Irenebrination: Notes on Architecture, Art, Fashion, Fashion Law & Technology: February 2017

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A Maximalist Dystopia for the Future (with an Architectural Twist): Marco De Vincenzo A/W 17

The fashion month that is slowly yet relentlessly coming to an end this week in Paris, proved that politics, resistance and human rights have been on many designers' minds. Art has also been (as usual) an important inspiration, while architecture seems to have been left behind for the next season. Yet, there were maybe glimpses of something architectural behind Marco De Vincenzo's maximalist A/W 17 collection.

Arthur Arbesser's runway took place in an industrial environment, but Marco De Vincenzo featured in his collection - showcased at Milano Congressi fairgrounds during the local fashion week - some elements that called to mind solid futuristic and industrial spaces.

His show opened indeed with an ink blue faux fur coat that included an intarsia motif of what may have been a factory with smoke coming out of a chimney. In a way it was a sort of futuristic industrial landscape verging towards the dystopia.

The same motif was replicated on his signature Lurex tops and the show continued in this mood and featured also checked skirts and designs decorated with Autumnal leaves.

If you looked a bit better and if you knew your architecture, you realised that some of the structures and motifs included in the designs echoed the ideas behind the drawings of Antonio Sant'Elia, a visionary Italian architect and a key member of the Futurist movement in architecture.

Born in 1888, Sant'Elia managed to anticipate in his drawings and sketches the characteristics and the configurations of the great metropolises of the modern age. His drawings included cityscapes with towering skyscrapers, power plants and futurist stations for trains and airplanes.

Sant'Elia's vision revolved around a highly industrialized and mechanized city of the future, conceived not as a mass of individual buildings but as a vast, multi-level, interconnected and integrated urban conurbation that at times seemed to have a ziggurat-like formation.

The architect's ziggurats were monumentally monolithic skyscraper buildings with terraces, bridges and aerial walkways that anticipated the settings of early sci-fi films such as Fritz Lang's Metropolis. Sant'Elia's drawings and buildings were therefore characterised by a great energy and sense of movement.

The same energy could be spotted in De Vincenzo's collection, that the designer conceived as a fantasy wardrobe for the future. There were actually no direct references to Space Age fashion or to Sant'Elia buildings (even though the latter may have been on De Vincenzo's mind since there was an exhibition last year at Milan's La Triennale museum marking the 100th anniversary of Sant'Elia's death), but future was a mood conveyed by colours and juxtapositions of textiles and fabrics.

His plaid apron dresses and pleated tartan skirts featured for example a graphic ziggurat motif created with decorative strips of fabrics in contrasting colours and patterns arranged at the level of the hips. These configurations of textiles called to mind the shape of Sant'Elia towering structures.

Further elaborations included coats with PVC fringes that looked like Christmas tinsel decorations, designs characterised by vivid contrasts of colours such as blue and green or pink and white donned with tights covered in a dense floral print, embroidered leopard jackets and coloured furs (for men's as well).

Marco De Vincenzo defended his maximalist vision of clashing textures in the show notes claiming he was "creating a conjunction between seemingly incompatible elements". It would be interesting to see what he may come up with if he combined his quirkiness with a rigorous architectural twist. In a way, there was already a hint to what the outcomes may be in this collection.

Posted at 07:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Emphasis on Bright Hues and Graphic Patterns: Arthur Arbesser's A/W 17

In yesterday's post we looked at a designer who showcased his collection during the latest Milan Fashion Week and who mainly focused on textile elaborations.

Let's move on today and explore something completely different with Arthur Arbesser's A/W 17 graphic collection.

The Austrian designer took inspiration for his collection from Wim Wenders' film "Wings of Desire" and East Berlin in the '80s.

The collection opened with a bronzed foiled coat layered onto a checked skirt and, while metallic shades returned here and there along the collection, the graphic patterns prevailed.

