Readers interested in discovering the history of fashion and of specific houses and labels will find long lists of books in all sorts of libraries and stores. But there is a genre that hasn't been explored so much and that may provide us in future with wonderful books - the fashion graphic novel with a female lead. Girl in Dior (NBM Publishing; with a poetic preface by writer Anna Gavalda) by Annie Goetzinger is definitely a great example of this genre.
Books about Christian Dior, his life, muses and passions and the history of his fashion house are not rare maybe, but Girl in Dior (first published in France under the title Jeune Fille en Dior) is a delicate portrayal of the house of Dior from the point of view of a young woman, Clara.
The story starts on a precise day - February 12th, 1947 - with Clara assigned to report for the magazine Jardin de Modes about the House of Dior's first runway, the catwalk show that revolutionised fashion launching the New Look.
Clara comes from a humble background, but grew up surrounded by seamstresses like her grandmother who worked at Poiret's, and soon finds herself among powerful people such as Harper's Bazaar's Carmel Snow, incredible stars like Marlene Dietrich and Rita Hayworth, and famous artists such as Jean Cocteau and Christian Bérard.
For a bizarre twist of destiny and a photoshoot that goes wrong, Clara loses her job at the magazine, but gains Dior's friendship and a job at his house, turning into an elegant fashion model and meeting in this new role her future husband as well.
Clara is a fictional character - a sort of crossover between early models à la Bettina and elegantly fragile acresses like Audrey Hepburn - transplanted in a real fashion house and surrounded by key figures such as Dior's elegant muse Mitzah Bricard. Yet the trick of mixing fiction with reality works pretty well thanks to Goetzinger's unique style and to the fact that the author had access to the fashion house archives and to some of the spaces where the story takes place and also had the chance to talk with the seamstresses who worked as young girls at Dior's.
Annie Goetzinger - awarded the Grand Prize "BD Boum" in 2014 (she was the first woman to win this prize) - studied art and fashion illustration in the late 1960s, and worked in theatre costume design and illustration, creating press cartoons for various newspapers, including Le Monde and La Croix.
Her background - suspended between illustration and cartoons - allows her to fill the page in a lovely way. Dior's full skirts in bright and varied colours jump out of the page; a sense of movement is achieved via sensually draped fabrics and gowns, while wide brimmed hats break the monotonous rhythm of panels, borders and outlines. This is maybe what Gruau would have drawn if he had lived in our times and would have created graphic novels.
Another important point to make is that Girl in Dior is not just Clara's story, but also the tale of the atelier's staff: Goetzinger cleverly introduces in the story the models and seamstresses working, gossiping and dreaming with Dior, without forgetting to look at the downside of the fashion world, with a page dedicated to the buyers irreverently touching the dresses and buying the rights to reproduce them.
Goetzinger's poetry is not only limited to the corolla shaped skirts and the parade of models walking down the runway, but to imagined moments such as Clara dressing up in the backstage and seeing Dior's evening dresses coming down from the loggia as if they were dropping from the sky.
The English-language release of the graphic novel in the States coincided with a tour with the author that somehow re-shifted the attention on art, cartoons, freedom and the Charlie Hebdo tragedy. Goetzinger has created in the past historical and crime comic books, but also stories addressing major issues, such as AIDS, and, while Girl in Dior is not a political work, it is a hymn to beauty, and - through Clara's personal story - to optimism and endurance even when unexpected twists of destiny shatter our dreams.
Most of us have controversially difficult relations with small and basic hardware pieces such as nails, harbouring too many memories of enthusiastic DIY sessions that ended up with random fingers hit hard with hammers and other assorted minor accidents and domestic tragedies.
Things may change, though, thanks to very different and visually striking hardware pieces designed by Droog. The collection - entitled "Construct Me!" and featuring 210 hardware items - was launched during Milan Design Week in what could be described as the smallest Droog/design exhibition/presentation ever. Located in a proper hardware store - Ferramenta Alfredo Viganò & C. in Via Panfilo Castaldi (until today, 19th April) - the presentation consisted in a table display case with several examples of screws, hinges, nuts, nails, brackets and other assorted hardware. So where is the innovation or the twist in this hardware tale?
All pieces are characterised by an extremely sensual and functional design. Some of them come in bright pink or blue shades, others glow in the dark. Nuts have grown four wings rather than two to add more character, while screw heads were amplified, so that the user won't miss them. Tie wraps work two ways to combine posts or tie around table legs; pattern brackets can be tessellated, combined and arranged as the user wishes to update existing furniture (or even build your own).
Screws remain the most desirable pieces as they feature cute emoticons winking, smiling, or sticking their tongues out or graphic signs such as stars, dashes and letters.
Studio Droog's main aim with this collection was going back to the basics and make visible and desirable those ordinary elements that are usually small and discrete and that therefore go often unnoticed.
The other point of the collection is celebrating forgotten hardware in a quirky way that will complement also a furniture piece: for example, each flat mesh nail adds a fun touch to the piece it will be incorporated in, as the mesh head flattens in a unique way upon each strike of the hammer.
Functionality remains high on the agenda, though, as all the screws can be used with a standard screwdriver.
The collection is accompanied by a hilarious catalogue with cool graphics in which the hardware pieces shout "Screw me (All Over the Place)" or "Tie Me Up!", slogans that add further fun to the hardware theme, something that was emphasised at the live presentation also through a gumball vending machine selling smiley screws outside the Ferramenta store.
