Irenebrination: Notes on Architecture, Art, Fashion, Fashion Law & Technology

Arty Uniforms for Environmental Protests: Marni S/S 20

As seen in a previous post, during Milan Fashion Week Miuccia Prada expressed her concerns about our planet on her S/S 20 runway with a minimalist collection.

Yesterday, on the day of a global event to fight climate change that saw millions of people marching all over the world inspired by the indomitable teen activist Greta Thunberg, Marni showcased in Milan a collection with some links to the environmental protests.

The set for the show was actually directly linked to Marni Men's S/S 20 runway: the audience sat on compressed cardboard seats and was surrounded by plastic (repurposed from the plastic props on the men's runway) jungle fronds, leaves and trees made of wood pulp and old clothes.

Creative Director Francesco Risso also created a tropical story to go with the set: the collection was inspired by an anti-infective fantasy drug - Tachitropirina - capable, according to the show notes, of treating a variety of "disorders", including Fauvism and tropical hypersensitivity, an illness that could leave its victims dizzy and trap them into a deliriously colourful state.

Mind you, if such a drug had existed, it wouldn't have managed to treat Risso's colour fever: the show opened with cotton puff-sleeve tops casually matched with wrap skirts knotted at the front or with full-skirts (at times paired with aprons for that touch of peasant style) covered in abstract brushstroke floral prints in an imaginative colour palette or in jewel tones. 

The abstract florals in the Fauvinist style (created by Risso and his team) covered the dresses with energetic splashes of paint that at times seemed to have dripped on the flip-flops.

Fitted soft leather skirts were juxtaposed to boxy jackets and coats with ample shoulders and large lapels that were also covered in hand-painted flowers.

The silhouettes were borrowed from the Haute Couture lexicon, but they were remixed, slashed and cut with edges that were left raw and unhemmed.

Asymmetrical knits were for example ripped and torn around the shoulders and seemed to unravel on the runway, while crocheted dresses with large appliqued flowers may have been reassembled from pre-existing clothes or yarns, after all Risso used for this collection upcycled textiles, organic cotton and recycled leather.  

Models had flowers and leaves sprouting from their mud covered hair, carried large basket or bucket-like bags and walked on shoes with upside down soles and bamboo heels.

In this exploration and explosion of colours and patterns the white underskirts peeking from the hems of the dresses provided a touch of muted elegance and serenity.  

There were no trousers in the collection but there was still a lot to take in and to choose from in this mix of silhouttes and prints that seemed to be a clash between Natalia Goncharova's peasants' styles and the palette in Paul Gaugin's post-Impressionist Tahitian paintings.

And while you could claim that some of these silhouettes weren't entirely new and that Risso (like all modern designers) isn't offering us a definitive solution about the sustainability issue in fashion (but he is raising awareness about plastic waste), this collection tried to provide an arty uniform for environmental protests, reminding us that we may still be able to reverse the apocalypse and we could do so wrapped up in euphorically joyous canvases.  

Extraterrestrial Felt: On Aldo Lanzini's (Illegal) Aliens

The Facebook event "Storm Area 51, They Can't Stop All Of Us" started in July as a joke. The organisers of the raid, scheduled for today, 20th September, urged alien and UFO enthusiasts to gather in the area of the U.S Air Force's secret base in Nevada, Las Vegas, and Naruto-run into the high-security military base to meet and rescue the aliens held there.

The tongue-in-cheek events soon sparked a viral craze and turned into something even more serious when people started showing an interest. And while the main event was cancelled after a Military spokesperson warned people not to enter the area, a variety of events including music festivals were planned in remote locations to celebrate alien madness. At the time of writing, the TV cameras also filmed a member of the crowd Naruto-running in the area. 

But what will you do if you're an alien enthusiast and you can't go to Area 51 as you're in Milan for the local fashion week? Well, take a break and go and meet Aldo Lanzini's aliens.

The Milan-based crochet artist and fashion lecturer at the Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti Milano (NABA) has been developing a collection of hand-sewn felt alien creatures since the mid-90s and more recently Lanzini transformed his aliens into a photographic project on Instagram.

Most of Lanzini's aliens have elongated bodies, they have no mouths but large ears as if they were more interested in listening rather than talking and at times their heads seem to sprout multiple spikes or disturbing protuberances.

