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

What Makes a Balenciaga Recognisable? Architectural Precision, Ample Volumes & Sharp Cuts

The best fashion designers are known for their unique looks, level of knowledge, individual style and trademark shades and silhouettes. Yet, at times, it can be tricky to spot the more technical details that are quintessential to a specific designer, especially if you're not well versed in the technicalities of fashion. That said, there are accessible ways to discover the vocabulary of a designer.

To celebrate the 50th anniversary of Cristóbal Balenciaga's death, the Cristóbal Balenciaga Museum in Getaria, Spain has for example launched an exhibition - "Balenciaga Character" (until 1st March 2023) that will help visitors to understand what makes "a Balenciaga" recognisable.

Cristóbal Balenciaga Eizaguirre (Getaria 1895 - Valencia 1972), also known as the "Master" of Haute Couture by his colleagues, directed for five decades his high fashion houses in San Sebastián (1917), Madrid (1933), Barcelona (1935) and Paris (1937). His name became synonymous with elegance, avant-garde, beauty and timelessness.

The Getaria exhibition features 90 designs, including Balenciaga's creations for his Eisa Costura label (Eisa was an abbreviated form of his mother's patronymic), that was dedicated to traditional quality dressmaking for an upper middle-class public.

The designs on display go from the sculpted silhouettes of the late '30s passing through the iconic designs of the '50s and the more abstract and modern creations from the '60s. Displayed in different rooms of the museum, the designs allow visitors to study their construction, shapes and silhouettes, volumes and fabrics.

It is quite often frustrating to look at designs in display cabinets during fashion exhibitions and to see just one side of that garment, the front or, maybe, the back.

Curator Igor Uria, Collections Director at the Cristóbal Balenciaga Museum, decided instead to show what's hidden, to discover the cut and technique beyond Balenciaga's designs.

In this way visitors are allowed to discover the power of the label, the importance of pads, weights, linings and pockets - invisible or almost secret aspects of a garment, that contribute to create Balenciaga's iconic designs.

The curator also prompts visitors to admire the meticulous details of the buttonholes, the sumptuous embroideries, the precise sleeves and the colours and consistency of the fabrics, like the intense carmine colour and creased surface reminiscent of a crested Celosia flower of a design from 1937.

Architectural precision, ample volumes and sharp cuts make Balenciaga's designs recognisable, but the best revelation is that the designer favoured a minimum number of seams in the cut that allowed him to create fluidly sculpted pieces.

This exhibition is recommended to those fashion fans who want to sharpen their attention to details, build their own Balenciaga vocabulary and learn to apply this newly learnt fashion glossary to dissect other designers' creations.

On World Embroidery Day, Why Not Celebrating Neuroscience?

It is World Embroidery Day, but, if you want to join the celebrations and you’re not a fan of traditional embroidered motifs, you can go down the science path. Yesterday we looked at an artwork inspired by neuroscience and there have actually been intriguing projects revolving around neuroscience and embroidery.

In 2020 Professor Cathy Abbott (from the Institute of Genetics and Molecular Medicine at the University of Edinburgh) came up with an idea - The Cajal Embroidery Project - to celebrate Santiago Ramón y Cajal (1852–1934) and the centenary of the 1920 Royal Decree that established the illustrious Instituto Cajal in Madrid, Spain.

As you may remember from a previous post, the Spanish scientist identified the role of neurons in the nervous system as proved by his early 1900s studies showing human neonatal astrocytes, motor sensitive patterns, afferents to the cortex and ganglia of the sympathetic nervous system. Cajal produced amazingly detailed drawings showing illustrations of neurons and their arborisations.

For his works, Cajal received a Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine in 1906, while his Institute put Spain at the forefront of neuroscience research, with several scientific giants graduating from it, such as Pío del Río Hortega (1882–1945), who discovered oligodendrocytes and microglia.

For the Cajal Embroidery Project, over 75 volunteers collaborated across six countries to create 81 intricate, hand-stitched panels of Cajal's images that, stitched together, ended up creating a single tapestry that was displayed at the Royall Hospital for Children and Young People in Edinburgh.

The embroiderers involved used ivory fabric (or cream cotton/linen) and black or dark brown yarns (some of them even made their own nettle yarn and used natural dyes, such as walnut husks to give the yarn a dark colour) to be more coherent with the original drawings.

