Irenebrination: Notes on Architecture, Art, Fashion, Fashion Law & Technology

Robes Zig-Zag: Salvatore Ferragamo A/W 2016-17

In 1969 the Milan-based publishing house Edizioni del Naviglio, released 27 pochoir prints of Sonia Delaunay's early Haute Couture designs. One of the prints included in the portfolio showed an Art Deco piece from 1923, an ensemble called "Robe Zig-Zag" that perfectly summarised the artist's passion for abstract geometrical elements. This specific print came to mind yesterday during Salvatore Ferragamo runway. 

Though Delaunay was a constant reference for the founder of the Italian fashion house, Creative Director Massimiliano Giornetti wasn't actually trying to channel the artist in his new collection for the Italian brand. 

The starting points for this collection were indeed Oskar Schlemmer and the Bauhaus and Hannah Höch and Dadaism. Rather than the Bauhaus' textile workshop, Giornetti seemed more interested in the interplay between rigid and soft planes, a dichotomy that also characterised Hannah Höch's fabric and yarn dolls. 

There is indeed a 1920 picture portraying Höch with two of her puppets representing her daughters Pax and Botta that looks quite interesting as the dolls are wearing disc-like skirts and some of their joints seem to be created reusing sphere-like elements. 

Her Dada dolls were indeed characterised by a combination of rigid and soft materials, and had a kinetic quality about them. 

While marionettes have often been used as metaphors for female enslavement and bourgeois domesticity, Höch's dolls also hinted at the role of women in society. In the same way, Giornetti made a statement in this collection about emancipated women who, rather than being trapped by relations, social or financial constrictions, are free to do what they want with their lives and can definitely buy their own luxurious wardrobes. 

The runway opened with a black cape contoured by zig-zag raw cuts, one of the themes of the collection, that also returned on completely white ensembles or in skirts made using a combination of coloured strips, a classic old-fashioned technique to make doll's clothes.

The felt skirts in multi-coloured zigzag patterns actually rang a bell with fashion critics raised in the '70s in Italy: if you were a child then and your mother or aunt were the lucky owners of a pair of zigzag cut decorative scissors you were a privileged soul as there was a trend to make doll's clothes and puppets with felt. 

Then the colours of the Sol LeWitt runway little by little crept onto the shoes and clothes, gradually spreading energetic shades of pink, blue, mustard, green, black and white in variegated stripes, infinite lines and zigzagging patters onto the outerwear and accessories. 

Höch's photomontages and paper abstractions were infused in the achitecturally modular garments that could be zipped and unzipped or buttoned and unbuttoned and therefore reconfigured, but at times the colour palette seemed lifted from her collages and her chopped up classical statues returned in the pleated designs included in the collection. 

Silk and knit slipdresses with pleated skirts had a strong graphic quality that pointed towards Delaunay's colourful exuberance and lean silhouettes, though the knitted shifts may prove a better choice investment-wise; blouses worn with full, pleated skirts in mismatched patterns and the Pierrot-like mink pompoms were instead less convincing. 

The outerwear offer included coats covered in grids of multi-coloured fur squares (a trend as proved at Iceberg's) and light coats in vertical stripes with round hems. 

Accessories featured suede and lizard skin boots, sporty sandals decorated with mink strips, fur T-bar shoes (for that fairy tale touch, after all Cinderella's slipper was originally made of fur...), handbags covered in zigzag motifs or shaped like cosmetic hard train cases, while jewellery veered more towards the geometrically modernist. 

In a way it was a game of juxtapositions between soft and rigid materials, so fur and pleated/fluid shapes versus zigzagging spiked contours. The general mood was playful, though, especially when compared to the A/W 2015 collection that seemed more serious and veered towards a darker palette lifted from interior design.

Considering that Milan has been more colourful than ever this season, the show was on trend. We'll soon discover if colours spread also onto the French runways as tomorrow the fashion circus moves to Paris.

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Brief Sunday Comparison: Moschino A/W 2016-17 Vs Giles A/W 2012-13 (and Fendi S/S 2011)

In between the Leviathan-like collections seen at Gucci and Prada during Milan Fashion Week came the puzzling situation at Moschino: leaving behind (at least for the time being) McDonald's uniforms, Barbie clothes, roadworks, Super Mario and other assorted pop shenanigans, Creative Director Jeremy Scott opted for two moods.  

The first inspiration must have been a sort of biker-meets-Peter Marino-meets a model dressed in a fancy Haute Couture gown.

Leather bustiers, crop tops, capes, and ragged distressed denims (matched with biker caps) were indeed wrapped in swooshes of taffeta or silk that at times opened to reveal thigh-high boots.

Then Scott reintroduced the occasional skeleton dress (Schiap forgive them because they do not know what they are doing...), reinvented this time (Scott has sent out on his runways skeleton tops and dresses many times such as in his A/W 2011 and S/S 2011 collections, though on Moschino's runway the situation was more kitsch than usual...) with bones traced by chains and handcuffs for that "Halloween in a hardware/bondage shop" frisson. 

The second inspiration came from a sort of cigarette/nicotine-like addition to fashion (see the Marlboro packets turned into a pack of "Moschinos"), combined with an event that took place in Florence in 1497, the so-called Bonfire of the Vanities.

During the latter, the followers of Dominican priest Girolamo Savonarola collected and publicly burnt objects that went from art and books to clothes, cosmetics, playing cards, and even musical instruments. In a nutshell, a selection of pieces that could lead to sin or were deemed immoral.

So while fashion addiction was hinted at via designs that reinvented cigarette packets and warned that fashion kills (hence the skeletons), the last final gowns were all burnt, eaten by flames and blackened by soot and ash. The very final gown was actually still smouldering as if the wearer had just escaped from a fire.

Symbols of decayed glamour, the pyro gowns aren't actually a new idea: Fendi's Spring/Summer 2011 collection included for example cotton and organza dresses with drawstring waistlines and burnt edges that symbolised the heat of summer or the sun burning, while channelling at the same time Burri's combustions.

In 2012 cigarettes and bonfires were quite fashionable as proved by Pratt fashion graduate Meredith Lyon's and Giles Deacon's AW/2012 collections: the latter in particular featured quite a few gowns that had been maybe donned by witch-like creatures who had escaped an angry mob trying to burn them on a bonfire. 

