BERLINDE DE BRUYCKERE: NO LIFE LOST
Trauma – it is rarely possible to describe an artist’s oeuvre in one word, but in the case of the Belgian artist Berlinde De Bruyckere, it fits neatly and without reducing or trivializing her art.
Eugene Rabkin is the founder of stylezeitgeist.com. He has contributed articles on fashion and culture to The Business of Fashion, Vogue Russia, Buro247, the Haaretz Daily Newspaper, and other publications. He has taught critical writing and fashion writing courses at Parsons the New School for Design.
Op-Ed: The Rise of Instagrammable Fashion
It’s no longer news that Instagram has become fashion’s most embraced Internet tool. It has created a myriad of self-made, self-promoting starlets, turbo-boosted the rise of street style photography, and has fashion executives biting their elbows trying to come up with ways to market and sell products on the app. But, perhaps most importantly, it has influenced fashion design itself.
Work:Space – Geoffrey B. Small
Last month I got a chance to visit the studio of Geoffrey B. Small, the American-born designer who has been working in Cavarzere, in the Veneto region of Italy. Veneto is the heart of the Italian fashion industry with a storied tradition of clothes making. It used to be that you could not throw a stone without hitting a fabric manufacturer or a shirt-making factory. Globalization has killed all that by outsourcing much of the work to other countries in Europe and Asia.
Boris Mikhailov: Diary
Boris Mikhailov is a somewhat accidental artist. He worked as an engineer in the Soviet Ukraine, dabbling in photography on the side when he was ratted out for taking nude photos of his wife. He was subsequently thrown out of work for spreading pornography – a common practice to remove “undesirable elements,” especially those of Jewish descent. Consigned to the dregs of society, which included the bohemia of the artists unapproved by the state, Mikhailov began to take photos in earnest. Photos that reflected the deep aesthetic and spiritual ugliness of the homeland that betrayed him.
Anselm Kiefer in Paris
If you happen to be in Paris, don’t miss the Anselm Kiefer exhibit at Centre Pompidou. This comprehensive retrospective, first in Paris since 1984, of nearly 150 works of the German master of pain and reckoning is spread over ten thematically organized rooms. It is an awe-inspiring show, profound and simultaneously quiet and disquieting.
OP-ED: PUTTING FASHION BACK TOGETHER
These days the fashion press that still bothers writing about fashion is filled with two types of articles. It’s either opinion pieces decrying the broken fashion system, or news about individual designers taking change into their own hands.
Some of the woes befalling the fashion systems, according to the “broken fashion system” articles, is that the stores demand deliveries too soon and put them on sale too soon, and that the fast fashion system produces knockoffs at far cheaper prices and put them in stores before the real stuff hits the racks. Supposedly, the latter necessitates the former, but designers don’t like to be rushed, and the additional stress put on them is the other reason for the fashion system being broken. We have fall clothes filling the racks in the summer, and summer clothes in the winter. Everyone shops on sale.
Francesca Woodman: On Being An Angel
Francesca Woodman was one of those art prodigies who has never quite found her place in this world.
She died young, but she has left a rich body of work that consists of photographs that could easily be mundane in the hands of a lesser artist, but in Woodman’s hands become enigmatic.
Fashion Week Ramblings F/W 16
This past men’s fashion week was marked by a sense of schizophrenia more than anything else. Half of the shows in Paris were held in opulent palatial spaces and the other half in basements stripped of everything but their concrete foundations. The reactions of critics and buyers were similarly split. The editors I spoke with mostly shrugged shoulders and talked of consistently lowering expectations, while buyers thought the season more than solid.
Sarah Moon at Palazzo Fortuny in Venice
If you happen to be in Venice in the next few months, don’t miss the Sarah Moon exhibit at Palazzo Fortuny. Moon is a perennial favorite, and this sensual, melancholic series of photographs taken at the Palazzon is no exception.
2015 – Gucci, Vetements, and Hype
This year is drawing to a close and a lot has happened in fashion, most of it not so good. I am not talking about the departed: Raf Simons from Dior (good for him), Alexander Wang from Balenciaga (good riddance), and Alber Elbaz from Lanvin (good lord!). I am talking about the arrivistes: namely, Gucci under Alessandro Michele and Vetements under Demna Gvasalia. And not just about them, but about the reaction on the part of the fashion media to their work.