Some volunteers chose to emulate even the circular blue-ink stamp with the words "Museo Cajal, Madrid" and a number handwritten by Pedro Manzano, the caretaker who first catalogued Cajal's drawings.

There is a thread (pun intended...) that ties the embroiderers involved in this neuroscience project to Cajal's work and some amazing correspondences between the illustrations and the embroideries. Cajal made his drawings and studies in solitude, in a laboratory fashioned in the attic of his own house; contributors to this project, many of them new to neuroscience or embroidery, worked during the lockdown imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic and, when they didn't have access to supplies because of the restrictions, they became creative and adventurous, and came up with new techniques, dyeing fabrics with teabags to achieve the sepia-coloured background.

This process reminds of Cajal's studies refining fellow Nobel Laureate Camillo Golgi’s "reazione nera" staining technique by applying silver nitrate to specimens via two brief pulses, rather than soaking them for two days. Besides, Cajal made illustrations of neurons and their arborisations demonstrating that the notion that brain cells are distinct, diverse units, which communicate with one another.

This calls to mind the modus operandi of the volunteer embroiderers who worked by themselves, but were in reality interconnected as they produced single pieces that then became a single large tapestry.The results of the project are suspended between art and science and they proved successful as they were used also for the cover of The Lancet Neurology magazine.

The December 2021 issue of the scientific magazine featured all the embroideries created for the Cajal Embroidery Project as they appeared in the assembled tapestry. Actually, last year several covers of The Lancet Neurology featured a neuroscience embroidery, some inspired by Cajal's drawings, others by other studies - from Cajal's illustration of a glial cell and of the hippocampus, to neuronal-glial-vascular interaction, pyramidal and cortical neurons, developing and developed cerebellar Purkinje cells and the many layers of the retina. All of them were made by scientists and researchers and introduced a special feature in the magazine.The Cajal Embroidery Project is over, but there is still a Facebook Group of scientists, embroiderers, craftspeople and beginners, that you may want to join to come up with your own interpretation of Cajal's illustrations.

English neurophysiologist Charles Scott Sherrington stated in 1935 that Cajal and his pupils, "opened a fresh era of knowledge". Proving that his drawings are still relevant today, this project bridging science with embroidery opens instead a fresh era for more collaborative cross-disciplinary projects.
 

Delicate Neural Choreographies: "Self Reflected" by Dr. Greg Dunn and Dr. Brian Edwards

As seen in a previous post, it is possible to use science or engineering as the starting points to create artworks that are completely based on fantasy. Yet, it is also possible to create pieces that are completely based on science and that look like fascinating works of art. "Self Reflected" (2019-2022) by Dr. Greg Dunn in collaboration with Dr. Brian Edwards is the perfect example.

Inspired by neuroscience and engineering, this monumental work (a version of it was recently auctioned at Sotheby's) consists in a 23k handmade gilded microetching in 25 panels mounted together in a frame and completed by "The Crescent", a lighting structure containing 1,596 high-powered LEDs, illuminating the microetching with up to 15 thousand lumens of light.

Lighting programs activate highly dynamic and colorful displays that mirror electrical activity in the brain, using different combinations of shades such as white, magenta, and violet or yellow, green, blue and violet.

The dynamic microetching is an 8-by-12 foot representation of a single brain slice depicting neural activity in the human brain. So that when you stare at it, you are actually staring at your brain actively perceiving itself, that's why this work is a self-portrait and a hyperdetailed animated representation of human consciousness.

Artist and neuroscientist Dr. Greg Dunn and artist and applied physicist Dr. Brian Edwards created "Self Reflected" a few years ago to explain the functioning of the most marvelous machine in the universe, the human brain. The piece was also included in 2016 in an exhibition at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia.

To create this piece, Dunn and Edwards did extensive researches about each region of the brain, its neuron types, sizes, what other neurons and regions they are connected to, firing patterns, neurotransmitter types and so on.

They settled on depicting an oblique sagittal slice of the human brain as this view provides a great deal of variety in structures, interesting circuitry, and avoids the ventricles that would simply have appeared as holes in the brain in this view.

The technique chosen is fascinating as well: the final work is the combination of hand drawing, algorithmically simulated neural circuitry, adapted neuroscientific data, photolithography, gilding, and strategic lighting, but this is not a scan of a brain.