Nominated to the 5th Edition of the Milan Design Award and winner in the Best Tech category, the "Construct Me!" hardware collection by Studio Droog has just one fault: the designers didn't realise that some of the pieces look so desirable that many of us will buy them to incorporate them not in our furniture but in our clothes and accessories.
Image credits for this post
1. Selected Pieces from "Construct Me! Hardware" by Studio Droog - Milan 2015. Products shown (L-R): Flat Cross Screw X-Large; Wing Nut Large; Wing Nut Medium; Double Tie Wrap; Flat Cross Screw Large; Nail Holder with Cross Head Nail; FlatMesh Nail; Pattern Hinge (combination); Emoticon Screw (smile); Pattern Bracket One. Photographer: Ilco Kemmere.
2. Flat Mesh Nail by Studio Droog. Photographer: Ilco Kemmere.
3. Wing Nut (Size L and M) by Studio Droog. Photographer: Ilco Kemmere.
4. Flat Cross Screw XL (Blue); Flat Cross Screw L (Bronze). All designs by Studio Droog. Photographer: Ilco Kemmere.
5 - 6. Emoticon screws by Studio Droog. Photographer: Ilco Kemmere.
7. Nail Holder in Pink with Cross Head Nail by Studio Droog. Photographer: Ilco Kemmere.
8 - 9. The "Construct Me!" hardware collection by Droog inside the Ferramenta Alfredo Viganò, Milan. Photography by: Ki Leung.
10 - 11 - 12. Ferramenta Alfredo Viganò, Via Panfilo Castaldi 40, Milan, the hardware store where Droog presented the "Construct Me! Hardware" collection. Images by: Studio Droog.
The expression "sotto voce" (beneath/under voice) indicates words spoken in an undertone or low voice. Softly whispered words make us think about calm and tranquillity, visually conjuring up serene landscapes in neutral tones and shades. This is the main reason why a current exhibition at the Dominique Lévy Gallery (the second show at its new London space in 22 Old Bond Street) is entitled "Sotto Voce" (on until today). The event, mainly focusing on a specific period of time going from the 1930s to the 1970s, comprises a wide range of artists creating abstract white reliefs.
The list of artists included is long and goes from Henri Laurens to Sergio Camargo, passing through Jean Arp, Ben Nicholson, Lucio Fontana, Piero Manzoni, Enrico Castellani, Fausto Melotti, Günther Uecker, Luis Tomasello, and Mira Schendel, among the others. In a nutshell, there are international representatives of different movements – from Surrealism to the Zero Group, Spatialism to Minimalism, and Conceptual Art to Constructivism – engaging in a unique dialogue that at times is intentional, at other is completely accidental.
The artists featured - selected with the help of international curators, collectors and artist's estates - will definitely change the perspective of many visitors regarding the white shade: this simple and basic tone is employed by artists such as Lucio Fontana to create works that revolve around the concept of space and the possibility of going behind the canvas, but further concepts and ideas are explored in other artworks on display here.
In "White Relief" (1936) - inspired by European schools of thought such as Abstraction-Création, Bauhaus and De Stijl - artist Ben Nicholson plays with light across a shallow relief and with variations of lights and shades with his incised or raised forms, achieving through perfect symmetry a softness of composition; Jean Arp's "Composition schématique" (1943), a geometrical composition in smooth marble, echoes instead in its shapes the reliefs made by the artist as a monument to his wife, while celebrating the beauty of the Mediterranean.
Visitors interested in paintings for the mind and works that focus on the perception of the visual experience and imagination through different shapes will enjoy Enrico Castellani's canvases and Sergio Camargo's "Madiera Pintada No. 288" (1970). The latter also looks at density, with flowing spirals filling up the frame, evoking a movement from the individual part to the multiple whole, floating in a dimension between painting and sculpture, in a constant otherworldly trance.
Some of the works included will inspire visitors to experiment more with unusual materials: Piero Manzoni's three "Achrome" works (from 1958 to the early '60s) combine wet kaolin crystallised and hardened on canvas, or painted polystyrene balls and kaolin on canvas; in Alberto Burri's "Combustione CP 9" (1964) the beauty of pure white is instead corrupted by the black tones of combustion on cellotex.
At around the same time that Manzoni was producing his achromes, Günther Uecker joined the Zero Group and developed works made with painted nails. His canvases covered in rows of nails turn into perfect platforms on which the artist played with concepts such as purity, positivity, and linearity.
Apart from rediscovering seminal works, "Sotto Voce" offers visitors the chance to find out more about artists that may not be that well known, but that are equally interesting and visually striking, such as Ascânio Maria Martins Monteiro, better known as Ascânio MMM.
The Portuguese-born, but Brazil-based architect who experimented first in the '60s with works painted in white, is known for his geometrical structures such as "Relevo Quadrados 23" (1968-2006; included in this exhibition), that tackle philosophy, maths, art and architecture.
Exhibitions based on one main shade can at times be a bit too cold and alienating, but "Sotto Voce" employs white works of art to ambitiously take visitors on a collective journey of discovery through lights and shadows, materials, shapes, forms and silhouettes.
Fashionistas will better take note as abstract white reliefs are definitely among the sub-trends for the next autumnal season: Tess Giberson's Autumn/Winter 2015-16 collection, inspired by frozen Arctic landscapes, features for example plenty of white garments - from stark white shirt dresses to puffy down parkas and fur-trimmed vests, gloves and scarves - in various contrasting textures, from smooth to chunky, curly, ribbed, fringed and pleated.
