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

From Protest Patchwork to Arty Collages: Dior A/W18 Vs Sally Ross's "Painting Piece-By-Piece" @ Collezione Maramotti

Quite often going to visit an exhibition helps designers getting inspired for their collections. In Maria Grazia Chiuri's case it was the exhibition "It's Just a Beginning", that opened last October and closed in January at the National Gallery of Modern Art in Rome, that did the trick. 

The event focused on 1968 and Chiuri decided to explore in Dior's A/W 18 collection, showcased during Paris Fashion Week, youth cultures and revolutions through her designs.

For a lucky coincidence the Beaux Arts in Paris is also anticipating the 50th anniversary of the May Paris student uprisings with an exhibition focused on the political posters of the French far left from 1968 to 1974.

The 1968 events also inspired the set design: the venue on the grounds of the Musée Rodin was indeed covered with collages of protest headlines.

In previous collections Chiuri was inspired by quotes by Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and art theorist Linda Nochlin, but for her A/W 18 collection for Dior, the designer mostly left behind all the slogans, aside from the opening jumper with the knitted "C'est Non, Non, Non et Non!" and a sweater with the peace symbol.

The themes seemed to perfectly summarise the anti-Trump feelings, the general mood after the Harvey Weinstein scandal, the courage of the #MeeToo campaign, the protests of young students in the States after the Parkland, Florida, school shooting, and the will to revolt at the mere thought of a Berlusconi comeback at this weekend's Italian elections.

The fashion inspiration for this collection came from Dior's archives and in particular from a 1966 black and white photograph of a protest staged by a group of young women outside the Dior store with signs reading "Mini Skirts Forever", that eventually prompted Marc Bohan, then-creative director, to launch Miss Dior.

Given the main themes of the collection, Chiuri naturally put emphasis on daywear and the collection featured classic mid-to-late '60s tropes including crocheted dresses, flower power embroideries in a luxury-meets-craft key, black leather jackets à la Monica Vitti in Miklós Jancsó's La pacifista (The Pacifist, 1970), patchworks, colourful friendship bracelets (soon to be a trend, so rediscover how to make them...) and rather cute beaded bags in different shapes including the saddle (that may pose a few questions, though, when it comes to appropriating traditional beaded techniques...).

A classic technique used between 1969 and 1970 by Yves Saint Laurent who employed it being fascinated by folkloric traditions, patchwork represents freedom and in this case it also pointed at the fashion house history. The textiles employed for the patchwork pieces were indeed reproduced from archival Dior prints.

Variations on colourful patchwork motifs employed for dresses, jackets, skirts, trousers and bags, came via mosaics of denim fabrics that gave to this humble and ordinary textile a luxury twist or via techniques that called to mind American penny rugs. 

Tulle kilts were another leitmotif of the collection, though among the best pieces there were the military coats and the organza dresses, all covered in intricately lavish floral embroideries, matched with heavy biker boots.

The art of embroidery was a strong inspiration for Chiuri: though it was a personal ode to craftsmanship and to her grandmother, it was also filtered through feminist writer Rozsika Parker's 1988 book "The Subversive Stitch" (on Chiuri's moodboard), and through artists who used fabrics in their practice such as Louise Bourgeois.

While this collection was maybe miles away from the Surrealist fantasy of Chiuri's S/S18 Dior couture show, there were arty elements in it.

Patchwork is indeed a trend in art as well and, if you want to discover more about it, you should definitely head this weekend at the Collezione Maramotti for Sally Ross' first European exhibition of her works - "Painting Piece-By-Piece" (4 March – 29 July 2018).

The event includes five large works from 2013 to 2015, recently acquired by the Collezione Maramotti (Maramotti Collection, Via Fratelli Cervi 66, Reggio Emilia, Italy).

Ross' paintings are actually non-paintings as the designer stitches together perfectly cut pieces of fabric creating collages of textiles.

The artist usually starts her creations moving from the studio floor, on which she places the various pieces that compose her maps. The results, once the pieces are sewn together, is a sort of cubist tapestry with some geographical connections.

An aerial view of Ross's works gives indeed the idea we may be flying over a landscape that integrates some very personal elments: some materials incorporated into her works are indeed cut from Ross' own garments that she brings into the compositions to symbolically inject in them her own DNA.

For years the artist used as her fave studio garment a green flannel shirt that she had found in the trash in 1997 and that bore the tag "Old Friend". The piece gradually became a sort of talisman, a work shirt she grew attached to.

When many years later the artist accidentally put it in the dryer and it shrank beyond hope, she integrated bits and pieces of the garment in the largest painting that will be displayed at the Maramotti Collection - "Goodbye Old Friend".

Ross freely intermingles painting, printing, collage, sculpture, and drawing: some parts of her paintings are comprised of patterns created and printed by the artist herself, such as fish scales and wood grain, or appropriated from existing materials, the stripes in bedding and in the webbing from a lawn chair, for example.

Anni Albers, Lee Bontecou, Alberto Burri, Franz Kline, Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Cy Twombly and Alan Shields come to mind while analysing Ross's works, but she also indirectly follows the tradition of arte povera.

Rather than using paint to create her artworks, Ross "constructs" her paintings, the physical act of actually painting with fabric conveying something very personal.

Chiuri's adopting patchwork to hint at crafts and at female empowerment and Ross using this technique for her artworks may prove that the needle can be mightier than the sword.  

