Posts from the “Fashion” Category

Camp: Notes on Fashion

Posted on May 7, 2019

Ensemble, Jeremy Scott (American, born 1975) for House of Moschino (Italian, founded 1983), spring/summer 2018; Courtesy of Moschino. Image courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Photo © Johnny Dufort, 2019

Last night, in New York City, the likes of Billy Porter, Ezra Miller, and Janelle Monae brought it to the pink carpet, as the camp-themed 2019 Met Gala got underway.

On Thursday, the exhibition itself – Camp: Notes on Fashion – opens to the public at The Met Fifth Avenue and The Met Cloisters in NYC. Bringing together four centuries of OTT fashion and art, the show uses Susan Sontag’s 1964 essay Notes on Camp to frame the ways designers have embraced camp’s tongue-in-cheek spirit in their métier.

If you have plans to be in the city before the end of September, Notes on Fashion is a must-see. And if you don’t, here are five reasons that needs to change.

Read the Full Story at Dazed

Camp: Notes on Fashion. Photo courtesy of The Met

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Art, Dazed, Exhibitions, Fashion

The Last Dance Before the Lights Come On

Posted on February 14, 2019

A young Michael Jackson takes to the dance floor. Credit: Courtesy Hasse Persson

In a city filled with history and legend, 1977 might just be New York’s most notorious year, as decadence reached dazzling new heights typified by the flight of the Concorde soaring at the speed of sound overhead. While 100 of the world’s most glamorous jet setters shuttled back and forth above the pond, New York was collapsing into anarchy.

After years of white flight and “benign neglect,” the city was broke. The federal government refused a bailout. Criminal became bold. Arsonists torched the Bronx while landlords collected insurance checks. A serial killer dubbed “Son of Sam” was terrorizing the city and writing letters to the press. Pornography was legalized and prostitution flourished openly on the streets. Then, on one hot night in July, a blackout struck and the city descended into pure chaos.

Amid the madness, a spark had emerged, soaring through the sky like a comet until it burned to dust — Studio 54, the most legendary nightclub ever known. College buddies Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager transformed a former midtown TV studio into a pleasure palace for the senses that took the Warholian ideal of celebrity to new heights, where everyone was a star in their own right.

Read the Full Story at Jacques Marie Mage

Hasse Persson / Courtesy Embassy of Sweden

Categories: 1970s, Art, Fashion, Jacques Marie Mage, Manhattan, Music

Paolo Roversi: Doubts

Posted on February 12, 2019

Roos, Paris, 2017 © Paolo Roversi; courtesy Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York

“For me to take a picture is an act of love, something to connect with the rest of the world and… voila!” Italian photographer and AnOther Magazine contributor Paolo Roversi says on the phone from his Paris studio of nearly four decades. “It’s like a kiss. It is to exchange a regard. It is very simple.”

Very simple – and pure. For Roversi, the photograph is an invitation to discover what lies beyond the known, creating a space where anything is possible. “I like to be lost in mysteries. I don’t like to explain everything. I don’t like to ask. I do not look for the answer in fact. I am happy with only the question,” he says.

Read the Full Story at AnOther

Molly, Paris, 2015.© Paolo Roversi; courtesy Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York

Categories: AnOther, Art, Exhibitions, Fashion, Photography

Gordon Parks: The New Tide, 1940-1950

Posted on November 7, 2018

Untitled, New York, 1950. The Gordon Parks Foundation. Photography by Gordon Parks, Courtesy of and copyright The Gordon Parks Foundation

Gordon Parks (1912–2006) was a singular figure in every sense of the word, transcending every boundary foisted upon him as a black man coming of age in Jim Crow America. Now, Gordon Parks: The New Tide, Early Work 1940–1950, a new exhibition in Washington, looks back at the groundbreaking first decade of his career, during which he rose to become the first African-American photographer at LIFE magazine.

Hailing from Fort Scott, Kansas, Parks decided to become a photographer while working as a waiter in a railroad dining car and looking through discarded copies of magazines like Vogue and Look. At the age of 25, Parks purchased a Voigtländer Brilliant, which he later called his “choice of weapon”, and taught himself to become a professional portrait photographer and photojournalist.

“Having a camera gave him access to tell different stories,” says Dr Deborah Willis, who wrote an essay titled ‘Gordon Parks: Haute Couture and the Everyday’ for the exhibition catalogue published by Steidl.

