It is that time of the year again – yes, it's Halloween and, if you're in search of something unusual for tonight, check out the Critical Halloween party organized by Storefront for Art and Architecture in New York. The events have been going since 2011 and have so far tackled a variety of themes - Luxury, I-Relevance, Corporate-AvantGarde and Banality.
This year's theme - Holes - promises to be particularly intriguing and can be interpreted from different points of views. The event takes place at the Museum of Sex (233 Fifth Avenue, New York), but the theme can be explored from the physical point of view as well as from the architectural perspective.
Holes appear to be made of nothing, but there is a lot of activity happening around, inside, and through them, they therefore involve issues of matter and space. Architecturally speaking holes can be interpreted as the windows or the doors in a building, or as accidental perforations that may open up in different areas of a structure from the ceiling to the floor or the walls.
Then there are the holes we can't see, like the ones in our memories that may end up erasing the most cherish moments we stored in our minds, or less vital holes, like those ones that open up in our socks and clothes and that too often we don't know how to mend because we have lost the skills to do so or we are simply too lazy to do it.
Apart from a live set by DJ Mapquest, an open bar, and the possibility to explore the Museum of Sex's current exhibitions and installations, guests will be able to join an intellectual debate and, as usual, take part in a costume competition with judges that will vote for Best Individual Costume, Best Duo/Couple Costume, Best Group Costume and Best Overall Costume, while online voting will determine the People's Choice award.
The best thing about Storefront's Critical Halloween parties remains the inspirational bibliography accompanying all the events: apart from being useful for people who are looking for costume ideas, it also gives the chance to readers to discover inspiring texts and volumes.
This year's bibliography includes books about the presence/absence dichotomy and volumes about anthropology, philosophy and ontology, tackling themes and issues such as matter, removal, and nothingness. So there is the proverbial something for everyone going from books about golf holes to a crime, punishment and redemption children's story about a boy in a detention center where kids spend their days digging holes; from texts about voids to essays about George Bataille, volumes about Vitruvius, and an investigation on the borderlines of metaphysics, everyday geometry, and the theory of perception.
Do holes really exist? Find your answer tonight at Storefront's Critical Halloween, but, if you can't take part in the event, go through the bibliography, pick up your book and ponder a bit about how to fill the temporary or permanent holes in your lives or simply rejoice at the liberating power of holes.
"They don't sew, they don't drape, they're media freaks. It's unbelievable (…) These new kids go to the vintage shows and they buy a few pieces, they change a button or two and they knock it off (...) They don't have any sense of history and no curiosity about anything," states style icon and interior designer Iris Apfel at one point of Albert Maysles' 2014 documentary about her.
It is hard to disagree with Apfel and here at Irenebrination we have been spotting connections and knock-offs for years (way before everybody else jumped on the bandwagon and turned it into a trendy visual sport that mainly juxtaposes originals and copies without contexualising this phenomenon...).
What is striking at the moment, though, is the speed derived designs are produced at: you finish reviewing a season reeking with knock-offs and suddenly there are capsules, collaborations and other fashion related events that show links with other fairly recent products. Besides, while the main practice so far has been remixing previous collections, tweaking and altering small details has also been a successful exercise for some brands.
Take the case of Anya Hindmarch: the British fashion designer has never been terribly original and a few seasons ago she launched a collection of "Eyes" designs - bags, shoes and small accessories such as keychains that seemed to be a combination of Giles Deacon's googly eye designs with Fendi's Bag Bugs.
Hindmarch's A/W 2016 bags shaped like Pacman ghosts also made you wonder if they had any links with Giles' S/S 2009 Pacman-inspired collection, and the question about a possible derivation of her designs from Deacon's products is now back. Hindmarch has indeed just launched a home collection featuring a series of baby powder, coffee and suntan lotion scented candles in lacquered porcelain jars. The latter are decorated with slogans or with the humourously cartoony eyes that have become her trademark in more recent years.
Alexander McQueen's sketched eagle in his Resort 2010 collection that covered the shoulder and chest area of his T-shirts and dresses (View this photo), was recreated into a digital print in Marcelo Burlon's County of Milan's collections and more recently the same idea was translated into a more simplified design that appeared on men's T-shirts for an Armani Exchange's collection.