Checks, diagonal lines and stripes appeared as prints or in orange, yellow, and pink or red, white, black and light blue shades on intarsia ribbed knit dresses and body forming turtlenecks.

The geometrical motifs in contrasting shades and colours evoked the Bauhaus textile workshop and in particular Anni Albers' designs.

There was actually an industrial connection with the space used as the venue for the show: the event took indeed place in a disused 19th-century bakery with raw thick concrete walls and bare fixtures contrasting with the most colourful looks (maybe this was also a way to juxtapose the black and white of "Wings of Desire" and Arbesser's passion for colours).

Practicality was introduced via volumes that could be adjusted and reconfigured with functional drawstrings (a current trend).

There was a touch of eccentricity in some of the looks such the (unnecessary) plastic pink shirts, maybe a will to convey a sense of freedom and madness borrowed from Wenders' Marion, a circus artist.

Yet nothing was too clownish here and there were interesting experiments in graphic patterns: Arbesser's optical madness confirmed he is much better when he goes off a tangent and tries to reinvent Anni Albers' geometries than when he opts for black and white looks.

His attempts at introducing a reference to uniforms with a black and white sailor's suit or via the final black crystal trimmed pin-striped jumpsuit (that vaguely called to mind in its shape Pierrot's costume), fell rather flat. The shoes instead tried to elevate the pieces: a collaboration with Vibram, the company better known for their FiveFingers sock sandals, they consisted in sock booties applied on a thin rubber sole or on a solid coloured platform.

Posted at 08:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Fragile Tensions, Unravelled Textiles: Xu Zhi A/W 17

Finding young designers who focus on fabrics and textiles rather than instantly appealing visual effects and current trends may be difficult, but London-based Chinese-born Xuzhi Chen is one of them.

The designer graduated from Central Saint Martins and worked for J.W. Anderson and Craig Green. Chen founded his label Xu Zhi in 2014, and was nominated for the H&M Design Awards in 2015, the LVMH Prize in 2016, and the Woolmark Prize.

After showcasing in the Fashion Hub Market in Milan, the label made its second appearance in the Italian fashion capital last week, when Giorgio Armani allowed the young designer to showcase his new collection at the Armani Theatre.

Xuzhi Chen's graduate collection revolved around yarn elements and textile embroideries. For his new collection, he opted for sophisticated moods and details, and this time his fabric research focused on deconstructed elements.

The collection opened with designs in nappa leather matched with pieces characterised by a raw-edge. The designs that followed were more interesting: cropped jackets, high-waist trousers and dresses, tops and skirts were made by hand-braiding yarns into ropes and then stitching them together onto a base fabric, creating in this way with them curved elements. At times the raw edges haemorrhaged into a silky fringe that sprouted from the hem of a skirt. In other cases the textiles looked as if they had been shattered, frayed and recombined together.

The artisanal techniques and highly textural surfaces employed for these designs could have been metaphorically used to hint at human emotions and at our modern existences falling apart in the maelstrom of unxpected social and political events.

The results looked raw but sophisticated, and the show seemed coherently edited for a young designer. As it usually happens in these cases, it will be worth waiting to see how the label grows up and develops in the next few seasons, but the fact that this young designer focuses on collages of textures and materials to create innovative construction techniques plays in his favour. Hopefully, Xuzhi Chen will have the time to develop them further and his textile research will not be corrupted by the fast rhythms of the industry.

Posted at 04:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Pink Is The New Black: Missoni A/W 17 (Activist Mode On)

During the latest fashion weeks we have seen designers protesting against US President Donald Trump in different ways: Raf Simons invited people to resist on his men's runway in New York via messages scattered on T-shirts and belts made with tape; Chalayan in London reacted with a moment of silent yet joyful aggression, while Miuccia Prada in Milan introduced her conceptual and political feminism. Angela Missoni chose to express her views through hats during today's show at Milan Fashion Week.

The designer left on the guests' seats the feminist pussyhats seen at the women's march on Washington, D.C. last month.

