Category: 1st class salad

Walter Van Beirendonck’s Gentlemen

The truth is we’re already preparing for the Fall. Bye bye sun and wonderful summer days, I never get enough of you! Anyway, I’ve searched for a Fall collection which is colored enough to preserve the summer in our souls. .. something special and warm like Walter Van Beirendonck.

Van Beirendonk may not be the  most popular designer of our times, but, definitely, he has a smart, spirited and funny approach to Men’s fashion. Remember the WonderFur project, the “Kiss the future” slogan, the huge headphones collection? With every new collection, the Belgian designer plays on a new theme – he knows that creativity matters and always gives it a twist. For the Fall 2011/12 Men Collection he showed out something more “classic”, very “wearable” and literally elegant. Mixing the tribal spirit with the western elegance, he dressed up some African models after he made a casting in the street.  The looks remind me particularly of those Afro- dandies portrayed in Daniele Tamagni’ s book- “Gentlemen of Bacongo“. Van Beirendonck’s gentlemen from the catwalk or the snobbish gentlemen from Tamangni’s book, both of them show the same wonderful features- genuine color, creativity and a great enthusiasm. And I love the fashion enthusiasts!


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Make It Hard

Have you ever questioned yourself about clothes in the world circuit, or textile metamorphosis in our everyday life? I always wonder about these, and then, looking over designer clothes, I’m swinging between delight and disgust.

As I’ve already talked in a former post about Tohoku – destruction and rebirth of the object through Art, now I have the opportunity to point out the reverse . Because for Helmut Lang, the famous Austrian-born designer,  25 years of collections and fashion pieces can be destroyed just-like-that, and turned into something new – sculptures.

A leading figure of 90’s minimalism, Helmut Lang has left a lasting mark on the industry. Following his brand’s acquisition by the Prada Group six years ago, Lang relocated to a Long Island studio to focus on his artistic career. After his official retiring from fashion in 2005, Helmut Lang isn’t a retired at all. Thus, he comes with a solo art exhibition at East Hampton’s Fireplace Project, and be sure he makes it hard.

Having already donated thousands of items from his vast archive to the crème de la crème of fashion and design museums worldwide, the designer-turned-artist has shredded his remaining 6,000 garments to use as raw material for making a series of sculptures. About a dozen stalactitelike pieces are to go on display from July 22 at The Fireplace Project, a gallery in East Hampton, N.Y., in a solo exhibition titled “Make it Hard.” According to writer and creative director Neville Wakefield, who is presenting the exhibition, Lang’s floor-to-ceiling columnar forms — made of scraps of fabrics, fur, feathers, leather, plastic, hair and metal from more than 25 years of fashion collections — erase the past and highlight “the transience of our creative endeavors.” The expo runs through Aug. 8.

 

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Late Summer In Bloom

Despite our everyday fashionable black & whites, the nudes & pastels, the hot & fluo colors, I think we also need some real colors, some joy and fantasy in our summer wardrobe. It’s just another wonderful way to enjoy these late summer days.
So make it bright with prints, flowers, accessories and wonderful colors, no matter if you build a wardrobe of elegant dresses from Marc Jacobs, Givenchy and Mary Katrantzou (like those featured in Vogue USA, August issue), or you just put together some colorful juicy dresses (with a gipsy touch) from some local no name designers.

Late Bloomers – editorial  in Vogue USA, August issue / photographer – Steven Klein/ model – Raquel Zimmerman/ images via fashiongonerogue

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Iris Van Herpen Couture

A few days ago, the Haute Couture Fashion Show, Fall/Winter 2012, was held in Paris. It was sparkling and this time, a little bit different. Apart from the traditional couturiers showing in Paris, this time, they added two new designers to the couture calendar: the Italian Giambattista Valli and the Dutch designer Iris van Herpen.

The haute couture moment is usually dedicated to the fashion elites, designers that are able to push further the boundaries of fashion, in terms of style and hard labour on and around the dress. But couture, apart from the few clients around the world (who really afford it), also supposed to be la creme de la creme of the fashion dream. Something special and something really avantgarde, something not necessary linked to our everyday outfits, but something to challenge our ordinary view on clothes. At this point, I think Iris van Herpen is the right designer to keep an eye on.

Her debut collection on the couture fashion scene was not only popular and  hysterically acclaimed, but could be also regarded as a symbolic shift of perspective in the fashion world. It seems that the traditional couture establishment finally starts to embrace something New. In Herpen’s terms, this means futurism, new materials and new fashion techniques, as rapid prototyping, the use of plastic and rubber –  in order to achieve a brand new poetry of costume.  That’s more challenging than draping and cutting boring fabrics on the vintage tailor dummy, huh?

 

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Excess all areas

Matthew Stone (an artist and a shaman) is probably best known for his “painfully beautiful photographic nudes”. Anyway, he has wonderful collaborations with avantgarde fashion magazines… I loved The Creator of Devotion in Vogue Hommes Japan, and I love this new editorial in i-D Magazine (#313, The Hedonist Issue).

I mean, Matthew Stone photography + Matthew Josephs styling = perfection

Excess all areas
i-D Summer 2011
Photography – Matthew Stone
Styling – Matthew Josephs
Set – David White
Make Up – Isamaya Ffrench
Models – Alek Wek @ Storm / Daniel Bamdad @ Elite Milano/ Korrel Kennedy and Theio Maddix @ Elite London

 

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Westwood

Vivienne Westwood – she’s already Iconic. Who on earth doesn’t know her, who doesn’t love her and who can resist her charm & fascinating world?

I was impressed, one more time, reading an interview with Vivienne Westwood (at work), published by Dazed Digital:

“The less fabric the better, I think, too many and the possible permutations become endless as the ideas gather. And I like to ‘cook’ with basic ingredients.”

“I took a very conservative man’s tailoring fabric (I love conservative fabrics – they have so many ideas to play with), a fresco in grey chalk stripe, and made a suit comprising a jacket from two years back and a favourite skirt – the ‘alien’ skirt – World’s End customers will know this skirt.”

Westwood talks about her Autumn/ Winter 2011 Collection and about how she created “The World Wide Woman”. She’s so modest and sincere; she’s a dreamer, but she has a good sense of reality, she’s a real designer… read full interview in Dazed.

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