What's on the September 2012 Fashion Calendar?

Smythe Warbler Tribute Blazer

September means the end of lazy summer days and back to school, back to work. Long before Kate Middleton started wearing the hip Canadian label Smythe, their blazers have been favourites in my wardrobe. With a bit of sleuthing and some help from one of my favourite sales reps, I scored the Warbler Tribute Blazer (shown above) inspired by the hit tv show Glee with proceeds to go to support  anti-bullying campaigns in Canada and the USA. This is what is on my fashion radar for September 2012 (and in some cases on my calendar).

September 6, 2012  7-10 pm: Holt Renfrew's 175 Birthday Party 
This Canadian retailer of designer fashion began as a furrier in Quebec City in 1837. Founded by William Samuel Henderson, the shop sold luxurious furs to customers such as Queen Victoria, the Empress Eugenie, Princess Louise, the Princess Beatrice, the Duchess of Albany. As the store evolved, more locations were added and it has become Canada's destination spot for high-end fashion labels. The store will be celebrating its 175th Anniversary with a street party and an outdoor film projection on Bloor Street in Toronto on Thursday, September 6th and the store will stay open until 11 pm.

September 5-13, 2012: Mercedes Benz NewYork Fashion Week Spring 2013 Collections
Spring 2013 Collections will be launched September 5-13 in New York. The line up includes American classic designers like Ralph Lauren, Calvin Klein, Michael Kors, Donna Karan, Chado Ralph Rucci, Zac Posen, Diane Von Furstenburg, Tory Burch. I am sure they will all be fabulous, but what I really want to see is the finalists from Project Runway on September 7, 2012 at 10 am....

September 6-16, 2012: Toronto International Film Festival 
Toronto has become one of the leading international festivals for the launch of films and the celebrities usually get glammed up for their walk on the red carpet. In the 37th year of the event, there will be 289 films shown over 11 days of the festival. I will attend two of the gala events and I am already wondering what to wear....

September 17, 2012: Andrew Bolton presents a lecture on McQueen: A Case Study of Curatorial Process at the Pratt Manhattan Campus: 144 West 14th St. (Room 213), 6 to 8 pm. Given that people are still talking about the McQueen show at the Met, this event is bound to be a standing room only situation. I wish they were going to live-stream this....

September 18-19, 2012: Design Intelligence; Fashion New York is a two-day creative event for 100 key players from the international fashion industry and its periphery to share knowledge to encourage sustainable design and business practices. I will be one of the participants and am looking forward to the 15 international keynote speakers including Hazel Clark of Parsons The New School of Design and Sarah Scaturro of the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum.

Photo courtesy of Smythe.

Manish Arora Fall Winter 2012

Manish Arora Fall Winter 2012

Embroidered Fashion Illustrations for Selvedge Magazine

Not long ago, I was contacted by the editor of Selvedge Magazine asking if I would take on the assignment of creating illustrations for story about Lyon silks. Even though I no longer have a separate website for my artwork, Selvedge editor Polly Leonard had found selected images of my embroidered 18th century dress illustrations on the web and wanted me to create similar images for an upcoming issue. Being swamped with other work, I initially declined. Even so, Polly convinced me to give it a try and  few days later I was glued to my chair in my studio, working frantically away to get the job done for deadline. 

Blinded by desire by Ingrid Mida 2010

I won't bore you with the details, but it was a rough go. My hands ached, my head hurt and at times I thought I was going blind. I even tried to fire myself at one point, but like most things worth doing well, it took longer and required more revisions than I expected. In the end, we were both happy and the illustrations will be published in the September issue of this London based publication. If you haven't seen a copy of Selvedge magazine before, it is lush with colour photos and illustrations of the most beautiful textiles. Their motto is "The Fabric of your life: textiles in fashion, fine art, interiors and shopping". A single issue of the e-magazine can be viewed online here (look for the Etiquette issue #48 if you want to see my illustrations).  The September issue of the newsletter features my work as well.

