31/01/2013

MB Fashion Week Stockholm A/W 2013

MB Fashion Week Stockholm A/W 2013

The seasonal Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Stockholm ended yesterday. Household names such as Whyred and The Local Firm played their usual safe cards, which is quite understandable considering the financial situation which is almost as dreary as the Northern climate.

The Swedish fashion scene instead turned its eye towards the young breed of design talents. Malmö-based altewai.saome’s New York-inspired collection was as crowd-pleasing as ever. The question however is if this collection is too contemporary to still be relevant come autumn. The collection’s main element was the cut-out details in the spirit of Alexander Wang S/S 13. The cut-outs were concealed by zippers, much like the sporty pieces from BACK’s A/W 12.

The newest addition to the hectic schedule came in the form of Minna Palmqvist. Palmqvist has during the last seasons been praised for her intellectual avant garde. Garments featuring the intestines and cellulite, embroideries and other undesired human flaws are present in her season-transcending work named “Intimately social.” Her design ideology is heavily inspired by Dame Mary Douglas “Natural symbols”-sociology of the human body in social and intimate contexts. New pieces in her timeless collection were presented through a video installation in renowned auction house “Bukowskis”.

Petter Köhler- Photo Kristian Lövenborg

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30/01/2013

Designers As Contemporary Artisans

Designers As Contemporary Artisans

More than 150 years have passed since William Morris, the grand English designer, writer, poet, artist and socialist, has first expressed his repugnancy towards the industry and his praise towards traditional crafts. Since the industrial revolution, designers have often discussed their position towards mass production of industrial goods in opposition to the pleasures and values of transmitted by handcrafted objects. While the period following the end of Second World War has seen designers whole-heartedly embrace technology seen as a means of cultural and social renewal, the period after the digital revolution of the nineties and fascination with everything high-tech has seen designers take a step back in the process.


While re-discussing the issues of computer aided design and digital technologies, contemporary design seems to be currently taking a different shift. Even though many areas of design are strongly engaged with new technologies, the most traditional branches of design, like furniture and industrial design, are becoming more aware of the value of craftsmanship in the design process. As Paola Antonelli states in an article published by the magazine Domus “…here we are talking about designers getting their hands really dirty, which for some also means getting their consciences clean. The loaded history of crafts is once again timely, with its antagonism towards mass production, tinged with ethical implications, coupled with new conditions in the world and in the market—from a general awareness of the environmental crisis, to the attempt to price and sell design differently to appeal to art collectors.”


Hence, we are witnessing an actual ‘revival’ of a Morris-onian approach to design. It ranges from practices like the one pursued by Martino Gamper who works almost exclusively on limited edition projects designed with the help of handy artisans and sold in high-end design galleries. A more research-oriented approach like the one of the Italian duo based in The Netherlands, Formafantasma, who use craftsmanship as a method for sourcing new materials and modes of production. To end with the Dutch designer Hella Jongerius, who applies handcrafted details to industrially produced objects and furniture.

This new generation of contemporary artisans, whether they work inside the industry or in less institutionalized spheres of design practice, use craft as a method in developing projects that reflect both on the design discipline itself, as well as on the society, mass production, economy and the way we relate to the objects we use, in a constant dialogue between past and present, awareness and sensibility.


Rujana Rebernjak

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29/01/2013

Guest Interview n°43: Anja Cronberg

Guest Interview n°43: Anja Aronowsky Cronberg

In the last years, there has been a small movement of magazines that are rethinking the way fashion is presented on paper. On the side of ‘image-based’ fashion magazines like Purple or Self Service and ‘word-based’ academic journals like Fashion Theory or The Journal of Fashion, Beauty and Style, a new category has emerged. Examples of this new wave are Vestoj, founded and curated by Anja Aronowsky Cronberg, Fashion Projects, founded and curated by Francesca Granata, or Address, founded and curated by Johannes Reponen. What relates these experiences is the will to create new spaces and new ways to reflect on fashion where image and words constantly dialogue. As Paul Jobling argues in his “Fashion Spreads” (1999), the image and the word are two crucial and inseparable languages of fashion and these new fashion magazines show it clearly. To understand better this new method of thinking fashion, we interviewed Anja Aronowsky Cronberg who talks with us about her project “Vestoj. The Journal of Sartorial Matters”.

