Category Archives: Tailoring

Jul 3

Portrait of An Artist as A Flâneur

Édouard Manet, Ignace-Henri-Jean-Théodore Fantin-Latour, 1867

 

Édouard Manet photographed by Félix Nadar, circa 1867-70

 

Édouard Manet was at the peak of his notoriety when the young Henri Fantin-Latour exhibited this portrait at the Salon of 1867. Manet himself chose not to submit any work that year, having had his submission rejected by the 1866 Salon jury. In this commanding image of the great French artist, Fantin portrayed Manet not as a painter, but as a flâneur, a sophisticated man-about-town whose eyes are open to every nuance of modern life. The background of the painting is almost completely blank, both in homage to works by Manet and in emulation of photographic portraits of the period.

In 1867, having been regularly rejected by the official Salon, Édouard Manet decided to present a private exhibition of 56 of his works in an independent pavilion close to the Exposition Universelle in Paris. Henri Fantin-Latour’s decision to submit this portrait of his friend—signed “To my friend Manet”—to the Salon that year may have been calculated to play off Manet’s increasing notoriety. A critic admitted that it was hard to reconcile the elegant figure in the portrait with the long-haired bohemian he had imagined Manet to be.

Jun 4

The Photographers’ Best Model

“It is impossible to contemplate the Salon walls without condoling with Mr. Steichen on the conflict between art and popular prudery. The camera can represent flesh so superbly that, if I dared, I would never photograph a figure without asking that figure to take it clothes off. I delight in mankind as nature makes it, and take such a moderate interest in mere garments that my tailor…has..had to change his name to avoid the public discredit of my callous abuse of his masterpieces….”

George Bernard Shaw
Amateur Photographer
(16 October 1902)

 

Photographed portrait of George Bernard Shaw by Edward J. Steichen, 1907

 

May 11

Dirty, Poorly Dressed

Roberto Bolaño’s Chair. Photo by Patti Smith, 2010

 
 

SUCIO, MAL VESTIDO

“En el camino de los perros mi alma encontró
a mi corazón. Destrozado, pero vivo,
sucio, mal vestido y lleno de amor.
En el camino de los perros, allí donde no quiere ir nadie.
Un camino que sólo recorren los poetas
cuando ya no les queda nada por hacer.
¡Pero yo tenía tantas cosas que hacer todavía!
Y sin embargo allí estaba: haciéndome matar
por las hormigas rojas y también
por las hormigas negras, recorriendo las aldeas
vacías: el espanto que se elevaba
hasta tocar las estrellas.
Un chileno educado en México lo puede soportar todo,
pensaba, pero no era verdad.
Por las noches mi corazón lloraba. El río del ser, decían
unos labios afiebrados que luego descubrí eran los míos,
el río del ser, el río del ser, el éxtasis
que se pliega en la ribera de estas aldeas abandonadas.
Sumulistas y teólogos, adivinadores
y salteadores de caminos emergieron
como realidades acuáticas en medio de una realidad metálica.
Sólo la fiebre y la poesía provocan visiones.
Sólo el amor y la memoria.
No estos caminos ni estas llanuras.
No estos laberintos.
Hasta que por fin mi alma encontró a mi corazón.
Estaba enfermo, es cierto, pero estaba vivo”.

Roberto Bolaño

 
 

___________________________________

 
 

“On the dogs’ path, my soul came upon
my heart. Shattered, but alive,
dirty, poorly dressed, and filled with love.
On the dogs’ path, there where no one wants to go.
A path that only poets travel
when they have nothing left to do.
But I still had so many things to do!
And nevertheless, there I was: sentencing myself to death
by red ants and also
by black ants, traveling through the empty villages:
fear that grew
until it touched the stars.
A Chilean educated in Mexico can withstand everything,
I thought, but it wasn’t true.
At night, my heart cried. The river of being, chanted
some feverish lips I later discovered to be my own,
the river of being, the river of being, the ecstasy
that folds itself into the bank of these abandoned villages.
Mathematicians and theologians, diviners
and bandits emerged
like aquatic realities in the midst of a metallic reality.
Only fever and poetry provoke visions.
Only love and memory.
Not these paths or these plains.
Not these labyrinths.
Until at last my soul came upon my heart.
It was sick, it’s true, but it was alive.”

