You cannot deconstruct unless you know how to construct. - Alexander McQueen

archive for the 'News' department

Stella Jean’s Migratory Patterns

Friday, October 16th, 2015

For the past couple of weeks I’ve been in the Southwest, hiding out among the saguaros and pretending that the Tethered Aerostat Radar System (TARS) blimp suspended over the Huachuca Mountains isn’t the Homeland Security’s Eye of Sauron trained on those with nothing but hope trying to find their way to a better life, but a giant fish giving me a coy, silvery wink from his sky aquarium. This has apparently fine-tuned my tastes such that Stella Jean’s Spring 2016 show left me with more than just a passing impression, as opposed to most other Fashion Month collections.

It turns out that Jean’s show is doing double-duty as both a fiesta for my eyeballs and a political statement (I’d like to think that the safety glasses are a political, rather than fashion statement). Jean herself being of Italian-Haitian descent, the collection - as worn by a multiracial cast - comments on Italy’s migrant identity with a multicultural mix of prints and variations on South American traditional dress. As national identity and immigration are very hot topics both here and abroad, the collection is timely. And the fifties pin-up hair is a nice touch. Some favorite looks:

stella jean 1.jpg


stella jean 2.jpg

stella jean 3.jpg

stella jean 4.jpg

Eliot Sumner’s “Dead Arms & Dead Legs”

Tuesday, May 19th, 2015

A new single debuted from Eliot Sumner, formerly known as I Blame Coco, mercifully stripped of unnecessary pop fussiness that drowns out this voice:

Vanessa Emirian’s Circulate

Monday, March 23rd, 2015

Always a sucker for the sculptural, I was enchanted by Vanessa Emirian’s Circulate collection shown as part of the National Graduate Showcase at VAMFF 2015 in Melbourne last week.

vanessa emirian 1.jpg
A look from Vanessa Emirian’s Circulate collection. The wonderful photos above and below are by Ramen Spoonz.

vanessa_emirian_2.png

Emirian tells Hope Street Magazine that she was influenced by polka-dotted legend Yayoi Kusama. I remember clearly that it was the Kusama issue of So-En that got me hooked on the magazine.

. yayoi kusama.jpg
Yayoi Kusama demonstrating to the breathless crowd how she subdues a wild polka dot.

yayoi kusama so-en may 2004.jpg
Yayoi Kusama in So-En Magazine, May 2004.

Lady in Concrete

Wednesday, March 11th, 2015

I had just read about the newly restored Hollyhock House when I did my afternoon gambol to style.com and read Tim Blanks mention it in his write-up on Rick Owens’ Fall 2015 collection. Am I reading the Internet’s mind, or is it reading mine? Or are we ONE???


rick owens f2015 2.jpg

Rick Owens Fall 2015

10314722-0.jpg
Frank Lloyd Wright’s Mayan Revival Hollyhock House in L.A.

On to other Fall 2015 memory game matches. So as soon as I saw Gareth Pugh’s show-closing Britannia…

gareth pugh f2015.jpg

…my mind went here:

britannia.jpg
Kevin O’Neill’s Britannia in latex from The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Century: 2009

I would not have questioned it if this look from Marko Mitanovski’s latest was buried deep within Charles Fréger’s Wilder Mann photo stream:

marko mitanovski detail.jpg
Marko Mitanovski Fall 2015, detail.

Wilder Mann, photos by Charles Fréger:


wilder mann 3.jpg


wilder mann 1.jpg


wilder mann 2.jpg


wilder mann 4.jpg

Please, Someone, Snicker at Le Monde in My Place

Thursday, February 5th, 2015

I would do it myself, but Jonah Kinigstein’s exhibit at the Society of Illustrators is a) in New York, and b) on for two more days (ending on February 7th).

www_fantagraphics_com_images_stories_previews_fu_empnc-preview_pdf.png

The show is entitled “The Emperor’s New Clothes: The Tower of Babel in the ‘Art’ World”, after the forthcoming book on Fantagraphic’s FU Press imprint, which collects some of Kinigstein’s cartoons that lampoon the modern art world. I’ve been told by Fantagraphics that it’ll be a very limited run and likely be available in a month or so.