How, when and why did you start Vestoj?
Vestoj was started in 2009 in Stockholm. I was editing a magazine called Acne Paper at the time, and I was getting increasingly frustrated that we as a magazine were somehow always justifying the fact that we were a fashion publication (and brand marketing tool) by including material from other creative disciplines, art, architecture, film and whatnot. A lot of fashion publications suffer from this type of inferiority complex. It’s as if a magazine dealing with fashion can’t be taken seriously unless you include a heavy dose of material from the creative disciplines considered superior in the hierarchy of the arts.

At Acne Paper we did interviews with Noam Chomsky, Nan Goldin, Slavoj Zizek, David Lynch and Alejandro Jodorowsky but since we, as editors, were far from experts in politics, linguistics, art, film or philosophy the finished texts were often a rehash of the subjects our interviewees felt comfortable with. We didn’t push many boundaries in other words. I started to feel that the only way to truly make a fashion magazine that knew what it was talking about, was to make a magazine about fashion. So, I quit my job at Acne Paper, moved to Paris and started Vestoj – a journal about dress and fashion that uses the way we wear clothes to study the culture in which we live.

What is its aim and how is this magazine different from other fashion magazines?
The aim of Vestoj is to be simultaneously inside and outside, both fashion academia and the industry. We aren’t strictly speaking an academic journal; Vestoj isn’t peer reviewed, it includes plenty of images, not intended to be merely illustrative but instead to provide an alternative way to deal with our themes, and the publication itself is an object to treasure and preserve. We want text and image to be in constant dialogue with each other and to provide an insightful and scholarly but always approachable way to deal with our discipline. We work with a lot of academic writers and aim to stay abreast of the academic discourse but we also always want to remain relevant for the fashion industry. Just as we don’t conform to the conventional academic journal, we don’t kowtow to fashion industry standards for publishing either. We don’t follow the seasons, choosing instead to publish annually in order to keep a slower pace that allows us to properly reflect and research our themes. We’re not news-based, we have no advertising and we don’t urge our contributors to use or refer to any particular brands.

As I mentioned in my earlier answer, it’s very important to us to focus solely on fashion and dress, we’re a fashion publication rather than one about ‘lifestyle’ in general. Were we to speak to Chomsky, Goldin, Zizek, Lynch or Jodorowsky we would ask them about what they wear and why. We’re interested in fashion as a mirror of our culture, and we try to choose themes that are both topical and slightly off-kilter: so far we’ve dealt with fashion and nostalgia for our first issue, fashion and magic for our second and fashion and shame for our third. At the moment we’re working on our fourth issue, on fashion and power.

What are the future plans for Vestoj?
As I mentioned, our fourth issue is our current priority. The idea is that the issue will be a close, investigative look at power and fashion, i.e. what are the rules in fashion and who sets them? We’ll look closer at topics such as money, ideals, politics and ideology and attempt to understand and expose how the politics of fashion allows power relations to be built and maintained. We’ll examine how dress can be a powerful weapon of control and dominance but how it can, at the same time, also be subversive and empowering. In addition, we’ll explore the link between power, social discipline, conformity and fashion, and examine how contemporary norms can be so entrenched as to be beyond our discernment, causing us to regulate and control ourselves without any deliberate coercion from others.

What, then, happens when we step out of line? We’ll also examine how the mechanics of demonstrations of power within the fashion industry are displayed and why so few today appear to challenge them. Is this endemic of a more widespread attitude in society? We’ll look at why it is so hard to be critical in fashion and at who gains from the industry’s rigid and static power structure. And in light of this we will ask whether it is in fact possible to challenge the status quo, and, if so, how?

Marco Pecorari

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28/01/2013

Paola Revenioti – Paola

Paola Revenioti – Paola

If the antidote to world-wide economic and social crisis is achieved through investigating itself inside the cultural roots of every state, it is interesting to discover that at times these roots are not so distant from present. So happens that in Athens, the symbolic city for economical defeat and the worrisome rise of Nazi-inspired parties, from a closer inspection, the signs and the seeds of a more open and less hostile culture are not relegated to the classical world but also to most recent past.


