Glasgow has always been a very "musical" city: its history boasts many great bands and the numerous local live music venues include both intimate spots and huge arenas. It seemed therefore only natural for Glasgow-based Design Studio Briggs & Cole to come up with a project that combined art, music and fashion.
Founded in 2012 by Glasgow School of Art graduates Jane Briggs and Christy Cole, the design studio create limited edition and unique commissions, including furniture, lighting, objects d'art, large scale artworks, fabric and wallpaper prints. Quite often their pieces are made by hand in the studio using a variety of processes developed in direct response to working with specific materials. All the designs produced are based on the same principle - every piece must tell a story.
For one of their latest projects the duo focused on an audio-visual tale, inviting twelve artists and designers to create a wearable scarf based on one main theme - music - and moving from the art of collage.
The resulting scarves were inspired by a range of influences: from a graphic novel interpretation of folk songs (Laurence Figgis's "Blonda") to rhythms and patterns (Gabriella Di Tano's "Clap"); from variations and repetitions (Tony Swain's "Trained Exteriors") to a fantasy representation of Paisley boy Paolo Nutini (Fiona Jardine's "Paolo") or a collage inspired by music production and performance (Goodd's "Burning Down the House").
Albums and typography proved strong influences for some of the artists and designers involved: Graphical House's "I Want The One I Can't Have" moves from The Smiths' "Meat Is Murder" cover, while Fraser Sim's "Forever Changes" is a digitally remixed representation of Love's eponymous 1967 album.
Bold graphics prevail in "Grille" by Derek Welsh, rooted in a memory of a Hohner accordion's distinctive grille ornamentation, "Sextet" by Ian Balch with six shapes taken from the same source, each imitating the first from memory but rotated and flipped in sequence, and "Taper", Briggs & Cole's own interpretation of the music theme.
Honorable mentions go to Mark Vernon's "Isarithmic Tape Edit 3" that includes a number of "sampled" sources - old reel to reel tape box graphics, musical notation, diagrams for electronic music circuits and dress cutting patterns - all reduced to their most basic elements; Pamela Flanagan's "Neon Romance", an architectural love poem to The Barrowlands, a venue that preserves many people's memories (the scarf design revolves around its iconic façade); and Kevin Hutcheson's "Sample", a sort of Cubist collage or still life with sections of several musical instruments such as a guitar, hinting at the multi-faceted nature of our experience of listening to recorded or live music, and the sort of collage that may appeal to Postcard Records fans.
"Our co-contributors have ingeniously designed very unique visual identities which go above and beyond our initial conception of what a music inspired collage design could be," Christy Cole, Director of Briggs & Cole, stated about this project in an official press release.
The scarves (100% silk, 90cm x 90cm) were part of the "No Line No Wave" exhibition, hosted a few months ago at Graven's Pavement Gallery in Glasgow's Albion Street. The limited edition pieces are currently available to buy (£110 each; enquiries should be directed to info@briggsandcole.co.uk).
"Everyone should live creatively. It is now recognised that the creative urge - other than sex - is manifest in varying degrees, not only in musicians, writers and painters, but in all human beings. Adults as well as children are encouraged to paint and to dance freely, to express themselves and put forward any ideas that occur to them. But creation should go further and mean more in our lives than purely aesthetic expression, important though it is. Creation in the widest sense must surely be adding to what already exists. If you contribute something to others and to yourself you are living creatively". Margaret Morris, Creation in Dance and Life
Yesterday's post focused on freedom of movement, so let's continue the thread by looking at the work of Margaret Morris, a prolific dancer, choreographer, educator, artist and costume designer.
Morris was born in 1891 in London from Welsh/Irish parents (her Father William Morris was an artist). Her parents moved in Boulogne when she was a few weeks old, and she grew up bilingual.
A child prodigy, in 1900 she joined the Ben Greet Shakespearian Company and played 'Puck' in A Midsummer Night's Dream; three years later she played child parts in Drury Lane melodramas and in The Water Babies at The Garrick Theatre.
She trained in dancing with John D'Auban, ballet master at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane, but she resented the rigidity of the classic style of ballet and started developing her own exercises to improve spring and balance.
In 1907 Morris joined Frank Benson's company as an actress playing ingenue parts and left two years later. A friend introduced her to Isadora Duncan's brother Raymond and she had several classes with him, learning the Greek Positions inspired to Duncan by the artefacts of ancient Greece, which, he maintaned, were the athletic basics of training and dancing.
Morris started incorporating these movements in her technique. In 1910 she choreographed and danced in Gluck's Orpheus and Eurydice staged by Marie Brema at the Savoy Theatre in London and played Water in The Blue Bird by Maeterlinck at the Haymarket Theatre.
English novelist and playwright John Galsworthy suggested her to set up a school to teach her method. She became very friendly with Galsworthy and his wife and wrote "The Galsworthy Story", that became the basis for the writer's novel The Dark Flower.
In the meantime, Morris' school took more of her time: she and her pupils appeared in many productions and, by 1912, she moved to new premises in Chelsea.
During a visit in 1913 with her company to the Marigny Theatre in Paris she met Scottish artist J D Fergusson who later on became her husband. As the years passed, her school and theatre became a mecca for many artists and Scottish architect Charles Rennie Mackintosh designed for her a theatre that was sadly never built.
Her modern dance technique became known as the Margaret Morris Movement. Since she improved the health and posture of her students, she was involved in dance and movement as therapy.
