Most Halloween features suggest readers costumes and ideas for partying on the scariest night of the year. But horror can provide us with sound inspirations not just for costumes and for one night only.
A great idea is for example turning to scary and disturbing films, read between the lines and find cool inspirations in one image, screen or colour. A suggestion for a film? X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes by Roger Corman (1963).
This science fiction/horror film revolves around Dr. James Xavier (Ray Milland), a famous scientist who, understanding that the human eye only perceives a tenth of the entire visual spectrum, develops eye drops that should increase the range of human vision.
The person using them should therefore be able to see into the ultraviolet and x-ray wavelengths and beyond.
Curious to see what happens to humans, Dr Xavier stops his experiments on animals and starts using the drops on himself.
While at the beginning the results are extremely useful or simply hilarious, with Dr Xavier saving a misdiagnosed girl during an operation or finding himself surrounded by naked people at a party, soon the enhanced vision gives him creepy nightmares.
Rather than seeing the world as it is, or "merely" being able to see behind the first layers of skin and into the human body, Dr Xavier starts indeed seeing confused lights and textures, and he is even able to see through his eyelids.
His eyes also change colour, going from black and gold to entirely black and he opts to wear dark wrap-around sunglasses at all times.
Dr Xavier's vision eventually drives him to a near-insanity state towards the end of the film when he sees the heart of the universe and "the Eye that sees us all". The man reaches a final and tragic decision - in a nutshell, the dark journey that brought him to see the Light, ends up in the deepest darkness.
In many ways this is more a science than a horror film and, in 1963, it also won the "Silver Spaceship" award at the first International Festival of Science Fiction Film (Festival internazionale del film di fantascienza) in Trieste, Italy.
The visual effects may be a bit primitive for today's standards as Corman used an optical process called Spectorama.
The film's pressbook explains the process: "Through a patented arrangement of prisms, light images are bent and colour changes with the resulting distortions appearing to be impressionistic paintings in motion."
Though not always convincing and at times ridiculous, the X-ray effects can still be inspiring, especially Dr Xavier's multi-coloured hallucinating visions.
At the begining Xavier's point of view is presented as textures under other textures (organs under the skin), but then everything starts turning into a fuzzy version of the reality, and the best images are produced when he turns his gaze around the cityscape or on the lights of Las Vegas and penetrates the urban features and the neon lights of the strip.
There are many inspirations for an entire fashion collection in these points - from the layered textures that could be replicated via sheer/opaque/matte textiles to the colourful effects (holographic fabrics and digital prints may help...) - so get working now on them. As an alternative, start tomorrow and enjoy for the time being your Halloween celebrations!
The recent news about Raf Simons leaving Dior and Alber Elbaz exiting Lanvin have spawned a series of articles about the state of fashion. Pressure, the fast rhythms of the industry and social media gone haywire have been blamed, but, when you sit back and think, you realise these may not be the only reasons why some designers have started to get off the fashion bandwagon. There could indeed be other explanations: one could be, for instance, the process of assigning random fashion awards to this or that label/designer or this and that product. Think about Kanye West's Adidas Yeezy Boost recently getting the Footwear News' "Shoe of the Year" award.
"This year's Shoe of the Year honour recognises the insatiable demand for all things Yeezy," read the official announcement, highlighting an important truth about fashion design. The words "insatiable demand" point indeed to quantity rather than quality, a quantity derived from the fact that West is a media sensation and not a designer with a terrific product up his sleeve.
West cleverly unveiled the Yeezy high-tops on the Grammys, sending them skyrocketing and turning them into a server crashing product; he also donned beige Boosts at the MTV VMAs in August to create the much-needed anticipation for their release during the holiday season. Besides, his wife Kim Kardashian, sister-in-laws Kendall and Kylie Jenner, were also often photographed wearing the sneakers. It was therefore only natural for the sneakers to become a coveted product by West's fans all over the world.
Yet West remains first and foremost a rapper and producer and a celebrity; he may know what he likes to wear and what kind of designer products he likes to receive for free, but these qualifications do not make him a designer.
As a matter of fact the Yeezy Boost 350 shoes do not have anything dramatically or radically innovative about them; they look indeed like any other knitted lace-up sneaker and you can just imagine how they assembled them at the Adidas HQs with West pointing to the desired rubber sole, nuance or graphic motif, and somebody conjuring up the final image on a screen in the same way consumers do when they customise sneakers online or in a dedicated sportswear store.
Taking a look at West's horrid collections of clothes (Kanye's Yeezy Season 1 Adidas apparel and Season 2 simply look the same, a combination of miserabilism in dystopic Divergent shades, mistaken by advertising money thirsty media for brave examples of social commentary tackling racism and promoting diversity...) - featuring tatty surplus army sweaters covered in holes, oridinary leggings, oversized sweatshirts, rather banal but ridiculously priced coats ("solutions-based" collection? Don't take the piss out of us consumers, come on...), and the horridly shaped Yeezy 950 Duck Boot, a remixed version of the classic bunny boots used by the United States armed forces (of the sort you can get from various retailers from Amazon to Aliexpress at a fraction of the price) - have the power to send shivers down any designer's spine.
Maybe the time has come to stop building the hype around celebrities' collections. Yes, it's true, when a celebrity shows his or her endorsement for a brand they make it instantly rich, but, while manufacturing a genuinely innovative product may take time and money, it is also a rewarding process that may win consumers's loyalty for life. Besides, we may be sending the wrong signals to an entire generation of young people who want to get into the fashion business and may start wondering what's the point of studying, learning and struggling if this is how it works.
The FN Achievement Awards - celebrating this year their 29th anniversary - will be presented on 2nd December in New York City. Considered as the "Shoe Oscar", the awards acknowledged throughout the years Christian Louboutin, Manolo Blahnik, Stuart Weitzman and Pierre Hardy, as well as brands like Nike, and fashion houses such as Prada, while Adidas brought home the award in 2014 for an iconically classic product, the Stan Smith court shoe. You may like or not these names/brands, you may love or hate some of their designs, but at least they all fall under the categories of designers/apparel brands and are managed by proper designers or by teams of people wth the proper qualifications to be designers.
Now the self-proclaimed "God of Rap" is also an awarded shoe designer, even though they probably gave him a prize because it's better to shut him up with praise than tell him in his face he is not a designer and get sued (West asked models who walked for his Season 2 show to sign non-disclosure agreements that stated he could sue them for up to $10million if they spoke out about him, the collection, Kim Kardashian West and her family).
Yet Footwear News has maybe forgotten that it's not the price of a pair of shoes (around $200 per pair in the case of West's Yeezy), or their re-sale value (the Yeezy shoes can reach three times their original price on the resale market) that makes a truly innovative shoe.
Innovation is indeed a combination of factors, including materials, design, colour and fit (not to mention the fact that you may need to know basic principles of orthopaedic medicine to design great shoes - Salvatore Ferragamo studied the anatomy of the foot in his early days as a designer in the States), and it's not the result of a mathematical equation between your ego, your aura of coolness and your celebrity status. People who choose to get heavily indebted and study fashion/footwear design, struggling to set up their own business, know this pretty well; maybe it's about time that we as media commentators and consumers were reminded so.
In a fashion industry that is rapidly changing, mutating or, who knows, maybe coming to an end (consider Raf Simons stepping down from his role as Creative Director at Christian Dior and yesterday's announcement regarding Alber Elbaz leaving Lanvin...), there is one main need - trying to understand if and how fashion can be used to create a better future. An exhibition currently on at Liljevalchs Konsthall in Stockholm is doing so in a clever way.
Curated by Sofia K A Hedman and Serge Martynov (readers may remember them from previous posts about other intriguing fashion exhibitions), "Utopian Bodies - Fashion Looks Forward" is divided in eleven galleries, all of them tackling very relevant topics and themes - Sustainability, Change, Technology, Craft & Form, Craft & Colour, Resistance & Society, Resistance & Beauty, Solidarity, Memory, Gender Identity and Love.