The simple title of the exhibition at Breeder Gallery, Paola, reflects a sense of familiarity and intimacy as addressing to a friend or someone known for a long time. Since Paola Revenioti is not a well-known personality outside national borders, she is actually a central character as well as a cult figure in Greek LGBT scene from the beginning of the 80’s. Paola is one of the most eccentric and revolutionary authors in an undefined territory between personal life and representation: gay rights activist, anarchist, transvestite, prostitute, photographer and film maker, above all creator of the magazine “Kraximo” that first approached with simplicity the environment of prostitution and street life of hustlers including “high” contents as the famous interview to philosopher Felix Guattari.


Kraximo has been a real archetype; free, brave and passionate in order to narrate the desires and the revolutionary spirit of a generation on topics such as politics, trans-gender and transgression through words and images, deeply focused to melt well the issues, clearly that the real social and political “revolution” can not be separated by a sexual revolution.
 The first intense exhibition at Breeder Gallery curated by artist, architect and teacher Andreas Angelidakis, interprets cleverly the versatility of this peculiar figure by right selections and setting.

Furthermore, what is exhibited inside the Athenian gallery is not a proper photography exhibition but something even more fascinating: between a historical archive and an intimate diary loaded with feelings, the spectator can be penetrated sliding around from the industrial metal shelving for the simple photo frames emerging pictures and memories of queer environment described by Paola in many years of her “career” as precious relics. Touching photographs loaded with beauty, desire, social emancipation, friendship at the same time a witness of willingness to build an identity and a common lifestyle, marvelously lapped by the Mediterranean light as well as the Aegean Sea.

Besides the photographs, the exhibition features some videos especially adapted from the archive ‘Video in Progress’ that points out the Athenian transsexual environment and underworld in a familiar way, since Paola has been a protagonist in it for three decades and beyond.

Paola will run until 16 February.

Riccardo Conti

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27/01/2013

Sunday Breakfast by Love For Breakfast

Sunday Breakfast by Love For Breakfast

Pancakes lover. Pancakes made with love. Pancakes to say I love you.

Alessia Bossi from Love For Breakfast

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25/01/2013

Haute Couture Spring 2013

Haute Couture Spring 2013

After the pre-season presentations and before we dive into the month of Autumn & Winter collections, Paris and La Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture let us indulge in Spring one last time during the couture shows – the event that only a few of the fashion houses and young designers are invited to attend.

The annual subject for awe and some tittle-tattle is the Chanel show. We have seen icebergs and seaworlds and the anticipation of finding out what Karl Lagerfeld would do next was as usual big: and big it was. A forest had literally been imported into the Grand Palais, where the Spring 2013 couture show was hosted as usual. Out came models in feathery hair and make up, presenting the exquisite tweed suits and what at a quick glance looked like prints, but in fact were embroideries (and hours of work by a couturiers hand). Focus was put on the shoulders, which appeared bare and slim due to large detailing just below. Though, it wasn’t the collection or the magical show venue that got the most attention at the end of the day, but the grand finale where Lagerfeld brought out not one, but two, spring brides, showing his support for same sex marriage.

There was of course also other “regulars” on the couture schedule worth talking about. Raf Simons did his second couture collection for Dior, inviting the audience into his spring garden of serenity. The short haired models showed a collection of floating materials, suits and layers. Armani Privé flirted with eastern cultures: from the headpieces to the small gilets and rich colour palettes, and Valentino gave a bit of the significant red and that couture perfection that 500 hours (for one piece of garment) of handwork gives.


Maison Martin Margiela, together with the young designers who are not yet fixed on the couture calendar, stood for the edge and the new. Margiela brought out a coat made of, what has said to be, thousands of metallic candy wraps and Rad Hourani showed his unisex collection: something only he has done. Iris van Herpen and
Yiqing Yin, other youngsters in the world of couture, showed their visions for Spring. Sculpted dresses and elaborate pleating came down the runway at Yiqing Yin while van Herpen played with 3D effects and electricity in her collection called Voltage.

It rests to see who stays on the schedule for the next selection by La Fédération, but this legally instated label which is held in reserve for those selected few, will keep the audience to pilgrimage to Paris for this art called couture.

