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Fashionology: Gruau – Dior Illustrated Exhibition

In the first page of the booklet it says a quote by John Galliano – ‘To be inspired by Dior is to be inspired by Rene Gruau. His sketches capture the silhouette and spirit of Dior and a new era of fashion and femininity. His illustrations are timeless, ever youthful, ever faithful to the moment he saw; they capture the energy, the sophistication and daring of Dior, and equally are a token of an enduring friendship.’

It really is like…Gruau’s illustration could speak to you…

Flower Woman – below

Christian Dior’s love of flowers inspired him to create the New Look in 1947. Drawn to their architectural symmetry, their colours and scent, he aimed to transpose these qualities on to the clothes he designed: ‘I was drawing flower women, soft, sloping shoulders, generous busts, a slim waist and wide skirts like flower petals.’ Rene Gruau understood and shared Dior’s passion for flowers, and when Dior asked him to create drawings for his perfume Diorissimo in 1956, Gruau initially presented the young woman in the nude. Although Dior was impressed by the boldness of the illustrator’s vision, he eventually asked Gruau to dress her in an elegant black sheath dress.

Diorissimo, 1956, below

was designed around the notes of Dior’s favourite flower, lily of the valley. As lily of the valley’s essence cannot be extracted, the perfume uses a blend of other flowers to recreate its scent. To reflect this, Gruau illustrated a mixed bouquet to evoke the spirit of the fragrance.

Miss Dior was originally a line of bath products. And to assemble that theme, Gruau has created some illustration with girl whistling in the bath.

There’re real photographs being cut and collaged onto the illustration. Those days without computer…

Dioressence (below) was created in 1979. The illustration for the original advertising campaign for Dioressence was inspired by the Belle Epoque society paintings of Georges Clairin. The image of an elegant woman reclining in a hammock conveys perfectly the exotic Haute Couture spirit of the scent.

Below illustration was called Miss Dior created in 1961, inspired by Venetian dominoes, recalls the great society balls of the post-war years, which were often hosted by mutual friends of Rene Gruau and Christian Dior.

For Dior’s second perfume, Diorama, Gruau chose to depict a neo Louis XVI chair onto which a woman has tossed her elegant gloves and scarf. Gruau understood better than anyone the power of the symbolic gesture, and in his drawings for Dior he often referred to the 18th century, a period of great influence for Christian Dior.

This illustration Dior-Dior 1976 is inspired by the techniques of Japanese calligraphy. The model is positioned in a large character reminiscent of Gruau’s own signature. The play on space gives a strong sense of the immaterial quality of the fragrance.

With swirly pattern carved on the body of the perfume bottle j’dor limited edition 2003, it truly represents the concept of the perfume as ‘a drop of gold’.

…below 2 illustrations are for stockings campaign…very cleverly portraited and drawing people attention to its promotional point.

…I wonder whether Lady Diana took her hair-cut inspiration from this illustration which was created during mid 60s…

…they are just so divine, magical and… Christmasy…

The exhibition overall has a genuine feeling of Christmas which is also helped by setting at Somerset House. With the ice-stating ring and Tiffany temporary shop set outside, this exhibition would be an ideal Christmas visit set into your diary.

Tags: Christian Dior, John Galliano, Rene Gruau

Future Beauty – 30 Years of Japanese Fashion

A couple of weekends ago I went to Barbican Art Centre to see ‘Future Beauty – 30 years of japanese Fashion’ exhibition. This is the first exhibition in Europe to survey avant-garde Japanese fashion, from the early 1980s to now. True, I’ve only seen the top 3 Japanese designers – Issey Miyake, Yohiji Yamamoto and Rei Kawakubo in various exhibition, never together, nonetheless all 8 together.

There were beautiful fine linen-paper-like material hanging off the ceiling to divide the space. The material is called MILIFE, a new non-woven product manufactured from a unique technology. It’s double-layer non-woven and it’s composed of 2 layers, each of which contains aligned MD filaments and aligned CD filaments.

