The Happy Scandal
At the age of six I wanted to be a cook. At seven I wanted to be Napoleon. And my ambition has been growing steadily ever since.
January 23rd marked the twentieth anniversary of Salvador Dali’s death, but it seems the artist still has some tricks in what is proving to be a very voluminous sleeve.
The upcoming biopic Little Ashes, slated for March release, will likely provoke posthumous interest and debate in Dali’s lesser known past as a student at Madrid’s prestigious Academia de San Fernando de Bellas Artes in the 1920’s. But perhaps more fantastic, at least to fanatics of the Twilight franchise, is casting of vampire/Hollywood heartthrob du jour Robert Pattinson as lead. So strong is the hysteria surrounding Pattinson at the moment, it’s too ironic not to believe that the ever attention-seeking Dali– who insisted on sitting on a stuffed rhinoceros on the Tonight Show in the 80’s– had his deft hand in such a 21st-century resurrection:
Dali’s name most famously evokes memories of melting clocks and monstrous limbs grasping limbs in desert scenes. There’s also that lobster telephone and the engine-red sofa inspired by Mae West’s pillowy lips. The Catalan in fact wore a veritable hat rack of roles as writer, sculptor, illustrator, film-maker, advertising guru, and stage designer. He’s credited for his work on the dream sequence in Hitchcock’s Spellbound and co-wrote an animated feature with Roy Disney.
But beyond his sharp suits and Velázquez-inspired mustache, Dali’s sartorial contribution remains the kind of trivia brought up at cocktail parties rather than in galleries or classrooms. If little else, Little Ashes will reveal to audiences how even in his youth Salvador Dali was a self-styled dandy, one who wore 19th century-style knee breeches, stockings, and his hair girlishly long. These exhibitionist underpinnings give only an inkling of his subsequent streak as art world provocateur and mascot darling among the fashion elite.
An acquaintance of Coco Chanel (above), Dali never collaborated with her or her house– her elegant yet practical customers had little interest in obvious jokes and charades. Fellow top designer Elsa Schiaparelli, however, was of a very different breed: Chanel herself famously referred to her rival as “that Italian artist who makes clothes.”
The Schiap, as friends called her, really splashed to the forefront with a cheeky sweater featuring a trompe l’oeil scarf “tied” around the neck. As she expanded her line to resort and eveningwear, Schiaparelli’s particularly playful brand of irony, humor, and outlandish taste won critical and mass acclaim. Ever the innovator, she dared to blind admirers in shocking pink, bolster jackets with shoulder pads, tease about the quirky seduction of animal prints, and use visible, dyed-to-match zippers in haute couture. Her 1927 store, Pour le Sport, applied the first experimental fumblings of ready-to-wear garments. She broke from dry and dusty presentations and put on real shows with theatricality, props, and themes. In 1934 Time magazine declared, “Madder and more original than most of her contemporaries, Mme Schiaparelli is the one to whom the word “genius” is applied most often.”
Highlights of Dali’s work as a jewelry designer and his collaboration with Schiapperelli:
Real Doll
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Fashion analysts weren’t kidding when they recently predicted the return of the conventionally pretty model during this economic downturn. Given the slightly sinister Victor and Rolf 15-year retrospective in June, Vogue Russia’s 10th anniversary hand-painted matryoshkas, and last month’s UNICEF auction of designer dressed dolls at the Drouot Montaigne, the pint-sized market is booming. But whether it’s childhood nostalgia or high-fashion frugality driving the latest trend, there’s something timeless about little Mary and Barbie and Victoria in their evocation of the couture spirit that’s sure to leave even the most dismal-minded damsels reassured of fashion’s first legacy: play.
ONWARD
The Whitney is featuring a William Eggleston exhibit. If you can’t visit it in person, check out the museum’s web stuffs: http://whitney.org/www/eggleston/images.jsp
You know Dries is on it.