Giles' gowns looked like mille feuille confections that had been burnt with a flame thrower; Scott burnt his gowns and had them vaping along the runway, but the results were more or less the same with one main difference, Fendi and Giles' seemed to be still wearable, while Scott's are made with celebrities in mind (check out chandelier gown that also made an appearance in this collection and that looked as if a chandelier had trapped in a tragic accident a fashion victim - imagine the chandelier falling on the stage of the Phantom of the Opera musical, but hitting a useless fashionista on its way, and you get an idea...View this photo). 

Yes, Scott designs for party girls; yes, he's got hundreds of young celebrities who love him, and yes, he's into showmanship and spectacle; but these are not the most puzzling issues about this show.

The most puzzling thing is indeed the fact hat we have seen the same inspiration on relatively recent runways (well, yes four years ago is aeons in fashion terms, but it's still a relatively recent time for human beings), and while this is not a case of literal appropriation or copyright infringement of the sort Scott has recently been involved in, it still makes you think about our collective attention span.

While the see now/sell now movement Scott apparently criticised with this collection (though he supports it as proved by the Moschino capsule collections that usually go on sale postshow) may be shortening the production chain, it is also erasing part of our memory and making us collectively think we are seeing something new in an old garment.

So it's time to ponder a bit about the consequences of accelerating even more the fashion rhythms and calendars by shortening the production times; in the meantime, if you want to embrace the nicotine trend and save some money, there's still Aliexpress, where (as it usually happens with most designs by Scott for Moschino) you will be able to pick several cigarette sweatshirts for a fraction of the price you would pay for a Moschino design. 

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Superstudio's Histograms of Architecture as Grid-Like Graphic Textures and Compositions: Iceberg A/W 2016-17

In the early '70s Italian architectural group Superstudio developed a series of objects that they called "Istogrammi di Architettura" (Histograms of Architecture). 

The istogrammi consisted in bare volumetric compositions with neither scale nor program, and they were also presented in the form of a universal grammar for architecture based on the extrusion of the grid. 

Referring to them as "easy architecture", a young Rem Koolhaas praised them as they represented the ultimate destruction of design and of any further spatial and formal invention by means of architecture. 

The gridded volumes led to the development of a series of conceptual pieces of furniture (the series "Misura" bought by Zanotti and produced as "Quaderna") in which the squared grid was recreated in a variety of scales, allowing the group to explore the possibilities the grid offered them in a table or in a urban landscape. Superstudio defined these solutions "tombstones of architecture" as problems of space and aesthetic sensibility were eliminated. 

These investigations involving the grid evolved when Superstudio dissolved physical architecture and came up with the the utopian Supersurface, an invisible continuous grid, a pure planar landscape and artificial surface.

In recent years Rem Koolhaas reintroduced Superstudio's radical ideas in modern architecture, but yesterday Arthur Arbesser reinvented the group's theories and applied them to Iceberg's A/W 16 collection. 

The logos emblazoned on the garments and the playful faux fur coats in vivid turquoise and neon pink pointed towards two inspirations for this collection, Japanese street kids and the Italian rave/club scene from the '90s, but the grids were borrowed from Superstudio's histograms. 

The latter were interpreted first as coloured Tetris-like blocks on black backgrounds and applied to knitwear or printed on dresses and shirts. 

Single squares were then used as geometrical figures on sweaters; while/black grids were also employed on dresses and skirts or reinvented as large pale blue and yellow plaids. 

Superstudio also designed a disco and maybe Arbesser was in a way influenced by the carefree and conceptual moods of radical architectures in Italian discos. 

The designer channelled this aspect of Superstudio's practice via pleated silver Lurex skirts matched with lightweight sweaters and shiny patent leather trench coats.  

At times Arbesser added a tactile quality to the grids, recreating them in a furry mix that combined a white/pink/strawberry/cranberry palette borrowed from Sam Baron's 2009 table (that moved from Superstudio's grid furniture), or allowing his grids to protrude from the hems of skirts and dresses, almost to hint at Superstudio's metaphysical projections into space. 

The grids were also disassembled into squares to form the label's name in an attempt at fusing typography and architecture with classic brand logo identity. 

Arbesser managed to combine the commercial (see the knitted ribbed dresses and the cropped squarish peacoats) and the conceptual (the grid dresses) with a streetwise sensibility (the duvet/sleeping bag coats), offering a wide selection of garments with shapes and silhouettes that may suit both a younger and older consumer, even though there were occasional faux pas such as checkerboard patchwork fur pants (a definite no) and a jumpsuit-cum-biker jacket combo. But, as a whole, this was a coherent effort for the Creative Director's second collection at Iceberg.

Arbesser previously moved for his own collection from Memphis Milano and is a keen fan of Ettore Sottsass, so he may be able to reintroduce in a modern key architectural fashion in Italy, a country that had a longstanding tradition of architects working in fashion and of fashion designers being influenced by architecture. 

In the meantime, while the possibility of wearing Superstudio's histograms of architecture may look intriguing, there is actually another lesson to be learnt from the radical group: in 1972 Superstudio stated about the genesis of their histograms and Misura furniture, "...it was obvious that to continue designing furniture, objects, and similar household decorations was no solution to the problems of living, nor to those of life; even less was it serving to save the soul".

Substitute the words "furniture", "objects" and "household decorations" with "garments", "accessories" and "collections" and you may get a great quote about modern fashion: continuing to churn out one collection after the next is definitely no solution to the problems of the fashion industry nowadays, besides this process is not even making people happy. There is therefore still a lot to learn from the group and, hopefully, the next autumnal season will be a very Superstudio one (as seen in a previous post, echoes of their Supersurface were also present in Prada's A/W 16 collection). 

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Symbolism in Unexpected Places (The Chatelaine is Officially in): Prada A/W 2016-17

As seen in a previous post about Prada's A/W 2016 menswear and Pre-Fall 2016 collections, the fashion house constructed via these designs a long and multi-layered story. Yesterday afternoon Miuccia Prada added to it another chapter with the A/W 2016 womenswear collection. 

The designer kept unchanged the set on which she showed the above-mentioned collections, letting her models walk along the multi-levelled chipboard panels that recreated a town square (suspended between De Chirico's mysterious squares and M.C. Escher's illusions) where people of different social status and backgrounds meet. 