"Self Reflected" is indeed made with a technique called reflective microetching that allows to give a piece a greatly enhanced visual experience. This term indicates handmade lithographs that manipulate light on a microscopic scale to control the reflectivity of metallic surfaces in precise ways. Indeed, microetchings have no colour, but they appear as gilded surfaces and they take the colour of any light source that illuminates it. For example, they can reflect one colour or an infinitely flexible variation of colours, complex ones included.

These techniques were invented by Dr. Greg Dunn and his colleague Dr. Brian Edwards to change the way the viewer experiences a painting, and also emphasize the concept that every human perceives the world differently from another.

The microscopic etches of the microetchings capture light arriving from different angles, this means that they reflect a different image of the overall piece to every viewer depending on their position. As a consequence the viewer (and even the viewer's two eyes) each have a unique visual experience.

While staring at the artwork scientists and doctors will easily spot in it the regions of the brain, from the visual cortex to the frontal gyrus, the thalamus and basal ganglia, the olfactory bulb and the motor and parietal cortex, but people who are not experts will still be able to enjoy the artwork with its regions that conjure up microscopic pictures of leaves and plants or optic fiber textiles.

"Self Reflected" is a visually bright work of elegance and beauty that pulsates with mesmerizing lights and wavelike electrical activity and its merit stands in the fact that it provides us with an immediate picture of the human brain.

The artwork makes it easier to grab the vastness and beautiful organization of the brain and lets us understand the complexity behind it not with difficult scientific explanations, but with immediate and delicately balanced neural choreographies designed to reflect what is occurring in our own minds as we observe this piece.

This is the art of neuroscience or neuroscience as art and you can bet that, at some point, some fashion designer will move from this piece for a collection or a runway show. Actually, maybe Dunn and Edwards should do a new piece showing the activity of the brain when we see something - like a garment or an accessory - that we deeply desire. Guess that would be a hit with the fashion crowd.

The Inventor with an Unlimited Imagination: "Panamarenko: Come Fly with Me" @ The Ten Bogaerde Arts Centre, Koksijde, Belgium

In the previous posts we looked at exhibitions opening in September, but there are plenty of events to visit also this Summer and, among them, you may find some gems. At the beginning of July, the exhibition "Panamarenko: Come Fly with Me" (until 8th January 2023) opened at the Ten Bogaerde Arts Centre, in the Belgian seaside resort of Koksijde.
 
The event focuses on Panamarenko’s desire to understand the miracle of flight and invites visitors to take an imaginary journey with his amazing flying machines.

The Belgian artist and inventor Henri Van Herwegen, AKA Panamarenko, had a profound passion for science and technology that prompted him to build aircrafts, flying machines and other amazing inventions. If implemented by engineers, some of them may have turned into real machines, others such as a flying carpet and a backpack with a propeller, were instead fantastical objects that could have never been built.

Born in Antwerp in 1940, Van Herwegen studied at the local Royal Academy of Fine Arts. He developed an interest in aeronautics at the scientific library at the University of Antwerp and, in the '60s, he became known as Panamarenko (at times shortened as "Panama"). The name was a contraction of "Pan American Airlines and Company" combined with the name of a Russian general, Panteleimon Kondratyevich Ponomarenko, that he heard in 1958 over his self-made transistor radio on which he was able to receive a Potsdam (then part of the DDR) radio station.

In the '60s Panamarenko met Joseph Beuys in Düsseldorf, where Beuys was a teacher at the art academy.

Encouraged by Beuys, and fascinated by the flight of birds and planes, Panamarenko created his first flying machine, "Das Flugzeug", a pedal-powered plane, followed by the 28-metre long zeppelin called "The Aeromodeller", made of glued strips of PVC film and featuring a rattan palm cabin sprayed in silver (the ideas was that the airship would have allowed the artist to move through the sky, so the cabin was designed like a private home; the airborne house was designed to impress Brigitte Bardot…).

Then came mechanical chickens and birds that looked like prehistoric dinosaurs, fantastical planes, cars, boats (the "Scotch Gambit", an armoured vessel made of stainless-steel plates), submarines (the "Nova Zembla" that featured fins like a fish and blades like an insect) and even UFOs.

Each machine was different, but all were characterized by the same problem: they were all more or less utopian follies, like his "Pepto Bismo", a flying device composed of a series of short rotor-propellers, worn on the pilot’s back. Panamarenko stopped his artistic activities in 2005 and retired. He died in 2019.

For the exhibition at Koksijde, the converted 13th century storage barn of the Ten Bogaerde has been turned into a flying hall for a selection of Panamarenko's works. This exhibition aims at showing how Panamarenko shaped his desire to understand the wonder of flying and invites the visitors to follow the thoughts and dreams of the artist.

