Sunday Breakfast by Love For Breakfast
The charm of the empty streets, the silence of a sleeping town. The scent of fresh linen blends to that of dense flowers illuminated by the dew. This morning, the thing I need is the air, and just a little more.
Heath Ceramics Summer Shop and Show
Even though you may not be into arts&crafts, you have to admit that design is and will always be part of your everyday life. Some things, besides being incredibly beautiful, are also fundamentally necessary and utterly useful for our daily experiences. One of those things are ceramics, which can be a tricky subject to handle as pottery is a mastery that often merges with art. That is why choosing to speak about a specific manufacturer among a long list of quality producers could have been a though decision, if we hadn’t found Heath Ceramics.
Founded in 1948 by Edith Heath, the company has a 60-year-old history based on a strong belief in beautifully crafted objects. But besides that, Mrs. Heath also believed in simplicity and innovation, thus creating ceramics that can be produced at a lower temperature, which allows saving energy while producing a durable and non-porous product. Through years, Heath Ceramics has become known for the simplicity of its products – functional and thoughtfully designed tableware and tile.
Besides being fully engaged with their small, partially hand-made production, Heath Ceramics also dedicates itself to promoting other excellences in the world of design and ceramics. Hence, you can often find their Los Angeles and the new San Francisco showrooms dedicated to pop-up shops and exhibitions. This time, Heath has paired with Starnet, a Japanese manufacturer, for a summer shop that features designs made by its founder Baba Koshi and the Starnet workshop. In the same time, the newly opened San Francisco showroom is featuring the work of Akio Nuraga in the exhibition titled “Very New Work”, showing the artist’s hand-thrown pots and vessels.
If you’re in California and don’t mind a six hour drive between SF and LA, make sure to check both of them, running respectively until the 10th and 5th of September.
Met at Pitti 82: 10A
10A is an Italian company that evolved from being a research lab producing 10 pairs of trousers with suspenders per month, to a full collection brand, producing not only trousers but t-shirts, bags and sunglasses for both men and women. The naval inspiration for the Spring/Summer 2013 collection was reflected in the Alternative Set that 10A treated their audience at Pitti Uomo 82; a regatta with radio-controlled boats and a smokestack spewing steam and making sounds.
AAAAAAAAAA, the research lab from where it all began is the product of the meeting between product designer Matteo Cibic and Daria Dazzan, fashion designer. The specific trousers with suspenders, in the finest of Italian materials, were successful and celebrated in the press, and led to the continuation of transforming the lab into a brand; 10A. The men’s collection for S/S13 continues with classic Italian tailoring, and trousers with the patented suspender system and the engraved logo in the back as a strong core. Though, it was a pleasure to see how the main product had evolved into a full style, refined by the leather bags and sunglasses. The loose fitted garments had alternatives in a slim cut, and the light materials did well in the combination of vintage inspiration. New trouser models and the new striped 10A t-shirt all came together in a light version of the navy uniform. Aside from the fabrics, also the colours were a part of the nautical inspiration, ranging from white and navy blue to light grey and green.
The previously mentioned regatta took part in the Piazzetta della Ronda at Fortezza da Basso. Four models dressed in the S/S13 proposal were directing the mini boats accompanied by steam and smoke in an amusing event, perfectly presenting the concept of 10A.
Do you remember the special lookbook project we did with 10A in Spring 2011? See it here.
Lisa Olsson HjerpeJan-Jan van Essche: Fashion Independent from Trends
32 year old Belgian designer Jan-Jan Van Essche, a 2003 Graduate from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of Antwerp and winner of the prestigious Dries Van Noten award has just returned to his Antwerp atelier following the presentation of his 3rd collection “In Awe” in Paris.
The Blogazine caught up with Jan-Jan to hear all about his inspiration and philosophy behind his work.
You design only one collection a year, which is a really original approach in today’s fashion industry. Why did you decide to create only annual collections?
Partly for practical reasons, so I can take my time and grow into it, to have time to make mistakes and learn from them.
I also realize that I wear my own clothes all year around, I just layer up or layer down depending on the season. It’s a practical ingredient.
Secondly it is out of respect for the craftsmanship, cloth making and tailoring; there is far too much attention and love which goes into any garment to make it a “temporary” item which you would put aside after 3-6 months. It doesn’t fit my philosophy.
Tell us more about your philosophy, and the mentality your collections stand for.
