As a follow up to the latest posts, let's look today at further examples of Italian '40s styles, via three different pairs of shoes. The first pair of shoes was presented in 1939 at the Rassegna dell'Ente Nazionale della Moda (National Fashion Board Exhibition). They featured high architetural sculpted heels and a dynamically shaped band that hugged the ankle in a rather unusual way.
The second example consists in a blue and yellow calf skin sandal with a sole made of cilindrical elements - maybe wooden bobbins - in matching colours. Probably made between 1936 and 1942, the sandals perfectly respected the autarchic regulations controlling consumption habits and promoting self-sufficiency in textile production and fashion design.
This design was reinvented and patented in February 1940 by Salvatore Ferragamo who came up with a similar shoe model but with a sole that featured cilindrical supports in galalith.
The third example - dated from around 1942 (both the second and third sandals in this post are preserved at the International Footwear Museum of Vigevano) - consists instead in an open toe sandal in burnt red chamois leather with a see through-celluloid heel and a practical rubber sole underneath.
As a follow up to yesterday's post let's look at two examples of '40s style from Italy, rather than the UK, and make a comparison between a day look and a more formal suit. .
The first example is a simple pale blue short-sleeved day dress from 1942-44 made in a mixed fibre (lanital and rayon). The front of the dress featured a triangle-shaped panel with an embroidered double edge and hand-embroidered floral motif. Five pale blue Bakelite buttons completed the front, while the skirt was made using three panels of fabrics pleated around the waist. While in the UK there was the Utility Clothing scheme, in Italy Fascism dictated austerity and promoted autarchy, controlling consumption habits and promoting self-sufficiency in textile production and fashion design.
The dress perfectly falls into these categories: it was was probably made at home and decorated with basic embroidery techniques, and it was made with two autarchich synthetic fibres. Lanital in particular, as you may remember from a previous post, was a synthetic wool that combined in its name the words "lana" (wool) and "Italia" - and was considered as the most national of Italian fibres. First developed in 1916 by a German chemist and improved by Italian engineer Antonio Ferretti in 1935, lanital was obtained from milk casein and had a molecular structure very similar to that of wool.
The second example is a shantung skirt suit in ivory cotton from the early 1940s. The short-sleeved jacket, nipped to the waist and falling over the hips, is characterised by wide lapels and ample padded shoulders. Four decorative pockets with a sort of cloud-shaped flap and three mother-of-pearl buttons completed the jacket. Four different panels form instead the short skirt enriched by four pleats in the front.
The suit was probably made by Giuseppe Tortonese, who had originally founded the brand La Merveilleuse. The latter was closed down to abide to the rules and regulations established by the fascist Ente Nazionale della Moda (National Fashion Board) that forbid the existence in Italy of brands with foreign names. The silhouette of this skirt suit was very fashionable also in Paris at the time: fashion magazine Le Jardin de Modes suggested then that such formal and simple outfits were ideal for sober ceremonies and war weddings especially when accessorised with a simple veil and a bouquet of flowers.
Europe celebrated this August the 70th anniversary since the end of the Second World War on the continent. Many decades have gone, but the World Wars keep on telling us powerful and moving stories that teach us a lot about humanity. There is actually an entry in the diary of Lieutenant-Colonel Mervin Willett Gonin, one of the first British soldiers to liberate Bergen-Belsen, that is incredibly significant, even though its unlikely protagonist is a beuty product.
"I can give no adequate description of the Horror Camp in which my men and myself were to spend the next month of our lives," Gonin wrote. "It was just a barren wilderness, as bare as a chicken run. Corpses lay everywhere, some in huge piles, sometimes they lay singly or in pairs where they had fallen. It took a little time to get used to seeing men, women and children collapse as you walked by them and to restrain oneself from going to their assistance. One had to get used early to the idea that the individual just did not count. One knew that five hundred a day were dying and that five hundred a day were going on dying for weeks before anything we could do would have the slightest effect (…) It was shortly after the British Red Cross arrived, though it may have no connection, that a very large quantity of lipstick arrived. This was not at all what we men wanted, we were screaming for hundreds and thousands of other things and I don't know who asked for lipstick. I wish so much that I could discover who did it, it was the action of genius, sheer unadulterated brilliance. I believe nothing did more for these internees than the lipstick. Women lay in bed with no sheets and no nightie but with scarlet red lips, you saw them wandering about with nothing but a blanket over their shoulders, but with scarlet red lips. I saw a woman dead on the postmortem table and clutched in her hand was a piece of lipstick. At last someone had done something to make them individuals again, they were someone, no longer merely the number tattooed on the arm. At last they could take an interest in their appearance. That lipstick started to give them back their humanity."
Gonin's shocking description of life in the camp and the conditions of the prisoners, suddenly changes tones when he tells us about the lipstick shipment. This simple accessory ends up marking for the female prisoners, a slow return to a life that the Nazis had denied them by considering them "things" or "pieces" ("Stücke").
