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

Effetto Dipinto: Valentino Haute Couture A/W 18 & The Painting Effect

It is not so rare while watching films by Pier Paolo Pasolini to spot what could be defined as "images within images", that is tableaux vivants inserted in the various scenes that call to mind paintings by Giotto, Bruegel, Vermeer or Bosch.

Author Antonio Costa in his writings about cinema and art, calls such moments "effetto dipinto" (painting effect), that he divides into two subcategories - "effetto pitturato" and "effetto quadro". 

The former refers to painted settings and backdrops in films (think Meliès' Voyage dans la lune); the latter indicates instead the way specific paintings or compositions are just subtly evoked in a film, via colours, gestures, lights or shadows.

As Costa writes: "The frame evokes a painting; either because the film cites it explicitly, or it reproduces determinate chromatic or lighting effects or its spatial organization, or because the film imitates the statis or temporal suspension of the painting or it inscribes itself in the compositional or iconographic logic of a certain genre (for example the landscape, or the portrait, or abstract decorativism)." 

You could easily apply Costa's "effetto dipinto" definition to the recent shows by Valentino: if you know your art references and have studied a bit the passions, obsessions and modus operandi of Creative Director Pierpaolo Piccioli, it becomes indeed almost easy to spot certain connections with art and illustrations. 

Take Valentino's Haute Couture A/W 18 collection showcased at the Hôtel Salomon de Rothschild in Paris during the local high fashion week.

Piccioli continued the solemn, almost sacred and divine moods that characterised the house's Haute Couture A/W 17 collection, but he injected into them a dreamy dose of heightened glamour.

The show opened with grand robes covered with appliqued motifs of animals and abstract patterns telling mythical stories; it moved onto more wearable day pieces such as blouses and pants matched with capes in luxurious fabrics and materials; continued with burnt gold thick brocade gowns accessorised with embellished Medieval caps and with dresses with golden and green intarsia birds that evoked Matisse's cut-outs, and closed with grand voluminous taffeta gowns in jewel colours such as aquamarine blue, emerald green, ruby red and fire opal.

Guido Palau's super glam coifs or floral headpieces, suspended between Sheila Legge, surrealist phantom, and Liz Taylor in 1968 Joseph Losey film Boom! completed the looks. 

The standing ovation arrived at the very end with an emotionally charged finale with a soundtrack that featured Maria Callas singing "Un bel dì vedremo" from Giacomo Puccini's "Madama Butterfly".

In a way it was the soundtrack that triggered the memories and conjured up visions of the arty ghosts behind the collection. In the intarsia-ed and appliquéd capes and dresses, Piccioli included the story of Daphne and Apollo (a character that some of his seamstresses dubbed "Nino D'Angelo", after the Neapolitan crooner famous for his signature blonde moptop haircut...), Leda and the Swan, Europa and the Bull and Caravaggio's "Narcissus", reinterpreted as an abstract sketch. 

Yet, when you thought about Costa's "effetto quadro" while listening to "Madama Butterfly", you immediately linked the opening robes not to legends and myths, but to Umberto Brunelleschi's illustrations for the sumptuously magnificent fable-like costumes for Puccini's "Turandot".

Piccioli is actually an opera fan and one of the pictures on his moodboard showed singer Maria Callas and Pier Paolo Pasolini on the set of Medea, a film that already served as an inspiration for Valentino's S/S 14 collection.

Yet the A/W 18 designs rather than moving from Medea, veered towards the first two parts of Pasolini's Trilogy of Life, with moods that seemed lifted from the painting-inspired moments or the costumes in The Decameron and The Canterbury Tales.

A grand red gown evoked the costume donned by Laura Betti as the wife from Bath in The Canterbury Tales, while one double-face pink and lame top with two long tails that extended from the shoulders called to mind Fra' Angelico's annunciatory angels in their pink robes and golden wings. 

Architectural details weren't missing as proved by a pale pink gown with trompe l'oeil sculptural round elements that seemed anchored to the skirt of the dress, evoking a detail maybe borrowed from a Baroque palazzo or church in Rome à la St Charles at the Four Fountains.

Pure moments of fashion with winged gowns that called to mind the structure of grandiose dresses by Roberto Capucci were combined with Greek mythology, fables and religion in Piccioli's very own stream of consciousness (he cited Molly Bloom's soliloquy in James Joyce's Ulysses as an inspiration...).

The designer's instincts allowed him to combine impossible garments in the same outfit such as a billowing yellow taffeta shirt with olive green Bermuda shorts, or to include in the same collection sweeping green sequinned capes, shocking pink diaphanous ruffle dresses and exuberant coats, monumental plumed gowns, backless jumpsuits, glamorous lamé jackets, blouses that tied at the neck and asymmetrical capes-cum-scarves reminiscent of one or two designs seen on the Haute Couture A/W 17 runway. 

The final voluminous tangerine gown made with 1,350 metres of fabric evoked visions of Max Ernst's surrealist "Attirement of the Bride" and provided careful observers with the final revelation.

The "effetto dipinto" in a film may prompt watchers to check upon a specific painting or discover what the director wanted to say by using it, and the way that work connects or speaks to a character, but in the aesthetic universe of fashion the "painting effect" as seen in this collection (but also in Valentino's Haute Couture A/W 17 designs) has a different meaning.

The moods, atmospheres and hues of different paintings get all mixed together on a runway, they are combined and confused, and their meanings or the metaphors they stand for dissolve, so that the "effetto dipinto" ends up offering an infinite visual contamination that has two very final aims - pleasure and desire.  

The Arty Pool Float From Missoni X Funboy to Niki de Saint Phalle

Summer floats have become the ubiquitous fun accessory on social media: celebrities, Insta-stars and fashion influencers often appear to be blissfully relaxing on one of them surrounded by the crystal clear waters of a pool, a beautiful lagoon or a turquoise sea, making the less fortunate among us feel incredibly jealous.