The show was dubbed "Pink is the new black" and the set featured an image of a pink coloured Monte Rosa ("rosa" in Italian means "pink"), the second highest mountain in the Alps. Yet pink was actually just one of the many shades of the collection that mainly consisted of multi-coloured designs inspired by the house archives.

The trademark Missoni zigzag arty patterns were replicated on sweaters, leggings and cardigans; colourful geometries were combined on a fur vest layered over sweaters and pants. Chunky multi-coloured plaid jackets and coats were juxtaposed to light-hearted form-fitting dresses and pantsuits.

The combination of textures on layered styles pointed more at a studied but functionally practical sporty chic (check out the double-breasted silver jacket matched with glittery green pants) rather than a casual mix-and-match.

There was no no overt political message during the show, even though there were some clear metaphors: knits inspire protection and warmth, but they also guarantee the wearers enough freedom of movement. Politics was in the soundtrack that featured Gil Scott-Heron's "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" and Patti Smith's "People Got the Power", but then reappeared on the runway in the form of three sweaters donned as mini-dresses.

One of them featured the Pink Triangle, a symbol adopted by many Gay rights groups in the 1970s to draw attention to oppression and persecution (the Pink Triangle was originally used by the Nazis to signify homosexuals). The ACT-UP (Aids Coalition To Unleash Power) started using in the '80s a Pink Triangle that pointed up, to signify an active fight back.

Another jumper featured the Venus symbol representing the female gender; a third design included two red hearts strategically placed on the model's breasts, an ironic reference to the no-female-nipple policy on social media.

The models then came out for the finale: all of them were wearing the anti-Trump protest-style pussy-eared beanie hats, some in Missoni’s very own variation with bold stripes or trademark jacquard.

If you thought this was all an empty feel-good temporary moment, think twice: Angela Missoni and her family including her 85 year-old mother and house founder Rosita came out on the runway and read the following statement: "In a time of uncertainty, there is a bond between us that can keep us strong and safe: the bond that unites those that respect the human rights of all. Let's show the world that the fashion community is united and fearless."

The uplifting show wasn't just a call for unity in the fashion industry, and a celebration of female power and the creative energy of women in the form of a pro-women knitwear happening: some of proceeds from the collection will indeed be going to the American Civil Liberties Union and the UN Refugee Agency. It looks like the revolution will not be televised, but it may be taken on (and off) the runway.

Posted at 07:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Girl with a Gun: Prada A/W 17

Just a couple of weeks ago insiders who worked on the presidential campaign stated that US President Donald Trump prefers female staffers "to dress like women". Soon after the statement, people took to the social media and started celebrating influential women and posting their own interpretations of this statement.

Yet, while we were posting tweets, Miuccia Prada must have been thinking and scheming about her A/W 2017 runway.

Her personal interpretation of what it feels like to be a woman nowadays was indeed the very essence of the show that took place yesterday's afternoon during Milan Fashion Week.

The space in Via Fogazzaro was more or less the same domestic backdrop for the A/W 17 men's show with the benches and beds with leather sheets separated by partitions covered in tiles, formica or marble.

There were some additions, that is walls covered with posters, photographs, postcards, maps and clippings, materials that were meant to help the guests identifying the people inhabiting this continuous space designed by Rem Koolhaas's AMO – women and feminists.

Miuccia had firmly in mind Fellini's City of Women, yet the collection was not about the film per se, but about the title, the idea of women's power in a male world gone utterly wrong.

This idea first materialised as corduroy pants matched with thick wool bras and duffel coats, then it developed in embellishments, ostrich feathers, and embroideries on pencil skirts, fluffy mohair cardigans, beaded skirts and tweed jackets, and in the crystals covering dresses for modern flappers.

Some of the knitwear motifs seen on the jumpers from the men's collection were applied to jackets and skirts. The furry shoes from that collection were transformed into multicoloured boots, while the shell and wood necklaces and the Roberta di Camerino evoking bags seen on the men's/pre-Fall runway made a come back.

