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Christian Dior set up his first boutique in 1946 on 30 Avenue Montaigne, an elegant hôtel particulier “with its reduced ...
10/12/2022

Christian Dior set up his first boutique in 1946 on 30 Avenue Montaigne, an elegant hôtel particulier “with its reduced size and classic elegance without overwhelming pedigree,” as he shared in his memoir. The interiors evoked the genteel refinement of the Louis XVI style that Dior adored and would revisit again and again in the design of his garments.
Dior believed that essential French aesthetics resided in the Palace of Versailles and loved the oval-backed medallion chair that Louis XVI used, designed in the late 18th century for the apartments of Marie Antoinette, with a wide, ruffled base resembling pettiskirts and a narrow oval back suggesting a corseted bodice. Monsieur Dior chose the Medallion Chair as a symbol of Louis XVI style as soon as he founded his House, in order to seat guests at his fashion shows in a “sober, simple and above all classic and Parisian” décor, as he recounted in his memoirs.
The essential oval surmounted by a fontanges bow became one of the major codes of 30 Avenue Montaigne, the beating heart of Dior. The chair became a signature of Dior’s fashionable empire, immortalized in fragrance ads by the illustrator René Gruau. It has become as iconic to the house as the Bar jacket.
DiorHistory

In 1978, at the height of Disco’s reign, Nike released the ‘Night Track’ sneaker, a shoe manufactured for dancing and to...
08/12/2022

In 1978, at the height of Disco’s reign, Nike released the ‘Night Track’ sneaker, a shoe manufactured for dancing and to be used by Studio 54’s employees. The story goes that a Nike sales rep and frequent patron of Studio 54 made an agreement to create shoes for the infamous nightclub’s employees. With sleek outsoles, vibrant silver, and lots of glitter, the Night Track was designed for dancing.

Nike’s ‘Night Track’ sneaker featured shiny silver uppers, red glitter outsoles, Swoosh, and heel tabs with big bold metallic Nike lettering, thick white midsoles, and metallic silver glitter laces. The Night Track was rebellion in sneaker form, inspired by classic cars of the 1950s for that boogie-down disco hustle inspiration, aimed at New York City’s uber-exclusive “Jet Set” crowd that frequented club Studio 54. Michael Jackson famously sported a pair of Night Tracks during the Suzuki Love scooter advert in Japan.

References to clowns and the circus universe have inspired fashion collections throughout history. At the house of Dior,...
06/12/2022

References to clowns and the circus universe have inspired fashion collections throughout history. At the house of Dior, John Galliano and Bill Gaytten played around with clowns during their tenures at the house. Maria Grazia Chiuri rescued these references in Dior’s Spring 2019 couture collection, which showed references to clowns extended beyond the makeup to the clothes, featuring ruffs and harlequin patterns.

In fashion, the word circus conjures the collection Elsa Schiaparelli showed in 1938, which famously included jackets woven with plumed, dancing horses that closed with Jean Schlumberger–designed acrobat buttons. During the Vivienne Westwood Spring 2018 show, models walked down the runway accompanied by a troop of artistic dancers and circus performers. Titled ‘We are Motherf**kers’, the collection was inspired by a set of playing cards, in which Westwood replaced ​​clubs, diamonds, hearts, and spades with her signature propaganda.

For ​​Moschino’s 2019 Resort collection, designer Jeremy Scott brought a literal circus show to Los Angeles. The collection represented every possible circus character with striped Lurex knits; graphic harlequin leather biker jackets, pants, and skirts; jewel-tone lamé separates; and tuxedos and tails in multicolored, sequined zebra, tiger, and leopard prints.

In 1974, Yoko Ono asked designer Dakota Jackson to design a surprise birthday gift for her husband, John Lennon. This wa...
04/12/2022

In 1974, Yoko Ono asked designer Dakota Jackson to design a surprise birthday gift for her husband, John Lennon. This was Dakota Jackson’s first commission, one that catapulted him on a new career path and crystallized his future as a maker of objects at the crossroads of magic and furniture.

Yoko Ono was intrigued by Jackson’s like-minded approach to his craft. Following their fateful phone conversation in 1974, Ono invited Dakota to visit the couple’s new apartment to discuss the project further while John was traveling.

Having never met the couple, Jackson was intrigued to experience the environment in which they lived, a visit that gave him an utmost understanding of Lennon’s essence, and recalls seeing a grand white piano in the couple’s living room and stage costumes from John’s time with the Beatles and the band’s Magical Mystery Tour.

Yoko Ono wanted to gift John a writing desk that could open in many ways and include hidden compartments to house personal treasures. While certain areas of the desk would slide up and rise at the simplest touch, other components were far more mechanical, taking extreme concentration to access.

Considering this an essential turning point in his career towards the design of furniture utilizing elements of magic and the illusion of normalcy, Dakota devised an object that was life-changing. The John Lennon Desk draws on the notion of mystery and the power encapsulated in an object straddling the line between pure design and illusion.