A good and short reading companion to the exhibit - if you can get there in time to see it thanks to this very short notice - would be Tom Wolfe’s The Painted Word, an essay which elaborates on one of Kinigstein’s themes: the uselessness of modern art without the accompanying narrative or theory from critics and curators so that you, the plebe, can “get it”.

Via The Epoch Times

Visions in Nude and Corsages Close to the Heart

Friday, April 11th, 2014

Last week during São Paulo Fashion Week, “something magical happened” in designer Paula Raia’s new house. Paola de Orleans e Bragança of style.com says that Raia’s S/S 2015 collection

nailed something that Brazil, and anyone interested in Brazil, has been craving for years: a precise, elegant, non-clichéd representation of the Brazilian essence translated into fashion. Using sisal, string, traditional embroideries, and tones that evoke wood, dirt, and the origin of Brazil’s name: the red tones of the earth that led to the association with embers (“brass” in Portuguese).

In his summing up of SPFW, Jorge Grimberg, also of style.com, similarly praises Raia’s presentation as, “…unquestionably one of the strongest of the season, with a vision on nude and natural hues mixed in different textures. The show provided a new, authentic, long-awaited Brazilian aesthetic, a mix of nature, architecture, and culture that just felt right.”

paula raia verao 2015 1.jpg
Paula Raia S/S 2015

paula raia verao 2015 6.jpg
Paula Raia S/S 2015

paula raia verao 2015 5.jpg
Paula Raia S/S 2015

paula raia verao 2015 2.jpg
Paula Raia S/S 2015

paula raia verao 2015 detail 2.jpg
Paula Raia S/S 2015, detail

paula raia verao 2015 detail 1.jpg
Paula Raia S/S 2015, detail

Again, I generally don’t give menswear collections a second glance, but then there’s Mai-Gidah by Alec Ali Abdulrahim. The creative and emotional stamp on his latest collection, “In loving memories”, refuses to be ignored. According to his conversation with Branko Popović, the collection was, ‘…a means of processing the past’.

mai-gidah 4.jpg
Mai-Gidah A/W 14/15

mai-gidah 31.jpg
Mai-Gidah A/W 14/15

mai-gidah 21.jpg
Mai-Gidah A/W 14/15

mai-gidah 51.jpg
Mai-Gidah A/W 14/15

What a talented fellow.

Sebastian Masuda’s Colorful Rebellion

Thursday, February 27th, 2014

Not much of a heads-up, but kawaii evangelist Sebastian Masuda’s exhibit, “Colorful Rebellion” opens tonight at Kianga Ellis Projects in NYC and runs until March 29th. According to the gallery, “From March 6 - 9, 2014, Masuda-san’s alter ego and female self will inhabit the gallery during open hours”.

sebastian masuda colorful rebellion.jpg
Sebastian Masuda and his “kawaii anarchy”.

Masuda designed the set for my guilty pleasure. Oops, couldn’t resist a period there. By guilty pleasure I mean NHK’s Kawaii International (yay for Tokyo Photo Book!), co-hosted by extraordinary local gal, Misha Janette.

intro kawaii international.png
Still from Kawaii International’s intro. Set by the show’s art director, Sebastian Masuda.

And while we’re on the subject of kawaii, these Manish Arora high tops are awesome:

manish arora f2014.jpg
Manish Arora, Fall 2014.

Fabrice Monteiro’s Signares

Thursday, August 15th, 2013

On show at Seattle’s M.I.A Gallery through August 30th is Signares and Hereros, portraits shot by Fabrice Monteiro and Jim Naughten. While Naughten’s photos might be more recognizable, Monteiro’s are no less enchanting. The subjects of the model-turned-photographer’s first exhibit in the U.S. are descendants of the signares of Senegal’s Petite Côte, south of Dakar (where he lives and works). On what a signare is, exactly, the gallery’s site says, “These women of power from Senegal were the official wives of European colonizers…Celebrated for their beauty and business mind, they played an important role in the socio-economic development of Senegal.” And so this heritage is communicated through dress:

signares 1.jpg

signares 6.jpg

signares 3.jpg

signares 4.jpg

signares 21.jpg

signares 8.jpg

signares 7.jpg

Unrelated work from Monteiro below. I can’t resist, they’re so good:

untitled under fashion by fabrice monteiro.jpg
Untitled

croquemitaine.jpg
“Croquemitaine”