English translation by Laura Healy

Nov 2

Tilda Swinton’s Surreal Fashion Fantasy

Tim Walker and actress Tilda Swinton created a series of phantasmagorias inspired by artists Salvador Dalí, Giorgio de Chirico, Remedios Varo, Leonora Carrington, and other muses and collaborators of English eccentric, poet, and surrealist collector Edward James.

 
 

Cover of W magazine. Modern Beauty issue. May 2013

 
 

Givenchy by Riccardo Tisci dress; Cornelia James gloves

 
 

Vera Wang Collection dress; Vicki Beamon lips and fingertips; Cornelia James gloves

 
 

Acne Studios gown

 
 

Maison Martin Margiela dress and gloves

 
 

Rick Owens jacket and dress

 
 

Ann Demeulemeester dress; Cornelia James gloves

 
 

Balmain jacket; Max Mara jacket; Swinton’s own Olivier Saillard gloves

 
 

Rochas dress; National Theatre Costume Hire underskirt; Cornelia James gloves; Céline pumps

 
 

Angels the Costumiers cape; Gucci gown; Vicki Beamon mask; Cornelia James gloves

 
 

Azzedine Alaïa top, skirt, and shoes; Emilio Cavallini bodysuit; Alexander McQueen headpiece

 
 

Louis Vuitton dress and shoes; Cornelia James gloves; Emilio Cavallini tights

 
 

Haider Ackermann shirt and trousers

 
 

Mary Katrantzou dress; Cornelia James gloves

 
 

Giorgio Armani blouse, skirt, and pants; Haider Ackermann dress; Ann Demeulemeester top; Cornelia James gloves; Prada gaiters and socks

 
 

Francesco Scognamiglio dress

Aug 3

Glamouflage at Glastonbury

On 2013 Mick Jagger called on the help of his long-term partner L’Wren Scott to create his glittering outfits for The Rolling Stones’ Glastonbury and Hyde Park performances. Ensembles include a big gorilla coat covered in hand-embroidered ostrich feathers, and a black jacket decorated with colourful butterfly motifs, a reference to the hundreds of cabbage white butterflies that were released at the band’s first Hyde Park concert in 1969 – in memory of guitarist Brian Jones who died two days before the show. For Glastonbury, the annual music festival in the Somerset countryside, which the Stones played for the first time in June, Scott and Jagger took a more pastoral turn.

 
 

Sketch for Mick Jagger by L’Wren Scott

 
 

Jagger performing in the oak-leaf-inspired jacket

 
 

“We started to think about the Glastonbury show and I said to her that [I wanted] something very English — an oak leaf. That’s where we started from in the Glastonbury show, nobody [in the audience] realized they were really oak leaves [on the jacket] — but I did,” said Jagger.

Even if Glastonbury’s crowd of thousands didn’t (or couldn’t) notice every detail on the jacket, the design meant a lot to Jagger. “Yes, it’s important. Most people just think it’s a bright green jacket, but if you look you can see. Glastonbury is an essentially English event,” he said.

Scott said she had originally wanted to do something around a leaf motif for Glastonbury. “So I did some tests of embroidery of leaves and I showed [Mick] a drawing with an embroidery or visual attached,” she said. “He loved the leaf idea, and I said it’s kind of like a ‘glamouflage.’

“We were joking about the glamouflage at Glastonbury, and he said ‘Well I want it to be oak leaf.’ So if you look at it closely you see the oak leaves — it’s quite cool,” said Scott of the sequin-embroidered jacket in emerald green, khaki and black. “It just felt very right for Glasto, to open the show with a very outdoorsy feel — and the crowd was incredible.”

Jul 14

What Do We See

What we do see depends mainly on what we look for. … In the same field the farmer will notice the crop, the geologists the fossils, botanists the flowers, artists the colouring, sportsmen the cover for the game. Though we may all look at the same things, it does not all follow that we should see them.”

John Lubbock
The Beauties of Nature and the Wonders of the World We Live in

 
 

Editorial To Me You Are a Work of Art. Photography by Dirk Alexander. Styling and illustration by Nicola Formichetti for Dazed Digital. Model: John Kharalian. All clothes by Mugler SS 2013 Collection.