In a way I am working on a continual line, each of the collections should fit together, so the wearer can combine pieces from 3 years ago with new pieces from the “In Awe” line. Though the collection is presented as a menswear collection, it has a lot of pieces I consider unisex. Most of it is one size, exclusive and limited, each piece is individually numbered.
I traveled for a while in Africa before I started my own label; this has been a big influence and inspiration which continues throughout my work. The line is about comfort and elegance but in a natural way, I’m constantly searching for new forms, shapes and items but without being too radical. I think the men who wear my clothing like calming, soothing and practical clothes; most men don’t like to make big statements.
What is your inspiration behind the “In Awe” collection?
“In Awe” is the name of a song by Midnite, a reggae band from the Virgin Islands which I couldn’t stop listening to. They are quite a meditative, obscure band, their songs are almost like recited mantras. Also someone used the words “in awe” when talking about my last collection, it was a new phrase for me and I liked it. The line is about pieces I am in awe of, it’s less about silhouettes but pieces I want to have in my own wardrobe. Like a trench coat kimono, an over-sized central Asian pant or a European nightwear shirt.
Who wears the Jan-Jan Van Essche label?
Independent, thinking people, people who are into fashion and beautiful things but not in a trendy way. I know quite some women who wear the collection too, mainly the tops. Last year I was in Tokyo and met some people wearing my clothes just as I’d hoped they would be worn, it was really inspiring.
I have an army of about 15-20 people in my head who I design for. I’m still searching for my clients though, I don’t know them yet, I am still looking who they are. This will grow as I see my clothes being worn, I want to grow together with my clients.
How do you see the future of your label?
Well, I’d like to reward all the people who are helping me who have worked so hard, to keep growing slowly but surely and to stay genuine to my ideas.
What do you like to do outside your work?
Well, there is Atelier Solarshop; a platform for art, design, fashion and other beautiful things that I co-curate.
And when there is the opportunity I like to go to reggae concerts from time to time.
Also two friends of mine started a Sunday morning breakfast club, I try to go as often as I can, for the amazing food, the lovely people and the great atmosphere. It strengthens my inner self both mentally and physically.
Met at Pitti 82: Esemplare
A young brand yet full of rich history, that is Esemplare N°61. With the roots in the province of Reggio Emilia and the company Manifattura Riese, Esemplare approaches the menswear area with exclusivity and innovation in focus. The Blogazine met them during Pitti Uomo to hear more about the barely two-year-old company, that has already made it into the big department stores.
It’s the quality and detailing without any excessive elements that round up the Spring/Summer 2013 collection from Esemplare. Head designer Alessandro Pungetti, who earlier worked for CP Company, brings together the technology of innovative materials and treatments with style. The collection, which presents an urban man, holds a lot of sporty aspects without losing its amount of sophistication. Reversible pieces and garment dying add to a certain uniqueness, even though it is a discrete collection that lets the fine Italian craftsmanship – and the man wearing it – shine through. Despite the youth of the brand, Esemplare mediates the feeling of know-how and a multi-faceted view on menswear.
The knowledge, which is well anchored in the 50 years of family history and Manifattura Riese together with an unmistakable sense for classic turned contemporary, has taken the brand outside of Italy and around the world. Bergdorf Goodman, Fred Segal and Merci are just few of the department- and multi branded stores that have picked up on the exemplary quality. Esemplare is one of the few young brands focusing on the essentials; the technology and the innovation. It’s not about superfluous or extravagant focal points, but the quality of materials and the quality of dressing people that matters.
Century of the Child: Growing by Design at MoMA
“Children are the future and our most valuable resource,” is an overly heard saying whose meaning we don’t take quite seriously. That is why a soon opening exhibition at MoMA, taking design as its maginfying glass, should open our eyes to the infamous saying and make us reconsider the position of a child in our society. Titled “Century of the Child: Growing by Design, 1900-200”, curated by Juliet Kinchin and Aidan O’Connor. The exhibition departs from Swedish design reformer and social theorist Ellen Key’s book “Century of the Child”. The book, written in the 1900, tries to emphasize the importance of children’s well-being as an interest of utmost importance to all society.
The paradigm of children’s prosperity was taken throughout the 20th century as a paradigm for progressive thinking and the renewal of the modern society. As a consequence, designers and artists have produced work that often involved childhood, but as such, has even more often been disregared in design cycles. Hence, many of the objects (around 500) exhibited in the show, even though created by famous figures of design and architecture history, have remained almost unknown. For their authors, the design projects have functioned as a sort of escape, particularly during the avant-garde, from the roughness and routine of everyday life.