The power of make-up during the war is analysed in one of the sections of the exhibition "Fashion on the Ration: 1940s Street Style", currently on at the Imperial War Museum in London (until 31st August 2015).
Gonin's diary entry may be more about the end of the war, but the exhibition actually focuses on garments, accessories and make-up during the conflict and does so through six sections - Into Uniform, Functional Fashion, Rationing and Make Do and Mend, Utility Clothing, Beauty as Duty and Peace and the New Look.
Though difficult to obtain, lipstick was indeed known as a "red badge of courage" and the exhibition features iconic images from those years such as the one portraying a female member of ARP staff applying her lipstick, almost as an act of defiance.
Trying to put together an interesting outfit even when clothes were rationed and make-up was rare or too expensive was indeed a way to cheer themselves up for women, but also guaranteed a boost of morale for the troops, so it was considered as part of the war effort.
An advert by British cosmetics company Yardley summarises the feeling, stating "To work for victory is not to say goodbye to charm. For good looks and good morale are the closest of allies", while the Board of Trade proclaimed in 1940, "Keep up the morale of the Home Front by preserving a neat appearance".
Elizabeth Arden produced lipsticks for servicewomen; Helena Rubinstein created the "Regimental Red" shade, and those who couldn't afford them were encouraged to turn to beetroot for lips, boot polish for mascara and eyebrow pencil to create the illusion of wearing back seam stockings.
Make-up was rare, but clothes had been rationed and, in the early 1940s, the Utility Clothing Scheme introduced in the UK measures to restrict the number of elements such as buttons and features like pockets and pleats in response to the shortage of clothing materials and labour due to the requirements of the war effort.
The Board of Trade set the rules for "utility clothing" in the "Making-up of Civilian Clothing (Restrictions) Orders", also known as the "austerity regulations", indicating the specifications regarding materials and labour.
Women usually opted to wear what they already had, they recycled clothes (wedding gowns and accessories were passed from one bride to the next as the exhibition tells us), altered their garments or got more creative as some of the pieces included in the exhibition prove.
There are indeed garments made from parachute silk; a rather luxurious bra owned by Countess Mountbatten and made from an escape silk map given to her by a boyfriend in the Royal Air Force (Milan and Trieste are still visible, each city on one breast...); jewellery pieces made from aircraft parts; a gas mask holder disguised as a leather handbag; decorative propaganda scarves; a powder compact in the shape of a US Army officer's cap; a collection of luminous buttons and flowers designed to make oneself more visible to other pedestrians and motorists during a blackout, and the "siren suit", an outfit you could pull in one go in case you had to run to the air-raid shelter in a hurry (it should be noted that this was perceived as a curiosity and it was only bought by wealthy people).
There is a lot to discover not just through these pieces, but also through photographs and posters: Mrs Sew and Sew, the iconic mascot of the Ministry of Information's Make-Do-and-Mend scheme prompted women to recycle what they had, recreating new clothes from their husbands' suits or employing unusual materials such as blankets.
The exhibition closes with Dior's New Look, though it fails to mention the implication behind the huge restrictive skirts that seemed to tell women they could now return to their pre-War duties and be relegated once again at home.
This is not actually the only criticism that you could maybe move to this exhibition: though engaging and interestingly proving that, rather than disappearing with the war, beauty and fashion became parts of the battleground, the event implies that this was the general condition of the entire country, even though the materials included mainly portray the situation around the London area.
Besides, the event doesn't mention the fact that the Make-Do-and-Mend campaign was a failure: it implied indeed people had enough clothes to mend, so it couldn't be applied to the poorest layers of the society.
You also get the feeling that, in an attempt at gaining more young and hip visitors, the marketing department tried to make the exhibition cool by adding the subtitle "1940s Street Style".
As we all know there are a lot of vintage clothes fans with a '40s obsession who are completely oblivious to what it was like living then, but, rather than strengthening in their minds the idea that, despite the war, everything was cool, the event should have maybe tried to educate them more by highlighting the hardest aspects of the life of ordinary people.
The emphasis on creativity, innovation and glamour, risks indeed of turning even the best pieces in the Imperial War Museum collection into examples of chic fun, making us forget that the war created more class/gender divisions (even though there is equality in displaying the male and female uniforms together to highlight a parity in sacrifice...) and social inequality. Some of the smiling images taken in the streets were indeed produced by the Ministry of Information to promote British fashion during the war, so they weren't a real depiction of what real people were actually wearing.
Some of the final video interviews included at the end of this event reinforce the impression that the event was put together using intriguing materials compiled to cater to a younger generation of hip fashionistas. There are indeed some ingenuous visions of the '40s as if some of the interviewees involved had been struck not by the living conditions of people in general, but by the utility chic designs modelled by Deborah Kerr or by the turban of factory worker Ruby Loftus.
