Maison Martin Margiela

The Martin Margiela exhibition at Somerset House is only open till September 5th so if you want to see it you’d better hurry. However I was pretty disappointed. With quite a lot of white space (no doubt reflecting the white aesthetic at headquarters) and not a very wide selection of pieces from a career that has spanned twenty years so far, I felt each room should have contained much more and showcased bigger collections to highlight the intricate detail that Margiela is famous for.  I have posted the video from the Somerset House website which makes it much more intriguing, so you can watch that and you really won’t need to go.  I’ve also copied and pasted the blurb from the website…again sounds much more exciting than it is.

Somerset House is proud to host Maison Martin Margiela ‘20’ The Exhibition, a major exhibition celebrating 20 years of one of contemporary fashion’s most influential and enigmatic designers. This ambitious, multi-layered exhibition captures Margiela’s unique aesthetic and vision, incorporating garments, installations, photography and film. This exhibition was initiated by the Fashion Museum Province of Antwerp and Maison Martin Margiela.

Young as its history is, no other fashion house has had quite the same impact on our understanding of fashion and its relationship to history, craft, commerce and innovation. Twenty years on, Maison Martin Margiela’s radical questioning and rethinking of what fashion is, how we clothe the body and ideals of human beauty, is still as groundbreaking as ever.

Editorial

This editorial really has to be one of the best I’ve seen recently, not necessarily fashion wise or for being hugely ground breaking but because it’s so clean and mesmerising. It’s for Marie Claire Italia,  photographed by Txema Yeste, styled by Belen Casadevall, featuring model Alana Zimmer. For me it’s all about the combination of a simple hat, the model’s amazing oval face, almond eyes and perfect orange/red lip. Just needed to share it with the world.

Source: FashionGoneRogue

Tony Bevan

Tony Bevan is one of my favourite artists at the moment. I first discovered him at the Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition a couple of years ago and fell in love with his graphic heads. I was lucky enough to see a collection of his  work at a gallery when I was in Paris earlier this year. I love the orange he uses and up close the canvases have an extraordinary power, textural and physical and at the same time full of emotion, partly explained perhaps by the fact that  he often uses his own body to model from.   I also like his more recent exploration of architectural forms such as archways and  corridors.

Source: TonyBevan.com

Campaign Meisel Style

Lanvin’s new Fall 2010 campaign features models Mariacarla Boscono, Anja Rubik and Magdalena Frackowiak, photographed by legend Steven Meisel. I love the dark intensity of these shots; the super strong make-up and the  Rorschach effect of the reflections give them an amazing linear energy.

Source: FashionGoneRogue

Cover Try

Wow! What a photo, what a face! Vogue Russia’s September issue 2010 cover of Natalia Vodianova shot by Mert&Marcus is quite something. It says buy me, buy my clothes, buy my lifestyle. You couldn’t walk past this and not want to pick it up.  It’s simplicity is stunning.

Source: FashionGoneRogue

Blake Lively

So, according to last week’s Grazia (yes, I’m a week behind on my lite reading), and I quote, ‘True style icons only come along once in a while. And when they do it’s pretty exciting. In a special report, Grazia reveals why the actress (Blake Lively) with the girl-next-door looks suddenly has the fashion world falling at her feet….’ !!

Now I have absolutely nothing against Blake Lively, I’m sure she’s a lovely girl, but style icon she aint! I think it’s really important that the term/accolade ‘icon’ isn’t bandied about too lightly.  A majority of all the outfits featured in the article are taken from Gossip Girl or related promotional events, ie they are Eric Daman’s styling for GG and whoever her stylist is for the red carpet. This does not a style icon make. In the couple of pictures of Blake out and about she looks totally normal, nice but definitely not iconic. Eric Daman’s styling has elevated the show beyond a normal teen drama, but to credit Lively is misguided.  In the article she readily admits she owns  ‘half of her (Serena’s) wardrobe’. A style icon doesn’t need to borrow someone else’s vision.  She’s also quoted as saying her favourite place to shop is ‘The fitting room on Gossip Girl. I go in and take pictures on my phone, then email them to the personal shoppers at stores and say, “Find me this”‘. Again, where is the personal touch? Great style comes from seeing a piece of clothing and knowing how to wear it, whether to add a great belt, shoe, brooch etc, not ‘that top’s nice, get it for me’! Grazia chooses to highlight a couple of outfits in particular, saying  ‘it’s clear that Lively’s wardrobe is coming into its own – a pair of pink high-waisted trousers by Suni jumped on to every style watcher’s wishlist after Serena was seen out wearing them’…..but as Grazia admits,  SERENA, the character Blake plays, was seen in a SCENE in them, ie Eric Daman’s styling, not Blake’s. They also mention a Preen outfit she recently wore to Comic-Con which in fact was widely panned for being far too cleavage-centric and totally inappropriate for a press day.

This is not supposed to be a rant but honestly I don’t understand how you can write an article celebrating someone’s iconic style status when it’s clearly so influenced by someone else’s professional expertise, ie Eric Daman for Gossip Girl.  It seems such a lazy and inaccurate way to do a profile.

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Majorca in Brief

I was lucky enough to be in Palma, Majorca far too briefly last week for a few days’ holiday. I love this city and have visited the island for over ten years with my family. It’s a really nice way of having a city break: the hotel has a roof top pool so we spend the morning there and then head out in the afternoon after siesta for some culture and wandering around. I love the sun-soaked atmosphere of the town, the bleached colours of the stones, the stunning cathedral, all the little alleyways and unique shops in every corner and of course the great food and wine! I went to the Museum of Contemporary Art  which has amazing roof top views over the city and harbour, but the art was pretty disappointing. A great break overall though, viva espana.

