5 times when art and fashion meant

1. Takashi Murakami x Louis Vuitton x MOCA Los Angeles

Amidst the millions of anime eyes and smiling flowers of Tokyo-born pop-artist Takashi Murakami's 2007 exhibition "Superflat," was the world's most indulgent museum shop. Monographs, posters, and key chains were reserved for MOCA's actual in-house store, a Louis Vuitton pop-up establishment with thousand-dollar totes. The monogrammed merchandise featured familiar characters and motifs of Murakami's and was specially designed for the in-situ boutique. The gesture was an unprecedented one for any American art museum, and in an interview at the opening of the exhibition, supermodel Linda Evangelista was asked by a reporter, "What do you think of this synergy of art and fashion?" Her response, "Well, it certainly makes fashion more interesting." The collaboration that began in 2003 as multicolored L's and V's had evolved into so much more. The cultural titans of 'high art' and 'high fashion' collided, and found their clash to be mutually beneficial; although it seems that there has yet to be as confident a move since.

2.  Daniel Buren x Louis Vuitton

2012 brought the collaboration between the legendary French artist, Daniel Buren (known for his striped posters and conceptual art work), and the legendary fashion house, Louis Vuitton (with Marc Jacobs serving as the creative head). Jacobs sought out Buren to offer his collaboration in the coming season and to extend gratitude for Buren's installation of the controversial work Les Deux Plateux; a work that served as a point of great inspiration for Jacobs and the Spring/Summer collection. Buren created the extravagant set of the highly anticipated Louis Vuitton runway show as a site-specific installation. Everything from the escalators to the immaculate yellow and white checked floor was a result of Buren's design and Jacobs' enabling. The work of Buren seemed to fit in seamlessly with Jacobs' collection for Louis Vuitton; stripes and the grid were frequent motifs in Buren's work, but also within the graphic culture of Louis Vuitton (as in the Damier check). Apparently the co-mingling of these two creative powers was so invigorating that Buren lent his time and talents to working on the advertising campaign and storefronts for Louis Vuitton after the close of the show. In a December 2012 interview with Vogue, Buren said of Jacobs' work: "And I must say I found it very, very beautiful, very strict, very strongly architectural."

3. Merce Cunningham x Rei Kawakubo

Rei Kawakubo first started designing under the name Comme des Garçons in 1969, and since then she has been making her name known as one of the foremost avant-garde fashion designers in the world. Merce Cunningham was making himself known under similar terms, but within the dance context. Kawakubo had always "shared similar creative philosophies with Merce Cunningham, including interests in engaging multiple artistic disciplines and aggressively pushing the boundaries of the unknown." After Cunningham's initial offer to give her complete freedom in designing the costumes and the set, Kawakubo declined. As myth has it, while working on her notorious spring collection of 1997, titled "Body Meets Dress, Dress Meets Body," she changed her mind. The collection was an aggressive response to her feelings of boredom with fashion. She padded the dresses in a way to reshape the body under new circumstances—her own circumstances. Similarly to the "Body Meets Dress" collection, the costumes Kawakubo designed for her collaborative work with Cunningham (tilted Scenario) featured the same "irregular bulges on the dancers' hips, shoulders, chests, and backs." Wearing these costumes altered the dancers' proportions, their balance, sense of space, and even their fundamental extent of movement. This experimental collaboration between Cunningham and Kawakubo transcends boundaries of art, fashion, costumes design, set design, dance and performance; their partnership should stand to remind us that there really isn't that much of a difference between those categories at all.

4. Raf Simons x Sterling Ruby

The internationally acclaimed Belgian fashion designer, Raf Simons, invited German-born, Los Angeles-based artist, Sterling Ruby, in 2008 to use his "Tokyo boutique as a canvas." Sterling's intervention transformed the store's interior from a clinical white space into something that in some ways is hard to describe. The walls were left white by Ruby, and in his typical style, appears to have haphazardly thrown paint everywhere and ended up with something beautiful, simultaneously minimal, and chaotically expressive. The plinths used to display the clothing are black with bleach splashed across them (a technique favored by Ruby in his textile manipulation work), which creates a seductive and unifying tension between the architecture holding the clothes, and the greater structure holding the entirety of the shop. The slight tonal varieties and organic veins of color converts what appears to be drywall into a material more akin to marble in a gesture of a sort of beguiling decadence. The collaboration between the two creatives was so copacetic that Simons brought on Ruby to create a unique capsule collection following the same aesthetic theme of Tokyo boutique installation the following year. Simons and Ruby have continued their collaborative relationship as recently as 2012, when Simons created fabric with images of four of Ruby's recent works. The textiles debuted as a part of Simon's premiere haute couture collection with design house Christian Dior.

