Let's continue for another day the religious thread that started on Thursday by briefly exploring an architectural inspiration in the Chiesa della Santissima Trinità degli Spagnoli (Church of the Holy Trinity of the Spaniards), located in the intersection between via del Corso and Via Condotti, in Rome.
Completed in 1746, the church was built in a baroque style by Portuguese architect Emanuele Rodriguez dos Santos with the help of Giuseppe Sardi. The church has got an oval plan but its orientation is along the longitudinal axis. There are seven intercommunicating chapels inside the church, four on the right and three on the left.
The paintings in the church are also from the 1700s: the white and gold elliptic ceiling incorporates an oculus with a fresco depicting "The Apotheosis of Saint John of Matha in Glory" (1748) by Rococo painter Gregorio Guglielmi. The dome is divided into eight sectors by ribs and each sector is coffered in a diamond pattern by interlacing ribwork (similar to wicker) containing lozenge-shaped rosettes. The simplicity of the repeated pattern produces here complexity and inspires an abundance of applications.
The motif offers indeed both aesthetic and technical possibilities in different fields and with different materials - think for example about weaving strands and strips of fabrics and textiles or diagonally overlapping them. In a nutshell by using this motif in a garment or accessory, technology and aesthetics would converge as the woven pattern with the rosettes is about structure and ornamentation.
It's Wednesday morning and there's a flurry of activity in the St Giustino Cathedral in Chieti, Italy. Groups of local men are cleaning and repairing the wooden scenes for the Good Friday procession; chants rise in the distance from the mass taking place in the crypt of the cathedral. In the meantime, Rita Centobeni, Prioress of the Archconfraternity of the Sacred Mount of the Dead, is quietly waiting for a small group of women - seamstress Pina Capista Cirillo, Emanuela D'Amelio, Carolina Obletter and Anna Eletta Sassani Valignani - in the sacristy of the private chapel in the basement of the cathedral. She is indeed the coordinator of a very special all-female rite, dressing the statue of the Virgin Mary in mourning robes for the Good Friday procession. And that is no mean feat.
Historically considered one of the oldest if not the oldest processions in Italy, Chieti's Good Friday display is about faith, music and theatricality: hooded men from the local confraternities accompany the wooden scenes commissioned in 1855 to illustrator, painter and set designer Raffaele Del Ponte that remember the Passion of Jesus. Two hundred musicians and a choir follow them playing and singing live Saverio Selecchy's "Miserere".
Men play a central role in the procession, except in one stage that is strictly prohibited to them – dressing up in mourning attire the wooden statue of the Virgin Mary, donated centuries ago by a local noble family to the Archconfraternity of the Sacred Mount of the Dead.
"It is a very private rite, open only to a few women, all of them sisters from the archconfraternity and the elderly seamstress, Mrs Cirillo, who is 87 and has been following the ceremony from the last 70 years," Centobeni, who has been playing this coordinating role for the last twelve years with the faith of a devout Catholic, the passion of a curator and the precision of a seamstress, explains.
"There is a very simple reason behind this secrecy: the statue is completely undressed during this rite, we remove the ordinary clothes the Virgin Mary is wearing, so she is standing in front of us in her underwear from the 1800s. The very act of undressing the Virgin Mary is incredibly intimate."
The statue is preserved in a wooden closet in the chapel of the oratory of the Archconfraternity, it is wrapped in a solid black cloak, and wears underneath it simple robes that Centobeni describes as "daily home garments".
Once they are removed, the women start building layer by layer the mourning ensemble, an architectural stage that would have made Cristóbal Balenciaga proud and that Centobeni describes as "moving and incredibly heart-rendering". The first phase consists in creating a base layer with two cloths, one white and one in a pale yellow shade, that are secured with pins to a bib vest.
"This is the first and most important layer as all the other parts of the dress are anchored to them," Centobeni explains. "Then we put on the statue two petticoats, one decorated with lace, one with flounces to give structure and support to the outer gowns. A third stage follows with a gown in black faille taffeta, a type of fabric that was very popular among noble women in the 1800s. We secure the gown to the waist with a white ribbon and then add a light sleeveless lace gown, cinched at the waist with a golden cord with two tassels that fall on the left side of the statue."