The most striking thing remains the fact that, while we tend to look at those years and compare the habits of the people who lived then (buy, wear, recycle, alter and wear again...) with our habits (buy, wear for a week, throw out and start again...), the event doesn't make reference to the fact that the rules of standardisation behind utility clothes could be considered as the seeds of the super fast production that drives our modern society.
There are still good reasons to go and see the exhibition, though: there are excellent objects on display from the Imperial War Museum collections and the letters (especially the ones in the uniforms sections) are particularly interesting as they reveal more about the habits of the people who lived in those times than some of the garments and accessories.
Visitors also get the chance to touch a selection of fabrics and make their own comparisons with modern textiles in the Utility Scheme section. While exploring this part of the event there is something that they should actually do: take their time and ponder a bit more about the legacies left by the war and linked with the industrial scale manufacturing of large quantities of products.
All images in this post courtesy Imperial War Museum
1. Exterior view of the front of the Imperial War Museum, London.
2. An official Ministry of Information Photo Division wartime photograph showing four young ladies enjoying a stroll in the spring sunshine.
3. A female member of Air Raid Precautions (ARP) staff applies her lipstick between emergency calls, Kingston House, 1940.
4. In-gallery shot, 'Fashion on the Ration'.
5. Join the ATS poster.
6. Blackout accessories for sale, Selfridges London, (1940). A woman pins a luminous flower onto her jacket lapel at Selfridges department store in London.
7. A black square filled with coloured text, which is designed to represent the remarks of people bumping into each other during a blackout.
8. - 9. Model in wartime utility clothing.
10. Bridesmaid’s dress made for and worn by Janet Saunders for the wedding of Ted Hillman (4th Battalion, Royal Sussex Regiment) and Ruby Mansfield in 1945.
11. Respirator Carrier Handbag. Standard civilian pattern respirator with a black rubber mask and metal filter contained within the base of a black leather lady's clutch handbag.
12. British civilian child's cloak. A cloak with a hood made from a grey, red and black striped blanket with button front fastening and arm holes.
13. Wide-brimmed hat of brown fur felt, with a central light khaki band around the raised crown, fitted with an enamelled WLA badge to the centre.
14. "Salvage Your Rubber" (1940-1945), British propaganda scarf by Jacqmar of London, containing numerous representations of domestic objects, with exhortations to save rubber and recycle goods in general. The chief designer was Arnold Lever who continued working for the company even after he had joined the RAF. The scarves fall into three main thematic groups of the armed forces, allies and home front.
15. The character Mrs Sew and Sew, created to promote the Make Do and Mend campaign.
16.-18. Visitors to "Fashion on the Ration".
19. Loftus was an outstanding factory worker and the Ministry of Supply requested that she be painted at work in the Royal Ordnance Factory in Newport.
The Expo 2015 exhibition currently on in Milan (until 31st October 2015) is celebrating the theme "Feed the Planet, Energy for Life". But, if you happen to be in the Italian city this weekend and you're looking for interesting events, you have the last chance to visit an exhibition at Palazzo Morando that has some links with the main theme of the Expo (the energy part at least...), but has stronger connections with fashion and art.
The event is entitled "Fashion as Social Energy" and looks at these two disciplines as catalysts for change, while looking at satellite themes including desire, anxiety, needs and obsessions.
Curated by visual arts critic and theorist and President of the Milan-based non-profit research agency Connecting Cultures Anna Detheridge, and art historian and international curator Gabi Scardi, the exhibition features work by thirteen international contemporary artists.
There aren't just garments in the exhibition, but also installations, videos and photographs, with quite a few pieces created especially for this event.
The exhibition opens with Mella Jaarsma's "Pecking Order", a sort of disquieting installation inspired by the hierarchy in the animal world. When it comes to hens, the bird at the top of the pecking order pecks another of lower status, yet something similar also happens in our human society.
Through a chicken skin garment-cum-table, the artist reminds us indeed that we have managed to re-establish boundaries in our society between oppressors and oppressed, letting violence triumph in social relations.
The power of society in fashion is actually explored by various projects: the capsule collection "Vestimi" (Dress me up) by artistic laboratory and workshop Wurmkos in collaboration with Bassa Sartoria was for example created by a group of people including disabled and non-disabled artists and critics.
The collection features a series of objects, paper patterns and clothes that create interactions between body, space and the wearer and other people surrounding him or her. The pieces can indeed be worn during special performances or they can be displayed in a museum-like environment, but the most important point about them is that they are conceived as methods of resistance and "antibodies against fear, uncertainty and prejudice".
In the same way Lucy+Jorge Orta's series "Refuge Wear", originally created to find answers to the economic crisis, the mass unemployment and social unrest in the early '90s, is still extremely relevant in our times. The project - including new pieces designed during a second-hand clothes transformation workshop in collaboration with the Salvation Army - features an architectural dome-like tent made of garments, and a coat with a set of matching suitcases.
