic shape went well with the themes of Kenzo's collection.
More colourful and functional than Hermès' and therefore aimed at a younger audience, the collection featured parkas in bright shades; nylon suits; sweaters with graphic motifs; tops with imaginary logos, cult scribbles and coded hierogliphs from a lost space tribe; messages claiming that UFOs are coming back; silver capes and astronaut pants that made you think Humberto Leon and Carol Lim had on their minds an extraterrestrial civilisation landing in Paris in its own intergalactic ship.
The marble staircase of the splendidly opulent Palais Garnier opera house served instead as the backdrop for Pigalle's Autumn/Winter 2015-16 collection.
The contrast created by the surrounding space, the collection and the format of the presentation was quite interesting in this case. The collection was entitled "Musique Therapie" (Music Therapy) and the set and the designs were actually employed as the core elements of a performance that comprised music and dance courtesy of the artists cast in the show as models by designer Stéphane Ashpool (Kirikoo Des, Ashpool's godfather Larry Vickers, Oko Ebombo, Bonnie Banane...). The format of the presentation added fun to a runway championing racial diversity.
The collection featured a mix of transnational influences and hybrid designs combining layered casual and streetwear elements with tailored moods: puffer jackets were juxtaposed to wool coats; cropped pants were matched with hooded tops reinvented from Moroccan djellaba robes; optical prints decorated satin jackets ad many looks were matched with trilbies, bucket hats or fedoras.
Hybrid was the actually the keyword behind this modern version of "Les Misérables", a sort of fashion runway-cum-urban opera. And while you could argue that such a collection clashed with the surrounding space, architecturally speaking there were no real clashes as the opera house is itself a hybrid mix of different architectural styles, including classical, baroque and Beaux-Arts.
This juxtaposition of architectures and shows continued in the Pre-Fall collections. For its formal presentation, Miu Miu collaborated with the OMA/AMO architecture and design creatives.
Together they turned the Palais d’Iéna into the salons of a upper middle class house populated by dummies clad in designs that combined 1920s boy scout uniforms with upholstery retro fabrics with geometric motifs borrowed from the '60s, and shrunken jackets, patterned cardigans, plaid shirts and shorts with Sherlock Holmes-like capelet coats and caps.
The space went pretty well with the mood of the collection but Miu Miu is not new to this building. Since 2011, the Prada Group has indeed got a special permission to use the Palais d’Iéna (originally commissioned to house a Museum of Public Works, though it then became the seat of the Conseil Économique, Social et Environnemental (CESE), the third constitutional assembly of the French Republic) for cultural, artistic and fashion-related projects and activities.
Designed by Auguste Perret, the building is characterised by his passion for Greek architecture and by his signature material, reinforced concrete and features inside a curved vestibule and a grand staircase that created the perfect setting for Miu Miu's collection.
At the end of January, during Haute Couture week, fashion magazine Vestoj staged instead a performance entitled "The Vestoj Journal on Slowness".
The performance consisted in artist and painter Scarlett Rouge acting as a lady's maid to Lola Peploe and dressing her in the rather complicated attire of an 18th century French aristocrat.
The main aim of magazine founder Anja Aronowsky Cronberg was clear: prompting guests to slow down and disconnect from the fast and relentless rhythms of the fashion industry. Interestingly enough, the event took place in the same building in 136 avenue des Champs-Elysée where Le Corbusier had built between 1929 and 1931 a penthouse for flamboyant Charles de Beistegui.
The house was characterised by a few dichotomic aspects: surrealism seemed to prevail over rationalism; there was confusion between outdoor and indoor spaces and upstairs/downstairs; though it had only candlelight, the house also featured technological tricks such as push-button movable hedges and a periscope.
In the Vestoj performance - that also referenced the technological (and unbuilt) "Slow House" by Diller + Scofidio (1989) for a client who had asked them to create "a house with a view" - a basic and minimalist wooden stage by French architect Estelle Vincent contrasted instead with the grand ritual of dressing a dame in a fancy and complicated costume.
Though the performance was mainly about managing time, it also hinted at managing and reinventing space: time and space boundaries were also erased as the past and the present combined in the same room.
The architectural projects behind this performance - Le Corbusier and Diller + Scofidio's - analysed the term "view" and explored ideas and thoughts surrounding it. In a way, the spaces that designers pick nowadays to present their collections can be considered as rooms with multiple views on a designer's practice and inspirations and, more generally, on future trends.
We briefly analysed the art of Agostino Bonalumi in a previous post a while back, but it looks like this will be Bonalumi's year in art (and, hopefully, in fashion as well), in the same way as we recently saw a renewed and much deserved rediscovery of Paolo Scheggi's works. There is indeed an exhibition at Mazzoleni London that explores a selection of significant sculptural works created by the Italian artist.
Organised in collaboration with Archivio Bonalumi and curated by Francesca Pola, "Bonalumi Sculptures" (until 4th April 2015) marks a return of Bonalumi to London. The Italian artist took indeed part in 1960 in the solo exhibition "Agostino Bonalumi. Recent Paintings, Sculptures and Drawings" at the New Vision Centre Gallery, he showcased during the collective events "Zero" (1964) and "Manzoni Azimut" (2012), and was dedicated the posthumous retrospective "Agostino Bonalumi. All the Shapes of Space 1958-1976" (October 2013) at the Robilant + Voena Gallery.
