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

Anna Russell Jones, Unsung Heroine of Textile & Graphic Design

Protests and demonstrations in the wake of the killing of George Floyd, an unarmed black man, by a white police officer have spread across the United States, reopening the debate about resurgent racism.

So let's continue the thread that started yesterday with a post about fighting racism through the work of inspiring figures who contributed with their creativity to bring down barriers. Yesterday we looked at a fashion designer, today let's move onto an artist and textile designer, Anna Russell Jones.

Born in Jersey City, New Jersey, in 1902, Anna Russell attended William Penn High School for Girls in Philadelphia. She was the first African American woman to receive a four-year scholarship from the Philadelphia Board of Education and, thanks to it, she continued her studies at the Philadelphia School of Design for Women (now Moore College of Art & Design).

While at PSWD she won three awards: for original rug design, original wallpaper design, and for her design of the 1924-1925 PSDW catalogue cover. When she majored in textile design in 1925, she became the first African American graduate of the Philadelphia School of Design for Women. 

After four years working as an in-house designer at James G. Speck, a well established carpet design studio in Philadelphia, she set up her own studio and began to seek commissions for her designs in Philadelphia and New York. 

Russell managed to sell her wallpaper and carpet designs to different local businesses until 1935 and, when the United States entered World War II, shel joined the United States Army (she was the first African American woman to do so) as part of the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC, later known as the Women’s Army Corps).

Stationed at Fort Huachuca, Arizona, she worked as a graphic artist for the army, designing maps, posters and booklets. Indefatigable as ever, after the war Russel returned to Moore College of Art and Design, completed post-graduate work in textiles and studied medical illustration at Howard University College of Medicine in Washington, D.C.

In the 1950s she also worked at Hahnemann University Hospital in Philadelphia as a licensed practical nurse and later on became employed as a graphic artist and illustrator in the civil service. Additionally, she continued to paint, sketch, draw, and do freelance artistic work in her spare time. Anna Russell Jones died in Philadelphia in 1995 and donated to the local African American Museum her archive.

Being a woman and being black meant that Jones was often met with prejudice, yet Jones never gave up, but turned textile design and graphic art into a part of her life and managed to combine her passions with her interest in the medical field. 

The Philadelphia Museum of African American History will dedicate to her an exhibition later on in 2020 (originally scheduled for February it had to be postponed due to the Coronavirus pandemic) that will include archival materials, carpet designs, medical illustrations, government and military illustrations and personnel records.

In the meantime, if you want to discover more about this textile and graphic designer, you can watch the documentary "Anna Russell Jones: Praise Songs for a Pioneering Spirit" (1993) directed by Nadine Patterson.

ANNA RUSSELL JONES: Praisesong for a Pioneering Spirit from Nadine M. Patterson on Vimeo.

Of Unifying Buttons and Bows: Patrick Kelly & The Subversion of Racist Symbols in Fashion

The world is still dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic and, while some countries are slowly going back to normal, others are struggling with new cases, while we all fear a second and even more deadly wave.

So far the States had over 100,000 Coronavirus victims, but the attention in the last few days has shifted from the virus to the death of a man of colour, George Floyd, in police custody.

Floyd, 46, died on Monday in Minneapolis after a white officer handcuffed him, then kneeled on his neck for around nine minutes. A video recorded by a bystander asking to let him go, shows the horrific ordeal, with the officer kneeling on Floyd's neck while the man cries out, "I can't breathe".

Protests against police brutality erupted in various American cities, including Minneapolis, Denver, New York, Chicago, Oakland and Atlanta. As anger escalated, the police headquarters of the officers involved in the death were set on fire; US President Donald Trump in the meantime seemed busy posting incendiary tweets and, in one of them, he called the protesters "thugs".

Former vice-president and Trump's opponent in the presidential campaign in November, Joe Biden, spoke of a national emergency (that may also end up having another deadly consequence, spreading Coronavirus even more as the protests and gatherings attracted a lot of people).   