Ethnicity and identity prevail in two installations: in Maria Papadimitriou's "Costume of Yorgos Magas", Roma coats and Firma Gypsy Globales - parts of her T.A.M.A. (Temporary Autonomous Museum for All) project - a series of overloaded costumes and accessories such as the outfit of a shaman-clarinet player, cloaks made with coverlets and kitsch and extravagant bracelets and pendants, explore the culture and aesthetics of the Roma people.
Andrea Zittel's hand-made uniforms created following traditional techniques and integrated in a space completed by objects and furnishings, attempt instead to provide answers to everyday questions such as "Who am I?" or "Who do I want to be?".
Architecture, society and mail art meet and combine in Kateřina Šedá's "For Every Dog a Different Master". The artist presents at Palazzo Morando the very final results of a long and complex project that saw her visiting the district of Nova Lisen, near Brno, in the Czech Republic. Here she took the names of the families from the buzzers and then sent a shirt designed by herself to 1,000 or of the 20,000 residents, accompanied by a letter stating it had been sent by another resident.
This process of storytelling became a social experiment to establish relationships between locals. The colourful buildings printed on the shirts add an architectural twist to the urban and social geography of the project.
The event also references and analyses several other topics including consumption and consumerism, the transience of beauty, the fragmentation of communities and relations between individuals, and working conditions in a globalised world.
The most important artist featured in the event remains Michelangelo Pistoletto. A key figure of the Arte Povera movement, Pistoletto showcases in this exhibition his "Venus of the Rags" (the first one was created in 1967). The work consists in an industrial reproduction of Venus, representing a degraded idea of the western canon of beauty, with her face buried in a pile of clothes. The garments could be interpreted as shadows of human existences turned into rags, while the latter turn into physical witnesses to consumerism and the ephemeral nature of beauty.
Swedish cultural theorist and artist Otto von Busch provides us with the best intervention of the entire exhibition. Through uniforms reminiscent of fascist garments, a pamphlet and a series of documents, he imagined the existence of a Fashion Police, a sort of contemporary inquisition led by a cynical dictator - Karl Lagerfeld.
The designer pulls the strings of the fashion world with all its power structures and joyless, reiterated brands, restricting the freedom to imagine, the spontaneity and desire to experiment. Von Busch arrives to claim that democratic fashion is a myth (well, who could argue with that?) and that fashion brands intimidate us to the point that we desire to escape from the freedom to choose and decide for ourselves, finding a new and restrictive escape in a branded existence.
South Korean artist Kimsooja looked instead at the other face of democratisation via images of exploited workers at the world's largest outdoor laundry, the Dhobi Ghat in Mumbai. Here thousands of people are at work in the open air every day dying and treating the fabrics destined to production lines all over the world.
Fans of revealing stories such as the ones told by Kimsooja's images, shouldn't miss Rä Di Martino's film The Show MAS Go On, a documentary/film/musical revolving around the MAS (Magazzini allo Statuto) department stores in Rome.
This cult venue that went from luxury store to market place was at risk of closing down when Di Martino made the film that turns into the surreal visual story of a very real place.
Storytelling is actually another theme of this event: Claudia Losi is among the artists who loves crafting tales. A while back she created a life-size whale made of fabric that travelled the world, then fashion designer Antonio Marras turned the fabrics from the disassembled whale into a series of jackets (Whale Suits, 2010) that were given to new owners selected by the artist.
In this way the fabrics - enriched by the adventures they lived while travelling - became blank canvases for new wearers keen on adding a further layer to the fabrics by telling their own stories.
"Io in testa" by Luigi Coppola and Marzia Migliora portrays instead the results of a social workshop entitled Cantiere comune di immaginario politico (Shared Workshop of Political Imagery) organised in May 2013 at the occupied traditional Roman Theatre, Teatro Valle. Using newspapers, the participants created a series of paper hats of the kind traditionally worn by joiners and bricklayers, to tackle the theme of the manufacturing of information through a performance event.
Visitors who like getting actively involved in exhibitions will love Nasan Tur's project: the artist analysed extreme forms of mobility and self-sufficiency via a series of backpacks characterised by various functions and hinting at the fact that we are living a temporary existence in which "portable" has become the key word.
People can borrow the backpacks and use them for a while before returning them, in this way the artworks become part of the active life of visitors but also of the city and of the wider urban context.
Though rather small compared to the monumental events revolving around fashion organised nowadays in museums, Fashion as Social Energy manages to question collective habits, undermine conventions and generate new visions and possibilities.
Visitors to exhibitions often stop in the museum or gallery shop to grab a souvenir of the event they have just seen. People who will go and see this event will instead leave with one question in their minds: why don't we see such exhibitions about the social, political and financial impacts that fashion is having on our lives more often and in more places in the world? Who knows, maybe, unbeknownst to us, the Fashion Police already exists and is preventing us from doing so...
"Fashion as Social Energy", Palazzo Morando, via Sant'Andrea 6, Milan, Italy, until 30th August 2015.
