Well Begun is Half Done

 

“Well Begun is Half Done”…says the practically perfect Mary Poppins! Photographer Matt King & I shot the graduating class of 2010 from Central St Martins collections in a Mary Poppins inspired adventure for online magazine Pages…

The Bell Jar

While interning at Vogue last year, I started reading Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar and it made quite an impact. It is the story of a girl who is doing an internship at a big woman’s magazine in New York in 1963. The glamourous world and job she has always dreamed of and that magazines project she finds to be empty, false and disorientating and descends into depression and madness. For some reason this book struck a chord…

Sugar and Spice

I was lucky enough to meet the charismatic Julian at menswear fashion week in Paris last January. I visited him in Berlin, and he dropped by my place in London and then Sydney, and we found out that the world is indeed very small. I admire him and his amazing work!

I spoke to the Swiss, Berlin based menswear designer Julian Zigerli, about his acclaimed debut collection “Sugar, Spice and Everything Nice”. 

Hello Julian!

Congratulations on your collection, can you tell us a bit about it?

Thank you. Most of my inspiration for the collection came from hybrids paired with the hubris. It all started with the Labradoodle, an unbelievably cute creature, mixed together in a test tube with plenty of pink smoke. The combination of two or more things in the pursuit of bringing forth something new, something better, which we call hybrid. The over estimation of one’s own faculties or potential during the realisation of a goal, is what we call hubris. It is basically a men’s collection trying to create a healthy, sporty, supernatural, half-god man. The hybrid thing is not only popping up in backpack jackets but also in the animal print combinations on extremely technical fabrics and I used the hubris to pair it all together, go crazy with it and give it the right mood.

You recently had a stint in New Zealand and Australia. I noticed some surf influences in your collection, was this inspired by your time down under?

It definitely was, but it’s not just surf inspiration. I was looking at a lot of different sports like biking, fencing, water sports, volleyball, wrestling and one of my most favourite: fly-fishing. All those sporty australians and new zealanders, there was no way i couldn’t ignore that!

Tell me about the amazing animal prints, they look extremely complex! Did you print them yourself?

I did, it’s a kinda transfer foil technique. It only works on those very technical sportswear materials. I got them from a fabric company in Switzerland. They do most of the clothing and fabrics for all the Olympic athletes. In contrast to those technical and synthetic fabrics I was working with a lot of different tulle qualities, all made out of cotton, silk or linen. By layering them up I created a moiré effect which goes hand in hand with the snake print I was using.

How does living in Berlin inspire your work? Where do your ideas come from?

Moving to Berlin is probably the best thing that could have happened to me. The city is so relaxed, young and inspiring. It is not as competitive as London or Paris. It really makes the designer’s life easier and you can be creative in your own way. But my ideas come from all over the world. I like to travel and look at things. Really look at things.

Which fashion labels/designers do you most admire?

Oh, there are loads, it changes every season. Lanvin, Tom Brown, Prada, Charles Anastase, Givenchy and very high up on my list at the moment is Comme des Garçons. Amazing how they pulled that skull thing. So nice again, even though I think it’s actually not yet time to return.

Menswear is gaining momentum and exposure, do you think men are getting to be as fashion conscious as women?

They definitely are. Menswear has still many more boundaries than womenswear so we need to find other ways to create something unique and outstanding. To work it, men really know how to look at details and if they are into fashion they do it with much more sensibility. 

You recently worked on costumes for the Zurich production of Closer…can you tell me a bit about that? Is fashion for the stage something you’d like to do more of?

Closer was already my second costume project. On this one I collaborate with designer and good friend Julie Eilenberger. I can tell you, team work is a blast! I think doing costumes is very interesting and is a lot more challenging than people think. You have to create and explain a character with just his cloth.

What are you wearing this summer?

As little as possible. Berlin Summer has been crazy. White t-shirt, cut of sweat pants and Birkenstocks which I bought in Melbourne’s St. Kilda. One other thing I really liked were those Melbourne boys with the random tattoos spread all over they’re bodies. mhmmmmm…..
Of course you did!

What next for Julian Zigerli!?

After finishing my studies this summer, I want to get more and more experience and later getting my own thing started. Hopefully sooner than I expect.

Us too!

Hold your breaths boys, soon you too can be a hybrid, supernatural god in Julian Zigerli. Watch this space!

www.julianzigerli.com

I am currently writing for online magazine Pages. You can view my interview with Julian and all of my fashion gossip from this week, right here!

