Four years ago in a post entitled "A Brief Glossary of the Most Abused Terms, Expressions and Concepts in Fashion" (divided in Part I and Part II), we mentioned the word and the verb "Curator/To Curate". In that post we stated: "Definitely the most abused term in the creative arts world. A curator used to be a highly educated person who took care of cataloguing a collection or who put together an exhibition. Now everybody can be a curator and everybody can curate everything, from an exhibition to a window shop, from a film festival to a magazine, a photo shoot or an advertising campaign. One of the most popular fun T-shirts seen at assorted art events all over the world just spells 'CURATOR' and I'm sure that, if Ikea did toilet signs with the words "Curated by..." and some space left to add the name you want, they would sell millions. A very obnoxious example of how this word has been abused: the press releases to some fashion shows include the section "Music curated by" and quite often the musical selection ends up being a pile of vile tracks (Burberry shows anybody?)."
As the years passed the terms "curator/curated by" kept on being overused: Burberry's press releases for example continued highlighting how the music for a show was "curated" by Burberry's current president and chief creative officer Christopher Bailey. In 2015, the brand also started a channel within Apple Music's "Curators" section.
Burberry's obsession with these words reached a new peak at the end of August when it was announced that the brand will organise a photographic exhibition during London Fashion Week.
Celebrating British photography, "Here We Are" (September 18 - October 1 at Old Sessions House, 22 Clerkenwell Green, London) will feature iconic images by more than 30 photographers.
The event was announced on WWD with an article that featured a rather interesting subtitle: "The exhibit, which will feature over 200 photos, was curated by Bailey, writer, curator and director of Claire de Rouen Lucy Kumara Moore and cocurated by Alasdair McLellan."
It is hard not being fascinated by the subtitles to this article because, linguistically, they prove we have lost the ability to use a Thesaurus and that hip and cool words are used by journalists and press officers like a drunkard may use a lamppost, in a nutshell we employ them to make things sound more grand than they actually are.
There is nothing wrong in merging art, fashion and photography as Burberry is doing, but the continuous use of the "curator/curated by" terms in Burberry's case in connection with Bailey is starting to sound ridiculously contrived.
Curating means selecting, choosing, editing, refining and organising something using professional or expert knowledge, but in the case of this exhibition you can almost picture a press officer showing images to Bailey and the creative director nodding or shaking his head. In a way it would be better if Burberry stopped overusing the words "curator/curated by" or if they would at least eliminate Bailey from the equation and let somebody else do the job to offer more variety to readers and consumers. We dread the day when fashion designers will say they have "curated" a fashion collection, hinting at the fact they may have not created it, but copied, pasted and re-assembled it (well, quite a few of them are already working along these lines...).
In yesterday's post we looked at model Barbara Mullen and at a project trying to rediscover iconic images portraying her. There is actually a famous picture of Mullen that we didn't include in that post: it shows the model captured in 1951 by Richard Avedon in a floral headpiece by milliner Lilly Daché. Mullen often modelled headpieces by Daché in the photoshoots in which she appeared, so it is worthwhile rediscovering this milliner for her connections with Mullen and for her flamboyant creations.
Born in 1898 (or 1896) in France (even though some say she was Polish or Romanian), as a young child she wasn't considered a conventional beauty, so she took to creating decorative accessories to enhance her beauty employing unusual materials including grape leaves (a practice that will convince her in later years that, when your hat is correct, it will compensate many faults).
At 15 Daché became an apprentice to Paris milliners Caroline Reboux and Suzanne Talbot, emigrating to the United States between 1919 and 1924.
Daché first worked at Macy's Department store in New York and at the Bonnet Shop, an independent hat shop on the Upper West Side; she became a milliner after she bought it with a co-worker.
In 1931, Daché married French-born Jean Despres, an executive at the large cosmetics and fragrance company Coty Inc., and started collaborating with them.
A few years later she moved to a nine story building on 78 East 56th Street, where she set her personal, work and retail spaces.
The business flourished even during the depression era, as women focused more on accessories than on clothes, and hats continued therefore to be in demand.
Daché became well-known for fancy oversized draped turbans at times featuring large fabric flowers (the first hat she made for her own boss was a turban in four shades of blue, made from scraps she found in the shop), large brimmed hats, visored caps for war workers, and snoods. It is said that her production ran as high as 30,000 hats a year.
Together with John-Fredericks, Walter Florell, Laddie Northridge and Sally Victor, Daché became part of a group of milliners who were better known at the time than fashion designers and who charmed many celebrity clients and Hollywood stars such as Maria Montez, Carmen Miranda, Sonja Henie, Audrey Hepburn, Carole Lombard and Marlene Dietrich.
Actress Linda Darnell is portrayed in a famous picture wearing a Daché hat with a futuristic see-through circle around it, and legend goes that Daché's last customer was Loretta Young, who arrived at her studio after she decided to retire and bought her last 30 hats.
Daché was the recipient of famous design prizes - the Neiman Marcus Fashion Award (1940) and the Coty American Fashion Critics Award (1943).
By 1949, Daché was designing clothing accessories, she had her own perfume and a costume jewelry line; in the early '50s the trademark Coty girl was embodied by a young woman in a strikingly elegant black Lilly Daché hat.
