07/06/2013

Future Beauty: 30 years of Japanese Fashion

We started hearing about Asian designers during 70s, when names like Kenzo and Issey Miyake made their first step into Western culture. From that moment on, a new revolutionary wave was starting and it reached its peak in the beginning of 80s, just one decade after. 
It happened that during Paris Fashion Week, in the summer of 1983, a scandal occurred. Two young designers from Japan, called Rei Kawakubo and Yohji Yamamoto, launched a completely new aesthetic based mostly on black – and a bit of white – and sort of ignored the usual female silhouette by using extra large garments and introducing the no-shape concept. 
The shows developed a series of open questions and statements from the fashion system itself, that started to call them the post-war generation.


Nowadays we dare to claim that the Asian fashion designers are considered the most innovative and inspirational ones worldwide. 
Three years ago at Barbican museum in London, an exhibit that showcased some of the most iconic Japan pieces took place. This year the show comes back at SAM, Simonyi Special Exhibition Galleries, in the city of Seattle. 
Curated by Kyoto Costume Institute director, Akiko Fukai, the exhibit aims to display the big names of East, such as Kenzo Takada, Junya Watanabe, Jun Takahashi, Rei Kawakubo, Yohji Yamamoto, Issey Miyake, through clothes, runway videos, photographs and magazines. 
By starting from the very beginning until the more contemporary times, the exhibition gives the visitors a complete view of the increasing evolution of Japanese fashion.



The show will be open from June 27th until September 8th.

Francesca Crippa 
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07/06/2013

On High Ground

The heart of the global theatrical, artistic and comic community every August, Edinburgh is a city of soaring volcanic hills, ghost-guarded closes and culinary daring.

The biggest attraction is the Edinburgh International Festival, which runs alongside the somewhat adventurous yet thoroughly captivating Fringe Festival – a month-long celebration of all things creative and laughter-inducing. But the city exists apart from these festivals. Scotland’s cultural and traditional capital, a UNESCO city of literature, and hugged by the North Sea, this is a place of history, national pride and rocky hills that are well worth a climb.


Robert Louis Stevenson, a native son of Edinburgh, always claimed that the best view of the city was gained from Carlon Hill. A weathered, monument-covered hilltop, this was Edinburgh’s first public park and was formed by volcanic activity 340 million years ago. Once used for bleaching, it’s now frequented by those keen to snap a cloudy, atmospheric shot of the moody city. Found at the far east of Princess Street, from here you can spy the port town of Leith (where the Britannia now resides), Arthur’s Seat, Salisbury Craigs and the surrounding countryside.

On the subject of Arthur’s Seat, that’s another Scottish treasure worth tackling. Found in Holyrood Park, this climb is short but steep. From the summit, if it’s not too blustery, you can spy the entire city below you with the Royal Mile – stretching from Holyrood House, once the home of the ill-fated Mary Queen of Scots, to the Edinburgh Castle – appearing particularly alluring. Overlooking the sea and adorned by a ruin or two, you’re unlikely to hear the call of a bagpipe up here. Moving and dramatic as they are, they do get a bit much after a few days in the city.



Naturally, this sort of climbing brings on peckishness. But fear not, Edinburgh is a town where foraged foods and local produce are utilized and adored. At Wedgwood the vivacious character that is Head Chef Paul Wedgwood creates dishes inspired by his global travels and filled with ingredients he foraged himself. If you’re going to brave haggis, brave it here. Then there’s the Larder Bistro, where the team works with local farmers, fishmongers, fruit, vegetable and drink suppliers to create a tempting seasonable menu. With a range of characterful suppliers and a love of all things local, this is where you head for a contemporary taste of Scotland. If it’s a view you’re after, accompanied by pickled vegetables or salmon prepared three ways, then venture to the Tower, attached to the National Museum of Scotland. Here you’ll feast on a rustic menu while watching the Edinburgh skyline transform beneath a seemingly endless sunset. Hills, panoramas, food and festivities, there’s a lot in this city to love.

Liz Schaffer 
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06/06/2013

4 Questions To – Margaux Lönnberg

She is the Parisian girl who looks Scandinavian and has a name that is the perfect clash of her heritage: part French, part Danish, part Swedish, part Finnish. She spent her years growing up between Paris and Morocco. She’s the blogger-turned-designer whose style, taste and personality have made her somewhat of a muse. She’s the girl who doesn’t read the questions before our interview because she prefers to respond naturally from her head and heart. The Blogazine got a moment with Margaux Lönnberg and got to know her honest and charismatic persona.

