Paris Fashion Week: Givenchy Autumn / Winter 2012-13
Giddy up fashion lovers simply because Riccardo Tisci desires to take you on a ride! The Givenchy designer saddled up for the unveiling of his Autumn / Winter 2012-13 collection this week with powerful references to equestrian, Guy Bourdin and Paris in the 1970s.
For the horsey aspect, he sent models down the runway in riding jackets, loose jodhpurs, leather chaps, and thigh-high tall boots. Leather coats had been quite intimidating with oversized flaps and capes. But this wasn’t any garb for the lady who likes to trot about on her pony, it was aimed squarely at those who like to gallop in the fast lane.
In contrast, Tisci also stepped away from the leathers and chaps to present silky lingerie slip dresses which featured lace embroidery and delicate pleats. Each and every boudoir-inspired piece was accessorised with a brightly coloured belt, satin choker and super-long black gloves. With sturdy dark lips and eyes, this look bordered on Gothic and just that little bit creepy.
Givenchy Fall 2012: ’70s Sexuality and Riccardo Tisci’s Finest Collection To Date
Long Nguyen is the co-founder and style director of Flaunt.
PARIS–The white neon lights spun quicker and quicker and the drum beats grew louder and louder in the frigid courtyard of the Lycée Carnot–it was the perfect opening for what was, maybe, Riccardo Tisci’s finest collection for Givenchy.
It was an ode to the overt sexuality of the 1970’s, specifically Guy Bourdin’s photography. Mr. Tisci opened the show with a demonstration of his now renowned rigid tailoring standards–like the tight lamb leather, masculine jacket with a faux lapel worn with leather shorts. A black and camel mink coat worn with a leather tank and flared skirt were outstanding.
JANE BY DESIGN Style Challenge #3: My Personality in a Bag – a Tale of Charles Jourdan, Guy Bourdin & Me
“For years I have been fascinated by the relationship ladies have with their handbags,” says Debbie Percy, the UK’s only handbag “therapist”. “Why is the handbag off-limits to our husbands and youngsters,” she contineus. “Why we carry the ‘kitchen sink’ about inside them: and can we really leave home with no them?” (image: source)
Few items are as intimate and but as public as a woman’s bag. Regardless of whether it really is a pricey bit of “it” arm candy or a thriftstore “whatever”, it tells the globe what you feel about your image and sense of style. “A sloppy bag shows the globe that you are a disheveled mess, quite likely in need of group therapy,” adds JBD’s Gray Chandler Murray. “A matronly purse says you are uptight, humorless and fairly possibly spending your nights alone, with only your cat for business. But the right bag represents you much better than any other accessory can. The correct bag reveals the very best aspects of your personality, winning you affection and admiration wherever you go.”
TELL US: WHICH OF YOUR BAGS IS MOST “YOU”?
Strange rooms
The unabashed nudity and fetishist themes would seem to draw clear reference to the likes of Helmut Newton and Guy Bourdin; though it’s the latter that more springs to mind when viewing Peter Coulson‘s hotel-based shoot. Like the mysterious, often surrealistic narratives that went into Bourdin’s works, Coulson delivers something that sits a little uneasy with the viewer. The room is sparse, the poses are unnatural, and inanimate objects somehow play a role. Half of the shots are brightly lit; in the other half, the room is shadowy and dark. Perhaps, in this world, it’s only dark when you’re alone.
Click thumbnails for full pictures:
Kanye West & Guy Bourdin
Photo: Guy Bourdin; Still: “Monster”
When Kanye West Tweeted last year that he wanted to live inside a Guy Bourdin painting, he wasn’t kidding. And since he’s Kanye West, he found a way to make it happen—by turning his latest music video, for “Monster,” into a series of moving Bourdin stills. The similarities between the two are striking. From wild haired women tugging shirtless men, to immobile models face down on the furniture, West repeatedly makes references to specific frames of Bourdin’s work.
