Lud wearing Cartier jewels, ph. Horst P.Horst

..
Lud looked, and was, solidly Russian. She had the cheekbones, the lips at once frankly sensual and playfully amused, the slightly upward slanted eyes that hinted at something distantly, fantastically oriental. Those eyes were her greatest feature, because they were different in every photo, from every angle the blue of ice one moment, the blue of warm bright gemstones the next, powerful proof of the Russian’s proverbial variety of moods..

Lud by Horst P. Horst
.

Born Ludmila Feodoseyevna in St Petersburg in 1913 to a vice-governor of Vladimir province, Lud escaped with her family to the Crimea after the Bolshevik revolution, thence to Constantinople, Greece and France. In exile, Lud proved to be more than just a pretty face. While her widowed mother struggled to make ends meet, Lud took high grades at a French lycée and planned to enter university to study philology.

Fate determined a different course for Lud when the famed photographer Horst espied her delivering dresses to Vogue’s Paris studios (she got the wrong ­studio and ended up throwing it at the photographer in a temper, and became one of his favourite models) . Thus at age eighteen, Lud began what was to be a fabulous modeling career, first with the house of Countess Vera Borea, then Patou, then Chanel. She married a French marquis, and knew the delicious experience of having rivals Elsa Schiaparelli and Coco Chanel vie graspingly for her services. In 1937, wearing a draped white gown from Alix  (Madame Grès) and posed like some lethally beautiful Medea between fluted columns, Lud was photographed by Horst in what Alexandre Vassiliev  (writer of ‘Beauty in Exile’) describes as “one of the immortal images of twentieth century fashion.”

Lud in Alix (Madame Grès) Dress, by Horst P Horst, 1937
.

We all know beauty and wealth do not guarantee happiness, but the gods sought to use Lud to press the point home. First her marriage to the marquis failed; she married again, to a naval engineer, and began to appear in films. She left France for a time, living first in Argentina and later in the United States, and her second marriage broke up. By the time she returned to France in the early 50’s and began working for Balenciaga, she sensed that somehow her sun had set. There were financial woes, brought on by her unflagging addiction to high living. She ended up taking a job at the Slenderella beauty institute, earning some cash on the side by singing in the chorus of the Paris Opéra. In 1959, the once glorious Lud was living in the resort town of Le Touquet, where the only work she could find was as an airport clerk. When that job ended, she found a new position, as head of curriculum at a private school, and when that job ended, Lud was hired as director of a home for aged Russians, where among the charges she oversaw was another faded Russian model, Princess Maria Eristova. Still, there was a little happiness for Lud at the end: in 1982, she married a childhood friend, Pierre de la Grandière, and lived with him in the French Alps until her death from cancer in 1990.

Lud in more photographs by Horst

Modeling a Chanel dress & Ivory cuff bracelet by Verdura, 1937

Moddeling a Schiaparelli hat 

In describing her mother, Lud’s daughter also gives a fair account of most of the other artistic Russian émigrés. Lud feared nothing and no one, remembered her daughter, never hesitating to sail a boat out onto a stormy lake or take a stroll through a crime-ridden Paris purlieu. Lud was in love with living: “She was the daughter of Epicurus”.

Life for Lud, and indeed, for most of the Russian exiles living in Europe or Great Britain, America northern or southern, was far more colorful and probably far more blessed with longevity than it would have been had they or their parents remained in Soviet Russia. Thanks to Alexandre Vassiliev’s  study of just where these many-colored threads began and ended, we can know that there was, after all, a future for them.

1937 Paris Vogue cover ph. by Horst P. Horst
.

Lud was once described as “a lethally beautiful Medea”.

It is said that she cut off parts of her breasts and thighs to make her figure the perfect silhouette for Horst photographs! Prove of this cannot be found…..

.
.

Book

Beauty in Exile

The Artists, Models, and Nobility who Fled the Russian Revolution and Influenced the World of Fashion

by Alexander Vassiliev

http://www.amazon.com/Beauty-Exile-Nobility-Revolution-Influenced/dp/0810957019

.,

Lud in 1939, photographer unknown

.

.

Info:

http://www.vassiliev.com/review.htm

http://dianesmakeup.com/horsts-very-modern-muse/

Wilhelmina Cooper (1 May 1939 – 1 March 1980) was a Dutch model who began with Ford Models and, at the peak of her success, founded her own agency, Wilhelmina Models, in New York City in 1967.

Born Wilhelmina Behmenburg in Culemborg, the Netherlands, she was known professionally simply as “Wilhelmina,” or “Willy” to intimates. Wilhelmina grew up in Oldenburg, Germany. She moved with her family to Chicago, USA, in 1954. She became one of the most famous models of the 1950s and 1960s. During her career as a model she was on the cover of 255 magazines. For a long time she also held the record for most covers on American Vogue, appearing 27 or 28 times.

Vogue Covers

ph. Irving Penn, 1965ph. Bert Stern, 1964

She was one of the most recognizable models of her time and she was considered the last star of the couture era in modeling.

In 1965 she married Bruce Cooper, former executive producer of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. In 1967 they founded Wilhelmina Models, which became the other leading model agency alongside Ford Models, years before Elite Model Management and other agencies began.

ph. Irving Penn, 1965

Cooper’s agency played a major role in launching the career of Naomi Sims, credited as the first African-American supermodel. Sims began her modeling career in the mid-1960s but despite a breakthrough appearance in the New York Times fashion supplement in 1967, she found it difficult to get work. Sims approached Cooper and told her that she would send out copies of the Times supplement to agencies and that Cooper would receive a commission on any work Sims received from this. Within a year, Sims was earning US$1000 a week; in 1968 she appeared on the cover of the Ladies’Home Journal and the following year she appeared on the cover of Life magazine.

On 1 March 1980, Cooper died of lung cancer at the age of 40 in Greenwich Hospital.

According to her obituary in Time magazine:

During her cover-girl days, Wilhelmina boasted that she was “one of the few high-fashion models built like a woman.” And she was. With her 5 ft. 11 in., 38-24-36 frame, doe eyes, delicate cheekbones and mane of high-piled dark hair, she epitomized the classical, aristocratic look that she helped to make the style standard of the 1950s and ’60s…

Cooper’s daughter, Melissa, told Michael Gross (author of “Model: the Ugly Business of Being Beautiful”) she believes her mother chose to kill herself with cigarettes instead of facing, and fixing, her horribly imperfect life, suffering as an abused wife of an alcoholic husband.

Cooper was portrayed by Faye Dunaway (who won a Golden Globe for her performance) in the 1998 movie Gia, which tells the story of Gia Carangi, a model who was discovered by Cooper and later died of AIDS.

In American sitcom Ugly Betty, the antagonist Wilhelmina Slater (Vanessa L. Williams) is named as a tribute to Cooper. Her nickname, Willy, and the fact that she became a successful businesswoman in fashion after being a model were attached directly to the character.

.

Movie

Gia is a 1998  biographical film about the tragic life and times of one of America’s first supermodels, Gia Marie Carangi. The film stars Angelina Jolie as Gia and Faye Dunaway as Wilhelmina Cooper.

Gia Carangi is a Philadelphia native who moves to New York City to become a fashion model and immediately catches the attention of powerful agent Wilhelmina Cooper. Gia’s attitude and beauty help her rise quickly to the forefront of the modeling industry, but her persistent loneliness after the death of Wilhelmina drives her to experiment with mood-altering drugs like cocaine. She becomes entangled in a passionate affair with Linda, a make-up artist. Their love affair first starts when both pose nude and make love to each other after a photo shoot. However, after a while Linda begins to worry about Gia’s drug use and gives her an ultimatum; Gia chooses the drugs. Failed attempts at reconciliation with Linda and with her mother, Kathleen, drive Gia to begin abusing heroin. Although she is eventually able to break her drug habit after much effort, she has already contracted HIV from a needle containing infected blood.

.
.

.
.

info:Wikipedia

Naomi Ruth Sims (March 30, 1948 – August 1, 2009) was an American model, businesswoman and author. She was the first African-American model to appear on the cover of Ladies’ Home Journal, and is widely credited as being the first African-American supermodel.

Sims was born in Oxford, Mississippi, the youngest of three daughters born to John and Elizabeth Sims. Her father (whom she never knew) reportedly worked as a porter, but Sims’ mother later described him “an absolute bum” and her parents divorced shortly after she was born. She was teased for her height of 5’10 at the age of 13. Mrs Sims later moved with her three daughters to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where Naomi’s mother was forced to put her child into foster care. She attended Westinghouse High School. There due to her height, she was ostracized by many of her classmates.

Vogue Italia, 1969

ph. Irving Penn for Vogue
Vogue 1970

Sims often said childhood insecurities and a painful upbringing — living in foster homes, towering over her classmates and living in a largely poor white neighborhood in Pittsburgh — had inspired her to strive to become “somebody really important” at a time when cultural perceptions of black Americans were being challenged by the civil rights movement and a renewed stress on racial pride.

Sims began college after winning a scholarship to the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City in 1966, while also taking night classes in psychology at New York University. Her early attempts to get modeling work through established agencies were frustrated by racial prejudice, with some agencies telling her that her skin was too dark. There was very little interest in fashion for black models and only a handful who had been successful, like Dorothea Towles Church, who starred in the couture shows in 1950s Paris, and Donyale Luna, who was named Vogue’s model of the year in 1966.

Her first career breakthrough came after she decided to sidestep the agencies and go directly to fashion photographers and Gosta Peterson, a photographer for The New York Times, agreed to photograph her for the cover of the paper’s August 1967 fashion supplement, then called Fashions of The Times.