5. Tom Sachs x Nike

New York-based artist, Tom Sachs, introduced the world to his Space Program 2.0: MARS in May of 2012. Sachs' most recent Space Program incarnation was a fully embodied work. Fleets of workers inhabited the Park Avenue Armory space in New York City from May 16 to June 17. Men and women were dressed in full astronaut garb, and models of Mars Rovers, and extraterrestrial artifacts spanned the faux-NASA-headquarter space. In addition to living out a childhood fantasy of being an astronaut (especially without any chance of deep space death), Sachs took his collaborative creation a step further by having Nike join the league of forces propelling this dream of Space-on-Earth into reality. And thus NikeCRAFT was born, the line boasted original designs such as the "Mars Yard Shoe" and specially designed bags and outerwear for the collaboration. Product descriptions are littered with both clinical and far-out, playful language. One tote bag for sale by NikeCRAFT is described as "For everyday superheroes" and comes equipped with a thirty foot paracord, a grappling hooker, a pry bar and AAA batteries "(or drugs case)." Fanciful gestures like the latter butt up against scientific allusions to "JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory)," and "vectran fabric from the Mars Excursion Rover airbags," and at times fail to describe anything to most civilians, but are still quirky and fun.

EFFE KOM 

5 times when art and fashion meant

In a list of art and fashion collaborations there is a bit of blurring that happens. There are moments when designers becomes artists, artists become designers, or both entities becomes something different entirely. Both the genre of fine arts and fashion design not only bare the affect of trend and social temperature, but their changing relationship to one another is also reflective of society as a whole. Perhaps some interventions and collaborations are more successful than others, but what is primarily important is the dabbling, the mixing, and fantastic results that come from the fanciful play of the privileged creatives.

1. Triumph in the Face of Absurdity - Charming Baker and Paul Smith

British designer, Sir Paul Smith, and UK artist, Charming Baker, collaborated to make a sculpture that is sweetly optimistic and inspired. The polished cast aluminum on a corten steel plinth is titled Triumph in the Face of Absurdity. The sculpture is "about life and about how humble your start is in any way. It's not linked with money or finance, it's to do with the fact that if you try hard and dig deep, however small you start, you can do great things...Effort is free of charge!" The aluminum cast bicycle is based on the one ridden by British gold medalist, Sir Christ Hoy, and had a timely connection to the arrival of the summer Olympics in London that year. The most saccharine detail of the sculpture lies in the small space between the bicycle and the plinth: a little life-size mouse. From afar it is hard to tell, but upon closer investigation it's clear that this tiny mouse is holding up this momentous bike—a feat for any mouse, but especially for the collaborative sculptors.

2. K8 Hardy x Oscar Tuazon at the 2012 Whitney Biennial

Artist K8 Hardy's Untitled Runway Show, 2012 continued in the spirit of lukewarm crossover projects. The gesture appeared genuine; in a New York Times interview Hardy said, "I want people to think of the entire runway show as a work of art. It's...to interrupt its normal and largely unquestioned flow." On the day of the show, models descended the runway-cum-sculpture by fellow Whitney Biennial artist Oscar Tuazon.

Tuazon's work frequently features the forms of the function—stairs, walkways, and wall partitions—in an arrangement of dysfunction. However, in the case of Untitled Runway Show, Tuazon's style shone through in his bare-bone use of industrial materials, permeable boundaries, and rigid geometric modulation. And the procession of Hardy's runway choreography challenged the repetitious conventions of New York Fashion Week's innumerable shows; models walked backwards and sideways, and some at especially painful, slow paces. Hardy openly admits that the clothes were not the primary purpose of the collaborative effort, and it shows. The garments looked more like cheap costumes, some modeled after painting palettes, and others were made of multicolored bras.

3.Tint the pallid landscape (off to the wars in lace) - Mary Katranzou x Mark Titchner

As a part of the "Britain Creates 2012" fashion and art collaboration, fashion designer, Mary Katrantzou, and artist, Mark Titchner, created a seven-minute digital video animation and a two part lenticular print. Katrantzou is best known in the fashion world for her sumptuous and highly detailed digital prints; her clothes become more like wearable hi-res digital collages, with images ranging from picket fences and Ticonderoga pencils to florals and decorative friezes.