This is in a way the same fate that fell upon McQueen's A/W 2009-10 snakes, reappropriated by Marcelo Burlon since 2014 and more recently by Alessandro Michele at Gucci, where they became a trademark of the house (as we have seen in a previous post).
Yet all these exercises in tweaking, altering and remixing only prove one thing - the laziness of many modern designers and fashion houses. In some cases such as Armani Exchange's shirts you may argue that the company was maybe trying to offer a trendy design and a lower entry price point to consumers, but you don't necessarily need to reissue something that has just been done two, three or five years ago by another company to do so, you can indeed come up with more original ideas for very different products as well.
An example? Fiorucci's Panini album that sold around 100 million packets of stickers in just a few months when it was first released in the '80s, turning into an instant cult and becoming a hit with both kids and grown-ups. Why is it so difficult nowadays for creative minds to come up with a cool, original and affordable product (not necessarily a garment or accessory...) that can win the hearts of consumers of all ages? Is it because, as Iris Apfel says, we have lost our curiosity?
Last night we put the watches back one hour, marking the official end of summertime. Yet the long and dark Autumn and Winter hours could prove less depressing and more inspiring if we tried to learn a new skill, such as embroidering. Men who think this is a feminine art, should think twice, especially after seeing the works of Brendan Fowler.
The Los Angeles-based musician who turned to art in 2008, has been producing since then photography, sculpture, mixed media artworks and performances.
In 2013 Fowler bought an industrial embroidery machine, taught himself how to use it and started transferring photographs onto large panels of fabrics using coloured thread.
He began producing large canvases on which he embroidered portraits on garments or fabrics: at first the process was exhausting and time-consuming, but he became more skilled as the years passed and produced striking portraits with a punkish edge about them, using found fabrics and recycled garments, polyester and rayon threads.
Upcycling is actually part of his creative process: Fowler often visits thrift stores, checks out the torn and ruined garments sold by the pound and then transforms them with his embroidered panels.
Some of the materials he uses include pieces from the clothing line and record label he founded with Cali Thornhill DeWitt ("Some Ware"), and from his own fashion label and recycling project, "Election Reform".
Fowler started the latter to spark up dialogue about the American electoral system. The cast-off garments from "Election Reform" often end up into his wall-based portraits, his art becomes therefore a form of collage as Fowler creates his works combining various layers together.
The results can be very intriguing and his portraits of friends and colleagues reduced to minimalist shadows, seem suspended between craft and technology as they are made using threads and a computerised embroidery machine with each lock of thread plotted by a face in a digital file.
If you are into fashion rather than art and think that learning how to embroider is not for you, you may change idea once you consider some of the pieces in Sarah Burton's Alexander McQueen S/S 18 collection.
Inspired by British gardens and English country houses, the collection included indeed a burlap dress (criss-crossed by leather straps reminiscent of Middle Ages armors), a corset and boots with cross-stitch roses in fuchsia and pink.
The most eccentric pieces were instead the ethereally eccentric organza wedding dresses with deconstructed corsets covered in three-dimensional exquisite half-embroidered and half-appliqued flowers.
Still uninspired by the art of embroidery? Well, you should check the exhibition "Embellishment in Fashion" at Hampton Court Palace.
Trying to capture the style and versatility of embroidery and embellishment from the 18th to 21st centuries, the event showcases a wide range of pieces from the Royal School of Needlework (RSN)'s unique Textile Collection, from blouses and men's waistcoats to purses, gloves and shoes.
Apart from the ordinary basic tours and curator's tours, it is also possible to enroll in a taster workshop that gives visitors the chance to try their hand at an embroidery session inspired by the exhibition itself.
If you finally get the embroidery bug, you may as well check out the RSN's Knitting & Stitching in Dublin (9-12 November) and Harrogate (23 - 26 November) shows. They will provide more inspirations thanks to the pieces on display such as the stumpwork by RSN Diploma in Technical Hand Embroidery student Ghislaine Peart based on Dee Nickerson's painting "Village Knitters". Looks like you may have no excuses not to try and learn the art of embroidery this Fall/Winter.
In some previous features we looked at the inspirations you can get from minerals. In a recent post on the site of Danish Kvadrat, manufacturer of interior design fabrics, Jonathan Olivares wrote about the power of rock and minerals. The industrial designer looked at them from the point of view of colour: Olivares visited indeed the Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies at the Harvard Art Museums to study the minerals that were used as pigments before the advent of synthetic colours.