The exhibition also sparks contrasting feeling and emotions about the works on display: Panamarenko's inventions are indeed fascinating, but they are also dangerous; they are complex, but unable to perform the task for which they were designed and built.

The key lesson to learn from him is that you can use science and engineering to make art (or reinterpret these disciplines through art), but the exhibition leaves you with a question - was Panamarenko an artist or an inventor?

Well, his works looked technical, but they were more artistic. So, while Panamarenko was interested in the technical complexity of his works, he was first and foremost an artist, or maybe an eccentric inventor led by imagination. Inventors often create useful and handy things, but originally the term "inventor" was used to define somebody with a bright and vivid mind, capable of creating wonderful (yet not necessarily useful...) things.

In many ways Panamarenko perfectly incarnated this figure of inventor as he let his imagination wander ending up creating objects that were "too beautiful to really function" as he used to say. Maybe his flying saucers and spaceships that could not actually fly or his back-pack levitation devices and solar-powered prehistoric birds were not useful, but surely their combination of science and fantasy still show that Panamarenko was a unique artist with an unlimited imagination and a passion for unconventional beauty.

An Artist's Commitment: "Moving in Space without Asking Permission" by Andrea Bowers @ GAM, Milan

Let's continue the thread that started yesterday about exhibitions that will be opening in September in Milan and that you may want to take a note of in case you're going to the fashion week. For something colourful, inspiring and also very political and radical, check out the first solo show in an Italian institution of Andrea Bowers.

Organised by Fondazione Furla and GAM - Galleria d'Arte Moderna, "Moving in Space without Asking Permission" (at GAM from 15th September to 18th December), will focus on the artists' commitment to the struggle for gender equality and women’s emancipation.

The American artist and activist living and working in Los Angeles, combines aesthetic practices and political engagement from a feminist perspective, using a variety of techniques, including drawing, video and neon signs.

Her works investigating gender equality, women's and workers' rights, immigration, and environmentalism, are all characterized by a strong visual impact that allows her to analyse complex topics through an accessible vocabulary.

This doesn't mean that the result is superficial: Bowers' projects are indeed the result of in-depth researches. Her work is a perfect example of how art can convey socially relevant messages through the aesthetic power of its language. In her practice, art and political activism are inextricably linked: her inspirations aren't indeed art movements or famous artists, but equality, the labor movement (and in particular the struggles of women workers for equality), abortion, birth control, gun laws, the fight against racism, transphobia and xenophobia.

Nothing is neutral in Bowers' work: her pieces have indeed got a very strong political meaning and, through them, she wants to change people's minds. Recently, she has also been focusing on ecofeminism, as, in her practice, the violence against Mother Earth is seen as violence against women.

The exhibition "Moving in Space without Asking Permission" uses feminism and in particular the relationship between feminism and bodily autonomy, as the starting point. The artist is also interested in the confrontation with some of today's Italian feminist experiences, in particular the work of the philosopher and activist Alessandra Chiricosta, who studies and teaches the practice of martial arts as a form of bodily self-awareness.

Bowers' neon works like "Fight like a girl" will be included in this event that will be characterized by versatility and will also feature her works integrating colourful printed satin ribbons covered with slogans (will we see one day her ribbons turning into a dress by a famous fashion designer?)

For those who like fashion accessories, look out for "Feminist Fans", an installation featuring colourfully sprayed fans hung on one wall. Yet, in this case, these humble accessories are not just useful tools against your next heatwave, but they are actually handy vehicles to spread ideas and slogans, such as "Trust Women", "It's okay to be angry", "Dead men don't grab pussies", and "Feminists are just women who don't want to be treated like shit".

Hopefully, the exhibition will also feature her photographs of the trans activists Jennicet Gutiérrez (who challenged President Obama at an LGBT event), Johanna Saavedra (an advocate for Latina immigrants), and CeCe McDonald (who served prison time for inflicting fatal wounds in self-defense).

Andrea Bowers' event in Milan is part of the Furla Series project that, since 2017, has launched exhibitions in collaboration with major Italian art institutions, with an all-female program designed to valorize and showcase women's fundamental contribution to contemporary culture.