In the mid-'20s her method was shown in London and Paris and her work was adopted in the massage school at St Thomas Hospital in London. The Movement thrived and the artist opened schools in London, Paris, Cannes, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Manchester and Aberdeen.
Morris' method was adopted by the British Army and taught at the Army Training School at Aldershot. The army authorities, though, refused to acknowledge her publicly by name since the originator of the system was a woman.
In 1939 she moved to Glasgow where the school remained open (other schools closed after the war) and where she became very active in the local art scene. The New Art Club and the Celtic Ballet met indeed in the Margaret Morris school premises of Blythswood Square (in 299 West George Street; it's not rare to find in books about Morris or ballet pictures of her and the students practicing in the square, as Morris had the habit of leading her students out of the dance studio and onto Blythswood Square to dance barefoot).
Morris encouraged this exchange between various disciplines and art forms. She saw indeed the performers dancing on stage as being part of a moving painting: "Anything presented on stage is a picture in a very definite frame," she wrote, " if we admit that stage productions may be considered as 'pictures', then the dancers are part of those pictures and the direction and shape of their movements of the utmost importance to the composition as a whole."
Some of the Art Club members therefore worked on the decor and costumes for Morris' ballets: Andrew Taylor Elder designed the set for The Forsaken Mermaid (1940); Josef Herman created sets and costumes for The Ballet of the Palette (1942), and Louise Annand designed the costumes for St Elay and The Bear (1947). The first two performances of the Celtic Ballet were The Forsaken Mermaid (1940) and Earth Shapers (1941).
In some of the performances groups of dancers created pictures against the artist's back cloth, their silhouettes enlarging upon it. In Morris' works the painter's eye was always vigilant and her method of enlargement of her own solo dancers was helped by the costume and the body that often repeated the movement and rhythms suggested by tree shapes like palm trees.
Some of the performances had a sculptural or architectural quality about them: in some cases the dancers reproduced frieze-like shapes; in others Morris' moving groups formed with their bodies lines and shapes that called to mind alphabetical letters,
During these years Morris collaborated with many artists and, in 1947, the Celtic Ballet became a professional company and started touring Scotland. It was also one of the first British companies to perform in France after the war.
The Celtic Ballet productions were focused on Scottish themes and their movements were a combination of the Margaret Morris method, Scottish country dance and Highland dance.
In the '50s the Celtic Ballet performed in the States and, ten years later, Morris formed a professional company, The Scottish National Ballet. She returned to London after the death of her husband and revitalised the method and school.
By 1984 there were over half a million annual attendances at the Margaret Morris classes in the UK and strong branches in Canada, France, Switzerland, Germany and Japan.
Morris returned to Glasgow in the '70s and died in 1980. In her book My Life in Movement she had written "I am confident my work will be fully recognised and utilised once I am dead; I intend to go on working as long as I can."
In 1991, a centenary exhibition organised in Glasgow celebrated her paintings and watercolours, and also included a few sketches of costumes in bold colours that displayed a taste for oriental style. Last year the choreographer and dancer was mentioned by fashion designer Holly Fulton as one of the inspirations for her Spring/Summer 2015 collection.
The time has come to rediscover Morris' method (her tips about posture and movement would definitely help many of us, especially those ones who spend too much time at the computer or bent on a portable device like a mobile phone or a tablet) and dedicate her a new exhibition celebrating her dance style, method and the costumes for her performances. Thirty-five years after her death, Morris has still got a lot to teach us about creativity, movement and finding harmony in our lives.
As she wrote in her book Dancing (illustrated by beautiful pictures by Fred Daniels): "Movement is the most primitive of the arts, and the most closely allied to our daily lives, therefore the understanding of it not only through physical exercises but through the study of shapes and lines made in dancing must be of great value. In our daily lives we cannot help moving in relation to our surroundings, to some objects or persons, and to a great extent, according to the harmony or disharmony of these relations, our lives become harmonised or disharmonised. The study of movement visually links up the physical and mental control of muscle and brain. Most people have never learnt to use their eyes, and more general study of seeing and moving would lead to a far greater tranquillity and harmony of rhythm than we see around us at present."
In previous posts we often looked at the links between dance and fashion, a connection that started with the Ballets Russes and that went on to inspire in more recent years collaborations between fashion houses, designers or brands and famous corps de ballet.
Throughout the decades we have seen several choreographers closely working with fashion designers: Martha Graham designed her costumes with the help of Halston who, in turn, considered himself as "Martha's hands"; Maurice Béjart and Versace were good friends and extraordinary collaborators; Jean Paul Gaultier's fashion semantics entered Régine Chopinot's performances creating a new visual language of dance.
While the trend continues, there is one important change that is worth mentioning: up until a few years ago this link was more about costuming the body in a striking way, but now body movements have radically transformed, and choreographers are both inspired by what the dancers are wearing, while influencing in return fashion.
New functional dynamics are currently being explored on many stages or on films uploaded on the Internet. These movements are at times inspired by the frantic and complex times we are living in, but also by modern themes such as society, technology or science.
Maybe inspired by last year's "Dance & Fashion" exhibition at the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York, AnOther Magazine recently organised a project entitled "MOVEment".
Launched by Dazed group co-founder Jefferson Hack and created in collaboration with Sadler's Wells, the project combining fashion, dance and cinema consists in seven fashion houses creating bespoke costumes for seven specially choreographed performances, interpreted for the screen by seven directors.
Now available online, the films were premiered at Sadler's Wells' Lilian Baylis Studio in April, followed by a live performance of "Two", performed by Russell Maliphant Company Dancer Carys Staton, with music by Andy Cowton.
