In the previous post we looked at a geological inspiration, so let's continue the thread today by exploring the possibilities offered to designers by layered structures like the ziggurat.
Designed and Produced in Italy, the silk and lurex terraced and architectural "Ziggurat Dress" by Cinzia Ruggeri (A/W 1984-85) featured in this post was inspired by the Mesopotamian ziggurat and by the passion of the designer for staircases.
Ceremonies and rituals were usually performed on top of the ziggurat, a sort of cosmic mountain on which gods dwelled. The priest's ascent up the stairway to the temple at the top of the ziggurat represented the ascent to heaven and the ziggurat was part of a temple complex around which a city was built.
Among the examples of such structures in the world there is the Tchogha Zanbil ziggurat at the site of the ancient city of Elam, in today's Khuzestan province in southwest Iran. This ziggurat originally measured 105.2 m on each side and about 53 m in height, it was layered in five levels and was crowned with a temple, so its original configuration (shown in the reconstructed image in this post) looked a little bit like this dress.
In this case the wearer inhabits the temple and behaves like the goddess that protects and enchants. The design will be part of the Quadriennale exhibition "Fuori" at Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome (30th October 2020 - 17th January 2021).
We are surrounded by great inspirations, but at times it can be hard to spot unusual sources where we may find intriguing ideas for creative projects. Obviously, though, it is not impossible to do so.
One of its dealers, Hotoke, has just put online pictures of a piece currently available in its catalogue, a strata model for Japanese schools. This piece, that should usually be filed under the teaching material category, is characterised by pastel colours and could be used for both fashion or interior design inspirations.
The model, dating from the 20th century, comes with separable partial cross sections and - as its dealer highlights, dubbing it "Geo Max", a name that evokes the Nike Air Max line of shoes - it looks like a neo-futuristic sneaker, a comparison that may prompt some footwear designers out there to develop a shoe, moving from the combination of colours and textures in this intriguing piece.
In yesterday's post we looked at an event revolving around wigs and headdresses, so for today let's continue the thread by going back in time and exploring vintage millinery.
The 12th February 1951 issue of Life magazine featured a cover with a model, Lillian Marcuson, in a veiled headpiece by Lilly Daché. Dubbed "Flower in Flight", the hat was made of starched white veiling and it was trimmed with a black velvet ribbon and an upright rose.
Inside the magazine there was a feature about "Hatless Hats", a new trend launched by milliners in the early '50s that is still going. "The hat is thrown away," the magazine announced, "the veil becomes the hat." Veils were indeed stiffened and moulded on blocks like felt, so that they would hold their shape without wilting.
The idea originated with Lilly Daché who worked on head-hugging veil visors, but it was adopted by other milliners who started developing hats inspired by the theme of transparency. They were designed to sit on the crown of the head or to cover the face and neck like the versions designed by John Frederics and Mr. John featured in this post (second image in this post, model on the left; third image in this post).
The most sensual versions consisted in a strip that screened the eyes ("Eyes of Youth", designed by Mr. John, second image in this post, model on the right), the most original was instead inspired by a fencer's mask and was designed by Lilly Daché (fourth image in this post).
This head piece covered the top of the head, bared the brow and sticked out in front of the face to offer leeway for smoking. While these ideas are inspiring and we have often seen the veil strip reappearing on contemporary runway shows, remember to take inspiration from these ideas only for your fashion creations, and always wear a sensible face mask to protect yourself from COVID-19.
A rather peculiar edition of Milan Fashion Week is kicking off today. To contain the spread of COVID-19 infections some fashion houses (Prada included) opted for digital shows, others for presentations and runways with a limited number of guests invited. It is only natural to think about this "new normal" and maybe go back with the mind to the previous fashion season when shows were still taking place even though Coronavirus was slowly yet relentlessly spreading and some designers had already started holding events behind closed doors.
It is also natural to look at fashion archives and rediscover vintage images like this picture from the historical archive of the Fondazione Fiera Milano that shows a competition for hair stylists that took place in Milan in April 1951.
