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But I kept this! :-) Members only on the outside, mind-blowing sartorial engineering on the inside. Individually signed by the tailor.
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Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months - Oscar Wilde
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going to throw this out there for the Chalayan fans:
does anyone feel that his collections carry too much attached text, like a 'How-To' guide to viewing his work? it's a thought that sometimes strikes, and from my perspective as someone who believes the work should speak for itself, can sometimes be disconcerting. the underlying text is a good narrative, of course, and it makes for fascinating layers. but sometimes i want to watch the clothes, pure, in their context without a guidebook holding my hand...
this is not in any way meant to deprecate Chalayan, his collections have produced some truly remarkable moments in the fashion consciousness.Comment
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/\ maybe, but he has stopped doing those labels about 4 years ago, I think.Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months - Oscar Wilde
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tweeds, any chance you can provide an example of such a text?
i'm really interested in your question, but it would be helpful to have something concrete to think about.....
Faust, maybe we can go look at the dress tomorrow...i'm not even sure it fits quite, as its a size larger than i normally take. honestly, being in the presence of pre 04 Chalayan causes me to lose all semblance of sanity and objective judgement. help!...I mean the ephemeral, the fugitive, the contingent, the half of art whose other half is the eternal and the immutable.Comment
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/\ I go where you go. I think tweeds is referring to my jacket's label.Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months - Oscar Wilde
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why do you want to wait till tomorrow?, it might not even be there,Originally posted by laika View Posttweeds, any chance you can provide an example of such a text?
i'm really interested in your question, but it would be helpful to have something concrete to think about.....
Faust, maybe we can go look at the dress tomorrow...i'm not even sure it fits quite, as its a size larger than i normally take. honestly, being in the presence of pre 04 Chalayan causes me to lose all semblance of sanity and objective judgement. help!
A dress like that should be bought the very moment it is spotted!
Buy first, try on later.............
“You know,” he says, with a resilient smile, “it is a hard world for poets.”
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Zam Barrett Spring 2017 Now in stock
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^totally useless, the lot of you....
actually, Zam, the fit issue was in the shoulders--when i raise my arm the entire dress comes up with it! is this something that's fixable? it's something with the armholes, i think, they didn't fit close enough to my body....
i am in need of your services for a couple of small things, btw......I mean the ephemeral, the fugitive, the contingent, the half of art whose other half is the eternal and the immutable.Comment
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on a normal dress I would say that it is, but with chalayan, nothing is ever normal, I would have to see how it is constructed, my chedule is not hectic, but kind of unpredictable, but maybe i might be able to tug along with you and the Bicycle Man,Originally posted by laika View Post^totally useless, the lot of you....
actually, Zam, the fit issue was in the shoulders--when i raise my arm the entire dress comes up with it! is this something that's fixable? it's something with the armholes, i think, they didn't fit close enough to my body....
i am in need of your services for a couple of small things, btw...
I dont want to work for you because you dont love me anymore
Just kidding, just kidding, I know your love is unwavering..........
we will speak maybe later or tomorrow and see what we can arrange“You know,” he says, with a resilient smile, “it is a hard world for poets.”
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Zam Barrett Spring 2017 Now in stock
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of course i love you baby!
i'm just having an affair with plato, at the moment,
and he is ever so demanding, the bastard.
i'll send you a pm....who on earth is the bicycle man?...I mean the ephemeral, the fugitive, the contingent, the half of art whose other half is the eternal and the immutable.Comment
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photography is truth baby, photography is truth................Originally posted by laika View Postof course i love you baby!
i'm just having an affair with plato, at the moment,
and he is ever so demanding, the bastard.
i'll send you a pm....who on earth is the bicycle man?
“You know,” he says, with a resilient smile, “it is a hard world for poets.”
.................................................. .......................