Some pieces work better than others: choreographed and performed by Paris Opera ballerina Marie-Agnès Gillot in a costume by Alexander McQueen, the film directed by Daniel Askill is very physical and tackles the theme of transformation and metamorphosis with Gillot turning at the very end of the film into a dark flying angel.
The costumes by Calvin Klein Collection contribute to give a further architectural note to Daniel Arsham's film set in a modernist environment and featuring a performance by Julie Kent and Jonah Bokaer (who also choreographed the piece).
Warren Du Preez and Nick Thornton Jones's film - with a performance by Carys Staton, choreography by Russell Maliphant and costumes by Iris van Herpen - could almost be interpreted as a darkly fashion representation of the Big Bang revealing not how the universe developed, but how a dress is created, with the dancer suspended in space and time and clad in a digital costume.
In some films the focus on the body gradually leaves more space to the costumes: in Ruth Hogben's filmic interpretation of the performance by Louis McMiller, Daniela Neugebauer, James Pett, and Fukiko Takase with choreography by Wayne McGregor and designs by Gareth Pugh, the movement of drinking straws forming the costume becomes more mesmerising than the actual choreography.
Fashion-wise not everything worked too well: Prada's bourgeois clothes look forced upon the beautiful piece choreographed and performed by the dancers of Tanztheater Wuppertal in the film directed by Kevin Frilet and set in a derelict theatre.
Dance-wise this is definitely the best piece of the septet with delicate duets and poetical music, and while the garments are supposed to convey a genderless neutrality between male and female dancers, they also add an unnecessary aura of coldness to an otherwise sensual choreography.
The energetic performance by Aya & Bambi, with choreography by Aya Sato and Ryan Heffington and costumes by Chalayan, turned Jacob Sutton's film into a painfully short and somehow repetitive music video.
Sponsoring from Ford Vignale meant instead that the film by Matthew Donaldson with a performance by Nevena Jovanovic, choreography by Jasmin Vardimon and a beautiful sculptural headpiece suspended between a nun's veil and an architectural piece (think Pasolini's Decameron meets Pierre Cardin...) by Stephen Jones Millinery, ended up looking like an extended car advert (albeit a stylish one, but still a car advert...).
The main aim of this project may be combining fashion and dance, but, rather than being about dance costuming, it emphases the aspect of body moving and therefore the choreography.
Interestingly enough, the focus has been on rather innovative dance routines also in music videos with certain artists introducing new ideas about body image.
Choreography has so far played a major role in the latest videos accompanying Australian singer and songwriter Sia's tracks. When "Chandelier" was released last year, most critics were mesmerised by the amazingly inventive dance routine (the tortured and deranged version of Nadine Bommer’s happy and cute "Cartoon Girl" choreography interpreted by Gaya Bommer Yemini at the 2011 Youth America Grand Prix...) choreographed by Los Angeles-based Ryan Heffington and performed by 11-year-old reality TV star Maddie Zeigler who, clad in a very basic nude leotard and a blonde wig, acrobatically flipped and kicked, frantically jumped and mimed, interacting with whatever desolate object - walls, floors, door frames, mattresses and tables - she encountered on her path.
Heffington also came up with the choreograph for Sia's "Elastic Heart" wth a cage-fight between Shia LaBeouf and Maddie Ziegler and more recently worked again with Ziegler on Sia's "Big Girls Cry".
Heffington's choreographies for these videos could be seen as physical yet abstract representations of modern anxieties, social phobias and other assorted issues generated by our modern society, styled image-wise in a rather basic way as the simple leotard has become a new minimalist protagonist that helps people refocusing on the song/the body movements, leaving behing grand costumes à la Lady Gaga.
Will the trend continue and influence fashion on a deeper level? We'll see, in the meantime 'Shame' - from Young Fathers's "White Men Are Black Men Too" - is another video based on physicality and body-wrenching movements.
The video (directed by Jeremy Cole) features an injured young man (Joshua Hubbard) wearing a tank top and tracksuit bottoms - an ensemble that points towards the uniform of disenfranchised youth - running down solitary roads and eventually throwing himself in an intensive and liberating dance routine (choreographed by Holly Blakey).
Let's hope that fashion learns a new lesson from these intense choreographies that revolve around body mechanics rather than on grand costumes - liberating itself from its ingrained elitist pretentiousness in favour of more functional approaches.
Launched a few years ago as a way to attract a younger generation of museum visitors, fashion exhibitions have rapidly turned into cash cows for many institutions. You can at present choose between monumental events sponsored by powerful brands and fashion houses, and smaller but well-curated exhibitions that will surprise you for the way the curators or the artists involved cleverly managed to use the tiny budgets allowed to them.
Then there is another type of "fashion exhibition - the archival event built on heritage pieces with a corporate twist about it (we have already explored the meanings of pernicious words such as "archive" and "heritage" in a previous post, so refer to it to know more about the current meaning of these words). A perfect example is "Fully Fashioned: The Pringle of Scotland Story", currently on at the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh.
The event seems to be well-deserved as the company celebrates this year its bicentenary, having been founded in 1815 in the Scottish Borders town of Hawick when the firm of Waldie, Pringle and Wilson started to trade from Whisky House Mill. Later on, Robert Pringle and his son Walter, established Robert Pringle and Son.
"Fully Fashioned" opens with woollen hosiery: Pringle first started producing a small range of high quality and high cost undergarments and knitted stockings before turning into a successful international fashion knitwear brand.
