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

The Eco-Crisis through from the Art + Science Perspective

Climate change is in the news but science and art go hand in hand with sustainability at the Meru Art*Science Research Program, an interdisciplinary project that will take place in Bergamo, Italy, during the 17th Festival BergamoScienza. 

For the occasion arist Nick Laessing, whose practice focuses on researches revolving around art, technology and the eco-crisis, will bring his Life Systems installations and projects at the Bergamo-based Galleria d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea (Modern and Contemporary Art Gallery - GAMeC), developing for the occasion also a series of objects powered by alternative energies with local high school students.  

A researcher at the Slade School of Art and The Electrochemical Innovation Laboratory, University College London, Laessing creates artworks moving from speculative technologies.  

Among his most famous pieces there is the "Plant Orbit": the latter was inspired by the food scarcity and is based on researches carried out in the '70s by the NASA to investigate the possibility of growing plant food in extra-terrestrial environments. The researches discovered that plant growth accelerates in anti-gravity conditions. The project was discarded by NASA and later appropriated by marijuana growers to maximise production for indoor cultivation.

Laessing created the piece with the advice from the marijuana growing community and hydroponics experts. "Plant Orbiter" tests the theory via an automated rotating system for food production: seeds are planted in a propagator and, once germinated, the seedlings are transplanted into the slowly rotating wheel that completes an orbit every hour around lamps reproducing the frequency of sunlight. There's a dichotomy in this project between utopia and dystopia: Laessing invites visitors to pick the products of the machine once they are ready, but he also prompts them to think about the possibility of the machine malfunctioning, becoming unable to produce anything and therefore leaving people to starve.

Laessing's Life Systems installations and projects will be at Bergamo's Galleria d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea (Modern and Contemporary Art gallery - GAMeC) from 7th to 20th October.

 

The Factory Floor as Fashion Inspiration

As discussed in a previous post, in the past there was a very strong connection between fashion houses and the manufacturing companies behind a collection. For example, the name of a textile manufacturer may have appeared in the advert for a new collection, almost as a "thank you" note to the factories that had collaborated with the fashion house in developing the new designs.  

As the decades passed, this practice went out of fashion for different reasons: in some cases designers decided not to reveal the name of the manufacturer for privacy reasons; in others, fashion houses started working with a variety of companies, ending up assembling a design in a location with parts arriving from factories based in other countries (as opposed to making it from scratch in just one place).

Besides, most fashion companies started favouring campaigns that did not focus on the quality of a fabric or textile, but that featured celebrities, influencers and other high profile personalities who can easily attract followers on social media and convince them to buy a specific product. 

But things may be changing and some companies may be looking once again at the maufacturing plant as inspiration and locus where creativity can meet know-how and where a collection can be developed.

An example? Margherita Maccapani Missoni, daughter of Angela, granddaughter of Rosita and current Creative Director (appointed last October) of the lower-priced line M Missoni, staged during Milan Fashion Week a fun presentation. The latter consisted in a tramway ride around the city centre with an eclectic cast of models (selected from the streets, but also including family friends such as Jessica Hart and Bianca Brandolini d'Adda).

Yet the lookbook accompanying the collection wasn't shot in the streets, but at the Missoni plant: models posed in front of knitting machines producing colourful textiles, among rows of yarn spools and colour cards.

Margherita Missoni actually employed the factory as research space: here she found yarns from previous seasons' left overs and dead stock textiles originally made for the company's home collection and reused them all, giving in this way also a sustainable twist to the new collection. 

Besides, she looked in the factory archive and researched the history of the company (that celebrated last year its 65th anniversary) also for what regarded motifs and patterns that she could reuse, picking a print designed by her grandfather Ottavio "Tai" Missoni, a vintage Missoni Sport logo and an abstract motif from the '80s.  

As a whole the collection was versatile as it featured a wide range of pieces that can be mixed and matched - from skirts and shorts to shrunken knits and long cardigans, along with accessories comprising smartphone cases and straw bags - that will easily fit in any sort of wardrobe. The designs will be produced in a wide range of sizes (from XS to XXL) that also means this is a collection for all shapes and silhouettes. 