Like the models on the menswear runway, Miuccia's girls accessorised their looks with sailors' hats and, like in that collection, tailored navy jackets, naval capes and peacoats prevailed, at times matched with frayed knits and multi-coloured knitted patchwork cardigans.

In a similar way to the menswear collection, garments were decorated with prints of surreal and disturbing images by French artist, illustrator, writer, director and porn actor Christophe Chemin (his tables with fruits; wild animals, mythical beasts, weird creatures and dinosaurs trapped in a concrete jungle; and Cleopatra kissing a Marine). 

There were also differences, though: white canvas corsets were used instead of belts and worn over rigorously cut coats; there were tailored jackets with fur sleeves and luscious fur capes.

Further additions included plenty of wearable '50s-style skirts and dresses in rich gilded brocaded fabrics and midnight blue or dark brown velvet dresses borrowed from the '40s and decorated with gold embroideries (note: the velvet sheath dresses with deflated velvet shoulders or shoulder pieces may start a trend).

Utility workwear was also another new entry compared to the menswear collection: in this case there were more nylon and quilted jacket liners while large utilitarian zipped pockets were applied on skirts and practical jackets.

Heavy trekking shoes borrowed from early skiing boots were also matched with many of the looks, at times creating contrasts and juxtapositions with light and floral dresses. 

In quite a few cases Chemin's prints were chopped, spliced and used to create fabric collages, so his illustrations were mixed with the thick and ornate golden brocade jacquards.

One print of vividly coloured cactuses growing on tomato red rocks on a dark blue background called to mind Superstudio's surreal collages showing their Supersurface, a connection that wouldn't be too far out since Prada likes art and architectural references and her favourite architect, Rem Koolhaas is a fan of Superstudio.  

There were also a few prints of six French words - among them "Vendémiaire", "Germinal" and "Floréal" - each of them hinting at a month in the Republican Calendar introduced during the French Revolution, when the reordering of the calendar meant that every month was given a feminine name.

The sailors' hats and canvas corset belts weren't the only accessories: there were also woolly argyle tights; knitted elbow-length gloves (at times decorated with anchors); velvet and leather handbags; necklaces with keys, anchors, a stylised mermaid kissing a fish and leather-bound padlocked almanacks and books, the same bits and pieces were also hanging from leather key chains (seen also at the menswear show), that could be interpreted as modern versions of the classic chatelaine.

As a whole this collection was a constant juxtaposition of two moods, the rich (luscious furs, golden brocades, soft velvets) and the poor (canvas, thick socks and trekking shoes).

The mood was again doomed and melancholic as in the menswear collection, with one main difference: Miuccia's sailors had been on a long sea journey (and some critics spotted in that collection references to the vast expanses of water crossed by migrants to find a new hope and a better life); her emotionally shipwrecked women decided to wear the entire contents of their wardrobes casually adding one layer after the next, and then went off on a journey that took them to venture themselves in the real world (see the trekking boots) or just led them to explore their own soul. 

Just when you thought that the final message about Miuccia's women was more or less this one and that she was once again using sailors' hats and a chateilane as fashion allegories to hint at flotation devices and at the status of a powerful woman in a household juggling multi-taslking duties (by the way, it's not rare to find in archives such as the Met Museum's marine-themed chatelaines shaped like an octopus that combined quality, functionality and aesthetics, so maybe Miuccia found the inspiration for this modern accessory in these vintage pieces), you had an epiphany moment.

The current fashion calendar is messed up and under scrutiny and the names of the French months scribbled on the white strips applied on the garments looked like the dedications written on ribbons applied to floral funeral wreaths in Italy.

Besides, the links with the A/W 16 menswear collection were also very symbolical: Mrs Prada was probably taking the piss out of calendars, seasons, the fast fashion rhythms and our collective obsession with digital devices (we have seen more than one smartphone cover/bag on other runways and in showrooms, but here we had notebooks instead...), reminding us that when an idea is valid (layered style, strong outerwear, key accessories...), it remains salable if it is presented in January, digested at the end of February and made available six months later.

Taking it slow is therefore the key: just write it down in your secret diary that will be hanging from your personal chatelaine come the next Autumn/Winter season, and add a final note in your almanack, the anchor is not just a nautical symbol, but it also represents hope. In the fashion industry? In the fashion calendar? In life in general? Well, that's for Miuccia to know and you to find out.   

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Le Buone Cose di Pessimo Gusto (The Good Things of Awful Taste): Gucci A/W 2016-17

The world is populated by all sorts of human beings, yet, you could argue, though different one from the other, most of us are "futurists". We indeed constantly live surrounded by a digital world; we greedly wait for innovative technologies or wonder how a certain gadget, app or programme will change, alter and eventually improve our lives. So it happens that, when we meet someone who seems to be living in a crepuscular pre-digital world less futuristic than ours, we feel confused, but also attracted to them.

Somehow this dichotomy calls to mind the Italian literary landscape of the early 1900s, with the Futurists supporting mechanisation and a passion for destroying words, reiventing fashion and recreating music, and their contemporaries, the crepuscolari or "Twilight poets", such as Guido Gozzano.

The crepuscolari favoured indeed the everyday and the mundane, they ignored the modern city preferring the provinces, and adored Sundays filled with sun and melancholy; they coudn't identify with a society run along technocratic and bourgeois-imperialistic lines, and therefore took up the position of self-doubting outsiders. Gozzano took refuge in his own ironic world, mixing in his works children's rhymes, a contagious playfulness and his trademark pessimism.

Rather than a lyric poet he was a narrator, as proved by his best pieces such as the poem "L'amica di Nonna Speranza" (The Friend of Grandmother Speranza, 1907) in which he ironically alludes to the fading of late 19th bourgeois values and traditions by describing a cluttered living room in Grandmother Speranza's house when she was a young girl.

The room contained so many "buone cose di pessimo gusto" (the good things of awful taste), including a stuffed parrot, busts of Alfieri and Napoleon, framed dried flowers, empty candy boxes, marble fruits, little treasure chests made of shells and a cuckoo clock. Dusty, sad and in bad taste, the living room still looked reassuring because it established a relationship between people, objects and places.