Born in La Spezia, Italy in 1939, Gaetano Pesce studied architecture and industrial design in Venice from 1959 to 1965. ...
01/12/2022

Born in La Spezia, Italy in 1939, Gaetano Pesce studied architecture and industrial design in Venice from 1959 to 1965. Throughout his over five-decade career, Pesce has employed design as a medium to understand the world and the ways in which people perceive the objects around them.

Pesce employs bold colors and unique methods of materiality to forge poignant connections between an object and its respective user. Since the early 1980s, Pesce has worked almost exclusively with resin and silicones to create pliable, organically shaped designs.

In 1984, Pesce contacted the Pratt Institute in New York, requesting to use Pratt’s laboratory, studio space, and available tools to experiment with novel industrial materials and create molds for a particular chair he had rendered in wax. The institute honored the Italian designer’s request for a residency, and thus the Pratt Chair was named.

The chairs communicate Pesce’s playful and thoughtful artistic vision through the iconography inscribed in contrasting colors on the chair’s resin. They represent a physical manifestation of Pesce’s career-long argument that ‘design is a form of art.’

For Bottega Veneta's Spring Summer 2023 show in Milan, Gaetano Pesce created a colorful resin-covered floor and designed 400 cotton-and-resin chairs. Named 'Come Stai?', the Pesce-designed chairs a rallying call for individualism, none of the 400 chairs were the same.

‘This space is a tribute to diversity. It is about the human being; we are all different. We are all different, and this is our defining quality – otherwise, we are just a copy. We are all originals, and this is one of the themes of my design,’ Pesce said about the project.

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Wiener Werkstätte is considered the original design firm. It began in 1903 as the brainchild of Josef Hoffman and Koloma...
29/11/2022

Wiener Werkstätte is considered the original design firm. It began in 1903 as the brainchild of Josef Hoffman and Koloman Moser, as a product of Vienna’s “Secession” movement, which included artists like Gustav Klimt. The Wiener Werkstätte broke away from the stylistic revivals that dominated Austrian architecture and design throughout the 19th century.

Wiener Werkstätte was also involved in jewelry, adornment, textiles, and fashion. Emilie Louise Flöge, an Austrian fashion designer and businesswoman, worked with her sister, Pauline, to create fashion garments in connection with Werkstätte. It was at their atelier that their loose, flowing gowns were first realized.

Most of these iconic fabrics were made and woven by the Wiener Werkstätte themselves. These versatile textiles were originally inspired by Japanese art and designed to be applied to furnishings, wallpaper, curtains, clothing, and sometimes even wrapping papers.

As the firm's fashion and textile division gained attention, this traction prompted the creation of new segments of the movement, including a special section dedicated to blouse design and construction.

Werkstätte’s printed fabrics featured geometric compositions, as well as colors and shapes inspired by the more temporal aspects of the natural world. In many of the surviving samples, order and chaos coexist in floral designs reduced to the simplest representational shapes, while forests of repeated forms swarm over the surface of silk swatches.

Milton Gendel was an art critic who left New York for Rome in the early 50s, where he became an advocate for postwar Ita...
26/11/2022

Milton Gendel was an art critic who left New York for Rome in the early 50s, where he became an advocate for postwar Italian artists and a photographer of subjects as diverse as Sicilian peasants and British royalty. Mr. Gendel became a significant part of Rome’s artistic world from the 1950s nearly until his death. In a series of spectacular apartments he rented over the decades, he hosted salons that brought together artists and other cultural personalities.

As the Rome correspondent for ARTnews magazine, he became an indispensable voice who told the world about artists like Alberto Burri, Tancredi and Toti Scialoja. In December 1954, he published his long article “Burri Makes a Picture” which would give a strong boost to Burri’s painting in the USA. Mr. Gendel was also creating a photographic oeuvre of la dolce vita in Italy, of Italian street scenes, reflecting the influence of Henri Cartier-Bresson, of poor Sicilians in the countryside after World War II, and of artists, aristocrats and celebrities.

Gendel was well known for his photographs of the British royal family. He famously photographed Princess Margaret, Queen Elizabeth feeding her corgis, Prince Philip, dozing at the foot of a tree after a hunting party, and André Leon Talley with Antony Armstrong-Jones, Lord Snowdon.

The fashion world, ever celebrated for its constant reinvention, happens to be one of the most wasteful global industrie...
24/11/2022

The fashion world, ever celebrated for its constant reinvention, happens to be one of the most wasteful global industries with a staggering amount of carbon emissions, water usage, and product waste. Brands are looking to sustainable fashion to combat these harmful effects, finding environmentally safe initiatives including “slow fashion,” an alternative to fast fashion, upcycling, transparency, and circularity.

Brands like Patagonia are leaders in the initiative for transparency in fashion. Patagonia focuses on creating long-lasting products that can be easily repaired, with as little waste as possible, eliminating the wasteful consumption that fast fashion has spearheaded.

Stella McCartney focuses her brand on three core themes: material innovation, social sustainability, and transparency. This means sustainably sourced fiber, including the brand’s famous vegetarian leather, which eliminates the land use and greenhouse gas emissions caused by cow leather.