There was also something else: illustrations by Robert McGinnis (also known for his film posters for Breakfast at Tiffany's, James Bond movies, Barbarella and The Incredibles) for '60s pulp thrillers, such as Brett Halliday's Murder and the Married Virgin and Never Kill a Client or Erle Stanley Gardner's Perry Mason Solves the Case of the Half-Wakened Wife, were printed on sheaths and pencil skirts.

Miuccia is considered a master in subversion and she employed the pulp illustrations that usually exploited female sexuality as ways to hint at powerful women, femmes fatales with guns or ingenues turned sinister vixens with weapons of mass seductions.

In a way it was as if the idealism of left-wing Italian politics in the '70s was filtered through glamorous lenses and pulp atmospheres.

Though, at times, rather than seeing Miuccia Prada's youth fascination with protest and politics as a young woman, you could almost see in the corduroy flares and hand-knitted scarves in mismatched colours Monica Vitti in La Pacifista.

But Prada's also pulp pin ups called to mind Monica Vitti turning from a girl trapped in conventions to seductress and independent woman in The Girl with the Pistol.

Maybe the character was on Miuccia's mind: backstage, while explaining ideas and inspiration, Prada referenced a feminist at the women's march holding a placard on which she expressed her disappointment at having to fight about the same issues and rights 50 years later than she originally did.

It is highly unlikely that Prada will lead the revolution, but the vision of sensual vixens with a gun in their hand could be conceived as an answer to the arrogance of male power, a way to tell the world that there's more to a girl than sugar and spice and all things nice.

Posted at 07:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle (Copy & Refashion?): Moschino A/W 2017

In his S/S 17 collection for Moschino Jeremy Scott took inspiration from paper dolls. Humble paper continued to provide him with ideas for the next season as well, as showed on today's runway during Milan Fashion Week.

The opening pieces - coats, jackets, mini-skirts, tops and skirt suits - were inspired by brown cardboard and they were at times made to look as if held together with parcel tape or made with crumpled paper bags.

Some of the pieces were decorated with shipping labels spelling "Fragile" and "Handle with care" that reminded the audience how we collectively rely from couriers parcels.

Scott's interpretation of carboard couture took another (less convincing) turn in the looks that followed: '50s dresses, casual jackets, tops, bustiers and skirts matched with thigh-high boots were covered in print collages made from old Moschino editorials stolen and literally ripped from the pages of Vogue.

This trick was a sort of return to Franco Moschino's attitude to literally take the piss out of himself and the fashion industry, but some of the bright nuances and the technique of collaging together ripped and torn pages called to mind Mimmo Rotella's layered and torn film and advert posters assembled with his décollage technique.

The trick tended to become a bit tiring, though, after two or three models sported it, but it was uplifted by George Michael's "Too Funky" on the soundtrack, a sort of ode to madness on the runway.

The collection closed with Haute (Trash) Couture: gowns made with a pile of rubbish, refashioned from a shower curtain or a rug or layered under a dry cleaning bag; crystals mimicked bubble wrap; toy rats were used to create a stole; a bag was shaped like a trash bin, a toilet roll was reinvented as a handbag and a single sock served as a purse.

Through his fashionable puns Scott was trying to hint at consumption and recycling in a fun way.

And while he is responsible for pollution as much as everybody else, when it comes to recyling he is actually a master. Yes, recycling from other collections.

Despite his goodwill at trying to find new ideas, one of his model sported a wheel on her head and a dress made with bin bags, elements reminiscent of Alexander McQueen's Autumn/Winter 2009-10 collection. The dress made of found watches called instead to mind the dresses and bras made with Swatch watches seen in 2003 at the "Swatch Skin" event in Seoul South Korea.

But, if these were mere coincidences, others were more or less rip-offs: indeed Scott came up with a Surrealist gown made of gloves matched with a purse made with one glove that echoed Margiela's purse for H&M and the Belgian designer's iconic waistcoats made of vintage gloves.