Looking at the colours and textures of the azurite, chromite, cinnebar, clay haematite, copper, galena, gold, graphite, green earth, gypsum rosette, Indian lake, malachite, Pozzuoli earth, realgar, willemite, talc, realgar, Armenian bole and celadonite on display, the designer realised he was staring at raw and unprocessed colours and he was going back through such pieces to a time when humans didn't intervene on colours, artificially enhancing or altering specific shades.
Interestingly enough, the colour palettes formed by the images of minerals collected by Olivares are incidentally similar to the ones employed by Dutch artist and designer Christien Meindertsma for her "Pigeon Service" installation at the "My Canvas" event organised by Kvadrat in September during the London Design Festival.
Meindertsma first created an installation using linen pigeons for Texture, the museum of flax in Kortrijk, Belgium. The work was initially inspired by the homing pigeons used for espionage during the First World War - some of them were indeed captured and locked into the building of the Linen Thread Company (now the Texture Museum) during the First World War.
In the installation for "My Canvas" the birds - each of them carrying a small rolled-up note on the side of its tail (so they could actually be used as messengers) - were employed to recreate a sort of three-dimensional colour card.
Yet in this case Meindertsma didn't look at minerals for inspiration, but reinterpreted via her trademark pigeons the colour nuances of a Kvadrat staple - the vibrant and elegant upholstery textile Canvas, crafted by renowned Italian colourist Giulio Ridolfo, first produced in 2012 and recently relaunched in a new set of shades inspired by the painterly landscapes of Skagen, Denmark.
So, though the inspiration in this case may not come from minerals, it is still borrowed from nature and in particular from the dark, light, cool and warm tones of the Nordic pastel panoramas and dramatic, dark coastlines.
"Former British espionage worker on Vogue staff" announced the Herald Journal when the American fashion magazine hired Brian Stonehouse in 1952. Though the title of the piece was intriguingly shocking it was actually true, the illustrator had indeed been a spy during World War II.
Born in 1918 in England, Brian Stonehouse went to art school and by 1938 he already produced fashion drawings, but his career was interrupted by the war. He signed up for military service in 1939, becoming three years later part of the Special Operations Executive (SOE), an elite group of men and women trained to infiltrate Nazi Europe and coordinate sabotage of the German War Effort from within.
After a long training he was sent as a British spy in France to aid the resistance movement and he did so under a cover, pretending of being a French art student, Michel Chapuis. His secret weapon was a B2 suitcase radio disguised as an artist's paint box.
When the Gestapo arrested him, Stonehouse told them he was a French art student working for Vogue, a lie that became true ten years later.
Stonehouse was frequently interrogated and tortured in the following months and transferred to a concentration camp in Germany in 1943 and later on to Mauthausen. An SS guard assigned him to do portraits of officers and their wives, but the artist was moved to other concentration camps, ending up in Dachau.
Stonehouse was finally liberated in April 1945, but it was only after the Nuremberg trials that he was able to move on with his life: he returned to England and then moved to the States where he became a portrait artist.
In 1952 he was hired by Vogue becoming one of the first illustrators hired by the fashion magazine in a decade. Together with "Eric" (Carl Erickson 1891-1958) and Rene Bouché (1905-1963), Stonehouse visually chronicled the rise of new designers and the arrival on the fashion scene of exciting styles.
From 1952 to 1962 he rose to fame, working as portraitist and fashion illustrator, while regularly doing adverts for Saks Fifth Avenue, B. Altman, Lord & Taylor and Gimbels, and developing a close association with Elizabeth Arden. Stonehouse completed his last sketch for Vogue in October 1962. He had worked closely with Editor-in-Chief Jessica Dave but her successor Diana Vreeland preferred photography.
In 1979 Stonehouse returned to England where he focused on his career as a painter and also did a portrait of the Queen Mother. He died in 1998.
At the moment an exhibition in London is rediscovering his work, giving the chance to visitors to buy some of his sketches. "Brian Stonehouse MBE (1918-1998) - WWII SOE Agent and American Vogue Fashion Illustrator 1952-1963" (through 22nd December) at Abbot and Holder features his Estate's works from the high days of fashion illustration.
The drawings and sketches show that Stonehouse's style was characterised by fluid and flowing lines and silhouettes that were slightly reminiscent of early René Gruau works.