“The shoot is a Nicopanda and Mugler mash-up,” Formichetti explains. “I do these illustrations for my brand Nicopanda and come up with new characters everyday. This one’s called “Chetti” and it’s an amoeba-panda! It’s a virus affecting the Mugler world, I wanted to do a shoot where Mugler and Nicopanda got mixed up, two completely different worlds living in the same dimension.”

 

May 24

The Elegant Portraiture of Timothy Greenfield Sanders

“For many photographers, fashion is the ultimate. But I’m not a fashion photographer. I’m a portrait artist who shoots fashion”

Timothy Greenfield Sanders

 
 

Yves Saint Laurent

 
 

Pauline Trigère

 
 

Sonia Rykiel

 
 

Rei Kawakubo

 
 

Todd Oldham

 
 

Jean Muir

 
 

Elsa Peretti

 
 

Paloma Picasso

 
 

Carolina Herrera

 
 

Carmen Dell’Orefice

 
 

Oscar De la Renta

 
 

Jil Sander

 
 

Vera Wang

 
 

Donna Karan

 
 

Naomi Campbell

 
 

Christy Turlington

 
 

Andre Leon Talley

 
 

Liz Tilberis

 
 

Anna Wintour

 
 

Simon Doonan

 
 

Iké Udé

 
 

Hamish Bowles

 
 

Betsey Johnson

 
 

Miguel Adrover

 
 

Patrick Robinson

 
 

Zac Posen

 
 

Michael Kors

 
 

Narciso Rodríguez

 
 

Calvin Klein

 
 

Tommy Hilfiger

 
 

Isaac Mizrahi

Apr 23

EART HL I NG

“I guess the common ground with all the songs is this abiding need in me to vacillate between atheism or a kind of gnosticism. I keep going backwards and forwards between the two things, because they mean a lot in my life. I mean, the church doesn’t enter into my writing, or my thought; I have no empathy with any organised religions. What I need is to find a balance, spiritually, with the way I live and my demise. And that period of time – from today until my demise – is the only thing that fascinates me.”

David Bowie

 
 

Earthling is the twentieth studio album by David Bowie released in February 1997 via BMG Records.  Before the album was released, Bowie considered using Earthlings (plural) for the album’s title. The album showcases an electronica-influenced sound partly inspired by the industrial and drum and bass culture of the 1990s. This was the first album Bowie self-produced since his 1974 album Diamond Dogs. Shortly after the release of this album, Bowie received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

 
 

Alexander McQueen Union Jack coat designed in collaboration with David Bowie for the Earthling album cover (art direction by Bowie himself). This coat combines elements of classic British design, represented by the Union Jack and expert tailoring learnt by McQueen on Saville Row, with an iconoclastic and subversive punk aesthetic.

 
 

Photographs by Frank W. Ockenfels

Apr 4

The Reverent Tastemaker

Stefano Pilati. Photograph by David Bailey. Published in Vogue, September 2004

 
 

Stefano Pilati’s 2004 debut at Yves Saint Laurent (Brand)—hot on the heels of Tom Ford’s sensational departure from the exalted French house—was one of the most anticipated in fashion history. The debonair Italian, then a relative unknown, was the third in a string of designers-cum-dauphins charged with the seemingly impossible task of maintaining a covenant with Saint Laurent’s epic legacy while creating new codes that would give the label contemporary relevance.

“There is nothing that Saint Laurent didn’t think of first,” Pilati said, upping the ante even further.

So how did the Prada– and Ford-trained designer tackle the challenge? With stubborn individuality. In seasons of hypersexed fashion, he showed polka dots and body-enhancing, ruffled dresses that, he said, “came from a memory of Saint Laurent in the late seventies.” Many critics balked, but time proved that Pilati was simply ahead of the curve. Notable case in point: the much-copied tulip skirt, which exerted a major influence on subsequent seasons’ silhouettes. “I think what maybe people objected to was that it was quite extreme,” said Anna Wintour of Vogue. “But you need the extremes to move people’s eye.” That first collection, she said, “didn’t look like anyone else’s.”

Pilati continued to stand apart, a latter-day Don Quixote pursuing a vision of grown-up, very French elegance. The fall 2007 and 2008 collections, particularly, were considered breakthroughs for their clarity of conception and purity of form. Critics occasionally remarked, however, that his work was too reverential to the past, that it relied too heavily on Yves-isms. “To me,” he countered in 2005, “it’s simply newer to be classic than transgressive.”