The 200 objects featured - accompanied by a series of images and videos (by Nick Knight/SHOWstudio, Geoffrey Lillemon and George Tsioutsias) - break stereotypes and conventions, highlight the freedom that clothes and accessories can give the wearer by transforming and altering the body and explore existential concepts such as birth, death and decay.
Some of the objects in the craft galleries also look at the concept of time and prompt visitors to think at the work of genuine artisans, at their knowledge of materials, skills and techniques and at the time they need to make finely crafted objects, something that comes to our minds every now and then and mainly in connection with Haute Couture collections.
The final point made by the curators (via the garments and accessories included some by famous designers, others by young creative minds) is that the ideal world that makes an utopia is fluid, but so is the world of fashion, a universe in constant change that can't be labelled, trapped or pigeonholed.
As a whole the exhibition is ambitious, rich and extravagantly organised with rooms and areas that will amaze not just fashion experts and fans, but people of all ages and with a wide range of interests (check out the Craft and Colour gallery and get immersed in the visually striking Sonia Delaunay-inspired setting).
Stockholm may be immersed in its dark and winter months, but Liljevalchs Konsthall has done a great effort to make them more fun, while attempting to offer us answers to a series of very contemporary questions about fashion. The cultural institution should also be praised since it commissioned sixteen Swedish designers to create unique garments for the event, each one inspired by a utopian object, innovation, idea or technology.
In this way Liljevalchs Konsthall elevated the main topic of the event to an intriguing level via new and innovative pieces, distinguishing itself from other institutions organising fashion exhibitions but mainly displaying pieces from their own archives or on loan.
We have already posted a feature on the exhibition, so for today let's sit back, relax and listen to the curators taking us on a very adventurous journey through the fashion of the future and the future of fashion.
This is a terrifically ambitious exhibition at Liljevalchs – how did it come about? Sofia K A Hedman and Serge Martynov: It all began about 18 months ago when the project and concept were first conceived. It was agreed that we would aim to make the exhibition appeal to a wide audience, underlining fashion's interdisciplinary nature and importance. In addition, we wanted to show both Swedish and international designers, as well as engage children. We decided to build the exhibition around the concept of utopia, so we could present what is possible here and now, as well as where we could go in the future. This exhibition is about fashion's possibilities and the power of human creativity. With utopia being such a vast subject matter, the exhibition naturally evolved and grew into what it is now. It was a very organic process, with many ideas gradually distilling into the central themes of the exhibition during a year.
It must have been hard going through the selection process for such a big event, what did you look for in the designs you selected? Sofia K A Hedman and Serge Martynov: Today, there are so many great innovations and thoughts that can be used for the future. However, it can sometimes be difficult to find out about them, so we tried to collect as many as possible under one roof. We wanted to show the diversity, skills and wonderful creativity that exists within fashion. As well as this, we strived to achieve a balance between the more established fashion houses and the new generation of designers. All objects in the exhibition are exceptional, each in their particular way.
While some of the designs included represent genuine visions of a utopian fashion future, others point towards dystopia: did you intentionally include some pieces characterised by this sort of ambiguity? Sofia KA Hedman and Serge Martynov: When researching and discussing the content for the exhibition, one very wise historian had reservations about the concept of utopia since one person's utopia will always be another's dystopia. This made us think in new directions. To avoid making a prescriptive exhibition, or being seen as attempting to deliver a truth, we decided to invite visitors to search for their own utopia. The exhibition is therefore arranged over eleven galleries, or themes – we invite the visitors to search for Sustainability, Change, Technology, Craft & Form, Craft & Colour, Resistance & Society, Resistance & Beauty, Solidarity, Memory, Gender Identity and Love. Some objects deal with very serious issues such as migration, gender and age issues. However, the objects are chosen not because they highlight all the problems in the world, but rather because they clearly illustrate how fashion can be used to create a better future. This exhibition is very much about breaking stereotypes and conventions when it comes to issues like these ones. We want indeed to highlight the freedom that clothes can give you. For instance, our "Change" gallery is about how fashion has the ability to continually transform itself and it also includes some objects that deal with death. It reflects contemporary cultural, social and economic life. This gallery can be seen as a snapshot of our relationship with the concepts of birth, decay and rebirth. Fashion historian Barbara Vinken suggests that, before the 1980s, high fashion rarely portrayed death or decay. However, a new breed of designers emerging from Tokyo and Antwerp helped challenge this, and we are now able to see the complete life cycle represented in fashion. Towards the end of the 20th century, designers produced realistic, even literal, executions of decay in their work. In 1996, Alexander McQueen filled a transparent plastic corset with live worms for "The Hunger" show. A year later, Maison Martin Margiela sprayed garments with mould and bacteria, and left them to deteriorate during an exhibition at Boijmans Van Beuningen. A decade later, Ann-Sofie Back commented on how we relate to death in popular culture through her "Ann-Sofie Back Burns in Hell" collection. Its inspiration came from typical teen horror films, such as Carrie and A Nightmare on Elm Street. Today, death is often also approached from a humorous point of view. Ryohei Kawanishi's project with children from Fukushima illustrates for example the prospect of rebirth. After the tsunami in 2011, Kawanishi travelled to the stricken area to create his new collection together with the affected children, who in turn worked through their trauma.
Which designs included in the event bridge the gap between different disciplines such as art and technology? Sofia K A Hedman and Serge Martynov: There are so many exciting things happening within science and technology, especially concerning sustainability issues. Seemingly, there is still quite a substantial gap between the fashion and technology worlds, but this is hopefully something that will soon change. For example, byBorre's BBsuit 0.2 cleans polluted air through a portable filtering system; Pauline Van Dongen's panel solar shirt stores natural energy; Qmilk make clothes out of biologically degradable milk fibres and Satsuki Ohata's "fondue-slippers" can be tailor-made at home through dipping your feet in a solution, while Billie Whitehouse and Ben Moir's Navigate jacket has a vibrating mechanism embedded in the shoulders that allows wearers to find their way without looking at a map.
In which ways do the spaces of the venue react and interact with the designs on display? Sofia K A Hedman and Serge Martynov: It was important for us to create a distinct feel in each gallery, as well as an unexpected rhythm between them. One of the ways in which we did it was by creating specially made mannequins in collaboration with mannequin experts Proportion London. We also commissioned over 30 headpieces by wig makers Charlie Le Mindu and Perry Patraszewski. In addition, we also used film, lighting, soundscapes and textures to amplify the ideas behind some of the more complex objects, as well as to capture the music, movement and attitude that is so important in fashion. We wanted the exhibition design to enhance the narrative of the exhibition and encourage the visitors to immerse themselves in each theme and historical context. The design of each gallery was initially inspired by either a utopian idea, innovation or art movement. For example, the Craft and Colour gallery is designed as a three-dimensional artwork for the visitor to walk through. A multitude of colour planes and points of contact enhance the rhythm, motion and depth of colour. The design is inspired by Sonia and Robert Delaunay's Simultané theory and we asked London-based artist Orlando Campbell to create this layout as his interpretation of their work. The Craft and Form gallery focuses on the materials, skill, techniques and time required to make finely crafted objects. The wood-carved mannequin arms in this gallery were created specially for the exhibition by artist Anastasya Martynova. They are inspired by the Art and Crafts movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. References for these carvings are drawn from William Morris's pre-Raphaelite patterns in Britain, Karin and Carl Larsson's light simplicity in Sweden, Emilie Flöge and Gustav Klimt's geometric aesthetic in Austria and Henry van der Velde's Art Nouveau inspired reform dresses in The Netherlands. The design of the Gender Identity gallery is inspired by philosopher Judith Butler's idea that we perform gender. It takes the form of an abstract dressing room, where we clothe ourselves to "perform" roles. Dozens of light bulbs and an array of mirrors reflect the visitors. Often museum productions create a lot of waste. Throughout this project, we tried to think about what will happen to materials after the exhibition. For example, the installation in the Sustainability gallery is entirely made using recycled wooden pallets, which will be taken apart and re-used after the exhibition closes. The same goes for other materials such as the wooden flowers, fabrics, plates and gravel which will also be re-used.