Throughout his career, Stonehouse worked on editorial and advertisements, drawing men, women and children's fashion, innerwear and outerwear. Yet his best illustrations in this event (quite often from 1955) show elegant models in chic clothes and delicate poses. At times loose strokes and brushes in the background highlight the figure in the forefront, in other cases the models are quickly outlined in pencils, their clothes and accessories emphasised with splashes of bold colours such as tomato red and orange. Some of his most intriguing illustrations show ethereal models half traced, as if they were evanescent fashion ghosts.
Stonehouse didn't rise to fame maybe because he never developed an extremely distinctive style or maybe because he had to compete with more established and more famous illustrators. When photography displaced illustration, his contribution to fashion was somehow lost in the folds of time.
Yet it is definitely worth rediscovering him (and maybe buying a drawing if you are a fashion collector and have the money to do so) for his fashion illustrations and for his adventurous life.
Stonehouse survived indeed torture, solitary confinement, a death sentence, slave labour and several concentration camps and those who will dig into his life will discover that The Imperial War Museum and Dachau Museum hold the drawings he made while at the Dachau camp and at the War Crimes Tribunals. In a way, the beauty of fashion and the joy of panting must have acted like therapy for Stonehouse, helping him to leave behind the dark horrors of the war.
Image credits for his post
1. For Cocktails or the Theatre, black silk cut to a deep V at the neckline with below the elbow sleeves and its own waist-cincher. By Jr. Sophisticates. $50 from Bloomingdale's and other stores. Gouache and fibre-tip pen on grey paper. Ill: "Young Colour Plans: Use a Priming Coat", p.162 15.8.1952 issue, American Vogue. Provenance: TThe artist's estate. Stamped "Stonehouse Estate / A and H" verso. 18x15 inches (irregular)
2. A Black and Red Priming Coat of black wool alpaca reversible to red velveteen … by Aintree with Merrimack velveteen, about $75 plus tax. Gouache, ink and fibre-tip pen on grey paper. Stamped verso "V9719". This coat illustrated "Young Colour Plans – Using a Priming Coat", p.163, 15.8.1952 Issue, American Vogue. Stonehouse bought this cloak for his sister Margot and it remains in the artist’s family. Provenance: The artist's estate. Stamped "Stonehouse Estate / A and H" verso. 23x12.75 inches (irregular). £3000.
3. A Checked and Belted Jacket. Gouache, watercolour and fibre-tip pen on cream paper. Circa 1955. For an American fashion magazine, probably Vogue. Provenance: The artist's estate. Stamped "Stonehouse Estate / A and H" verso. 22.25x16.25 inches. £2250.
4. A Full, pale Blue Skirt and Black Top. Gouache, ink and fibre-tip pen on sketchbook page. Circa 1955. For an American fashion magazine, probably Vogue. Provenance: The artist’s estate. Stamped "Stonehouse Estate / A and H" verso. 23.5x17 inches (irregular). £1750.
5. Shorts and a Sleeveless Top. Gouache and a fibre-tip pen on grey paper. Signed. Circa 1955. For an American fashion magazine, probably Vogue. Provenance: The artist's estate. Stamped "Stonehouse Estate / A and H" verso. 22.25x14.75 inches (irregular). £1750.
6. Gold Necklace and Green Top. Gouache and fibre-tip pen on grey paper. Circa 1955. For an American fashion magazine, probably Vogue. Provenance: The artist's estate. Stamped "Stonehouse Estate / A and H" verso. 19.25x12.5 inches (irregular). £2250.
7. Orange Red Coat and Black Skirt. Gouache, ink and fibre-tip pen. Circa 1955. For an American fashion magazine, probably Vogue. Provenance: The artist’s estate. Stamped ‘Stonehouse Estate / A and H’ verso. 21x11.5 inches (irregular). £2250.
8. A Full Skirt and Sleeveless Top, back view. Gouache, ink and fibre-tip pen. Circa 1955. For an American fashion magazine, probably Vogue. Provenance: The artist's estate. Stamped "Stonehouse Estate / A and H" verso. 23x11.5 inches (irregular). £1750.
9. Black and White Checked Jacket. Gouache, ink and fibre-tip pen on pink paper. Circa 1958. For an American fashion magazine, probably Vogue. Provenance: The artist's estate. Stamped "Stonehouse Estate / A and H" verso. 23x14 inches (irregular). £2500.