Image credits for this post

Andrea Bowers
Goddess (Power of the Common Public), 2016
Feathers, metal bracket and ribbons
254 x 129.5 x 30.5 cm
Courtesy of the artist and Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York

Andrea Bowers
Fight Like a Girl, 2021
Cardboard and color changing LED lights, acrylic gel medium
165.1 x 297.2 x 15.2 cm
Courtesy of the artist and Capitain Petzel, Berlin
Photo: Jeff McLane

Andrea Bowers
Feminist Fans (detail), 2018
Courtesy of the artist and kaufmann repetto Milan / New York
Photo: Andrea Rossetti

Andrea Bowers
Sisters Be Strong, 2013
acrylic marker on cardboard
156 x 275 x 5 cm
Courtesy of the artist and kaufmann repetto Milan / New York and Private Collection Italy
Photo: Roberto Marossi

Andrea Bowers
LIVING DEMOCRACY GROWS LIKE A TREE (Quote by Vandana Shiva), 2022
steel, neon lights
165 x 130 x 120 cm
Courtesy of the artist and kaufmann repetto Milan / New York and Private Collection Monaco
Photo: Andrea Rossetti

Discarded & Recontextualized: "Gilded Darkness" by Nari Ward @ The Centro Balneare Romano, Milan

Some of us may be on holiday at the moment, or leaving soon for a break. Others may instead already be busy planning their trips for the fashion weeks in September. If you are among the latter and you may be heading to Milan, take a note of the exhibitions you may want to visit in between runway shows, and include in your list Nari Ward's "Gilded Darkness" at the Centro Balneare Romano - Milanosport (Via Ampère 20; from 12th September to 16th October).

The event, organized by the Nicola Trussardi Foundation and curated by its artistic director Massimiliano Gioni, will extend in the outdoor and indoor spaces of the Centro, and will feature some of Ward's most renowned installations and environmental interventions alongside new works created specifically for the occasion.

Born in St. Andrew, Jamaica, in 1963, at a young age Ward moved with his family to New York where he studied art. In the '90s Ward settled in Harlem and here he was inspired by the abandoned objects in his neighborhood - among the others, children's strollers, shopping carts, umbrellas, shoelaces, carpets, plastic bags and mats, soda bottles and caps, screws, and ropes.  

Detached from the places where they were found and recontextualized, the objects assumed new meanings in his installations and environmental interventions (this definition may be used to describe the objects in the various designated spaces, but may also hint at the fact that Ward's art is sustainable since it usually features recycled materials).

Some of the items Ward found were used for monumental installations such as "Amazing Grace". Produced during his residency in 1993 at the Studio Museum in Harlem, "Amazing Grace" featured more than three hundred abandoned strollers, reconfigured in the form of a ship's hull. The installation was accompanied by the voice of gospel singer and African American activist Mahalia Jackson, singing "Amazing Grace".

This work now assumes a new meaning: it reminds us of people fleeing from their countries for different reasons and in particular evokes images of strollers left at stations on the Ukrainian border after refugees fled from the Russian invasion. "Amazing Grace" will return at the Romano Pool where it will occupy the old locker rooms.

Other installations (Ward's shoelaces series forming words on the walls are particularly fascinating) will analyse the dialogue between cultures, identities at the crossroads between different languages and traditions, and the function of monuments at a time marked by the continual revision of history and the numerous collapses and repeated crises defining these past few years.

The key installation at this event is a site specific intervention, "Emergence Pool" that, occupying the 4,000 square meter pool, will transform it into a gigantic golden expanse made up of thousands of floating thermal blankets.

The location for this exhibition is also linked to other themes analysed by Ward: designed by architect Luigi Secchi during the Fascist period, inaugurated in 1929, and dedicated to the memory of the young Olympic champion Guido Romano, who died at the front during World War I, the pool celebrates the ideals of victory and greatness, war and athleticism, nationalism and imperialism.

These themes will also be explored in Ward's installation featuring a crane with a huge white flag, hinting at nationalism, violence, and defeat. This installation will be accompanied by sounds and musical compositions made in collaboration with various groups and individuals living in Milan to remind visitors of the multiplicity of cultures and languages inhabiting the Italian capital of fashion.

Through his works, instead, Ward leaves behind grand ideals of victory and nationalism and invites visitors to consider stories of everyday heroism, episodes of collective joy, as well as images of defeat and downfall.

