Antimonide - fashion spot -

Coming this month is a special edition book about fashion “enfant extraordinaire” the Belgian born fashion designer Olivier Theyskens. Published by Assouline, this book is a wonderful photography essay by Julien Claessens, accompanied with a text by Sally Singer, the fashion news and features director for the US edition of Vogue.

“When he was twenty, Olivier Theyskens dropped out of design school to create his first collection. Within the next year, Women’s Wear Daily head­lined his “Star Quality,” Harper’s Bazaar christened him an “Instant Icon,” and The New York Times singled out his work in coverage of the Metro­politan Museum’s Costume Institute, where it was already enshrined. That Winter, Madonna wore Theyskens to the Oscars.

source: Assouline

Fashion Jewellery: Catwalk and Couture by Maia Adams

Fashion jewellery is created with the catwalk and couture in mind, characterized by its creativity and originality. It is arguably the most exciting field in fashion today. Arranged by designer, this is the first book to showcase contemporary catwalk and couture jewellery, profiling 33 international fashion jewellers who combine traditional techniques and ultra-modern methods to create this new style of jewellery. Among the stunning images of work shown are collaborations with leading fashion designers and brands such as Lanvin, Vivienne Westwood, Alexander McQueen and Comme des Garçons, as well as collections for directional fashion stores such as Colette and 10 Corso Como.
Fashion Jewellery will provide inspiration for designers, jewellers and students of fashion, offering a unique insight into the working methods and inspirations of a new generation of jewellers. Showcasing skilled craftsmanship, unusual materials and an often limited-edition approach Fashion Jewellery harnesses the spirit of couture for the 21st century.

Since graduating from Central Saint Martins, freelance writer and editor Maia Adams has contributed fashion and lifestyle articles to publications including British Vogue, Elle, The Guardian, The Sunday Times Travel Magazine and Wallpaper*. Based in London, Maia is also a visiting lecturer on the fashion degree courses at Barcelona’s Design Institute and the University of the Creative Arts in the UK.

” Wildly feminine, cheerful, seductive and wicked at the same time. Nimbly hopping between art, fashion and illustration, the English multidisciplinary artist Julie Verhoeven (1969) has built up quite a reputation for herself over the past few years.
Her work adorns fabrics from Versace and accessories from Mulberry. It makes reference to surrealism and Schiele, to name but a few influences. And although her surname perhaps suggests otherwise, Verhoeven is English in heart and soul, almost to the point of eccentricity.
As from November 13th, Julie will be bending MU totally to her will, transforming De Witte Dame into a feminine cross between a latex cabinet of  curiosities, a Victorian boudoir and a stencilled punk bunker.

The core of Verhoeven’s work are her drawings. Not just sensual and beautiful, but also tragic femmes fatales populate her creative world. Some display a hint of Beardsley, while others have a blatant Vogue stare or a constructivist physique.
Allusions tumble over one another, easy enough to find for those who care to look. Blaring pop music and fashion, paintings and interiors, hairstyles and films, anything can nourish Verhoeven in her search for inspiration.

Verhoeven likes her women to humorously meddle with the boundaries of aesthetics, because underneath, destruction grows rampant. With a mischievous pen and a lick of paint, she reveals the deeper layers in a raw manner, in the best traditions of punk. ”

On the occasion of the exhibition, MU will publish ‘A Bit of Rough’, a book dedicated to the work of Julie Verhoeven. This publication includes an essay by critic Francesca Gavin.

Emmasingel 20 – de witte dame
NL – 5611 AZ Eindhoven
+31 (0) 40 296 1663
www.mu.nl – mu@mu.nl

Julie Verhoeven’s new book “A bit of Rough” gathers beautiful and magical drawings, collages and various projects. Truly inspiring book!

A Bit Of Rough is available from DonLon Books:

DonLon books
210 / Unit 3
Cambridge Heath Road
London
E2 9NQ
www.donlonbooks.com

OPENING TIMES
Thursday – Sunday 11am – 6pm

0fr. Saturday 14th March, 6 to 9pm
Mark Borthwick invites you to a dinner at 0fr. Concert of Amy Sioux followed by some new songs from Will Shine.

(Mark Borthwick exhibition is open everyday until the 22th. Signed books, records, polaroids and photos. He will also give a concert at 0fr with Jeff Ryan next Tuesday (we’ll also show that night the movie in project about him from Sébastien Jamain). An other concert should be organised next Thursday too)

A book signing by Patrick Demarchelier at Colette, Paris

Saturay 27 September, from 5-6pm – Colette, 213 rue Saint Honoré, 75001, Paris

Born outside Paris in 1943, Patrick Demarchelier relocated to New York in 1975, where he began his editorial career with Harper’s Bazaar/Hearst Publications. His photographs appear regularly on the covers and in the pages of publications such as Vogue and Vanity Fair, among many others. He was the 2007 recipient of the Eleanor Lambert Award from the Council of Fashion Designers of America. He lives and works in New York.