By the 1870s the company introduced cashmere, establishing itself as the leading supplier of luxury undergarments, while cleverly applying to its knitwear the unique properties and techniques of knitted woollen undergarments, guaranteeing to the wearer freedom of movement and ending up playing a key role in the emancipation of women (as their sporty clothes made their way into their wardrobes revolutionising the way women dressed).
Genuine knitwear fans and designers will enjoy these displays and the ones that focus on the Argyle patterns - pioneered by Pringle - and on the twinset, a fitted sweater with a matching cardigan that has played a central role in the development of the company since the 1930s.
Pieces from royal wardrobes are particularly important to the Pringle story: HM Queen Elizabeth II received indeed a piece of Pringle of Scotland knitwear every year since 1947.
In return she wrote (every year) a thank you letter to the company (a sweater worn by Queen Elizabeth II and a thank you letter are part of one of the displays dedicated to these royal connections).
Pringle has held the Royal Warrant for the manufacture of knitted garments since 1948, and has supplied underwear and outerwear to many members of the Royal Family.
But further royal links are explored through the cashmere cardigan with glass buttons from the 1960s owned by Princess Grace of Monaco (who also passed her sweaters to her daughter, Princess Caroline).
The exhibition also features pieces from the Hawick Museum and the Women Golfers' Museum, including a 1933 outfit worn by golfer Gloria Minoprio.
Celebrity endorsement and artistic partnerships are remembered through photographs of actresses.
In the 1950s "sweater girls" - Jean Simmons, Margaret Lockwood, Deborah Kerr, Brigitte Bardot, Margot Fonteyn and many more - all wore Pringle and made it famous.
Modern day influencers include instead Tilda Swinton, who, in 2010, "designed" for the company a piece that was actually based on a Pringle of Scotland twinset which belonged to the Scottish actress's grandmother.
The exhibit in Edinburgh features more or less the same displays and contents showcased in London at the Serpentine Gallery during London Fashion Week, in February 2015.
While it is the norm for most exhibitions to feature the same contents wherever they may travel, it is surprising that the curators didn't seem interested in tailoring the event to the country where Pringle was born.
The cashmere cardigans created in 1934 by Austrian industrial designer Otto Weisz (the first full-time designer at Pringle) remain for example one of the highlights of the exhibition especially when we consider the local connections that Weisz developed.
During the '50s and the '60s Weisz called designers from Glasgow School of Art to create with them collections that combined cultural heritage with technical innovation.
Maybe this local connection could have been explored a bit better.
There are actually other points that could have been analysed more in depth.
The event closes with a 2014 cable-knit polo-neck sweater featuring 3D printed elements combined with hand-knitted construction.
The piece was designed by current Creative Director Massimo Nicosia in collaboration with architect and material scientist Richard Beckett, a teaching fellow at the Bartlett School of Architecture at University College London.
The 3D printed panels integrated in Nicosia's designs for Pringle's Autumn/Winter 2014 and Spring/Summer 15 collections that look like chainmail were created using the selective laser sintering (SLS) process.
They were then woven through small hooks on the underside or stitched into the wool.
This perfect example of traditions mixed with innovative technology to produce a fluid piece with an added tactile dimension about it, could have definitely attracted a younger generation of museum visitors.
More local knitwear and fashion designers, but also 3D mavericks and labs could have been involved in organising workshops and related events at the National Museum of Scotland explaining and exploring the possibilities of combining traditional yarns with innovative plastic based materials, yet this aspect seems to have been neglected.
There is actually one great link with Scotland and one intriguing part in the exhibition - the three short films commissioned to the Michael Clark Company. This project continues the tradition of collaborating with Scottish creatives - including David Shrigley, Douglas Gordon, Robert Montgomery, and Alasdair Gray.
The films explore the role of knitwear in the development of the modern wardrobe and the importance of key qualities such as warmth, flexibility and breathability, and feature dancers clad in vintage and new garments from the S/S 2015 collection.
Yet as a whole this exhibition is not too convincing and visitors risk of being disappointed by quite a few things. First and foremost the long, rich and complex history that they talk about in the press releases seems to have been reduced to several memorabilia and brand imagery arranged in a very cold way through antiquated displays (you get the same feeling when you visit a historical company's HQ and you find displays about its history at the entrance or in the basement...).
You also wonder why they insisted on including specific historical images (photos of a sweater with a Corgi on it made for Princess Anne), when they do have more modern and eye catching pieces such as the twinset by Tokyo-based designer Julien David for Colette and made using a computer.
Visitors expecting a quintessentially Scottish view on local manufacturing will also be disappointed. Scotland has been in the spotlight last year with its referendum and now it is once again in the news thanks to the unexpected success in the British general election campaign of Nicola Sturgeon, current First Minister of Scotland and Leader of the Scottish National Party, but it must be underlined that Pringle is not Scottish at the moment.
After turning in the mid-'80s into a favourite with football casuals (another connection that not many seem interested in rediscovering since it is deemed rather embarrassing, but a connection that could easily win to museums who may organise showcases about "casual fashion" a good number of rather unusual visitors...), Pringle started losing its appeal and, in 2000, it was bought from Scottish firm Dawson International for around £6 million by Hong Kong-based S.C. Fang & Sons Company, Ltd, owners of clothing retailer Toppy Group.
This move marked the end of production at the factory in Hawick, with all manufacturing outsourced to Fang's third-party suppliers in Asia and some finishing still occurring in Scotland to allow high-end products to be marked as "Produced in Scotland".