In a way, this event it perfectly timed: Italy will hold early political elections on 25th September after a crisis in the government pushed Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi to resign. At the moment, far-right parties lead the Italian polls and surveys, and Ward's interventions, calling for unity, social justice and solidarity and contrasting with the architecture and the values imbued in it, could be the perfect antidote to the rise of a national-conservative right-wing front.

Image credits for this post

1. - 2. Nari Ward, Amazing Grace, 1993. Exhibition views of "Nari Ward: We the People", 2019. New Museum, New York. Photo Maris Hutchinson / EPW Studio

3. Nari Ward, Radiant Opacity, 2022. Exhibition views, Galleria Continua / Les Moulins. Courtesy GALLERIA CONTINUA. Photo Oak Taylor - Smith

4. Nari Ward, Canned Smiles, 2013. Courtesy the artist and Lehmann Maupin, New York, Hong Kong, Seoul and London

5. - 6. Exhibition views of "Nari Ward: We the People", 2019. New Museum, New York. Photo Maris Hutchinson / EPW Studio

7. Nari Ward portrait, 2016. Courtesy Pérez Art Museum Miami. Photo World Red Eye

The Joys of a Visually Rich Ornamental Vocabulary: "Fantastically French! Design and Architecture in 16th - to 18th-Century Prints" @ The Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, Texas

Our eyes are trained on digital images that look visually striking for their bright colours, peculiar patterns or fascinating shapes. Yet, if you retrained your eyes to take in also less immediately striking images, you would discover an entire world of tiny details and inspirations.

There are exhibitions that can help us retraining our eyes, such as "Fantastically French! Design and Architecture in 16th- to 18th-Century Prints", currently on (until 14th August) at the Blanton Museum of Art at The University of Texas, in Austin.

Curated by Holly Borham, Associate Curator of Prints, Drawings and European Art, the event features over 60 prints from Blanton's archive (founded in 1963, the museum holds the largest public collection in Central Texas with more than 21,000 objects), and publications from the Harry Ransom Center Book Collection, including books by French Renaissance architects and prints by leading designers of the Rococo.   

"Fantastically French!" invites visitors to discover the beauty of French prints and engravings and take in the refined arabesques, fantastic creatures, natural elements, animals, or decorative motifs for architectural façades, furnishings and jewelry pieces through drawings taken mainly from Blanton's extensive collection.

From the mid-16th century, these decorative motifs helped establishing France as a center for style and design.

The exhibition opens with early French etchings and engravings from the decorative program for the Palace of Fontainebleau, but spans three centuries of printmaking, allowing to discover ancient decorative motifs combined with fantastical ones, royal portraits and ornamental designs for fountains, chimneys, and even a bird's eye view of the gardens of Versailles by Adam Perelle.

Architecture fans will discover a magnificent profusion of cornices, pedestals, capitals, architraves and columns (check out Pierre Moreau’s imaginary pyramid-shaped mausoleum surrounded by four columns) or juxtapositions of two designs for church façades using elements from classical and Renaissance architecture (see Jean LePautre's etching).

Designs for pulpits, liturgical and home furnishings, decorative panels and balustrades are particularly fascinating for their details.

In some of the engravings on display there is also a profusion of flower garlands, fruit and vegetables, a visually rich ornamental vocabulary at times derived from Italy.

Everything is highly ornamented with a twist of the fantastic and the grotesque (or even the comical and the disturbing…), like in René Boyvin’s engraving "Design for a Fountain Supported by Dolphins", a design for a table fountain decorated with mythological scenes and supported by cherubins, dolphins, and a cornice of snails and tortoises.

Boyvin didn't just include fantastic images in his engravings, but also had a connection with fashion as he did drawings of figures in masquerade costumes and produced jewelry designs.

The former can provide us with some wonderful inspiration: the Fantastical Masked Female Head by the workshop of René Boyvin (after a drawing by Léonard Thiry) included in the exhibition features indeed a wide range of intriguing accessories, in particular a necklace that could be reinvented in a variety of contemporary materials.

Boyvin was also known for his engravings of jewelry that helped changing the way jewelers worked and clients shopped as well. People who wanted to order a piece of jewelry could indeed use the engravings as a catalogue and choose from them the type of rings and links they favoured.

A final note for people who work in the fashion industry: don't dismiss the engravings in this event as something old fashioned and boring as they may provide great inspirations for fashion invitations, especially if they were re-coloured or reinvented with some embroidered elements.

Actually, if you're on holiday and have plenty of time on your hands, you can use the downloadable colouring pages from the exhibition to relax or reinvent the engravings and prints from the museum using your favourite colours and materials.  