And yet it is useless to mourn the end of fashion as we knew it since we can always reinvent it in different ways and with innovative events. For example, if you like fashion, beauty and hair styles, but also design, architecture and, well, a little bit of mathematics and you're in Milan tomorrow you can join (from 10.00am to 10.00pm) the celebrations at Artifact c/o Spazio Maiocchi (via Maiocchi 5) for the book Personas 111 - The Art of Wig Making (Konomad Editions, 2020) by Japan-based hair artist, head prop designer and wig maker Tomihiro Kono (河野富広). Visitors will be able to admire Tomihiro Kono's handmade "Haute Couture" wigs at Spazio Maiocchi.
In the evening it will also be possible to follow live at Spazio Maiocchi (you will have to register at this link by today as there's a limit on capacity, so register as soon as you can and don't forget you will have to comply with the Coronavirus regulations once in the venue, so you will have to wear a face mask and keep social distancing) a screening of a talk (from 7.30pm Milan time; 2.30am Tokyo time) I will be moderating on SPRINT IGTV with Tomihiro Kono and artist and photographer Sayaka Maruyama, who took all the pictures for Personas 111. Our talk will focus on head props and wigs, fashion, identity and creativity at the time of Coronavirus, and Tomihiro and Sayaka's books as well.
Irenebrination is supporting a competition that will be announced during the event: during the talk we will ask a question and people following us can send their answers to the address - [email protected]. Winners (one in Milan and one in the rest of the world) will get a copy of Tomihiro Kono's latest book Personas 111. If you have questions for Tomi and Sayaka you can post them tomorrow during the talk or send them to my email address.
Tomihiro Kono's creations will be on display at the Spazio Maiocchi from 25th September to 8th October 2020. The event is part of a warm-up series created by SPRINT - Independent Publishers and Artists' Books Salon, an artist-led platform devoted to investigating the multiple forms in which content, support and languages are articulated in publishing. Since 2013 the three-days salon has featured a non-profit Art Book Fair and an extensive Public Program. The 8th edition of SPRINT will take place in Milan from 27th to 29th November 2020 (with the support of Istituto Svizzero and in partnership with Spazio Maiocchi).
Quite a few museums and galleries have reopened their doors (in some cases with limited capacity) and exhibitions have started again in many countries after the long months of Coronavirus lockdown. Among such events there is also an exhibition dedicated to art and design fans that opened last week in Pistoia, Tuscany.
"Pistoia Novecento" at Palazzo de' Rossi (on until 22nd August 2021) is a journey featuring 70 works - mainly from the collection of the Fondazione Pistoia Musei (Pistoia Museums Foundation) - by artists and designers born in Pistoia or with some connections with the Italian city.
The exhibition develops through photographs, letters, posters, videos and artworks and looks at a variety of themes including realism, abstractions, nature, artifice, sign, gesture and environment.
Architecture fans will be able to rediscover the work of Adolfo Natalini, co-founder (with Cristiano Toraldo di Francia, Gian Piero Frassinelli, Roberto and Alessandro Magris and Alessandro Pol) of Superstudio, and the Archizoom group. Founded in 1966 by architects Andrea Branzi, Gilberto Corretti, Paolo Deganello and Massimo Morozzi, with designers Dario and Lucia Bartolini joining in 1968, Archizoom presented its first project at the Superarchitettura I exhibition in 1966 in Pistoia, Italy, an event that was followed by the second installment of the same even in Modena the following year.
Archizoom focused on industrial and architectural design and urban planning. The group became known for its visionary environments and fantasy furniture pieces such as the Superonda sofa (1967), a couch made of foam blocks, the palm-shaped Sanremo Floor Lamp with illuminated leaves (1967-68), the Mies Armchair and Footreast (1969) and their bed Presagio di rose (Presage of roses, 1967) that revolutionised the traditional understanding of good taste. Archizoom also developed radical ideas for what remained an unbuilt utopian model for urbanisation - the No-Stop City (1969-71) - that allowed the inhabitants to create their living spaces within a grid system of buildings that continued infinitely. While none of their projects came to fruition, they influenced the theory and practice of modern architecture.
There is a wide variety of artists and works included in "Pistoia Novecento", like Umberto Buscioni's Pop Art infused artworks or the collages of Remo Gordigiani. The latter started producing collages that had a painting-like quality in 1964, but exhibited them only in later years. The collages weren't his first works, but they represented a solution after the artist developed an allergy to colours and solvents used in oil paintings. The result of his research for new and exciting materials that would allow him to engage with colours, led him to a new world of possibilities represented by collages.
