Industry Magazine 2016

YEARBOOK

UNIVERSITY

OF

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OXFORD

MAYA GULIEVA & CHARLOTTE HYMAN

COVER

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VIRGINIA

RUSSOLO

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Editors-in-Chief MAYA

GULIEVA

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CHARLOTTE

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HYMAN

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E d i t o r s - i n - C h i e f

C r e a t i v e D i r e c t o r

L i t e r a r y E d i t o r s

Events

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B u s i n e s s T e a m

B r o a d c a s t i n g

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M A Y A

GULIEVA

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CHARLOTTE

I S A B E L

H A N N A H

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CASSENS F E Y I

HYMAN

L A W

MARSHALL A D E G B I T E

O T T O L I N E

H A R T

J O S H K U N M A H I R

N A T A S H A

J O N E S

E D W A R D V Y V Y A N

H E N R Y

F A R R

F E L I X V O N S T U M M

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C H A R L OT T E

HYMAN

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On Friday we skipped class and spent the morning rummaging through in the treasure trove that is Reign Vintage on Cowley Road.

Then we photographed our favourite looks in our classroom.

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Creative Director

CHARLOTTE

A r t D i r e c t o r

VINCE

P h o t o g r a p h e r

YVES

M o d e l s

HYMAN DENG LEATHER

SOFÍA CRESPI DE VALLDUARA & JULIETTE ALIKER

Clothing generously provided

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by

Reign

Vintage 136 COWLEY RD OXFORD OX4 1JE

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ZAHA HADID’S NOT SO SENSUOUS LEGACY

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GEORGE

GRYLLS

In the wake of the death of Zaha Hadid a whole slew of pieces were written in rampant or measured praise of her legacy.

Among these was the Guardian editorial published on April 1st, which stated that it ‘is not demeaning to insist that her work will always be seen as voluptuously feminine.’ In my opinion it is both demeaning and simplistic, forcing as it does a bodily reading where it is entirely inappropriate.

Le Corbusier’s later works - including his sinuous chapel at Ronchamp and his Unité d’Habitation in Marseille are true examples of the corporeal (i.e. relating to the human body) in architecture. They are designed using his personal golden ratio, his modulor: a measurement based on the contours of an abstract man. Every space therefore corresponds intimately to the human body and moulds itself around it. So whilst it may not be easy for every commentator to look at these masterpieces and say “that looks like an arm” or indeed “that looks like a leg,” the experience of these buildings is fundamentally corporeal.

Throughout her career Zaha Hadid faced prejudice, be it for her Muslim background (although she came from a strictly secular well-to-do Iraqi family) or for her gender. One far-fetched example came from the Welsh MP Rhodri Morgan who tenuously analogised Hadid’s design for a Cardiff Bay Opera House to the kaaba in Mecca (I urge anyone to google both) warning that, if built, it was likely to bring a fatwa down on the city; Hadid herself was never so explicitly political in her expression. Similarly, the insistence that her designs are corporeal falls into the same bracket. The words ‘sinuous,’ ‘voluptuous’ and in the case of her design for the Al Wakrah stadium in Qatar, ‘yonic,’ seem reductive in their lazily implicit or often explicit references to Hadid’s body. You do not hear Nicholas Grimshaw’s geodeisic Eden project being described as testicular, and you do not pay attention to people calling every tower they see phallic. And yet it is received and indeed encouraged as a tenable view in the critical reception of Hadid’s work to link her buildings to her body, indicative of a broader issue: the reduction of the work of female artists, such as Eva Hesse and Cornelia Parker, to their gender and sexuality at a critical level in a manner that rarely occurs for their male counterparts.

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But Hadid’s buildings most certainly are not. In fact they do very opposite: they are intended to transport us from our body to a feeling of weightlessness. Hadid’s proposals, both built and unbuilt, are almost entirely preoccupied with elevation. Deeply influenced by the Suprematist compositions of Malevich and El Lissitsky, for whom she created collaborative exhibitions and published books, Hadid always aspired to attain the same level of floating freedom in her buildings as they did with their intersecting planes and featherweight forms. Her ‘Peak’ project in Hong Kong was her first major competition win, and is testament to this continuing dialogue with her Russian forebears. It won her initial renown for its dynamic climbing angularity that only deigns to touch the hill upon which it rests, whilst effortlessly seeking to escape it. As time progressed, the vocabulary of her work changed from angles to curves, but as Rowan Moore noted in his more authoritative obituary, ‘the emphasis on dynamic spaces and defying gravity remained.’ Only her second project to be built was a looping ski-jump at Innsbruck, in Austria.

It is easy to see what fascinated her about designing a building whose very extension was flight.

from whom Hadid did draw inspiration; indeed she expressed excitement last year at having discovered his proposal for student housing at St Antony’s from forty years before. Nevertheless Niemeyer, unlike Hadid, was actively preoccupied and indeed enamoured by the female form, writing in his memoirs The Curves of Time: “I am not attracted to straight angles or to the straight line, hard and inflexible, created by man. I am attracted to free-flowing sensual curves. The curves that I find in the mountains of my country, in the sinuousness of its rivers, in the waves of the ocean, and on the body of the beloved woman."

Niemeyer’s book is dotted with free-flowing sketches of nude women that recall the sensuous outlines of Ingres or Matisse.

But like any great artist, Hadid took inspiration without imitating, adopting only the form of the curve later in her career and re-purposing it. Her own fantastic drawings and paintings float free from mimetic parameters set by Niemeyer; instead they push back, forward, down and up, jagging as much as they swoop, spiking as much they arc. Her clothing, a creative expression in itself, did not emphasise the body but rather whirled it into a fantastic dynamism like some sort of Futurist machine chopping at the air.

In some buildings this ascendance owes much to form; the mesmeric Heydar Aliyev Centre is a dancing cirrus. Others are more material-centric. When I interviewed her last year about the Middle East Centre at Saint Antony’s in Oxford, she explained choosing the stainless steel cladding because “its surface reflects light very softly to give the building a wonderful ephemeral quality.”

It was thus not through her creations that she expressed her strong female voice but through her prominent position in a profession dominated by men. She became increasingly vociferous in criticising the exclusivity of the boys’ ‘golfing weekends’ and the bravado of ‘trips to the pub.’ “I never thought of myself as a role model,” she acknowledged last year. “In the beginning of my career, I always thought I didn’t want to be known as a ‘woman architect’ or an ‘Arab architect’. But later, I realized that it is critical I acknowledge the fact that I could influence others.

So I think it’s important that I can – in some very modest way – help others to have the courage and determination to achieve their ambitions.”

The levitational effect in her buildings is entirely subjective. For example, her recent stadia designs in Tokyo and Qatar appear less weightless; it is very hard to create the illusion that titanic bowls which seat eighty thousand people are about to take off and fly away. And yet at the same time there is no doubting the grace of her diving London Aquatics Centre. Overall, Hadid’s legacy is of beautifully drafted, superterranean creations made real initially by dedicated engineers such as Peter Rice, and finally by advances in computer technology.

