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ON THE COVER
Editor-in-Chief/ Creative Director
Jacqueline Carlisle
Design Production
Lindsay McWilliam
Fashion Editor
Jacqueline Carlisle
Conntributing Fashion Editor
Alexandra Vairo Jessica Remitz
Design Editor
Alexander Horne Madelaine Lutterworth
Contributing Design Editor
Vanessa Voltolina
Wearable Technology Editor
Erich Zainzinger
Circulation Director
Peter Walsh
Web Design
James Daniel
ON THE COVER Photographer: Laura Tilman Stylist: Charlotte Stroud MUA: Rae Mathieson Patience Model: Victoria Middleton, Model Team Location: Kildrummy Castle, Scotland
ISSUE 016
We are living in strange times aren’t we? Everything around us has an air of uncertainty and yet this is when creative minds thrive. We have nothing to lose so go for it seems to be the feeling of many designers who are struggling to make their mark. That’s how I feel about this magazine,obstacles get in my way and I go through them, and as difficult as it is sometimes, giving up is not an option. There have been personal tragedies my team of contributors have also weathered and again we all keep going. That’s why I would like to dedicate this entire issue to all designers who are working towards success. To quote an radio interview I once heard, “no simply means not yet.” But if you don’t try, you won’t know if you can do it, chasing a dream comes with hard work and perseverance. It’s always darkest before the dawn as the saying goes, but you will reach achieve your dreams. Dark times are upon us,and somehow as a civilisation our instinct is to keep going. Knowing the rules, then breaking them is the mantra of all the talented designers we have shown you in every issue, and I take inspiration from all of them as they constantly remind me to keep going. Best wishes for the holidays and let 2013 be a fruitful and happy year for all.
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Th s ssue Dark Romance Vega Zaishi Wang The Memory of Paper Victim Fashion Street Dare Droid Spider Dress Sustainable DanceFloor
om ark
mance k
Shorts: Saunt&Sinner Jewellery: Model's own Headpiece: Covet Bespoke Milliner
Tulle Dress by Jamie Johnstone Headpiece: Covet Bespoke Milliner Jewellery: Stylist own
Lace Dress designed by Jamie Johnstone Headpiece: Covet Bespoke Milliner Jewellery: Stylist own
Photographer: Laura Tilman Stylist: Charlotte Stroud MUA: Rae Mathieson Patience Model: Victoria Middleton, Model Team Location: Kildrummy Castle, Scotland
TEXT : Jacqueline Carlisle fashion editor
Who are the women that buy Vega Wang? Those who are independent-minded, as well as having own visions towards the world and their own lives. They should be determined and passionate about their careers.
Tell us about some of the materials used in the Autumn/ Winter Collection? For this Autumn/Winter Collection, we continue to use wool, which we always loved, with embroidery patterns inspired by armours used to be worn by female warriors on the Mongolian grassland, and for extra. fabric we use Huyang sheep furs.
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Why did you choose to further your education at Central Saint Martens? Because Central Saint Martens is a place where independent thinking and actions are encouraged; I also chose it simply because it’s the best art & fashion school in the world.
What are some of the materials you source locally? Silk and accessories
Since most of your line is created by hand, how long does it take?
TEXT : Jacqueline Carlisle fashion editor
If all goes well, it usually takes three to four months.
IIs there a particular era that inspires you? I would say the Second World War and the post-war reconstructions, because during those times the world was going through a transitional period before its re-birth - meaning designs have to be as practical as they needed to be aesthetically retained.
Will you expand into accessories? Yes. When I first founded Vega Zaishi Wang, I tried my hands on
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designing shoes and handbags. I think accessory design holds a crucial position in any brand’s identity, because comparing to garments, it reflects more directly upon the designer’s aesthetics and tastes. As our brand develops, we will definitely focus more on accessories.
What does luxury mean to you? British art historian Kenneth Clark once said something like ‘luxury, by any means, lucks artistic mettle; whereas the awareness to limits is the noble taste that any society should enthrone’. That pretty much sums it up for me.