Unicorns, flamingos, swans and rainbows have become de rigueur for that perfect Instagram shot, and Funboy, the float company that has been producing trendy pieces in the last three years recently added to its offer mermaids, seahorses, llamas, a giant crown and a butterfly-shaped raft, the result of a collaboration with Italian knitwear house Missoni (the company's multicoloured fiammato patterns are replicated on the butterfly wings).

A while back Funboy also came up with artist editions of its swan floats, decorated by artist Alex Yanes, mural artist and photographer Kelcey Fisher, better known as Kfish, and photographer Gray Malin.

Two years ago Grey Area, a boutique that commissions and sells design objects by contemporary artists, also opted for the arty inflatable, commissioning toys designed by art collaborative FriendsWithYou and artists Jen Stark, Devin Troy Strother and Misaki Kawai.

Yet the arty pool toy or inflatable is not a new concept: indeed in 1968, artist Niki de Saint Phalle started producing inflatable pool toys shaped like her exuberant Nanas.

Decorated in vividly bright colours and with a facsimile signature of the artist on the front, they were initially produced by Marlo Plastics, in New York, but in 1996 and 1999 Edition Flammarion relaunched a series of pieces by de Saint Phalle that also included her animals. 

The original 1968 Nanas - conceived as ephemeral works, objects you could play with and have fun - appeared on the pages of Vogue: the magazine wrote about their energetic colour combinations highlighting how the Nanas came in different sizes - from "teddy bear to titanic" - and were sold at $4, $10 and $16.

Though revolutionary and perfectly embodying the ideals of Pop Art, the 1968 Nanas were not received warmly by the art world and de Saint Phalle was criticised for releasing items dismissed as "commercial products".

The artist ignored the complaints, though, since the more commercial products in her career including jewellery pieces and a perfume, helped her raising money for more monumental projects (like her Tarot Garden). 

If you calculate the value of $16.00 in 1968, you will realise that this sum had the same buying power as $116.35 in 2018; which means the most expensive inflatable Nana was slightly cheaper than the current trendy versions of some of the modern inflatables on the market today (the Missioni x Funboy raft retails for $148).

This is to say that price is not the main difference between early arty inflatables and modern ones. It is clear that one of the most considerable differences is probably the technology behind the pieces, as nowadays you can have lighter yet more resistant inflatable items, and therefore come up with more extravagant and larger shapes, but maybe the most significant difference is the final reaction.

Niki de Saint Phalle was indeed criticised for her inflatables, but, if she had launched them nowadays, she would have easily ended up being celebrated on Instagram.

Thinking of astonishing your followers with an arty vintage inflatable? Well, Niki de Saint Phalle's sometimes resurface at auctions or on eBay, and some of them were even sold for $700-$750. Looks like branching out into the world of arty floats for the artist was further proof that she was genuinely ahead of her time. 

Graphic Novel Alert: "Niki de Saint Phalle - The Garden of Secrets" by Dominique Osuch and Sandrine Martin (NBM Publishing)

In 1961 artist Niki de Saint Phalle started developing collage works made with assorted found objects and toys plastered on wood. Once finished she would hang cans or bags of paint in front of them or lodge containers of paint in her assemblages. She would then proceed to shoot at the packets of paint with a .22 rifle and release their contents onto the plaster reliefs. The act of firing with a gun at the containers of paint generated live action painting and a theatrical performance.

In Niki de Saint Phalle: The Garden of Secrets by French writer, artist and graphic novelist Dominique Osuch and illustrator Sandrine Martin (translated by Joe Johnson and published by NBM Publishing), this episode is symbolic since, while shooting at the paintings, Niki hits all the people and the things that made her suffer - from her abusive father to men in general, from the schools she attended as a child to church and conventions - she even shot at her old self, releasing in this way the colourful ghost of creation trapped in her heart and mind.

This is just one of the many episodes recounted in this graphic novel, a biography of the artist that proceeds in short chapters, each of them introduced by one of Niki's beloved tarots.

The story of Catherine-Marie-Agnès Fal de Saint Phalle starts with her birth in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France, and at the very beginning it is told in black and white. Her father, the banker Count André-Marie Fal de Saint Phalle, and her mother, Jeanne Jacqueline Harper, moved to the States after her birth, leaving the young child with her grandparents in Nièvre.

Neglected, Marie-Agnès started listening to her interior voice that materialises in the pages of the graphic novel as a mysteriously colourful ghost, an aura of colour called Niki.

Marie-Agnès/Niki rejoined her parents in the States in the early '30s: rejecting the conservative values of her family, she was often expelled from the Catholic schools she attended (she was dismissed from the Brearley School after she painted in red the fig leaves on the school's classical statuary, an incident included in the graphic novel), she then became a fashion model, appearing on the cover of Life and French Vogue, and in the pages of Elle and Harper's Bazaar.

At 18 Niki married Harry Mathews: the young couple had two children and led a bohemian life at the very beginning, but Niki started suffering recurring physical and mental illnesses that often threatened her life. She also went through electroshock and insulin shock therapy after attempting suicide when she discovered her husband was having an affair. Institutionalised in a psychiatric ward in Nice, she focused on art as soon as she was released, as she also states in the graphic novel - "I came in crazy, I'll come out painting."

Fascinated by Antoni Gaudí's Park Güell, Niki felt once again inspired and started fantasising about a garden-based artwork. After separating from Harry, Niki met Swiss kinetic artist Jean Tinguely, who became her life partner and collaborator as well.