You’re recognized as blogger, model, designer, muse… what would you, yourself, say that your ‘title’ is?

Well.. I would like to designate myself as designer, regarding that I design my brand! Muse, yes, I think I’m a muse in certain ways for certain people: maybe for the blogosphere, for a few creatives and photographers, and it’s something I always loved. But today I present myself as a designer. It’s what I always wanted to do and it was for this reason I started my blog to start with. I already designed a bit before and with the blog I could create my own universe with all my inspiration and music et voilà, now I have my own brand!

Speaking about your eponymous brand, Margaux Lönnberg – the collections seem to be a reflection of your own wardrobe. Are you your own muse?

No, but I’m inspired by my own taste, of course. Though, my taste comes from others – I don’t think my taste comes only from me, but is something that is created through the people around me! When I design and in everything I do, I find inspiration in photography, images, music – above all, music! My blog is full of music! – cinema, books.

I have my style and I try to design the things I like and that I don’t find, the things I think are missing – the brand is about style and not about making something that is ‘in fashion’ or trendy, and it is what makes it interesting. I don’t follow fashion, at all. I’m not looking for women saying “this out of fashion, it’s passé – I’ll throw it away”. I’m creating a style, something that last.

If not Paris, where would you live?

I’d have to say New York. New York is a city where people really do things. In Paris people are a bit.. soft, they don’t do things for real, thoroughly. In New York people work hard. Then you have the architecture, all the different quartiers, neighbourhoods, all these places that create a city, and it’s a city that is rich. Rich in everything! Though, it’s a very rapid city, the people really speed, which stresses me a little, I like things a bit more cool. But the answer is New York – every corner of the city is truly inspiring.

What’s the one piece of clothing you couldn’t do without?

Le t-shirt blanc! A white tee is the basic that you can wear with everything: jeans, pants, skirts, during the day, during the evening, in the night. Then there are plenty of other pieces of course, but a white t-shirt really is my wardrobe favourite and it’s a piece I wear all the time.


Interview by Lisa Olsson Hjerpe 
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06/06/2013

1 Granary – By Students For Students

Central Saint Martins students have recently released their last project: the printed version of the online platform
1 Granary. Just over one year after the launch of the blog, they decided to turn it into a real tangible edition by creating a collectors’ magazine with a limited circulation of one thousand printed issues.


Over the last years we have seen several annual and bi-annular magazines taking their place in the newsstands, but what makes 1 Granary magazine different from other similar publications is that it is completely composed by the school’s graduates as well as the freshmen. The project that started in 2011 got its name from the place where all courses of the school had been reunited in a single venue: 1 Granary Square, London.

The idea of using the school’s address as the name of the magazine aims to extend the location where the students can share ideas and projects without feeling pressured or fearing to be misunderstood. The magazine wants to become a foothold for all Central Saint Martins students, helping them to grow in a familiar and open reality, while experimenting with various paths. Olya Kuryshchuk, editor-in-chief and BA scholar, seeks to create a source of inspiration by students for students, but more than that, the magazine can also be a way of opening the doors to a wider public, showing insights of the everyday life and work of CSM.


The magazine’s two hundred pages are filled with photography, art and everything related to the subjects of the studied courses. Emerging talents are featured alongside the well-known names, and content such as an interview with the Sex Pistols guitarist Glen Matlock, a tale about John Galliano’s early school years and a fashion editorial styled by Katie Grand, Love Magazine editor. By bringing something digital to a printed form, uniting the two platforms, 1 Granary also forms a new creative wave with insiders under the same cover, both attempting to push a fresh growing generation into the fashion field.

Francesca Crippa 
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05/06/2013

Memorable Fashion Moments

Fashion moments are those flashes of fashion that linger longer than a season. It is not a mere description of a runway look but a piece of history or a definition of a memory. In Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby the costume design was almost as important as the storyline, which brought in mind a few other historical fashion moments.

Audrey Hepburn walking down 5th avenue to the notes of Henry Mancini is an iconic scene from Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Her black dress was something that gave the little black dress a permanent place in the fashion hall of fame. The dress designed by Hubert de Givenchy was simplistic, yet the dipping back of the neck brought thoughts to the eastern culture of the Geisha giving it a unique quality. In a way this is something that can give an ironic comment on the Holly Golightly character.