In yesterday's post we looked at the exploration of innovative methods of production and new forms of craftsmanship. This could be considered as one of the sub-themes of the current Milan Design Week (until 19th April).
In some ways, "In Between" - the exhibition theme of the "Mindcraft15" display currently on in Milan - tackles this specific aspect linked with design. The showcase does so via artistic, experimental and conceptual projects by Danish craftspeople and designers.
Organised by Danish Crafts, an institution of the Danish Ministry of Culture, Mindcraft was showcased until 2010 in Zona Tortona, before moving to the trendy design district of Ventura Lambrate, as readers of Irenebrination will remember from previous posts that looked at past presentations. This year instead the event has been transplanted to a historical location - the old cloister Chiostro Minore di San Simpliciano, in Brera in the centre of Milan.
Curated by Danish-Italian design duo GamFratesi (designers and architects Stine Gam and Enrico Fratesi), Mindcraft15 features fourteen new works by nineteen leading designers and craftspeople.
GamFratesi have actually brought a breath of fresh air to the location and presentation. The cloister courtyard has indeed been covered with mirrors supported on a temporary platform (a perfect example of a space suspended between the past and the future...) and the various pieces exhibited are displayed inside metal cages or hung from supports in the covered walkways.
Some of the pieces on display can be described as fully developed functional products, others are conceptual ideas, but all the designs explore the intersections between one discipline and the other or the cross-field between functional object and conceptual/sculptural statement.
Practical examples of useful objects include "Pedestal" by Halstrøm-Odgaard - a flat-pack cabinet made with Trevira fabric from Kvadrat attached to a steel frame - and "Tram" by Akiko Kuwahata, a tray-cum-coffee table designed to fit into the narrow space between the sofa and the wall.
Unusual forms and silhouettes and symbolic meanings characterise instead those objects that seem to have lost their original function and purpose: "The Castaway" by design duo benandsebastian (Ben Clement and Sebastian de la Cour) consists in the recreation of a transport case from a museum collection in Copenhagen and in the object that was originally contained in it and that was lost (recreated by the duo using blown glass). The final product is a crossover between object and imprint or cast and mould, and symbolises presence and absence.
The installation of conical porcelain objects "Fontanella" by Claydies (Tine Broksø and Karen Kjældgård-Larsen) recreates the shape of a classic champagne fountain, transformed by its visually striking yet minimal decoration that gives the illusion of rivulets of water or wine spilling from glasses.
Experiments with "in between" materials are also particularly exciting: Edvard-Steenfatt's (Jonas Edvard Nielsen and Nikolaj Steenfatt Thomsen) "Terroir" is a lamp made combining seaweed and recycled paper. The result is a tough and durable material with a warm and tactile surface as soft as cork and light as paper.
The colour is determined by different species of seaweed and ranges from dark brown to light green. The seaweed is harvested along the coast of Denmark, it is dried, ground into powder and cooked into glue, using the viscous and adhesive effect of the Alginate - the natural polymer of the brown algae.
Material and texture is also at the core of Tora Urup's "Dish – Between Earth and Sky", a group of solid circular hand-crafted glass dishes, each with a unique character due to the textured decoration on the underside sprinkled with coloured glass powder.
Conceptual objects include "Selfie" by Eske Rex, an oval wooden object divided in two parts (deriving from the designer's earlier work "Divided Self") with embedded magnets that pull the two shells towards each other, while strings fastened to a round wooden frame keep them suspended in mid-air, preventing them from connecting. The suspended objects rotate and vibrate with the influence of a breeze or a breath hinting at the fragile nature of life and at the delicate position of the soul.
Though fully functioning on the practical level, the "Point of View" bench by Jakob Wagner has got a conceptual twist. Two persons can sit and enjoy the view together, while pondering about different points of views as the bench appears red and solid from one side or blue and transparent on the other. The piece hopes to make people realise that all aspects of life depends on our own perspective.
There are two projects could maybe be considered as linked with fashion: "InsideOut" by weaver and craftswoman Rosa Tolnov Clausen, and "Umspiral" by artist and fashion and costume designer Henrik Vibskov.
Clausen's wall hangings fuse present-day graphic materials with classical traditional Scandinavian weaving techniques. The wall hangings deviced for this showcase recreate traditional fabrics in materials suited for the outdoor exhibition venue. The weaving was indeed done with polyurethane yarn on a basic foot-powered loom and, in a second stage of production, spray paint was added.
"Umspiral" is instead a sculptural object characterised by multiple layers in a spiral-shaped system with obvious visual references to the DNA double helix. In its red/white colour scheme, the resulting shape also hints at Tintin's iconic moon rocket.
The most exciting thing about Mindcraft remains its spirit and the hope - nurtured by the various curators throughout the years - that more designers will be inspired through this showcase to reuse traditional craft skills as the foundation for a contemporary design aesthetic, injecting in their projects conceptual principles, cultural values and inovative approaches and processes.
It is always a pleasant surprise to find old Irenebrination friends in new contexts. The Dutch platform Transnatural Arts, Research & {future} Design (mentioned in a previous post) has indeed landed in Milan for the local Design Week (until 19th April).
The platform is presenting the "Living Matter(s)" exhibition at the Undai Gallery (Via Ventura 6, Ventura Lambrate) and introducing its Art and Design collection.
The "Living Matter(s)" presentation takes visitors on a journey through the world of synthetic fabricated bio materials, objects and projects.