Can you pick three items that for you may be employed to summarise the exhibition? Sofia K A Hedman and Serge Martynov: It's very difficult to pick just three, as there are so many great stories and ideas behind each object. The first that comes to mind is Smart Textiles' recycled cotton dress. Present-day cotton production is extremely demanding on the environment, with the enormous volumes of water it consumes and its use of chemicals. For that very reason the technical breakthrough of being able to recycle cotton presents boundless opportunities for a more environmentally friendly textile industry. It is predicted that the textiles of the future will be recyclable, just like paper. The second is Hussein Chalayan's "table" skirt and film from his "Afterwords" collection which looked at the plight of refugees and the horror of being displaced in times of war. His own Turkish-Cypriot family were forced to leave their homes in Cyprus in the 1960s due to a programme of ethnic cleansing. In his show, Chalayan imagined scenarios where people are confronted with war, forced to flee, hide or bring with them all the belongings they can carry. This piece is over 15 years old now, but it feels just as relevant than ever today. Last but not least, Anrealage's "Wideshortslimlong" ensembles, which play brilliantly with proportions, scale and silhouettes challenging the idea of beauty and non-beauty by using humour. They are so unique and imaginative and they seem to put a smile on the face of just about everyone who sees them!
There are quite a few young designers featured in this event: how do you go about scouting them? Do you visit a lot of exhibitions or travel a lot to spot them? Sofia K A Hedman and Serge Martynov: We try to see as many graduate shows as possible, as well as do research online if we can't physically make it. It's always exciting to come across young designers with lots of energy and fresh ideas: as curators, it is fantastic to have objects that visually illustrate ideas in such clear ways.
The commissioned pieces also look very interesting: did you get the chance to follow the 16 designers who worked on them as they developed them? Sofia K A Hedman and Serge Martynov: On this occasion, the designers were encouraged to do whatever they wanted. We did not want to interfere in their working process. We had agreed upon which themes they were exhibiting in and the final days before the opening were very interesting as we finally got to see all their impressive creations for the first time!
Do you feel this exhibition also breaks preconceptions of conventional beauty? In which ways? Sofia K A Hedman and Serge Martynov: Overall, the exhibition shows fashion as being more than just shopping and trends. It shows that plurality is important as well as highlighting the freedom that is imbued in clothes. In one of our galleries, Resistance and Beauty, we approach the idea of conventional beauty more directly. Fashion shapes our perception of what is beauty and non-beauty, but it can also be an act of rebellion against such norms. Based on the idea of the Medieval carnival where beggar becomes king and vice versa, the Carnivalesque describes instances when the authority of mainstream society is turned upside-down. Beauty is found in the unconventional, vulgar, ugly or grotesque. Here, humour challenges the powerful and makes a new social order temporarily visible. The idea of the "grotesque body", celebrated during Carnival and banned for the rest of the year, clashes with the traditional perception of beauty, characterised by proportion, symmetry and order. Designers such as Walter van Beirendonck, Anrealage, Bernhard Willhelm and Hideki Seo can be seen reworking silhouettes by turning to exaggerated proportions, distortion, asymmetry and chaos.
The S/S 16 fashion catwalk shows (in the main fashion capitals) finished less than a months ago and the debate about the future of fashion is rife: which of the aspects tackled in this exhibition (sustainability, technology, etc...) do you feel will be more prominent in the immediate future of the fashion industry? Sofia K A Hedman and Serge Martynov: We will have to be sustainable. It is not only the production, but equally our consumption that we must address. In fact, over-consumption is one of the most serious problems facing the world today. One famous theorist calls it "the world's biggest mental sickness". There are so many directions in which fashion can and should address the issue of sustainability. In the exhibition, we look at the life cycle of a garment - production, distribution, use, re-use, repair, and how it can eventually decay organically into nature. There is a strong emphasis on reducing waste, developing technology and the re-use of materials. Our Craft and Form gallery focuses on the time it takes learning and creating craft: all the objects included here have a caption by the designers that include the use of materials and techniques as well as the time that has gone into each single garment. Another example is our Memory gallery, where we look at the materiality of clothes. We wanted visitors to think about their own clothes and the memories they capture. This is a very remote concept from today's fast fashion. For this room we asked a number of personalities to select their favourite garment and tell us about their memory. Participants include Hamish Bowles, editor of Vogue; Susanne Ljung, journalist; Roy Andersson, director; Twiggy, model; Conchita Wurst, winner of Eurovision Song Contest, and Christian Lacroix.
Tapestries often draw from literary or mythological subjects, yet the art of weaving was often employed to narrate political events such as the story of famous battles or to celebrate a key victory. Emperors and kings at times commissioned sets of tapestries, for example, to depict and register historical events.
Nowadays contemporary weavers are maybe more focused on creating tapestries characterised by abstract motifs that could be used for interior design purposes or could be elevated to art, but there have been in the history of this practice artists who attempted to use tapestries in a strongly political way. Enter Hannah Ryggen.
Born in Malmö in 1894, Hanna Jönsson studied painting and drawing between 1916 and 1922 under the painter Fredrik Krebs in Lund. After a study trip to Dresden and inspired by the work of Goya, El Greco, and Vermeer, she decided to abandon painting and teach herself how to weave. Around this time she met the Norwegian artist Hans Ryggen, whom she married.
In 1924 the couple moved to a small farmhouse in Ørland, Norway, where Hannah was able to control the entire artistic process, using wool from local sheep, colouring her yarns with dye made from the plants she collected, and making her pieces on a standing loom built by her husband.
Rather than weaving classic rural scenes or opting for traditional mythological subjects, Ryggen focused on contemporary society: she followed closely the Spanish Civil War, the Second World War, and the German occupation of Norway, paying close attention to the rise of fascism in Europe.
Her works soon turned into acts of resistance: her 1935 tapestry "Etiopia" (Ethiopia) was triggered by Benito Mussolini's ferocious invasion of the African country in October 1935 and was shown at the Paris World's Fair in 1937 next to Picasso's "Guernica" and in 1939 at the New York World's Fair.
Picasso's painting was commissioned by Spain's Republican government, but Ryggen's tapestry was made by the artist as a reaction to Mussolini's aggressive campaign and became one of the first works made by Ryggen that proved her social and political engagement.
More pieces followed: "Hitlerteppet" (The Hitler Tapestry, 1936) analysed the cruelties of the Nazi regime and the Church's entanglement in National Socialism and depicted two decapitated figures kneeling before a hovering cross. Ryggen also dedicated a tapestry to the executed German communist dissident Liselotte Herrmann, while her work "Drømmedød" (The Death of Dreams, 1936) looked at the Nazis' imprisonment of the German journalist and Nobel Peace Prize winner Carl von Ossietzky, while criticizing Norwegian author Knut Hamsun, who supported Ossietszky's condemnation.
Rather than using mythological figures or allegories, Ryggen featured therefore in her socially conscious tapestries real historical figures, tackling the themes of violence and oppression and expressing opposition and criticism (Ryggen was critical of her home country, Sweden, that claimed to be neutral during the Second World War but allowed German soldiers to use its railway to get to Norway).
By the end of World War II, Ryggen looked at themes such as love, nature, portraiture, and social conformism, expressing her protest at the American involvement in Vietnam via her work "Blood in the Grass" (1966).
In the 1950s there was a comprehensive travelling exhibition of her work in the United States; Ryggen had a large solo exhibition at Moderna Museet in Stockholm in 1962 and she was the first female Norwegian artist to be represented at the Venice Biennale in 1964. Hannah Ryggen died six years later, in 1970.
This week the Moderna Museet in Malmö will launch the exhibition "Hannah Ryggen: Weaving the World". Curated by Julia Björnberg and produced in collaboration with Norway's National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design in Oslo, the event will feature sixteen monumental pictorial tapestries from 1926-1958 that explore violence and oppression, but also look at existential questions, love and poetry.
Among the pieces on display there will be the seven-metre long "Trollveggen" (Troll Wall, a cliff in the Troll Peaks Range; 1966) tapestry that usually hangs in the University of Oslo, and "We Live Upon a Star" (1958).