It’s a great opportunity to actual experience a very close-up view to those masterpiece. Draping and folding are simply amazing.

Yohji Yamamoto’s cage corset – he’s mastered with playing black and black and black…as he explains, away from the colour distraction, it is much easier to focus on the construction.

It’s breath-taking to be so close-up to these carefully sculpted pieces, I’ve only seen them in art books before.

Below garment by Yohji Yamamoto was a collection inspired from the period after The Second World War, when people had no money and all clothes were illy fitted and misshaped. Yamamoto had taken the idea further and make the look somehow very poetic.

Below number is from Junya Wantanabe…thousands of pleats and ruffles in organdie…

These are from label Comme des Garçons , Rei Kawakubo has created them in the early 90s by understanding the space around the body. Oversized garments envelop rather than expose the female form. This set is from Body Meets Dress, Dress Meets Body collection (SS1997) featuring extreme, unconventional padding at the shoulders and hips, proved shocking to audiences at the time. Merce Cunningham was inspired by the collection to compose Scenario, a 1997 dance piece for which Kawakubo designed the costumes and stage set.

The exhibition is overall good because of all the show pieces, but however, being let down on a few parts. There was a cinematic room where people could sit down to watch a movie ‘interview with Yohji Yamamoto’. With its odd colour and Yamamoto’s younger face, the film is shot at least 15 years ago to my recognition. I sat in the dark for a good 30 mins at least wishing to catch the end, but still failed. Lots of imageries seemed just a show-off camera tricks with quite empty meanings and sometimes the interview voice was far too low and you could hardly hear anything. Then there were in between interview camera shots on top of the roof looking over Paris and Eiffel Towers in sun-set but sadly with Yamamoto’s voice only in Japanese and no english subtitles, which left all viewers very confusing. I think it was rather arsy than artistic.

The music filled the entire environment was a bit annoying too as it seems to be just some long quiet noises pretending to be the noise of people’s subconscious??! I thoroughly enjoyed all the exhibited garments and felt inspired on colours and especially the pattern-cuttings, which the Japanese are superb amazing skilled for.

Tags: Issey Miyake, Jun Takahashi, Junya Watanabe, Mintdesigns, Next Generation, Rei Kawakubo, Tao Kurihara, Yohji Yamamoto

From Now To Then

Selfridges has opened up an exhibition in honor of Dame Vivienne Westwood sponsored by Melissa. The exhibition is located at basement of Selfridges ‘Ultra Lounge’. It’s simply too many gems there.

a lot of them look a bit worn which add on more value of the collection…

each design is labeled with name and the year of launch…

Apolo sandals…

the famous Rocking Horse Ballerina….is one of true originals from 80s…and you can still order these designs from Westwood’s World’s End boutique on King’s Road with around £400-500. Though waiting time is around 4 weeks, it’s definitely a worth waiting purchase.

…I clearly remember this printed toe-shaped multi-straps shoe from year 2002, because I was so close to own them at Davies Street Boutique but lost them to another client just entering the shop before me…damn!!

now these babies are just looking so ‘Current’ and ‘Acceptable’ to wider audience, but back to 15 years ago, those curved heels were a shocking design!

…and with my amazing fashion memory from teenage time, this baby is from 1994…and when I check the year on the label, I’m so proud I was damn right!

Tags: Selfridges, vivienne westwood

Magic Margiela

A couple of weeks ago on a sunny breathy Sunday afternoon I visited the Margiela exhibition at Somerset House. Maison Martin Margiela has been the iconic break-through artistic fashion designer since the 80s. In October 2008 MMM celebrated its 20th anniversary. This exhibition at Somerset House pays tribute to those 20 years and salutes one of the world’s most influential fashion houses.