In a recent Desert Island Discs, Hadid explained candidly why she thought it was people misconstrued her, “I think it’s my shy side.” If we are to bring personality into her buildings, as seems required in modern criticism, then I would say that they are set free from shyness to find expression in boldness.

A case can be made for all these readings of her work; but to reduce her entire legacy to the female body is simply to undermine her work. The aforementioned Guardian editorial that triumphs the ‘bodily’ curves of her architecture draws parallel between Hadid and the Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer,

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ANDREW

DICKINSON

I should not blame you for what you have done.

Smoke can but rise, so ashes fall unheard And shadows string out in the setting sun And hounds need chase and ground the fleeing bird.

These pictures and depictions crowd my mind And not the instincts from which they first grow.

From source to mouth the impulses declined, Framed blankly, embers of an embryo.

These images are emblems of sour fate; Fate sweet when hotly morning’s rays rush by To warm the stilling frost’s obscuring slate And in true waters my clear image lies— The waters muddy, picture’s lustre greyed; My face eclipsed by yours, your blinding shade.

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PHOTOGRAPHY ART

DIRECTION

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ALEXANDER

SILFVER

INDUSTRY

MAGAZINE

M I N O T A U R

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V E N I C E

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VIRGINIA

RUSSOLO

P E R F O R M A N C E //

ANDREW

DICKINSON

Your feet were not precise. The fingers danced From string to bow. But your feet shuffled Inconsistent, an ill-weighted metronome, on stone; If like a nervous boy’s then not from nerves.

Your bow now draws its last. The strings sing still As the applause’s echo ripples slow.

You turn, and bow, subdued, pianissimo…

And as the tightness sharpens, my line falls flat.

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A VIRGINIA

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Y RUSSOLO

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T O

B R I N G

I T //

ANDREW

O F F DICKINSON

The darkness shatters, rush of light her neck whips back, hand to her eyes, those swimming eyes won’t settle.

‘The straight line is the hardest to draw. To trace even.

For a time, for a long, for a maddeningly long time, I couldn’t.’

Lightheaded from the sudden light she ups the bottle and tries to prise the tightpacked pills don’t rattle.

‘Until these popped along. A new one took me off them once.

That charlatan, quacking his cures and puffing his pills.’

Her lips, compressed, draw that straight line, her fingers arch and crack then rest in her temple’s small depression.

‘I’ve heard my children turn away from me.

Gripped them in moistening hands. They pulped.’

You think her cadence rings out fine?

And yet I wouldn’t say I’m jesting — This is still my impression.

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HARRY

JONES

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A Symptom of the Internet generation

‘What are you doing here, honey? You’re not even old enough to know how bad life gets.’ //

‘Obviously, Doctor, you’ve never been a 13-year-old girl.’

So goes the exchange between Cecilia Lisbon and her doctor at the beginning of Sofia Coppola’s 1993 cult classic movie, The Virgin Suicides, which revolves around the five mysterious and tragic Lisbon sisters. A film that tells a story of mental illness accessorised with pink tulle, rosy filters and pastel rosary beads, complete with a deliciously suffocating soundtrack by French electro group Air, it is perhaps a good place to start when discussing the phenomenon of the ‘sad girl’ – the vulnerable, oft-self-destructive, and always-beautiful pin-up of the Instagram generation.

There is no doubt that such an idealised image of feminine pain has existed through the ages: we see it in Shakespeare’s Ophelia, the image of her tragic end quoted by the Pre-Raphaelites and many more since; in Brontë’s Cathy, who destroys herself at the prospect of choosing between the men she loves; more recently, Sylvia Plath has become a favourite for quotes tattooed in swirly cursive on collar-bones and inner-arms, her legacy now a melancholy character to be emulated, rather than a terrible story of abuse and illness.

It was, however, in the 1990s, that this pop-romanticisation of sadness began to snowball, with the release of films like Girl, Interrupted (1999), featuring a wistful, doe-eyed Winona Ryder, as well as 2001’s Prozac Nation, which once again tackles issues of mental health, its lead actress similarly desirably thin and beautiful, despite the unimaginable pain of her reality. At the same time came the rise of the 90s ‘waif’ and Heroin Chic, epitomised by Kate Moss, with her pointy limbs and dark undereyes, idolised by teen girls the world over.

In 2007, the British TV drama, Skins, entered our homes, its longest-running character Effy Stonem. Deeply self-destructive, emotionally unavailable and incredibly vulnerable, it was the beautiful Effy, all heavy eye-makeup and roll-up quivering on her lip, arm round her equally ‘messed-up’ and

HANNAH

CASSENS

MARSHALL

equally desirable boyfriend, that every teenage girl watching the show wanted to be. Skins was perhaps the catalyst for much of this current ‘sad girl’ trend, the source of countless GIFs that apparently summed up the angst of teen life in a convenient and re-bloggable form. Nearly ten years after the show began, and three years since its last episode, imagery from the show is still ubiquitous on online platforms such as Tumblr, a favourite for angsty teenagers. Here can be found black and white close-ups of the characters’ sad faces, captioned with quotations - ‘everything that kills me makes me feel alive’ - or tagged tellingly with single words: fragile, alone, drugs.

Soon after came Twilight, a franchise that skyrocketed to cultural phenomenon status, and whose lead female is the definition of ‘sad’. Putting herself in danger to lure her boyfriend home is oh so romantic, while said controlling partner is portrayed as deeply loving. The series’ adoring fans seemed to think nothing of the fact that Bella spends a chunk of the second film perched on a chair in an empty room, the seasons changing outside, while she waits for her true love. Such behaviour is not romantic; it is manipulative and depressed. One argument that has been put forward for the incredible popularity of the franchise among teenage girls is that Bella, has no discernable personality; this allows viewers to project their identities upon her, their own insecurities, fears, and angst reflected in the character. Meanwhile, they can reassure themselves that despite, or perhaps even because of these things, they too can achieve that which Bella has - that is, have two objectively attractive men fight over her, ending happily after a period of thrilling drama.

In a pattern that can be found across Hollywood films (and in television too - the aforementioned Effy is in fact silent for the first two series of Skins), the female protagonist is once again reduced to an object defined by her relationship to men, devoid of her own persona. Once again, the damsel in distress is presented as the desirable ideal.