Besides, among the accessories there was also a reinvention of the iconic magazine clutch from the '80s.

The irony of this collection was supposed to be on people spending and splashing and on the fact that real attitude is not in how much you spend on something, but in how you wear it, may it be a bin bag used as a dress or an empty toilet paper roll turned into a fancy bangle. So, the final message was rather positive, encouraging people to make something by themselves or reinvent it in a cheap material when you can't afford to buy original.

Yet said by Scott, a designer well-versed in copyright infringement, the message sounded like a lie. Besides, even though the collection was less ridiculous than some of the previous ones for Moschino and even managed to be more relevant to the times we are living in, it still echoed previous designs and could have been summarised with the subtitle of McQueen's A/W 2009 collection - "Everything And The Kitchen Sink".

Posted at 08:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Return of Cosmic Fashion

In yesterday's post we looked at Christopher Kane's A/W 2017 collection, with its Space Age references. As stated in that post, among the main accessories introduced during Monday's runway there were Kane's futuristic Safety Buckle bags and high-top sneakers (the safety buckle is a trademark motif that first appeared in Kane's 2007 collection).

These accessories are part of the Space Collection and their colours are described as "Pitch Black, Venus Pink, Mars Red, Solar Sun, Yellow Moon Dust, and Planet Blue".

The most cosmic thing about them is not the price (around €900 for the bag and €400 for the sneakers...) nor the fact that you can already purchase them on Kane's site, but the announcement that a bag and a pair of sneakers were launched into space on February 6th from Ashbourne in Derbyshire, England. They landed about three hours later within 193 Km from the takeoff spot, having reached an altitude of up to 38km above the Earth and having sustained pressure close to 0% of that at sea level and temperatures of minus 64 degrees Celsius.

Kane is not the only one who took a renewed interest in space: Molly Goddard recently designed two flat boots for Topshop (one in a silvery moon shade) that call to mind André Courrèges' 1965 iconic white kid boots (Goddard's boots do not feature an open toe or cut-out top, still the shape is very similar to Courrèges').

On the New York Fashion Week runways instead the Museum of Cosmonautics in Moscow provided a fresh inspiration for Felipe Oliveira Baptista's Lacoste A/W 17 collection, while, as you may remember from a previous post, Vivienne Tam invited us to join NASA with her S/S 17 collection.

Alessandro Michele at Gucci was the latest designer to jump on the sci-fi bandwagon: his collection, showcased today in Milan was another orgy of antiquarian and historical details remixed with the present and the future. One of his skirts featured a print of a floral painting with a vintage UFO flying above it and three smaller flying saucers joining the mothership from a blouse.

These new cosmic fashion references arrived while Russian KosmoKurs announced a few days ago that it will start selling tickets for its commercial passenger spacecraft (for $250,000) next year, to try and beat Virgin's Richard Branson and Tesla founder Elon Musk into orbit.

Interestingly enough, when it was first launched, Space Age fashion was full of hope and optimism, while now, we seem to have turned to it to escape from our sad and complicated planet.

The possibilities of finding a new place where we could move seem in the meantime to have increased: NASA revealed today that scientists have identified via the infrared Spitzer Space Telescope seven Earth-size, habitable-zone planets around a ultra-cool dwarf star, an exoplanet system called TRAPPIST-1 located at about 40 light-years (235 trillion miles) from Earth, in the constellation Aquarius. It looks like fashion designers have some fresh cosmic inspirations awaiting for them...

Posted at 07:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Mix-and-Match Contrasts from the Factory Floor to the Spaceship Factory: Christopher Kane A/W 17

It is surprising how, at times, a fashion collection moving from a sort of sci-fi art inspiration can indirectly make a political statement. But, somehow, this is what happened on Christopher Kane's A/W 17 runway.