Alessandro Michele's collections for Gucci look like Gozzano's nostalgic inventory of Granmother Speranza's living room - they are indeed a constant reinterpretation of a past cluttered with good things quite often in bad taste, and they end up being successful because they include so many items, references and ideas that resonate with people of different ages.

Inspirations for the collections could be detected in Michele's Instagram count (Lallo25) with its images of artworks, a stuffed parrot and occasionally horrid bric-à-brac and antiques that could be considered as the nightmare of any minimalist interior decorator.

In a way, though, his supposedly geeky aesthetic that makes fashion magazines scream for a desirable bohemia probably makes more mature fashion connoisseurs feel stuck in Grandmother Speranza's stifling living room.

The puzzling and philosophically obscure titles of Michele's collections - this one was called "Rhizomatic Scores" in reference to Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari's rhizomatic' system of thought, as stated in the show notes that also included a 1959 piece of music by Sylvano Bussotti for pianist David Tudor - hide indeed multiple layers of influence borrowed from different styles and different times.

The main idea for this collection was mixing Catherine de' Medici, Studio 54, sport inspirations from the '70s and Italian and French couture from the '80s with street style,Michele's passion for borrowing ideas for prints from random art books and with his obsession for horridly grand and kitsch interiors with thick floral wallpaper and chairs covered in brocaded fabrics.

This collection included brocades and intricate embroideries; frills and florals; trompe l'oeil details that called to mind the previous collection; coloured goat fur protruding from brocade sleeves; bows (running the length of a sleeve), ruffles and puffy shoulders; silk dresses with mink details; double-breasted brocade coats; ostrich-trimmed gowns that we will probably see on the red carpet and several unlikely hybrids that combined evening wear with sportswear, such as a spearmint-coloured tulle gown with balloon sleeves, sequinned black panther motif and a number appliquéd on the back in pure basketball style.

Michele's love for the animal world prompted him to include once again his birds/parrots and coiling snakes on dresses, though he also introduced a black panther, a revolutionary symbol (that in the mind of some Italian critics may be reminiscent of Krizia's collections), and Op Art-like zebra striped platform shoes; his obsession for interior designs led him instead to replicate motifs that may have been borrowed from a Chinese Coromandel screen on a fur-cuffed three-quarter-sleeved dress.

Renaissance jewellery (see the pearly necklaces), tailoring (the sleeve and shoulder details), prints and Italian art were mixed with graffiti spelling "REAL" above the Gucci logo, a trick courtesy of New York street artist and musician Trevor "Trouble" Andrew, also known via his branded alter ego GucciGhost (a logoed spectre that made Andrew well-known around Brooklyn) who also "spray-painted" the Gucci "G" on biker jackets and fur coats, and emblazoned "LIFE IS" on a mink-trimmed baseball jacket.

Further accessories included multi-finger ring pearl bracelets; sparkling and glittering disco sandals; shoes with snakes crawling on heel; sunglasses covered in sparkling gems; baseball caps and net-veiled hats borrowed from the '80s and reinvented in pastel colours, and ankle-length socks in Gucci luggage-stripes.

Quite often while looking at Michele's designs you feel like stepping in Grandmother Speranza's living room, and have visions of Speranza talking with her friend Carlotta, both the girls wearing rather kitsch shawls covered with prints of oranges, flowers and birds.

Michele's collections are indeed vast remixes of several elements, quite a few of them - let's admit it - in bad taste, but all rolled together and reinvented in a wide range of colours.

The style could be defined as "geeky Gozzano" and it obviously has the power to attract people who have never lived it, but, if you're Michele's age and you're Italian, you can probably spot references, ideas, and a mood defined eccentric but that actually harks back to the '80s when in Italy we were able to effortlessly merge the '40s and Fiorucci and come up with impressively unique results.

Apart from the good things in bad taste Michele and Gozzano have something else in common: the poet wrote for the public of newspapers and fashion magazines, setting himself at the centre of mass cultural consumption, creating what could be defined as artistic products for a modern time devoid of aura.

Michele does the same: his collections aren't a cabinet of curiosities, but a living room stuffed with curious knick-knacks combined and recombined together for a very confused and essentially superficial digital society in desperate need for a fashion escape.

Yet the Gozzano trick works: Gucci reported last week a five per cent rise in sales for the final three months of 2015, besides, revenue in the final quarter of 2015 reached €1.1bn, 4.8 per cent higher than the same quarter of 2014 and ahead of the 1.5 per cent rise expected by analysts.

"The good things in bad taste" are therefore rather successful and at the moment there aren't any plans for speeding up the runway-to-retail cycles at Gucci (Francois-Henri Pinault, Chief Executive Officer of Gucci-owner Kering SA, stated that making the collections available immediately after the show "negates the dream" of luxury, while waiting "creates desire"). Having established himself as a decorator, Michele comfortably sits in Grandmother Speranza's living room, maybe knowing that he will have to find the door out and a way forward at some point, yet, for the time being, as he repackages and sells the past to the futurists, the future can definitely wait. 

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(A) Book Alert (and a Fashion Inspiration): Iceland by Fokion Zissiadis (teNeues)

In the mind of architect, photographer and entrepreneur Fokion Zissiadis Iceland is a work-in-progress, that is a country still being shaped by natural elements, with mountains and rocks sculpted by water, wind and fire.

Harsh, desolate and wild, Icelandic vistas have been fascinating Zissiadis for years, making him fall in love with landscapes that could be considered as the complete opposite of the ones from his native Greece. 

Zissiadis took his passion to the next level on two trips he planned with his wife Mata and his son Leonidas in recent years: travelling through 10,000 kilometres, in both Summer and Winter, Zissiadis ended up taking 1,000 photographs that captured the natural beauty and spirit of Iceland.

The selected results of Zissiadis' trips have now been collected in a recently released volume entitled Iceland published by teNeues. 

The images show lava fields, sharp ridges and rugged mountains; impetuous waterfalls and quiet rivers; rumbling waves crashing on dark sands; glaciers melting into lagoons; frozen landscapes, wild moors, and dramatic clouds formations. 

The photographs have an abstract quality about them, emphasised by the fact that there is very little human presence in the images: farms look abandoned, churches deserted and there is an occasional lighthouse that may or may not be inhabited.

Human beings are indeed only occasionally captured by Zissiadis: they are usually standing in the distance almost to remind us how small and insignificant we are compared to the nature surrounding us.

