"Alice Through the Looking Glass", the sequel to Tim Burton's "Alice in Wonderland", this time directed by James Bobin (and produced by Burton) will be released next week. The film plot revolves around Alice returning to the world of Wonderland and travelling back in time to save the Mad Hatter.
In all the trailers released so far Alice (Mia Wasikowska) can be seen wearing a very colourful creation by costume designer Colleen Atwood.
The design is defined as Alice's "Mandarin costume" online, the embroidery and decorations (and the boots as well) look indeed derived from traditional Chinese costumes, but there are elements such as the details around the shoulder area that betray a different derivation.You could indeed almost make a comparison between Alice's dress and this Burmese theatrical costume for a Prince or male lead character.
This costume - from the archives of the Brighton Museum and Art Gallery - was donated by Noel F Singer (Panchee Nay Myo). The performer (who left his country in 1962) studied historical costumes and his designs for performances in Britain during the 1960s and 1970s borrowed from his extensive researches. He adapted textiles and items he had brought from Burma (Myanmar) or found at London markets and created with them exquisite theatrical costumes.
It would be interesting to ask Atwood if she ever saw costumes such as this one or if she combined in her "Mandarin costume" elements from other traditions: whatever the answer, the costume perfectly fits in with the moods and atmospheres of the film and the fantastic worlds (and times...) Alice moves in.
It's not rare nowadays to go online and stumble upon pictures of beautiful people in multi-coloured hair not just on dedicated fashion sites, but on many different social networks. The way we colour, arrange, style, cut or shave our hair reveals a lot about our personality, and at the same time it says a lot about our culture as well. Wavy curls, Shirley Temple curls, straight hair, natural hair and futuristic styles could be seen as extensions of our identity.
The photography of J.D.'Okhai Ojeikere documenting the elaborate hairstyles and head wrappings of Nigerian women, is for example suspended between fashion, anthropology and history, revealing traditions behind special ceremonies and festivals, while hinting at social positions in the community or at the way specific styles evolved from the postcolonial era.
Hair is the focus of a very special bi-annual event that will take place this Sunday (22nd May) at the Tropenmuseum in Amsterdam. Devoted entirely to hair as self-expression, the "Good Hair Festival" is divided into three themes – "Hair as Subculture," "The World of Barbers" and "Hair Trends".
The first section will look at hair as an art object and at its socio-cultural significance via the identity of people from diverse cultural backgrounds, and will expore the way we look at each other and react to covered/uncovered hair.
The second section will allow male visitors to have a free trim ot to shave their beards and mustaches. The most interesting thing in this section is actually an analysis of the differences and similarities between barbershops in London, Amsterdam and Cape Town. The Great Hall of the museum will indeed feature pictures of the current streetscape along with images from the museum collection with barber signs from the 19th and 20th century in Indonesia, Suriname and Ghana.
Fashionistas will instead love the third and final section that revolves around a series of new and futuristic hairstyles, courtesy of professional hairdressers and experts.
Each theme is accompanied by a series of dedicated events, demonstrations, talks, debates and workshops. Long locks, short bobs, weaves, dreadlocks, curls – you name it, you will be able to see them or learn more about them or about very personal stories and traumas involving hair loss and such likes.
There are actually many highlights in the programme: there is a talk about the cultural role of hair and hair politics with Björk's favorite hairstylist, filmmaker and photographer Jimo Salako, who has worked for Prada, i-D Magazine, and Dazed & Confused among the others; a debate on the hijab or headwrap that touches topics ranging from religion to fashionable or cultural considerations, and one panel about the boxerbraid - or cornrows, aka kwikwiba - that will look at cultural appropriation.
Among the special guests there's also wig-maker and hairstylist Charlie Le Mindu who will offer an insight into his eccentric world and talk about his life, work and inspirations.
Art fans should instead opt for the debate about the role of hair art, with artists who employ this material in their work or who use it as the focus of their projects.