Transnatural fans will rediscover during the exhibition Nina van den Broek's "Ivorish", an ivory-like material made from human or animal tooth waste material; Aagje Hoekstra's "Coleoptera", a bioplastic made using dead beetles; Sammy Jobbins Wells' algorithmic generated wearable structures covered with materials made from bacterial cellulose, and the Xylinum Cones project, part of a research by German designers Stefan Schwabe and Jannis Huelsen who use bacterial cellulose and living organisms to grow geometrical objects.
Among the highlights of the exhibit there are Julian Melchiorri's synthetic biological leaf and Maurizio Montalti's Growing Lab.
The former, as you may remember, revolves around the concept of photosynthesis: Melchiorri's leaf can absorb water and carbon dioxide and produce oxygen like a plant as the synthetic biological breathing leaves refresh polluted air and could therefore be ideal for applications in the design or architectural fields.
Montalti's ongoing research project explores strategies for growing materials and products by implementing fungal mycelia and therefore allow materials and products to grow in a mold by a process that is comparable to a sort of natural 3D-printing.
The main aim and objective of these projects is to launch or inspire new forms of craftsmanship and techniques, but also innovative production methods: Montalti envisions indeed a world where the classical concept of production is replaced by growth and cultivation and where products come to life through a process comparable to a sort of natural 3D printing. These researches insinuate in our minds and hearts the hope that one day we will be able not to make, but to grow our own products.
While some of these projects are speculative and will need a few more years to be developed, Transnatural also offers the chance to be able to see and buy pieces that are ready for the market, such as Lex Pott and David Derksen's "Transience Mirrors", handmade pieces characterised by striking geometrical forms that show the natural oxidation process in tones that range from silver and gold/brown to purple and blue.
Other available pieces include Mike Thompson and Gionata Gatto's "Trap Light", a glass lamp with embedded photoluminescent pigments, Marjan van Aubel and James Shaw's new range of Black and White "Well Proven Stools" (the stools entered the collection of New York's MoMA last year), based on a chemical process between leftover wood chips, organic resin, water and colour, and Jólan van der Wiel's "Gravity Stools" created using the forces of magnetism.
We have been following the possibilities and developments of 3D printing for roughly four years on this site. In between technological pioneers, experimental projects by students, prototypes, exhibitions and books about 3D printing, a few innovators emerged, among them United Nude. The shoe company often came up with avant-garde footwear designs, at times created in collaboration with maverick figures such as Iris van Herpen.
The Dutch company is currently back on the 3D printed path with a special exhibition during Milan Design Week. The event opened yesterday (and will continue until 19th April) at Teatro Arsenale and revolves around five different pair of shoes designed by five creators - architects Zaha Hadid, Ben van Berkel and Fernando Romero, and designers Ross Lovegrove and Michael Young.
The exhibit also includes a selection of United Nude's previous designs such as Iris van Herpen's 3D-printed "Fang", and a display detailing the evolution of the Möbius shoe, United Nude's trademark footwear.
Technology-wise the shoes prove that things have progressed a lot from the first prototypes of 3D printed footwear that were heavy, rigid, prone to break into pieces and therefore completely inadequate to walk in. The five shoes on display in Milan are indeed more flexible and softer with uppers made from thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) and soles printed in hard nylon. It took 24 hours to print each pair of shoes with an sPro 60 Selective Laser Sintering (SLS) machine by specialised company 3D Systems Corporation.
The result of this new project by United Nude is at times quite interesting: British designer Ross Lovegrove worked for example with Grasshopper software expert Arturo Tedeschi. Verticality was the starting point for his mint green "Ilabo" shoe and Grasshopper helped them creating a thin polygon mesh structure that covers the sole and foot, leaving open the toe and heel.
In most cases, though, the designs look a bit questionable as if the creators were more focused on the technology than on creating anything extremely innovative on a visual level: Zaha Hadid's "Flames" look like high-heeled Louboutin shoes covered in flickering tongues of fire-like thorns embracing the foot (for that Maleficent touch...); Ben van Berkel's curved hoof-shaped "UNX2" looks instead like a crossover between the "Armadillo" shoes from Alexander McQueen's Spring/Summer 2010 collection and the first designs created by Iris van Herpen for United Nude.
Focusing on stability Mexican architect Fernando Romero came up with the red "Ammonite" shoes, while Hong Kong-based Michael Young focused on the possibilities of exploring a sculptural dimension in a boot. The former is based on the spiral fossil and locks the foot and ankle in a pentagonal casing that again evokes the shape of early 3D printed experiments produced by Freedom Of Creation (think about Andreia Chaves' "Invisible Shoe"). Young's shoes is formed by a solid base topped with a mille-feuille-like latticed block that, though dynamically positioned at an angle to the ground, seems to trap the foot in a static and squarish box, without offering much sense of movement.
The problem with most of these designs is indeed that they draw too much from architectural and sculptural inspirations (or from previous existing designs that have now entered the collective imagination, but haven't entered our wardrobes...), forgetting not just ergonomics and comfort, but also aesthetic values and the possibility of complimenting the wearer's body, walk and figure (consider that four of these designs erase the ankle area, something that usually doesn't help elongating the figure, but makes the wearer look shorter).
So, while it's great to know that technology and manufacturing of 3D printed wearable products and accessories, has progressed, now we must make sure that creators and designers truly focus on innovative forms that can help enhancing the wearer's body.
There is indeed no point in creating intricate architectural blocs and sculptures for your feet if they are only made for static design exhibits or brief catwalk shows, if you can't properly walk in them, and if they do not offer technically advanced comfort.