The creatures are made entirely of felt, a symbolical material linked with the definition of "smooth space" by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. Felt is a textile material produced by matting, condensing and pressing fibers together and represents for Lanzini a metaphor for the modern world. 

The Pokémon-like characters aren't just fun and collectable creatures (will Prada turn them at some point into bag charms? After all, they do seem to embody Miuccia's "ugly chic" concept...), but they are actually a way for Lanzini to make a statement about society.

The main inspiration for this project came indeed came from Lanzini's personal experiences: the artist and designer lived and worked in New York for quite a few years and the expression "illegal alien" - commonly used to indicate a person without a residence permit of a different nationality from the country they are in - always made him cringe.

How do we define indeed what's "foreign"? After all, we live in a magnificently vast universe, "so what is the minimum distance required to call someone foreign?" Lanzini wonders.

The artist decided therefore to pay tribute to all forms of clandestinity with his creatures, reckoning we are all aliens; his characters become therefore also a way to discover and reconcile with what Julia Kristeva calls "our own stranger-divided selves" or "the stranger within". 

Seen from this point of view these innocently looking aliens become a medium to approach a wider and very contemporary debate about migrants, identity, traditions and boundaries.  

Last but not least, like all of us, these aliens are neither good nor bad (after all, we are all oxymoronic creatures, capable of the meanest horrors and as well as of the kindest gestures...), but each and everyone of them represents a way to celebrate individual skills and the power of the collectivity as well, that's why they are different one from the other, but they are often pictured by Lanzini in packs, colonising domestic spaces or venturing out in public parks.

How do you get to meet them? Well, you don't need to do a Naruto-run to get one of his aliens as Lanzini often gives these creatures to adoption to worthy souls in the hope of turning them into "resident aliens" à la Quentin Crisp. The artist and designer is up for challenges and commissions, so, if you want to bring his UFO madness and paranormally conceptual invasion to your runway or you want a customised alien, you can contact him at this link.

Know Your Style, Save Your Planet: Prada S/S 20

In the last few months quite a few designers have expressed their concerns about environmental issues and the impact of the fashion industry on our planet, with companies trying to find new ways to be more sustainable. During London Fashion Week, while the fashion world seemed busy taking part in a ball on the Brexit Titanic, there was the Extinction Rebellion protest group that tried to disrupt the runways. 

In Milan things were a bit quieter as there were no real protests, but Miuccia Prada expressed her concerns about our planet on her S/S 20 runway (that very aptly took place two days before Friday's global climate strike that will see millions of people all over the world marching for action).

Caught up between the excesses of the fashion industry and its thirst for something new every few months, and critics suggesting fashion should stop producing more garments and encouraging people to stop consuming, Prada wondered how fashion can sustain itself if people stop buying things. 

Her answer was simple - stripping things down and providing key garments inspired by timelessness rather than trends. Easily recognisable prints such as flames, Frankenstein monsters and comic book illustrations or accessories like the super fashionable padded headbands, were left behind in favour of a minimalist approach.

Leaving behind also convoluted conceptual meanings and ideas, Prada opted for a simple approach to allow her fans and consumers to focus on details and style.

The runway kicked off with model Freja Beha Erichsen in ribbed grey top and thin white mid-calf skirt and, as the show progressed, there were hints at the '20s, the '70s and the '90s. Plain dresses and tailored jackets were juxtaposed to versatile leather skirts in black or lilac with a sequinned palm motif that was replicated on light dresses as a print and in its beaded variation on coats and leather tops. 

Nature was evoked with the botanical motifs, at times appliqued on languid diva dresses (that wouldn't have looked out of place on Great Garbo in a film with an Art Deco set...) and in the necklaces made with large turbo petholatus, or tapestry turban (a name that definitely fits the world of fashion...) shells (Prada has been into shell necklaces for a while now, but the ones for the S/S 20 collection look extravagant and grand compared to necklaces from the A/W 17 runways) and in the large leather earrings representing marine creatures such as colourful crabs. These pieces created constrasts with the more minimalist ones. 

The botanical embroideries called to mind pictures from Karl Blossfeldt's volume "Art Forms in Plants" (1928) or Walter Gropius' damasked tapestries, while the graphic motifs, stripes and intricate geometric elements (that went well with the tiled geometric floor) of intarsia knits and ugly prints may have an arty derivation (like the intrecciato leather sandals).