Julian Zigerli’s Hybrid Menswear,

John Davis opens at the National Gallery, Nailing it; this year’s ironic beauty trend, Rodarte takes to the silverscreen, The Miu Miu dress that’s ruling the covers, The Queens Guards in Stella McCartney? The Sounds of Saint Laurent, The world has gone Mad Men mad! Anna Dello Russo’s new fragrance is Beyond, and why Little J is the new Queen B!

XOXO

Swingin’

This season is all about the Sixties (as is every season for me)! The BFI is enjoying a Hitchcock directorspective and the Barbican hosting Godard all month. Miuccia brought shades of the era back in her Mad Men style Prada show and Mary Quant-ish Miu Miu collection, note the mini applique`7 lace dress on the cover of Elle, Vogue AND W this month! For hair and make up, fashion and film makers, the experimental, yet most glamourous decade, is a constant inspiration.

Here are my top ten 1960s films, which I can watch over and over and always provide new ideas – not in any order.

L’Enfer (Inferno) (1964- completed in 2009)

Romy Schneider’s pale blue lipstick and eyeliner… so major! Another shot has her in olive oil and coated in glitter. 

A Bout de Souffle (Breathless) (1960)

Seminal Godard film of the Nouvelle Vague which celebrating it’s 50th anniversary. Jean Seberg is a picture, here captured in the famous New York Herald Tribune t-shirt and much copied pixie crop.

The Party (1967)

Peter Sellers and Claudine star in the most amazing Hollywood party that you could dream of going to! Elephants, paint, foam, beautiful dresses all in the most incredible house.

Viva Las Vegas

Ann Margaret, the ultimate strawberry blonde (how do I get this?), is Elvis’ swimming instructor/ dancer. LOVE!

The Birds (1963)

Haunting classic, always reoccurs in nightmares…Tipi Hedren as an icy Hitchcock blonde in green twin set…

The Boy Friend (1971)

I saw this film at about 4 in the morning once on an obscure channel when throwing an all nighter to finish some work…I wondered whether it had been a dream! Twiggy stars in a musical. Giant playing cards, clowns, stars and moons…I thought it was just my delirium. This film is impossible to find again!

The Graduate (1967)

Anne Bancroft in leopard print coat. Classic. Say no more!

Bewitched (1964-72)

Elizabeth Montgomery is so chic as suburban house wife slash witch Samantha Stephens but the most killer long, hostess dresses belong to her interfering mother, Endora.

They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? (1969)

Jane Fonda in a depression era dance marathon! Such a great film. You can draw many direct references from McQueen’s 2003 dance marathon show.

Midnight Cowboy (1969)

Touching film with Jon Voigt and Dustin Hoffman, and amazing soundtrack!

XOXO

Some like it haute…

“Haute Couture is a joke. Anyone who tells you it still matters is fantasising. You can see it dropping dead all around you. Nobody buys it any more. The prices are ridiculous. The rules for making it are nonsensical. It belongs to another age.”  Pierre Berge, former head of YSL.

Haute Couture shows in Paris rolled round again last week, with their relevance, more than ever being questioned. To qualify as couture, a garment must be entirely hand made by one of the Parisian houses approved by the Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture. Each house must employ at least 20 people, and show a minimum of 75 new looks a year. In 1946, there were 106, 18 in 1997 and now only 11 remain under these restrictions, as the craft and demand has diminished. It is a small, exclusive group of the world’s wealthiest women and their caprices, whom the entire industry rests upon. With the extortionate costs and miniscule clientele, no wonder it’s influence is questionable.

The purpose of couture has changed; for the big houses like Chanel, Dior and Givenchy still making it, it is now almost soley a marketing device to give the essence of luxury and aspiration to their profitable ready to wear, cosmetics and fragrance lines. After all, in today’s world of the disposable and instantaneous, where fashion is available for all over the internet, we need incredible things to fantasise about, even if we can’t afford a £50,000 dress, we need it to exist, to dream about…It is a little bit of glamour and tradition and skill from a bygone era, that must be cherished before it faces extinction.

So when last week in Paris, I found some how myself in the same room as Catherine Deneuve, Dita von Teese, Mario Testino, Jean Paul, Jean Charles, Anna and Grace, Carine and Emanuelle, Suzy, Tim, Alexandra, Sarah et al….my heroes and heroines, the creators and innovators, with the most amazing clothes, I felt priveleged to be part of this fantasy, and this surreal world that is fashion.

I found myself sitting next to an opinionated British journalist who just did not see the point of all this frivolity…but why does there need to be one? It’s art, it’s skill, it’s time, it’s money, and it’s beautiful!