Titchner's text-based work won him the prestigious Turner Prize in 2006, and his commitment to residencies in places like Toronto gave him the opportunity to emblazon billboards with his graphically aggressive phrases like "BE REAL" and "WE WANT TO ADMIT OUR MISTAKES." The collaboration blossomed into a playful and densely layered world of digital imagery. The skills of computer animators allowed the two graphic worlds of Katrantzou and Titchner to fuse into one. Dizzying, almost psychedelic patterns undulate behind a slow-moving script as words like "STAMINA," "STRENGTH," and "AGILITY" float across the screen. Although the digital video is almost painful to sit through, the experience between the lenticular print and the video must have proved for a very trippy afternoon of art.

4. Mile Minute - Hussein Chalayan x Gavin Turk

It began when prestigious fashion designer, Hussein Chalayan, interviewed British artist, Gavin Turk, about "his enduring preoccupation with the mythical status and identity of the Artist." The subsequent musical collaboration—inspired from the transcript of their first meeting—resulted not only in an audio track, but a video accompaniment made from the perspective of a needle traveling along the surface of a vinyl record, created by Turk. The work was created as a part of "Britain Creates 2012," a nationwide effort between visual art and fashion design. The duo was inspired by artists, Marcel Duchamp and Roger Bannister, and limited the production of the vinyl to 100 copies, hand signed by both artists. Unfortunately, the unique "copper master" was created to self-destruct after a full play on the turntable—the only way to access it in the precious conversation between two artistic icons of this generation is to destroy it.

5. Cindy Sherman x Comme des Garcons

This 1994 collaboration with internationally acclaimed photographer, Cindy Sherman, and avant-garde Japanese fashion designer, Rei Kawakubo, still holds an edge over a lot of the more recent fashion photography campaigns. Sherman is best known for her self-portrait series Untitled Film Stills that feature a number of typified feminine characters. Sherman, inspired by Kawakubo's already pointedly unconventional fashion sense is driven to create a campaign equally unique. The coquettish personalities of her Film Stills are replaced by the slumped, unhappy and imperfect female persona. These photographs confront the consumer with a model that isn't particularly ideal at all; she floats in isolated contemplation, caught forever pensive in the frame of Sherman's photograph. Cindy Sherman would go on to a number of other fashion-related collaborations moving forward with names like Marc Jacobs and Balenciaga.

EFFE KOM

What about “ugly” models in fashion industry?

We all know about the usual stereotypes about the perfect, skinny and beautiful model who’s the only type of woman we can use in fashion industry. 

Dear friends things are changing. 

Let’s take a look to the unique models that we find in fashion industry nowadays. 

MELANIE GAYDOS 

The 28-year-old, American citizen and art student, is suffering from ectodermal dysplasia, a rare genetic condition that does not allow teeth and nails to grow. In addition to this, Melanie also suffers from congenital alopecia due to which she is completely bald. Plus it is almost completely blind. His body looks completely different from that of a model as we are used to seeing it on a gangway or on the cover of newspapers. And yet, thanks to the illnesses he suffers, Melanie has a unique image in the world that makes her one of the most popular models.

Melanie Gaydos by Tim Walker on LOVE MAGAZINE

SHAUN ROSS 

Shaun Ross made history becoming the first African American Albino model to do big shows, challenging the standards of beauty at New York Fashion Week. The 22-year-old was born with albinism, a congenital disorder that results in the production of little to no pigment in the skin, hair and eyes. Ross, who describes his look as "euphoric," is one of a growing number of anti-cookie-cutter models. He said his smile "isn't the prettiest," but illuminating; his face is "very disoriented," but edgy. "I challenge photographers," he said. 

MOLLY BAIR 

Molly Bair slender figure sparked heated debates about the reemergences of “anorexia chic”. She has quickly become fashion's hottest property, posing for top couture brands. Bair was born in Philadelphia and discovered in a New York flea market, reports i-D. The teen is signed to ELITE London, although before she was previously thinking of majoring in computer science or a career in environmental lobbying when she was filling out college applications. 'I would never think that a girl who spent most of her childhood with a unibrow, glasses and a Yoda shirt would be in Vogue Italia,' Bair told CNN.But she said she instantly felt at home when she began modeling. 'I think it's because we're kind of a community of people who have always been the strange, tall, skinny people,' Bair said to CNN.'It's crazy how I've instantly found so many people who are so similar to me. It's really weird. I've never been able to make friends so quickly. 