From then on she developed new styles and works, focusing on her "Nanas" that, as the years passed, became more joyously colourful and exuberant. One of the most famous Nanas - the giant Hon-en-Katedrall ("She-a-Cathedral") - was an enormous figure of a woman that could be entered through the vagina and that featured (among the other spaces) a milk bar, a 12-seat cinema theatre, a fish pond, a brain built by Tinguely, and a playground slide for children. Installed at the Moderna Museet, in Stockholm, Sweden, the "Hon" is remembered and celebrated also in the graphic novel.

The writers follow the development of the Nanas that evolved from plaster over a wire framework to composite fiberglass-reinforced polyester plastic, while chronicling the various arty adventures Niki was involved in. Despite her multiple health problems (attributed to repeated exposure to glass fibers and petrochemical fumes from the materials she had used), Niki launched various ambitious projects - the monumental Tarot Garden in Tuscany, further collaborations with Jean Tinguely, efforts to raise funds for galleries, events and museums, and AIDS: You Can't Catch It Holding Hands, a book Niki did in collaboration with Silvio Barandun, a German medical professor of immunology.

The graphic novel goes through all these episodes in a symbolical way: at first black and white tones prevail and Niki's interior voice is just a dusty green shadow.

Dark demons haunt Niki when she reveals she was abused by her father, an episode that later on in her life became the inspiration for her 1972 surreal horror film "Daddy", that dealt with her guilt over her father's abuse. Yet, when Niki finds her path in life through art, colours explode on the page and she becomes an unstoppable creator and collaboratror as proved by the works she did with Tinguely, from Le Cyclop, in Milly-la-Forêt, near Paris, to the Stravinsky Fountain, a 15-piece sculptural fountain for Igor Stravinsky Square, located next to the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris. 

While Niki is obviously the main protagonist of the story, the graphic novel also features a series of secondary characters - family members, friends, collaborators and curators crowd the pages of the book, becoming part of a cast and an inseparable team for Niki.

From Tinguely to Swiss art student Rico Weber and assistant Ricardo Menon who died of AIDS in 1989 (Niki created for him the large cat Chat de Ricardo located in the Tarot Garden in Tuscany), from Marella Caracciolo Agnelli (her brothers Carlo and Nicola Caracciolo offered Niki a part of their property in Garavicchio, Tuscany, for Niki's beloved Giardino dei Tarocchi) to architect Mario Botta.

Niki's story becomes therefore a collective story about a prolific artist who remained instinctive and followed her intuitions throughout her turbulent life and who was the happiest as a child hiding in the kitchen overseen by the soothing presence of the family cook (a sort of inspiration for her Nanas), or in the kitchen she created inside The Empress in the Tarot Garden, where she shared meals and laughs with her friends.

The graphic novel closes with Niki's death in 2002 in La Jolla, California, and with her last work - Queen Califia's Magical Circle, a sun-drenched sculpture garden in Escondido - unveiled posthumously.

Yet the volume - that also offers a detailed chronology and a list of additional materials to read including Niki's Insider-Outside. World Inspired Art - does not end with death, but with a message dedicated to all readers. Art saved Niki, it rescued her from madness and from becoming a bad person, as her ghost states at the very end of the book: "What's for sure is that, if I hadn't created, I would have destroyed. Yes, I'd have made a rather fearsome terrorist!"

From her first violent assemblages, Niki journeyed safely to light-hearted, whimsical, colorful, large-scale sculptures of animals, monsters and iconic female figures. Art saved her, and it could save each and everyone of us, it could even save the world. Food for thought for us all then and for the bleak, racist, violent and aggressive times in which we are living in. 

Rigorously Precise Lines in a 1949 Madame Grès Dress

Let's close the Madame Grès thread that started on Friday by going back in time and rediscover through the cover of Italian magazine Annabella a design from 1949.

The dress in the picture in a plaid patterned woollen fabric was characterised by a collar with ample lapels. Rather than being draped, the fabric was gathered around the hips generating dynamism and movement and contrasting with the tight-fitting bustier and the cinched waist.

Though the dress in this image is almost 70 years old, its simple yet rigorously precise construction makes it still look stylishly elegant, don't you think so?

Spouse & Sorceress: Duality in Madame Grès' Designs for Silvana Mangano in Mario Camerini's "Ulysses" (1954)

In yesterday's post we looked at a modern and humble version of Haute Couture inspired by the techniques developed by Madame Grès.

Let's continue the Madame Grès thread today with a different story and look at her work as costume designer for the Italian film Ulysses.

Directed by Mario Camerini (cinematographer Mario Bava, even though uncredited, co-directed the cyclops segment) and released in 1954, this is a pre-peplum (the film was very successful and generated an interest for "peplum" movies, that is stories inspired by Greco-Roman mythology such as Hercules, released in 1957) adaptation of the story of Homer's second epic, the Odyssey, and recounts the vicissitudes of Ulysses trying to return home to Ithaca after a ten-year voyage that followed the war against Troy.

Kirk Douglas starred in the film as Ulysses, while Silvana Mangano had two roles, appearing as his wife Penelope and as the sorceress Circe, Anthony Quinn played Antinous, one of Penelope's suitors; Rossana Podestà was Nausicaa and Franco Interlenghi was Telemachus, son of Penelope and Ulysses.

Ulysses has lost is memory after ending up stranded in the land of Alkinoos, father of Nausicaa. While he starts remembering his extraordinary adventures, Penelope is waiting at home for her husband, holding off her suitors who are squandering the wealth and land of Ulysses.

Penelope has told the suitors she will pick one of them after she finishes her tapestry, but she unweaves it every night to be able to keep on waiting for Ulysses. 

Italian artist, illustrator and costume designer Giulio Coltellacci designed the costumes for this film: after World War II Coltellacci worked as a cover designer for French Vogue, he then returned to Italy where he became famous for his work for the stage and the big screen (as you may remember from previous posts he designed the costumes for Elio Petri's The Tenth Victim). 