MMM ’20′ The exhibition is not a classic retrospective exhibition. It’s probably the best fashion exhibition I have been to. I will show you the reason slowly…

One of the most remarkable characteristics of Maison Martine Margiela is its consistent use of white, or better said, all possible shades of white, in the collection, in the interiors of its offices, shops and showrooms and even invitations. I have previously blogged about the new released perfume ‘Untitled’ which was in a white medical-look-a-like bottom.

MMM is especially known for its deconstructivist approach, its fashion shows in unexpected places and its taste for recovery and recycling materials. Entrance hall has a projection of catwalk video in front of a line of statues of ‘Tailoring / Shoulders’. The shoulder is an important element in the MMM silhouette.

Tabi boots have also become one of their most iconic objects. They are inspired by Japanese tabi which are ankle-high socks with a split for the big toe and are worn with traditional Japanese sandals. Tabi boots has the split for the big toe from pumps to platform sandals to boots.

More details and images after the jump…

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Tags: Burberry, Maison Martin Margiela

Long live McQueen

We spoke on the phone just moments after the Daily Mail broke the sad news of Lee Alexander McQueen’s passing. The news came as a huge shock to the both of us. We’re both huge fans of his work and it was hard to describe what we were feeling. He was such an inspiration and it’s hard to believe that he is now gone.

For the past couple of days we’ve been reminiscing by digging through old scrapbooks, old magazines and looking at pictures from his past collections. In this blog post (which also happens to be the first one we’ve ever co-written) we would like to pay tribute to Lee by sharing some of our favourite Alexander McQueen moments.

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Tags: Alexander McQueen, Devon Aoki, kate moss, nick knight, Shalom Harlow

Marchesa Casati – A dash of eccentricity

Earlier we’ve blogged about how art inspires fashion, but how about when the artistic inspiration is a person – a muse? One such person, the Marchesa Luisa Casati, has inspired many writers, painters and also fashion designers .

The Marchesa was born into a wealthy Austrian-Italian family in Milan in 1881. A patron of coutouriers such as Paul Poiret, Mariano Fortuny and Erté and jewellers like Lalique, Casati astonished European society for the first three decades of the 20th century with her eccentric personality and outrageous style. In his autobiography Erté described her as the “the most extravagantly odd woman I have ever met”. She would wear living snakes as jewellery, throw parties where her servants were covered in leafed gold from top to toe and parade her pet cheetahs around in Venice on leashes covered with gold and diamonds whilst wearing nothing but a fur coat. Her hair was a dyed a deep henna red, her skin powdered pale white and her eyes heavily kohled.

The Marchesa painted by Augustus John to the left. Carina Roitfeld as Casati, photographed by Karl Lagerfeld.

More after the jump

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Tags: Carine Roitfeld, Chanel, Christian Dior, Couture, Giorgio Armani, John Galliano, Karl Lagerfeld, Marchesa Luisa Casati, muses, Tilda Swinton, Tom Ford, Yves Saint Laurent

Art-inspired fashion

Designers taking inspiration from art is hardly anything new.  One thing I find really fascinating though is how different the outcome of different people’s interpretation of the same piece of art can be. One of the most famous examples of “fashion-inspired-by-art” is probably Yves Saint Laurent’s day dress from 1965 inspired by Dutch artist Piet Mondrian’s work. Earlier this summer I was watching the video of La Roux’s Bulletproof and in the video she is wearing another nice Mondrian-inspired piece – a jacket from Jean-Charles de Castalbajac‘s Spring/Summer 2009 collection.

One of my favourite Mondrian-inspired collections though, has to be Norwegian design duo Batlak & Selvig‘s spring/summer 2009-collection. Click >> here for a video of the fashion show which was held at Galleri Riis in Oslo in August 2008.

For those interested in reading more about Mondrian-inspired fashion, please check out this blog post by John Coulthart. In the post he also links to another great blog post on this topic by Couture Allure.

Photo source: Galleri Riis

Tags: Batlak & Selvig, Jean-Charles de Castalbajac, La Roux, Piet Mondrian, Yves Saint Laurent