When receiving an Oscar as Best Actress for her role in Million Dollar Baby, Hilary Swank wore a dress by Guy Laroche, also glancing backwards. The dress consisted of 27 yards of silk and seemed quite demure in the front but surprised as the back was exceptionally low cut. The sheer surprise of the dress shape and the minimalistic feel helped to form a new opinion of the saying “less is more”.

Diane Keaton’s Annie Hall reinvented the term “androgynous” through her look of layered menswear. Introducing the la Garçonne in a whole new way by mixing up a more dandy look with long hair and neutral makeup. The 70s have been a fashion inspiration for many years now, and the Annie Hall-look – which takes inspiration from other eras – creates a vague time continuum making it easier to be timeless.

These are a few trips down the fashion lane which is paved with many more moments. Uma Thurman in Pulp Fiction and Michelle Pfeiffer in Scarface are other perfect examples, everyone surely has their own favorites among the many. The paving keeps adding new stones to the lane such as the pink suit á la Gatsby.

Victoria Edman 
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05/06/2013

Ariel Pink’s Teenage Symphonies

Ariel Pink has never been easy to digest. Viewed by critics and fans alike as a scuzzed-out L.A. drug zombie, his music can come off as confusing, charged full of pop hooks, nonsensical lyrics, unexplainable instrumental wanderings and spoken-word interruptions, and a fair dose of 60s folk-pop references. Many of his songs would fare well alongside The Byrds and Donovan on am radio, while others are so bizarre and nonsensical that they make The Butthole Surfers seem as chart-friendly as The Everly Brothers.

It’s hard to know where to put him in the pop lexicon, but like all successful songwriters, his appeal lies in his ability to forge new ground while keeping one foot firmly rooted in traditionalism. Ever since landing a record deal with Animal Collective’s startup label Paw Tracks in 2003 he’s been on a steady upswing, releasing select work from his back catalog before moving to 4AD and blowing up with 2010’s artistic and critical breakthrough Before Today. That record cemented Pink’s reputation as the idiot savant of lo-fi bedroom pop, something like the 21st Century’s answer to Brian Wilson: an erratic pop craftsman in his early 30s writing near-perfect songs about people in their early 20s for people in their teens romanticize and obsess over.

“Round and Round”, the lead single from Before Today, has become the “Good Vibrations” for the twenty-something crowd. Former Girls’ frontman Christopher Owens called him our generation’s greatest songwriter, and the critics are on board. Pink himself said that the song was a mashup of three separate tracks he had written over a decade-long period, a process that would serve you well to keep in mind when listening to his music. On his latest, 2012’s Mature Themes, tracks change direction without warning (“Is This The Best Spot?”), lyrics make absolutely no sense, at least on a front-brain level (“Kinski Assassin”, “Farewell American Primitive”), while perfect pop nuggets fly out of nowhere (“Mature Themes”, “Baby”, “If Only In My Dreams”. His live shows are notoriously unpredictable. It can get confusing, but that’s part of the fun. Either way, what he’s doing is hard to put down and walk away from. More often than not, you ask yourself, is Ariel Pink an idiot or a genius? His entire career seems to be casually answering your question with a question: can’t it be both?

Ariel Pink plays Irving Plaza in New York on June 6th.

Lane Koivu 
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04/06/2013

The Book Affair at Venice Art Biennale

Even though for quite some time now we are being told that books are dead, a shy but particularly passionate niche of producers tries to demonstrate the mainstream media that they are wrong. In fact, if you are even a tiny bit into design and art, you must have noted the resurgence of particularly well-produced magazine and books, printed matter and ephemera, together with the incredible growth of exhibitions and fairs exploring the phenomenon. It is in this particular context that The Book Affair, an event curated by a small Venetian publishing house – Automatic Books – was born.


Organized in the occasion of the 55th Venice Art Biennial, The Book Affair was founded with the idea of creating a platform for exchange and discussion about the contemporary production of artists’ books, situated in an intersection of disciplines — namely the visual arts, literary arts and/or critical design. A highly stimulating and fertile environment offered by one of the most significant art events in the world, La Biennale di Venezia, has allowed The Book Affair to propose a unique space of inquiry complemented by interdisciplinary practice, collaboration or coproduction. In fact, the event brought together numerous contemporary independent art and design publishers, graphic designers and artists, collectors and curators to confront their work and thoughts.


Thus, visitors were able to observe the history of art through the book media, in an exhibition curated by Giorgio Maffei, participate in conferences held by Dexter Sinister and David Horvitz, actively discuss contemporary publishing with Joshua Simon, Paul Soulellis or the founders of San Rocco magazine, check new books published by Valiz, Roma Publications, Rollo Press or Onomatopee, as well as simply enjoy the beautiful location of San Lorenzo library, proving the skeptics that books will probably never go out of style.