Being an artist, Coltellacci based his costumes on the elements, drawings and motifs depicted on Greek vases (see the decorative elements on the suitors' tunics).

For the attire of Nausicaa he also borrowed ideas from the looks donned by the dancing girls frescoes from the Queen's Megaron and from the procession frescoes of the South Propylaeum from the Knossos Palace in Crete; but in her wardrobe and in the dresses of her maidservants, there are also elements of the frescoes showing the Mycenaean women bearing gifts and of the wall painting "Lady of Mycenae" (in some cases recombined with styles from the 1800s, for that anachronistic touch).   

Madame Grès designed instead the wardrobe for Mangano: while faithful Penelope awaits for her husband, Mangano is clad in dark veils that go from soft browns to olive green and wears a brown dress or a draped dress half in a brown fabric, half in a printed fabric that seems to perfectly match with the colours of her Palace and of the frescoes decorating it. 

Her attire radically changes for the day she must finally choose her new husband when she is dressed in a white pleated dress that calls to mind the attire of a goddess or of the static and architectural beauty of the caryatids.

Circe is a seductive and voluptuous woman and Madame Grès devised instead for her two dresses: the first is an embellished pale green gown covered in beads and matched with a diaphanous veil; the second gown is instead a red pleated dress in classic Madame Grès style. 

Circe accessorises her green hair with flamboyant headpieces inspired by the sea, such as pearls, while Penelope's veils are anchored to less grand and more minimalist tiaras (all the jewels and weapons in the films were copied from models in Rome's Capitol Museum).

The wardrobe created by Madame Grès perfectly contributed to make Mangano's duplicity more credible: as the wife waiting patiently at home, Mangano wears her veils in a modest way, mainly to protect herself from her suitors.

Circe the dangerous witch ready to steal another woman's husband uses her veils instead to wrap her body in a mysterious and seductive way.

Mangano's duplicity in this film continued throughout her career: while in Riso Amaro (1949) she had appeared as the rice worker Silvana, iconically portrayed as a pin up rising from the flooded rice field in a seductive pose with shabby shorts and torn black stockings, in this film she looked more slender and refined; in the films in which she starred later on in her career, her looks radically changed again, going from futuristic comic book vamp to bored middle-class wife.  

Though some may dismiss Ulysses as a '50s costume drama, by reading the credits of the film, fashion fans may discover this movie had more than just the Madame Grès connection to link it to the world of Haute Couture. 

The costumes were indeed created in collaboration with famous tailoring houses Madame Karinska, Werther, Carosa and Salvini, while the shoes and sandals for all the characters were produced by famous bespoked shoemaker Tito Petrocchi. In a nutshell, there were probably more high fashion designs on the set of this film than on today's Haute Couture runways.  

The Seductiveness of Humble Fashion: Olivier Saillard's "Moda Povera" Vs Madame Grès

Mention Haute Couture and most of us will conjure up in their minds visions of grand and magnificent styles, opulent fabrics and intricate embellishments. Yet it doesn't have to be always like that, as proved by Olivier Saillard's "Moda Povera" collection showcased in Paris, during Haute Couture Week.

Saillard, better known for being the chief curator of the city's Palais Galliera costume and fashion museum, and the current artistic director of the luxury men's footwear brand J.M. Weston, curated in his career over 140 impeccable exhibitions, but threatened to cross the fine line between the elegant and the pretentious during some of the presentations he did in the last few years in the role of a performance artist.

While Saillard's museum installations have indeed been excellent, his performances such as "Cloakroom" with Tilda Swinton, while acclaimed by the fashion intelligentsia, proved rather cold (would they have been praised if, rather than Saillard and Swinton, they had featured two newcomers unknown to the fashion industry?).

In June Saillard continued along the same lines with "Défilé for 27 Shoes", a presentation for J.M. Weston that featured dancer, choreographer and head of the French National Center for Dance Mathilde Monnier. The 20-minute introspectively philosophical performance revolved around the heritage styles and the history of the brand, founded in 1891, and consisted in Monnier walking, dancing and moving next to a row of shoes by Weston.  

Leaving more pretentious moods behind, during Paris Haute Couture Week, Saillard opted instead for a more humble approach.

In the last few months he looked on the Internet for €5 XXXL T-shirts (the random palette including white, peacock green, black, egg yolk orange and bright red depended from the stock Saillard found on the Internet...) and slashed, pleated, draped and folded the garments, radically transforming this humble wardrobe staple into a series of refined designs.

While the name of the 27-piece collection, "Moda Povera", was borrowed from the "Arte Povera" movement and from its principles such as using the most commonplaces materials, fashion-wise the main inspiration was Madame Grès's draping and the final aim was transforming the most common item seen in the streets - a basic T-shirt - into something more beautiful and unique.

Saillard is more than just a fan of the French designer since he curated the 2011 exhibition "Madame Grès: Couture at Work" at the Musée Bourdelle, in which Grès' creations were juxtaposed to Antoine Bourdelle's sculptures.

Shirts were therefore adapted and turned into dresses or tunics, they were enriched not with visually striking elements like beads, sequins and embroideries, but with architectural elements that reshaped them; they were slashed open around the back, twisted into new configurations, or cropped to expose the waist and some of the midriff.

Wearers, Saillard suggested, could also try additional tricks with these garments: to renew these reinvented pieces even more, they could indeed wear them back-to-front (three red thread cross-stitches point to the wearer which side is actually the front of the garment).

Saillard didn't do everything by himself, but worked on the designs with the help of Martine Lenoir, Madame Grès's last seamstress in the '70s and 80s. There was also another connection with Grès: some of the garments were modelled by Axelle Doué, who worked as mannequin for the French designer in the early 1980s. 

