Edith Sitwell multiple exposure, Cecil Beaton, 1962

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“The two greatest mannequins of the century were Gertrude Stein and Edith Sitwell – unquestionably.  You just couldn’t take a bad picture of those two old girls” 

A quote by Diana Vreeland 

Short Biography

Edith Sitwell (1887 – 1964) was born in a very wealthy, aristocratic family. She got two younger brothers (also authors), Osbert and Sacheverell, who, like Edith, had a hard time growing up with their eccentric, unloving parents. 

When still a teenager, Edith’s father made her undertake a “cure” for her supposed spinal deformation, involving locking her into an iron frame.

Edith, Sacheverell and Osbert Sitwell, 1930’s

At 23, she began publishing poetry and three years later she moved to a shabby flat in London, which she shared with her governess, Helen Rootham. In 1932 together they moved to Paris to live with Helen’s younger sister. Helen Rootham died six years later of spinal cancer. This was a tragedy for Edith, for she had never lived alone before.

Although she spent her life unmarried, Edith was passionately in love with the homosexual Russian painter Pavel Tchelitchew. This love was Edith’s most important, yet most unfulfilling, relationship of her long life. For her the spark was definitely there and it did not matter that she was almost eleven years Pavlik’s senior, initially the relationship was one of great intimacy. 

In the beginning, Pavlik was captivated by Edith’s extraordinary presence and later painted her portrait several times. Sadly, he only offered “Sitvouka” friendship and with no other choice, Edith accepted. Pavel’s interest in her seemed purely intellectual and quite possibly financial, the thought of Edith laying her hands on him in an intimate way appalled him. 

Edith In front of a Pavel Tchelitchew Portrait of her

Pavel started to design her clothes and her signature look was born. Edith always tried to be somewhere near Pavel, who once said to her: “Nobody has ever understood you better, or come closer to you than I have and nobody ever will!”

Edith went to New York after the war, where the friendship almost ended as the result of a wild scene that Pavel made in a New York restaurant. Apparently, “white-faced with anger,”  he denounced Edith for being “self-obsessed” and for letting herself be corrupted by the “vulgar social figures that surrounded her.” Pavel further accused her of betraying the poet in her, the part he cherished, and “crudest of all, he coldly told her that everything that had ever been between them now was over.” 

Pavel Tchelitchew, Edith Sitwell and Pavel’s partner Allen Tanner

Crushed, Edith sailed for home the next day and spent the entire Atlantic crossing in bed. 

Although, it was possible for her to eventually forgive him the friendship barely survived.  It was a disaster of failed nerves and disappointed expectations on the sides of both.

During the WWII Edith had retired to Renishaw with her brother Osbert and his lover David Horner. She wrote under the light of oil lamps as the house had no electricity. She was lucky that during her lifetime she was surrounded by people who appreciated her and her two brothers as central to the artistic life of the times.

Edith Sitwell by Jane Brown, 1959

Edith Sitwell provoked many critics in conservative Great Britain because of her dramatic work, but also because of her unusual appearance. She resembled Queen Elizabeth I (they also shared the same birthday) dressed in exotic costumes, brocade and velvet gowns, adorned with gold turbans and huge colourful rings that reflected what she claimed: ‘good taste is the worst vice ever invented.’

She was created Dame of the British Empire in 1954. Three years later Edith got ill and ended up in a wheelchair. She passed away in 1964.

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“I am not eccentric. It is just that I am more alive than most people are. I am an unpopular electric eel set in a pond of goldfish”.

Edith Sitwell, 1962

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 Edith Sitwell (and brothers) by Cecil Beaton

1927

1928

Edith Sitwell first met Cecil Beaton on 7 December 1926 at the home of Allannah Hooper.  It was a fateful meeting because the photographs that Beaton made of Sitwell later in 1926, then in 1927 and 1931, brought them both much fame. 

The portraits that he took in 1926 and 1927 were all prefabricated set-ups prepared in dimly lit interiors. 

In 1962, wearing her black ostrich feather turban faced with sheer organza, she welcomed Beaton into her apartment at Greenhill in Hampstead. She had commissioned portraits from him to mark her 75th birthday. She knew that they would be published internationally and would create an instant sensation. They did and you can see why. She is performing her eccentric fame for the camera and is much more beautiful at 75 than she was at 25.

Her style was an essential part of her character. But she had also had teasing sense of humour. Early on, Cecil Beaton noted ‘the twinkle in her eye’.

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The trouble with most Englishwomen is that they will dress as if they had been a mouse in a previous incarnation, they do not want to attract attention.

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Edith Sitwell by Horst P. Horst

Horst photographed Edith in 1948 for Vogue in New York. Here-along with her aquamarines-Edith wears two massive brooches. Horst says “Edith Sitwell wore extravagant clothes and Jewels; usually the clothes did not fit at all they just hung. She did it exactly her own way and got away with it.” “She was considered an Improbable and anachronistic fashion icon frequently photographed bristling with gigantic aquamarine rings– at least two to a finger, and plastered with vast brooches of semi-precious stones”

The ‘Aztec’ necklace

‘This gold collar was made for me by an American woman called Millicent Rogers. She was one of my greatest friends, though I only met her once. She sent it to me and the British Museum kept it four days and thought it was pre-Columban, undoubtedly from the tomb of an Inca-though they couldn’t make out how the gold could be stiffened in a way that wasn’t in existence in those days. But I have to be careful of the clanking when I am reciting and don’t often wear it for that.’ 

The rings

Ph. Philippe Halsman, 1937

‘I feel undressed without my rings. These aquamarines I love, but I’ve got a beautiful topaz like a sunflower–and when I’ve worn these too much I feel it’s being neglected….I’ve got red and green and black amber bracelets, and a ring I call tiger into grape. Its yellow, veined with blue and red, but when it snows it turns blue.’ 

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Edith Sitwell & Marilyn Monroe

Edith Sitwell & Marilyn Monroe

People were expecting the two women to dislike each other. Instead of giving the waiting photographers a good scandal, Edith and Marilyn hit it off immediately. Edith described Marilyn in her autobiographyTaken Care Of:

In repose her face was at moments strangely, prophetically tragic, like the face of a beautiful ghost – a little spring-ghost, an innocent fertility daemon, the vegetation spirit that was Ophelia.

Marilyn was an autodidact but her intellectual curiosity and love of books were not considered consistent with her sex symbol image. Marilyn and Edith sat together chatting happily about Austrian philosopher, esoteric spiritual writer, and founder of anthroposophy Rudolf Steiner, whose books Marilyn had recently been reading.

Pavel Tchelitchew Portrait of Edith Sitwell

info:

wikipedia

http://theesotericcuriosa.blogspot.nl/2010/02/unrequited-love-broken-heart-edith.html

http://aucklandartgallery.blogspot.nl/2010/08/1962-portraits-of-dame-edith-sitwell-by.html

…Scots-born musician and designer Pam Hogg has dressed the queens of rock and pop as often as she has appeared amongst them. Once a support act for The Pogues and Debbie Harry, she has fronted bands performing a wide range of music; from rockabilly to punk. 

Pam had an overnight rise to fame. After her studies of Fine Art and Printed Textiles at the Glasgow School of Art, where she won numerous medals, she went on to study at the Royal College of Art in London, where she gained her Masters of Art degree.

Self taught in making clothes from an early age, she caught the attention of clubland in the late seventies and early eighties which led to a career in fashion. Her creations were immediately embraced by the popular magazines of the time. She was photographed for ID, BLITZ and The Face and soon became a known fashion talent as London was named the innovative fashion capital of the world. Her first collections sold to Harrods, Harvey Nichols and Joseph in London, Bloomingdales, Bendels and Charivari in New York and independent boutiques in Paris, Italy and Tokyo.

Pam’s first catwalk show was with the collective “Hyper Hyper” in 1985. Pam and her collections gained immediate press attention. In 1989, “Warrior  Queen”, her sixth and final group show won her the cover of ID magazine. She left Hyper Hyper that same year and relocated to a small self contained shop parallel to Carnaby Street in the heart of Soho. She continued to create, produce and direct her own London Fashion Week Catwalk Shows for a further six seasons. Her clients ranged from Debbie Harry and Siouxsie Sioux to Bijork, Kylie Minogue and Paula Yates.

In 1991, Terry Wogan introduced her onto the show as “one of the  most original, inventive, creative designers in Britain” adding, “She has reached what is called Cult  Status”.

In 1992 Pam quit fashion and returned to music. Her band Doll opened for Blondie in 1993 and the Raincoats in 1994.

Between 1999 and 2001 her continued love of designing and making clothes resulted in two catwalk collections and her first Fashion Film “Accelerator” starring Anita Pallenberg, Bobby Gillespie, Patti Palladin and Pam herself.  She also clinched cameo roles from Daryl Hanna, David Soul and Primal Scream towards the end of 2002, having found a voice in script writing and film directing.

Inspired by Siouxsie Sioux’s Japanese concept, Pam designed the costumes for the Ice Queen of Punk’s 2004 world tour ‘Dreamshow’. In 2006, the Spanish curator Xavier Arakistain invited Pam to exhibit in the travelling art exhibition “Switch on the Power” alongside Yoko Ono, Warhol, Leigh Bowery and Kraftwerk.

Pam also returned to directing fashion movies, which resulted in the videos ‘Opel Eyes’ and ‘Electricman’’. These were viewed by a whole new unexpected audience via youtube and myspace. This direct access and exposure regenerated a new found interest in Pam’s work and pushed her back into the spotlight resulting in media attention from magazines including Vogue and ID.

In 2007, Kylie Minogue appeared in Pam’s black mesh metal studded cat suit in her 2 Hearts Video, Naomi Campbell modelled a Pam Hogg lycra and snakeskin printed leather catsuit in Vogue while Siouxsie Sioux wore numerous distinctive Pam Hogg signature cat suits throughout her 2008 tour and appearance on Later with Joolz Holland. During the show, Pam was interviewed and announced her inevitable return to fashion.

In October 2008, the prestigious Fashion store Browns of South Molton St London, was the first to stock the new Hogg-Couture collection. She was further asked to dress their widows for Halloween, an honour rarely given to one designer. Katie Grand’s new magazine LOVE, launched during London Fashion Week in February 2009 with a fashion feature over several pages styled by Joe McKenna solely featuring Pam’s new collection. 

October 2013 Pam Hogg won an award for Creative Excellence by the Scottish Fashion Council.

 Wedding Dress

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Pam Hogg Fashion

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Pam’s Army

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Info official website: http://www.pamhogg.com

Duro Olowu

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Since arriving on the London fashion scene in 2004, Nigerian-born Duro Olowu has impressed the right people with his vibrant mix of African prints, seventies tailoring, and unlikely color combos. A high-waisted patchwork boho dress—known as the “Duro”—put the brand on the fashion map and became a cult item in 2005 after being discovered by American Vogue editor Sally Singer and Julie Gilhart of Barneys.

Short Biography

Duro Olowu was born in Lagos to a Nigerian father and Jamaican mother; he grew up in a multicultural and big family (he’s the fourth of six children), where any art expression was encouraged. As a child, he passionately loved fashion: his first inspirations were fabrics and prints, shapes and volumes of dresses seen on African women.  His Jamaican mother was his first style icon. “My mother was an individual. She embraced my father’s Nigerian culture and would always mix things up. She’d wear costume jewellery with a Gucci scarf and a skirt made by a local tailor. When she got dressed it was instinctual, it wasn’t too drawn out. And I think that’s a valuable lesson.” 

My mother used to find the tailors who carried sewing machines on their shoulders and get them to make patchwork shirts and furnishings from local fabrics mixed with others she picked up on holidays abroad. She was a big influence on how I see color and print.

In the 80s he followed his parents’ wish: he studied in London and took a degree in Law, then went back to Nigeria; soon after, apart from being a lawyer, he started working in fashion. He returned to Europe, and spent a year in Paris at the beginning of the 90s, working as a freelance illustrator. He tells: “Paris was wonderful but really what it taught me is that fashion needed to be a business as well. It really showed me that the way you presented things and projected things and your vision were super-important for the future.”

Duro Olowu Fall 2007

The “Duro” dress

When he went to London again, he met his soon-to-be first wife Elaine Golding, a shoe designer; they launched a brand – Olowu Golding – and opened a boutique: “We were working hard but we were doing things we wanted to do.”

After splitting up with his wife, in 2004 he launched another brand with his own name, totally self-financed, and opened a new boutique: the first dress he designed in this period would set his future success.

In 2005 Sally Singer, who was Fashion News/Features director at Vogue at that time, spotted a dress in the Olowu boutique and fell in love with it: wide sleeves and Empire waist, it was made of colourful and printed fabrics in different combinations. “It’s a very joyful dress, effortless, comfortable, and sexy without being in-your-face,” he explains. When buyers from important New York stores eyed this dress on the journalist, a mania started: everybody wanted the dress promptly called “Duro”.

Duro Olowu Fall/Winter 2012

In January 2008 he married Thelma Golden, curator and chief director of Studio Museum of Harlem, in New York: the bride wore a dress designed – of course – by Duro. 