Showcased during London Fashion Week, Kane's collection opened with a historical reference and a heritage homage interpreted as dresses made with peach, pink and blue neoclassical damasks by Gainsborough Silks (woven in England since 1903).

This was a sort of interior design connection rather than a fashion reference, considering that these fabrics are usually applied to furnishings.

The angular, jagged, sharp and stiff shapes of the dresses introduced themes that Kane explored later on in his collection – the future, cosmic designs and Space Age.

They were tackled via a trench coat covered with iridescent fabric strips, through pleated silvery gowns, holographic fabrics, cashmere cardigans covered in a metallic glaze, and prints of Ionel Talpazan's UFOs.

The late self-taught outsider artist Talpazan created throughout his life art inspired by an encounter he had with a UFO when he was a child in Romania.

He often showed these fantastic spaceships in cross-sectional diagrams that revealed how they worked and added explanatory texts in Romanian or English, using bold and bright colours to indicate the sources - nuclear, solar and electromagnetic energy - that powered them.

Talpazan even believed NASA could have learnt from his artwork and his ideas on issues such as advanced propulsion and accelerated space travel.

The artist was actually interested in the technology beyond UFOs thinking they could help bringing about a better world by introducing a benevolent technology. There was therefore a positive and encouraging message behind his art.

In the same way, there seemed to be a positive and youthful message behind Kane's lunar dresses, asymmetrical tops in shiny Constructivist block colours, grey cardigans edged in silver sequins, Space Age suits and in the closing looks decorated with cascades of sparkling appliquéd 3-D holographic flowers.

At times, though, simplicity worked better: his flowers seemed indeed les extravagant and more acceptable when they randomly decorated a pocket on a plain dress or a beige raincoat taken from another section of the runway show inspired by factory workers and laboratory technicians.

These workday designs were characterised by Velcro fastenings and the offer of this section of the catwalk show also included oversized wool coats and knits covered with pockets along the sleeves.

Accessories were similarly suspended between the factory floor and the spaceship factory: patent pumps were padded underfoot with industrial foam, a material that also decorated the upper (a decorative touch that the Surrealists would have loved or that you may see on Prada's runways...); but there were also holographic slippers (the ruby version was a combo of The Red Shoes and The Wizard of Oz), bejeweled Crocs lined in fur, and Kane's futuristic Safety Buckle bags and high-top sneakers.

As a whole the show didn't seem too coherent or cohesive and, while he stayed true to his personal vision, here and there Kane verged more towards Versace circa 1984 (remember the designer's oroton tops?) than towards a desperatively innovative space odyssey.

Bizarrelly enough, though, his schizophrenia represented pretty well the divided world in which we are living in: while Britain is caught in the Brexit dilemma, not too far from the venue for Kane's show (Tate Britain), people were protesting in favour of the UK staying in the EU and against President Trump's state visit to Britain.

Besides, while Kane's show was a moment of escapism, there was a very down to earth message in his art reference. Born in Romania, Ionel Talpazan ran away from his country at 19 swimming across the Danube River to Yugoslavia. He then joined a United Nations refugee camp and, declared a political refugee, he was accepted for U.S. residency and granted citizenship, settling down in New York. In a nutshell, Kane's trip to space was somehow more grounded in reality and in the current immigration issues than it seemed.

Posted at 08:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Anger, Architecture & Celebration in Monastic Moods: Chalayan A/W 17

There's different ways to be political and vent your anger in fashion: you can wear your opinion on a slogan T-shirt, for example, or you can opt for more silent and subtle conceptual forms of protest as Hussein Chalayan did during his A/W 17 runway show that marked his return to London.

The collection was showcased on Saturday at Sadler's Wells Theater, a venue reminiscent of Chalayan's early presentations (before he decided to move to the Paris schedule 16 years ago) like his show for "After Words" with its iconic skirt that turned into a wood table. The location also hinted at the designer's collaboration with the contemporary dance company that resulted in the 2015 performance "Gravity Fatigue".