And The Truth Sleeps

Wednesday, April 17th, 2013

Below is Morrissey’s excellent open letter on True To You regarding the media coverage of Thatcher’s death. I briefly considered chiseling paragraphs from the monolithic text block, but then I figured it’s an apt symbol of the Thatcher love - much like our Reagan love - being a bit difficult to digest:

Surely how I feel is not nothing?

by Morrissey, 15 april 2013

I have listened and I have seen a lack of truth that we had dared not believe existed in modern Britain. Margaret Thatcher has left the order of the world, and she is not to blame for the reports of her own death - reports so dangerously biased and full of intolerant menace that we now wonder how we can possibly believe anything that has ever been recorded in British history books. The coverage by the British media of Thatcher’s death has been exclusively absorbed in Thatcher’s canonization to such a censorial degree that we suddenly see the modern British establishment as an uncivilized entity of delusion, giving the cold shoulder to truth, and offering indescribable disgust to anyone unimpressed by Thatcher. Even to contest Thatcher’s worth is termed “anarchist”, and this source of insanity - intolerant of debate, is spearheaded by the BBC reporting not on how things actually are on British streets, but on how they would prefer things to be. For those of us who survived despite Thatcherism, and who recall Thatcher as a living hell, The Daily Mail and The Guardian have a steadfast message for us: You are nothing. Our thoughts are further burdened by the taunting extravagance of Thatcher’s funeral; the ceremonial lavish, the military salute, stripping Thatcher’s victims of everything, and rubbing salt in wounds with teasing relish. It is all happening against us. In thought, we have killed Thatcher off a million times, but now that we have the reality of her death, the Metropolitan Police have set up new laws against us, and within paragraphs of law, we are not allowed to register our feelings so that anyone might overhear them. Echoes of Libya? Echoes of any Middle Eastern patch whose troubles are thought too uncivilized for a democratic England where chivalrous respect is afforded to “freedom”, and where we are all servile to “democracy.” It is, of course, The Big Lie. The fact that there will be such an enormous police presence at Thatcher’s funeral is evidence that her name is synonymous with trouble - a trouble she brought on herself. No one wished for it, or brought it to her, yet she created her subtle form of anarchy nonetheless. BBC News will scantily report on anti-Thatcher demonstrations as if those taking part aren’t real people. Lordly scorn is shown towards North Korea and Syria, and any distant country ruled by tyrannical means, yet the British government employs similar dictatorship tactics in order to protect their own arrogant interests. There will be no search for true wisdom this week, as the BBC gleefully report how Ding Dong the witch is dead “failed to reach number 1″, and they repeat the word “failed” four times within the brief report, and a shivering sovereign darkness clouds England - such identifications known only in China. There will be no report as to how “the British people have succeeded in downloading Ding dong the witch is dead to number 2″, and we are engulfed in Third Reich maneuvers as BBC Radio assume the role of sensible adult, finger-wagging at that naughty public who must not be allowed to hear the song that they have elected to number 2. By banning Ding dong the witch is dead (and only allowing four seconds of a song is, in fact, a ban) the BBC are effectively admitting that the witch in question can only possibly be Margaret Thatcher (and not Margaret Hamilton), even though Thatcher isn’t mentioned in the song, which is in fact a harmless, children’s song written over 70 years ago. Whilst the BBC tut-tut-tutted a polite disapproval at the Russian government for sending a “feminist punk” band to prison for recording an anti-government song, they engage in identical intolerance against Ding dong the witch is dead without a second’s hesitation. Thatcher’s funeral will be paid for by the public - who have not been asked if they object to paying, yet the public will be barred from attending. In their place, the cast are symbols of withering - as old as their prejudices, adroit at hiding Thatcher’s disasters. Ancestry and posterity, trimmed with pageantry, will block out anyone with a gripe. David Cameron will cling to Thatcher as she clung to the Malvinas, each in their last-ditch efforts to survive obscurity. Cameron achieves his own conclusions without any regard for the appalling social record of The Thatcher Destroyer - the protestors outside are simply not being British, or, even worse, are probably from Liverpool. When Cameron talks he is simply speaking his part, but he is adamant that the scorn Thatcher poured onto