Some of these motifs and prints called indeed to mind the drawings by Varvara Stepanova and Alexander Rodchenko for the costumes for "Death of Tarelkin" or Léon Jallot's 1928 interior design projects, even though the main connection the runway had with interior design was the one with the palette (comprising orange, gold and pastels) from the films of Wes Anderson (who has a show opening tomorrow at the Fondazione Prada and who was sitting in the front row).

There was a final message in the juxtapositions of textures and materials (velvet and leather; sequins and straw; while the cloche hats seemed made from collaged scraps of luxury materials): know your style, to paraphrase the ancient Greek aphorism, and assemble your own wardrobe, mixing and matching, and remembering that you should rule fashion rather than being dominated by it (a difficult statement to make, especially when most people going to runways have turned into advertising boards for fashion designers/companies). 

Miuccia Prada may not have found a way yet to reduce pollution, but in May the company annnounced it would go fur-free starting with this collection and last month Prada joined other prominent fashion houses and brands in the Fashion Pact, a document pledging to work together to reduce the negative impacts by the fashion industry on the environment.

So will it be possible for fashion houses to save the planet without going bankrupt and without stopping producing their collections? The dilemma remains, but creating more compact collections focused on style rather than trends may be one of the solutions. 

Fashion, Art and Interior Design Correspondences

There are different ways to look at a runway: if you're a critic, one of the most obvious is reading the collection notes to learn more about the inspirations or the materials used in a specific collection. Yet there is also the fun way to look at a show, consisting in trying to spot in the designs visual correspondences that may come from other fields, such as art, architecture or interior design.   

Take for example Christopher Kane's S/S 20 collection: showcased during London Fashion Week, it was entitled "Eco-Sexual", and focused on Kane's current interest in sustainability (he has indeed been working towards turning his company into a more sustainable venture) filtered through his obsession with anything sex and sensuality.

The main idea for the designer was celebrating in this collection people who are in love with nature and who want to be in touch with the earth. This inspiration was clear in the designs with prints of an East London park with flowers blooming in Spring.

Nature also emerged in the paisley patterns (being Scottish, this pattern should have been an obvious choice, but it actually looked out of place in the collection) and in the dresses with petal cut outs (that seemed a development of the motifs seen in Kane's S/S 14 collection).

In the case of a white broderie anglaise blouse and a dress, the flower motifs were abstracted and called to mind Charles Rennie Mackintosh's (the Scottish architect has often been an inspiration for different fashion designers for his geometrical patterns and prints) Art Nouveau sensuous lines and curvilinear shapes, found for example in the projects for his House for an Art Lover.   

Who knows if behind the accessories (boots, sandals and bags) and behind some of the black leather designs including a skirt and a jacket there maybe have been an interior design connection.

These designs incorporated indeed gem-like silicone elements in bright colours that seemed to evoke Joann Westwater's confetti pieces of furniture with their doors integrating colourful pieces of glass placed like falling confetti.  

Kane also added a cosmic inspiration to the collection with space-inspired silver chainmail dresses (evoking Versace's oroton designs...), illustrations of the moon, cloud prints and star prints on dark dresses embellished with crystal and spherical decorations that hinted at planets. 

These designs with the metallic planets shining around the neck or being used in functional ways like buttons evoked Jean-Ignace-Isidore Gérard (better known simply as Grandville)'s satirical prints of imaginary universes from his 1844 volume Another World.

Written by Taxile Delord (according to Grandville's notes; the volume was no more than a framework for Grandville's drawings), the book featured a loose plot about the adventures of three characters who end up discovering several worlds, after they decide to explore the universe in order to sell their stories to a publisher.     

And while such correspondences may not have much to do with the actual inspirations behind this collection, they seem more fun as they provide us with a different (and less superficial) perspective from which we can explore fashion. Feeling inspired by Grandville's illustrations? You can download Another World here (Download Grandville_AnotherWorld).

Our Lady of Luminous Geometries: "Nanda Vigo – Light Project" @ Palazzo Reale, Milan

Visitors stepping into the first floor of Milan's Palazzo Reale will find themselves surrounded by a futuristic world made of lights and minimal geometries. This is Nanda Vigo's own sci-fi universe. 

The artist and architect is currently being celebrated in a retrospective entitled "Nanda Vigo. Light Project" (on until 29th September), dedicated to her work from the late '50s on and to her connection with her hometown, Milan.

