the neophile

Einige Hintergrundinformationen über die Modeblogosphäre in Schweden finden sich in einem kürzlich auf ‘Blica‘ veröffentlichtem Interview mit mir. Mehr dazu hier.

This week, French television channel FRANCE 5 broadcasted a worth seeing documentary – entitled “L’Enfance est un destin” by journalist Guillaume Durand – on fashion entrepreneur Bernard Arnault.

Until February 10, it is available online here. An interview with Durand has been published here.

On Monday, Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Stockholm 2012 starts. Once again, the intention is, of  course, “to attract the international fashion community […] to get a closer look at the Swedish fashion scene,” as the communiqué says.

In this context, the annually organized event “Fashion Talks” (on February 1)  should not be missed. The program can be found here, RSVP here.

While the cruise disaster of the Costa Concordia hits the front pages, nautical fashion seems to peak.

Four days ago, fashion journalist Hillary Alexander tweeted: “Winter’s here and the high street is having a nautical moment. Hello sailor, you can hardly move for navy/white stripes!”. Likewise, Kim Friday, Senior Fashion Editor at Women’s Wear Daily, recently stated – with regard to the summer trends 2012 – that “[n]ot a season goes by that nautical doesn’t make an appearance”.

Certainly, this all-time popularity derives from a romanticized image of seamen’s life and it (sometimes) alludes to glamorous and luxurious overseas cruises on ocean liners during the early 20th century rather than to a disaster like Giglio.

In his nautical-inspired spring / summer couture collection in 1989, Christian Lacroix, for example, referred to Lady Diana Cooper’s royal yacht cruise in 1937, together with King Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson.

However, Sweden, as a seafaring nation, also has a rich and vivid history. Recently, I came across some worth seeing nautical images in the collections of the maritime museum in Stockholm. This particular collection “includes over 100.000 objects, 40.000 ship plans and more than 600.000 photographic images” and is, to my mind, a great source of inspiration – for both art directors, designers, design and fashion historians, photographers, students and stylists. Please see below for a selection of photographs.

Photographs courtesy of Statens Maritima Museer (SMM)

Sjöhistoriska museet – Birger Gustafssons samling – okänd fotograf – SMM:s arkiv

Foto från Lewenhaupt, Adam – Sjöhistoriska museet – SMM:s arkiv

“Skeppare och hund” – Sjöhistoriska museet – Samling Olle Svensson – Fotograf okänd – SMM:s arkiv

Sjöhistoriska museet – Samling KSSS – okänd Fotograf – SMM:s arkiv

okänd Fotograf – Sämling KSSS – Sjöhistoriska museet – SMM:s arkiv

Karl Einar Sjögren – Sjöhistoriska museet – Birger Gustafssons samling – okänd fotograf – SMM:s arkiv

Foto från Adam Lewenhaupt – Sjöhistoriska museet – Adam Lewenhaupts samling – Fotograf: Lewenhaupt, A. – SMM:s arkiv

Sjöhistoriska museet – Samling KSSS – SMM:s arkiv – Fotograf:  Hägglund, P. / 1953

“Fashion not only confirms and economically functionalizes the division of gender and class; it constructs and subverts them by stripping them bare – if this clothing metaphor is allowed here – and reveals them as an effect of construction.” Barbara Vinken in Fashion Zeitgeist: Trends and Cycles in the Fashion System, trans. M. Hewson (Oxford: Berg, 2005), 4.

For further reading, please also check Joanne Entwistle’s The fashioned body : fashion, dress and modern social theory (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000). Please see below for a short clip that was broadcasted on German television in Die Sendung mit der Maus (English: The Program with the Mouse).

In der ZEIT (51/2010) erschien vor gut einem Jahr Wolfgang Uchatius lesenswerter und informativer Artikel “Das Welthemd” – “über die Suche nach dem Geheimnis des billigen T-Shirts” bei Hennes & Mauritz. Morgen folgt nun in der ARD “Der H&M-Check” (20.15h). Den Trailer dazu gibt’s hier.

“Nobody really knows anymore, especially in the U.S., what couture is. […] They’ll say, ‘This couture dress by Ralph Lauren,’ and I’m like, ‘No. NO.’” Valerie Steele, fashion historian and curator, in:

Binkley, Christina. “Fashion Journal: So What Does ‘Couture’ Mean, Anyway?“, Wall Street Journal. April 26, 2007.

For a proper definition of ‘haute couture’, read this chapter.

“Hedberg nennt die Stockholmer eine Verbraucherelite, beschreibt sie als relativ junge Gruppe, etwa 25 bis 40 Jahre alt, aufgeschlossen, etwas blasiert. Die Schweden haben eine Vorliebe für das Uniforme. Böse Zungen behaupten, daß immer nur eine Meinung oder Mode den Ton angibt. Mit Todesverachtung und ohne Schwimmweste stürzen sie sich in die Trend Wellen, die rasch aufeinander folgen. Heute Indianer, morgen Cowboy aber nie beides zugleich.”

Lisbeth Borger-Bendegard und Alphons Schauseil, ”Kopfüber in jede Trend-Welle“, DIE ZEIT,  22.06.1984.

Referring to Prada’s menswear show F/W 2012 and to the appearance of Willem Defoe, Gary Oldman and Tim Roth as models, Eric Wilson asks: “Could real actors do better than professional models?”. Scholar Bärbel Sill argues that ”…stars personalize the clothes they are wearing in transferring elements of their star image to the clothes. Thus they have a capacity advertising the clothes which models on their own may not. Acting is fundamentally different to modelling, in that the model is unable to give the clothes they are wearing the same ‘character’ as a star does.”

For further reading: Sill, Bärbel. “Stardom and Fashion: on the Representation of Female Movie Stars and Their Fashion(able) Image in Magazines and Advertising Campaigns.” In Fashion as photograph: viewing and reviewing images of fashion, edited by Eugénie Shinkle, 127-140. London: I.B. Tauris, 2008.

“Sicher: wenn die Bilder nur ins Museum kommen, dann sind sie nicht gut genug. Bilder, die niemand braucht kommen ins Museum – nein, eigentlich in Kunstgalerien. Aber das sind keine Kunstgaleriefotos. Klar, sie werden veröffentlicht, in Zeitschriften. Überall dort, wo man über diese Art von Problemen nachdenkt. Und die Probleme sollen dann diskutiert werden, auf Grundlage dieser Fotos.”

Oliviero Toscani in Peter Scharfs Dokumentarfilm Schockbilder – Der Mann, der mit Werbung Politik macht (2010). Vorgestern sorgte Toscani wieder für Schlagzeilen. Eine Auswahl seiner Fotografien hat die SZ hier.