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Juergen Teller, Go-Sees

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In 1999, Juergen Teller had another stroke of genius! After becoming successful, model agencies started calling, asking if they could send over models for a go-see (casting), which means, new models come to show their portfolio and hand over a setcard. At first he didn’t know what to do with these requests, but then he turned the procedure around and called the agencies to send girls and photographed them all at the entrance to his studio. Juergen Teller, Go-Sees  became a photographic log of every model that had visited his studio May 1998 and 1999. The hundreds of portraits made for an artistic concept exploring identity. The book is an uncompromising journal of the uncharted world that lies behind the outward glamour of the fashion industry. These portraits of models, most of whom are unknown, are sometimes deeply moving.

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The Missoni family

“We wanted the campaign to be a snapshot of an evening with the Missoni family,” said creative director Angela Missoni, “I always think that our product has some extra value – an artisanal, traditional value – and I know that people often collect the pieces and keep them for a long time. The product is real so I wanted to show it in a real context – and that is difficult to do with traditional fashion imagery.”

The campaign was shot at the home of Missoni founders Ottavio (or Tai) and Rosita Missoni in Sumirago, in Italy’s Lombardy region and starred three generations of Missonis: the founders themselves, their daughter Angela and son Vittorio and grandchildren Margherita, Francesco, Theresa, Marco, Ottavio Jnr and Giacomo, all wearing pieces from the Missoni ready-to-wear collection.

“It was very relaxed, we had a lot of fun,” Missoni laughed. “Juergen had only one assistant so there was no big crew – it was just us and him. We did have to make some samples up specially for the shoot – because my son and my nephews are huge compared to catwalk boys – but apart from that it wasn’t a big effort. At half past midnight my father said ‘Are you planning on staying much longer?’ but it was definitely a good day.”

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Céline , autumn/winter 2012

Recently Daria Werbowy returned as the face of Céline for a/w 2012. Daria cut her hair and dyed her eyebrows a lighter color. Posing without makeup and unstyled hair, she wears the Parisian label’s clean-cut tailoring and signature oversized coats in unique shades for a mixture of candid shots which are interspersed with some accessory close-ups and some quirky snaps of pink flamingos.

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Juergen Teller is one of the most influencial fashion photographers of his generation

(Juergen Teller & his wife Sadie Coles)

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The film is a satire of the French mid-1960’s fashion world, in which William Klein, writer and director of the movie, unapologetically skewers the fashion industry. William Klein, an expat American in Paris and former fashion photographer for Vogue during the Diana Vreeland era. His explosive New York street photography made him one of the most heralded artists of the sixties. He was ranked 25th on UK’s Professional Photographer’s ’100 Most Influential Photographers of all time’: ‘The anarchic rebel of fashion, reportage and film making. His wide-angle ‘in your face approach’ lives on, as does his attitude.’

In 1954, Alexander Liberman, then art director of Vogue hired William Klein, launching his career as a fashion photographer, “a journey marked by his ambivalent and ironic approach to the world of fashion. Klein worked for Vogue till 1965. ” Klein did not want to continue with mundane fashion poses, but wanted to take, in his own words “at last real pictures, eliminating taboos and clichés.”

William Klein’s move into the cinema world was a natural progression in his artistic career. He only made three fiction features. His debut, Qui Êtes-Vous, Polly Maggoo? (1966) with, in the leading role as Polly Maggoo, Dorothy McGowan.

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Polly Maggoo, the movie

Fairly loosely plotted, the film uses a fictional documentary TV news program called “Who Are You?” to take a close look at Polly Maggoo, the world’s most popular supermodel and in the process, ruminate (often satirically) on fashion, fame, and wealth.

It’s an art film through and through, and in the truest sense of the word. It’s extremely edgy, surrealistic, and critical of the fashion world, which exploded into a new shape during the 60s (haute couture really getting “out there” – no longer about wearable clothing but about making ‘art’ on the human form).

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The movie starts with an absurd runway show in which the models are wearing aluminum sheets as clothes. When one of the models cuts herself at the aluminum, the designer says :”no problem, we can fix it with some foundation”, instead of caring about the pain and cuts in her arm. When the show is finished Miss Maxwell, the most famous fashion editor, who is obviously based on Diana Vreeland,  proclaims the designer has ‘recreated the woman’. Then fashion crowd goes backstage and give all ridiculous (but very funny) comments about the show and the creations and the designer pronounces: “I have great plans, I am going to do the whole collection in copper too’”.

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Admittedly, this won’t be for everyone, as it is rather strange (sometimes too psychedelic for me). It’s delightfully absurd and extremely stylish, crammed with awesome pop art costumes, makeup, sets, and more. It’s worth watching for the visuals alone, but it also has quite a bit of intellectual weight and interesting ideas well-presented.
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Dorothy McGowan played the role of Polly Maggoo

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Models aren’t generally the most loquacious bunch. In fact, talking seems to be generally discouraged among their numbers: they are meant to be visual entities, whose mystique is only heightened by the lack of verbal insight they give. As such, it is usually assumed they don’t have very much to say.

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Fortunately, Sixties mannequin Dorothy A. McGowan was perfectly at ease last Friday evening when the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Harold Koda and historian Kohle Yohannan chatted with her before a screening of William Klein’s “Qui Êtes-vous, Polly Maggoo?” in which she stars.

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The Brooklyn-born McGowan, child of Irish immigrants, was discovered at Kennedy Airport and joined the Ford agency’s roster in 1959. She went on to work with Richard Avedon, Irving Penn and Melvin Sokolsky; nab four Vogue covers back-to-back, and most famously, become one of Klein’s favorites and the star of his 1966 French film.

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It was all a rather bemusing trip for the young Bay Ridge native, who claimed, “I had no ambition for the future.”

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“What happened that made you see [modeling] as a career opportunity?” asked Koda.

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“Everyone would say to me, ‘You should be a model.’ I wasn’t stylish. I was long and lanky and had a baby face,” explained McGowan, between sips of water. “I saw this ad that said ‘Wanted: model trainee.’ And so I went to this place and this man asked me to come back the next day…it was a model agency on East 40th Street. When I was leaving his office, somebody said, ‘Who was that girl?’ and he said, ‘Oh, she’s not interesting; she’s too skinny.’”

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“Last time that was ever said in fashion,” said Yohannon to much laughter.

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In the satirical film, McGowan plays Brooklyn-born supermodel Polly Maggoo working in Paris. She becomes the subject of a French TV documentary series “Qui Êtes-vous?” and is simultaneously courted by both the filmmaker and a Soviet prince, all to her bewilderment.

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“I met William Klein in 1960 in the offices of French Vogue. I was working with Penn and I guess he saw some of my pictures…and he asked me if I would do some pictures [with him],” said McGowan, who stopped modeling in 1974 and has since earned both a bachelor and graduate degree in the arts.

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And despite Klein’s infamously intimidating reputation, McGowan was a willing foil.

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“People were terrified of Klein as though it was a lion’s den; I was never more at home.”

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William Klein

The World Photography Organisation has announced that legendary photographer William Klein received the Outstanding Contribution to Photography Award at the 2012 Sony World Photography Awards.

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Watch the following documentary about William Klein

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The Delerious Fictions of William Klein

dvd box with the three movies William Klein directed: ‘Who Are You, Polly Maggoo’, Mr. Freedom’ and ‘The Model Couple”.

http://www.amazon.com/Eclipse-Series-Delirious-Criterion-Collection/dp/B0011U3OB0/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1361893312&sr=8-1&keywords=polly+maggoo

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The New York Times

By Caroline Weber  (September 17, 2006)

For a time, the former schoolmates remained close, but by the early 60’s relations between them had cooled. In 1958, Saint Laurent triumphed with his first collection at Dior. (Dior had named Saint Laurent his successor before he died in 1957.) Not long afterward, Saint Laurent met an older man, Pierre Bergé, who appointed himself the couturier’s Svengali. Between the international renown he achieved as Dior’s helmsman and his involvement with Bergé, with whom, in 1961, he founded a label bearing his own name, Saint Laurent had little time for his old school chum. Lagerfeld reacted by declaring haute couture a dying art and forsaking it to work as a freelance ready-to-wear designer. Although the two rivals socialized in the same fizzy beau monde, professionally they were worlds apart.