Lisa Olsson Hjerpe – Images courtesy to the respective brands

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24/01/2013

On The Streets of Copenhagen

On The Streets of Copenhagen

Copenhagen is sure to satisfy you, whatever you are looking for. Let your inner child be enthralled by the Little Mermaid, feel suitably moody at Assistens Cemetery, the final resting place of Hans Christian Anderson, and bike along cobbles and past green-tinged states – after all, in the capital city of cycling, bikes are the swiftest way to travel between some of the Northern Hemisphere’s most delightful culinary haunts. And just relax. After all, you’re in Copenhagen, the Scandinavian home of delectable, traditional and hyggelige (cosy) delights.


On the food front you have Noma, a two-Michelin-star haunt, housed in an old warehouse by the waterfront in the über artsy, 70s feeling Christianshavn neighbourhood. Lead by chef Rene Redzepi, adored internationally and regularly proclaimed as the best restaurant in the world, Noma takes its name from two Danish words – ‘nordisk’ (Nordic) and ‘mad’ (food). Here culinary insanity rules supreme with diners served with vegetables in their own dirt, wild ants, sea urchin toast, flower salad and raw razor clams. Not for the faint foodie-hearted, you understand why people travel from across the globe to experience a single meal.

While this ‘New Danish revolution’ may be the most famed gastronomic attraction, there are traditional culinary delights aplenty. Along Jargersborggade Street going hungry simply isn’t an option. Porridge is all the rage at Grød, crowds flock to the vege-centric menu at Relæ, you’ll get wired in the most delicious way at Coffee Collective and discover bakery-chic at Meyers Bageri – this is a city that seems to live for pastry.


But Copenhagen serves up more than just food. On every corner, on almost every street (this is especially true once you stumble into the university district) you’ll find either a vintage store, packed with quirk and character, or the new home of Denmark’s next big design thing. If it gets sunny and you’re done on the vintage front, wander to Amager Strandpark, an urban beach where the water is never quite warm, but cyclists and rollerbladers are always keen to entertain themselves in. For the lovers of brave, new architecture, check out the Royal Danish Playhouse. If the building doesn’t entertain you, the happenings within surely do.


Alternatively, pass a lazy afternoon at Nyhavn, meaning New Haven. Once a bustling commercial port teeming with sailors, alehouses and mysterious ladies of the night, this area is now famed for its titling houses, ancient signs and for the thriving restaurant and bar scene. Do as the locals do, bring a beer (and pastry, of course) and simply dangle your feet – people-spotting here is utterly brilliant. If you’re a fan of formality, catch the Royal Danish Guard patrolling the royal residence Amalienborg Palace. Guard action begins everyday at 11:30 at Rosenborg Castle (built in 1624 and overlooking a rather stunning garden) before concluding at noon with the traditional changing of the guard. Often accompanied by church bells and drum beats, this is a sight to behold.

So much more than just a historic city of canals, cobbled squares, copper spires and royalty, Copenhagen is a European treasure. Just be sure to remember your appetite and wide-eyed sense of wonder when visiting.


Liz Schaffer

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23/01/2013

Pre-Fall, Pre-Fashion Week

Pre-Fall, Pre-Fashion Week

Within a week, and continuously for the rest of the following month, the Internet will explode with street shots of people dressed up to their teeth (even though looking just casually well-dressed), hashtags with the two little letters F & W in combination with a city initial, and for the people behind it: a month of travelling. It is once again time for #fashionweek.

Like for any good movie, there’s an intriguing trailer to watch up until the opening night. In fashion words that would be the pre-fall collections: the ‘trailer’ filling up the space between the fashion weeks as much as between the seasons. The women’s pre-fall 2013 collections have showed a mash-up of upcoming trends.


The Pantone key colour of 2013, emerald, has made an appearance, just like rich shades of red: burgundy, oxblood and saturated red wine tones in rich wools and shiny-coated fabrics. The pre-season coats are big, boxy and over-sized while the quilting and padding from the continuous biker trend has been seen to move over to dresses, skirts and sweatshirts. On the illustrative side the presentations have shown geometric patterns, smudged graphics and textured prints as well as a softer side of folkloric florals in heavy brocades.


