Paris: Haute Couture Spring/Summer 2010 Romantic Nymphs & Glamorous Heroines

This season, in a fierce effort to boost Couture, Parisian Couturiers demonstrated their unequalled mastery by offering optimistic and sumptuous collections, resorting to all of luxury’s best resources. The revival of long, spectacular evening gowns covered in lace, or minutely worked, embroidered and pleated, were noticeable. The Spring/Summer 2010 woman is a romantic heroine, a futuristic princess or a Hollywood star.
Elie Saab presented his own confident version of classical and discreet elegance in a romantic collection. Always proposing a wide range of colours, this season, he chose flattering powdery pastel tones. Well-known for the sophistication of his long, preciously adorned gowns, he offers an idea of eternal luxury: a sure value of good taste for all women.

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Art of Draping

Ancient Greek and Roman fas­hi­ons, carved into marble, have always impressed by their grace and majesty, despite the simplicity of their shape: just plain rectangles of loose cloth, in varying dimensions. Usually wra­pped around the body, these, were attached onto the shoulders with fibulae, twisted around the waist and held together by ornamented belts. Seams were scarce, present only when necessary, to preserve modesty.
Thick woollen cloth only permitted the arrangement of large symmetrical pleats. The use of lighter, more fluid fabrics such as linen, helped develop the creation of pleated garments, and asymmetrical draping, which allowed more freedom as to the varying size and number of pleats.
After Greek and Roman sculptors, the Old Masters of Western painting commonly used drapery to add emotional and dramatic ‘strength’ to their figures. Enabling an infinite play of light and colour shades, drapes offered the artists an opportunity to demonstrate their high drafting skills, while depicting the beauty of human nature and expressing an of­t­en­-concealed eroticism. Austere Byzantine God Mothers, splendid Italian or Flemish Renaissance Madonnas in gowns and mantles, Botticelli’s goddesses in transparent tunics, Titian’s sensual portraits… painting, as a sacred and secular art, has always magnified the female body in folds of fabric.

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To be or not to be…a fetishist

As far as shoes are concerned, beware ladies: ‘EASY-CHIC’ is OUT!  Spring­/Summer 2010 shoe catalogues proclaim “… a desire to be different…” A ‘desire’ long searched and still unfulfilled, as the fashion crowd’s favourite Bondage Sado­-Masochistic trend, which was innovative in the 1970’s, persists for yet another season in a row.
French designer Chantal Thomass was a pioneer in transforming ‘sordid vulgarity’ into ‘seductive chic’ with her own touch of ‘retro naughtiness’.
From a “trashier” perspective, Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLauren reinterpreted London’s underground BDSM codes, with Bad-Street-Girl, Wild-Goddess, Queer-Queen types as icons, recognizable by their attributes: spikes, corsets, lingerie mixed and worn as clothes, stilettos or kinky boots, bondage trousers, chains, etc.  An original synthesis of both types, with both a chastity belt and pointed corset, was proposed by Jean Paul Gaultier and his Amazon look, embodied by Madonna in her 1987 Blonde Ambition Tour.
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French Couturier Christophe Josse: An Interview by Louise Kissa

Dreaming One’s Life: Portrait of French Couturier Franck Sorbier

On a rainy and misty day, we meet the enigmatic French Couturier Franck Sorbier in his atelier, his curiosity shop, in the 11th arrondissement, a quiet artistic quarter of Paris.

After debuting his career with Chantal Thomass and Thierry Mugler, this very eclectic designer gained experience as a concept-maker for advertising, design, decoration and architecture, while working with famous trendsetters in Paris. Early on, Sorbier attracted the attention of publicists who were seduced by his unique ability to create dreamy and poetical worlds. Major luxury brands regularly use his talent by commissioning him to design costumes for advertisements (“So Pretty” perfume campaign for Cartier, 1994).

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Just a few drops of No 5 to sleep…

Up until World War One, perfumes were exclusively produced by perfume-makers, who used simple floral extracts like rose, bergamot, geranium, lavender, jasmine, lemon or heliotrope. The floral compositions made at the time were very dense as the mixtures altered and evaporated easily. Women had to wear heavy amounts of perfume to maintain the scent all evening, thus reinforcing their flower- like image. Closely associated to passive beauty, flowers were also worn on hats and dresses, following the feminine ideals of the time, which Gabrielle Chanel rejected as much through her “revolutionary” clothes, as through the lifestyle she suggested: comfortable and simple clothes, adapted to active, independent, sporty women, who were keen on travelling.