Madame Grès herself stated in the 1980 documentary "Portrait de Madame Grès" by Marie-José Lepicard, "In all these collections I have done in solitude there is a lot of me woven-in", and in this case the idea was weaving in the simple fabric Grès' techniques. Though simple, the shirts followed therefore the rules and principles of high fashion, so that grosgrain inner waistbands and organza panels were employed to secure the pleats from the inside.  

The event called to mind other performances in which Saillard tried to show how fashion can effortlessly be beautiful such as his "Couture Essentielle" that featured models in black leotards who draped and wrapped different fabrics around their bodies to construct a series of dresses. While that was a one-off performance, this should instead be the first collection by the Studio Olivier Saillard label, which is run from an atelier on the Rue des Petits Champs.

Hopefully Saillard will focus more in future on humbleness and on projects that are about passion and not just about conceptual gestures with big names as main players, after all, as Madame Grès stated in Lepicard's documentary, couture is "a work of architecture and needs a lot of heart." 

This presentation set indeed your creative juices in motion, prompting you to try and learn from scratch the principles of dressmaking and proving that couture can be created from any material, once you study and retain the technique. 

Head-to-Toe in Haute Couture: Tomihiro Kono X Aganovich Couture A/W 18

One of the most frequent challenges fashion designers end up facing in their careers is trying to find the perfect balance in their collections between commercial pieces and more creative and conceptual (and therefore more expensive...) designs. It is therefore not uncommon for many designers to give up their more avant-garde ideas in favour of less original, but definitely more saleable creations.

Nana Aganovich and Brooke Taylor may instead just have found a way to avoid finding difficult balances between commercial and original forces and compromising their creativity: this July they were indeed invited by the French Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture to show on the high fashion schedule.

The design duo limited the number of designs on the runway (a space outside their 11th Arrondissement atelier) to 12 looks, and borrowed many inspirations from their ready-to-wear pieces, recreating some of them with couture fabrics and luxury textiles.

Many designs bore therefore the duo's trademark passion for pieces inspired by history in which they injected Victorian moods à la Dickens or Gothic details of the kind that Miss Peregrine in Ransom Riggs' books about the extraordinary Peculiar Children would favour.

Black prevailed at the very beginning of the show with ample sculptural skirts and pants matched with ruffled white organza shirts, black brocade skinny suits paired with shirts decorated with multiple layers of organza around the neck, a black leather jacket that looked as if it were made of plastic, and black deconstructed mourning dresses.  

A Marie Antoinette palette was introduced thanks to brocades by Venetian Rubelli (it is worth remembering that costume designer Milena Canonero turned to Rubelli for the gowns in Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette), employed for frock coats characterised by pleated motifs on the front and matched with light powdery pink or cream skirts.

Even though these designs clearly showed a historical derivation, none of them looked like costumes: the emphasis was indeed on creating a refined artisanal offer for Aganovich's private clients interested in acquiring bespoke pieces.

That is also the main reason why the designers turned to milliner Stephen Jones who created two headpieces for this runway, and to Japanese hair artist, head prop designer and wig maker Tomihiro Kono (河野富広) who worked on the colourful wigs that gave a contemporary punk twist to the designs.

Fresh from an exhibition of wigs at The Community in Paris, Kono opted for rebellious looks that broke with the romantic brocades in pale blue and peach, and called to mind the flamboyant hairstyles in Miloš Forman's Amadeus.

You can bet this experience will be chronicled and recounted in detail by the hairstylist and wig maker in a new book, maybe a follow-up to "Head Prop: Studies 2013 - 2016" (Konomad Editions), but, for the time being, you can learn more about it from this brief interview with Kono.  

What does Haute Couture represent for you?
Tomihiro Kono: For me, Haute Couture represents a dream, even though I don’t find so much difference between Haute Couture and Ready-to-Wear actually, because the designers I have worked with are quite specific in their styles, so every look is bespoke anyway. This Aganovich show only featured 12 looks, and that made it very special since you didn't get that classic army-style runway in which every model looked the same, but each model became a character with her own fantastic aesthetic. I have always loved one-off, bespoke pieces as opposed to mass production.

Is this the first time you took part in a Haute Couture show?
Tomihiro Kono: Yes, it was and for me it was as if one of my dreams had become true.

How did the collaboration with Aganovich happen?
Tomihiro Kono: I met Nana Aganovich and Brooke Taylor two years ago when they were doing Ready-to-Wear and they asked me to collaborate with them on their A/W 2016 runway. They really loved the bandage hairstyles I did and, in between a glass of wine or two, we shared our creative visions. I started making wigs from scratch two years ago using a time-consuming handmade process that consists in making a foundation, knotting hair strands into it and colouring, cutting and styling the wigs into any shape. It takes a lot of patience to go through this process, but it's really worth doing it since it can be considered as real couture. I have presented some of my most recent designs during my compact exhibition "Wigs (Perruques)" at The Community in Paris. Brooke and Nana absolutely loved my wigs and my idea of "hair-couture", so this collaboration started from there.

Did the designers give you a theme or a story you could develop while working on your wigs? 
Tomihiro Kono: They didn't give me any specific theme, but we share some common aesthetics, so it was a natural process in which we tried to match clothes, wigs and models as we did the fittings.

You made the wigs, but there was also another collaborator who worked on the headlieces, can you tell us more about it?
Tomihiro Kono: Stephen Jones made the surreal dome-shaped headpiece that encased one model's head and he also designed the black veil with a face printed on it.