Visitors with a passion for graphic design and technology will fall in love with the works of a self-taught and innovative artist, Gianfranco Chiavacci, and with Mario Nigro's panels.
Born in 1936 in Pistoia, Chiavacci began his career as a painter in the 1950s. In 1962, the artist's practice went through a major change: Chiavacci took a programming course on IBM's first computers and became fascinated by this new form of language. From then on, the binary language entered in a dialogue with abstract art, and he started juxtaposing materials, threads and colours, three-dimensional shapes and forms.
Inspired also by optical and kinetic art, he developed two and three-dimensional paintings in which he created geometric figures and forms without using the computer, but employing the binary logic relating to programming that allowed him to come up with a unique aesthetic.
Mario Nigro was first and foremost an artist, but worked as a chemist, and in his panels formed by rhythmic and progressive iterations of grids, he combined art with science, abstract geometries and modular structures.
Abstract painter Gualtiero Nativi with his sharp geometries, almost mechanical and cruel, but fascinating at the same time, is also present in this event, that includes Gianni Ruffi as well. Another designer from the Italian Radical movement (his humorous "La Cova" or Nest, sculptural seat (1973) is a sofa-bed representing a giant nest) created playful artworks which revolved around a rich array of plays on words and double meanings.
Though curated by three women - Alessandra Acocella, Annamaria Iacuzzi, Caterina Toschi - "Pistoia Novecento" is mainly focused on men and, while some radical design groups had a very limited presence of women and it may have been more difficult to find women artists actually born in Pistoia,it may have still been possible to find connections or develop certain aspects a bit better.
Archizoom's projects "Dressing design" (1971) and "Dressing is easy" (1972), based on the idea of the user's participation in the finishing and on the use of neutral and modular clothes (later produced by Fiorucci), were developed by the group but in particular by Lucia Bartolini with her sister Nicoletta Morozzi, while the non-conformist Superonda sofa became popular thanks to an advert that featured actress Florinda Bolkan shot by Elisabetta Catalano (so featuring a woman and photographed by a woman). It would therefore have been interesting to try and shed some light on the presence of women in some of these groups, so you can maybe take this event as a starting point to do your own research on further aspects, movements and artists linked with Pistoia.
Image credits for this post
1. Archizoom Associati, Superonda, sofa, Poltronova; photo Dario Bartolini, Villa Strozzi, 1967. Courtesy Centro Studi Poltronova Archive
2. Archizoom and Superstudio. Superarchitettura. Galleria Jolly 2, Pistoia, 1966. Photo Cristiano Toraldo di Francia. Courtesy Archivio Toraldo di Francia, Filottrano
3. Ettore Sottsass jr., Mobili Grigi, Poltronova; photo E. Sottsass and A. Fioravanti, 1970. Courtesy Centro Studi Poltronova
4. Gianfranco Chiavacci, Opera numero 0043, 1966. Fondazione Caript Collection. Courtesy Fondazione Pistoia Musei
Coronavirus has reshaped our lives in unexpected ways, putting more emphasis to the digital rather than physical world: fashion-wise, the rhythm of fashion weeks and shows has been completely disrupted with some designers going for smaller presentations or favouring the digital medium and choosing to organise virtual shows. Many of us are still opting for smart working, while we may be following online courses to learn a new skill or have Zoom conferences to keep updated at work and collaborate with colleagues. Besides, while schools may be reopening or have reopened, online learning is still here to stay in case of emergencies or as a precaution. All these situations mean that one laptop is definitely not enough in one household. Yet in the last few months some countries went through computer shortages with laptops being sold out as manufacturers weren't able to keep up with the demand during the pandemic.
Maybe inspired by these needs for computers, maybe prompted by the fact that fashion brands have been looking at other ways to engage with consumers, some companies turned to rather unusual collaborations. Taiwanese multinational computer and electronics company Asus joined forces for example with German techwear brand Acronym to release an advanced machine, the Zephyrus G14 gaming laptop.
The main point behind this collaboration was combining a powerful computer technology with strong aesthetics to create a product that may prove desirable not just for gamers, but for all creative professionals.