CASEY LEGLER 

Casey Legler, former Olympic athlete, now famous for becoming the first woman hired as a male model, is a 35-year-old French 188-centimeter high. In addition to being extremely fascinating, creative and intelligent, this young woman also plays a very important role: shuffling genres, spurring anyone who wants to play with his own self, and giving everyone the opportunity to think seriously about the real necessity to define feminine or masculine. 

We can even find in London an “UGLY MODEL AGENCY”

And it’s everything I have to say. 

EFFE KOM 

Fashion Writing

Fashion journalism involves all aspects of published fashion media, including fashion writers, fashion critics, and fashion reporters. This can be fashion features in magazines and newspapers, and may also include books about fashion, fashion related reports on television and online fashion magazines, websites, and blogs. The work of a fashion journalist can be quite varied. Typical work includes writing or editing articles, or helping to formulate and style a fashion shoot. A fashion journalist typically spends a lot of time researching and conducting interviews and it is essential that he or she has good contacts with people in the fashion industry, including photographers, designers, and public relations specialists. Fashion journalists are either employed full-time by a publication or are employed on a freelance basis.

A word of advice from Tim Blanks in the fashion realm is worth listening to. 

The internationally-recognised fashion critic who made a name for himself writing for Vogue, Interview, TheFinancial Times and as principle show reporter for Style.com is known for incisive show reviews that draw on his encyclopaedic knowledge of music and culture, to rich effect. As the newly appointed course director for online fashion school Mastered, Vogue asked Blanks to reflect on the key lessons that would aid would-be fashion writers on their way to success. 

Read well to write well                                                                                       “You set yourself your own standards in a way and I say this again and again: to write you have to read. While you’re reading you are seeing things that you can aspire to. You are seeing a style of writing, you’re seeing writers who have been through what you maybe want to go through in your life, and they’ve been published and they’ve been successful perhaps. Or even reading classic writers. Even reading Dickens or – I’m kind of having a Shakespeare moment myself – or books that I love…You read those books and you see how other people work with words and that is something that you take on board for yourself.”

Context can be key “When you’re reviewing you’re looking at a fashion show, and when you’re looking at a fashion show you’re looking at what that designer wants to show you about what he has in his mind for the season – the hair, the make up, the music, the set, the choice of models. It’s slightly different from what he’s putting in the showroom to sell. So I review what he wants me to see. I don’t review what he wants the buyers to see. That’s why the context is critical…I can only write about what’s in front of me. The other thing about that, is that I’m telling the reader about what I saw and that’s the other thing. You are there. You’re in Sydney or Lima or Shanghai or wherever. And if I can give a little flavour of what it’s like to be sitting in this venue looking at these clothes then I’ve done it.”

Engage with popular culture “I’m constantly listening to music, constantly reading magazines, constantly looking at TV shows. You know right now television is incredible so how can I not watch a series like The Leftovers or Bloodline or Jessica Jones, and not go to a fashion show and imagine designers looking at these things and feeding that into what they do? Nothing exists in a vacuum.”

And why it can help you find an authentic voice “Look at incredibly written pieces of television. Like Chinatown - the perfect script. Listen to how people talk to each other. Actually listen to how you speak. I find that really interesting. People say to me, ‘oh I when I read something you wrote and I could hear your voice, I could hear you saying those things’. So listen to how you speak and get that on the page.”

Fashion history isn’t something you should labour over “If it’s not something you’re interested in to begin with, it’s not something you can make yourself interested in. To be interested in reading about how fashion started or the characters who make fashion, for me it was kind of peripheral because Coco Chanel was part of worlds I was reading about anyway. Cristobel Balenciaga was dressing the wives of men whose biographies I was reading, you know, it’s sort of a peripheral thing.”

Be curious “All I can say is nothing should ever be a chore because if it’s a chore it’s not valuable to you. If you feel you have to research something, you have to research something, it’s a real drag to do it, the research isn’t going to be useful to you. Just be endlessly curious, and everything you learn is a boon.”

The Mastered talent program for professional writers will be led by Tim Blanks. Applications are now open. Click here to apply.

You’ve got a chance.

EFFE KOM 

Fashion as Art Performance

ONCE UPON A TIME, fashion shows were small affairs reserved for paying customers and the upper echelons of the fashion press. Now, hundreds can attend and snap away on their phones with no intention of ever purchasing what appears on the runway. Competition has always been rife among designers, but with the social media frenzy that now exists around Fashion Month, there’s more rivalry than ever. And what better way to garner attention than by turning your show into a performance art piece?

Unlike Chanel’s elaborate airport and supermarket settings, performance art shows aim to tell a story rather than simply create a spectacle.