Around 1954 Coty established General Beauty Products Inc., to distribute Lucien Lelong, Marie Earle and Lilly Daché Hair Cosmetics in the United States.
After five years Daché was given the right to purchase 20% of the shares of General Beauty Products and she also took up the role of president of General Beauty Products.
At the end of the 1950's she hired a young assistant - Halston Frowick - who went on to become known for his own line of clothes, while leading New York hairdresser Kenneth Battelle took charge of her hair salon.
Throughout the '50s Daché became a bit of a celebrity, she was indeed a mystery guest on a 28th August 1955 episode of the TV game show "What's My Line?"
She was referenced in the song "Tangerine" performed by the Jimmy Dorsey Orchestra ("Tangerine / She is all they say / With mascara'd eye and chapeaux by Daché") and wrote a few books including her autobiography, Talking through My Hats (1946) and The Glamour Book (1956).
As the hat business gradually declined, in 1968 Daché decided to retire. She died at a nursing home in Louvecienne, France in 1989.
Daché was certainly known for her kitschly glamorous headpieces characterised by masses of bows and blossoming flowers, but some of her less extravagant yet still striking hats included architectural features such as elliptical brims and spiralling patterns.
One of the most popular creations remains the versatile "circle hat" that was based on a simple pattern, published on the popular Family Circle magazine.
Among Daché's most extravagant inventions there were veils that were tinted green across the eyes and blush-rose across the cheeks.
There are some striking examples of Lilly Daché's headpieces, turbans and snoods in a few museums like the Philadelphia Museum of Art and The Met Museum: if you check their archives you will spot, for example, creations from the 1950s such as a multiple tiered spiralling black astrakhan wool and net hat, but also an extravagant 1957 floral design in bright shades of scarlet and fuchsia silk satin.
One of the most extraordinary designs is kept at the Philadelphia Museum of Art - it is a headpiece covered in straw leaves and pine cones (1958).
Yet there are many more creations by Daché to explore and get inspired by all over the Internet and, after seeing some of them, you will certainly wish we still lived in times in which adding a fancy hat to one's wardrobe was almost more desirable than getting a brand new dress.
A model in a Gilbert Orcel emerald green hat and strings of amber beads serenely smiles in a picture taken in 1956 by William Klein. For most of us this is just another classic fashion image, one of those elegant headshots from a glamorous vintage magazine. Yet for writer John-Michael O'Sullivan it became one of the starting points for a wider research on a model forgotten by time - Barbara Mullen.
Soon O'Sullivan's passion turned into an obsession that led him to rediscover images shot by famous photographers and portraying the model in elegant designs or exotic locations. What struck O'Sullivan was the chameleon quality of Mullen: as he stated in a piece he wrote for The Observer"her features seemed, in front of a lens, somehow morphed, endlessly transforming her into somebody else."
In some of the early images shot by Lillian Bassman (Mullen became her muse), she looks like an elegant swan; she is a sophisticated lady in a flaming red Herbert Sondheim chiffon gown in a 1950 Enka Rayon ad photographed by Francesco Scavullo; Norman Parkinson took instead a lushly coloured photograph of Mullen delicately balancing on an elephant in a Lanvin robe and satin trousers at the gates to the City Palace in Jaipur.
Mullen's dichotomic approach to the fashion world was embodied by Jerry Plucer-Sarna's photograph of the model in which she is potrayed dressed in elegant attire with a large half-moon hat on her head, smoking a cigarette with a hand and simultaneously trying to eat spaghetti in the most inappropriate yet irresistibly ironic manner, while defiantly staring at the camera.
Later images show a more carefree Mullen in a white swimsuit and simple ponytail sitting under a large white parasol, a slice of watermelon adding some bright colours to the composition (a Frances McLaughlin beauty shoot for Glamour, taken in 1954), or relaxing in Greece wearing a red, white and blue-striped hooded sweater by Dior (Lionel Kazan, 1956).
After she gave up her modelling career Mullen moved to Europe and opened a boutique in Klosters, a Swiss ski resort, where she sold designs by Pucci, Ungaro, Sonia Rykiel and Kenzo Takada (among the others).
In 1964 Gail Kernan (also known as Gail Garraty, original illustrator of Ursula K. LeGuin’s fantasy books), created a poster for her boutique featuring its owner in a turtleneck, her hair cut in a sleek Vidal Sassoon bob.
In the poster she looked like a modern dynamic woman, something she had anticipated in her fashion images such as the one shot by Joe Leombruno and Jack Bodi in the mid-'50s in which she donned a design by Rudi Gernreich for Westwood Knitting Mills.
O'Sullivan eventually tracked the former model down and met her in Switzerland where she lives with her second husband. The writer is still researching Barbara Mullen's life and fashion images, but he is also working on an ambitious project – a book about Mullen.
O'Sullivan has launched a campaign with Unbound, a new publishing house producing books by crowdfunding, and he is currently gathering the funds to print The Replacement Girl, Mullen's first biography. The title of the book is inspired by the name Lillian Bassman gave to her muse: Mullen was indeed a last-minute stand-in for a 1948 photoshoot.