TEXT : Vanessa Voltolina contributing design editor
Large, dramatic sculptures twist and writhe in the air. They look almost like fabric, but upon closer examination, they are made from bamboo that has been manipulated into its final form. These are the work of Dutch artist Peter Gentenaar. Gentenaar began papermaking in the early ‘70s, thanks to two grants from the Dutch government. With these, he was able to experiment and visit paper factories to learn a new craft. Forty years later, Gentenaar says he still feels “pretty alone in my technique.” However, he’s most “inspired by architects” and “people who tackle spaces.” The artist says that he is “not so much a designer. I have worked my whole life as an artist, switching between drawing, painting, sculpture and printmaking.” The Process Intrigued with shrinkage properties of paper—which started when he accidentally dropped a match into a wet sheet of paper and saw the tension created as the sheet dried—Gentenaar works primarily with overbeaten bleached Belgian
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flax, a fiber normally sold to linen spinning mills. He began making sculptures by constructing flat frameworks out of bamboo strips, resembling giant spider webs, a technique he still utilizes today. The framework is laid into his large deckle box style vacuum table, where he pours pulp into the box so that it surrounds the bamboo. Around 75 percent of water is sucked out by the vacuum, and the leftover water remains with the fiber. With the help of ropes, pipes, pulleys and clothe pins, Gentenaar elevates the two-dimensional sheet which sandwiches the bamboo from the vacuum table surface and forms it into a 3D shape. He dries the sculptures as fast as possible with the help of dehumidifiers, a huge fan and heat, and has found that this fast drying makes the pulp and bamboo forms twist into dramatic spirals. When the artist started, he used a Voight Umpherston Hollander beater, which is a machine developed by the Dutch in 1680 to produce paper pulp from cellulose containing plant fibers. He put this machine to the test with these long fibers he was manipulating for his
TEXT : Vanessa Voltolina contributing design editor
work. However, frustration came when the machine would clog. After many reparations, Gentenaar familiarized himself with the mechanics, and designed his own beater, named the Peter Beater. While similar to a Voight, it has a horizontal instead of a vertical pulp flow, and better suited for long fibers. Over 80 studios around the world use the Peter Beater. “I have developed the technique of working with wet pulp, shaping it in paper thin three dimensional shapes, which are further shrunk in spiraling movements by the loss of 40 percent of water during the final drying,” he says. He casts his paper sculptures in bronze, and mixes the pulp with porcelain clay, which after baking yields eggshell thin ceramic. Memory of Paper According to Gentenaar, paper has a memory. And just because most paper is made flat, that doesn’t mean that when it has dried up in a 3-dimensional shape it won’t be a strong shape. The memory of paper goes back to its former plant life. No matter what structure he is
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ooking to achieve, “My inspiration is a bud, which, in spring, unfolds into a leaf,” he says. “A compact, folded form feeds itself with water and turns into a great spacious form. In autumn this leaf falls of the tree, the water evaporates and a small web of fibers curling around the spine is the end of this form.”While the leaf is his inspiration, more recently, the artist has returned to basic forms such as triangles, squares and trapezoids. These show the baroque workings of the shrinking force in a much more expressive way. Due to the way that the pulp dries, these basic shapes and forms also react differently to shrinkage during the drying process (a triangle will remain rigid, while a rectangle will twist itself into a butterfly), giving sculptures their rich, baroque shapes. The tension between wooden frame and paper skin in his sculptures “resembles the nerves in a tree leave or the arches in a Gothic cathedral,” he says. In 2009, 80 of Gentenaar’s paper sculptures made it into a flamboyant gothic abbey church of Saint-Riquier in Somme, France. “The relationship between the Gothic architecture and the
TEXT : Vanessa Voltolina contributing design editor
sculptures was striking,” he says. “The use of these basic shapes allows more control over the end result and helps me to plan and dream new combinations,” he says. Bold colors—think deep blues, reds and purples—added as pigments to the fibers during the last phase of the beating make the sculptural forms more fantastic. Coloring the bamboo framework accentuates the form, and the paint can bleed into the pulp, giving the sculpture surface the look of ceramic glazing. The artist’s shapes, and flow-y, almost satin-looking work, has also been tied to fashion. Together with fashion designer Peter George d’Angelino Tap, Gentenaar combined his exotic paper creations with textile crafts, which were both displayed into the Atrium in den Haag, Netherlands, resulting in white costumes on the gallery at the exhibition, and sculptures made with poured linen. “The main joy in my work is the making of sculptures that are three to four meters tall and totally spacious so that the inside and outside form play an equal part,” he says. Working from a two-dimensional wet sheet
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and transforming it into a three dimensional shape is a challenge, and one the artist enjoys. He says: “The lightness of my material allows me to hang the sculptures from one nylon string, so they will turn on the lightest breeze.”
TEXT : Jessica Remitz contributing fashion editor
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Beginning her 14-plus year career in London with a second hand sewing machine and an addiction to vintage fabrics, Victim Fashion Street designer Mei Hui Liu’s vision has been original and
Portobello, Spitalfields and Brick Lane markets upon her arrival. Starting with sheared wrap skirts and bandeau tops, she moved onto more complicated separates as her experience, talent and customer
unwavering from the start. Her longtime focus on eco-fashion and high-end, romantic pieces have attracted attention from Vogue to London Fashion Week and allowed her build a loyal following and explore the “sweet and sinister” dimension of her collections. The self-taught designer arrived in London from Taiwan via Paris and Italy and worked her way through
base increased. Though her work has become more complex over time, her dedication to raw stitching, haphazard hems and deconstructed antiques has remained crucial to her vision. “Although I’ve always been in love with lace and frills, there’s an aggressive punk streak in my work, so I like to slash some of the sweetness out of salvaged garments and use antique trimmings,” Liu
TEXT : Jessica Remitz contributing fashion editor
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said. “My reconstructed pieces are an ode to romance, a passion for sustainability and a nod to the street.” Though sustainable fabrics and design have been the building blocks of Lui’s work for over a decade, showcases including London’s eco fashion forward Estethica have allowed Lui and her peers to showcase their work on a global stage. Sustainability has always been instinctual for her work, and she makes conscious decisions to use recycled fabrics and vintage clothes, she said.
dilapidated
“I have a passion for old things,” she said. “The real turn-on is when I can transform unloved
serve as reminders of the work
vintage
stock
or
precious antique materials which are broken, frail or need mending into totally new things while still keeping their priceless character alive.”