In 1997, London’s enfant terrible, Alexander Mcqueen gave Time Out a quote to remember: “I don’t want to do a cocktail party. I’d rather people left my shows and vomited.” Alexander McQueen delivered sensory and provocative shows, causing discomfort and wonder from his audience. Although he didn’t collaborate directly with artists, his creative inspirations and bold ingenuity caused three shows in particular to go down in history. Spring 1999 — known as No. 13 — was inspired by artist Rebecca Horn’s installation of two guns firing blood red paint.

 In McQueen’s mind, this became two car paint sprayers mechanically violating model Shalom Harlow in shades of black and yellow; the colors of DANGER.

The setting of Voss, McQueen’s Spring 2001 collection, was perhaps the most controversial. Housed in a makeshift asylum, models paced the box, banging against the glass in a performance of pure anxiety. Even the designs had a hidden comment on the state of the fashion industry. Erin O’Connor’s razor shell dress fell apart as she walked with McQueen telling WWD, “The shells had outlived their usefulness on the beach, so we put them to another use on a dress. Then Erin [O’Connor] came out and trashed the dress, so their usefulness was over once again. Kind of like fashion, really.”

Spring 2004, Deliverance, saw McQueen and choreographer Michael Clark team up to teach the likes of Karen Elson and Lily Cole in the ways of ballroom dancing. Many designers have used this theme since, but as with many things, McQueen was among the FIRST.

“Marina is, for me, the world,” Riccardo Tisci once said. 

The creative duo and longtime friends have worked together on a number of projects: an opera, a campaign and, most recently, Givenchy’s epic Spring 2016 show. Set in New York in view of the World Trade Center on the anniversary of 9/11, Serbian performance provocateur Marina Abramović orchestrated seven performers to hug, submerge themselves in water and wander aimlessly through the waiting audience. Providing a calm alternative to the usual destruction of Fashion Week, this was a different look into the mind of Abramović; an artist most well known for shocking stunts, including harming her body through whipping and carving and sitting in a chair for three months straight. Music came from six different cultures in a bid to show that tragedy can unite people of all faiths, while the debris-filled set was made from recycled materials, leaving no waste. In a note written to Tisci before the show, Abramović displayed the duo’s intentions: “The 11th of September is the most sad day in recent American history. This event that we are creating together is about forgiveness, inclusivity, new life, hope, and above all, love.” 

IF ONLY ALL FASHION SHOW COULD BE THE SAME 

But if they were all the same we could not have the opportunity to watch Kanye West and Vanessa Beecroft fashion collaboration. 

Vanessa Beecroft  perfomances 

Italian performance artist Vanessa Beecroft has enjoyed a long partnership with professional loudmouth Kanye West, having designed his wedding, various album parties and now, his much-lauded fashion line. Collaborating on every single (and highly hyped) Yeezy presentation, the pair has garnered a fair share of admiration and criticism.

 Season 1 saw a Yeezy-clad army standing stock-still the entire time. Season 2 continued the military theme, arranging models based on their skin color with a drill sergeant directing them around the space. West’s mega album launch and Season 3 release was inspired by an image of refugees and featured a cast of 1,500 black models and extras filling up Madison Square Garden dressed in Yeezy designs and dyed secondhand clothes. The most recent collection, Season 4, involved a controversial “multiracial” casting call with the chosen models forced to stand in the blistering heat on Roosevelt Island for hours. Merging the concepts of race, female bodies and military discipline, Beecroft’s presentations (which now total 75) can be known for their grueling treatment of models. Horror stories of girls being made to stand in ill-fitting stilettos for 16 hours a day and having all of their body hair waxed off without prior warning have become commonplace. Whether it’s a statement on the torturous nature of the fashion industry (or the world on women in general) or simply an oversight on Beecroft’s part still remains to be seen.

But Kaney you’re not the only one, “sorry”! 

EFFE KOM 

Grandma you cool

You know your grandma is always gonna be more fashionable that you right?

And you’re not the only one knowing it.

Lately it seems like everywhere we turn, we see models who are 60+ .

It’s not that surprising, considering we’re living in an age where people are dedicated to broadening the definition of beauty to include more than just the blond-haired, blue-eyed, white-skinned, size-2 models that have run the show since the 60s.  

Yuki james, Balenciaga ads for a parallel universe, I-D

Fashion is starting to accept new definitions of beauty.  It makes sense that that definition would include, ahem, “advanced” fashionistas as well !