I burn my candle at both ends
Saturday I became a year older and not a whit wiser.
In other news, you might want to check out some artists on Secretely Canadian, a good little record label in my little town. An Antony and the Johnsons’ song is featured in the latest Prada animated short, “Fallen Shadows.” Lagerfeld also sent his troops down the Chanel RTW Fall 08 catwalk to Antony’s “Blind.”
And because cloth is beauty, a picture of pressed tulle I shot for a project a year ago.
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Minimalism in a Material World
Milan Case Study: Raf Simons for Jil Sander
Raf Simons has designed for Jil Sander as her first formal successor to the brand since Fall 2005. A former industrial design student who stumbled into fashion design upon the heels of the Antwerp Six (van Noten, Demeulmeester, etc.), Simons and his work for Jil Sander is nothing short of stimulating and has become something of a hallowed Milan highlight in my mind.
Inflating Lasers
I never imagined I would help make an inflatable sculpture. But here it is, partly inspired by the S/S 08 Chayalan show.
OK UK
Maybe it’s the BBC America in me talking, but I believe in London Fashion Week.
I don’t think it’s a dying blip on the four-week fashion calendar, or a breather between New York and Milan to conveniently skip out on because, come Paris, names like Krystof Strozyna and Louise Goldin fall and don’t make a sound at Balenciaga, Givenchy, and Lanvin.
Too bad. Because if you really listen, you might hear notes you never knew were missing from the bigger capitals.
Runaway Runways
Following is a piece I wrote semesters ago for my history of photography class.
I know street style photographers have been around for years, and that this article needs a good dusting. I thought however it might be worth posting as I wait for things to heat up in London.
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“The rise of abstract art and decorative design permitted the citizens of Western Europe to accustom their eyes to visions of themselves as shapes.” –Anne Hollander, Seeing Through Clothes
In late 2007 Colette, the European arbiter of cool, held an exhibition titled “From the Street to the Night” in her boutique/gallery in Paris. Compiled of work by a slew of younger photographers who prowl city streets around the world for shots of stylish denizens about town, the show proved a successful showcase of a genre Colette herself has christened social photography. Whether this “new” coinage is precise or appropriate with consideration to the established history and influence of street photographers like Henri Cartier-Bresson or Warhol’s “Factory Fotographer” Billy Name, there is indeed something novel about how the featured photographers were discovered and recognized through their own regularly updated photo blogs. Moreover, that they exclusively photograph in metropolitan milieus evokes a revamped vision of the twentieth-first century flaneur. Once characterized as a detached stroller/aesthete of the urban experience, Baudelaire’s “botanist of the sidewalk” now comes armed with a digital camera, a specialized interest (in this case, fashion), and the motivation to share his spontaneous encounters with the masses via Internet.
Scott Schuman’s rising popularity from his work on The Sartorialist is a particular testament to the blog’s effectiveness as a media channel. At thirty-nine, Schuman is slightly older than other photographers included in the Colette exhibit, and arguably more proficient. Street style bloggers often overlook the subtleties of a person’s dress, the small cares that make it artful, and instead zero in on the exhibitionism and uniform trendiness parading around only the hippest and youth-oriented of neighborhoods. But fifteen years in high-end fashion marketing and sales–not to mention a stint in college learning couture construction– have conditioned Schuman’s eyes to appreciate the most minute clothing details as well as the nuanced diversity of the people sporting them. His photographs have an innate element of double composition: the subject’s own composition of dress and Schuman’s subsequent composition of the subject. By first dissecting the relationship between photographer and his subjects, and then examining examples of his work, I will demonstrate how Schuman contextualizes his subjects through the aesthetic synthesis of dress and the urban landscape.
You Say You Want a Revolution
New York Case Study: Rodarte
Rodarte’s spring ‘09 collection has become something of a litmus test in the fashion crowd. Initial internet chatter resounded positively and negatively as: WOW . . .
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AGAIN?
