Of all the fabulous, wearable fashion in this month’s Vogue, the most striking spread is Monsters, INC, in which Raymond Meier shoots fall’s hottest fur accessories modeled atop performance artist Nick Cave’s very furry soundsuits. Like a psychedelic Where the Wild Things Are or an edgy Dr. Seuss illustration, Cave has captured every imagined childhood monster in his suits, right down to the pile of laundry that comes alive—the suit sporting a Marc Jacobs bag is made entirely of socks—and has made them fun.
Cave’s soundsuits as Meier has captured them are fanciful, outlandishly attractive and as well-crafted as any couture, but their visual appeal is only the beginning of their wonder. The first suit began as a sculptural costume constructed from thousands of twigs and never meant to be worn. Cave donned it on a lark and discovered that the twigs’ rustling and clattering when he moved crated a beautiful visual and audile effect. He ultimately chose to combine the suits’ dramatic rhythm with dramatic and rhythmic African dance; his goal is to make people “step outside of themselves” and “delight within a moment.”
Below is a video of UCLA world arts students performing in Cave’s suits at the opening gala for the Los Angeles Art Show in January.
I can’t decide which one I like more: the enchanting abandon of soundsuits in action, or Vogue Fasion Editor Elissa Santisi’s genius in combining light-hearted art with fashion—an art that is often taken too seriously. Either way, Cave’s suits do their job—both are absolutely blissful.
Iconic menswear designer Hedi Slimane’s creativity knows no bounds—most well known as art director for Yves Saint Laurent from 1993-99 and creative director of Dior Homme 2000-07, Slimane is also a writer, furniture designer, musician and fashion photographer. He is famous for creating the “new male ideal” in the early 2000’s. By designing slim-cut menswear and employing very thin models, Slimane introduced the waif look into men’s fashion and changed the predominant high-fashion ideal from muscular and aristocratic to pencil-thighed and androgynous.
Slimane has archived his photography in his Fashion Diary, including incredible shots of fittings for all of the YSL and Dior shows he directed. The photos are fantastic, and it’s very cool to see the way Slimane chooses to document his own designs.
While his skinny male aesthetic was most influential during his time at Dior, it is evident even in his YSL photos…
As is his exploration of androgyny, which here crosses into the feminine.
P.S. How similar is this photo to Max Beerbohm’s dandy self-caricature?? I wonder if it was intentional.
Marc Jacobs’ new men’s fragrance, Bang, has caused quite a stir lately with provocative print ads that feature Jacobs himself greased-up, nestled in crinkled metal and covered only by the Bang bottle. Jacobs came up with the name, which he chose for its immediacy, power and masculinity, while at the gym. The ad campaign was designed around the name by Juergen Teller, who has been photographing for Jacobs since 1998. Impact—visual, sexual, olfactory—seems to be the driving theme behind Bang, and the scent’s bottle fits in perfectly.
The crumpled effect Teller uses in the ad reminded me of Stephen J. Shanabrook and Veronika Georgieva’s “Paper Surgery” collection, which features magazine photos twisted and stapled to distort the subjects’ faces. The beautifully disturbing result is grotesquely impacted images— as though the subjects were pummeled by a prizefighter and the duo photographed the bloodless aftermath. Shanabrook, whose parents were an obstetrician and a coroner, often explores disfigurement in his work: he is most famous for a series of chocolates created from casts of injuries on cadavers.
Despite their superficial similarities, these works have polar opposite messages: Teller’s accentuates the human form, glorifies sex and promotes mainstream fashion, while Shanabrook and Georgieva’s finds aesthetic in a rearranging the human form by distorting an image of sex and mainstream fashion. Still, that doesn’t make the latter completely anti-establishment—Comme de Garçons commissioned a “Paper Surgery” image for their S/S 2010 SHIRT campaign.
As much as I love Teller’s and Jacobs’ other work, I have to say I find Shanabrook and Georgieva’s twisted surgery to have far more impact than Jacobs’ glittering exhibition.
