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

Layered & Complex Histories: Storytelling Through Aggregates in Art

Many artists throughout the decades devoted themselves to the creation of collages: this technique can be incredibly inspiring and provide us with unique works in different fields such as art and fashion as well. Often collected in scrapbooks, employed to create photomontages or incorporated in paintings, collages could be considered as aggregates of layered images and materials. 

New York-based artist, Johanna Goodman, for example, uses the collage technique to create wonderful figures that she calls "Imaginary Beings".

The figures are usually characterised by heads, arms and feet taken from historical images or real pictures. Quite often her aggregate figures have the head of an ancient statue and feet clad in stilettos, sneakers or sandals, anachronisms that create striking contrasts.

The bodies of these figures are instead aggregates formed by a variety of images such as green hills and mountains, rocks, waves and lakes, verdant jungles or compositions of assembled windows, buildings and houses, plus ropes, trees and iridescent sequins.

Among the most recent images there are doctors and nurses, their bodies are made of blister packs of pharmaceutical tablets, images of Coronavirus, graphics, gloves and face masks; then there are political images, figures that incorporate in their bodies photographs of suffragettes protests, women's marches or Black Lives Matter signs.

There are also figures intended as odes to colours and textiles, their bodies integrate a variety of patterns and prints, they are made with quilts and yarns and feature knitted and crocheted swatches.

Goodman studied at Boston University's School of Fine Art and at New York's Parsons School of Design where she graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Illustration in 1992. She first started painting and drawing, but after working with these mediums for a few years, she felt she was ready for something new and unexpected that may have given her more freedom and she started experimenting with large-scale collages, developing her signature elongated figures. 

At the beginning she often employed historical images, but then she started incorporating in her aggregates digital pictures of every day objects she took while walking in the streets.

This practice prompted her to become more aware of her surroundings, appreciate minor details and get inspired by an image, a shape or a colour.

The possibilities proved endless: a cracked strip of asphalt covered in tar was turned into a dress for one of her imaginary characters, while fantasy-scapes made of red glitter and bright pink clouds of smoke became oversized gowns. In this way Goodman's aggregates allowed her to create composite micro-worlds - at times fantastical and imaginary, at others inspired by reality and by contemporary events - within her artworks.   

Some of these images were commisisoned by a variety of clients including publications such as Time, Le Monde, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post (you can be sure that this is another artist who will be co-opted by the fashion industry very soon; so far she has done adverts for Ferragamo, but you can already imagine T-shirts with her collages in a collection by Dior, Prada or Valentino).  

Collages are two-dimensional, but if you like the idea of aggregates and would like to explore them in three-dimensional artworks check out the recently unveiled sculpture "April is the cruellest month", by Nasher Prize-winning artist Michael Rakowitz.

This life-sized statue is a commission with Turner Contemporary in Margate for the event England's Creative Coast (from tomorrow until 12 November 2021). This art trail along the Essex, Kent and East Sussex coastlines, offers visitors a new outdoor cultural experience to connect art with landscape and local stories with international perspectives. The event includes also Waterfronts, a series of seven site-specific artworks by leading contemporary artists such as Rakowitz, taking the border between land and sea as their inspiration. 

The statue on the Margate seafront is engaged in a sort of symbolical dialogue with the Surfboat memorial figure of a lifeguard who gazes out to sea to rescue people and it is overlooked by the shelter where T.S. Eliot wrote part of "The Waste Land" while recovering from a nervous breakdown a hundred years ago (the title of Rakowitz's statue comes from Eliot's poem).  

Rakowitz's sculpture is an anti-war monument and a symbol of peace: it is modelled after Daniel Taylor, a young soldier who served with the Royal Artillery in Basra, Iraq, during the Iraq War. His figure is cast out of an aggregate the artist has made from concrete, calcite, sand and earth from Basra with chalk from Margate in which he embedded fossil-like items that embody trauma - military medals and other votive offerings that have been personally donated by Taylor, members of Veterans for Peace UK and by residents of Kent.

This gesture of giving up the medals of war follows in the example of the First World War poet-officer and pacifist Siegfried Sassoon, whom Rakowitz discovered during his research to be his direct ancestor. Sassoon's words are also featured at the sculpture's base: "I am a soldier, convinced that I am acting on behalf of soldiers. I believe that this war, on which I entered as a war of defence and liberation, has now become a war of aggression and conquest."

Rakowitz's soldier turns his back on the shore and instead points inland towards London and parliament where the decision to go to war with Iraq was made. Its formal inspiration relates to a Basra memorial of 80 bronze statues of Iraqi soldiers, a memorial to those killed in the Iran-Iraq war, whose fingers pointed accusingly across the Shatt al-'Arab towards Iran where they were felled, and which were removed in April 2003 during the British occupation of Basra.

"April is the cruellest month" is an evolution of those statues and aggregate of anxities, fears, memories and broken hopes. In an official press release for this project Rakowitz stated, "I thought about what happens to the British soldier that sees these authoritarian sculptures being taken off pedestals and thrown into the Shatt al-'Arab by the local population. Do they see themselves in that Iraqi soldier? Do they see themselves in this continuous vector of invaders and occupiers, who will themselves be removed? And so it became something where I began to imagine that sculpture underwater, more or less accumulating all the sea life that attaches to it and then... eventually emerging on the coast of Margate and carrying with it all of the traumatic items in between. And so it became a British soldier, pointing not at some imagined enemy across the sea, but inland, toward Parliament, where the decision to invade Iraq was made."

Rakowitz is not new to aggregates: in 2010 the artist, exhibited a replica of the Ishtar Gate based on a version erected by Saddam Hussein. Rakowitz's Ishtar Gate was made of packaging materials and papier-mâché, a technique he employed for the winged Assyrian lamassu installed in Trafalgar Square's fourth plinth in 2018 and in "The Invisible Enemy" project (2007 - ongoing).

The latter consists in a life-sized reconstruction of the more than 8,000 artefacts from the Iraq Museum in Baghdad that are missing, stolen, destroyed or of status unknown, after it was looted in 2003. The artist and his team recreated these objects using the packaging of food products produced in northern Iraq, such as date cakes and syrup or Arabic newspapers.

Both in Goodman and Rakowitz's case the aggregate materials used, from paper and digital images to food packaging, are the key to the final purpose of their works - producing pieces with a strong and powerful narrative that capture the viewers' attention with their storytelling quality.  

Image credits for this post

1 - 11. Artworks by © Johanna Goodman

12 - 15. Michael Rakowitz: 'April is the cruellest month'. A Waterfronts commission with Turner Contemporary for England's Creative Coast. Photo © Thierry Bal.

