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

Share Your Love for Costumes, Help Crowdfunding the Restoration of a Caramba Gown!

Halloween may be a chance for the most extravagant among us to finally put on that costume they have been longing to wear for the entire year. But there are other occasions to show your love for costumes on ordinary days as well, such as joining a very special crowdfunding project to restore a unique garment.

Prato's Museo del Tessuto (Textile Museum) has just launched a crowdfunding project to restore costumes from the première of Puccini's Turandot.

The opera was first staged at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan on 25th April 1926, but the rich costumes inspired by the Orient and designed by legendary La Scala costumier Luigi Sapelli, better known as Caramba, were considered lost.   

In 2017, though, the museum got a phone call from Sardinia where a trunk of costumes, wigs and jewellery had resurfaced: investigations led the curators to realise the costumes had belonged to the famous Pratese soprano Iva Pacetti and were the long-lost gowns for Puccini's Turandot. 

The two costumes preserved in the trunk survived the Second World War, but their state of conservation is particularly bad: the materials are very fragile and the fabrics have been damaged by time and improper storage, so both costumes need important restoration in order to be shown to the public. 

One of the two Caramba costumes is in a particularly bad state with various parts of the beautiful woven fabric, decorated with metallic thread, presenting holes and lacerations as well as dirt.

The complex restoration project costs 35,000 Euro and the Region of Tuscany has agreed to contribute with 15,000 Euro. To complete the job, however, the museum has turned to all of us, ordinary people and fans of costumes, opera, music and fashion and has launched a campaign that will be online until 8th December 2019. The campaign is on Eppela under the name "The Lost Costume" (Il Costume Ritrovato).   

While it is already possible to join the crowdfunding campaign, the project will be launched officially at the Prato Museum with a dedicated event on 11th November (at 9.00pm), with a special presentation during which it will be possible to learn more about the Turandot costumes and even view just for one night the costumes in their pre-restoration state.

It won't be easy to reach the 12,000 Euro-goal, but supporters will be happy to know there are some great rewards for them, going from museum tickets and exhibition catalogues to special edition scarves and the option, for companies and associations, to use the museum's event space.

The biggest reward for all costume fans will be seeing the Caramba costumes restored, though: the spledid gowns will be the centerpiece of a temporary exhibition about Puccini's Turandot, scheduled for next Spring at Prato's Textile Museum.   

As Francesco Nicola Marini, President of the Fondazione Museo del Tessuto, states, "By entering into the patrimony of the museum, the Turandot costumes have become the patrimony of everyone. Everyone can contribute to this fundraising, with any amount, transforming the delicate process of restoring these extraordinary dresses into a collective project that involves us all in the history of costume and of lyric opera."

The Best Way to Be Honoured Posthumously? A Scholarship or a Grant

In pre-Internet times when a public figure or a celebrity died they would get an obituary in the papers. Nowadays, things are more global and we often share our grief online and post our condolences or tributes on social media.

As ordinary people that's the best we can do and that's perfectly fine as it shows our humanity. But could there be a better way to honour a public figure who has passed away? A scholarship or a grant seem to be great answers as they can help other people and take someone's legacy forward. Interestingly enough, in the fashion world designers who die are rarely honoured with scholarships by the large and powerful corporations or houses they worked for. It is instead with a scholarship that Isabel Toledo, who died in August of breast cancer, will be remembered. 

Her husband, artist and designer, Ruben Toledo posted on their Instagram account news about the Fashion Group International that will introduce a scholarship in Isabel's name.

Ruben posted on the page the speech of the group's new President and CEO, Maryanne Grisz, who stated "Recently, unexpectedly, designer Isabel Toledo passed. Isabel and her husband Ruben have been part of our FGI family and members since the early '90s. Izzy, born in Cuba, took up sewing at the age of 8. She met Ruben, painter, muralist, author and were a true renaissance couple, living and working together in harmony. Isabel Toledo, an artist, visionary, a woman of integrity, purpose and grace. She opened our hearts through the passion of her work and being - Isabel - you will always be our angel." 