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My mother, a high school teacher, used to come home telling stories of the girls she taught walking around school, the cuts on their forearms shown proudly with sleeves rolled up in what appeared to be the latest trend, while more recently, hashtags such as #cutforjustin and #cutforzayn trended when teen idols did something their fans didn’t like. Topshop came under fire last year for selling ‘statement’ temporary tattoos that resembled self-harm scars, the tagline on the packaging ‘Flaws worth fighting for’. Meanwhile, the teen mental health crisis has come to a head in recent years, with waiting lists for treatment on the NHS at an all-time high, some patients waiting months, even years to get help. Battling mental health problems at school, the same classmates who told me they understood exactly how I was feeling were confused days later when I wasn’t back to cracking jokes. Today, mental health issues are better understood than ever before, but are conversely more romanticised and even fashionable

This brings us to the present day. The 90s throwback trend means that films such as the Virgin Suicides have had somewhat of a renaissance, and at the time of writing, there are over 300,000 posts tagged #sadgirl on Instagram.

This hashtag was popularised by Lana Del Rey, whose career has been made on the back of a persona who perfectly embodies the damsel in distress, waiting for her bad boy lover to come home to her. Her second album, Ultraviolence, features a song called ‘Sad Girl’, which includes lyrics such as ‘I’m pretty when I cry’ – in fact, #prettywhenicry has become another popular tag on social media.

Lana Del Rey is an interesting example. Her audience is mesmerised by a persona presented to the public; under her birth name, Elizabeth Grant, Del Rey tried several times to launch a career, to no avail. It is the theatricality, the carefully contrived aesthetic that takes elements from popular iconography, and cultures perceived as ‘exotic’ and ‘cool’ (leading to accusations of appropriation from various groups), that can be attributed to her success. Another contributing factor is the mystery in which Del Rey’s everyday life is shrouded; so much can be left to the imagination. This is a tactic that, as demonstrated in the case of scripted characters, works to great effect.

More specifically, Del Rey has been accused of appropriation of the ‘Sad Girl’ culture that can be traced to cholo culture, which developed among first- and second-generation Mexican immigrants in the 1990s. The feminist art collective Sad Girls Y Qué, which takes its name from the 1994 film Mi Vida Loca, which focuses on the life of an L.A. chola nicknamed Sad Girl, say that the idea of the Sad Girl originates within, and fights against, a macho, Catholic society that oppresses women in specific ways.

dition. Meanwhile, in a more literal interpretation of the ‘sad girl’ concept, the ‘byojaku face’, where girls and women make themselves up to look a little unwell, or as if they have been crying, has also been reported in Western press. This is a more traditional interpretation of the strangely desirable vulnerability exemplified by Effy, Cathy, and Ophelia, the damsels in distress who wait for their men to come and rescue them. It seems more than a little perverse that this should be idealized. Across the globe, different interpretations of the ‘sad girl’ converge, all ultimately drawing from the same collective experiences of oppression and angst.

There is no doubt, then, that the phenomenon exists: the emotional young woman has been brought into the 21st Century, manifested in a hashtag and a clichéd social media post; but is the ‘sad girl’ harmful? The artist Audrey Wollen argues not. Best known for her ‘Sad Girl Theory’, a brand of feminism that champions melancholy, Wollen argues that in this form, sadness is empowering in the face of the patriarchy, which labels feminine qualities such as sensitivity as weak. Besides, it seems women cannot win; if we are emotional, we are written off as hysterical and oversensitive, while those who are less expressive are cold-hearted bitches. In a way this is freeing: we can act as we like with the knowledge that we will be treated with the same hand no matter what we do. So why not fight it, using feminine sadness as a form of passive resistance, in the way that the chola ‘Sad Girl’ is intended to? Wollen does this in much of her art: in one series, she poses for nude selfies resembling famous historical artworks by men, bringing associations with the woman ‘almost continually accompanied by her own image of herself’ that John Berger discusses in his Ways of Seeing. Perhaps it is possible to use the products of this historical oppression to dismantle the very structure that oppresses us. Recognizing the validity of feelings that many women and girls can relate to can hardly be a bad thing.

That said, the contemporary ‘sad girl’ is typically Western, affluent and white (in short, privileged), choosing to express her deepest, darkest feelings in typically formulaic fashion. It is difficult to see how this passive celebration of sadness and its more pathological counterparts, lacking in any real creativity or drive, can really serve to do much good without an accompanying discussion of the issues that lie beneath all this.

Otherwise, girls will continue to idolize the dreamy eyes and tear-stained faces of Del Rey’s videos, without real understanding or awareness of the horror of that which their peers might be going through, or willingness to properly deal with issues that they themselves are facing. There is nothing wrong with seeing the beautiful in any part of life, but to reduce it to this can only be harmful. So, is the ‘sad girl’ empowering, dangerously romanticizing, or just a trend? I would argue that she can be any of these things; it is up to us to decide which to accept.

This lowrider culture and its offshoots, has manifested itself across the world, too, not least in the last few years where slicked back baby hairs and dark lipliner has become trendy among the fashion set, referenced at Givenchy and Rodarte. In Japan, ‘cholos’ deck themselves out in plaid shirts, knee-high socks and tattoos in a curious amalgamation of the oft-childlike styles of local subcultures with this new ad-

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VIRGINIA

RUSSOLO

My recent performance, ‘Untitled/Pollen Grains’, was an exploration of the gap between the self and Western societal structures.

A key feature of the work was a fur coat; I attempted to understand the role of this item of clothing, evaluating the intersections of its social and personal connotations. The context of this discussion, in a fashion magazine, offers a strong platform for a consideration of the social constructs behind this coat; aesthetic and monetary value, social status, and historical reference to certain fashion trends point to a Western market of certain climatic locations.

A story: we’re in Europe. We’re in my hometown, Oderzo, Northern Italy. In this industrial region there’s a heightened sensitivity to what clothes say about one’s social status, a mindset lingering from the industrial boom of the 1960s. An occurrence that always fascinated me was the appearance of the fur coats on the church steps in the piazza. This luxurious army of many coloured, glistening armour was impenetrable to the cold and irresistible to the eye. However beautiful their animal garments might be, the elderly and middle aged women wearing them also knew the power of their furs, be it in the austere settings of church, or on display in the piazza cafés, where, catching light, their coats were also catching status.

The psychological change in these fur coated women was a powerful happening to witness as a child. The softness and smell of the fur coats belonging to the women in my early life became synonymous for me with conversations carefully constructed with extra grace, a heightened awareness of the limits of the clothed body, and the outside factors that might damage it, or more pronouncedly add a sense of power and security. As a child I experienced this from a sculptural point of view rather than a monetary one; hiding under my grandmother’s fur coat, I was exposed to a true architectural wonder, the folds of material a great canopy.

Returning to the physical qualities of the coat, it struck me that inhabiting an animal’s primary source of protection wasn’t a topic much discussed by the aforementioned group of coat wearers. In my own performance, this layer of protection was very important, and was also applied to the feet in the form of a pair of horsehair loafers. First, I moved rhythmically around the exhibition space, eyes covered by my arm. In the second half of the work, I carried out the ritual which I define as shamanic work, rolling in my mouth the clear resin casts I had made of pollen grains viewed at microscopic level. After being worked with saliva in the mouth, these objects were placed in the pockets of the fur. My attachment and detachment, and bodily engagement with these objects instigated an inner dialogue on the ongoing internal processing of emotions.