16 - 17. In progress detail of 'April is the cruellest month', Michael Rakowitz's Waterfronts commission for Margate. To open to the public with Turner Contemporary on Saturday 1 May 2021. Photo © Ben Ryan. Courtesy of England's Creative Coast.

18. Michael Rakowitz, May the Arrogant Not Prevail, 2010. © MCA Chicago.

19. Michael Rakowitz, The Invisible Enemy Should Not Exist, Fourth Plinth, London, 2018. Courtesy of the artist.

Copyright Matters: Potential Controversies Between Art & Fashion

It is unfortunately not so rare in our times to spot on Instagram an independent artist or designer complaining about a major fashion brand plagiarising their original works or using their artworks without crediting them. This practice often makes you wonder why fashion houses - often famous ones and with enough money to pay for such a collaborations - do not get in touch with the author of that specific artwork or design asking for a proper partnership.

The latest incident of this kind regards Mexico City-based artist Brendan Fagan, known for his collages under the pseudonym Judith Supine. Friends spotted his artworks on garments by Brooklyn indie brand Meg, but Fagan/Supine hadn't really given any permission to use them.  

In this case the brand's founder Meghan Kinney admitted she had purchased a wallpaper with a print by Judith Supine from Flavor Paper. Entitled "Eye of The Beholder", the artwork featured a series of collage portraits by Judith Supine, and the print was correctly attributed to the artist in the product description. Kinney liked the print and decided to use it in a dress, skirt and top in Meg's S/S 2020 collection (inspired by Mexico City) without asking for any permission. Despite the company sold $4,855.97 worth of products with this motif and continued to do so even after Fagan's sent a cease & desist letter, the artist was only offered $950 in compensation.

"Those of you who know me understand that I am a very private person; I let my artwork speak for me. So writing this is difficult for me but I am doing it with the hopes that other artists will not have their work exploited without their permission as someone has done to me," the artist stated on his Instagram page. 

"They acknowledge that I have a rightful claim for copyright infringement and admit that Meg profited from these unlawful sales (they say 5k in profit), but then go on to say that since they know it will cost me more to sue them than what I can get in damages (because the artwork wasn't registered prior to the unlawful use), they are only offering me 1k to settle my claims. So for all you artist's out there be aware and protect yourself! The only way to really do so is to register your artworks with the US Copyright office," Fagan concluded. 

Now, despite the artwork wasn't registered prior to the unlawful use, it was actually sold on Flavor Paper and credited to Judith Supine, so you may argue that here Fagan has a case. Even if we admit that the artwork wasn't registered, Kinney should have still got in touch with Flavor Paper that, as a seller, may have pointed out the wallpaper was made by a specific artist. So Fagan may be able to defend his case here.

Yet there is something else to consider in this case: since 2019, Fagan has been working on collages featuring the names of prominent brands: quite often he used the Marlboro Country cowboy in collages that looked like spoof adverts for Prada, Marni, Saint Laurent or Fendi. Synonymous with America's image of a hard-working handsome self-made man, the Marlboro Man appeared in ads for over thirty years, always with a cigarette in his mouth.

Fagan/Supine's purpose was maybe to make a comment about cancer and fashion (throughout the decades, at least four Marlboro Men died of smoking-related diseases and caused further deaths of more men who emulated the imaginary fictional hero), while also looking at contradictions such as virililty/fragility or material wealth/health. 

The idea looked pretty cool especially when Fagan printed his collages on posters and took over  bus stops: passers-by probably looked at the posters and wondered "is this for real or are these spoof ads?" In some cases, like Prada's and Marni's spoof adverts, the collages with their recombined bits and pieces, bizarre proportions and severed limbs, looked indeed almost genuine as Fagan seemed to capture the essence of these brands (it is often the case that bootleg designs, unofficial merchandise or fantasy collaborations look better than the real thing...).

The fact that they almost looked like authentic adverts is probably the reason why the ads weren't immediately removed from bus-stops when Fagan took over them. When he exhibited them a while back none of the companies involved complained, after all this is art and Fagan may have appealed to satire and the principles of Pop Art or even excused himself saying he was paying a tribute to these brands.

But, a few months ago, one these collages inspired by the cover of a magazine and featuring a gun, the title "Guns are out of control" and Prada's name was featured on a T-shirt by Paradigm Publishing.

If that had been a bootlegged T-Shirt for an art project, maybe exhibited in a gallery, things may have been different but, last November the T-shirt was available at Dover Street Market and on Paradigm Publishing's site.

Now, while in the case of the adverts consumers may have wondered if they were real or fake, in this case consumers may have thought this was an official collaboration as the T-shirt featuring Judith Supine's print was sold in a conceptual fashion store that stocks Prada (Judith Supine has sometimes collaborated with fashion designers in the past, his collages appeared for example in Manish Arora's A/W 2012-13 collection).

So far none of these brands went after the artist in question (and they may have easily done so considering how some fashion houses and brands have a strict policy about being associated with tobacco and alcohol companies and with guns as well), but Judith Supine's artworks may expose the artist to dilemmas very similar to those seen in the case of the Satan sneakers by MSCHF in collaboration with Lil Nas X that may have generated some confusions in those consumers who thought they were official Nike shoes.  

Besides, in this case the artwork turned T-shirt may prove more dangerous for the artist as it may be taken by Meg's lawyers as a proof that Judith Supine used the name of a famous fashion houses in a collage that was later turned into a commercial T-shirt (yes, Meg never asked permission, but did he ask permission to Prada & Co?), so the story may have further implications. 

The solution to this problem? If you're a fashion designer slways consider the wider implications that using original artworks by artists without asking their permission may have on your work; but, if you're an artist, also consider the consequences that using the name of a brand/logo in a unique work may have if you ever decide to turn that piece of work into a commercial product.

 

  

  

The Rise of NFTs, The Emergence of The Re-constructivist

Fashion is a fast business: it is an industry that keeps constantly updated with what happens in the world, with its finger on the pulse of society, recording trends, passions and shifts in tastes to produce new ideas and manufacture new products. Coronavirus destabilised it, but also pushed the industry to search for innovative solutions, from digital runways and lookbooks inspired by video games to partnerships with game developers, AR products and video game collaborations.

The current obsession of fashion is definitely technology, in particular the possibilities of the blockchain (that seems to have great potential when it comes to protecting the authenticity of luxury products) and super collectible exclusive NFTs (non-fungible tokens - that is distinct, indivisible, scarce and verifiable tokens on a blockchain network).

Things have developed really fast since Christie's auction of a purely digital work with a unique NFT hit the headlines in March. Beeple's monumental collage sold online at Christie's for $69,346,250 USD opened the proverbial Pandora's box, pushing many who didn't have a clue about non-fungible tokens to research more into this technology.