Ph. Irving Penn

Despite this breakthrough, Sims still found it difficult to get work, so she approached Wilhelmina Cooper, a former model who was starting her own agency, saying that she would send out copies of the Times supplement to advertising agencies, attaching Cooper’s telephone number, and that Cooper’s agency would get a commission if Naomi received any work. Within a year Sims was earning US$1000 a week. The key breakthrough came when she was selected for a national television campaign for AT&T, wearing clothes by designer Bill Blass. In 1968 Sims told Ladies’ Home Journal: “It helped me more than anything else because it showed my face. After it was aired, people wanted to find out about me and use me.”

Sims was suddenly in high demand, modeling for top designers like Halston, Teal Traina, Fernando Sánchez and Giorgio di Sant’Angelo, and standing at the vanguard of a fashion movement for black models that would give rise to runway stars of the 1970s, including Pat Cleveland, Alva Chinn and Beverly Johnson.

She became one of the first successful black models while still in her teens, and achieved worldwide recognition from the late 1960s into the early 1970s, appearing on the covers of prestigious fashion and popular magazines. The New York Times wrote that (her) “appearance as the first black model on the cover of Ladies’ Home Journal in November 1968 was a consummate moment of the Black is Beautiful movement”. She also appeared on the cover of the October 17, 1969 issue of Life magazine. This was the first African-American model on the cover of the magazine. The images from the 1967 New York Times fashion magazine cover and the 1969 Life magazine cover were exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in an exhibition entitled The Model as Muse.

In 1969 and 1970, Naomi Sims received the Model of the Year award. In 1972 she received the Woman of Achievement Medal and then the Top Hat Award in 1974.

By 1972, Hollywood took an interest in her as a potential actress and offered her the title role in the movie Cleopatra Jones, but when Sims read the script, she was appalled by the racist portrayal of blacks in the movie and turned it down. Sims ultimately decided to go into the beauty business for herself. Sims retired from modeling after five years to start her own business which created a successful wig collection fashioned after the texture of straightened black hair. It eventually expanded into a multimillion-dollar beauty empire and at least five books on modeling and beauty. 

She authored several books on modeling, health, and beauty, including All About Health and Beauty for the Black Woman, How to Be a Top Model and All About Success for the Black Woman, as well as an advice column for teenage girls in Right On! magazine.

In the 1980s, she expanded the Naomi Sims Collection to include a prestige fragrance, beauty salons and cosmetics, but by the end of the decade she had become less involved with its daily operations. Many images of  Sims from that period are still used to promote the products that bear her name.

In August 1973, she married art dealer Michael Findlay. Findlay and Sims caused a stir as Findlay was white and interracial marriage in 1973 was still considered taboo. Findlay and Sims were both profiled separately in the February 1, 1970 issue of Vogue before they met and married. They had one son, Bob. Their marriage ended in divorce in 1991.

Sims died of breast cancer on August 1, 2009, aged 61, in Newark, New Jersey.

“Naomi was the first. She was the great ambassador for all black people. She broke down all the social barriers.”   

Halston in 1974

.

Book

How to be a top model

Hardcover – 1979

1ste edition is over € 1.350,- !!!!

ISBN-10: 0385133618

ISBN-13: 978-0385133616

.

Naomi Sims, ph. Steven Meisel 1990

.

.

info: WikiPedia &

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/04/fashion/04sims.html?_r=0

Donyale Luna, ph. Charlotte March, Twen magazine, 1966

.Donyale Luna was the first black Supermodel, though many long established fashion-watchers don’t even know her name.  At the height of her career, the New York Times called Luna “a stunning Negro model whose face had the hauteur and feline grace of Nefertiti.” The designer Stephen Burrows recalled that “she was just one of those extraordinary girls.” And in 1966, when Beatrix Miller, the editor of British Vogue, chose her as the first-ever black model for that magazine’s cover, it was because of “her bite and personality.” Bethann Hardison, another ascendant model, remembers that “no one looked like her. She was like a really extraordinary species.”

Ph. by David Bailey 
.

David McCabe, known for photographing celebrities like Twiggy and Andy Warhol, recognized that Luna had something special the first time he saw her in 1963. “I was on a photo assignment in Detroit, photographing Ford cars [and] there was a school nearby,” he recalled. “I was struck by this almost 6-foot-tall beautiful girl – around 14-years-old at the time – wearing her Catholic uniform. She stopped to see what was going on.” He told her that he was a photographer for magazines like Mademoiselle and Glamour and that, if she was ever in New York, she should call him. In 1964, he got that call, and sent the ensuing photos to various agencies. “I also called Richard Avedon,” he remembers. “I said you’ve got to see this girl. She’s just unbelievable.” Soon Avedon began photographing her, too, eventually signing her to a one year contract.

In the mid-sixties, “the magazine world really wasn’t ready for photographing beautiful black women,” McCabe says. Luna’s first major cover, for Harper’s Bazaar in 1965, was a sketch in which her racial identity remained ambiguous. Luna’s face, most notably her lips and nose, are also obscured on her British Vogue cover, also somewhat hiding her race.

Despite all that, Luna’s role as a trailblazer is largely forgotten. Luna’s name is still a rarity on many “black firsts” lists. And Beverly Johnson is routinely referred to as “the first black woman to appear on the cover of Vogue,” for her turn on the American edition eight years after Luna’s British cover.

Short Biography

Donyale Luna (August 31, 1945 – May 17, 1979) was born Peggy Ann Freeman in Detroit, Michigan, to Nathaniel A. and Peggy Freeman (née Hertzog). She was the youngest of three daughters. In January 1965, her mother fatally shot her father in self-defense as he was reportedly abusive.

Despite the parentage stated on her birth certificate, she insisted that her biological father was a man with the surname Luna and that her mother was Indigenous Mexican and of Afro-Egyptian lineage. According to Luna, one of her grandmothers was reportedly a former Irish actress who married a black interior decorator. Whether any of this background is true is uncertain. Luna’s sister later described her as being “a very weird child, even from birth, living in a wonderland, a dream”. She would routinely create fantasies about her background and herself (like Coco Chanel did).

As a teen, she attended Cass Technical High School, where she studied journalism and was in the school choir. It was during this time that she began calling herself “Donyale”. She was later described by friends and classmates as being “kind of kooky”.

After being discovered by the photographer David McCabe, she moved from Detroit to New York City to pursue a modeling career. In January 1965, a sketch of Luna appeared on the cover of Harper’s Bazaar. She became the first black model to appear on the cover of a Vogue magazine, the March 1966 British issue, shot by photographer David Bailey.

Luna was under exclusive contract to the photographer Richard Avedon for a year at the beginning of her career.

Photographs by Richard Avedon

After being discovered by the photographer David McCabe, she moved from Detroit to New York City to pursue a modeling career. In January 1965, a sketch of Luna appeared on the cover of Harper’s Bazaar. She became the first black model to appear on the cover of a Vogue magazine, the March 1966 British issue, shot by photographer David Bailey.

Luna was under exclusive contract to the photographer Richard Avedon for a year at the beginning of her career.

Photographs by David Bailey

An article in Time magazine published on April 1, 1966, “The Luna Year”, described her as a new heavenly body who, because of her striking singularity, promises to remain on high for many a season. Donyale Luna, as she calls herself, is unquestionably the hottest model in Europe at the moment. She is only 20, a Negro, hails from Detroit, and is not to be missed if one reads Harper’s Bazaar, Paris Match, Britain’s Queen, the British, French or American editions of Vogue.

By the 1970s, however, Luna’s modeling career began to decline due to her drug use, eccentric behavior and tendency to be difficult. A designer for whom Luna once worked said, “She took a lot of drugs and never paid her bills”. Fellow model Beverly Johnson later said, “[Luna] doesn’t wear shoes winter or summer. Ask her where she’s from—Mars? She went up and down the runways on her hands and knees. She didn’t show up for bookings. She didn’t have a hard time, she made it hard for herself.”

‘Fur on Ice’, Twen magazine, 1966, ph. Charlotte March

During the late 1960s Luna appeared in several films produced by Andy Warhol. These included Screen Test: Donyale Luna (1964), Camp (1965), and Donyale Luna (1967), a 33-minute color film in which the model starred as Snow White.

In the 1969 Federico Fellini film Fellini Satyricon, she portrayed the whitch Oenothea, and Luna also appeared in The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus, the Otto Preminger comedy Skidoo, the documentary Tonite Let’s All Make Love in London and  starred as the title character in the 1972 Italian film Salomé by director Carmelo Bene.

Donyale Luna on the set of Satyricon
.

Donyale Luna was married, engaged or romantically involved many times, like to Austrian-born Swiss actor Maximilian Schell and in 1969 with German actor Klaus Kinski. This relationship ended when Kinski asked her entourage to leave his house in Rome: he was concerned that their drug use could damage his career. Another one of her liaisons was with Rolling Stone Brian Jones

Luna married the Italian photographer Luigi Cazzaniga. In 1977 they had a daughter, Dream.

At the age of 33 the drug-taking finally caught up with Donyale Luna. Estranged from her husband, she died in a Rome clinic in the early hours of 17 May 1979 of an accidental heroin overdose. She left behind her 18-month-old daughter, Dream.

Donyale Luna, ph. Luigi Cazzaniga

.

.