Some of the landscapes portrayed look more alien than others, but all of them have a sublime dreamlike beauty about them. 

The book - released in a limited edition of 149 signed and numbered copies - includes both coloured and black and white images and also features an interview with the author in which he talks about his practice and explains readers how he prepares for his adventures (Zissiadis has travelled extensively taking several photographic trips to Europe, Africa and Asia). 

You may wonder what kind of inspirations fashionistas may be able to take from landscape images portraying the Strokkur Geyser in South Iceland blasting from the earth or the calm Fjallsarlon Glacier lagoon in Southeast Iceland.

But, apart from borrowing from these images a beautiful palette of deep greens, strong greys, earthy browns and titanium blues, if you stare at the textures of some of the natural elements portrayed in the pictures, you can easily imagine these landscapes recreated in soft velvets, delicate cottons or warm wools, and spot quite a few ideas especially for knitwear designs.

Immortal and sublime landscapes can indeed provide interesting inspirations: for example during London Fashion Week, designers Peter Pilotto and Christopher de Vos translated the shapes, formations and lines of icy wintry landscapes in tactile elements included in their A/W 2016 collection.

Dresses, coats and tops were decorated with patchworked lace and chenille embroidery, handworked appliqued details and shiny Lurex threads that formed abstract patterns derived from natural northern landscapes, while liquid skirts and dresses in intense shades of blues hinted at vast expanses of water. 

The results weren't always consistent or incredibly majestic as glacial landscapes, but there was a coat with what looked like a mountain trail map for an exploration to a Nordic land that looked graphically interesting and that called to mind the map of Zissiadis' trip to Iceland included in the book.

The designs were matched with a collection of jewellery including earrings, cuffs and tiaras designed in collabration with Atelier Swarovski. Called "Arbol", the collection was inspired by frozen tree branches and featured colourful crystals replicating ripe fruits and berries miraculously hiding under the snow. So there's a lesson to be learnt here - never underestimate the power of landscape photography and of wearable topography.  

Iceland by Fokion Zissiadis is out now on teNeues.

Image credits for this post:

Image 1 cover of Iceland by Fokion Zissiadis, published by teNeues

Photographs 2 to 11 in this post © 2015 Fokion Zissiadis. All rights reserved.

2. Hjörleifshöfði, Hjorleifshofdi Cape, South Iceland

3. Jökulsárlón, Jokulsarlon Beach, Southeast Iceland

4. Kirkjufell, Kirkjufell, West Iceland

5. Seljalandsfoss, Seljaland Waterfall, South Iceland

6. Sigöldufossar, Sigalda Waterfalls, South Iceland

7. Eldhraun, Eldhraun lava field, South Iceland

8. Seljalandsfoss, Seljaland Waterfall South Iceland

9. Reynisdrangar, Reynisdrangar, South Iceland

10. Kirkjufellsfoss, Kirkjufell Waterfall, West Iceland

11. Jökulsárlón, Jokulsarlon Glacier Lagoon, Southeast Iceland

Image 14 in this post is an elaboration of a Peter Pilotto A/W 2016 design combined with the map of Fokion Zissiadis's travels to Iceland. The map is taken from the volume Iceland by Fokion Zissiadis, published by teNeues, but the collage is a personal interpretation of the author of this post and the owner of this site. It is therefore not included in the book, but it is employed here to provide inspirations to readers.

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Wearable Solutions to Mend a Less-Than-Perfect Life

In a previous post we looked at traditional Japanese techniques such as kasuri and sakiori reapplied to contemporary collections. It looks like such techniques may actually be turning into fashionable trends come the next Autumn/Winter season.

Indeed, during London Fashion Week, Vivienne Westwood sent out on her runway, patchworked garments that looked as if they had been casually stitched together. 

Though her A/W 2016 designs were mainly inspired by Donatello (the draping) and El Greco (the colour palette), there were a few pieces made using colorful patchwork squares re-employed to create a light padded coat, a silk sheath and a blouse. 

Rather than just being used to look quirky and eclectic, patchwork could be employed to upcycle clothes and radically reinvent them, if it were combined with other techniques that could emphasise the marks and scars and give fabrics a new life. There are indeed two old Japanese arts employed to fix pottery that may be very useful in fashion as well - kintsugi and kintsukuroi meaning "to patch with gold" and "to repair with gold".

These techniques are generally employed for broken ceramic pieces and were probably originated when Japanese shogun Ashikaga Yoshimasa sent a damaged Chinese tea bowl back to China for repairs in the late 15th century. The bowl was returned, but it didn't look that beautiful since it had been repaired with metal staples.

Japanese craftsmen therefore started looking for a new solution that would have made broken pieces more asthetically pleasing. Cracks were then repaired with a gold or silver lacquer, materials that ended up elevating the pieces to art, making them look even more beautiful than they originally were. 

There are a few artists employing this technique for very unique pieces, among them Korean Sookyung Yee, who makes imposing teapot sculptures using shards and fragments of discarded pots made by master potter Lim Hang-Taek.

In the '80s, musician and costume designer Syvano Bussotti came up instead with a similar technique in one of his opera costumes, creating a patchworked tunic with squares of brocade upholstery fabrics that he then highlighted with gold sequins.

Dutch sister duo Gieke and Lotte Dekker from Humade came up a while back with a Kintsugi repair kit that can be used to become more acquainted with this technique on broken ceramic pieces, but can also be applied on materials similar to ceramics, so, with some little experimenting it could be employed for broken/damaged accessories as well.   

 

If you fancy playing instead with kintsugi and fashion, you can also check out Humade's "Create Me" kit with more than 100 textile transfer iron-on gold or silver shapes inspired by the tangram game and ideal to repair a hole or tear, hide a stain or personalise clothes and interior textiles.

As a simpler alternative, get some scraps of fabrics and some gold or silver thread and patchwork the fabrics and textiles together: the results may be unexpected, but they will help you accepting not just the asymmetries and irregularities you may end up creating in fashion, but also the flaws in our less-than-perfect lives.    

 

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Perils of the Derivative Fashion Collection

New York Fashion Week was a bit of a dull affair with not many notable collections. At times critics complained of the derivative ideas seen on the runways, but London has sadly revealed more borrowed moods than we could imagine.