Born in 1936, Vigo graduated from the Institute Polytechnique in Lausanne and, after a stage in San Francisco, she opened her studio in her hometown in 1959.

From then on she started studying the dichotomy between conflict and harmony and light and space and she developed a personal research on light, transparency and immateriality that led her to the creation of the "cronotopi" in the early '60s.

The "cronotopi" were actually anticipated by a shocking solution to a spatial problem that Vigo presented at an architectural competition, a proposal for a "cemetery tower" where the cemetery of the future grew upwards on various floors. The artist then transformed this sci-fi graveyard into a structure with a metallic frame support on which industrial patterned glass was inserted.These minimalist and even simple towers, as mysterious as the monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey, were not destined to a particular function or purpose, but they were designed for intellectual contemplation.

At times, these pieces incorporated inclined glass cut in such a way as to reflect a new vision of reality, but the final purpose was just one, creating material metaphors for lightness and mutation.  

In those years there were quite a few avant-garde groups in Italy: the "Azimuth" group founded by Piero Manzoni and Enrico Castellani tended towards Fontana, while the kinetic-programmatic group "T" owed a lot to Bruno Munari.

Vigo sided with "Azimuth" and, being interested in exploring the cosmic horizons opened by Fontana's spatialism, she became a partner of Gruppo ZERO, a transnational group of artists from Germany, The Netherlands, France, Belgium, Switzerland and Italy, collaborating with Giò Ponti and Lucio Fontana (she curated the 1965 ZERO show at Fontana's Milan studio).

She also continued her architectural projects, developing the interior design for the so-called "ZERO House" (1959-62), and the  interiors for the "Casa blu" (1967-72), "Casa nera" (1970) and "Casa gialla" (1970), as well as for the "Casa sotto la foglia" (House under a leaf) designed by Giò Ponti in 1965-69 in Malo. Her greatest architectural achievement remains the Museo Remo Brindisi at Lido di Spina (1967-1971).

In 1971 Vigo received the New York Award for Industrial Design for her Golden Gate lamp; the 1980s were characterized instead by a fascination for Postmodernism, while her later output returned to the seductiveness of neon, radiant and diffused light, and simple and dynamic forms.

In 2019 the environments made by Nanda Vigo and Lucio Fontana were included in the show "Lucio Fontana. On the Threshold" at The Met Breuer and The Met Fifth Avenue, New York.

The retrospective at Milan's Palazzo Reale rediscovers Vigo through 80 works, among them projects, sculptures, and installations. The focus of the exhibition is the environment that fills the Sala degli Specchi and that invites visitors to live a transcendental experience that goes beyond the materiality of everyday life to perceive a higher reality through contemplation and dematerialization.

At the palazzo there is a bit of everything, from the "cronotopi" of the early 1960s, to the more recent "Deep Space" pieces, passing through the "Pyramids". Vigo found her "form of freedom" in each work she created, often suspended between an industrial aesthetic, a kind of architectural brutalism and the purest sci-fi. 

Light remains the unifying element between space and time in all her works and in particular in her mesmerising luminous geometrical paintings. Geometries are also the inspiration behind her trapezes or pyramids of mirrors, some of them lit from the inside. In other cases mirrors are placed in a room in such a way as to reflect parts of the building creating destabilising optical illusions.

Vigo's works from the past twenty-five years are often characterised by a blue light, they are dynamic, but they do not have a final purpose, they are just there to create relationships with other forms surrounding them and, in the case of Palazzo Reale, they establish connections with the rooms they are populating and with the visitors passing by to contemplate them. 

Vigo's pieces are journeys through another universe (she is definitely into sci-fi and the future as proved by the logo of her archive - the silhouette of Star Trek's Enterprise...), they are mental experiences that allow us to take a trip through time, space and personal thoughts.

"Nanda Vigo. Light project" is highly recommended to all creative minds passing through Milan and in particular to those visitors who will be in town for the local fashion week in the next few days and who may be on the lookout for a break from the hectic runways.   