A futuristic brand with famous fans, among them also cyberpunk author William Gibson (who is a friend of co-founder Errolson Hugh), Acronym mainly produces functional and practical pieces all characterised by the abscence of prominent and easily recognisable logos. The Asus ROG (Republic of Gamers) Zephyrus G14 ACRNM is among the world's most powerful gaming laptops: it features an AMD Ryzen 9 4900HS processor, Nvidia's GeForce RTX 2060 GFX card, a 1TB SSD and 32GB of RAM. The QHD 60Hz display is also "Pantone validated."Design-wise the lid is covered with a matrix of tiny LED lights that can light up to create patterns, graphics, text messages and logos. The word "ZPHYRS" is written across the back vent, printed on the packaging and etched into the bottom of the chassis, that also features a series of symbols (including the ROG logo). The keys on the keyboard are coloured and characterised by the "A" letter logo on every corner of most letter keys; the battery life is excellent and the weight contained (roughly 1,5 Kg) also thanks to the magnesium alloy deck topped by an aluminum lid.
The laptop is preloaded with a software called The Brain developed by Harlan Hugh, Errolson Hugh's brother, a programme that a user can employ to organise things to do, ideas and projects. This machine is indeed not conceived as just for gamers but for all those users generating video contents, working with large images, or employing design programmes that literally eat up the memory of ordinary laptops.
The history of design features some great collaborations between technology companies and creative minds, from the Olivetti Valentine typing machine designed in 1968 by Ettore Sottsass and Perry A. King to Studio Alchimia's Commodore 64 (1985) or Michele De Lucchi's designs for Olivetti, but this collaboration opens up a new path for fashion houses and brands.
This is indeed the first global collaboration for the Asus ROG line and it would be good to see if more industrial or fashion designers will join in and develop further projects with the company/the line in future. Though this is a powerful machine (that will set you back $2,499 if you can still find it - it is released in a limited edition and it is already sold out in some places such as Bodega), the technological details are not as important as the actual consequences of this collaboration that proves that technology and fashion are getting closer and closer.
So far fashion brands and also luxury houses have produced items for technological devices such as smartphone cases and laptop bags, but new possibilities opened up in the last few years with some fashion houses collaborating with videogame developers (Louis Vuitton's collaborating with "Final Fantasy" or, more recently, the "Animal Crossing" craze that has spread at different levels of the fashion industry) .
Acronym also stepped into the world of videogames: the brand's jackets appeared in "Death Stranding" and in April this year the brand teamed up with Hideo Kojima and Kojima Productions and recreated the jacket worn by Norman Reedus' character in the game.
Errolson Hugh also consulted on the apparel in "Deus Ex: Human Revolution", but this may be the next logical step of the tech/videogame/fashion collaboration, a gaming laptop designed by a fashion brand dedicated to all creative minds.
As fashion shows are becoming a distant memory because of Coronavirus, there are more opportunities for partnerships and branding of this kind, but in the meantime keeping an eye on techwear is also recommended: these garments are comfortable and practical and there is usually a lot of research that goes into some of these designs (think about extreme heat insulation, water resistance, pockets for accessory storage, or textile innovations; Acronym has got a jacket with a zipper that allows you to remove the garment while wearing a seat belt) and they may prove ideal not just in the virtual world of videogames but in the real pandemic and post-pandemic world we are living in now.
The hashtag #RIPRBG has been trending since it was announced that U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, also known as RBG, died yesterday at the age of 87 in Washington, from complications from metastatic pancreatic cancer. Tributes are now pouring in to pay homage to the senior liberal member of the court, a beacon of justice and resistance.
Born in 1933 in Brooklyn, New York, Ginsburg went to Cornell University where she met her future husband Martin Ginsburg. She became a mother before starting law school at Harvard where she was one of nine women in a class of 500 men. As a young woman she went through some hard times, but proved indefatigable: while studying and taking care of her daughter Jane, she also visited her husband who was in hospital after having been diagnosed with cancer and organised his classmates' notes for him to make sure he didn't miss his own work.
When Martin recovered and got a job as a tax lawyer in New York, Ruth transferred to Columbia University. She graduated as one of the top students, but, since no law firm would hire her because she was a woman, she became a professor at Rutgers Law School, where she taught some of the first women and law classes, co-founding the Women's Rights Project at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
She started focusing on gender discrimination and in particular on discrimination against women in the US, and became advocate for the advancement of gender equality and women's rights. Ginsburg proved that gender discrimination was a violation of the constitution's equal protection clause.