Some projects were extremely successful: art-wise, Sotheby's auction of digital art - The Fungible Collection by Pak (the anonymous creator, who has been producing digital art for over two decades) released exclusively on Nifty Gateway, a marketplace specializing in the sale and auction of non-fungible tokens - yielded a total of $16,825,999 USD between April 12 and April 14.

The cryptohoodie by Overpriced.™, an ode to CryptoFashion by a company set on designing "fashion for the crypto generation", sold at an auction on Blockparty.co for $26,000 USD. On the contrary NTFs of Kate Moss engaged in rather ordinary activities, that were auctioned off as NFTs created by anonymous artist collective Moments in Time were a bit of a flop (only one was sold). 

Now it's the turn of the fashion collection as NFT: Dutch digital fashion house The Fabricant (more famous for collaborating in 2019 with Dapper Labs and artist Johanna Jaskowska on the futuristic "Iridescence" dress, sold at an auction at the Ethereal Summit in New York for $9,500 USD), teamed up with virtual brand RTFKT Studios, maker of super cool custom and virtual sneakers, better known for their NFT sneaker drop with 18-year-old crypto-artist FEWOCiOUS that, promoted on Snapchat, reached at the end of February over $3.1 million USD in just seven minutes.

The Fabricant and RTFKT Studios released a non-fungible token collection dubbed "RenaiXance": symbolically inspired by the Renaissance period that marked the transition between the Middle Ages and Modern history, the collection was on sale for 48 hours only (from 16th April) on invite-only marketspace The Dematerialised and featured a wide range of pieces, from a dress to a corset, plus a pair of earrings and, obviously, sneakers. 

Everything went fast, in more or less 10 minutes and consumers in many cases bought more than one NFT, with corsets being the fastest selling item (prices went from $10 to over $10,000 USD).

Among the designers who have been developing NFTs there is also Aitor Throup. The Argentinian-born designer often employed his collections to make a critique of the fashion industry and the conventional division into seasons, reshifting the attention of people on the value of a designer's work and the role of a designer.

Since 2006 when he got his MA in Menswear at the Royal College of Art with a collection that told the story of his fascination with the style of English football hooligans (entitled "When Football Hooligans Become Hindu Gods"), Throup developed his own aesthetics creating several collections and collaborating with other companies (including Stone Island, C.P. Company and G-Star Raw) producing technicalwear and functional pieces.

Throup also focused on personal projects that were then developed into collections, such as NOR - an acronym standing for New Object Research - that allowed him to present his designs in a conceptual environment and make statements about the fashion industry, and, more recently, the DSA - that is Daily Sketchbook Archives - collection.

The DSA project consists in an accessible, genderless collection of basic garments such as T-shirts and hoodies, featuring his artwork but no external logo, only the number of the sketch made by the designer. Every piece is conceived as a collectable item as that sketch will not be used in future series, so once an artwork sells out it is not going to be available again. In this way the designer hopes to challenge the industry via unique and collectible pieces. 

These two principles - collecting exclusive and unique pieces - are also behind Throup's latest conceptual project based on experimental multimedia design - Anatomyland - a sort of work-in-progress that the designer has developed over 16 years.

Anatomyland's first drop consists in collectable digital characters, almost digital sculptures that call to mind the designs and presentation for Throup's S/S 17 collection (remember the puppeteers reminiscent of the Bunraku theatre?), released as NFTs through Nifty Gateway (the first offering launches on May 7).

There are three characters at the moment - Lil Yin, Lil Yang and Good Ol' Dom: the first represents the feminine, the right side of the brain and the immigrant and its clothes are characterised by black mesh and circular construction details; the second represents the masculine, the left brain and the Anglo-Saxon and in this case clothes are based on white mesh and straight and sharp construction lines. Good Ol' Dom (or G.O.D.) is a representation of the divine and it is therefore characterised by different shades, not just black and white, but bright pink as well.

There will be the chance to wear some of the products part of the project: the designer plans indeed to release two styles of modular caps in limited "First Editions" (only available in five hand-numbered units per style, signed and authenticated by matching digital NFTs) that Throup defines as "archetypes". More archetypes will be released in the following months until the whole collection is introduced. After that, there will be a general and final release of the collection.

So in Aitor Throup's case releasing NFTs is not just a way to join a trend, but more a system to hack fashion and to make the release of a collection incredibly slow, while encouraging people to consider other issues dear to the designer and embedded in his creations, such as inequality, racism and mental health.

There are some points and issues to consider about NFTs: first of all, who buys them. NFTs are mainly targeted at new investors, people who mined cryptocurrencies (you must have a crypto wallet to buy NFTs) in the very early stages when they weren't worth much, and digitally native Gen Z consumers, young people who may be intro trading cryptocurrencies and love collectible items as well and who may not even own the physical space where to keep them.

Older generations may wonder what's the point of collecting fashion NFTs when you can't really wear digital items, but then again there are Haute Couture collectors who never wear the designs they buy and sneaker fans who keep in their boxes their prized shoes, often acquired at the by now not so rare events organised by prestigious auction houses for a younger customer base. Despite being relatively young these consumers are not naive and they know what they want and what may be valuable in future (which explains why most of them didn't buy into Kate Moss' mundane videos, but focus on CryptoArt and CryptoFashion pieces). 

While it is interesting to analyse who are the buyers of NFTs, it is even more interesting to consider the consequences of this trend. For example, a collection such as The Fabricant x RTFKT Studios' marks a new development: the remixing process that has led in more recent years to the transformation of Takeji Hirakawa's "Fashion DJ" into a professional "Fashion Remixer", has now led us to another type of figure - the re-constructivist. With this word we may define a creative mind with different skills, possibily a fashion designer with a passion for video games or a video game designer and programmer with a passion for fashion. This new figure disassembles garments and accessories seen in different environments and reconstitutes them back together using digital media. 

So while NFTs are definitely here to stay and you wonder when we may have architecture NFTs after seeing this new technology being applied to art, fashion and music, you also realise that this is the real revolution behind this technology - the emergence of new figures that will also have to be hired by fashion houses to meet new requirements. 

That said, now there are just some dilemmas to solve and the first is an environmental one: many fashion houses and even fast fashion brands have pledged that in so many years they will be fully sustainable and create recycled collections. If they start releasing NFTs (and this is imminent, especially for houses and brands that appeal to young people such as Gucci or Balenciaga), these companies will also have to consider the impact of non-fungible tokens on the planet, and the usage and emissions of individual NFTs.