The exhibited works include Jean Prouve’s School Desk, a glass desk designed by Gio Ponti, children’s chairs by Marcel Breuer, Alvar Aalto, and Kit Nicholson, LEGO building blocks and the Slinky, Charles and Ray Eames’ projects, Aleksandr Rodchenko’s photograph Pioneer Girl, Roald Dahl’s The Gremlins, to name but a few.
If we are fond of believing that design has a fundamental role in our society, and that children are its future, then this exhibition showing years of prolific designers’ work on the theme can only confirm it.
“Century of the Child: Growing by Design, 1900 -2000” will be on show from July 29 – November 5, 2012 at MoMA.
Rujana RebernjakMarkus Schinwald | Between Past And Future
Feverish preparations for holidays are under way, and while most people are getting ready to leave the hot Milan, the ones still in the city could profit these last weeks to visit art exhibitions before their finissage waiting for the next season. Among the shows on view until the end of July, we chose to suggest you Old Wants – Young Desires by Salzburg-born artist Markus Schinwald (b. 1973) at gallery Giò Marconi.
Schinwald’s works rely on a trans-historical approach that mixes contemporary elements and ancient atmospheres leading back into the past, linking different periods to display the constriction of human bodies and their relation with the surrounding space.
Amelie, Grita, Berth, Jasper, Lukas or Pepe are just some of the characters depicted by the Austrian artist in his restored and manipulated paintings and vintage prints: faces of bourgeois ladies and gentlemen from the 19th century, who are being suffocated by curtains and scarves wrapped around their faces, men and women tricked up with chains, metal clamps, stripes and bandages that remind of weird pieces of jewelry and, at the same time, fetish objects and prosthesis.
Markus Schinwald’s small dark portraits are both macabre and freaky, though preserving the elegance, seriousness and above all composure of their hybrid creatures that puzzle and intrigue the viewers. Yes, because even if the weird tools initially cause uneasiness, they actually don’t seem to be hindrances for the perfectly self-controlled figures.
The altered body, its connections with the mind and space; the relation between inner and outer, conscious and unconscious call to mind the study of an artist’s renowned countryman, Sigmund Freud.
Beyond paintings and prints, the exhibition also presents three aquariums that interact with the gallery architecture. For this show, as already did at the 54th Venice Biennale, Markus Schinwald plays once again with the topic of “legs”, displaying sculptures of chair legs that remind dancers’ legs and, as an icing on the cake, a double projection of his famous film Orient.
Spending some time in a chilly and relaxed art gallery visiting a very high quality exhibition is definitely a good way to wait for summer holidays, don’t you think?
Old Wants – Young Desires will run until July 27th 2012.
Monica LombardiSunday Breakfast by Love For Breakfast
The purity of the morning light accompanied by the essence of the fruit mixed with the freshness of milk. It’s a side of what I use to call happiness.
The Lords of Dancalia Valley
There are many destinations appealing voyagers in Africa, even if they are considered too dangerous and inconvenient to get to. The volcano Erta Ale is among them, with its lava lake and the spectacular saltpans of Dallol, along with the legendary hostility of the Afar, the lords of Dancalia valley.
Forget everything you already know and prepare yourself to discover a desert made of lava, stone, salt and rock. We are about to enter an area that seems to belong on the moon, inhabited by thin people – the Afar – , who scamper and smuggle between Ethiopia and Eritrea, taking aim with their Kalasnikovs, the symbolic gift received as a proof of their passage into adulthood, at around 13 years of age. Dancalia, largely belonging to Ethiopia, is divided by a line like a slash of a scalpel, made by European minds intentionally blind to the separation of clans and villages, ignoring freedom, ripping apart families and tribes, and destroying the invisible but valuable bonds between the people.
These malnurished people listen in silence to soldiers of Addis Abeba, who shout them orders with thundering voices and sharp words; to not cross the boundaries and to not smuggle weapons, ammunition and oilcans on their full-packed camels milling around. When the sun goes down, people who are not tied in the salt business take small paths that the Ethiopian army trucks can’t drive.
The Afar people tend to sharpen their teeth to relish the raw flesh of freshly killed prey. Their favorite and legendary motto is “better die than not to kill”. They know perfectly that it’s hard to resist the hell of Dancalia, where the burning sun hits the eyes and melts time, and where there are always soldiers lying in ambush somewhere. Abdo Yahia – a Yemenite moved to Ethiopia at the age of two – and I decided to take the prudent road, and instead of militaries, to take two Afar scouts with us to go up to Erta Ale.