Compounding this divergence was a profound difference in style. Almost from the outset, Saint Laurent had a highly specific vision of female elegance. With innovations like the safari jacket and le smoking (a women’s trouser suit based on the tuxedo), he developed an instantly recognizable look, reprised in his subsequent collections. (His attitude toward his pets betrays a similar fixity of spirit: “Each time one of Yves’s French bulldogs dies, he mourns it, buys another and calls it Moujik,” the author writes.) Lagerfeld, by contrast, was predictable only in his self-proclaimed habit of “vampirizing” any and all cultural references that came his way. His ready-to-wear confections betrayed a wild eclecticism. His signature statements — like the ponytail, sunglasses and fingerless gloves he sports today — were reserved mainly for his artfully outrageous self.

The more publicly flamboyant of the two designers, Lagerfeld was far less adventurous when it came to private indulgences. Saint Laurent partook recklessly of the alcohol, drugs and casual sex that abounded in Paris in the 70’s, but Lagerfeld avoided such decadence. As it turned out, “glorious excess” took its toll on Saint Laurent. His substance abuse led to frequent hospitalizations, and to an inordinate dependence on Bergé. (By 1976, Drake writes, Saint Laurent couldn’t write a check, board an airplane or book a restaurant without Bergé’s help.) Lagerfeld ceded control to no one, breaking off friendships once he had mined their creative possibilities or when they threatened to disappoint him. As he declared in 1997: “I was born to live alone. … But who cares?”

In the early 70s, however, Lagerfeld became enamored of Jacques de Bascher, a debauched young nobleman new to the Parisian scene, and began bankrolling his extravagant lifestyle. Bascher intrigued Saint Laurent, too, who saw in him a way to rebel against Bergé’s tight control and to “exorcise certain of his demons,” Drake writes. In 1973, Saint Laurent and Bascher began an affair — infuriating Lagerfeld and Bergé, and precipitating the fateful rupture between the two camps.

For Drake, Bascher personified the “gilt-edged decadence” that defined his intimates’ milieu. Drawing on the link he himself made between “decadence” and “falling” (a link that apparently inspired her book’s title), she writes: “For Jacques, it was always beauty that justified the fall. Beauty made even the idea of self-destruction … a possibility.” By self-destruction, the author means not only drug addiction but AIDS, from which Bascher died at 38. But despite Drake’s presentation of him as a doomed artiste, his demise comes more as an anticlimax than as a tragedy of genius lost. Having “never carved a statue or painted a picture” or designed an article of clothing, Bascher left behind only a legacy of hatred between two men far more talented than he.

This animosity, though, assumed epic proportions, as Drake, with her insiders feel for fashion-world cattiness, shows in splendid detail. When it relates the fallout from the two designers’ feud, “The Beautiful Fall” crackles with excitement. Mutual friends were forced to choose sides; barbs flew in the press; and the rivalry that had been brewing since their school days became a driving force in Parisian fashion. Declaring himself “the last couturier,” Saint Laurent retreated into what some critics perceived as stultifying nostalgia for his own past work. Lagerfeld took issue with this approach. “The best way of surviving in the present,” he announced pointedly, “is forgetting the past, to permanently recreate one’s paradise.” In 1982, Lagerfeld found a new paradise to recreate when he was tapped to design for Chanel. Lagerfeld’s subsequent “irreverent manipulation of the Chanel oeuvre” — a classic case of his “vampirizing” — “drove Yves Saint Laurent to distraction,” Drake writes, but it also provided a refreshing counterpoint to his increasingly mummified version of couture.

In 2002, Saint Laurent retired from fashion and became a recluse; his atelier has since reopened as a museum. Lagerfeld, conversely, has breathed “life into a moribund fashion house” and made Chanel one of the world’s most bankable bastions of style. In so doing, he has not only become a legend in his own right, but “invented the blueprint” for designers like Tom Ford, Nicolas Ghesquière and Marc Jacobs, who have likewise catapulted to stardom by reviving languishing labels. Perhaps not incidentally, Ford drew Saint Laurent’s ire when, in 1999, he began reworking the maestro’s best-known staples for the Saint Laurent ready-to-wear line. Ford’s modus operandi was surely too reminiscent of Lagerfeld’s “vampirizing” to appeal to Saint Laurent. Indeed, Drake suggests, by making constant reinvention the watchword of modern fashion, Lagerfeld just may have trounced his great rival at last.

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The Guardian

By Hadley Freeman (September 23, 2006)

Literature, like film, has never really been able to capture the fashion world. Three approaches prevail: there’s sarcastic mockery, as in The Devil Wears Prada; there’s campy revelling in its silliness, as in Fashion Babylon; and there’s po-faced solemnity, as in pretty much any fashion designer’s biography, which will almost invariably include a line such as, “His handling of the sleeve caused grown women to weep.”

http://www.amazon.com/Beautiful-Fall-Fashion-Genius-Glorious/dp/0316001856

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and if it’s good enough for Kate……..

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News Flashes

On Facebook it caused a worldwide negative stir, but Karl Lagerfeld declared: “Paris needs some new things, some stimulation….. I love the idea. I think it’s interesting and it’s important. Something fresh was needed.”, after Hedi Slimane (just appointed new fashion director at YSL  in 2012) decided the company name Yves Saint Laurent would change into Saint Laurent Paris.

Years before (November 2000) Karl Lagerfeld decided to lose weight in order that he could adopt Hedi Slimane’s new skinny silhouette. “Until then, I had got along fine with my excess weight and I had no health problems, or – which would be worse – emotional problems, but I suddenly wanted to wear clothes designed by Hedi Slimane, who now creates the Dior Homme collections,” Karl told the Telegraph. “But these fashions, modelled by very, very slim boys, required me to lose at least six of my 16 stone.” He lost more than 90 lbs over the course of the year.

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Fashion Biography: Dior, Yves saint Laurent & Photography

Hedi Slimane  ((French pronunciation: ​[eˈdi sliˈman]), born in Paris on 5 July 1968, learned the art of photography before he even reached his teens and began making his own clothes at age 16. He studied History at the Ecole du Louvre, before he began working with fashion consultant Jean-Jacques Picart in 1992 on an exhibition celebrating the centenary of Louis Vuitton’s iconic monogram.

In January 2001 Hedi presents his first Dior Homme collection. Karl Lagerfeld documents the scene backstage with a camera. Yves Saint Laurent himself attends Hedi’s show, leading a standing ovation, but he skips Tom Ford’s debut collection for his namesake label…. And Hedi headed up the launch of Dior Homme’s first fragrance under his creative control – named Higher. He designs the packaging and works with Richard Avedon on the advertising campaign to ensure all elements tallied with his new vision for the Dior man..

In 2002, Hedi Slimane became the first menswear designer to be named the CFDA International Designer of the year, presented by Hedi Slimane  fan David Bowie.

Hedi Slimane’s inspiring online photographic blog, The Diary, is launched in 2006 – featuring his pictures of unknown cool kids as well as some of the music world’s biggest stars.  

http://www.hedislimane.com/

In the summer of 2006 Hedi chose not renew his contract at Dior Homme after negotiations with the French house surrounding his eponymous label broke down (LVMH is said to refuse to grant the designer enough autonomy). Dior proposed to fund Hedi Slimane’s own collections but the designer was reportedly reluctant to lose control of his name. Dior announces that Hedi will be replaced by Kris Van Assche, his former assistant. Hedi moves to Los Angeles to pursue photography.

In March 2011, following John Galliano’s dismissal from Christian Dior, Hedi is linked with the job of new Dior creative director. But Hedi never talked about – or even implied- to go back to work at Christian Dior, or any other luxury house in particular. He did publish Anthology of a Decade, a book in four volumes about the past ten years in the four cities – Paris, Berlin, London, and LA – where he had spent most time. Also an exhibit of photographs, “California Song,” debuts at Los Angeles’s Museum of
Contemporary Art.

In early 2012, Hedi is again linked with two of his former employers – Christian Dior  and Yves Saint Laurent – both of whom were seeking a new creative director following the departures of Galliano and Stefano Pilati. In March Pinault-Printemps-Redoute, parent company of Yves Saint Laurent, announces that Hedi Slimane will replace Stefano Pilati as creative director. The label’s design studio will be relocated from Paris to Los Angeles, Hedi’s adopted city.  And in June Yves Saint Laurent announces that it will be renamed Saint Laurent Paris, sparking a media furor and protests from critics and fashion bloggers; Hedi insists that this rebranding will merely return YSL to its 1966 identity, when the Saint Laurent Rive Gauche ready-to-wear line was launched.