Rujana Rebernjak 
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04/06/2013

Inner Body Design: Design In a Capsule

In different cities, apart from one another, yet almost simultaneously, different designers have left our tangible, materialistic, outside world for what it is. They have started to develop ideas and to design products for our inside, our inner body. And once these products are ready to be produced and utilized, we would have to swallow them to ‘activate’ the purchased product.

Dutch designer Daan Roosegaarde – artist/ innovator/engineer – is “obsessed to customize the world around us” and in many ways he has accomplished to materialize the rather inconceivable ideas he has in his brain, mostly by using technology. Right now he is working on a project that goes – at least for many of us – beyond our common sense and more towards a sci-fi scenario: a pill that makes us glow, shine and luminous. Within a year from now Roosegaarde expects his project to be finalized and then, once we absorb the pill, light will shine through the skin of our hands (“let’s start with the hands”, Roosegaarde suggests). In order to create his “luminous pills” Roosegaarde looked closely at the animal world, at a jellyfish for example, and how to hack nature’s techniques.

Another project that shows striking similarities but that builds on the body’s own enzymes is the project “Swallowable Parfum” of Australian body-architect Lucy McRae. Together with synthetic biologist Sheref Mansy, McRae is developing a capsule that contains “synthesized fragrant lipid molecules that mimic the structure of normal fat molecules naturally found in the body”. Without going into the biological details, this means that after we eat the capsule our body will emit a unique fragrance through the skin’s surface when we perspire.


These two projects are still in their research phase, but going a few years back in time, 2009 – 2011 to be exact, you will find another project (a drinkable yogurt this time) that has to go through our body to perform its function. British designers James King and Alexandra Daisy Grinsberg developed in close collaboration with undergraduates from the Cambridge University in London the E-chromi project: the idea of a drink laced with bacteria, which “react with the enzymes, proteins and other chemicals present in our gastrointestinal tract and turn into different colours for different diseases”, where after our stool and a colour swatch provide us with an easy health check.

Merging their creative fascinating ideas with biology and technology brings these designers to an unusual working area: our inner body. This is normally something we regard as only belonging in the hands of doctors, dentists and biologists. Without a doubt soon there will occur more inner body design projects and laboratories that challenge the idea that our human bodies are a platform for technology and that we can (re)program it to what we desire, need or want to avoid in the future.

Lisanne Fransen – Images Lucy McRae, Tobias Titz 
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03/06/2013

The 55th Venice Biennale | The Pavilions Part. 1

After the bellyful of art offered by The Encyclopedic Palace, the next step is making a plan and selecting a personal path not to get lost – and tired out, especially if you have only few time and you keep dragging a hard parties’ night weight around – in the numerous projects proposed by the international pavilions. At the Arsenale a stop at the Italian pavilion is essential. The first thought goes to the drastic reshape achieved by the curator Bartolomeo Pietromarchi who selected, in clear juxtaposition with the mare magnum of the previous edition guided by Sgarbi, only fourteen artists whose works are set up dividing them according to seven couples: Luigi Ghirri and Luca Vitone, Francesco Arena and Fabio Mauri, Piero Golia and Sislej Xhafa, Flavio Favelli and Marcello Maloberti, Francesca Grilli and Massimo Bartolini, Giulio Paolini and Marco Tirelli, Gianfranco Baruchello and Elisabetta Benassi.


The pictures by the returned-to-life Luigi Ghirri opens the “Journey through Italy” and are exhibited along with the rhubarb notes of the olfactory (sometimes sickly) installation by Luca Vitone that spreads around the rooms. The following conceptual combinations see Arena and Mauri “deal with unresolved gaps in history through the filter of the body and performance”, while referring to culture and pop-folk traditions, Favelli displays a huge cupola made of sheet metal, wood glass, neon and a series of decalcomanias on vintage plates. The installation is positioned just in front of the numerous wood-tables sustained by students, who stand around an impressive marble block, looking up and down in silence, building an unstable balance for Maloberti’s performance, this time less playful than usual (maybe he felt the psychological load of the Biennial). Giulio Paolini closed the show, dialoguing with Marco Tirelli on the theme of art as a joining link between illusion and reality. Thanks to a special project introduced by the curator in February 2013, all the exhibited works have been supported through a gathering of funds.