“We have to keep in mind that at the time, black people didn’t have that sense of freedom to walk into spaces and expect the respect that he received. That’s what I find fascinating about Gordon: the boundaries weren’t there for him. He understood that he had an eye. He believed in his sense of understanding of the depths and complexities of life that he wanted to pursue work and develop the work.”

Read the Full Story at AnOther Online

Untitled, Chicago, 1950. The Gordon Parks Foundation. Photography by Gordon Parks, Courtesy of and copyright The Gordon Parks Foundation

Categories: AnOther, Art, Books, Exhibitions, Fashion, Photography

Kimberly M. Jenkins: Fashion and Race

Posted on November 6, 2018

An image by Stevens Añazco featured in Fashion and Race: Deconstructing Ideas, Restructuring Identitiesvia @stevensanazco

When Vogue Italia published the ‘all black’ issue in July 2008, it asked: “Is Fashion Racist?” In the decade since, the question has come to the fore countless times, demanding investigation, critique, and, ultimately, dismantlement.

Inspired by the conversation the question posed, Kimberly M. Jenkins, a fashion educator and independent researcher, began developing an academic initiative. It began with the course “Fashion and Race”, which she has taught at the New School’s Parsons School of Design since Autumn 2016. “The first thing we do in the class is to go about discussing what race, systemic oppression, and white privilege are to set up the terms we will be relying upon in order to look at how the construction of race has shaped fashion and beauty industries,” Jenkins explains.

Driven to bring her vision to the public, Jenkins created The Fashion and Race Database Project, an online archive filled with vital source materials. Now, as part of the third and final phase of the project, Jenkins has curated Fashion and Race: Deconstructing Ideas, Reconstructing Identities, a group exhibition of student and graduate work, which runs until 11 November.

The artists featured in the show confront and subvert racism to assert their vision and claim their space as people of colour navigating worlds of fashion and beauty. In How to Be Black, Avery Youngblood, a ‘Beyoncé Formation Scholar’, simulates a ‘how-to’ guide,’ recording the everyday life of a young, multidimensional black woman, while Jamilla Okubo created Hair as Identity, a zine that explores preconceived notions of black hair. Kyemah McEntyre presents her dashiki prom gown, which went viral in 2015. Jenkins also organised a free film screening of The Gospel According to André, followed by a Q&A with André Leon Talley and director Kate Novack. Here, Jenkins speaks about how the next generation of artists are becoming the change they want to see in the world.

Read the Full Story at Dazed

Categories: Art, Dazed, Exhibitions, Fashion, Photography

Stephane Raynor: All About the BOY

Posted on October 25, 2018

BOY Poster designed by Peter Christopherson 1978

In 1976, Stephane Raynor opened BOY on King’s Road, and it quickly became the Mecca for the punk scene that was taking London by storm. The store created a cohesive brand identity long before anyone was thinking on those terms, drawing its name from provocative tabloid headlines like “Boy Stabs PC” and “Boy Electrocuted at 30,000 Volts,” which had been clipped and hung as décor.

“The ‘70s were awesome. I didn’t know what the fuck I was doing, but the world knew I’d arrived,” recalls Raynor. “Imagine a wasteland of a city like London where we could do whatever we wanted. There was no capitalism and that was fine for a small bunch of renegades like us.”

“I was an art anarchist. I didn’t believe in much. I wanted to create and destroy at the same time. I was living in a bubble, taking everything in around me but not knowing if I would succeed or crash and burn —and for some reason, it didn’t matter. I had no fear of consequences.”

Read the Full Story at Huck Online

Punks at the Roxy, London, 1977 Photo by Derek Ridgers

Categories: 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Books, Fashion, Huck, Music, Photography

David Bailey: Peru

Posted on October 21, 2018

Photo: © David Bailey

David Bailey is at home anywhere he goes. Driven by a profound sense of curiosity and a desire to engage, the photographer’s observant eye and quick intellect allow him entrée into just about any situation he chooses for himself; his calm confidence combined with an easy laugh span any chasm where language might otherwise be a barrier.

“They probably think I am mad for wanting to take a picture of them,” Bailey tells AnOther, reflecting on his experiences travelling through Peru in 1971 and 1984, with Grace Coddington for British Vogue and the Wool Board, and for Tatler, respectively.