others should not be returned to her. Her mourning family must have considerations that were never shown to the families of the Hillsborough victims, and although Thatcher willingly played her part in the Hillsborough cover-up, let’s not go into all that now. Instead we’re asked to show respect for a Prime Minister whose own Cabinet were her rivals. Thatcher’s death gives added height to David Cameron (a Prime Minister who wasn’t actually voted in by the British people, yet there he is – reminding us all of our manners), and he does not understand how the best reason for doing something is because there’s nothing in it for you. The words of Cameron are assumed to have weight, yet his personal gain is the only reason why he speaks those words. Cameron tells us that the British people loved Thatcher, but we are all aware that Sunningdale and Chelsea are his Britain; he does not mean the people of Salford or Stockton-on-Tees, who are, in any case, somewhere north of Lord’s Cricket Ground. Can the BBC possibly interview someone with no careerist gain attached to their dribble? No. On the day that nine British citizens are arrested in Trafalgar Square for voicing their objections to the Baroness, the BBC News instead offer their opening platform to Carol Thatcher, a dumped non-star of I’m a celebrity get me out of here, and to Sir Mark Thatcher (Sir!), unseen since the disgrace of his involvement in selling arms to countries at odds with Britain (magically, he avoided a 15-year prison term and was financially bailed out by his mother - her moral conscience nowhere in sight as Sir Mark patriotically took his 64 million and fled to Gibraltar having been refused entry to Switzerland and Monaco. What kind of mother raised such a son?) Both Mark and Carol get the BBC spotlight because they mourn their mother’s death, whilst those honest civilians who mourn Thatcher’s life are shunted out of view. This is how we see Syrian TV operate, and this is most certainly NOT a week when David Cameron will advise: “hug a hoodie.” Whilst the quite astonishing social phenomenon of Ding Dong the witch is dead is ignored by the television news, instead we are shown an eight-minute clip of Psy, a funny little South Korean singer who is making all British newsreaders laugh with his funny little new video. Today, news items from South Korea, Belgium and China get precedence over homeland news of anti-Thatcher protests in Trafalgar Square, and the meaningless banality of Modern Media Britain casts a shameful shadow. Repeated and repeated, words strengthen. The truth sleeps as the heartlessness of Thatcher is re-written as a strength, for it was not exclusively because Thatcher destroyed the miners or murdered the boys of The Belgrano that we feel rage, but it was the lip-smacking relish with which she did both, and with which she sent armies of police to batter anyone who opposed her view. Gaddafi did the same thing in the same way. Thatcher could never show sympathy, or empathy, or understanding to those from whom David Cameron is now demanding a show of civil respect for a woman who, like Myra Hindley, proved to all of us that the female could be just as cruel as the male. By 1990 Thatcher was the gift that not even her own Cabinet wanted, and she was tufted out of office. How could such a catastrophic end warrant a statue in Trafalgar Square? Revenge was the vital juice of every move made by Thatcher, and her results produced the most dis-United Kingdom ever seen in history. Although Thatcher was never flesh, her demeanor took on an incurably demented sadness, and her broadcasting tones registered madness … as Britain burned. From all of this we see, in this April week of 2013, that modern media reporting in Britain is a disturbing fog of taboos and prejudices, reviving the divisions that Thatcher hatched, whilst hiding her horrors. Even in death, Thatcher remains ‘the enemy within.’
And the truth sleeps.

The Serbians

Wednesday, February 27th, 2013

Super sweet shout out from Branko Popović to Ana Ljubinković, Ivana Pilja and George Styler for their inclusion in the International Fashion Showcase during London Fashion Week 2013.

international fashion showcase london serbia.jpg
Looks by Serbian designers (from left to right) Ana Ljubinković, Ivana Pilja and George Styler. Backdrop art by BECHA, who collaborated with Ljubinković for the tenth issue of FAAR Magazine.

In an effort to learn more about the designers, I came across these wonderful video portraits from THE LOVESTREET:

I love Styler’s portrait for its experimental film vibe:

Particularly impressive is Ljubinković, who helped take over an abandoned section of downtown Belgrade to co-found the Belgrade Design District:

Representing Serbia in London, Pilja told Fashionela she hopes that, “…Ana, George and I will open the doors to creative people from our country, with the message that originality always finds its way”. No doubt it will.