Yet the Tropenmuseum is not just about hair: housed in an impressive listed building overlooking Amsterdam's Oosterpark, this institution features in its collections objects that have many stories to tell about humankind and themes such as mourning, celebration, ornamentation, prayer and conflict with no gegraphical boundaries, from Africa to West and Southeast Asia, from New Guinea to Latin America, so there will be a lot more to see once the festival is over.
What's in the news often surprises and affects us in negative ways: ongoing wars, massive migration flows, terror attacks and tensions between countries are definitely not indicators of great human interactions in modern society.
It is indeed not rare to get the feeling we do live in a borderline society, suspended between ultimate disaster and the emergence of something new, better and more positive.
An exhibition opening this week at the Moderna Museet in Stockholm explores the human condition in a fast-changing world.
Curated by Joa Ljungberg, "The New Human" is a film and video-based project and looks at the way we perceive ourselves, exploring at the same time further themes that may have darker tones, such as living, socialising and controlling each other.
The themes of the videos are quite different, going from political events and revolutions to nationalist and neo-fascist organisations and parties re-establishing themselves throughout Europe.
Insights into a global warzone of religious fanaticism and political extremism and violence are juxtaposed to moments of solidarity and compassion, while technological progress and our addiction for digital means of communication challenge notions of humanity and the way we relate to each other.
Tomáš Rafa documents Europe's handling of the refugee crisis; Hito Steyerl provides us with much needed visual instructions to become "invisible" in a world in which cameras are omnipresent, while Adel Abdessemed creates in his "God is Design" a new kind of "visual Esperanto" by fusing ornamental symbols from three monotheistic religions - Christianity, Islam and Judaism - with North African patterns and with schematic drawings of human cell structures.
Science enters the event via Daria Martin's "Soft Materials" and Kerstin Hamilton's "Zero Point Energy", videos that introduce visitors to dystopian laboratory environments where human beings interact and perform with robots or a new humanity can be discerned.
Quite often these videos combine architectural, scientific and human landscapes with themes such as dance, choreography, and representation, allowing visitors to explore and investigate nano technological environments from an arty point of view.
The exhibition will also feature the entirely new work by Ursula Mayer (a video that takes the visitors into a post-human age...) and Tomáš Rafa.
"Today, thirty-year-olds can rightfully claim that the world looks completely different compared to when they were children. In times of such rapid change, pause and reflection become increasingly important. The artists participating in 'The New Human' strive to understand how new developments change our lives and in what direction we might be moving", states curator Joa Ljungberg.
Will technology suppress and replace us with complex, intelligent and self-generating hybrid forms of life such as cyborgs? And what kind of future awaits us?
"The New Human" doesn't provide a definitive answer but offers multiple scenarios. Several of the exhibited works will be exchanged in the course of the nine month exhibition period, so there is reason to visit this event several times.
"The New Human", Moderna Museet, Exercisplan 2, Stockholm, Sweden, 21st May 2016 - 5th March 2017.
Hito Steyerl, How Not to Be Seen: A Fucking Didactic Educational .MOV File, 2013 (Video still), Image CC 4.0 Hito Steyerl. Image courtesy of the Artist and Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York
Hito Steyerl, How Not to Be Seen: A Fucking Didactic Educational .MOV File, 2013 (Video still), Image CC 4.0 Hito Steyerl. Image courtesy of the Artist and Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York
Let's continue the cinematic thread that started yesterday with a brief piece on Pier Paolo Pasolini. In previous posts on this site we explored his life and pondered about his death; we analysed the meanings of the costumes in his films and discovered links about his movies and fashion.
This modern intellectual continues indeed to inspire us through his writings and films and at times reading his essays or newspaper articles can lead to interesting comparisons with our times. In 1975 Pasolini interviewed "himself" for an Italian newspaper, explaining the reasons behind his film "Salo or the 120 days of Sodom" (1975) in an article entitled "Sex as a Metaphor for Power".