The final verdict on "Fully Fashioned"? Rather than a proper fashion exhibition about a historical company, this is a way for National Museum of Scotland to test the waters in wait of the 2016 opening of new galleries of decorative art, design and fashion, while being also a corporate event for Pringle (it will be travelling to Asia and visit its current owners...).
Institutions organising this sort of exhibits should remember, though, that some visitors are becoming more demanding when it comes to the contents of fashion events and they are becoming more knowledgeable as well. They will therefore be able to spot the difference between a genuine fashion exhibition and a "corporate archival event revolving around heritage".
Images in this post
1. National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh, by Anna Battista
2. Ladies combinations, PESCO of Hawick, 1920s
3. Pringle of Scotland Catalogue image 1940's.
4. Cashmere ‘golfer’ cardigan, mid-1950s. Courtesy of Jamie Mulherron.
5. Roll-neck sweater with Intarsia design, late 1950s.
6. 1947 United States market advertisement for Pringle of Scotland, courtesy Jamie Mulherron.
7. Keyboard twinset, Julien David for Colette, 2010.
8 -9. Pringle of Scotland, A/W 2014
10. VOGUE USA Cover, Model wearing Pringle of Scotland, April 1955.
Modern fashion magazines may offer great content when it comes to immaculately styled shoots, but they are missing something - patterns for clothes.
There were obviously more women making their own clothes in the '50s when the ready-to-wear industry hadn't developed yet. But today finding your own fabrics and trying to make your own dress can be a way to save money, engage yourself in a nice DIY project and learn more about the technical side of fashion. So, if you want to try your hand at making a dress, here's a project that may inspire you. It is taken from a 1959 May issue of the Italian edition of Grazia magazine.
It consists in an easy Summer belted dress to be made with 3 metres of fabric and in 3 days. The magazine suggested to make it in linen, light alpaca or cotton tweed, and advised seamstresses with more time and skills to embroider the initials of the wearer's on a pocket. Enjoy your DIY Sunday/Summer dress project!
A few days ago the Board of Directors of the Biennale di Venezia chaired by Paolo Baratta, appointed - upon recommendation by this year's Artistic Director Okwui Enwezor - artist El Anatsui Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the 56th International Art Exhibition, and curator Susanne Ghez Winner of the Special Golden Lion for Services to the Arts.
El Anatsui's Golden Lion is extremely well deserved: considered as today's foremost contemporary African sculptor, the Ghanaian artist - born in Anyako in 1944 but working in Nigeria - is known for his memerising works, densely intricate sculptures (mentioned in a previous post) made with found materials such as discarded aluminum caps and plastic seals from liquor bottles, which he flattens, shapes, perforates, and painstakingly assembles with copper wire.
The final result looks a bit like a modern tapestry or a flexible metallic textile (a sort of recycled and monumental version of Versace's oroton...) characterised by visually striking colour schemes including gold, red, and yellow.
El Anatsui's work derives from traditional strip-woven Kente cloth developed by Akan and Ewe weavers in the artist's native Ghana. These textiles are usually employed for commemorative purposes and at times they are draped on the body as the apparel of chiefs and regional leaders, but El Anatsui also borrows his draped motifs from Classical sculptures.
This main inspiration is combined in his work with techniques and moods borrowed from Western art including mosaics, tapestry, chain-mail armours and the paintings of Gustav Klimt. El Anatsui's works also offer comment on contemporary life and on issues such as consumption of alcohol, the impact of liquor on Nigerian villages, and the detritus of consumerism.
The prestigious award could also be seen as a call for more African artists to take part in the Venice Biennale and, indirectly, as a way to fight against the static and archaic nationalism of the pavilions in the Giardini.
El Anatsui coined the term "nomadic aesthetic" to describe his works. Though monumental, his pieces are indeed not fixed but fluid and they can therefore be folded for easy transportation and arranged in different configurations, depending from the place where they are installed and by the curators mounting them. They are therefore geographically and formally nomadic pieces supporting an aesthetic fluidity of ideas, impermanence and indeterminacy. So, hopefully, the Golden Lion to El Anatsui will also remind us about the humanitarian crisis in the Mediterranean and about all those migrants who, fleeing from the Middle East and Northern Africa, became the victims of tragic shipwrecks.
If you're an ordinary person joining Fashion Revolution Day, at the moment you're probably wondering who made the clothes you're wearing and maybe posting pictures of yourself on the social media, demanding an answer. If you're an artisan and you find yourself on the manufacturing side, you will instead be busy telling the world that you actually made the clothes that many of us may be currently wearing.
As you may remember, Fashion revolution Day was first launched last year to commemorate the victims of the Rana Plaza disaster. The factory complex collapsed in just 90 seconds in Dhaka, Bangladesh, in 2013, leaving behind a final death toll of 1,134 victims and around 2,500 people injured or permanently disabled. The tragedy was described by global trade unions as "mass industrial homicide".
While remembering the victims, the event - that boasts this year a total of 71 countries joining in - focuses on raising awareness about the true cost of fashion, showing that change is genuinely possible. We will probably be able to consider the real impact of the campaign and see if it produced any positively tangible results only in a few years' time.
In the meantime, we should all start considering new ways to make sure that the revolution doesn't last only one day by being more careful when we shop.
For example, it is a consumer's right to demand full transparency on the "Made in" labels, but they are quite often not enough to guarantee the real origin of our clothes. A garment may indeed be made in Italy, a country well known for its artisanal skills (but also for its illegal sweatshops...), using materials imported from other countries (think about skins of exotic animals that may have been produced without respecting certain standards, or even small metallic elements made in sweatshops located in Asia).