Image credits for this post

Photographs of Sally Ross's works in this post by Carlo Vannini

12. Sally Ross, "Painting Piece-By-Piece", Collezione Maramotti 4th March - 29th July 2018

13. Sally Ross, Betsy's Gift, 2013
oil and gesso on canvas pieces, nylon thread
203,2 x 355,6 cm

14. Sally Ross, Betsy's Gift, 2013
oil and gesso on canvas pieces, nylon thread
203,2 x 355,6 cm
detail

15. Sally Ross, Big Pink, 2015
gesso, matt medium and enamel on canvas pieces, nylon thread, fiberglass arm splint on modified stretcher
190,5 x 190,5 x 28 cm

16. Sally Ross, Big Pink, 2015
gesso, matt medium and enamel on canvas pieces, nylon thread, fiberglass arm splint on modified stretcher
190,5 x 190,5 x 28 cm
detail

17. Sally Ross, Goodbye Old Friend, 2014
oil, enamel, acrylic, colored pencil and gesso on canvas pieces, wool shirt, nylon thread
198 x 498 cm

18. Sally Ross, Goodbye Old Friend, 2014
oil, enamel, acrylic, colored pencil and gesso on canvas pieces, wool shirt, nylon thread
198 x 498 cm
detail

19. Sally Ross, Holy Roller, 2013
enamel, oil, gesso and matt medium on canvas pieces, nylon thread 
190,5 x 160 cm
detail

20. Sally Ross, Queequeg, 2014
enamel, matt medium and gesso on canvas pieces, nylon thread
160 x 259 cm

21. Sally Ross, Queequeg, 2014
enamel, matt medium and gesso on canvas pieces, nylon thread
160 x 259 cm
detail

That Strange Felliniesque Feeling: "Heavenly Bodies" Teaser

Sometimes it is simply bizarre how one day you see on a runway an accessory inspired by something and the next day you actually manage to see the original piece that may have inspired that design.

So, for a twist of destiny, on Sunday there was a bag shaped like a Papal tiara on Dolce & Gabbana's runway, and yesterday the press presentation held at Rome's beautiful Galleria Colonna for the Met Museum's Costume Institute's Spring 2018 Exhibition"Heavenly Bodies" (May 10 – October 8) about fashion and the Catholic imagination, featured the tiara of Pius IX (1846-1878).

Made with a cloth of silver embroidered with gold metal thread, gold, blue enamel, diamonds, emeralds, sapphires and semiprecious stones, the headdress was one of the five pieces on display celebrating the Vatican loan of around 40 ecclesiastical pieces for the exhibit.  

There will be more about the preview in a later post, but for the time being it's enough to say that the most interesting presentation came courtesy of Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi who dissected the fashion and religion connection in less than 10 minutes and much better than professional fashion critics and tried to take the discourse to a higher philosophical level.  

The most iconic picture of the afternoon isn't the one featuring American Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour with some of the designers involved in the event, that is Donatella Versace (her house is also one of the main sponsors of the exhibition) and Valentino's Pierpaolo Piccioli (Thom Browne was also around), but a picture taken while exhibition curator Andrew Bolton was talking, with fashion devil Anna Wintour on one side and Cardinal Ravasi on the other.

The image, with Wintour's bob on the left and the cardinal's red zucchetto on the right, could have been a poster for a film about Heaven and Hell, and it somehow perfectly summarised the themes of the exhibition and the strange Felliniesque mood that hung in the air yesterday in the Galleria Colonna. 

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No, Not Another Pretino Dress: Dolce & Gabbana A/W 18 Vs Sorelle Fontana

For some kind of weird coincidence Dolce & Gabbana's A/W 18 runway took place a day before the launch in Rome of the Met Museum's Costume Institute's Spring 2018 Exhibition "Heavenly Bodies" (May 10 – October 8) about fashion and the Catholic imagination.

The show was once again steeped in classic Dolce & Gabbana's tropes inspired by the Catholic iconography and style with religious references lifted from the architecture of churches and sacred images of Madonnas, crosses and cherubs (recreated in sequins, crystals and gems on tops and dresses). There were also some religious slogans for the next season – "Santa Moda Ora Pro Nobis" (Saint Fashion Pray for Us), "Fashion Sinner" (printed on a black and white fashion nun inspired ensemble) and "Fashion Devotion" (mind you, this time D&G have left behind their obsession with ex votos).

Variations were added via looks that called to mind the attire of Madonna (the singer), in videos such as "La Isla Bonita" (remember her red gown?). Yet there was something even more ridiculous this time as if the duo was desperately trying to strengthen their bond with Catholic religion: while on Gucci's runway there was an intricately embroidered liturgical stole, here one skirt was decorated with an inverted triangular motif that called to mind the mitre, the ceremonial headdress of bishops consisting of a tall, white, peaked cap.

There were also bags shaped like a hanging incense burner, a tabernacle, a classic wardrobe of the types you may find in a sacresty and an elaborate bag reproducing a Papal tiara, a jewelled three-tiered crown used at papal coronations from 1305 (last used by Pope Paul VI in 1963).  

The most embarrassing thing though came when a model donned a priest collar and another sashayed down the runway in a reinvented version of the "pretino" dress (literally "little priest dress"). Originally designed by the Sorelle Fontana (Fontana Sisters), the pretino was created in 1956 for Ava Gardner. At the time the three sisters even asked Catholic authorities for the permission to design the dress and the Vatican granted it.

Voluptuous Anita Ekberg donned a similar version of the "pretino" in Fellini's film "La Dolce Vita", disturbing the bourgeois consciences of the self-righteous.

In 1991, Krizia recreated two new versions of the "pretino" dress: both were mini-dresses, but one was decorated with high-prelate buttons and another, more similar to the model worn by Ekberg, was a black cady and white satin dress completed by a hat.

Apart from reproducing a vision of the Catholic church that is more similar to the one in Fellini's "Roma" than to Pope Francis', the collection looked like a parody of itself. Maybe Camera della Moda should start opening up the Fashion Week to religious tailoring houses working for the Vatican, you can bet they would come up with less ridiculous and costumy collections than this one.