Before rejoining her family Maccapani-Missoni worked on collaborations with various brands and companies, including Splendid for sportswear, Yoox for children's sleepwear and Away for luggage. Now that she's back in the family, manufacturing company Gilmar SpA will be the production partner for the M Missoni line.

You may argue that no actual workers are featured in these images from the M Missoni lookbook, but choosing to shoot the lookbook where the historical family makes its designs is already a first step. Hopefully, the "fashion-factory" relationship will continue to be rediscovered, allowing a younger generation of fashion fans to understand that chaotic and unglamorous spaces like manufacturing plants (where workers' rights are respected) are still creative places. 

The factory floor as fashion inspiration may turn into a proper trend soon: Louis Vuitton is currently doing a series of documentaries by French director Loïc Prigent that take people to factories, with episodes filmed for example in Asnières, France, and in Fiesso d'Artico, Italy (you can watch them on LV TV channel on YouTube). While these episodes are shot with a fun approach in mind, they also show the skills, talent and devotion of the artisans behind some of the company's products. Looks like the real influencers may not be the ones going to runway shows and sitting in the front row, but those behind the scenes, doing all the hard work in the factories. 

From Film Sets to Real Life: Gabriella Pescucci X Max Mara Weekend

The Victorian horror/fantasy series Penny Dreadful featured visually striking costumes by the mighty Gabriella Pescucci. The Italian costume designer and Academy Award winner (for the costumes in Martin Scorsese's The Age of Innocence) is a talented fashion researcher and connoisseur. Specialised in period costumes and famous for her passion for historical accuracy and philologically precise details that she mixes with a great fantasy, she has worked with directors as different as Federico Fellini, Martin Scorsese, Terry Gilliam and Tim Burton. 

In Penny Dreadful there is an inside joke at one point when the camera lingers in one scene on an atelier by a certain "Madame Pescucci".

Yet, come next March, "Madame Pescucci" may become a reality: Max Mara has indeed turned to the costume designer for a capsule collection for its casual outdoor Weekend line. For previous collections the company chose among the others American interior designer Anthony Baratta, and American artist Richard Saja, but this is the first time it works with a costume designer.

The collaboration was the result of a chance encounter between Max Mara Fashion Director Laura Lusuardi and Pescucci during a costume design exhibition about the Tirelli tailoring house. Lusuardi invited Pescucci to Reggio Emilia and, after visiting the brand's archives, the costume designer accepted the challenge of creating a capsule for the Weekend line.  

The collaboration, entitled "On Set by Gabriella Pescucci", was unveiled during Milan Fashion Week and moves from three main inspirations - The Age of Innocence, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen and TV series The Borgias created by Neil Jordan.

Scorsese's film with its crinolines and elegant gowns inspired designs in cotton, organdie and linen, such as embroidered cutaway tops with bell sleeves, white shirts with broderie anglaise-like laser-cut motifs and lace skirts. 

Pescucci's passion for the ocean and the scene with Uma Thurman coming out of the shell like Botticellli's Venus in Terry Gilliam's "The Adventures of Baron Munchausen" inspired a coat and skirt with shells and coral branches, elements replicated also on the accessories such as the "Pasticcino" (pastry) bag in pastel colours and in the embellishments of strappy thong sandals, while tops and shirts with puffed or flared sleeves, braided elements and ruffles, hint at Lucrezia Borgia's costumes.

The collection will be available on-line and in all Weekend Max Mara shops from March, but, in the meantime, Pescucci is back on the set, working on a series for Sky Atlantic (working title "Domina"), about Livia Drusilla, wife of Roman emperor Augustus.  

Pescucci is not the first Italian designer collaborating with a famous fashion company: Milena Canonero has influenced fashion with her costumes (the safari styles she created in "Out of Africa" and the uniform she designed for the droogs in "A Clockwork Orange", sparked fashion trends...). After "Chariots of Fire", she was asked to design clothes for Norman Hilton and she designed a collection that won her a special Coty Award.

So collaborating with a costume designer is certainly not new for a fashion brand, but this collaboration offers the chance to younger generations to think more about the great connection between fashion and film (and see how a cinematic inspiration can be adapted from the set to real life...), while finally acknowledging the influence that iconic costume designers always had on the fashion industry, something that is rarely done.