Even if he says he doesn’t design for celebrities, many of them love his style: among the others, Michelle Obama, supermodel Iman and Iris Apfel.

He takes care of all the styling in his shows and often works, as a stylist, with the German photographer Juergen Teller.  

Duro Olowu Fall/Winter 2013

He fights against the progressive racism in the world of fashion, where very few models on the runways are black: “The fault lies with the designers – their ignorance and their racism. Yes, it’s true that a lot of agencies don’t bother sending non-white models – my casting agent told me that I’m the only one who asks specifically for non-white models – but things will only change if the designers take a stand and ask for them.” 

In 2005 he was appointed New Designer of the Year at the British Fashion Awards, just one year after launching his own brand.

Duro Olowu spring 2015

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Duro & Iris 

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 http://www.duroolowu.com/

Thelma Golden wearing one of her husbands design

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info: Vogue Italia & Herald Tribune/ Suzy Menkes

 Jun Takahashi is the founder and head designer of cult Japanese label ‘Undercover’. Born in Kiryu, Gunma prefecture, Japan in September 1969, Takahashi studied Fashion Design at the Bunka Academy of Fashion. During his study period, he founded the ‘Undercover’ brand with his friend and classmate, Nigo (who now heads the inconic Japanese streetwear label ‘A Bathing Ape’). Following his graduation in 1991, Takahashi continued to develop his Undercover label.

The brand really began in 1993 when Takahashi and Nigo opened a store called Nowhere in the trendy Tokyo district of Harajuku. Undercover really began to take off after the opening of Nowhere; therefore Takahashi and Nigo opened another shop in Aoyama (fashion district in Tokyo). Soon enough, Takahashi was seeing his designs on the catwalk in Tokyo. A new shop called “Nowhere LTD” was opened after this and featured only clothing from the Nowhere brand. Takahashi began working with fellow designer Hiroshi Fujihara in 1994 to create another brand called A.F.F.A., which stands for “Anarchy Forever Forever Anarchy”. They worked on this intermittently for about three years, taking breaks here and there, though the project eventually failed. 

Undercover A/W 2000

 In 2002, Takahashi’s brand debuted at Paris Fashion week with great success. Soon after in 2003, he won two major awards for his designs from the Mainichi Shimbun (one of the major newspapers in Japan). Today, the brand has a large cult following, making the brand both sought-after and expensive. One of the most important thing to note about Takahashi’s style is the incredible influence the Sex Pistols have on him. Even though it is not punk fashion per se, there are various punk influences throughout his designs, as well as references to other bits of American popular culture, such as Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange. The cuts are often more feminine and the fabrics make use of color printing. He also makes liberal use of tattered, frayed, and shabby-chic elements in his designs. 

This brand’s punk and street-style look have propelled Takahashi in the fashion world and he continues to see success with his Undercover brand today. In 2005 he was invited to design a special edition camera case for Canon, as well as being given the opportunity to guest edit the Belgian A Magazine. His brand is also featured at Rei Kawakubo’s Dover Street store in London. These successes, and possibly more to come, show just how powerful a designer Takahashi is and his Undercover brand’s avid fans would whole-heartedly agree.

The brand has been called “the essence of Japanese cool” and features finely crafted clothing pieces which are, in the words of Takahashi himself, “strange, but beautiful”. Undercover has won numerous awards and been praized by other fashion designers including Miuccia Prada and Rei Kawakubo.

 “Political and poetic, Jun Takahashi  has been announced  as one of the most brilliant and unpredictable fashion designers of a new generation. He describes his work as an appeal for thinking about the fact that things look different depending on the way we look at them. 

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Fall/Winter 2013-14

Special pieces made from deconstructed men’s white shirt collars. Photo by René Habermacher.

Dress made out of vintage lingerie, UNDERCOVER Fall/Winter 2013 Anatomiecouture

 A/W 2014

Jun Takahashi turned his models into fairytale queens, albeit wicked ones. If they looked angelic in their crowns made out of braided hair and rhinestones, their blood-red contact lenses and red mascara ensured an eerie quality “like vampires. I wanted to show how cold-blooded the girls could be,” he explains.

 Spring/Summer 2015

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Undercover Bear Plush Toy by Jun Takahashi

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Next week: Jun Takahashi (part two)

info from:  www.virtualjapan.com/wiki/Undercover

After 25 years as a New York designer, Liz Claiborne co-founded her own firm in 1976, first designing stylish, moderately priced sportswear that freed working women from plain, dark suits, then expanding into menswear, accessories and perfume. Liz Claiborne Inc. broke into the Fortune 500 list of “America’s largest corporations”—becoming the first company founded by a woman to be so honored. 

Biography

Born Anne Elisabeth Jane Claiborne in Brussels, Belgium, on March 31, 1929, Liz Claiborne is best known for revolutionizing the women’s apparel industry in the United States. She served as head designer and co-founder of the company that bears her name, Liz Claiborne Inc., for more than 20 years.

The daughter of a banker,she spent many of her early years abroad, and became fluent in both French and English. Liz and her family moved to New Orleans, Louisiana, in 1939. After WW II ended, she moved to Europe, where she studied art. Liz never earned a high school degree. At the age of 19, she won a design contest held by Harper’s Bazaar magazine, and soon moved to New York City to pursue a career in the fashion industry.

Liz’s first job was as a sketcher for sportswear designer Tina Leser, also working from time to time as a size model. She worked for several other designers over the next few years, and, in 1950, married book designer Ben Schultz. The couple had one son, Alexander, before splitting. In 1957, Liz married Arthur Ortenberg.

The founders of Liz Claiborne Inc.

Liz Claiborne Inc. reached $5.6 million in 1986, and the firm broke into the Fortune 500 list of “America’s largest corporations”—becoming the first company founded by a woman to be so honored. In 1987,Liz  Claiborne was elected chairman of the board and CEO of the company, but she retired from active management in 1989.

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Vintage Liz Claiborne 

After retiring, Liz devoted much of her time to social causes. She and her husband started the Liz Claiborne Art Ortenberg Foundation to support a number of different projects around the world; over the years, the organization has supported conservation and environment efforts, including those aimed at protecting elephants in Gabon and Mozambique.

She was honored in 2000 at the American Fashion Awards for her environmental work, especially for her work to stop the killing of elephants for their ivory tusks. But business didn’t stop after Liz stepped down. Over the years, Liz Claiborne, Inc. has acquired several companies that you may know such as, Lucky Brand jeans, Juicy Couture,Kate Spade, and Mexx. 

Liz faced a health crisis in her later years: She was diagnosed with peritoneal cancer, which she courageously battled for many years. She died from complications related to her cancer on June 26, 2007, at the age of 78, in New York City.

Although Liz has passed away, her name is seen everywhere and she will forever be remembered. In a biography written by her husband, Art, he concludes, “Liz left us more than her work, perhaps more than the consequences of her work; she left us herself. The making of that self, and the good she did for others, is the story I tell.”

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More vintage Liz Claiborne 

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Lots of vintage Liz Claiborne can be found on http://www.etsy.com & http://www.ebay.com

Book

To have lived a joyful life and to have departed that life a victim of a vicious cancer is, in brief, the story of Liz Claiborne’s life. But the story is much more than that. Born in Brussels in 1929, the third and last child of a highborn American banker and his delicate, beautiful wife, she was born privileged and taught that privilege incurs responsibilities. She lived out her early years untouched by life and death during the ominous 1930s, until the ominous became the real and the family fled to America. Inheriting her father’s love of paintings and museums and her mother’s love of costumes and clothing, Liz early on discovered “the beauty of everyday things,” and at the age of twenty won the Grand Award in the Harper’s Junior Bazaar Design Contest, which earned her a trip to Paris to work for ten days with famed couturier Jacques Heim. For the next twenty-five years she worked as a designer and sketch artist before starting her own company with her husband Art Ortenberg. Liz Claiborne, Inc. was an immediate success, and was by 1981 a Fortune 500 company with $1.2 billion in sales. In this book Art Ortenberg does not so much celebrate Liz Claiborne the designer and entrepreneur, but rather Liz the woman. “Liz left us more than her work,” he concludes, “perhaps more than the consequences of her work; she left us herself. The making of that self, and the good she did for others, is the story I tell.”

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info: http://www.biography.com/people/liz-claiborne-9248891

Elio Fiorucci, ph. by Giarcarlo Mecarelli

Elio Fiorucci was born in Milan on 10 June 1935, son of a shoe shop owner. One day in 1962, Elio came up with the idea of making galoshes (rubber overshoes) in bright primary colours while working at his father’s shop. When they were featured in a local weekly fashion magazine, the galoshes caused a sensation (inspiration for Prada shoes fall 2012). Following a trip to London in 1965, Elio was determined to bring Carnaby Street fashions to Milan. He opened his first shop on Galleria Passerella in Milan on 31 May 1967 selling clothes by London designers such as Ossie Clark and Zandra Rhodes.

In 1968 Fiorucci looked East for inspiration, buying cheap T-shirts from India, and turning rice sacks into bags. Two years later the company set up its own manufacturing plant, and adopted the “two angels” logo created by Italo Lupi.

Andy Warhol chose the shop window to launch of his revolutionary “Interview” magazine.

“Went to Fiorucci and it’s so much fun there. It’s everything I’ve always wanted, all plastic.”

12/21/83 Warhol diary entry
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In 1974 the company opened a huge new store on Via Torino in Milan, expanding beyond fashion to offer books, furniture and music. The new shop also had a performance area, vintage clothing market and restaurant. Meanwhile the label introduced the monokini and thong from Brazil, causing controversy with the topless photos used to advertise them. Glass beads from New Mexico were another hit In 1975 the company opened its first store overseas, on the Kings Road in London, and launched a children’s collection called Fioruccino. It brought Afghan coats to the mass market and popularised the leopard-skin prints first created by Elsa Schiaparelli two decades before.

Fiorucci controversial monokini ad

The real epicenter of Fiorucci’s cool was its New York store at 125 East 59th Street. Opening in the spring of 1976, it soon became a destination for all those young and weird. The press compared its atmosphere  to that of Studio 54. In 1977, New York magazine would declare: “All it took this year to achieve instant chic, day or night, at the slickest New York party or the trashiest was a pair of $110 gold cowboy boots from Fiorucci.” Customers such as Marc Jacobs, Cher and Terence Conran would rub shoulders with Jackie Onassis and Lauren Bacall, you might see drag queen Joey Arias serving the King of Spain or author Douglas Coupland absorbing the store’s pop culture or Calvin Klein and Gloria Vanderbilt buying some jeans.

Oliviero Toscani for Fiorucci

Fiorucci served free espresso during the ’70s before most Americans had even heard of it. Fiorucci had DJ’s in the boutique spinning all the latest cutting edge music, B-52’s, David Bowie, Blondie, Lena Lovich, Kate Bush.  Fiorucci had models dancing in its window displays, wearing the latest fashions. Fiorucci was “cool”. Out with the old in with the new. Fiorucci had 30 stylists and trend- spotters, some as young as 16, whose job was to fly around the globe and report back on the latest trends. They would buy samples of things they saw on the street. They’d go to clubs and see what people were wearing. They would get the youngest, and best looking sales assistants, dress them up in the most outrageous outfits, and have them “sell” Fiorucci, on the streets. Look at this fabulous plastic skirt I got at Fiorucci. etc…. 

Fiorucci Art Direction by Maripol

In the early 1980s the Fiorucci art director was jewelry designer Maripol, known for creating Madonna’s look at the time. Other employees included Madonna’s brother Christopher Ciccone, Terry Jones of i-D magazine, Oliviero Toscani, who shot many of the famous Benetton ads and famed interior designer Jim Walrod.

Meanwhile, the company continued to bring new products to market, including a collection made from DuPont’s new Tyvek fabric and velvet slippers from China. In 1978 they were the first fashion house to license their name for a collection of sunglasses, while in 1981 a Disney licence led to a highly successful range of clothes emblazoned with Mickey Mouse. Ever on the pulse of the times, Fiorucci sponsored the reunion of Simon and Garfunkel in The Concert in Central Park on 19 September 1981, attended by 400,000 people or more and on the bill for their birthday party in 1983 was a then-unknown Madonna.

Madonna and her dancers, the 15th anniversary of Fiorucci at Studio 54, 1983

In 1981 the company launched the first stretch jeans with Lycra, and the success of the 5-pocket “Safety” jeans was recognised three years later in a licensing deal with Wrangler Jeans.

Jeans put Fiorucci onto the international fashion scene. Fiorucci created vinyl jeans that were skintight, sexy, and brightly colored. Fiorucci was crazy for color — shocking, screaming, pulsating fluorescent shades — at a time when others were proposing muted preppie plaids. Fiorucci sold sex, before the concept was coopted by mainstream media.

In 1987 Fiorucci produced the Junior Gaultier line designed by Jean-Paul Gaultier, and in 1989 they went back to their roots with a deal with Vivienne Westwood, queen of the London street scene.