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A Hagiography of Saints, Sinners and Hybridised Fashionistas: Gucci A/W 18

Fashion show goers know that there are runways that move you to tears or that fill you with an unexpected sense of joy or with utter feelings of disappointment.

Alessandro Michele's shows for Gucci have the power to leave people disoriented: this strange puzzling feeling is usually produced by the many layered references scattered in the venue, the clothes and accessories.

You may think you have just spotted a reference to a painting in a dress when you realise the design following it is actually hinting at a film costume, but, then the cinematic mood turns into pure urban style, filtered through a myriad of cultural references.  

Last Wednesday the feeling was the same: the new A/W 18 men and women's wear collection, showcased during Milan Fashion Week, was presented in a set that reproduced a surgical theatre with several operating tables placed under harsh hospital lights, while the audience sat in waiting-area plastic chairs.

At first you may have thought this was a reference to plastic surgery and an impossible quest for beauty, but then a model entered carrying a perfect reproduction of her severed head.

While this was a perfect Instagram moment, confusion creeped in - was this going to be some kind of horror show à la Dario Argento (after all Michele is a fan)?

The designs that followed actually did not confirm the horror derivation, but combined more themes together in 90 confounding and astonishing looks.

There were classic Gucci florals mismatched with checkerboard prints; glam '80s dresses with big shoulders were juxtaposed to blanket coats; turquoise metallic tops with extravagant bows seemed to be an antidote to sensible yet boring '70s suits.

Classic Chanel tweed jackets were shredded at the hems and sprouted chains of sequins, while the New York Yankees logo was applied to elegant coats and formal jackets (Gucci partnered with Major League Baseball on a line of accessories and clothing, so this was all official).

Long gowns evoked in a sleeve or in the embellishments a sort of refined Renaissance style, obviously destroyed by the geek librarian look that followed them.

Accessories inclouded bejewelled brooches of tigers and long necklaces; trainers looked terribly ugly, but embellished with fake gems and crystals again of the sort you may spot in a Renaissance painting.

Other accessories included Russian babushka headscarves and knitted balaclavas (is that going to be a trend come next Autumn?) that at times looked more like post-plastic surgery bandages and only covered the lips.

The bright colours of the headdresses evoked in some cases the masks of the Mexican Lucha Libre or the transformative power of Leigh Bowery's costumes, though when matched with coats or knitted pieces they seemed to reference the Inuit attire or the pictures of masquerades or masked religious celebrations taken in Brazil, Jamaica, Cuba, Haiti, Benin and Nigeria by Phyllis Galembo.

In some cases though the balaclavas were transformed with jewels in the fashion of Berber women.

There were more hints at transnational style with visions of China in a pagoda headdress and in mint green silk pyjamas and Japan being represented by characters from '80s animated manga series replicated on jumpers and coats.

What to do about the blue Sikh turbans? Some may find them offensive, after all a Sikh turban is an article of faith, but Michele also used a heavily embroidered stole, a vestment from the Catholic liturgy, to accessorise one look.

Besides, another model in a red velvet dress looked like a perverted version of a Medieval nun (is Michele trying to get into the new Met Museum exhibition "Heavenly Bodies"?), so his main intent seemed combining all these references together rather than offending anybody's religious sensibility.  

In some cases the accessories were integrated into the models' bodies: a young man sprouted for example a pair of faun-like horns, while a model in a cute pink dress had a disturbing third eye on her forehead.

Another model carried a rubber red and black striped snake of the kind that Michele made famous since becoming Gucci's Creative Director; but there were also a pet baby dragon and a cute chameleon.

The explanation behind all this Gucci madness was produced in the show notes and in a press conference that elaborated on Michele's rather convoluted inspirations.

The designer moved indeed from Professor Donna J. Haraway's 1984 essay "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century" to create these hybrid characters or post-human "Gucci cyborgs".

The final idea was to play with dichotomies such as "normal/abnormal", "human/machine" and "human/animal" and present a humanity in constant transformation.

According to Michele this modern metamorphosis may happen via means of communication, social media, plastic surgery or just clothes: he indeed acts like a wicked Dr Frankenstein, stitching together two looks in one or combining two identities in an entirely new one.

The nude transparent tulle wraps donned by some of the models on their looks were indeed supposed to be signs of these metamorphoses (and not replicas of the laundry bags in Margiela's S/S 12 collection... View this photo).

Yet in Michele's delirious remix it is almost too easy to spot some references and ideas especially if you sit down and worked like a forensic scientist: the models accessorising their looks with pets seemed new versions of ladies portrayed during the Renaissance with exotic, fantastic or symbolical animals like Raphael's Portrait of a Lady with a Unicorn or Leonardo Da Vinci's Lady with an Ermine. Andrea Solari's Cleopatra may instead be the inspiration for the model with the snake.

His models carrying heads - symbols of young people trying to forge an identity for themselves in a rather confusing world - could almost be seen as glammed up versions of cephalophore saints like St Denis, St John The Baptist or Saint Valerie. In the same way as the model carrying the baby dragon seemed a modern reinterpretation not of a character out of a fantasy saga, but of St Margaret of Antioch, often portrayed with the dragon that swallowed her and that she defeated.

Even the electric blue turbans may have an arty derivation, evoking Jan Van Eyck's Man in Blue Turban, while it is difficult not to spot in the ample white collars decorating the black jackets and tops links with the attire of the men and women portrayed in Dutch paintings (think about Rembrandt's Portrait of Maria Trip).

There were also cinematic hints (after all Michele studied costume design at the Academy of Costume and Fashion in Rome): from the Paramount logo gown and the Russ Meyer's "Faster, Pussycat, Kill! Kill!" top, to Old Hollywood gowns and designs that called to mind Theda Bara as Cleopatra.

The religious references also conjured up visions of Danilo Donati's costumes for Fellini's "Roma", while the luscious ruby red gowns called to mind the sensuality of the costumes in Matteo Garrone's "The Tale of Tales".