Bailey made a practice of shooting fashion in the morning and evening so that he had the day to himself. He made his way through the cities and the towns, travelling across the plains and into the mountains, to create a captivating portrait of a people and a place collected in the new exhibition David Bailey: Peru, opening October 19 at Heni Gallery, London, and accompanying book publishing November 1.

Bailey’s Peru unfolds like an epic poem filled with magic and mystery, history and myth, as scenes of daily life evoke a sense of timeless wonder and awe. Now in his 80th year, Bailey laughs, “You ask me to remember what, 60 years ago?” – only to do just that for us.

Read the Full Story at AnOther Online

Photo: © David Bailey

Categories: 1970s, 1980s, AnOther, Art, Books, Fashion, Latin America, Photography

Martine Gutierrez: Indigenous Woman

Posted on September 23, 2018

Martine Gutierrez, Demons, Xochiquetzal ‘Flower Quetzal Feather,’ p94, from Indigenous Woman, 2018. © Martine Gutierrez; Courtesy of the artist and RYAN LEE Gallery, New York.

Martine Gutierrez, Demons, Tlazoteotl ‘Eater of Filth,’ p91, from Indigenous Woman, 2018. © Martine Gutierrez; Courtesy of the artist and RYAN LEE Gallery, New York.

Frida Kahlo once said, “I am my own muse. I am the subject I know best.” It’s a sentiment that also eloquently describes Martine Gutierrez, a transgender Latinx artist who routinely performs the triple roles of subject, maker, and muse in her own eclectic body of work.

By establishing a practice of full autonomy, wherein Gutierrez conceptualizes and executes every detail on both sides of the camera, the artist has taken complete control of her narrative. For her latest exhibition, Indigenous Woman, Gutierrez created a 146-page art publication (masquerading as a glossy fashion magazine) celebrating “Mayan Indian heritage, the navigation of contemporary indigeneity, and the ever-evolving self-image,” according to the artist’s “Letter From the Editor.”

“I was driven to question how identity is formed, expressed, valued, and weighed as a woman, as a transwoman, as a Latinx woman, as a woman of indigenous descent, as a femme artist and maker? It is nearly impossible to arrive at any finite answers, but for me, this process of exploration is exquisitely life-affirming,” she writes.

Gutierrez uses art to explore the intersections of gender, sexuality, race, and class as they inform her life experience. The Brooklyn-based artist uses costume, photography, and film to produce elaborate narrative scenes that combine pop culture tropes, sex dolls, mannequins, and self-portraiture to explore the ways in which identity, like art, is both a social construction and an authentic expression of self.

Fashion editorials and beauty features with titles like Queer Rage, Masking, and Demons pepper the pages of Indigenous Woman, alongside advertisements for faux products like Blue Lagoon Morisco sunless bronzer, paired with the tagline “Brown is Beautiful.” Gutierrez subverts the traditional cisgender white male gaze while simultaneously raising questions about inclusivity, appropriation, and consumerism.

While her exhibition is on view at Ryan Lee Gallery in New York, VICE caught up with Gutierrez to talk about her masterful interrogation of identity.

Read the Full Story at VICE Online

Martine Gutierrez, Masking, 24k Gold Mask, p46 from Indigenous Woman, 2018. © Martine Gutierrez; Courtesy of the artist and RYAN LEE Gallery, New York.

Martine Gutierrez, Masking, Green Grape Mask, p51 from Indigenous Woman, 2018. © Martine Gutierrez; Courtesy of the artist and RYAN LEE Gallery, New York.

Categories: Art, Exhibitions, Fashion, Photography

Dapper Dan: Harlem Hustle

Posted on August 30, 2018

“I’m from the east side of Harlem, which was the power base when I was growing up in the 50s and 60s. I was always in awe of the Rat Pack – they influenced fashion. Before that, it was James Cagney and Edward G Robinson, the guys who played gangsters in Hollywood movies. But my biggest influence came from the Italians in East Harlem. Those were the first people in the ghetto we saw with Cadillacs, diamond rings, silk suits, all that.