Rootstein mannequin

Donyale Luna, the first notable African American fashion model and cover girl, was also the first African American to have a mannequin created in her likeness. It was produced in 1967 by the leading mannequin manufacturer, Adel Rooststein, as a follow-up to their famous Twiggy mannequin of 1966.

eBook

Beauty’s Enigma – Donyale Luna – The First Black Supermodel

They called her “the reincarnation of Nefertiti,” and “a girl of staggering beauty and magnetism.” She was Donyale Luna, the startling, owl-like beauty who crashed through fashion’s apartheid system in the mid-1960s to become the world’s first black supermodel, and the first to grace a Vogue cover. In a short but action-packed career, she worked with Salvador Dali, Frederico Fellini, Andy Warhol, David Bailey, Helmut Newton and Richard Avedon, before her untimely death from a drug overdose in 1979. This new biography by Ben Arogundade, author of Black Beauty, details her amazing life story in all its dramatic glory.
eBook
ISBN: 978-0-9569394-4-9.

.

Info:

Wikipedia &

http://nymag.com/thecut/2013/07/first-black-supermodel-whom-history-forgot.html

John Rawlings (1912-1970) was a Condé Nast Publications fashion photographer from the 1930s through the 1960s. Though Rawlings left a significant body of work, including 200 Vogue magazine and Glamour magazine covers to his credit, he never achieved the name and fame of his lengendary colleagues and masters Cecil Beaten and Horst P. Horst.

The introduction of American photographer John Rawlings to Vogue’s visual team in 1936 was certainly one of Conde Nast’s best strategic moves. At a time when opulence, pretentiousness, and theatrical lighting were prevalent in fashion photography – fueled by the European school led by the British Beaton, the German Horst, and the Russian Hoyningen-Huene – Nast and Vogue’s editor in chief Edna Woolman Chase decided they needed a change of direction and placed their bets on a talented but unknown twenty-four-year Midwesterner.

In two memos sent by Chase, one to her staff in 1937 and another to the photographers in 1938, she demanded more information and less art in Vogue pictures: “Several of the photographs for September fifteenth are nothing but black smudges,” she wrote in the second. “Concentrate completely on showing the dress, light it for this purpose and if that can’t be done with art then art be damned. Show the dress. This is an order straight from the boss’s mouth and will you please have it typed and hung in the studio”. 

The change of direction would take a few years, but the man to lead it, John Rawlings, would become one of the most prolific and important photographers of the twentieth century, with more than two hundred Vogue and Glamour covers to his credit. 

His beginnings were unremarkable. Born in Ohio in 1912, John Rawlings attended the local Wesleyan University, and upon graduation in the early 1930s he relocated to New York, where he became a freelance store window dresser. After buying a Leica to photograph his work and show it to potential clients, Rawlings discovered that he enjoyed taking pictures and eventually started to photograph some of the aristocratic clients themselves, alone or with their dogs. A few of those shots found their way to the desk of Nast, who decided to offer Rawlings a job at the Vogue studios as prop builder, studio hand, and apprentice to the legendary masters Beaton and Horst. The young man was so dedicated and worked with such unbridled enthusiasm that four months later he not only was promoted to first assistant to the masters but also got his first photo published in the September 15 issue of Vogue. Impressed by his precocious talent and visual style, Nast and Chase rewarded him in 1937 with a job at the British Vogue studio in London, where he would train and work until the early 1940s. During his time there, Rawlings experimented with his style and began to develop his signature uses of light, setting and posing. His British Vogue work was so impressive it began cirulating in French and American Vogue as well.

Charles Dare Scheips Jr., former director of the Conde Nast Archives, called Rawlings “The first major Conde Nast photographer to demonstrate a truly American eye.”

Rawlings is credited as the first fashion photographer to associate fashion with Hollywood celebrities and also said to have single-handedly elevated commercial photography to an art form. 

.

Book    

 John Rawlings: 30 Years in Vogue

With over 200 Vogue and Glamour covers to his credit and 30,000 photos in archive, John Rawlings (1912-1970) immortalized the era in which American fashion and style truly came into their own. During his three-decade affiliation with Conde Nast, Rawlings’s work paralleled his publishers’ and editors’ efforts to reformat and expand the power and scope of the fashion press. Rawlings was in the elite circle of Irving Penn, Horst P. Horst, George Hoyningen-Huene, and George Platt Lynes, all top Vogue photographers, yet never received the kind of attention lauded on his colleagues — until now. Drawing on the photographer’s rediscovered archive, curator Kohle Yohannan presents glamour portraits as well as never-before-published nudes that testify to the artist’s ground-breaking and compelling body of work. Photographs of stage, screen, and society stars of the 1940s and 1950s, including Marlene Dietrich, Salvador Dali, Veronica Lake, Lena Horne, and Montgomery Clift are featured.

Veronica LakeVivien Leigh
Photographer Irving Penn in his American Field Service uniform.
Actor Peter Ustinov
.
.
.

.
.
info:

http://bygonefashion.livejournal.com/195868.html

http://www.fashionmefabulous.com/2011/03/famous-fashion-photographers-john.htmlshion Me Fabulous

Flappers were a “new breed” of young Western women in the 1920s who wore short skirts, bobbed their hair, listened to jazz and flaunted their disdain for what was then considered acceptable behavior. Flappers were seen as brash for wearing excessive makeup, drinking, treating sex in a casual manner, smoking, driving automobiles, and otherwise flouting social and sexual norms. Flappers had their origins in the liberal period of the Roaring Twenties, the social, political turbulence and increased transatlantic cultural exchange that followed the end of World War I, as well as the export of American jazz culture to Europe.  (Wikipedia)

The empress of the Jazz Age, Zelda Fitzgerald  inspired fashion in much the same way she inspired her husband F. Scott Fitzgerald’s writing: firmly and fiercely. The two married in 1920, and soon after Scott achieved literary success with This Side of Paradise. Feisty, talented and a prodigious social butterfly, Zelda quickly made a name for herself as his charismatic muse. Dubbed the “first American flapper” by her husband, Zelda epitomized the Roaring Twenties with her bobbed hair, short skirts and unapologetic drinking as she made her way through the most exclusive social circles in New York and, later, Paris. She wore a flesh-colored bathing suit to fuel rumors that she swam nude–she liked the attention. However, in reality, life wasn’t quite so enchanting — the Fitzgeralds’ marriage was often turbulent. Zelda spent much time in and out of institutions being treated for mental illness. She was staying in an institution in North Carolina in 1948 when she died after a fire broke out. However, despite the personal hardships, Zelda had embodied everything that fabled era promised: defiance, recklessness and, above all, glamour.

Zelda & Scott Fitzgerald

Zelda & Scott Fitzgerald
.

Zelda, Scott & Frances "Scottie" Fitzgerald

Zelda & Scott Fitzgerald
Zelda, Scott & Frances "Scottie" Fitzgerald
Zelda & Scott Fitzgerald
.

.

Zelda Wasn’t ‘Crazy’

According to Zelda biographer, Theresa Ann Fowler: “Zelda did suffer some mental health crises — depression, primarily — and was an uninhibited, uncensored woman who didn’t always think before she acted, but she wasn’t crazy. Unwise? Sometimes. Insane? No.”

.

.

Book

When beautiful, reckless Southern belle Zelda Sayre meets F. Scott Fitzgerald at a country club dance in 1918, she is seventeen years old and he is a young army lieutenant stationed in Alabama. Before long, the “ungettable” Zelda has fallen for him despite his unsuitability: Scott isn’t wealthy or prominent or even a Southerner, and keeps insisting, absurdly, that his writing will bring him both fortune and fame. Her father is deeply unimpressed. But after Scott sells his first novel, This Side of Paradise, to Scribner’s, Zelda optimistically boards a train north, to marry him in the vestry of St. Patrick’s Cathedral and take the rest as it comes.

What comes, here at the dawn of the Jazz Age, is unimagined attention and success and celebrity that will make Scott and Zelda legends in their own time. Everyone wants to meet the dashing young author of the scandalous novel―and his witty, perhaps even more scandalous wife. Zelda bobs her hair, adopts daring new fashions, and revels in this wild new world. Each place they go becomes a playground: New York City, Long Island, Hollywood, Paris, and the French Riviera―where they join the endless party of the glamorous, sometimes doomed Lost Generation that includes Ernest Hemingway, Sara and Gerald Murphy, and Gertrude Stein.

Everything seems new and possible. Troubles, at first, seem to fade like morning mist. But not even Jay Gatsby’s parties go on forever. Who is Zelda, other than the wife of a famous―sometimes infamous―husband? How can she forge her own identity while fighting her demons and Scott’s, too? With brilliant insight and imagination, Therese Anne Fowler brings us Zelda’s irresistible story as she herself might have told it.

.

.

Shaun Ross
.

This week I watched a documentary about the hunt for Albinos in parts of Africa and it completely took my by the throat. Wanting to share this film, I surged for a connection with my blog and found it in Shaun Ross.

‘.

Albinism in humans (from the Latin albus, “white”) is a congenital disorder characterized by the complete or partial absence of pigment in the skin, hair and eyes due to absence or defect of tyrosinase, a copper-containing enzyme involved in the production of melanin. It is the opposite of melanism. 

“I was always the outcast, but a confident outcast”  

Shaun Ross (born May 10, 1991) is an American professional fashion model, actor and dancer best known for being the first male albino pro model. He has been featured in photo-editorial campaigns in fashion publications including British GQ, Italian Vogue, i-D Magazine, Paper Magazine and Another Man. He has modeled for Alexander McQueen and Givenchy.

Ross’s mom gave birth to him on the highway on the way to the hospital. “The nickname my parents always called me was Nissan,” Ross said with a laugh.