The company expanded rapidly after 1978, launching new stores across the US, Europe and Asia. Despite thriving sales, the company was dogged by poor management and had to close the New York store in 1986; Betsey Johnson has suggested “Fiorucci was the most happening place. It never stopped being happening — it just left New York City, because I don’t think New York City was happening enough by the mid-80’s”. Fiorucci closed down the rest of the US retail locations in 1988 after a franchise dispute, moving instead to a wholesale strategy.

Fiorucci logo by Italo Lupi

Fiorucci label tag

The company was sold and resold again. January 1996 after a plea bargain, Elio Fiorucci was given a suspended jail sentence of 22 months for inflating the value of invoices to increase the value of the company to Carrera at the expense of his creditors.

In 1999 the then owners announced a plan to open a New York store once again. The initial plan was to open in time for Christmas 1999, but the store on lower Broadway finally opened its doors in June 2001. Critics were sceptical that it could recapture the buzz of times past, given the increased competition in mass-market clubbing gear from the likes of H&M and The Limited.

Meanwhile the brand continued to thrive in Europe and regained some of its former notoriety in 1995 with a poster campaign for its jeans featuring a naked woman’s buttocks and pink furry handcuffs, which became instant bestsellers. In 1999 it launched a successful perfume, followed by a second, Fiorucci Loves You, in 2001, and “Miss Fiorucci” makeup in 2003.

Although Elio Fiorucci retained creative control during this era, the owners are protective of the Fiorucci trademarks and have taken legal action against H&M in the US when Elio designed their Poolside line. He has also set up a brand of his own called Love Therapy and designed for Agent Provocateur.

In March 2003, Elio Fiorucci announced that after 36 years, he was closing the doors to his historic shop in Corso Vittorio Emmanuele, Milan. When Fiorucci hit the scene nearly 40 years ago, he blew Italy – and the rest of the world – away with a larger-than-life attitude. He brought in the new and unexpected, pre-dating the surge of today’s “lifestyle” stores. Fiorucci mixed clothing with beauty products, vintage items, music and home furnishings. He even used his retail space for artistic performances. Elio said the reason he was closing his shop was because he had “fallen out of love” with fashion.

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Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore

Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore patches up several videos of young people dancing, singing and partying. It starts with the disco scene of the 1970s, touches upon the Northern Soul of the late 1970s and early 1980s and climaxes with the rave scene of the 1990s. Mash-ups of a single soundtrack play during the whole video, giving a sense of unity and narrative to the video. However, there are moments of spoken text. At one point an animated element – a bird tattoo image – appears as if released from the hand of a dancer, then carried into the next shot finds its place on the arm of another of the film’s nightclubbing subjects. Some dance moves are played on loop for a few seconds, some are played in slow motion.

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Inspired by Elio Fiorucci

coloured galoshes : http://www.swims.com/MEN/Galoshes.aspx

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Info:

 Wikipedia,

http://www.thedollsfactory.com/2010/07/fiorucci-provocative-genius.html#.VUUM8Pntmko

article by By Trish Donnally, Chronicle Fashion Editor

This post is a tribute to my mother, who always inspired me to be myself. I gave her some hard times, dressing fashionably at a very young age, fashion she didn’t understand or like. But even when I walked around with three shoulder pads on top of each other (ultimate power dressing, ahum) and people were staring at me, she proudly walked next to me. Thanks mam for letting me find out who I am!

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Claude Montana is a French fashion designer. His company, The House of Montana, founded in 1979, went bankrupt in 1997.

Born in Paris in 1949 to a Catalonian father and German mother, Montana began his career by designing papier-mâché jewelry covered with rhinestones. Later, he discovered leather and the complex techniques associated with it, eventually becoming a leading force in leather. His first fashion show took place in 1976. He was an avid colorist and favored blue, red, metallic, and neutral tones, in luxurious materials such as cashmere, leather and silk. He started his own company in 1979, and quickly became a darling of 1980s high fashion along with Thierry Mugler, who also favored aggressive shapes and strong colours.

In 1981, Montana designed his first collection for men, called Montana Hommes, in which he focused on the color and material of each garment rather than trivial details. From 1990 to 1992 he designed haute couture collections for the House of Lanvin, for which he received two consecutive Golden Thimble awards. Despite critical acclaim, Montana’s bold designs were financially disastrous for the house, created at a total estimated loss of $50 million, and he was ultimately replaced by Dominique Morlotti. In 1999, he designed an affordable line of clothing for women, Montana BLU. It was inspired by his favorite themes but modified to fit the style of sportswear and citywear.

Claude Montana for Lanvin, ph. Paolo Roversi

Montana’s fashion shows excelled in styling as well as in presentation. Because of their vibrations, modelling for Montana became prestigious and invitations to his shows the hottest tickets in town. With fashion’s return to harder lines in 2007 Montana has become an inspiration for many designers. Alexander McQueen praised and honored Montana many times in his collections. Both designers shared a love for construction and high quality.

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On July 21, 1993, Montana married model Wallis Franken. It was a marriage of convenience and friendship, as Montana was openly homosexual. They were the same age, had been friends for 18 years, and she had served as his muse for many of his fashion innovations. Wallis already had two daughters and a granddaughter by a previous marriage. In June 1996, Wallis died after falling three stories from their Paris apartment. The death was ruled a suicide.

Power Dressing

In October 2010 it was announced that Claude Montana and Marielle Cro have been working on a coffee-table book documenting Montana’s career. The book includes photos and interviews with insiders who witnessed Montana’s career firsthand.

Currently, Montana lives in Spain.

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Death of Wallis Franken

In late April and early May, Wallis spent a wonderful two weeks in New York, tending to her aging mother, seeing old friends, buying gifts for Montana, and visiting a Chinese herbalist, to whom she recited a litany of menopausal symptoms. She told him, for example, that unstoppable tears would sometimes flow from her eyes, but she never mentioned the possibility of depression. She said she was excited that her daughter, Rhea, 26, who had two small daughters, was about to give birth to a grandson. “She left in very high spirits,” says Sanchez. Wallis made a date to meet Sanchez three weeks later at his house in Marrakech. Then she flew home, arriving on Monday morning, May 6.Claude Montana & Wallis Franken fitting for the wedding, 1993

The body was not removed from the courtyard until midafternoon. After an autopsy, which showed no marks or signs of self-defense on her body but which did show that she had ingested alcohol and cocaine, the French authorities have officially ruled Wallis Franken’s death a suicide by defenestration. Her family accepts that verdict. Nevertheless, her older brother Randy, who lives in Germany, and her mother, who lives in New York, both gave statements to the French police. They also engaged a lawyer who, according to Randy Franken, “made clear to authorities that there was a history of abuse.”

Book

Displays and revels in the rich inventiveness of a designer who played a key role in the fashions of the 1980s and 1990s, and who has become an inspiration for many contemporary designers.

The Montana woman embodied an extraordinary new image: razor- sharp tailoring and strong silhouettes with dramatic proportions and masculine lines, enlivened by an astonishing mix of detail and bold hues. Materials, colors, and cut were all vehicles for Claude Montana’s effervescent genius, and it was the Lanvin period in the early 1990s that marked the absolute high point of his creativity.

This book looks at the principles and practices that underpin Montana’s work. It records numerous conversations with Montana himself that help us to understand the essential forces that have shaped his work, while scores of catwalk images and reproductions of his sketches reveal the energy and singularity of his vision. It is a journey punctuated with intimate comments and observations by those who have accompanied the designer at different points along the way—among others, the photographers Dominique Issermann, Tyen, and Paolo Roversi; the embroiderer François Lesage; the designer Alain Mikli; and the makeup artist Olivier Echaudemaison. Their moving testimonies are scattered throughout these pages. 124 color and 22 black-and-white illustrations.

ISBN 9780500515396

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Info: Wikipedia, http://www.vanityfair.com/magazine/1996/09/montana199609

Martin Margiela first got the fashion world thinking in 1989 with a collection that challenged what luxury could be. Applying ‘grunge’ techniques such as deconstruction, recycling and raw finishes, in an intelligent and sleek manner, his ideas provoked shock and intrigue. In a rejection of mass media culture, Margiela became an anonymous design hand and has hardly ever been photographed or interviewed. Working under the collective ‘Maison Martin Margiela’ for over 20 years, Margiela left the label in 2009.

.Maison Martin Margiela studio photo on invitation show a/w '96'97 
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Short Biography

Martin Margiela was born on April 9 1957 in Genk, Belgium.

In a rare interview with Sphere in 1983, Margiela talked about his first fashion experience. “I was watching the TV news and there was an item about (Paco) Rabanne and (André) Courrèges. As soon as I saw their designs I thought, ‘how wonderful, people are doing the sort of thing I want to do’.”

Margiela graduated from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp in 1979. Today he is considered an honorary member of the ‘Antwerp Six’, the ground-breaking group of designers that emerged from the academy in 1980, including Ann Demeulemeester and Dries Van Noten. This wave of talent is credited with pushing the fashion industry beyond Paris, New York, London and Milan, kick-starting today’s global marketplace.

Martin Margiela & Jean Paul Gaultier
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In 1984 Martin moved to Paris to work as a design assistant to Jean Paul Gaultier. “I already knew he was good, but I didn’t realise to what extent,” Gaultier later said.

Margiela founded his eponymous label in 1988, provoking instant reaction with his first collection. “It was really a shock for everybody to see Margiela’s first silhouettes… you realised that he was much more advanced than everybody else,” designer Bob Verhelst, told Icon in 2009.

Martin Margiela won the very first ANDAM fellowship in 1989, a now prestigious prize that has since been awarded to Viktor and Rolf, Richard Nicoll, Gareth Pugh and Giles Deacon.

Martin Margiela F/W 1992

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In an unexpected move, iconoclast Margiela became womenswear director of classic design house Hermes in 1997. “When (Jean-Louis Dumas, chairman of Hermes, and I) first met, he asked me anxiously if I was going to cut the Kelly in half because, at the time, the press used the words grunge and destroy to describe my work,” the designer told Grazia in a rare statement.

Martin Margiela for Hermes
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Margiela launched his first menswear collection in 1998, known as line 10. Every new product range is given a number from 0 to 23, acting as a referencing code rather than a chronological order. The original tags were blank white labels, hand tacked with four white stitches that could be seen from the outside of the garment – a symbol of cool for those in-the-know. The ranges have expanded to include fine jewellery (12), footwear (22), eyewear (8), objects (13) and fragrance (3).

Maison Martin Margiela  Menswear

Maison Martin Margiela Footwear 

Maison Martin Margiela Fragrance

Maison martin Margiela Fine Jewellery

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In 2002 Maison Martin Margiela became a public company with the majority share acquired by Diesel Group owner Renzo Russo.

Margiela stepped down from his role at Hermes in 2003, and was ironically succeeded by his former mentor, Jean Paul Gaultier.

In March 2006, Margiela presented a critically acclaimed collection where perfectly tailored trouser suits were made from seventies upholstery fabrics and car seatbelts were used to draw in silhouettes. His work with unconventional materials is renowned and other hits have included tops patch-worked from vintage leather gloves, cleft-toe boots and jewellery made of coloured ice, dyeing the clothes as it melted. The designer’s presentation methods have been equally brilliant, as one show challenged editors and buyers to seat themselves according to their perceived importance, while another saw models wheeled out on trolleys.

The Chambre Syndicale invited Maison Martin Margiela to show their first haute couture collection on the official Paris schedule in May 2006, an acknowledgement of true excellence and craftsmanship.

In 2008, 20 a retrospective of the Maison’s work opened at the Fashion Museum Province of Antwerp.

In October 2009 it was announced that Margiela had resigned from his position as creative director at the Maison, although insiders suggested that he had been ‘absent’ for a while. Rumours circulated that he had disagreed with the commercial drive of the new Diesel ownership and felt that the Maison was sacrificing its authenticity and exclusivity in favour of becoming a globally recognised brand.

In the months that followed the question of who could replace Margiela became a hot topic, with Raf Simons and Haider Ackermann reportedly turning down offers to become the successor.

The 20 retrospective moved to London’s Somerset House in June 2010 with a party attended by many of the designer’s more recognisable peers and acolytes. The big question of the evening was whether the ‘invisible’ designer himself was present. ‘Moving freely among (the celebrity-filled crowd) was that balding, grey-haired gent. Was it Margiela? Well, that assumes all Martin had to do was remove his signature cap to pass as One of Us,’ Style.Com’s Tim Blanks reported.

The 20 Retrospective Exhibition

Margiela’s radical concepts have influenced everybody from Azzedine Alaïa to Alexander McQueen.”Anybody who’s aware of what life is in a contemporary world is influenced by Margiela“ Marc Jacobs told Women’s Wear Daily in 2008.

