The Blogazine

ZZegna / Realnob – Noble Note

Matteo Cherubino directed this gem of a short film for Z Zegna’s A/W 2011 collection. Showcasing several pieces from the “Artisan Alchemy” collection that we quite enjoyed from the sidelines, the short’s narrative follows model Theo Hall from Elite through Zegna’s iconic glass and steel structure on Via Savona. The piece was shot in collaboration with the self-described blog for dandies, Nob, and produced by 2DM.

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STYLEBY

With a launch party at nothing less than the Royal Palace in Stockholm last week, Sweden’s latest fashion magazine began its grandiose life. But with Elin Kling as Creative director, who could have thought otherwise? In the past six months, Styleby has been the buzzword among everyone who has anything to do with fashion in Scandinavia. In July its website, a sort of live blog with up-to-the-moment insights into the lives of the three women behind the magazine, was launched.

Jonna Berg, Editor-in-chief, is known as the “woman of magazines,” having contributed extensively to a wealth of Swedish publications. Columbine Smille, who began her career as Kling’s assistant, is now Styleby’s Fashion editor. With her exquisite taste and courage to showcase Swedish creativity beyond Acne and Whyred, she is sure to do a bang up job.

Elin Kling, who has worked the gamut of jobs in the industry, started her career as the fashion editor at Vecky Revyn, and has gone from being a blogger to one of the industry’s most influential women. Apart from launching Styleby and the magazine, she designed a successful collection for H&M and has hosted her own TV show, Style by Kling. And if that weren’t already enough, she was invited to Luisa Via Roma’s landmark FIRENZE4EVER party as Sweden’s contribution to the industry.

The first issue of Styleby, with six clones of Elin Klin on the double-page cover, will hit newsstands March 15.

Not coincidentally, Nowmanifest was launched just before Styleby made its debut. Already known as a must-visit fashion destination, Elin Kling and Christian Remröd were (surprise) the founders. It is quite simply an amalgamation of fashion superpowers: alongside Elin’s blog is will be BryanBoy, Rumi Neely and Industrie Magazine. This forward-thinking gathering of eclectic and important fashion personalities on one site will hopefully bring increased attention to Sweden’s burgeoning and pioneering scene.

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200 Best Illustrators / Naja Conrad-Hansen

It’s official. Naja Conrad-Hansen, one of 2DM’s illustrators, is among the best in the world. For the third time, she was included in 200 Best Illustrators Worldwide from Lürzer’s Archive with her recent work for New York recording artist Katrine Ottesen. The Austrian publishing house well-known for its novel ranking system and its long-running series of “200 Best” specials, is somewhat of an authority on contemporary visual culture. Conrad-Hansen’s work was chosen out of a selection of 6,075 works from 69 countries and is one of only a handful of artists to be featured both this year and last.

And as the nature of the publication would suggest, the work on its pages is all absolutely stunning. From the amazing textural works of Paul Meates and Steve Barrett, to the lo-fi and painterly works of Brad Holland, there is no lack of imagination or inventive technique among today’s illustrators. The Danish-born Conrad-Hansen’s work is marked by its intellectual rigour and wealth of symbolic content, but her sense of formal beauty is a boon to her wealth of work in fashion.

Congratulations, Naja! In any case, we didn’t need Lürzer’s to tell us she was amont the world’s best. Check out more of her work here.

D / The Blogazine: Fashion Week Backstage

This week marked the grand web relaunch of Gruppo Editoriale L’Espresso’s D Magazine, one of Italy’s most important lifestyle publications. For the occasion, The Blogazine teamed up with a group of three handpicked photographers, Eva Manticova, Luca Campri and Piotr Niepsuj to take on Milan’s fabled fashion week. In three video galleries – skilfully edited by Daniele Testi – we brought to life an incisive and ambient image of the glitz and the glam and the grit of the week in style all our own.

Catch the videos here: Piotr Niepsuj, Luca Campri and Eva Manticova.

This was not the Sartorialist. It’s fresher. It’s raw. It’s open. This is not BryanBoy. And this isn’t tweeting capricious snap judgments from the sidelines of a show. In fact, we worked entirely in analogue. We were out front, backstage, mingling, parsing the collections… and even up a few freshly sewn skirts. We joined a band of models from pre-show castings to their frenetic sprints from runway to runway. And caught up with roving herds of them at the best parties. We went inside to capture a tapestry of the season’s colours, the vibe, the textures on the catwalks and the mood on the street.

The project was born of a fatigue of superficial, heedless fashion reportage. And in an age where everyone plays photographer – and our visual landscape has become an indiscriminate landfill as a result – we instead sought to curate a precise vision. Ours are young, insider photographers with discerning sensibilities, and their vantage lent them an authentic vision of the week, especially when captured in the infinitely more human texture of film…

With this collaboration, The Blogazine’s creative universe and curatorial voice was brought for the first time to a prominent platform, and new audience at the front lines of fashion journalism.

Luca Campri
What is photography? How do I shoot? What should I take pictures of? But why should I shoot? Should I shoot this? That? Does a photo became memory? Is it a friend? Is it a lover? Should i shoot in black and white? Awesome! Your face shows who you are. I’ll burn every experience onto film. Memory never fades. What if i took a photo of everything I’ve ever experienced? What does it mean to be a photographer? I shoot to know these answers.