Earlier on in October, the late fashion designer was also honoured at the Golden Heart Awards gala for the charity God's Love We Deliver. The latter provides illness-specific nutrition education and counseling to men, women and children living with HIV/AIDS, cancer and other serious illnesses.

During the ceremony Michael Kors presented the Michael Kors Award for Outstanding Community Service to Iman, and Presidential candidate Mayor Pete Buttigieg was honoured alongside John Dempsey, chairman of the M·A·C VIVA GLAM Fund, awarded with the Golden Heart Award for Outstanding Volunteerism and Community Leadership.

During his acceptance speech, Dempsey announced a new fund, inspired by the late Isabel Toledo: "In the spirit of giving back by looking forward, we choose not just to accept this award, but to share its power and its meaning with another. On behalf of M·A·C VIVA GLAM Fund and The Estée Lauder Companies, it is our distinct honor, privilege – and a rite of shared grief – to dedicate this award in tribute to a longtime, dear friend of God's Love, M·A·C, The Estée Lauder Companies and so many in this room: the late, indisputable genius, irreplaceable and desperately missed designer, artist and icon Isabel Toledo. Her partner in life and art for 45 years and beyond, artist Ruben Toledo, is with us tonight. Thank you for being here to celebrate Isabel's memory, her work, and her legacy – a legacy is sure to touch generations to come."

Isabel and Ruben Toledo worked with M·A·C and James Gager, former Creative Director at M·A·C, on a special collection in 2015; the Toledos collaborated also created artwork for holiday cards for God's Love We Deliver back in the '90s.

"Isabel's remarkable life was one defined by service and relationships," Dempsey continued. "She lived to create – to bring form to feeling. She was fluent in this language of translating intention into action, and lived her life in service to her art, fashion and fabric, the laws of physics themselves. She served and celebrated women and honored the mysterious duality of life – to clothe in order to reveal. She dressed to reveal a woman's unique beauty, confidence, dignity. To be in that presence of her gifts made us all feel a little bit immortal. Her art was not merely to be observed but to be experienced. Isabel was taken from us too soon, by breast cancer. What better way to serve and celebrate her than to share this award, and transform it into a gift."

Elsa Peretti, From Florence to Tiffany & Co (and via Tiffany to LVMH?)

The documentary "Halston" (2019) by Frédéric Tcheng features several people who knew the fashion design and includes an archival interview with Elsa Peretti, the Italian-born jewellery designer who first joined Halston as a model.

In the documentary Peretti is shown through archival footage as she talks about her relationship with Halston, her ups and downs at the studio and the way it was Halston who introduced her to Tiffany & Co.

Last week Peretti was celebrated in Italy with a special prize: the XII Florence Biennale assigned the "Leonardo da Vinci" awards for a career in design to Salvatore and Wanda Ferragamo for fashion, Elsa Peretti for jewellery and Paula Scher (from New York's Pentagram studio) for graphic arts.

Born in Florence in 1940 from a conservative family (her father was Ferdinando Peretti, founder of oil company Anonima Petroli Italiana - API), Peretti studied in Rome and in Switzerland.

She then went to Milan to study interior design and work for the architect Dado Torrigiani. In the early '60s she moved to Barcelona to work there as a model (she also posed for Salvador Dali) and ,in 1968, she relocated to New York.

Here she modelled for Halston, Oscar de la Renta and Giorgio di Sant’Angelo and, together with Karen Bjornson, Alva Chinn, Pat Cleveland, and Pat Ast, she became one of Halston's favourite models – the Halstonettes.

A regular of Studio 54, Peretti was portrayed in 1975 in an iconic photograph by Helmut Newton showing her in a bunny costume by Halston amongst the towering skyscrapers of New York. 

By then Peretti had already started designing jewellery for Halston. She reiceived the Coty Award in Jewelry Design in 1971 and a boutique dedicated to her opened in Bloomingdale's.

In 1974, helped by Halston, for whom she designed also a globular botle for his first fragrance, she had also joined Tiffany & Co. as an independent designer, but by the end of the decade she became the firm's leading designer.

Peretti mainly used silver in her creations characterised by modern and timeles forms, elevating this material.