In a world that lives on global inequality and that manufactures billions of pieces of cheap clothing and accessories a year causing social and environmental catastrophes, the best thing is probably questioning more what we are buying and changing our spending habits.
Resisting being brainwashed by fast fashion trends, and refusing to be told by the next trendsetter - be them a celebrity with too many high tech luxury watches on their wrist or a high profile blogger with too many pairs of shoes in their closet - dictating us what to wear every week/day is probably one step towards changing our buying habits.
Using the Internet to search and find some smaller companies manufacturing products according to ethical standards is another. In a previous post we looked for example at Kenya-based knitwear company Toto Knits.
Kenya will be joining Fashion Revolution Day with a series of events analysing the local textile industry, shifting the attention on cotton farming and the decline the industry went through in the last few years, a decline that left only 15 textile mills still functioning.
Toto Knits' founder Erin Brennan Allan had to face this problem when she first started her knitwear company and was looking for the proper yarns to use. The company currently produces childrenswear, accessories and a selection of gifts and small decor objects at affordable prices.
Yet the most important thing about it is that Toto Knits employs a team of local knitters, women who work in a friendly environment and who sign all the pieces they make, so that consumers know the name of the special craftswoman in Africa who made what they ordered (yes, the company ships internationally).
Toto Knits recently started publishing on its blog a "Knitter of the Month" post: Milkah Wamaitha, a mother of two who has been collaborating with the company for nine years, is one of the latest knitters featured. In a short Q&A on the blog she states the best thing about her job is "Working as a team. We are all a family here."
Consumers visiting the company's Facebook or Instagram pages will also be able to meet other Toto Knits artisans such as head knitter Mary Wambui.
What's so unusual about them? They are all happily smiling because they are able to support through work their families earning a decent wage based on fair trade standards. Looks like a different approach to manufacturing may turn fashion into a healthier business for both manufacturers and consumers.
Image credits for this post
All images of Toto Knits workshop and artisans copyright Sean Dundas and courtesy of Toto Knits. Artisans:Catherine Nyaboke, Anne Nyokabi, Catherine Wamaitha, Eunice Wairimu, Mary Nduta, Sarah Wambui, Milkah Wamaitha, Mary Wambui and Margaret Wanjiku.
A few seasons ago monograms were all the rage with luxury fashion houses such as Prada offering the possibility of adding customisable letters to various products including backpacks, bags, trolleys, and sunglasses. Yet the trend now seems to have shifted towards typography and alphabets.
This is actually not a new obsession: passionate art and fashion fans may remember Erté's famous "feminised" alphabet in his instantly recognisable and elegant Art Deco style.
Quite often, children's books about alphabets were elevated to proper art thanks to the detailed images illustrating each letter: as you may remember from a previous post, Alphabet in Pictures by Alexandre Benois, a children's book published in Saint Petersburg in 1904 included the letters of the Russian alphabet in 35 full page chromolithographs, with beautiful drawings inspired by folklore, popular fairy tales or Bible stories.
The history of art also includes further experimental books revolving around alphabets, such as Abeceda ("Alphabet", 1926), a poem on the forms, sounds and function of the alphabet by avant-garde Czech writer Vítězslav Nezval with dancer Milča Mayerová photographed in poses representing each of the letters, and design, typography, and photomontages by Karel Teige.
Letters and alphabets came back in fashion around 4 years ago with D&G's A/W 2011-12 collection, that featured pencil skirts, leggings, trousers, sweaters and shirts in bright colours covered in alphabet prints.
Then the alphabet trend disappeared for a few seasons before resurfacing at the end of last year.
Before Christmas, Issey Miyake offered the chance to their site users to create messages for family members and friends employing limited-edition animated typography that included the entire alphabet from A to Z. Each letter was allocated a unique sound, so that the final message came out as a one-of-a-kind melody.
The same letters were also used to decorate the window of the brand's London flagship store in Brook Street, where it was possible to buy limited-edition products from six Issey Miyake brands, all in the shape of the animated typography.
The latest designer who opted to move from typography and alphabets is Mary Katrantzou. Her Resort 2015 collection featured see-through pieces covered in embroidered, jacquarded or embossed calligraphy and fonts, and was inspired by a wide range of graphic ideas including illuminated manuscripts such as the Book of Kells and works by legendary graphic designer Milton Glaser.
Katrantzou also developed last year a collection of four clutches (in a mix of materials including snakeskin and perspex with glitter, tortoiseshell and wood effects) spelling her name, and recently released for the Spring/Summer 2015 season the next installment of her alphabet clutch bags (featuring letters 'D', 'A', 'N', 'C' and 'E').
The designer has now taken her obsession with typography to the next level with a collection of alphabetical tote bags. Entitled "Initials", the 26-piece collection includes coated canvas totes (with matching zipped clutches) with prints dedicated to all the letters of the alphabet, reworked in an arty way.
The prints were the result of the "Mary's A to Z" project that the designer created last year with online art platform ArtStack (the series was exhibited on the site and then turned into a range of T-shirts and sweaters).
The prints could be considered as surrealist mixes of images produced by the designer's fantasy combined with Erté's alphabets, Maxfield Parrish's graphics, Antonio Basoli's architectural engravings from his Alfabeto Pittorico (Pictorial Alphabet) compositions, and paintings by Tristram Hillier, Edward Hopper or David Hockney (think about the palette and composition style that Hockney adopted for "American Collectors" View this photo to get an idea).
