ELITISM FOR ALL · Volume 8 Issue 7 · £8 · Spring 2016
Bubbles Hal Foster Art pop Peter Sloterdijk Inflatable architecture Mariana Mazzucato Jean Baudrillard Neo-baroque Estelle Hanania Science of bubbles Colin McDowell In praise of shadows Sara Hossain Westminster bubble Masahisa Fukase Dior in the Palais Bulles
Cover photography: Tod’s by Joanna Piotrowska
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Editor’s letter Bring the magazine to life: how to use the Fashion Scan app. Front
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In the bubble: from commodities to soft matter and geodesic domes to disputed territories, spheres, foams and bubbles offer a new framework for contemporary life. Features Bubble diagram: Tank’s guide to Peter Sloterdijk’s world of spheres. Double bubble: Kai Friese is a journalist who lives in New Delhi. Bubble mentality: Atossa Araxia Abrahamian has worked as an editor at Al Jazeera America, the New Inquiry and Dissent magazine and the author of The Cosmopolites: The Coming of the Global Citizen (2015).
Chimera: as France’s most infamous theorist of postmodernism and poststructuralism, the philosopher and academic Jean Baudrillard defined the extremes of French theory until his death in 2007. A show of his lesser-known photographic work, reveals a fascination for surfaces, Ultimate Paradox, was recently exhibited at Chateau Shatto in Los Angeles. Original spheres: Martha Henriques is a science and health writer who has written for the BBC, among other publications.
100 The big bubbly: Peter Lang is professor in architectural theory and history at the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm. He specialises in the history and theory of post-war Italian architecture and design, with a focus on 1960s Italian experimental design, media and environments. He has been a member of the Rome-based urban arts research group Stalker since 1997.
108 When the bubble bursts: Mariana Mazzucato is professor in the economics of innovation at the Science Policy Research Unit of the University of Sussex. Her work focuses on finance and economic growth; and the role of the state in modern capitalism. She is the author of The Entrepreneurial State (2011).
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Toil and trouble: Timotheus Vermeulen is assistant professor in cultural theory at the Radboud University Nijmegen, where he co-directs the Centre for New Aesthetics. He has written on contemporary aesthetics, art, film and television for, among others, the Journal of Aesthetics and Culture, Screen, Monu, E-Flux, Frieze, Texte Zur Kunst and various collections and catalogues.
124 Westminster bubble: Nesrine Malik is a columnist and political analyst based in London. She grew up in North Africa and the Middle East and writes for the Guardian, among other publications.
136 Beheaded by iOS: Josephine Pryde is an English artist who teaches at the Universität der Künste in Berlin. Her work has recently shown in solo exhibitions in Bristol, San Francisco and Philadelphia. 142 From Millais to Wells: Simon J. Schaffer is is a professor of the history and philosophy of science at the University of Cambridge. In 2005 he shared the Erasmus Prize with Steven Shapin for their book, Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle and the Experimental Life. Curated pages
152 Art pop: Ajay RS Hothi and Christabel Stewart explore art that is ready to burst. Fashion features 130 Forever blowing bubbles: The legendary Colin McDowell has been one of the most influential and internationally respected figures in the global fashion community for three decades. He writes a regular column for the Business of Fashion. 166 A stitch in time: Faustine Steinmetz, Martina Spetlova, Phoebe English and Joe Richards by Tamsin Blanchard. Koché by Bethan Holt. Gabriele Colangelo at Giada by Prudence Wade. MSGM by Jainnie Cho. Eckhaus Latta by Natasha Silva-Jelly. Ed Lee by Sara McAlpine.
Fashion
184 Heavenly bodies: photography by Sohrab Golsorki-Ainslie, styling by Nobuko Tannawa 200 Familial: photography by Estelle Hanania, styling by Benoît Bèthume 214 Neo-baroque: photography by Eloise Parry, styling by Nobuko Tannawa 230 Light by design: photography by Osma Harvilahti, styling by Bobby Hook 244 In praise of shadows: photography by Lena C. Emery, styling by Sara Gilmour
256 Double take: Alessandra Facchinetti at Tod’s. Photography by Joanna Piotrowska, fashion by Caroline Issa and Nobuko Tannawa 279 Talk Hal Foster, Sara Hossain, Lynne Tillman, Erik Davis, Douglas Murphy, Matthew Gibberd & Albert Hill, Sylvie Tissot, Peter Cook, Joanna Walsh, John Foot and Frédéric Panaïotis. 302 Stockists and Subscriptions Mirror, mirror
304 Bukubuku: Masahisa Fukase’s final series
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In the bubble: from commodities to soft matter and geodesic domes to disputed territories, spheres, foams and bubbles offer a new framework for understanding contemporary thought Lucie wears a bodysuit, leotard and shoes by Moncler Gamme Rouge.
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“Copernicus took us out of the centre of the solar system; we now need to take ourselves out of the centre of the biosphere.” From John Thackara’s In the Bubble: Designing in a Complex World (2005), a book on ethics and lightness in design. Lucie contemplates the Copernican revolution, wearing a shirt and skirt by Thomas Tait. Opposite, all of Charlie’s clothes are by Raf Simons.