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SHAMANISM

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ARISTOCRACY

UNIVERSITY

OF

OXFORD

BOTANICAL

GARDENS

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BOYHOOD

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IN

THE

GREENHOUSE

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Creative Director & Photographer

VINCE

DENG

S t y l i s t

ROSIE

MULLAN

M o d e l s

Clothing

designed

by

RUFFUS ROCK & FRANK PINCENT

JACK

MCGOLDRICK

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NOBUYOSHI ARAKI, 'Polanography', 2016, two Polaroids cut in the middle and attached, 10.8x8.9cm, Unique, Unframed x4. Courtesy of TAKA ISHII

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FORMS OF FLOWERS AND FEMALE BONDAGE Nobuyoshi Araki’s exploration of sex, life and death

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KATTY

COWLES

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If there is any lingering debate as to where the line between art and pornography falls, Nobuyoshi Araki strings it up by the ankles and hangs it feet-first from the ceiling. One of Japan's most prolific contemporary artists, his work recalls the rich history of eroticism that has penetrated Japanese art since the 15th century. He is known partly for his work with bondage, photographing women trussed in rope and half-open kimonos or bare-skinned in moments of quiet intimacy. Yet playing on age-old artistic tradition has hardly granted the self-styled “photomaniac” an easy ride; he was censored by the Japanese government until the early 80s, and has since been dismissed as an enfant terrible, a monster, a pornographer. Now it seems the mania is all ours, as auctions and exhibitions spring up across the globe to cement the legacy of the ill and old Araki. But claiming to have always had one foot in the grave, Araki continues to produce art, seeing sex and photography as the truest affirmations of life, even in death.

The difficulty of applying the art versus pornography debate to these particular works is this. Araki’s is not photography of bondage, but rather, photography is bondage. While I’ll try not to get too carried away with the meta-theory behind his practice, it nevertheless strikes me that the subject of Araki’s erotic series has at least some affiliation with the process of photography itself. To take a photograph is to fix, to capture a particular moment in time whether it be messy or rehearsed, ordinary or extraordinary. It asks for movement, but it deals in precision and stasis. And then there is the printing process itself.

Araki uses gelatine-silver print to produce many of his blackand-white photographs, a process in which animal protein acts as the binder for developed silver as the image material. Here, print is itself a form of intricate binding. It’s the joining of forces and materials, a practice that seems to mirror Araki’s own creative process in its emphasis on collaboration: his models are seen as partners, equal to him rather than submissive.

I'm at the Musée Guimet in Paris where a comprehensive retrospective of Araki's work is showing here until September. A sign on the wall reads that the content of the exhibition is unsuitable for children, and I wouldn’t be so bold as to dispute it. I remember hearing that in a gallery in Austria, a 1992 exhibition of Araki's bondage series caused two female guards to walk out, refusing to return until it had been dismantled. They argued that the work was degrading, intrusive and fetishistic. And yet nothing in Araki's erotic imagery seems to offend my delicate sensibilities, and it's not because I've been desensitised or over-sexualised or because I have some raging Japanese porn fetish. At least, I don't think so.

Besides the theatrical art of kinbaku, Araki’s work is also influenced by his admiration for shunga, a form of early erotic woodblock printing in Japan. “I’d like to take photos similar to shunga,” he once said, “but I haven’t reached that level yet.

There is bashfulness in shunga. The genitals are visible, but the rest is hidden by the kimono like they are hiding a secret.” As I weave through a gallery spread legs, cigarettes, hotel rooms and public urination, it nevertheless strikes me that Araki has, in one particular series, managed to achieve his own special kind of sexual bashfulness. The flower series is intensely beautiful and seems to evoke the quiet philosophy that drives the artist’s whole oeuvre: that there is love and sex and regeneration, but none of it without death. For Araki, whose wife died prematurely in 1990, wilting magnolias, tulips and anthuriums are important symbols of both the waning of life and the waxing of memory.

His flowers are rendered and positioned suggestively; petals are sometimes moistened with red and pink paint and pistils dampened. Yet it’s hardly enough to say “that one looks so much like a vagina”. The flowers are rich and organic and full of sap, and hung next to photographs of the artist’s own intimate love affairs they give the exhibition its cumulative effect. It is aphrodisiacal.

The art of bondage in Araki's photography is inspired by the tradition of kinbaku, a type of erotic binding that first emerged in the 1800s and originated with a form of ancestral Japanese martial art. Kinbaku is essentially the beauty of tight binding. It weaves a network of intricate rope patterns across billowing human flesh, ensnaring the body and its lines in a moment of pure theatricality. Araki’s photographs show wrists bound behind backs, legs held in frog-like genuflect, breasts bulbous and squeezed into oblongs by thick black ties. Women are hanging from trees and ceilings, trapped in baths and suitcases, are kneeling, floating and dancing. There's a pregnant woman wearing nipple-clamps, and there is lots and lots of vagina.

And yet something about Araki’s work screams prurience rather than vulgarity. It is interested in sexuality as an aesthetic, as something to talk about and, indeed, as a thing of beauty. If there is any hint of violence in an image it is always softened by the expression of its subject: the woman’s gaze is one of either severity or serenity, and stares at the lens with assurance and calm. There is no sign of pain, only playfulness and control.

The photos are constructed around this incredible suspension of movement and gesture, and at the end of the shoot the photographer releases the model and she goes home.

If ever Araki’s photographs appear seedy or shocking, I imagine that this pornographic element is entirely intentional. Erotica alone is too clean and intellectual for an artist who strives for something messier, dirtier, more candid. This whole debate of pornography versus fine-art photography hardly seems to trouble a man who believes that vaginas are the origin of all visual art. Pornographer or not, Araki produces work that does far more than to simply realise erotic behaviour in print. His vision is driven by a consciousness of heritage, tradition and theatre. He sees photography as suspension, swinging between modesty and sexuality, between damp and drying up, and between binding and release. The exhibition at the Musée Guimet shows Araki as he ties these opposing forces together, fixing memories in place among other, sexier things. At worst it might turn you off; at best, it’ll do more than turn you on.

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F A N D O M

F A S H I O N

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HENRY

DEACY

If I were to list in this article the name of each person who laughed when they found out I was writing for a fashion magazine, I’m sure I would have far overstepped my word count.

In fairness to the naysayers, a list of items of clothing I own that are associated with sci-fi shows, fantasy books and various superhero comics would be about the same length. My proudest collection are my nine Doctor Who t-shirts, each of which I can describe in perfect detail - don’t worry, I won’t. It seems odd to many of my friends that I don’t invest into something a little trendier, or make more of an effort to look good on a night out, and when I do occasionally wear something which isn’t geek-related, the cries of “that outfit’s actually not terrible”, or something similar, come my way thick and fast (you know who you are).