The looks that opened the show were characterised by a monastic modernity, a sense of humbleness that called to mind the arty simplicity of Joseph Beuys' felt suit.

In this first section of the runway models mainly donned tunic-like tops, soft loose pants with side belts, and cocooning jackets.

The palette revolved around neutral tones of concrete grays and autumnal browns, that faded to a black and white monochrome. There were therefore no visually striking surface elaborations in bright and bold colours, ideal for that perfect Instagram moment, but the pieces had some artfully tailoring tricks.

One black design looked like a dress matched with a linear coat, but it was actually one piece, its fluid lines harmonically enveloped the models' body, while a black jacket was reworked as a corset and matched with a white shirt.

There was probably more than just one inspiration in the collection: the wool felt fabric pointed at Beuys, but the column-like gowns were reminiscent of Ancient Greek sculptures (a hint at a return to solid ancient values?).

Greece actually gave Chalayan also an architectural inspiration: a jacquard represented an Ancient Greek city map combined with Manhattan's modern grid system, an idea for all women who may feel like architectural goddesses, but also a political message.

The modern grid structure created indeed the conditions for businesses and society to flourish in Manhattan, and embodied a New World sensibility, offering at the same time new opportunities and allowing a multicultural, highly networked landscape to flourish.

The bare threads on some of the designs introduced instead the closing numbers: at the very end of the show models walked towards the front of the stage and fiercely ripped a paper flap or panel integrated in their clothes around the chest area.

This aggressive gesture of liberation revealed tinsel strips and streamers in bold sparkling tones of green and purple, glitter and feathers that, floating in the air, fell to the ground.

It was a sudden explosion of tackiness and joy in the monastic quiet and austere moods Chalayan had created with the rest of the collection and it pointed at the dual rhythms that regulate our lives – calm and protest, peace and anger, celebration and aggression, and the dichotomies solitude and isolation Vs fellowship and society.

While the choice of showcasing the collection in London seemed coherent with the location of his menswear show and with the fact that the designer opened in 2015 his own store on Mayfair's Bourdon Street, it remains unclear if his womenswear runways will return to Paris in future.

Surely, for the time being, the ones who gained the most from this collection and show were London's fashion students: 300 free tickets were indeed awarded to them.

While it was a shame there was no technological collaboration in this show like in the previous collection, students hopefully benefited from this lesson in conceptualism and subtle political messages with an architectural twist.

Posted at 04:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I Become a Nisei: "Self-Interned, 1942 - Noguchi in Poston War Relocation Center" @ The Noguchi Museum, Long Island City, NY

"To be hybrid anticipates the future. This is America, the nation of all nationalities. The racial and cultural intermixture is the antithesis of all the tenet of the Axis Powers. For us to fall into the Fascist line of race bigotry is to defeat our unique personality and strength." Isamu Noguchi, "I Become a Nisei", 1942

US President Donald Trump's travel ban (suspended after a federal district judge issued a temporary restraining order against it, but soon to be rescinded and replaced with a new one) turned immigration and refugee policies into a global hot button issue. These themes are usually analysed from a political or social point of view, but the Noguchi Museum in Long Island City, NY (32-37 Vernon Boulevard) is currently exploring them with a compact exhibition that will hopefully prompt visitors to think more about nationality, segregation and deportation.

Curated by Noguchi Museum Senior Curator Dakin Hart, "Self-Interned, 1942: Noguchi in Poston War Relocation Center" (through January 2018), marks the 75th anniversary of Executive Order 9066. Signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on 19 February 1942, this directive authorized the internment of Japanese citizens and American citizens of Japanese heritage living on the west coast. Artist Isamu Noguchi voluntarily entered the Poston War Relocation Center, in the Arizona Desert, despite being exempt from internment as a resident of New York.