Image credits for this post

1 to 3. Installation views of the exhibition "Fantastically French! Design and Architecture in 16th - to 18th-Century Prints". Courtesy of the Blanton Museum of Art at The University of Texas, Austin.

4. Copy after Pierre Milan and René Boyvin, The Nymph of Fontainebleau, after Rosso Fiorentino and Francesco Primaticcio, circa 1560, engraving, 12 3/16 x 19 3/4 in. Blanton Museum of Art, The University of Texas at Austin, Purchase through the generosity of the Still Water Foundation, 1990

5. Adam Perelle, La Salle des Festins, Versailles, published 1704, etching, 8 13/16 x 12 3/16 in. Blanton Museum of Art, The University of Texas at Austin, The Leo Steinberg Collection, 2002

6. Pierre Moreau, Mausoleum, 1730, etching, 5 1/4x 7 11/16 in. Blanton Museum of Art, The University of Texas at Austin, Gift of Julie and Lawrence Salander, 2006

7. Jean LePautre, Two church façades, plate 6 from Italianate Church Façades, 1640, etching, 8 7/8 x 6 1/4in. Blanton Museum of Art, The University of Texas at Austin, The Leo Steinberg Collection, 2002

8. René Boyvin, Design for a Fountain Supported by Dolphins, after Léonard Thiry or Rosso Fiorentino, 1560s, engraving, 5 11/16 x 7 3/16 in. Blanton Museum of Art, The University of Texas at Austin, Archer M. Huntington Museum Fund, 1988

9. Workshop of René Boyvin, Fantastical Masked Female Head, after a drawing by Léonard Thiry (after designs by Rosso Fiorentino?), 1550s, engraving, 6 1/4 x 4 7/16 in. Blanton Museum of Art, The University of Texas at Austin, The Leo Steinberg Collection, 2002

10. Gabriel Huquier, Panel of Ornament with Eight Figures and a Swing [La Voltigeuse], after Jean-Antoine Watteau, circa 1725, etching, 25 3/16 x 181/4in. Blanton Museum of Art, The University of Texas at Austin, Jack S. Blanton Curatorial Fund, 2008

Architectural (and Modular) Vintage Shoes

In yesterday's post we looked at the design of a shoe store, so let's continue the thread, but let's look at architectural shoes instead an in particular at architectural vintage footwear.

The digital collections of the FIT Library's Special Collections and College Archives (SPAC) offer quite a few ideas, among the others some sketches of Jerrold "Jerry" Miller's shoes from the '50s.

The first sketch in this post refers to a tortoiseshell sandal with Turkish toe, contoured strap and gold and black insole lining; the second features instead a white platform, black insole lining and a blue calfskin strap. Both the sandals are similar for their shape and their minimal straps, but the soles are different and also the configuration of the straps. Both look timeless and move from minimalist principles as the designer stripped the shoe of any decorative element in favour of a streamlined and timeless style. 

If, rather than strictly architectural styles, you want to get inspired by interior design and in particular by modular interior design pieces, check out Miller's modular "Saddle Up" ponyskin flat. The peculiarity of this shoe was the fact that it featured an interchangeable element that allowed the wearer to change the saddle for different occasions and times of the day, from the morning to the evening.

The sketches come on Margaret Clark's headed paper: Clark, who worked for I. Miller (a shoe manufacturing firm established in the late 1800's) in 1946 and was a top designer for Bally and Capezio among the others, was the wife of Jerry Miller (grandson of I. Miller's founder). Together, the couple created the Margaret Jerrold, Inc. brand in 1954, producing shoes characterised by high style and fine workmanship. The sketches in this post are part of a collection comprising around 5,000 sketches donated by Jerry Miller to the Fashion Institute of Technology of New York.

The Sci-Fi Laboratory as an Immersive Retail Space: All Design Studio X MTS

In previous posts we often looked at how science can inspire fashion collections. Yet All Design Studio proves with its latest creation that this discipline can also inspire interior design. The architectural studio established in 2016 by architects and designers from China, France and Taiwan, recently created the concept for the 160 square meters MTS shoe store.

Opened at the beginning of July and located on the third floor of Dong'an Luxemporium, in Beijing, the space features six large cylindrical installations containing pairs of sneakers at the entrance.

In the middle of the shop there is another cylinder with a pair of shoes surrounded by plants, connected to other displays via tubes symbolically "feeding" the sneakers in the shop.