She created several iconic and minimalist pieces often inspired by the shapes of flora and fauna, such as her 1973-74 articulated snake necklace (her house in Sant Martí Vell in Catalonia, Spain, was a great inspiration in later years - her 2007 scorpion necklace was inspired by the scorpions she saw there). Her kidney bean, open heart, bottles and mesh designs are well-known around the world (Peretti also designed tableware for Tiffany).

The mesh was developed in collaboration with Prof. Samuel Beizer at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York; Beizer and Peretti acquired old machines from Whiting and Davis, a Massachusetts-based company that used to make mesh and studied how the mesh was machine-knitted like a stocking. Peretti created with the mesh a series of intriguing pieces, including a scarf necklace and a mesh gold bra or halter top.

 

 

The most famous design she created remains the "Bone Cuff", a fluid piece incorporating organic forms that pay homage to the human body.

In 2001, to celebrate Peretti's 25th anniversary with the company, Tiffany & Co. established the Elsa Peretti Professorship in Jewelry Design at the F.I.T., in memory of Samuel Beizer.

In 2012 the long-time relationship between the famous jewellery company (that had become the sole licensee for the intellectual property rights of the designer in 1974) and Peretti seemed to come to an end. The contract was instead extended for another 20 years.

This was a clever move for the company considering that Peretti's designs are timeless and always had an important role in Tiffany's net sales (after the new agreement Peretti received a one-time fee plus a basic annual royalty fee for use of Peretti Intellectual Property and 5 percent of net sales of Peretti jewellery).

As the years passed Peretti also provided support to cultural, scientific, humanitarian and educational initiatives through her Fondazione Nando ed Elsa Peretti, a foundation dedicated to her father.

Ten days ago Peretti visited the space dedicated to her jewellery at the Florence Biennale, leaving a note in which she stated: "Florence, 18-10-2019. I was born here on 1st May 1940; receiving this award is such an honour and a profound emotion."

From Florence and the rest of the world via Tiffany & Co, Peretti's creations may become even more iconic in future: LVMH has just revealed it has bid to buy Tiffany & Co. The LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton group, owned by Bernard Arnault, made indeed an unsolicited $14.5bn offer to the jeweller.

LVMH has been on the lookout for design companies that appeal to China's new wealthy consumers and Tiffany has noted a rise in Chinese customers. Besides, Tiffany would like to expand into watches and LVMH is also trying to increase its client base in the US, opening up to younger consumers (a luxury and expensive brand such as Bulgari, currently in LVMH's portfolio, doesn't appeal to younger generations, but Tiffany offers also a range of affordable items). Integrating the 182-year old Tiffany & Co. into its portfolio would be a successful acquisition for LVMH and it would also be the biggest so far. So, if the deal goes through, Peretti's iconic designs may find a new life and become even more known, maybe even appearing on some of the runways of fashion houses owned by the LVMH group.

Inspiration Everywhere: Notes on Milliner Sally Victor

Most of us mainly wear hats for practical reasons nowadays, to protect ourselves from the cold or the heat. Yet, when you leaf through vintage magazines, especially publications from the '40s or the '50s, and see some of the styles that were popular then, you find yourself thinking that it would be nice to start wearing again hats for style reasons.

One image that prompts such a return to hats is definitely a photograph taken by Erwin Blumenfeld for the cover of the August 1944 issue of Vogue. The image shows three models wearing felt hats with a crocheted skull cap underneath in contrasting colours. 

The hats were designed by Sally Victor, famous for her sculptural creations such as her stacked Guggenheim-inspired hat from the '60s.

Born in 1905, Victor first fell in love with hat-making when her family moved from Pennsylvania to New York where her aunt had a millinery shop. At 18 she began working in the millinery department of Macy's as a stock girl. A year later she became assistant millinery buyer, and then she moved on to L. Bamberger's department store in Newark where she worked as chief millinery buyer.

She married Sergiu F. Victor, who headed the wholesale millinery house of Serge and briefly retired, but soon returned to millinery, working as head designer at her husband's firm.