Maybe the next project should consider teaming up a designer/architect with a 3D printing company, an artisan and an orthopedic expert, making sure they coordinate each stage of the design with the wearers, listening to their needs and suggestions. Failing that, the words "sculpture walk" will stop being used to describe a walkway through open-air galleries of outdoor sculptures, and start defining the inelegant and impaired walk of a poor fashionista.
The fashion industry is a vast world that includes various branches and satellite disciplines, such as "Visual Merchandising". Originally, this label referred to display windows featuring mannequins in department stores.
Throughout the years print media, television and - more recently - the digital revolution radically changed the way fashion reaches out to consumers, eroding the impact that traditional displays with dummies used to have.
Yet the work of seminal manufacturers such as Pucci Mannequins took this art to another level, as proved by a recently opened exhibition at the Museum of Arts and Design (MAD) in New York - "Ralph Pucci: The Art of the Mannequin".
Founded in 1955 in Mount Vernon by Pucci's parents, the company was originally a mannequin repair shop.
As the years passed, Ralph Pucci developed new and more intriguing forms and shapes, leaving behind the predictable mannequin in favour of figures doing handstands, vaulting, or even riding bikes.
In the early '80s, after Pucci formed an association with Swiss manufacturer Schläppi, Diana Vreeland used their faceless figures in her Yves Saint Laurent retrospective at the Met.
In 1985 Pucci was hired by Barney's to develop with interior designer Andrée Putman signature mannequins for their flagship store. The result of this cooperation - a tall, upright, broad-shouldered, androgynous, and metallic-toned Art Deco figure dubbed the "Olympian Goddess" - inspired further mannequins and opened the path to more collaborations.
In the 1990s Pucci worked indeed with Ruben Toledo and Lowell Nesbitt, taking the process of mannequin making to another level.
While celebrating Pucci's 40th anniversary in the business, the exhibition at MAD analyses the intersection between art, design and visual merchandising.
The event features 30 historical pieces created by Pucci - through them it is possible to spot not just several fashion trends, but also important cultural changes in disciplines such as art and design.
Pucci interpreted indeed in his dummies new concepts of beauty, transforming the anonymous forms of the mannequins into dynamic shapes, adding anatomically accurate details or sculpted musculature.
Some mannequins like the ones created with Christy Turlington in 2001 strike yoga and athletic poses, others reflect in their silhouettes social and economic changes.
A few figures can be filed under the "abstract art" or "sculpture" labels: "Birdland" (1988), created with Ruben Toledo, is a dynamical shape inspired by surrealism and Alexander Calder, originally created to display jewellery, but later re-imagined by Pucci as a full-size form for handbags and other accessories; "Olympic Gold" (1989), a muscular male mannequin that challenges ideas of male beauty, was designed by Lowell Nesbitt for the opening of Dayton Hudson's Mall of America store.
The heads of the "Swirley" collection (2000) - one of Pucci's most risk-taking collaborations as the mannequins were characterised by different colours and quirky alien-like elements such as one or three eyes or bizarre cone heads - were drawn from Kenny Scharf's Pop Art paintings; "Ada" (1994) was instead based on one of Maira Kalman's imaginative drawings of eccentric New Yorkers, and featured her signature primary coloured hair and face.
Inspirations for Pucci's in-house collection comes from a variety of sources, including Greek and Roman statues, the performance costumes of the New York Dolls, the music of Philip Glass, the Japanese fashion designer Issey Miyake and the legendary jazz trumpeter Miles Davis, or ancient Chinese terra-cotta warriors' poses (the latter integrated in mannequins created for Diane von Furstenberg in 2013).
The organisers - MAD's Chief Curator Lowery Stokes Sims and Barbara Paris Gifford, Curatorial Assistant and project manager - opted for a cross-disciplinary cut for this event and tried to look at the workmanship behind the objects on display by recreating a replica of Pucci's studio.
Pucci's master sculptor and longtime collaborator Michael Evert is in residence at the museum to demonstrate the stages of the mannequin-making process and offer visitors an insight into the creative process, from modelling small maquettes in clay to the rendering of the fiberglass end-product.
There is a work-in-progress atmosphere in this section of the exhibition, with figures drying, body elements and mannequin in various stages of development hanging from hooks or lying on tables, at times looking like disturbing tableaux from a horror film à la Mario Bava.
During the exhibition's run, Evert will conduct live "sittings" and sculpt models of selected fashion celebrities and members of the general public.
There's a bonus in this event for visitors with a passion for jewellery: designers Isabel and Ruben Toledo reinvented the Tiffany Jewelry Gallery as an imaginary moonscape with undulating hills and valleys populated by the half bird/half female mannequin forms created by Ruben for Pucci and donning jewellery pieces from MAD's permanent collection.
In 2004, Pucci created a collection of fuller-bottomed mannequins for Macy's department store. Though the mannequins were only partially answering the consumers' demand to see clothes on realistic female bodies, they were deemed revolutionary as they still added a couple of inches of curves around the hips area, offering in this way a shift in the contours of beauty, and confirming at the same time Pucci's role as an agent of change.
The results of Pucci's collaborative relationships with designers, models, artists and illustrators on display at "The Art of the Mannequin" may not be conventional mass-market fashion forms, but they perfectly showcase the work of a modern artisan who has explored through his practice the relationship governing demand and acceptance between consumer and mannequin, while revolutionising in the process the perceptions of beauty, and elevating mere "visual merchandising" to an art form.