There was a historical component in the clothes with some designs evoking a sort of Marie Antoinette style - did those design inspire the pastel shades of some of your wigs?
Tomihiro Kono: The Aganovich duo has a specific taste in their clothes that evokes historical elements. I personally like that, but I wanted to break up with classical elements and I opted to use pastel coloured wigs to make the garments look fresh and young. I also wanted to avoid coming up with a very traditional image, so I aimed at making more contemporary pieces with new, energetic vibes.

You spent quite a few weeks in Europe and now you're back in New York: did you find any inspirations while being in Europe for your wigs/hair styles? 
Tomihiro Kono: Europe is more or less my home, everytime I visit I get inspired by the European aesthetics. What inspires me the most is that people in Paris really appericiate what I do, they do have a lot of respect for the artisanal spirit and I like this attitude. During my exhibition at The Community in Paris people were willing to try my wigs on and stopped to ask me how I made them and so on and that felt really encouraging. Maybe I should move back to Europe at some point!

Image credits for this post

Wigs by Tomihiro Kono; all images in this post courtesy and copyright Konomad.

Listen and You Will Hear All the Houses That Walked There Before: From "Paris Is Burning" to "Pose", the Return of Voguing and the House Ballroom Scene (Soon to Be Co-Opted by the Fashion Industry?)

The voguing scene became mainstream after Malcolm McLaren and, shortly afterwards, Madonna co-opted it: in 1989, Willi Ninja, iconic dancer and choreographer from the House of Ninja, appeared indeed in McLaren's track "Deep in Vogue" and danced in the accompanying music video.

Clad in a peplum jacket that vaguely called to mind a doublet matched with skin-tight leggings, Ninja looked as if he had stepped out of a Renaissance painting. Yet this historical vision ended up looking extremely modern thanks to the way Ninja danced with dynamic movements inspired by the static poses of models in the pages of Vogue.

Introduced to voguing by Jose Gutierez Xtravaganza and Luis Camacho Xtravaganza, Madonna released in 1990 her song and video "Vogue", while, the following year, Jennie Livingston's landmark documentary "Paris Is Burning" came out.

Though criticised for the way it reinforced certain stereotypes and for not compensating properly its participants, "Paris Is Burning" remains an important document, since it attempted to chronicle the ballroom scene in the '80s in New York through interviews with some of its main players, such as Pepper LaBeija and Angie Xtravaganza.

At the very beginning of the documentary, an interviewee explains what is a ball: "Gay people, men, gather together under one roof and decide to have a competition amongst themselves, balls. I went to a ball, I got a trophy and now everybody wants to know me." 

In a way this wasn't a new tradition as history shows that in the mid-to-late 1800s there were already charity masquerade gala balls for well-to-do African-Americans, with men in female drag and women in male drag.

The tradition developed in the early '60s with Marcel Christian (Crystal), founder and legendary Mother of the House of LaBeija, staging the first proper ball.

For the communities of transgender and gay people of colour, balls became the answer to a society that turned them into outcasts or pretended not to see them, it wasn't the American dream becoming real, but a personal interpretation of the American dream.

Pepper LaBeija defined the balls in "Paris Is Burning" as "our fantasy of being a super star, like the Oscars or whatever or being on a runway, like a model".

The ball community eventually started splitting into more houses - the House of Dupree, the House of Xtravaganza, the House of Dior, the House of Saint Laurent and so on - that became tight groups of people, safe havens for queer black or Latino kids rejected by their own families.

In "Paris Is Burning" a "house" is defined as a street gang fighting not in the street, but on the floor of a club where the members of a house performed, or rather walked, in various "categories".

The balls revolved indeed around the latter, the main idea being that people walking in a specific category had to look genuine, they had to embody the real thing.

While at the beginning of the ball scene most participants would copy Las Vegas showgirls, in the '70s the movie star look prevailed, but in the '80s new categories started arriving, with themes such as military, executive, town and country, butch queen, opulence, and so on. Some of the categories were also inspired by TV series, such as Dynasty, and by fashion and runway models as well. 

The categories were usually introduced  by a sarcastically caustic emcee, ready to encourage, support, make fun or ridicule the person walking down the dancefloor. 

The various categories allowed the people walking in them to fulfil their dreams, adapt their identity and prove they could become anything they wanted if they were given a chance. 

In "Paris Is Burning" Dorian Corey, Mother of the House of Corey, states: "In real life you can't get a job as an executive unless you have the educational background and the opportunity. Now, the fact that you are not an executive is merely because of the social standing of life. Black people have a hard time getting anywhere and those that do are usually straight. In a ballroom you can be anything you want. You're not really an executive but you're looking like an executive. You're showing the straight world that I can be an executive if I had the opportunity because can look like one, and that is like a fulfillment."

Voguing was an integral part of the balls: this form of body expression developed from shade, a nonviolent way of fighting during the balls, a form of dance that two people did because they didn't like each other and, instead of fighting, they danced it out on the dancefloor and the best person at throwing shade won.

Shade developed into voguing thanks to people like Willi Ninja who had a talent for creating energetic routines that combined drama, pantomime, lines and shapes borrowed from hieroglyphics and movements taken from gymnastics, with the rigour of ballet and the elegance of a fashion model (Ninja went on to teach runway walking to models, including Naomi Campbell and Christy Turlington).

Six years ago there was a renewed interest in the scene thanks to the ballroom volume Voguing and the House Ballroom Scene City 1989-92, featuring photographs by Chantal Regnault and including a series of interviews with the founders of the House of Xtravaganza, the House of Mugler, LaBeija and Saint Laurent.

Around the same time comic book "Fashion Beast" by Alan Moore and Malcolm McLaren paid homage once again to legendary houses such as LaBeija and Xtravaganza, and now the ballroom scene has become popular once again thanks FX series "Pose".