Zam Barrett Spring 2017 Now in stock
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Faust is right, the labels are one thing - a side note here, i didn't know he discontinued that style of label 4 years ago, that ties in with the collections i really felt a little lost by, around 2005 - but for me there is sometimes a more general gap between the text and the clothes...Originally posted by laika View Posttweeds, any chance you can provide an example of such a text?
i'm really interested in your question, but it would be helpful to have something concrete to think about.....
one example is Inertia (SS09), where Chalayan stated that "it's about the speed in our lives and how it can only result in a crash" - something that was further developed in the Design Museum blurb as well - but what we effectively got was a series of prints culminating in latex dresses. while i like the concept, and the car graveyard images idea, the final output felt a little far from the ideas behind it. when i saw the latex pieces at the retrospective the first response was a wow, but after that a little disappointment that it was a basic piece of sculpture with the print (and concept) layered on it.
going back to 2005, and the Genometrics (AW05) show along with the film Absent Presence, with his favourite themes of technology and ethnicity. watching the film and reading his basis for the collection (DNA mapping and reaction to London soundscapes), i felt that the connection between clothes and text was quite lost. ironically by making known the text, the clothes almost seemed diminished...
again, in no way am i deprecating Chalayan's work, i'm just curious if anyone feels like i do. his earliest work, like Airmail and Afterwords, really managed to connect his thematic interests with wild technical ability. i feel like this potency has been diluted through a disconnect of the two, his narrative becoming more complex and his technical ability really coming out in terms of creating spectacle, but both moving in different directions, so that this hand-holding of clothes with text feels constricting.
caveat: i've not read much about his most recent work after SS09, so have little idea about his approaches after that.Comment
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He only used the "texty" label for one season of the women's line, S/S 2004. He might have used it more than once for the men's line. His diffusion line had similar - albeit much abbreviated - text on the hangtags, but not on the labels themselves.
I think you're misrepresenting the extent to which he uses text; it's not like he publishes a dissertation every time he shows. Usually he articulates ideas in the exact same way that just about every other designer does, which is as a response to some backstage interviewer's inevitable "Can you tell us a little about the ideas behind this collection...?" question.Originally posted by tweeds View Post
Chalayan does choose to communicate a lot of often very complex ideas through his shows, more so than any other designer I can think of, and for that I'm grateful. At the same time, I question to what extent it's his responsibility to make these ideas coherent for his audience, at least as regards his collections (I would judge his art/film/installation work by a different standard). As a fashion designer, his primary objective isn't to elucidate, but to make clothing. He once said in an interview that while he acknowledges the fact that the conceptual elements more often than not fly right over people's heads, he simple can't work any other way. In other words, clothes aren't so much a medium by which he delivers ideas, as ideas are the means by which he makes clothes.
There's no denying the pleasure to be had when viewing a beautiful collection and feeling like you "get it," but I don't consider "getting it" a necessary prerequistie for appreciating a collection. Some of the themes he's worked with, like those for "Genometrics" or "Temporal Meditations," were so personal that I'm not even sure we're meant to understand them. And the fact remains that a lot of his more opaque or convoluted ideas have resulted in some astonishing collections ("Panoramic" A/W 2008 comes to mind).
I guess what I'm saying is that I disagree...
Last edited by droogist; 11-06-2009, 01:29 PM.
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Let's hear it!Originally posted by tweeds
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an explanation for why we disagree on the extent to which he uses text: it stems from his exhibition here in London, which blew me away, but at the same time really pushed an enormous amount of text at me that resulted in this disconnect.Originally posted by droogist View Post
of course exhibitions are different worlds from collections, and the actual collection probably wouldn't have given me this feeling as much. exhibition = collections overwrought, if you like...
disagreement aside, Chalayan is still a designer who creates fascinating work. thanks for the thoughtsOriginally posted by droogist View PostI guess what I'm saying is that I disagree...
wilhelm: same masterful technical ability at the core, but no text, pure visual language, strange and fantastic vocabulary. something along those lines, i forget the specifics nowComment
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