Fashion can't do much to put an end to the plague of racism, but it can help us dissecting racism and reacting to it through the work of those designers, such as Patrick Kelly, who fought against it with energy and creativity.

The late African American designer made himself known for creating clothes in bold and bright shades, often characterised by hearts traced with colourful buttons.

Born in 1954 in Vicksburg, Mississippi, one of the most racist and violent states in America in the 1950s and '60s, Kelly fell in love with fashion through his mother and grandmother's magazines. Yet the magazines also struck him in a negative way as black women weren't featured in their pages.

Kelly learnt to sew in grade school and, after living, working and studying in New York, he moved to Paris in 1979. He arrived with almost no money and started selling his own designs on the street. Little by little, things started working out for him and he created costumes for the Parisian nightclub Le Palace and designed his first commercial collection in February 1985. Fashion conglomerate Warnaco signed an agreement to produce his designs in 1987 and, a year later, he became the first American and the first black designer to be voted into the prestigious Chambre Syndicale du Prêt-à-Porter des Couturiers et des Créateurs de Mode.  

Kelly developed a joyful and playful aesthetic that was daringly as much as it was humorous: he mainly used vibrant colours and lively patterns that gave his designs an ironic and flamboyant twist. "I want my clothes to make you smile," he once stated, but his exuberant shows and his designs, like his body-conscious black dresses with hundreds of coloured buttons in different sizes forming heart-shaped bustiers, didn't just make you smile, they made you feel elated (remember the elegant velvet suit with a surreal nail-print that fastened with real metal nails?).

Nothing was casual, though, in Kelly's universe: his buttons were indeed a reference to his beloved grandmother, Ethel Rainey, who often used mismatched buttons to mend his shirts as a young boy. Once, after he complained, she started using the buttons also in a decorative way. 

Besides, inspired by those magazines he had leafed through as a young boy, Kelly decided to create clothes for all women, celebrated in his shows with his diverse and inclusive cast of models.

New York and Paris mixed and combined in his looks: Kelly firmly had in mind cool street styles and graffiti art, but he had a soft spot for a very special muse - Josephine Baker - and an undivided admiration for iconic designers such as Madame Grès, Coco Chanel, Elsa Schiaparelli and Yves Saint Laurent. 

In Paris Kelly also started collecting black memorabilia, such as advertising, dolls and other assorted items like Darkie toothpaste and figurines of Aunt Jemima. These objects strongly connected with racial stereotypes became the starting point for Kelly to push boundaries even further.

In the '80s Kelly reappropriated indeed the golliwog, a fictional black character originally taken from an English children's book from 1885 and turned it around, transforming it into his cartoonish logo, a face with big eyes and smiling lips, printing it on a white body-hugging dress with matching long gloves. 

He also came up with Aunt Jemima bandana dresses, applied buttons on body-con jersey dresses that evoked the eyes and the smile of the golliwog, created accessories such as pickaninny doll earrings and necklaces and a hat in the shape of a watermelon slice (watermelons are a major symbol in the iconography of racism in the States).

Having experienced racism as a child in pre-civil rights Mississippi, Kelly, who studied art history and African American history at Jackson State University, conceived the memorabilia he collected and the symbols he used in his designs as ways to think about his own experience and confront questions of race.

By reappropriating these symbols of black oppression, the designer wondered if he could tell through them another tale, not a story of oppression but of liberation, achieved through fashion. Using symbols like the golliwog on his shopping bags, with his name in bold letters was his own way of subverting stereotypes, while asserting his place not just in society, but in the universe of fashion as well.

Kelly's life was cut short by AIDS: the designer died on January 1, 1990, so this year also marks the 30th anniversary of his death.

Kelly is buried in the 50th division of Paris's Père-Lachaise cemetery and his tomb is easily recognisable as it is engraved with his logo.

His friend and feminist activist Gloria Steinem, stated at his memorial, "Instead of dividing us with gold and jewels, he unified us with buttons and bows."