Prada’s Re-Nylon initiative partners with textile producer Aquafil to create nylon material from recycled plastic waste and textiles. Brands such as Gucci and Louis Vuitton have begun implementing responsible sourcing of materials and reducing waste in their company missions.

Following in Stella McCartney’s footsteps, Gucci announced in 2017 that it would no longer use fur in its collections. Chanel’s “Mission 1.5°” pledges to switch to 100% renewable electricity by 2025 and to reduce emissions by 50% by 2030.

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From the beginning of modern commerce, retail and architecture have been closely linked. With the addition of the famous...
22/11/2022

From the beginning of modern commerce, retail and architecture have been closely linked. With the addition of the famously grand department stores, the relationship between architects and brands, between architecture and brand identity, was sealed. One early example of this collaboration was between the men’s clothing store Knize, which opened in Vienna in 1910, and architect Adolf Loos, who later designed stores for Knize in Paris and Berlin.

In 1937, Architect Jean-Michel Frank collaborated with Elsa Schiaparelli on her Place Vendôme perfume boutique. The interior included a large-scale bamboo birdcage, a reference to the surrealist nature of Schiaparelli’s work and the birdcage in the designer’s Paris living room.

Japanese industrial designer Shiro Kuramata worked with fashion designer Issey Miyake in the design of two stores in Tokyo and around the world. In New York City, artist Sterling Ruby, known for his large-scale installations and work in sculpture, collaborated with Raf Simons to re-imagine Calvin Klein’s Madison Avenue flagship, originally designed by architect John Pawson in 1996.

In Los Angeles, New York-based fashion brand The Row designed a flagship store with international architecture firm Montalba Architects. The boutique uses California Modernism as inspiration to create a fluid dialogue between the retail space and the shop’s outside environment.

Much like art, the world of fashion is deeply tied to consumerism. While in contrast, fashion is a part of our everyday ...
20/11/2022

Much like art, the world of fashion is deeply tied to consumerism. While in contrast, fashion is a part of our everyday lives through dress, making it a contributing factor in social gatherings that revolve around drinking. Fashion and alcohol are both luxury items used to show off one’s class and wealth, fostering a deep-rooted connection between the two, one example of this being the Cocktail Dress.

The idea of the modern woman made the cocktail party become a popular social event in America, in which friends would gather in semi formal wear in the late afternoon for cocktails and conversation. The cocktail dress had a shorter hemline than that of the evening gown, further showing the dissolution of strict standards for women, and was paired with costume jewelry such as cocktail rings.

The French took the key elements of the cocktail dress — women’s freedom and semi-formal wear — and incorporated them into a new “fancy-dress” style. Paul Poiret, in particular, is noted for his “Harem skirt,” which was shocking, exotic, and representative of a new age and a new woman, the perfect design for any cocktail party or social gathering.

The fashion world deals with horses not only in symbolic terms, but also in the physical manufacturing of sportswear and...
18/11/2022

The fashion world deals with horses not only in symbolic terms, but also in the physical manufacturing of sportswear and leather goods associated with riding. Hermès is one of the world’s most well-known producers of equestrian gear. The 1900 Haut a Courroies bag, designed for their elite clientele to carry their saddles with them, soon morphed into a smaller, more fashionable version in 1922. The bag gained popularity and Hermes began manufacturing leather handbags, eventually leading to the now-iconic Kelly and Birkin bags.

Vivienne Westwood paid homage to the humble rocking horse in her Spring/Summer 1985 “Mini-Crini” show. The now-iconic Rocking Horse shoes, inspired by ballet shoes, intended to promote poise and to emphasize the movement of the mini-crini skirt. Stella McCartney’s Fall 2017 collection featured equestrian-inspired elements combined with more modern silhouettes.

Dior’s 2019 Resort show brought in a Latin American tradition of horse riding while still referencing the works of classical Europe. Drawing from the symbolic power of the horse rider, Chiuri showed full riding skirts, black cravats, equestrian ponytails, and riding hats to emphasize her message of feminine strength.

American artist Jean-Michel Basquiat was internationally recognized for his evocative, abstract style of painting, focus...
15/11/2022

American artist Jean-Michel Basquiat was internationally recognized for his evocative, abstract style of painting, focusing his deeply abbreviated career on creating work that merged both high and low art and culture into a single entity. Basquiat’s career is commonly credited for the democratization of the art world, but a lesser-known example of the late artist’s methods to blend high and low culture was seen in his clothing designs of the late 1970s.

In the later 1970s, while still a teenager, Basquiat was playing in a band called Grey and tagging buildings in downtown New York under the pseudonym ‘SAMO’. Before embarking on his journey into fine art, Basquiat developed a line of hand-painted clothing under the label ‘Man Made’ – a name that stemmed from a tag he was using in his graffiti at the time. The artist’s ‘Man Made’ garments were up-cycled from found materials he sourced on the street and re-purposed like a canvas.

In November 1979, Basquiat convinced costume designer Patricia Field to carry his line in her small, upscale boutique on 8th street in the East Village. Despite the artist having garnered little public recognition by that time, Field also allowed Basquiat to use her store windows to display his sculptural works.

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