Mullen's first appeared in magazines around 70 years ago, on September 1st 1947, and O'Sullivan is celebrating this anniversary (and Mullen's 90th birthday) by publishing on his Instagram page 90 pictures of the model by 90 photographers accompanied by lenghty descriptions featuring anecdotes about Mullen. The project will finish this week, on 1st September, but you will still have time in the next few weeks to support O'Sullivan's crowdfunding.
When did you start your research about Barbara Mullen and what prompted you to find out more about her? John-Michael O'Sullivan: I first came across Lillian Bassman's pictures of Barbara in 2011. A year later, I read a William Klein interview which made her sound like a fascinating character. And it all really started from there; I kept coming across mentions of her in magazines and books, and finding more and more pictures online. The Observer commissioned me to interview her for their magazine in 2013 - and that encounter, when I got to know a little about Barbara, and was introduced to her incredible archive, is what triggered this whole project.
What fascinates you about the images featuring her? John-Michael O'Sullivan: In the first instance, it was the sheer diversity of her work. In Lillian Bassman's pictures, she's this fragile, elegant ghost; when you see her being photographed by William Klein, she's a sophisticated clown. She responded to every photographer in such an individual way. In a time when most models had a very specific, defined look, she had a unique, chameleon-like quality. And she worked for such a long period, across two continents, that I'm constantly re-reading old magazines in my collection and spotting her in images that I'd completely missed - only a few weeks ago, I found a stunning colour shot of her by George Platt Lynes, that I'd flipped past several times before.
When did she appear for the first time on a fashion magazine? John-Michael O'Sullivan: She first appeared in magazines exactly 70 years ago, on September 1st 1947; before that, she'd spent two years as a department store mannequin at Bergdorf Goodman. She started right at the top, in American Vogue, photographed by Richard Rutledge. Her first Vogue cover came a year later. She appeared on its cover four times in total - alongside eight covers of Elle, five of Bazaar, three of Glamour, and two each of British and French Vogue. And she retired in 1960, with occasional returns to the spotlight up to the mid-Sixties.
In your opinion, which photographer captured Mullen at her best? John-Michael O'Sullivan: I actually love off-duty pictures of her, where you catch glimpses of the person behind the model. In terms of professional pictures, William Klein's are probably the most distinctive - though Barbara also did some terrific stuff with Toni Frissell, Lionel Kazan, Milton Greene, Jeanloup Sieff and Joe Santoro.
Which is the most famous picture we have of Barbara Mullen? John-Michael O'Sullivan: It’s a tough call! But right now, the most famous one is probably the one Lillian Bassman took of her in Paris in February 1949, wearing a Dior evening gown. This spring, that picture was chosen for the cover of Harper's Bazaar's 150th anniversary book, and projected onto the Empire State Building for their anniversary party this spring.
What kind of impression did you have when you met her for the first time? John-Michael O'Sullivan: I was expecting someone to match Lillian Bassman's pictures; instead, I found someone funny, earthy and self-deprecating, who's never taken herself - or her work - too seriously.
Did you discover any extraordinary anecdotes behind some of her pictures, or are there any mysteries you would like to unveil? John-Michael O'Sullivan: It's an ongoing process! I'm forever interviewing people who provide new insights on pictures I've been familiar with for years. Legendary Vogue editor Polly Mellen remembered a shoot with Barbara and Karen Radkai on Coney Island, and Toni Frissell's daughter-in-law passed on a story about their Peru shoot, where Toni pushed Barbara into an arena in the middle of a bullfight to get the perfect shot! In terms of mysteries, there are so many. But I'm fascinated by the Jerry Plucer-Sarna picture, which I first spotted on Irenebrination; I'd love to know where that one came from!
The fashion world in which Mullen worked was radically different from the contemporary fashion universe: in your opinion, what's the best thing about that world that we have sadly lost? John-Michael O'Sullivan: For me, I think what's most interesting about that world is, surprisingly, how similar it is to today's fashion landscape. Now, those mid-century photographers, designers, editors and models are legends, but at the time they were all youngsters, making it up as they went along. Not that different, after all, from their descendants today! In terms of something that's been lost, I think there was a very specific moment where a post-war financial boom enabled these youngsters to do incredible things, in a way that has perhaps never been replicated since.
Why did you decide to turn to a crowdfunding project to publish The Replacement Girl? John-Michael O'Sullivan: It was out of necessity, in all honesty; we went through several mainstream publishers over the past four years, all of whom loved the story, but felt it wasn't commercial enough to publish. Each time, we tried to change the scope and focus of the book to make it more palatable to them. With Unbound, it felt as though we finally had the chance to tell the story exactly how we wanted it.
When do you hope to bring the book out? John-Michael O'Sullivan: Provided we hit our funding target, it should come out in 2018!
You're also doing an Instagram page about Mullen, can you tell us more about it? John-Michael O'Sullivan: Barbara turned 90 earlier this year. To celebrate her birthday, I gave her a book with 90 photographs, by 90 different photographers. And that's what triggered the idea of the Instagram posts; to reproduce those images, and give people an insight into the story behind each one, and through that, hopefully, to get people interested in the idea of supporting Barbara's biography. It's been a wonderful process, particularly in terms of making connections with other followers of mid-century fashion photography. I've been introduced to pictures of Barbara I'd never seen before, by photographers I'd never heard of, sent in by people from all over the world.