American Apparel, always making headlines, just topped their latest “merkin” controversy with news of their new lingerie model: 62-year-old Jacky O’Shaugnassey.  The older model has posed for the brand in the past, but never in such skimpy styles.  AA and Jacky bare it all in their latest campaign, which features Jacky in a see-through lace bra-and-panties combo!

Jacky O’Shaugnassey for American Apparel 

sexy has no expiration date. 

Look at the novelist Joan Didion in the new ultra-cool photo shoot for high-end French fashion brand Celine, wearing a tight black pullover, giant sunglasses and what looks like a brass cowbell around her neck. She’s +80.

Joan Dion by Jurgen Teller for Céline Adv

NO COMMENTS NEEDED...

By now we find also young artist using “unconventional” models

@wynnenatore 

or just appreciating them!

@sciuragram I think I love you as much as you love little grannies. 

EFFE KOM

Assemblage, creating a new whole story

Collage is a technique of an art production, primarily used in the visual arts, where the artwork is made from an assemblage of different forms, thus creating a new whole. Despite the pre-twentieth-century use of collage-like application techniques, some art authorities argue that collage, properly speaking, did not emerge until after 1900, in conjunction with the early stages of modernism.   The glued-on patches which Braque and Picasso added to their canvases offered a new perspective on painting when the patches collided with the surface plane of the painting. Then the two were radically transforming the painting world with their dive into Cubism. 

In the early part of the 20th century, decoupage, like many other art methods, began experimenting decoupage, a type of collage usually defined as a craft, with a less realistic and more abstract style. 20th-century artists who produced decoupage works include Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse.

In the last years of the 50′s we start to see a new kind of collage, Photomontage.

Nowadays first photographer that use this kind of method is Johnny Dufort,  who does undone glamour like NO ONE ELSE, whether capturing Pamela Anderson applying lippy or Lindsey Wixson walking into a pole. His work is bold and vibrant, combining surreal compositions and striking subjects to create oddly beguiling glimpses into the characters he and his camera are drawn to.

Johnny Dufort selection.

And nowadays we have the luck to see also new young artist making AWESOME works using collage methods.

@wynnenator, wynnenator.com

@Synchrodogs, www.synchrodogs.com

EFFE KOM

Club kids, then and now

CLUB KIDS ARE BACK ! And they’re hotter then ever. 

The Club Kids were a group of young New York City dance club personalities led by Michael Alig and James St. James in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The group was notable for its members' FLAMBOYANT BEHAVIOR and OUTRAGEOUS COSTUMES !! But I think everyones knows who club kids are   ... PLEASE ! 

So, nowadays this AMAZING subculture is back ! 

Get lost with ​Charles Jeffrey, Loverboy designer, and his crew.

 Harry Charlesworth and Charles Jeffrey by Tim Walker on i-D

London’s best young designer following a grand tradition of ‘showing off’.          LOVERBOY the club night is the catalyst for Charles Jeffrey and his gang to express everything they do with abandon. LOVERBOY the collection is the same, just on a catwalk. Clothes worn by the real people who go to the real night. It's really like a spontaneous happening,  both on and off the catwalk.

Loverboy models by Tim Walker on i-D

London's clubs have always been places full of the thrill of escapism. BUT, let’s not forget about THE BIG MAMAH, NYC  ! ​

And we can find Charles Geffrey and his cress also here of course. 

But now let’s talk more about the crew :

Ladys and gentelmens, SUSSI !

Sussi, Harry Charlesworth and Gia Garison by Louie Banks 

Scotty Sussman, a young star of New York nightlife, who brought what he learnt also in London. 

When one night of six years ago she sneaked into a party of Susanne Bartsch hiding under the coat of a stranger. He was 15 years old.

Note written by Sussi shotted by Jalis Vienne on Dull Magazine 

 At age 15, Scotty stopped painting paintings to become the canvas on which to give free rein to his creativity. He told in a i-D interview “Many of the people who attend my own circles seem to have been in the club for over a hundred years or more. They have the same trick for six days. Instead, I want to appear to have come out of a magazine”. This is how nightlife is seen nowadays. Scotty believes that social media could help spread the club culture and define Instagram his business card, his identity, his personal agenda, and his fingerprint.

Sussi by Jalis Vienne on Dull Magazine

His partner in crime and life is miss HARRY 

And he’s flawless as his lover ! 

PEACE AND LOVE GUYS, CLUB KIDS NEVER DIE. 