Image credits for this post
1. Fashion as Social Energy, Exhibition Poster.
2. Mella Jaarsma, "Pecking Order", 2015.
3. Wurmkos and Bassa Sartoria, "Vestimi", performance, Farmacia Wurmkos, 2014. Photography Antonio Maniscalco.
4. Lucy Orta, "Fabulae Romanae - Dome Dwelling Viminale", 2012.
5. Lucy Orta, "Fabulae Romanae Spirit - Traveller", 2012.
6. Maria Papadimitriou, "The Costume of Yorgos Maga". Installation view. DESTE Foundation in collaboration with the Benaki Museum, Athens. Photo: Matthew Monteith. Courtesy DESTE Foundation Athens.
7. Andrea Zittel, "Rough Furniture; Consumption and Expulsion, Artifacts from David's Back Yard, Joshua Tree California", 2007. Courtesy Galleria Massimo De Carlo, Milan/London.
9. Michelangelo Pistoletto, "Venere degli Stracci", 1967, Courtesy Città dell'arte, Fondazione Pistoletto, Biella.
10. Otto von Busch, "Fashion Police", logo.
11. Kimsooja, "Mumbai A Laundry Field", Production Still, 2007. Courtesy Galleria Raffaella Cortese.
12. Rä Di Martino, "The Show MAS Go On", HD Video 31', 2013.
13. Claudia Losi, "Balena Project, Letter Jacket, George Hollander, 2012/2015". Photo by Andrea Rossetti.
14. Marzia Migliora and Luigi Coppola, "Io in testa", 2013. Photo Francesco Niccolai. Courtesy of the artist and the Occupied Teatro Valle, Nomas Foundation Roma.
Let's continue the photography thread that started yesterday with a personal post about a picture I took at the end of June that I entered in the 2015 Tiger Camera competition.
The interpretation of the "Borders" theme was at the core of this year's competition. The picture, entitled "Glasgow World", didn't win the main award, but was among the 50 best pictures chosen to be part of a book. The following questionnaire answers a series of questions that the finalists were asked about their photograph and the story behind it. Enjoy!
What's your name? Anna Battista. I'm a freelance journalist, writer, researcher and independent scholar with a personal passion for photography.
What made you decide to participate? The theme of the competition sounded really intriguing. Borders could be considered in a negative way as something that divides one thing from the next, but also as a balancing line, a sublime place where everything is suspended between two extremes and this is how I wanted to interpret the theme in my picture.
Please explain the process/thinking behind your photo. Why this photo? Scottish artist Frank Boyle and I were walking around the Barras Market in the East End of Glasgow on a Sunday morning. The main idea was having a look around its mix of street and indoor stalls, get inspired by unusual things and look for books, old magazines and hardware tools. I was also looking at the theme of dereliction for a post about it in connection with fashion for my site Irenebrination. We turned a corner and passed this surreal gravestone display and the contrasts between the hustle and bustle of a market and the quietness of death immediately came to my mind. I was mesmerised. In the last few years, the loss of some members of my family deeply touched me and I started pondering more about life and death. The gravestone display was directly under the sign that read "World" and it evoked in my mind the invisible border between these two states. Was the booth actually telling me that life ends in death or that death is nearer to the chaos of life than I had ever imagined? The more I looked at the gravestone display, the more I felt it was almost like a portal to an underworld that hinted at a series of "borderline" dichotomies - from chaos Vs quietness to joy Vs sadness. The rolled up grass carpet in the background also looked like a shroud containing a body, while the carefully folded three-stripe tracksuit seemed to be an irreverent version of Jesus' linen burial cloth, hinting at a urban resurrection. On a personal level the image also came to represent a border, evoking the personal illusions and delusions I lived in Glasgow and, architecturally speaking, it established a further contrast and a border with the Barrowlands (also located in this area), the historical music venue where many iconic bands play. In a nutshell, there were so many different borders in this one shot that it became a favourite of my three submissions to the Tiger Camera Competition. One final note: I entitled the photo "Glasgow World" - that translates in Italian as "Mondo Glasgow" - thinking about the Italian "Mondo Movies". This subgenre - the result of a combination of documentaries with exploitation films - often featured strong and shocking images and themes, claiming to show the bizarre and unusual in the world, even though the movies weren't usually entirely real. This dichotomy is still standing in my picture since it looks like showing something really shocking, but, if you know the real story behind it, you discover there isn't anything controversial or scary about it, since this is actually a real gravestone display.
What camera did you use? A battered Kodak EasyShare Sport, a tiny pocket camera I stole off my brother. Small cameras are perfect when you don't want to attract the attention of other people in busy places and, being waterproof, this camera is handy in the temperamental Scottish weather and in torrential rain.
Where was the photo taken? The Barras Market, Glasgow, Scotland.
