Festival Poster starring Irma Vep

If in London, don’t miss the Fashion in Film Festival, now in its second edition. Co-curated by Marketa Uhlirova and Christel Tsilibaris and titled “If Looks Could Kill,” it tackles the links between fashion and crime in cinema–two inextricable themes, as the earliest incarnation of the cinematic woman of fashion—the vamp—perhaps starts to point out.

The festival takes place across the city in a number of different venues and shows an equally diverse range of films, from Dario Argento’s terrifying horror movie The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970) to Cindy Shermann’s “darkly humorous flick” Office Killer (1997), and the silent film series by Louis Feuillade Les Vampires (1915) starring Irma Vep—perhaps one of the earliest yet most compelling incarnations of the feminine criminal in film.

The impressive line-up of movies is matched by an equally impressive array of speakers, including the renowned film scholar Tim Gunning and the fashion designer Bella Freud, to name just two.

Francesca

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From ANP Quarterly, Issue 10

The new issue of ANP Quarterly was just published and, among other topics, it features a sprawling interview by Brendan Fowler with Sarah Lerfel–one of the owners and the main buyer of Colette–on her role in the art and fashion worlds. Also included is an article by Aaron Rose on the men’s magazine illustrator Tom of Finland as well as an interview with the owners of the new Chicago concept store Golden Age.

The LA-based magazine, edited by Brendan Fowler, Aaron Rose, and Edward Templeton, is now in its tenth issue and can be found free of charge in a number of stores across the US, but in actuality one might have to subscribe to read it on a regular basis. However you get your hands on it, it makes for an engaging read, particularly as it gives ample space to its subject—the interviews tend to be many pages long. It reminds one a bit of the much-missed magazine Index both in the interview-format and in the range/type of people it tends to cover.

Francesca

If in London, don’t miss the London College of Fashion and the Centre for Sustainable Fashion’s celebration of the launch of Eco Chic The Fashion Paradox by Sandy Black. The event, which will take place Wednesday May 7th, will start with a a round table discussion and Q&A session with Abigail Petit of Gossypium, and Orsola de Castro of From Somewhere and will be followed by a book signing. (It is scheduled to take place at 6:00pm at the Terrace in the London College of Fashion, 20 John Princes Street, W1G 0BJ).

Also out is another book on echo fashion Sustainable Fashion and Textiles by the engaging theorist and practioner Kate Fletcher. The book which can be ordered on Design Journeys is sure to satisfy the need for practical as well as symbolic solutions to issues of sustainability in fashion. Fletcher is, in fact, one of the pre-eminent theorist/proponent of Slow Fashion—a concept, which developed after the Slow Food Movement, with the aim to create meaningful networks and relations through clothes by slowing down processes of productions, consumption and care.

Francesca

International Fiber Collaborative, W.R.A.P.

The International Fiber Collaborative just completed their yearly project…The collaborative was started with “the goal to provide an opportunity for people who enjoy working with fiber arts, to come togethe to express their concern about the worlds extreme dependency on oil.”

“This year’s project is called the World Reclamation Art Project (W.R.A.P.). Participants have crocheted, knitted, stitched, patched, or collaged 3 foot square fiber panels that expresses each participants concern about this topic. Simply by designing and creating these panels and participating in this project they are, in the larger picture, expressing their concern about this important subject to the rest of the world. All the panels have been sewn together to completely cover an abandoned gas station in central New York State.”

Slow and Steady Wins the Race, After Balenciaga and After Gucci Bags, 2004

Don’ t miss the student symposium Certified Authentic? Counterfeits, Copies, and Constructions of Culture at the Bard Graduate Center (on 38 W. 86th St), which will be taking place this friday, April 25.

The keynote speaker, Susan Scafidi will be discussing fashion and counterfeiting. Scafidi is a Visiting Professor at Fordham Law School and member of the law and history faculties at Southern Methodist University, is author of Who Owns Culture? Appropriation and Authenticity in American Law (2005), as well as a blog on law and fashion design, Counterfeit Chic

Also, on the topic of counterfeiting is Lynn Yaeger’s article in this week’s Village Voice. The author’s visit to the Murakami exhibition at the Brooklyn museum and, particularly its accompanying Vuitton store, spurned her musings on Canal Street and fake Murakami purses.

The Fashion Institute of Technology is making further leeways into exploring sustainable solutions to the fashion and design industries–at least at an educational level. A group of professors, students and alumni have started a sustainability group with the aim “to inculcate the concepts of sustainability into all aspects of what we do at FIT.