Madame des Pouffs by Ingrid Mida 2009

The images shown above are not the illustrations I created for the magazine but are examples from the series. In this work, digitally altered images of upper class18th century men and women are layered over traditional French toile de jouy fabrics to create an interplay between the fabric and the figure. Embroidery and beading is selectively incorporated to highlight certain areas in the composition. The images appear pretty but meaning is layered into the work in a subtle and playful way. I've worked on this series on and off since 2009 and sold works to customers in Italy, England, Canada and the USA. Admittedly the work for Selvedge was a little more conventional than what I've shown here, but it is a joy to embroider, and something that I rarely have time for in workweek anymore.

Last Chance to See

The summer is drawing to a close as are a number of exhibitions of fashion in the museum. The list includes:

Surreal Body Gallery from Impossible Conversations: Schiaparelli and Prada at the Met
Photo courtesy of the Costume Institute at the Met

Impossible Conversations: Schiaparelli and Prada at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York closes TOMORROW Sunday, August 19, 2012. My review of the exhibition was published on Fashion Projects and can be read here.

Tutu Cozy by Svetlana Lavrentieva
Photo by Setareh Samadi

The Tutu Project and Sixty Years of Designing the Ballet at the Design Exchange in Toronto will both close on Saturday, September 2, 2012. In celebration of the sixtieth anniversary of the National Ballet of Canada, these two exhibitions together provide a whimsical portrait of the tutu on stage and as a work of art.

Fashionality: Dress and Identity in Canadian Art at the McMichael Gallery, north of Toronto in Vaughan, Ontario closes Monday, September 3, 2012. In this exhibition, curator Julia Pine draws on theorist Roland Barthes' interpretation of clothing and adornment as “vestimentary code" because it conveys gender, class and cultural heritage. This exhibition features a number of Canadian artists who have used clothing for "its expressive qualities" and relationship to Canadian identity.

Marc Jacobs

Louis Vuitton and Marc Jacobs at Les Arts Decoratifs in Paris closes Sunday, September 16, 2012. This exhibition traces the legacy and relationship between Louis Vuitton and Marc Jacobs. Marc Jacobs, who is not a fan of fashion exhibitions said: "I always find it a bit difficult to deal with the idea of fashion and museums and I've said that before. And I think curators have a kind of cerebral, heady, comparative narrative thing going on. For me the reward of doing what we do is doing it, not when it's done. And when people wear it and love it and covet it or can't wait to have it, whatever it is. So I think my attitude towards the whole thing was that I was very flattered, but how do we make this experience of what fashion is all about - which is the joy."

Maria, Amsterdam

Reflecting Fashion: Art and Fashion since Modernism

Wedding Dress 1967 by Christo at the Mumok, Vienna

The intersection of art and fashion is a topic that I never tire of, and the exhibition Reflecting Fashion at the Mumok in Vienna, Austria offers four floors of engaging examples that explore "clothing and fashion as an essential component of art".  The main themes of the exhibition include: Fashion as Modernism, Fashion as the eternal deputy of Surrealism, and From the Three-Piece Suit to the Deconstruction of Fashion.


Curators Susanne Neuburger in collaboration with Barbara Rüdiger explore the relationship between fashion, clothing and art, making reference to Charles Baudelaire in defining modernity through a concept of fashion and theorist Walter Benjamin in conferring a "revolutionary significance to fashion but also a certain primacy over art".

Regina Moller Dress and Photo at Mumok, Vienna

Some of the artists whose work is on display include Elsa Schiaparelli (Salvador Dali Lobster dress 1937), Ellsworth Kelly (Dress for Ann Weber 1952), Marcel Duchamp (Vest for Benjamin Peret 1958), Andy Warhol (Green Stamps Blouse 1965), Christo (Wedding Dress 1967), Cindy Sherman (Doll Clothes 1975 as well as photos from 1983-1990), among others.

Reform Dress early 1900s at Mumok, Vienna

This was an exhibition that I could have spent days in and I have to thank Valerie Steele for telling me about it. Valerie gave the keynote address "Is Fashion Art?" at the opening on June 15, 2012. This is an exhibition that I will long remember as offering one of the most comprehensive visual displays of the topic.

Reflecting Fashion: Art and Fashion since Modernism  
Exhibition runs until September 23, 2012
Mumok
MuseumQuartier, Museumsplatz 1, A-1070
Vienna, Austria

Is Milan Still One of the Fashion Capitals?