Released posthumously in 1976, the film was banned as soon as it came out, its violence and sex scenes proving too much for many people. Yet Pasolini often stated that the violence was a metaphor for the relationship of power with those ones who are subjected to it. In other words it is the representation of what Marx calls the commodification of man, the reduction of the human body to a thing (through its exploitation).
In the film the power of the fascists from the Salò Republic turns indeed into a power that transforms people into objects. Nowadays we delude ourselves into thinking we are free, but too often our lives are ruled by different forms of power. Fashion is definitely one of the modern industries playing around with our minds, fascistically imposing a colour or a trend regardless of the collective tastes or needs of consumers. My suggestion? Pasolini employed sex to analyse and criticise power: find new metaphors for old powers in our everyday life and turn them into your personal inspiration for a project. As further inspiration, I'm posting here (Download PierPaoloPasolini_SelfInterview_March1975_byABattista) my translation of Pier Paolo Pasolini's "Self-Interview" published on Il Corriere della Sera on 25th March 1975.
A few sci-fi/horror fans in Italy were lucky to be able to see some special screenings of the digitally restored version (from the original 35mm Kodak Eastman Color negative) of Mario Bava's "Terrore nello Spazio" (Planet of the Vampires, 1965) last year during the Turin Film Festival.
Today the film will be on at Cannes as part of the Classics Special Screenings, before being re-released on 6th July. In Cannes the film will be presented by director Nicolas Winding Refn (who introduced it in Turin as well) and by its producer Fulvio Lucisano.
The restoration (by CSC Cineteca Nazionale) and the complex colour correction via colorimetry comparison of an original 35mm positive copy courtesy of the Cineteca Nazionale were carried out under the supervision of assistant director (director and screenwiter) Lamberto Bava (Mario's son).
A constant inspiration referenced by many modern directors including Tarantino, Martin Scorsese, and Tim Burton, Mario Bava was a unique director with a brilliant mind and a penchant for special effects made with extremely low budgets.
In "Terrore nello Spazio" two spaceships - the Argos and the Galliot - answer a signal sent by the mysterious Aura planet, located in a distant quadrant of the galaxy. When they land, confused by the gravitational pull, the Argos' crew start fighting among themselves, but their Captain prevents them from killing each other. After landing they discover the Galliot nearby, but all the astronauts on board are dead. There is more behind the killing frenzy that has taken the two crews: Aura is indeed inhabited by parassitic creatures ready to kill and take possession of somebody else's body to run away from their dying planet.
The film can't be filed under the B-movie label for many reasons: rather than being just a sci-fi film, Planet of the Vampires is indeed a combination of fantasy, sci-fi and horror infused with gothic elements.
The scary intergalactic vampires mentioned in the English title for this film aren't actually visible, so, in many ways, the movie also hints at the dark side of human beings.
This sci-fi movie - based on Renato Pestriniero's short story "One Night of 21 Hours" and featuring a screenplay by a team including Italian writer Alberto Bevilacqua and critic Callisto Cosulich - becomes therefore a philosophical tale with ghosts, vampirical parasites and zombies, with no extreme technology involved. Modern films have got us used to amazing digital effects and visual scapes, but Bava's set is mysterious, foggy, rocky and atmospheric (even though it consisted in just a couple of rocks leftover from another film that Bava multiplied with mirrors and other effects...). Colour-wise the film is a baroque Carnival of colours, a tapestry made with lurid shades of red and violet.
Materials are also extremely interesting: the dead astronauts are indeed buried in futuristic looking graves with metal headstones and they are wrapped in basic plastic shrouds (plastic bits and pieces that were lying around the set?)
The spaceships (Carlo Rambaldi worked uncredited on this film as model maker) are almost empty, mirroring in this way the empty bodies of the dead astronauts, filled by the parasitical aliens.
Yet if the mysterious aliens are cruel, don't think the astronauts are good: their costumes - black bodysuits with yellow details matched with a yellow helmet (the original costumes for this film are perfectly intact and were modelled by a young man and woman at the Turin Film Festival screening last year) - were designed by Gabriele Mayer (who also worked on "Danger Diabolik") to call to mind fascist uniforms, becoming therefore hints at colonisation, power and rootless dictators. As the years passed the uniforms inspired fashion collections and further costumes for sci-fi films.