10. Winter Overcoats. Ink and gouache on tan paper. Circa 1960. For an American fashion magazine, probably Vogue. Provenance: The artist’s estate. The artist's estate. Stamped "Stonehouse Estate / A and H" verso. 29.75x21 inches. £3000.
11. Full Red Skirt and Black Top. Gouache, chalk and ink on grey paper. Circa 1960. For an American fashion magazine, probably Vogue. Provenance: The artist’s estate.The artist's estate. Stamped "Stonehouse Estate / A and H" verso. 23.25x14 inches (irregular). £2250.
12. Flying In to Palm Beach. Gouache, charcoal and fibre-tip pen on grey paper. Illustrated ‘Shop Hound … in Palm Beach’, p’s 88-91, 1.2.1962 Issue, American Vogue. Provenance: The artist's estate. Stamped "Stonehouse Estate / A and H" verso. 18.75x16 inches. £3000.
Architecture-wise Antwerp is known for the house where Rubens lived in the 1600s, a sumptuous property that showcases ten of his works and provides visitors with an insight into Flemish living in the 17th century. Yet, at the moment, the Belgian city is also known for hosting an intriguing architectural exhibition.
"Drawing Ambience: Alvin Boyarsky and The Architectural Association" opened last Tuesday at the Flanders Architecture Institute, deSingel (until 14th January 2018). The exhibition - that has been on tour in the USA and Berlin, before arriving in Belgium - features a series of drawings acquired by the late architect and mentor Alvin Boyarsky (1928-1990), long-term chairman of the Architectural Association School of Architecture (AA) in London.
Born in Canada, Boyarsky studied architecture at the McGill University in Montreal. After completing the postgraduate programme at Cornell University, he taught at the University of Oregon, the Bartlett School of Architecture, as well as the University of Illinois at Chicago.
While leading the AA from 1971 to 1990 Boyarsky promoted an international outlook and revolutionised the school's programme, inviting to teach professors who turned in more recent years into influential architects and writers, and putting emphasis on architectural drawing. The latter became an integral part of the school, prompting students to find new approaches to the architectural practice.
According to Boyarsky drawing wasn't just a representational tool, but a form of architecture in its own right and the works on display definitely prove his point.
Divided into sections, "Drawing Ambience" features drawings as well as a small selection of archival documents. Showcased in a chronological order, the display features previous AA teachers and students such as Nigel Coates, David Greene, Zaha Hadid, Rem Koolhaas, Daniel Libeskind, Bernard Tschumi and Peter Wilson, works by international studios and architects including Frank Gehry, Superstudio, and Coop Himmelb(l)au, and by artists Mary Miss and Eduardo Paolozzi.
Some of the drawings show imaginary and metaphysical places, others focus on more realistic buildings. There is therefore a wide range of styles and techniques in this event, with drawings traced with pen, ink and graphite, screen-printed works, etchings and collages.
There's mechanical precision in Jeremie Frank's "The Macrophone" (1981), minimalism in Franco Raggi's "Untitled" (1977), and Suprematism in Zoe Zenghelis's conceptual plan Sixteen Villas on the Island of Antiparos (1983), while Eduardo Paolozzi introduces us to a Pop world, David Greene to a technological utopia and Superstudio to imaginary Supersurfaces.
While the architects and architectural practices involved represent key figures in the history of contemporary architecture, they also offer visitors the chance to take a journey through different projects.
Bsides, the drawings remind visitors that architecture is a dichotomic practice with a core discrepancy between the visionary and imaginary works of architects and the reality, often riddled with funding problems and bureaucracy: Superstudio invite us to go beyond architecture and step into a metaphysical world, while Libeskind's works hint at projects that he actually built later on in his life, including his prefabricated homes, and Hadid's swirls and squiggles introduce her trademark dynamic shapes and silhouettes, her "Sperm Table" (1988) representing indeed the architect's first ever built project - five pieces of furniture designed for a studio apartment located in London.
One thing reunites the drawings on display, though, all of them show a strong will to experiment and the range of ideas explored is extremely inspiring.