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“The sphere is the interior, disclosed, shared realm inhabited by humans… because living always means building spheres, both on a small and on a large scale” From Bubbles: Spheres I (2011) by Peter Sloterdijk.
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“Today, how easy it is to presume that one universe is all there is. Yet emerging theories of modern cosmology, as well as the continually reaffirmed improbability that anything is unique, require that we remain open to the latest assault on our plea for distinctiveness: multiple universes, otherwise known as the ‘multiverse’, in which ours is just one of countless bubbles bursting forth from the fabric of the cosmos.” From Cosmic Horizons: Astronomy at the Cutting Edge (2001) by Neil deGrasse Tyson. All Charlie’s clothes are by Fendi. If he listens hard enough, maybe he can hear the bursting of universes through the cosmic fabric.
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“I was drunk in that pure joyful way you can be from white wine, when your thoughts collide with one another like bubbles and what emerges when they burst is pleasure” Karl Ove Knausgård, from Dancing in the Dark: My Struggle Book 4 (2015). Charlie wears a suit, shirt and carries a bag by Paul Smith with shoes by Joseph.
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“We all have secret lives. The life of excretion; the world of inappropriate sexual fantasies; our real hopes, our terror of death; our experience of shame; the world of pain; and our dreams. No one else knows these lives. Consciousness is solitary. Each person lives in that bubble universe that rests under the skull, alone.” From Galileo’s Dream (2009) by Kim Stanley Robinson. Solitary in his consciousness, Charlie wears shoes by Joseph.
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“Ninety-nine percent of who you are is invisible and untouchable,” said Buckminster Fuller. Opposite, Lucie, trying in vain to touch her invisible self, wears two shirts and trousers by Erika Cavallini and shoes by Camper. All Charlie’s clothes are by Dries Van Noten.
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“The Google self and the Facebook self, in other words, are pretty different people. There’s a big difference between ‘you are what you click’ and ‘you are what you share’” From The Filter Bubble by Eli Pariser. Charlie wears a jacket by J.W. Anderson, a jumper and trousers by Tommy Hilfiger Tailored and shoes by Saint Laurent by Hedi Slimane. He points out the difference between his digital selves, holding a jacket by Tommy Hilfiger Tailored and sunglasses by BOSS.
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“[Creative destruction is] the process of industrial mutation that incessantly revolutionises the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one”. From Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy by Joseph Schumpeter (1942). All Charlie’s clothes are by Loewe. Lucie, stable, but revolutionised from within, wears a vest by G-Star RAW, a shirt by Kit and Ace, a belt by Kenzo, trousers by Hillier Bartley and shoes by Jimmy Choo.
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“Now tell me in what society, or beside whom, you live, and I will tell you who you are; describe your double, your guardian angel, your parasite, and I will recognise your identity.” Michel Serres, from Atlas (1994) as cited in Sloterdijk’s Bubbles. Twinned, Charlie and Lucie find their identity through each other. All their clothes are by Pringle of Scotland.
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“All movement, the great horizon, the journey, is a spasm of forgetting, which bends in the bubble of memory. Memory is always portable, it is always in the hands of a wandering automaton” From César Aira’s The Seamstress and the Wind (2011). Lucie takes her memories with her, wearing two dresses and carrying a bag by Céline.
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“We are already living in the bubble ourselves – already, like those characters in Bosch paintings enclosed in a crystal sphere: a transparent envelope in which we have taken refuge and where we remain, bereft of everything yet overprotected, doomed to artificial immunity, continual transfusions and, at the slightest contact with the world outside, instant death,” wrote Jean Baudrillard in his essay “The Boy in the Bubble” (1993). Charlie wears a jacket and badge by Saint Laurent by Hedi Slimane. Opposite, he wears a bag by Vivienne Westwood, trousers by Dior Homme and shoes by Joseph, evoking Hieronymus Bosch’s painting The Garden of Earthly Delights (1515).
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“In foam worlds, the individual bubbles are not absorbed into a single, integrative hyper-orb, as in the metaphysical conception of the world, but rather drawn together to form irregular hills... What is currently being confusedly proclaimed in all the media as the globalisation of the world is, in morphological terms, the universalised war of foams” Peter Sloterdijk in Foam: Spheres III (forthcoming). Opposite, Lucie wears a top, trousers and shoes by MM6. All Charlie’s clothes are by Prada. Charlie and Lucie are drawn together, ready to scale irregular hills.
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“Again and again the notion of the spherical environment, the dome or the bubbles, came to represent the new-found sense of the earth as a small, vulnerable globe in the vastness of space” From Douglas Murphy’s Last Futures. Lucie, floored by her new-found sense of the vulnerability of the earth, wears a top, skirt and bracelets by Liviana Conti with trousers and shoes by Iceberg.