A Big Sustainable Lesson from Small Parts: YKK Recycled and Plant-Based Products

News concerning sustainability and fashion often focus on the production of fabrics or on famous houses and brands announcing they will not be using furs.

Rarely we hear about making ecofriendly key elements - such as fasteners - that are also a vital part of many different garments. Yet there are companies working to make things better also in this field. 

Zipper manufacturer YKK (U.S.A.) Inc. developed for example the NATULON® product lines. Made from certified recycled materials (such as PET bottles), this collection of sustainable trims includes environmentally friendly zipper tapes, hook and loop fasteners and buckles.

This material is the result of a double-layered development system using both chemical and material recycling. In the first case the zippers are made from PET bottles, post-consumer polyester products (old fiber and other polyester remnants) and yarn waste. These materials are processed, granulated, purified, treated with dimethyl terephthalate (DMT) and used to make a yarn that is then transformed into zippers. 

The material recycling process employs post-consumer polyester products that go through the phases of pulverization and pelletization (no DMT stage in this case), before being transformed into a recycled yarn employed to make the zippers. 

Ten thousands NATULON® zippers of 60 cm length recycle approximately 3,600 plastic bottles (29 g/bottle) and YKK (U.S.A.) Inc. has set production of NATULON® in Macon, Georgia, to further reduce the environmental impact from sourcing the products overseas.

In September YKK announced a new development - the GreenRise™ Zippers made with a plant-based material.

The plant-derived polyester used for zippers is in this case made from molasses, the by-product generated in the sugar production process (petroleum-based ethylene glycol, which accounts for about 30% of the components constituting the PET, is replaced with plant-based ethylene glycol). In this way fossil fuel consumption and CO2 emissions in the product cycle are reduced and byproducts are put to effective use. 

Unlike other companies, YKK has definitely not jumped on the sustainable bandwagon only now, but it has been working for years on trying to improve things: in 2015, YKK (U.S.A.) Inc. installed 1,968 solar modules on the roof of its Anaheim, CA, facility and the company is now working towards eliminating hazardous chemicals from the manufacturing process. By 2020, YKK aims to eliminate various substances, among the others surfactants, phtalates and heavy metals (you can read the entire list here). 

Besides, YKK developed fasteners made out of organically grown cotton to reduce the use of synthetic chemicals in agriculture and created the ECO-DYE® technology that allows the reduction of the amount of water used in the zipper dyeing process to almost zero.  

These products are the result of long researches and clever investments, but there is also a philosophy behind them: YKK follows indeed a principle that the company defines "Cycle of Goodness™" and that revolves around the motto "No one prospers without rendering benefit to others." 

Behind it there is the concept that "contributions to society can best be achieved by the continual creation of value through innovative ideas and inventions." Sounds like the huge fashion industry may learn a thing or two from the smallest parts made for its products. 

Fashion Insanity: Gucci S/S 20

Fashion can drive you crazy for all the wrong reasons: the stress of churning out a collection after the other can be unbearable for a designer, but following what happens in the industry can be stressful as well. Think, for example, about critics (well, the very few ones left...) reporting on a daily basis from the runway shows during fashion month. There are also other forms of fashion-related insanity like super obsessed fashionistas who follow all the latest trends and buy too many clothes and accessories.

And so it happened that Gucci's show, that took place during Milan Fashion Week, opened with over 20 models on a conveyor belt runway surrounded by white plastic waiting room-style chairs of the sort you may find in a hospital. They all had a blank expression on their faces and wore what looked like reinvented versions of straitjackets.

There were beige or white shirts, dresses, coats, jackets, but the starting point was always the straigtjacket used to restrain adult patients in psychiatric hospitals between the 1930s and the 1960s.

During the runway one of the models, Ayesha Tan Jones (YaYa Bones), raised their palms revealing the message "Mental Health Is Not Fashion". The non-binary artist and musician explained on Instagram they didn't feel at ease with the straitjacket part of the runway, and wrote: "As an artist and model who has experienced my own struggles with mental health, as well as (having) family members and loved ones who have been affected by depression, anxiety, bipolar and schizophrenia, it is hurtful and insensitive for a major fashion house such as Gucci to use this imagery as a concept for a fleeting fashion moment (…) It is in bad taste for Gucci to use the imagery of straight jackets and outfits alluding to mental patients, while being rolled out on a conveyor belt as if a piece of factory meat. Presenting these struggles as props for selling clothes in today's capitalist climate is vulgar, unimaginative and offensive to the millions of people around the world affected by these issues." 