At the moment the major sport in London is actually pretending of not seeing the imitation game going on in the current collections for the sake of the British fashion industry, while at the same time spotting the next big thing (could it be Marc Jacobs' protégé Amie Robertson, of A.V. Robertson, or Molly Goddard and her perilously voluminous tulle mumus?).

In the meantime a young and established generation of designers is revealing weaker than we thought: David Koma went down the Donatella Versace path without providing any new ideas for his sensual sihouettes; Gareth Pugh left his trademark gothic inspirations behind to provide his own vision of powerful women that blended retro futurism à la Blade Runner, Thierry Mugler's Virgin Mary apparition from his A/W 1984-85 show and Claude Montana's silhouettes.

The main inspiration of the show - women on top - was symbolised by French ballet star Marie-Agnès Gillot, her eyes covered in aviator shades, donning an officer's coat and sitting on a throne in the background of the runway taking place at the Grand Temple of Freemasons Hall.

Though this collection could have helped Pugh taking distance from his dark costumy shenanigans to refocus on his tailoring, his designs turned into an ode to '80s power dressing in which there was nothing new.

The Hannibal Lecter hockey masks (employed to prove Pugh's point - women are man-eaters - rather than to add that frisson of horror) and the make-up with an elastic that ridiculously highlighted the cheekbones of the models (View this photo), bizarrely turning them into clones of Cinzia Otherside, the ambiguous character out of Leo Ortolani's comic Rat-Man, distracted from the whole thing. 

The most puzzling of the lot, though, was Mary Katrantzou. Her collection moved from the passion for dressing up derived from childhood; this main inspiration produced colourful designs that combined country western moods with glittery and sparkling textures. 

Dolly Parton provided the soundtrack for Katrantzou's models clad in squarish rodeo jackets and shirtdresses covered in embroideries and appliqued elements representing hearts, stars and flames. Now, this could have been a great inspiration if Miuccia Prada hadn't been at it before Katrantzou. 

This collection was indeed a combination of Miu Miu S/S 2011's boxy leather jackets and leather pencil skirts with colourful intarsia motifs, and of Miu Miu's Resort 2016 designs, that mixed tweed with western moods.

There were actually also fur coats, shrugs and stoles with vivid and bright intarsia that called to mind the coats in Prada's S/S 2014 collection, while the tongues of fire on the hems of the skirts were borrowed from Prada's S/S 2012 women and cars collection.

Other motifs such as the stars and the butterflies in this collection were reminiscent of Valentino's Pre-Fall 2016 designs that, as you may remember, were a mix of cowboy shirts and Oriental/Japanese motifs.

Mind you, butterflies were also a recurrent motif in Sarah Burton's Alexander McQueen's A/W 16 collection: the latter actually featured a few designs that reminded of the ubiquitous butterfly looks in many recent Valentino collections such as the Pre-Fall 2014 designs (apparently it took a lot of artisans not just in London, but in Italy as well to make the designs for McQueen's collection, who knows, maybe some of them were the same as Valentino's....).

Burton's satin duvet jackets inspired by nighttime and dreams pointed instead towards Cinzia Ruggeri's classic "Abito Letto" (Bed Dress) originally created for Vogue Casa in 1986 consisting in a quilted duvet gown matched with a satin pillow, a design then reinvented by Viktor & Rolf in their Autumn/Winter 2005-06 ("Bedtime Story") collection. 

Fashion follows a cyclical rhythm, so it is only natural to get a sense of déjà-vu when you see something on the runway, after all, things are meant to go in and out of fashion all the time. But what's puzzling about these designs is that in most cases they do not show derivations from collections released a long time ago: Katrantzou's designs are indeed heavily indebted to relatively recent Prada and Miu Miu's collections and, in some cases, they may even spark a debate about copyright issues. 

These recent collections may be the final proof that there is nothing new happening in fashion at the moment and that we are bombarded by so many images every day that we are not even capable of processing ideas and images and change them enough to provide innovations from a knockoffs. Because, you see, Miuccia Prada is undoubtedly a great remixer, but coming up with a remix of the remix is a very bad idea.

Though these derivative collections may be the low point of London Fashion Week (and they may influence young fashion design student in the wrong way as they may start thinking that all you have to do is lazily cutting and paste recent collections...), they may end up playing in favour of a younger generation of Italian designers: boycotted by the fashion media for many years, they may now regain some attention, if this is the current standard of their colleagues in Great Britain.

At the same time, these derivative collections may be symptoms of fashion fatigue. The remedy? Resetting fashion, rather than making designs immediately available after the runway. Stopping the fashion machine for 6 to 12 months may be difficult and tricky, but it would be the only way to make sure the system goes through a major detox.

In the meantime, Miuccia Prada, having also seen her coloured python collages from Prada's A/W 2011 collection making a reappearance on Burberry's A/W 2016 runway, can rest on her laurels: her brand may not be doing that great when it comes to sales, but, hell, it's still being widely copied and - as they say - imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

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Hats Off to "Fashion on Film" @ The Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Melbourne

The eyes of the fashion industry may be focused at the moment on the catwalk shows for the next season, but there are other equally interesting fashion appointments to take care of.

For example, if you're in Melbourne this week and you love film and fashion, you shouldn't miss "Fashion on Film" a fun event organised by the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI). 

Curated by James Nolen and screening as part of the Virgin Australia Melbourne Fashion Festival (VAMFF), the programme features a collection of recent documentaries analysing designers, brands and fashion as an industry and a spectacle as well.  

As you may guess, there is a bit of everything for everybody in the programme: Haute Couture connoisseurs and passionate fans of hand-made quality accessories will definitely enjoy Eric Pellerin's Hubert de Givenchy: A Life in Haute Couture and Enrica Viola's Borsalino City, a documentary about the famous Italian hat company.

Younger generations of fashionistas won't be disappointed by Loïc Prigent's The Legacy of Alexander McQueen that looks at the late designer through his last four collections, and by Vlad Yudin's Jeremy Scott: The People's Designer.

Fashion fans interested instead in discovering more about fashion presentations shouldn't miss Prigent's Dressed Up for Winter 2016 (Habillées pour l'hiver 2016) that analyses not just catwalk shows, but also dissects a key issue in contemporary fashion - the power of social media. 