Shortly before the fall collections were mounted in 2012—and after months of rumors—the Saint Laurent company announced that Pilati was stepping down. Although his tenure was broadly respected and considered a success, he had failed to reach the starry brilliance of his predecessors.

Within a few months, however, the press was abuzz again (if perhaps at a slightly lower decibel level) with the news that he would pilot the Italian menswear label Ermenegildo Zegna and its sister brand, Agnona. Those truly in the know were probably not terribly surprised that Pilati would make this Lazarus-like return: A onetime heroin addict—who got his start as a teenage usher at fashion shows in Milan—the tattooed designer is clearly a man of considerable grit. “Work is my salvation,” he once said.

 
 

Source: Voguepedia

Mar 26

Gianni Versace and The Tin Machine

David Bowie during the Tin Machine tour, wearing outfits designed by Gianni Versace, circa 1990-91

 
 

Tin Machine were an English-American hard rock band formed in 1988, famous for being fronted by English singer-songwriter David Bowie. The band consisted of David Bowie on lead vocals and guitar, Reeves Gabrels on guitar, Tony Sales on bass, and Hunt Sales on drums. Eric Schermerhorn was an unofficial fifth member of the band. The group recorded two studio albums before dissolving in 1992, when Bowie returned to his solo career.

Dec 5

Free Fashionable Speech

Freedom of Speech, Norman Rockwell. It was published in the February 20, 1943 Issue of The Saturday Evening Post

 
 

This image is praised for its focus. And the empty bench seat in front of the speaker is perceived as inviting to the viewer. The solid dark background helps the subject to stand out but almost obscures  Norman Rockwell‘s signature. It is a scene of a local town meeting in which one person spoke out in lone dissent but was accorded the floor as a matter of protocol. Once he envisioned this scene to depict freedom of speech, Rockwell decided to use his Vermont neighbors as models for a Four Freedoms series. The painting took four attempts.

 
 

Earlier versions were troubled by the distraction of multiple subjects and the improper placement and perspective of the subject for the message to be clear.

 
 

Gant by Michael Bastian Fall 2013 Menswear

 
 

“Maybe it’s because it was an election year, but I was feeling interested in what it is to be an American,” Michael Bastian said. Swedish parent company or not, Gant is an all-American label (provenance: New Haven, Connecticut) with an all-American designer and, for Fall, an all-American inspiration: Norman Rockwell. Bastian called the collection In Stockbridge, after Rockwell’s Massachusetts hometown, and showed it at New York’s Art Students League, where a young Rockwell studied.

 
 

Painting of model CJ Richards by Yuki at the Art Student’s League in NYC

 
 

Michael Bastian reading the paper next to his collection

 
 

A portrait photo of Michael Bastian by one of the students.

 
 

This comes after collections that saw Bastian channeling Tropicàlia in the Galapagos and skiers in Scandinavia; its ambitions, its designs, and its feeling went far afield. “It had spiraled into a designer collection,” Bastian admitted, which is not what it was intended to be. So he brought it off calendar this season, “more about the clothes and less about the spectacle.” What it amounted to was a kind of Greatest Hits collection, which offered anew some of the easy basics Gant was founded on: chinos, oxford shirts, cashmere sweaters. “Every guy needs a navy blazer and a perfect oxford, and we never do them,” he said. Now he does.

There are new fabrications, of course, and even the odd old-newness of pieces lifted directly from Rockwell’s work, like a hardy suede jacket borrowed from Freedom of Speech. And Bastian being Bastian, there are still bolder color combinations and layering than you’d find in any edition of the Saturday Evening Post.

Jul 21

Naked We Came…

“Naked I came in to the world naked I shall go out and a very good thing too for it reminds me that I’m naked under my shirt whatever its color.”
E.M. Forster

 
 

E. M. Forster with Lady Ottoline Morell’s pug Soie. Photo by Lady Ottoline Morrell, 1922

 
 

“Mistrust all enterprises that require new clothes.”
E.M. Forster
A Room with a View

 
 

Stills from A Room with a View (James Ivory, 1985)