Ayesha Tan Jones also added she had decided to donate all the fee from the show (and a few of the models on the runway pledged to donate a portion of their fee) to mental health charities.

Gucci's press office explained that the model's protest was not planned, highlighted the garments would not go into production and would not be on sale, and added that the brand's creative director Alessandro Michele didn't mean to offend anybody.

That part of the show, Michele claimed, was inspired by uniforms hinting at restrictions imposed by society on somebody's personal expression. The straitjacket was conceived by Michele as "the highest type of uniform", something that blocks and constrains the wearer turning them into an anonymous human being (the show notes quoted French philosopher Michel Foucault and also highlighted the importance of resisting subjugation). Gucci's Instagram page also explained that these blank-styled clothes represented "how through fashion, power is exercised over life, to eliminate self-expression. This power prescribes social norms, classifying and curbing identity".

According to the Instagram statement, the collection that followed, was supposed to "allow people to walk through fields of possibilities, cultivate beauty, make diversity sacrosanct and celebrate the self in expression and identity."

The straitjacket section was indeed separated by a moment of darkness and then the real S/S 20 designs arrived on the runway to prove that constraints were lifted and that creativity could finally take place.

Though Michele is still a maximalist at heart he tried to go down a different route for the S/S 20 collection, injecting a dose of sex into his librarian chic designs.

Black prevailed, prints almost disappeared, the silhouettes were suspended between the '70s and the '90s, there were subtle hints at Prada and Michele at times homaged Tom Ford.

Lace slip dresses with plunging necklines, and high-slit skirts matched with kinky thigh vinyl boots and latex opera gloves were accompanied by cat o' nine tails and riding crops, to hint at the company's heritage and subvert it in an S&M key, reducing a functional sport accessory into a sexual object.

There were still classic Alessandro Michele moments and the accessory section included sparkly butterfly brooches, eyeglasses with thick chain holders, mismatched trainers, and anklets and bracelets that looked like bullet casings but contained instead rows of lipsticks (the best way to advertise Gucci's beauty line). Yet, as a whole, things were a bit toned down.

Bags, jackets, sleeve cuffs and trouser hems incorporated slogans such as "Gucci Orgasmique" and "Gucci Eterotopia" (from Michel Foucault - "heterotopia" describes cultural, institutional and discursive spaces that are somehow "other", so ships, cemeteries, bars, brothels, prisons, gardens of antiquity, fairs and many more).

But while Michele's maximalist nerds gone sexy went down well with the media, that initial One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest moment remained questionable.

It is surprising that, even though the company recently hired a Global Head of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (Renée Tirado), it still comes up with dubious messages (remember the previous faux pas, the balaclava jumper with a cut-out mouth and red lips that summoned up blackface imagery and that was pulled immediately from stores?). Besides, the explanation provided on Instagram about society controlling the individual simply doesn't work – you may indeed argue that fashion controls the individual as well.

Society may impose a role on each of us, but fashion puts pressures, tells us that we should go for this trend, that particular brand, those shoes and bags to achieve status or to conform with the rest of the fashion tribe. It is indeed difficult to read behind those straitjackets an invitation to dare to be whoever you want to be in a world of copies, when brands and fashion houses fascistically impose certain trends and order us to follow them.

In many ways fashion erases our identities and no brand - Gucci included - can be the antidote because each and everyone of them tries to overimpose their logo on our personalities (often influencers and models following a particular brands call themselves family or army and, by pledging their loyalty to a particular brand for financial reasons, wear an invisible uniform).

And while we can all choose by ourselves if we want to escape the constraints of fashion by buying luxury clothes or by making our own garments or wearing only vintage or second-hand clothes, Gucci should have instead escaped controversy by leaving an instrument of torture such as the straitjacket safely confined to a museum.

Sadko & The Tale of the Ocean: Laura Theiss S/S 20

In Ilya Repin's painting "Sadko" the fairytale hero is portrayed staring at an enchanted procession of half-human and half-aquatic girls passing in front of him. Bathed in a golden light and surrounded by underwater creatures, each girl is dressed in a fantastic attire.