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Short Film on Martin Margiela: The Artist Absent

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Books

Maison Martin Margiela

Graduating from Antwerp’s Royal Academy of Fine Arts in the 1980s, Martin Margiela (and his contemporaries in the Antwerp Six) transformed global fashion with his aggressive restatement of traditional fashion design and a polemical approach to luxury trends. Working first with the house of Gaultier, Margiela absorbed the radical design of Japanese deconstruction, making it wholly his own with the founding of his own label in 1988. Margiela propounds a singular, enigmatic look, moving beyond the recognizable tropes of deconstruction—a monochromatic palette, outsized garments, non-traditional fabrics, exposed seams, or roughly appliquéd details—to develop a fully considered worldview, one with elegance, mystery, and menace in equal measure. This book provides an inside look at the design process from a craftsman who creates pieces prized for their originality, delicacy, and daring. In the spirit of Margiela’s garments, the book is a work of art in itself, designed exclusively by Margiela and complete with silver inks, ribbon markers, a variety of lush paper types, twelve booklets, and an embroidered white-linen cover. This book provides a window onto the intimate, handmade world of a unique designer.

ISBN-13: 978-0847831883 ISBN-10: 0847831884

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Maison Martin Margiela: 20 Years The Exhibition

Twenty years of Maison Martin Margiela is examined in this unique retrospective exhibition catalogue. Departing from the traditional idea of presenting a comprehensive overview, the catalogue explores the different themes and concepts that have been present in the Maison’s production. This extends to their collections, events, the interior designs of their boutiques and offices, and the unmistakeable approach to their graphics and communication.

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Martin Margiela: Street Special 1 & 2

In 1995, Tokyo-based Street magazine approached the Paris fashion house of Martin Margiela with an invitation to publish a special edition dedicated to its work. Maison Martin Margiela guest-edited the magazine, and was solely responsible for the selection of images and presentation, which includes many previously unpublished photographs from its archives. The success of the first volume led to the publication of a second instalment in 1999, and together the two special issues cover every Martin Margiela collection from Spring/Summer 1989 through to Spring/Summer 1999. Now both popular volumes have been made available once more in this combined reprint.

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Martin Margiela, Belgium newspaper, dated March 3, 19838
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info:http://www.vogue.co.uk/spy/biographies/martin-margiela

Jean Cocteau’s Beauty and the Beast, costumes by Pierre Cardin

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Short Biography

A Pierre Cardin Bubble Dress

Soon, though, Cardin was looking outside France for inspiration. He visited Japan in 1957, becoming one of the first Western designers to seek out Eastern influences. In Japan, he scoped out business opportunities while studying the country’s fashions for new ideas. The Japanese fashion school Bunka Fukusoi made him an honorary professor, and he taught a one-month class there on three-dimensional cuts. Also in 1957, Cardin opened his first boutique for men in Paris, called Adam.

During the 1960s, Cardin began a practise that is now commonplace by creating the system of licenses that he was to apply to fashion. A clothing collection launched around this period surprised all by displaying the designer’s logo on the garments for the first time.

Uniforms for Paskistan International Airlines 
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 Books

Pierre Cardin: Fifty Years of Fashion and design

This is the first authorized monograph on Pierre Cardin (b. 1922). Visionary fashion designer and licensing pioneer, Cardin began his career apprenticed to Elsa Schiaparelli and Christian Dior. He quickly launched his own haute couture line, in 1954, followed rapidly by the first women’s and men’s prêt-à-porter (ready-to-wear) collections from a couture designer. Since the 1960s, Cardin’s cutting-edge, futuristic designs have continually broken new ground and established exciting new trends. And he invented the business of fashion as we know it today, with international brand licensing across a variety of products and media. Pierre Cardin himself made his ambition clear: “I wanted my name to become a brand and not just a label.”

Cardin brought high fashion to the street; he invented the bubble dress and launched the use of cartridge pleating, bright clear colors, as well as vinyl, plastics, metal rings, and oversize buttons. Pierre Cardin has also designed accessories, furniture, and cosmetics. There are now more than 900 licenses in over 140 countries, employing more than 200,000 people under the Pierre Cardin trademark.

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Pierre Cardin: 60 Years of Innovation

The Cardin fashion house celebrated its 60th anniversary in 2010, an occasion that called for a retrospective of the work of its founder, designer Pierre Cardin. Born in 1922 in Sant’Andrea de Barbarana, Venice province, Pierre Cardin immigrated to Paris in 1924 with his parents, who were thrown into poverty by World War I. After working briefly with Elsa Schiaparelli, Cardin joined Dior in 1946 and opened his own couture house in 1950.

He was a pioneer from the start, creating a design-based, architectural fash ion with a futurist sensibility. Cardin also had a pioneer’s understanding of fashion’s relationship to new audiences, presenting his collections to large crowds. He was the first to demonstrate that fashion can be both a creative process and a business – and that one man can excel as both a business man and an artist.

This volume is a tribute to an iconoclastic – and now iconic – designer, entrepreneur, and visionary.

info: http://www.whatgoesaroundnyc.com/blog/12540 & Wikipedia

Veronique Branquinho is a diverse Belgian designer who creates ladieswear, menswear, shoes, boots, sunglasses and lingerie. She has worked on several projects collaboratively with other designers and fashion manufacturers. Her designs fall into the luxury brand category, are well-tailored, and use the finest fabrics to create striking, yet lovely garments. She is in tune with the female body and believes that clothing should be made to fit perfectly, thus, making them more comfortable and more appealing. Her attention to detail through the use of quality fabrics is her signature feature.

After graduation, Veronique worked hard and released her first collection in 1997, a ready-to-wear womens line. Her label was called Veronique Branquinho. She was not afraid to show her work and was confident enough to present the collection on the Paris runway. All of the garments were clearly top quality, as she wanted everything to be perfect, right down to the finishing touches and magnificent detailing of each item. She was immediately known for her long pleated skirts which resembled kilts in a maxi styling length. Her womenswear collections would continue until Fall 2009.

Not long after Veronique’s first showing, she established an actual company in Antwerp, as she was growing from the orders from luxury companies like Barneys New York and Iris in Montreal. Boutiques in Moscow, Tokyo, London and Paris also wanted to stock her now famous label. By Fall 2003, she launched her menswear line which also continued successfully until 2009. One her most unique collections was the 2006 “his and hers” line. It was basically the same garments, but made for both men and women. The women’s line also had a skirt which was made from the same fabric as the men’s pants. When interviewed, she said that this was probably her favorite collection to date.

‘His and Hers’ Collection

Through the years, collaboration was important to Veronique and she has worked with numerous companies to create unique pieces. Examples include luxury eyewear with Linda Farrow, a British sunglass designer; leather goods with Raf Simmons for Ruffo Research, an Italian company; an exclusive sixteen-piece collection for 3 Suisses, a French catalog company selling upper end fashions; and jazz shoes for Repetto, the French company that specializes in ballet and dance footwear.

Veronique returned to fashion under her own name, three years after filing for bankruptcy. The designer set to return to the ready-to-wear (S/S 2013) schedule in Paris, with a slightly lower-priced offering than her former eponymous brand.

Created along with Italian clothing manufacturer Gibò, who has reportedly also invested in her company, the collection will be a “bit more adult” than her former designs, she says.

“I’ve always been a no-nonsense girl, I think,” the designer said. “My approach is also like that and I think this is something people are looking for – honest things… Before, I had an independent company. I was responsible for everything. In this new situation, it feels so comfortable, because I’m only busy with the creative part.”

A Magazine curated by Veronique Branquinho ( No.6)

Watch A Magazine curated by Veronique Branquinho by clicking on the link below

http://www.amagazinecuratedby.com/issues/veronique-branquinho/

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Veronique Branquinho  ®MARK SEGAL

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info:

http://www.belgian-fashion.com/veronique-branquinho-a-bio.php

http://www.vogue.co.uk/news/2012/06/25/veronique-branquinho-returns—catwalk-comeback

Wilhelmina Cooper (1 May 1939 – 1 March 1980) was a Dutch model who began with Ford Models and, at the peak of her success, founded her own agency, Wilhelmina Models, in New York City in 1967.

Born Wilhelmina Behmenburg in Culemborg, the Netherlands, she was known professionally simply as “Wilhelmina,” or “Willy” to intimates. Wilhelmina grew up in Oldenburg, Germany. She moved with her family to Chicago, USA, in 1954. She became one of the most famous models of the 1950s and 1960s. During her career as a model she was on the cover of 255 magazines. For a long time she also held the record for most covers on American Vogue, appearing 27 or 28 times.

Vogue Covers

ph. Irving Penn, 1965ph. Bert Stern, 1964

She was one of the most recognizable models of her time and she was considered the last star of the couture era in modeling.

In 1965 she married Bruce Cooper, former executive producer of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. In 1967 they founded Wilhelmina Models, which became the other leading model agency alongside Ford Models, years before Elite Model Management and other agencies began.

ph. Irving Penn, 1965

Cooper’s agency played a major role in launching the career of Naomi Sims, credited as the first African-American supermodel. Sims began her modeling career in the mid-1960s but despite a breakthrough appearance in the New York Times fashion supplement in 1967, she found it difficult to get work. Sims approached Cooper and told her that she would send out copies of the Times supplement to agencies and that Cooper would receive a commission on any work Sims received from this. Within a year, Sims was earning US$1000 a week; in 1968 she appeared on the cover of the Ladies’Home Journal and the following year she appeared on the cover of Life magazine.

On 1 March 1980, Cooper died of lung cancer at the age of 40 in Greenwich Hospital.

According to her obituary in Time magazine:

During her cover-girl days, Wilhelmina boasted that she was “one of the few high-fashion models built like a woman.” And she was. With her 5 ft. 11 in., 38-24-36 frame, doe eyes, delicate cheekbones and mane of high-piled dark hair, she epitomized the classical, aristocratic look that she helped to make the style standard of the 1950s and ’60s…

Cooper’s daughter, Melissa, told Michael Gross (author of “Model: the Ugly Business of Being Beautiful”) she believes her mother chose to kill herself with cigarettes instead of facing, and fixing, her horribly imperfect life, suffering as an abused wife of an alcoholic husband.

Cooper was portrayed by Faye Dunaway (who won a Golden Globe for her performance) in the 1998 movie Gia, which tells the story of Gia Carangi, a model who was discovered by Cooper and later died of AIDS.

In American sitcom Ugly Betty, the antagonist Wilhelmina Slater (Vanessa L. Williams) is named as a tribute to Cooper. Her nickname, Willy, and the fact that she became a successful businesswoman in fashion after being a model were attached directly to the character.

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Movie

Gia is a 1998  biographical film about the tragic life and times of one of America’s first supermodels, Gia Marie Carangi. The film stars Angelina Jolie as Gia and Faye Dunaway as Wilhelmina Cooper.

Gia Carangi is a Philadelphia native who moves to New York City to become a fashion model and immediately catches the attention of powerful agent Wilhelmina Cooper. Gia’s attitude and beauty help her rise quickly to the forefront of the modeling industry, but her persistent loneliness after the death of Wilhelmina drives her to experiment with mood-altering drugs like cocaine. She becomes entangled in a passionate affair with Linda, a make-up artist. Their love affair first starts when both pose nude and make love to each other after a photo shoot. However, after a while Linda begins to worry about Gia’s drug use and gives her an ultimatum; Gia chooses the drugs. Failed attempts at reconciliation with Linda and with her mother, Kathleen, drive Gia to begin abusing heroin. Although she is eventually able to break her drug habit after much effort, she has already contracted HIV from a needle containing infected blood.

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info:Wikipedia

Naomi Ruth Sims (March 30, 1948 – August 1, 2009) was an American model, businesswoman and author. She was the first African-American model to appear on the cover of Ladies’ Home Journal, and is widely credited as being the first African-American supermodel.

Sims was born in Oxford, Mississippi, the youngest of three daughters born to John and Elizabeth Sims. Her father (whom she never knew) reportedly worked as a porter, but Sims’ mother later described him “an absolute bum” and her parents divorced shortly after she was born. She was teased for her height of 5’10 at the age of 13. Mrs Sims later moved with her three daughters to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where Naomi’s mother was forced to put her child into foster care. She attended Westinghouse High School. There due to her height, she was ostracized by many of her classmates.

Vogue Italia, 1969

ph. Irving Penn for Vogue
Vogue 1970

Sims often said childhood insecurities and a painful upbringing — living in foster homes, towering over her classmates and living in a largely poor white neighborhood in Pittsburgh — had inspired her to strive to become “somebody really important” at a time when cultural perceptions of black Americans were being challenged by the civil rights movement and a renewed stress on racial pride.

Sims began college after winning a scholarship to the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City in 1966, while also taking night classes in psychology at New York University. Her early attempts to get modeling work through established agencies were frustrated by racial prejudice, with some agencies telling her that her skin was too dark. There was very little interest in fashion for black models and only a handful who had been successful, like Dorothea Towles Church, who starred in the couture shows in 1950s Paris, and Donyale Luna, who was named Vogue’s model of the year in 1966.

Her first career breakthrough came after she decided to sidestep the agencies and go directly to fashion photographers and Gosta Peterson, a photographer for The New York Times, agreed to photograph her for the cover of the paper’s August 1967 fashion supplement, then called Fashions of The Times.