Image credits for this post

1. Portrait, 1964, Cronotopia, photograph by Nini and Ugo Mulas

2. Magazzini Fly, Milan, 1966

3. Ambiente Cronotopico, Eurodomus, Turin, 1968, photograph by Ugo Mulas

4. Nanda Vigo, "Diaframma", 1968, photograph by Emilio Tremolada

5. Nanda Vigo, Cronotopo, 1969 photograph by Emilio Tremolada

6. Nanda Vigo, "Global Chronotopic Experience", 2017, Spazio San Celso, Milan, photograph by Marco Poma

7. "Arch/arcology", 2018, Museo MAXXI, Rome

8. Portrait, 2006, photograph by Ruve Afanador

9. Trilogia, Light progressions
Homage to G. Ponti L. Fontana P. Manzoni 2
Nanda Vigo, Palazzo Reale, Milan, 2019
Photo Credit Marco Poma
Courtesy Archivio Nanda Vigo

10. Arch/arcology, 2
Nanda Vigo, Palazzo Reale, Milan, 2019
Photo Credit Marco Poma
Courtesy Archivio Nanda Vigo

11. Deep space
Nanda Vigo, Palazzo Reale, Milan, 2019
Photo Credit Marco Poma
Courtesy Archivio Nanda Vigo

12. Galactica 2 and Trigger of the space
Nanda Vigo, Palazzo Reale, Milan, 2019
Photo Credit Marco Poma
Courtesy Archivio Nanda Vigo

13. Neverended light and Galactica sky
Nanda Vigo, Palazzo Reale, Milan, 2019
Photo Credit Marco Poma
Courtesy Archivio Nanda Vigo

14. Genesis 2
Nanda Vigo, Palazzo Reale, Milan, 2019
Photo Credit Marco Poma
Courtesy Archivio Nanda Vigo

15. Genesis
Nanda Vigo, Palazzo Reale, Milan, 2019
Photo Credit Marco Poma
Courtesy Archivio Nanda Vigo

16. Nanda Vigo, Palazzo Reale, Milan, 2019
Photo Credit Marco Poma
Courtesy Archivio Nanda Vigo

Programmable Multi-Coloured Matters: The Mutable Nature of MIT's PhotoChromeleon Ink and its Applications in Fashion

In the last few posts we looked at how nature can offer great inspirations to creative minds. While yesterday we explored the creative possibilities offered by shape-shifting creatures, let's move on today and examine the colour-changing capabilities of chameleons.

We can all try and camouflage ourselves with the environment surrounding us by changing the colours of our clothes, but inanimate objects can't really change colour. Or can they, wondered a team of researchers at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL).

Moving from this question, the CSAIL team developed a reprogrammable ink that allows objects to change colours when exposed to ultraviolet (UV) and visible light sources.

The system is called "PhotoChromeleon" and consists in a mix of photochromic dyes. Once sprayed or painted onto the surface of any object they will allow users to change its colour (a reversible process that can be repeated infinitely).

PhotoChromeleon is a development of "ColorMod" that employed a 3D printer to fabricate items that could change their colour, a project that only allowed users to employ a limited colour scheme as the printer had to 3D print individual voxels for each color (with ColorMod an object could, for example, only go from blue to transparent when activated, while PhotoChromeleon's ink allows to create animal prinst like a zebra or a checkerboard pattern with varying checkerboard widths or a multi-coloured effect) and the quality was rather low.

The ink used in the PhotoChromeleon project was created by mixing cyan, magenta, and yellow (CMY) photochromic dyes into a single sprayable multi-colour solution. Once obtained, the solution was sprayed onto an object that was then put in a box with a projector and UV light.

The UV light source saturates the colours from transparent to full saturation, and the projector desaturates the colors as needed. When the light activates the colours, the new virtual texture programmed by the user is transferred from the digital model onto the object (the process can take up to 40 minutes, depending on the surface of the object you want to cover with the pattern).

By understanding how each dye reacts to light and interacts with different wavelengths, the team was able to control each colour channel through activating and deactivating the corresponding light sources. Different lights with different wavelengths eliminate each primary colour separately, so a blue light is absorbed by the yellow dye and deactivated, while magenta and cyan remain, resulting in blue. Green deactivates instead magenta, and then both yellow and cyan would remain, resulting in green.

If you aren't happy with the design you have created, you can use the UV light to erase it and you can start over again, but the inks are bi-stable so, once you're satisfied with your pattern, they will remain on the object even when the light source is removed. The process is fully reversible and users can recolour the object as many times as they want.

The team experimented the ink on phone cases, a toy car and a pair of shoes, but researchers hope in future to be able to apply a similar system to a wide range of products and plan to collaborate with material scientists to develop improved photochromic dyes and possibly extend the fabrication methods to 3D printing with filaments and resins.