To view the complete list, log on to the website www.steidlville.com

First name in fashion
The glamorous life and work of Valentino Garavani

Think Valentino: think luxury. Think elegance. Think red carpet. Fashion’s most beloved upholder of refined decadence and the most exciting couturier in business is known around the globe simply by his first name. Only a few years after opening his fashion house in Rome in 1959, Valentino was already at the height of success, counting Elizabeth Taylor, Jackie Kennedy, and Audrey Hepburn among his devotees. Over forty years later, not much has changed—he’s still dressing the top celebrities, from Gwyneth Paltrow to J.Lo, though now his business is a major economic force in Italy and his fashion house is among the most famous in the world. Valentino has always designed clothes for glamorous and sophisticated women, never wavering from his signature style even when grunge, deconstruction, and other passing fads were all the rage. Though his couture division almost never makes a profit (his ready-to-wear lines are what fuel the business), his heart is most solidly devoted to the magnificent haute couture gowns that earned him his reputation as fashion’s most talented dressmaker.

This luxurious limited-edition publication renders homage to Valentino’s illustrious career via a copious selection of images from his archives, including drawings, magazine shoots, advertisements, portraits of Valentino, and documentary photographs; presented chronologically, the visual material is accompanied by a vast array of newspaper and magazine articles about Valentino throughout the years. Text also includes Vanity Fair writer Matt Tyrnauer’s interviews with twenty of Valentino’s closest collaborators and friends as well as an appreciation of Valentino by International Herald Tribune’s fashion writer Suzy Menkes. All of these elements add up to an in-depth look at the man, his lifestyle, and his genius—a book more comprehensive and stunning than one could hardly dare to dream of. After all, what could be a more fitting tribute to the work of Valentino than a book as beautiful and luxurious as one of his gowns?

Art Edition (No. 1–100)
• Limited to 100 numbered copies, signed by Valentino Garavani
• Accompanied by four prints of original drawings from the 1950s and 1960s, all signed by Valentino, and authenticated with a stamp on the back (frames not included)
• Features gilt-edged pages and is covered in an elegant book cloth with six-color silkscreen printing
• Comes in a clamshell box finished in silk cloth

This book offers a user-friendly reference guide to all aspects of visual merchandising and covers both window dressing and in-store areas. Using examples from a range of shops, from fashion emporia to small outlets, the book offers practical advice on the subject, supported by hints and tips from established visual merchandisers. It reveals the secrets of their toolkit and information on the use of mannequins, the latest technology and how to construct and source props, and explains the psychology behind shopping and buyer behaviour. Presented through colour photographs, diagrams of floor layouts and store case studies, and including invaluable information such as a glossary of terms used in the industry, Visual Merchandising is an essential handbook for anyone working in and learning about this exciting area.

Buy it

A stunning new exhibition showcasing the work of Dutch fashion designers Viktor & Rolf opens on June 18. This is the first time in the United Kingdom that an exhibition has been devoted to this highly influential duo. Over the past 15 years Viktor & Rolf have taken the fashion world by storm with their particular blend of cool irony and surreal beauty.

The House of Viktor & Rolf presents each of the designer’s signature pieces from 1992 to now, shown in a specially commissioned and characteristically theatrical installation that dominates the entire Gallery. Highlights include pieces from Atomic Bomb, 1998–99, featuring dramatic mushroom cloud-like cushioned necklines and Russian Doll, 1999–2000, in which a single model was painstakingly dressed by Viktor & Rolf until she was gasping under 70 kilogrammes of exquisite haute couture. For the collection Bells, 2000-2001, models emerged from a smoke-filled space in clothes embroidered with hundreds of brass bells, so they were heard before they could be seen.

Drawing on the Dutch tradition of silver plating a baby’s first shoe as a keepsake, the climax of Viktor & Rolf’s Autumn/Winter collection of 2006–07, was a strapless wedding dress with a wide petticoated knee length skirt, silver plated, including even the bride’s bouquet.

Publication
A 256 page hardback book, the most comprehensive on the work of Viktor & Rolf to date, including 400 fashion photographers, catwalk images and exclusive illustrations and polaroids

I just discover this book about Brad Kroenig, of course I saw him during few ads. I don t unsterstand, why him.

In Metamorphoses of an American, Karl Lagerfeld traces the physical and emotional development of Brad Kroenig, once an unknown but now the world’s most sought-after male model. Lagerfeld discovered Kroenig in 2003, took his first photographs of him in Biarritz, and since then has observed him through his photographic lens, month by month. In hundreds of pictures Lagerfeld explores Kroenig’s evolution from a young “All American Boy” into a professional model conscious of the subtleties of facial and corporeal expression. These photographs are however not simply documentation; rather Lagerfeld and Kroenig work together to create a new persona, one which Kroenig expresses without losing a sense of his own self.

Lagerfeld selects a spectrum of literary and cultural references for Kroenig to interpret: we see him as James Dean, as Rudolph Valentino, as a Gatsby-like figure from F. Scott Fitzgerald, and as Lieutenant Pinkerton from Puccini’s Madame Butterfly. Yet throughout these transformations, there is never the sense that Kroenig is merely acting; instead he presents newly discovered aspects of himself through the guises of other characters. Metamorphoses of an American contains photography made both within and beyond the fashion world. However

regardless of the purpose of Lagerfeld’s images, each one evidences rigorous formal principles grounded in an appreciation of early twentieth-century photographer such as Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Steichen. Indeed Lagerfeld refers to his work more as “pictures” than photographs, conveying the graphic processes of construction and design from which each image emerges.