Accessories are equally important: the statue wears black fingerless gauntlets decorated with a row of buttons and enriched with white lace wrist cuffs and holds a delicate white handkerchief in her right hand. The mourning gown is completed by two veils, a heavier one with golden stars and a second veil, punctuated by tiny gold sequins. "It looks evanescent," Centobeni states. "It is secured to the head of the statue in a special way, so that, if there is a light breeze during the procession, you can see the veil moving, a detail that adds a touch of realism to the image of a mother suffering for her son."
Details are extremely important, even the ones that people may not be able to see while the procession meanders through the streets of Chieti: for example, the two black dresses the Virgin Mary wears have two holes where her heart should be, "We insert in them a sword, hinting at the immense pain suffered by the Virgin Mary when she lost her son. There is no bigger pain as that of a mother losing her child, so this is a very symbolic accessory."
There is a cathartic power in the statue as her eyes are turned towards the heavens, "She is trying to engage in a dialogue with God, almost asking him for an explanation about Jesus's death," Centobeni says. "It is extremely touching and all the people who take part in the procession and see her, feel as if they were living once again their personal pains and sorrows."
The religious component behind the dressing up rite is strong as everything starts and ends with a Hail Mary and a Salve Regina, while on the Saturday after the procession when the statue is disrobed of her mourning garments and put back in the oratory, Mrs Cirillo, prays the Virgin Mary to give her the strength to continue the tradition bestowed upon her by her aunt. The room where the rite takes place becomes therefore part of a transcendental dimension.
None of the women involved in the rite see it as a duty, but as a honour: Centobeni is an independent modern woman, she is an orthodontist, she is married and has two daughters. One of them, Carolina, 18, already takes part in the dressing up ritual and hopes to follow in her mother's steps. "I feel privileged being involved in this stage of the procession," Centobeni says. "Living in our incredibly modern times but at the same time preparing a part of a 400-year-old procession is incredible. It is as if you looked into the future, but had an eye firmly on the past, on your roots and history."
There is something, though, that may change in the procession as time goes by: for obvious reasons (the wooden scenes are very heavy to carry) men play a central role in the event, but, little by little, things may be changing. "Many confraternities opened up to women in the last few years and sisters and brothers are equal nowadays," Centobeni says. "I would love to live the procession as an insider and I think one day it will happen, but it will mean taking baby steps and working also on more practical aspects such as the official uniforms and garments, as all the men in our Archconfraternity wear during the procession a black tunic, a golden short cape and a black hood, so we would have to work on the official costumes as well."
In the meantime, there are other issues to take care of, like sending out a social message through this cultural and sacred event: Mrs Valignani, from one of the historical families of Chieti, hopes people and men in particular will re-read the procession from the point of view of the Virgin Mary in her mourning robes. In the last few years Italy has seen a tragic rise in femicides with women killed by their boyfriends, husbands, and partners for jealousy, for daring to ask for a divorce or for standing up against domestic violence. "We live in very complicated times for women," Valignani says at the end of the rite, after I'm readmitted to the room where the dressing up took place to see the Virgin Mary covered in her black veil dotted with golden sequins. "If only they could look at her as she follows Jesus, crying and with her heart pierced, they would probably understand in a better way the role of women in society, our pains and suffering."
With thanks to the Archconfraternity of the Sacred Mount of the Dead, Chieti, for allowing me to take some images of the initial and final stages of the rite.
Images in this post
1, 3 The cathedral of San Giustino, Chieti, Italy.
4, 5 Volunteers restore and prepare the procession scenes (1855 by Raffaele Del Ponte, painter, illustrator and set designer) for the Good Friday Procession, Cathedral of San Giustino, Chieti, Italy.
6, 9 The statue of the Virgin Mary is being prepared in the sacresty of the Chapel of the Arciconfraternita del Sacro Monte dei Morti (Archconfraternity of the Sacred Mountain of the Dead), Cathedral of San Giustino, Chieti, Italy.
7, 8, 10, 11, 12 Rita Centobeni, Prioress of the Arciconfraternita del Sacro Monte dei Morti, prepares to dress up the Statue of the Virgin Mary in mourning garments.
13, 14, 15 The statue of the Virgin Mary dressed in her mourning gown with veil.
The image in this post shows a pair of black fingerless gauntlets. Some readers may think they look rather Victorian for what regards their style and colour, and while they may have guessed the period (the gauntlets in the picture date around the 1800s, as you may notice they are a bit worn out as well), the accessories do not belong to an ordinary woman.