The second dilemma regards influencers and their future: it is clear that investment money from many fashion brands and houses will go into NFTs from now on, reducing the budgets available for those influencers whose main purpose in their pre-Covid 19 lives was taking pictures of themselves outside a runway venue, sitting among impossibly cool friends in the front row or posing in their "outfit of the day". Training in programming may not be a bad idea for them, as the fashion industry will need not just designers but also more programmers from now on. So for them it may be a case of embrace CryptoFashion and its complexities or die.

"The" Wordy Saga: The Ohio State University Vs Marc Jacobs

The most commonly used word in the English language, the definite article "the" derives from gendered articles in Old English - "se" (masculine), "sēo" (feminine) and "þæt" (neuter). In Middle English, these merged into "þe", the ancestor of the Modern English word "the".

It seems strange that such a simple and common word that derived from Old English recently caused some dilemmas linked with trademarks in our modern times, but that's exactly what happened.   

In August 2019 Ohio State University decided that, as many of the school's logos and signs already included the article "The" in front of the university name, it may have as well applied to trademark it.

The university therefore filed Application No. 88571984 with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USTPO) requesting to register the word "THE" to be able to use it in capital letters on commercial items such as garments and accessories that would bear the word in large characters and the university logo in a smaller size.

Founded in 1870 as the Ohio Agricultural and Mechanical College, OSU changed its name to The Ohio State University in 1878 and already sells a wide range of merchandise with the longer phrase, that's where the idea for the trademark application came from.

But, unfortunately for Ohio State, academia isn't always as fast as fashion when it comes to apply for unfounded trademark requests. Indeed Marc Jacobs' company had already applied to register the word "The" for what regarded garments and accessories (in connection with the definition "The Backpack Marc Jacobs", "The Book Bag Marc Jacobs", "The Tote Bag Marc Jacobs" or "The Marc Jacobs", for example) in May, an application approved by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in June 2019, but under review.

Apart from the fact that Marc Jacobs would have had priority in this case, there was another issue that should have been considered by the university, as Josh Gerben, a trademark lawyer from the prestigious Washington, D.C.-based Gerben Law Firm, pointed out also on his Twitter account (follow him here to discover more intriguing intellectual property cases and solutions) - you can't register for trademark a word to print it or embroider it on a T-shirt or a hat, you must also include it on the label for that specific item.

At the time of applying for registering the article "The", Ohio State University wasn't new to other trademark attempts: in 2017 it filed for another registration, that time of the acronym "OSU", on clothing and apparel, generating a legal conundrum with another "OSU" - Oklahoma State University. Eventually in that case the two universities agreed that they could have both used the acronym on a national basis.

Now, people who aren't really that interested in legal matetrs may think all these applications for acronyms and articles are an exaggeration, almost the result of an obsession, but universities know that branding yourself is essential for different reasons, protecting the name of the institution is indeed not just a question of pride, but of financial value.

In September 2019 the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office turned down Ohio State University application explaining that the article didn't distinguish OSU's merchandise from other brands/companies'. The trademark office stated indeed that the word was not a clear sign of association with the university and rejected the application explaining: "Registration is refused because the applied-for mark as used on the specimen of record is merely a decorative or ornamental feature of applicant's clothing and, thus, does not function as a trademark to indicate the source of applicant's clothing and to identify and distinguish applicant's clothing from others."

Last year, in March 2020, the university filed "defense action" ahead of Jacobs' own appeal, asking the Patent and Trademark Office to reconsider its decision.

Out of time to continue settlement discussions, Ohio State University filed early last Friday a "Notice of Opposition" with the Patent Office's Trademark Trial and Appeal Board to block Marc Jacobs' trademark filing for the word "The" (as he applied first for the word "The") claiming that the University was the rightful owner of this trademark. Eventually, the two entities filed a Consent to Register Agreement coming to an agreement on the same day, to suspend opposition and avoid in this way a court case that may have taken until the end of 2022 to resolve if it had progressed.

The solution came when the parties decided they are both seeking exclusive rights to the word, but in different categories or markets - Ohio State University for athletic-related items and leisurewear; Marc Jacobs for high-end apparel and accessories. 

That said this division is a bit unclear: a hoodie is universally considered as a very basic piece of the athletic-wear wardrobe, but, as we all know, it is also a very fashionable and trendy garment, and there are luxury houses producing hoodies that look like ordinary ones used to do sports, but, being designer items, they are considered as high fashion.

Will the USTPO accept this agreement that would allow both The Ohio State University and Marc Jacobs to use their beloved "THE" or will it consider this registration as confusing for consumers? Time will tell, but if you're a designer, beware of the power and the pitfalls that some parts of speech may pose when registering your brand or your line.

Fashion Obituary: Alber Elbaz, Dreaming about Glamour, Longing for Technology

The fashion industry is in mourning after it was announced yesterday that designer Alber Elbaz, 59, had passed away on Saturday at a Paris hospital from COVID-19. Compagnie Financière Richemont, his joint venture partner in AZ Factory, his latest fashion brand, confirmed the news.

Born in Morocco in 1961, Elbaz was raised and educated in Israel, where his family moved when he was 10 years old and where he studied at the Shenkar College of Engineering and Design after fulfilling his army service.

In the mid-1980s Elbaz moved to New York where he worked at Geoffrey Beene; in 1996 he started working at Guy Laroche and later on at Yves Saint Laurent where he was expected to replace the designer when he retired. Instead, in 1999 the Gucci Group added Yves Saint Laurent to its portfolio, Tom Ford was appointed creative director of the fashion house and Elbaz was fired.

Elbaz headed to Krizia for a season, and, in 2001 he became creative director at Lanvin, the house founded by Jeanne Lanvin in 1889 and owned by Taiwanese publishing magnate Shaw-Lan Wang.

His tenure there was successful because, rather than radically revolutionising it, Elbaz took one element that Lanvin did well - the dress - and reinvented it.

As the years passed the designer managed to revamp the legacy of the historical French fashion house: Elbaz focused on women's needs and on making them feel beautiful. 

In his creations he also added elements such as functional zips to make his designs - included his glamorously desirable couture-like party dresses constructed with elegant folds of fabrics and draped elements and often featuring puffed sleeves - modern and comfortable to simplify women's lives. He also put emphasis on costume jewelry designed in collaboration with Elie Top, and his successful collections scored the historical French house a collaboration with fast fashion retailer H&M in 2010. 

Celebrities also turned to Lanvin for glamorous styles: Tilda Swinton accepted the Oscar as best supporting actress in Tony Gilroy's "Michael Clayton" in 2008 and Meryl Streep opted for a a draped, gold lame gown by Lanvin by Elbaz for the Oscar ceremony in 2012, when she won the Academy Award as best actress in Phyllida Lloyd's "The Iron Lady".