Is photography a part of your everyday life? Photography runs in the family, but more as a personal passion rather than a professional career: old family photograph albums have always been an obsession of my mother and my aunts, while my father used to take a lot of pictures of damaged cars for his job as a Motor Vehicle Assessor. This meant there were always a lot of cameras and films lying around the house and this was an irresistible temptation for my brother and I. We would steal the stuff and take terrible pictures trying to come up with surreal shots. We never managed to beat my father's accidentally experimental skills, though: one time he employed a used film with some car pictures to take photographs of my cousin's wedding. All the pictures were ruined, but the final result was tragicomic with lots of car parts replacing human limbs - unforgettable pre-digital era effects! Maybe that's why I'm more interested in taking shots of inanimate objects, unusual and disquieting places, or mechanical parts...
Will you participate again in the 2016 competition? Yes, and can't wait to hear more about the main theme!
Finally so we know what to do better: What do you think is the Best and Not So Good thing about the Tiger Camera Competition? Well, there are many great things about the competition: there is no entry fee and you can post three images, so you get more than just one chance to win. The first prize offers a great opportunity to the winner to travel and get visually inspired by another country. Yet also the finalists get a great reward as being published in a book that will be widely distributed in the Tiger stores and will be available at a very reasonable price is something that puts a smile on your face. What's not so good? Well, I would personally get three main winners rather than just one, and expand the number of finalists to one hundred. You know what they say - "The More The Merrier"!
"We live in the cities. The cities live in us. Time passes. We move from one city to another, from one country to another. We change language, we change habits, we change opinions, we change clothes, we change everything. Everything changes. And fast. Images above all," the opening monologue from Wim Wenders' Notebook on Cities and Clothes with its reflection on identity and cities, images and transformations could be used as the perfect description for "Time Capsule. By the Side of the Road" an exhibition of photographs by Wim Wenders that will soon be opening at Blain|Southern, in Berlin.
The artist’s first exhibition in his hometown in over half a decade, the event features new and recent photographs by Wenders, shot in Germany and America. Memory and the way photographs can help us capturing the past and preserving it forever are the main themes of the exhibition that proceeds in some cases via juxtapositions of images.
The dense foliage of "Forest in Brandenburg" (2014) dialogues for example with a roller coaster structure in Canada, the trees in the former creating a natural forest compared to the desolate land of multiple metal poles in the latter; the cranes in Potsdamer Platz (1995) form a urban jungle of metal and concrete that establishes a new contrast with a sublime landscape near Wittenberge, Germany (2014), while "The Elbe River near Dömitz" (2014), depicts the reverse angle of a river as captured by Wenders forty years ago in his film In the Course of Time (Im Lauf der Zeit).
Several of the works in the exhibition feature places that have long-since changed, the images themselves therefore act as portals into lost moments or spaces. Wenders considers himself as "an interpreter, a translator, a guardian […] of stories" that places tell him and quite often his tales revolve around desolation and loneliness, with architectures and landscapes stripped of the presence of human beings, almost to emphasise the power of the physicality of the spaces surrounding us.
Another interesting point to make about this event is the scale of the work: Wenders' newest and most impressive panorama (four and a half metres in width) depicts the epic landscape of the American West – an area that he has extensively examined in his work.
As he states: "I think I had wide-open eyes for America, and 'the American landscape' in a general sense seemed extremely attractive to me, both as a photographer and filmmaker. Maybe the long absence from Germany of 15 years has enabled me to see places here with the same wide-open eyes. What has remained the same: in those landscapes, German or American, I'm still looking for the traces of civilization, of history, or people."
Wenders claims that the scale of some of his most recent works transports people to the places he discovered and learnt to love, but there are more themes to unveil in other sections of the exhibition, including loss, nostalgia and movement: a giant mountain of salt overlooks an eerily-quiet town; a perforated cinema screen stands disused and abandoned; a woman rests alone at the end of an American saloon bar.
Photographs - Wenders states - give him the chance to take these places to people, but, we may add, they also act as memory images capable of releasing emotional triggers in the viewers and stimulate their thoughts, associations, and visions from the past.
"Time Capsules. By the Side of the Road" by Wim Wenders is at Blain|Southern, Potsdamer Strasse 77-87, 10785 Berlin, 17th September - 14th November 2015.
Image credits for this post
All images by and copyright of Wim Wenders; courtesy of Wim Wenders and Blain|Southern.
Contemplation, Denver, Colorado, 1982, Silver gelatin on Baryt paper framed behind glass on Alu Dibond.
Drive-in at night, Montréal, Canada, 2013, C Print.
Forest in Brandenburg, 2014, C Print.
Roller Coaster, Montréal, Canada, 2013, C Print.
The Elbe River near Dömitz, 2014, C Print.
Drive-in, Marfa, Texas, 1983, Silver gelatin on Baryt paper framed behind glass on Alu Dibond.
Glasses went through several revolutions since they first appeared in the world in the 13th century as a reading aid for priests and scholars. As the centuries passed, new advancements in the optical industries allowed to technically and aesthetically develop innovative glasses and sunglasses, while designers came up with very original frames and fashion houses and brand's logos assumed more and more importance.