The automotive industry is currently very interested in this project as re-programmable colour-changing coating could enable buyers to explore different textures or patterns on a product in a showroom, while re-programmable coating could also be used in car-sharing or to display changing advertisements on the car exterior. 

Ford worked on the ColorMod 3-D technology with MIT and also followed the developments of this new research, but it would be amazing to see MIT collaborating with a fashion designer such as Anrealage's Kunihiko Morinaga, who has already created collections characterised by photochromatic prints.

Photochromic shoes, textiles and accessories mean that we could alter the appearance of our outfits as many times we wanted to without having to buy new ones.

"This special type of dye could enable a whole myriad of customization options that could improve manufacturing efficiency and reduce overall waste," Yuhua Jin, the lead author of a new paper about the project states on the MIT site. "Users could personalize their belongings and appearance on a daily basis, without the need to buy the same object multiple times in different colors and styles."

There could also be applications in interior design with rooms in which walls or furniture could be re-coloured thanks to a ceiling mounted UV/projector system or in dynamic physical visualizations (think about weather forecasts projected on a 3D printed earth sphere).

So maybe the future of many industries, fashion included, stands in programmable matters that can change itheir physical properties in accordance with our needs. The PhotoChromeleon project will be presented at the User Interface Software and Technology Symposium, in New Orleans, from 20 to 23rd October, in the meantime you can read a paper about the project here. 

Of Shape-Shifters and Mutating Forms in Nature

In yesterday's post we looked at plants as the starting point for a fashion collection, but nature is full of wonders that can provide wonderful inspirations.

For example, at the beginning of September the crew of the research vessel E/V Nautilus posted on YouTube a video that became viral and that shows a translucent Deepstaria enigmatica jellyfish floating in the sea currents near Baker Island at the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument.

The peculiarity of this jellyfish is that it shape-shifts and in this video you can also see a little red crustacean consuming pieces of the jellyfish body from the inside, while remaining hidden from predators. This jellyfish does not have stinging tentacles, but it has an expansive bell-like membrane that opens and closes trapping the prey that floats inside it.

Spotted more than 2,500 feet (762 meters) below the central Pacific Ocean by the Ocean Exploration Trust, the Deepstaria seemed to move in the video in a mesmerising way, almost dancing under the sea, mutating form and turning from evanescent ghost to a lightweight plastic carrier bag.

Like the jellyfish inspiration? Check out the illustrations of jellyfish by Ernst Haeckel. The fascination of the German biologist for medusae actually rescued him from the depression in which he had falled after the premature death of his beloved wife Anna.

After seeing a medusa in a rock pool, the biologist made a sketch of it, called the species Mitrocoma Annae (Anna’s headband) in memory of his wife and wrote about the experience, "I enjoyed several happy hours watching the play of her tentacles which hang like blond hair-ornaments from the rim of the delicate umbrella-cap and which with the softest movement would roll up into thick short spirals."

Haeckel was so obsessed with jellyfish that he did a two-volume work, System of Medusae (1879 and 1881), describing 600 species. You can can download Volume I from this link (Download Haeckel_MonographiederMedusen) and Volume II from this other link (Download Haeckel_MonographiederMedusen_II). Haeckel also built a house in Jena that he named "Villa Medusa" and that featured on its ceilings frescoes of medusae that then appeared as lithographs in his book Art Forms in Nature.  

What about fashion? Can you think of anything from the recently showcased S/S 20 collections that may resemble a jellyfish? Well, probably Molly Goddard's gowns favoured by those fashionistas who like being surrounded by yards of tulle floating around them and shape-shifting in Deepstaria style.

Art Forms in Plants: Threeasfour S/S 20

Fans of photography and nature may be familiar with Karl Blossfeldt's volume "Art Forms in Plants" (1928) that features 120 plates of plants captured in extraordinary detail.

The book was the result of a series of experiments: from 1898 and for three decades, Blossfeldt taught design at Berlin's School of the Museum of Decorative Arts where he started taking images with a homemade pinhole camera with custom magnifying lenses. 

Blossfeldt used the photographs showing plants in great detail to teach students patterns and designs in nature that were difficult to see to the naked eye.