The designer also created special costumes for Natalie Portman's 2015 film "A Tale of Love and Darkness", about Amos Oz's youth.

At the end of 2015, after collaborating with Olivier Saillard on a major retrospective of French couturier Jeanne Lanvin at the Palais Galliera in Paris, Elbaz was dropped from Lanvin: at the time nobody saw this coming and the decision was attributed to the majority shareholder. Loved and respected, Elbaz caused staff protests.

Since then Lanvin has seen Bouchra Jarrar, Olivier Lapidus and Bruno Sialelli succeeding one to the other.

A year later, in October 2016, Elbaz received the title of Officer in the National Order of Merit by French Culture minister at the Culture ministry in Paris, and, from then on, he dedicated himself to one-off projects with other brands including a collaboration with Tod's on shoes; a Converse sneaker and a limited-edition makeup line with Lancôme among the others. Elbaz also spent time travelling and researching and, in the last few years he developed an interest in technology. 

In late 2019 Elbaz focused on his own company, AZ Fashion, a name inspired by his initials and by the hope of exploring different steps, from A to Z at a more human rhythm and also a reference to the expression "as fashion". The first designs from Elbaz's new brand, called AZ Factory - conceived like a laboratory of ideas (its name hinted at the expressions "as a factory" or "as a laboratory", to rediscover the connection between designers and manufacturers) - were launched in January 2021 during Paris Haute Couture Week with a video. 

Explaining he had been looking for ways to eliminate stress from women's lives, Elbaz developed not just a fashion collection or a capsule, but a series of projects or stories.

First of all he decided to manufacture his ebullient designs oozing joy in a wide range of sizes, from XXS to 4XL, to celebrate inclusivity.

Then he developed colourful and functional pieces like pajamas (one of his obsessions at Lanvin) with bright and vivid prints, suited for sleep or to go out.

Inspired by the changes our lives went through with the Coronavirus pandemic and in particular by the needs of smartworking and Zoom meetings, but also by the possibility of quickly changing yourself, Elbaz created the "Switchwear" project, a series of sporty pieces that could be turned into elegant designs by adding a satin skirt or top. 

Yet the most intriguing projects for AZ Factory were definitely his collaborations with different companies to develop technological pieces for his "AnatoKnit" dresses.

Combining glamour and comfort while providing women with different body shapes with figure-flattering anatomical dresses in which the ergonomic lines were emphasised to give the wearer the body she wanted, Elbaz worked with MAS Italy, Dutch fabric innovation studio ByBorre and Spanish textile company Nylstar, applying their techniques, high-tech yarns and textiles to chic and glamorous creations manufactured without consuming water, generating air pollution or using solvants. 

We don't know what may happen now to AZ Factory (in the meantime all the piece from this collection can be bought online from the brand's site and from other retailers such as Farfetch.com). 

The latest post on the brand's Instagram page, after a picture of Elbaz with the words "You made us dream, you made us think, and now you fly. Love, trust and respect, always", is just a mourning black screen with no message, but it would be a shame if all these experiments and ideas would die with him, as Elbaz had conceived this laboratory as a way to reignite desire in consumers.

According to Israeli media, Elbaz died of the South African variant of Coronavirus (last year also Japanese fashion designer Kenzo Takada died of Covid), despite being fully vaccinated.

Elbaz was worried about the pandemic and tried to help the Coronavirus response efforts: in May last year, to thank the health-care workers for their efforts during the first Coronavirus wave in France, he did a sketch of a group of nurses accompanied with the word "Merci". The proceeds of this collaboration with fashion chain Gerard Darel went to the Hôpitaux de France foundation.

Alber Elbaz is survived by three siblings who live in Israel and by his partner Alex Koo, previous merchandising director at Lanvin. The couple lived in Paris, France, but, according to some reports, Elbaz may be buried in Israel.

Rallying the Resistance: "Resistenza Ieri e Oggi" by Kutmusic (2021)

A song, as we have seen in the previous post about Billie Holiday's "Strange Fruit", is a powerful medium: it can instill strength, empower and inspire a revolution. Today it is Liberation Day in Italy, a public holiday in which the country celebrates the end of Nazi-fascism during the Second World War.

In previous years we looked at this day from different points of views, analysing the informal uniforms of partisans and remembering an artist who had joined the partisans. 

For this post let's move onto music with a new release dedicated to Liberation Day in Italy - the album "Resistenza Ieri e Oggi - Canzoni e Poesie sulla Resistenza nel Mondo" (Resistance Yesterday and Today - Songs and Poems about the Resistance from the World).

Released today by Kutmusic, restored and remastered by Riccardo Ricci / Velvet Room Mastering, UK, the album was originally published by ENAL in 1975 (a year marking the 30th annivesary of the Italian Resistance).

This album, with arrangements and conducting by maestro Gerardo Iacoucci and his orchestra, includes a wide range of tracks to remember and get inspired even nowadays. After all there are many causes we should be fighting for: we are collectively facing the challenges of the health emergency caused by Coronavirus, but we still have to fight against racism, inequalities and injustices, so the Italian resistance should be an inspiration.

Some of the tracks included in the album are instrumental, but there are also spoken word tracks, prayers and dedications to partisans who fought for freedom (it is worth remembering that among them there were quite a few women who haven't been often acknowledged by history) by Riccardo Cucciolla, Franca Salerno, Massimo Dapporto and many more with texts by Alexandros Panagulis, Pablo Neruda and Teresio Olivelli.

Among the other tracks there are the Italian version of "El pueblo unido jamás será vencido" (originally composed by Sergio Ortega with a text by Quilapayún, but popularised by the Chilean band Inti-Illimani who took up residence in Italy after the 1973 coup d'etat by Augusto Pinochet), "La Libertà" by Giorgio Gaber (performed by Amanda and I Cantori Moderni di Alessandroni) and resistance anthem "Bella Ciao" sung by Miranda Martino and the Cantori Moderni di Alessandroni.

A moving hymn about fighting and dying for freedom readapted in different countries, including Turkey and Brazil, by a wide variety of performers (Manu Chao and Goran Bregovic among the others), popularised in recent years by the Netflix series "La casa de Papel" (Money Heist) in its readaptation by Manu Pilas, "Bella Ciao" has unclear origins.

Some say that before the war the song was usually sung by the mondine, the female rice paddy field workers of the Po Valley, lamenting their working conditions and that an unknown author then readapted the song during the Second World War and the lyrics were changed to tell the story of a young man leaving to join the partisans. Others claim that the mondine's version came after the war and that the partisans' "Bella Ciao" derived its structure and melody from different folk and traditional songs. Whatever the origin, it remains a powerful ballad.    