Many prominent fashion houses and designers have come up with iconic spectacular frames, but fans of the iconic and the architectural (rather than the spectacular...) can now enjoy a new collection of eyewear by Japanese fashion designer Yohji Yamamoto.
The collection includes 17 optical frames and 13 sunglasses, all manufactured in France in collaboration with Mazzucchelli for what regards the palette, and Christian Dalloz, for the lenses.
The eyewear was inspired by Yamamoto's original three-word brief "Dramatic, Avant-Garde and Intelligent". Yet the more you look at some of the frames, the more you think about architecture and in particular about Wim Wenders's Notebook on Cities and Clothes (1989), the documentary about Yamamoto.
Some of these frames with their geometrical sharp shapes evoking concepts such as reconstruction through deconstruction and Yamamoto's cutting skills, could indeed be juxtaposed to the images of highways around Tokyo with their solid concrete pillars or to shots of the metal muscles and steel bones of the Centre Pompidou, as seen in Wenders' documentary.
One of Yamamoto's most famous quotes defining his approach to fashion, accompanies the launch of the collection, "With my eyes turned to the past I walk backwards into the future".
While this statement perfectly summarises his philosophy, it's a shame that the designer didn't use this collection to share with his fans new quotes about cities and architecture and how they influence the way we look at things or the way we dress.
He will hopefully do so with his next eyewear collection. For the time being, Yamamoto fans can add a note to the old adage stating that hiding behind dark glasses suggests concealment and mystery - now it also suggests seeling and feeling architecture.
There is a renewed interest in the work of Orry-Kelly, the Academy Award-winning costume designer who created dresses and gowns for many famous celebrities including Marilyn Monroe. His memoir Women I've Undressed was recently published, an exhibition - "Orry-Kelly: Dressing Hollywood" - is currently on at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, while Gillian Armstrong shot a fascinating documentary about him, "Women He's Undressed".
Before rediscovering him, though, a great idea would be to re-watch some the films in which his work appeared. The list is long and includes a bit of everything from romances to dramas, though an interesting way to learn more about a costume designer is maybe starting from films that are not terribly well known.
A good example is the horror story (well, today it's also a Monday and the first day of the week is usually a bit of "a horror story" for many of us...) Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933).
Based on an unpublished short story entitled "The Wax Works" by Charles Spencer Belden and directed by Michael Curtiz, this American Pre-Code mystery-horror film revolves around Ivan Igor (Lionel Atwill), a sculptor who operates a wax museum in 1921 London. Igor seems to be particularly fond of some of the statues in his museum, the three ones representing Joan of Arc, Voltaire and Marie Antoinette.
After a fire started by his business partner destroys the place, Igor manages to re-open a new museum in New York City several years later. Yet his new gallery of wax figures hides a horrid mystery behind its doors, something that young reporter Florence Dempsey (Glenda Farrell), on the verge of being fired for not bringing in any worthwhile news, eventually discovers while investigating the suicide of model Joan Gale (Monica Bannister).
Florence and her roommate Charlotte Duncan (Fay Wray) are dressed in the film in very sensible costumes: 1930s dresses and skirt suits quite often matched with long and wide coats prevail and the two friends always wear quite elegant cloche hats.
Even on screen you can see that fabrics must have been of great quality: Orry-Kelly had a passion for the finest fabrics around and you can detect it from the way the clothes move or stand on the main actresses' bodies.
Dynamism prevails in Florence's wardrobe since she's a young reporter ready to jump at the prospect of a good news story, while the more romantic Charlotte seems to be into zigzags and romantic motifs as well. At the very end of the film Florence, who has finally got her scoop, is clad in a striking dress with a very architectural motif around the elbow area, matched with a leopard coat and scarf.
The costumes in this film suffer from one main point: the movie was shot in two-color Technicolor, a process that combined red and green dyes to create a colour image with a reduced spectrum. As a consequence, the main shade that emerges from the film is a flesh and corpse-like colour (referenced in Ivan Igor's explanation of his interest shifting from stone to wax, a material that could help him reproducing "the warmth, flesh, and blood of life far more better...than in cold stone").
Even the city seems to be drenched in this colour, as if it breathes the horrors boiling inside Igor Ivan's laboratory, a metallic structure located underground, in the bowel of a rather bland museum, where Ivan keeps a pit of flesh-coloured boiling wax.
Fashion-wise the flesh coloured tones of the film definitely detract from the costumes, yet they remain intriguingly elegant and, hopefully, one day some publisher will come up with a special book featuring cutting patterns for some of the best costumes by Orry-Kelly. After all, there is nothing like a cleverly cut garment (like the ones Florence wears in The Mystery of the Wax Museum) to make you feel elegant, at ease and ready to take up the challenges life throws at you.
A while back we looked at typography and alphabets as a fashion trend, but if you are a passionate expert of graphic arts or an amateur typography fan and you're looking for random inspirations, start from the first fonts and graphics you may find around you, such as the ones on store fronts.