"Ralph Pucci: The Art of the Mannequin", is at the Museum of Arts and Design, 2 Columbus Circle, New York, until 30th August 2015. The exhibition is accompanied by a publication with photographs by Antoine Bootz, a foreword by Margaret Russell, editor-in-chief of Architectural Digest, an essay by art historian Emily M. Orr on the history of mannequins, and an interview with Pucci by Jake Yuzna, Director of Public Programs at MAD.
Image credits for this post
1 - 2. Installation photo of 'Ralph Pucci: The Art of the Mannequin' 2015. Photo by Butcher Walsh. Courtesy of the Museum of Arts and Design.
3. Ralph Pucci in His Gallery, 2014. Collection of Ralph Pucci. Photo by Antoine Bootz.
4. Mannequin Sitting Down, 2014. Collection of Ralph Pucci. Photo by Antoine Bootz.
5. Mannequin Torso, Arm and Head in Foundry Finish, 2014. Collection of Ralph Pucci. Photo by Antoine Bootz.
6. The Olympian Goddess, 1986; Andrée Putman, designer; Pucci Mannequins, fabricator; Fiberglass. Collection of Ralph Pucci. Photo by Antoine Bootz.
7. The Form, 1988; Andrée Putman, designer; Pucci Mannequins, fabricator; Fiberglass. Collection of Ralph Pucci. Photo by Antoine Bootz.
8. The Mistress, 1988; Andrée Putman, designer; Pucci Mannequins, fabricator; Fiberglass. Collection of Ralph Pucci. Photo by Antoine Bootz.
9. Birdland, 1988; Ruben Toledo, designer; Pucci Mannequins, fabricator; Fiberglass. Collection of Ralph Pucci. Photo by Antoine Bootz.
10. Olympic Gold, 1989; Lowell Nesbitt, designer; Pucci Mannequins, fabricator; Fiberglass. Collection of Ralph Pucci. Photo by Antoine Bootz.
11. Ada, 1994; Maira Kalman, designer; Pucci Mannequins, fabricator; Fiberglass. Collection of Ralph Pucci. Photo by Antoine Bootz.
12. Veruschka, 1996; Veruschka, designer; Pucci Mannequins, fabricator; Fiberglass. Collection of Ralph Pucci. Photo by Antoine Bootz.
13. Motion2, 2013; Pucci Mannequins; Fiberglass. Collection of Ralph Pucci. Photo by Antoine Bootz.
14. Swirley, 2000; Kenny Scharf, designer; Pucci Mannequins, fabricator; Fiberglass. Collection of Ralph Pucci. Photo by Antoine Bootz.
15. Partially Finished Mannequin Head Revealing Fiberglass Structure, 2014. Collection of Ralph Pucci. Photo by Antoine Bootz.
16. Mannequin Sculpture Being Measured, 2014. Collection of Ralph Pucci. Photo by Antoine Bootz.
17. Mannequin Miniature, 2014. Collection of Ralph Pucci. Photo by Antoine Bootz.
18. Mannequin Molds, 2014. Collection of Ralph Pucci. Photo by Antoine Bootz.
19 - 20. Installation photo of 'Ralph Pucci: The Art of the Mannequin' 2015. Photo by Butcher Walsh. Courtesy of the Museum of Arts and Design.
21 - 22. Installation photo of 'Ralph Pucci: The Art of the Mannequin' 2015. Photo by Butcher Walsh. Courtesy of the Museum of Arts and Design.
In our unpredictable times, it may be hard for publishers to find a richly researched book that could easily turn into a bestseller. Yet, apart from being well-written, the recently released volume Gods and Kings: The Rise and Fall of Alexander McQueen and John Galliano (Penguin Press) by Dana Thomas, could just do the trick. The volume coincides indeed with a series of events celebrating McQueen including the blockbuster show, "Savage Beauty", currently on at London's V&A (after the first version of the exhibit became an instant success in 2011 and broke all records for a museum fashion display at the Metropolitan Museum's Costume Institute in New York). In the meantime, John Galliano's story is currently being updated with his new job as Creative Director of Maison Martin Margiela.
Thomas, a journalist who started covering Galliano in 1994 and McQueen three years later, offers in the book a careful and educated analysis of their careers. The author first looks at their backgrounds and childhood years, chronicling their time at Central Saint Martins and the first financial struggles to stage romantic and provocative shows, while shedding some light on the competition between the two designers (McQueen was obsessed with Galliano's "shellfish" dress, and tried to come up with more ethereal versions of it in his "Irere" and "Widows of Culloden" collections).
The biggest change in both the designers' lives occurred in October 1996 when the luxury conglomerate LVMH (Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton), owner of Christian Dior and Givenchy, announced that John Galliano would be taking over at Dior, while Alexander McQueen would have replaced Galliano at Givenchy, a shift that also marked an era of growth for luxury fashion.
At the first couture shows that followed in January 1997 Galliano's collection for Dior was hailed as a triumph, while McQueen's rose many doubts, even though when he arrived at the Givenchy atelier, the French couturiers were astonished by his technique, skills with hems and seams, and precision cutting.
Thomas describes in detail the main inspirations behind each show that included in Galliano's case capricious and extravagant muses, and books, history, films and his mother Joyce's interest in their family's past when it came to McQueen's. As they rose to fame and their shows became more complex, both designers seemed to lose some of their original spontaneous madness: in February 1997 when McQueen's staged his A/W 1997-98 show "It's a Jungle Out There", hundreds of young people, students and groupies tried to get in. Amy Spindler of The New York Times stated then that McQueen was "fashion's closest thing to a rock star (...) He isn't just part of the London scene; he is the scene."