The latter was originally commissioned to Ryggen for the government building in Norway as a piece to remind the country's leaders of the importance of love and compassion for our fellow man. The work - featuring a naked man and woman embracing each other over a globe and two naked infants representing innocence and life suspended over the globe - was badly damaged in the attack carried out by a far-right terrorist on the government quarter in Oslo in July 2011, followed by the terrorist's rampage at the summer camp on Utøya Island.
The piece has been restored, but has a visible scar that now assumes even more meaning and power, reminding people of Ryggen's humanism, powerful criticism and struggle against fascism.
Finnish composer Mika Vainio, former member of ultra-minimalist electronica duo Pan Sonic, was also commissioned to create a pece inspired by the "Trollklangveggen" tapestry that will be performed on the opening night at the Inkonst art centre (Bergsgatan 29).
Though Ryggen was the first Norwegian textile artist to be accepted as a pictorial artist, she is not well known even in Norway and remains an outsider. Yet the powerful storytelling tapestries she created still speak to new and younger generations, reminding us that weaving can be used to make ambitious and powerful statements, connect with and contribute to modern history and politics, and build links between crafts and pictorial arts. As Ryggen herself indeed stated: "I am a painter, not a weaver; a painter whose tool is not the brush, but the loom".
"Hannah Ryggen: Weaving the World", Moderna Museet Malmö, October 31, 2015 - March 6, 2016.
Yuri Pardi's "Monument" collection, showcased at the graduate shows during summer, was definitely among the most original ones. A take on geometry and anatomy, the collection featured men and women's wear garments that looked as if they had been sculpted from grey concrete blocks. The pieces were instead made with grey wool and Pardi played with patterns, creating protrusions and rigid volumes supported by foam sheets that dramatically altered the shapes and silhouettes of the designs. This process allowed Brazilian-born Pardi to reduce the body to geometrical shapes in an exercise that called to mind the art of the Proto-Cubists or the Italian futurists, and that indirectly referenced the monumental modernism of Oscar Niemeyer or the concrete brutalism of Italian-born Brazilian architect Lina Bo Bardi.
Geometry, usually considered as a field of absolute clarity and the locus of rationality, turned therefore for Pardi into a way to create an irregular rationality that added surprise and emotion to a design. Ziggurat-like squarish blocks traced the back of a dress characterised by two minimalist seams running from the front to the back, a trick obtained by cleverly altering the pattern cutting; rectangle-shaped elements around the shoulders and the hips but invisible from the front disrupted instead the straight silhouette of a long gown. Menswear was altered via the same rectangular protrusions but featured highlights in darker shades of grey.
Pardi chose this nuance inspired by German artist Gerhard Richter's statement about grey being a neutral and inconspicuous shade, proving that this colour can instead force our eyes - stressed by the constant visual overload we are subjected to on a daily basis - to refocus on details, on the power of light and shadows and on a minimalist aesthetic of reduction.
Can you introduce yourself to our readers? Yuri Pardi: I was born in Brazil and studied both at the University of Brasilia (Graphic/Product Design) and at the University of East London (Fashion Design). I am currently based in London.
Do you consider yourself an artist or a fashion designer and which disciplines inform your work? Yuri Pardi: I believe every designer has to be an artist, but not every artist is a designer. I consider myself a designer in the wider sense of the word. The project methods and thinking in design can indeed be applied to any area, from graphics to fashion. Fashion is just the way of designing I prefer. However, designing for me is more than just about my personal expressive needs, since I strive for something that could convey a message pertinent to the present scenario. This leads me to naturally draw from art, architecture, design, philosophy, sociology and express it through clothing.
Your graduate collection has got something architectural about it, can you tell us more about the background inspirations? Yuri Pardi: My latest collection is entitled "Monument" and explores the relationship between people as individuals and aspects that are collective and common to all humans. I have translated this idea into garments that morph from traditional tailoring techniques into perfect geometric shapes. The former represent the body, the individual; the latter hint instead at the universal, the equal. You can find further information about my collection in this feature and interview.
Did you get inspired by any specific buildings for the shapes and silhouettes included in the collection? Yuri Pardi: No, the inspiration for the shapes came exclusively from the human body. Every shape reflects a segment of the body projecting outwards and forming a polyhedron.
What fascinates you about architecture and who are your favourite architects? Yuri Pardi: The notion of space and being able to expand or contract space, reveal or hide it, according to the proportion and lighting. The simple physical existence of three-dimensional objects is really fascinating. There is something really primal and beautiful about perceiving an object in space. My favourite architects are John Pawson, Tadao Ando and Oscar Niemeyer.
Grey is the prevailing shade in your collection and it almost evokes concrete, does this material inspire you? Yuri Pardi: Grey is the only colour in this collection, in two shades. It was chosen for a number of reasons, resembling concrete is one of them. The main reason for the choice was to give absolute focus to the shape as opposed to surface graphics or embellishments. The choice is perfectly explained with this statement by Gerhard Richter: "Grey. It makes no statement whatever; it evokes neither feelings nor associations: it is really neither visible nor invisible. Its inconspicuousness gives it the capacity to mediate, to make visible, in a positively illusionistic way, like a photograph. It has the capacity that no other colour has, to make 'nothing' visible."
Your pieces must also be very interesting pattern cutting-wise, can you tell us more about developing the patterns, was it challenging? Yuri Pardi: Yes, it was very challenging. The patterns turned out to be very mathematical due to the precision needed to keep the shapes in place whilst still allowing freedom of movement to the wearer. I developed a combination of traditional tailoring with flat polyhedra keeping darts and seams to a minimum. The big dress for example is made entirely with only two seams.
What kind of fabrics did you employ for this collection? Yuri Pardi: All the collection is made of only one fabric - synthetic wool - plus the interlining in polyester fusing. The only slightly different material used was foam sheets for the internal structure.
What plans do you have for the future? Yuri Pardi: I am currently working as a fashion assistant and planning on creative opportunities. I have no plans of taking part in any fashion events for the time being.
All images in this post by Eric Phillips courtesy of Yuri Pardi.
Fans of mixed-media artist Ugo Rondinone who have been consistently following his practice from the '90s perfectly know that it can be difficult to pigeonhole the works produced by his studio. They span indeed from abstract paintings and videos to photography, sculpture and performance. At times they are terribly comic and ironic or drenched in bright colours, at others they are serious and a bit depressing, but what's for sure is that they are never the same thing twice.
The Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam is currently working on an event for the next Spring (13th February - 29th May 2016) that will occupy part of the galleries of the institution.
"Ugo Rondinone - Vocabulary of Solitude" will include new and existing work in a wide range of colours: there will be mandalas and windows, abstract rainbow-like arches or brightly coloured concentric rings, plus forty-five life-like sculptures of clowns.
Born in Brunnen, Switzerland in 1964 from Italian parents, Rondinone studied at the Hochschule für Angewandte Kunstin in Vienna, moving from 1998 on to New York where he is still based.
Rondinone collaborated earlier on in his career with Austrian performance artist Hermann Nitsch and came to international attention during the 1990s via installations that went from sculpture and painting to video, sound and photography. Rondinone's artworks could be considered in many ways as reactions to the violent art of Nitsch.
The artist represented Switzerland at the Venice Biennale in 2007 and had major solo exhibitions at prominent institutions such as the Centre Georges Pompidou, the Louisana Museum of Modern Art, Kunsthalle Vienna, and Palais de Tokyo.
The artist is currently working on "Seven Magic Mountains", an installation of seven stone totems painted in bright shades constructed from car-size stone cut from a Nevada quarry and stacked 32 feet high. The public installation, along Interstate 15 that connects Los Angeles to Las Vegas, will launch in early 2016 and will remain on display for two years.
The exhibition for the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen will undoubtedly be poetical, teetering on the brink of euphoria and depression. On the floor of the 1,500 square meters Bodonzaal gallery of the museum visitors will indeed be able to move between a wide range of pieces or stop and contemplate Rondinone's clowns caught in the act of dreaming, sleeping, waking up or running, all of them symbolising the unhappy man and incarnating solitude, but doing so in a loud way.