Computer-aided design is now the norm, but "Drawing Ambience" asks visitors to stop, look at the artworks on display and consider the power of drawing by hand and wonder what may be in ten or fifteen years the consequences of abandoning this practice. Those ones interested in finding answers to this question or in getting to know better Boyarsky's collection should also check out the insightful catalogue that accompanies the show.
Image credits for this post
All works in this post are part of the Collection of the Alvin Boyarsky Archive.
Jeremie Frank, "The Macrophone", 1981.
Nigel Coates, "Ski Station", 1982.
Superstudio, "New-New York", 1969.
Alex Wall, Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA), "The Pleasure of Architecture," 1983. Poster based on competition drawings for Parc de la Villette, Paris, 1982-83.
Coop Himmelblau, "Super Spaces," c. 1969.
Bernard Tschumi, "#4 K Series," 1985. Study for "La Case Vide: La Villette," Folio VIII, 1985.
Franco Purini, "La terra desolata" (The Waste Land), 1984.
Daniel Libeskind, "The Garden", 1979.
Office for Metropolitan Architecture, Site Plan for Parc de la Villette, Paris, 1983.
Rust and decay have always been fascinating and inspiring elements in the creative arts. Fashion heads will remember how Hussein Chalayan's "The Tangent Flows" (1993) collection featured garments made with fabric that the designer had buried in a friend's garden with some rusted iron pieces. The outfits Chalayan made with this fabric allowed the designer to explore the concepts of change and deterioration. In 1997 Martin Margiela produced instead for an exhibition at the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam clothes on which moulds and bacteria grew. The garments were used as symbols of decomposition and consumption and therefore as metaphors for the capitalist processes of buying and throwing away.
Rust and decay are two key elements in the photographs of Francesca Piqueras. An exhibition opening at the Palazzo Ducale (Piazza Aranci 35) in Massa, Italy, later on this week will introduce to visitors twenty-five images from her archive.
"Paesaggio dell'umanità" (Landscape of Humanity; 28th October - 26th November) will feature a series of mesmerising industrial shots. The artist - daughter of Italian Grati Baroni and Jorge Piqueras, a Peruvian artist of Spanish origin (the couple were friends of Marcel Duchamp) - has a penchant for landscapes dominated by relics of decaying cargo ships, deserted shores and abandoned oil rigs and military structures.
There are indeed no humans in Piqueras' pictures, but a profoundly deep and tangible desolation. The twenty-five images included in the exhibition in Massa follow the creative path of the artist and focus on three main elements – the sea, the sky and the rusted metal of the ships portrayed.
Debris forgotten by people, the bodies of these ships stain the oceans and sands: the cargo ships assume indeed mesmerising shades of brown and green that constrast with the colours of the sea and sand that lull them.
Boats are definitely Piqueras' trademark as proved by her "Architecture of Absence" (2011) and "Architecture of Silence" (2012) series: the former focuses on ships being dismantled in dockyards in Bangladesh; the latter chronicles the slow yet relentless death of cargo ships sank and abandoned off the coast of Mauritania.
Piqueras mainly takes images of things that humans may have built for financial or war reasons, structures and means of transport that show how we often impose our own architectural views on spaces, violating them and forcing our vision on nature. Yet the photographer does not use her images to point her finger at humanity, but to silently chronicle the stages of human folly, its paradoxes and contractions and the way nature and time take their revenge upon us, sculpting the relics we leave behind, eating the human architectures and finally destroying them. Another key element in Piqueras' images is therefore the theme of transformation of matters and materials.
There is also a cinematic quality to Piqueras' darkly poetical images: the artist started taking pictures when she was 13, but was also attracted by art in general and by cinema and worked as film editor (one of her fave films remains Michelangelo Antonioni's "Deserto Rosso", a movie that may have inspired her the contrasts of neurotic colours in her images and her obsession with desolate industrial landscapes).
Some of her images could easily be photographs taken on the set of an industrial film, but they also tell us stories of transformations: the arrogant and strong oil rigs have morphed into decomposing skeletons; the monumental ships look like rotten carcasses or mythical leviathans dying on far-away shores, the wind producing screeching sounds as it passes through their decomposing lungs.
Tangible relics of a dystopian society or preludes to human destruction, Francesca Piqueras' photographs are memento mori postcards of wounded landscapes hinting at a silent post-industrial apocalypse.