By 1934 she already had a label under her own name, with a millinery salon on East 53rd Street in New York and sold her designs in high-profile stores, including Lord & Taylor on Fifth Avenue. She became well-known and her creations also appeared in the film Vogues of 1938 by Irving Cummings.

In 1943 she was the recipient of the Fashion Critics' Millinery Award, but Victor didn't just focus on high-end creations. During World War II, she designed a beret for the Cadet Nurse Corps and created for General Electric a denim work hat with an attached adjustable snood to protect the long hair of woman workers, preventing accidents (the crocheted skull-caps on the cover of Vogue were the stylish version of this functional working hat).  

Victor also created hats for first ladies, including Eleanor Roosevelt, Mamie Eisenhower (who donned the striking "Airwave" hat at her husband Dwight's inauguration in 1953) and Jacqueline Kennedy.

For the 1952 Presidential campaign, the milliner worked on an affordable "I Like Ike" blue faille pillbox beret for women with a red cockade to which Ike buttons could be attached. Yet Victor was also favoured by Hollywood actresses, among the others Irene Dunne, Helen Hayes, and Merle Oberon.

Victor had a passion for unique inspirations: a member of the Edward C. Blum "Design Laboratory", she often used the Brooklyn Museum's collections as starting points for her baby bonnets, pompadour hats, Flemish sailor and Grecian pillbox designs, for the so-called "curvette" hats and cap-berets (also known as C-B).

She created hats inspired by Native American art, Chinese lanterns, Japanese armours and artists and architects, including Henri Matisse, Piet Mondrian, Rogier van der Weyden, and Frank Lloyd Wright. 

About her inspirations she once stated in a 1949 interview on the St. Petersburg Times, "Here in New York there are more sources of inspiration than anywhere else in the world. Many of the greatest old masters, as well as a wealth of modern arts, are housed in our museums and galleries, But I find inspiration everywhere – in the city streets, the headlines, the new plays and on the radio to mention just a few. I never know just when an inspiration for a new hat idea is going to strike me or where it will come from."

Victor's work is often compared to that of Lilly Daché and John P. John, Victor actually displayed some differences from her colleagues: she was very much into sculpted silhouettes and architectural hats in wool or straw. 

Besides, she created intriguing collapsible circular hats, designs that a lady could pack up flat and take with her on a journey.

These designs featured a collapsible crown and a brim that remained stiff, in this way the hat could be easily placed flat in a suitcase for travel and could be popped back into shape when the wearer needed.

The Met Museum's archive in New York stores some wonderful examples of Sally Victor's hats, such as a concentric and collapsible straw hat from 1945, but there are other creations as well, including hats in wool characterised by arty folds and pleats or elaborate ivory straw headdresses that are clearly inspired by Japanese armours.

The designs preserved in the archive prove that Victor followed architectural principles while creating her hats.

It may be rare to stumble in a vintage shop in a Sally Victor creation, but, if you like her idea of collapsible hats, you can still buy collapsible straw pieces from traditional milliners such as Giuliana Longo's shop in Venice. 

Vintage Sunday: Stripes from 1948

In a previous post we looked at new collections for the S/S 20 season characterised by stripes. In that post we mentioned that stripes have always been fashionable, so let's go back in time to November 1948.

This image from the cover of Italian magazine Lei shows a dress by Jacques Heim. The sepia cover doesn't make it justice, but the original dress came in an Autumnal palette - lead grey with dark yellow and brick red stripes (the magazine suggested that it would have been intriguing to see it also in different colour combinations). The dress silhouette was simple, but it featured a clever element - an ingeniously designed belted motif around the hips that created a dynamic movement, breaking the linear regularity of the stripes.

Striped Simplicity with a Revolutionary Twist: Nina Donis S/S 20

There are motifs and graphic patterns that will never go out of fashion. One example? Stripes. Artists are naturally drawn to stripes that can create visually striking effects, think for example about Daniel Buren's works or Bridget Riley's Op Art motifs incorporating striped effects. 

Being stripes timeless, they seem to be always on the minds of fashion designers like a costant obsession, often reappearing on the fashion runways. In more recent years striped patterns have also turned into a bone of contention for some fashion designers, becoming the unlikely protagonists of copyright infringement cases.