The Met Museum will open the "Heavenly Bodies" exhibition in May, but these pieces are an example of accessories for a sacred body, they are indeed part of a sacred ensemble, instrumental for one of the oldest processions taking place during Good Friday in Italy. The procession in question takes place in Chieti, and this item belongs to the statue of the Virgin Mary, but you will discover more about this incredible story tomorrow, Good Friday.
The appointment of Virgil Abloh at Louis Vuitton may represent the victory of the hype and the cult over precision and technical skills, but if you're a fan of architecture and construction, stop reading about hip brands and head instead to the Cristóbal Balenciaga Museum in Getaria, Spain, to check out the "Moda y Patrimonio" (Fashion and Heritage) exhibition (until January 27, 2019).
The exhibition is conceived as a celebrative event: 2018 marks the 50th anniversary since the Master of Haute Couture retired in 1968, so the displays reflect on the heritage of Balenciaga's work from the moment he closed his salons and stopped activity at his workshops in Paris, Madrid, Barcelona and San Sebastián. From then on, Balenciaga's creations started inhabiting the archives, galleries and museums and being studied by designers, researchers, fashion historians, fans and architects as well.
"Fashion and Heritage" is divided into two parts: one starts in 1917 - opening date of Balenciaga's first atelier in San Sebastián - until the moment his maisons closed their doors; the other goes from 1968 to today.
The museum collaborated on this project with a special guest curator - Judith Clark, director of the Centre for Fashion Curation at the University of the Arts London.
The narratives are constructed around 80 items of clothing (thirty of them never exhibited in the museum, some of them were delicately restored using surgical thread...), the pieces are chronologically ordered to show the evolution of the designer and they are accompanied by accessories, fashion magazines, documents, photographs, patterns and fabrics, a series of pieces that also reference previous exhibitions at the Balenciaga Museum and that should be intrepreted as study objects.
The spaces of the museum were radically altered by temporary walls that form an alternative layout with no glass cabinets. Wandering around them this open spaces it is possible to admire an elegant two-piece ensemble dated 1955, the red taffeta "Globo" gown and the iconic "baby-doll" dress, plus capes and coats and the uniforms for Air France characterised by clean and minimalist Space Age lines (the only ready-to-wear examples in the life of the couturier).
There are quite a few highlights and gems among the displays: check out the 1912 honeymoon dress that Balenciaga created for his cousin; the design Balenciaga sent to Givenchy as a present and the creations he designed for the women in his circle that show a more intimate side of the designer.
Visitors should look at the exhibition focusing on the evolution and revolutions Balenciaga went through: the authorised copy of a Lanvin design or a kimono he spotted in a book in the library of the Marquises de la Torre were indeed the starting points for his studies on body shapes, sculpted volumes and minimalist lines.
Technology plays a big role in the exhibition as visitors are offered new interpretations of Balenciaga's designs on interactive displays. Some creations were digitalised and can now be explored in all their 360 degree glory or they can be digitally disassembled to discover the patterns behind them, a trick that will finally allow many fashion students and fans as well to realise how Balenciaga's rich semantic revolved around clean lines and geometries, superb textiles and innovative volumes created by delicately sculpting fabric with air.
A picture of a Louis Vuitton trunk. This is how Virgil Abloh anticipated yesterday's big fashion news to his 1.6 million Instagram followers. The French fashion house confirmed shortly after the post that Abloh had become the new artistic director of Louis Vuitton men's collections. Abloh follows in the steps of Kim Jones who left in January to start at Dior where he takes Kris van Assche's place.
Born in Rockford, Illinois, Abloh has been on a constant rise in the last few years or so. He doesn't have a formal fashion education, but studied engineering and architecture, then met Kanye West, started working as a DJ and became West's creative director, designing the rapper's merchandise.
West and Abloh interned at Fendi in 2009 (ah, but to know more about the selection process behind this internship...) to try and learn more about the luxury industry. Abloh then launched his sporty/streetwear project Pyrex Vision in 2012 that mainly consisted in printing the name of the brand on Ralph Lauren shirts (sold at $550) and, at the end of 2013, he started Off-White (owned by the Milan-based NGG-New Guards Group that also produces and distributes Marcelo Burlon County of Milan and Palm Angels, among the other brands).