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All Charlie’s clothes, and his bag, are by Gucci. Photography: Sohrab Golsorkhi-Ainslie / Womenswear styling: Nobuko Tannawa / Menswear styling: Bobby Hook / Women’s hair: Maki Tanaka using Aveda / Men’s hair: Takuya Uchiyama using Catwalk by TIGI / Women’s make-up: Emma Williams using Estée Lauder / Men’s make-up: Ammy Drammeh using MAC Cosmetics / Menswear styling assistant: Lucy Budd / Models: Charlie Cooper at Models 1 and Lucie Grace at Select Model Management
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An effervescent reading list Peter Sloterdijk, Bubbles The German philosopher’s best-known book, the first volume of his Spheres trilogy, reinterprets the history of Western metaphysics as an immunological project and gives an account of the contemporary discovery of the self – the bubble. See pages 64, 66-75, 118-123, 142-151, 288-289 Douglas Murphy, Last Futures A guide to the hopeful visions of socially responsive 1960s architecture. From Buckminster Fuller to Biosphere 2, via the Metabolists and Californian communes, Murphy’s revisionism celebrates the concrete and glass of a “future faced expectantly”. See pages 288-289 Eli Pariser, The Filter Bubble: What the Internet is Hiding From You The chief executive of Upworthy explodes the myth of “customisation” and search engines to reveal a formerly undetected cloistering of our online content. Pariser argues that “autopropaganda” of the filtered internet is aggressively harmful, creating a world of the familiar. See pages 136-141 Maggie Nelson, The Argonauts Nelson’s tenth book, a memoir, enters the microcosm of motherhood, the domestic realm and life with her husband Harry Dodge, with epigrammatic paragraphs on theory, love and politics, building to a shattering crescendo that confronts birth, life and death. Jean Baudrillard, “The Boy in the Bubble” from The Transparency of Evil: Essays in Extreme Phenomena In this polemical and vertiginous essay, Baudrillard argues that the “Boy in the Bubble” epitomises the “kind of vacuum-sealed existence hitherto reserved for bacteria”. We are enclosed in crystal spheres, overprotected, “doomed to artificial immunity”. See pages 84-91 The Inflatable Moment: Pneumatics and Protest in ’68, ed. Marc Dessauce Fifteen essential essays on the intersection of blow-up buildings and the radical French group Utopie. During the 1968 protests, inflatable architecture seemed to counter every principle of traditional architecture: adaptable, unstable, febrile. See pages 100-107, 288-289, 298-99
John Thackara, In the Bubble: Designing in a Complex World Thackara’s work on contemporary design takes its name from the term air traffic controllers use to describe their state of mind when “they are working, in control and in the flow”. Thackara asks the crucial question: what is all this technology for? What value does it add to our lives? See pages 100-107 Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy Asking, off the back of a sardonic reading of Marx, “Will capitalism survive?”, Schumpeter sets out his theory of “creative destruction”, arguing that technological innovation determines the development of capitalism, not the “laws of the market” – a detail too often forgotten by his free-marketeer fans. With memories of the last financial bubble still fresh, and as we hunker down for the next, it’s no surprise that it seems so apposite today. See pages 108-117, 130-135, 280-281 §
Flash fictions: Blot by Brian Catling Brian Catling is a poet, sculptor and performance artist who is currently making egg-tempera paintings and writing novels. He has performed and exhibited installations in many countries. His 2015 book The Vorrh drew much critical acclaim and is being made into a much-anticipated TV series directed by Terry Gilliam. Last year he won the Cholmondeley Award from the Society of Authors for his poetic works and this year he was elected a Royal Academician. He is the co-founder of the international performance collective The Wolf in the Winter and professor of fine art at the Ruskin School of Art, University of Oxford. briancatling.net His short stories appear on pages 73, 78, 95, 121 and 129
The big bubbly: inflatable architecture seems to speak of optimism. Yet as Peter Lang argues, these transparent experiments can be as claustrophobic as they are progressive
Haus-Rucker Co, Oase Nr.7 / Air-Unit (installation view at Museum Fridericianum), 1972. Photograph Š documenta Archiv
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City of Hemispheres: The Fifth City The city is a dazzling sheet of crystal amidst woods and green hills. On nearing it, one realises that it is made up of the covers of 10,044,900 crystalline sarcophagi, 185cm long, 61cm wide and 61cm deep. The walls separating the sarcophagi are transparent; the bottom, however, is shiny white. Inside each sarcophagus lies an immobile individual, eyes closed, breathing conditioned air and fed by a bloodstream – in fact, the blood system is connected to a purifying and regenerative apparatus which, through toxin elimination and doses of hormones, prevents ageing. A series of electrodes applied to the cranium controls an external sensory apparatus, of hemispherical form, diameter 30.5cm; this hemisphere of silvery metal is capable of moving and remaining immobile in the air and on the ground thanks to a propulsion system which emits no gas and no noise and has an unlimited life. One might think that the hundreds of thousands of hemispheres that continually
crowd the air and are suspended over the city or its surroundings are moved by telekinesis. The flat surface of the hemisphere contains its sensory organs; sight, hearing, taste, smell, touch. The sensations which these perceive are transmitted directly to the brain of the individual commanding the hemisphere. At times one can see hemispheres placed on the sarcophagi of the owners, exactly over the head; this is the position known as “profound meditation”. At other times, especially on sunny days, many hemispheres can be seen united in couples; this is the position of “sublime love”; these spiritual unions naturally do not have the power to create life, but this is unnecessary in a place where death does not exist. Image and text by Superstudio, “Fifth City” from City of Hemispheres, 1971. Courtesy the artists
