Have you ever felt cornered? Physically cornered in a confined space or metaphorically pressured without enough options to address a problem or make a decision? Cornered by anxieties, by fears; cornered by a mental paralysis or by depression? Or by indecision, maybe, and therefore unable to find a solution to something and feeling helpless or vulnerable? Possibly. Probably. Yet, sometimes, it is in that limited space, claustrophobic and reduced that you can find an inspiration.
Photographer Irving Penn made of the cornered perspective a way to experience the soul of the people he portrayed. Quite often he stripped his subjects of their selves and posed them against bare walls and in corners. The strategy of confining them in a corner allowed him to focus on them and on their pose.
"Cornering the subjects like this had the effect of keeping them from wandering off the set - mentally, that is. The corner acts for them as a sort of 'human reflector'," he explained.
The portrayed personalities - all of them daring creating minds and talents - posed in an abstract and artificial space that was also symbolical: the images were taken at the end of the '40s, a time of changes, of new beginnings.
So Penn filled one corner with a New York Ballet society quartet that included four principals, Corrado Cagli, Vittorio Rieti, Tanaquil Le Clercq and director Georges Balanchine, posing like a sculptural group, with Le Clercq standing looking like a muse in a simple yet perfectly draped tunic and with the three men sitting on the ground at her feet, all dressed in formal suits.
English playwright, composer, director and actor Noël Coward posed with apprehension, the corner encasing his figure, almost trapping his shoulders; Marlene Dietrich, looked defiant and empowered, her hands casually resting around the belt of her skirt, almost adopting a more masculine pose (imagine a man with his thumbs into the belt hoops).
Charles James was pictured languidly lying on the floor and resting on one elbow with one of his evening gowns on a dummy standing next to him, in the double role of creator of the dress, but also of a devout worshipper of high fashion.
Wallis Simpson, the duchess of Windsor, wearing a black ensembled cinched at the waist by a bustier belt, impressed Penn as "wearing history as coolly as she wears her impeccable clothes", while Igor Stravinsky assumed a listening attitude "when he was asked to imagine that there was a mouse across the room."
Even though restrained by the cornered perspective, Penn's subjects still managed to express their feelings and reveal viewers something about them.
So, if you're looking for an idea for a fashion collection, try experiencing with the cornered perspective; try to feel trapped in a limited space, physically and metaphorically; try to have a limited number of options and materials that restrict your choices, using this confined space to avoid distractions and achieve maximum focus on your designs.
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