Since then Abloh applied for federal trademark protection for a generic logo characterised by black and white thick diagonal stripes (in the hope, maybe, of being able one day to sue for trademark infringement pedestrian crossings...), put random words in Helvetica in quotation marks (because decontextualising a word is fun and writing "Sculpture" on a bag or "For Walking" on a pair of boots is pure art) and launched a series of collaborations with Nike, Ikea (upcoming), Sunglass Hut and German luggage maker Rimowa (this collaboration will arrive in the stores this summer), just to mention a few.
Abloh also entered the art world thanks to a project at the Gagosian Gallery in London with previous Louis Vuitton collaborator Takashi Murakami, and a solo show in Tokyo, not to mention the exhibition of past and current work scheduled for 2019 at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Chicago. Last year at the Florence menswear show Pitti Uomo, Abloh also collaborated with artist Jenny Holzer on a piece that focused on the immigrant crisis.
Louis Vuitton betting on Abloh is good news from one point of view: he is indeed the first African-American to lead a Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy-owned brand and a 164-year-old French luxury house.
From the point of view of Abloh's critics, the appointment is the final confirmation of the worst fears young people enrolled in a fashion course may have at the moment: you can invest as much as you own, you can study as much as you want and have all the talent that needs to succeed, but nowadays it is not your knowledge that counts, but your level of coolness, the hip aura fluctuating around you and the number of your followers.
Louis Vuitton seems indeed to have bought not into Abloh's talent and design skills, but into his numbers: most features about the appointment mention Abloh's 1.6 million and Off-White's 3.1 million Instagram followers, highlighting how the designer is more capable of shifting products and selling them to the Instagram addicted millennial consumers than of designing them.
Besides, by choosing Abloh the group has maybe done a disservice to the LVMH Prize for Young Fashion Designers: Off-White made it onto the shortlist of the 2015 edition but didn't win it and now Abloh got a major design job at LVMH. In a way the appointment proves such awards are useless, after all why offering a major post to a finalist rather than a winner?
At the same time it is perfectly understandable why the fashion house went for Abloh: Louis Vuitton's recent collections have maybe focused more on the hype than on the tailored - think about the A/W17 collection that launched the Supreme collaboration. Abloh stands between street culture and high fashion and Louis Vuitton is desperate to replicate the success achieved with street icon Supreme.
Will Abloh deliver considering that his collections have consisted in remixing things continuously, lifting and borrowing multiple references from other designers and fashion houses? Those who defend Abloh fully support him and justify his copies by claiming he is ironic (the same thing they say about Demna Gvasalia...), but it is clear that Abloh's phenomenal success is not based on originality, a point highlighted also by Raf Simons in an interview with GQ last year.
For the time being Off-White founder doesn't seem to have clear plans about what to do with this huge luxury toy box he has been given to play with: he hopes to rejuvenate the brand, possibly creating a project and using it as a case study on how to update a luxury house.
Will this be a marriage made in heaven or a 6 to 9 months job? We would be tempted to bet on the short tenure for too many reasons, but, who knows, guess it will just go on until the hype lasts.
Pick any representative of any fashion group, any brand or label out there and ask them what's one of their main aim for the future. They will all tell you they want to reach out to the younger generations, they want to speak their language and look appealing for cool young consumers.
Yet, judging from what we saw last weekend during the various March For Our Lives events calling for action against gun violence that took place at more than 800 locations around the world, the fashion industry has so far underestimated the fact that the younger generation includes very strong people who may not be that easy to co-opt and brainwash.
Thousands of people joined the rallies and listened to the speeches delivered by the kids and teenagers on stage. It was refreshing as there were no adults in sight delivering the usual fake promises and lies.
In Washington DC Parkland survivor Emma González, paid homage to her school fellows and teachers, naming them, remembering how they would never see their dreams become true.
"My friend Carmen would never complain to me about piano practice, Aaron Feis would never...Joaquin Oliver would never...". She then held the huge crowd to a silence that screamed all her anger and pain. Silently crying and closing her eyes she let six minutes and 20 seconds pass, the same time it took a gunman to kill 17 people on 14th February at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High, in Parkland, Florida.
Edna Chavez, from Manual Arts High in south Los Angeles, told the story of how her older brother was shot dead when she was a young child, stating "I have learned to duck from bullets before I learned to read."