“The experience that shaped my relationship with clothes and how transformative they could be came about as a result of how poor we were. We used to put paper in our shoes to cover the holes in the sole. Then we got more innovative and started putting in linoleum, because it didn’t wear out as fast. One day, when I was eight years old, I came home and my feet were killing me. My oldest brother took me to a Goodwill store. He asked, ‘You see any shoes you like?’ I saw some split-toe shoes with tassles. I took off my shoes and tried them on. They felt good. He said, ‘OK, take your shoes, put them on the rack. Let’s go.’ I will never forget that. I took care of those shoes like they were a living thing. They made me feel like somebody.

“Those shoes were also my initiation into elements of criminality. Later on, I used to boost my own clothes. I call it the ‘Robin Hood complex’. It’s OK if you need it. That led to me being involved in street things. I grew up before the drug epidemic. When that came, I chose to retreat. I went back to school and got pretty radical.“

Read the Full Story at Dazed

Photography Petra Collins. All clothes Gucci-Dapper Dan collection. Styling Emma Wyman.

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Dazed, Fashion, Manhattan

Jamel Shabazz: Icons of Style

Posted on August 28, 2018

Jamel Shabazz (American, born 1960); Digital chromogenic print; 25.4 x 20.3 cm (10 x 8 in.); EX.2018.7.163

Hailing from Brooklyn, Jamel Shabazz began taking photographs of his friends during the late 1970s. After returning from the Army in 1980, he began to dedicate himself to documenting life on the streets of New York, taking portraits of street legends and regular folks alike, taking an entirely new approach to the art of the fashion photograph.

With an eye for style, Shabazz used the camera as a vehicle for conversations with his subjects, who are predominantly African American and Latinx teens. Focused on helping them to develop a knowledge of self and how to survive in America, Shabazz easily spent hours with his subject before photographing them. The result is a series of portraits that convey a sense of power, pride, and dignity. As an independent artist working outside the fashion and publishing industry for decades, Shabazz has established himself as the rare artist who has been able to crossover long after this body of work was made.

Now a selection of Shabazz’s work can be seen alongside the likes of Irving Penn, Richard Avedon, Cecil Beaton, Guy Bourdin, William Klein, Antonio Lopez, and Herb Ritts in the new exhibition Icons of Style: A Century of Fashion Photography, 1911-2011 at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, now on view through October 21, and accompanying catalogue of the same name. Shabazz shares his thoughts on the power of fashion photography, the importance of visibility and representation, and the power of staying true to one’s vision.

Read the Full Story at Feature Shoot

Jamel Shabazz (American, born 1960); Digital chromogenic print; 25.4 x 20.3 cm (10 x 8 in.); EX.2018.7.164

Categories: Art, Books, Exhibitions, Fashion, Feature Shoot, Photography

Remembrances of Studio 54

Posted on June 13, 2018

Pat Cleveland and Andre Leon Talley. Photo: Copyright Dustin Pittman

Glitz, glam, and glory – Studio 54 had it all. The epicenter of the New York disco scene in the 1970s, the infamous nightclub was a symbol of hedonism – a potent brew of celebrity, sex, drugs, and decadence.

In 1977, co-owners Ian Schrager and Steve Rubell, two friends from Brooklyn, converted an old CBS television studio into a magical space where Hollywood stars, fashion designers, performers, socialites, artists, models, and street legends would dance the night away.

For 33 months, Studio 54 made headlines for its outrageous stunts, becoming the stuff of legend until it all came crashing down when Schrager and Rubell were arrested for tax evasion and ended up serving 13 months in prison. In 1989, Rubell died from complications due to AIDS, while Schrager turned his life around, becoming one of the most significant hoteliers of our time. After being pardoned by President Barack Obama in January 2017, Schrager broke his 40-year silence, finally telling the true story of Studio 54.

On Friday (June 15), Studio 54, the first documentary about the famed nightclub will officially release. In celebration of this film, we spoke to its director Matt Tyrnauer and a host of Studio 54 insiders, who share their memories of the endless nights spent partying, rubbing shoulders with everyone from Elizabeth Taylor, Jackie Kennedy Onassis, and Diana Ross to Michael Jackson, David Bowie, and Karl Lagerfeld.

Read the Full Story at AnOther Man

Palmoa Picasso. Photo: Copyright Dustin Pittman

Categories: 1970s, AnOther Man, Art, Fashion, Manhattan, Music, Photography