Inez van Lamsweerde & Vinoodh Matadin

If you want to escape the sun, I suggest to take a trip to photography museum Foam in Amsterdam. My favorite Dutch fashion photography duo, Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin, have an exhibition of their extensive work. I love it that their pictures are never just “pretty-pretty”, they mix fashion with art and there’s always an element of darkness in their work. The exhibition contains 300 of their most essential images, selected by the duo themselves. They choose the photographs that showed their fascination for people and their aspirations: who are we, how do we want to look en what does that say about our lives and feelings. A tiny selection of their work:

Advertisement:

Miu Miu Spring/Summer 2006

Chloé Spring/Summer 2007

Abbey Lee Kershaw in Fora by Gucci advertisement

Editorials:

Kate Moss for Vogue Paris, April 2008

i-D Magazine January 2009

French Vogue, August 2009

Lara Stone in W Magazine, May 2009

W Magazine, March 2005

Non commercial:

Pretty Much Everything – photographs 1985-2010:  June 25 - September 15,  Foam Amsterdam, entrance € 10,-.

Out of Our Minds

Two days ago me and P. went to see Melissa auf der Maur, not only on stage, but also on screen. Before the gig we got a showing of her movie “Out of Our Minds”. (Actually we could watch it twice, Melissa was so kind to show it again for the people who missed the first minutes). She made the 28-minute film in 2009 together with director Tony Stone. It’s a strange little film, that doesn’t have a clear storyline. That’s not a bad thing, actually I thought about the film many times afterwards. I’m not going to tell a lot about it, go try to watch it sometime (or watch the trailer below…).

 

ooomfilm.com / xmadmx.com

R.I.P. Alexander McQueen

Yesterday the very sad news came that designer Alexander McQueen has died. A couple of years ago I saw one of his runway shows on tv and I couldn’t take my eyes of the screen, because what I saw was like an extraterrestrial, magical world of fashion. Since then I’ve always been a big fan.

Just to show a little bit of his brilliance, here’s an impression of his latest shows.

Spring / Summer 2010

The spring /summer 2010 collection was an apocalyptic forecast of the future ecological meltdown of the world: Humankind is made up of creatures that evolved from the sea, and we may be heading back to an underwater future as the ice cap dissolves. This vision was shown through short dresses with nipped-waists and sea-reptile prints.  

 part1:

part 2:

 

 

Fall 2009 / Winter 2010

The Fall 2009 / Winter 2010 collection was his protest against the predictability in fashion. The clothes were high-drama satires of twentieth-century landmark fashion: parodies of Christian Dior houndstooth New Look and Chanel tweed suits, moving through harsh orange and black harlequinade looks to revisited showstoppers from McQueen’s own archive.

part 1:

part 2:

 

 

One of  his fashions shows that is now legendary was his Fall 2006 collection, in which a vision of Kate Moss appeared: a hologram made by video maker Baillie Walsh, art-directed by McQueen.

Kate was a close friend of Mcqueen and appeared in some of his shows. When Kate had her cocaine scandal in 2005, Alexander showed his support by wearing this t-shirt at the Spring / Summer 2006 show.

In 2009 he made an affordable line for the US retail brand Target, check out our post about that. But the was also made a shoe and clothing line for the Puma Black Label.

He sure will be missed…

Collection pictures from style.com.

Fashion for thought – Alexander van Slobbe exibition

Alexander van Slobbe is quite an entrepeneur. As front runner of the Dutch modernist fashion movement in the 1990s he achieved most of his successes outside his homecountry. In fact his main line Orson+Bodil only has three points of sale in the Netherlands. He has collaborated with Puma and Marc Jacobs amongst many others. His work is all about construction and styleful minimalsm. The Dutch modernism movement definetly does not come close to my personal aesthetic, but i have deep respect for people who work this hard and achieve so much influence in the world coming from this dot on the map we call home.

pieces from his fall/winter 2009  Orson+Bodil collection

His work has been collected for an overview by the Centraal Museum in Utrecht and will be presented in a special exposition called:

Stof tot nadenken(which literally means thinking material, but is being officially translated as Fashion for Thought )

from Feb 13th to May 16th 2010 at the Centraal Museum Utrecht

Here comes the best thing! Almost as interesting as the exposition, if not more(to me anyway).. is the fact there will be an accompanying project called “Patroon Ontrafeld”(“pattern untangled“) which will include patterns of Slobbe himself  available in a sewing workspace in the museum as well as creative workshops with famous artists and designers and a “sewing for dummies” workshop. As a finale to all this goodness there will be a  fashion show and design contest.

pieces from his spring/summer 2009 collection

mini biography: 1984 graduated cum laude at the fashion academy in Arnhem
started the label orson+bodil in 1989
1993 started menswear label SO and was the first Dutchman to have his own show in Paris in 1993.
In 1995 had over 200 selling points all over the world and soon after over 20 of his own stores.
2003 recieved the prince Bernhard culture award

link to the exibit page at the Utrecht Centraal Museum website

The Decade Had Taste: 70′s Cool

I don’t know why suddenly there are so many great movies to watch and fab books to read, but this is another post about a brilliant book I found while wandering through my local bookshop: “70s Style & Design” by Dominic Lutyens and  Kirsty Hislop. “We wanted to explore the lesser know and in some cases forgotten designers of the decade,’ says Lutyens, ‘ without neglecting such perenially fascinating episodes of 70′s history, such as Biba and punk. A lot of looks that were born in the 70′s, such as the Debbie Harry/Fiorucci look became associated with the 80′s, because the mainstream was slow to catch up.’

 The book is about 70′s cool (no synthetic fabrics, flares and the usual tat) and covers fashion, design, architecture, interiors and art. Divided into four themes: the pop movement and the rise of postmodernism; the Edwardian, 20′s and 30′s revivals; the back to nature movement and finally the decade’s avant-garde movers and shakers.

Expect images from the designs of Alan Aldridge, Jean-Charles de Castelbajac, Daniel Hechter, Jean Paul-Goude, Barbara Hulanicki, Laura Ashley, Ossie Clark, Celia Birtwell, Yves Saint Laurent and Vivienne Westwood.

Buy it here or here.