In Frontiero V Richardson (1973), Ginsburg argued on behalf of a female Air Force lieutenant denied a housing benefit for her husband that her male colleagues received for their wives. She also worked on cases involving men, like Weinberger V Wiesenfeld (1975), about a young widower who was denied benefits after his wife died in childbirth.
One of her most important cases remains the United States V Virginia (1996) in which she challenged the exclusion of women from the Virginia Military Institute. She won the case and, since then, the institute has been open to women as well.
In 1980, President Jimmy Carter appointed her to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, and, in August 1993, President Bill Clinton appointed her Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.
She was the second female justice (after Sandra Day O'Connor) in the Supreme Court (only four women have ever been confirmed to the court - Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, were both appointed by Barack Obama). Her late husband Marty (he died in 2010) was instrumental in her career since he always supported her choices and championed her appointment at the Supreme Court.
Ginsburg set an example, showing that you can fight for different causes and can do so politely, without being arrogant and aggressive. Throughout the years Ginsburg has indeed charmed also her opponents: in the 2018 "RBG" documentary rightwing senator Orrin Hatch is shown at Ginsburg's confirmation hearings, as he tells her "Frankly, I admire you and you earned the right to be on the supreme court."
She also struck an unlikely friendship with the late conservative Justice Antonin Scalia with whom she shared a passion for the opera, despite their different positions on legal grounds.
Ginsburg believed the most important case tackled by the supreme court was the landmark 2015 ruling that legalised same-sex marriage across all states.
Her strength, fights for justice and passion turned her into a beacon of resistance and an inspiration for many people, especially for a younger generation: young law student Shana Knizhnik created a Tumblr account dedicated to Justice Ginsburg called "Notorious RBG", after the rapper Notorius B.I.G., that Knizhnik and her co-author Irin Carmon then transformed into a book. Ginsburg seemed to like the moniker since, as she stated in interviews, she shared with the rapper quite a few things, first and foremost she was born like him in Brooklyn.
Ginsburg was portrayed by actress Kate McKinnon on Saturday Night Live and her pop culture icon fame rose, inspiring gadgets, mugs, T-shirts (a favourite of Ginsburg who often gives them to friends as well), action figures, tattoos, children's books and Halloween costumes, among other things.
At the end of last year the National Museum of American Jewish History dedicated to Ginburg the first-ever museum retrospective, "Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg" , that traced her career and looked up at her legacy via photographs, documents, historical artifacts and contemporary art, but also through the Notorious RBG memes and fan art, such as T-shirts, Giphy stickers and cell phone wallpapers.
Ginsburg appeared this year in the documentary "RBG" (2018) directed by Betsy West and Julie Cohen, while the early years of her career as a law professor and then with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) are recounted in the film "On the Basis of Sex", directed by Mimi Leder and starring Felicity Jones as Ruth Bader and Armie Hammer as Marty Ginsburg (with costumes by Isis Mussenden).
In "RBG" Justice Ginsburg explained the genesis of her jabots that have turned into feminist symbols. As she stated in the documentary, "The standard robe is made for a man because it has a place for the shirt to show and the tie, so Sandra Day O'Connor thought it would be appropriate if we included in our robe something typical of a woman."
The collars were therefore for Justice Ginsburg a statement as they indicated that you don't need to dress like a man to be in this job, you just need to be yourself and be confident.
Ginsburg's favourite collar remained a simple beaded jabot, but in "RBG" she opened her wardrobe and showed many varieties of collars she owned (will they get a dedicated exhibition or be part of a fashion display one day?). At times Justice Ginsburg would also get collars from fans and supporters, like the one she was gifted by the University of Hawaii, made with French lace and decorated with beads from the beach.
She was also known for the special meanings attached to the collars: a collar that was given to her as a gift from the law clerks of court was used to announce majority of opinion, while a black one decorated with large rhinestones was usually donned to show dissent (she wore it during the Hobby Lobby contraception case; the collar has even been recreated in miniature for necklaces and has been turned into a popular pin). For her official Supreme Court portrait in 2018, Ginsburg opted instead for a striking collar of gold feathers sent to her by a fan.
Ginsburg was indefatigable throughout her life: diagnosed with cancer of the colon in 1999 and 10 years later of the pancreas, she was operated, completed her treatment and went back to work. She broke three ribs in a fall in November 2018 and before Christmas of the same year she underwent surgery after malignant nodules were found in her left lung. She continued to work remotely from hospital in 2020, keeping her focus on women's preventive health, abortion, the death penalty and voting rights. She is survived by her children, Jane and James.
