• M.i.h Jeans introduces the Marrakesh 1971

    Written by Fashion Tales

    This March 2018 M.i.h Jeans introduces the Marrakesh 1971 capsule collection, inspired by original seventies denim from the brand’s archives.
    1971 was the year that M.i.h Jeans’ founder Chloe Lonsdale’s father, (“Blue Jean King” Tony Lonsdale), imported the first flares into the UK and sold them at his Jean Machine store on the King’s Road in London.
    1971 was the year that Made in Heaven designed the first British-made flares, a first both in Britain and in Europe.
    And 1971 marked the start of a pivotal decade in which jeans were the rebellious choice of the young, the hip and the bohemian.
    To recognize the importance of 1971 to the brand, M.i.h Jeans have designed the Marrakesh 1971 capsule featuring six denim pieces inspired by the Made in Heaven archive. The jeans of the seventies were unisex and democratic, liberating women from gender biased dressing. The capsule pieces reflect this new attitude and freedom of expression women were experiencing. The original 1971 Marrakesh flare was the first flare designed by Made in Heaven and was designed as a unisex jean for men and women. The hippies and bohemians, travelling to Marrakesh across ground from Europe during the sixties and seventies, only wore flares and if those flares were British, they were Made in Heaven label.
    The original, best-selling 1971 Marrakesh flare has been remade to evoke this free-spirited, worn-in attitude with cut off waist-band, slipped back pockets and a faded-out wash. The capsule also features the denim cut offs version of the 1971 Marrakesh flare, and other best-selling 1971 styles from the Made in Heaven archive.
    The straight cut Paris jean has been re-named the Paris Drive-Through and features original zip through detailing and Made in Heaven pockets. The Sunland denim jacket has sunray back panel detailing and a wash inspired by vintage sun-faded denim, the Tribe dungarees fature sunray paneling and a cropped straight leg, and there is a classic 70s unisex western denim shirt. In addition to the six denim pieces, the capsule also includes a white 70s style tee with the original Made in Heaven logo.
    The concept has been captured visually in the Kasbah, Medina and Riads of Marrakesh following the journey taken by the free-thinking, bohemians of 1971. Ella Richards plays the muse as the free-spirited English hippie breaking with the conventions of the seventies in her flares worn with trinkets found at the souk. The creative team who have brought the concept to life are photographer, Laura Bailey and Stylist, Cathy Kasterine.
    Marrakesh 1971 speaks to the free-spirited attitude of denim culture and the brand’s origins rooted in the seventies. M.i.h Jeans will always embody a 1971 attitude.

  • Marimekko - Art of Print Making

    Written by Fashion Tales

    Marimekko launched its fall/winter 2018 ready-to-wear collection at Paris Fashion Week on Sunday 4 March 2018.

    For the fall/winter 2018 ready-to-wear, Marimekko’s design team drew inspiration from Finnish winter landscapes and the exotic Lapland. The collection features modern folklore-inspired silhouettes, a rich colour palette, and a vivid dialogue between contemporary prints and iconic archive patterns from the 1950s and 1960s.

    Festive materials such as velvet and silk are combined in the collection with unexpected details in metallic colours – to bring joy and happiness to everyday life and festive moments alike. Some of the looks seen in the presentation include showpieces designed especially for the event.

    The new ready-to-wear collection was presented in Paris in an experiential display, staged in an old printing house, which immersed the audience in Marimekko’s art of print making. The presentation highlighted Marimekko’s philosophy of craftsmanship and timeless and functional design. The company’s own textile printing mill in Helsinki serves both as a factory and as an innovative hub for Marimekko’s creative community.

    The presentation was organized in partnership with Clinique. In January 2018, Marimekko and Clinique announced the Marimekko for Clinique Limited Edition Collection – a collaboration combining Clinique’s most-loved everyday beauty essentials with Marimekko’s iconic and colourful patterns.

  • Art of Non-Symmetric Knowledge

    Written by Ksenia Rundin

    Saturday, March 10th starts with a vernissage of Carl Lagercrantz’ exhibition “NON-SYMMETRY” at GALLERY GREGER at Hornsgatan 46 in Stockholm. Being a great-great-grandson to the founder of Villastaden (Villa Town) and prominent figure in Stockholm’s cultural, political and financial life, Henrik Palme, Carl Lagercrantz draws knowledge and inspiration in that invaluable heritage. Furthermore, he skilfully alternates the cultural prosperity of the family’s history with his American background. The artist was born in 1972 in the United States of America, where he could both observe and learn from the blossoming of different modern and postmodern art movements, starting with the Peggy Guggenheim Collection and ending by Neo-Pop kitsch style of Jeff Koons. The artist usually says, “I do not form my art, letting my art form me”.