Ross is of African-American descent. Born in the Bronx, when he was growing up, Ross dealt with much discrimination for being albino. He was bullied frequently by his peers, called names such as “Powder”, “Wite-Out”, and “Casper”. After training at the Alvin Ailey School for five years, Ross was discovered on YouTube and crossed over to the fashion industry in 2008 at 16 years old.

models Shaun Ross & Diandra Forrest
.

In 2009, Ross appeared on the Tyra Banks Show. He shared the show with fellow albinistic African American model Diandra Forrest; together, they shared their life stories about how different life was for them. Later that year, Ross played a role in a short film by Yoann Lemoine which won a first-place prize in a contest sponsored by Italian Vogue. Ross also has worked with other directors, such as Julien Seri, Jason Last, Jessica Yatrofsky and Ella Manor in both film and television. Ross, who is bisexual, participates in the underground ballroom scene in New York, where he often vogues as a free agent.

.

Shaun Ross in People Magazine:

Growing up in New York, I had to face scrutiny of my looks for as long as I can remember. Looking different, feeling different, all because of the way the world wants to classify you. I got called “weird,” “powder,” or “Casper.” When the world doesn’t want to see you – or better yet, accept you the way you are – the last thing you think you could become is a supermodel. 

Society makes it seem that the most beautiful people in the world are models; they are the perfect design of what a human being should look like: female models with long straight hair and a tiny thin waist and male models with bleach blond hair or Herculean bodies. When you’re raised with the public telling you that you are ugly or you have a disease, you don’t think you have a chance. 

As a child, I was always very outgoing and charismatic, traits I got from my parents. They helped me gain the confidence to eventually become a dancer, like my idols Michael and Janet Jackson, Madonna and Beyoncé. Later, Shameer Khan scouted me for a modeling contract. When this break led to me becoming the first male model with albinism, I knew I was helping to change the way people thought. I was breaking the mold by changing the standards of beauty with the help of others before me like Alek Wek, Stacey McKenzie and Connie Chiu.

Ross says that his condition doesn’t define him or confine him in any way. It has just always been there. The problem lies with others and with people’s perception.

Ph. David Armstrong for Another Man Magazine
Ph. Danny Roche, Vogue Italia
Ford Motor Company campaign "Be Unique"

,

http://www.inmyskiniwin.com/

Ross summed up his attitude with a hashtag he uses to his growing social media following, #InMySkinIWin, which he says promotes a level of comfort with yourself. He started it to raise albinism awareness, but has since expanded the meaning to just loving who you are.

http://shaundross.tumblr.com/

.

.

Documentary

The hunt for Albinos

In parts of Africa people believe that giving birth to an Albino “creature” is a curse. Some also believe that owning a part of their body will make them rich. Albinos are hunted down and hacked to death. Or, if lucky, they will only lose an arm (sold for $225).

In this amazing documentary Joseph Terner reaches out to the same people who made his life hell. He explains Albinos are not the product of a curse, but that of a genetic mutation.

.

.

Ph.Terry Richardson for Nixi Magazine
;
;

Info:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/shaun-ross/

http://www.people.com/article/shaun-ross-model-albinism-tanzanian-refugees

http://edition.cnn.com/2013/09/10/living/fashion-week-imperfect-model-shaun-ross/

Ph. Erwin Blumenfeld, 1947
.

Babe in her wedding dress when she married Stanley Mortimer.Ph. Horst P.Horst,1940

Ph.John Rawlings, Vogue February 1946
Ph. Clifford Coffin for British Vogue December 1946Ph. Lord Snowdon

Truman Capote.

.

Ph. Horst P. Horst
Ph. Norman Parkinson

Ph. Alexander Liberman, 1942

.

.

.

.

Ph. John Rawlings

Info:  Wikpedia &

http://video.vanityfair.com/watch/the-best-dressed-women-of-all-time–babe-paley

Vogue UK December 1974, ph. David Bailey
.

Bianca Jagger (born Bianca Pérez-Mora Macias, 2 May 1945) is a Nicaraguan-born socialite turned human rights activist.

She was born in Managua, Nicaragua. Her father was a successful import-export merchant and her mother a housewife. They divorced when Bianca was ten and she stayed with her mother, who had to take care of three children on a small income. She received a scholarship to study political science in France at the Paris Institute of Political Studies. 

Bianca & Mick Jagger

Bianca Jagger is known for being both the first wife of Mick Jagger and one of the most impeccably stylish women in the world. Bianca’s exotic beauty caught the Rolling Stones’ frontman’s eye at a party in France after one of their concerts in 1970 and they married ( Bianca wore a YSL Le Smoking jacket on her wedding day) a year later in St Tropez. Bianca has since said that her marriage was over as soon as it began, but black and white photographs of the cooler-than-cool pair dripping with ’70s glamour suggest it was beautiful while it lasted. Their split did little to snuff out Bianca’s jet-setting, party-going reputation, and she was a solid fixture on Manhattan’s Studio 54 scene always decked out in luxurious furs, glittering sequins and exquisitely tailored white YSL trouser suits.

A close friend and photographic favourite of Andy Warhol (her daughter Jade once urinated on a piece of his artwork), Bianca also personified the elegant Halston woman along with Liza Minnelli and Lauren Bacall. It was Halston she wore to her 30^th birthday party at Studio 54 where she famously rode on a white horse lead by a semi-clad man.

Studio 54

Steve Rubel(owner Studio 54), Halston and Bianca Jagger at Studio 54, 1978
Halston, Bianca & Andy WarholWith Angie & David BowieElisabeth Taylor, Halston & Bianca
Halston, Bianca,Liza Minnelli & Micheal Jackson
.

The It Girl of the decade, Bianca’s glam look ranged from unbuttoned blouses, wide-lapel suits, bold choker necklaces, one-shoulder dresses, and fierce facial expressions. As she puts it well, “Style is knowing what suits you, who you are, and what your assets are. It is also accepting it all.”

Wearing Zandra Rhodes Wearing Ossie ClarkWith Yves Saint Laurent.

.
Studio 54 Fable

Bianca Jagger wants to set the record straight about a certain night at Studio 54, which has haunted the annals of night life lore since 1977. “Mick Jagger and I walked into Studio 54,” she wrote in a letter to the editor in the Financial Times, finally setting to rest the rumors that she rode into the famed nightclub on a white horse.

As with most rumors, the story has some basis in fact. Fashion designer Halston threw a 30th birthday party at Studio 54 for Jagger, who at the time was married to Rolling Stones frontman, Mick Jagger. At the party, a naked giant covered in gold glitter led Bianca, clad in Halston and Manolo Blahniks, around the night club on horseback. The moment was captured by noted fashion photographerRose Hartman and the image went whatever was the 1977 equivalent of viral, slowly becoming emblematic of the excesses (read: fun) of the era and eventually becoming a legend.

However somewhere along the way, the story was twisted to include the detail that Jaggerrode into the nightclub on the horse, which would certainly be a memorable feat. However, Jagger took to the Financial Times today to declare that detail preposterous and, as an animal rights defender, downright offensive. In the letter to the editor, she wrote: “It is one thing to, on the spur of the moment, get on a horse in a night club, but it quite another to ride in on one.”

She explained that the club’s owner, Steve Rubell, had brought the horse into a club as a lark, after seeing a photo of her riding one in her home of Nicaragua. When she saw the horse inside the club, Jagger thought it would be fun to hop on and take it for a quick spin. Contrary to rumor, she did not ride the white horse down 54th street and into the velvet-roped doors of Studio 54. In her letter to the editor, Jagger wrote: “I often ask myself how people visualise this fable . . . Where was Mick during this time? Was he holding the reins and pulling me and the horse through the streets of New York, or following submissively behind me!?”

She closed the note with the hope that her letter would finally “put this Studio 54 fable — out to pasture.”

By Melissa Locker for Vanity Fair

.

.

Wearing her backstage pass on het shoe

info:

WikiPedia

http://www.oystermag.com

http://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2015/04/bianca-jagger-studio-54

Zandra Rhodes (born 19 September, 1940. Chatham, England) was introduced to the world of fashion by her mother, a fitter for the Paris fashion House of  (Charles) Worth and later a lecturer at Medway College of Art. Zandra studied at Medway College of Art, and then at The Royal College of Art in London. Her major area of study was printed textile design.

Zandra Rhodes Textile Designs

Her early textile designs were considered too outrageous by the traditional British manufacturers so she decided to make dresses from her own fabrics and pioneered the very special use of printed textiles as an intrinsic part of the garments she created. While teaching at art college, in 1967, she opened her first shop: The Fulham Road Clothes Shop in London with Sylvia Ayton. In 1969 she set up on her own and took her collection to New York where Diana Vreeland featured her garments in American Vogue, after which she started selling to Henri Bendel in NY, followed by Sakowitz, Neiman Marcus and Saks. In the UK, Zandra was given her own area in Fortnum and Mason, London. She was Designer of the Year in 1972 and in 1974 Royal Designer for Industry. In 1975 she founded her own shop off Bond Street London and boutique area in Marshall Fields, Chicago.

Zandra Rhodes garments in American Vogue 1970

Natalie Wood by Penati in Zandra Rhodes Vogue 1970
Zandra’s own lifestyle is as dramatic, glamorous and extrovert as her designs. With her bright pink hair, theatrical make-up and art jewellery, she has stamped her identity on the international world of fashion. She was one of the new wave of British designers who put London at the forefront of the international fashion scene in the 1970s. Her unique use of bold prints, fiercely feminine patterns and theatrical use of colour has given her garments a timeless quality that makes them unmistakably a Rhodes creation. In 1977 she pioneered the pink and black jersey collection with holes and beaded safety pins that earned her the name of “Princess of Punk”. Her posters from this period have been a continuous inspiration for make-up artists and are collectors’ items.