Set in the 1980s and comprising eight episodes, "Pose" was written by Steven Canals, Brad Falchuk and Ryan Murphy (who also directed the first two episodes); writer and activist Janet Mock and Our Lady J have also been serving as writers and producers, while one of the consultants is legendary House of Xtravaganza Grandfather Hector Xtravaganza. 

The transgender lineup shines with five brilliant stars - MJ Rodriguez (Blanca), Dominique Jackson (Elektra), Indya Moore (Angel), Hailie Sahar (Lulu) and Angelica Ross (Candy) - acting alongside Evan Peters (Stan), Kate Mara (Patty), Billy Porter (Pray Tell), Ryan Jamaal Swain (Damon), Dyllón Burnside (Ricky) and Angel Bismark Curiel (Lil Papi).

The ballroom scene becomes the protagonist from the very first episode in which Elektra, Mother of the House of Abundance, and her children steal clothes from a museum for an upcoming ball with a royal theme. In the meantime, a previous Abundance member, Blanca, decides to leave Elektra to become a Mother herself and forms the House of Evangelista.

There are quite a few parallelisms with "Paris Is Burning" in the series, first and foremost the balls that both in the documentary and in the fiction are events where the participants display their arrogance, style, wit and seductiveness. Even brilliant Pray Tell, emcee extraordinaire, evokes in his comments and presentations the real emcees seen in "Paris Is Burning". 

The series could be defined as a dance musical based on juxtapositions: the world of the balls Vs the universe of the yuppies working in the Trump Tower; trans women and gay people of colour Vs a white world and a white gay scene that reject them; dishonest fakers Vs honest drag queens (Stan, the young white executive who falls in love with Angel, realises that she is more real and honest than him, while he is living a lie both in his job and at home, in his suburban house with his perfect wife Patty).

The characters will have to fight against stereotypes and archetypes and solve life dilemmas such as finding one's identity through a sex change operation or giving it up to keep a wealthy lover who opposes the idea of a full sex change.

There is fun and there is also solidarity: in between all the glitter, the posing and voguing on the dance floor, the characters highlight the importance of the surrogate family recreated around the "house", while Blanca takes her role of Mother very seriously, encouraging talented yet shy and scared Damon to enter into the dance academy (a very Fame twist to this story).

Yet not eveything is about glamour: the characters sharing their memories of family rejections, evoke the story told by Pepper LaBeija in "Paris is Burning", but there is also the nightmare of discovering of being HIV positive, followed by the hell of dying of AIDS abandoned in a hospital room where not even nurses want to enter for fear of contagion, events that bring to mind the memory of the many players in the ballroom and voguing scene who died too young and too soon.

In a nutshell, there's bleakness and tragedy and a sense of unbearable loss in "Pose", but there is also a strong belief in your dreams and in the potential of people and in doing something good for the other people in your community and group.

As a whole the show looks authentic, besides it offers fashion fans the chance to see some wonderful designs and styles by Lou Eyrich, well-known for her work on "American Horror Story" and "Nip/Tuck": there's extravagant gowns at the balls, quite a few of them evoking French couture; Elektra may look stunningly fierce in high fashion, but she looks even better in an iconic Patrick Kelly number covered in golden buttons; Pray Tell is a flamboyant dandy and talented dressmaker (though he doesn't use bootleg logoed fabrics like Dapper Dan, his skills and passion for making garments will definitely remind viewers of the tailor of Harlem).

Shows such as RuPaul's "Drag Race" and now "Pose" may have brought the LGBTQ+ scenes into the mainstream in very controversial hard times, but there is also something else to say about the TV series.

The dystopia of "The Handmaid's Tale" may echo Trump's draconian and hostile policies, but "Pose" seems to point at human rights and freedoms of queer people of colour being at risk, while it uses the tensions between the white yuppies in the Trump Tower and the ball scene characters to trace the rise of the white power presidency.

While "Pose" is an entertaining series with the power of relaunching the voguing scene worldwide, there is a tangible worry that culture vultures may end up taking more than just inspiration from its stories. Deep down you know indeed that characters à la Pray Tell would have great impact on a real fashion runway and it is probably just a question of time before we see in shows such as Alessandro Michele's ones for Gucci, a voguing contest introduced with the words "Work...Live...Pose!". Somehow you know it will happen. Till then, there's not much we can do but strike a pose, as we wait for the next musician or fashion house ready to jump on the bandwagon and co-opt again the scene.

Body Dynamics in Four Acts: Acne Studios S/S 19

In the last few years the collaborations between fashion houses, corps de ballets and choreographers has strengthened: apart from fashion designers coming up with costumes for ballet shows, we have seen more recent experiments that involved choreographers working with brands to develop innovative fashion presentations that focused not just on the clothes but on body dynamics (remember British choreographer Wayne McGregor collaborating with Cos or the New York City Ballet Resident Choreographer and soloist Justin Peck working with Opening Ceremony?).

Yet, when a young choreographer approached Acne Studios' Creative Director Jonny Johansson after a dance production at the Royal Opera House in Stockholm, and asked him to collaborate, the designer simply refused the offer as he felt he didn't know much about costumes and choreographies.

While things didn't change after doing some researches, Johansson got the dance bug and decided to use it as inspiration for Acne's S/S 19 womenswear collection.

Showcased in Paris at the Camille Sée High School, the collection chronicled the life of a dancer and it was divided into four acts.

Movement ran through the fluid designs, but it also became a theme of Acne Studios Instagram account since, while the fashion show took place, Alice Renavand, principal dancer of the Paris Opera Ballet, took over it.

The first act was devoted to training and opened with romantic separates (that evoked in their colour and consistencies the delicate tutu donned by Dégas's "La Petite Danseuse de Quatorze Ans"), jersey dresses and light slipdresses with bodysuits underneath for that layered look favoured by dancers.