Eva Manticova
As a properly educated child, I had to finish my school and do all the possible degrees before ditching my small village to travel around the world as a model at 18. After learning how to pose in front of a camera, I discovered that I preferred to be behind it. My first analog camera came from eBay and it’s been loaded, shooting everything around me since. I’m 26 now.

Piotr Niepsuj
Born in 1984 in Poland and raised in Lodz. He moved to Milan a half-decade ago and has since made it his him. He studied architecture at the Politecnico di Milano, and works currently as photo editor and assistant creative director at PIG Magazine in addition to shooting for them.

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Aroma 30

Aroma 30 is one of the freshest, most candid young designer collections we’ve come across in a while. Founded by Rome native Michela Fasanella, the collection is a synthesis of good old-fashioned Italian aesthetic sensibility, a splash of pan-Europe cosmopolitanism and rigorous fabric research. The designer readily admits to using her own body for prototyping, and to excellent effect: her pieces are comfortable and wearable in addition to being flattering.

An alumnus of l’Accademia di Costume e della Moda and Central Saint Martins, Michela began her career assisting Ferragamo’s creative team. From there she advanced to assisting Maria Grazie Chiuri and Pierpaolo Piccioli at Red Valentino. Her line was launched from London, first with a small and successful capsule collection, but she returned subsequently to Rome to be closer to its production and the roots of her creativity.

In a short conversation with The Blogazine, the designer talked beauty at its core, as well as her distaste for the arbitrary rhythms of fashion: “My style is focused on the research of timeless beauty, as I think it has a much deeper meaning in capturing the evolution of lifestyles. I can’t stand the fast pace of fashion trends, and I prefer working on the development of an image.”

Inspiration for the Aroma30 is drawn from fountains as diverse as religious iconography (the designer is Roman, afterall), classical geometry, snapshot photography and nature’s perfect equilibriums. This last point, apparently, is key, as Michela alluded to us nature’s mastery at eliminating the superfluous – through evolution, through erosion, through chemical processes -to ensure that everything which remains is functional. And while volumes and silhouettes are liberally manipulated, Aroma’s lines almost speak Scandinavian simplicity in their elegance, as well as Belgian sophistication in their complex tailoring. The designs also wear a strong Valentino influence on their sleeves, so to speak…

2DM’s Roberta Ridolfi, a friend of Michela’s and longtime Londoner, shot the label’s last collection in the stark softness of white – Ridolfi’s playful sensibility a perfect match for Michela’s creations. Aroma30’s current collection, measurably harder and darker, is inspired by the piercing light of the Nordic countries and the low-contrast, intricate beauty of Paolo Roversi’s photographs.

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Andrea Crews & The Living Dead A/W 2011

In the Parisian outskirts, far away from the chi chi-neighborhoods and the established runways, Andrea Crews – The Parisian art, activism and fashion collective lead by Maroussia Rebecq – has seized power over the concert venue and salle de spectacle Le Trianon, built in 1894 in Paris’ XVIIIème arrondissement. The contrast between this renowned historical building and the strong enfant terrible-spirit of Andrea Crews’ label was striking. And during a windy Fashion Week evening, the fall & winter collection – “Les Morts Vivants de La Mode” – was presented.

To the stage, a runway had been added, and in the first few minutes a series of red-shaded gothic creations is presented, worn by Vampire-like blood teared vamps, in the finest Bela Lugosi-spirit possible. But then, something else happens… A mob dressed in black jumps up on the stage, the music accelerates and great white banners are draped down from the top balconies in the theatre hall – banners that are sprayed with black letters reading out “Andrea Crews”. The anarchistic mob runs out on the runway, lifts up one of the models and puts her in a dustbin bag. The red curtains, which were previously closed are opened, and uncover a fiery hell landscape where the dark rabble has come to burn the models at the stake.

The show began with well tailored evening gowns, down jackets and blazers in scarlet red, and a craftsmanship-theme kept on reappearing in the show, followed in short order by chunky nits and the Andrea Crews trademark: Haute Insanity accessories in the forms of shoes stacked upon one another, and knitted hats with fluorescent details. The show finishes off with a model dressed in a revealing turquoise on-ne-sait-quoi piece, swinging two heads in front of the audience. Knitted heads of course.

We are not in Salem, nor in the 16th century. The current location is Paris. It’s 2011AD. But the angry mob is very much present, and have never been more dark or furious. It’s the Andrea Crews witch trials.

The interesting thing about Andrea Crews is not always the collection itself, but rather its presentation. There’s no doubt that underneath the Insane Asylum-styling, every piece that is strutted down the runway has an avant garde-touch to it but is nonetheless very wearable. And like a high number of brands, A.C would have no problem resting on these laurels. But they instead choose to incorporate other Classy Uglification-elements into it, such as neon coloured details. And on top of that, since this was a veritable theatre performance, the hall was filled to the brim with smoke. It may have been something that would make most photographers weep – and it may not show the collection in its best light – but A.C simply says…“Catch Me If You Can.”

The collection is filled with pieces like knitted cardigans and a draped black dress, but the difference with A.C is that their draped dress will have you perform the final number of out Swan lake. You’re not wearing a garment; you’re wearing conceptual performance art. You’re a small part of a movement. Much like with other contemporary artists such as the musician Björk, you might never quite grasp the full meaning of what’s going on, and that’s part of the charm. A.C is all about personal creativity, bold experimentation and full frontal independence. Find your inner Andrea, and run with her!