Yesterday people gathered on the steps of the US supreme court in Washington to pay tribute to Ginsburg,
Hillary Clinton, who looked up to her as a young woman and chose to study, practice and teach law, stated she was "devastated". Former President Barack Obama stated on his site that she was a "warrior for gender equality", a "relentless litigator and an incisive jurist," adding, "Justice Ginsburg helped us see that discrimination on the basis of sex isn't about an abstract ideal of equality; that it doesn't only harm women; that it has real consequences for all of us. It’s about who we are - and who we can be."
What may happen after Ginsburg's death is scary: U.S. President Donald Trump could indeed replace her with a conservative justice (his latest list of Supreme Court nominees unveiled a few days ago was more political and included three U.S. very conservative Republicans - Arkansas' Tom Cotton, Texas' Ted Cruz and Missouri's Josh Hawley) and the court would shift to the right, a decision that would have dire consequences on a variety of issues, including abortion and LGBTQ rights (since taking office Trump appointed two justices to the court - Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, and the latter was confirmed despite allegations of sexual misconduct). Republicans have a small voting majority and, while some Republican senators like Ted Cruz are suggesting they should move fast, Obama asked Republicans to abide by the precedent they set in 2016 and delay the process till after the elections. Former Vice President and Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden agrees as well and suggests that the next president should be elected before Justice Ginsburg's replacement is chosen.
In 2016 Republicans refused to hold a hearing or an up-or-down vote on Merrick Garland, coming up with the principle that the Senate shouldn't fill an open seat on the Supreme Court before a new president was sworn in. Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell explained in a statement that Trump's nominee would get a vote in the Senate and, while he didn't explain when, he highlighted he will ignore his own suggestion from 2016, when he stated that confirming a president's supreme court nominee months before a presidential election was inappropriate.
The press reported that, before dying, Ginsburg told her granddaughter this week: "My most fervent wish is that I will not be replaced until a new president is installed." While we can only hope that her wish will be honoured, we can be confident that her legacy will continue to inspire generations to come.
If you've ever worked as a writer or translator for the film industry, maybe focusing on subtitles and synopses, you may know that sometimes these texts are dramatically reduced for time limits. It isn't rare for example to find plot summaries that, reduced and edited to the minimum to fit a DVD package or a box on a website, don't make the film any justice. This may have been the case with the recent debate around Maimouna Doucouré's French-language feature debut "Mignonnes" (Cuties).
A sort of revised and extended version of Doucouré's 2016 Sundance and 2017 César-winning short "Maman(s)", "Cuties" was presented at the World Cinema Dramatic Competition section of the 2020 Sundance Film Festival in January. Doucouré won the Directing Award at Sundance and the film was released in France in August 2020 and last week it came out on Netflix.
The Netflix advertising campaign for this film was accompanied by a poster with four young girls identically dressed in aquamarine metallic crop tops and hot pants; a synopsis (then deleted) explained that the movie revolved around Amy, the main character, who "becomes fascinated with a twerking dance crew" and, as she tried to join them, she started to "explore her femininity, defying her family’s traditions."
The picture and summary were enough to unleash chaos on social media with some people, who obviously hadn't watched the film, asking Netflix to remove it. Yet "Cuties" is definitely not about a twerking gang and it is not your average film about a dance competition (yes, we have seen too many of them).
The film follows indeed the vicissitudes of a Senegalese Muslim immigrant girl, eleven-year-old Amy (Fathia Youssouf Abdillah), who lives with her mother and brothers. They are settling down in the marginalized suburbs of modern-day Paris and Amy usually goes to pray with her mum and the other women in their building while she eagerly waits for her father to arrive from Senegal.
But soon things change: Amy sees the suffering of her mother when she discovers that her polygamous father is preparing to return from Senegal with a second wife (Doucouré drew upon her experiences as a young girl). Longing to escape this life, Amy starts drifting towards a gang of girls, the Cuties - Angelica (Médina El Aidi-Azouni), Coumba (Esther Gohourou), Jess (Ilanah Cami-Goursolas) and Yasmine (Myriam Hamma) - hanging around at her school who seem obsessed with a local dance competition. First enrolled to film the girls with her (stolen) mobile phone, Amy is promoted to dancer and comes up with allusively sexualised movements and gestures, a choreography inspired by videos she has found on the Internet.