At the moment it does seem impossibly difficult to be unified in a world divided by racism and by the social and economic inequalities deepened by Coronavirus. It does seem implausible, unimaginable and unattainable, but, as the epitaph on Kelly's grave states, "Nothing Is Impossible".   

Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread: Baking Art

When Italy went into lockdown in March, it became impossible to find face masks, but there was something else that became very rare - flour and yeast. Forced to stay at home, many started indeed to adopt slower daily rhythms and make their own bread or experimenting a bit with other formats such as ciabatta or focaccia. None of us, though, reached the perfection found by Linda Ring.

Inspired by art and nature, the Swedish photographer and stylist turned making bread into an art. Using a bread lame and sometimes following personal sketches and drawings, Ring traces indeed on her sourdough loaves portraits and illustrations employing the scoring technique and transforming a simple loaf into a canvas.

Slow rhythms are the secret behind the process that Ring seems to be using also as a way to detox herself from overusing digital devices and to get her energy back by working the dough with her hands and let the baking process take all the time it needs.

There's a blissful face here, a dove there, and a lovely illustration of a classical sculpture of an elegant woman on another loaf. Something basic, made just with flour, water and salt, becomes therefore a rare work of art that Ring shares with her family, friends and, via Instagram, with the rest of the world.

Ring is not a professional baker, but through her passion she developed something beautiful that could also be seen as a way to react to our consumer-oriented society and return to craftsmanship in food.

Ring is not the first artist who has elevated bread to the status of art: for Sardinian artist Maria Lai bread represented a symbol of life, that's why she made her early sculptures with this material and also created a bread encyclopedia that could nourish the mind and the body.

You wonder if Ring's loaves will catch the eye of some fashion house who may turn the idea around and start making loaves of bread (or biscuits, maybe?) with logos. Fashion brands are desperate at the moment to find new ways to reach out to consumers who may not have the money to invest in expensive clothes and accessories due to the Coronavirus crisis, but who may want to invest in more affordable designer pieces with an art twist. Who knows, maybe the next step for fashion houses will be going from brands to breads... 

Rethinking "Heavenly Bodies" from Philip-Lorca diCorcia's Point of View

As museums all over the world closed down and most exhibitions were suspended for the last few months because of the Coronavirus pandemic, many institutions decided to go digital organising special events. At the same time, these closures and suspensions allowed us to ponder a bit about previous exhibitions and maybe go back to study them from different points of view.

David Zwirner's galleries recombined the two concepts by publishing online three images by photographer Philip-Lorca diCorcia. The photographs were originally commissioned for the May 2018 issue of Vogue to celebrate "Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination", the Costume Institute's 2018 blockbuster exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

The Internet often tends to dismiss an exhibition after it closes and move onto the next big thing, but the fashion and religion connection is always en vogue and always worth analysing to find new analogies and comparisons, and Philip-Lorca diCorcia's images are very intriguing and make you want to go back to re-exploring that event. 

On David Zwirner's site, the photographer states "The process was slow, it was as if the models were sitting for paintings. And the pictures are like paintings." The three photographs evoke indeed paintings and also seem to be composed like tableaux that tell stories that extend beyond the boundary of that single scene.

The first image evokes a monastic and minimal (yet at the same time futuristic, considering the purity of those lines...) atmosphere. The photograph features two models, one on the left wearing Karl Lagerfeld for Chanel's Haute Couture A/W 1990 wedding dress, and one on the right in an almost monastic gown by Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pierpaolo Piccioli for Valentino's Haute Couture Spring 2013 collection, matched with Philip Treacy's Haute Couture 2001 "Madonna Rides Again II" hat.

In the centre of the picture there is a mannequin in the iconic 1967 wedding dress and hat by Cristóbal Balenciaga also known as the "one-seam wedding dress" as it was made from a single length of fabric (almost a reference to the seamless robe that Jesus wore shortly before his crucifixion).