Decorative elements, initial letters, borders and names on shop signs can indeed prove as incredibly intriguing as they may tell us more about the date when a store was founded or may hint at what's being sold inside.
Shop signage is key to business success since it's meant to attract the attention of pedestrians and the public, making a lasting impression by convincing a passer-by to get in and become a customer.
Historical cafes, bars, restaurants (check out "trattorie" and "osterie" in particular) grocery stores and interior design shops scattered all over Italy can offer great inspirations, as seen in these pictures taken in Venice and Ascoli Piceno. The size, colour and forms of the signs vary, offering a survey of different visual graphics.
Don't forget to look also at the shape of a sign and at the way it can can help conveying specific messages: the corsetry sign from Glasgow with its sensual shape and italic type almost hints at what the shop once located in that building used to sell.
Want to gaduate from shop signage to something else? Go window shopping for typographic inspirations, checking out the books in second hand stores and antiquarian shops.
The last picture in this post shows for example a book spotted in an antiquarian shop in Venice: The Romance of Perfume (1928) by Richard Le Gallienne was conceived as a history of the uses of perfume around the world and featured beautiful illustrations by George Barbier. The cover was set in a modern English adaptation of type designed in France in the 16th century by Robert Granjon.
The book was published by Richard Hudnut who had a perfume and cosmetic business located on Fifth Avenue, New York, and on Rue de la Paix, Paris. Amazing what you can learn from typography, isn't it?
In yesterday's post we mentioned William Morris and, since among the contemporary artists referencing him there is Jeremy Deller, let's have a look at the installations by this British artist included in the 56th International Art Exhibition in Venice. Deller has curated a room inside the Central Pavilion at the Giardini.
Some of the works included were actually part of the Hayward touring exhibition "All That Is Solid Melts Into Air", first shown in 2013 at the Manchester Art Gallery, among them there are for example pages of 19th century broadsides.
Concerned with heavy industries, cotton mills, railways and mining, the broadsides on display ("Five in the mornings", "Jone O' Grinfield" and "Just What We'd All Like To See", 1843-73) documented the industrial struggles, poor working conditions, strikes, accidents and disasters of those times.
In the absence of newspapers, they became ways of spreading information and featured songs that exposed the perils and dangers faced by the industrial workers, calling for education and self improvement.
The songs were a crossover between folk and popular music, with lyrics referencing work in general and the working conditions in the factories (though they weren't sung inside factories because of the noise of the machines).
These songs were paired with more sentimental verses and lyrics contrasting songs with heavier themes and tales of woe, such as the one entitled "Lines upon the Explosion at Witton, near Birmingham".
The latter, recounting a disaster at a mine, may have been used for example as a way to raise funds for victims and families, while "A prophecy for 1973" imagines the world in 100 years' time, celebrating freedom and sexual emancipation.
There are further references to songs in a jukebox surrounded by a mural evoking a furnace or the fire and brimstone of John Martin's painting "The Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah" (1852).
The jukebox is loaded with forty recordings from Britain's industrial past and present, and includes noises of cotton and coal industries with the clang of machinery on the factory floor. Many of these recordings were made in the '80s, a time when factories were closing down.
Deller's reference to music and songs extends to the Arena space in the Central Pavilion where visitors can see at specific times and days the a cappella vocal performance "Broadsides and Ballads of the Industrial Revolution", with scores based on song sheets sold in the streets.
The display is completed by other works hinting at the theme of labour, such as a plastic arm with a Motorola device protruding from a wall. The device on the wrist is a Motorola WT4000, usually worn by employees in warehouses (such as Amazon's) to track the speed of orders and the efficiency of the staff. It can calculate if a worker falls behind schedule and send warning to inform them about the situation.
Next to this severed plastic limb, there are 28 photographs of unidentified female ironworkers. Dating from 1865 these photographs of anonymous women workers from Tredegar ironworks in South Wales were taken by William Clayton, a local photographer, in response to a public debate about the role of women in heavy industry and the effect it was having on domestic life.
Most of these women posed for the first time in front of a camera and the studio backdrop emphasises the class distinction between people.
The label describing the photographs also states that this could be an example of Victorian anthropology, indicating a new tribe in the making - the industrial worker.
A banner hanging from the celing completes the installation, stating: "Hello, today you have a day off" (2013; made by Ed Hall) a sentence sent as a text message to a zero hours (day labouring) contract worker telling him that his labour would not be required that day.
The installation chronicles the transition from an industrial to a post-industrial condition and from relentless working hours in factories and mines to dispossession, a condition experienced by zero hours workers.
In many ways this is a partial representation of labour as it doesn't tackle also the engagement of illegal immigrants or undocumented labour on exploitative terms and beyond the reach of protective labour laws. It would be interesting to expand the discourse to these topics and even come up with specific art projects based on the representation of exploitative labour in the fashion industry.