As this coming-of-age story progresses we understand that Amy, who gravitates in a liminal world, will have to find her place, bargaining and negotiating between the worlds she crosses. She will eventually find her own path, but the latter may take her far away from her traditions and even further away from her gang of free-spirited girls, ready to turn their backs on each other when things go terribly wrong. Amy will indeed be rejected by her friends when she posts a compromising photo of herself, something that should make us all think about the pressures to which kids are exposed everyday, but should also reveal us the pain and confusion of growing up in a modern world ruled by social media.
Doucouré plays with different contrasts: there is one main dichotomy in the film, the one between traditional values and heritage, juxtaposed to our modern times and to what's important in this world (likes and followers...). Yet there are further juxtapositions between the girls who long to look older and more mature than what they are (and they prove they are mature enough to understand complex feelings - it is heartbreaking how Angelica, the daughter of Latin American immigrants, already knows she is a failure in her parents' eyes) and the fact that they are still children, as proved by the scene in which Coumba mistakes a condom for a balloon, and the girls wash her mouth with soap.
Clothes have an important transformative power in the film: Amy tries hard to fit in, ironing her hair (with disastrous results) as she saw Angelica doing in the laundry room, and wearing her younger brother's T-Shirt that fits her like a crop top; one day she wears leggings with a top in school and looks like a model on a runway, but her underwear, exposed during a fight in the playground, betrays her age and her family's financial constraints.
There's a moment of elation with the girls going on a shopping spree to buy lingerie and costumes, garments that contrast with the dress Amy's father sends from Senegal - long, elegant and formal and aimed at making her look good at his wedding.
Clothes also help Amy becoming invisible: during a prayer service she hides under her veil, pretending to be praying but actually watching videos of scantily-clad women twerking, and while she may not be able to understand what she sees, she imitates them because she knows that's the path to being accepted.
Amy is perennially suspended between these worlds, between her new friends in leggings, mini-skirts and colourful dance costumes, and a bride covered by a veil that looks scary in Amy's eyes as this mysterious woman looks like a ghost or a projection of what she may become in a few years' time if she doesn't find herself first.
There are intriguing moments in the film in which the architectures surrounding the characters play a key role: the building where Angelica and Amy lives, for example, may be full of people, but it suffocates the two girls, here Amy who has misbheaved is subjected to a ritual to exorcise her demons and clean her soul. The school is also a dangerous place where bullying occurs, so the only safe place is the surrounding derelict area where the girls go to rehearse their dabroutines and where they can be free.
So what's all the fuss about "Cuties"? The film was premiered in the World Cinema Dramatic Competition section of the 2020 Sundance Film Festival, but there was only a massive debate after Netflix released it, with the hastag #CancelNetflix trending on Twitter in the United States. A day after its release Texas House of Representatives member Matt Schaefer announced on Twitter he had Texas Attorney General Paxton's office to investigate the film for "possible violations of child exploitation and child pornography laws".
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz called on the Justice Department to investigate Netflix and the "Cuties" filmmakers to determine whether they broke any federal laws against the production and distribution of child pornography. "The film routinely fetishizes and sexualizes these pre-adolescent girls as they perform dances simulating sexual conduct in revealing clothing, including at least one scene with partial child nudity," Cruz wrote in a letter to Attorney General William Barr Friday.
Yet "Cuties" glamorises children's sexualisation as much as Danny Boyle's "Trainspotting" glamorises heroin. "Cuties" actually exposes the hyper-sexualised culture in which kids live in today and that delicate progression from childhood to puberty complete with the first period and unexpected menstrual blood (something that probably deeply unsettled some conservative grown-ups out there). So if you expect this to be your ordinary dance movie about a dance competition in which the most unlikely team wins after working hard, or about young girls happily bursting into a song and a dance like Disney's princesses, well, you're going to get very disappointed.