There was actually a strong connection with this film as the special effects in the show - that is the severed heads, third eye, and the fake animals - were courtesy of Rome-based company Makinarium, that also did the special effects for "The Tale of Tales". 

So there is logic in this madness, but there are also other points to make: in the case of this show the clothes became secondary to the special effects as if they weren't important.

In a way they aren't since, rather than designing, Michele appropriates, remixes, reinvents, regenerates, re-edits and styles together all sorts of eras and inspirations (consider Gucci's floral scarves - they are still the same ones favoured by Princess Grace of Monaco, but they may be embellished with crystallised chains or matched with a varsity jacket). 

This is what differentiates Michele from other designers: in the past we may have seen people like Miuccia Prada getting one designer coat from a vintage shop and recreating it in a new version.  

Michele's main skill stands in recombining more than one era, painting, artwork, film, obscure reference, book, garment and style in one look like a mad surgeon, in an endlessly post-modernist act of unapologetically stealing and recollaging things together. In a way it is the amount of references that gets people lost and confuses them.

The modus operandi behind this multi-layered exercise that confuses most people is dictated by optimism and by Michele's belief in possibilities and hopes. That sounds a bit childish, especially considering the state of our world.

Locked in an ivory tower from which he creates glammed up versions of Renaissance and Medieval gowns, Michele risks of living a utopia in which he may think to be speaking to the entire world, while he is catering for celebrities and selfie-crazed influencers. 

There are more practical plans for the future, though: Gucci has pledged to donate $500,000 to the Gun-Control March for Our Lives rally planned in Washington next month organised by the survivors of the massacre in Parkland, Fla., where a gunman killed 17 people on 14th February. Maybe there are hopes Michele will leave at some point the ivory tower - with or without his pet dragon - to rejoin the masses. 

Surreal Moods in the Fashion Week: "Cinzia Ruggeri - Umbratile con Brio" @ Federico Vavassori Gallery, Milan

The film "Ready Player One" directed by Steven Spielberg is not out yet, but it promises to be a great journey into the future by way of the past with hundreds of references to the '80s, a period of time in which we went through great changes in many disciplines, including fashion and technology. At the time Italian designer Cinzia Ruggeri reunited this duality with her avant-garde outfits, conceptual behavioural garments, and "transdisciplinary" pieces inspired by Cubism, Futurism and Constructivism, and unusual collaborations (fans may remember how Brian Eno created a ziggurat shaped lightning installation for one of her shows, causing a sensation in Milan).

So, as the '80s seem to be pretty trendy at the moment, it doesn't come as a surprise that the Milan-based Federico Vavassori Gallery (Via Giorgio Giulini 5) is currently celebrating Ruggeri with "Umbratile con brio" (curated by Mariuccia Casadio and on until 10th March), the first exhibition after the retrospective "Cin Cin 1985 – 2015" that took place three years ago at 10 Corso Como. What may be surprising for some visitors who may not know Ruggeri's entire ouvre, is that the objects and designs collected here do not belong just to the fashion realm. 

The "Homage to Lévi Strauss dress", with its three-dimensional ziggurat-like motifs now lives in the permanent collection of the Victorian & Albert Museum, so it is missing from the show, but the exhibition is conceived not as a retrospective with Ruggeri's best pieces, but as a voyage through her visions.

There are therefore other creatures to discover here, from the "abito salame" (salami dress) made with a thread similar to a cotton ham netting that would trap the body of the wearer as if it were a sausage, to an apron covered with natural sponges (that goes well with a steel chair covered in sponges, plastic gems and pearls...).

Some rooms are suspended between dream and reality, design and fashion, performance and installation: a dummy sits at a table inhabiting the "Abito Tovaglia" (tablecloth dress, 1984), a simple frock with an extension that could be used as a tablecloth offering the wearer a functional solution for an improptu lunch or dinner with friends.

On her back the "Shatzi" mirror invites visitors to play: this object is indeed not a sniggering enemy revealing wrinkles and other worrying signs of ageing, but a dear friend ready to offer with its multiple hands simple but fun gifts to the person standing in front of it.

Hands are actually a recurrent motifs in Ruggeri's imagination: they emerge from walls and paintings, inviting or scaring the viewers; they are evoked by black opera gloves calling to mind surrealist Schiaparelli and they are represented in a mosaic pattern on a bandeau bra, clutching the wearers' breasts.

Puzzling and blunt (see the ball of chicken skin floating in a glass case...), obsessively in love with her Schnauzer dog that appears everywhere, dangling on an earring or decorating a wall as a cut out made in simple black cardboard, Ruggeri nurtures a secret love for knick-knacks and random objects, that's why she designed a beaded ornament to dress a humble bulb or turned an ordinary coffee maker into a design object adding a seductive red veil and transforming its handle into a leg.  

Literal interpretations of verbal expressions inspire Ruggeri funny moments like the "Colombra" (a sort of hybrid word fusing "colomba", Italian for "dove", and "ombra", meaning "shadow") and "Perle ai Porci" (Pearls to the Swines). The former is an elongated black velvet sofa, replicating the shadow that a human figure would cast on a wall, its crossed hands projecting a dove; the latter is a long pearl earring integrating a plastic pig among the pearls.  

Explorations of geographies and boundaries also work pretty well in Ruggeri's universe: one table in the exhibition is shaped like the Greek Island of Miklos, while a map showing Torre dell'Ovo and Torre dell'Orso (in Puglia, where Ruggeri lived when she took a break from fashion and refocused on interior design) hangs on a wall surrounded by a broken frame that is allowing the plastic animals resting upon it to escape in a final act of surrealist freedom.

Far away from the brouhaha of the Milanese fashion week, "Umbratile con brio" offers an antidote to the madness of the world via the destabilising power of laughter. Miss it at your own peril.