Similarly, in 2003 Madonna’s “Hollywood” drew so heavily from the photographer’s canon that Bourdin’s son brought a lawsuit against the superstar. But while Madonna played a sexualized model on the brink of danger, West assumes the role of the male protagonist; reclining cavalierly among lifeless female bodies. Madonna’s pop art antics may have drawn from Bourdin’s surreal sexuality, but West’s “Monster” mimics the violence that’s even more integral to Bourdin’s work via hangings, hoods, and decapitation.
Both West and Bourdin deflected criticism of their work by arguing that viewers should allow art to “be” and not infer ulterior messages, but that may be pushing it for the rapper-meets-popstar. His aim is, after all, far more commercial than Bourdin’s ever was and there was so much pre-controversy that when the video finally premiered at the beginning of the month a disclaimer was added: “The following content is in no way to be interpreted as misogynistic or negative towards any group of people. It is an art piece and it shall be taken as such.”
The Mary Katrantzou Effect—For Your Couch
Photo: Curbed; Imaxtree
Since Mary Katrantzou hit the scene three years ago with her bright, graphic prints she’s been one of the most highly anticipated designers on the London Fashion Week schedule. For spring, she covered her dresses, skirts and tees with printed interiors from famed photographs by legends like Guy Bourdin and Helmut Newton giving their nude stars a run for their money. Now it appears she’s started a trend. Curbed just posted these images from Paris-based graphic designer Angéline Bailly who’s covering her chairs and sofas in screen printed images of the New York and Paris cityscape. They’re not quite as ladylike as Katrantzou’s print, and maybe even less practical, but apparently people are actually buying them. Would you? At this point we wouldn’t be surprised to see walls painted with images of other walls before the year is up.
A New Exhibit Examines & Challenges Our Culture’s Cult-Like Obsession with “Beauty”
Are models & other fabulous people deemed “beautiful”….really too young, too skinny, too unrealistic?
A new photographic exhibition will be exploring how feminine beauty is defined, challenged, revered, and how it has evolved in the past two centuries – as viewed through the lenses of iconic photographers including Man Ray, Guy Bourdin, Horst, Jean-Paul Goude, Bert Stern, Herb Ritts, Albert Watson, Philippe Halsman, Matthew Rolston, and Tyen. “As much as beauty can astonish and inspire, it can also corrupt and subvert, rendering all else – and even itself – broken and obsolete,” opines Wallis Annenberg, Chairman of the Board, President and CEO of the Annenberg Foundation where BEAUTY CULTURE will be on display at in Los Angeles from May 21 through November 27, 2011.
Read more about this interesting new cultural critique at BeautifulTribes.com.
Victoire de Castellane Explores Timeless Themes – Gorgeous to Grotesque – in Fleurs d’excès at Gagosian Gallery Paris
French poet Charles Baudelaire scandalously explored decadence and eroticism in his 1857 volume “Les Fleurs du mal” (The Flowers of Evil), & de Castellane is doing the same with Fleurs d’excès, her new exhibition at the Gagosian Gallery Paris of revived & bejeweled obsessions of times gone by. Highlights include the mechanical nightingale of the Hans Christian Andersen’s fairytale, Fabergé eggs, and the fabulous “bestiaries” of animals real and mythic. Both intoxicating and dangerously poisonous, her flowers personify the Romantic idea of women “under the influence” in a compendium of phantasmagorical specimens with faux-classificatory names, such as Heroïna Romanticam Dolorosa and Crystalucinae Metha Agressiva.
Each intricately-constructed hybrid also contains a wearable element, which the designer describes as “jewelry at rest, waiting to be worn.”
De Castellane’s memorable & unusual collections for Dior have helped redefine “haute joaillerie,” in part because as a self-taught artist, her process is unique. “I start with a story, a world, never with the material,” she explains about her inspiration which can include everything from the élan vital of the natural world to the synthetic wonders of Technicolor; the Brothers Grimm and Walt Disney; voluptuous Hollywood screen idols and manga characters; the trash and fizz of pop culture and the darkest depths of the subconscious. “I find my stories in everything I observe and experience — rebellion, love, sexuality, pleasure, violence, protection, psychoanalysis, and my taste for fairy tales.”