Ph. Irving Penn

Despite this breakthrough, Sims still found it difficult to get work, so she approached Wilhelmina Cooper, a former model who was starting her own agency, saying that she would send out copies of the Times supplement to advertising agencies, attaching Cooper’s telephone number, and that Cooper’s agency would get a commission if Naomi received any work. Within a year Sims was earning US$1000 a week. The key breakthrough came when she was selected for a national television campaign for AT&T, wearing clothes by designer Bill Blass. In 1968 Sims told Ladies’ Home Journal: “It helped me more than anything else because it showed my face. After it was aired, people wanted to find out about me and use me.”

Sims was suddenly in high demand, modeling for top designers like Halston, Teal Traina, Fernando Sánchez and Giorgio di Sant’Angelo, and standing at the vanguard of a fashion movement for black models that would give rise to runway stars of the 1970s, including Pat Cleveland, Alva Chinn and Beverly Johnson.

She became one of the first successful black models while still in her teens, and achieved worldwide recognition from the late 1960s into the early 1970s, appearing on the covers of prestigious fashion and popular magazines. The New York Times wrote that (her) “appearance as the first black model on the cover of Ladies’ Home Journal in November 1968 was a consummate moment of the Black is Beautiful movement”. She also appeared on the cover of the October 17, 1969 issue of Life magazine. This was the first African-American model on the cover of the magazine. The images from the 1967 New York Times fashion magazine cover and the 1969 Life magazine cover were exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in an exhibition entitled The Model as Muse.

In 1969 and 1970, Naomi Sims received the Model of the Year award. In 1972 she received the Woman of Achievement Medal and then the Top Hat Award in 1974.

By 1972, Hollywood took an interest in her as a potential actress and offered her the title role in the movie Cleopatra Jones, but when Sims read the script, she was appalled by the racist portrayal of blacks in the movie and turned it down. Sims ultimately decided to go into the beauty business for herself. Sims retired from modeling after five years to start her own business which created a successful wig collection fashioned after the texture of straightened black hair. It eventually expanded into a multimillion-dollar beauty empire and at least five books on modeling and beauty. 

She authored several books on modeling, health, and beauty, including All About Health and Beauty for the Black Woman, How to Be a Top Model and All About Success for the Black Woman, as well as an advice column for teenage girls in Right On! magazine.

In the 1980s, she expanded the Naomi Sims Collection to include a prestige fragrance, beauty salons and cosmetics, but by the end of the decade she had become less involved with its daily operations. Many images of  Sims from that period are still used to promote the products that bear her name.

In August 1973, she married art dealer Michael Findlay. Findlay and Sims caused a stir as Findlay was white and interracial marriage in 1973 was still considered taboo. Findlay and Sims were both profiled separately in the February 1, 1970 issue of Vogue before they met and married. They had one son, Bob. Their marriage ended in divorce in 1991.

Sims died of breast cancer on August 1, 2009, aged 61, in Newark, New Jersey.

“Naomi was the first. She was the great ambassador for all black people. She broke down all the social barriers.”   

Halston in 1974

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Book

How to be a top model

Hardcover – 1979

1ste edition is over € 1.350,- !!!!

ISBN-10: 0385133618

ISBN-13: 978-0385133616

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Naomi Sims, ph. Steven Meisel 1990

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info: WikiPedia &

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/04/fashion/04sims.html?_r=0

Donyale Luna, ph. Charlotte March, Twen magazine, 1966

.Donyale Luna was the first black Supermodel, though many long established fashion-watchers don’t even know her name.  At the height of her career, the New York Times called Luna “a stunning Negro model whose face had the hauteur and feline grace of Nefertiti.” The designer Stephen Burrows recalled that “she was just one of those extraordinary girls.” And in 1966, when Beatrix Miller, the editor of British Vogue, chose her as the first-ever black model for that magazine’s cover, it was because of “her bite and personality.” Bethann Hardison, another ascendant model, remembers that “no one looked like her. She was like a really extraordinary species.”

Ph. by David Bailey 
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David McCabe, known for photographing celebrities like Twiggy and Andy Warhol, recognized that Luna had something special the first time he saw her in 1963. “I was on a photo assignment in Detroit, photographing Ford cars [and] there was a school nearby,” he recalled. “I was struck by this almost 6-foot-tall beautiful girl – around 14-years-old at the time – wearing her Catholic uniform. She stopped to see what was going on.” He told her that he was a photographer for magazines like Mademoiselle and Glamour and that, if she was ever in New York, she should call him. In 1964, he got that call, and sent the ensuing photos to various agencies. “I also called Richard Avedon,” he remembers. “I said you’ve got to see this girl. She’s just unbelievable.” Soon Avedon began photographing her, too, eventually signing her to a one year contract.

In the mid-sixties, “the magazine world really wasn’t ready for photographing beautiful black women,” McCabe says. Luna’s first major cover, for Harper’s Bazaar in 1965, was a sketch in which her racial identity remained ambiguous. Luna’s face, most notably her lips and nose, are also obscured on her British Vogue cover, also somewhat hiding her race.

Despite all that, Luna’s role as a trailblazer is largely forgotten. Luna’s name is still a rarity on many “black firsts” lists. And Beverly Johnson is routinely referred to as “the first black woman to appear on the cover of Vogue,” for her turn on the American edition eight years after Luna’s British cover.

Short Biography

Donyale Luna (August 31, 1945 – May 17, 1979) was born Peggy Ann Freeman in Detroit, Michigan, to Nathaniel A. and Peggy Freeman (née Hertzog). She was the youngest of three daughters. In January 1965, her mother fatally shot her father in self-defense as he was reportedly abusive.

Despite the parentage stated on her birth certificate, she insisted that her biological father was a man with the surname Luna and that her mother was Indigenous Mexican and of Afro-Egyptian lineage. According to Luna, one of her grandmothers was reportedly a former Irish actress who married a black interior decorator. Whether any of this background is true is uncertain. Luna’s sister later described her as being “a very weird child, even from birth, living in a wonderland, a dream”. She would routinely create fantasies about her background and herself (like Coco Chanel did).

As a teen, she attended Cass Technical High School, where she studied journalism and was in the school choir. It was during this time that she began calling herself “Donyale”. She was later described by friends and classmates as being “kind of kooky”.

After being discovered by the photographer David McCabe, she moved from Detroit to New York City to pursue a modeling career. In January 1965, a sketch of Luna appeared on the cover of Harper’s Bazaar. She became the first black model to appear on the cover of a Vogue magazine, the March 1966 British issue, shot by photographer David Bailey.

Luna was under exclusive contract to the photographer Richard Avedon for a year at the beginning of her career.

Photographs by Richard Avedon

After being discovered by the photographer David McCabe, she moved from Detroit to New York City to pursue a modeling career. In January 1965, a sketch of Luna appeared on the cover of Harper’s Bazaar. She became the first black model to appear on the cover of a Vogue magazine, the March 1966 British issue, shot by photographer David Bailey.

Luna was under exclusive contract to the photographer Richard Avedon for a year at the beginning of her career.

Photographs by David Bailey

An article in Time magazine published on April 1, 1966, “The Luna Year”, described her as a new heavenly body who, because of her striking singularity, promises to remain on high for many a season. Donyale Luna, as she calls herself, is unquestionably the hottest model in Europe at the moment. She is only 20, a Negro, hails from Detroit, and is not to be missed if one reads Harper’s Bazaar, Paris Match, Britain’s Queen, the British, French or American editions of Vogue.

By the 1970s, however, Luna’s modeling career began to decline due to her drug use, eccentric behavior and tendency to be difficult. A designer for whom Luna once worked said, “She took a lot of drugs and never paid her bills”. Fellow model Beverly Johnson later said, “[Luna] doesn’t wear shoes winter or summer. Ask her where she’s from—Mars? She went up and down the runways on her hands and knees. She didn’t show up for bookings. She didn’t have a hard time, she made it hard for herself.”

‘Fur on Ice’, Twen magazine, 1966, ph. Charlotte March

During the late 1960s Luna appeared in several films produced by Andy Warhol. These included Screen Test: Donyale Luna (1964), Camp (1965), and Donyale Luna (1967), a 33-minute color film in which the model starred as Snow White.

In the 1969 Federico Fellini film Fellini Satyricon, she portrayed the whitch Oenothea, and Luna also appeared in The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus, the Otto Preminger comedy Skidoo, the documentary Tonite Let’s All Make Love in London and  starred as the title character in the 1972 Italian film Salomé by director Carmelo Bene.

Donyale Luna on the set of Satyricon
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Donyale Luna was married, engaged or romantically involved many times, like to Austrian-born Swiss actor Maximilian Schell and in 1969 with German actor Klaus Kinski. This relationship ended when Kinski asked her entourage to leave his house in Rome: he was concerned that their drug use could damage his career. Another one of her liaisons was with Rolling Stone Brian Jones

Luna married the Italian photographer Luigi Cazzaniga. In 1977 they had a daughter, Dream.

At the age of 33 the drug-taking finally caught up with Donyale Luna. Estranged from her husband, she died in a Rome clinic in the early hours of 17 May 1979 of an accidental heroin overdose. She left behind her 18-month-old daughter, Dream.

Donyale Luna, ph. Luigi Cazzaniga

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Rootstein mannequin

Donyale Luna, the first notable African American fashion model and cover girl, was also the first African American to have a mannequin created in her likeness. It was produced in 1967 by the leading mannequin manufacturer, Adel Rooststein, as a follow-up to their famous Twiggy mannequin of 1966.

eBook

Beauty’s Enigma – Donyale Luna – The First Black Supermodel

They called her “the reincarnation of Nefertiti,” and “a girl of staggering beauty and magnetism.” She was Donyale Luna, the startling, owl-like beauty who crashed through fashion’s apartheid system in the mid-1960s to become the world’s first black supermodel, and the first to grace a Vogue cover. In a short but action-packed career, she worked with Salvador Dali, Frederico Fellini, Andy Warhol, David Bailey, Helmut Newton and Richard Avedon, before her untimely death from a drug overdose in 1979. This new biography by Ben Arogundade, author of Black Beauty, details her amazing life story in all its dramatic glory.
eBook
ISBN: 978-0-9569394-4-9.

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Info:

Wikipedia &

http://nymag.com/thecut/2013/07/first-black-supermodel-whom-history-forgot.html

Ph. Erwin Blumenfeld, 1947
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Babe in her wedding dress when she married Stanley Mortimer.Ph. Horst P.Horst,1940

Ph.John Rawlings, Vogue February 1946
Ph. Clifford Coffin for British Vogue December 1946Ph. Lord Snowdon

Truman Capote.

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Ph. Horst P. Horst
Ph. Norman Parkinson

Ph. Alexander Liberman, 1942

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Ph. John Rawlings

Info:  Wikpedia &

http://video.vanityfair.com/watch/the-best-dressed-women-of-all-time–babe-paley

Thea Porter reflected in her dining table.  Ph. Jim Lee for the Sunday Times , 1971
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Once, towns strewn across Turkey and Afghanistan owed their economies to the western appetite for the kaftan. During the 1970s travellers on the hippy trail brought back pottery, soft furnishings and piles of clothes to remind them of their spiritual adventures.

More than 40 years on, the kaftan has had several revivals as a key fashion piece. And, like Indian cuisine, it now seems to have been adopted as a British staple. It is the late Thea Porter, who is credited with bringing the bohemian look to London catwalks…. 

Although Thea Porter is not as famous a name as Mary Quant or Laura Ashley, her influence on the look of her era is just as potent. Her loose, draped shapes and fabrics helped create the style of stars such as Faye Dunaway and Elizabeth Taylor in the 1970s, and they have since become forever entangled with the idea of rock-star self-indulgence.  Vogue UK, June 1971Maudie James, ph. Patrick Hunt 1970

Avant Garde, September 1978, Ph. Jacques d’Alva

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Short Biography

Thea Porter in her work room

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Thea Porter was born Dorothea Noelle Naomi Seale, on 24 December 1927, in Jerusalem and raised in Damascus. She was the daughter of Morris S. Seale, the Arabist and theologian, who was a Christian missionary in Syria, and his French wife, who was also a missionary.  

Thea was educated at the Lycée Française in Damascus, Fernhill Manor, then for a short time studying French and Old English at Royal Holloway College, London, before being expelled.

Following her studies in England, she worked in the library of the British embassy in Beirut, where she met her future husband, Robert Porter. Together they travelled to Jordan and Iran, and had holidays in France and Italy. She studied painting during the day, and “went to nightclubs every night and had millions of clothes.” In June 1961 Thea had her first solo painting exhibition at the Alecco Saab Gallery, Beirut. Together they had a daughter, Venetia.