Could such a dreamy and magical moment take place in our times, in which the oceans and their creatures are threatened by pollution?

Knitwear designer and crochet artist Laura Theiss moved from this question for her Spring/Summer 2020 collection.

The designer retained the romanticism of the fairytale in her palette, comprising dusty rose, lavender, turquoise, mint, aqua and yellow-green.

Cotton yarns in these shades were combined with thin metallic threads to reproduce the effects of the sun glistening on the water, while dark tones were employed to hint at the still unexplored depths of our oceans.

Theiss's new collection features designs for modern princesses: asymmetrical half-and-half dresses point at the duplicity of mermaids while nodding at the split-look trend; delicate graphic motifs reproduce on crocheted dresses the movement of the waves, evoking the sea, while fan-like elements on below the knee A-line dresses are reminiscent of the decorations of the Sea Queen costume as imagined by painter Mikhail Vrubel.

Some of the designs observe the interaction between marine fauna and flaura: in the crocheted patterns you may spot a starfish or the exuberant fragile beauty of a jellyfish, while large appliqued floral motifs bloom on plain T-shirts like aquatic plants.

Densely crocheted white elements appliqued around the shoulder area or on one sleeve evoke corals, and remind us that these splendid creatures are being bleached of colour due to rising water temperatures, while a black mesh dress is not just a sensual versatile piece, but a call for responsible fishing.

Theiss's journey through the oceans and the unexplored depths is also sustainable: the designer mainly works with crochet artisans who, following traditional patterns reinterpreted for modern silhouettes, make by hand the garments using natural fibres, bringing in this way time-honoured traditions into the future.

All images in this post courtesy Laura Theiss 

A Lumine Motus: Gabriele Colangelo S/S 20

There are people who seem to be born in the perfect time and place, their lives are aligned with a benevolent destiny offering them multiple opportunities and chances. This doesn't happen to the majority of us, though, and fashion designer Gabriele Colangelo is part of that vast majority.

Colangelo is an artisan and a very knowledgeable expert when it comes to textiles, leather and furs (he comes from a family of furriers). Throughout the years he has also mastered a form of architectural minimalism that calls to mind Japanese designers.

Colangelo doesn't seem to fit in this superficial world in which those designers who use bright and vivid colours or visually striking embellishments and come up with the most extravagant confections characterised by exaggerated silhouettes and volumes, have an immediate impact on social media and find immediate fame.  

And so it happens that his collections end up being understated affairs, often appreciated only by those who look closely, who dare to touch a material, turning the hem of a dress and finding it is perfectly done, or trying on a pair of trousers and realising that, as if by magic, they fit like a glove.

Yet the designer is not just about artisanal crafts: for his S/S 20 collection, showcased during Milan Fashion Week, he showed for example his interest in technology and the world of crafts moving from the photographic printing process called lumen.

Lumen prints consists in putting a flat object on a piece of sensitive paper and exposing it to the sunlight until it changes colour, leaving the shadowed areas unchanged or less-unchanged.

After placing the print in a bath of print fixer for five minutes, the colour of the print will change again, becoming permanent. Colours vary, depending on the paper, and you may get pinks, browns, beiges and lilacs (as seen in the prints by photographer Heather Siple juxtaposed in this post to Colangelo's designs). 

Colangelo's distorted nuances tried to mimick the unpredictable palette of lumen prints, those subtle colour shifts produced by the reactions between an object and paper, so there were soft neutrals broken by pale yellow, peach, pale blue and lilac, with tie-dye prints employed to recreate the effect of the sun on photographic paper. 

Textile and textures were the result of a long research into fabrics: laser-cut leather strips were hand-woven and applied on tunics and jackets to create juxtapositions between solid and mesh textures, while a pair of gray silk linen jacquard trousers and a coat had been deconstructed by hand, removing the horizontal threads from the garments to give them an unfinished effect that destabilised their structure.

The light dresses, long-sleeve blouses, fluid trousers and boxy coats with soft modernist shapes were given a tough treatment with the addition of supple leather aprons tied to the front or one-shoulder leather plastrons that gave a genderless touch to the collection.

It hurts being an intellectual in a world ruled by superficiality, but there are plenty of wise women out there looking for this level of complex textures in well-cut clothes made by clever designers who may not be incredibly famous - Colangelo caters for their needs.  