Hedi Slimane’s first show for Saint Laurent, Paris   S/S 2013

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In the lead-up to Hedi’s first women’s RTW runway presentation for Saint Laurent Paris in October, the house issues a slew of instructions and rules to the press, sparking media chatter about Slimane’s supposedly controlling nature. He shows his first full womenswear collection for Saint Laurent Paris, which references Saint Laurent’s bohemian influences in the 1970s. According to the fashion press Hedi failed to deliver the visceral, game-changing act of rebellion which the industry expected from this most mythic of contemporary fashion designers. The 1970s haute-groupie looked nostalgic and familiar, rather than agenda-setting or challenging.  The reviews are mixed.

Pre Fall collection Saint Laurent, Paris   2013

And in March 2013, Hedi’s second collection for Saint Laurent Paris is inspired by the grunge period, Courtney Love and Kurt Cobain. The disconnect with the Saint Laurent customer seems at times alarmingly wide. In California, where Hedi lives and to where he has moved the design studio, nineties grunge is a deeply felt part of everyday folklore; but in Paris, it is an abstract concept. And the grunge roleplay did not provide much in the way of roles for accessories. There were almost no handbags in this collection – this girl, with her unwashed hair and kohled eyes and fishnets, has no yen for an expensive handbag. Yet the YSL woman, surely, loves her handbag. This was a second act by Slimane which leaves the stage intriguingly poised for the next.

Saint Laurent, Paris grunge fashion show  A/W 2013

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Next week more about Hedi Slimane‘s photography

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Hedi Slimane’s most exclusive photobook-box

http://www.amazon.com/Hedi-Slimane-Anthology-Decade-2000-2010/dp/3037641150/ref=la_B0058V1EP6_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1363705850&sr=1-1

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Here I am. That was the only line uttered by Veruschka—famous enough in 1966 to play herself—in her classic scene from Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow-up. But here was a case where action—those three minutes of leggy writhing on the studio floor for David Hemmings’ Bailey-esque fashion photographer—truly spoke louder than words.

It’s no exaggeration to say that Veruschka changed ­fashion for good. She was the first superstar model of the Sixties. Her six-foot frame, with its improbably long limbs, was revolutionary, ­following as it did the more womanly shapes of the models that came before her.

When the director Antonioni came to London in 1965 to film Blow-Up, the fashion movie that defined the decade, he cast Veruschka as the model who cavorts in front of the lens of the ­character based on David Bailey.

The part was only a cameo, lasting no more than five minutes, but it made her a superstar. Slinking like a cat toying with a mouse—half-naked on the floor in a beaded dress—while the photographer shouted encouragement (“Give it to me! Give it to me! . . . Work, work, work!”), she was sixties sexuality incarnate.

Veruschka single-handedly started the trend to be super- thin; Twiggy burst on to the scene only once the film was in the can.

‘I was tall and I was thin. But just before shooting started I had been on a fashion assignment in Mexico and became terribly sick from drinking the water. I lost so much weight and was really ill and weak when I made the movie.’

Start of the super-thin trend: Veruschka admits she was too thin when she played a model who cavorts in front of the lens of the ­ it-fashion photographer in the film Blow Up. Dysentery. Not the most glamorous of muses for a new look.

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Veruschka’s scene in the film Blow Up has been voted the sexiest cinema moment in history

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Biography

Vera Gräfin von Lehndorff-Steinort or Veruschka von Lehndorff (born 14 May 1939 in Königsberg, East  Prussia, Russia) is a German model, actress, and artist who became popular during the 1960s. Known  professionally as Veruschka.

Vera’s father, Count von Lehndorff, is serving in the German army reserves when he witnesses Nazi atrocities in Balarus. The count takes part in the famous Operation Valkyrie plot to kill Adolf Hitler at the Wolf’s Lair. He is arrested the day after the conspirators’ bomb fails to kill the Führer.  “I have done this because I consider Hitler to be a murderer,” Von Lehndorff  tells the court at his trial. He is convicted and hanged. Vera and her sisters are separated from their mother and taken to a labor camp. “You will change your names and Hitler will educate you and you will never see your mother again,” the girls are told. Vera is five, her eldest sister seven.

In 1945 World War II ends in Europe. The von Lehndorff family is shattered, homeless, moving from place to place. Vera will attend thirteen different schools before studying at an art college in Hamburg.

Although she had grown up dreaming of becoming an artist, she moved to Florence, where she was discovered at age 20 by the photographer Ugo  Mulas and became a full-time model.

In 1961 Veruschka, a twenty-something, aspiring model who stood more than six feet tall, is still going by her given name, moves to New York City. Her modeling career fails to take off. She is unable to secure even one booking, despite having met Eileen Ford, head of powerful Ford Modeling Agency. After a brief sojourn in Europe, she brings a new, exotic name back to Manhattan: Veruschka. “I dressed all in black and went to see all the top photographers, like Irving Penn,” she will later say. “And [I] said, ‘I am Veruschka, who comes from the border between Russia, Germany, and Poland. I’d like to see what you can do with my face.’ ”Her audacity, and her exoticism, are entrancing.

The transformation did the trick: Soon, everyone was clamoring to work with her. Richard Avedon called her “the most beautiful woman in the world.” (Her boyfriend, the photographer Franco Rubartelli, was reported to be jealous)

 Richard Avedon & Veruschka

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Franco Rubartelli & Veruschka

For one landmark shoot, with Avedon and the fashion editor Polly Mellen, Veruschka spent three weeks in Japan, modeling exotic furs on icy peaks, on the slopes of a dormant volcano, and in a shogun’s shrine. “Fashion isn’t about being beautiful. It’s about never being forgotten once a photographer has seen you,” she once said.

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In 1963 she poses for Salvador Dalí as a living sculpture covered in shaving cream. Models for the first time in Vogue, in a fashion portfolio on the “new crepe chic” by Irving Penn. Called in for a meeting with Diana Vreeland. “She was charming and had a great  presence,” the Vogue editor in chief will later recall. “Her looks, of course, were superb.”

                                                               (Salvador Dalí & Veruschka)

In 1967 Veruschka is one of the highest-paid models in the world and she makes the cover of Life magazine. The accompanying feature is titled “Bizarre, Exotic, Six Feet Veruschka—The Girl Everybody Stares At.”

Grace Mirabella, the new editor of Vogue, brings her in to do a Paris collections portfolio in 1972. The makeup, however, takes five hours to apply—leaving the model exhausted by the time they are ready to shoot. “It absolutely showed in the pictures: They were dead; I had no expression,” she says. Mirabella and Condé Nast editorial director Alexander Liberman suggest she try a new look, “to cut my hair and be more like other models.” (Veruschka said about th disagreement, “Grace Mirabella wanted me to be bourgeois, and I didn’t want to be that”) Veruschka: “I said no. I realized it was no longer my moment. After that, I decided not to work in fashion again.”

Sensing that her moment had passed, Veruschka retired from modeling in 1975. She reverted to her given name and rediscovered her first passion: art. Working with Holger Trülzsch, a painter and sculptor, she collaborated on photographic self-portraits in which her camouflage body paint blended into the background; they were an “exploration of visibility and disappearance, a near-perfect but uncomfortable analogy for [her] own life,” according to Frieze magazine.

Her first photo book, Veruschka: Trans-Figurations—in collaboration with artist Holger Trülzsch—is published in 1986. In the arresting images, her body is painted to appear clothed.

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In October ’94, Veruschka makes a surprise runway appearance at the Chanel spring show in Paris (“looking sensational,” one reviewer says).And in 2002 “Veruschka Voyage” is the title of designer Michael Kors’s latest collection for French fashion house Céline.

In 2006  Veruschka appears as Gräfin von Wallenstein in latest Bond flick, Casino Royale.

Veruschka, a sumptuous $500 limited-edition coffee-table book, is published by Assouline. The foreword, by Richard Avedon, is reprinted from a May 1972 issue of Vogue.         http://www.assouline.com/9782759402960.html

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Veruschka: ‘It has not been hard to grow older, because I believe if you have something you believe in that will keep you alive far more than plastic surgery or Botox. I know that there are many things I could do, but I’m not interested. It’s more important to be loving and to have a lively mind.’

Occasionally Veruschka still appears on catwalks.

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Filed under: biography

 “I love, love, love fashion so much, that’s why I became a model in the first place.”