YSL

Yves Saint Laurent, a couturier who has changed the way the modern woman dresses. Saint Laurent was a master of fashion with a love for the masters of art

A stylist who has made a passion for art, the stylistic figure of his collections, combining poles opposed to that beautiful universe he has always been part of. Along with his life partner Pierre Bergé, Yves Saint Laurent collected more than fifty years of collection of about 730 works of art. Including paintings by Picasso, Matisse, Mondrian, Léger, Goya.

Henri Matisse 

Fernenad Léger  

In fact Sanit Laurent always tried to combine his love for art and Fashion. Not only took inspiration from the art world but over the years also paid tribute to artists in his designs. 

( SUCCEDING! ) 

Arguably the most famous of all his art-influenced designs was the Mondrian dress of 1965.

The following year Saint Laurent released a collection inspired by Pop Art. Inspired by works from notable artists like Wesselman. 

Wesselman

After more than a 10-year hiatus from creating art-inspired collections, in the late 70s and 80s Saint Laurent created collections inspired by some of the most notable artists of the century: Picasso, Matisse, Van Gogh & Braque.

Braque, Doves

Van Gogh, Girasoli

EFFE KOM

A new way to see us all

We all knew about photoshopping, plastic surgery and bla bla bla, to make models look more “beautiful” in fashion industry.  But what if pushing it to major levels is the only way to follow ? 

Ok, I’ll explain myself.

I’m talking about the distortion of the image. A new, innovative and beautiful way to see the body. 

Many young artist are now approaching to this movement. 

The Canadian French artist Marie Lou Desmeules and her sculptures reflect on the concept of plastic surgery. 

Marie Lou Desmeules sculptures. 

The concept is: take art and put it aside. Where, in the present case, art is plastic surgery and the value to be set aside is the relevance of subjects. The artist decided to reflect on the growing industry of plastic surgery by shutting down gender issues in the name of a much wider reflection on the physical obsession with modern obsession. But also to the same obsession that some of us have of others, of icons; Whether they are stars, bloggers, or who they want, influencer. The question is: what is beauty? What is AESTHETIC without ETHICS? (WHATEVER YOU WANT, BY MY OPINION) 

But let’s talk about a more digital and futuristic approach! 

Surfing the web I found out many artist who does this kind of visual art 

@cumcow, Manny Quinn 

@FecalMatter.  “We identify as trans human” cit Fecal Metter 

Last but not least is : @pierlouis7

And you know what ? Gucci’s newest Instagram models are ALIENS! 

CAN WE SAY THAT THE NEW STEP FOR FASHION IS ABOUT MODIFICATION AND DISTORTION OF THE BODY? 

I SAY YASS 

(MY MAN AND I BY ME) 

EFFE KOM

Roberto Capucci Role playing between Art and Fashion

Enfant prodige, at just 26 years old, was named by Christian Dior as "the best Italian fashion maker": Roberto Capucci, 1930s, boasts a bit of a blazing career. Born in Rome after having attended high school and the Academy of Fine Arts. At just 20 years, he inaugurated his first atelier. The following year he presents his creations in Florence, at the residence of Giovanni Battista Giorgini, inventor of Italian fashion.

 Audacious experimentator, his collections reflect his visceral love for art. The bold and highly scenic geometries and volumes are inspired by nature, with its multiple expressions. 

In fact guys, take a look :  

"In my life I wanted to dress dreams, but today we are surrounded by rags"                                                                                                   cit Roberto Capucci

EFFE KOM

Bling & Beauty

In 2000 THE MOST ICON person in ClebrityLand, who was not even a real celebrity, was PARIS HILTON 

Let’s talk honestly, she created a new whole type of celebrities, opening the road to others (KARD...SHIAN), having any specific talent or ability. 

Then you will think, “YEAH OFC, DADDY’S MONEY HELP A LOT” 

Yeah and WHO CARES? 

Paris Hilton invented every trend you actually following in 2017: 

1. SELFIES: I think the first selfie Paris Hilton took was at age of 5.. 

2. COORDINETED TRACKSUIT. 

                                                                                 VETEMENTS Fall 2016

3. T-SHIRTS ARE THE BAY WAY TO TELL THE WORD YOUR PROFOUND THOUGHT. 

                Jeremy Scott Fall 2017

4.BLING AND SHINE BABY. 

                                                                              Paco Rabanne Fall 2017

5. MINISKIRTS QUEEN

And we can go on.. 

So.. THANK YOU PARIS, BFF 4EVER 

EFFE KOM

Martin Parr

Martin Parr is a British documentary photographer, photojournalist and photobook collector.