All images in this post by Amin Zarif

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The Vocabulary of Zigzag Moderne: Laura Theiss A/W 18

Once the largest hotel in New York City, the Hotel St. George was characterised by a bas-relief that featured modern symbols, from skyscrapers to means of transport including buses and trains, steampships and even a dirigible.

The sinuously stylised waves under the steamships and of the smoke rising from the chimneys in the bas-relief didn't break its linearity but contributed to give the scene a certain degree of elegant dynamism.

Laura Theiss' A/W 18 collection, entitled "Skyline", features a series of sleek and sophisticated designs inspired by such dynamic motifs and from the decorative elements of the Zigzag Moderne style.

In her new designs Theiss has broken her traditional knitted patterns with abstract three-dimensional graphic motifs.   

The collection comprises a variety of functional knitted and crocheted separates and dresses going from densely pleated skirts matched with cocooning rounded shoulder jumpers to practical modernist sweaters and palazzo pants; from form-fitting dresses with delicate crocheted Art Deco motifs of fans to couture cardigans with sculpted sleeves and drop-waist dresses in mesmerising jewel tones. 

The architectural motifs of Zigzag Moderne - originally made in an array of materials including exotic wood veneers, marble, painted terracotta and metal, that can be admired in buildings in New York, Los Angeles and Miami - are the leitmotif of the entire collection.

They form geometrically sharp lines on pants and skirts; they are appliqued diagonally on a top to add a romantic note, they create on a dress surrealist fractures or transform into gentle waves and evoke the intricate vocabulary of shapes and patterns of Sir Eduardo Paolozzi's screenprints "Calcium Night Light" and "Four German Songs". 

Lines are elegant and midi skirts and dresses prevail evoking the elongated silhouettes of Erté's female alphabet forms.

The collection is completed by a series of accessories such as gloves and scarves that can be used to complement the designs or add an architectural twist to everyday looks.

Theiss mainly used wool and cashmere for this collection, but, since Art Deco employed synthetic materials such as plastic and metals, the designer also introduced synthetic threads in her textile weave.

Lurex yarns give therefore the designs a futurist twist, while the palette - comprising black, navy blue, dove grey, turquoise, shocking pink, emerald green and burgundy - reunites classical autumnal tones with the colours of an imaginary galaxy.  

Zigzag Moderne celebrated modern life and Theiss has created for her A/W 18 collection the ultimate wardrobe for a modern woman - she is fierce, strong, she's nobody's doll and she's the architect of her own fortune and her own future.

Laura Theiss will be showcasing her A/W 18 collection at White Milano from today till 26th February 2018. 

All images in this post courtesy of Laura Theiss. Photographer: David Yeo; Styling: Rachel Holland; Model: Anastasia @wild.london

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The Quest for the Next Big Thing or The Queen Vs Richard Quinn (But What If Young Designers Were Given More Time to Grow Up and Develop Their Styles?)

The biggest news during London Fashion Week didn't relate to clothes, but to the fact that the Queen turned up at Richard Quinn's runway show that took place Tuesday afternoon at 180 The Strand.

Sitting next to supreme fashion dictator, Vogue's editor-in-chief Anna Wintour, Queen Elizabeth II, seemed to enjoy it all: she smiled, listened to what Wintour had to say and, at the very end of the show, awarded Quinn with the inaugural Queen Elizabeth II Prize for British Design.

The rose-shaped award, designed by Angela Kelly, Her Majesty's personal assistant and senior dresser since 2002, will be assigned on an annual basis to a designer who's made a contribution to society beyond their fashion designs. Quinn runs a print studio in Peckham, south London, that is open to other designers and college students, so he seemed like the perfect candidate for the first prize of its kind.

Enlisting the Queen was a major coup for the British Fashion Council - you must admit that New York, Milan and Paris can't compete with that. They may have poseurs, celebrities, influencers and a few dodos - pardon - fashion critics, but these fashion capitals definitely do not have a 91-year-old monarch sitting in the front row.

But what about the clothes? Well, Richard Quinn is a very young designer who's become known for his bold and bright floral prints. He got a BA in Fashion Print and for that first collection, showcased in 2014, he split classic couture gowns in two and then restitched them together in mismatched and clashing colours and prints.

The Stella McCartney foundation then sponsored his MA studies: his style evolved and, in 2016, he came up with a collection in which mysterious masked models were covered in quirky floral designs.

Among the inspirations for his early collections there were the Haute Couture designs of Dior (where he interned), but also the upholstered figures created by artist Paul Harris. Yet in that collection the emphasis on faceless models and floral boots ended up evoking a bit too much Margiela's designs.

This connection with Margiela returned during Tuesday's runway: the show featured once again faceless models, quite a few of them wearing scarves as a tribute to the Queen's Balmoral attire.

There were a lot of retro floral prints, obviously created at the designer's print studio, matched and mismatched in pleated dresses, bomber jackets, and theatrical silver foil capes and gowns.

Floral bodysuits and thigh-high boots also made an appearance and the final effect rather than being extremely original was more Ken Scott-meets-Leigh Bowery meets-Margiela-meets the Queen-meets Comme des Garcons's A/W 2012 collection.

The English country garden inspiration was also remixed with some Mugler in the (infinitely less interesting) motorcycle looks - think a Dior bar jacket clashed with a motorbike jacket and matched with cascades of polka dots ruffles for that Strawberry Switchblade touch and a snake print body-con dress accessorised with a motorcycle helmet and elbow-length PVC gloves. 

There were also quite a few connections with other designers: his foil capes called to mind Alexander McQueen's billowing black cape and Balenciaga's 1950s bubble dress, both recreated in bright metallic shades. Quinn also moved from Balenciaga's iconic baby doll dress for one of his floral creations.