So why do I do this to myself? Why expose myself to potential ridicule and ignore the opportunity to work on complementing my distinctly average looks? The answer is that I am not an outcast from the fashion world, but a pioneer. The era of

fandom fashion is at hand, and I am a self-declared spokesperson, vehement advocator, and social martyr for this new age of cool.

Fashion has always had me at a disadvantage for a number of reasons. Being partially colour-blind, getting dressed can be a dangerous game, and I have fallen victim to every chromatic faux-pas in the book, so much so that my wardrobe once existed of only blue and black items- until I was reliably informed by my hipster cousin that exclusively wearing shades of blue wasn’t going to cut it either. I also suffered from the fact that my mother wouldn’t let me out of her sight outside of the house for many years, meaning shopping trips consisted almost entirely to my mind of me intensely and conspicuously staring at the ceiling or floor while walking through mile long lingerie sections. Home clothes days were the bane of my life, and when girls showed up on the scene, my textile trauma only grew.

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In a last ditch effort at the age of 12 I decided there was one thing I must have if I were ever to get on in this life: a Hollister t-shirt. Rory Skinner had one and what Rory had, the cool kids needed. After pleading to my mother to buy me something which in hindsight I consider to be a severely overpriced tea cloth, the day finally came, just in time for a school trip, when I was given the holy grail of the pre-teen social world.

Taking this moment to reiterate that you are reading the words of a man who wears a Batman lanyard so often that his girlfriend thinks he looks strange without it on, I am obstinate when I say that this t-shirt is one of the most embarrassing items of clothing I have ever owned. It was bright red, throwing off my wardrobe tactics immediately, and on the front of it was a cartoon of a blonde boy who could only be described as a “dude” standing next to the bold letters “PRAY FOR SURF, HOLLISTER CA.”. There was a place in this world for Pray for Surf, but it wasn’t on my torso. And matters were only made worse when I was interrogated on my knowledge of surfing. The revelation that I had never surfed ensued ridicule for the next three days.

I would have been better off naked.

Why oh why, I asked myself, would anyone ever bother with fashion? Within seconds of meeting me, people had judged my character purely based on my t-shirt, giving me no chance to explain what a stellar personality I had. It was then, however, that I realised something - I could use this traumatic reality to my advantage. I’d seen it all my life, people wearing t-shirts with their favourite bands or movies on them having an instant conversation starter with like minded individuals. My error in the fashion world had not been wearing a symbol, but rather wearing the wrong one. Just because I wasn’t a Ramones or Top Gun fan it didn’t mean I couldn’t do the same thing.

I looked at my comic book heroes and realised that I simply needed to find my own big red letter S to place on my chest.

The practical advantages were enormous too.

Websites such as qwertee.com would offer two nerdy t-shirts a day, for one day only, at £8 a piece. The fact that these items of clothing were predominantly online meant that I never had to venture into John Lewis, Topman, or any of their ilk, let alone enter the dreaded changing rooms. Christmas and birthdays were also guaranteed to be a good time when I reached the dreaded “practical presents” age; forcing my parents to sit through Smith era Who every Saturday paid off and then some.

MODEL // LAMORNA ASH

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COFFEE

WITH

ANNA

//

SHRAI

HARVEY

POPAT

When I meet with Anna Harvey at Kensington Kitchen, on a bright Tuesday afternoon, I was concerned that I already kneow too much. As a fan and follower of her illustriousan avid follower of her career I feared that I might appear as a slightly tanned ‘Single White Female’ imitation. I’m confident that it is quite hard not to be impressed. Having coffee with the pioneer thatwoman who has served as the Deputy Editor of British Vogue, whilst having the monumental task of styling the late Princess of Wales from blushing bride, to daring divorcee and going onto head up Vogue new markets (being responsible for bringing the fashion bible to outposts such as Russia, India and Brazil), isn’t as typical an afternoon as you might expect. Harvey proves utterly charming, and insists that before we begin that her memory is not ‘what it used to be’. I soon come to find that this modesty is a trademark characteristic, and just part of what makes it so easy to chat to her. Smiling, with a grey pixie cut, and hammered gold drop earrings, she places her phone inside her slouchy Burberry tote to signal the start of the interview, and is keen to add that ‘everything may be digital, but I’m certain my children will forget how to actually write soon!’

way to get the best out of us. Throw us in and let us fight it out.’

One of the lasting gripes she had with Miller’s tenure as Vogue editor-in-chief was the ‘politics of the magazine’ and the sheer difficulty to work out just ‘exactly how to please people’. That’s something that Anna [Wintour] is very good at avoiding. She’s very transparent.’ Indeed, Wintour’s short reign as editor of British Vogue was an education in dealing with brutal honesty. Yet Harvey assures me that Wintour is ‘most certainly not arrogant’ and is still a dear friend that never seems to forget their humble beginnings on the same desk at Harpers all those years ago.

Indeed, Harvey notes that when she and Wintour began at Bazaar, and even when Harvey joined Vogue in 1977 ‘everything was structured differently…’ and that ‘you did everything yourself, and the models did everything too…from doing their own hair and make up, to bringing the right underwear.’ However, Harvey was certainly not one to ever shy away from the daily grind, and was never deterred from a career in fashion.. A career in fashionIt had been her dream since her early years in South Africa, spent ‘pouring over Vogue and Bazaar, which had come by boat and arrived months late.’. After eleven years in South Africa she was sent to boarding school in England, which she ‘I ‘simply hated,’’, although she adds, he reflects that ‘I still have life long friends that I made there.’ It’s clear to see how Harvey has maintained such lasting relationships throughout her career- each one is given time, work, and crucially, perseverance. When we meet, Harvey isn’t interested in dishing the dirt about her time at Condé Nast.

Harvey is part of Condé Nast’s proverbial furniture.

She began at Harpers Bazaar, as pPart of the a generation of women that ‘seldom went to university,’, she hadshe embarked on a course at secretarial college before working at an advertising agency, where- through her contacts she was able to get a spot at Harpers Bazaar through her contacts, before moving to Condé Nast’s Brides magazine. Harvey earned her stripes as a junior fashion editor at Brides and it wasn’t until 1977 that she joined Vogue under the helm of then editor-in-chief, Beatrix Miller. Harvey professes that it was a treat to work for Miller,. ‘ Beatrix was a wonderful writer, but notably a writer, as opposed to a fashion journalist.’ Harvey became a senior fashion editor at Vogue and is quick to point out just how ruthless the cultureit all was: ‘it was so competitive, and she [Miller] knew that was the

On the contrary, even more testing professional relationships, like with American Vogue creative director Grace Coddington, are always qualified with noting just how talented Coddington was, and still remains to this day. What’s clear is Harvey’s unflinching respect for the industry that has given her so much.