Eleve-year-old Naomi Wadler, from Alexandria, Virginia, proudly told the marchers she was representing "African-American girls whose stories don't make the front page of every national newspaper (…) who are simply statistics instead of vibrant, beautiful girls full of potential."
Martin Luther King Jr's granddaughter, Yolanda Renee King, 9-years-old, told the crowd: "I have a dream that enough is enough. And that this should be a gun-free world, period." She then led the crowd into repeating after her: "Spread the word, have you heard? All across the nation. We are going to be a great generation."
The March For Our Lives rallies also inspired a new protest item - evil eye gloves - courtesy of Krista Suh, who was also involved in the creation of the Women's March pussy hat. The gloves were inspired by a dream Suh had in which she saw a crowd of protesters with hands stretched, their palms revealing the drawings of eyes. The message was simple: all the eyes of people are on those politicians taking money from the NRA.
While the protests took place, US President Donald Trump was hiding at his members' club in South Florida, probably scared by the revelations that would come out from the TV interview that was going to be aired the next day (yesterday) on CBS' "60 Minutes" with porn star Stormy Daniels in which she went through the details of her affair with Trump.
Art, culture and fashion joined in the protests: The Standard High Line Hotel in New York supported for example the march with the installation "Parkland 17". Curated by artist Calyann Barnett in collaboration with Dwyane Wade, the installation comprised 17 desks and a live mural painting of the phrase "We Demand Change" by artist Manuel Oliver.
Fashion-wise many companies supported the march on Instagram, others joined in a more active way: Gucci donated $500,000 to the Washington rally; Cynthia Rowley and Christian Siriano partnered with Everytown for Gun Control and created the Everytown Fashion Council, focusing on engaging the power of the fashion community to support gun safety and help reduce gun violence. Rowley also created a limited-edition white T-shirt with a gold safety pin on the chest.
Stranger Things star Millie Bobby Brown made her voice hear on the stage of the 2018 Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards, clad in a Calvin Klein ensemble, the names of the 17 victims of the Parkland shooting were embroidered on the back of her button-down shirt.
Yet fashion houses thinking they can just jump on a bandwagon (nobody is doubting here the genuine intent of most houses in their anti-gun initiatives, but we all know how fashion has co-opted feminism...) should realise these kids may be on another level.
Many brands, houses and labels have successful co-opted some millennials with a present, a bag here and a pair of shoes there, not to mention the usual invitation to a fashion show, but what they have here is a very different and less superficial human material, a humanity that has been deeply wounded in their hearts and that may not need a logoed handbag to store in their ideas, dreams and strong voices. They aren't indeed here to be co-opted.
You're instantly struck by their young age, their anger and courage, by the way they have created opposition and a unified voice and fiercely address major issues such as equality and violence, while adults and politicians only provide chaos, confusion and divisive messages full of hate and aggression. As a grown-up you just feel ashamed you haven't been able to eradicate gun violence, stop wars or find real solutions to vast global tragedies. If they are going to be the leaders of the 21st century, this may turn into a better world. Bless them, they genuinely deserve it.
Yesterday's post closed with Elsa Schiaparelli, so let's continue the Schiap thread for another day with this picture taken by Baron Adolph de Meyer in 1933.
It shows Schiaparelli's "Peiping" (Peking) red quilted cape matched with a grey satin sheath. Schiap wore this outfit at a concert at the Théâtre ds Champs-Elysées and she looked so striking in the architectural cape characterised by a clean line and a sort of embossed trellis-like motif that legend goes she left the audience startled. Have a lovely architecturally fashionable Sunday!
In yesterday's post we looked at costumes incorporating Commedia dell'Arte references integrated in a contemporary art installation. In that case the artist and the designer involved used black and white stripes, but Comedy of Manners costumes can incorporate stripes in a variety of colours.
Pink was pretty popular before then: in the mid-1800s it was considered a very feminine colour and was often employed for dresses and gowns, but also for small, decorative elements and accessories such as shoes and bonnets.
At the time pink and white stripes were also a favourite motif for Spring and Summer day dresses. It is not rare to stumble on the Internet upon images of American or British designs such as the one in the second image in this post, showing a pink and white striped muslin summer gown from around 1864. Though simple, the dress featured a distinctive fan motif on the front and the back and a watch pocket at the waist and it was trimmed with cotton torchon lace.
