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Batlak & Selvig – Spring/Summer 2011

awais — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 06:28:52 +0000

Norwegian design duo Admir Batlak and Charlie Selvig revealed their spring/summer collection in Oslo on the 18th of August during Oslo Fashion Week. Instead of showing the collection at the main Oslo Fashion Week venue, they showed the collection at the contemporary art venue Galleri Riis – as usual.

Batlak & Selvig - Spring/Summer 2011

Instead of having a regular fashion show with models walking down the catwalk, they opted for a fashion presentation. The guests were escorted into the venue in small groups. Inside the gallery the collection was displayed on mannequins. The atmosphere was more that of a vernissage than a fashion show. No models and no celebrities on the front row to steal the limelight – all focus was on the clothes. Blurring the line between fashion and art is not something which is new to the duo, as made evident by their previous work – for instance their Mondrian-inspired collection of cocktail dress a couple of years back.

Batlak & Selvig - Spring/Summer 2011

The collection consisted of classic 60′s style dresses. Simple and clean silhouettes and above-the-knee hemlines.

Batlak & Selvig - Spring/Summer 2011

Admir earned his graduate degree in Fashion Design from the Istituto Artistico dell’Abbigliamento Marangoni in Milan, while Charlie did her degree at Central Saint Martins in London. As students they did their internships at Proenza Schouler and Hussein Chalayan, and have since also worked as design consultants for Dolce & Gabanna and guest lecturers at the National College of Art in Oslo. Along with Kristian Aadnevik, Peter Dundas and Siv Støldal, the duo are undoubtedly amongst the most interesting contemporary Norwegian designers today.

Batlak & Selvig - Spring/Summer 2011

Photo sources: Stella Pictures

Art-inspired fashion

awais — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 01:04:06 +0000

Earlier this summer I was watching the video of La Roux’s Bulletproof and in the video she is wearing a Mondrian-inspired jacket by Jean-Charles de Castalbajac.

The fact that designers often take inspiration from art is hardly anything new, but what I find really fascinating is how different designers’ interpretation of the same piece of art can be. The brief for one of the first projects I did when I was in fashion school was to design an outfit inspired by an art piece. I remember chosing Mondrian’s iconic grid-based paintings and drawing a white skirt and jacket with black lines – it looked like a butchered version of Yves Saint Laurent’s iconic Mondrian dress from 1964.

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