Short Biography

 Super Linda: W magazine Dec ’12, by Steven Klein

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Linda Evangelista by Mario Testino for V Magazine, Fall ’06

Linda Evangelista as Katharine Hepburn, photographed by Steven meisel

Love Magazine, s/s 2012

The Misfits, Photographers: Mert Alas & Marcus Piggott, Stylist: Katie Grand

(Linda Evangelista has modelled for more than 300 magazine covers)

Tim Walker, born in 1970 in England, ‘invented’ a whole new style of (fashion) photography.

Extravagant staging and romantic motifs characterise his unmistakable style and his work is instantly recognisable.

 (Photograph by Irving Penn, 2003)

I met Olivier Theyskens ones in Paris, many years ago. I was walking the streets with a friend, who was modeling at the time and knew Olivier. I had seen pictures of his work and admired his style, but at the moment we met I didn’t know he was the Olivier Theyskens and just stood there fascinated by his beautiful androgynous face…

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Born in Brussels, Belgium, in 1977, Olivier Theyskens decides at a very early age he wants to design Haute Couture. His parents are always very supportive of his dreams. At eighteen he registers at Brussels’ prestigious La Cambre school of visual arts, but two years later he drops out because he thinks he’s wasting his time and his parents money. He starts his own label Olivier Theyskens. His first collection is titled Gloomy Trips.

(garment from first collection is titled Gloomy Trips)

Olivier believes in design for design’s sake. So much so that he creates his debut collection in 1997 with no intention of ever selling it. When the fashion director of Barneys New York approaches with an offer to buy the entire line, wholesale, the stubborn 20-year-old will not budge: Yes, his Gothic garments can go on display in the windows of the chic department store’s Manhattan flagship, but the sales floor? No.

His first collections are often referred to as ‘Gothic extravaganzas’.  “My first collection was made from sheets that my grandmother, who lived in Normandy, had been collecting for a long time”: Olivier tells later.  His cutting-edge vision quickly makes him one of the most acclaimed and respected designers of his generation.

(for 15 years  this ‘Melissa auf der Mauer wearing Olivier Theyskens’ picture hangs on my ‘inspiration-wall’)

One year later stylist Arianne Phillips sees photographs of his collection and dresses Madonna in his black silk satin coatdress for the Academy Awards and this brings his name to public attention.

Olivier Theyskens collection s/s 1999 (part 1 & 2)

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But without sufficient financial support, Olivier is forced to close his label in 2002. He begins costuming an opera for the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie in Brussels, but is soon recruited by Rochas, to become the houses’s new creative director.

For Rochas, Olivier designs collections inspired by “elements of lace, a Parisian couture approach, a femininity that is very intellectual and very beautiful but not that girly.”  His brief is to modernize the brand, making it more hip.

Debut collection Rochas  f/w 2003

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While Olivier’s dark aesthetic softens and gives a more romantic feel during his tenures at Rochas (and Nina Ricci), his approach is met with some criticism and is ultimately not sustainable. He is a champion of “demi- couture”—creating clothes for the retail market using techniques from the haute couture atelier. It is certainly an appealing concept, but hours of hand-stitching or embroidery drives the price of his pieces up and out of the range of his target customer. Olivier also takes a purer approach to fashion and doesn’t rely, like many fashion houses, on accessory sales for a reliable source of revenue. Olivier’s refusal to create a marketable accessories line, combined with the fact that he undermines the importance of advertising makes his position by Rochas very difficult.

In 2006 Rochas fashion division is discontinued by the line’s parent company, Proctor & Gamble, even though Olivier receives the CFDA International Award for his work at Rochas. A couple of months later he is appointed creative director at Nina Ricci.

Olivier’s first show for the House of Nina Ricci established him as being somewhat wiser in a business perspective. ”He is now aware of the fact that fashion needs to address a younger, more casual level of dressing.” This is in stark contrast to the couture-like dresses he created for Rochas.

In March 2009, seven months before the end of his contract, Olivier is dimissed from Nina Ricci by the parent company, Puig.

Debut collection Nina Ricci a/w 2007

In 2010 Olivier designs the capsule collection for Theory (a Japanese owned, New York based company), which is loved by the public and is almost sold out (this rarely happens anymore in economical difficult times).

Olivier is appointed Artistic Director of the global Theory brand, as well as Head Designer of the Theyskens’ Theory collections. He’s also gaining creative control of everything from accessories to menswear. He has matured, and lessons had to been learned: “It’s about designing fashion that makes it more affordable, more accessible.” This brand allows him to offer a new point-of view on modern fashion.

Theyskens’ Theory is a worldwide succes.

http://theyskenstheory.com/

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Debut collection Theyskens Theory s/s 2011

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“Fifty years from now, Parisian women will no longer have hips; their bosoms will diminish. Tomorrow’s woman will be an eternal little girl; there will be no place for the mature woman.”

(around 1950)

Jacques Fath  

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Biography

Jacques Fath (born Maisons-Laffitte, France, 6 September 1912 – Paris, France, 13 November 1954) was a French fashion designer who was considered one of the three dominant influences on postwar haute couture, the others being Christian Dior and Pierre Balmain.

Young Jacques, although already very interested in fashion, studies bookkeeping and business law at his father’s urges and has a brief career at the Paris Bourse. He had also completed a year of military service, when film director Léonide Moguy casts the handsome young man in one of his films and Jacques enrolls in drama school. Here he befriends model and aspiring actress Geneniéve Boucher de la Bruyére, a former secretary to Coco Chanel.

At 21, Jacques begins educating himself about fashion and costume design by exploring museums, books and the seams of his mother’s and sister’s dresses. Four years later Jacques takes the plunge and starts his business in a small space at 32 Rue la Boétie, working together with dressmaker Mme Gulbenkian, soon his partner and house premiére (head of all seamstresses and dressmakers).

The first few years his success remains modest and financially Jacques’ business barely survived and when the Chic Parisiennes begin to visit his studio he uses the down payment for a dress commission to buy the fabric to create it…

In 1939 Jacques asks Geneviéve to marry him and when she is wearing her husband’s asymmetrical drape dress and fluttery cape, she creates a stir at the Grande Nuit de Longchamps, a horse race society event. For the first time Vogue reports about Jacques: “He is inspired. He has a vision. He will succeed.”  Jacques and Geneviéve become one of the most photographed couples in Paris, her being a celebrity as a cover girl and him for his good looks. Business takes of, but soon World War II erupts and Jacques is drafted to serve the French Army as a gunner second class. He is taken prisoner by the German forces shortly before Paris falls under the Occupation.

Not for long though and Jacques returns to Paris and resumes control of the House of Fath by buying out his partner, Mme Gulbenkian. He joins other couturiers in keeping the city’s fashion pride alive, while being closed off from the rest of the world. Finally Jacques finds his first successes, using yards of tartan (which he did to mock the germans occupiers) and designing a number of tunic dresses and peasant skirts, suitable for women riding bikes, which were feminine and sporty at the same time. Jacques is determined to reinvent seduction. The house of Fath relocates and a son, Philippe, is born.

After the liberation of Paris, the House of Fath starts its legendary years of success, which will go on till Jacques death in 1954.

“One cannot understand the workings of haute couture without the realization that it is based on publicity.”

Jacques and Geneviéve use their celebrity status for marketing purposes (and pleasure ofcourse….). They could be seen everywhere and their yearly themed balls, held at their home the Chateau de Corbeville, were highly anticipated events. The guest list could top 800 and included the press as well as society patrons and hollywood stars. Genevieve personified the early ’50′s desire for a return to femininity and the editors of the style magazines were happy to take her lead.

The White and Red Ball on June 15, 1951, is one of their most famous events. The scenery is recreating an 18th century masterpieces like Gilles and l’Indifferent from Watteau and a stunning painting from Princess Troubetzkoi posing as the Marquise de Pompadour for La Tour. Each guest must interpret his or her own interpretation of a costume for a 18th century white ball with ruby accessories. More than four hundred guests attending the ball, one of the years foremost social events, arrive one after the other at the Chateau, whose gardens are attributed to Le Notre, the garden architect from Versailles.

The post war world was ready to embrace everything French and wealthy Americans preferred the French fashion over the collections of the American designers, but for an unknown reason the House of Fath wasn’t embraced by them yet. So Jacques and Geneviéve decided to use their celebrity status once again and travelled to the United States for a  three month tour. Geneviéve’s wardrobe consisted of 35 outfits for day and evening, 17 hats, 16 pairs of shoes, 10 handbags, 4 umbrella’s and numerous other accessories.

After their return, Jacques secures a deal with Seventh Avenue manufacturer Joseph Halpert to design two ready-to-wear collections a year under the label “Jacques Fath for Joseph Halpert”.