It is easy to shake your head and feel horrified by these girls dancing in the finale of the film, but it is not "Cuties" that contains dangerous and scandalous content. After all the Internet and TV are full of programmes - from dance competitions to beauty pageants - in which girls dance with the same routines seen in this film and they aren't usually as criticised as this film was. So you wonder if those ones who outrageously accused "Cuties" of sexualising children aren't maybe just vapidly and petulantly embodying the proverbial rage of Caliban seeing his own face in a glass or if they are angry about a clever coming of age film directed by a strong woman and featuring a cast of bright young girls. After all, rather than being enraged about a film, shouldn't those ones who condemn "Cuties" be more worried about the conduct of a misogynist man like US President Donald Trump, accused by several women of rape, sexual assault, and sexual harassment?
When Covid-19 struck in March quite a few fashion companies had to readapt and some of them started making face masks. In February Japanese Hasegawa Corporation in Ichinomiya City, Aichi Prefecture, responded to the shortage of mask supply in Japan and started researching the possibility of creating a mask with its yarns.
More famous for its silk-based yarns and knit products and specialised also in cashmere and mohair, Hasegawa usually showcases its products during Pitti Filati in Florence, but this year's edition of the yarn trade fair was cancelled and the yarns for the next season were showcased by 37 exhibitors (Hasegawa included) virtually on Pitti's digital platform.
So, while the fair events booked for this year were cancelled, the company mainly focused on research and first developed a handmade silk mask kit for people who wanted to try and make their own masks using a pattern and silk knit jersey fabric (90% silk, 10% polyurethane) developed by Hasegawa itself.
As the weeks passed, the company developed first a washable silk or cotton inner cloth for masks (made on Shima Seiki's flat knitted machine) to prevent makeup transfer and sebum on face masks, and then a silk smooth mask, made with high-quality silk knitted jersey fabric and created using automatic knitting machines. These masks are characterised by excellent durability and can be washed and reused.
Research continued till the production of a 3D silk mask made using Shima Seiki's Wholegarment flat knitting machine. The first masks produced by Hasegawa were originally created to protect the mouth and nose of the wearer while coughing or sneezing to prevent the spread of germs, but a test carried out in April in Japan proved that the 3D silk mask guarantees also a pollen block rate of 92%.
The fancy knit masks, the latest products made by Hasegawa to respond to the Covid-19 pendemic, are aimed at both adults who love colours and textures, and children: these colourful masks made with fluffy "Fix" (100% cotton) or "Bouquet" (silk and nylon) yarns, are characterised by a colourful outer layer, while inside the masks are still 100% silk.
While it is worth remembering that these masks are not medical devices, but they can be still be used to reduce the spread of germs and they can prove more comfortable than disposable masks especially for people with skin conditions, it is only natural to wonder if further companies producing yarns will move onto face masks or will introduce this accessory as well. Time, as usual, will tell, but, in the meantime, please stay safe and keep on wearing a face mask.
As a follow up to the recent vintage-themed posts about patterns and geometries let's focus for today on a small collection created by architect and designer Bernard Rudofsky in the early '50s.
His research on clothes started in the '40s when, invited with his wife Berta to Black Mountain College, he lectured on the state of fashion and on what he called "anachronistic, irrational, impractical and harmful" clothes, while Berta held a workshop on sandal-making. In 1947, three years after Rudofsky curated the exhibition "Are Clothes Modern?" at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, the couple launched the successful Bernardo Sandals, a line of practical and functional footwear.
Rudofsky considered shoes as instruments of torture, but also criticised form-fitting clothes cut in individual sizes as he found them unattractive and uncomfortable. In the early '50s he launched therefore a compact collection of architectural pieces - the Bernardo Separates - based on one shape, the rectangle. The collection featured a tube dress, a square skirt, a sleeveless coat, a one piece bolero plus oblong drawstring shorts.
The garments were based on simple rectangles of cloth (their configuration calls to mind the project for a villa in Positano that Rudofsky designed with Luigi Cosenza in the '30s View this photo) and their only shape came from drawstrings or belts. Any separate would fit any size and the cost of each piece depended exclusively on the material as sewing was very basic (the prices in 1951 for items from this collection ranged from $5 for the shorts to $9 for the coat and the tube dress).
The clothes also saved space as they could be folded and stored on shelves instead of being hung and they could be shared, borrowed and loaned as they would fit anybody.
In the history of fashion further architectural and practical solutions along the same lines were presented decades later by Archizoom Associates with their "Dressing Is Easy" system (1972) and by Nanni Strada with her "Cloak" and "Skin" (1973) projects.