The album is available from the main digital download and streaming stores - Apple iTunes, Spotify, Amazon and Deezer. Enjoy your Resistance Sunday! 

The Timely Relevance of "Strange Fruit" & The Metaphors Behind the Costumes in Lee Daniels' "The United States Vs Billie Holiday" (2021)

At the beginning of director Lee Daniels' film "The United States vs Billie Holiday" American jazz singing legend (Golden Globe winner and Academy Award nominee Andra Day) is being interviewed by Reginald Lord Devine (Leslie Jordan).

The radio journalist mentions her song "Strange Fruit" and calls her "troublemaker" for keeping on singing it, but she replies "You ever seen a lynching?" adding about the song "It's about human rights. Government forgets that sometimes."

This week "Strange Fruit" came to mind to many after the verdict for the murder of George Floyd was finally released. Floyd, 46, died last year in Minneapolis after a white officer, Derek Chauvin, handcuffed him, then kneeled on his neck for 8 minutes and 46 seconds. A video recorded by a bystander asking to let him go, showed the horrific ordeal, with the officer kneeling on Floyd's neck while the man cried out, "I can't breathe".

On Tuesday Chauvin was convicted of murder and manslaughter in the death of George Floyd. Yet, while the guilty verdict was being announced, news also arrived about police officers who, while responding to an attempted stabbing, fatally shot Ma'Khia Bryant, a 16-year-old Black girl in Columbus, Ohio.

Earlier on in April, Daunte Wright, a 20-year-old Black man, was fatally shot at close range by police officer Kimberly Potter during a traffic stop and attempted arrest for an outstanding arrest warrant. They are just some of the latest victims of police brutality, so while the George Floyd verdict gave hope, it is clear that far more work must be done in the US to tackle systemic racism and police brutality. At the same time the verdict shook people's conscience, just like "Strange Fruit".

"Southern trees / Bear a strange fruit / Blood on the leaves / And blood at the root / Black bodies swinging in the Southern breeze / Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees," Andra Day sings as Billie Holiday in one scene of Daniels' film and, while watching it, you feel compelled to rediscover its origins.

Holiday recorded this song about the horrors of lynching on 20th April 1939, but it was originally a poem - "Bitter Fruit" - by Jewish school teacher and civil rights activist Abel Meeropol. The poem was inspired by Lawrence Beitler's photograph of the 1930 lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith in Indiana.

Holiday remembers performing the song for the first time at New York's Café Society in her autobiography "Lady Sings The Blues": "The first time I sang it I thought it was a mistake. There wasn't even a patter of applause when I finished. Then a lone person began to clap nervously. Then suddenly everyone was clapping."

From then on, everytime she performed the song, Holiday forced with her dramatic interpretation people in the audience to actually confront reality, racism and the horrors of lynching. The song caused a wide range of reactions: it reduced people to tears, but it was also blacklisted by radios, while Columbia Records refused to record it.

In Daniels' film (with a screenplay by Suzan-Lori Parks, the first African American woman to win a Pulitzer Prize for Drama), we are not told about the origins of "Strange Fruit", but we are shown the consequences that keeping on singing it had for Billie Holiday.

Considered a troublemaker and a threat as she may have encouraged a black uprising by refusing to stop singing the controversial "Straneg Fruit", Holiday became the target of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics. The war to silence her was redressed as a war on drugs by agent Harry J. Anslinger (Garrett Hedlund). Undercover Black agent Jimmy Fletcher (Trevante Rhodes) employed by Anslinger to infiltrate jazz clubs, eventually framed Holiday, who was a known heroin user.

Arrested for narcotics possession in 1947 and sentenced to West Virginia's Alderson Federal Prison Camp, after she was released Holiday wasn't given back her cabaret card, required to all New York City performers in nightclub. 

Daniels suggests that Fletcher regretted framing her and fell in love with Holiday, rescuing her from a life of abuses. While the romance is actually historically incorrect, the film has some powerful moments, like Andra Day singing in a deep mournful voice "Strange Fruit" with the camera lingering on her face, on her haunting and anguished eyes and on her cherry red lips evoking blood and contrasting with the immaculate white flower behind her left ear. It's a powerful, painful and moving moment.

Costumes, designed by Paolo Nieddu in collaboration with Prada, have a great part in this film. Nieddu created collages in the costumes for "The United States Vs Billie Holiday": while he took inspiration from vintage photographs of Billie Holiday, he also selected elements and details from Prada's archives and recombined them together. Miuccia Prada loves silhouettes from the '40s and the '50s, so Nieddu found great correspondences between original clothes and Prada's interpretations.

We first meet Holiday as she sings "All of Me" in a luminous and striking red gown, inspired by a lapel-halter style dress Holiday donned onstage at the Free Trade Hall in Manchester in 1954, recombined with a Prada look from its A/W 2004 collection for what regards the molded bodice and bust, while the colour for the gown was taken from a Spring/Summer 2009 dress.

The black and white gown was instead a reinvented version of a dress in the same shades and with an oversized bow Holiday donned in 1947 at the Downbeat Club. In this case, though, the bustline was recreated from Prada's car inspired collection (Spring/Summer 2012) and the dress was remade in black taffeta and decorated with floral embroidery.

Andra Day then wears a replica of the pinstripe skirt suit Holiday opted for when she appeared in court: Nieddu based it on a vintage suit jacket and separate skirt but made it with Loro Piana's cashmere wool and silk crepe.

After serving her time in prison, Holiday sings in front of a sold-out crowd at Carnegie Hall in a black silk gown with dramatic shoulders.

The statuesque gown in the film was made in collaboration with Old Hollywood dressmaker and Orry-Kelly tailor John Hayles (who also designed for Marilyn Monroe).

For her illicit residency at Club Ebony, we see instead Andra Day/Billie in a classic yellow marigold gown with precious crystal work, inspired from a 1946 look with shoulder details from Prada's A/W 2017 collection (see image 8 in this post) recombined with the crystal patterns from the house's Resort 2011 collection (here reinterpreted by costume designer and artist Maria Hooper).

We also see Andra Day/Billie in a red flutter-sleeve crop top (based on a vintage 1930s design) and matching wide leg pants for a performance in Baltimore.

While travelling with her band, Andra Day/Billie wears a vivid summery dress with multi-coloured flower embroideries forming long fringes. We see her walking through tall grass during a break but, while following a path she finds herself in front of a rural house, the set of a lynching and the colours of her joyful dress are juxtaposed to this harrowing scene.