Noguchi, who was also chairman of The Nisei Writers and Artists Mobilization for Democracy and a national spokesperson for the Japanese-American community, took this decision to give something positive to the forcibly displaced community of Japanese Americans. He hoped, indeed, that it would have been possible for him to turn the camp into a more human environment, adding a park and recreational area, baseball fields, swimming pools, and a design for a cemetery.

Instead, he was never supported by the Poston officials, the War Relocation Authority, or the War Department, his plans were never put into practice and he managed to get out of the camp seven months later.

During his time at the camp Noguchi walked the desert, wrote letters to friends and focused on his work.

Taken from the museum collection, the pieces on display for this exhibition follow a chronological timeline to trace Noguchi's creative path before, during, and after his time at Poston (so from 1941 to 1944, the year after he returned to New York City).

While at the camp Noguchi's works transformed, going from figurative to modernist: a sculpture portraying theatre actress Lily Zietz (1941) shows the time when the artist was supporting himself creating portrait heads of the rich and famous (before entering Poston Noguchi was working on Ginger Rogers' portrait).

At Poston, the artist started working with new materials, including wood, while he tried to tackle satire ("Yellow Landscape", 1943, is a reference to the anti-Asian stereotype sweeping the Unites States after December 7, 1941) and consolatory subjects ("Mother and Child", 1944-47).

The event also includes archival documents such as his essay "I Become a Nisei" (the term indicated first generation Japanese-Americans) and letters like the one Nogouchi's wrote to Man Ray in May 1942 in which he calls life in the camp as "the weirdest, most unreal situation".

The exhibition concludes with abstract pieces like "Double Red Mountain", a table sculpture in Persian travertine that represents microcosmic landscapes, and "Gateways", comprising the artist's signature voids, doorways, and donut-shaped suns.

The main point of this event is not just looking at the impact his experience at Poston had on Noguchi's art, but also exploring a gap in American democracy, this is what makes "Self-Interned" a very relevant exhibition for our times.

"We who are artists know that any culture worthy of the name blossoms with the growth of the indivisual and dies under Fascism. Let it be said then that the democracies fight for the equality of races and opportunity and the freedom of culture everywhere," Noguchi wrote in his essay "I Become a Nisei". It sounds almost incredible, but, seventy-five years later, they still sound like the most powerful way to oppose to shallow narrow-minded leaders à la Donald Trump.

Image credits for this post

2. Isamu Noguchi. Lily Zietz, 1941. Plaster. ©The Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum, New York/ARS. Photograph by Kevin Noble.

3. Isamu Noguchi. Yellow Landscape, 1943. Magnesite, wood, string, metal fishing weight. ©The Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum, New York/ARS. Photograph by Kevin Noble.

4. Isamu Noguchi. Double Red Mountain, 1969. Persian red travertine on Japanese pine. ©The Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum, New York/ARS. Photograph by Kevin Noble.

5. Isamu Noguchi. Untitled, 1943. Wood, string. ©The Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum, New York/ARS. Photograph by Kevin Noble.

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

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February 2017

February 28, 2017

A Maximalist Dystopia for the Future (with an Architectural Twist): Marco De Vincenzo A/W 17

February 27, 2017

Emphasis on Bright Hues and Graphic Patterns: Arthur Arbesser's A/W 17

February 26, 2017

Fragile Tensions, Unravelled Textiles: Xu Zhi A/W 17

February 25, 2017

Pink Is The New Black: Missoni A/W 17 (Activist Mode On)

February 24, 2017

Girl with a Gun: Prada A/W 17

February 23, 2017

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle (Copy & Refashion?): Moschino A/W 2017

February 22, 2017

The Return of Cosmic Fashion

February 21, 2017

Mix-and-Match Contrasts from the Factory Floor to the Spaceship Factory: Christopher Kane A/W 17

February 20, 2017

Anger, Architecture & Celebration in Monastic Moods: Chalayan A/W 17

February 19, 2017

I Become a Nisei: "Self-Interned, 1942 - Noguchi in Poston War Relocation Center" @ The Noguchi Museum, Long Island City, NY