Jacques Fath was a visionair and had an ability to predict trends. His choice of models was brilliant and after he restyled them, they all became the most sought after mannequins in Paris, like his favorite Simone Micheline Bodin. She was renamed and recreated (he let her cut her hair extremely short) by Jacques , who told her, “We already have a Simone; you look to me like a Bettina.”

During his career, Jacques Fath hired several young new designers as assistants and apprentices, many continued to form their own Fashion Houses, including Hubert de Givenchy, Guy Laroche, and Valentino Garavan. He was also very polite and respectful for his team. He called his seamstresses always by their first name, never forgot a birthday and offered a wedding dress to his female workers getting married. And the more than 500 workers had tremendous respect for Jacques.

The House of Fath also produces a lot fragrances, starting of with Chasuble, Iris Gris and Canasta. And in 1950 Jacques opens a boutique in Paris, offering affordable luxuries like scarves, stockings and men’s ties.  In 1954, Jacques launches a prêt-a-porter line, Jacques Fath Université, this to the snobbish horror of many in the haute couture establishment!  

At the end of the year, Jacques Fath dies of leukemia, only 42 years old and just a few weeks after his last collection. Geneviéve keeps the House running for three more years with er husband’s former associates. In 1957 the company’s haute couture operations ceased to exist, but the business went on producing perfumes, gloves, hosiery and other accessories.

Jacques Fath, who has been described as extremely effeminate and a former lover of the French film director Léonide Moguy. Geneviève Boucher de la Bruyère, his wife came from an aristocratic family and was supposedly a lesbian.

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In 2010, after several tries to revive Jacques Fath as an haute couture house, the Alliance Designers Group, current owner of the name Jacques Fath is now reviving the famed label as an accessories brand under the creative direction of Laurence Dumenil.

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” I admire her. I have been surging for her shadow all my life, it’s tiring.”

Yohji Yamamoto about Madeleine Vionnet

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Biography

Madeleine Vionnet (Madame Vionnet) was born in June 1876 and started her apprenticeship as a seamstress at age 11. After a short marriage, she left her husband and went to London to work as a hospital seamstress, where she learnt about mass-production. Eventually she returned to Paris to be trained at the fashion houses of the Callot Soeurs and Jaques Doucet. At the Callot Soeurs she learned about the bias cut. Madeleine is often credited as the inventor of that cut, which did upset her very much, because she never claimed herself that place in history! But she did expand the use of the bias cut to perfection.

Bias cut dresses

The bias cut: a diagonal way of cutting fabric in order to give it stretchability. By making dresses that could be put over the head, because of the stretching, Madeleine created garments that were both easy to get in & out of (and that was revolutionary by itself)  and were comfortable to wear, something we find in tricot knits today. The bias cut made that the dresses clung to women’s bodies, accentuating the natural form as opposed to ‘distorting’ them with corsettes and other popular (and uncomfortable) undergarments.

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In 1912 Madeleine founded her fashion house Madeleine Vionnet, but two years later she had to close again because of WWI and set off to visit Rome.

In 1919, the house was reopened and Madeleine asked Thayaht (the pseudonym of artist and designer Ernesto Michahelles) to create a logo. He also started to design textiles, clothing and jewelry for the house.

Madeleine always designed her new garments by draping on a reduced-scale doll (mannequin), which was half the size of an average body. The pattern was made afterwards by the house’s premiére (first seamstress), it was a new way of creating patterns. Normally the pattern is made before a toile (first-try) is made. Because every fabric, by its fiber and weave, reacts a little different Madeleine’s dresses were not lined. If they were sheer, a separate lining or slip was supplied, and each part was allowed to go its own way.

The house was at its peak in the 20′s and 30′s and Madeleine’s designs were inspired by Greek vases and Egyptian frescoes. She also designed ‘seam decorations’, decorating visible seams in star of flower shapes. Madeleine’s vision of the female form revolutionized modern clothing. But her revolutionary vision didn’t stop there…

Greek influences

In 1922, Théophile Bader, the owner of the Galeries Lafayette department store, joint the current shareholders in a new venture called Vionnet & Cie and a few months later the so-called ‘Temple of Fashion’ opened at 50, Avenue Montaigne, a collaboration of  architect Ferdinand Chanut, decorator George de Feure and crystal sculptor René Lalique, incorporated  a spectacular Salon de Présentation and two boutiques: a fur salon and a lingerie salon.

At the same time Madeleine Vionnet was one of the co-founders of the first anticopyist Association. To assure authenticity, Madeleine introduced fingerprinted labels: each garment produced in Vionnet studios bears a label featuring Vionnet’s original signing and an imprint of Vionnet’s right thumb.

In the mid-1920s Vionnet & Cie signed an exclusive agreement with Fifth Avenue retail store Hickson Inc. and a Vionnet New York Salon was opened. And in 1925 Vionnet was the first French couture house to open a subsidiary in New York: Madeleine Vionnet Inc. , a salon that sold ‘one-size-fits-all’ designs with unfinished hems, which could be adjusted to fit the client.

In those days, high fashion was unavailable for the poor and Madeleine, having worked as a hospital seamstress, knew some about mass production, which she used for her own label. The designs for the US wholesale were called ‘Repeated Original’ as a trademark name. Arguably it was the first ‘prêt-á-porter ever made.

Honeycomb dress

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Handkerchief dress

In 1932, The House Vionnet acquired a new five-storey building, housing 21 workshops, producing garments, shoes and accessories, but also clinic equipped with both doctors and dentists and a gymnasium. Madeleine employed what were considered revolutionary labor practices at the time, also providing a canteen, maternity leave, paid holidays and daycare. The house of Vionnet grew to employ 1,100 seamstresses.

In 1939, when WWII started, Madeleine closed her house, never to reopen it again. She lived to the age of 99 and died in 1975.

Madeleine Vionnet is considered one of the greatest designers.

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The bias cut quickly emulated in the Paris couture before World War II, but Madeleine Vionnet’s influences didn’t stop there. Geoffrey Beene, Halston, and other Americans in the 1960s and 1970s, Azzedine Alaïa in France, and Japanese designers Issey Miyake and Rei Kawakubo in the 1970s and 1980s used the techniques of Madeleine. Mikaye and Kawakubo were alerted to Madame Vionnet by her strong presence in The 10s, 20s, 30s exhibition organized by Diana Vreeland for the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1973 and 1974.

Since 2006 the label Vionnet is in operating again. It has already employed many different designers, starting with of Sophia Kokosalaki (a ‘draping genius’ herself). By now Vionnet is designed by Rodolfo Paglialunga, who has been the womerswear designer for Prada for 13 years.

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The best book written about Madeleine Vionnet

“Vionnet’s passion and spirit have been carried on by Mrs. Betty Kirke…  Although many people were aware of the designer’s greatness, researching and writing the book was a difficult task which no one had dared to undertake in the past. Thanks to Mrs. Kirke, we are able to preserve and to pass on the precious legacy of Madeleine Vionnet.”

Issey Miyake from the foreward to ”Madeleine Vionnet” by Betty Kirke

to order at:   http://www.bettykirke.com/

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This Vionnet Pattern book  is written in Japanese, so advanced skills are needed to understand the patterns.

http://nl.etsy.com/listing/61691579/vionnet-japanese-dress-pattern-book?ref=sr_gallery_1&ga_search_query=patronen+boek+Vionnet&ga_order=most_relevant&ga_view_type=gallery&ga_ship_to=NL&ga_item_language=en-US&ga_search_type=all&ga_facet=patronen+boek+Vionnet

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Short video of the 2009 exhibition in Paris

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Nowadays Alber Elbaz does a fantastic job as head of Lanvin, but it all started with Jeanne Lanvin, the founder of the house of Lanvin. The grande dame was one of the greatest and least-know designers of the 20th century.

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Biography

Jeanne-Marie Lanvin ( 1 January 1867, Paris – 6 July 1946, Paris) was the eldest of 11 children. She trained as a dressmaker at a French fashion house called Talbot and then later worked as a milliner. She had the passion, unique talent, energy and enormous potential. In 1890, backed by a devoted client, she opened up a millinery shop (Coco Chanel also started as a milliner and opened a millinery shop, before she went into fashion design).

Jeanne Lanvin, who by now was a doting mother, also designed an extensive mini-me wardrobe for her daughter Marguerite Marie-Blanche di Pietro. She made such beautiful clothes for her daughter, using sophisticated textiles and colours, that they began to attract the attention of a number of wealthy people who requested copies for their own children and Jeanne branched out into childrenswear.