In the second image a model wears a monumental gown by John Galliano for Dior's Haute Couture Spring 2006 collection. The dramatic ample gown in a bright shade of red accessorised with a necklace with a large crucifix, points at the red cassock of cardinals, so art-wise it is connected with the portrait of Cardinal Fernando Nino de Guevara by El Greco, but also to the red gowns often donned by the Virgin Mary in paintings.

There could also be a more controversial reference here with the red dress and the black veil hinting at something more sinister, like a satanic force (so is the baby a holy or satanic child?).

There is a final juxtaposition also in the third image with Mayowa Nicholas in a Christian Lacroix Haute Couture A/W 2009 gown reminiscent of the attire or the Virgin of El Rocío (venerated in Almonte, Spain), usually clad in rich brocades and surrounded by flowers, and a model reflected in a mirror in a black dress with matching veil by Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pierpaolo Piccioli for Valentino Haute Couture's A/W 2016 collection. This could be read in different ways: we may be in front of a bride and a widow, but the dichotomy may also refer to the festive and mournful attires donned by different statues of the Virgin Mary.

So there are stories to read in these images that will provide inspirations to many designers, artists or fashion writers interested in exploring further the "fashion vs religion" theme. The images are on sale at the gallery, and the artist and David Zwirner will also donate one edition of each work to The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Photography Department.

Fashion & Interior Design Juxtaposition: Glans 1960 Vs Alexander Girard's Wooden Dolls

In a previous post we looked at two summer designs by Glans, so let's have a short fashion history lesson about it. Glans was an Italian boutique brand that was popular in the '60s, together with other ready-to-wear casual brands such as Valditevere, Vito, Scarabocchio, Avolio, Mirsa, Naka and Avagolf. Today we may find a fashion designer working for their own brand and for another company, and, in more or less the same way, the collections of these boutique brands were often created by well-known fashion names, but, price-wise, they were more affordable.

For example, Walter Albini worked for a while for Glans (but he also worked for Billy Ballo, Cadette and Cole of California to mention just a few brands). In the '70s Albini created for Glans collections inspired by China, for both men and women.

Yet, even before Albini's collections inspired by East Asia, Glans had turned to the Orient for motifs, patterns and prints, as proved by this Summer 1960 ensemble consisting in a classic black and brown silk shirt with a masculine cut with a print of stylised kokeshi dolls, with matching shorts. The motif on this top calls to mind Alexander Girard's "Wooden Dolls".

Born in 1907 in New York City, Alexander Girard became a key figure of postwar American design, together with George Nelson and Charles & Ray Eames. Girard studied architecture, but had an extensive career in interior and graphic design. He became indeed well-known for his upholstery fabrics for the Herman Miller Company (from 1952 to 1973).

While his first fabric lines were more architectural and therefore focused on plain geometries, little by little, he added more variation and created more patterns and designs, often inspired by folk art and characterised by abstract shapes and geometric motifs in a wide variety of colour combinations.

Girard also collected folk art and acquired objects and textiles during his travels. In 1962, Girard and his wife established the Girard Foundation in Santa Fe to manage their art collection that comprised over 100,000 pieces and, in 1978, the designer contributed his collection to the local Museum of International Folk Art.Girard conceived his family of wooden figures representing human and animal characters, created in 1952, as playful decorative objects for his Santa Fe home. Some of the dolls, all made in solid pinewood, look joyful, others have enigmatic or cheeky expressions on their faces. 

Collected at the Vitra Design Museum, the originals are used as models for the re-editions by Vitra (Girard's Wooden Dolls are still fabricated and painted by hand today).

In many ways this fashion and interior design juxtaposition works well: Glans' print of kokeshi wooden dolls (handcrafted pieces from the Tohoku region in Northern Japan that were traditionally made as guardians of children but that later became popular amongst collectors) in striped dresses calls indeed to mind Girard's wooden dolls decorated with bold and bright geometrical patterns.