All the bags - released in a limited edition run of 20 - are now available on e-commerce site Matches Fashion.As the price ($1,070 each) is definitely not for everybody and there are also very few bags around, if you like the trend a good idea is to start your own little DIY project and come up with a personalised alphabet tote bag.
In the meantime, you can expect the next level of the trend to hit other disciplines very soon, so it's just a matter of weeks before we will be seeing colouring book for adults à la Johanna Basford, revolving around the alphabet.
If, while waiting for the next alphabet inspired product, you ever wonder why this trend is so popular, you will have to go back to the 1800s to find an answer.
In a letter written in 1839 while travelling, Victor Hugo provided interpretations of all the letters of the alphabet - L was the leg and foot; D the back; M a mountain or a camp with two adjoining tents; N a closed door with a bar running diagonally across it and so on. Hugo's letters included a series of human activities and disciplines that went from geometry and astronomy to war - in a nutshell, his alphabet was a book of human existence. And that's exactly the answer to why this trend is so popular: as Hugo stated, "Human society, the world, and the whole of humankind is to be found in the alphabet."
Nature offers us the chance to carry out exciting explorations into several geometrical figures and shapes. The complicated structure of nests made by social insects is, for example, particularly intriguing since it is the product of the labour of many thousands of individuals working according to a fixed sequence of simple behaviours and producing an impressive and complex whole. Wasp nests vary indeed in structure, size and raw materials employed, with the genus Polybia being the smallest of paper nest makers.
Remarkable structures found in nature - such as honeycombs - quite often inspired a variety of applications in the creative arts. Frank Stella's irregularly shaped "Etymology (Q 10)" from the Moby Dick Series (1990) is characterised by disparate elements such as sinuous wave-like forms fluently flowing from a nucleus and opening onto other elements - like steel tubing - that expand outward. The piece also includes a thick honeycombed metal structure that seems to be the focal point of the structure.
Fashion has also taken inspiration from these natural shapes and forms: Sarah Burton based Alexander McQueen's Spring/Summer 2013 collection on honeycombed embroideries, prints and organza structures and patterns (matched with headdresses inspired by beekeepers' veils).
Come next Autumn, honeycombs and expandable structures based on geometries will be fashionable once again. Some of the most spectacular examples of these complex structures appeared on the Parisian runways, in particular during Junya Watanabe's catwalk show.
His Autumn/Winter 2015-16 collection started with full inverted cupcake-like skirts and, little by little, it developed through expandable pieces in structured felt-like fabrics, matched at times with lampshade-like headdresses (ideal if you will be staging a recreation of Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass and you need a chess piece costume...) and cartoonish hairstyles.
Some of separates, outerwear and dresses were based on the Chinese flat paper decorations known as paper gourds that can be opened up to reveal a hidden and more fantastic world of colours and volumes (think about Li Hongbo's sculptures and you get an idea...).
Other garments were characterised by irreverent fabric spikes based on the configuration of an origami fortune teller (make several, then stitch them together one after the next and you will get a rough version of Watanabe's scarves), while the effects of trellis-like packaging cardboard was cleverly reproduced into laser-cut capes, coats, ponchos, and biker jackets.
Variation and dimensionality, transformation, movement and mutability were the key words to unlock this collection characterised by a multi-layered and mille-feuilled aesthetic and revolving around elastic accordion and concertina folds.
Quite a few Japanese designers throughout the years moved from the Japanese tradition of origami to create examples of "flat yet expanding" garments, among them also Hiroaki Ohya, who, as you may remember, created a while back a red polyester film ensemble that could be folded flat or could extend to resemble a beehive.
Watanabe is also not new to these structures and complex pleating systems emerged in many of his designs: in his A/W 2000-01 "Techno Couture" collection there were for example plenty of honeycomb or bell-shaped structures and exaggerated yet ethereal ruffs in blue, yellow and red polyester organdie, but in this collection he focused more on combining wearable and tailored pieces with these striking structures.
The designer played a lot with dichotomies, mixing in a visually striking way in his jackets and coats classic tailoring with expandable structures, and juxtaposing in his crisp white shirts with spiky fabric elements spiralling around the collar area, the elegantly formal and the extravagantly transgressive in a very desirable way.
While nowadays it remains extremely difficult to create something genuinely innovative, uniquely outstanding and cleverly playful at the same time, Watanabe seems to manage to do so almost effortlessly, even though his process of creation can only derive from long researches into multiple sources and disciplines.
It is possible to detect in this collection a series of inspirations including tailoring and sculpting, but also history (some of the honeycombed necklines looked like modern versions of Elizabethan ruffs recreated in bright shades of red, purple or pink), nature, interior design and architecture.
The latter was also mixed with mathematics, algorithms (during the show, the models seemed to have mathematical equations scribbled on their skin...) and fractals.
Looking at Watanabe's designs it is almost impossible not to make comparisons and links with convincing expandable architectural structures such as Wing Yi Hui and Lap Ming Wong's experimental "Wood Morphogenesis" project (2010) that balanced control with the natural response of wood capacities.
At the same time it is also quite easy to think about these designs in connection with the researches on fractals and on explosive multiplication of fractal constructions and dimensions by Polish-born French mathematician Benoit B. Mandelbrot, or with principles such as multiplicity of alternative definitions of dimension, and negative dimensions conceived as measures of the notion of quantitative measure of emptiness.