So far which is the most popular image of Mullen among your followers? John-Michael O'Sullivan: Currently, it's a toss-up! There's the Norman Parkinson shot, taken in India in 1956, which features Barbara in Lanvin, balancing on an elephant; it was only ever published in Vogue Paris, and so I think it's taken people by surprise! The runner-up is an image of her in Dior by Louise Dahl-Wolfe, at the Arc de Triomphe, also from 1956. It shows a very modern side to both Dahl-Wolfe and Dior.
Would you ever do a documentary about Mullen if you had the chance? John-Michael O'Sullivan: Two separate documentary makers have actually raised the idea already, but, for now, I'm trying to keep focused on Step One - the book!
Image credits for this post
Barbara Mullen in a Gilbert Orcel hat, photographed for Vogue Paris by William Klein, 1956.
Barbara Mullen, Blowing Kiss, photographed by Lillian Bassman, 1950.
Barbara Mullen, photographed by Jerry Plucer-Sarna.
Barbara Mullen in a poster advertising the fashion boutique Barbara's Bazar, which she opened in Klosters after she retired from modelling. Poster by Gail Kernan, 1964.
Barbara Mullen in Rudi Gernreich, photographed for Vogue in New York by Leombruno Bodi, 1955.
Barbara Mullen photographed by Norman Parkinson, Delhi, India, November 1956.
Barbara Mullen in a Talmack dress, photographed in New York's Gramercy Park by William Helburn, for a 1957 Supima Cotton advertisement.
Barbara Mullen in Larry Aldrich, photographed for Harper's Bazaar in Louisiana by Lillian Bassman, 1951.
Barbara Mullen in Balmain, photographed in Washington by Toni Frissell, 1953.
Barbara Mullen in Herbert Sondheim, photographed in New York by Francesco Scavullo, 1950.
Barbara Mullen in a ball gown by Christian Dior, photographed by Lillian Bassman, 1949.
Barbara Mullen in Dior, photographed for Elle in Greece by Lionel Kazan, 1956.
Barbara Mullen, photographed for Glamour on Long Island by Frances McLaughlin-Gill, 1954.
Barbara Mullen in Hattie Carnegie, photograhed by Richard Avedon, Vogue, February 1952.
Barbara Mullen photographed by Norman Parkinson, Delhi, India, November 1956.
Barbara Mullen and Ivy Nicholson in Jaeger pastel knit turtlenecks and contrasting tapered slacks, photographed by Henry Clarke for Vogue, 1956.
We live in a very visual world: we constantly take pictures with smartphones and post all sorts of photographs on the social media, chronicling different moments from our lives - from something we may have seen in the street or in a museum to exotic locations we may be travelling to, from fancy foods to the latest purchase added to our wardrobes. Like the rest of us, fashion designers and their teams often take pictures that they may not share, but that they may be using as inspiration for their collections. Yet, if you fall into these categories, you'd better take into consideration what you're photographing and using for a commercial product as it may be copyrighted (think about graffiti).
Now, unfortunately for McQueen, the planter in that image is actually covered by copyright: the product was indeed designed by Luke and Kate Holt, founders and owners of Quarff-based firm Greencroft Shetland Ltd.
Consultants working for Alexander McQueen were in Shetland last summer and took a photograph of one of the red-doored crofthouse planters in someone's garden. The image then became an integral part of the collage rug design for the womenswear runway show.
The couple only recently found out about their planter ending up in two fashion collections when they saw a photograph in a publication promoting Shetland.
The Holts weren't happy about the discovery and got in touch with the fashion house that eventually answered and told them they weren't aware of the model crofthouse being theirs (mind you, they may have found out who made them; write down "cottage shaped planter Shetland", click images and you will get Greencroft's). The company also added they had done nothing wrong.
Now the problem with this case is that actually the crofthouse planter design is Greencroft Shetland's registered intellectual property (the planters are handmade by Kate and they feature a bespoke coloured door, handcut chimneys and locally recycled glass from Cunningsburgh; you can check them out and order them here) and it wasn't used in the background of a photoshoot, but as a decorative element on several carpets and later on in coats (you may argue the image couldn't be seen from the outside of the coats, but the lining revealed it) by a multi-million pound fashion house.
Technically you can't use an interior design element - imagine a lamp or a chair by a famous interior designer - for a commercial product such as a T-shirt (so, you can't print and sell a T-shirt with Ettore Sottsass' "Suvretta" library unless you get permission; and no you can't print it even if you own the rights of the photograph of that library). Therefore you can't use the cottage-shaped planter for a carpet.
The Holts stated on the Shetland News site that this case was similar to Fair Isle knitwear designer Mati Ventrillon's dispute with fashion giant Chanel. Yet while in that case Chanel apologised and added Ventrillon's name to the collection, McQueen's house doesn't seem interested in crediting the planter to the Holts.
The couple may not have the resources to pursue legal action, but, being a family-run business, they turned to social media (on their Facebook page they wrote: "Mr McQueen was wee bit Scottish and did a fashion show about the English exploitation of the Highlands! How ironic?") and asked for an apology, credit for the design and a goodwill payment.
So, if you're a fashion designer, the next time you go on holiday or on a research field trip you'd better pay attention to what you're photographing and maybe talk a bit with the locals: you may learn something interesting about them and their work and, who knows, even find some new collaborators.