Vogue April 1975, ph. Barry Lategan
Vogue November 1970, ph. Barry Lategan
Vogue 1969
Vogue October 1969, ph. Guy Bourdin
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After she separated from her husband, Thea moved to London in May 1964. Her first job was in interior design, working for Elizabeth Eaton. She opened her first shop, an interior decorating business offering imported cushions, fabrics and hangings called Thea Porter Decorations Ltd, in Soho at 8 Greek street on July 27, 1966. She realised that rather than just cutting up her imported kaftan to use the fabric for cushion covers, they were fashionable in their own right, and began making up her own in mixed fabrics and antique trimmings.

From 1967, she expanded internationally; her first wholesale client was Henri Bendel in New York in 1968. 

In 1971, Thea opened a store in New York financed by Michael Butler, the producer of the hit Broadway musical Hair. It closed after six months, but she continued to sell very successfully at high-end boutiques across the United States; Giorgio Beverly Hills sold approximately $300,000 worth of Thea Porter designs per year in the mid-1970s. On April 1, 1977 she opened a store in Paris, on the Rue de Tournon; this closed in 1979. Thea Porter Decorations Ltd went into receivership in February 1981; she subsequently worked from ateliers on Avery Row and Beauchamp Place. Zandra Rhodes has stated, “Sadly, one didn’t hear of her after that“.

In 1994 Thea was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. Thea Porter died in London on 24 July 2000.

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Though she’s no longer a household name, Thea Porter basically owned the boho look from the late 60s onwards. 
Facts about Thea Porter:

Growing up in the Middle East had a lasting influence on her designs

Thea was born in Jerusalem, grew up in Damascus and studied in Beirut. Eventually settling in London in the mid-60s, the influences of her upbringing made her designs feel new. She brought the flowing robes and rich textures that she’d seen as a child to a London crowd who had been dressing in the Op Art and modernist styles of the early 60s. Moroccan djellaba robes, Iraqi Samawa carpets and 17th-century Persian paintings were all inspirations. A shirtdress made from the Damascus tablecloth fabric, aghabani, became a bestseller.

She started out with interiors, and menswear followed

Her first shop, on Soho’s Greek Street 8, was quite the hangout. It opened in 1966, and sold Thea’s ornate, colourful furnishings, including wall hangings and curtains. The Beatles snapped them up to decorate their short-lived Apple Boutique. Rock royalty liked her menswear designs, too. Elton John was an early fan and Pink Floyd wore her embroidered jackets and vibrant shirts on the cover of their appropriately trippy debut album The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn in 1967.

Pink Floyd album cover  'The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn'

She also excelled at womenswear

Thea fitted into the floaty, feminine mood of the time that other designers – Bill Gibb, Ossie Clark, Laura Ashley – were also exploring, but made it her own with several signatures. Along with the aghabani shirtdress, her so-called “gipsy” dress – layers of vibrantly printed chiffon, with a tight bodice and flowing sleeves – had the requisite wild romanticism, especially when worn with swashbuckling boots. 

She had a good business brain on her chiffon-clad shoulders

By 1969, Thea had expanded overseas, with a concession in New York department store Henri Bendel. A stand-alone store followed in 1971, and she sold her designs successfully in LA, too. Her success partly came from an ability to evolve her aesthetic. The very ornate designs gave way to simpler pieces in the 1970s, influenced by the classical lines of 30s fashion. At this time, she also hired a young Katharine Hamnett who worked for Thea while still studying at Central Saint Martins.

Her clothes were loved by a well-heeled crowd

A regular in the pages of British Vogue – where luminaries including Lauren Hutton, Penelope Tree and Rudolf Nureyev modelled her clothes – the likes of Barbra Streisand and Faye Dunaway were clients in the Greek Street store and Elsa Peretti modelled in her shows. While Thea’s name faded into obscurity in the 1980s and 90s, it’s since become a cult favourite on the vintage scene, with original pieces fetching more than £1,000 on eBay. 

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Book

Thea Porter: Bohemian Chiq

Thea Porter (1927–2000) came to epitomize bohemian chic in the 1960s and ’70s, using an eclectic mix of luxurious fabrics for her signature flowing dresses that became favorites of stylish women everywhere. Faye Dunaway, Joan Collins, Barbra Streisand, and Elizabeth Taylor were fans; Vogue’s Diana Vreeland championed her clothes; and today vintage Thea Porter is worn by Kate Moss, Nicole Richie, and other fashionistas. This first  book devoted to the UK-based fashion designer features new photography of her fabulous clothes and jewelry as well as press clippings, sketches, and excerpts from an unpublished memoir she wrote about her aesthetics, philosophies, and work.

Photo’s of the Thea Porter exhibition in the Fashion &Textile Museum, London

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info:

http://www.ftmlondon.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/TheaPorter-press-release.pdf

WikiPedia

http://www.theguardian.com

http://fashion.telegraph.co.uk/

Stephen Sprouse by Andy Warhol, 1987
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Stephen Sprouse was born in 1953. Being the oldest son of Norbert and Joanne Sprouse, he spent his first two years in Dayton, Ohio, where his father was stationed at the Air Force base. After the family moved to Columbus, Indiana, Norbert Sprouse pursued a lucrative manufacturing career; the family lived comfortably in a white, columned house a friend describes as something out of Gone With the Wind. Sprouse’s artistic talent emerged when he was a toddler. “Stephen was wired the way he was from the time he was 2,” his mother says. “He was totally unique.”

He was rarely without a pen, churning out pictures with such intensity that his mother worried that her shy son was relying too much on his art to do his talking. Sprouse was assertive only when wielding a pen or pencil—and then so much so that teachers nicknamed him the Art Supervisor. At 9, he drew a series of four self-portraits, in which he imagined his future career choices. “I might be a hobo,” he printed beneath one. “Or a movie star . . . or a father.” On the last picture, as if acknowledging his special gifts, he wrote, “Now I know who I better be—ME!”

When Sprouse was 12, his father showed his portfolio to someone at the Art Institute of Chicago, which led to an introduction to the designer Norman Norell. Sprouse’s father took Stephen to New York to meet both Norell and the Indiana-born Bill Blass, who later hired the aspiring artist as a summer apprentice. Sprouse was then only 14. “He was cool, my dad,” Sprouse told the late fashion editor Amy Spindler. “I mean, this was in Indiana. He could have beat me up if I didn’t play football, and he didn’t.”

Four years later, Sprouse enrolled at the Rhode Island School of Design, where a teacher introduced him as “the designer of the future” to a class that included Nicole Miller. For Sprouse, however, the future couldn’t come soon enough, and he left after three months to come to New York. He was totally fascinated by Andy Warhol and the people who hung around him. Sprouse loved Edie Sedgwick. For him, she was like the sixties Kate Moss.

Assisting Halston with a fitting on Anjelica Houston, 1970s
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Sprouse immediately got a job with Halston, who was then at the height of his fame as America’s top fashion designer, and a reigning prince of Manhattan’s nightlife. Sprouse as a “total drawing machine.” Halston frequently designed by draping fabric, and Sprouse, sketchpad in hand, would have to visualize the architecture of his draping and then translate it to paper. Other times Halston would simply say, “Now, give me a dolman sleeve,” and Sprouse would instantly create one. From Halston, whose strength as a designer was in the purity and simplicity of his forms, Sprouse learned about shape and luxury. 

Sprouse left Halston after two and a half years, and in 1975, he moved to a loft in the Bowery, where he shared a bathroom and kitchen with singer Deborah Harry. The beautiful ex–Playboy Bunny, and former art student Chris Stein had recently formed Blondie, and they were beginning to gain a following at Max’s Kansas City and CBGB. At Halston, Sprouse had loved playing dress-up with the designer’s favorite model, Karen Bjornson, who personified the cool Upper East Side blonde. He transformed Harry into a kind of Bowery Bjornson, creating clothes from ripped tights, T-shirts, and objects he picked up off the streets. In London, designer Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren, manager of the Sex Pistols, were already making the conceptual link between fashion and punk with their Kings Road boutique, Sex. It sold slashed T-shirts and bondage gear. Sprouse’s vision was less hard-core, more glam. He may have created a dress with razor blades dangling from the hem, but it was beautifully designed.

Debbie Harry wearing Sprouse, 1979
Debbie Harry & Stephen Sprouse
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Art, rock music, and fashion were the central themes of Sprouse’s life. When he wasn’t designing clothes, he worked on his art, doing giant silk-screen paintings of rock stars, and painting pictures over the Xerox copies he made with his large industrial copier. With the advent of music video, rock and roll was becoming a bigger part of mass culture. In 1978, he photo-printed a picture he’d taken of TV scan lines onto a piece of fabric, which he then designed as a dress for Debbie Harry. She wore it in the video for her No. 1 hit “Heart of Glass,” giving Sprouse the kind of exposure it had taken Halston years to get.

Sprouse found many of his design ideas on the downtown club scene. He was a regular at the Mudd Club, where the “theme parties”—the equivalent of happenings in the sixties—attracted both an art and a music crowd. It was viewed as the antithesis of Studio 54, which, in Sprouse’s mind, was more Halston’s territory. One thing both places had in common, however, was the copious quantities of drugs being consumed on their premises. Pot was Sprouse’s drug of choice during the Halston years, but he later moved on to heroin. Friends say that if he hadn’t stopped, it would have killed him, but he went into AA. He wasn’t about to become a drug victim. His work meant too much to him.

Debbie Harry in early Stephen Sprouse dress
Keith Haring, Stephen Sprouse & Teri Toye
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For years, Sprouse had been adorning his hands and arms with friends’ phone numbers—his version of a Palm Pilot. Graffiti, both an essential element of punk and an outgrowth of subway art, had already been incorporated into the works of Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring. Sprouse decided to use it his way.

“Stephen told me that he was wandering around the East Village one day,” says Beyer, “and suddenly went home and began sketching graffiti-covered motorcycle jackets and sequined miniskirts.” He showed them to his friend Steven Meisel, then an aspiring photographer, who brought them to fashion producer Kezia Keeble. In April 1983, Sprouse’s clothes appeared in a show of young designers that Keeble produced and were such a hit that Bergdorf Goodman and Henri Bendel immediately ordered ten dresses. He was suddenly a bona fide fashion designer—something he wasn’t entirely sure he wanted—and with $1.4 million from his parents, he set up his business.

Muse Teri Toye modeling Stephen Sprouse
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Eight months later, at his silver-painted showroom on 57th Street, he introduced his first, groundbreaking collection, a synthesis of sixties and eighties pop culture, which merged all the visual references he’d picked up on during his thirteen years in New York. The models wore big Jackie O sunglasses, impish stocking caps, and graffiti-covered white motorcycle jackets, while punk rock and the Rolling Stones boomed from speakers. “I remember being totally overwhelmed,” says Kal Ruttenstein, now Bloomingdale’s senior vice-president for fashion direction. “It was the first time I’d seen Day-Glo clothing. You had very loud rock-and-roll music, which you just didn’t have before in shows. You had boys and girls walking together down the runway, which wasn’t done, and you had Teri Toye, a man who lived as a girl. It was a very powerful moment.” (Ruttenstein says that when Bloomingdale’s started carrying the line, Karl Lagerfeld and Claude Montana always wanted to see Sprouse’s clothes.)

Fall 1984 sequined graffiti dresses
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Debbie harry in Stephen Sprouse, 1988
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Next Week:

info: WikiPedia

http://nymag.com/nymetro/arts  by Patricia Morrisroe

In May 1984, when Sprouse showed his latest collection at the Ritz, a former club downtown, 2,500 people attended, including Andy Warhol. He loved Sprouse’s sixties-inspired clothes and afterward traded two portraits for the whole collection. “Sprouse was definitely one of Andy’s ‘children,’ ” says Benjamin Liu, who worked as Warhol’s assistant. “So much of what Andy was brilliantly known for—the neon colors, the Pop imagery, the association with musicians—Stephen brought into his own work.” Warhol, in turn, brought Sprouse into his life, inviting him for dinners at Odeon or Indochine that would lead to after-dinner excursions to Area, at the time the city’s hottest club.

Jean Pagliuso for American Vogue, November 1984
Steven Meisel for American Vogue, March 1988.
Spanish Vogue, Stephen Sprouse in the middle
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Sprouse had been in business only a short time but had quickly become a cult figure, his clothes prominently featured in major department stores and on the pages of Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar. He was part of Warhol’s coterie. Rock stars, like Madonna, wanted him to help style their images. But there was one way in which success eluded him: He was running out of money. From Halston, he’d developed a taste for expensive materials, but since no one was making Day-Glo fabric at the time, he turned to Agnona, the Italian luxury cashmere manufacturer. As a result, his clothes were priced too high for the youthful customers who gravitated to them. Then there were the production problems, as Sprouse insisted on doing things like hand-painting the graffiti on the clothes himself. By the spring of 1985, he owed $600,000 to creditors; that summer, Sprouse shut down his business. 

The press had a different kind of field day, and stories appeared with headlines like SPROUSE: HOW SUCCESS TURNED TO FAILURE. Sprouse, for the most part, kept his feelings private.