My newest artist obsession is Anika Smulovitz, an Idaho-based jewelry designer, metalsmith and art professor. Smulovitz’s designs are brilliant both in their beauty and in their inspiration. Her academic study of jewelry’s historical context—the traditions that gave rise to it and how the jewelry, in turn, shaped those traditions—and it’s physical interaction with the wearer gives rise to focused, highly conceptual collections and pieces that are both striking and intellectually engaging. Smulovitz’s most recent collection is a series of specimen bottle-topped rings displaying plants, flowers and seeds from the artist’s garden.
Meant to explore our simultaneous dissociation from nature and our desire to control, preserve and connect with it, some stand as captured moments of beauty and potential, while others evoke a gloomy longing.
Her other collections include “Keys,” a study of the keys, especially as symbols of power, and the acts of locking and unlocking, “White Collar,” which explores the sexual (think Playboy bunny) and authoritative implications of dress shirt collars on women, and “Body in Motion,” which plays with different ways to convey movement.
"Loss and Longing I" and "Echinops/Globe Thistle" from Keys
Gareth Pugh’s 2010 collections have been profoundly softer and more accessible than the severe avant-garde drama on which he made his name. His A/W collection, especially—sleek, 30’s-inspired, very wearable—is a significant departure from past years, when extreme alien collections varied between the bird-like and the geometric. Imagine Darth Vader meets Lady Gaga. Pugh’s current collection is still undeniably Pugh, but the alien is manifested as revisioned retro futurism, the bird-like as the flight-obsessed 30’s revisited and the geometry as art deco. All of this, imbued with a smoky, screen siren glamour, makes for a streamlined sensuality that I absolutely adore.
The highlight of Pugh’s collection? The Fall/Winter ’10 campaign video from SHOW studio, complete with an entrancing, robotic lewdness straight from Fritz Lang’s Metropolis.
I spent most of my morning enthralled by DIS Magazine, a year-old publication dedicated to deconstructing the norms of art, fashion and beauty. The magazine’s creators, Lauren Boyle, Solomon Chase, S. Adrian Massey III, Marco Roso, Patrik Sandberg, Nicholas Scholl and David Toro tend to take themselves a bit too seriously, but they introduce seriously creative, clever work into a scene they find uninspired. They certainly know how to laugh at the art world, even if they can’t laugh at themselves, and their fashion editorials are pretty fantastic. With their found-object looks, DIS teaches the überhip a lesson on überhip-dom, while giving the always worthwhile reminder that you don’t have to scour thrift, etsy and vintage stores to be creative—home goods, bodegas and electrical tape work just as well!
1. Hot towel wrap
Flamenco-inspired dress and bag, color block kaftan and cap-sleeve crop top, all from towels.
2. Environmentally friendly
Message tanks from plastic grocery bags. Love the nude!
3. Sharp in sharpie
Posing as a poser with home made iPod, cigarette and tattoos.
4. Whimsical wares
Hats from woven baskets, a skirt from a stool cushion and (my favorite!) a swing top from a sheer curtain.
Minjae Lee is a highly talented 21-year old, self-taught, South Korean artist. Lee captivates a raw, theatrical drama using markers, pens, crayons and acrylics to manifest a dark, dramatic fairytale using ethereal female portraits as his subjects. Lee’s art has a mysterious appeal that instantly draws you in and creates a sense if intimacy and sensuality that reaches you at your core. The human face is his template for his designs and by using abstract movements and textures, bold lines, and vibrant colors, each piece becomes a unique and striking interpretive work of art. He carefully uses color and shapes to work as the perfect synergy with his black and white outlines and intricate patterns.
The Dream
Her Face
Each piece of art reveals a haunting emotion that is brought to life using his aggressive stroke and use of vibrant colors, which displays his evocative imagery and cleaver juxtaposition of fragile beauty and disturbed insanity, that is guaranteed to leave you wanting more.
“I like to capture the woman’s face, because they are so emotional.
My work needs to express a strong feeling. You need to feel the love, pain or excitement. I present those feelings with lots of colors.”
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