XOXO

The Poetics of Space

“For our house is our corner of the world. As has often been said, it is our first universe, a real cosmos in every sense of the word.” The Poetics of Space 1958

Priére de Toucher (Press to Enter!) 1947, by Marcel Duchamp 

 This week I had the pleasure of seeing the Barbican’s latest major exhibition The Surreal House which explores the relationship between Surrealism and architecture and “the house” as a vessel of wonder and desire. Habitats are examined from the typical child drawn, to haunted houses, caves, castles, cages and even the womb and failed utopian architecture like the Villa Savoye, and the work of Gaudi and Le Corbusier. The whole show is especially well curated, with the first floor exploring the domestic and the interior, opening with a house made of skin, Freud’s furniture, a haunted suspended piano by Rebecca Horn, and Louise Bourgeois’ Femme Maison and the mezzanine showing a view from above. We are lead through a beautiful synthesis of ideas in cinema, object, paintings and architecture linked by the emotional connection to a sense of place.

Concert for Anarchy, Rebecca Horne, 1990

I have been thinking about the concept of sense of place and emotional attachment to the idea of “the home” quite a lot recently, especially as I live a long way from “home”, and that house, in which I spent my formative years, recently burned down.  Tarkovsky’s film ‘The Sacrifice‘, 1986, which closes the show, presents the protagonist burning down his own house to be liberated from enslavement of sentiment and nostalgia that plagues modern life. Losing a lot of belongings and spaces with memories attached to them is devastating, a house is “more than a machine for living” (said Le Corbusier), there are dreams, memories and desires that resonate with every door handle, lamp shade and window, which the Surrealists explore in this show, however they can also constrict us.

Joseph Cornell’s boxed assemblages made me think about creating new habitats between four walls. Moving a lot in the last few years, filling new, alien spaces with collected objects and experiences it becomes a home, only to be stripped bare and feel unfamiliar and uncomfortable.  The Surrealists used the house as a metaphor for the unconscious mind; it’s filled with knick-knacks and memories; some important, some not – but it’s when something goes missing that the comfort and homeliness we crave,  makes way for a darker, lonelier place.

The Surreal House is “veiled-erotic, fixed-explosive and magic-circumstantial”  (Andre Breton in the L’Amour Fou (Mad Love) and now showing at the Barbican until 12th September, 2010. Highly recommended! 

XOXO

Call Me!

Our now defunct ‘zine Call Me! It was the best thing since sliced, carb free bread. The amazing Call Girls dressed up, stalked bands, drank champagne to disguise our lack of music knowledge, attempted to camp outside the Brick Lane Beigel shop with a camera and a dictaphone, directed photo shoots in dumpsters, conducted meetings on rooftops, over lunch in Marylebone and tea at Sketch, blagged our way in to fashion shows with our glossy business cards, sneaked into PRs at midnight by torchlight to get our hands sparkly designer garms, whinged and laughed about the ridiculous errands we ran as fashion interns and interviewed poets, buskers and divas. We lived the high life on the minimum wage and basically faked it until we maked it. R.I.P. X

Wet & Wild

A shoot I worked on with Teddy George and David Titlow is in the new issue of Vice. Get nautical. But be nice.

XOXO

Gypsy

So I’m back to the velvet underground,

Back to the floor, that I love.

To a room with some lace and paper flowers,

Back to the gypsy that I was…

My gypsy look, 1992.

How De-Vinyl

It’s been all go in Graceland Studios this week! No sunshine for me… Yesterday I styled the Vinyl Stitches for a feature in the second issue of What Else magazine in beautiful Victoria Park. I sourced clothes by amazing young designers who caught my eye at Fashion Week in February like the Dutch Maaike Mekking, knitwear by Alice Palmer, Yan To, Belle Sauvage, jewelery by Ada Zanditon, Alpha 60, Stolen Girlfriends Club..and lots of vintage accessories thanks to the kind folk at Rokit, Arckiv and Beyond Retro. This month it’s all about camel and mustard as far as I’m concerned…(thanks Phoebe Philo), however co-ercing these stubborn musicians out of their black polo necks was rather a tiresome task. A couple of beers later, I won the war and had the boys in frills! One point to me! By the end of the shoot the band had broken up, a drum kit had been smashed and skin had been slashed…now that’s real rock and roll. The new issue will downloadable on your iPhone in August. Get me an iphone! XX

clothes, clothes, clothes….

mint vintage glasses from Arckiv and recycled perspex jewelery by Ada Zanditon.

XOXO