An investigation broadcast on Danish television channel TV2's "Operation X" program recently unveiled that, since 2013, fast fashion retailer H&M may have incinerated around 60 tons of its own new and unworn apparel at a waste disposal company in Denmark. Though apparently this is a recurrent practice at the Swedish retailer, H&M denied the accusation stating that the garments had been sent to incineration because of mold or because they did not comply with chemical restrictions. Yet if H&M does not know how to genuinely recycle things, it may turn to Belgium.
Last week Oxfam opened indeed a pop-up shop in Rue Antoine Dansaert 90 in Brussels, in a space where the former Marc Jacobs store was located.
Set to remain open until 16th November, the space is called "The Empty Shop": the store gets indeed filled little by little as donations come.
Being located on the designer road in Brussels, donations come predominantly from renowned Belgian designers and stylists and international brands as well. Obviously also individuals can donate high-quality second-hand clothing. In this way other designer stores get rid of older stock, while consumers can find new pieces on an everyday basis.
The set for this minimalist space, characterised by two shades - white and matte gold - hinting at luxury, was designed by Alain Gilles Studio and it occupies two floors. On the upper level of the pop-up shop a fashion show runway is positioned in the centre of the room and showcases many of the objects used daily by Oxfam when sorting and storing items, including racks and trolleys.
The ground floors features another symbolic installation: a receiving station welcomes donors encouraging them to leave their goods onto a retrieval desk, while the central element is a sort of funnel machine symbolising the collecting and sorting of garments.
The top of the funnel is covered with plants hinting at environmental issues and recycling, while at the same time reminding consumers that here they can find a rich and diverse harvest of "clothes and accessories".
The installation integrates a series of recycle storage racks in a circular-shaped configuration reminiscent of a factory. The store is actually based on a concept written in Italian on its walls - "La fabbrica del valore" - that is "The Factory of Value".
This is a pun on the well-known Milanese exhibition space "La fabbrica del vapore", but also reminds consumers about a very simple and key idea - creating value through the collecting and sorting of clothing, furniture and trinkets by Oxfam.
The location of the pop-up shop and the fact that the space was conceived by designer Alain Gilles is an attempt by the charity to offer a fresh look to visitors, but the store will hopefully be reused as an exhibition or commercial space inspired by the core values of this project.
Announced in July, the Erdem Moralioglu X H&M collaboration launched last week in Los Angeles. Journalists, influencers and high profile bloggers were shipped there, they enthused about a collection that looked like a mix and mesh of floral Erdem and wacky Gucci by Alessandro Michele (maybe at times it was more Gucci than Erdem...), but the event didn't really shake the fashion world, maybe because the designer has a small following or maybe because, having launched major collaborations in the previous years, H&M is losing its Midas touch.
Usually such collaborations generate money for the retailer involved and produce a lot of impressions on social media, but this time the advertising opportunity that H&M may have got was overshadowed not by the alleged craftsmanship of the collection but by other issues of a legal matter.
There are indeed a couple of copyright cases at the moment involving the Swedish fast fashion retailer: a while back H&M released garments celebrating a fictitious team, the "Toronto Wildfox". Yet the word "Wildfox" is a trademark of the brand Wildfox Couture. Definitely not a desperately original label, Wildfox - launched by Kimberly Gordon and Emily Faulstich in 2007 - mainly produces functional garments such as tops with prints and slogans. Just to be on the safe side, a week ago H&M filed a suit in the New York federal court stating it wasn't infringing Wildfox Couture's registered trademark and unfairly competing with them (H&M Hennes & Mauritz GBC AB et al v. Wildfox Couture, LLC et al).
That's just one story, though, as the second one revolves instead around Classixx's Michael David and Tyler Blake. The LA electronica/dance duo filed in a California federal court a complaint against the Swedish retailer (HUSH HUSH SOUND, INC., a California corporation; MICHAEL DAVID; and TYLER BLAKE, v. H&M HENNES & MAURITZ LP, 2:17-cv-07668 (C.D. Cal) after H&M sold sweaters and T-shirts with the name of the band without any authorisation. The duo accused the retailer of trademark infringement, name misappropriation and violation of the California Business and Professions Code.
The duo actually tried to sort things amicably and sent a cease and desist order to H&M prior to filing the lawsuit, but H&M replied that using a word as a decorative feature on an article of clothing is not trademark use. The retailer therefore denied any wrongdoing and stated they had never heard of the musical group, even though the duo's lawyers have evidence that the retailer played their music in their stores.