Dating around 1870s the ensemble in the third image in this post comprised a pink and white striped bodice with 19 pearl buttons, a three tiered flounced pink skirt and a draped pink and white striped overskirt. The day dress in the fourth image (from 1873-1875 and from the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag in The Netherlands) was slightly more functional than this one, but had a similar draped overskirt that created a contrast with the upper part of the dress that looks simple and practical.
In the mid-1900s pink and white stripes often reappeared in Schiaparelli's designs such as the visually striking 1948 satin and faille dress with a dramatic gathering of fabric into the bow at the back and a flared train.
The alternation of matte and shiny fabric created a sort of surreal effect since it referenced the shape of the body and the skeleton beneath the skin.
Schiap also designed accessories employing pink and white stripes like the 1950 gloves and hat (the latter looking strikingly similar to Brunelleschi's hat for Scapino), part of the Philadelphia Museum of Art collection.
Pink and white stripes continue to be a popular motif in our days, particularly for Spring as the colour combination evokes freshness and vitality, themes that go well with Easter arriving next week.
As a fashion commentator when you spot a derivative design on a runway, you often wonder if that particular designer is maybe taking the piss out of consumers. It is easy to get the same feeling about certain modern artists (Damien Hirst anybody?) or contemporary artworks.
Take Anthea Hamilton's "Lichen! Libido! Chastity!" installation (2016) that featured a huge pair of splayed buttocks on a brick wall, accompanied by a brick suit. The former was an interpretation of a 1972 drawing by Italian architect Gaetano Pesce for a never-constructed door for a New York apartment block; the latter was probably lifted from a 1997 design by Moschino (even though the history of fashion is rife with brick suits and brick prints...).
If you couldn't find an answer about the final message and intent behind that (derivative) work, it will be even more difficult to find them in Hamilton's immersive installation created for the annual Duveen commission at Tate Britain, in London (until 7th October).
The neoclassical space was radically transformed (in collaboration with set designer Dylan Atkins) and covered in 7,000 white tiles (installed in just two weeks by the Direct Painting Group). Plinths and sofas seem to rise from this minimal, clinical and bathroom-like dimension and sculptures from Tate's collection punctuate the space.
Among the other works, selected because satisfying to the touch rather than to the eye, there are three abstract bronzes by Henry Moore, Henri Laurens' "Autumn", Bernard Meadows's "Crab", Jean-Robert Ipoustéguy's "Earth" and Frederic Leighton's "The Sluggard".
The space is inhabited every day by a solo performer in a squash-like costume: every day for the next six months, the performer on duty (there are 14) will choose a costume from seven different ones created in collaboration with fashion brand Loewe and its creative director, Jonathan Anderson (the two met in 2015 when Anderson commissioned Hamilton pieces for Loewe's Chance Encounters exhibition at Art Basel Miami). This means that people visiting the Tate Modern will see different sections of the entire performance.
The costumes are surreal hybrids: the fibreglass squash masks (some of them covered in ostrich skin, buffalo leather, lamb suede fabric or velvet) with their beak-like shape seem to evoke the pea launchers in the videogame "Plants vs. Zombies", but the costumes are a mix of different eras with a bulbous leather bolero with Tudor sleeves clashing with striped trousers directly lifted from the Commedia dell'Arte, not to mention the (Margiela evoking?) tabi socks accessorising a ruffled shirt matched with a flared bodysuit with a hand-painted squash texture. One green squash with tendril-like ruffles looks instead like a bizarre vegetable character out of "Plants vs. Zombies".
The main inspiration for this installation actually came from a found photograph showing a person dressed in a costume like a squash that Hamilton saw while at art school. She never discovered what it was about and then she lost that picture. In a way you're glad she did, so that she can leave this supposedly humorous but actually highly puzzling space open to be interpreted freely by the people visiting it. So we guess she won't be offended if we said that this is Superstudio's Histograms populated by anthropomorphic vegetables in hybrid Commedia dell'Arte-historical costumes (albeit made with luxury materials...). Visit it at your own risk.
PS A final note: after seeing the costumes for "The Squash", we highly suggest J.W. Anderson not to ditch fashion for art yet and maybe avoid falling into the temptation of designing costumes for ballets.
For fashionistas loyalty to a brand is proved by proudly wearing the logos of their favourite brands or of the brands that sponsor them. At times (think Balmain), they profess their allegiance by considering themselves as part of an army. Yet nothing announces that you're part of a genuine army like a classic camouflage print.