Stripes were also the inspiration behind Michel Pastoureau's book The Devil's Cloth: A History of Stripes, a key reference for all fashion writers as the volume analyses the negative connotations of vertically or horizontally placed colours in fashion in Western societies.

Striped clothes were often used throughout history to identify society's outcasts, from jugglers to prostitutes, slaves, servants and criminals, while in Medieval paintings the devil himself is at times depicted wearing stripes.

If you're a fan of visually striking patterns with no negative connotations, you may be happy to hear that they will be fashionable again come next Spring, thanks to Nina Neretina and Donis Pouppis.

The Russian design duo has always been about bridging the gap between Russia and the West, and in their collections you can usually spot personal references to their culture and backgrounds, combined with hints at Western art, but also at music and in particular to bands like synth-pop Pet Shop Boys or New Order.

Leaving behind the Argyle pattern that characterised the previous collection, but continuing their studies about geometries, Nina Donis recombined in their S/S 20 designs the multi-coloured stripes from Pet Shop Boys' "Introspective" cover with Lyubov Sergeyevna Popova's graphic prints, Varvara Stepanova's unisex 1920s sport uniforms (both Popova and Stepanova are constant inspirations in Nina Donis' work) and Alexander Rodchenko's photographs.

Stepanova's bold and striking geometric designs had to highlight the movement of the athlete and create dynamism. Nina Donis use black and white or red and white stripes with the same purpose in mind in their dresses and tops. Garments characterised by colourful horizontal or vertical stripes add some playfulness in the collection, black and white stripes hint at dazzle camouflage, while monochromatic or bicoloured looks act as palate cleansers for people who favour more minimal styles. 

The vertically or horizontally striped garments remain the main protagonists of the collection and the more you look at them the more you wonder if these graphic patterns actually have a further connection with playfulness and with raves as they may also be interpreted as subtle hints at the industrial design of Manchester's Haçienda (View this photo). 

Silhouettes for the S/S 20 collection are simple, practical and functional, something that connects the duo with what artist and textile designer Varvara Stepanova once told to the members of her studio, "Do not put any ornamentation on the dress: the seams which are essential for the cut give the dress form."

Stepanova reached great results using fabric as a canvas and creating precise geometries based on avant-garde designs that are widely considered as visual experimentations that follow Constructivist principles. The same can be said about Nina Donis' looks.

Another trademark of Nina Donis is the versatility of their designs: you can always get one of their pieces and effortlessly integrate it in your wardrobe. 

But beware of the hidden messages behind the collection: stripes are about freedom and playfulness, but they were also used throughout history to bring in revolutionary meanings. So, never ever understimate the power of stripes as behind these minimalist bold and simple stripes there may be some kind of message that only their fans may be able to decode. 

Sustainable Habitats: TECLA by Mario Cucinella + WASP

There is an intense debate about finding ways to turn the fashion industry into a more sustainable business, but the sustainability issue is also being tackled in other fields such as architecture, with designers working on developing eco-friendly structures.

In a previous post we looked for example at Anna Heringer who has built in Bangladesh functional structures using mud. In Italy, instead, Mario Cucinella Architects teamed up with Massimo Moretti's pioneering 3D printing company WASP (World's Advanced Saving Project) to create a 3D printed global habitat for sustainable living.

The project was inspired by a basic human right, adequate housing, and by two considerations: as the global population increases, there is a lack in affordable housing.

In 2017 the United Nations published a report demonstrating that the current global population of 7.6 billion people is expected to reach 11.2 billion in 2100, and in 2030 nearly 5 billion people are expected to live in cities. Governments are therefore faced with substantial challenges related to housing solutions and cities will have to be radically rethought.

Mario Cucinella and his SOS (School of Sustainability), an educational institution he founded, worked on an extensive research about the housing issue, and the cause and effects of homelessness. 

The research was conducted with the support of MA students from the Sustainable Environmental Design programme at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London.

A focus on new technologies and on case studies about locations with different climates, led the researchers to develop a flexible yet resilient and energy-efficient structure.