There's nothing better than having a rest on a Sunday while watching a film - like the musical Les Girls (1957) directed by George Cukor - featuring visually intriguing costumes.
The movie - with music by Cole Porter - tells the story of three ladies - Joy Henderson (Mitzi Gaynor), Sybil Wren (Kay Kendall) and Angele Ducros (Taina Elg), working as dancers in a Paris show directed by their boss, American dancer Barry Nichols (Gene Kelly).
The plot by Vera Caspary was actually based on an article that appeared in The Atlantic and that focused on a showgirl reminiscing on her touring years.
When the film opens we are indeed introduced to a trial: after the publication of her tell-all memoir about her days with the dance troupe, one of the girls, Sybil (Kendall) is sued for libeling fellow dancer Angele (Elg).
As the court case proceeds, the film unravels via flashbacks recalled by two of the girls and by a final special witness who recount their own versions of the facts.
There are some charming flashbacks showing dance numbers (the film also features Geoffrey Holder and Carmen de Lavallade, dancers; Charles Manna, comic, and the Glee Club, Corps de Ballet and Rockettes) characterised by rich and colourful costumes by Orry-Kelly.
As chief costume designer at Warner Bros. between 1932 and 1944, followed by subsequent contracts at the other major Hollywood studios, Orry-Kerry had a long career spanning more than three decades and 295 film credits. The costume designer was engaged by MGM Studios producer Sol Siegel for this film.
The girls wear matching costumes on stage, while off stage each of them seems to be characterised by a different wardrobe: Sybil is lady-like in beige or cream ensembles; Angele looks like an independent French woman, always impeccable, but also dynamic; Joy, an American singer, favours more functional clothes and often wears separates and trousers as well.
Knitted tops are particularly interesting as they go from classic and elegant buttoned ones to more modern and minimalist designs, like the olive green short sleeved top with a triple vertical stripe in emerald and grass green donned by Sybil in the "You're Just Too, Too!" number, or practical jumpers the girls used to rehearse, such as the one in the scene in which Barry and Angele are working on the golden rope choreography.
Musical and dance genres are different in the films, ranging from vaudeville to experimental ballet, and wardrobes and costumes try to mirror these differences.
In the first dance numbers black and white with some touches of red prevail; this combination of shades returns towards the end of the film when Joy and Barry dance in the energetic waitress/motorcyclist number.
There are mainly elegant dresses in the first numbers, while the "Ladies in Waiting" white costumes featured a very naughty detail, an aquamarine bow provokingly perched on the girls' bottoms.
One of the most memorable piece remains the flower basket dance costume donned by Angele at the beginning of the movie, with flower baskets placed in strategic areas of her body to create a sensual, alluring and ironic composition.
The '50s gowns in jewel tones the girls wear for the final party they give to Barry, are particularly striking, with Sybil and Angele wearing a similar combination of topaz blue and emerald green and Joy in a pearly white and ocean blue shoulderless peau d'ange (angel's skin; a fabric manufactured using a satin weave and usually made from silk yarns) dress.
When the girls get married, they leave behind their theatrical careers but also their fancy costumes and we see them again in court wearing more formal and elegant attires matched with refined accessories and hats (made by Leah Barnes who also created the headdresses for the film Auntie Mame; Sydney Guilaroff worked instead on the hairstyles for this film).
Orry-Kelly became the first Australian costume designer to win three Academy Awards, for An American in Paris, Les Girls and Some Like It Hot.
The yarns were constructed from carbon nanotubes, which are hollow cylinders of carbon 10,000 times smaller in diameter than a human hair. The nanotubes were twist-spun into high-strength, lightweight yarns. To make the yarns highly elastic, the researchers introduced so much twist that the yarns coiled like an over-twisted rubber band.
The yarn must be either submerged in or coated with an ionically conducting material - or electrolyte - which can be as simple as a mixture of ordinary table salt and water. When the twistron is stretched the internal friction sets the charges from the carbon nanotubes free, releasing electricity.
"Fundamentally, these yarns are supercapacitors," states Dr. Na Li, a research scientist at the NanoTech Institute and co-lead author of the study, in a press release on the University of Dallas site. "In a normal capacitor, you use energy - like from a battery - to add charges to the capacitor. But in our case, when you insert the carbon nanotube yarn into an electrolyte bath, the yarns are charged by the electrolyte itself. No external battery, or voltage, is needed."
As explained by Dr. Ray Baughman, director of the NanoTech Institute and a corresponding author of the study, stretching the coiled twistron yarns 30 times a second generated 250 watts per kilogram of peak electrical power when normalized to the harvester's weight.
In the lab, the researchers showed that a twistron yarn weighing less than a housefly could power a small LED, which lit up each time the yarn was stretched. Co-lead author Dr. Shi Hyeong Kim, a postdoctoral researcher at the NanoTech Institute, went to test the yarn on the field: he waded into the surf off the east coast of South Korea to deploy a coiled twistron in the sea. He attached a 10 centimeter-long yarn weighing only 1 milligram (about the weight of a mosquito), between a balloon and a sinker that rested on the seabed. Every time an ocean wave arrived, the balloon would rise, stretching the yarn up to 25 percent, thereby generating measured electricity.
The inspiration for this research is all around us and more or less under our eyes: the researchers were indeed interested in finding alternative sources of power for small-scale, portable electronics and wearable devices.