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Marguerite was the inspiration and driving force behind Lanvin’s designs. Jeanne created the looks of eternal youth, so that her daughter was the most beautiful woman in the world. Designing dream outfits that her daughter could wear gave Lanvin a chance to relive her own life as she’d always dreamed of. The life she had to sacrifice to her work.

Following customer demand for adult versions of her exquisite children’s clothing, she created women’s and girls’ lines. Her first garments follow the simple, Empire-waisted chemise silhouette. As a full-fledged couturière, she now joined the Chambre Syndicale de la Couture and becomes known for her mother-and-daughter outfits.

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The Lanvin logo

(The Lanvin logo is inspired by a picture of Jeanne and her daughter Marguerite.)

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Jeanne was in her fifties when she became famous for her designs for grown-ups and was not like her rival, Coco Chanel, designing for slim women, but continued her bouffant style for women with a larger size, like Paul Poiret did. The robe de style bouffant dress became her signature piece.

Jeanne loved to work with expensive fabrics and her garments were easily recognisable for her masterful use of embellishment, her delicate trimmings and her embroideries along with exquisite beadwork in floral inspired colours. Often her embellishments included free-flowing ribbons, ruffles, flowers, lace or mirrors inspired by her travels. Ornamentation included appliqué, couching, quilting, parallel stitching, embroidery and discreet use of sequins.

Jeanne’s clothes were about perfection. She chose the fabrics, then developed her own  colour schemes and even built a dye factory in Nanterre in 1922 to achieve the subtle  inimitable shades she was after. She used pieces of mica, coral, minute shells,  gold and silver threads, ribbons and raffia along side of pearls and sequins, so  that the beading would match the fabric, the mood and the motif.  Fabrics most often used were silk, taffeta, velvet, silk chiffon, organza, lace, fur and tulle.

Unlike her rivals Coco Chanel, Paul Poiret or Elsa Schiaparelli, Jeanne Lanvin was a very private person – she would rather stay on background than dissolve herself into the lights of fame and social glamour. Dressed in black, she was more keen on concentrating on her designs and communicating with fabrics rather than people.

This was also the problem, Jeanne Lanvin had no public image and no public relations in the industry. Her rivals all understood that they needed to embody their house in their own appearance, so they were tireless self-promoters. Karl Elberfeld wrote about Jeanne: “Her image wasn’t as strong as that of Chanel because she was a nice old lady and not a fashion plate”.

On the other hand, Jeanne was a great businesswoman and 1918 she took over the whole building at 22 Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honore. It included two workrooms for semi-tailored clothes, two for tailored ones, one for lingerie, one for hats, one that was used as a design studio, and two that were given over to embroidery; the latter was a speciality which Lanvin, unlike other couturiers, did not entrust to outside workers.

And Jeanne did understand that fashion isn’t just about clothes, it is a way of life and in the 1920s she already opened shops devoted to home décor (Lanvin Décoration, at 15 Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré), sportswear,  menswear, furs, swimwear and lingerie. Lanvin became the first house to dress the whole family!

In 1924, Jeanne was one of the first couturiers to create a division for fragrances, Lanvin Parfums and the next years a fragrance factory is constructed near Nanterre. Mon Peche scent debuted, but didn’t do so well untill the name was changed into My Sin. In honor of Marguerite’s (who, by then, calls herself by her middle name: Marie-Blanche) 30th birthday Arpege, lanvin’s first perfume, debuted. Later many new fragrances followed, like Scandal, Eau de Lanvin and Rumeur.

During WWII, Jeanne continued to operate her house, creating special collections for women engaged in war work and regulation uniforms for female armed-service members.

Jeanne Lanvin’s Art Deco appartement

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“When you are constantly thinking about new designs everything you see is  transformed and adapted to whatever is in hand. The process happens naturally  and becomes an instinct, a truth, a necessity, another language.”

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In 1946, Jeanne Lanvin died at age 79. her daughter, Marie- Blanche de Polignac took ownership until she herself passed in 1958, and the house of Lanvin went to their cousin Yves Lanvin. From then on the label passed from hand to hand. By the time Alber Elbaz took over in 2002 it was the oldest fashion house in continuous operation, and despite its dimmed reputation, it somehow survived and overnight became a huge success again!

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Books on Jeanne Lanvin

http://www.assouline.com/lanvin.html

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www.amazon.com

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This bikini made me a success.”

 Ursula Andress

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The History of the Bikini

The history of the bikini begins far before the official introduction of the bikini swimsuit in the summer of 1946. Some historians believe that the bikini may have been one of the first public swimming costumes in existence. Drawing evidence from 300 A.D. Roman mosaics, historians point to the bikini as the swimsuit of choice for ancient Roman women. The history of the bikini, however, may begin nearly 2000 years sooner than even ancient Rome! Minoan wall paintings from approximately 1600 B.C. also depict women wearing the seemingly quite popular two-piece bathing costume.

The official history of the bikini, under that name, begins in the summer of 1946, just one year after the tumultuous end of World War II. During that summer, as France was seeking to recover from the dreadful effects of the war, two French designers almost simultaneously created and marketed the bikini swimsuit. Barely leading the charge, Jacques Heim, a fashion designer and beach shop owner in the French resort town of Cannes, introduced his swimsuit creation, the “Atome,” early in the summer of 1946. The swimsuit was named the Atome because of its miniscule size (as compared to the then smallest known particle of matter, the atom). Heim intended to sell his swimsuit in his beach shop. To drum up business and increase awareness of the new swimsuit, Heim sent skywriters high above the Cannes sky, proclaiming the new Atome to be “the world’s smallest bathing suit.”

Sadly for Jacques Heim, another French fashion designer was also hard at work creating a remarkably similar swimsuit in the summer of 1946. Just three weeks after Heim began marketing his swimsuit, Louis Reard, a mechanical engineer who had decided to dabble in swimsuit design, sent out skywriters over the French Riviera. The message these skywriters carried was simple but powerful marketing: “Bikini—smaller than the smallest bathing suit in the world.” Perhaps due to Reard’s obvious marketing skills or a simple turn of fate, the name bikini became the official tag for the two-piece swimsuit.

The bikini made its first proper introduction to the world of fashion design on July 5, 1946, as it is was worn and displayed at a Paris fashion show by French model Micheline Bernardini. Reaction to the bikini was immediate and explosive. As one American correspondent put it (in typical Texan style), “All of a sudden, a blond named Micheline Bernardini ambles out in what any dern (sic) fool could see was the smallest bathing in the world, including West Texas. Why folks, that suit was so small that…” Any number of phrases could complete this statement and would adequately describe the male reaction to the bikini. Needless to say, most of those who viewed the new swimsuit were equally shocked and titillated by its minimalist style.

The bikini began to be marketed and sold in the United States just one year after its introduction in France. Reaction to the swimsuit was great, but sales were initially quite slow. Men and women alike assumed that the suit was simply too bare and scandalous for conservative American women to don in public. American women did indeed approach the swimsuit quite  cautiously until the revolutionary decade of the 1960s, in which bikini sales soared tremendously.

The bikini has now become such an entrenched part of swimsuit design that it is a wonder the modern swimsuit is only 60 years old. True to its explosive nature, the bikini has inspired even more shocking innovations in swimsuit design, including the short-lived monokini and the immensely popular thong bikini. It would be interesting to learn if Louis Reard has the foresight to
know of the far-reaching implications of the scanty two pieces of cloth that comprised the original bikini.

The word bikini has rather an interesting etymology. Unlike the word swimsuit, which is entirely functional and descriptive in its purpose, the word bikini implies much more about the bikini’s history than it does the bikini’s purpose.

Most scholars assume that the bikini swimsuit was named after the famous Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Marshall Islands. While it may seem strange for the birthplace of the actual bikini swimsuit to be in France and the birthplace of the name bikini to be in the South Pacific, these two areas of the world actually had quite a bit in common during the historical time period of the introduction of the bikini.

When the bikini was introduced to the world in 1946, World War II had just ended the spring before, and the world was still rollicking from the horrendous nature of that war. After detonating the controversial atomic bomb on two Japanese cities to end the Pacific war, the United States was setting off further test bombs on the Marshall Islands during that same summer. Needless to say, the destructive power of the atomic bomb was still quite a shock to people around the world. While Jacques Heim and Louis Reard were simultaneously inventing and marketing their own versions of the bikini swimsuit, people all over the world were marveling at the awesome power of the atomic bomb.