Thomas also mentions (and in some cases interviews) in the book early backers such as socialite São Schlumberger (Galliano's) and loyal collaborators orbiting around the designers including Galliano's muse Amanda Harlech, who was later on offered a better position at Chanel by Lagerfeld; Steven Robinson, who maneuvered his way up to become an invaluable fashion collaborator for Galliano, and prematurely died of heart attack, maybe induced by a massive overdose of cocaine.
The painful relationship between Isabella Blow and McQueen is also described, while former colleague Sebastian Pons, milliner Philip Treacy and Simon Ungless offer touching memories of times when in McQueen's life there was maybe less money, but also more anger, creativity and freedom.
Acute anxiety and work-related pressures and problems gradually led both designers to drink and drugs: Galliano started in 1984, producing two collections and shows a year until 1995, when he began working at Givenchy. In 2011, before being fired from Dior, he was overseeing over 30 collections a year.
McQueen felt the same pressures dictated by continuously creating, and found hard reconciling the fact that the products appearing in the stores didn't look like what he had designed. Thomas reveals in the book that he wanted out and was in talks with Ungless to start teaching at San Francisco's Academy of Art University, a project that kept on being postponed.
The luxury market is not directly blamed for the ups and downs in the designers' lives: according to the author, Dior's firm head Sidney Toledano and LVMH's Bernard Arnault tried to convince Galliano to go to rehab, but they weren't as fast as to stop him from cracking up and attacking with anti-Semitic remarks a couple in the Paris café La Perle.
In the same way, Domenico De Sole - who had convinced McQueen with the help of Tom Ford to work on his own label under the Gucci Group and PPR (now Kering), headed by François-Henri Pinault, extricating him from the Givenchy contract - and De Sole's successor Robert Polet, never realised McQueen's physical and mental health conditions.
Yet the pressure of being a mere clog in the biggest machine of the modern fashion industry and of being pushed to deliver multiple products and collections, had been tackled by McQueen in one show that many people forgot. In October 2003, he staged a catwalk show inspired by Sydney Pollack's drama They Shoot Horses Don't They? about a dance marathon that prompts many desperate couples competing for a money prize until their mental and physical destruction. An allegory for his personal life (at the time McQueen had already been diagnosed with HIV) and career, the performance featured professional dancers and models moving, dancing and running till they collapsed on the floor with exhaustion.
The most sublime moments of beauty are juxtaposed in the book to moments of darkness: a triumph of luxurious decadence at Dior, is rebalanced by a faux pas like the "Diorient Express" show, a terribly mad confusion of history, trains and Indian warriors; while McQueen's fame was shadowed by his betrayal of stylist Isabella Blow, whose suicide in 2007 ominously preceded McQueen's.
The fall of Galliano and McQueen coincides with the end of a period of magic creativity and dark beauty that lasted for three decades. Thomas doesn't seem to be too happy about the current state of the fashion industry: rather than just in fashion, McQueen's vision was undoubtedly drenched in art and history, in disturbing mindscapes à la Jake and Dinos Chapman or in the photographic nightmares of Kevin Carter's (McQueen once claimed he wished he had been a war photographer instead...). Nowadays, Thomas claims, "designers are hired hands charged with interpreting the house's codes, and few outside the industry know their names," while fashion's stars are "bloggers and Instagrammers who have hundreds of thousands of followers and earn more than a million dollars a year in kickbacks and 'gifts' from brands for shamelessly flacking products in their posts."
It's somehow impossible to disagree: Galliano's story is still being written (though, so far, the designer hasn't added anything new to his creative glossary), in the meantime there is an unhealthy excitement surrounding McQueen's image. "Savage Beauty" is at London's V&A; a new play based on the designer and written by British playwright James Phillips will be unveiled in May at London's St James Theatre; behind-the-scenes pictures from McQueen's "The Horn of Plenty" (A/W 2009-10) collection by Nick Waplington are currently on show at Tate Britain, while "McQueen: Backstage - The Early Show" an exhibition of photographs by Gary Wallis was recently on at Proud Chelsea.
Somehow, the same people who in the '90s thought McQueen was just a provocateur and a misogynist, are now tragicomically considering him a genius. Maybe it's just a case of the old adage "Nemo propheta in patria (sua)", or maybe this is just the final proof that, at the moment, we are not after art and poetical darkness in fashion, but we are all settled on relentless consumption, money, finance and marketing, no matter how many young and creative minds burn out, get destroyed and die in the process.
Gods and Kings: The Rise and Fall of Alexander McQueen and John Galliano by Dana Thomas is out now on Penguin.
We have touched upon concepts such as aggregation, accumulation, collages and density in previous posts, but it's always good to re-explore these themes from a different angle. Let's consider these topics from the "landscapes of objects and fragments" theme and find works and installations that may inspire us.
The first artwork is "The Dance of Time", a preparatory study for a larger painting by Duncan Shanks, currently on view at the Hunterian Art Gallery in Glasgow. The work is on display as part of "The Poetry of Place" event celebrating Shanks's gift to the University of Glasgow of his entire output of sketchbooks from the past 55 years.