                                                                Portrait of Martin Parr, part of the Photo                                                                 Paintings from North East Brazil series

He is known for his photographic projects that take an intimate, satirical and anthropological look at aspects of modern life.

Composition of Martin Parr’s photo, by Effe Kom.

Between February 22-28 2017, the fashion world descended on the Italian city of Milan for Milan Fashion Week.           Martin Parr went along to capture the downtime between shows and the goings-on backstage.

Parr has said of his photography:

“The fundamental thing I'm exploring constantly is the difference between the mythology of the place and the reality of it. Remember I make serious photographs disguised as entertainment. That's part of my mantra. I make the pictures acceptable in order to find the audience but deep down there is actually a lot going on that's not sharply written in your face. If you want to read it you can read it.” 

On Lurve Magazine by Martin Parr 

And that’s TRUE guys. 

EFFE KOM 

BALENCIAGA = VODKA

If Cristobal Balenciaga were still alive today, he would have turned the formidable age of 119.

 His house had its first Paris fashion show in August 1937, 

For many, a Balenciaga show was the closest fashion gets to a religious experience. 

As the Vogue editor-in-chief Diana Vreeland put it, 'One fainted. It was possible to blow up and die. I remember at one show in the early 1960s… Audrey Hepburn turned to me and asked why I wasn't frothing at the mouth at what I was seeing. I told her I was trying to act calm and detached because, after all, I was a member of the press. Across the way Gloria Guinness was sliding out of her chair on to the floor. Everyone was going up in foam and thunder.' 

Once more, Balenciaga is one of the HOTTEST labels in town.

Yuki james, Balenciaga ads for a parallel universe, I-D

But also now is kind of seen as a “RELIGION”: 

“ BALENCIAGA = VODKA “

BALECIAGA House is now in DEMNA GVASALIA ‘s hands. The Georgian designer who is the lead talent behind the collective that creates the Vetements label, has been appointed the creative director of Balenciaga. 

And as WE ALL KNOW and see , is all going very well for this talented guy.  

EFFE KOM

Paul Poiret

Paul Poiret was a leading French fashion designer, a master couturier during the first two decades of the 20th century.

Portrait of Paul Poiret, André Derain                 Autoportrait, Paul Poiret

His contributions to his field have been likened to Picasso's legacy in 20th-century art.

Femme au café, (1901-02)                              Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, (1907)

Poiret established his own house in 1903, and made his name with his controversial kimono coat and similar, loose-fitting designs created specifically for an uncorseted, slim figure.

Poiret continued to promote his own career. 

An important example of Poiret's artistic influence was in his work with Paul Iribe. With Iribe creating the drawings that pictured Poiret's dresses, they produced a publication for the elite society titled Les Robes de Paul Poiret, racontees par Paul Iribe.

His interests included painting, boating, and participating in the Mortigny Club, a group of artists and dignitaries.

Intérieur aux porcelaines, Paul Poiret                               Autoportrait, Paul Poiret

In fact, Poiret spent his latter years indulging in his love of painting.

He died on April 30, 1944 in Paris.

EFFE KOM

Still life in fashion: what is it? What is it used for?

Still-life is a work of art depicting mostly inanimate subject matter, let’s start there!

Andrian Bekiarov, Bulgaria

But during the 20th and 21st century, the notion of the still life has been extended beyond the traditional two dimensional art forms of painting into video art and three dimensional art forms such as sculpture, performance and installation.

Darren Jones, A Time and a Place

But let’s concentrate on still-life in FASHION!                                                    

Most part of the time still life is mostly used for campaign, advertising or look book; it is photographic genres aimed at commercial communication. So all that matter it’s THE PRODUCT.  

There’s different ways to compose a still-life.

But first you have to think,                                                                               WHO ARE YOU SELLING IT TO ?!

OK, BUT...  WHAT ARE WE... ? 

With many or less things that create the composition, the most important thing is the brand identity. Is even hardest when there’s no model, and just the objects has to speak.

JUST TWO WORDS: Céline campaigns.

As we see and, I HOPE, we all know, Cèline shapes are totally clean and simple in a classy and kind of modern way, and talking about her still-life is the SAME.

Then, we’ve got also more complex composition. But even if there’re full of contempt, the image is still giving the feeling of the brand.

So guys, it’s all about the ATMOSPHERE.                                                             Just after the moment you totally know what is the feeling you want to give and connect it, after a proper research, to the content there’s gonna be inside, the composition is gonna be the easiest part. 

EFFE KOM