No one knows for sure whether Louis Reard was inspired enough by the atomic bomb detonations in the Bikini Atoll to christen his swimsuit the bikini or if he chose the name at random. Whatever the reason, the name bikini stuck as the official title of the midriff-baring, two-piece swimsuit. Many etymologists have assumed that Reard believed his swimsuit creation would create a shock equal in its reverberation to that of the atomic bomb (as it proved to do in the following years). The term bikini has now become so lodged in the vocabulary of swimsuits that several new types of swimsuits have spawned from it, including the bandini, tankini, camikini, monokini and burkini.

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“A bikini is a thoughtless act.”

Esther Williams

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Modern Swimwear

Vogue Italia Swimwear 2013 by Steven Meisel, model Kristen McMenamy

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most information for this post can be found on: http://www.everythingbikini.com/

It sounds a bit scary, body manipulation in fashion, but this post is about changing the natural shapes of the body though a garment or undergarment, not changing the body itself. It’s about Crinolines, Yohji Yamamoto and Comme Des Garçons inspired by crinolines and the “Dress Meets Body, Body Meets Dress” collection by Comme Des Garçons. These, together with for instance corsets and shoulder pads, are samples of body modification in fashion.

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Crinolines

Women did suffer for the sake of fashion for many centuries and many do so today with high heels and plastic surgery. Ridiculously large crinolines, protruding bustles and heavily boned corsets often did restrict movement and the range of activities women could engage in.

In 1837 Victoria ascended to the throne. The fashion press looked to this new young queen to endorse new fashions. Contrary to popular belief Victoria was, until Prince Albert’s death at least, interested in fashion. She was not a frivolous royal leader and her belief in simplicity and demure elegance is echoed by the fashion plates of the day. Gone were the flamboyant fashions of the mid-1830s with the huge balloon-like sleeves, large bonnets and trailing ribbons. Dresses of the late 1830s and 1840s were characterised by drooping shoulders, long pointed angles and a low pinched-in waist.

Panniers

Then fashion changed and the skirts of the new dresses  presented new problems. They increased in size and had to be supported by layers of heavy petticoats which were very hot and unhygienic – particularly in the summer. Bustle-like structures made of down-filled pads or whalebone and stiffened petticoats helped give added support. The most popular type of stiffened petticoat was made out of horsehair and linen which earned it the name crinoline (‘crin’ is the French for horsehair and ‘lin’ the linen thread it was woven with).

The development of the sewing machine in the early 1850s was one of the most important innovations of the 19th century as it led to the mass production of clothes including underwear. Although many corsets and crinolines of the 1850s were still stitched by hand, the speed of sewing on a machine meant that manufacturers could produce in far greater numbers and increase the variety of designs. Corsetry and underwear manufacture therefore became a major industry with a turnover of millions of pounds per year. During the 1850s the skirts became the focus of attention. They grew ever wider and wider, and the flounces and light materials they were made of meant that they needed more and more support. Layers of petticoats including the horsehair crinolines were no longer sufficient, and they were very heavy and uncomfortable. Something more structured was required.

Partial Panniers

A patent was taken out in May 1856 for a garment inflated by means of bellows and deflated to enable the wearer to sit down.

In 1858, the American W.S. Thomson greatly facilitated the development of the cage crinoline by developing an eyelet fastener to connect the steel crinoline hoops with the vertical tapes descending from a band around the wearer’s waist. The cage crinoline was adopted with enthusiasm: the numerous petticoats, even the stiffened or hooped ones, were heavy, bulky and generally uncomfortable. The cage crinoline was light — it only required one or two petticoats worn over the top to prevent the steel bands appearing as ridges in the skirt — and freed the wearer’s legs from tangling petticoats.

Unlike the farthingale and panniers, the crinoline was worn by women of every social class. The wider circulation of magazines and newspapers spread news of the new fashion, also fueling desire for it, and mass production made it affordable. It took several years for high society to accept the wearing of the cage crinoline as it started as — and remained in perception — a middle class affectation. It not only freed women from the weight of massive numbers of petticoats, but also the expense of owning, washing, and starching such copious petticoats. The wider skirts were now achievable by a greater number of less wealthy women.

Crinolines

Crinoline-inspired skirt by Comme Des Garçons

There were many tales of accidents that could befall wearers of crinolines, such as being caught in her hoops as she descended from a carriage or of causing damage if she were a factory girl or servant as china, glass and other delicate materials could easily be swept off shelves and tables. In 1860 the textile firm Courtaulds instructed its workers ‘to leave Hoop and Crinoline at Home’. The most frequent, and terrible, accidents were caused by sparks from open fires, a situation not helped by the wearing of highly flammable fabrics such as muslin and silks. Some husbands were even advised to insure their wives at Fire Insurance offices.

It’s easy to imagine how women could stray too near an open fire in their large crinolines.  The stories about ladies not being able to fit into carriages or through narrow doorways are exaggerated. The cage crinolines might look very rigid but spring steel is in fact incredibly flexible and could be compressed. Accidents did happen but women would learn how to walk in crinolines and how to sit down so that they did not reveal all their underclothes.

Crinolettes

The spring steel structures were  very light so rather than imprisoning women in cages (as some of the reports and images suggest) they had a liberating effect. They freed women from the layers and layers of heavy petticoats and were much more hygienic and comfortable.

The crinoline had grown to its maximum dimensions by 1860. However, as the fashionable silhouette never remains the same for long, the huge skirts began to fall from favour. Around 1864, the shape of the crinoline began to change. Rather than being dome-shaped, the front and sides began to contract, leaving volume only at the back. The kind of crinoline that supported this style was sometimes known as a crinolette. The cage structure was still attached around the waist and extended down to the ground, but only extended down the back of the wearer’s legs. The crinolette itself was quickly superseded by the bustle, which was sufficient for supporting the drapery and train at the back of the skirt.

Crinolines are still worn today. They are usually part of a formal outfit, such as an evening gown or a wedding dress. The volume of the skirt is not as great as during the Victorian era (except for ‘Big Fat Gipsy Weddings’), so modern crinolines are most often constructed of several layers of stiff net, with flounces to extend the skirt. If there is a hoop in the crinoline, it will probably be made of plastic or nylon, which are low in cost, lightweight and flexible, or steel.

Bustle

Bustle-inspired skirts by Comme Des Garçons

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Yohji Yamamoto

was inspired by an old picture of a woman being dressed and wearing a ridiculously large crinoline.

Yohji Yamamoto wedding dress

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Dress Meets Body, Body Meets Dress

The s/s 1997 collection by Comme Des Garçons, often referred to the ‘lumps and bumps’ collection, was a much talked about show in Paris that season. It featured predominately tight tops and skirts that were swollen by goosedown-filled lumps which distorted the body shape.

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From sudden Fame to harsh Criticism

In many ways Corinne Day  memory is shadowed by the moment of her greatest good fortune: her spotting of a Polaroid of a gangly Croydon teenager among the files of a London model agency in the spring of 1990. She brought a photograph of the 14-year-old Kate Moss to Phil Bicker, the visionary art director of the Face magazine, then the single most influential style magazine in Europe. Back then, Bicker was busy reinventing British fashion photography as a gritty, altogether less glamorous form. He had gathered a bunch of young and ambitious photographers, including Glen Luchford, David Sims and Nigel Shafran, all of whom became successful in the fashion and art world. Corinne Day was perhaps the most temperamental, a feisty, self-taught, model-turned-photographer with attitude to burn.

“It was an exciting time because we were making up the rules as we went along,” says Bicker, “I saw the same thing in Kate as Corinne saw, that she represented something very real: the opposite, in fact, of all the unreal high glamour of fashion. I sent Corinne and stylist, Melanie Ward, down to Camber Sands to do a shoot with her.”

The cover of the July 1990 issue of the Face gained iconic status in the fashion world and beyond. On it, the young Moss, who appears to be wearing no make-up, grins like an excited and slightly gauche teenager from beneath a headdress made of fabric and feathers. The cover line announces “The 3rd Summer of Love” and promises features on the Stone Roses, Daisy Age fashion and psychedelia. The summer – and the decade, and the style-obsessed world in which we now live – had found its face.