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Bubble diagram In John Boorman’s 1974 film Zardoz, Sean Connery runs up against an immense glass dome-like structure. The world he left outside was rife with frenzied chants and acts of naked savagery, while inside the dome his free will is supressed by powerful mind controllers. The film is set some 300 years from now and the dome is a stage for two oppositional worlds – one primitive, the other futuristic. On the outside of the dome are the Brutals, a ragged people herded by violent, gun-wielding exterminators; on the inside, are the Eternals, an immortal community of hopelessly bored telepathics. Connery’s character, the moustachioed Zed, finds himself transported inside the transparent hemisphere aboard a massive stone figurehead that glides across the skies. Zed’s arrival eventually destabilizes the tenuous social balances of these privileged inhabitants, and much like in The Wizard of Oz, the Frank Baum tale that inspired this one, Zed gets to go home, but not before he has punctured the Eternals’ utopian bubble. Besides imagining the transparent shelled dome that envelops half the countryside, Boorman places a number of other inflatable bubbles in different scenes. As a spectator you come to understand that the rotund forms trigger something deep in our subconscious, conjuring up both a primordial past and a cybernetic future, both Arcadian and utopian. What intrigues us about the world of bubbles is that their rounded forms, dynamic shapes, womblike interiors create visceral conditions that can make us want to cuddle, feel vulnerable, or expose us to some really primal sensations. Yet the subject of bubbles in architecture is far from mainstream, and they are basically considered temporary, good for making indoor tennis courts, goofy entertainment spaces or at best emergency shelters. Yet their pure forms can be traced a long way back in time, to the first humanrecorded histories. Egyptian foundation myths, for example, deploy the bubble as the medium through which the gods are released into the world. The bubble springs forth from an infinite sea releasing the sphere of life. From this sphere emerges the first generation of divine gods, who will create all living things and command the earth and skies. The bubble therefore describes the protean moment before all things become possible – the egg-like form rises from an oceanic cosmos that will one day resubmerge the
human universe. This myth is symbolised in the god figure Nun, a male-female divinity who represents the before and after, the void and chaos that recall current Big Bang theories. The ancients understood the tenuous dynamic that held their world together, something we are just beginning to recognise with the rising seas brought about by the devastating effects of climate change. The noted design visionary John Thackara refers to the term “in the bubble” as the moment when air traffic controllers reach synchrony among all the incoming and outgoing flight trajectories. The danger, of course, is when airplanes wander outside the air traffic controllers’ predictable patterns and chaos ensues. Thackara’s flying predicament is clearly a familiar scenario, where the bubble represents a state of fragile equilibrium that, when ruptured, sends everything out of whack. Bubblegum Yet while the bubble can comfort, its undulating and elastic membrane also stirs feelings of queasiness and unease. That is probably why the most fearsome scenes in the short-lived 1960s British psychodrama The Prisoner, starring Patrick McGoohan as an ex-secret agent, featured a squadron of bubbles. McGoohan, known only as “Number 6”, is held against his will in an isolated holiday resort where escape is virtually impossible. Trapped inside the town, the only open way out is across the sea, but every escape attempt is thwarted by “Rovers”, water-bound, balloon-like bubbles. These menacing viscous shapes bob above the waves as they roll toward their panicked targets. And indeed, to be captured by one of these psychedelic bubble-guards means suffocation or even death. The architecture theorist Georges Teyssot, who has investigated the existential history of interior environments, describes eggs, bubbles and balloons as the most primal spatial archetypes. The hard shell of the egg and the soft, flexible membrane of the bubble find their fusion in the building experiments conducted by the pioneering architects Eliot Noyes and John Johansen, who used rubber balloons as moulds onto which they sprayed liquid concrete. Once the concrete hardened, the structures could be made inhabitable. On the other end of the spectrum, one of the great architecture critics to document the profound transformation of early 1960s British post-war architecture, the architectural historian Reyner Banham, was particularly enthused by recent
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“The natural delights of being inside a soft-shell bubble, its fluctuating, ‘quivering’ membrane, related more directly to natural elements than would stodgy old-style houses with bad ventilation and poor natural light”
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experiments in flexible structures. Teyssot credits Banham for speaking openly about the natural delights of being inside a soft-shell bubble, its fluctuating, “quivering” membrane relates far more directly to the natural elements than would stodgy old-style houses with bad ventilation and poor natural light. By the early 1960s, bubble-like structures began spreading throughout the international design community, with fantastical prototypes cropping up in Japan, Europe and the US. At the very beginning of the decade, the Japanese Metabolists designed huge speculative, residential and urban centres built around cellular capsules that could be combined into towering superstructures, like the cylindrical units pegged onto towers designed by Kiyonori Kikutake in 1963, or his geodesic dome cells mounted onto the Expo Tower in Osaka in 1970.
was attached to the front of a neoclassical building in Kassel in 1972. In Italy the group UFO paraded its inflatable tubular bubble structures in Florence’s streets and piazzas in playful political demonstrations it called urboeffimeri, or “urban ephemerals”, to demonstrate against war, capitalism and public authority. The sight of crowds of young people hauling huge, sausage-like inflatables with toothpaste adverts and Viet Cong slogans painted on them which profaned the Renaissance squares and monuments, did not go down well with the Florentine authorities.