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Naturally, the magazine industry, with its arduous hours and (particularly for Harvey) demanding schedule meant that compromise was inevitable. She is quick to note that when her first international post came up (to consult for Spanish Vogue 25 years ago), it was a struggle to decide if she was going to take it. ‘I had four children…travel for work was very different then. You would go away for two weeks, now you could condense to two days…the teams were much smaller.’ I am curious as to how she managed the travelling with the long hours at Vogue House, all the while being a mother? Without much hesitation she replies earnestly: ‘I had a remarkable husband who put up with my constant absences.’ Johnathan, a barrister, was ‘incredibly hands on with the children’ as they grew up.

Being away from her children for long spells wasn’t something Harvey necessarily found easy, and she does acknowledge that ‘leaving Heathrow was always difficult.’. But Harvey isn’t shy to add just how much she loved her job. Quite rightly, it is clear to see how little time she had for certain ‘nameless’ models who behaved ‘like spoilt children who she could have been spending time with at home.’ Naomi, however, was ‘a treat’ to work with, and Harvey assigns this affability to Campbell’s lasting career as an older fashion model. ‘She’s still doing nudes!’ Harvey protestsexclaims, and ‘that’s a huge achievement for any model over the age of 30.’

In 1981, Anna Harvey was appointed to strike up a relationship with a certain public figure to help them with their recent rise in the public eye and navigate every major event that required sartorial deliberation. Of course, Diana the Princess of Wales, a young bride with the world watching her every move, needed to ensure that not one foot was stepped out of place when it came to something as ostensible as her wardrobe choices. Harvey assures me that it was not a common occurrence for a fashion editor to dress royalty. Vogue was more concerned with five page spreads of Halston and Bill Blass, than working out what tea dress would look best at Balmoral in the summer. ‘It was quite a challenge for me,’ Harvey adds when we come to the topic of Diana.adds. Harvey is routinely credited with transforming the late princess from a ‘Laura Ashley sheathed Sloane’ to an international fashion icon. When I bring up this impressive accolade, Harvey is wonderfully forthright to pointpoints out that ‘we were all wearing Laura Ashley! People have a tendency to be quite unfair with regard to her earlier fashion choices.’ Harvey’s job was most certainly not straightforward. One wrong decision and she would have been liable to the Royal Family’s wrath and the scrutiny of the British public, as well as the international press. ‘I remember having to buy lots of gloves…most of the Royal family don’t have to wear gloves now.

I would like to know what happened to all of those wonderful gloves!’

How did Diana’s style revolution begin for Harvey?

What did it really involve? ‘When she was married we used a lot of British talent…Catherine Walker did a very good job’ Harvey muses. ‘But after her separation she [Diana] didn’t need to be as loyal to British designers.’ After 1992, Diana started to be seen in many of the designers she became so fond of in her later life. ‘A lot of Versace… he was doing beautiful tailored suits that were perfect for her lifestyle.’ Harvey, ever humble, loved

working with Diana, , and it remains one of her lasting professional achievements, with that particular velvet Victor Edelstein ‘Travolta’ gown proving to be a highlight. Harvey regales that ‘Diana was always grateful…she would always say, “thank you”.

That’s something I’m forever telling my children- “always say thank you!”’ It’s clear that this interview could, in fact, be an education for me in making the right first impression.

The question that has been on my mind from the very beginning has been why Harvey stayed at Vogue for so long? Harvey only left her post at Vogue last August, and after over forty years it’s safe to say that it wasn’t something easy to leave. ‘Quite simply, it’s the best…and I had another life.’ Harvey’s According to Harvey, her husband and four children had ‘absolutely no interest in fashion.’ she declares. As we laugh she adds just how refreshing it was to come back home and separate herself from her work life. Of course, I couldn’t get away without asking which designers have been particularly inspirational throughout her career. She pauses to reflect and proceeds to insist that she ‘longs for the days of Alber [Elbaz],’, the ex-creative director of Lanvin, and that she greatly admires Christopher Kane, Marni, and remains a ‘huge fan’ of Vivienne Westwood. Indeed, when Harvey became editorial director of Condé Nast ‘New Markets’ in 1997 I wasam curious to see how she was able to translate these designers’ work onto the pages of Indian and Russian Vogue. ‘The fashion was rarely the problem…these countries have a huge appetite for fashion and particularly home-grown British talent as well as their own designers…it’s quite a nice balance.’ Yet, the editorial logistics didn’t prove as easy. Harvey notes that as deputy to Alexandra Shulman she had learnt a lot about editorial content and became ‘a jack of all trades’, And whilst she comments that ‘India has a great culture of journalism’, Russia certainly proved difficult. ‘The Cyrillic alphabet was difficult, and just bringing something like Vogue to Russia was a challenge…the biggest hurdle was finding the staff to work in the magazine.’ Harvey also found some colleagues, at times, ‘devious’ at times, realising many of the promises that came with taking Condé Nast global were empty: and realised many of the empty promises that came with taking Condé Nast global: ‘you would be told that they had found the most wonderful features editor, and no one actually qualified materialised.’

Harvey smiles before telling me how Bruce Webber once complained that she was ‘rather boring’ when they went on shoot for Vogue in the 1980s. I laugh with her. Harvey is truly anything but, and seems to have been Condé Nast’s secret weapon for decades, supporting and striking up friendships with Editors, like Alexandra Shulman (still one of her best friends) and Felicity Clarke, surreptitiously styling Lady Di, and transforming Vogue intoon an international platform. Harvey is neither icy, nor cuddly, but forever humble, talented, warm, and frankly irreverent for an age of fashion that is shape-shifting into a digital haze. Harvey is the old school poet behind it all.

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THE

C U LT

OF

PERSONALITY

Fashion and the rise of the individual

// CAMILLE GOODMAN

Vogue100: A Century of Style, a centenary celebration, a showcase of photography, fashion, art, and culture. From its birth in 1916 to its contemporary prominence, British Vogue has been synonymous with everything significant in the world of catwalks, trends, lifestyle and most importantly, contemporary societal issues. 280 prints were scattered around the National Portrait Gallery, joined by an extensive archive of magazine covers, and most eye-catchingly, a series of moving images of the most remarkable of Vogue’s photography through the ages, truly conveying the worldwide scope and changing influence of the ‘fashion Bible’. Static images transformed and moulded into each other in an installation that told a narrative through works by photographers like Steven Meisel, Lee Miller, Man Ray, their chosen subjects a who’s who of icons of the last century: Greta Garbo, Madonna, Audrey Hepburn and Cara Delevingne.