"Terrore nello spazio" was certainly the major influence on Ridley Scott's "Alien" and "Prometheus", movies that seem to have a similar storyline.
The final lesson to be learnt from this film may be a philosophical one revolving around humanity and power, but, as highlighted also in other posts on this site in which we mentioned the Italian director, the real lesson is hidden in an old adage: though Bava always seemed to have limited resources on his films, he was always high on resourcefulness.
In this film, for example, he used the mirror-based Schüfftan Process to combine live action with miniatures, avoiding in this way the costly matte/optical printing techniques. In a nutshell, don't let your lack of resources or financial limits stop you from being creative, but opt for the Bava method.
In the last few years, investing in fashion has been a recurring topic on many sites. Even financial publications focused on this theme, highliting the importance of vintage Haute Couture designs or the value of iconic pieces by key designers, at times mistakenly claiming that this or that bag is supposed to be a safe investment for the future. Yet, if you do have the money and the will to invest in fashion, you should maybe opt not for a bag or a gown, but for a rare piece of jewellery.
Until Wednesday Christie's offers the chance (to wealthy collectors...) to pick a piece from its "Art as Jewelry" selection. This auction - the first Christie's online sale of artist jewellery and a subset of Christie's New York's first-ever "20th Century Season" - features over 70 lots from some of the 20th century's greatest artists, architects and designers.
The wearable artworks on sale include bracelets, brooches, pendants, rings and cufflinks by Jean Arp, Pol Bury, Enrico Castellani, Man Ray, Pablo Picasso, Roy Lichtenstein, Arnaldo Pomodoro, Carmen Herrera in collaboration with Chus Burés, Jesus Rafael Soto, Kenny Scharf, Anish Kapoor and many more.
Alexander Calder's 1938 brass and steel wire brooch is actually among the most expensive ones and it is estimated to reach $90,000. The lucky collector who will get it will definitely feel like Peggy Guggenheim. Calder created jewellery for her and Peggy Guggenheim once stated about his pieces, "I am the only woman in the world who wears his enormous mobile earrings."
Roberto Matta's "Cacastrello" (a pun on the Italian words "pipistrello", that is "bat", and "cacca", "shit") gold and glass-bead necklace with gold pendants in the shape of bats inlaid with diamond, moissanite, and rubies, will appeal to all lovers of Surrealism. Born in Santiago, Chile, Matta, was a major figure in 20th century abstract expressionism and surrealism and his works bridge the natural and supernatural worlds.
Given the recent revival of Italian artists Paolo Scheggiand Agostino Bonalumi, Enrico Castellani's "Superficie" necklace would be a great investment, and it would also offer the lucky collector scooping it the chance to wear around the neck a very portable version of Castellani's amazing canvases.
Fans of kinetic art should instead opt for Edival Ramosa's rhodium treated silver and anodized aluminum necklace, or Pol Bury's gold articulated ring. Inspired by an encounter with Alexander Calder's mobiles in 1950, Pol Bury began to create his own form of kinetic art from 1953, abandoning painting to create sculptures that moved with captivating slowness. From the 1960s, the artist's material of choice became highly polished, reflective metal, with demi-sphères, such as those featured on this ring, becoming a preferred motif.
Man Ray incorporated his avant-garde jewellery into shoots with celebrities including Catherine Deneuve (he portrayed her wearing his spiralling Pendantif-Pendant earrings in 1968).
The "cheapest" and rarest investment in this auction? Andrea Branzi's modular ring. This exceptionally rare piece by the influential Italian architect, designer and theorist tackles the relationship between the artificial and the natural and the ring is constructed in a very clever way with all the elements forming it existing separately so that the shape is left to be determined by the person wearing it, giving them the choice of one round element or a square one.
