Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty

Alexander McQueen - Dress from the VOSS collection
- seen here

“You’ve got to know the rules to break them. That’s what I’m here for, to demolish the rules but to keep the tradition.” Alexander McQueen

I wish I could pop across the pond to see this exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty opened today and is a major retrospective of McQueen's collections from his Postgraduate show at Central St Martin's in 1992 to the final catwalk show after his death in 2010. 

The website for the show is very thorough and has lots of videos and resources, really worth getting lost in for a while!

Stéphane Rolland

Whilst at the V&A we were scooped up in an event that we hadn't planned to visit, but turned out to be an exciting addition to the day. Fashion in Motion is a series of live catwalk events at the museum, the featured designer at today's event was Parisian, Stéphane Rolland and the event took place in The Raphael Gallery. The couture dresses we saw were incredibly beautiful; sculptural, architectural - but exquisitely elegant and feminine.

The gallery attendants were all wearing little hats made especially for the museum - I think by milliner Steve Jones (please correct me if anyone knows differently!).

Jayne Pierson

We have a wonderful fashion designer working from a studio here in Carmarthenshire, Jayne Pierson has been getting some exciting coverage in prestige magazines such as Vogue Italia and AnOther recently, not to mention Blown Magazine the baby of our own Ric Bower - Carmarthenshire based photographer.

Jayne Pierson: design - Alice Gibb: Model - Donald Christie: Photographer - seen here

Alexander McQueen

Alexander McQueen - seen here

Alexander McQueen: Iconic Moments from Jean Hürxkens on Vimeo.

Alexander McQueen design - seen here

R.I.P Alexander McQueen 1969 - 2010.

Article here

SHOWstudio: Fashion Revolution

On Sunday morning I visited SHOWstudio: Fashion Revolution at Somerset House. I've had a page on SHOWstudio.com for a few years now and I really enjoy its energy and vibrancy. Headed up by legendary fashion photographer, Nick Knight, SHOWstudio "...has pioneered the most imaginative and exciting forms of fashion for the Internet. These have both informed and inspired the current fashion revolution. In championing the new medium of fashion film in particular, SHOWstudio.com has harnessed the potential of new technology and the Web to completely reinvent the fashion image and the way we experience it."

By democratising the processes of fashion and opening the forum to all comers, Nick Knight has challenged the notions of exclusivity in the fashion world. In utilising digital platforms, embracing and experimenting with the new technologies, the business of fashion photography has expanded to incorporate performance, film, music, art - SHOWstudio has pioneered a 'richer landscape' for the fashion universe.

Ma Ke

Image seen here

Thank you to Mady Dooijes on her blog Abundance for posting about Chinese fashion designer, Ma Ke and her Wu Yong collection. A hybrid between art and fashion, these extrodinary sculptural garments embrace ideas around sustainability and challenge notions of value, especially in the fashion industry; Wu Yong translates as 'useless'. Ma Ke sees her garments as "things which are the bearers of values for the future."

Here is a You Tube piece about her work at the V & A Fashion in Motion showcase in 2008.

The Wu Yong concept has expanded to a set of truely beautiful photographs by Zhou Mi.

Images by Zhou Mi seen here

J. Morgan Puett and Mildred's Lane

Seen here

Hold the front page! I've just been finding out about an American artist, J. Morgan Puett. I am in a little funk of excitement. I had not heard of her before and now I don't know why! Her vision is singularly focused and currently extremely pertinent. This passage from her artists' statement is extraordinary and inspiring to me:

"My career and trajectory as an artist/cultural worker was shaped and determined very early. In 1984 I was attempting to research detailed aspects of working people's clothing from 1900-1930 in the costume archives of the Metropolitan Museum, and I was told that no specimens of these clothes survived. The actual reason for this was a shock to me—the clothes had been worn to dust, altered, patched, turned into quilts, chair backs, and curtains, passed down, and eventually used as rags. It was the fact that everything that was part of early vernacular culture was constantly being re-used, re-shaped, and re-worked—in a continuous act of invention that permanently shaped my practice. Categories shifted—clothing became furniture became architecture and vice versa—this changed my thinking about material culture and the inherent fluid nature of things. I realized that these histories and practices needed to not only be preserved and represented in museums but also activated in contemporary public life. At this moment I realized that I had to find a way to reconstruct historical practices and networks - making products and systems that could activate all the categories of everyday life. Art alone, I found, is singularly lacking in the tools to do this. I strategically came to situate myself at the nexus of art,architecture and principally in the world of fashion".

Seen here

Seen here

In the last 10 years, J. Morgan Puett has been working with her ex-partner to establish an artists' colony at her home in Noth East Pennsylvania. Called Mildred's Lane after the former occupant of the 96 acre farmstead, Mildred Miller. The project provides a space where artists, interns and other folk can come to 'locate their own creativity' in this living, breathing, vernacular installation.

Seen here

Here's a lovely article from 2008 about the artist and Mildred's Lane.

Here's a link to the the artist's gallery, Alexander Grey Associates.

Émilie Faïf

Image seen here

Émilie Faïf is a French artist - a set designer. She works with Paris based fashion designer Isabel Marant making installations and interventions for spaces connected with Marant's collections. This piece and the others in this collection are such an interesting idea; landscape images printed on the inside of the garment. It plays with the function of clothing, especially high end designed clothing. The image can only be seen when the piece is off the body and is made to be viewed when hung from a coat hanger. It turns the piece instantly into an art object in a really simple and direct way. The nature of the image, and especially it's painterly quality underlines the idea. There's also the lovely idea of keeping a secret whilst wearing the clothes; it's a very seductive notion. I love the thought of wearing a landscape on the inside, it's a bit like dreaming. It blurs the boundaries of the real and imagined.

Outside of the conceptual, they are just very beautiful, haunting, dream-like objects. Simple and multi layered at the same time. Clever!

Image seen here

Manon Gignoux

Manon Gignoux - Photo: Eric Morin for Interiors magazine

I was flipping through some back issues of Interiors magazine the other day and I came across an article I had book-marked about French artist/stylist Manon Gignoux. I remember being really drawn to the images at the time (February 2008).

Recently, on a trip to London we visited Egg, the exceptionally lovely shop in Kinnerton Street, Belgravia (there are now two shops opposite each other). The lovely lady in the shop let us have a look in the store room when we told her we were from a contemporary craft gallery, amongst the linen and cottons there were fabulous ceramics from Rupert Spira and others - but also some gorgeous textile necklaces and intriguing little domestic objects 'dressed' in fabric. Some things send a frisson of electricity through you when you see them, they sing against your nerve endings. I have just twigged that this was Manon Gignoux's work left from an exhibition she had at the shop. I wish I had been able to see it!

This is how she describes her practice: "I create fabric sculptures, dressed objects, clothes and accessories – each piece is unique. My work lies between art and fashion".


Manon Gignoux - Photo: Eric Morin for Interiors magazine