At present, these harvesters could be employed for powering applications where changing batteries is impractical, such as sensors and sensor communications. "Based on demonstrated average power output, just 31 milligrams of carbon nanotube yarn harvester could provide the electrical energy needed to transmit a 2-kilobyte packet of data over a 100-meter radius every 10 seconds for the Internet of Things," added Baughman.
Yet there are different applications for such a yarn: while it would indeed be possible harvesting energy from the motion of ocean waves or from temperature fluctuations that could be used to charge a storage capacitor or use the waste energy to power IoT applications, when sewn into a shirt, the yarns could be employed as a self-powered breathing monitor (that could generate useful data for medical devices), but could also be woven into electronic textiles to harvest electrical energy from human motion.
The real challenge now is to make the yarn less expensive and harvest the enormous amount of energy available from ocean waves. It would be interesting to see if twistron could be taken out of the lab and to a yarn fair: it is about time that such events started featuring not just artisanal products, but a combination of luxury yarns and synthetic products based on innovative scientific and technological discoveries.
In a previous post we looked at Amazon's The Fix, an in-house affordable accessories label available exclusively to the retailer's Prime customers. Yet, as reported by the MIT Technology Review, the Internet-based retailer may be aiming not just at reselling fashion products, but at designing them thanks to a tailor-cut (pun intended) algorithm.
Developed by Amazon's San Francisco-based Lab126 - the company's research and development hub - the algorithm uses a tool called generative adversarial network (GAN). The GAN employs two deep neural networks to remember the characteristics of specific styles and trends.
Learning from raw data, the tool can transform an existing piece of clothing to fit in a particular style. In a nutshell, the algorithm may spot a trend on Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, or in its own collection images generated by Amazon's Echo Look camera, and come up with new styles.
The results of this project were presented during a recent workshop co-chaired by Amazon and featuring academic researchers working on how machines can study and understand fashion styles and trends. There were further lectures at the conference focused on other projects that employed algorithms to identify fashion-focused social-network accounts, a person's correct size, or generate new items of clothing from scratch (a research by Tim Oates, a professor at the University of Maryland in Baltimore County).
In the last few months Amazon has been heavily focusing on fashion, and online apparel shopping is currently thriving, so this can be the next logical step. Yet some issues may arise from the use of this "fashion designer" algorithm. As seen in a previous post, Amazon's The Fix is already a compendium of the most glamorous and desirable fashion tropes or - to put it more simply - it offers consumers products that are copied by designs made by more famous brands. Now, will the results be incredibly different if an algorithm starts selecting the most popular fashion trends to create a product derived from them? Who knows. For the time being the algorithm may help Amazon spotting a trend first.
At the moment, though there are other services, such as Stitch Fix, using algorithms to provide personalised recommendations that help consumers selecting items in accordance with their tastes and needs (Amazon launched its own version of Stitch Fix - Prime Wardrobe - in June; like StitchFix, this service lets customers try on clothes before buying them). Stitch Fix also started producing a small collection of items via the Hybrid Design project, based again on the results that algorithms are providing them with, so Amazon wouldn't be doing anything radically new here.
It is a bit too early for fashion designers to worry as the algorithms developed so far haven't invented innovative trends, but they are working on existing styles and can only produce new designs after selecting a wide range of images, so we still need the creative power of a human being to provide that input. What we know, though, is that, while Stitch Fix seems to be doing well, previous projects involving fashion and algorithms have generated embarrassing results (remember Google And Zalando's risible Project Muze?), it is therefore easy to wonder if one day Amazon's dream of the fashion algorithm may turn into a dystopian nightmare of AI runway shows full of ill-fitting copied clothes. At the same time, you perversely hope the "fashion designer algorithms" will succeed, as they may help giving a rest to stressed designers (or maybe they will prompt designers to do their job without behaving like gods and stars...).
The most interesting thing, though, would be to see what may happen if historical or powerful houses - think Dior, Louis Vuitton or Prada - started using this technology allowing algorithms to remix their archives. What kind of creations would we get? Guess time will tell.
Premiered at Berlin's Radialsystem V in June, the piece - with music by the Soundwalk Collective, a band famous for their work exploring themes like anthropology, ethnography, psycho-geography and the observation of nature in their performances and concept albums, and lighting design by Urs Schönebaum, better known for theatre and opera productions, exhibitions and installations - is currently on during the 29th international festival Tanz im August in Berlin.
In "Kreatur" Waltz and and 14 dancers explore aspects of human existence and social reality: through gentle moves or sudden violent explosions they mark the relationship with the space surrounding them, tackling key life dichotomies such as power/powerlessness, dominance/weakness, freedom/control, community/isolation, social interactions/social violence, democracy/oppression.
The performance is therefore characterised by a series of liminal themes mirrored in the costumes: at times the dancers move in light cotton candy-like ethereal white cocoons; in other cases their bodies are transformed, morphed and distorted by screens or they struggle in the arms of anonymous nightmarish figures sprouting long and dangerous spikes from their bodies.
The costumes feature Van Herpen's trademark semantic codes: the cocoons protecting the dancers' bodies, representing light balls of energy, remind of her 3D printedbubble-shaped garments; the screens distorting the dancers' bodies, call to mind the seventeen optical light screens (OLF) that duplicated and morphed the models' image on Van Herpen's A/W 16 runway in a mesmerisingly alienating way.