Speaking of Balenciaga, there were quite a few links and connections with the French house's recent collections designed by Demna Gvasalia. You may argue in Quinn's defence that Gvasalia steals from Margiela and that Quinn's 2014 collection anticipated some of the trends that became dear to Gvasalia (they both borrow from Margiela and maybe they started borrowing from each other as well?).  

The connections between Quinn and Gvasalia were probably generated also by the styling of the presentation that also included models wearing wigs that seemed to be made with stainless steel sponges in the fashion of Comme des Garçons' A/W 17 collection. 

The presence of the Queen and the emphasis on themes, ideas and moods taken from other designers (but not highlighted by critics too intent in hiding such connections in an act of voluntary censorship to convince themselves they may have just found the next big thing...) ended up casting a shadow on Quinn's colourful hand-made experiments.  

In a way these links and connections made you suspect that, despite his experiments (in a previous collections Quinn produced a floral frock integrating a houndstooth bodysuit without seams in the pattern), Quinn is not yet a fully-fledged fashion designer.

He may have a passion for hand-painting and printing florals on his dresses, but he has some weak points when it comes to shapes, silhouttes and pattern cutting, elements on which he could work to develop a more personal style.  

Quinn is going to have a busy year with collaborations with Debenhams, Lane Crawford, Matchesfashion.com and Liberty (the second one) lined up. Yet you wished they would let him grow up a bit more since, as things stand, he may risk disappearing in 1 or 2 years, the time to give the media and Instagram another victim - pardon - young designer, to call a genius and another member of the royal family to award them.

Still this collection prove that times have definitely changed: hard to think the Queen would have gone to see an Alexander McQueen's show and appreciated the late designer's dramatic interpretations of the Highland Clearances or saluted as an act of creative genius live worms sandwiched in plastic corsets. 

But maybe not having the Queen at your show is not so bad, after all, fashion is supposed to be anti-establishment and at times even disturbing. When the establishment and the oi aristoi nod and applaud, you must really worry because it means that fashion has lost the power to annoy and destabilise people and hasn't got anything rebellious to say (at Quinn's show everything was too civilised, with the odd tear appearing when "Visions of Gideon", the final track by Sufjan Stevens on Academy Award nominated film "Call Me By Your Name", closed the show). 

As for Quinn, maybe he should be given a bit more time to discover his real vocation before he commits to the super saturated women's wear market. A career as textile or interior designer would probably suit him better and would even avoid him to fall into too many copycat traps.    

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Fashion Obituary: "Father Thames" Judy Blame, Alchemist of Fashion (1960 - 2018)

Genuine subversion is a subtle business and history has often proved that radical revolutions are made with small acts and gestures. That's exactly what artist, stylist and designer Judy Blame did in his career and that's why his death at 58, announced yesterday, cast a dark shadow on the final day of London Fashion Week.

Born Chris Barnes in Leatherhead in 1960, Blame ran away from home at 17. Educated at the school of punk rock, he spent a couple of his formative years in Manchester where he became a friend of Peter Saville and of radical artist Linder Sterling.

Blame then moved to London where he went through an act of self-reinvention, accidentally helped by designer Anthony Price, who called him Judy while he worked the cloakroom of gay club Heaven in the early 80s.

Judy Blame first started producing jewellery as a form of personal adornment within the London club scene. He had a totally DIY approach to things and often used safety pins and buttons creating with them conglomerates in which he added keys and other assorted objects he found while mudlarking on the banks of the Thames.

His style around this time was perfectly summarised by the "Father Thames" shoot by Robyn Beeche, portraying a young man in an assemblage of clothes and accessories made with simple hopsack linen and a necktie covered with buttons and random objects.

While the main point of these adornments featuring safety pins (a symbol for him since 1974 when he threaded six plastic beads in a rainbow gradient through a safety pin), buttons, badges, pearls, corroded bottle tops, bottle openers, rusty keys and cutlery, plastic bags and commercial elements such as toy soldiers was standing out from the crowd, once reassembled these mass produced elements turned from the debris of a society based on waste and suffering from industrial and economic decline into richly textured layered tokens shaping an almost tribal identity and a new and cool youth culture.

Around this period of time, Blame met and influenced creative minds such as Boy George, Derek Jarman, Anthony Price, John Maybury and Leigh Bowery.

In his autobiography, Straight, Boy George wrote that Blame would arrive with a bag of safety pins and a cork and would create "a fashion revolution". Indeed the pieces for performers à la Boy George in which Blame turned the ordinary into the extraordinary inspired fans who imitated them, starting new trends.

In 1984 Judy Blame showcased some of his pieces of jewellery (fashionably donned by models wearing Marks and Spencers underwear...) during a fashion show at the ICA. Spotted by Martin Fry from ABC, he ended up inspiring the track "Judy's Jewels" on the b-side of ABC's single "Vanity Kills" (1985).

 

In 1985 Blame helped John Moore to establish The House of Beauty and Culture in Dalston, a craft collective of like-minded artists and designers, located on Stamford Road that included Fiona Skinner, Dave Baby, Fiona Bowen, John Flett, Peter Foster, Alan Macdonald & Fritz Solomon (furniture making duo Fric & Frack), Richard Torry and Christopher Nemeth.

The collective experience led Blame later on in his life to become a consultant and collaborate with various labels and designers including John Galliano, Rifat Ozbek, Rei Kawakubo at Comme des Garçons (remember the Homme Plus S/S 2005 collection?), Gareth Pugh, Marc Jacobs, Kim Jones at Louis Vuitton (for the accessories in the A/W 2015 menswear collection) and more recently Jeremy Scott at Moschino.