Vintage Fashion Geometries from 1960

In yesterday's post we looked at an intriguing volume about geometry, so let's continue the thread in connection with fashion. As we saw in previous posts, geometry can lead to wonderful inspirations for what regards shapes or patterns, in both clothes and accessories.

At the moment we are all craving a holiday in the sun that may never happen in between Coronavirus and a financial crisis caused by this pandemic that has brought many job cuts, so let's combine our desires for a bit of sun with a passion for geometry and look at these two geometrical tunic shirts from 1960.

The first one in white with a boat neck and kimono short sleeves was characterised by simple lines in turquoise and burnt orange, employed to create a minimalist decorative pattern and highlight the countours of the pockets, forming a square motif.

The second top with matching shorts featured slim elbow sleeves, side slits and a geometrical pattern - a print of triangles and rectangles in different sizes and in shades of lilac and pink on a white background. Both the designs were created by Italian brand Glans and we will discover more about it in the next post.

Inspiring Geometry Books from 1570 & 1847

Who says that geometry is boring? In yesterday's post we looked at a comparison between origami headdresses that recreated in some cases geometrical shapes and figures around the head of the models. And if you want to be inspired by geometry, try checking out rare volumes about this discipline in archives and libraries.

The University of Glasgow Library Flickr page has got some great tomes about geometry. The first one is The Elements of Geometrie of the most auncient Philosopher Euclide of Megara, translated into the English by H. Billingsley, introduced by John Dee and published in 1570.

Its author, Euclid, was a Greek mathematician living about 300 B.C. who founded a mathematical school in Alexandria in the reign of Ptolemy I, and the book contains al lGreek mathematical knowledge since Pythagoras.

The publication is divided in 13 books and looks at a wide range of topics, including plane geometry, the properties of numbers, irrational quantities and solid geometry. This edition is particularly intriguing as it features 930 pages of text with geometrical figures and several pop-up diagrams.

The main point behind the diagrams was highlighting the function and utilitarian aspect of geometry and the importance of experimenting. Through the pop-ups readers could easily understand key mathematical concepts such as volume relationships and shape recognition.

The pop-ups were extremely rare at the time and this was one of the first printed books that included folding and moveable diagrams. One copy of this book was auctioned at Sotheby's in 2011 and sold for £32,450, but, while not many of us will be able to own a copy, we can all leaf through it at this link (the volume is part of the archive of the University Libraries at the University of Oklahoma).

If you prefer a bit of colour in your geometrical figures check out The First Six Books of the Element of Euclid with coloured diagrams by Oliver Byrne (1847), again from the University of Glasgow Library Flickr page. This version included coloured diagrams and symbols instead of letters, that were also aimed at simplifying and explaining each geometric principle more clearly.

The art connection with this volume? The graphic design, colours and style of the geometrical figures seemed to anticipate modernist movements such as the Bauhaus and De Stijl. 

Sunday Comparison: Tomihiro Kono's Origami Headdresses (2016) Vs Rick Owens' (S/S 20)

During the Coronavirus emergency Gucci's Creative Director Alessandro Michele has been pondering a lot about the future of fashion and has been posting messages on Instagram in which he shared his thoughts. In more than one message he highlighted his need to reconnect with the main reasons that inspired him to join the fashion industry and at the beginning of May he made an announcement - there will be just two shows a year for Gucci from now on. 

"I will abandon the worn-out ritual of seasonalities and shows to regain a new cadence, closer to my expressive call. We will meet just twice a year, to share the chapters of a new story," Michele stated. "I would like to leave behind the paraphernalia of leitmotifs that colonized our prior world: cruise, pre-fall, spring-summer, fall-winter. I think these are stale and underfed words (…) Containers that progressively detached themselves from the life that generated them, losing touch with reality."

Michele is certainly not the first fashion designer who has been feeling like this (nor he will be the last one...). You can also bet that Gucci will not be the only fashion house to restructure its fashion shows after this pandemic will be over. But in a post-Coronavirus world there may be other things that will have to change, for example designers borrowing and copying each other.