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Louis Vuitton – When Fashion chooses Architecture

The Louis Vuitton Moet-Hennessy Holding, which, among others, owns Louis Vuitton, is well established as the first luxury group in the world. With a history in briefcase making since 1854, the brand with the famous LV logo entered the fashion world in 1997 when LVMH President Bernard Arnault appointed New York designer Marc Jacobs as artistic director. As an unchallenged leader in high-quality leather goods and travel products, LV is a recognized model of profitability thanks to the efficiency of its organization at all levels.  The constant expansion of its empire relies on a solid international tradition, which dates back to the 19th Century, when the Maison supplied royalty and the jet set all around the world (Queen Victoria, Tsar Nicolas II, the Egyptian Khedive, Ismail Pasha, Indian Maharajahs, Japanese Emperors like Hirohito in the 1920’s, American billionaires, Hollywood stars…etc). Also famous for taking part in well-publicized exploration rallies through Africa (the “Croisière Noire” in 1923, revived in 2004 with the opening of the first South African store in Johannesburg) and China (Paris – Pékin in 1907, celebrated with the “Rally Louis Vuitton Classic China Run,” in 1988). This prestigious past is certainly an advantage for the conquest of new markets, as often seen in the firm’s advertising campaigns.   (more…)

Tracing back Surrealism

Surrealism, a cultural movement born in Paris between the two World Wars, is known for the subversive visual artworks and writings of its disciples. These sought to break down the boundaries of rationality and irrationality, while exploring the resources and revolutionary energies of dreams, hallucinations and sexual desire. Artists and writers blamed the excessive rationalistic mentality and praise of bourgeois values for causing World War I and a deep crisis in Western culture. They rejected artistic tradition and formed an anti-rational, anti-social movement, Dadaism, which later evolved to Surrealism, under the leadership of André Breton, (Surrealist Manifesto, 1924) inspired by the psychoanalytical discoveries of Freud, (although Freud himself doubted their interpretation of his work) and Marxism.
Surrealism offered a ‘new’ way of perceiving the world: expressing psychological facts by removing ordinary objects from their usual environment and isolating them into an ‘imaginary’ world, accentuating their symbolic significance or insignificance by maximizing the visual impact on the viewer and evoking a feeling of ‘empathy’. Its adepts used unconventional techniques: automatic writing in literature, a dream-like perception of space and dream-inspired symbols in painting (artists Salvador Dali, Yves Tanguy, Max Ernst and Rene Magritte…etc)

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Making garments for a fair pay

The garment industry around the world has been notorious for its sweatshops, these factories that maintain a modern form of slavery in developing countries, characterized by low wages, excessive overtime and inhuman working conditions, especially endured by women, who make up most of the workforce.
Being opposed to the spreading of sweatshops all over the world, Ethical Fashion followers, who belong to the environmentalist movement, advocate for fairer labour, and a better-protected environment. Their coherent but limited programme proposes to help develop small communities through the preservation of traditional crafts and the use of natural  raw or recycled materials, as stated by Lionel Astruc in his book, “Voyages aux Sources de la Mode Ethique” (Paris, Eugen Ulmer Editions, 2009). For instance, the Indian NGO, Conserve India, helps fight poverty and pollution in New Delhi, by recycling plastic bags that are then transformed into trendy bags and purses sold in Europe. In Brazil, the sportswear brand, Veja, provides jobs to workers employed in collecting latex all the while protecting the Amazon rainforest. Other development initiatives include: weaving traditional silk in Cambodia and Alpaca wool in Bolivia, or jewellery made out of Zebu horn, in Madagascar. (more…)

Setting up a Fashion Company in this decade

Aganovich: A Case study

Serbian designer Nana Aganovich immigrated to Co­pe­nhagen with her family at the age of eight. Street art and political activism urged her to leave home at fifteen to travel around Europe, while practicing her graffiti style. After spending a year in Rome, she returned to Copenhagen where she attended the Danish Design School. Nana later completed the MA womenswear course at Central Saint Martins, from which she graduated in 2000, with distinction. Her next step was to follow her Chinese-American friend, Ahlaiya Yung, a former student from the St. Martins crowd, to China, where they set up a small production unit. ‘Missing Stock Studio’ as it was named, has since grown and relocated to the artistic hub, the OCT loft, in Shenzhen, South China. It continues to strive towards its founders’ goal of fighting unethical assembly line production by offering machine-made demi-couture: each garment is produced by one seamstress, encouraging and promoting dignity and high quality. (more…)