Writing in 1906 to the school's director, Blossfeldt explained about his project, "Plants are a treasure trove of forms  -  one which is carelessly overlooked only because the scale of shapes fails to catch the eye and sometimes this makes the forms hard to identify. But that is precisely what these photographs are intended to do -  to portray diminutive forms on a convenient scale and encourage students to pay them more attention."

From educational materials the images turned into an art book when gallerist and collector Karl Nierendorf saw the photographs and published them in the volume "Urformen der Kunst" (Art Forms in Plants). In his introduction, Nierendorf explained that Blossfeldt combined in his pictures three elements - nature, art, and technology.

Threeasfour's S/S 20 collection, showcased during New York Fashion Week, revolved around these three elements and displayed the same obsession Blossfeldt had for patterns found in nature.

Adi Gil, Ange Donhauser and Gabi Asfour's starting point was actually their 1999 collection (so this was also a 20th anniversary celebration), inspired by organic forms and entitled "Human Plant", but they actually approached the themes tackled in that collection with the current environmental crisis in mind.

The result was different from that first collection: models came up wrapped in giant curvilinear leaves and in mini-dresses constructed with layers of fabric leaves that resembled woven Palm Sunday fronds.  

Patterns based on an algorithm of leaf veins were printed on skirts and jackets, but there were also tactile experiments with cut-out dresses that evoked skeleton leaves, that made you wonder if Threeasfour were trying to replicate what Blossfeldt did with his pictures - portraying diminutive forms on a larger scale to encourage people to pay them more attention.

Technology was introduced via dresses with three-dimensional patterns of leaves in glowing holographic textiles and in the hand-pleated organza design that closed the show. 

In a way this collection was a sort of conceptual representation of modern clothes for Shen Nung, the Chinese "Divine Farmer" dressed in traditional garb made from leaves (View this photo), believed to have taught the ancient Chinese their practices of agriculture and the use of herbal drugs.

Maybe in future Threeasfour will manage to develop not just garments inspired by natural forms, but also clothes in biodegradable textiles. With US President Donald Trump mocking the climate change crisis, let's hope creative minds will become more involved in the environmental effort, turning into genuine beacons of sustainability.   

From a Soul Brother to a Rock'n'Roll Sister: Pyer Moss S/S 20

For long seasons (or maybe years...) New York Fashion Week was a commercial affair of monumental proportions with just a few occasional designers trying to raise their voices about key social and cultural issues.

Things changed with this season, though, with some designers bringing politics on the runway with their S/S 20 collections addressing identity issues and barriers. Among them there was also Pyer Moss' Kerby Jean-Raymond who organised a major show at Kings Theatre in Flatbush that focused on African American history and the black experience in America.

After winning the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund award in November last year, Jean-Raymond actually skipped one fashion season in February, but he seems to have benefited from the break (proving that taking a pause from the relentless rhythms of fashion can be invigorating...).

The Brooklyn native designer returned indeed with a grand show, kicked off by author Casey Gerald with a speech that moved from Fannie Moore, born a slave on a plantation in South Carolina in 1849, and often whipped like an animal with a cow hide.
Gerald made a connection between Moore and Sister Rosetta Tharpe, the godmother of rock'n'roll, often forgotten in favour of white male rock'n'roll stars.

Sister Rosetta Tharpe's music wasn't the only star of the night: on stage there were also the 90 members of the gospel Pyer Moss Tabernacle Drip Choir Drench in the Blood, originally formed 4 years ago by Jean-Raymond and his show director Dario Calmese.

For the occasion the choir opted for a set that included hits by Tina Turner, but also by hip-hop female artists such as Queen Latifah and Missy Elliott.

Music was the starting point for the collection that was entitled "Sister": Tharpe was usually elegantly dressed, and matched her elegant gowns with her guitar that she played fiercely.

Jean-Raymond opened with a glamorous sparkly look with wide-leg pants and a bolero jacket and then created dresses, jackets and skirts with piano or guitar-shaped panels and embroidered keys. A full skirt recreated the curves of a grand piano, while a pleated one in gold yellow seemed to mimick the interior of a piano.

Prints of singers performing and pin-striped motifs broken by a series of musical instruments provided variations on the musical theme.

The latter was also explored in the accessories such as leather guitar and piano bags and in the hairstyles. Guyanese hairstylist and barber Nigella Miller worked on the hair looks with braids enriched with beads and pendants by Johnny Nelson shaped in the likeness of Lauryn Hill and Erykah Badu among the others.