In the last few years we have seen many houses misbehaving in different ways: remember for example the case of Fair Isle-based knitwear designer Mati Ventrillon who saw some of her designs reappearing in a Chanel's Metiers d'Art collection in 2015. This wasn't a coincidence when it was revealed that two members of Chanel's staff visited Fair Isle and bought some of her stock garments "for research".

Sending team members or interns around scouting for ideas is not an unheard of practice and you wonder if this is also what happened with the headdresses used to accompany Rick Owens' S/S 2020 collection.

Reminiscent of the nemes donned by Egyptian pharaohs, but recreated in shiny black or silver metal, the pieces called to mind the headgear in Junya Watanabe's A/W 2016 collection, that was inspired by origami and was created by Tomihiro Kono.

You wonder if Owens or somebody else in his team actually saw these pieces or the sections relating to them in Tomihiro Kono's volume Head Prop. Maybe? Or is this just a coincidence, a parallelism resulting from a casual analogy? We will never know, but maybe the answer is not even important at the moment. 

What's important now is that in future we will see a slower approach to design that will allow creative minds to come up with genuinely innovative ideas (as opposed to borrowed and remixed ones...) or to find the humbleness to turn to other professionals, work with them and credit them. Surely the broken fashion system can be fixed and maybe coming up with a more compact fashion calendar will allow the system to regain a more human rhythm once and for all.

The Future is a Fancy Wig: Tomihiro Kono on Getting Creative in Lockdown with Arty Face Masks & Fancy Wigs

Our lives were radically changed by Coronavirus and our daily routines were put on hold, stuck, suspended or subjected to new rhythms that also had an impact on ourselves and on our personal spaces. We adapted our styles to less glamorous daily tasks that implied minimal social interaction and we transformed our personal spaces into creative studios, schools, offices and boardrooms for distance meetings.

Like all of us, Japanese hair artist, head prop designer and wig maker Tomihiro Kono (河野富広) also had to readapt. In March his new book Personas 111 - The Art of Wig Making 2017-2020 came out on Konomad Editions, but, unfortunately, the performances and interactive exhibitions scheduled to launch it had to be cancelled due to the Coronavirus emergency. 

Yet you can't stop a creative mind and Tomihiro Kono decided to react by getting busy in his New York studio: the hair artist usually conceives his wigs as masks for the head, but with Coronavirus the attention has globally reshifted onto face masks, so he collaborated with Collina Strada's New York-based designer Hillary Taymour, embellishing her whimsical masks for her "Quarantine Collection" with long braids in bright colours, beads and sensual kisscurls.    

While working on the face masks, Kono realised that with lockdown many people started missing the possibility of having access to basic services, like going to the hairdresser or the barber and getting a new haircut or changing hair colour. 

Tomihiro Kono therefore came up with a a couple of different solutions: the first one is virtual and consists in an augmented reality filter designed by artist Sayaka Maruyama.

The filter allows you to apply to your selfies some of the most original creations by Tomihiro Kono, from his head pieces for Junya Watanabe's A/W 2016-17 collection to some of his most colourful designs included in his book Personas 111 - The Art of Wig Making 2017-2020.

The second solution isn't digital, but real: apart from his usual wigs, Kono created smaller and functional hair pieces.

Dubbed "Fancy Wigs", these fun wig elements - all available online from Tomihiro Kono's shop - are conceived as joyful building bricks, elements that allow you to create a new radical style even with the shortest of hair - or with no hair at all - in just a few seconds.

There are impossibly long and thin or jumbo caterpillar-like braids, romantic kisscurls, super wavy finger waves, punky spikes and magnificent mohawks in the most extraordinary colours - from dark black to cherry red, from flamingo pink and Creamy Mami lilac to emerald green and ocean blue.