The documentaries are accompanied by a selection of short fashion films, handpicked from the 2016 VAMFF Film Competition that will give festvial goers the chance to get to know young and innovative directors. 

Two special events will pay homage to hats, "Borsalino and Bubbles", a one-off event where people will be given the chance to learn the intricacies of hat making, and #HATMOB, that will follow the opening night screening of Borsalino City (on 25th February) and will be hosted by Melbourne milliner Annabel Allen, aka The Eternal Headonist. In today's interview Allen takes us behind the scenes of the "Fashion on Film" festival while sharing her passion for designing and wearing hats.    

How did you get involved in the 10th anniversary of ACMI's "Fashion on Film" Season?
Annabel Allen: We've been lucky enough to have the amazing James Nolen, the ACMI programmer responsible for the wonderful "Fashion on Film" series, as a great advocate for our brand and hat mission. He'd attended some of our previous #HATMOB events and when the opportunity arose to do something at ACMI, he got in touch. It's so exciting that a hat film (a rare beast!) is forming part of the series this year and even better, the opening night. We, of course, jumped at the chance to collaborate and create an occasion that celebrates the fun of hat wearing! 

The 10th anniversary programme will also be celebrating hats in a special way via Borsalino City: what fascinates you about this Italian manufacturer and what kind of hat will you be wearing at the opening night screening?
Annabel Allen: Borsalino is such an iconic hat brand, and one that's really stood the test of time through classic design and workmanship. It's a company that's been through its ups and downs but has so many great stories to tell, through its hats and the people that have worn them. Every Hollywood icon from the 1920s through to today has been seen wearing one. There's not many brands that have created and maintained such a suave legacy. I'm yet to decide on my hat for the screening, but it will either be something classic and vintage or something colourful and extravagant - there's no middle ground with me! 

As a milliner, did you ever design hats for any films, or would you like to do so? 
Annabel Allen: I haven't designed hats for films, but I would love to do so and when this opportunity arises it would have to be for some crazy, futuristic, sci-fi or fantasy film. I'm a bit of a sci-fi nerd, and would love to imagine what the headwear would look like in a future world or alternative galaxy - it's where you could get really creative. The first Hunger Games movie had some incredible headwear in the crowd scenes during the opening ceremony, but films like the 5th Element or 2001: A Space Odyssey (particularly interesting as the costumes were really projecting a '60s visualisation of the future, with big '60s influenced futuristic pillbox hats) had some amazing costumes. Doing something like that would be on my wish list! 

Which are your favourite fashion films and who is your fave costume designer?
Annabel Allen: I love films about fashion characters, and Bill Cunningham - New York is a particular favourite, maybe I have a fondness for him as he started life as a milliner, or maybe it's just because he is really awesome! The last #HATMOB we had, we went to see Iris, the story of the incredible Iris Apfel, and it's hard not be truly inspired by her vision and love for life and fashion. All the (now famous) "Advanced Style" ladies really know where it's at when it comes to incredible headwear and how hats complete an outfit - just check out their instagram feed! I'm waiting for someone to make a film on the story of Elsa Schiaparelli: having read her biography her story is fascinating, she really got up to some incredible and daring adventures that need to be told, as well as her fashion story. Whilst I'm waiting for that, I'm looking forward to seeing the Alexander McQueen and Jeremy Scott films as well as Borsalino City as part of the "Fashion on Film" series this year. Costume-wise, designer Eiko Ishioka really caught my attention a few years ago with the incredible costumes she made for Grace Jones' "Hurricane" tour. Grace Jones is the ultimate "Headonist", and Philip Treacy made some show stopping hats for that tour, but Jean-Paul Gaultier's and Hardy Amis's work in the 5th Element and 2001 A Space Odyssey, as mentioned above, are among my favourites.

In your opinion, who are the greatest milliners in the history of fashion and who are your personal hat muses?
Annabel Allen: There's a a favourite milliner for every era, but the milliners of the early to mid-20th century are my absolute feminist icons. They were total trail blazers and created huge business empires at a time when women definitely didn't do that kind of thing. Caroline Reboux, Lilly Dache, Hattie Carnegie, Elsa Schiaparelli, Coco Chanel, were hugely driven and creative women who started life as milliners, and built huge fashion brands employing hundreds and sometimes thousands of people. Seriously, just wow! In contemporary millinery, you really can't go past Philip Treacy and Stephen Jones, they are unparalleled in terms of how they have advanced millinery in modern day fashion. Stephen Jones never fails to amaze in the catwalk looks he creates for Galliano and Thom Browne. I have several hat muses, and they are generally people who are fearless and unafraid to take risks with their headwear. Erykah Badu, Grace Jones, Lady Gaga and classic Audrey Hepburn are my daily inspirations.

Quite often people think you must have perfect facial features to wear a hat, but most times the opposite is true and people who may not be stereotypical beauties look better in a hat than many models on the runways, would you agree with this statement?
Annabel Allen: Absolutely, pulling off a killer hat look, is all about attitude, outlook and how you carry it. Yes. certain face shapes suit certain hat shapes better, but that is not saying anything about perfection - confidence is your greatest attribute when wearing a hat. If you've got a smile on your dial, or some cool in your attitude, that hat is going to make your outfit! 

What are your plans for the future for your maison?
Annabel Allen: I want to get to a stage where fantastic Australian and contemporary millinery is available to all and for all occasions, not just Spring Racing. People love hats, but lack the confidence and occasions to wear them. The #HATMOB is all about creating events and occasions for people to wear hats. There's also very few places where fashion forward headwear is available all year round, so the dream is to be the go-to place for contemporary headwear and promote the talented designers and milliners we have in Australia.

What kind of hat would you suggest to wear to take part in some of the hat related events at ACMI's "Fashion on Film" Season?
Annabel Allen: Wear a hat that makes you feel special, one that makes your outfit look 1001%. It doesn't have to be big and crazy (although we thoroughly endorse that!), but something that makes you feel great inside and out! 

"Fashion on Film 2016", ACMI, Melbourne, Australia, from 25th February to 14th March 2016. 

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Between Dark Tales and Politics, America in Transition: Marc Jacobs A/W 2016-17

Hate it or love it, you can't deny that fashion offers something that other disciplines may not give you – the chance to analyse it from various points of view, from the merely superficial to the creative, the arty, anthropological, political, financial, global and sociological. 