She has designed for clients as diverse as Diana, Princess of Wales, Jackie Onassis, Elizabeth Taylor and Freddie Mercury of the rock group ‘Queen’. She has a strong following in the US, UK, and Australia.

Zandra’s dresses are the ultimate dress-up dress. Helen Mirren, star of “The Queen” wore a Zandra Rhodes when she received her award from BAFTA and Sarah Jessica Parker dressed up in a Zandra for “Sex and the City”. Her vintage pieces have long been collected by Tom Ford and Anna Sui and have been worn by Kelly Osborne, Ashley Olsen, Kate Moss and Naomi Campbell.

Additionally, Zandra has set up the Fashion and Textile Museum in London which was officially opened May 2003 by HRH Princess Michael of Kent. Mexican architect Ricardo Legorreta designed the museum, which is in stunning pink and orange, and already has a preservation plaque. The museum is dedicated to showing the work of fashion and textile designers from the 1950s onwards. This museum has created several notable exhibitions: “My Favorite Dress”, “The Little Black Dress”, and Zandra’s very own “Zandra Rhodes: A Lifelong Love Affair with Textiles”, which is a major monographic exhibition exploring the forty year career of the iconic British Designer herself. 

Rhodes was appointed Commander of the British Empire (CBE) in 1997 and Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in the 2014 Birthday Honours for services to British fashion and textiles, having been invested at Buckingham Palace by Princess Anne.

.

.

Book

The Art of Zandra Rhodes
A glamorous hardcover reprint of the 1984 edition

This book began as a record of Zandra Rhodes’ work and has become the ultimate reference book for students studying the process behind creating designs. It explains how Zandra’s ideas are translated from her original sketchbook drawing, into a textile design, and then into the final garment. It spans from the beginning of her career to 1981.

.

.

Zandra Rhodes 2015

.

info:

WikiPedia

http://www.zandrarhodes.com/about

Thea Porter reflected in her dining table.  Ph. Jim Lee for the Sunday Times , 1971
.
Once, towns strewn across Turkey and Afghanistan owed their economies to the western appetite for the kaftan. During the 1970s travellers on the hippy trail brought back pottery, soft furnishings and piles of clothes to remind them of their spiritual adventures.

More than 40 years on, the kaftan has had several revivals as a key fashion piece. And, like Indian cuisine, it now seems to have been adopted as a British staple. It is the late Thea Porter, who is credited with bringing the bohemian look to London catwalks…. 

Although Thea Porter is not as famous a name as Mary Quant or Laura Ashley, her influence on the look of her era is just as potent. Her loose, draped shapes and fabrics helped create the style of stars such as Faye Dunaway and Elizabeth Taylor in the 1970s, and they have since become forever entangled with the idea of rock-star self-indulgence.  Vogue UK, June 1971Maudie James, ph. Patrick Hunt 1970

Avant Garde, September 1978, Ph. Jacques d’Alva

.

Short Biography

Thea Porter in her work room

.

Thea Porter was born Dorothea Noelle Naomi Seale, on 24 December 1927, in Jerusalem and raised in Damascus. She was the daughter of Morris S. Seale, the Arabist and theologian, who was a Christian missionary in Syria, and his French wife, who was also a missionary.  

Thea was educated at the Lycée Française in Damascus, Fernhill Manor, then for a short time studying French and Old English at Royal Holloway College, London, before being expelled.

Following her studies in England, she worked in the library of the British embassy in Beirut, where she met her future husband, Robert Porter. Together they travelled to Jordan and Iran, and had holidays in France and Italy. She studied painting during the day, and “went to nightclubs every night and had millions of clothes.” In June 1961 Thea had her first solo painting exhibition at the Alecco Saab Gallery, Beirut. Together they had a daughter, Venetia.

Vogue April 1975, ph. Barry Lategan
Vogue November 1970, ph. Barry Lategan
Vogue 1969
Vogue October 1969, ph. Guy Bourdin
.

After she separated from her husband, Thea moved to London in May 1964. Her first job was in interior design, working for Elizabeth Eaton. She opened her first shop, an interior decorating business offering imported cushions, fabrics and hangings called Thea Porter Decorations Ltd, in Soho at 8 Greek street on July 27, 1966. She realised that rather than just cutting up her imported kaftan to use the fabric for cushion covers, they were fashionable in their own right, and began making up her own in mixed fabrics and antique trimmings.

From 1967, she expanded internationally; her first wholesale client was Henri Bendel in New York in 1968. 

In 1971, Thea opened a store in New York financed by Michael Butler, the producer of the hit Broadway musical Hair. It closed after six months, but she continued to sell very successfully at high-end boutiques across the United States; Giorgio Beverly Hills sold approximately $300,000 worth of Thea Porter designs per year in the mid-1970s. On April 1, 1977 she opened a store in Paris, on the Rue de Tournon; this closed in 1979. Thea Porter Decorations Ltd went into receivership in February 1981; she subsequently worked from ateliers on Avery Row and Beauchamp Place. Zandra Rhodes has stated, “Sadly, one didn’t hear of her after that“.

In 1994 Thea was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. Thea Porter died in London on 24 July 2000.

.

Though she’s no longer a household name, Thea Porter basically owned the boho look from the late 60s onwards. 
Facts about Thea Porter:

Growing up in the Middle East had a lasting influence on her designs

Thea was born in Jerusalem, grew up in Damascus and studied in Beirut. Eventually settling in London in the mid-60s, the influences of her upbringing made her designs feel new. She brought the flowing robes and rich textures that she’d seen as a child to a London crowd who had been dressing in the Op Art and modernist styles of the early 60s. Moroccan djellaba robes, Iraqi Samawa carpets and 17th-century Persian paintings were all inspirations. A shirtdress made from the Damascus tablecloth fabric, aghabani, became a bestseller.

She started out with interiors, and menswear followed

Her first shop, on Soho’s Greek Street 8, was quite the hangout. It opened in 1966, and sold Thea’s ornate, colourful furnishings, including wall hangings and curtains. The Beatles snapped them up to decorate their short-lived Apple Boutique. Rock royalty liked her menswear designs, too. Elton John was an early fan and Pink Floyd wore her embroidered jackets and vibrant shirts on the cover of their appropriately trippy debut album The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn in 1967.

Pink Floyd album cover  'The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn'

She also excelled at womenswear

Thea fitted into the floaty, feminine mood of the time that other designers – Bill Gibb, Ossie Clark, Laura Ashley – were also exploring, but made it her own with several signatures. Along with the aghabani shirtdress, her so-called “gipsy” dress – layers of vibrantly printed chiffon, with a tight bodice and flowing sleeves – had the requisite wild romanticism, especially when worn with swashbuckling boots. 

She had a good business brain on her chiffon-clad shoulders

By 1969, Thea had expanded overseas, with a concession in New York department store Henri Bendel. A stand-alone store followed in 1971, and she sold her designs successfully in LA, too. Her success partly came from an ability to evolve her aesthetic. The very ornate designs gave way to simpler pieces in the 1970s, influenced by the classical lines of 30s fashion. At this time, she also hired a young Katharine Hamnett who worked for Thea while still studying at Central Saint Martins.

Her clothes were loved by a well-heeled crowd

A regular in the pages of British Vogue – where luminaries including Lauren Hutton, Penelope Tree and Rudolf Nureyev modelled her clothes – the likes of Barbra Streisand and Faye Dunaway were clients in the Greek Street store and Elsa Peretti modelled in her shows. While Thea’s name faded into obscurity in the 1980s and 90s, it’s since become a cult favourite on the vintage scene, with original pieces fetching more than £1,000 on eBay. 

.

Book

Thea Porter: Bohemian Chiq

Thea Porter (1927–2000) came to epitomize bohemian chic in the 1960s and ’70s, using an eclectic mix of luxurious fabrics for her signature flowing dresses that became favorites of stylish women everywhere. Faye Dunaway, Joan Collins, Barbra Streisand, and Elizabeth Taylor were fans; Vogue’s Diana Vreeland championed her clothes; and today vintage Thea Porter is worn by Kate Moss, Nicole Richie, and other fashionistas. This first  book devoted to the UK-based fashion designer features new photography of her fabulous clothes and jewelry as well as press clippings, sketches, and excerpts from an unpublished memoir she wrote about her aesthetics, philosophies, and work.

Photo’s of the Thea Porter exhibition in the Fashion &Textile Museum, London

.

info:

http://www.ftmlondon.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/TheaPorter-press-release.pdf

WikiPedia

http://www.theguardian.com

http://fashion.telegraph.co.uk/

 Koos Van den Akker

Until his death Koos had a store at 1263 Madison Avenue, New York, his former location for decades and a studio in the Garment District. Koos maintained a high-profile in New York and LA. He collected a following among celebrities and much press from Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, L’Officiel, Vice Magazine and I-D.

.

 Book

This biography and illustrated guide highlights the work of master designer Koos van den Akker and provides inspiration for bold, unique sewing creations. Chronicling the designer’s 30 years in haute couture, this book follows van den Akker from his start in the Paris workrooms of Christian Dior to his rise in the fashion world and the establishment of his own Madison Avenue boutique. Included are demonstrations for duplicating several of his construction and design techniques that offer illustrated sewing instructions and intricate details for home sewers to imitate. The designs, with their richness of texture, generosity of color, and dynamic mix of fabrics, share the full scope of van den Akker’s masterful creations.

.