The Rondinone event at the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen is part of a series of controversial and experimental exhibitions of leading international contemporary artists that have featured throughout the years Fischli & Weiss (2003/2004), Urs Fischer (2006), Yayoi Kusama (2008), Pipilotti Rist (2009), Olafur Eliasson (2005, 2010), Carsten Höller (2010), Paul Noble (2014) and many more.
During the exhibition, the museum will organise various activities for all ages including a highly recommended "meet & greet" event with the artist and children's workshops. While this exhibition is part of the "Project Rotterdam" initiative set to celebrate the city, the opening of Rondinone's exhibition will coincide with Art Rotterdam Week (10 - 14 February 2016) and the exhibition will then be travelling to other museums.
Last Thursday it was announced that designer Raf Simons was stepping down from his role as Creative Director at Christian Dior for personal reasons. The fashion house's Spring/Summer 2016 collection, showcased during Paris Fashion Week at the beginning of October, is therefore his last one for Dior. As Simons stated in an official press release: "It is a decision, based entirely and equally on my desire to focus on other interests in my life, including my own brand, and the passions that drive me outside of my work."
Designing for Dior was an "incredible opportunity", Simons claimed in the official statement as he thanked Bernard Arnault (chairman and chief executive officer of LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton and Christian Dior SA), but the Belgian designer enjoyed it for a relatively short time, having joined in 2012. His first Haute Couture collection was showcased in July of the same year and was also documented in Frédéric Tcheng's Dior & I.
Simons' creations were critically and widely acclaimed, besides, according to the fashion house, sales boosted under the designer. The label enjoyed indeed a 60 percent rise in sales since 2011; revenues at Christian Dior Couture rose 12.9 percent in its fiscal first quarter (the three months ending September 30th) reaching €471 million (around $524 million).
So if his collections were praised and the sales went up, you really wonder why did Simons decide to leave? Some sources claimed he wanted the general image he had started giving to the company to be reflected in advertising and on fashion house boutiques (the untouchable side of Dior - designed by American architect Peter Marino...).
The real reason could be pressure, though: Simons had to work on the ready-to-wear and Haute Couture collections, but also on the pre-collections that nowadays have the nasty habit of being presented as itinerant shows across the globe (Dior showcased in Cannes and Tokyo), apart from running his own label. This may have put too much pressure on him and maybe took its toll.
If this is the real reason, Simons was honest enough to step away from it all and, though he may not be able to join another fashion house for some time due to a non-compete clause in his initial contract, he may finally get a much needed rest and find more time to run his eponymous Antwerp-based label. As an alternative, he may sell everything and enjoy new adventures into the world of arts and furniture (Simons studied in Genk and obtained a degree in industrial and furniture design in 1991).
After all, as reported by WWD, just before Dior's Oct. 2 show in Paris Simons hinted at the fast pace of fashion when he told the press "I'm questioning a lot. I feel a lot of people are questioning. We have a lot of conversation about it: Where is it going? It's not only the clothes. It's the clothes, it's everything, the Internet." As millions of images and videos relating to style and fashion get instantly uploaded, visualised and digested not just during catwalk shows and fashion weeks, but on an everyday basis pushing big brands and powerful groups to aggressively produce more at a fast pace, designers feel more and more pressure.
The worst thing when a designer dies/leaves a brand or gets fired is actually the fact that the brand usually survives like a malevolent symbiont that gets attached to another human being and consumes it.
The scariest thing about Simons leaving Dior is instead the beginning of a new game of musical fashion chairs (the one at Balenciaga recently closed when Demna Gvasalia, head of Paris fashion label Vêtements, was picked as the new Creative Director). This is becoming the most common but also the most tiring and irritating sport in fashion, fuelled by the habits of fashion houses of signing one person and then discarding them after three years only to start the cycle again (a cycle that also features other important steps such as getting on your side the cool ambassadors - that is the key fashion critics, the most famous celebrities, the most prominent bloggers and the poseurs with the best Instagram accounts - not to mention launching your IPO...).
Many are rumoured, few will make it into the final list of candidates and only one will fill the vacant role, but it would be interesting to see Dior getting someone with a proper Haute Couture training, maybe a woman for a change (Bouchra Jarrar?) or somebody terribly unlikely with a passion for science and technology (Iris Van Herpen?) rather than picking the candidate from the usual list of likely male designers currently topped by Riccardo Tisci.
For the time being everything is under wraps at Dior and the next pre-fall collection will be designed by the in-house team and shown in January in Paris. Yet Simons getting off the big and powerful fashion house bandwagon remains a shocking move: maybe he won't be alone and we will hopefully see other designers abandoning the fast and furious fashion train and getting off at the next station. This is maybe the only way to make the industry understand that, if it wants to go faster (in an innovative and edgy way and therefore develop new solutions, fabrics, textiles and ideas) it will have to slow down and it will have to do so as soon as possible.
Events labelled as "fashion nights" scattered all over the world from Milan to London and New York have been rather depressing for being just another occasion to shop rather than learn anything about the fashion industry.
Yet in Venice they are going to turn the concept around during tonight's "Venice Fashion Night". Rather than forcing on consumers the umpteenth "It" bag while they sip a glass of cheap champagne and listen to a hip DJ in a shop, agency "Venezia da vivere" is inviting local people and tourists to join in a rich programme of cultural events that will introduce them to the art of many local artisans, ateliers and tailoring houses.
The main point of this event is indeed promoting the local history and work of genuine craftspeople: so if you are around, you'll be able to visit Roberta di Camerino's historical atelier in Palazzo Grifalconi and discover an exhibition on her tartan pieces; tailoring fans shouldn't instead miss the performance at the Atelier Al Duca D'Aosta Venezia 1902, while accessory lovers can opt for the wearable glass art of Marina and Susanna Sent or learn from one of the last impiraresse the art of threading beads.
Fashion designer Antonio Marras has instead curated the layout for the exhibition "Sguardo di donna. Da Diane Arbus a Letizia Battaglia" (A Woman's Gaze. From Diane Arbus to Letizia Battaglia), and there is also a prestigious institution that will be offering engaging events - Palazzo Mocenigo (one of Irenebrination's favourite institutions).
The Museum and Study Center of the History of Fabrics and Costumes will be open until 10 p.m. tonight to allow visitors to see two exhibition, "Miniartextil – Gea" and "The Rape of Venice".
The former is a traditional event for the Mocenigo Palace: organised every year by the association Arte & Arte Como and featuring 54 mini textile works made with "threads" of every description, including wool, copper, silk, iron, light, wool and glass, this year's exhibition is inspired by the theme Gea, The Great Mother Earth. The second event is instead a multimedia installation by Andrea Morucchio about saving and protecting Venice, that extends on the ground floor of the museum.
The best thing about this very special "Fashion Night" - that you can also follow live on Instagram - remains the fact that it has a unique local flavour, it will help visitors discovering and getting to know local talents, and it boasts the support of a museum of costume and textiles.
This is actually a great idea that should maybe be adopted by other museums all over the world. What about launching a Global Fashion Museum Night? It would indeed be great if people were invited to discover more about the history of fashion design and of the fashion industry before being forced to become consumers, don't you think so?
The art of knitting has enjoyed in the last few years a sort of renaissance also thanks to exciting and intriguing exhibitions.
Yet, though beautiful and well organised, quite often such events focused on designer pieces and, rather than prompting visitors to actively learn how to knit, they often pushed them to passively admire the items on display, without even trying to understand the effort knitwear designers go through to create something unique and truly innovative.
A new exhibition recently opened at the Fries Museum in Leeuwarden (The Netherlands) cleverly combines instead the two aspects, inviting visitors to look at knitwear pieces and arty installations, while offering them the chance to learn some skills.
The unusual and extensive textile collection of the Fries Museum is the starting point for "Breien!" (Knitting!), but these historical artifacts are juxtaposed in engaging ways to pieces by national and international contemporary designers and artists who work with knitting techniques.