Holiday actually never witnessed a lynching, but here the shocking scene evokes the graphic depiction of the metaphor behind "Strange Fruit" and eventually prompts her to defy the authorities and sing the song again. She does so in a strapless white gown with crystal embroidery on the bodice.

Inspired by Holiday's look at her last major jazz concert at Town Hall in 1958 (View this photo), Nieddu's version features the plunging neckline from a Prada Spring/Summer 2014 dress (last image in this post) and geometric beading and crystal-work.

Costume-wise there were a couple of pitfalls: the credits scene with Andra Day and Trevante Rhodes waltzing and Day rebuking him for stepping on her "Prada dress" was pure advertising and may have been cut, while Prada's triangular logo may have been removed from the pants Billie Holiday wears while on tour, as this product placement wasn't necessary at all.

The costumes have a specific purpose in the film - reminding us that Holiday was a talent, but that she also looked astonishing. Her iconic presence, her gowns, furs and diamanté sunglasses, simply oozed glamour, while hiding her pains, the traumas of her upbringing of violence, rape and abuses.

Her clothes and accessories (Nieddu accessorized all of the costumes with vintage finds, from handbags to charm bracelets and cat-eye sunglasses) were her armour: her style oozed strength and her grand gowns were her protection as she sang her revolutionary song.

Her looks were therefore weapons of resistance and political statements at the same time and this is exactly what mainstream white society couldn't stand: in the film when Billie Holiday sings at Carnegie Hall, Anslinger's wife is mesmerised and she states "She does look incredible", while her husband remains silent, but inside he's probably disdainfully wondering "how can a Black woman dare to look as glamorous?"

People like Anslinger may have thought justice was done when Billie Holiday died in 1959 handcuffed to a hospital bed as agents, claiming they had found heroin on her, arrested her as she lay dying. She was 44.

Her legacy lived and "Strange Fruit" became one of the protest songs of the 20th Century, an anthem for the civil rights movement.

Covered by many different artists, including Andra Day who recorded her own version of "Strange Fruit" in 2017 in partnership with not-for-profit organisation Equal Justice Initiative, it entered the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1978 and was named the song of the century by Time Magazine in 1999. Incidentally, the movie was released on the exact day the US House of Representatives passed the Emmett Till (14-year-old Till was lynched in Mississippi in 1955) anti-lynching act - 26th February 2021.

Lee Daniels' movie doesn't always work, mainly for its unlikely romance between the singer and Jimmy Fletcher. The agent actually told Holiday's biographer Linda Kuehl he regretted the betrayal, but there is no evidence that he hang around or that he had a love affair with Billie Holiday.

Yet this is not first biopic that contains made-up facts, and Andra Day's brilliant performance as Billie Holiday offers compensation reminding us that it's not just the powerful lyrics of "Strange Fruit" that are important, but the fact that Holiday refused to stop singing the song throughout her career.

Sailors' Yarns: Try Your Hand at Making Laura Dalgaard's "Caught in the Knit" Sweater

After visiting an exhibition, many of us stop in the museum shop and buy a small memento, maybe a pen or a notebook, that may remind us of that trip and that visit. But the Maritime Museum in Helsingør (Elsinore), Denmark, has decided to reward visitors to its "Oceanista" exhibition, an event that explores the connection between fashion and the sea as we have seen in the previous post, with something very different that people from all over the world may enjoy in their own time – a pattern for a jumper.

Designer Laura Dalgaard came up with the sweater "Caught in the Knit" especially for this exhibition. The designer specialises in knitwear and has collaborated with various fashion brands and yarn suppliers, creating limited edition sweaters, knit kits and patterns.

The collage-like jumper for the "Oceanista" exhibition features a story that unfolds between the sky and the sea with the designer wondering what we may be able to catch with a net - Dalgaard suggests we may end up with some fish, buoys, ocean waste and a red lobster.

Yet the story is not just in the scene Dalgaard has created, but also in the stitches as the sweater is a tapestry of stitches and knitting techniques from the diverse world of seafaring; some are inside-out while others are reinterpreted. 

Dalgaard hopes indeed that through the classic honeycomb, diamond, rope and hawser cable, the lice stich and the sailor bobble stitch, we may discover the artisanal skills of sailors and go on a journey as well through knitting styles and countries.

Dalgaard has included indeed in the jumper also a traditional pattern from Halland in Sweden, a classic motif from Iceland and the OXO pattern from the Fair Isle.

In this way the designer pays homage to the crafts of sailors and fishermen such as the "guernsey" sweaters (that incorporated patterns that varied from village to village and from family to family and that allowed to identify a fisherman in case of shipwreck and death) or the Portuguese camisolas poveiras with their traditional embroideries and maritime or naval symbols.

You can download Dalgaard's pattern here (Download FangetIGarnet_CaugthInTheKnit) and the diagram here (Download FangetiGarnet_CaughtintheKnit_diagram) and you can knit your very own "Caught in the Knit" jumper by altering the patterns, using leftover yarns from old sweaters (Dalgaard is into sustainability and always encourages to reuse yarns) or knitting in a word, a slogan or even your own name like Dalgaard did.

You can then share your work on social media with the hashtags #caughtintheknit #oceanista #maritimemuseumofdenmark and if you want to discover more patterns, do so on Laura Dalgaard's shop page where you will be able to buy also knits inspired by Netflix' series "Stranger Things" and "The Moomin" stories by Tove Jansson or her collaborations with conscious jewellery and accessory label Pura Utz that produces beaded pieces in collaboration with a team of women in Guatemala. 

Fashion & The Sea: "Oceanista" @ The Maritime Museum, Elsinore, Denmark

Earth Day, an event to increase public awareness of the world's environmental problems, was first established on April 22, 1970. But saving our planet and working together to fight climate change has never been more urgent as it is now.

Coronavirus prompted us to realise that there may be a new pandemic era around the corner, hastened by climate change. So, while the Covid-19 health emergency is not over yet, we must take care of our natural resources that are under severe pressure from current rates of consumption. An example? Water resources are dwindling and a report released by the United Nations in March 2021, stated that five out of 11 regions have water stress values above 25%, including two regions with high water stress and one with extreme water stress.

Pollution and climate change are also having an impact on oceans, as increasing greenhouse gas emissions threaten entire coastal and marine ecosystems.

The Maritime Museum in Helsingør (Elsinore), Denmark, has got a timely exhibition celebrating the oceans through fashion. Entitled "Oceanista", the event launched yesterday as the museum reopened after it was shut down due to Coronavirus like many other institutions all over the world.

The event, extended until 28th November, tries to reshift the attention from just fashion to the ocean as an energetic, strong and powerful inspiration, almost an obsession for designers throughout the decades, hence the word "Oceanista".  