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Inside, Kate Moss cavorted on Camber Sands in hippy-style clothes, sometimes topless, like a girl who could not quite believe her luck. Bicker is quick to point out that, although the fashion shoot seemed casual and unstyled, it was, in reality, the opposite. “It looked natural and simple but it was carefully constructed to look like that. In fact, as I recall, I sent them down there two or three times until they got it right. Kate hadn’t been modelling for very long but, even in her awkwardness, she had that thing about her that Twiggy had in the 60s, a freshness that matched the times.”

Juergen Teller, one of Corinne Day’s peers, and now the most globally successful photographer of all the young iconoclasts of that time, concurs. “I loved Corinne’s first photographs of Kate. They had that end-of-summer feel and seemed very fresh and almost naive, but in a good way. To me, they were her best photographs.”

The 3rd Summer of Love

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Revealingly, neither Kate Moss or her model agency were pleased with the photographs, finding them too raw and unadorned. Corinne Day had brought her own experience of being a model into the shoot. She later said, “It was something so deep inside, being a model and hating the way I was made up. The photographer always made me into someone I wasn’t. I wanted to go in the opposite direction.”

But the next time Corinne Day impinged on the public consciousness, that freshness had been replaced by a darker, harsher vision. In 1993, she photographed Kate Moss for a fashion shoot for British Vogue, Under-exposure. In it, the model looked strung out and sad, dressed down in baggy tights and stringy underwear that exacerbated her skinniness. Again, the photographs were a reaction to the glitzy unrealness of the fashion photography that Vogue usually featured, but here the extremity of Corinne Day’s vision provoked outrage and hysterical headlines about the glamorization of anorexia and hard drug use.

The terms “heroin chic” and “grunge fashion” were born and bandied about in the tabloids. By then, the troubled and troublesome photographer had burned too many bridges in the fashion world and, more problematically, was actually living in, and intimately photographing, a bohemian milieu defined by hard drug use.

Under-exposure

Corinne Day later said that she took the shot above on a day when Kate had been crying after a fight with her then-boyfriend, resulting in the vulnerability that turned this into one of the most iconic and controversial images produced in the 90s (on, of course, the charge that Kate was too thin, heroin chic,etc). It’s the most reproduced image of the entire editorial, but the clothes (pink Liza Bruce vest and Hennes- now known as H&M- chiffon knickers) are rarely remembered, or credited. I have the picture on my Wall of Fame. The vulnerability, innocence & simplicity of the image made it iconic picture to me too.

Start photography

Corinne grew up in Ickenham with her younger brother and her grandparents. She left school aged sixteen and worked as an assistant in a local bank. After a year at the bank she became an international mail courier. It was during this period that someone suggested she try modelling – she worked consistently as a catalogue model for several years. In 1985 she met Mark Szaszy on a train in Tokyo - Mark was a male model and had a keen interest in film and photography.

During an extended trip to Hong Kong and Thailand, Mark taught Corinne how to use a camera and in 1987 they moved to Milan. It was in Milan that Day’s career as a fashion photographer started. Having produced photographs of Mark and her friends for their modelling portfolios, Corinne began approaching magazines for work.

From Fashion to Documentary

Corinne retreated from fashion work in the wake of the heroin chic debate, instead choosing to tour America with the band Pusherman and concentrate on her documentary photography. She also undertook work photographing musicians, including the image of Moby, used on his 1999 album Play.

Her autobiographical book, Diary was published by Krus Verlag in 2000, and contained frank and at times shocking images of Corinne and her friends. The images in Diary featured young people hanging out, taking drugs and having sex, and have been compared to the documentary realism of Nan Goldin. Coinciding with the publication of Diary,  Corinne had two large-scale exhibitions in London in 2000.

Diary

Diary also records the dramatic events of the fateful night in 1996 when Corinne collapsed in her New York apartment and was rushed to Bellevue hospital. There, she underwent an emergency operation for a brain tumour. She insisted that Mark photographed her, even in the moments leading up to her surgery. She looks dazed, helpless, disoriented. “To me, photography is about showing us things we don’t normally see,” she said later, “Getting as close as you can to real life.” The book’s final picture is of a beach strewn with beer cans: a glimmer of hope, and yet a tarnished one.

After her initial illness, Corinne made an uneasy truce with fashion photography. She abandoned her raw, edgy style for something more traditional in the fashion shoots she did for, among others, British, French and Italian Vogue, Arena and Vivienne Westwood.

Corinne’s tumour returned in 2008 and a campaign called Save the Day was started by her friends to pay for treatment in a clinic in Arizona. It raised £100,000, much of it from the sale of signed, limited-edition prints, including several of Kate Moss that were signed by the model and the photographer.

Corinne Day, who died 27 August 2010 , will be remembered for transforming fashion with her pictures of the young Kate Moss for the Face.

Most information for this post from:  The Observer, article by  Sean O’Hagan & Wikipedia

Official website Corinne Day:  http://www.corinneday.co.uk/home.php

Twice a year I took the train to Paris, just so I could get my hands on the next issue of Six Magazine by Comme Des Garçons, the most inspiring magazine at the time.

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In 1988, Comme des Garçons founder and creative director Rei Kawakubo created bi-annual creative journal Six (and abbreviation of Sixth Sense), presenting her own work alongside that of other artists, photographers, designers and writers. The magazine closed its doors in 1991, by which time it had become an institution for the Japanese brand, and it’s now the subject of a stylish new iPad app. Moving Six takes an interactive look back into the archives, still a source of inspiration for Rei Kawakubo, packed with photos by Steven Meisel, Minsei Tominaga and Karl Blossfeldt, all tinted and enhanced especially. Be inspired.

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Comme des Garçons’ Moving Six app

Comme des Garçons presented a brand new iPad application in 2012, exploring the world of Six magazine, edited by designer Rei Kawakubo from 1988 to 1991.

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(most pictures in this post were published in Six Magazine, the other pictures are also related to Comme des Garçons)

A couple of years ago, my sister Mary showed me a great online shop specialized in books on crafts like sawing, knitting, beading, embroidery etc. She had bought a Japanese book with patterns for children’s clothes which was really great, so I started searching the shop for other pattern books and found the best ever. They were written in Japanese, but because I am a very advanced sewer this didn’t withhold me from buying some of the books. A little while ago I noticed one of these books in a bookstore in Amsterdam, but this one was translated in English. So for my fellow craftsmen who haven’t been introduced to these fantastic books, read this post.

 Pattern Magic

Pattern Magic is the cult pattern-cutting book from Japan. Taking inspiration from nature, from geometric shapes and from the street, this book harnesses the sheer joy of making and sculpting clothes. The book takes a creative approach to pattern cutting, with step-by-step projects for fashion designers and dressmakers to enjoy.
All the basic information you need to start pattern cutting is included, from the basic block to measurements and scaling. Each project is beautifully illustrated with clear diagrams and photographs showing the stages of construction, the toiles and the finished garments. These easy-to-follow illustrations and detailed instructions make it easy to create stunning, sculptural clothes with a couture look.

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 Pattern Magic  vol. 2

About the Author

After serving many years as a professor at Bunka Fashion College, Tomoko Nakamichi currently delivers lectures and holds courses on design making, both in Japan and overseas.

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Pattern Magic even has its own Facebook page on which people show their own Magic Pattern-garments and their own designs !

 

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Pattern-Magic/367180714172

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Pattern Magic  Stretch Fabrics

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All three books (English version)  can be ordered by Amazon.com

http://www.amazon.com/Pattern-Magic-Tomoko-Nakamichi/dp/1856697053

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Men’s coats by Ryuichiro Shimazaki

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Japanese Sewing Pattern book for Men’s Coats with Full-Sized Pattern Sheet Basic & Cool!!! These cool coats are all designed by  Ryuichiro Shimazaki. Ryuichiro Shimazaki is very famous Sewing Designer for men in Japan!! This book is absolutely FANTASTIC! It’s written in Japanese though… Don’t worry You can get step-by-step instructions  in illustrations ! 01 – Trench Coat 02 – Trench Coat (Spring Coat) 03 – Casual Trench 04 – Short Trench 05 – Pea Coat 06 – Pea Coat (Vintage Style) 07 – Pea Coat (Marine Style) 08 – Pea Coat (Military Style) 09 – Duffel Coat (Traditional) 10 – Duffel Coat (Off-White) 11 – Duffel Coat (Canvas) 12 – Balmacaan Coat (Traditional) 13 – Balmacaan Coat (Used Style)

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http://www.amazon.com/Mens-Coat-By-Ryuichiro-Shimazaki/dp/4579112202

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Shirts by Ryuichiro Shimazaki

This book is can be bought in the French or Japanese language