Koos Van Den Akker at home in New York

“Heart of Glass” is a dreamy pop hit that at the very least is pleasing to anyone sane and addictive to those who love to dance. And the video delivered so much more: a beautiful blonde front woman whose delivery matched her persona: Detached, willful, feminine, feminist, bored and flirtatious. And the style! Was she disco, New Wave, rock or punk? Was she an uptown princess or downtown cokehead? Her outfit—a scrap of a dress paired with clear plastic heels—hints at posh but also feels like a one-off. The duality made Blondie lead singer Debbie Harry endlessly alluring and enigmatic. Through “Heart of Glass,” Harry was introducing the world to fashion designer Stephen Sprouse, who styled her rock goddess image from the tips of her bleached roots to the transparent toes of her Cinderella slippers, East Village style.

Debbie Harry before Stephen Sprouse
.

Sprouse met Harry in 1975, after he moved into the East Village loft above a liquor store where Harry lived. The two shared a kitchen and bathroom, and Harry would often feed the designer’s cats. Sprouse had some clothes he’d “been dragging around for years,” and started to put a look together, cutting up dance tights and T-shirts into outfits and helping her dress. Rock music was a primary source of inspiration for Sprouse, and in 1978 he took a picture of lines of pixels dancing across the TV, photo-printed the enlarged image onto diaphanous chiffon and designed what became “the Heart of Glass dress” for Harry. When that song shot to number one on the dance charts, even in those pre-MTV days, Sprouse’s reputation quietly crept above ground and uptown.

Watch any Blondie video and it quickly becomes clear that it is next to impossible to draw attention away from stunning Harry—her band mates tried in vain to do so through the lifespan of the group—but Sprouse’s dress does it. In fact, all of the costumes he created for her various videos and appearances hold their own against Harry’s magnetic “It factor,” precisely because they are so perfectly styled for her; they are her. The Heart of Glass dress, for, fits and drapes superbly and, with its hip-high asymmetrical hemline, might have looked Halstonesque were it not for the single, off-kilter strap and DIY print. It hangs from her tiny frame like an oversize kerchief; torn, filmy and strangely unforgettable.

Years later, Harry told People magazine that Sprouse “put a layer of cotton fabric underneath and a layer of chiffon on top, and then the scan-lines would do this op-art thing.” A shadow of a stripe is repeated on the thin scarf Harry bats about and on the coordinated T-shirts the rest of the band wears. In the world’s first glimpse of the band, Sprouse’s styling created the image of Blondie, a group not quite disco and not quite pop, one with punk-rock roots that appeals to the upper-crust set.

.

.

.

info: written by Ali Basye
.
.

.

.

.
Comment by kafkette   /  http://trashilove.wordpress.com

wait.
i like debbie harry, blondie, stephen sprouse, & yr blog.
but the photo of her with the dark hair is from much earlier, c1969, when she was in a band called wind in the willows. & ‘heart of glass’ was ABSOLUTELY NOT the world’s first glimpse of her. all the punkrocker types knew who she was for YEARS before that, since ’75-’76, maybe? and the only worry over what type of music blondie made showed up maybe at the time of ‘heart of glass’ by people who actually had never heard them before. they are from the same scene as television, the heartbreakers, the ramones, every-new york-one who then mattered. blondie was a fixture on the tiny punk scene—maybe 500 core people WORLDWIDE, not what people think at all.
other than that, do not worry, yr article is very good. and even my friend, who does not follow fashion in the least, loved the one about koos. i sent it to her, as i will send this one to another friend, who will enjoy it. i just wanted to make the abovenoted clear, because so much of our tiny culture’s history is lost, gone with so very many of our dead. i’m still here, not very druggy & one of the youngest so count me still alive. sadly.

Stephen Sprouse by Andy Warhol, 1987
.

Stephen Sprouse was born in 1953. Being the oldest son of Norbert and Joanne Sprouse, he spent his first two years in Dayton, Ohio, where his father was stationed at the Air Force base. After the family moved to Columbus, Indiana, Norbert Sprouse pursued a lucrative manufacturing career; the family lived comfortably in a white, columned house a friend describes as something out of Gone With the Wind. Sprouse’s artistic talent emerged when he was a toddler. “Stephen was wired the way he was from the time he was 2,” his mother says. “He was totally unique.”

He was rarely without a pen, churning out pictures with such intensity that his mother worried that her shy son was relying too much on his art to do his talking. Sprouse was assertive only when wielding a pen or pencil—and then so much so that teachers nicknamed him the Art Supervisor. At 9, he drew a series of four self-portraits, in which he imagined his future career choices. “I might be a hobo,” he printed beneath one. “Or a movie star . . . or a father.” On the last picture, as if acknowledging his special gifts, he wrote, “Now I know who I better be—ME!”

When Sprouse was 12, his father showed his portfolio to someone at the Art Institute of Chicago, which led to an introduction to the designer Norman Norell. Sprouse’s father took Stephen to New York to meet both Norell and the Indiana-born Bill Blass, who later hired the aspiring artist as a summer apprentice. Sprouse was then only 14. “He was cool, my dad,” Sprouse told the late fashion editor Amy Spindler. “I mean, this was in Indiana. He could have beat me up if I didn’t play football, and he didn’t.”

Four years later, Sprouse enrolled at the Rhode Island School of Design, where a teacher introduced him as “the designer of the future” to a class that included Nicole Miller. For Sprouse, however, the future couldn’t come soon enough, and he left after three months to come to New York. He was totally fascinated by Andy Warhol and the people who hung around him. Sprouse loved Edie Sedgwick. For him, she was like the sixties Kate Moss.

Assisting Halston with a fitting on Anjelica Houston, 1970s
.

Sprouse immediately got a job with Halston, who was then at the height of his fame as America’s top fashion designer, and a reigning prince of Manhattan’s nightlife. Sprouse as a “total drawing machine.” Halston frequently designed by draping fabric, and Sprouse, sketchpad in hand, would have to visualize the architecture of his draping and then translate it to paper. Other times Halston would simply say, “Now, give me a dolman sleeve,” and Sprouse would instantly create one. From Halston, whose strength as a designer was in the purity and simplicity of his forms, Sprouse learned about shape and luxury. 

Sprouse left Halston after two and a half years, and in 1975, he moved to a loft in the Bowery, where he shared a bathroom and kitchen with singer Deborah Harry. The beautiful ex–Playboy Bunny, and former art student Chris Stein had recently formed Blondie, and they were beginning to gain a following at Max’s Kansas City and CBGB. At Halston, Sprouse had loved playing dress-up with the designer’s favorite model, Karen Bjornson, who personified the cool Upper East Side blonde. He transformed Harry into a kind of Bowery Bjornson, creating clothes from ripped tights, T-shirts, and objects he picked up off the streets. In London, designer Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren, manager of the Sex Pistols, were already making the conceptual link between fashion and punk with their Kings Road boutique, Sex. It sold slashed T-shirts and bondage gear. Sprouse’s vision was less hard-core, more glam. He may have created a dress with razor blades dangling from the hem, but it was beautifully designed.

Debbie Harry wearing Sprouse, 1979
Debbie Harry & Stephen Sprouse
.

Art, rock music, and fashion were the central themes of Sprouse’s life. When he wasn’t designing clothes, he worked on his art, doing giant silk-screen paintings of rock stars, and painting pictures over the Xerox copies he made with his large industrial copier. With the advent of music video, rock and roll was becoming a bigger part of mass culture. In 1978, he photo-printed a picture he’d taken of TV scan lines onto a piece of fabric, which he then designed as a dress for Debbie Harry. She wore it in the video for her No. 1 hit “Heart of Glass,” giving Sprouse the kind of exposure it had taken Halston years to get.

Sprouse found many of his design ideas on the downtown club scene. He was a regular at the Mudd Club, where the “theme parties”—the equivalent of happenings in the sixties—attracted both an art and a music crowd. It was viewed as the antithesis of Studio 54, which, in Sprouse’s mind, was more Halston’s territory. One thing both places had in common, however, was the copious quantities of drugs being consumed on their premises. Pot was Sprouse’s drug of choice during the Halston years, but he later moved on to heroin. Friends say that if he hadn’t stopped, it would have killed him, but he went into AA. He wasn’t about to become a drug victim. His work meant too much to him.

Debbie Harry in early Stephen Sprouse dress
Keith Haring, Stephen Sprouse & Teri Toye
.
For years, Sprouse had been adorning his hands and arms with friends’ phone numbers—his version of a Palm Pilot. Graffiti, both an essential element of punk and an outgrowth of subway art, had already been incorporated into the works of Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring. Sprouse decided to use it his way.

“Stephen told me that he was wandering around the East Village one day,” says Beyer, “and suddenly went home and began sketching graffiti-covered motorcycle jackets and sequined miniskirts.” He showed them to his friend Steven Meisel, then an aspiring photographer, who brought them to fashion producer Kezia Keeble. In April 1983, Sprouse’s clothes appeared in a show of young designers that Keeble produced and were such a hit that Bergdorf Goodman and Henri Bendel immediately ordered ten dresses. He was suddenly a bona fide fashion designer—something he wasn’t entirely sure he wanted—and with $1.4 million from his parents, he set up his business.

Muse Teri Toye modeling Stephen Sprouse
.

Eight months later, at his silver-painted showroom on 57th Street, he introduced his first, groundbreaking collection, a synthesis of sixties and eighties pop culture, which merged all the visual references he’d picked up on during his thirteen years in New York. The models wore big Jackie O sunglasses, impish stocking caps, and graffiti-covered white motorcycle jackets, while punk rock and the Rolling Stones boomed from speakers. “I remember being totally overwhelmed,” says Kal Ruttenstein, now Bloomingdale’s senior vice-president for fashion direction. “It was the first time I’d seen Day-Glo clothing. You had very loud rock-and-roll music, which you just didn’t have before in shows. You had boys and girls walking together down the runway, which wasn’t done, and you had Teri Toye, a man who lived as a girl. It was a very powerful moment.” (Ruttenstein says that when Bloomingdale’s started carrying the line, Karl Lagerfeld and Claude Montana always wanted to see Sprouse’s clothes.)