UFO, Urboeffimero n.6, 1968-2012. Courtesy Centre for Contemporary Art Collection Luigi Pecci, Prato
In the US, the group Ant Farm began experimenting with temporary inflatable structures and in 1971 introduced an Inflatocookbook, to accompany its coast-to-coast road tour of American college campuses. These large inflatable plastic structures came packed inside a customised travelling van, and were supposed to promote spontaneous gatherings and alternative collective actions.
François Dallegret, Un-house. Transportable standardof-living package / The Environment Bubble, 1965. Collection Frac Centre, Orléans
In Britain, Mike Webb from Archigram invented inflatable structures like the Cushicle (1964) and the Suitaloon (1967), intended to reconcile personal space and the urban environment. In Austria, HausRucker-Co’s work focused on a variety of spherical structures, from the wearable Flyhead Helmet (1968) to a design for a weekend house – a sort of wrapped inflatable structure with the odd shape of a translucent bladder. Its most iconographic project was a vertiginous bubble structure, Oase No. 7, which
Ant Farm, Clean Air Pod at the Air Emergency Event, 1970. Courtesy UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive
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certain point, there is a critical moment when the tables are turned, like in a Ballardian construct, and the goal no longer is to preserve society but to keep society from destroying everything else. Then again, the most televisual dome ever to cover an entire city was in The Truman Show, directed by Peter Weir in 1998. Here, reality and fiction melded under one enormous stage set, a sort of dome over the known world. The film was shot in the then up-and-coming New Urbanist city of Seaside, on Florida’s Gulf Coast. This meant that Weir chose to stage his fictional film about a fictional reality show in a real town designed to resemble an imaginary version of a New England town built in Florida. Truman Burbank, played by Jim Carrey, finds he has no place to hide – an obtuse reference to the original “boy in the bubble” David Vetter, an American child born in 1971 who literally lived hospitalised in a plastic bubble, his entire life spent under the media’s uneasy gaze. Truman, unlike Vetter whose life would be portrayed by John Travolta, had access to a much larger volume of inhabitable space, but still experienced his world as oppressively claustrophobic. Under a dome, reality tends to flip, the transparent clarity of the structure perverting the sense of the visible and invisible, the public and the private. Above, the dome over Springfield in The Simpsons Movie (film still), 2007. Below, Hazel Larsen Archer, Buckminster Fuller Inside His Geosidic Dome, 1949 Courtesy ICA Boston
Bubble boy The inverse of the human-scale inflatable bubble is the bubble dome, a theme explored to great satirical detail in The Simpsons Movie (2007), in which the town of Springfield is sealed off to stop its noxious pollution from spreading to the rest of the country. The townsfolk are trapped inside, provoking a series of increasingly desperate attempts to break through the shell. Though many have remarked that there are similarities to Stephen King’s 2009 novel Under the Dome, later made into a television series, the Simpsons story is the more subversive of the two, given that the “Dome over Springfield” references Buckminster Fuller and Shoji Sadao’s 1960 plan to place a dome over midtown Manhattan. That dome, the mother of all planetary-scale projects, was intended to save energy and keep out pollution, the opposite of the Simpsons’ tragicomic scenario. As things are turning out, a dome over Springfield suggests something much more relevant to our situation today. At a
Rem Koolhaas and Cecil Balmond with Arup, Serpentine Gallery Pavilion, 2006. Photograph © John Offenbach. Courtesy Serpentine Galleries
These days, however, the bubble’s future is less in the hands of radical designers and eccentric screen writers. Contemporary experimental groups such as Raumlabor use inflatable structures to spur collective actions by bringing together alternative communities, just as Rem Koolhaas and Cecil
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Balmond’s bubble canopy erected for the Serpentine Gallery in 2006 hosted non-stop talks that demonstrated a commitment to neo-radical research. Not to mention a whole generation of form-generating, parametric-programming, 3D-fabricating architects who delight in making squirmy, mushy, bubbly things: bubble structures that point to a future where people will live unencumbered in free-form, non-Euclidian spaces.
Above, Raumlabor, Duismülsen, 2007. Courtesy Raumlabor, Berlin. Below, Matt Damon plays an astronaut who builds a greenhouse on Mars in the film The Martian (film still), 2015. Courtesy 20th Century Fox
But a more significant trend involves the proliferation of biospheres, those bubble-like, self-contained, self-regulating and independent ecosystem environments that are gradually becoming the prototype of choice for the human conquest of Mars. Unsurprisingly, The Martian (2015), Ridley Scott’s latest film, does not best make this point. Instead, it is a project like NASA’s inflatable dome structure on the remote and inhospitable volcanic slopes of Mauna Loa in Hawaii that houses researchers who are collecting data about living laboratories for would-be martian explorers. As we begin to learn
about the task of surviving the hardships of deep space voyage and remote human settlements, the very physical shape of our survival remains tied to these archetypal bubble-like spheres. Which brings us back to where we began: living life in the bubble might hold the future for the entire human race. §
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Heavenly bodies: a return to Palais Bulles, scene of one of Raf Simons’ final collections for Dior. Photography by Sohrab GolsorkhiAinslie, styling by Nobuko Tannawa Scan the opposite page to watch the story come to life. Go to page 27 to see how.
Lou wears a top from Dior SS15. Overleaf, she wears a top and skirt from Dior SS14.