This cylinder is indeed surrounded by incubator-like shelves of sneakers displayed on a grass-like green material. In a way, it is as if the shoes were the product of a biological process that went through three stages - creation, artificial incubation and growth.

The effect with the grey metal surfaces alternating with acid green shades, is suspended between a laboratory and a sci-fi world. The cylindrical boxes were inspired by the petri dish (used in microbiology for the cultivation of microorganisms and bacteria), but the way the sneakers are displayed on a green bed evokes the configuration of Michel Blazy's installations featuring several pairs of trainers used as pots for plants on display on special shelves bathed in hydroponic lights.

All Design Studio is interested in creating innovative, yet functional retail designs that prove inspiring for consumers and resonate with younger generations through codes and images they can relate to. In this case, they combined fashion with science to hint at sneaker symbiosis.

The hope of the design studio is to create desirable environments for consumers who lost their passion for shopping in brick and mortar spaces when the pandemic hit and started favouring digital shopping.

As the Covid-19 pandemic eases (but there may be a new pandemic arriving – monkeypox…), consumers have started looking for more adventurous and exciting shopping experiences capable of establishing an emotional bond with them and All Design Studio has so far provided surreal, intriguing and original concept to attract consumers.

This is not the first time All Design Studio turns to sci-fi environments: they also designed a spaceship-like internal space for luxury boutique Luxēmporium in Chengdu, China, with mysterious tunnels, a 3D-printed sculptural art installation and a futuristic structure representing a time machine.

And the MTS store may be a sci-fi fantasy in a commercial shopping mall, there are actually young designers experimenting with growing sneakers. So, this may not be just an alternative shopping reality for young consumers, but a vision of a (distant for now, yet terrifically intriguing) future.

Mesmerised by Meteorites

Looking for an unusual inspiration for a project? Turn to meteorites. Pallasite meteorites are particularly intriguing as they are made of minerals and metal, and they often show their internal and external structures. So on the mantle and in the core structure you can usually see a pattern of the nickel-iron alloys broken by amber-hued or olive-green olivine (a form of magnesium-iron silicate) and peridot crystals suspended in the matrix. Olivine can appear as a single crystal or a cluster or can create a pattern of veins through solid metal. When the light shines through these meteors, the olivine parts creates quite beautiful effects.

Pallasites represent less than 0.2% of all known meteorites and some scientists believe they formed in melted asteroids in a similar way to iron meteorites, where dense iron metal sinks toward the centre to form an iron core; other scientists think that there are very few olivine-rich meteorites in the asteroid belt, and too many pallasite meteorites for them all to have come from a core-mantle boundary. So, according to their theory, these types of formations may have been formed by impact melting.

Among the most famous there are the Seymchan and the Imilac meteorites. Seymchan meteorites originate from an asteroid that broke apart during early solar system history. 

Parts of it arrived on Earth thousands of years ago - specimens of the Seymchan meteorite were first discovered in 1967 in the settlement of Seymchan in Siberia's Magadan District. Some of them went through different stages of cutting and were transformed in polished spheres, a trick that allows to admire the internal crystalline structure (some specimen also feature graphite inclusions).

The Imilac meteorite formed in the asteroid belt, and also originated from the mantle-core boundary of an asteroid that broke apart and it was recovered from the Atacama Desert atop the Andes, the highest desert on Earth.

Specimen of these meteorites can often be spotted at auctions: at the moment Sotheby's "Meteorites - Select Specimens from the Moon, Mars, Vesta and More" (27th July) offers a beautiful selection of Seymchan and Imilac meteorites, and it is also possible to admire them at Sotheby's New York (1334 York Avenue, till the day of the auction).

So, if by any chance you are in New York, go and explore meteorites, and note the duality in the mantle and core structure of pallasites. This duality may indeed inspire you unusual effects in any design project.

Besides, don't forget to look at other special specimens like the Seymchan meteorite consisting entirely of the asteroid's metallic core and characterised by the metallic latticework called "Widmanstätten Pattern" (the result of a slow cooling rate that provided sufficient time - millions of years - for two metallic alloys to orient into their crystalline habit).

Sculpted by French artisan, mathematician and engineer Guy Le Berre (who also helped writing the code for the software that directed the complex machinery which carved this meteorite), this specimen features a robust octahedral crystalline matrix associated with Seymchan meteorites and a sculpted surface comprising 720 triangular faces.