Fall 1984 sequined graffiti dresses
.
.

.

.

Debbie harry in Stephen Sprouse, 1988
.

Next Week:

info: WikiPedia

http://nymag.com/nymetro/arts  by Patricia Morrisroe

In May 1984, when Sprouse showed his latest collection at the Ritz, a former club downtown, 2,500 people attended, including Andy Warhol. He loved Sprouse’s sixties-inspired clothes and afterward traded two portraits for the whole collection. “Sprouse was definitely one of Andy’s ‘children,’ ” says Benjamin Liu, who worked as Warhol’s assistant. “So much of what Andy was brilliantly known for—the neon colors, the Pop imagery, the association with musicians—Stephen brought into his own work.” Warhol, in turn, brought Sprouse into his life, inviting him for dinners at Odeon or Indochine that would lead to after-dinner excursions to Area, at the time the city’s hottest club.

Jean Pagliuso for American Vogue, November 1984
Steven Meisel for American Vogue, March 1988.
Spanish Vogue, Stephen Sprouse in the middle
.

Sprouse had been in business only a short time but had quickly become a cult figure, his clothes prominently featured in major department stores and on the pages of Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar. He was part of Warhol’s coterie. Rock stars, like Madonna, wanted him to help style their images. But there was one way in which success eluded him: He was running out of money. From Halston, he’d developed a taste for expensive materials, but since no one was making Day-Glo fabric at the time, he turned to Agnona, the Italian luxury cashmere manufacturer. As a result, his clothes were priced too high for the youthful customers who gravitated to them. Then there were the production problems, as Sprouse insisted on doing things like hand-painting the graffiti on the clothes himself. By the spring of 1985, he owed $600,000 to creditors; that summer, Sprouse shut down his business. 

The press had a different kind of field day, and stories appeared with headlines like SPROUSE: HOW SUCCESS TURNED TO FAILURE. Sprouse, for the most part, kept his feelings private.

In September 1987, six months after he’d designed costumes for the New York City Ballet’s premiere of Ecstatic Orange—and after the sudden death of Warhol, who was buried in a Sprouse suit—Sprouse returned to fashion with the opening of his own store in a converted firehouse on Wooster Street. He was now in business with 24-year-old Andrew Cogan, whose father, Marshall, was chairman of GFI-International. At last, he had big money behind him. But the store was a risky venture—he would be the first designer to have a full-scale emporium in Soho. “There was nothing like this downtown,” says longtime friend Candy Pratts Price. “It was a real happening. A living environment.”

1984
1987
1987-1988
1988
1988

.
Sprouse controlled almost every aspect, designing the interior, picking out the music, selecting the images for the massive video wall on the first floor. He created three different clothing lines, including a cheaper one for younger customers, as well as gloves, fishnets, hats, shoes, jewelry, even makeup. “The opening was unbelievable,” says Jamie Boud, Sprouse’s longtime assistant. “Debbie Harry played on a stage formed by a big red X. Stephen knew a lot of people, and they all showed up for him.”

He did two shows that year, one grown-up and sophisticated, with prints done in collaboration with Keith Haring, the other a Sprouse phantasmagoria, with models stumbling down the runway chewing capsules that gushed fake blood. “That show was critisized harshly ,” says Boud. “But Stephen thought it was the best one he’d ever done. He was into the showbiz of it all. The clothes were just costumes for the ‘show.’ ”

By 1989, Sprouse, in what was now becoming a familiar pattern, was once again unemployed. He lost his stores—he’d opened a second one in L.A.—and his wholesale business. “We were too crazily, overly ambitious,” admits Cogan. “At the end, we were doing close to $10 million worth of business, but it wasn’t enough. The clothing, particularly after that last show, which was a spectacular bomb, didn’t sell. Telling Stephen we couldn’t continue was the worst day of my life.” “After the store closed, Stephen was a little lost,” says Boud. “He was just a freelance guy at that point. He realized fashion was what he was best known for, but nothing about his career had ever been calculated.” He spent more time on his art, creating giant silk screens of rock stars, like Iggy Pop and Sid Vicious. He made costumes for Mick Jagger, Axl Rose, Trent Reznor, Courtney Love, David Bowie, and Duran Duran, and designed numerous album covers and backdrops for sets.

In 1996, Sprouse won the rights to use Warhol’s imagery on his clothing, which led to a deal with Staff International, an Italian company whose stable of designers included Vivienne Westwood. Sprouse returned to the runway in the fall of 1997 with a collection that paid homage to Warhol: Models wore the artist’s vivid Pop images on dresses and baggy raver-style pants. But when Staff was later bought out by another company, Sprouse’s license wasn’t renewed—a cruel irony, as fashion was then experiencing a retro-eighties moment and Sprouse’s designs were fetching high prices at vintage stores.

In the summer of 2000, Marc Jacobs asked Sprouse to go to Paris to help with his spring collection for Louis Vuitton. Jacobs, who’d known Sprouse from his own club days, had long been a fan, and arranged for him to stay at the Ritz, where Sprouse, staring at TV static one night, came up with the idea of creating floral prints using huge digitized cabbage roses. But it was Sprouse’s graffiti bag, on which he’d written, in raw painted lettering, louis vuitton paris, that became the big hit, with long waiting lists. Sprouse confided to Boud that even he couldn’t get one. Months later, he could—on Canal Street, where counterfeiters were selling them by the hundreds. “At least the knockoffs were expensive,” says Boud. “Other bags by other designers were selling for $20; his were $90.” Friends bought the standard LV knockoffs and asked Sprouse to paint graffiti on them.

Backstage with Marc Jacobs at the Louis Vuitton s/s 2001 show
.

The experience with Marc Jacobs disillusioned Sprouse on fashion; instead of coming away envious of Jacobs’s lucrative LVMH deal, he realized he’d never be able to work in such a rigid corporate structure. Though Sprouse was then in his late forties, he was still very childlike and loved sitting in Washington Square Park, watching the kids skateboard.

In 2002, Sprouse designed a lower-priced line of red, white, and blue clothing and accessories for Target. Everything had usa written on it in graffiti print. While some people viewed it cynically as a cheap way of cashing in on 9/11, Sprouse, who’d lost a friend in one of the plane crashes, felt an uncharacteristic surge of patriotism. 

For years, friends had noticed that Sprouse, who smoked three packs of cigarettes a day, seemed frequently out of breath. At the end of 2002 Sprouse asked around for rehabs for cigarette smokers. He wanted to go to a place where they’d lock him up. Finally, Sprouse quit cold turkey, but in spring 2003, he was diagnosed with lung cancer.

Sprouse kept his diagnosis a secret from all but a few friends. Andrew Cogan, who by then had become CEO of Knoll, had hired him to do textiles, and Renzo Rosso, the founder of Diesel, wanted him to design T-shirts and jeans. He was very concerned about losing those contracts.

A friend took him to the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston and managed to get him admitted into an experimental drug trial, but when his breathing worsened, doctors wouldn’t let him continue with the protocol. Over the next eight months, he visited numerous oncologists and took various drugs, hoping to improve enough to be readmitted into the Dana-Farber program. One drug gave him such bad acne he didn’t want anyone to see him. In September 2003, though, he had to put in an appearance at the opening of the new Diesel store he’d helped to design on Union Square.

Yet he had his optimistic moments, as if cancer were just another business reversal from which he could stage a triumphant comeback. He put his energy into painting portraits of his friends and nephews. He was even working on a painting of the space station for NASA.

In January 2004, he took a six-week trip to Buenos Aires to visit a friend. A few days after his return, Sprouse couldn’t catch his breath. He called a friend, Sean Bohary, who took him to St. Luke’s–Roosevelt Hospital, where he died early the next morning.

In Paris, the fall 2004 shows were in full swing, with people saying an emotional farewell to designer Tom Ford, acting as if he’d died when he was only leaving Gucci. On Sunday night at the Vuitton show, tucked inside the program, people found a slip of paper that read, “This collection is in loving memory of our friend Stephen Sprouse.”

On March 10, 25 friends gathered in New Jersey for the cremation. With pens and Magic Markers, they covered his wooden coffin in graffiti, writing messages to him on the inside and outside surfaces of the box. Then, before closing the lid, someone placed a Magic Marker in Sprouse’s hand, so he could write the last words himself.

.

.

Book

The Stephen Sprouse Book

Inventive, enigmatic, and supremely creative, Stephen Sprouse made art and clothing that captured the mood of the eighties. One of the first American designers to mix graffiti and a punk aesthetic with fashion, Sprouse manipulated conventional notions of style, and his unique sensibility has inspired designers from John Galliano to Raf Simmons to Marc Jacobs. Sprouse’s career started in the late seventies, when, after working for Halston, he migrated to a warehouse on the Bowery and started making outfits for his neighbor, Debbie Harry. The fashion world quickly embraced his innovative, culturally relevant sensibility and downtown edge. But Sprouse’s inability to compromise his artistic vision for the rigid fashion business compromised his commercial success. The Padilhas possess the largest private collection of Sprouse’s work, and were given exclusive access to his archives by his family for this project. They also obtained never-before-published images from photographers such as Steven Meisel, Bob Gruen, and Mert and Marcus. The book features a foreword by the novelist Tama Janowitz, one of Sprouse’s closest friends. The release of this book coincides with a retrospective at Deitch Projects. The book will be available with four different jackets, each featuring a different Day-Glo color, an homage to Sprouse’s iconic album cover for Debbie Harry’s Rockbird.

http://www.thestephensprousebook.com

.