Before moving into the realm of designer fashion and luxury houses, Blame worked as a stylist in the music business: meeting the late stylist Ray Petri (behind the Buffalo fashion collective) led to key collaborations with Neneh Cherry (he styled her iconically dynamic and sporty look for her performance of "Buffalo Stance" on Top of the Pops in 1988, when the singer was heavily pregnant).

Blame also produced fashion editorials with photographers Mark Lebon, Mark Mattock, Jean Baptiste Mondino and Juergen Teller for publications such as i-D, and The Face, acting as art director, image maker and consultant for Björk and Massive Attack among the others.

Blame was celebrated last year with a first major show at London's ICA - "Judy Blame: Never Again", curated by Matt Williams.

In the exhibition Blame's make-do-and-mend spirit prevailed together with his neo-Dada collages, fashion editorials and sketchbooks, and pieces about his collaborations with other artists and creative minds including Charles Atlas (check out the 1987 film "Hail the New Puritan"), Jake and Dinos Chapman, Derek Jarman, Jim Lambie, Mark Lebon, Linder, John Maybury, Jamie Reid, Peter Saville, Juergen Teller, Nicola Tyson (see the 1983 film "Judy Blame on Southwark Bridge") and Tim Noble & Sue Webster.

At times the pieces and images included in the event (see the old heroin foils transformed into art) weren't just provocative or crazily eccentric (bits and pieces of his shopping lists were transformed into badges), but hid a darkness that pointed at the intermittent periods of Blame's drug and alcohol addiction.

Judy Blame represents everything that London is currently missing (despite what the British Fashion Council wants you to believe...): even in the birthplace of punk most people have conformed to fast fashion, super quick trends, streetwear fads or (for those who can afford it) luxury pieces.

Click on the Instagram account of any prominent influencer and you will sport adverts, references, names of labels, borrowed and leant clothes maybe worn with personality, but surely not with any personal effort (a prolific user of Instagram on which he posted many pictures from his archives, Blame actually disliked the fact that on Instagram everybody seems to be an "art director" or a "stylist"...).

Flick through the thousands of streetstyle photos taken during fashion weeks and spot one person who is wearing something truly original you can't buy in a shop/online, something handmade with a childish glee, something that is not tagged and attributed to this or that designer.

In a way, while fashion has recently been ripping off the '80s, it hasn't certainly been celebrating the DIY aesthetic of people like Judy Blame who were major players in that decade.

Blame proved that you could be low on resources, but high on resourcefulness and that, yes, it can be frustrating not having a lot of money, but that doesn't mean your imagination can't come up with something truly extraordinary.

He saw beauty where others saw trash and inspired many out there to go down the same route, painstakingly covering berets in buttons, playing with safety pins, experimenting with commercial toys and proudly wearing the results as works of art. After all, diamonds may be a girls' best friends, but safety pins are sharper and toilet chains can be even cooler - the trick is indeed in how you assemble a piece and in how you wear it and not in how much you paid for it. 

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Notes from a Silver-Toned Retro-Future: MM6 Maison Margiela A/W 18

As seen in yesterday's post, one of the inspirations for Raf Simon's A/W 18 collection for Calvin Klein, showcased during New York Fashion Week, was Andy Warhol's 1966 "Silver Clouds" installation.

The arty ghost of Warhol also hovered in MM6 Maison Margiela's presentation that took place during London Fashion Week.

For the occasion the house transformed the Mayfair pub The Running Horse, wrapping the entire space - fireplaces included - in silver foil.

The collection, designed by an in-house team, mainly revolved around one shade - metallic silver - though there were some occasional glimpses of black and white.

The most interesting pieces included in the collection were the raincoats, leather coats and cropped shearling jackets, with one puffer jacket looking very similar to the pillow-shaped "clouds" Warhol created in collaboration with engineer Billy Klüver.  

Silver coated denim pants were instead a bit too stiff, while coated turtlenecks and slipdresses added an element of softness.

Apart from the outerwear, the most desirable pieces were probably the accessories that comprised long leather gloves and classic granny's head scarves that evoked the Queen of England's most royal accessory (reinterpreted in a glam key), but there were also leather tabi socks worn with plastic flip flops, a motorcycle helmet used as a bag and boots and bags covered in disco ball-like mirrors.

Disco balls proved to be another strong inspiration as they were printed on tops and dresses and their surfaces inspired a super reflective trouser suit.

Though evoking more modern artworks such as the distorted disco balls of "Quelle Fête II" by Dutch design collective in Rotganzen, the mirror ball graphics went well with Warhol's artwork, after all, "Silver Clouds" was a disco-related installation aimed at making people think and ponder about the status of contemporary art.

At the same time the idea wasn't new as Margiela already produced a deconstructed disco ball top for the house's Artisanal S/S 2008 collection and Margiela's S/S 2009 collection included disco ball sandals and leggings (besides, the tinsel trim used to decorate the hood of a parka was also a reference to the tinsel jackets from the house's A/W 2007 Artisanal collection...).

As for the idea of wrapping all up in silver foil, it was reminiscent of the house's interior design installations and displays during Milan Design Week.

Yet there was something else going on here: Warhol's installation had (and still has - remember how it was also used to create the atmosphere for Mary Katrantzou's A/W 20016 runway?) the power of putting a smile on people's faces.

This Margiela collection, instead, seemed to hide behing the perfectly quilted astronaut coat not the exuberance of future space travels or the optimism of Space Age fashion, but the need to wear something highly protective against an invisible menace. The fractured surfaces of silver coated ribbed military jumpers and gloves revealed indeed a deep black shade underneath, almost a black hole or a void. Maybe this was a hint at a dark future or maybe the team imagined this collection as ideal not for the disco, but in the event of a nuclear fallout.

In a way the fact that Warhol's metallised pillows resurfaced during the latest fashion shows could also be interpreted as a reflection on the state of fashion: Warhol made a lot of money producing cheap multiples, while in the last few years fashion houses and brands have been making money recycling and remixing ideas.