The main idea behind the fancy wigs is to be able to change your style instantly, even when you're home and can't go to a hairdresser and even if you have the shortest hair or even a buzzcut, but to do so choosing a quality product.

All Tomihiro Kono's pieces are indeed made by hand, and for what regards the wigs he starts from the foundation, knotting hair strands into it and colouring, cutting and styling the wigs into the various shapes in a process that can be compared to Haute Couture.

There is also another point behind the fancy wigs: Kono conceives them as democratic gender neutral accessories. They are handmade but still affordable and they can be used by each and everyone, without distinction as to age, gender or race. The fancy wigs are an invitation to use your head as if it were a blank canvas and play at being a painter by creating your own masterpiece and a unique new style following Oscar Wilde's famous advice - "Be yourself everyone else is already taken."  

Let's start from your augmented reality filter - how did you get the idea for it and how did you develop it?
Tomihiro Kono: Well, I had to postpone my interactive wig installations that were going to take place in March at the Vacancy project and the Japan Society in New York, but I had all my 111 wigs styled for the exhibitions. People kept asking me when the events were going to take place, but I had no idea - and I still haven't as we will have to wait till the end of the Coronavirus pandemic. So we decided to make a wig filter: all the wig photos used for this filter were shot by Sayaka Maruyama, and this was the first time she ever stepped into AR to make a filter. It took her 3 or 4 days, but she managed to and it has become pretty popular on Instagram!

You're in New York, how are things over there and in which ways has the Coronavirus emergency impacted on your creativity and your work?
Tomihiro Kono: The lockdown in New York coincided with the release of my new book, Personas 111, so there was no launch and no way to share with people the intensive work I did over three years. As you may imagine, I was disappointed, but then I realised there were other ways to reach out to people. Some of them started ordering the book and, since there were more people staying at home, I realised I could reach out to them via Instagram and share ideas, styles and, more recently, my filter. I ended up connecting with people from all over the world and it was amazing. I feel very energized and happy that people get inspired from my work. I get a lot of direct messages from all sorts of people with lovely words and I really appreciate it. It's an absolute pleasure to be able to share my creativity with other people as I think we need to share inspirations to go through these times.

Can you tell us more about the collaboration with Collina Strada's Hillary Taymour for the "Quarantine Collection"? 
Tomihiro Kono: I created 7 pieces for Collina Strada. We worked in a very fluid way: they made masks using cute fabrics, leftovers from a previous collection, and I added hair pieces inspired by the prints and patterns on the fabric. Hillary gave me carte blanche to do whatever I wanted, so I had total freedom, but she wanted arty masks. So I customised the masks with hair or with embroideries made with hair. Then I sent the pieces back to her. I liked a lot what they did with the "Quarantine Collection" shoot as the images spread optimism and positivity. The masks are on auction till Monday 25th May, and 100% of the profit from the sales will go to various charities. This was the first time I took part in a charity event and I think it was great. I'm enjoying following the process of the various pieces as well, and some masks have gone up in prices reaching over $600. Check Collina Strada's site to bid. 

Will you be doing more face masks after the ones for Collina Strada?
Tomihiro Kono: Yes, I might do some. Now we need face coverings all the time when we go out and it's becoming the new normal in New York City, but in the rest of the world as well. A lot of people want to be safe, but they are also looking for unique and fashionable designs, so at the moment I'm thinking about how we can protect ourselves from this pandemic, while trying to inject some positivity into our daily life.

While in lockdown in New York, which has been the thing that has kept you creative and has kept you going?
Tomihiro Kono: I have been really inspired by this global situation that has seen the entire world coming to a standstill with people staying at home, making their art, cooking, gardening and making masks. We could say that this pandemic has pushed many people to be more creative, showing the resilience of creativity in very turbulent times. 