In September 1987, six months after he’d designed costumes for the New York City Ballet’s premiere of Ecstatic Orange—and after the sudden death of Warhol, who was buried in a Sprouse suit—Sprouse returned to fashion with the opening of his own store in a converted firehouse on Wooster Street. He was now in business with 24-year-old Andrew Cogan, whose father, Marshall, was chairman of GFI-International. At last, he had big money behind him. But the store was a risky venture—he would be the first designer to have a full-scale emporium in Soho. “There was nothing like this downtown,” says longtime friend Candy Pratts Price. “It was a real happening. A living environment.”

1984
1987
1987-1988
1988
1988

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Sprouse controlled almost every aspect, designing the interior, picking out the music, selecting the images for the massive video wall on the first floor. He created three different clothing lines, including a cheaper one for younger customers, as well as gloves, fishnets, hats, shoes, jewelry, even makeup. “The opening was unbelievable,” says Jamie Boud, Sprouse’s longtime assistant. “Debbie Harry played on a stage formed by a big red X. Stephen knew a lot of people, and they all showed up for him.”

He did two shows that year, one grown-up and sophisticated, with prints done in collaboration with Keith Haring, the other a Sprouse phantasmagoria, with models stumbling down the runway chewing capsules that gushed fake blood. “That show was critisized harshly ,” says Boud. “But Stephen thought it was the best one he’d ever done. He was into the showbiz of it all. The clothes were just costumes for the ‘show.’ ”

By 1989, Sprouse, in what was now becoming a familiar pattern, was once again unemployed. He lost his stores—he’d opened a second one in L.A.—and his wholesale business. “We were too crazily, overly ambitious,” admits Cogan. “At the end, we were doing close to $10 million worth of business, but it wasn’t enough. The clothing, particularly after that last show, which was a spectacular bomb, didn’t sell. Telling Stephen we couldn’t continue was the worst day of my life.” “After the store closed, Stephen was a little lost,” says Boud. “He was just a freelance guy at that point. He realized fashion was what he was best known for, but nothing about his career had ever been calculated.” He spent more time on his art, creating giant silk screens of rock stars, like Iggy Pop and Sid Vicious. He made costumes for Mick Jagger, Axl Rose, Trent Reznor, Courtney Love, David Bowie, and Duran Duran, and designed numerous album covers and backdrops for sets.

In 1996, Sprouse won the rights to use Warhol’s imagery on his clothing, which led to a deal with Staff International, an Italian company whose stable of designers included Vivienne Westwood. Sprouse returned to the runway in the fall of 1997 with a collection that paid homage to Warhol: Models wore the artist’s vivid Pop images on dresses and baggy raver-style pants. But when Staff was later bought out by another company, Sprouse’s license wasn’t renewed—a cruel irony, as fashion was then experiencing a retro-eighties moment and Sprouse’s designs were fetching high prices at vintage stores.

In the summer of 2000, Marc Jacobs asked Sprouse to go to Paris to help with his spring collection for Louis Vuitton. Jacobs, who’d known Sprouse from his own club days, had long been a fan, and arranged for him to stay at the Ritz, where Sprouse, staring at TV static one night, came up with the idea of creating floral prints using huge digitized cabbage roses. But it was Sprouse’s graffiti bag, on which he’d written, in raw painted lettering, louis vuitton paris, that became the big hit, with long waiting lists. Sprouse confided to Boud that even he couldn’t get one. Months later, he could—on Canal Street, where counterfeiters were selling them by the hundreds. “At least the knockoffs were expensive,” says Boud. “Other bags by other designers were selling for $20; his were $90.” Friends bought the standard LV knockoffs and asked Sprouse to paint graffiti on them.

Backstage with Marc Jacobs at the Louis Vuitton s/s 2001 show
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The experience with Marc Jacobs disillusioned Sprouse on fashion; instead of coming away envious of Jacobs’s lucrative LVMH deal, he realized he’d never be able to work in such a rigid corporate structure. Though Sprouse was then in his late forties, he was still very childlike and loved sitting in Washington Square Park, watching the kids skateboard.

In 2002, Sprouse designed a lower-priced line of red, white, and blue clothing and accessories for Target. Everything had usa written on it in graffiti print. While some people viewed it cynically as a cheap way of cashing in on 9/11, Sprouse, who’d lost a friend in one of the plane crashes, felt an uncharacteristic surge of patriotism. 

For years, friends had noticed that Sprouse, who smoked three packs of cigarettes a day, seemed frequently out of breath. At the end of 2002 Sprouse asked around for rehabs for cigarette smokers. He wanted to go to a place where they’d lock him up. Finally, Sprouse quit cold turkey, but in spring 2003, he was diagnosed with lung cancer.

Sprouse kept his diagnosis a secret from all but a few friends. Andrew Cogan, who by then had become CEO of Knoll, had hired him to do textiles, and Renzo Rosso, the founder of Diesel, wanted him to design T-shirts and jeans. He was very concerned about losing those contracts.

A friend took him to the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston and managed to get him admitted into an experimental drug trial, but when his breathing worsened, doctors wouldn’t let him continue with the protocol. Over the next eight months, he visited numerous oncologists and took various drugs, hoping to improve enough to be readmitted into the Dana-Farber program. One drug gave him such bad acne he didn’t want anyone to see him. In September 2003, though, he had to put in an appearance at the opening of the new Diesel store he’d helped to design on Union Square.

Yet he had his optimistic moments, as if cancer were just another business reversal from which he could stage a triumphant comeback. He put his energy into painting portraits of his friends and nephews. He was even working on a painting of the space station for NASA.

In January 2004, he took a six-week trip to Buenos Aires to visit a friend. A few days after his return, Sprouse couldn’t catch his breath. He called a friend, Sean Bohary, who took him to St. Luke’s–Roosevelt Hospital, where he died early the next morning.

In Paris, the fall 2004 shows were in full swing, with people saying an emotional farewell to designer Tom Ford, acting as if he’d died when he was only leaving Gucci. On Sunday night at the Vuitton show, tucked inside the program, people found a slip of paper that read, “This collection is in loving memory of our friend Stephen Sprouse.”

On March 10, 25 friends gathered in New Jersey for the cremation. With pens and Magic Markers, they covered his wooden coffin in graffiti, writing messages to him on the inside and outside surfaces of the box. Then, before closing the lid, someone placed a Magic Marker in Sprouse’s hand, so he could write the last words himself.

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Book

The Stephen Sprouse Book

Inventive, enigmatic, and supremely creative, Stephen Sprouse made art and clothing that captured the mood of the eighties. One of the first American designers to mix graffiti and a punk aesthetic with fashion, Sprouse manipulated conventional notions of style, and his unique sensibility has inspired designers from John Galliano to Raf Simmons to Marc Jacobs. Sprouse’s career started in the late seventies, when, after working for Halston, he migrated to a warehouse on the Bowery and started making outfits for his neighbor, Debbie Harry. The fashion world quickly embraced his innovative, culturally relevant sensibility and downtown edge. But Sprouse’s inability to compromise his artistic vision for the rigid fashion business compromised his commercial success. The Padilhas possess the largest private collection of Sprouse’s work, and were given exclusive access to his archives by his family for this project. They also obtained never-before-published images from photographers such as Steven Meisel, Bob Gruen, and Mert and Marcus. The book features a foreword by the novelist Tama Janowitz, one of Sprouse’s closest friends. The release of this book coincides with a retrospective at Deitch Projects. The book will be available with four different jackets, each featuring a different Day-Glo color, an homage to Sprouse’s iconic album cover for Debbie Harry’s Rockbird.

http://www.thestephensprousebook.com

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info: WikiPedia

http://nymag.com/nymetro/arts  by Patricia Morrisroe

Hussein Chalayan given name Hüseyin Çağlayan, (born 8 August 1970) is a British/Turkish Cypriot fashion designer. He has won the British Designer of the Year twice (in 1999 and 2000) and was awarded the MBE (Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire) in 2006.

Short Biography

Hussein Chalayan was born in Nicosia, Turkey. By the time he graduated from school the population of the island was divided because of the constant struggles between the Greek and Turkish authorities. Ethnic conflicts between the Turkish and Greek Cypriot communities eventually led to the Turkish invasion of Cyprus, which led to human right abuses towards the civilian from both sides. For this reason Chalayan and his family were forced to move to England in 1978. After Highgate School he studied for a National Diploma in fashion and clothing at Warwickshire School of Arts, and proceeded to study Fashion Design at Central Saint Martins in London. His graduate collection in 1993, titled “The Tangent Flows”, contained clothes which he had buried in a back yard and exhumed just before the show where they were presented with an accompanying text that explained the process. The ritual of burial and resurrection was said to give the garments a dimension that referenced to life, death, and urban decay. The work attracted the attention of the Browns fashion boutique in London, who borrowed the collection to feature in their window display

The Tangent Flows graduation collection

 

 

In 1994, having completed an internship with Saville Row tailor Timothy Everest, the Chalayan established his own company, Cartesia Ltd., and his namesake ready-to-wear line, Chalayan, exhibiting his first collection in London’s West Soho Galleries that spring and debuting at London Fashion Week to resounding critical acclaim. 

BetweenThe Panoramic collection for Fall/Winter 1998 expressed the idea of infinity in a surreal cityscape of geometric forms and distorted images. The models were distorted into generic shapes and unified by architectural proportions; cones were fixed to the top of the head and faces and bodies swathed in black to obscure their identity. As Chalayan explored the idea of representing nature in this collection, he broke it down into its most basic graphic representation, pixels. Body and clothing were then merged into a digital landscape, which was recreated in enlarged cube-shaped pixels.

His Geotrophics collection for Spring/Summer 1999 had already featured Chair Dresses that represented the idea of a nomadic existence and a completely transportable environment. This concept was later expanded in Chalayan’s After Words collection for Fall/Winter 2000.which included some of his most well known designs such as ‘the coffee table dress’.  The Table Skirt and the entire set from the show were later featured in the 2001 Tate Modern’s Century City exhibition in London.

The Coffee table Dress

Chair Dresses

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In 1998 Chalayan was appointed as creative director of TSE New York with his inaugural sportswear collection for the brand debuting in March. In 2001, despite this attention and recognition for his work Chalayan struggled with sponsorship and funding, often receiving it from various other companies, independent exhibitions at Colette in Paris and producing capsule collections for Topshop, Chalayan was forced to file for voluntary liquidation, having amassed debts of an estimated $1.5 million.

Subsequently, he restructured his company and staged comeback collection in 2001 without a catwalk presentation, and designed for high-street label Marks & Spencer’s to make ends meet. Italian clothing manufacturer Gibo also helped the designer as did British jeweller Asprey, who appointed him as their fashion director the same year.

Chalayan has been awarded the prestigious ‘Designer of the Year’ award at the British Fashion Awards in 1999 and 2000, as well as being recognised as a ‘Design Star’ at the 2007 Fashion Group International awards. Along with being listed as one of the ‘25 most powerful figures in the industry’ by the British Fashion Council, Chalayan was also credited by Time magazine as one of its ‘100 Most Influential Innovators of the 21st Century’.

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Book

Hussein Chalayan

The comprehensive book on the visionary Hussein Chalayan, one of the most innovative, experimental, and conceptual fashion designers working today. Internationally acclaimed, Hussein Chalayan is known for his inventive use of materials and integration of new technology into his designs. He is also celebrated for putting the creative process itself on view. Some of his best-known designs include a paper dress that can be folded into an envelope and airmailed, armchair covers that transform into dresses, and a coffee table that reveals itself to be a wooden skirt. Original and groundbreaking, his designs are also pretty and modern, and this book explores that continuum. Featuring Chalayan’s complete body of fashion and creative work—including his installations, videos, and photographs—this unique and beautiful volume is as thought-provoking as it is stunning and is sure to be coveted by fashion, art, and design connoisseurs.

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info:

Wikipedia

http://www.businessoffashion.com/community/people/hussein-chalayan

Bill Gibb, a forgotten fashion hero from the Scottish Highlands, incarnated the romantic essence of British style – according to John Galliano. “British designers are storytellers, dreamers, and I think this was really the essence of Bill Gibb”.

With the encouragement of his grandmother, a landscape painter, Gibb moved from dressing up his sisters with bedcovers and curtains to the Central Saint Martin’s school in London and ultimately to the Royal College of Art. His fellow fashion students were Ossie Clark and Zandra Rhodes, who shared an unbridled vision of “fabulosity.”

His story could be played in London like a broken record: a designer comes from nowhere (or, in his case, from a farming family in the far north of the British Isles), becomes famous and feted, dresses high society and rockers, loses his backer and goes bust. Fade out of this familiar film without a happy ending…

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Biography

Born near New Pitsligo, a small village in Aberdeenshire in Scotland Gibb went to school in nearby Fraserburgh. His teachers at Fraserburgh Academy encouraged him to go to art school in London, and so, in 1962, Gibb went to Saint Martin’s School of Art. After graduating top of his class, Gibb was awarded a scholarship to the Royal College of Art, but before completing his degree, he left to start up in business.