Visitors are welcomed to explore the world of knitting first via "City of Stitches", a soft and warm site specific installation by Isabel Berglund.
The Danish artist occupied indeed an entire exhibition hall creating a welcoming environment, a sort of knitted structure built around a wool tree where visitors can spend some time before discovering more about the history of knitting.
Twelve dioramas then offer the chance to explore the past via objects such as a maliënhandschoen (chainmail glove), immersed in a landscape comprising a knitted medieval castle surrounded by knitted trees, or the oldest knitting sheath (tool to knit faster).
From knitted sailor hats, traditional fishermen's sweaters and Norwegian woolen pieces, the exhibition then moves through patterns and styles to show how knitting fluidly and constantly develops as the years pass.
The media also play a key role in spreading specific trends and the exhibition looks at this aspect via vests à la Starsky & Hutch, and the jumper donned by Detective Inspector Sarah Lund (played by Sofie Gråbøl) in the Danish series The Killing, a garment that helped shaping her character, spawned an interest in all things Danish and became so popular that it contributed to turn the series into a cult show.
Historical pieces, knitted modern artworks and trendy designs show the versatility of knitting in the main room: there are actually quite a few highlights in this section, including beaded handbags and traditional finely knitted pieces from the 18th century from the Fries collection.
Further interesting pieces include gold Frisian oorijzers (ornamental metal ear pieces), the gossamer-thin Frisian lace caps and delicate mittens from the 18th century.
Yet visitors into modern avant-garde designs will probably like more London-based artist Zoë Landau Konson's crocheted, stitched or woven sculptures that look like masses of assembled forms, but hide a deeper and darker side, and the work of Chrystl Rijkeboer, charged with a magical quality, yet slightly upsetting at the same time as the artist mainly uses human hair to make it (check out the wolves and birdhouses made with this material).
There is also another point to make about this exhibition - it doesn't only look at fashion, traditions and the possibility to create installations via knitting, but also introduces another category - interior design.
Christien Meindertsma's thick and solidly knitted hassocks are indeed juxtaposed to Stephen West's swants (sweater pants - trousers made from pullovers) and to a multi-coloured monster-like costume by Bas Kosters.
The exhibition - designed as a fairy tale environment by Studio La Meul - shows how knitting is not just about group identity, mindfulness and nostalgia, reminding visitors that this art offers freedom of creation and has therefore no limits.
An exhibition about knitting is not complete without offering visitors the opportunity to pick up the needles themselves, and the museum gives the chance to do so by joining museum knitters on Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday or ask them for tips and tricks, while organising also knitting courses and a knitting cafè, plus competitions such as the ugly Christmas sweater party (who can resist such an opportunity?).
As a whole "Knitting!" is worth seeing also because it is open to any kind of age group, from skilled knitwear enthusiasts to fashionistas with an amateurish passion for knitwear and children who will enjoy the touch trail routes and peep boxes, dioramas, mannequins with animal heads, and fun installations such as geese wearing traditional hats or busts of deer dressed in fishermen's sweaters.
Stephen West, one of the designers featured in "Knitting!" is also the inspiration leader of the Westknits Fun Squad, a team of yarn obsessed crafty people interested in spreading the love of yarn and taking it to hilarious levels with their crazy and fun videos.
Stepping inside this event at the Fries Museum may not turn you instantly into a knitwear designer, but will definitely introduce you to a beautiful soft world and, who knows, it may even prompt you to start your own knitting squad and take yarn bombing to the next level.
Knitting! The Fries Museum, Leeuwarden, The Netherlands, until 28th August 2016.
All images in this post courtesy of The Fries Museum.
Complementing the exhibition, the publication curated by Tamsen Young, Digital Media Manager, The Museum at FIT, and organised by Taina Laaksonen, an awardee of the Mobius Fellowship Program, in collaboration with staff at The Museum at FIT and with the support of The Finnish Cultural Institute in New York, features 11 fashion bloggers. The publication was released last week in conjunction with a special symposium jointly hosted by The Museum at FIT and CUNY Graduate Center and School of Visual, Media & Performing Arts at Brooklyn College
Global Fashion Bloggers features writers, photographers and fashion fans scattered a bit all over the world, from Paris to Mumbai, passing through Istanbul, Lagos, Mexico City and Seoul. As you may guess each blogger offers his or her unique perspective about fashion and style. Among the other blogs featured there is also Irenebrination. Its founder Anna Battista provides in the interview her views on global fashion and style. You can read the edited version of the interview on the Global Fashion Bloggers publication, but if you want to read the longer version, just scroll down.
Global Fashion Bloggers
Text by Anna Battista, Founder and Editor @ Irenebrination
Irenebrination: The early days I started Irenebrination in 2008. The name of the site is a pun and moves from the name "Irene Brin", pseudonym of Italian writer and journalist Maria Vittoria Rossi (1914-1969). A witty and stylish woman, Irene Brin was passionate about fashion and art: together with her husband Gaspero Del Corso she opened an art gallery in Rome, the "Obelisco", that soon became a local cultural hub providing also the set for many fashion photo shoots that tried to compare garments and accessories to paintings, drawings and sculptures. A voracious reader, a translator and an indefatigable writer, Irene Brin was a precise observer of the crazes and fads of the times she lived in, combining in her features an impeccable style with subtle irony. She also became the first Italian contributor of Harper's Bazaar. I'm Italian and I wanted to pay homage to a stylish Italian journalist, while giving the name of the site a global twist (the "nation" part of the site's name) and hoping the readers would be "inebriated" by its contents.
I originally devised the site not as a way to monetize the content via sponsored pieces, but as a place where I could write news, features, interviews and reviews about architecture, art, fashion, film, science and technology, but I also conceived it as a reaction against superficial fashion publications. When I started Irenebrination I felt there must have been a more engaging way to write and ponder about specific themes and appreciate or analyze a bit more in depth something as ephemeral as a catwalk show. As a writer and journalist launching my own site seemed to be the logical way also to collect my pieces all in one place or use it to publish features, investigations and interviews that nobody else in the fashion industry would have liked to publish because deemed too controversial. In a nutshell, Irenebrination started and still is a self-proclaimed labor of love.
Contents and focus. Irenebrination mainly analyzes the intersection between architecture, art (from paintings to sculpture, photography, visual installations and so on), cinema, the performing arts, science/technology and fashion. You may find on it comparisons between a specific architect or artist and a designer or a building and a fashion trend, or explorations about new materials and experimental projects. So if you're interested in a piece that analyzes a billowing cape and inflatable architectures, guess Irenebrination is the place to go! I also tend to do quite a few posts about the history of fashion to provide readers (and especially students) with some quick notes on topics they may find inspiring, informative and educational. In my writings I'm mainly prompted by Bruno Munari's teachings. This Italian artist, designer, and inventor stated in his book Fantasia (Fantasy) that a fervid fantasy comes from being able to make connections and links between different things. To make such connections you must have a wide knowledge and an even wider culture, in this way the links you will be making will be limitless. Fashion is a great discipline that can be explored from multiple points of view and it allows you to write about various topics: you can write about it in connection with history, art, architecture, biology, chemistry, finance and economics, but also politics.
Readership and role in the mediascape. My readership includes fashion, costume and interior designers, students, lecturers, art fans, gallerists, and textile experts (I dedicate special posts to yarns and experimental textiles and fabrics), just to mention a few. The best readers are all those people who are simply passionate about the topics I write for and who enthusiastically get in touch to ask me further information about specific posts. Writing about obscure subjects often brought me to the attention of amazing people: the great-grandchildren of Italian silent diva Lyda Borelli tracked me down after I wrote a post about her; actor Denis Gilmore got in touch after I did a post on the costumes in Roberto Faenza's film H2S, while musician Lorand Sarna, son of painter, illustrator and photographer Jerry-Plucer Sarna (1904-1994), agreed to do an interview that shed more light on his father's life after reading a post I did on his work.