.

info: WikiPedia

http://nymag.com/nymetro/arts  by Patricia Morrisroe

David Robert Jones
.

This week David Bowie, the man who inspired me the most, passed away.

I am still speechless, so I’d like to share some photographs …..

As Andy Warhol in my favorite movie 'Basquiat'

.
.                                                R.I.P. 

.

.

Katharine Hepburn, ph. Cecil Beaton
.
Katharine Houghton Hepburn (May 12, 1907 – June 29, 2003) was an American actress. Known for her fierce independence and spirited personality, Hepburn was a leading lady in Hollywood for more than 60 years. She appeared in a range of genres, from comedy to literary drama, and she received four Academy Awards for Best Actress—a record for any performer. In 1999, Hepburn was named by the American Film Institute The Number One Female Star of All Time.

Hepburn was unparalleled in her ability to invent and maintain her own star image. She signed with RKO and went to Hollywood in the early 1930s when the Dream Factory was fixated on platinum blondes draped in sequins and feathers. But Hepburn was cut from a different template, and from the moment she stepped onscreen in the 1932 film A Bill of Divorcement, her unique image made her a “movie star.” Her highly-stylized personality and lanky physique signaled a radical departure from such screen sirens as Jean Harlow and Carole Lombard. Instead, Hepburn conveyed the essence of modernism—a woman who looked life straight in the eye.

.

“I was a success because of the times I lived in. My style of personality became the style.”

.

Book

Katharine Hepburn: Rebel Chic

The first book to celebrate the irreverent and original style of Katharine Hepburn — icon of stage and screen. Glamorous when she wanted to be and tomboyish when she didn’t, Katharine Hepburn developed her personal style and public image as a style rebel. Whether on stage, on screen, or in private life, Hepburn had a firm grasp on the power of her appearance. Rather than submit to studio image makers, she controlled her image and drew on her own proclivities to create a distinct antifashion persona. This book presents the famously headstrong star in a new light: as a style icon. Through images of Hepburn’s on-screen and off-screen wardrobes and essays by top fashion historians, this book reveals how modern Hepburn’s insouciance and idiosyncratic manner of dressing really was and shows her as an inspirational, self-styled counterpoint to the over-managed looks of celebrities today. Full of never-before-published images of Hepburn’s costumes and personal wardrobe, Katharine Hepburn is a refreshing look at a true fashion original..

Katharine Hepburn, ph. Richard Avedon

.

.

Linda Evangelista as Katharine Hepburn
Ph. Steven Meisel for Vogue Italia

.

.

Paco Rabanne design, 1974
.

Who was Joan of Arc?

Joan of Arc, a peasant girl living in medieval France, believed that God had chosen her to lead France to victory in its long-running war with England. With no military training, Joan convinced the embattled crown prince Charles of Valois to allow her to lead a French army to the besieged city of Orléans, where it achieved a momentous victory over the English and their French allies, the Burgundians. After seeing the prince crowned King Charles VII, Joan was captured by Anglo-Burgundian forces, tried for witchcraft and heresy and burned at the stake in 1431, at the age of 19. By the time she was officially given the status holy in 1920, the Maid of Orléans (as she was known) had long been considered one of history’s greatest saints, and an enduring symbol of French unity and nationalism.

.

Joan of Arc inspires fashion designers, photographers & magazines to the day, because she’s a symbol of heroism and strength

Alexander McQueen was very inspired by Joan of Arc. He based his fall/winter ’98 collection on her, but in many other collections he produced, you’ll find influences of Joan. And Sarah Burton, who is now head designer of Alexander McQueen, 

.

Jean-Paul Gaultier

.

John Galliano/ Dior

.

Portayed as Joan of Arc

Emma Thompson, ph.by Annie LeibovitzMichelle Pfeiffer ph. Herb Ritts
Alexander McQueen
Madonna
.
.

Marlies Dekkers

Fall/Winter 2014

.

W Magazine

Dame of Thrones, ph. Tim Walker, September 2012

.

My favorite Joan of Arc is Milla Jovovich in The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc, 1999.

Directed by Luc Besson.

.

.

.

.

.

Since his last collection for fall/winter 1992, Kansai has lent his name to licensed products ranging from eyeglasses to tableware. His fashion show spectaculars have become the framework for the grand Kansai Super Shows, the first of which was held in Moscow’s Red Square in 1993. Others held since in Japan, Vietnam, India, and Berlin have drawn audiences in the hundreds of thousands.

KANSAI SUPER SHOW

.

Kansai Yamamoto designed the Skyliner train, unveiled in 2010, that connects Japan’s Narita Airport with central Tokyo.

.

Vintage Kansai Yamamoto.

Kansai Yamomoto vintage clothing is very sought after. You can find it on : http://www.farfetch.com/nl/shopping/women/kansai-yamamoto-vintage/items.aspx

https://www.etsy.com/nl/search?q=kansai%20yamamoto&ref=auto1

.

.

Kansai Yamamoto

.

.

info:

http://www.philamuseum.org/exhibitions/318.html

Hussein Chalayan given name Hüseyin Çağlayan, (born 8 August 1970) is a British/Turkish Cypriot fashion designer. He has won the British Designer of the Year twice (in 1999 and 2000) and was awarded the MBE (Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire) in 2006.

Short Biography

Hussein Chalayan was born in Nicosia, Turkey. By the time he graduated from school the population of the island was divided because of the constant struggles between the Greek and Turkish authorities. Ethnic conflicts between the Turkish and Greek Cypriot communities eventually led to the Turkish invasion of Cyprus, which led to human right abuses towards the civilian from both sides. For this reason Chalayan and his family were forced to move to England in 1978. After Highgate School he studied for a National Diploma in fashion and clothing at Warwickshire School of Arts, and proceeded to study Fashion Design at Central Saint Martins in London. His graduate collection in 1993, titled “The Tangent Flows”, contained clothes which he had buried in a back yard and exhumed just before the show where they were presented with an accompanying text that explained the process. The ritual of burial and resurrection was said to give the garments a dimension that referenced to life, death, and urban decay. The work attracted the attention of the Browns fashion boutique in London, who borrowed the collection to feature in their window display

The Tangent Flows graduation collection

 

 

In 1994, having completed an internship with Saville Row tailor Timothy Everest, the Chalayan established his own company, Cartesia Ltd., and his namesake ready-to-wear line, Chalayan, exhibiting his first collection in London’s West Soho Galleries that spring and debuting at London Fashion Week to resounding critical acclaim. 

BetweenThe Panoramic collection for Fall/Winter 1998 expressed the idea of infinity in a surreal cityscape of geometric forms and distorted images. The models were distorted into generic shapes and unified by architectural proportions; cones were fixed to the top of the head and faces and bodies swathed in black to obscure their identity. As Chalayan explored the idea of representing nature in this collection, he broke it down into its most basic graphic representation, pixels. Body and clothing were then merged into a digital landscape, which was recreated in enlarged cube-shaped pixels.

His Geotrophics collection for Spring/Summer 1999 had already featured Chair Dresses that represented the idea of a nomadic existence and a completely transportable environment. This concept was later expanded in Chalayan’s After Words collection for Fall/Winter 2000.which included some of his most well known designs such as ‘the coffee table dress’.  The Table Skirt and the entire set from the show were later featured in the 2001 Tate Modern’s Century City exhibition in London.

The Coffee table Dress

Chair Dresses

.

In 1998 Chalayan was appointed as creative director of TSE New York with his inaugural sportswear collection for the brand debuting in March. In 2001, despite this attention and recognition for his work Chalayan struggled with sponsorship and funding, often receiving it from various other companies, independent exhibitions at Colette in Paris and producing capsule collections for Topshop, Chalayan was forced to file for voluntary liquidation, having amassed debts of an estimated $1.5 million.

Subsequently, he restructured his company and staged comeback collection in 2001 without a catwalk presentation, and designed for high-street label Marks & Spencer’s to make ends meet. Italian clothing manufacturer Gibo also helped the designer as did British jeweller Asprey, who appointed him as their fashion director the same year.

Chalayan has been awarded the prestigious ‘Designer of the Year’ award at the British Fashion Awards in 1999 and 2000, as well as being recognised as a ‘Design Star’ at the 2007 Fashion Group International awards. Along with being listed as one of the ‘25 most powerful figures in the industry’ by the British Fashion Council, Chalayan was also credited by Time magazine as one of its ‘100 Most Influential Innovators of the 21st Century’.

.

Book

Hussein Chalayan

The comprehensive book on the visionary Hussein Chalayan, one of the most innovative, experimental, and conceptual fashion designers working today. Internationally acclaimed, Hussein Chalayan is known for his inventive use of materials and integration of new technology into his designs. He is also celebrated for putting the creative process itself on view. Some of his best-known designs include a paper dress that can be folded into an envelope and airmailed, armchair covers that transform into dresses, and a coffee table that reveals itself to be a wooden skirt. Original and groundbreaking, his designs are also pretty and modern, and this book explores that continuum. Featuring Chalayan’s complete body of fashion and creative work—including his installations, videos, and photographs—this unique and beautiful volume is as thought-provoking as it is stunning and is sure to be coveted by fashion, art, and design connoisseurs.

.

.

info:

Wikipedia

http://www.businessoffashion.com/community/people/hussein-chalayan