Your fancy wigs and fancy braids are very versatile - can you give us some style tips on how to use them?
Tomihiro Kono: Fancy wigs are basically partial wigs, casual hair accessories that are fun to wear for all sorts of people with no distinction of age or gender. These elements are designed for people who may not want to opt for a whole wig. The braids have got elastics, while other styles have pins, so you can easily attach them to your hair or position them on your head. There are also fancy bonnets, that is a combo of cap and mohawk style. Many of us don't want to risk going crazy with their own hair, but with the fancy wigs they can take all the risks they want and can instantly change style and take up an entire new persona. When they are tired, they can remove them or restyle them in other ways... the fun never ends with the fancy wigs.

Image credits for this post

All images by Sayaka Maruyama

Fancy Wigs and masks by Tomihiro Kono. All the pieces are available from Tomihiro Kono's shop

Creative Philanthropy in a Collaborative "Quarantine Collection"

In March when the Coronavirus emergency started in Europe, face masks turned into a necessary accessory. As they became rare to find and as surgical masks were mainly destined to healthcare personnel, many of us opted for reusable and washable fabric face masks.

Handmade at home during quarantine to pass the time or bought from designers who reconverted their productions to face masks during the emergency, these masks have become our daily companions.

Most masks currently on the market are designed for everyday practical and functional purposes, but, if you're looking for arty and extravagant unique masks, that you can maybe wear for that online Zoom party or in future at a rave or a music festival (when mass gatherings will be allowed again...hopefully soon), don't look further than Collina Strada's face masks.

A 2019 CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund finalist with a DIY fun aesthetic and a passion for sustainability and preserving the planet, Collina Strada's New York-based designer Hillary Taymour decided during the Coronavirus lockdown to push her creativity and face the emergency with colour rather than getting depressed about an uncertain future.

So, after joining the Masks4Medicine campaign (started by New York City doctors and seeking to help healthcare professionals on the frontlines of the COVID-19 pandemic stay healthy by collecting and distributing medical masks and other supplies) and posting a tutorial on the Collina Strada site on how to make face masks, Taymour focused onto the "Quarantine Collection".

The latter includes over 40 garments, comprising hoodies, sweatpants and T-shirts in bright and bold clashes of colours, with scribble prints or tie-dyed effects, plus accessories such as Taymour's trademark crystal covered water bottle and a selection of face masks. 

All the pieces were made from the scraps of the Autumn/Winter 2020 collection "Garden Ho" at Taymour's studio by the designer and by artist Charlie Engman, who helped her sewing and embroidering the garments. There is an added value in the pieces: fashion-wise, the masks were made in collaboration with a well-known creative mind, Tomihiro Kono (河野富広).

The Japanese hair artist, head prop designer and wig maker customised Collina Strada's masks with leftover hair from his studio. Some of the masks in colourful fabrics and with thick fabric straps that can be used to make fun decorative bows, are embellished with long braids in pastel colours, others are embroidered with beads and sensual kisscurls. 

Embellished and intricately decorated, these masks aren't medical devices, but they can be considered as urban wearable sculptures. They display a strong bond with the rave aesthetic and they could be the perfect accessory to add a twist to a look or enrich an outfit, or could be used to conceal your identity while revealing your creative self or as a prop for that perfect Instagram selfie.

Last but not least, while you can't buy this collection, you can bid for each and every piece it features (until Memorial Day 2020 -May 25th). All proceeds from the sales will go to 22 charitable organizations and initiatives tackling the health emergency, environmental problems like pollution and material waste and charities taking care of children in need, such as Action Against Hunger, COVID-19 Caring for Homeless Youth, Farmworkers' COVID-19 Pandemic Relief Fund, Navajo and Hopi Families COVID-19 Relief Fund, Charity Water, the Surfrider Foundation, Seeding Sovereignty's Indigenous Impact- Rapid Response Initiative, African Wildlife Foundation, Dead White Man's Clothes and Save the Children. 

The creativity driving this collaborative collection, accompanied by images shot during lockdown respecting safety social distancing regulations, is therefore a way to face the challenges posed by Coronavirus and find the strength and energy to react to the emergency in a positive and optimistic way.