In a way fashion is similar to a sun from which different topics radiate: you could indeed just focus on the clothes and moods seen at a runway show or analyse them taking into consideration the artworks and films they reference or, in a wider way, the historical context in which they were developed. 

Drenched in an American Horror Story mood, Marc Jacobs' A/W 2016 runway reflected for example one main point – it is not just his own label and the fashion industry in general that are going through a transitional phase, but it's America. 

As the restructuring and integration stages progress after the Marc by Marc Jacobs line closed down, and while designers are currently trying and find a way to renew the concept of the runway show while increasing sales, the race for the next American president is heating up and, in many ways, all these themes came together in Jacobs' collection.

The latter was showcased during New York Fashion Week in a white circular room created inside the Park Avenue Armory. This white-washed madhouse gave models the chance to walk in a circle creating through their gargantuan coats and platform boots dramatically huge shadows, while an eerie soundtrack inspired by the Japanese artist Keiji Haino played in the background. 

Dark and doomed moods prevailed: models were engulfed in voluminously gigantic coats and jackets that covered ample sweaters with crocheted doily collars or pussybow blouses matched with ballooning vinyl skirts lasered with motifs that called to mind broderie anglaise. 

At times fur jackets, tweed coats and dresses were made using a variety of textures collaged together in a Frankenstein-monster style; a denim jacket was decorated with a glittery cobweb and a patch showing Mickey Mouse with an evil expression on its face, and silhouettes were elongated to monstrous proportions. 

Raven feathers sprouted from the back of jackets, while prints of cats, rats (a reference maybe to one of Jacobs' secondary lines in the early and mid-noughties, Stinky Rat, derived from a nickname given to the designer by Juergen Tellers' daughter Lola), crows and ballerinas, were courtesy of artist Stephen Tashjian, known for his drag queen character Tabboo!

All the looks were matched with perilously high platform boots and shoes, half Bowie and half Gene Simmons, and accessories included bags in chequered fur or ostrich leather. 

If you didn't get too distracted by the Edward Gorey-like gloominess, you could actually spot ideas from previous collections being recycled in this one: the spliced band-concert sweatshirts from Spring 2016 were reinvented in darker versions; the perforated leather flowers of Resort 2016 were turned into laser cut vinyl skirts; the Yayoi Kusama/Louis Vuitton spotified collaboration from 2012 and Marc Jacobs' A/W 2011 polka dots became larger black or white dots; Marc Jacobs' yellow and white chequered looks for Louis Vuitton's S/S 13 collection were turned into tattered grey and black chequered jumpers or purple and black fur grids, while some of the fabrics for his coats called to mind the William Morris fabrics in Marc by Marc Jacobs' A/W 2015-16 collection. 

This was the other side of last season's light and fun show: some looks were reinvented, redesigned as gigantic constructions, painted in strong dark shades with a few variations added, including dark green, pale pink and strong fuchsia and donned by eccentric characters with black eyes and lips. 

Among them there was also Lady Gaga, who became the focus of many reviews and stole the show in a cumbersome grey coat with fur sleeves and a pussy-bow blouse. Gaga has so far been associated with many fashion designers and brands (McQueen, Versace, Mugler and Tom Ford), but this is the most recent "collaboration" with Jacobs after the designer outfitted Lady Gaga's Bowie tribute at the Grammy awards. 

As a whole the collection was a great cauldron proving Jacobs has always been a great stylist rather than an impeccable designer, capable of mixing together various influences. In this case, Jacobs combined in a giantly fashionable Creepypasta Christina Ricci as Wednesday Addams, Lydia out of Beetlejuice, dark Victoriana as seen in Penny Dreadful, neo-Goths and Little Monsters, Comme des Garçons' oversized garments and Art Deco (see the surface elaborations on the fabrics, the embellishments on some of the gowns and the waving hairstyles...), New York ghosts, the maniacal madness of a world gone crazy à la Stonehearst Asylum, and the scary tales of American Horror Story. This long fairytale closed with a Gothic Alice turned dark Queen in a checkerboard cloak.

It's only natural to wonder if through his new collection Jacobs was maybe hinting that he will move into a Haute Couture narrative: the ballerinas and caged birds embroidered on a jacket and those shocking pink accessories (not to mention the stripy looks) pointed towards Schiaparelli (but then again there were elements reminiscent of Schiap also in the S/S 16 collection) while the dramatically elongated coats and capes evoked the magnitude of high fashion and the grandeur of Parisian ateliers.

Time will tell, in the meantime Jacobs finished off this dark affair by taking his bow in a suit and a customised glittering "Made for History" tee featuring Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's face and revealing the political edge of an otherwise gothic fiction show.

The Hillary Clinton campaign just launched "Made for History", a limited-edition collection of T-shirts (retailing for $45 on Clinton's website) designed in collaboration with Marc Jacobs, Tory Burch (the rainbow coloured "Women's Rights are Human Rights") and Dao-Yi Chow & Mazwell Osborne's Public School (the "Make Herstory" design). Jacob's design features an image of Clinton's face in red, white and blue.

"My support for Hillary is grounded on our long-standing shared belief in equality," Jacobs states on Clinton's site. "I am proud to share this T-shirt as a champion for equal rights, for the progress we have made, and for the hope of continued progress with Hillary as President."

The fashion industry supported Obama's election and re-election with two different initiatives, "Runway to Change" (2008) and "Runway to Win" (2012), and they have now moved on to support Hillary Clinton, hoping to open a brand new chapter in America's story and in the story for women's equality.

Jacobs has closed in an entertainingly dark way an otherwise dull and flat New York Fashion Week that revealed a lack of revolutionary and radical ideas and a widespread fashion fatigue, but that left us with the see now-buy now items of the season - the political T-shirts.

As stated, the designer was wearing his Hillary tee when he took his bow, but so was Anna Wintour dressed in bold shades of red, white, and blue in the front row. 

Unsure about your candidate? As an alternative you can opt for Bernie Sanders's tee deigned by Shepard Fairey, the street artist and activist behind the "Hope" design used during Obama's presidential run in 2008. Looks like the run for the 2016 US Presidential race is turning into a battle of the shirts: fashion may be transitioning towards another era, but so is politics... 

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