The laser cut costumes revealing the dancers bodies evoke instead the designs from the S/S 17 collection and the creations from "Aeriform" with their wave-like patterns and the interplay between shadow and light.
The performance works rather well mainly because both Van Herpen and Waltz could be considered as multidisciplinary artists: the former moves indeed quite well between fashion, science and technology, while Waltz's choreographies have always been suspended between dance and other art forms and the choreographer often collaborated with other artists.
In this case fashion interacts with the dancers, in the same way as in previous performances artworks were turned into the co-protagonists of the piece: dance aficionados may remember how in her large-scale "Wolke" (Cloud; from "noBody", 2002), part of the exhibition "Sasha Waltz - Installations Objects Performances" (at the Center for Art and Media Technology in Karlsruhe, Germany, 2013), a dancer in a white dress seemed to be engulfed by an inflatable structure that hugged, lulled and swallowed her.
In that performance the cube occupied the space, mutating its function with its volume and becoming a new element in the same way as the water basin became one of the protagonists in "Dido & Aeneas" offering the dancers an innovative space within a space in which they could move, swim and dance.
In "Kreatur", a piece set at the boundaries between dance, image, fashion and social comment, the costumes offer the chance to dancers to alter their personal spaces, they are indeed to be interpreted as armours, cocoons, shells or wombs that protect them and help them surviving their struggles, but also as alien structures that alter and reconfigure their body movements.
Sasha Waltz will be at Berlin's Tanz im August with "Kreatur" and with another performance entitled "Women" (world premiere on 30th August at the St. Elisabeth-Kirche), about women exploring rituals of femininity.
Dance and fashion fans who are going to miss "Kreatur" in Berlin (tonight at the Haus der Berliner Festspiele, Schaperstraße 24), can still catch up with it during the European tour - the performance will indeed be heading to Barcelona and Rome in September, Lisbon in October and Dijon and Brussels in January and February next year, two performances that will mark the 25th anniversary of the company. For further information about dates and tours you can check out the calendar page on Sasha Waltz's site.
Launched last year, the project revolves around the possibilities of developing origami-like structures in various materials integrated with inflatable devices that can give them programmable shapes.
Imagine having sheets of paper, plastics or fabrics and adding in these materials air passages in the shape of geometric patterns (the team experimented with stripy, square and polygonal structures).
Thanks to a software tool (controlling the aspect ratio of three geometries - the line, arc and diamond), the team created multiple programmable shapes and geometries coming up with a range of fabrication methods, including manual sealing, heat pressing with custom stencils and a custom heat-sealing head that can be mounted on 3-axis CNC machines to fabricate the designed transforming material.
The technology could be applied to a wide range of objects and items, from interactive wearables to furniture (in a way this is a new take on Skylar Tibbits' self-assembling structures), toys and items for the packaging industry.
There are a few online videos that make the process easier to understand and a lecture as well based on a paper the team wrote about the system.
The paper actually shows three examples of objects to which the technology has been applied: a shape-changing package for a light bulb that can be transformed from a 6-sided box cushion to a curled lampshade; a fabric origami crane that folds from a flat sheet to a 3D shape, and haptic gloves for biking that allow cyclists to navigate without taking their smartphone out (the left glove inflates to turn left, the right gloves inflates to turn right).
The researchers hope to create in future inflatable metal sheets with programmable transformations, but also wearable fabrics that can be encoded with shape changes.
While this universal bending mechanism can indeed be useful in architecture to create temporary structures for pavilions or for emergency purposes, or in the automotive industry to develop new airbags, the applications of multiple shape-changing materials may inspire both extraordinary fashion designs or useful garments with new and practically functional purposes.
Some of the researchers in the team developed a while back Biologic, a synthetic bioskin that can regulate the wearer's heat and sweat by opening and closing flaps in the material as needed, so they do seem to have an interest in fashion. Maybe, before developing complex clothes and garments it would be easier to work on smaller objects and experiment a bit with them, from jewellery to flat-pack shoes or bags that can change shape and size. The possibilities behind this technology may not be unlimited, but they would surely and intriguingly lead brave fashion and textile designers in uncharted territories.
If you like visiting museum displays of incredibly rich jewels and bejewelled artefacts, but have missed the exhibition of the Al Thani Collection at the Victoria & Albert Museum last year, don't despair as you will be able to catch it again in Venice come September.
"Treasures of the Mughals and of the Maharajas - The Al Thani Collection" - edited by Amin Jaffer, Senior Curator of The Al Thani Collection, and Italian scholar of East Asian art Gian Carlo Calza with Gabriella Belli as academic director - will indeed be on display at the Doge's Palace (9th September 2017 - 3rd January 2018).
The journey through Indian jewellery will start in the 16th century at the court of the Mughals (1526-1858), the Timurid Dynasty founded by Babur after his conquest of most of Northern India in 1526.
The Mughal lands were rich in precious stones and metals and this helped the development of a refined tradition of ornaments and jewellery.