Activating the Geometrical Surface: Marco de Vincenzo S/S 20

When we talk about textile design we immediately think about decorative patterns, prints and colours. Yet the history of fashion also presents us with more advanced textile products, created using new technologies and often employing chemical or artificial fibres. 

In 1968, for example, Pierre Cardin invented a synthetic fabric dubbed "Cardine" that featured a three-dimensional pattern.

The fabric made with heat-moulded bonded Dynel (a copolymer of acrylonitrile and vinyl chloride and the trade name for a type of synthetic material used in fiber reinforced plastic composite materials, especially for marine applications) that could be pre-shaped or sewn to couture standards.

Cardin used the fabric for uncrushable pre-formed dresses incorporating decorative three-dimensional geometric patterns that had a good tensile strength.

The effects of Cardin's Cardine designs was mimicked in some of the creations in Marco de Vincenzo's S/S 20 collection, showcased last Friday during Milan Fashion Week.  

For the occasion De Vincenzo left the usual indoor venues and moved his runway in the open air to Milan's Darsena on the banks of the Naviglio Grande.

While in the past the designer usually combined a lot of colours and patterns in the same design, for the S/S 20 season he decided to accept a new and refreshing challenge and focused on monochromatic looks. 

He came up with 47 models, each of them sporting one colour (and no colour was alike), starting from black and finishing off with bright pink.

The different colours were a way for de Vincenzo to reference multiculturalism, diversity and inclusivity, and remind the audience that fashion is for everybody.

Having reduced his colours, de Vincenzo therefore reshifted his attention on elaborate textures: he pleated, folded, twisted, embossed and created origami with silk cady. 

He then used these fabrics with embossed surfaces for jackets, cropped tops and midi skirts. Strapless tops were sculpted with ripples, and there were also laser-cut holes on light dresses and a trellis-like tulle construction punctuated by tiny roses or swirls overimposed on a prismatic sequin dress.

Some of the models also carried an ice cream cone to show a connection between the texture and colour of the ice cream and of their outfits.  

Material transformations at times didn't work, especially in those cases in which de Vincenzo seemed to evoke silhouettes from past Chanel's collections (by Karl Lagerfeld) or in the designs that closed the collection that were a bit bulky and unflattering, while the knitwear offer provided variation and was consistent.

The final effects de Vincenzo created called to mind the experiments carried out in the late '70s by the Abet company that produced the first three-dimensional laminate, Reli-tech, characterised by interesting modern patterns and a three-dimensional effect that added a tactile quality to the material.

The three-dimensional motifs in de Vincenzo's collection may have actually been taken from architecture or interior design, after all they seemed to point at the patterns featured in the Decorattivo yearly compendiums of graphic information (or maybe we're reading too much into this collection and de Vincenzo was just fascinated by the texture of a soft swirl ice cream...).

Somehow it didn't care where the geometrical patterns came from as the most relevant point was that the decorative surface elements provided de Vincenzo with a new infinite dimension to explore as the smallest motifs replicated on the design contained the total information carried by the system as a whole.

 

From Jungle Prints to Google Pics: J.Lo, Versace & The Dress That Changed the Internet

Sustainability was trending on the runways at Milan Fashion Week (well, hopefully it won't just be a trend). At Versace, jungle prints in bright green and orange/red were all the rage, even though, to be honest, they weren't too sustainable as the foliage was often rendered in three-dimensional plastic sequins (at times applied on Prada-evoking shirts...) or the motif was printed on transparent emerald green PVC raincoats.

Alternatives were provided by little black dresses with boxy shoulders that were cinched at the waist, as modelled by Amber Valletta.

The star of the show, though, wasn't the jungle print per se (reinvented through different iterations throughout the collection that wasn't certainly that extraordinarily new - it looks like the fashion house has been resting on its jungle prints rather than on its laurels...), but Jennifer Lopez in an updated version (still with plunging neckline, but this time with a billowing tail and an open back) of the 2000 Versace dress she donned at the 42nd Grammy Awards (that was originally modelled on the runway by Amber Valletta).

At the Grammys J.Lo looked gorgeous in the dress that helped cementing her reputation as a fashion icon. The picture went viral, so viral that it forged an interesting link with technology.