Moving to the Giardini, we stop off at Dutch pavilion where Mark Manders presents his project entitled Room with Broken Sentence, which consists of installations, sculptures, offset print on paper and architectural interventions that create an enigmatic impact through the use of different media: epoxy and painted bronze look like clay and brass reminds of wood. Germany and France, for the first time in the history of Venice Biennale, swap the pavilion and decide not to display national artists. France devotes its space to Anri Sala, Franco-Albanian artist living in Berlin, who takes inspiration from the Concerto in D for the Left Hand composed by Maurice Ravel in 1930, while Germany hosts the works by Ai WeiWei from China, Dayanita Singh from India, Santu Mofokeng, South Africa and, finally, the German Romuald Karmakar.

The Chinese artist, one of the most influential persons of contemporary art, creates a striking installation consisting of 886 wooden stools made by craftsmen that symbolizes WeiWei’s culture and stands for “the individual and its relation to an overarching and excessive system in a postmodern world developing at lightning speed.”


It is worth to visit United States’ pavilion made by Sarah Sze, who develops experimental site-specific installations, which collects myriads of different objects in an obsessive order, a sort of complex work stations that analyze the dichotomy between the difficulty of finding a stability in the world and its constant research. While getting to the touchy and symbolic Greek pavilion by Stefanos Tsivopoulos that reflects on different social classes and different ways of relating to money, we hear the bells ringing in the closer Polish show during the performance by Konrad Smolenski.

The path is still long and there would be many more things to talk about, but we decided to close this piece with the great project by Russia, where Vadim Zakharov displays Danaë, an installation that put up the worst human feelings: from anger to envy, from greed to hate and selfishness. Here a man astride from the ceiling throws peanuts peels careless of people below, and a prie-dieu is disposed in the centre of the room, to not to look up to God, but to direct the views to a dispositive that activates a rain of gold coins, and drive them down to a pile of money. Its disarming simplicity and direct approach turn it in one of the best pavilions of the whole Biennial.

Monica Lombardi 
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03/06/2013

The 55th Venice Biennale 2013 | The Encyclopedic Palace

There were high expectations for the 55th edition of the Venice Art Biennial. And this was not only because it is still one of the most important main art events worldwide, but also and above all, because this year the rudder is in the hands of the artstar Massimiliano Gioni, the youngest curator ever called to guide the Biennial. The Encyclopedic Palace is the name chosen to identify the exhibition, which takes inspiration from the building – the scale model is placed at the beginning of the path – projected by Marino Auriti (1891-1980) to contain the utopian digest of the universal knowledge. According to the curator’s point of view, art, in all its forms, is not just for entertainment, but represents a way to understand the world. Thus this show, through its anthropological approach, reflects on the creative boosts of the last two centuries to set people’s imagination free.



Articulated between the “Giardini” and the “Arsenale” this exhibition is a sort of Cabinet de Curiosités, which combines the work of different past and present artists – 150 from 37 countries -, whose interest was/is related to the role of images in sharing and structuring the knowledge. From the displayed pieces we chose the striking video devoted to robotic surgery entitled Da Vinci by Yuri Ancarani (b. 1972, Ravenna, Italy), the room split between the masters Bruce Nauman and Dieter Roth, and the one celebrating the Golden Lionesses Maria Lassnig and Marisa Merz, the works by the new generation of young bigs such as Ed Atkins (b. 1982, Oxford, UK), Neïl Beloufa (b. 1985, Paris, france), Camille Henrot (1978, Paris, France) – Silver Lion for the best promising artist 2013 -, the shocking videos about the teen-aged neurosis by Ryan Trecartin (b. 1981, Webster, texas), the timeless sculptures by the Japanese Shinichi Sawada and the ones by the Swiss duo Peter Fischli and David Weiss, the impressive reconstruction of a Vietnamese church by Danh Vo (b.1975, Vietnam), and the showcase containing the delicate and poetic work by Ivorian artist Frédéric Bruly Bouabré (b. 1923, Zéprégueé), even if the list is undoubtedly lacking numerous of the other names that would deserve to be mentioned.



Mixing painting, photography, installation, sculpture and video along with writing, architecture, psychology, magic and spirituality, Mr. Gioni, who never misses a shot, in a clever and proficient way, put together a show that looks at the history of image all-round, from a collective and individual perspective. So, among the guests of his ‘palace’, even the unconscious and the occultism find their place with the Red Book by C. G. Jung and the tarots by Aleister Crowley and Frieda Harris.



The 55th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia will run until 24th November 2013.

Monica Lombardi 
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