Fitted pants and ribbed leggings that at times looked like legwarmers gave models an elongated silhouette and were at times matched with leotards and with sneaker-cum-sandal-cum-ballet slipper shoes.

The second act revolved around the performance and included designs in natural fabrics with a workwear twist as well: linen jumpsuits and ample shirts were decorated with crocheted trims, references to folkloric detailing, and integrated patches in punk style showing photographs of dancers or posters of performances by the Merce Cunningham Dance Company (including the collaboration between Cunningham and Robert Rauschenberg and posters from 1973 and 1991).

The latter, together with Ballets Russes posters, were also replicated on functional bags (Johansson actually obtained the rights to use these images, so this is a completely legal collaboration).

Then followed an interlude with more practical clothes layered, the sort of styles dancers may opt for when off-duty or while they are going home.

The palette comprised soft shades, nude tones, earthy browns and rusty oranges, smokey pastels with splashes of pale green, coral and turquoise, but the final act became more grand and veered towards opera rather than dance.

Toile de Jouy prints showing the Palais Garnier and old opera houses, and jacquard fabrics - used for coats, suits, dresses and knitted tops showing raised curtains - introduced indeed an architectural theme. The last garments - brocade suits with swan prints and a black suit decorated along the lapels with bejwelled swans - evoked the eternal dichotomy between Odette and Odile.

There was a faux pas in this collection as Johansson stopped at the most obvious references, from the Ballets Russes to Merce Cunningham and the New York City Ballet, so a lot of other themes, experimental artists and performers were left unexplored (surely there is more to a dancer than stereotypical layered looks...).

Yet the designer managed to come up with strong and commercial pieces such as the garments and accessories with posters (check out also the shirt with the retro print of the New York City Ballet) that may prove visually alluring also for graphic design fans (the 1991 Merce Cunningham dance Company poster was designed by acclaimed Swiss graphic designer Rosmarie Tissi), while offering design alternative to dance fans on the lookout for more refined garments to pay homage to their dance idols. Apart from that there's a bonus about most pieces from this collection: you don't need indeed the body of dancer to wear them.

In Psychedelic Plastic Dreams: Dries Van Noten Men's S/S 19 Vs Verner Panton

The history of fashion has seen quite a few designers creating interior design pieces or collaborating on a regular basis with companies manufacturing textiles for interior purposes.

Yet there have also been fashion houses that tried to create correspondences on the runway between a collection and interior design, maybe by using furniture as background decoration for a show or taking inspiration from the colour combination, shapes and silhouettes of specific designs for their clothes (think also about the Memphis Milano theme that has turned into an unhealthy obsession in the last few years...).

Dries Van Noten was the latest to move from interior design for his S/S 19 menswear collection. In his case the starting point was Verner Panton (1926-1998) and in particular the patterns for his fabrics and textiles, even though some of the moods seemed to be directly linked to the Visiona (0 and 2) events curated by Panton between the end of the '60s and the early '70s.

Sponsored by chemistry company Bayer AG and developed on the boat "Loreley" (anchored on the Rhine) for the Cologne Furniture Fair in 1968 and 1970, these temporary installations were supposed to promote the technical possibilities and practical use of the comapny's new synthetic fibres like Dralon through a home textiles collection.

Yet for these occasions Panton ended up creating immersive environments in bright and bold psychedelically exuberant colours in which architecture and furniture were combined together.

The results were avant-garde fantasy cave-like spaces characterised by fluidly liquid architectures that broke with design traditions and that also integrated in their organic shapes Panton's own designs, including lamps and chairs. Panton didn't use colours in a casual or random way for these installations, but he based his choices on human psychology.

Soon these showcases for home textiles became iconic events that introduced visitors to a new interior design vision that broke with conventions, hinting at the possibilities offered by the future.

The opening looks on Dries Van Noten's runway seemed to borrow the colour palette from the intergalactic and hallucinated "Phantasy Landscape" in "Visiona 2".

Yet the waving motifs and thick swirls on the opening swimming trunks, shorts and jackets were actually borrowed from Panton's textiles called "Mira-X-Collection Decor I" (1969-71) that featured designs in 8 pure colours - orange, bright red, dark red, aubergine, mauve, violet, blue and turquoise - and in eight shades of brightness - from 100% to 15% colour saturation.

The Panton inspiration first appeared on Van Noten's runway in the colours, patterns and textiles chosen for the collection, and including rich reds, Campari spritz oranges, electric blues, soft browns, luscious greens and vivid yellows, waving patterns and a graphic print of a hand.

Panton's prints, authorised by his estate, were digitalised, adjusted, rescaled and adapted to the various garments.

The light cellophane-like raincoats evoked Bayer's Dralon, but there were also a series of less synthetic and more natural options such as cotton suits, overalls borrowed from workwear for that utilitarian twist added, and practical separates with shirts made in a thick velvet fabric that evoked the consistency of interior design textiles. 

Silhouettes were wearable, elegant and functional, a natural choice that went well with the more complicated and colourful patterns.

The accessory offer was strong with bag and shoes also characterised by Panton's patterns and colours. Van Noten seemed to give up his more romantic moods, his trademark floral elements, signature botanical prints and delicate embroideries in favour of a retro futurism that inspired a much needed optimism.

The final idea was indeed giving a new energy and vibe to people's life: Panton believed indeed that living was about relaxing and feeling happy in environments that could be considered as radically different and alternative versions of the more conventionally and formally furnished living rooms.

This was the first show since Spanish fragrance and fashion firm Puig acquired a majority share in Dries Van Noten. Time will tell if this was the right option or if the company will lose its identity with Puig pushing for more boutiques and maybe one or two commercial fragrances, but this was undoubtedly a good way for the Belgian designer to start a new chapter in his career.