The day after the awards, on February 24, 2000, "Jennifer Lopez's green dress" became one of the most popular queries on Google. Search results for the query, though, showed the search engine wasn't delivering what users were asking for.

Google's then CEO Eric Emerson Schmidt decided that there should be a way to look for the images and not just the fashion link and the company started working on a new type of visual search engine. Shortly afterwards Google Images was born.  

In July the house of Versace anticipated the return of the jungle print launching a pair of Versace X Concepts "Chain Reaction" sneakers (that retailed at $1,075), covered in the iconic motif.  

On the S/S 20 runway J.Lo's entrance was anticipated by a tech moment: a Google Image search flashed on screens, a voiceover of Donatella Versace asked for the images of the Versace jungle dress. The results were photos of J.Lo from 2000. A new search asked: "Okay Google, show me the real jungle dress", and J.Lo appeared on the runway looking like a goddess.  

This wasn't the first time Versace recreated the dress for J.Lo: in June 2014, the singer appeared at a concert in the Bronx in a new version of the gown. 

Enthusiastic fashionistas looking for trendy Halloween costumes will be happy to hear that Fashion Nova has re-created a series of celebrity looks including the 2000 Versace for J.Lo dress (available from the retailer's website). At $69.99 it sounds like a bargain, but, you're warned, wearing it may not instantly turn you into a super fashion icon à la J.Lo.

Arty Uniforms for Environmental Protests: Marni S/S 20

As seen in a previous post, during Milan Fashion Week Miuccia Prada expressed her concerns about our planet on her S/S 20 runway with a minimalist collection.

Yesterday, on the day of a global event to fight climate change that saw millions of people marching all over the world inspired by the indomitable teen activist Greta Thunberg, Marni showcased in Milan a collection with some links to the environmental protests.

The set for the show was actually directly linked to Marni Men's S/S 20 runway: the audience sat on compressed cardboard seats and was surrounded by plastic (repurposed from the plastic props on the men's runway) jungle fronds, leaves and trees made of wood pulp and old clothes.

Creative Director Francesco Risso also created a tropical story to go with the set: the collection was inspired by an anti-infective fantasy drug - Tachitropirina - capable, according to the show notes, of treating a variety of "disorders", including Fauvism and tropical hypersensitivity, an illness that could leave its victims dizzy and trap them into a deliriously colourful state.

Mind you, if such a drug had existed, it wouldn't have managed to treat Risso's colour fever: the show opened with cotton puff-sleeve tops casually matched with wrap skirts knotted at the front or with full-skirts (at times paired with aprons for that touch of peasant style) covered in abstract brushstroke floral prints in an imaginative colour palette or in jewel tones. 

The abstract florals in the Fauvinist style (created by Risso and his team) covered the dresses with energetic splashes of paint that at times seemed to have dripped on the flip-flops.

Fitted soft leather skirts were juxtaposed to boxy jackets and coats with ample shoulders and large lapels that were also covered in hand-painted flowers.

The silhouettes were borrowed from the Haute Couture lexicon, but they were remixed, slashed and cut with edges that were left raw and unhemmed.

Asymmetrical knits were for example ripped and torn around the shoulders and seemed to unravel on the runway, while crocheted dresses with large appliqued flowers may have been reassembled from pre-existing clothes or yarns, after all Risso used for this collection upcycled textiles, organic cotton and recycled leather.  

Models had flowers and leaves sprouting from their mud covered hair, carried large basket or bucket-like bags and walked on shoes with upside down soles and bamboo heels.

In this exploration and explosion of colours and patterns the white underskirts peeking from the hems of the dresses provided a touch of muted elegance and serenity.  

There were no trousers in the collection but there was still a lot to take in and to choose from in this mix of silhouttes and prints that seemed to be a clash between Natalia Goncharova's peasants' styles and the palette in Paul Gaugin's post-Impressionist Tahitian paintings.

And while you could claim that some of these silhouettes weren't entirely new and that Risso (like all modern designers) isn't offering us a definitive solution about the sustainability issue in fashion (but he is raising awareness about plastic waste), this collection tried to provide an arty uniform for environmental protests, reminding us that we may still be able to reverse the apocalypse and we could do so wrapped up in euphorically joyous canvases.