Dubbed TECLA, the structure is conceived as a habitat to be built on site and in the shortest period of time using multiple collaborative 3D printers.

The TECLA house is composed of two onion-shaped sections, and, once built, it looks from a distance as if it were made with wicker. TECLA is actually made using entirely reusable, recyclable materials - that is locally sourced clay, a biodegradable and recyclable natural material which will effectively make the building zero-waste (and this is what makes it different from other houses that have been planned using 3D printing technologies).   

The structure can adapt to multiple environments and it will be suitable for self-production through the use of WASP's innovative technology.

A prototype of TECLA was built at WASP's HQ in Massa Lombarda, near Ravenna, in Italy, using Crane WASP. This technology, launched in 2018 after the Big Delta WASP 12 metres, the largest printer in the world, allows to print on site eco-districts at low environmental impact. 

There is also poetic connection in this project: the name comes from an imaginary city described by Italo Calvino in The Invisible Cities.

Calvino's Tecla is in continuous evolution and it is therefore constantly covered in scaffoldings and metallic structures. The inhabitants seem intent on building Tecla almost to stop a destruction that has never started (being unfinished the city can't be destroyed...) or maybe they are afraid that the moment they will remove the scaffoldings, the buildings - and their hopes - will collapse. There's a fundamental difference betwen Calvino's Tecla and Mario Cucinella and WASP's: the latter will definitely be finished as the 3D printed process allows to build the house in a relatively short time. Its future dwellers can therefore forget about scaffolding and building materials and can immediately enjoy living in their new house.     

Image credits for this post

All images Courtesy and Copyright Mario Cucinella Architects

1. Printed Habitat

2. 3D printed earth wall section by Crane WASP, model

3. WASP's Maker Economy Starter Kit

4. TECLA - Axonometric view

5, 6, 7 and 8. 3D printed earth wall section by Crane WASP

9. TECLA - Daytime, Summer

10. TECLA - Bedroom, night time

11. TECLA - Living area, night

The Architecture & Design Ideas That You Should Be Copying Were Actually Never Created

You can easily find connections between fashion and architecture in the most unexpected places: a collection may be deemed "architectural" to indicate rigorous or fluid lines; there are architects who turned fashion designer (the tradition is long and goes from Gianfranco Ferré to Tom Ford, passing through Kei Kagami, just to mention a few ones), or fashion designers who collaborated with architects on their collections, or turned to them to design their creative spaces, boutiques and runway sets (by now collaborations such as Iris van Herpen/Philip Beesley or Miuccia Prada/Rem Koolhaas's OMA/AMO are well established). It is also not so rare for fashion conglomerates to call a famous architect to design their HQ or a public space with philanthropic intent (think about The Fondation Louis Vuitton/Frank Gehry).

American fashion designer Bonnie Cashin was ahead of her times not just for what regards fashion garments and accessories (that get widely copied by contemporary designers), but also for some very peculiar architectural and design associations.

Stephanie Lake, designer, curator, auction specialist and the caretaker of the Bonnie Cashin archive (and author of the volume Bonnie Cashin: Chic Is Where You Find It) posted yesterday on her @cashincopy Instagram account the section of a letter that proved that for a few years Cashin tried to buy an island in New York's East River. The island wasn't destined to a private project, but it was part of a plan with inventor and designer Buckminster Fuller.

"This small bit of land sitting alongside the UN and in full view from her UN Plaza apartment windows would become the site of a nonprofit, educational foundation," Lake explains on Instagram. "One idea was to have a small structure with a rooftop flame that would rise and fall according to the state of global conflicts and resolutions handled within the UN." 

Sadly, the island project and the educational foundation (with that rooftop detail that may be so tragically symbolical even in our times) never came into being. That was an absolute shame as who knows what amazing structure may have resulted from such a collaboration. Yet a connection remained between Cashin and Fuller. 

In 1980 Bonnie Cashin established the Innovative Design Fund, a New York-based not-for-profit organization that ancouraged new designs. The organisation donated up to $10,000 to designers with original ideas in fields such as home furnishings, textiles and fashion, and who needed funds to turn their sketches into products. The fund wasn't interested in one-off products, but in designs that could have brought genuine innovations in the lives of ordinary people and that may have been easily produced. A volunteer committee of designers, educators and executives would select winners and Buckminster Fuller himself served as honorary director of the fund from 1979 to 1983. 