Bill Gibb and Kaffe Fassett, 1960s
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In 1967 Gibb was one of six young designers invited to present their designs in New York, which led to a three-month research tour of the United States with his then boyfriend, the artist and textile designer Kaffe Fassett, who would remain a very close friend and design collaborator. On his return to London, Gibb and a group of friends had co-founded the Alice Paul boutique, for which Gibb designed typically late 1960s outfits of miniskirts and long coats, whilst his friends handled the marketing and manufacture. Between 1969–1972, as a freelance designer, Gibb designed for the London fashion house Baccarat. In 1972 Gibb launched his own company, Bill Gibb Fashion Group, which ran until 1988, and in 1975 he opened his first shop in London, on Bond Street.

Beatrix Miller of Vogue selected one of Gibb’s designs for Baccarat, a pleated tartan skirt and printed blouse worn with a Kaffe Fassett knitted waistcoat, as the 1970 Dress of the Year. Gibb’s design was described as the epitome of the new emerging trend for romantic eclecticism in British fashion design, as well as demonstrating how traditional handicrafts, such as hand-knits, were becoming acceptable for mainstream fashion. That same year, Harrods opened a dedicated area for Gibb’s designs, calling it the “Bill Gibb Room”, and the model Twiggy approached Gibb to create several historically-inspired dresses for her. She wore a “Renaissance” evening dress featuring printed textiles based on 1520s Hans Holbein drawings to the Daily Mirror’s Fashion Celebrity Dinner in 1970. Another gown made from various patterned textiles that Twiggy wore to the 1971 film première of The Boy Friend drew a great deal of media attention.

                   Twiggy called Bill Gibb “my knight in shining armor”.

Gibb presented his first collection under his own name in 1972. His fantastical creations were based on nature, with unexpected combinations of fur, feathers, printed leather, and brightly coloured clinging fabrics. His output during those days was of such a consistently high standard, it verged on couture. He was probably best known for his evening gowns, fabulous concoctions in floaty and exotic fabrics embellished with appliqués or heavily embroidered nets and lace, silks, brocades, and chiffon panels. However, his most important work was in knitwear, co-designed with Kaffe Fasset and hand-knitted by Mildred Bolton. Due to massive demand, Gibb found a manufacturer in Leicestershire who was willing to take on the challenge of machine-knitting Fassett’s extraordinarily complicated, multi-coloured woollen designs, although Bolton continued to hand-knit one-off designs. During the 1970s, Gibb did take on other design commissions, including creating a range of shoe designs for the high-end shoe manufacturer Rayne. Later, in the 1980s, Gibb collaborated with another Leicestershire manufacturer, Annette Carol, to produce acrylic knitwear using a jacquard technique.

Bill Gibb & Kaffe Fassett knitwear

Throughout most of the 1970s Gibb ran a small wholesale business, but was forced into liquidation. A brief period of financial support followed, but it is doubtful whether he enjoyed the restrictions and deadlines implicit in such an arrangement. The mid-1980s saw a brief recovery and, with a renewed collaboration with the knitwear designer Kaffe Fassett, Gibb showed a collection at the London Fashion Week in 1985 , called “Bronze Age”, featuring hats by Stephen Jones. His clothing was roundly applauded, with critics dubbing him the “master of the decorative,” praising his “simply cut, richly colored knitted suits and throws,” and what was characterized as his “fairytale exercises in the baroque, the beaded, and the burnished.”  Alas it did not attract buyers.

Gibb was described as “one of the most gentle, kindly and considerate human beings I have ever met” and a “man without malice” by the journalist Jack Webster. Twiggy described him as her “knight in shining armour”, and as a “sweet, sunny farm boy in baggy corduroys whom I absolutely adored”.

Gibb will best be remembered for his flights of fancy, and his unique contribution to 20th-century fashion. As Vogue said in 1962, in a feature called “Fresh Air in the Rag Trade,” for “the first time the young people who work in the rag trade are making clothes which are relevant to the way they live…ours is the first generation that can express itself on its own terms.” Bill Gibb was very much a product of his time, a free spirit. He died at the very young age of 44, in January 1988, from bowel cancer.

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Book

Bill Gibb, Fashion and Fantasy

Crowned ‘Designer of the Year’ by Vogue in 1970, Bill Gibb (1943-1988), barely out of college two years and yet to launch his eponymous line, was to become a major name in fashion history. Gibb’s career was prolific, and truly visionary at its finest, but sadly short-lived. His legacy, continued relevance and importance as a designer is apparent today in the work of designers from Giles Deacon to John Galliano. Famous for his love of romance, soaring flights of fancy and devil-may-care dynamic, Gibb’s wildly eccentric combinations of checks, tartans, stripes, floral prints and Fair Isle Knits had never been seen before. This stunning book explores Gibb’s background, long-time fascination with historical imagery and the themes that inspired his designs.

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Info:

WikiPedia

Victoria & Albert Museum

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/25/style/25iht-fbill.1.18094446.html?_r=0

James Galanos, ph. Richard Avedon, 1975
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Hubert de Givenchy, the illustrious French couturier, ones looked at an inside of a James Galanos garment and exclaimed “… we don’t make them this well in Paris!”

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Short Biography

James Galanos was born in 1924 in Philadelphia, PA. After graduation from high school in 1942, Galanos enrolled at the Traphagen School of Fashion, in New York City. He completed two semesters before leaving to gain experience as a designer at the New York East 49th Street emporium of Hattie Carnegie. His job there turned out to be more clerical than creative, and, disappointed, Galanos left.

After a failed launch of a ready-to-wear dress business by textile magnate Lawrence Lesavoy, the intrepeneur agreed to send the 24-year-old Galanos to Paris, just as couture houses there were rebounding from the war. Couturier Robert Piguet absorbed the American into his stable of assistants, among whom were Pierre Balmain, Hubert de Givenchy and Marc Bohan. At the Piguet atelier, Galanos met with fabric and trimming suppliers to choose materials, sketched and draped up designs under the eye of Piguet, who oversaw his work on a daily basis.

James Galanos with supermodel Dovima in his studio, 1960

In 1948, Galanos decided to return to the U.S and accepted a job with Davidow, a dress-making firm in New York. The new job allowed him very little creativity, and he resigned shortly.

In 1951, James Galanos decided to take a shot at California, and when the opportunity arose for him to open his own company, Galanos Originals, in 1952, he created a small collection, which was immediately ordered by Saks Fifth Avenue in Beverly Hills. He then opened his New York showroom where a Neiman Marcus clothing buyer discovered him and predicted his styles would soon “set the world on fire.” Stanley Marcus, the president of Neiman Marcus, agreed and soon proclaimed that the greatest and most treasured luxury in the world for a woman to have would be a dress by James Galanos. Legendary magazine editors and style arbiters such as Diana Vreeland, Eleanor Lambert and Eugenia Sheppard became fans, ensuring that he would become a household name within months. From this first collection, his clothing has been admired for its particularly high quality, especially considering it was ready-to-wear, not custom-made. His chiffon dresses in particular made his reputation in the early 1950s, with their yards of meticulously hand-rolled edges. Many designers worked with chiffon, but Galanos was a true master of the genre.

Chiffon dresses 

In 1953, Galanos embarked on another venture altogether – he began designing for movies. His first job was to create costumes for Rosalind Russell, the star of the forthcoming film “Never Wave at a WAC.” Russell, who at that time was considered the best-dressed of all American actresses, loved Galanos’ designs, and she became his friend and a loyal client.

Galanos gathered some of the most talented craftsmen available in his workrooms; many were trained in Europe or in the costume studios of Hollywood, for whom he continued to design from time to time. Nondas Keramitsis, Galanos’ head tailor, moved to Los Angeles from his native Greece to make women’s clothing. He had heard about Galanos through relatives and soon started working with him in his Los Angeles studio. Keramitsis and a crew of about 22 tailors he oversaw made everything by hand. If Galanos’ work was compared to that of anyone else, it was compared to French haute couture. His business was more comparable to a couture house than a ready-to-wear manufacturer; there was a great amount of hand work in each garment, and all of his famous beadwork and embroidery was done by his staff. Galanos always chose fabrics and trimmings personally during trips to Europe and Asia. Though he constantly looked for the best fabrics, Galanos often felt compelled to create his own. So he would make jackets out of different colored ribbons to toss over his chiffon dresses in impressionist colors. Or he would cross black satin ribbons over black lace for the bodices of delicately frothy short evening dresses. He often lined his dresses with silks that other designers used for dresses themselves, and he was always a firm believer in the importance of hidden details. These details made a difference in the feel of the clothes on the body and the hang of the fabric, and his clients all over the world were willing to pay a great deal for them. Details that were not hidden included sequins, feathers, metallic brocades and laces. He often balanced his most glittering dresses with quiet tie-dyed velvet sheaths and long, clingy styles in black crepe or crushed velvet. “Galanos: Perfection, and Lots of It,” read the headline in The New York Times after Galanos’ show of some 200 designs in 1988. “While he travels to Europe for his fabrics – many are the same as those used in the Paris couture collections – most of Galanos’s designing is done in California,” reported the Times. “His standards are as high as those found anywhere in the world. If a comparison is made, it is usually with the Paris couture. It is reasonably astonishing that an American designer of ready-to-wear should merit that kind of homage over so long a period of time.”

Daywear 

Galanos was also famous for his exquisite furs. He used mainly mink, sable, lynx and broadtail and handled the furs imaginatively, as if they were fabric. He smocked and quilted the surfaces, nipped the waistlines and used drawstrings, ruffles and capelets to give a strong fashion slant to all that opulence. He often designed for Peter Dion, the furrier who made sure that the quality of the pelts and the workmanship supported the innovative design. At the top of the line were coats made of lynx bellies, so soft and fluffy they looked airborne. The short style was selling for $200,000, the long one – for $300,000. The fitted coat was a Galanos specialty, successful in almost any fur, including fox.

Coctail dresses

1963-'64

Galanos was also famous for his exquisite furs. He used mainly mink, sable, lynx and broadtail and handled the furs imaginatively, as if they were fabric. He smocked and quilted the surfaces, nipped the waistlines and used drawstrings, ruffles and capelets to give a strong fashion slant to all that opulence. He often designed for Peter Dion, the furrier who made sure that the quality of the pelts and the workmanship supported the innovative design. At the top of the line were coats made of lynx bellies, so soft and fluffy they looked airborne. The short style was selling for $200,000, the long one – for $300,000. The fitted coat was a Galanos specialty, successful in almost any fur, including fox.

Many of the world’s most socially prominent women were Galanos customers. “James Galanos designs for wealthy women who go to luncheons and cocktail parties, dine at the finest restaurants and are invited to the best parties,” reported The New York Times. “His clothes are rarely seen in business offices. It isn’t only because of the five-figure price tags, although they are daunting to all but the highest-paid executives. It’s also the glamour quotient of the clothes.” Galanos agreed, “I design for a very limited group of people,” he told Time magazine in 1985.

Evening wear

1955
1950's
1958-'59
1959

1960’s
1966

1977-’78


In the 1980s, Galanos made national headlines as First Lady Nancy Reagan’s favorite designer. The fact that Mrs. Reagan wore a 14-year-old Galanos gown to her first state dinner at the White House attested to the timelessness and durability not only of his workmanship, but more importantly, of his design. This type of occurrence was commonplace among his faithful customers, which included Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor, Jackie Kennedy, Lady Bird Johnson, Grace Kelly, Diana Ross, Betsy Bloomingdale, Rosalind Russell, Marlene Dietrich, Dorothy Lamour, Judy Garland, Loretta Young, Ali MacGraw, Ivana Trump, Carolyne Roehm, Kim Basinger, Arianna Huffington and many other notable personalities and film and media stars.

Nancy Reagan in a dress by James Galanos, ph. Horst P. Horst, Vogue, May 1981
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Despite his retirement in 1998, Galanos continues to make his presence known in the fashion world. In 2002, he blasted the fashion industry for catering to only young women with perfect bodies. In an interview with WWD over lunch at the Pierre Hotel in New York he asked the reporter, Eric Wilson, shaking his head in contempt, “How many women can wear just a patch over their crotch and a bra? Aren’t you embarrassed when you see a young girl walking down the street practically naked? Fashion is geared only to young people today,” Galanos continued. “All we see is Levi’s and bare bellies to the point of nausea. There are no clothes for elegant women. Let’s face it, some of the things you see in the paper are absolutely monstrous looking – and I’m not squeamish. God knows I made sexy clothes in my day, but there’s a point when you have to say, ‘Enough, already’.”

“While he officially retired in 1998,” wrote Alix Browne in The New York Times, “he shows no signs of falling out of fashion.”.Galanos’s vintage gowns remain chic, sought after and popular among the international jet-set, Hollywood stars and supermodels.

Vintage James Galanos can be found on: http://www.shrimptoncouture.com/collections/designer-galanos

Amber Valetta wearing vintage James Galanos
Celine Dion wearing vintage James.
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James Galanos with model, 1961
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info:
Wikipedia
http://fashion-history.lovetoknow.com/fashion-clothing-industry/fashion-designers/james-galanos