 

A few days ago Men's Fashion Week in Milan ended and in less than a month Women's Fashion Week will begin. The city will turn into chaos, the bloggers will occupy the streets and nervous journalist and editors will run hysterically from one show to another.

This makes me wonder: is all this hype justified? Can Milan still think of itself as one of the main fashion capitals along with Paris, London and New York or is it slowly losing the battle against some rising fashion metropolis like Madrid, Berlin and São Paulo?

There is no doubt that when it comes to the commercial aspect Milan is the winner. What you see on Milan's catwalks is what sells all over the world and there will always be big brands like Gucci, Armani, D&G, Prada that will attract international buyers and press. But what matters for the future of any fashion industry is the young and upcoming talent. And that is exactly what is missing in Milan, or rather it is not featured enough as in other fashion weeks around the world. When I think about it, I can't really come up with any Italian designer that has emerged in last ten years and has created an internationally known and successful brand. Maybe DSquared2, but they are originally from Canada, based in Italy, but not really representatives of Italian taste and style.

So what is missing? There are countless fashion schools all over Italy, there is even a solid platform for the manufacturing process... Maybe Italian fashion community doesn't do enough to support and guide young designer so they just end up working as assistant designers for some major brand never getting the real recognition for their work. Sure there are events like "Who is on Next?" but still after all these years not one young designer has managed to surpass the borders of Italy and make it big worldwide. And young designer always have their shows on the last day of the fashion week, after all major brands have already finished their shows, and all the press and buyers have left for Paris wich is the next fashion week in the calendar.

So how can we explain the phenomenon of two extraordinary talented Italian designers like Riccardo Tisci who has resurrected the french maison Givenchy; and Giambattista Valli who is equally successful both in prêt-à-porter and haute couture. And somehow they are both based in Paris and are fully embraced by the French fashion industry.

Maybe what is happening to Milan is what used to be the problem of London till recently. It just didn't have the support system. But one of the biggest British brands Burberry has eventually returned to the London Fashion Week. I don't see Italian brands like Valentino ever coming back from Paris to Milan.

And lastly, maybe it is to consider also the fact that fashion lives where creativity and young energy burst. In a city that can simply be described with the color grey, where walking down the streets there are significantly more old than young people, and where anxiety and bitterness is the common state of mind, even the fashion has given up. It has moved to a better, warmer and more prosperous place. I bet it is having a fabulous time somewhere in the streets of Rio.

Red Dress, Amsterdam

Shorts & Sweater, Amsterdam

Top Designers in Fashion - Style And Fashion Weeks

Fashion designers are creators! The fashion shows and the fashion weeks attract fashionistas even in this time of financial insecurity. The catwalks are full of beautiful models presenting glamorous collections however, the buzz of the fashion weeks is dimmer.

The social and the financial instability through which the world is going through today has affected the fashion industry and the fashion designers. But in times of crisis there is no need to despair you just need to make the most of the situation given. This seems to be the motto after which the designers are creating their collections this year. Even the tops designers at fashion weeks have adapted to this trend. The collections seem to be down to earth and more wearable than the ones in the previous years.

However, even if there is this common ground from where the designers leave when they start their collection there are many differences in the style and attitude of their clothes. We can actually separate the fashion trends and styles according to some of the biggest capitals of the world. For instance, the French scene is dominated by designers such as Gautier, Nina Ricci and many others. However, Paris seems to be losing it fashion crown to London. Some of the best designers here are Vivienne Westwood, Sir Hardy Amies, Christopher Kane and many others.

The French designers have always respected the chic and classy trends and have focused on high glamor styles. Their clothes are sophisticated and are almost always accompanied by smart accessories. Having boutiques and shows all over the world they seem to have an aesthetic sense of fashion that prevails at any time. The British designers on the other hand create conservative attires using extravagant material. Their creations take us to the idea of royalty and dignity.

The style of the designers is characteristic of the city where they reside however, choosing a particular clothing item is something of personal taste. There are many fashion trends and styles but you should always invest in clothes that represent you and your personality.