A first part of the exhibition will allow visitors to admire some of the dynastic gems and in particular two famous diamonds, from the legendary mines of Golconda - The Idol's Eye, the world's biggest cut blue diamond; and Arcot II, one of the two diamonds given to Queen Charlotte - wife of King George III (1738-1820) - by Muhammad 'Ali Wallajah, Nawab of Arcot (1717-1795).
The golden age of patronage for jewellers crafting astonishing pieces started with the fourth and fifth Mughal emperors: the pieces made during this period of time became popular for their quality gems, but also for the way artisans combined Eastern and Western art and culture.
The polychrome enameling technique that can be admired in some of the pieces - such as the pendant in the form of a figure modelled around a baroque pearl and probably representing snake god Nagadevata - was for example inspired by the Renaissance courts in Europe.
Jade and rock crystal were also highly prized at the Mughal court since in Islamic culture jade was understood to invoke victory and was also believed to detect and counteract poison. The Wine Cup of Emperor Jahangir, inscribed with verses of Persian poetry and the titles of the monarch, and the Shah Jahan dagger (1620-1625), with a jade hilt are early examples of jade pieces that will be included in this section of the exhibition.
Some of the techniques employed by the artisans can also be rediscovered by closely looking at these pieces: the kundan technique allowed for example artisans to set gems in gold without the use of a prong, but using strips of malleable pure gold. The Pen Case and Inkwell (Deccan or North India, 1575-1600), made from solid gold and encrusted with precious gems was made employing these techniques.
Another masterpiece made with special techniques was the tiger-head finial from the throne of Tipu Sultan. As seen in a previous post, the gold-encrusted and gem-set throne was dismantled after Tipu was killed by British forces in 1799 and some of its components ended up in the British Royal Collection while others were recently found.
Some of the most remarkable pieces remain the green enameled jewel-encrusted objects (from the 18th century) from Hyderabad ateliers used in rituals and ceremonies during audiences at court, while power in the court will be evoked by turban ornaments dating from the 17th to the 20th centuries.
The Mughal decline was followed by a period of political instability and, when the country transitioned under British colonial rule, the patronage of great jewellery also passed into the hands of rulers of the successor states, be they maharajas, nizams or nawabs. Tastes and styles were consequently westernised and collaborations were launched with leading European jewellery houses such as Cartier.
Gems were incorporated into modern compositions and new designs that mixed Indian traditions with Western jewellery culture.
The exhibition includes therefore a series of extraordinarily rich diamond necklaces and other unique pieces like the Canopy that formed a part of the Pearl Carpet of Baroda, commissioned by Maharaja Khanderao Gaekwad between 1865 and 1870. The silk covering the deerskin was decorated with silver, gold, coloured glass, diamonds, rubies, sapphires, emeralds and around 950,000 pearls (the item was intended to be placed inside the tomb of Prophet Mohamed in Medina, but it never reached its destination).
European jewellery absorbed Indian influences: think about the Ballets Russes's oriental productions in the early 1900s and in particular their "Schéhérazade" performance with sets and costumes in the colours of the Mughal and Iranian book paintings acquired by European collectors (including the jeweller Louis Cartier); or check out the beautiful Art Deco pieces that will be on display at this event, such as the brooch designed by Paul Iribe and made by Robert Linzeler.
At the same time Indian patrons wore contemporary Western jewellery and Western houses were inspired by Indian jewellery, designing pieces like the peacock aigrette created by Mellerio dits Meller (Paris 1905) bought by Maharaja Jagatjit Singh of Kapurthala.
In 1931 Cartier made for one of Maharaja Bhupinder Singh of Patiala's wives an exclusive ruby choker (a Westernised version of a traditional Indian guluband; the exclusive use of rubies, combined here with pearls and diamonds, had no precedent in traditional Indian jewellery) and created for Maharaja Digvijaysinhji the Tiger Eye, a gold-coloured diamond mounted into a turban ornament.
The exhibition will close with a tribute to contemporary goldsmithing with artisans such as Mumbai-based Viren Bhagat combining modern techniques with ancestral forms and motives.
More than the gems included the exhibition (or the power they hint at – after all the collection was assembled by His Highness Sheikh Hamad bin Abdullah Al Thani, a member of the Qatari Royal Family...) or the meanings behind them such as the divisions into rank, caste, region of birth, marital status or wealth of the wearer, the event is important for highlighting the complex traditions of the Eastern and Western societies, but also the relationships between them.
Visitors should therefore take the dazzling gems, precious stones and jewels in this exhibition as excuses not to be overwhelmed by the pieces on displays and by the materials they are made of, but to ponder about the importance of exchanges between different cultures and the astonishing results they can produce.
A final note for people who will not be able to visit in person the event - you can still take a virtual tour of the exhibition at this link.
Image credits for this post
Pendant India, c. 1575–1625 Pearl, gold, diamonds, rubies, emeralds, sapphires, glass, enamels H. 6.6 cm; W. 5.2 cm
The Agra Cut-cornered, rectangular mixed-cut pink diamond H. 1.8cm; W. 1.7cm
The Maharani of Patiala's Choker Cartier Paris, 1931; restored and restrung to the original design by Cartier Tradition, Geneva, 2012 Rubies, diamonds, pearls; platinum settings H. 2.2 cm; L. 33.3 cm
The Nawanagar Ruby Necklace Cartier, 1937 Platinum, rubies, diamonds H 20.5 cm, W 19.5 cm