A photo of Twiggy, a visual reflection of 60s London, was arbitrarily positioned, impressed in black and white into the centre of one blank empty space. The picture, a charming portrayal of the crop-haired, child-like, smoky-eyed model, mouth agape in an image of excitement and spontaneity,

encapsulated everything I thought the exhibition should have stood for. The image, combines personality and style in a way that both enshrines it in a 60’s array of heavy eyeliner, off-duty style and free-spirit and foresees the continual emergence of fashion personalities such as Kate Moss and more recently, the changing goofy faces of Cara Delevingne.

What Vogue, and increasingly, other media today, have been doing is breaking down walls between individuality and normality, catalysing a shift from featuring models as mere clothes-horses to models and increasingly celebrities, as individuals, on covers and billboards, on TV and YouTube. Readers don’t just want to see a face, a trend, a picture; they want to know the back-story, they want to relate, and most importantly, they want to emulate. It is true that the everyday figure is still restricted by price tags, by the often outrageous six-figure sums of the highest couture. But today we have, high street brands which replicate catwalk trends, and diversifying forms of media, readily accessible fashion shows on YouTube, street style blogs like The Sartorialist and celebrities on Instagram.

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Vogue has in a way foreseen these with its style files, and depictions of models and celebrities that defy categorization, encouraging variety and celebrating personality, As far back as 1922, Vogue was making waves in the fashion world.

Editor Dorothy Todd, avant-garde in her cultural approach, invited writers such as Virginia Woolf and Aldous Huxley to contribute, reflecting the modernist age in its feature of ‘the horrors of society’. In 1963, Editor Diana Vreeland, altered the approach from a focus on fashion to pop, including Barbara Streisand, Mick Jagger, and Warhol in its pages. 1973 saw Liza Minnelli grace the cover in an unconventional pose, hands sprawled in front of her as perhaps a barrier, symbolizing touch or unwanted touch in a way which sparked discussion about feminism and body image.

Then in 2001, Carine Roitfeld became editor of French Vogue and allowed Kate Moss, Sofia Coppola, and Charlotte Gainsbourg, among others, to guest edit. Gone were the guides of ready-to-wear trends, beauty tips and lifestyle advice, and in their place, images of increasing controversy, diversity and contemporary impact. The reader was presented with an insight into the lives of these notable figures not just from fashion, but all cultural realms. Roitfeld used her prominence to allow these women a voice in a way that should not have been surprising in 2001, but would be hugely impactful even today in terms of women’s equality. Unlike the seemingly arbitrary por-

trayal of prints and models in the Vogue100 exhibition, these three women were chosen for their precise individual emphasis.

Kate Moss has graced the covers of editions worldwide from Japan to Spain, and is known as much for her plethora of looks over the years as their relation to times of her life.

From the controversial 1993 heroin-chic cover, the refreshed image of Kate post-rehab in 1999, to Kate as a mother, and dressed in vintage Bowie costumes, Moss constantly evolves and defies labels. The British-French actress Charlotte Gainsbourg is known as much for her beauty and artistic skill as her personal life: her turbulent upbringing as the daughter of Jane Birkin and Serge Gainsbourg, and controversial artistic collaborations with Lars Von Trier. Each of these women were chosen not only for their impact on fashion, but their life and personality.

We’re in an age of personality, of models who are also celebrities, and of celebrities who cover fashion magazines: the Delevingnes, the Waterhouses, the Kardashians, and even the Obamas. It’s the age of Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr, pages which give voice to previously dismissed clothes-horses or mere fashion icons, allowing them to take control of how their lives is perceived, to give voice to contemporary issues that relate to their own personal experience and wider society.

Media has become a platform for this and it often stems from aspects of fashion, where even personality is a commodity.

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When our cellar flooded ten years ago, it wasn’t the assortment of dusty furniture, the boxes of tools, or the disregarded gifts that my mother lamented. It was the stacks of Vogue magazines which had been submerged, their pages fused together and curling, the faces washed into an impressionist watercolour. I had been the proud owner of one of the smaller piles: every October issue from 1995, the year of my birth, had been given to me by my mother.

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Some might flinch at the prospect of dressing like their parents...

...but perhaps we overlook the influences that they’ve had.

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Creative Director

M A Y A

G U L I E V A

P h o t o g r a p h e r s ISABELLA BOSCOWEN & TIFFANY KHA S t y l i s t

I S A B E L

L A W

M o d e l s E L I C I A B E G G & Z O E B R A N D O N Wo r d s b y

OLIVIA

With special thanks to

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WALLWORK

Camille

Goodman

P R I N T E M P S

2 0 1 6

Fashion in the age of tehcnological change

// HANNAH

&

CASSENS JACK

MARSHALL COOPER

Shiny new technologies are so often touted to change the way we live, and if we are to believe its advocates, 3D printing is one of the most exciting developments in design and production in recent years. Once the preserve of the manufacturing industry, we have already seen its potential for political power in the 3D printing of a gun by American anarchist Cody Wilson; it has enabled exploration of the art-science intersection in the creation of a new ‘Rembrandt’ painting, made with the help of algorithms to find common patterns in the artist’s work, and ultimately 3D printed. However, interesting though they might be, these examples remain very much in the domain of the experimental, and do not particularly affect the lives of the majority of the population.

The Magma dresses from her Autumn/Winter 2016 Lucid collection, a continuation of van Herpen’s collaboration with the innovative architect Philip Beesley, are a testament to the possibilities of the medium of 3D printing. In these dresses, thread-like white thermoplastic polyurethane filaments ricochet delicately across a firmer black polyamide base, while elsewhere these same filaments pool to form luminous Rorschach inkblots against the black. Such intricate complexity could not have been so easily achieved with more traditional materials, the plastics providing a flexibility and strength belied by their ethereal form. Van Herpen has been working with 3D printing for years, of the first designers to do so; her first collection making use of the technology was in 2011.

Meanwhile, the fashion industry has always had a penchant for the innovative, a connection most recently explored at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute exhibition, Manus x Machina: Fashion in an Age of Technology; here, the relationship between fashion and technology since the early 1900s is set out across 170 examples of haute couture and avant-garde ready-to-wear pieces. Included are the dresses bedecked in laser-cut plastic flowers from Marc Jacobs’ Spring/Summer 2012 collection for Louis Vuitton, as well as more laser-cut offerings from the current creative director of the brand, Nicolas Ghesquière. Alongside these pieces can be found 3D-printed Chanel suits, with embroidery, paint, and tiny crystals added by hand later, as well as work from the Dutch avant-garde designer, Iris van Herpen.

3D printed materials can also be combined with more traditional techniques, the printed parts used to embellish the garments. The designer Alexis Walsh has used this approach in her LYSIS Collection, which featured angular printed pieces sewn onto clothing by hand to provide a silhouette which combines both rigid and organic in garments of a palette of grey and orange tones, resulting in pieces reminiscent of volcanic rock and molten lava.