I feel I mainly have an informative role in the arts and fashion mediascape, but I'm also an independent and objective critic: I don't get flown in by companies to go and see their fashion shows, and I don't accept presents (I tend to run competitions on the site if some of the people I interview for it are keen and kind enough to give a product for free to my readers). So, the unique side of it? I just speak my mind and I'm not afraid of criticizing a collection if I feel it deserves to be criticized. Remember, it's through sincere and honest criticism that we grow up and improve ourselves and not through safe and false praise.
Commercial aspects, benefits and/or drawbacks. As I said, the blog is not as commercial as other fashion publications: if I write about a specific product it's because I feel like writing about it and not because I have received it for free. I tend to stay away from commercial projects since, a few years ago, I was involved in a commercial event that revealed itself as an eye opener: I co-ordinated three fashion bloggers and three fashion designers in a creative project. When I expressed my doubts about some of the results they had achieved, I was answered by the PR officer working on the project "Don't worry, it will go well, after all, they look amazing on camera!" Most brands or fashion houses launching such "collaborative" projects with bloggers are packaging superficial images that often do not have any kind of content, but are made to be passively received by viewers and readers.
So if it's not commercial, you may ask, what are the benefits you get from your hard work? Well, my name circulates and I get offers to write pieces from other publications or even museum institutions. After doing a few interviews with her, Dutch fashion designer Marga Weimans chose me as the co-writer of the book that accompanied her exhibition at the Groninger Museum.
The major drawback is that it takes a lot of time and energy to come up with constant ideas, especially when I write features that need in-depth research. This is the main reason why I mainly chose to have a website and a Twitter account linked to that - I don't really have the time to engage with other social platforms at the moment. There is something I would like to do better, though: I would like to improve my graphic design skills, but I'm working on it and I'll hopefully get there!
Success. If we intend success as being invited to catwalk shows, being photographed and being part of a circus that is ready to swallow, chew and spit you, or as the possibility of being recognized in the street, well, I'm simply not interested in all that as I prefer to be heard rather than be seen. I believe indeed that in, a world based on the cult of the image and on being spotted in the street or on the social media, the power of not being recognized is much greater.
Another way to reach out is through personal side projects such as jewelry. I sometimes come up with bizarre, surreal and extravagant necklaces that incorporate found objects or recycled materials - from toy cars to 8 mm filmstrips and doll's eyeballs, minerals and miniatures - and quite often people stop and talk to me because of them. This project has become a sort of social experiment: every time someone stops me in the street, in an airport, on the train, bus or underground, and asks me about my necklace, I feel happy and "successful" because I have reached out to other people or I have managed to capture their attention, divert their gaze from their smartphones and make them curious enough to start talking to a complete stranger. I think this is also a way for me to create behavioral pieces that can help me spreading optimism through fashion and make people smile, in the tradition of Italian avant-garde fashion designer Cinzia Ruggeri.
About Fashion Weeks, established fashion capitals (Paris, London, New York, Milan) and emerging fashion cities. I do love the idea that the fashion world has become wider in the last few years, with other capital joining the more traditional calendar revolving around New York, London, Milan and Paris. That said, we do have to sit and ponder about this movable feast of endless shows and presentations and at the ways younger fashion capitals are portrayed. In 2012 Vogue Italia Fashion Editor Franca Sozzani displayed very little knowledge of Africa when she suggested in an interview with the then President of Nigeria Goodluck Jonathan that the complex problems of the country may have been sorted out by opening up expensive shops and starting up a fashion week ("All the richest Nigerians spend their money abroad because there are no shops here, no hotels with a chic African flair, no hip restaurants or clubs. Why not build an African Rodeo Drive in Lagos or Abuja, with boutiques carrying both imported and Nigerian goods?"). Now, there is no way a fashion week can single-handedly save a country or even restore its economy. I personally love the idea that it is possible to discover new talents in unlikely places, and that we can now get inspired by other amazing cities as well, but at the same time we have reached a saturation point in the industry and it can be not just hard, but almost impossible for young talents and brands who invest their own savings in catwalk shows or in renting booths at fashion fairs, to emerge without the support of key players in the industry.
The other point is that less established fashion weeks often depend on funding from private sponsors and this means that if the sponsor decides to stop investing in that event, that specific "fashion week" is canceled and when something becomes "intermittent" it often gets quickly forgotten. A few years ago when the first fashion bloggers arrived on the scene, quite a few of them were invited to new fashion week events in younger style capitals such as Stockholm: everybody jumped on the bandwagon, but as soon as the sponsors decided not to invite the bloggers anymore, the same bloggers didn't turn up again at the next event and the attention towards specific fashion designers started fading. That's a shame because it's always great to follow a young designer from the start and see he or she slowly - and I would like to emphasize the word slowly - developing their talents.
Resort shows are also becoming increasingly important at the moment and they seem to have become a key appointment of the fashion calendar outside of the ordinary fashion week dates. Powerful fashion houses and labels have recently launched this habit of taking the Resort shows to exotic places: Chanel's 'Métiers d'Art' shows have schizophrenically taken place in Linlithgow, Dallas, Dubai, Salzburg, and Seoul just to mention a few places; Louis Vuitton's Cruise 2016 show took place at Bob Hope's Palm Springs Estate and Dior's at Pierre Cardin's Palais Bulles in Théoule-sur-Mer. So it may be fair to say that, recently, fashion weeks and resort shows haven't focused on who is the most talented designers or which is the most beautiful collections, but they have revealed themselves as a chic war in which the most powerful and richest groups compete with each other at colonizing parts of the world. The proliferation of fashion weeks and other shows and events also means that things happen pretty fast and that it is therefore becoming pretty difficult to write consistent reports and reviews about the events seen.
On the relationship between a city's fashion industry and the street. In the opening monologue of Wim Wenders' Notebook on Cities and Clothes (1989), the director talks about cities, identity and images, wondering if we can trust the electronic (and digital) image, stating about the latter, "The very notion of the original is obsolete. Everything is a copy. All distinctions have become arbitrary. No wonder the idea of identity finds itself in such a feeble state. Identity is out, out of fashion (...) Then what is in vogue, if not fashion itself? By definition, fashion is always in. Identity and fashion, are the two contradictory?"
Our identities went through a globalization process and we more or less look all the same and tend to model ourselves on a collective perception of what is stylish that is packaged for us by specific media outlets – be they blogs or glossy magazines.
What we are not grasping, though, is the importance of the fashion industry intended as infrastructures such as the factories where the production takes place. When I think about the "industry" I immediately conjure up in my mind a series of manufacturing processes and not the most superficial aspects of fashion. For example, if you leaf through Italian fashion magazines from the '70s, you will see fashion house adverts including the names of the fabric and yarn producers who worked on a specific collection. This was not an exception, but the rule: in some cases the adverts were conceived as "thank you" notes to the textile or yarn manufacturer. I miss this connection between the industry and the world of fashion: we have wrongly managed to make young people believe that fashion is all about what you wear and how you wear it in a selfie, but there is more to fashion than just that, and the links with the manufacturing processes shouldn't be forgotten.
Contribution of blogs and fashion media to the social dialogue about local/global fashion. When fashion blogs first started there seemed to be a bit more of an objective view provided by bloggers on fashion weeks, and surely some of the early street style pictures were less pretentious. In the last five years we saw a lot of revolutions in the blogging world, with bloggers sitting in the front row, getting invited to events, sitting in fashion competition panels or creating capsule collections with fashion brands. Most of them were co-opted by the system and their objectivity went down the drain. In a nutshell their original "bird's eye view" - an aerial and general view of what was happening in the world of fashion - was replaced by a "crow's eye view". Crows have divided vision, they can see and process two separate unrelated pictures, so they can see an entire picture with just one eye and I guess that's what we started to see as well.
I must admit I don't always find inspiring the images I see on various Instagram accounts, as they all look more or less the same to me. Let's indeed consider this: people like Iris Apfel or the late Anna Piaggi proved throughout their lives that the key to being stylish stands in effortlessly mixing clothes and accessories, market finds, vintage pieces, plastic toys and designer coats, achieving your own look and refusing to abide to specific codes. I can see no bravery, flamboyancy and extravagance in polished Instagram pictures of some of the "new icons of style" and celebrities who are supposedly contributing to the social dialogue. Among them there are high profile bloggers paid or supported by specific brands to advertise their designs (let's be really honest, how many ordinary people you see in the street can buy a Chanel backpack costing over $3,000?). I do feel that, quite often, specific street pictures are used to manufacture consent and reinstate the power of fashion brands, something that deeply fascinates me since it makes me think about Italian dictator Benito Mussolini.