There is a further Warhol connection in this collection dedicated to all fashionistas: a limited shirt will feature prints of Polaroid images (a format Warhol loved) of the collection taken before the London presentation.

As an alternative, if you prefer the silver shades but you can't afford designer clothes at the moment, well, grab an emergency blanket and fashion your exclusive protective design from it. Guess Warhol would have approved.  

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Landscapes of Kansas Barns, Electric Chairs and Silver Clouds: Calvin Klein A/W 18

Kansas barns and electric chairs certainly do not conjure up visions of cool fashion runways. They are indeed nightmares out of news stories like the one that inspired Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, revolving around the murder of the Clutter family by Perry Smith and Richard Hickock.

Yet during New York Fashion Week barns and electric chairs were integrated into the setting for Raf Simons' Calvin Klein A/W 18 men and women's wear collections.

Though threatening and sinisters, the barns (inspired by this season's campaign shot by photographer Willy Vanderperre) and the images that decorated them showing electric chairs and assorted disasters courtesy of The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts (Calvin Klein has currently got an ongoing partnership with it), were actually meant to conjure up a surreal film set. The cinematic connection was also clear in the gallons of popcorn that invaded the runway, giving the illusion the models were walking through snow.

The show, that took place at the former American Stock Exchange, opened and closed with reinvented orange workwear jackets. In some cases the safety gear was turned into billowing coats, in others the functional jackets became a cropped shirt while the hi-vis bands were integrated into shearling coats.

Outerwear for both men and women was characterised by ample and voluminous silhouettes, reminiscent at times of David Byrne's giant gray suit from the Talking Heads' 1984 live movie Stop Making Sense.

The designs were mainly accessorised with balaclavas: usually associated with terror, the head pieces lost all their negative connotations as they looked homemade and mainly came in pastel colours.

In a few cases rather than looking threatening, the headpieces evoked Bonnie Cashin's (no, not again, please...) hooded turtlenecks and the emphasis on orange workwear also seemed to evoke Kenneth Paul Block's 1974 illustration of a model in a tangerine dress by Cashin.

Looks were layered so that overcoats hid long skirts or dresses, often matched with elbow-length gloves.

Prairie dresses à la Laura Ingalls Wilder or gowns from the American Civil War times, like the ones donned by Sofia Coppola's "The Beguiled" murderous schoolgirls and women, were given a touch of perversion, as they were recreated in sheer fabrics or with cut-out sections that left the models' breasts exposed.

Rubber boots were also given a dichotomic value as they could have been interpreted as functional safety footwear or as fetishistic accessories.  

Bags in Warhol's trademark colours with prints of his "Death and Disaster" series also made a new appearance (Simons used them already in Calvin Klein's previous collection), the dark and macabre prints contrasting with the popcorn bags (printed with Calvin Klein ads) that many of the models clutched to their chests.

Two-tone cowboy-inspired button-down shirts and placket trousers trousers from previous seasons also made an appearance, while playful touches were added via knits that seemed to incorporate glitches or that reproduced homespun images of Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner.

More crafts appeared via the designs inspired by American quilting patterns, including white shirts and evening gowns, they were new versions of the creations seen in previous Raf Simons for Calvin Klein collections.

These designs could also be interpreted as reassuring: quilts do have a protective power and quite often charity organisations and volunteers make quilts for people in need. In this case they represented hope in a hallucinatory dystopia.

More optimism arrived towards the end of the show when the balaclavas took another shape: they became silver astro hoods, the sort of headgear that became popular in the '60s, inspired by the joys of space travel.

The optimism of a new Space Age that we glimpsed just a few weeks ago through the launch of SpaceX's Falcon Heavy, was evoked by the silvery tubes protruding from the barns, while the silver foil dresses were references to Mylar survival blankets (Todd Haynes's 1995 "Safe" film was another cinematic inspiration for this collection) and to Andy Warhols' 1966 "Silver Clouds" installation.

The latter, first installed in 1966 at New York's Leo Castelli Gallery, was actually recreated in Calvin Klein's 654 Madison Avenue flagship for the joy of the New York Fashion Week fashionistas (in this case the "silver clouds" were printed with images from Warhol's "Death and Disaster" series and with his portraits of Dennis Hopper and Sandra Brant) 

You could read between the third part of Raf Simons' trilogy for Calvin Klein and find a lot of hidden meanings in it.

The show, that ended up being the best one in a rather dull edition of New York Fashion Week, could be interpreted for example as a disturbing take on Hollywood with all the dark sex abuse scandals that have eclipsed its glossy glamour (in this case the models clutching popcorn turned the audience into the spectacle).

But the show, entitled "Landscapes", was first and foremost a multi-layered vision of America as it is now, a land of dystopia in which it is too difficult to distinguish between the fake and the genuine, the nightmare and the nightmarish reality.

Besides, this collection was also Simons' post-modernist reflection on appropriation as he reworked Western shirts, Civil War attire, firefighters gear, American crafts and films in a fantasy set partially conjured up with the help of artist (and Simons collaborator) Sterling Ruby.    

One thing made you think, though: when Andy Warhol launched his silver baloons, he stated "Since I didn't want to paint anymore, I thought […] that I could give that up and do the movies. And then I thought that there must be a way that I have to finish it off, and I thought the only way is to make a painting that floats." Surely, this is not a metaphor for Simons not wanting to create fashion anymore, but this Warhol reference prompts you to ponder.

The designer's experiments with the Americana glossary have so far worked pretty well and revenues have been going up since he arrived at the label. Yet his modus operandi, his will to combine art, interior design and fashion, makes you suspect that one day Simons will leave the fashion stage to pursue other, more arty and conceptual dreams. Till then and till he remains at Calvin Klein, though, he will probably keep on being the most intense designer showing in New York.