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While these examples from van Herpen and Walsh are to be admired for their innovation, they are hardly accessible. The MakerBot Replicator, a 3D printer popular amongst designers (and the Radcliffe Science Library of Oxford), is limited in its ability to print products with maximum dimensions of 28.5 x 15.3 x 15.5 cm. Clearly, a piece of clothing cannot be created all at once, an issue reflected in the way in which the technology has been used for this purpose; one of Iris van Herpen’s Magma dresses is made from of 5,000 individual elements sewn together. Van Herpen and Walsh are at the forefront of experimentation of this nature within haute couture, incorporating new materials and techniques with old ones, but their pieces could not be produced by someone with a 3D printer, a passion for fashion, and no design skills. 3D printing is in this regard not the democratising technology that it has been presented as.

Maybe the true potential of 3D printing in fashion lies instead in the customisation of pre-existing designs to suit the individual. Online repositories of object designs for 3D printing already exist. Thingiverse.com contains user-uploaded designs, which can be downloaded and printed by anyone with a 3D printer. You want a replacement part for your model aeroplane? Some stackable boxes for your kitchen? A bowl for your jewellery? You can download it, personalise it, and print it. The same concept could, in theory, apply to fashion.

Imagine scrolling through a database of designs in the search for a dress for an event. You see a design that takes your fancy, but you wish it was a bit shorter. With a shop-bought dress, this either means continuing your search, or tailoring the garment; with a 3D printed dress you could simply remove the desired sections of the digital design. Your dress is now the perfect length, but your best friend is going to be wearing a dress of the same colour; you can change the colour of the digital design, and the dress will be printed using a different coloured material. Taken to its logical conclusion, you could print clothing on a whim, to suit your mood, or the occasion, switching up colour, cut, and pattern. Altering clothing to suit an individual’s form and tastes would be as simple as pressing a few buttons.

For this to be possible, consumers would have to be able to easily construct clothing from the smaller components produced by a 3D printer. Stitching together 5,000 individual parts would obviously be impractical for most people. Danit Peleg, of Israel’s Shenkar College of Art and Design, showed how this construction could be made simpler, producing an entire collection with just the smaller 3D printers that can be used at home. Peleg printed sheets made from a flexible plastic material, which could be used like normal textiles and assembled to form the overall structure. By printing these sheets with subtle hooks and clasps, you’d just have to snap all the pieces together.

So, could 3D printed fashion decentralise design?

Could the existence of online design repositories where anyone could upload their designs (and charge others to download them) loosen the grip of labels on trend more than any previous innovation? The short answer is, probably not.

Such a shift would require enormous progress in the field of 3D printing. Although Danit Peleg’s collection only cost around €70 in materials for each piece, the printers themselves cost more than 20 times that sum. Factor in the more than 2000 hours it took to print, and this is a pretty inconvenient operation.

While it is normal for new technology to increase in efficiency and reduce in cost as it develops, it would also be foolish to be too optimistic about the impact of 3D printing on fashion. All else aside, people need to want to wear these garments, and I can’t see anyone rushing to wear a plastic jumper in the depths of the winter. It might well be that 3D printing is the latest in a string of trends to get the fashion pack excited for a season or two, before they move on; maybe it will remain the preserve of experimental art forms, exciting in theory, but limited in practice.

Maybe this view is overly pessimistic though; as this technology becomes more sophisticated and affordable, maybe 3D printing really could change the way we make, buy, and wear clothes.

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Europe

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With specail thanks to the W S Supplies Army Surplus Store

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Producer

CHARLOTTE

A r t D i r e c t o r

VINCE

HYMAN DENG

B & W P h o t o g r a p h y YVES LEATHER Colour Photography M o d e l s

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CHARLOTTE

ANDREW

HYMAN

DICKINSON & CHARLOTTE NEVE

A R T

I N

F A S H I O N

:

M E TA L S A N D M AT E R I A L S

Olivia May 31 Little Clarendon Street Oxford OX1 2HU http://www.oliviamay.org/

// A collaboration between Oxford based Sculpture Artist RACHEL DUCKER & Oxford fashion boutique OLIVIA MAY Ltd

Whether you argue the case that fashion is art or not, one cannot deny the importance of art in fashion. Throughout history fashion has taken its inspiration from fine art. In fact, from medieval art to impressionism, cubism to street art and all periods in between, many of the fashion world’s elite have been heavily influenced by art. We only have to look at some of the recent runway collections to see evidence of this. Bill Gayton, Creative director of John Galliano, has said illustrator Aubrey Bearsley’s drawings have directly informed his collections.

It is not surprising then that the fashion boutique Olivia May, who prides itself in being the ‘the home of unique designers’, has teamed up with Oxford based artist Rachel Ducker. Amongst the esteemed designers carried by Olivia May is German fashion designer Studio Rundholz, with its emphasis on an extraordinary mix of materials, design and colour techniques, making it the obvious choice for this collaboration. The marrying together of Studio Rundholz’s metallic collection and the sculptural forms used by Rachel demonstrates once again the close relationship between art and fashion. The ability to experiment with finishes, materials and looks brings a new dimension to fashion and to sculpture.

‘energised in human form’. The clever posturing, latent movement and use of materials leaves the viewer with a tangible feeling of energy.

Combining metals with plaster adds yet a further dimension to the energy of the sculptures. The elongated dancer emphasises the graceful shapes and forms of the art. Rachel’s “The Fisherman” casting the net, a Rolls-Royce commission, creates an interpretation of the traditional fishing techniques in a wire sculpture form. The outstretched hands of a female figure or the Icarus falling figure abandoned with its gauze flames conjure up a living, breathing sculpture.

When presented with Rachel’s inspiring art it is no surprise Olivia May were driven to join forces with this collaborative photo shoot. Rachel’s generosity and enthusiasm, combined with her insight into the human form and works seamlessly with the inspiration of a fashion designer, demonstrating once again a true partnership between art and fashion.

Statement pieces from Studio Rundholz in heavy cotton fabrics, offering texture and structure have been hand dyed to create a clothing collection with a ‘true metallic ‘finish. Since the foundation of the company and the creation of its first collection in 1993, the name Rundholz has stood for garments not subject to short lived trends, but instead ones that emphasise the individuality of the wearer.

In the same way the visionary art of Rachel Ducker, with her ability to bring sculpture alive through movement and materials has seen her create inspirational wire sculptures. With an accomplished background in life drawing and an appreciation of the human form, Rachel has given us something truly unique. The ability to capture the human body, whether it be slightest movement of the hand or fingers, the graceful movement of a dancer or the tilting of the head, we are presented with a piece of sculpture

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For further information please email Naomi@oliviamay.org

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Managing Director

JOSH

MCSTAY

TOM

METCALF

SPISTO

PERNIA

Secretary

PRICE

HARRIET

Directors

BULL

MACK TOM OLIVER HELEN ROBERT

GRENFELL HALL JOHNSON STEVENSON WALMSLEY

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