Lots are estimated to fetch between $1,000 and $70,000 and you can bet that, for some of these pieces, offers will be even higher. The sale runs on Christie's web site through May 18 and, though it is a shame there are no pieces by Lucio Fontana or Niki de St Phalle in this auction, there may be a chance that in future Christie's will give this special category more attention. This is indeed the first time jewellery designed by artists is given a stand-alone auction.
There are many fashion collections that reference art, but owning one of these pieces is probably the only way to turn yourself into a real work of art, while making at the same time a better investment than a designer handbag.
In yesterday's post we looked at science and fashion, let's continue the thread in a lighter key with a very brief look at this Spring/Summer 2001 design by Issey Miyake that, rather than focusing on maths, concentrates on optics, and exploits the behaviour and properties of light in textiles.
Preserved in the archives of the Brighton Museum and Art Gallery, this ensemble consists in a grey polyester jacket with purple/yellow shot lining and a grey polyester dress and trousers.
The pleats in all Miyake's designs hint at dynamic movement, but this piece could be used as the starting point to develop more studies in colour changes in textiles: as the pleats move their colours vary, giving an optical and kaleidoscope-like illusion.
In a previous post on this site we looked at the application of mathematics in a fashion collection via threeASFOUR's "Harmonograph" dress. As you may remember from a previous post the designers created a spiralling motif around the body, following the geometry of the Fibonacci sequence, optically portraying the effect of a harmonograph.
It looks like Fibonacci and maths are an inspiration also for students at the moment: on Wednesday, at the Academy of Arts University's Graduation Fashion Show, Vanessa Nash-Spangler, B.F.A. Fashion Design, sent out a series of oversized tulle, silk and organza designs in a vibrant selection of nuances, going from soft wysteria and lilacs to sky blues, decorated with ruffles and flowers.
Though they echoed a bit Comme des Garçons' creations, the designs were actually part of a collection entitled "GeoSprung" inspired by the Fibonacci Sequence and the geometrical figures we encounter in nature.
While in mathematics the Fibonacci sequence features the numbers in the integer sequence 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, and so on (in a nutshell each subsequent number is the sum of the previous two), the sequence also appears in biological settings, such as branching in trees, grasses and flowers, arrangement of leaves on a steam, the fruitlets of a pineapple, the flower of the artichoke, the arrangement of a pine cone, the seeds on a raspberry and the spiral patterns in horns and shells.
Nature actually does not use the Fibonacci numbers: specific natural shapes are indeed a by-product of a deeper physical process since for example the leaves in a plant are arranged to maximise access to resources like sunlight for photoshynthesis.
Nash-Spangler incorporated instead the Fibonacci Sequence into the patterns for her designs to create some of the ruffles contributing to give a voluminous shape to her designs. Other ruffles were straight cut and sewn into a hexagonal base to mimic a honeycomb. The final art/artisanal touch? All the fabrics were painted by hand.
It is extremely easy to understand why fashion designers are constantly inspired by Fibonacci: his series of numbers and its rations are said to be the perfect and most pleasing to the eye and therefore the ideal shape for all creation.
Let's continue yesterday's thread with a follow up on the theme of interior design and fashion.There is a recently unveiled collaboration that may indeed be filed under this label.
Sharing a passion for interior design, Cabana magazine editor in chief Martina Mondadori Sartogo and Gucci's Alessandro Michele created six limited edition chairs upholstered in the label's herbarium fabric and featuring animal figures (two snakes, a tiger, a fly, a hare and a bird) hand-embroidered on the seats.
The chairs will be sold on Cabana's pop-up store on 1stdibs.com for €1,200 each; the sale will coincide with Cabana's fifth issue release with a cover designed by Michele.
The chairs incorporate elements that Michele has used in his previous fashion collections, but it is undoubtedly true that, so far, most designs by Michele for Gucci have heavily borrowed from interior design fabrics and motifs.