More than colours, shapes and knee-length shorts and skirts we have seen references from other eras. Clare Weight Keller at Chloé mixed French elegance with English heritage, while Acne found inspiration in the famous Swedish artist and playwright August Strindberg, and Max Mara looked to David Bowie’s Hunky Dory album.

The pre-fall collections might not be a true mirror of what we will see on the runway but nonetheless, they’ve intrigued us to see more.


Lisa Olsson Hjerpe, trends by Tamsin Cook – Image courtesy of Acne, Chloé & Burberry Prorsum

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22/01/2013

AMO and OMA for Knoll and Prada

AMO and OMA for Knoll and Prada

We knew about the design-architecture-fashion love triangle for quite some time now. It has, by now, taken many different shapes, from Marni’s 100 chairs made by Columbian ex-prisoners, to more than a few no-brainers where a fashion company provided the textiles and a design company thoughtlessly applied them to their furniture. Nevertheless, the collaboration we have witnessed last week could hardly fit in any of the previously imaginable categories.


It is the widely appreciated love story between OMA and Prada that has managed to surprise us once again, but maybe this time, not in a very good way. During Milan’s Men’s Fashion Week, Prada presented their new line of clothing on a specially designed runway, arranged around the theme of the ideal home. And even though this might seem quite nice, the best part of this story is yet to come: the fabulously designed runway featured some of the most un-fabulously designed furniture, this time by AMO, the research counterpart of OMA, for the American company Knoll.


This explicitly post-modernist furniture, if judged strictly in the context of a fashion week, could definitely be appreciated. But, it is the fact that the furniture displayed on Prada’s runway, to be officially presented by Knoll on another high-profile Milanese event, Salone del Mobile, isn’t just a conceptual inquiry into post-modernist design, but an actual line of furniture to be sold and used in our more than un-perfect homes, that leaves a sense of doubt. Made from shiny plexiglas, carefully masked wood and colourful foam, these geometric swivel armchairs and stacked coffee tables aren’t something anyone should aspire of having in their ideal house. The only way this furniture might be understood is in the highly fashionable circles of ‘conceptual’ and ‘radical’ design where it is supposed to be looked, thought about and admired, but not actually used.


Rujana Rebernjak

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21/01/2013

Danh Vo – Chung Ga Opla

Danh Vo – Chung Ga Opla

Danh Vo (born in 1975 in Saigon, currently lives and works between Berlin and New York) the recent winner of the prestigious Hugo Boss Prize, is the protagonist of the second show curated by Alessandro Rabottini around the “Accademy” topic in the lavish spaces of Villa Medici in Rome.


Danh Vo is the perfect example of a son of the multicultural society: his family fled South Vietnam in a homemade boat, and was rescued at sea by a Danish ship. For this reason Vo settled in Denmark, the experience influencing his personal imagery, pushing him in creating not just a sort of personal idea of history, but also in “testing” the official Western history.


Like his previous exhibitions, also this show titled Chung Ga Opla – a phonetic translation in Vietnamese from the French “Oeuf au plat” (fried egg) – is similar to a psychological and unconscious journey in the artist’s mind and reflections: each artwork and installation are performance-based pieces, inspired by his life experiences, seeming to materialize real facts, musings, and inventions mingled together in a sort of ready-made gallery of objects.


These historical artifacts create a dialogue with the site and the spaces in which they are displayed, like in Villa Medici, where everything has been created as a “reaction” with the ambient and amplifying this experience of examining how such items are dispersed across borders or how they symbolize transnational movements. 
Danh Vo seems to suggests that official histories and biographies are written, rewritten or completely relative, and the experience of the emigrant offers a unique point of view to make more dense this relationship with some pivotal benchmarks like cultural and ethnic identity.


The core of Chung Ga Opla is represented by Fabulous Muscles, a room where the artist has involved his relatives and a group of children, leaving them completely free to paint and draw on the walls. In this naïve-like example of Art Brut Danh Vo has inserted different quotes from authors like Antonin Artaud, Emil Cioran and David Bowie.


More than an exhibition of a visual artist, Chung Ga Opla – along with the other Danh Vo’s shows – is an attempt to use contemporary art as a language to learn and explain new ways to tell stories and histories.

Danh Vo’s exhibition will run until 10 February.

Riccardo Conti

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