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Dior is Paris’s most venerable fashion house. The stewardship of Raf Simons brought a fresh sense of connection to the maison’s heritage. Modernist with a capital M, floral without a hint of chintz, thoughtful while fun: Simons’ Dior was a realignment of Frenchchic for contemporary life and audiences. From his first couture show in 2012, where the rooms were covered entirely in fresh flowers, to his last cruise show in the Palais Bulles – the location of this shoot –
every gesture was poignant and profound. Simons’ Dior was aspirational and lavish, of course, but believable and intellectually credible. The house is now more relevant to the 21st-century woman than was ever imaginable before. Simons remained elegant even in his departure, leaving with an integrity that was full of love. As the Old Lady of Paris awaits her next suitor, we remember the Raf years with more than a little wistfulness. —Masoud Golsorkhi
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This page, Lou wears a dress from Dior AW14 Couture. Opposite, is a dress from Dior SS13.
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“The high point for me was that first collection he did for couture. It was such a clean, coherent message that immediately made the house codes clear and relevant again. And those walls of flowers were beautiful – lavish but simple, which seems very Dior. I think he’ll be remembered for bringing an artistic eye to the house, for reviving the Bar jacket and the tux, for getting it into Dover Street, for the jewelled
trainer. He broadened Dior’s audience. But in the end, three years just isn’t enough.” —Lisa Armstrong, fashion director, the Daily Telegraph This page, Lou wears a top and skirt from Dior SS13. Opposite, she wears a top and dress from Dior SS15 Couture.
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“I will never forget Raf’s first Dior show at the Hôtel Particulier in Paris – it was completely covered in flowers. As we walked in, the scent was intoxicating and the anticipation was palpable. I have rarely felt such a charged atmosphere before a show. The clothes had the modern touch needed to bring Dior forward. An unforgettable moment. Raf made the brand relevant again, insofar as it became a topic
of conversation in fashion. While not everyone was a fan of the direction he took, and some people missed Galliano’s theatrics, it’s undeniable that Raf put a unique stamp on Dior.” —Imran Amed, founder and editor-in-chief, The Business of Fashion This page, a dress from Dior SS14. Opposite, is a coat from Dior SS13.
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“While we were making Dior and I, on a Friday night I accompanied Raf back to Antwerp in his car. Away from the Dior office I discovered the extremely personable man behind the designer, equally curious about my favourite dessert or my favourite artist under 30. Raf is someone who has the ability to change the discourse on fashion. It’s not just about clothes any more.” —Frédéric Tcheng, film director
This page, Lou wears a jumper, top and shorts from Dior SS16 with the stylist’s own socks. Opposite, she wears a coat and boots from Dior SS15 Couture and tights by Falke.
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“Raf’s legacy is not just about Dior; it is about the fashion industry. It did feel like a ‘moment’ with him being there, because the menswear designers were doing womenswear. It was a shift and for me it did feel really significant. There was this idea of reality in the way he handled the couture so that it had a feeling of newness that had not been there for a
long time – probably since the 1950s, when it was the reality and ready-to-wear as not as dominant.” —Jo-Ann Furniss, fashion writer This page, a skirt from Dior SS15. Opposite, Lou wears a top and a skirt from Dior SS15 and the set designer’s own rubber glove.
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“I knew Raf before he went to Dior – we worked together at Jil Sander. So when he first arrived, I was the only person who knew him within the company. On one particular day, everyone in the studio was presented to him and when he walked into the room we ran and embraced each other like old friends. Raf was able to liberate Dior from its past but respect it at the same time.” —Stephen Jones, milliner
Opposite, Lou wears a jumper and top from Dior SS16.
Set design: Georgina Pragnell at Webber Represents / Hair: Maki Tanaka using Bumble and bumble / Make-up: Nobuko Maekawa using MAC Cosmetics / Videography: Martin Senyszak Photography assistant: Gabby Laurent / Set design assistant: Staci Lee Hindley / Model: Lou Schoof at Models 1
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Familial: the ties that bind, the bloodlines that hold. Photography by Estelle Hanania, styling by Benoît Bèthume
Scan the opposite page to watch the story come to life. Go to page 27 to see how.
Kim, Guerrino, Noah and Chloé Kim wears a jacket, skirt and shoes by Prada and a shirt by Véronique Leroy. Guerrino wears a coat and shirt from the Prada archives (stylist’s own) and trousers and shoes by Prada. Noah wears a coat by Prada, a jacket and trousers by Loewe, a shirt by Equipment and shoes by Nina Ricci. Chloé wears a coat and trousers by Véronique Leroy, a shirt by Dries Van Noten and shoes by Nina Ricci.
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Xavier and Klaudia Xavier wears a jacket by Acne Studios, a scarf by Sacai and his own trousers and shoes. Klaudia wears a coat by Lanvin, a dress by Sacai, shoes by CĂŠline and earrings by Nehera.
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Rose, Josefien and Lotte Rose wears a jacket and skirt by Vivienne Westwood Gold Label, a belt and earrings by Véronique Leroy and shoes by Dior. Josefien wears a dress by MM6, a top and shorts by Dior, a belt by Azzedine Alaïa and shoes and earrings by Véronique Leroy. Lotte wears a dress and boots by Miu Miu, a belt by Véronique Leroy and her own earrings.