Music combined with art in the vibrant tunic dresses and skirts with prints of paintings by Richard Phillips, an artist wrongfully imprisoned for 45 years for a homicide he didn't commit, who was released from custody in 2017 and won exoneration a year later and there was a political message in this section as well, with a tank top with the message "Vote or Die (For real this Time)".

The show then continued with the Reebok partnership (as artistic director at the company, Jean-Raymond takes care of Reebok Studies, a sort of incubator for young talent), introduced by actor Caleb McLaughlin in a salmon jacket. Pastel colours combined with a darker palette comprising green and purple on black in the sweatshirts and tracksuits that followed, but there were also asymmetric plissé tracksuits for those fashion fans who can't make up their minds between elegant designs and sportswear.

In between music, art and sport, there was also another collaboration with Sean John, the fashion lifestyle company created by music mogul Sean Combs.

The ambitious show closed with a standing ovation and the choir offering a rendition of Christian gospel "Make Me Over Again" that left the audience wondering if fashion is maybe just a vehicle for Jean-Raymond to present his thoughts and about a series of key social issues (rather than just an excuse to post picture on Instagram...).

Deep down you feel that Jean-Raymond may indeed find a different path in his life and leave fashion behind to embark in a career as a writer of fiction or essays (after all, his celebration of freedom only emphasised the fact that, 170 years after the birth of Fannie Moore, there are still people living in slavery - think about migrants flying their countries who end up stuck on boats in the Mediterranean...). In a nutshell this monumental show in a 3000-capacity venue seemed just a small chapter in Jean-Raymond's future.

Tom Ford and The Return of the Moulded Bustier

Fashion works in cycles, so, if you stick around long enough, you're bound to see something coming back at some point. And so it happened that while there were (obvious) echoes of Bonnie Cashin on Coach's runway during New York Fashion Week, Tom Ford's collection featured shiny moulded bustiers and bras that we saw in another time and another era (and in another post...).

Ford's collection, showcased in a subway station in Nolita, was a combination of sportswear and glamour (is this glathleisure, a mix of glam and athletic wear?) and while the trio of black, white and bright orange floor-length skirts matched with casual shirts with rolled up sleeves that opened the show looked elegantly practical, the super short sexy silk boxing shorts paired with satin blazers or the Halston-evoking draped gowns weren't desperately new. 

And then there was a moment of pure déjà-vu towards the end of the show when Ford came up with shiny moulded bustiers and bras in bright metallic shades. Some critics saw in them Ursula Andress's rapid-fire brassiere in Elio Petri's The 10th Victim. 

Yet Ford's bustiers and bras had other origins: they looked indeed like reinventions of Claude Lalanne's sculptures for Yves Saint Laurent created for his Haute Couture A/W 1969 collection.

In Lalanne's case the sculptures were plaster molds of Veruschka's breasts, torso and belly covered in galvanized copper and incorporated then in two dresses, one in blue and and the other in black crepe voile. 

The history of fashion then recreated Lalanne's sculptures decade after decade: in the '80s Issey Miyake came up with a striking breastplate; Thierry Mugler created sensually robotic or transparent corsets; the late Alexander McQueen designed a transparent neck-to-hips bustier in which he sandwiched live worms for his Spring/Summer 1996 collection ("The Hunger"), while in his S/S 1999 collection there was a moulded leather body corset.

Sculptural corsets were also integrated in dresses in Hussein Chalayan's Autumn/Winter 2009 collection ("Earthbound") and Francesco Scognamiglio adopted the idea of full-torso corsets with sculpturally detailed breasts in his A/W 2014 collection (all these connections were explored in a previous post a few years ago, so check that out).

So, is this a case of plagiarism? Well, Ford is not new to lifting ideas from other designers and collections, and he certainly knows his fashion history and where to get inspirations from. In this case he tried to vary a bit the theme, coming up with the bustier in super shiny bright colours that evoked Jeff Koons' metallic artworks for that futuristic cyborg touch. Yet maybe this wasn't the freshest idea he had for this collection.

The best intuition Ford had for this season wasn't indeed on the runway: as new chairman of the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) he reduced New York Fashion Week to five days. The schedule became more compact and therefore benefited from this cut. So, who knows, maybe Ford's future is not on the runway, but behind the scenes, supervising, reorganising and managing the New York calendar.