"Buckminster Fuller once said it took 20 years for a good idea to reach the public. We're trying to close the gap for someone,'' Cashin stated in 1986 in a New York Times article about the Design Fund. Maybe there is something that major fashion houses (entities that may be able to financially support such ventures) should copy from Bonnie Cashin - the island project or the Innovative Design Fund. We do have quite a few competitions dedicated to fashion design students, but there are no educational foundations nor design initiatives funded by a major player in the fashion industry dedicated to the public and to ordinary people. Who knows maybe the time has come for fashion to stop copying Cashin's designs and start copying ideas that she conceived but never managed to turn into reality and that could be useful to society. 

Fabric Like Clay, Patterns Like Abstract Art: Brief Notes on Halston

In yesterday's post we looked at an artist using fabrics to create paintings. But would it be possible for a fashion designer, instead, to turn things around and create a garment that, unfolded, would look like a painting?

If you have watched the documentary "Halston" (2019) by Frédéric Tcheng (and if you haven't, make a note in your diary to watch it as soon as possible, since it is probably the most complete one about this iconic American designer), you'll also know that the answer is yes.

At a certain point in the documentary it is stated that Halston took Charles James' concepts and relaxed them, creating modern clothes that went well with the changing role of women in society. 

The documentary features a lot of interviews and the director also gets feedback from some of Halston's most famous models, among them Alva Chinn, Karen Bjornson and Pat Cleveland, who talk about the way the clothes were designed and made.

Chinn states the clothes allowed the wearer to combine elegance and ease and helped you feeling like you owned power without looking masculine.

Bjornson says that you felt incredibly free inside Halston's designs and Cleveland adds that Halston took away the cage and the constricting elements of clothes. But how did he do it?

Model Chris Royer sheds more light on this, explaining that fabric was for Halston like clay to a sculptor, he knew how to use it and everything was cut on the bias (cutting fabric on an oblique or 45-degree angle), so it spiralled on the body.

Halston would throw a piece of fabric on the floor, cut it, put it on a model - and voilà - it looked like an elegant, yet practical dress.

The director of the documentary also interviews Fred Dennis, curator at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York, who is particularly fascinated by single-seam patterns and by the fact that some Halston patterns look like artworks. 

Dennis shows the director two designs: a white dress with a knot on the front and a recreation of its pattern hanging on a wall as if it were a painting, and a black dress made from one piece of fabric following a pattern that, Dennis states, looks like a Cuisinart blade.

The curator compares Halston's patterns to abstract art, highlighting how the designer reduced the main principles of fashion to its least common denominators. Yet, you could read behind this statement also an architectural intent: just after the interview with Dennis, there is an archival interview with Halston in which he states that, for him, less definitely becomes more, a principle that characterised the work of German architect and designer Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.

Bridging the Gap Between Painting and Fiber Art: Bisa Butler's Quilted Narratives

Mention the word "quilting" and most of us will conjure up in our minds a wonderful traditional craft, and quilts with intricate and colourful geometrical figures that have also provided through the decades intriguing inspirations for fashion collections. Yet Bisa Butler's definition of quilting is very personal and imaginative, as proved by her colourful textile portraits.

Born in Orange, NJ, the African American artist of Ghanaian heritage studied Fine Art and then started working as an art teacher and painter.  

A Fiber Arts class at Howard University helped her finding an innovative path, reinventing a creative process that allowed her to combine her passion for painting, her love of portraits and photo albums and the sewing skills she had acquired as a child from her mother and grandmother.

A quilt she made for her dying grandmother and her childhood memories of looking at pictures with her and listening to the stories of the people portrayed in the images, finally prompted her to switch from paintings to fabric compositions. 

Butler started with relatively small portraits that framed the face and the shoulders of a subject, but her works quickly expanded and she now creates large textile paintings incorporating several subjects, in which she employs fabrics instead of paint and the sewing machine as if it were a brush. 