    His art path began with his mother, who was an artist and also Carl’s first art teacher. Even though the main academic focus finally fell on political science, the painting has always been a strongly integrated part of Carl’s life. He has never stopped educating himself in art and attended painting classes of Martin J. Garhart and classes in sculpture of Barry Gunderson. Through the years Carl has had several exhibitions, inter alia Spain and Sweden. The artist’s works adorn homes of a number of owners around the world.

    “NON-SYMMETRY” is a new step in Carl’s artistic development, where he gathers his inspiration from different aspects of our life, such as brutality and poetry of the city landscape admired by J. G. Ballard, letting the art be a filter for interpretation of the collected experience. Somewhere, at the junction of the ideas of Russian Cosmism and the roughness of our hyperreality treacherously surrounded by artificial intelligence, the artist creates his own reality - his art. Architecture and engineering, philosophy and religion, fashion and art, poetry and cosmic space the artist tries to comprehend through his art. It is both his personal diary and his discovery of a world in art and art in the world. Art is a cosmic universe, built on the ambivalence of past and future, placed on the border between abstraction and science fiction, questioning the role of humans. Art is a remedy to comprehend the world as much as it is a way to understand the human’s role in this world.

    His artworks are intended to create a discourse about non-symmetrical nature of knowledge, where the latter is seeing as a dichotomy consisting of a hard part and soft one. The soft part is the one we cannot structure as it consists of emotions like fear and love, carried out by the limbic system. That soft part is our creativity, which the artist depicts by placing the latter in the context of the real life stained by the futuristic spirit of the hard – structured and technology-dominated – part of knowledge. Accordingly, he endeavours to understand the future role of humans, based on a strong belief in evolution, in the world we are creating together by means of politics, fashion, technology, art and philosophy. Is it a new transcendental realm we are heading towards? Let’s go and see the exhibition between March 10-14!

  • Magic City - The Art Of The Street

    Written by Fashion Tales

    MAGIC CITY – THE ART OF THE STREET
    presents today’s most vital and imag- inative art form – Street Art – in all its diversi- ty: political, lyrical, biting, critical – and always entertaining. Visitors embarking on a journey of discovery into MAGIC CITY – THE ART OF THE STREET will find it hard to contain their astonishment: around each corner, new imag- inative graffiti is found, astounding 3D-illusions, monumental wall paintings, multimedia installa- tions, and all kinds of strange objects and sculp- tures as if from a dream. A feast for all the senses!
    All the works, apart from a few loans, were pain- ted, sprayed, scratched, glued, or even knitted. The overwhelming variety shows that Street Art – although now elevated from the underground to the exhibition rooms of museums and auction houses – is as iconoclastic and experimental as ever. Furthermore, due to increasing global urban- isation and networking it has become a kind of “seismograph”, which reacts to what is happen- ing in cities globally on an almost daily basis. It responds to the everyday challenges of urban life with ever-new visual surprises and thought-pro- voking impulses. Art doesn’t get any more excit- ing than this.
    This openness to new ideas in response to the now is what shapes the spirit of this undertaking.
    Just as cities and their Street Art are continu- ally changing, so the face of MAGIC CITY – THE ART OF THE STREET is being constantly trans- formed. On its world tour, at each new stopover, MAGIC CITY – THE ART OF THE STREET re-cre- ates a unique exhibition adding new artists and themes. This constant transformation is what makes MAGIC CITY – THE ART OF THE STREET unique, and, in comparison to traditional exhibi- tions, extraordinarily responsive and up-to-date. However, one thing remains constant always and everywhere: its variety and openness across na- tional borders. In an age in which boundaries and exclusion are on the rise again, MAGIC CITY – THE ART OF THE STREET with artists from all five con- tinents, stands for a global sense of community, free from prejudice.
    This was precisely the aim of the curators, both of whom are acknowledged Street Art experts. Carlo McCormick is an art critic and author of numerous books such as City as Canvas and Trespass; and Ethel Seno has been co-curator of exhibitions such as Art in the Streets at the Museum of Contempo- rary Art in Los Angeles and Coney Art Walls in New York. They declared that their goal was to create a “playground for the imagination”, in a new hybrid form – on the one hand a classic exhibition, but without “art in frames”, and on the other, a type of street festival allowing visitors the freedom to wander through the rich displays. The result is a fasci- natingly staged presentation of museum-curator- ial quality, but without the “threshold of fear”, as there are no thresholds.

    MAGIC CITY – THE ART OF THE STREET was conceived and realized by SC Exhibitions, the pro- ducers of the internationally acclaimed exhibition Tutankhamun – His Tomb and His Treasures (6 mil- lion visitors worldwide). For MAGIC CITY – THE ART OF THE STREET, a global team of experts was gathered together, including Rainer Verbizh, Tobias Kunz and Annette Doomanand, Brooklyn Street Art (film programme), Lorne Balfe and Hans Zimmer (sound production), and Don Karl and Akim Walta (Urban Art publisher).