Shakespeare´s Rough Magic

Any film based on Shakespeare is always a good deal for me but new pictures of Helen Mirren in Shakespeare’s The Tempest make  me even more excited. Controversially, Mirren plays  the male lead  in Julie Taymor’s adaptation of what was probably Shakespeare´s final play, about Prospero, an old magician on an enchanted island manipulating a cast of  wilful spirits, devious shipwrecked nobles, their colourful crew and his own beloved daughter Miranda, towards a redemptive end. Putting aside the excitement of the Bard, I have to say it should be visually stunning and the costumes look amazing. Also pictured below are Russell Brand and Djimon Hounsou.

Source: JustJared

Lee Klabin

I was invited to a viewing last week for a designer called Lee Klabin, which I thought I’d share with you as many of the pieces were beautiful.  After a first degree in biomedics, Lee Klabin went on to the LCF where she discovered a love of corsetry. Her first Ready to Wear collection launched in London this February and a full S/S collection will be on show in London and Paris this autumn.   The medical/art background is interesting because you can see that the corsetted constructions she makes are designed both to accentuate the female form as well as to alter and flatter it.  This collection incapsulates ‘traditional tailoring meets technology’ and she has been innovative with the basic elements of the corset, so that the boning, for example, is manipulated in unconventional ways.   I am always impressed by detail and there’s lot to find her and there are some lovely necklines in whites, greys and blacks, lots of clever pleating, and I liked the way tartan and leather make an appearance with nice subtlety.

Misread

The article below was published yesterday by The Daily Telegraph about the lastest issue of Vogue, the all important September copy (as the article will inform you), but for me it seems a tad harsh. Does Alexander Chancellor really expect to find this magazine to his liking? He’s not exactly Vogue’s target audience as he freely admits. He complains about all the adverts but they are often visually stunning and inspiring, and we all understand that they are what it’s all about, you wouldn’t want, and surely couldn’t have, Vogue without the  adverts? He hates shopping…we’ve lost him from the start! Vogue is about looking and admiring some of the most beautiful, directional and perfectly crafted  clothes, bags, shoes available, interpreted with great flair; it most certainly is not a catalogue.  I’m not sure why he wrote the article if he didn’t set out to say something interesting. The only thing he does express a fondness for is Kate Moss, suprise suprise.

Tumbling yesterday out of the dark clouds of recession, unemployment and austerity came that gleaming almanac of glamour and self-indulgence, the September Issue of Vogue. I got my hands on the most important issue of the year – the fattest, the most profitable, the most influential – two days before it arrived in newsagents. I do not know if I deserve the priviliege: to my shame, I had never heard of “The September Issue” until I saw last year’s gripping film documentary of that name starring Anna Wintour as the despotic, blood-chilling editor of American Vogue. Only then did I realise that the September issue – whether in America, in Britain, or in any of the other privileged countries that have Vogues of their own – is the single most important reference book for anyone seeking to be in the swim. I find myself wondering how I have managed to exist without it.

Then again, as a 70-year-old man with no interest in fashion who never buys a garment anywhere other than at Marks and Spencer, I am not exactly Vogue’s target reader. But I checked out the UK’s September issue to see what appeal it might have for me. I fancied it might cut a dash in my study, if nothing else, make a proper modern man of me.

The most immediately striking thing about it is its opulence, page upon glossy page of advertisements for every expensive fashion house or jeweller you have ever heard of – so many that at least 100 pages go by before you arrive at the first bit of editorial copy.

Luxury can be especially seductive in times like these, but Vogue, charmingly, has attempted to show sensitivity to the country’s penitential mood. The trend this year is to be “minimal chic” – nothing fancy, just plain, clean-cut clothes full of understated elegance. (Make a beeline for the A-line, it advises, whatever that may mean.) There is a new taste for old-fashioned cosiness – sheepskin, log baskets, wooden basins, and anything furry or quilted. I cast around my own home and feel suddenly, and pleasingly, in the swim.

But then, in her “Editor’s Letter” promoting a Vogue-sponsored “celebration of fashion and shopping” in London next month, Alexandra Shulman writes: “The point of the event is not to encourage people to spend money [I will try to believe her] but to draw attention to the fact that fashion and retail are a hugely important and – let’s not forget – enjoyable part of the country’s economy”.

Here we come to the crux of my problem. I do not find fashion and retail “hugely enjoyable”. In fact, I much dislike shopping for clothes. I have no interest in trends or vibes, so all Vogue’s advice on such matters is wasted on me. But I do admit that I rather like looking at well-taken fashion photographs, and I find the pictures of Kate Moss by Patrick Demarchelier in the September issue particularly mesmerising. Kate Moss is also the cover girl, wearing a short, blue, brass-buttoned Burberry coat and nothing else, since fashion is now “all about the coat”. This is Kate Moss’s 30th Vogue cover, and her sixth for a September issue. I don’t know what it is about her that makes her so irreplaceable, but she certainly has some distinctive style.

I enjoyed David Jenkins’ feature on James Brett, the eccentric founder of the Museum of Everything. I thought I might take some tips from Frances Bentley, Vogue’s managing editor, on how to feel better by meditating in a down-to-earth way. I was even quite interested in a long profile of Giorgio Armanui, the 76-year-old billionaire Italian fashion designer and businessman, who says he doesn’t feel “remotely old”. That’s because he’s trendy and has to be. Trendiness is his business. But I feel a little bit more in tune with another 76-year-old, Jonathan Miller, who said yesterday in an interview that he had stopped going to the theatre and now only wanted to stay at home and shop at Marks and Spencer.

Source: Telegraph.co.uk