Camouflage patterns have perennially been in and out of fashion, but, quite often and for different reasons, they've been in and out of the courts. The latest lawsuit regarding a camo pattern was filed last week in the federal court in Georgia: Columbus-based Jordan Outdoor Enterprises ("JOE") filed a suit against Kanye West's Yeezy Apparel, LLC ("Yeezy") brand (Jordan Outdoor Enterprises, Ltd. v. Yeezy Apparel, LLC et al, 4:18-cv-00053).JOE claims Yeezy Season 5's garments and accessories (hoodies, pants, high heels and men's boots) feature elements lifted from its own distinctive camo prints and are "substantially similar" to the patters integrated in the garments by its hunting gear company, copyright-protected Realtree®.
According to the suit, the prints are "among the most famous and well-known camouflage patterns in the camouflage industry in the United States and throughout the world".
It is somehow difficult to disagree with this statement as the Yeezy designs seem to replicate images of trees and woods that can be easily spotted in the Realtree Xtra® Under Armour garments or on the NFL Baltimore Ravens Joe Flacco Realtree Replica Jerseys.
Most of these items are all over the Internet and it is easy to stumble upon them on huge retailers such as Amazon as well.
So it is easy to understand why the company is seeking injunctive relief (that would imply Yeezy to cease all manufacturing, marketing, and sales of the allegedly infringing products) and monetary compensation.
Past legal disputes about camouflage patterns may help sorting things out in this case: five years ago Canadian HyperStealth Biotechnology Corp., known for its work with over 50 countries to develop camouflage patterns for their military and police forces, sued Digital Concealment Systems, in the United States District Court for the Middle District of Georgia, Columbus Division, as Digital' "A-TACS FG Camo" pattern looked similar to HyperStealth's designs.
Digital cited independent creation, but it was proved that Digital's IP address had been a top 30 visitor to HyperStealth's website in the three months before Digital's "A-TACS FG Camo" pattern was created. Besides, sixty-one megabytes of information were downloaded to Digital's IP address over the course of 124 visits for the three months prior to Digital's creating its A-TACS FG Camo pattern in October 2011. The other point in this case was identifying whether specific protectable elements of different camouflage designs could be found in one accused infringing design.
Jordan Outdoor Enterprises may investigate IP addresses and check if anybody behind Yeezy was a frequent visitor; for what regards the distinctive elements of its camouflage patterns, well, being based on precise photographs of woods, foliage and trees rather than on an abstract patterns Realtree's prints can be defined as distinctive and therefore protectable.
Another case that may help Jordan Outdoor Enterprises is the one regarding the U.S. Navy. A while back the latter set to have a registered trademark on a pixelated black, gray and navy blue design - the NWU 1 pattern - used on its uniforms.
The United States Patent and Trademark Examining Attorney stated that, being functional the pattern could not be a trademark (the federal statute that governs trademark law prohibits the registration of a mark that comprises any matter that, as a whole, is functional); the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (TTAB) reviewed this decision, considered the existence or absence of a utility patent disclosing the utilitarian advantages of the design, and of advertising material in which the originator of the design highlighted the utilitarian advantages of the design. The TTAB eventually could not find any utility patents for the Navy's fabric design.
The TTAB ruled that the fabric design had actually acquired the necessary distinctiveness in the eyes of the public and was protectable as a trademark.
In this case there is a trademark involved rather than a copyright issue, but the same principles may be applied to Realtree's design, considering that they are easily recognisable and indentifiable and therefore distinctive.
It remains a mistery why Yeezy opted to copy such a well-known brand rather than opting to collaborate with it, when other companies chose legal collaborations with Realtree (besides, what's the logic of producing more clothes with these patterns since they are so popular and easy to find and buy?).
In the same way, in 2013 Vans OTW went down the collaborative route and released a capsule with Hyperstealth Biotechnology Corp. that included camouflage shoes, packs and apparel with the distinctive Hyperstealth's camo patterns.
While we don't now how the JOE Vs Yeezy lawsuit will end, there's definitely a lesson to learn here for Kanye West: if he wants to be lazy when it comes to design his garments and accessories, he could join forces with a company that has more experience than him, rather than lifting entire designs from them. Hopefully, this misadventure has taught him that camouflage may protect animals from predators, but it doesn't protect a lazy designer from copyright infringement lawsuits.