    Detailed information is available at
    www.magiccity.art

    Stockholm Weekend 22-25 February.

  • BARBARA I GONGINI - Nordic Luxury Avant-Garde

    Written by Jahwanna Berglund

    Intro by Ksenia Rundin
    BARBARA I GONGINI is a Nordic luxury Avant-Garde fashion design brand founded by designer Barbara í Gongini, who introduces a conceptual aesthetics, consisting of powerful geometric cuts and soft elliptical silhouettes. While beholding the garments, you imagine a strong fashion cocktail, mixed of Rick Owens’ gothic-grunge of essentiality and Maison Margiela’s androgynous architecture of tailoring, flavoured with vigorous artistic identity, genuine craftsmanship and raw authenticity of BARBARA I GONGINI. It is an intellectual celebration of cuts and shapes, encouraging a broad fashion discourse.

    What is the inspiration behind this season’s collection?
    I think we all have that little place somewhere in our inner core that emanates very much of where we come from.  I originate from the Faroe Islands. By living not just on the islands, but also outside - we have our Headquarters in Copenhagen - you get another perspective on that place. You start romanticizing, as it becomes very dear to your heart, making you longing for this peculiar place. I have been looking very much into that feeling and just compressed it in a visual way. I believe that it comes from this place within. The inspiration itself has never been questioned. We have selected the monochromatic shades, which mirror the natural elements such as sawing grass, mud and rough basalt cliffs. The choice of colors remains as a silent canvas, where on the contrary the cuts and shapes of the garments are set in the limelight.

    While keeping your signature moody Nordic avant-garde construction, this season you bring in some lighter colors that haven’t been so prominent in recent collections.
    Even though, the Avant-Garde is not influenced by trends, you sometime slightly have to bend to adapt to market needs.  Therefore we decided to implement a selection of styles in a variety of color. We are touching a new terrain with earthy shades, depending on which season; we either go in the darker or lighter realms of color. It broadens our selection but it still lies in symbiosis with our monochromatic designs.

    Have you always incorporated used leather into your collections and production?
    The process of reusing leftover fabrics as well as leather has always been incorporated into our design DNA. We get the leather scraps from the manufacturer and sew smaller items from those.  Another approach is to create Showpieces from leftover material. Our Modular Human Showpieces were created from a carpet, which we found on the streets and are now traveling around the world for being displayed at well-known design museums.

    Your collections have always captivated a broad audience in regards to gender and age. Do you see this becoming more prevalent in the fashion arena?
    We at Barbara I Gongini, celebrate the male, the female and everything what lies within. We don’t think exclusively in terms of gender. A lot of our female customers buy our Menswear and the other way round. We celebrate this fluidity!

    Besides your current clients, what person would make you happy to see dressed in your SS18 collection?
    I am personally not very impressed by the mechanism of fame. Don`t get me wrong, I really appreciate when people succeed with something that they really burn for! Personally, I love to see the different types of people on the street, the ones who made an effort and considered what to wear. This can be a form of pure art. Therefore what really inspires me is the people, not a particular person. Of course, I was happy when I got the opportunity to dress Lenny Kravitz’s band, for instance, it filled my heart with joy. That was really cool, because I dig his art, too.

  • Hail, the Dark Lioness!

    Written by Ksenia Rundin

    South African visual activist Zaneli Muholi has turned Stockholm’s frosty Friday morning into a subtropical celebration of self-reflection and contemporary identity politics. Her solo exhibition “Somnyama Ngonyama” (Hail, the Dark Lioness) invites us into the hard everyday life of LBTQI-world of the Republic of South Africa and narrates their story through her personal experiences expressed in a myriad of reality-embellished and self-speaking black-and-white photographs. Tyres, torn plastic bag, clothes pegs, metal sponge, a vacuum cleaner hose and, all of a sudden, a Japanese kimono - every item, besides creating an aesthetic aura for the beholder’s eyes, bears a deep and significant reference to the past and challenges the future. Using all these attributes, Zaneli Muholi claims the right to her own body without waiting for someone to validate her existence.

    By turning the camera towards herself, she creates a conversation filled with a deep emotional cascade and a long camp for freedom of individuality and freedom of love. Meanwhile, she also creates an expressive intimacy based on a cultural context and wrapped into a complex notions of sustainable beauty and desire. The photographer draws attention to urgent environmental issues, sexual politics and violence by creating strong emotional ties confiding her personal trauma to the camera lens. She establishes her own artistic language, dancing as a robe-walker between classical portraiture, fashion photography and ethnographic imagery, letting the dark lioness become the focal point of the moment eternalised.

Pages