As they force the wearer to establish a new relationship with the space surrounding her, Watanabe's expandable designs can be filed under the "conceptual" category, but they remain at the same time wearable.
The designs are also the tangible proof that there are very few innovations in contemporary fashion and those designers introducing them are mainly working on the technical aspects of a garment and, more specifically, on the pattern-making, while carrying out also a few experiments with fabrics and textiles.
Fashionistas interested in the honeycomb may also want to check out This Is the Uniform's A/W 2015 collection that features see-through organza tracksuits with infinitely less complex structures than Watanabe's.
Fashion fans with a passion for themes such as static and dynamic forces, mass and volumes and contrasting principles such as the stiff/flexible dichotomy, should instead opt for Issey Miyake's A/W 2015-16 womenswear collection.
Entitled "Colorscope", this collection by Creative Director Yoshiyuki Miyamae features many garments made with experimental fabrics and characterised by geometrical motifs (geometry was also employed as the main inspiration for the show invitation - a circle that folded into a rectangle).
In some of the separates included in the collection yellow, red, purple, aquamarine and blue shades seemed to be trapped in a black honeycomb structure. The solution behind this mysterious effect is once again based on mathematical equations and on the 3-D Steam Stretch technology.
Unveiled in the Autumn/Winter 2014 collection, this innovative technique allows to incorporate in advance creases into a design.
Applying steam to the cloth, the fabric is given more volume and in this way it becomes easier to create expansive cloud-like pieces (see this video to discover more about this technique).
The collection also features designs in a polyhedral textile with a 3-D star pattern inspired by snow crystals that produce an abstract quality when applied to different shades of dark tones such as grey, or call to mind Dutch wax fabrics in their yellow, blue, pink, red and purple versions.
One very last touch in this geometrical collection was added at the very end of the catwalk show with several models wearing mesh body stockings and what looked like mini-skirts or large fabric belts that unfurled into ample skirts covered in multi-coloured geometrical patterns and multiplicative fractals. It looks like next Autumn some of us won't be just thinking about complex geometric concepts, but we'll also be wearing them.
Renaissance humanist representational art may not be to everybody's tastes, considering also the fact that many people nowadays - influenced by new media and technologies - have developed a passion for abstract or complex geometric art. If you like the genre, you'll be happy to hear that there are still a few weeks to enjoy Jens Wolf's striking geometries at the Ronchini Gallery in London (22 Dering Street; until 16th May).
Living and working in Berlin, the German artist graduated in 2001 from the Academy of Fine Arts in Karlsruhe under Helmut Dorner and Luc Tuymans. A key figure in the development of process art and from the same generation of artists such as Mark Grotjahn, Wolf has taken part in multiple solo and group exhibitions and his works are included in numerous permanent collections all over the world.
The exhibition at Ronchini's focuses on compositions revolving around varying shapes, at times more basic, at others more complex, based on shades such as white, red and black, or on more visually striking combinations of turquoise, lime and bright yellow.
The event also features new works, including two murals made with fabric and aluminum foil, nine paintings on plywood of varying size and colour, and one site-specific piece created for Ronchini.
Some of the pieces call to mind Josef Albers and Frank Stella's art; others point the visitors towards the principles of Constructivism.
But there is one key point that distinguishes Jens Wolf from other artists: Wolf deliberately adds slight imperfections to his works. In this way the artist finds in geometry - otherwise considered as a strict and rigid medium - a new kind of freedom.
The imperfections in Wolf's crisp angles and lines hint indeed at different dimensions behind those angles and shapes, colours, forms and lines.
Besides, the natural grain of the plywood - Wolf's main material of choice - creates contrasts with the smooth paint. Edges on lines are frayed and the sign of the artist's hand in the making of the work is visible in unpainted areas with pencil lines. Obvious signs of distress occur in areas where the paint has been partially chipped away to reveal the raw surface underneath.
Some of the abstract patterns and structures on display have a "projective quality" as they look as if they may jump out of the plywood; other complex and dynamic curvilinear shapes characterised by bold strokes appeal instead to calligraphy, cryptography and typography fans who are left to interpret and decode the works on display in this event.
"Jens Wolf has taken cold abstraction and added his own visual language to create contemporary works that have a sense of vulnerability and individual expression about them," Gallery founder Lorenzo Ronchini stated in an official press release. We can only add that we expect to see Wolf's visual language turning very soon into prints for some modernist fashion house's new collection or the artist disseminating his imperfect geometries on the set of some future catwalk show.
Image credits for this post
All images in this post Courtesy the artist and Ronchini Gallery
1. Jens Wolf, 11.09, 2011, Acrylic on plywood, 80x60cm
2. Jens Wolf, 13., 2013, Acrylic on plywood, 80x60cm
3. Jens Wolf, 13.21, 2013, Acrylic on plywood, 80x60cm
4. Jens Wolf, 13.19, 2013, Acrylic on plywood, 80x60cm
5. Jens Wolf, 08.70, 2008, Acrylic on plywood, 234 x 172 cm
6. Jens Wolf, 08.74, 2008, Acrylic on plywood, 238x172cm
7. Jens Wolf, 10.13, 2010, Acrylic on plywood, 86x115cm
8. Jens Wolf, 09.82, 2009, Acrylic on plywood, 115x86cm
9. Jens Wolf, 09.07, 2009, Acrylic on plywood, 60 x 80 cm
10. Jens Wolf, 12.33, 2012, Acrylic on plywood, 115x86cm
11. Jens Wolf, 14.20, 2014, Acrylic on plywood, 190x140cm