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Opposite, Chloé and Axel Chloé wears a coat by Nina Ricci, a shirt and skirt by Gucci, a top by Masha Ma, tights by Wolford and shoes by Prada. Axel wears a shirt from the Prada archives (stylist’s own), a top by Nina Ricci, a belt by Prada and trousers by Lemaire.
This page, Xenia, Audrey and Marine Xenia wears a dress by Simone Rocha, shoes by Nina Ricci and earrings by Prada. Audrey wears a dress and shoes by Nina Ricci and earrings by Prada. Marine wears a dress by MM6, shoes by Lanvin and earrings by Céline.
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Jeanne and Claire Jeanne wears a coat by Miu Miu, a dress by Vivienne Westwood Red Label and her own earrings and bracelet. Claire wears a trench coat and belt by Wanda Nylon, a dress by Vivienne Westwood Red Label, tights by Falke and her own ring.
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Inès and Élise Inès wears a hat, a suit jacket and skirt by Chanel, a scarf by Lanvin, a belt by Miu Miu, socks by Falke and her own shoes. Élise wears a hat, coat, skirt and necklace by Chanel, a black lace belt by Prada, a belt by Sonia Rykiel, socks by Falke and her own trainers by New Balance.
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Hair: Perrine Rougemont at Caren / Make-up: Isabelle Bertrand at Caren / Videography: François Coquerel / Production: Arno at Kitten / Photography assistant: Emilie Zasso / Styling assistants: Marine Lescieux and Thomas Begue / Models: Chloé and Axel at Dominique Models, Indigo and Klaudia at Jill Model Management, Hakim, Guerrino and Marine at Hakim Model Management, Inès and Élise at Isabelle, Jeanne, Claire, Kim, Noah, Chloé, Xavier, Andrew, Audrey, Xenia, Josefien and Lotte
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Neo-baroque: brave new frills, strange new folds, and hard edges. Photography by Eloise Parry, styling by Nobuko Tannawa
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Sue wears a collar by Araz Fazaeli, a plastic shirt by Loewe, a bra by Redemption Choppers, a belt and trousers by BACK by Ann-Sofie Back and shoes by Acne Studios with her own socks. Martin Jay thinks the optics of the baroque offer a “dazzling, disorientating, ecstatic surplus of images�.
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This page, Sue wears a collar and dress by Junya Watanabe. Opposite, Zinnia wears a dress by Simone Rocha over a jacket by Joseph and a shirt with lace by Miu Miu over a highcollared shirt by A.W.A.K.E. For Martin Jay the baroque entails a “rejection of the monocular geometricalisation of the Cartesian tradition�.
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This page, Zinnia wears a jacket by Calvin Klein Collection, a vest by Proenza Schouler, a shirt by Versace and trousers by MaxMara. Opposite, Sue wears a jacket, dress and shirt by Hood by Air and boots by Kenzo. Jay argues that the baroque is closer to the sublime than beauty is because it yearns “for a presence that can never be fulfilled�.
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This page, Zinnia wears a vest and shirt by Louis Vuitton with a bracelet by Bulgari. Opposite, Sue wears a jacket by J.W. Anderson, denim shorts by Yohji Yamamoto with trousers underneath by Joseph and a necklace by Pomellato. Jay sought not to demonise the Cartesian optic experience but to demonstrate the plural regimes available to us.
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This page, Zinnia wears a trench coat by Sacai and a dress worn on top by Vivienne Westwood. Opposite, Sue wears a jacket by Caitlin Price, a dress by Richard Malone and a rubber dress worn tied around the waist by Gareth Pugh. “Indeed, desire, in its erotic as well as metaphysical forms, courses through the baroque scopic regime.�
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Sue wears carpet armour by Dilara Findikoglu with an earring by BACK by Ann-Sofie Back. We can see through the loops of Sue’s earring, whereas baroque shows a “fascination for opacity, unreadability and the undecipherability of the reality it depicts”.
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This page, Zinnia wears a jacket and long shirt by Vivienne Westwood, a vintage shirt from Rokit, trousers by BACK by Ann-Sofie Back and shoes by Acne Studios. Opposite, Sue wears a shirt by Fendi, plastic trousers by Loewe, jeans by Y/PROJECT and latex bags on her arms by HYDRA. For Jay, the baroque mode counters the chaos of postmodernism.
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Sue wears a jacket by Vivienne Westwood, a silver coat by Akris, trousers by J.W. Anderson, boots by Loewe and a collar (stylist’s own). “We won’t entirely lose the sense of unease that has so long haunted the visual culture of the West, but... we may learn to wean ourselves from the fiction of a ‘true’ vision and revel instead in the possibilities opened up by the scopic regimes we have already invented and the ones, now so hard to envision, that are doubtless to come.” All quotes are taken from Martin Jay’s essay “Scopic Regimes of Modernity” (1988). Set design: Danny Hyland / Hair: Hiroshi Matsushita using Oribe Hair Care / Make-up: Molly Portsmouth using Nars Cosmetics Photography assistant: Phoebe Salmon / Styling assistant: Lulu Cooper / Set design assistant: Harry Stayt / Models: Sue and Zinnia at IMG Models
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Light by design: menswear’s rich simplicity and easy luxury. Photography by Osma Harvilahti, styling by Bobby Hook
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Silviu wears a top and shirt by Prada.
