The Puzzled British Bazaar

‘Another curious spectator contemplating the scene’ is a fragment from a glam rock British era poster. It could also be the description of the British Design exhibition visitor. Playing a modern Masquerade, he is seeking for the hidden post-war art treasure where the game becomes almost like a Hitchcockian vertigo.

Set up as a 3D live collage, where the arrows showing the right way to go, play the role of the glue that sticks together over 300 objects, Innovation in the Modern Age is an exhibition where you could easily taste the story of the British design from 1948 until today. Among pieces of furniture like the Mambo chair or Peter Murdoch’s paper furniture, ceramic, fashion designs by Mary Quant, Vivienne Westwood or Alexander McQueen, magazines like i-D or The Face, on musical backgrounds by Pet Shop Boys, with film screenings, the exhibition develops from the reconstruction of the late 40s to the revolution of the swinging 60s and punk 70s until the innovative contemporary British style today.

Paper chair

Alexander McQueen - AW2009

If the first part of the exhibition evokes a time where you could almost hear the television programmes on a CS17 wooden TV box, the second part walks you through changes in fashion, music, shopping, interiors and film, heading to a ‘Cool Britannia’ of the 1990s when artists and designers pioneered a fresh concept that marked the cultural landscape forever.

Unique for its quirky style, British sense of culture is recognizable for its way of understanding and puzzling together the bazaar. British Design brings in the same place an indoor market for vintage lovers and new designs visionaries.  

British Design 1948-2012 Innovation in the Modern Age

at V&A until 12 August 2012

Re-veil the fashion

I love reading classic literature. I find interesting to observe how characters behave or dress in societies which are no longer applicable but still with some visible traces.
The veil as inspiration.

The Painted Veil by W. Somerset Maugham

Alexander McQueen SS12

Ann Demeulemesteer SS10

Naomi Campbel for Vogue Russia

Ann Demeulemesteer SS10

Jason Wu AW10

Luca Gadjus for Glamour Germany 2011

all photos from here

Timeless

Vogue Germany December 2011

Model: Karlie Kloss

Photography: Alexi Lubomirsky

All photos from here.

Burberry in Taipei

The power of promotion is as ancient as the Roman roads. 

So, when a brand like Burberry opens a new store in one of the most populated cities in the world such is Taipei evidently the creative people behind the name will amaze us with their vision over the show.

Combining live music with digital weather experience on a 360° screen, the English brand proved again to the whole world that heritage can go hand in hand with new digital experience without losing the brand's identity.

Great way of showing how fashion evolves from season to season.

The text of the Texture

Words are signs that talk about other signs. Within its composition of letters, the word represents meanings or visual objects. The world would be emptied from its content if it would'n be for the word. 

Words live in a sacred space where they shape their substance before to be used and re-used. It's almost like you feel you want to enter the space where things are incepted. 

Everything we get in touch with has a story that can be heard or read in different ways. The texture of a fabric for example, can have a conversation through its interwoven fibres because we have the ability to interpret what we see. It's not that easy, it's not that difficult: it's about how unique you can be when creating new meanings.

Donna Wilson for Ercol

Barbara Weible - Steroid Powder Collection

Clay Ketter

Elsa Hosk by Chris Nichols

Pitti Filati - SS13

Pitti Filati - SS13

Wynwood Arts District, Miami

MAC 

Textile woven from spider silk

All pictures from here.

Reading fashion advertising

This image is a coloured photograph, in which is portrayed a woman. She is sitting down, semi-naked, covered only by a white shirt and a bowler hat. She wears a chained necklace. She looks straight at the camera. With one hand she holds the hat, while she keeps the other hand close to her body, on the floor. A small part of her breast is revealed from under the hat. On a black background two strong lights. In front of her there is a bottle of perfume, off centred. The light is much stronger on her face than on her body. There is as well some text: the name of the brand, the name of the perfume and the name of a website.

The photograph is an advertisement for CocoMadmoiselle, a Chanel perfume, taken by the photographer Dominique Issermann in 2007. The model is the actress Keira Knightley. The purpose of this photograph is to sell, function emphasized by the presence of the written message, the name of the website: chanel.com. More than this, the presence of the imperative form of the verb ‘’to shop’, ‘Shop Chanel.com’, informs the viewer that the image she/ he sees has the function of selling. So, the consumer will be persuaded to buy, not only by the visual message, but by the linguistic text as well. Perfume ads ‘can give no real information about the product so that the function…rests totally on making a connection with an image drawn from outside the ad world’ (Wiliamson in Marris). Here the denoted image implies no code (‘this is the case of the advertising photograph’).

Even if in this specific photograph there are symbols carried along with the meaning of the image, they lose some of their significations when being included in the context of advertising.  Still, some interpretation analysis can be done. The white shirt represents the presence through absence of the man. The bowler hat develops interpretations which arise from the existence of the film The UnbearableLightness of Being, based on a novel written by Milan Kundera, where one of the characters is a naked woman with a bowler hat. ‘Objects of play and eroticism, hats can evoke everything from the menacing to the seductive’ (Ronnberg). The lights in the background frame the stage she performs on, as an actress in the real life and as a star in the photographic message. Being a celebrity, she is represented in this ad as a woman who plays a role. Although her pose is static, there is a feeling of visual activity. 

Playful, the woman looks at the man present beyond the camera. This advertising doesn’t necessarily create new meanings, but translates the ‘image’ of Keira Knightley into something meaningful. 

Nineties revive or Ninestalgia

I grew up with music like this or like this or...and the list can be carried on for at least 5 pages(a3). Every decade it's new and interesting in its way and if you look back in the history of fashion and music you cannot picture one without the other. Let's say that genres of music portray genres of clothing.
For me, 80s and 90s are the only decades that make me smile every time when I see or listen something in relation. It's probably because I have memories of them. So, collections like ASOS Revive bring back sporty thoughts and make you think from which box you should take out the old denim track trousers to make them new.
Time will always tend to come back helped by people or places by adding a sprinkle of new to the old.

In creating the collection, Ebru Ercon, Revive Desiner, looked back to the influence of music in the 80s and 90s fashion and the power of youth culture in those years.

All photos from here.

Cara Delavigne and a kitten

Concept and Photography Nick Knight

Model Cara Delavigne

Fashion Direction Alexander Fury

all photos from here.