We enter Dancalia from South, following the mythical path of Italian explorers. After three days of traveling, we get to the base camp of Erta Ale. A five-hour nightly climb awaits us. No one ventures the volcano’s side during the day; the temperature of 45° at 10am discourages whoever. The sultriness doesn’t give a respite, not even in the dark. The night finds us leaving at 3am, silent and in an organized line, hearing some gigantic frightened animals far away tremble the terrain. Camels in front of us carry the water while armed Afar people protect us from the threat of the Eritrean raids.
When we get to a huge caldera the sun peeps out and the hollow sound of the mountain scares us. Not far from here, among the coagulated lava sparkling at sunrise, we finally see the incandescent eye of Dancalia. We wait until the afternoon, when the guides finally take us pass hot gas eruptions, molten lava and sharp edges, all the way to the shore of the lake. Liquid stone of 1250 degrees and a drop of sixty meters, a roaring column of lava rises from the belly of the earth.
The temperature is unbelievably high, but the lava lake with its roars, squirts and fumaroles attracts us as the light attracts moths. We stay there until the late night, unable to take our attention away from the “monster” and its hypnotic, dominating eye.
“You should go away now, you are running out of water and you have been too exposed to him” says my scout pointing at the gigantic red mass under us. “It’s too hot,” he urges on, “too hot, and tomorrow we have to go back. Erta Ale does not spare anyone, you know. Last year it ate my cousin, lava surrounded him and started rising… Now we have to go”. Reluctantly, dazed by the exhalations and the heat, I leave that huge energy, but immediately I know I want to return here.
Met at Pitti 82: Carlo Rivetti of Stone Island
In occasion of Pitti Uomo 82, Stone Island celebrated the company’s long history of successful collections, high technological fabric research, and being a brand experimenting with techniques often foreign to the fashion world. The retrospective exhibition Stone Island 30 shows over 200 garments from 30 years of collections along with the recently published book showcasing the immense archive, for the very same occasion. While in Florence, The Blogazine met with Mr Carlo Rivetti, the CEO and owner of Stone Island.
Buonasera mr Rivetti! The exhibition is great, how do you yourself feel about the final result of it?
I’m very surprised by the general response to the exhibition. First of all, there has been an unbelievable attendance by the press but also by our customers. As well, we invited and organized a bus to bring all the people from our factories from Emilia here. Without these people, this exhibition would not exist!
The exhibition has taken us from 1982 to 2012. How has the trip been?
It’s been more of a flight than a trip! Times flies… too fast! I think this is a milestone, not only in our history but also in the evolution of the man over the past years.
And what comes next?
Well, first of all we need to file the exhibition into our archive. As you can understand, we are very fond of all historical aspects and we need this as a memory for the future! I believe, well, we believe in the Internet a lot, and in all the new types of media – the Internet is like an elephant, hahaha, it doesn’t forget anything! Hopefully the effect of the exhibition will live on forever, in some way. Other than that, we will start working on a mobile application in the near future.
Is there anything in your archive that you can see working as well in the future?
It’s interesting that you ask. Yesterday I was in our showroom in Milan, and it is amazing to see how the Tela Stella, our initial material, has been under constant evolution all this time. And now, for the S/S 2014 collection we’re taking it aboard and transforming it into something new. I have been told many times that if you would change the features of our first original collection just a little bit, it would be very contemporary. So it’s really an interesting mix between the past and the future that stands before us.
How does it come that Stone Island is so devoted to the area of innovation?
Innovation is the DNA in my company, and you know; a company is built by people. My people have their DNA in the field of research and developing techniques, they keep on pushing for innovation all the time – it’s fantastic!
Your strength often lies in the fabrics, the technical research and the functionality. How do you see the balance between sportswear and fashion?
I don’t recognize myself in the fashion business, I see myself much closer to industrial design. Stone Island doesn’t do shows, we don’t do presentations, we don’t do fairs, we do zero. A couple of years ago a British newspaper said that Stone Island is the best kept secret in the fashion industry, and that I am very proud of. I believe in this type of communication instead, because I want to talk directly to the final customer. In these days, if you have a story to tell – and we got many stories to tell – and if you are consistent and respectful of your company’s DNA, people will be fascinated.
Thank you for giving us a little of your time Mr Rivetti!