Suspended between painting, sculpture and architecture, Bonalumi's practice prompts visitors to explore the environment in which we live and the spatial dimension in which we move.
Born in 1935, Bonalumi has been a painter, draughtsman and sculptor. He took part in 1958 in a first exhibition with Piero Manzoni and Enrico Castellani at Galleria Pater, in Milan, in which he showcased pre-pop compositions based on objects glued on canvases (shirts, underwear, and metallic tubes mummified in layers of concrete).
The artist took part in further exhibitions in the following year, but it was the period of time between 1958 and 1960 that became particularly important for him. It was around then that he started producing the first monochrome works with padded elements that were later on defined in English as "shaped canvases".
Bonalumi had a key exhibition in 1964 in which the difference between him and other artists working around the same technique became clear: while others expressed their research about objects and space in a rigid and geometrical way, in Bonalumi's works fantasy and imagination prevailed. His bi-/three-dimensional explorations in forms, shapes and shadows were indeed more natural and fluid than in the case of other artists.
In Bonalumi's career it is possible to highlight several different phases: in the first stage he produced monochrome paintings with padded elements that, applied to the back of the canvas, formed extruded shapes.
From 1965 on, new shapes were added to create asymmetrical elements that unbalanced the paintings, these elements would literally break the boundaries between the canvas and the object stretching it.
In a third phase wooden elements formed three-dimensional bodies that literally broke the surface and he continued his research into new dimensions with an emphasis on sinuous shapes in a fourth stage of his practice. Bonalumi introduced then in his works oil cire nylon fabric, an element that substituted canvas, but the main aim of his explorations - going beyond things and looking at objects transforming the space - remained the same.
At various points in his career, Bonalumi created sculptures as well as immersive environments. The works on view at Mazzoleni London date from the 1960s to the 2010s and examine the broad range of materials the artist experimented with.
"Nero" (1969) consists in large-scale forms in fibreglass that outline Bonalumi's use of creative curves; the works entitled "Bronzo" (1967-2006 and 1969-2007) can be considered as studies not only about shapes, but also about light as reflected on shiny bronze surfaces; the metal sheets forming "Bianco" (1989) and "Blu" (1990) are instead employed to create movement, while plastic and coloured ceramic in works like "Rosso" (2010) delineate more static yet equally mesmerising surfaces and forms (note for visitors intending to head down Mazzoleni this week: the red pieces in the exhibition with their sensual glossy surfaces look also perfect for people looking for less banal images to celebrate St. Valentine's Day).
The abstract volumes of the sculptures, the sinuous forms spilling out of the canvases and jutting out into the gallery, the elegant curves, soft bumps and hollows, the lines that break up or intersect one with the other attempting to go beyond the limits of a painting or a sculpture, retain a special sensuality while creating interactions with the visitors and establishing links between space and time. The sculptures represent indeed the meeting of two universes - the world of the objects and the world populated by human beings - but they also hint at Bonalumi's past works projected towards a future (our future), made of extremely modern minimalist-geometrical shapes.
"Bonalumi Sculptures" is at Mazzoleni London, 27 Albemarle Street, W1S 4HZ London, UK, until 4th April 2015.
Image credits for this post
1. Agostino Bonalumi 1967 Courtesy Archivio Bonalumi and Mazzoleni London
2. Agostino Bonalumi Bianco e Nero 1968 Shaped Ciré 120 x 100 cm Courtesy Archivio Bonalumi and Mazzoleni London
3. Agostino Bonalumi Blu 1993 Vinyl tempera on shaped canvas 114 x 146 cm Courtesy Archivio Bonalumi and Mazzoleni London
4. Agostino Bonalumi Giallo 1969 Shaped Ciré 150 x 120 cm Courtesy Archivio Bonalumi and Mazzoleni London
5. Agostino Bonalumi Nero 1968 Shaped Ciré 62 x 49 cm Courtesy Archivio Bonalumi and Mazzoleni London
6. Agostino Bonalumi Nero 1970 Fiberglass and paint on shaped canvas 80 x 130 cm Courtesy Archivio Bonalumi and Mazzoleni London
7. Agostino Bonalumi Bronzo 1969 - 2007 Cast bronze 18 x 38 x 42 cm Courtesy Archivio Bonalumi and Mazzoleni London
8. Agostino Bonalumi Bronzo 1969 - 2007 Cast bronze 38.5 x 42 x 45 cm Courtesy Archivio Bonalumi and Mazzoleni London
9. Agostino Bonalumi Bronzo 1969 - 2007 Cast bronze 60 x 58 x 50 cm Courtesy Archivio Bonalumi and Mazzoleni London
10. Agostino Bonalumi Rosso 1968 Vinyl tempera on shaped canvas 120 x 100 cm Courtesy Archivio Bonalumi and Mazzoleni London
11. Agostino Bonalumi Rosso 1967 - 2005 Fiberglass 140 x 180 x 120 cm Courtesy private collection, Archivio Bonalumi and Mazzoleni London
12. Agostino Bonalumi Rosso 1969 Fiberglass and enamel 180 x 180 x 90 cm Courtesy Archivio Bonalumi and Mazzoleni London