Among other projects they have organized the conference “Designing Sustainability as the New Cultural Paradigm,” to take place this Thursday the 17th from 8:00 AM-5:30 PM in The John Reeves Great Hall. For a list of speakers and other events organized concomitantly with the conference, you can visit the sustainability group at FIT site.

Leigh Bowery outside his flat, 1993

Yeti—the Portland based journal—just published an interview I conducted with Nicola Bowery.

I had visited Nicola Bowery—wife of the late Leigh Bowery—in her Brighton, England home last summer, to interview her for my PhD thesis, a chunk of which revolves around Bowery’s extravagant costumes and performances from the ’80s and ’90s. My interest in Leigh Bowery had been spurred by Hilton Als’ New Yorker profile, which discussed Bowery’s varied “career” from fledging fashion designer to notorious club figure to performance artist—three strands of his practice which remain inextricably intertwined.

Nicola was extremely kind in taking the time to show me a number of her husband’s elaborate costumes which, having been painstakingly made to measure to Bowery’s large girt, appeared eerily empty—particularly as a complex systems of understructures kept them in shape, further highlighting Bowery’s absent body. Nicola also took the time to discuss her role as the slime-covered baby in the humorous, unsettling “birth scenes” which Bowery staged as part of his performances with his band Minty, from the early ’90s until his untimely death in 1995.

Francesca
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We interrupt our usual announcements to inform you that the sixth issue of the Lowbrow Reader is just out. Albeit dealing with comedy rather than fashion, with contributions from John Waters and Justin Bond of Kiki and Herb, as well as longer articles from Neil Hagerty and our own contributor (as well as editor of the Lowbrow) Jay Ruttenberg, this issue is not to be missed. The heavily illustrated journal can be found in larger stands and independent book and music stores across the United States and in London, as well as directly on their site, www.lowbrowreader.com

1920s New Yorker cover from “What a Dame! Tracking the Origins of the New York Woman in 1920s Media and 1930s Film” by Lisa Santandrea

April seems to be introducing a slew of fashion lectures. This Friday April 4, the NYU costume studies MA is hosting its yearly symposium, “The Seventh Richard Martin Visual Culture Symposium.” The keynote speaker is Jan Glier Reeder, curator of the Brooklyn Museum Costume Documentation Project. Other lectures’ topics include a talk on guerrilla stores (by Emily Marshall Orr) and a lecture by Lisa Santandrea, which tracks the origin of the New York Woman in 1920s Media and 1930s Film.

The symposium is taking place 6:00pm to 8:00pm in the Einstein Auditorium, 34 Stuyvesant Street, New York, tel. (212) 998-5700.

Coming up next week at the Fashion Institute of Technology is a talk by Christian Louboutin, which has been organized concomitantly with the Louboutin’s exhibition curated by the graduate students at FIT. (The talk is to take place on April 9 from 5:30pm to 7:30pm at FIT’s Katie Murphy Amphitheatre.)

The next day (from 6pm to 8pm) a panel titled “Women Rule Fashion”—moderated by FIT curators Molly Sorkin and Colleen Hill—will engage in a discussion on the way the fashion industry has historically and at times uncharacteristically allowed women to gain leadership positions. Joining in the discussion are designer Catherine Malandrino, Vogue editor Sally Singer, photographer Maria Chandoha Valentino and Susan Sokol, president of Vera Wang.

Diane Pernet, Drawing by Siggi Oddsson

This Sunday, Harold Koda, chief curator of the Metropolitan Museum’s Costume Institute, will host a panel on fashion and blogging, to which Cathy Horyn (the New York Times senior fashion critic) will participate together with Scott Schuman of the Sartorialist and Diane Pernet, editor of A Shaded View on Fashion.

It will be interesting to see whether they will address the different kinds of blogs: i.e. personal blogs (in the case of Diane Pernet) versus a blog hosted by an established editorial entity (as is the case of Horyn’s and to some extent the Sartorialist). And to what extent ethical questions (particularly when it comes to the Times) inform the various types of blogs and potentially clash with the conversational, un-fact-checked and, as a result, often un-journalistic nature of the media.

It is great that the Met is becoming interested in the phenomenon, however, I also hope that future blog panels will include younger fashion bloggers—i.e. Susie of Style Bubble and Almost Girl. The latter has in fact also started Coutorture—an umbrella fashion blog—which serves as a service to the fashion blog community.

The event is taking place Sunday March 30, 2008 at 3:00 p.m. in The Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium and it’s free with museum admission.

Francesca