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This page, Silviu wears a suit jacket and trousers by Paul Smith, shirt by Costume National and shoes by Prada. Opposite, he wears a suit jacket and trousers by Haider Ackermann and a T-shirt by American Apparel.
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Silviu wears a shirt by Ed Lee and trousers by Raf Simons. Overleaf left, he wears a shirt, trousers and shoes by Gucci, and right, a coat and trousers by Maison Margiela and boots by Haider Ackermann.
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This page, Silviu wears a coat by Pringle of Scotland and a shirt by Iceberg. Opposite, he wears a coat and top by Fendi.
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This page, Silviu wears a shirt by Ed Lee, trousers by Raf Simons and shoes by Joseph. Opposite and overleaf, all of Silviu’s clothes are by Prada.
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Hair: Takuya Uchiyama using Catwalk by TIGI / Make-up: Bunny Hazel Clarke using MAC Cosmetics / Videography: Martin Senyszak / Styling assistant: Marie-Charlotte Vermeulen / Model: Silviu Scutelnicu at Supa Model Management
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Double take: the focussed rigour and empowered vision of Alessandra Facchinetti at Tod’s. Photography by Joanna Piotrowska, fashion by Caroline Issa and Nobuko Tannawa Scan the opposite page to watch the story come to life. Go to page 27 to see how.
Camilla wears a yellow suit from Tod’s SS15, while Giulia wears a blue suit from Tod’s SS14. Her bag is from Tod’s SS16. All bags, belts and sunglasses throughout are from Tod’s SS16.
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Tod’s, the Italian house famed for its leather shoes and accessories, has been reimagined under the creative directorship of Alessandra Facchinetti. Her ready-to-wear collection launched with distinctive equanimity and to wide-ranging critical acclaim. Paying respect to Tod’s traditional sportiness and indisputable leather expertise, Facchinetti mirrors the house’s vision to amplify, in her own words, “the way that Tod’s pushes innovation with the most artisanal of techniques”. With the spring/summer 2016 collection, she constructed a complete lifestyle proposition that put woman at its centre. And this was a more casual, tough and rebellious woman when
compared to the somewhat bourgeois and polite hostess figure of Tod’s past. Previous shows were set in opulent rooms, brimming with Italian masterpieces, but for this collection we were welcomed by a set of portraits depicting the characters who had been cast in the show – a clear sign that Facchinetti was shifting her focus from interior design to woman’s interior life. For Facchinetti this move is based on “a more relaxed attitude and a freedom”. “It’s the way we want to feel today, it’s not only about style but about truly having the feeling of freedom,” she adds.
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The clothes have a cool and breezy sensibility yet a hard and confident attitude. For Facchinetti, “infusing classic pieces with a feminine touch” conveys the subtle interplay of the masculine and the feminine. “The masculine comes through because of the iconic pieces we play with.” Facchinetti has given Tod’s the potential for global reach as a believable lifestyle brand with a rich Italian heritage and woman at its heart. —Masoud Golsorkhi This page, Camilla and Giulia wear dresses from Tod’s AW15 and shoes from Tod’s SS16. Opposite, they wear T-shirts and shoes from Tod’s SS16.
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This page and opposite, all of Camilla and Giulia’s clothes are from Tod’s AW15 and their shoes are from Tod’s SS16.
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This page and overleaf, Giulia and Camilla wear dresses from Tod’s SS14.
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This page, all of Camilla and Giulia’s clothes are from Tod’s SS16. Opposite, Camilla wears a top and trousers from Tod’s AW14, while Giulia wears a skirt from Tod’s SS15 and her own bra top. Both their shoes are from Tod’s SS16.
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This page, Camilla and Giulia wear jackets from Tod’s SS16. Giulia wears jeans by G-Star RAW, while Camilla wears jeans by Diesel. Opposite and overleaf, they wear trousers and shoes from Tod’s SS16. Their T-shirts are by Calvin Klein Jeans.
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This page, Giulia wears a top and Camilla wears a jacket from Tod’s SS16. Opposite, they wear their own tops and briefs.
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Giulia wears a T-shirt by G-Star RAW and jeans by Guess, while Camilla wears a white T-shirt and jeans by Calvin Klein Jeans. Rochana wears a T-shirt by Calvin Klein Jeans.
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Camilla and Giulia wear tops from Tod’s SS16. Overleaf, Giulia wears a blue suit from Tod’s SS14, while Camilla wears a yellow suit from Tod’s SS15. Their shoes are from Tod’s SS16. Hair: Takuya Uchiyama using Bumble and bumble / Make-up: Nobuko Maekawa using Chanel S 2016 and Chanel Body Excellence / Videography: Sohrab Golsorkhi-Ainslie / Production: Mitzi Golsorkhi-Ainslie and Chelsea Jones / Styling assistant: MarieCharlotte Vermeulen / Hair assistant: Yuki Matsuo / Models: Camilla and Giulia Venturini at Viva Paris, Rochana Johnson-May at Premier Model Management The new Tod’s flagship boutique at 2-5 Old Bond Street, London, opens in June 2016
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