Landscape, colourful flowers and natural scenes prevail in Shanks' works: quite often the artist takes inspiration from his favourite locations such as the surroundings of his home at Crossford, a small village by the river Clyde, or the isolated glens and reservoirs of the Upper Clyde and the West coast and islands. This work gathers broken fragments discarded by man and nature around which the artists has created a narrative with the added symbols of bird, cage, statues and references to admired paintings such as J.D. Fergusson's "Les Eus". For Shanks such scattering of objects or "landscape of tiny objects", as he calls it, symbolises the journey in time across his table top.
The second inspiration is "Virus" by Mexican installation artist and architect Antonio O'Connell. This structure, on display outside Summerhall - the former Royal School of Veterinary Studies in Edinburgh, and now a creative hub for the arts with studio and workshop spaces - is an assemblage of various elements, objects and recycled materials and items from the building's past.
The construction - inspired by buildings created in the outskirts of cities in Mexico - oozes chaos, disorder and spontaneity, and shatters the boundaries between what goes on inside on the creative level and the world outside the building. The "virus" could indeed be coming from the outside or may be spreading from the inside and may be trying to "infect" in a joyous way the space outside it.
The third and last example is embodied by Kwang Young Chun's sculptures. The internationally renowned Korean artist, who will have his fist solo exhibition in Scotland at Edinburgh's Dovecot Tapestry Studios in July, combines in his monumental pieces Eastern philosophy and American Abstract Expressionism.
His works consist in complex assemblages made employing triangular forms in various sizes, cut from Polystyrene or foam, wrapped in Korean mulberry paper and tied with hand-twisted paper string. The artist conceives these "basic units of information" or "basic cells of life" as elements creating harmony and conflict in unique three-dimensional formations. These sculptures are inspired by a childhood memory of small mulberry paper medicine packages with name cards hanging from the ceiling of a Chinese medicine doctor's pharmacy to protect them from insects.
Chun Kwang Young's textured topographical maps of alien-like rocky landscapes (at times presented in delicately beautiful colour gradations) take viewers on a journey through space and symbolically refer to the conflicts that regulate our modern lives.
Apart from being visually striking, the examples of accumulations and aggregations analysed in this post could all be considered as exploratory studies or investigations into more complex and intangible subjects such as the tensions, anxiety and uncertainties at the core of human existence.
As a follow up to yesterday's architectural post, let's focus today on a brief comparison between a building and a dress, moving from one theme - cinema.
In the late '30s architect and developer William Beresford Inglis, of Weddell & Inglis, set out to introduce the "colours and lines of cinema" to Glasgow's hotel building. The result was the eight storey Beresford Hotel in Sauchiehall Street.
The building was characterised by symmetrical Art Deco lines, two semicircular towers that extended on either side of the main entrance from the first floor to the tenth and striking colours with red central lines and an exterior covered in black and mustard yellow earthenware and porcelain tiles. The hotel, considered as the first skyscraper in town, was built to accomodate in a luxurious environment the visitors expected for the Empire Exhibition of 1938.
Its architect tried to integrate into the façade of the building the main theme of the Empire Exhibition - Art Deco - a style that was adopted also for the centrepiece of the event, The Tower of the Empire, designed by Thomas S. Tait.
Requisitioned during the Second World War and turned into a favourite rendezvous for American servicemen during the Second World War (the nearby Charing Cross was for a time the epicentre of the American troops activities), the building functioned as a hotel until 1952.
In later years the hotel was first turned into office accomodation for the Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) and then sold in the '60s to the University of Strathclyde that turned it into Baird Hall (the most abhorred student halls in town with the greatest location...). The building was sold again in 2002 and turned into 112 residential flats. It remains one of the most important examples of Art Deco/Streamline Moderne architecture in Glasgow.
The current colour scheme and the silhouette of the building call to mind Gilbert Adrian's oatmeal, black and russet wool day dress (on the right side of the following picture) that some critics say was part of the "Shades of Picasso" collection (1944-5; the dress reappeared in a Kerry Taylor Auctions a while back - View this photo).
Trained at the New York School for Fine and Applied Arts (now Parsons School of Design), Gilbert Adrian created the costumes for many musicals and shows.
After he transferred to the school's Paris campus, Adrian was hired by Irving Berlin and designed the costumes for The Music Box Revue. He worked on the costumes for 11 films by Cecil B. DeMille, becoming chief costume designer at MGM.
Adrian created garments for over 200 films in his career: his gowns for Norma Shearer, Jeanette MacDonald, Jean Harlow, Katharine Hepburn remain legendary, while his outfits for Greta Garbo and Joan Crawford had a great impact on women's fashion. A ruffled organdy gown designed for Crawford in Letty Lynton was widely copied by the fashion industry, while his wide-shouldered designs for the actress launched a fashion trend.
Art Deco didn't just leave a stamp on the silhouette of Adrian's costumes: this style was very much fascinated with the female figure and its popularity coincided with the rise of the New Woman in American society. The simple yet striking wool day dress (View this photo to see another shot of this garment) compared to the Beresford Hotel in this post, was designed with a modern and strong woman in mind.
The muted and well-balanced palette and the short cape around the shoulders gave it a glamorous architectural sobriety that Adrian loved, while hinting in a more fluid way at the "triangle silhouette" (broad shoulders, slim hips and skirt 15 inches from the floor) that the costume designer loved as he considered it as the most flattering shape to a woman's figure (see also the final image in this post for the "triangle silhouette"). "A good dress," he once stated in an interview on Life magazine, "has a sense of classical rightness that makes it wearable until it falls apart."