Taking inspiration from nature and plants and influenced by Japanese design, Gallé created sereval pieces representing cats with mesmerising glass eyes and a cheeky expression on their faces that seemed to be "wearing" chintz kimonos and lace bonnets. Gallé's cats were very popular in his times and they often indicated the social standing and taste of the owner of the house where they were displayed.
Yes, you may argue that garments, accessories and ornamental porcelain cats may belong to different product categories, but in this case they seem to be based around the same aesthetics in which floral elements are recombined with other motifs to create eye catching decorative effects.
Finding Gallé's cats and Michele's Gozzano-infused aesthetic a bit too much for your tastes? Come up with your own fashion collection moving from somethign else, such as this silvery day bed and screen from the 1930s designed by Armand-Albert Rateau.
Rateau studied cabinet making at the Ecole Boulle. As artistic director of the decorators Alavoine & Cie., he designed boutiques for Tiffany and Boucheron and made important contacts. After serving in World War I, he worked for wealthy private clients, such as fashion designer Jeanne Lanvin, composer Cole Porter and the French Government.
This bed and screen (wood decorated on gesso with water-gilding and oil-gilding with silver leaf), were designed for his wife's bedroom in their Parisian house and combine simplicity of form with richly patterned surfaces and details borrowed from antiquity but filtered through Rateau's style. Could be a great inspiration for a Space Age-inspired collection incorporating some arty and interior design references.
Undoubtedly, the fashion industry is not enjoying good health and there seems to be a lingering confusion about fashion shows, men/womenswear collections and the "see now buy now" frenzy, all contributing to generate creative short circuits in the designers' minds. Maybe interior design could save fashion: let's think for example about the ongoing collaboration between Belgian designer Raf Simons and Danish Kvadrat, manufacturer of interior design fabrics.
Known for its collaborations with a wide range of artists, architects and designers (among them also Hella Jongerius, Patricia Urquiola, and Paul Smith), Kvadrat seems to have given to Simons, who departed Dior last October after a three-and-a-half-year tenure, the chance to slow down his creative rhythms while rediscovering his original training as an industrial furniture designer.
While in the past Simons appreciated the faster pace of fashion, as he grew older he learnt to appreciate the rewards of slower thinking and manufacturing processes. Designing interior design fabrics is indeed not a rush job and you may end up creating one or two collections a year for an interior design company as opposed to eight collections of garments a year for a well-established fashion house.
In previous collections Simons often included in his designs upholstery fabrics, especially for outerwear, but he also understands that thicker fashion textiles can be applied to interior design by slightly re-adapting certain weaving processes.
In March Simons launched his third collection for Kvadrat: his new textiles Reflex, Pulsar and Fuse are inspired by Modernist furniture, Pop and contemporary art, fashion textiles and music. The textiles are characterised by bold striped motifs in a modern palette including cobalt blue and flaming red, sharp lemon yellow and powder pink as well as a range of greys and neutral tones.
The collection was launched with a special exhibition in Galerie Thomas Schulte in Berlin that featured the iconic Poltrona Seggiovia, a hanging chairlift seat by neo-rationalist architect and designer Franco Albini (originally created for the Milan Triennale in 1940) covered in Simons' bright yellow and orange striped fabrics.
Simons loved this design and the original striped upholstery of Albini's chairs inspired him the main motifs for his new collection for Kvadrat. The company went therefore as far as asking (and obtaining...) exclusive permission by the Fondazione Franco Albini to reproduce the chairs with the new fabrics.
Simons seems to be happier when involved in such projects that in many ways prove that the relentless pace of fashion is killing creativity and enthusiasm. Will Simons combine art, architecture and interior design in his S/S 17 menswear collection presentation (with a special project included) at Pitti Uomo this June? We will discover it in a few weeks (the presentation is on 16th June).
For the time being, what's for sure is that interior design research and textile projects can provide a break and an antidote against the relentless pace of fashion, currently producing piles of forgettable collections: the rhythms may be radically different and, while it may take months or even years to develop one amazing interior design product, quite often clever pieces make history, turning into iconic designs worthy of being displayed in prestigious museums and institutions.