In the mid-'30s Fascism dictated austerity and promoted autarchy in Italy, controlling consumption habits, promoting self-sufficiency in textile production and fashion design, and establishing the Ente Nazionale della Moda (National Fashion Board). Fascism understood pretty well that fashion could be used as a way to promote and enforce political power and tried to employ it for its own means. Some of the street style fashion images could be read as a new form of modern fascism, though their main intent is not political, but financial as they are used to generate desire and sell expensive designer pieces. I don't honestly think pictures of models caught in the street in between fashion shows or of fashionistas hanging around show venues during fashion weeks can be considered strictly as "street photography". In most of these images we can indeed see people clad in expensive designer wardrobes and it's only every now and then that you see a hairstyle, or a DIY accessory or garment that genuinely inspires you.
More thoughts about fashion weeks in general. I do follow the more established fashion weeks and the fashion weeks where I feel there are interesting an unusual designers scheduled. Visiting Moscow for example game me the chance to meet in person with duo Nina Donis (Nina Neretina and Donis Pouppis), two people I respect for their design integrity and I love as human beings. I also tend to go to fashion fairs (not just garment and accessories events, but also textile, yarn and leather fairs) and I enjoy spotting people there and doing interviews with young designers and students who may have fresher views on the future of fashion (I have started abhorring well organized press conferences in which the PR officer talks more than the supposedly famous/cool/hip fashion designer...). Yet I do feel that some fashion weeks are becoming totally surreal: there are too many shows, events, parties and presentations scheduled for example in New York and I don't think quantity automatically means that the fashion industry is in a terribly healthy status.
There is an artwork that could be considered as a perfect embodiment of a fashion week - Michelangelo Pistoletto's "Venus of the Rags". This 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. You can change the statue and the color and style of the clothes/rags and come up with a perfect logo for any fashion week across the world: you could for example put the Statue of Liberty in the place of Venus and a pile of clothes made in the USA, and you could have an arty representation of New York Fashion Week.
Personal fashion knowledge. It would be pretentious of me to rate my own fashion history knowledge. I do know my fashion history (I compiled roughly 900 questions for a fashion game for Vogue Italia a few years ago and I can assure you that some of the questions included were pretty obscure...) and keep myself constantly updated. Being Italian, my expertise remains Italian fashion and tailoring, and I do love obscure little stories about Italian tailors moving to other countries and combining their own knowledge and traditions with the local trends.
I'm very concerned about museums at the moment as they all seem desperate to break the attendance records of previous exhibitions, so they keep on organizing monumental fashion exhibitions financed by powerful sponsors trying to attract huge numbers of visitors. While I can understand all this, there are museums all over the world with smaller collections that not many people know about as they do not have aggressive marketing strategies and the funds needed to take journalists on sponsored trips. I do love for example Palazzo Mocenigo in Venice. Apart from currently offering the chance to admire very rare pieces such as an entire section of waistcoats from the 1700s, this Museum and Study Center of the History of Fabrics and Costumes has a great and helpful staff with a passion for costumes that I have rarely seen in other institutions and that extends from the museum director Chiara Squarcina to the ticket office and the cleaning ladies.
Accessing online fashion collections is also great: being able to go through a museum or fashion house archive is incredibly inspiring and educational and it can help you making interesting discoveries and parallelisms. Museum-wise I particularly love the Rijksstudio, a very special (and free) online archive comprising 125,000 works from the Rijksmuseum collection that offers the chance to register, access the museum collection and download ultra high-resolution images or sections and details of specific artworks. The Met Museum in New York now offers instead the chance to improve our culture and knowledge by downloading 448 books from its publishing program for free. The MetPublications portal includes indeed a wide selection of out of print volumes and exhibition catalogues about various topics and disciplines – from art and anthropology, to fashion, jewelry, tapestry and textiles - all in PDF format.
How do the digital and physical practices of fashion feed one another? During the last few years we have seen live streaming of catwalk shows and drones on the runway; we can do interviews with designers via Skype and instantly create videos captured during fashion presentations, parties and events. It's all brilliant, but we have to start detaching ourselves from our computer/tablet/smartphone screens and learn a bit better from real life if we want to build a more solid fashion history knowledge and a better fashion industry in general. As I said earlier on, the real industry and the manufacturing aspects behind fashion collections have been terribly neglected in the last few years (no, organized guided tours of factories and workshops for high profile bloggers who have never been in a factory environment and who are just visiting for half an hour do not count...) and the time has come to do more coverage about these environments to get a better grasp of the industry.
Thoughts about the future of digital fashion, my blog or the industry in general. Well, the fashion industry knows that things aren't as brilliant as they make us want to believe and they are looking for other ways to attract people's attention. There are two themes at the moment: public access/savvy use of social media for marketing purposes and a talent drain from the fashion world to the world's biggest tech companies and vice versa. For what regards the former, well, in September we saw Givenchy reserving 1,200 tickets for its New York show for ordinary people (820 distributed on first-come/first-served via registration on a dedicated Web site; 100 tickets reserved for residents living near the outdoor show site and 280 tickets to students and faculty of local fashion schools). Blogs helped stirring the attention of people and have been used for marketing purposes, but now they seem to have more or less exhausted their role and, for most fashion houses manufacturing the consent of a larger number of ordinary people is much more important than giving one free bag to just one person.
For what regards the link between fashion and tech companies, well, former Burberry chief Angela Ahrendts assumed the role of senior vice president for retail and online stores at Apple (currently perceived as a luxury brand), while LVMH recently enlisted former Apple executive Ian Rogers as its new chief digital officer. You can bet that these exchanges will become more and more frequent while e-commerce will triumph. This phenomenon will also generate an increasingly vapid portrayal of fashion with a coverage of fashion weeks that may end up being even blander than it already is: dynamic digital global retailers may indeed know how to sell a pair of designer shoes, but they do not have any historical or cultural fashion backgrounds. I think we will also lose a few fashion weeks: the runway show is indeed an old formula that will eventually die. Will this generate a Brave New Fashion World? We'll see, but as things stand Banksy's next "Dismaland" will definitely be inspired by fashion. For what regards the future of my site, well, Irenebrination will keep on going until I have the energy to do so, but, in the meantime, I'm exploring new ideas and opportunities in other fields as well.
What digital technologies excite you? I'm very interested in seeing how digital technologies will change cultural communications, but I'm also very keen on disciplines such as science and technology and in experiments that merge textiles and these two fields. We're living in exciting times but I often feel we're only using technology to take pictures of accessories, garments and of our latest exotic meal. We don't need to clutter the Internet with personal relics that prove that we exist in a Cartesian fashion ("I blog/post pictures on Instagram and therefore I am..."). I often think that one day I will wake up and realize I've been part of a boisterous, naïve and sad generation who uselessly lived at a frantic pace. I think the key is to slow down a bit, experiment more and collectively inspire each other in positive ways. After all, that's what global fashion is – an opportunity for us all to mutually learn from each other in a natural, cosmopolitan and transnational way.
Images featured in this post
Banner/Collage by Anna Battista.
Irene Brin by Richard Avedon.
Irenebrination logo.
"Marga Weimans - Fashion House", book by Anna Battista and Sue-an van der Zijpp, 2014.
Safety Mining Necklace by Anna Battista – a piece about health and safety issues on the workplace inspired by the explosion and fire occurred in May 2014 in the power distribution unit in a mine in Soma, Turkey.
Michelangelo Pistoletto, "Venus of the Rags".
Palazzo Mocenigo, Venice, the waistcoat room, by Anna Battista.
Donis Pouppis, Anna Battista, Nina Neretina and Nina Donis' manager Tom Amelin, Moscow.