Now, if H&M had used more general words such as "Classics", "Classic" or even "Classix" or "Classic XXX/Class XXX", they may have managed to easily districate themselves from this embarrassing situation (and they may have used the excuse of a word being employed in a decorative way). These spellings may have been considered as generic words or corruption of the words "classic" or "class", and it would have been slightly harder proving they were linked to a trademark.
The other point that goes against H&M is the fact that the items generated confusion among fans (in its essence, this case is similar to Wildfox's): David and Blake sell indeed their own merchandise and, when some fans spotted the tops in H&M, they tweeted about them, asking the duo if they had been collaborating with the retailer.
It is clear that H&M deliberately damaged the artists and it is only natural to wonder why such retailers seem to be so careless about these issues. You get the feeling this is one of those cases that will be blamed on the intern in "Jeremy Scott at Moschino" style. As you may remember, when Moschino Creative Director Jeremy Scott was sued by street artist Joseph Tierney – for reproducing one of his murals on a Moschino gown, the designer denied personal involvement in the copying, and filed a declaration in a California federal court claiming the graphics were "selected and created by a graphic artist at Moschino", completely independently of him.
Maybe retailers à la H&M should start forgetting about the next cool collab, cancel the party plane and leave the influencers at home: investing money in a team of fashion law advisors and of product namers (IKEA style), who may research words and slogans and check if they are infringing copyrights, may be more useful in the immediate future and they would also guarantee some rather engaging and much needed positive media revenue to the fast fashion retailer.
In the past fashion labels and houses created garments or accessories that were then illegally bootlegged by independent manufacturers - in the mid-'80s the majority of fake designs circulating in Italy were for example produced in and around Naples. Then came High Street stores that started replicating looks off the catwalk and reproducing them quickly, using factories in China, India, Bangladesh, Vietnam or Turkey.
Though unfair, this practice was perfectly understandable: you copy indeed something really cool and exclusive that the majority of people can not afford and sell it at cheaper prices. Yet, in the last few years, things have dramatically changed: designers do not seem to have enough time to create and they probably spend a lot of time on the Internet looking for ideas that can be copied and quickly reproduced.
Yet in previous posts we looked at the fact that nowadays you may be seeing a New Order/Joy Division T-shirt on a runway à la Raf Simons and then you can find more or less the same design on Aliexpress. The former is usually the fruit of a legal collaboration, while the latter is a fake. The process is the same seen in Moschino's S/S 18 collection with fully licensed "My Little Pony" products that genuinely made you wonder if Jeremy Scott had been surfing Aliexpress and looking at the various fake and illegal "My Little Pony" items.
But now we have further developments in what may be called "The Aliexpress Syndrome": the online retailer has been offering for months merchandise inspired by the Netflix series "Stranger Things" (the same products are bought and resold by quite a few Amazon sellers...).
At the begining of October a "Stranger Things" top appeared on Louis Vuitton's S/S 18 runway: in his collection inspired by anachronisms, Nicolas Ghesquière collided indeed brocade frock coats, silk running shorts and a shirt with the poster for the popular series (Ghesquière is a fan and last year he invited the cast to visit his studio).
Then yesterday (to mark the release next Friday of the second series of the supernatural thriller), Topshop launched its "Stranger Things" capsule collection.
The latter includes 28 pieces - T-shirts and sweaters with logos, prints with characters and phrases used on the show, caps, backpacks and lunchboxes - characterised by retro moods and '80s graphics.
Now it is somehow easy to justify these three levels of products: you get the cheapest illegal collaboration, then the deluxe legal collaboration and the affordable legal collaboration. The only difference is that, up until a few years ago, the cheapest illegal product came after the most expensive one, but now stages have turned, proving that fashion has become rather lazy.
Illegal copies shouldn't be encouraged, but you seriously wonder if in this case consumers should actually opt for an item found on Aliexpress or Amazon, after all, who guarantees that the pieces in the Topshop capsule collection do not come from the same factories or retailers that manufacture the fake products in China?
Or maybe there is a better way to react to this mess and boycott them all: do you really want a "Stranger Things" design? Well, rather than buying a luxury one, a High Street copy or a fake product from a major online retailer, got for the DIY route. In this way you will join the trend, but will do so in a unique and personal way.