A derivation of the Latin suffix -ist, the -ista suffix (borrowed from the Spanish language) denotes a specialist of a certain topic. With the word "Oceanista" the museum, in collaboration with fashion researcher Maria Mackinney-Valentin, hopes to capture the attention of its visitors via fashion and turn us all into maritime connoisseurs.

It is true that if we mention the words "maritime style", most of us will conjure up in their minds visions of sailors, but in the exhibition sailors' styles are filtered through the minimalist vision of Coco Chanel or the extravagant imagination of Jean Paul Gaultier who radically transformed the Breton jersey into a layered, ruffled, pleated and fantastic item for sirens rather than sailors, while sailors' tattoos were transformed into halter tops assembled with embroideries based on the designs of American tattooist Sailor Jerry in Maison Margiela's S/S 2014 collection.

Talking about sirens, the exhibition also includes Iris van Herpen's 2016 ethereally delicate dress made of silicone coated hand-blown glass spheres and Simon Rocha's pearl inspired designs.

Mysterious stories about the sea and ghost ships are instead told via Philip Treacy's hat shaped like a sailing ship, but also calling to mind elaborately opulent 18th century hairstyles such as the one called À la Belle Poule that commemorated the victory of a French ship over an English ship in 1778 (remember Marie Antoinette's tall ship hairdo?).

If you like the Navy, you won’t be disappointed as the exhibition features Thom Browne's reinvented uniforms and Balmain's jacket with frogging, reminiscent of Jimi Hendrix'.

But if you're more interested in adventures, you can check out designs by Craig Green for Moncler, evoking heroic expeditions full of hardships, but also marked by the joys of new discoveries.

There's the proverbial everything for everybody on display among the corals designed by award-winning scenographer Julian Juhlin, an innovative artists mainly working for the stage in Denmark.

Films, photos and interviews complete this exhibition that also features quite a few Danish brands and designers as well, among the others Henrik Vibskov, Kvadrat and Nikoline Liv Andersen.

While "Oceanista" also invites visitors to consider sailors' and fishermen's crafts, from knitwear to knots, the exhibition may have also benefited by adding a chapter about how traditional styles launched by fishermen have been rediscovered in some countries and have even become the object of copyright cases when famous fashion houses borrowed from them (remember the recent camisola poveira Vs Tory Burch story?). Yet there are designs to discover (or rediscover) here and the museum was also designed by Danish star-architect Bjarke Ingels and his BIG (Bjarke Ingels Group) architectural firm, hence a visit is a must for architecture fans as well. 

So, if you're in Denmark (or may be going there once the pandemic allows us to travel more freely) set your sails and land at Elsinore's Maritime Museum: it may be your chance to stop being called a "fashionista" and adopt the inspiring title of "oceanista". 

Sharing the Common Language of the Blockchain: The Aura Consortium for Luxury Goods

We explored the possibilities that the blockchain may offer in journalism in a previous post in 2018. Then, two years ago, we also looked at how French luxury goods conglomerate Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy (LVMH) was exploring the blockchain and had invested millions to establish the AURA platform.

Developed over a year in collaboration with Microsoft's Azure platform and New York-based software technology company and Ethereum design studio ConsenSys (also linked to the Civil Media Co. project for a new journalism economy using blockchain), AURA used a permissioned version of the Ethereum blockchain known as Quorum, developed by JPMorgan and focused on data privacy.

Thanks to the ERC-721 non-fungible tokens (NFTs; ERC-721 tokens arrived at the end of 2017 with the CryptoKitties, one of the first blockchain games), the technology was mainly developed to prove the authenticity of high-priced luxury goods.

Years passed and it was just announced that other fashion companies showed an interest in the technology, yet, rather than competing to establish their own platforms, the Prada Group and Compagnie Financière Richemont decided to join LVMH in the AURA Blockchain Consortium (the following companies area already keyed into the platform: Bulgari, Cartier, Hublot, Louis Vuitton and Prada).

Which are the actual benefits of the blockchain for fashion and in particular of the AURA platform? The blockchain network can be used for different purposes in a wide range of industries: as a system it can be employed for example in the medical industry to store health records. Fashion-wise it can instead be used to authenticate products - from garments to accessories.

You could easily fit a handbag with a very affordable microchip that would allow you to register the bag on the blockchain and show in this way the chain of ownership. This would allow to establish where the item was originally purchased, who is the legitimate owner of the bag in case it gets stolen and to register the transfer of the ownership in a legitimate way from one person to another at a resale. In this way it would be easier to determine if that specific product is authentic, something that may facilitate further sales and auctions as well and discourage fraud and the sale of stolen luxury pieces.

Many luxury brands protected their products with serial numbers, watermarks, holograms, barcodes and RFID technology. Too often, though, such attempts proved to be ineffective, as a hacker may have been able to corrupt such data or database. Whereas no one can alter, lose or destroy records on blockchain systems. That's why the blockchain seems to be the perfect system to facilitate luxury authentication processes.

Yet the blockchain is not just about authenticity: the groups that joined the AURA blockchain want to give their consumers a message about responsible sourcing, traceability along the supply chain and sustainability as well. The blockchain allows indeed a company to track the raw materials and original components employed to make a product.

Consumers will therefore be able to discover the story behind a product from the AURA certificate that they will receive when they purchase a product. In this way fashion houses also hope to win back those consumers who stopped buying their brands as they didn't see any transparency when it came to sources and sustainability. The platform is open to all those luxury goods that align with principles such as quality, traceability, transparency and authenticity, including cars, jewelry and watches (and for what regards some of these products the blockchain may provide a genuine change - a jewelry maker could indeed use the blockchain to state the provenance of its diamonds and highlight in this way its ethical commitment).  

At the time of writing companies are just preparing for the AURA blockchain: Prada hasn't launched its consumer-facing app and dedicated online environment, but it has already embedded radio-frequency identification chips into its products, and consumers will be able to link them to the app when it's ready.

This collaboration is interesting not just because of the benefits the blockchain may offer to luxury houses, but for the fact that these groups decided to use one single blockchain solution open to different brands worldwide. Fashion is a competitive business, but in this case it seemed more logical to team up rather than fight. Actually the consortium may grow even more as the groups involved claim they are already in talks with small and independent brands (it is worth noting that participating brands pay an annual licensing fee and a volume fee, but the consortium is not-for-profit and those who join in can still be using other authentication platforms as well - for example, Richemont also uses the Arianee digital passport platform for valuables for some of its watch brands). Who will join the AURA Consortium next? Time will tell, but this is the final proof that the blockchain is now considered by the fashion industry as an established and reliable resource.