Having
personal
style
icons, including the ultimate dark romantic—Lui’s Pernet,
as
term—Diane
clients,
opening
her
first shop on Fashion Street when the area was still a “tense-feeling dustbowl on the verge of something amazing” and showing at London’s Institute
of
Contemporary
Arts
she’s put into her success and the
community
she’s
become
a
TEXT : Jessica Remitz contributing fashion editor
part of since moving to London. Lui is also glad to have such a diverse and eccentric client base that have an eccentric streak or come to her for a touch of extravagance. She’s the first to acknowledge that her clothes aren’t for wallflowers and is grateful to have customers incorporating her separates into their daily looks—weather they’re in their mid-teens or well into retirement. Victim Fashion Street’s current collection focuses on periods of time and how they can seem to overlap in life. Lui used a silent filmera starlet as her muse, bringing her through Victorian, Edwardian and
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20th century periods and exploring the clothes she’d wear along the way. She says playing with different and iconic shapes from different eras gives her pieces the tension between raw and refined she loves. “People sometimes only see one layer of my work—all the pastels, girly prints, frills and candy floss image,” she said. “But I also have ranges and parts of my collection that are dark, gothic, punk, creepy and menacing. For me it’s about throwing the two extremes together. Some seasons and some outfits come out looking mostly sweet with a sinister touch while others are the opposite”.
I
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The Daredroid is a biomechanic cocktail making dress that used medical technology, customised hardware and human temperament to provide you with a freshly made cocktail. The human host and robotic dress work together to provide you with a cocktail in exchange for a game of “Truth or Dare.� The robotic performance playfully transgresses and explores human interaction in public spaces and inverts the normal social experience by asking people to reveal personal information.
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Sensors around the model’s neck detect a presence and allows the technological system to dispense non-alcoholic or alcoholic liquid. The willingness to play a touch screen based game of “Truth or Dare,” combined with the natural charm of the onlooker triggers the decision to give you more than just a non-alcoholic beverage. LED’s on the robotic dress indicates the proximity to the human host, and if you breach her personal space the system shuts down. Play the game and be rewarded. Alcohol companies take note, this could be a wonderfully creative way to introduce a new product. The Modern Nomads are an highly creative team consisting of a Anouk Wipprecht a Dutch fashion technology designer who uses electronics in her designs. Marius Kintel is a hacker, a tinkerer, and an engineer based in Vienna at the Metalab. Jane Tingley is a Montreal based artist who works with sculpture, responsive installation, and sound.
Photographer : Mojmir Bures
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Exploration within the realms of robotic dresses, the spider dress tries to give more power and ‘psychological thrills’ to the sugar sweet character that performative wearables often have in the mindset of artificially projected, instinctive behavior, to engage her audience and entice its viewers. “Focused on the interactive nature of this robotic, we tried to coin the attention to the technical side, rather than fashion design only.” Upon it’s reactive system and dynamic interactions, leaving the silhouette of the dress dark, functioning as a shadow - with her electronic complexity projected at the outside rather than ‘hidden’ within [mechanism, plates and wires are view-able]. This project utilizes sensory measuring and servo controlled mechanisms within the objective of ‘performanceart’ to engage the public in topics of intimacy, comfort, trust, and privacy. As the viewer approaches,
the dress floats from happy, crawling, and jumping around into a state of protection, and after this, a series of ‘attack’ modes when approaching too fast of being too close. The mechanic ‘host’ system on both shoulders are individually connected using 20 servo motors, and is wirelessly controlled by a tiny system based on a teensy 3.0 that is stored in the pocket of the dress. The project examines and combines ideas around personal space within the human reign and instinctive behavior within the animal kingdom, and raises questions concerning control and privacy at the platform of performing art, technology, hybrid fashion, and social environment. This dress doesn’t want to stay captured to be adored, but wants to crawl through spaces, drawing attention while exploring the audience, capturing them in an symbiotic play with her other worldliness.
Photographer : Mojmir Bures
SUSTAI
da
FLOO
is an interactive floor which generat
INABLE
ance
OR
ates electricity through the act of dancing.
The first dance floor was created by Studio Roosegaarde uses mechanisms and embedded technologies as a means to harvest energy.
Via interactive technologies a sensual and interactive environment is created in which dancers are engaged with the sustainable experience.