You could definitely consider her artworks as textile paintings since, while the technique behind them is essentially taken from quilting, Butler uses different colours of fabrics and different materials, such cotton, velvet, wool and silk, to create hyperreal images with varied nuances and playing with lights and shadows.

The starting point for her artwork is usually a black and white archival image, showing famous or anonymous characters, such as Basquiat, Josephine Baker, a stylish couple, a group of Harlem girls or of dapper sapeurs. One of her biggest pieces is entitled "To Truth and God" and it is inspired by a 1899 picture of the Morris Brown College baseball team.   

There is a main difference between the early pieces Butler created and these new ones: the latter have become more nuanced and defined and the artist also employs in them a wider variety of textiles and in particular traditional African fabrics often from Butler's personal archive.  

Fabrics are important on two levels: they create visually striking effects with their bold and clashing colours and contrastingly mesmerising textures (Butler often uses flower patterned fabrics in ingeniously clever ways to create the hair of her characters), connecting the artworks to the realm of fashion and style, and they point at strong symbolisms and at the narratives behind African fabrics (as you may remember from a previous post, a pattern covered in swallows represents a symbol of good luck, but also hints at the process of asking for a favour, while in Ghana the print refers to the transience of riches and to the fact that you may be rich today and poor tomorrow since money has wings and can fly away...). 

Money prints hint at slavery, while the jumping horse fabric on the socks of some of the characters in "To Truth and God" it is called "I run faster than my enemies" in the Côte d'Ivoire and it pays homage to the spirit of the young men portrayed.

Besides, there are other meanings being specific textiles as vintage fabrics such as lace and satin point at an elegance gone by, while layered multi-coloured organza and netting are used by the artist to portray a multifaceted character. 

Quilting is a craft usually made by women, but it has also got connections with the African-American tradition: slaves would make  quilts for themselves and their owners. In the children's story Sweet Clara and the Freedom Quilt (1989) slaves used quilts as a means to share and transmit secret messages to escape slavery and travel the Underground Railroad. In the history of quilt-making the quilts of Gee's Bend, an Alabama-based all-black community known for this craft, also have a very special place.      

In Butler's art quilting is transformed into a complex art form that also allows the artist to display a fashion sensibility and an environmental consciousness: from the way she dresses her characters you easily realise Butler has got a peculiar personal style, while employing in some of the artworks discarded fabrics is an important statement that adds another layer and meaning to the portraits. 

Butler is currently represented by Claire Oliver Gallery, but her big break may come next year: in March 2020 the Katonah Museum of Art (KMA) will dedicate a first solo museum exhibition ("Bisa Butler: Portraits") to the artist's current work and will feature approximately 25 of her vivid and larger-than-life quilts that capture African American identity and culture. 

The exhibition will then travel to Art Institute of Chicago (AIC) in September 2020. But before then you can bet that Butler will be offered to collaborate with a fashion house: the more you look at her works, the more you can see her portraits of fierce and strong characters in their bold and bright attires being featured in a fashion collection.

Image credits for this post

Bisa Butler, Broom Jumpers, quilted and appliquéd cotton, wool and chiffon, 2019

Bisa Butler, Broom Jumpers (detail), quilted and appliquéd cotton, wool and chiffon, 2019

Bisa Butler, I Am Not Your Negro, 2019

Bisa Butler, Les Sapeurs, cotton and silk, 2018

Bisa Butler, To God And Truth - detail, cotton, silk chiffon, satin, silk and lace, 2019

Bisa Butler, I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings (work in progress), quilted and appliquéd cotton, wool and chiffon, 2019

Bisa Butler, Black Star Family, first class tickets to Liberia (detail), cotton, silk chiffon, satin, silk and lace, 2018

Bisa Butler, The Mighty Gents, quilted and appliquéd cotton, wool and chiffon, 2018

Bisa Butler, The Safety Patrol, quilted and appliquéd cotton, wool and chiffon, 2018

Bisa Butler, Dear Mama, quilted and appliquéd cotton, wool and chiffon, 2019

Bisa Butler, Four Little Girls, September 15, 1963, cotton, silk and lace netting, 2018