Hasta La Ideas

In this exclusive interview, British fashion designer Paul Smith shows Dezeen his new exhibition at London’s Design Museum, which contains a room “nicknamed the paracetamol room, because by the time you come out you’ll probably need an aspirin” (+ movie).

Called Hello, My Name Is Paul Smith the show, which opened today, celebrates Paul Smith‘s career to date and reveals insights into his creative processes.

“The whole point of the exhibition is really about encouragement,” he tells Dezeen while sat in a recreation of his cluttered Covent Garden office that has been created at the show. “It hopefully gives you the encouragement to think, well, I can move on from a humble beginning’,” he says.

Visitors enter the exhibition through a three-metre-square cube that simulates Smith’s tiny first shop on Byard Lane in Nottingham, which was only open for two days a week. Smith’s Covent Garden design studio has also be recreated, with material and pattern samples strewn amongst sketchbooks and colour swatches.

In a room called Inside Paul’s Head, images of flowers swirl around screens before morphing into prints covering Smith’s garments and accessories. “It’s nicknamed the paracetamol room, because by the time you come out you’ll probably need an aspirin,” Smith jokes.

The next space is a hand-painted wooden mock-up of the Paris hotel room that Smith used as his first showroom during Paris fashion week in 1976.

“I think it was six shirts, two jackets, two jumpers and nobody came,” he recalls. “Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, nobody. I was leaving on Thursday and one person came at 4 o’clock, and I was in business.”

There’s also a section dedicated to Smith’s photography: “I’ve been taking photographs since I was 11. My Dad was an amateur photographer and his original camera is there on the wall. I shoot all our advertising and promotional material but also work for lots of magazines as a photographer.”

Smith’s collaborations over the years including a MINI car and a pair of skis painted with his signature colourful stripes are displayed together, along with cycling jerseys and a giant rabbit-shaped bin he has worked on.

“It’s really interesting for me to see,” he reveals. “They’re usually all hidden away somewhere. Seeing them all together is like ‘Oh wow! We’ve done quite a lot over the years’.”

A wall covered in 70,000 buttons is used to demonstrate the unique elements found in each of the brand’s stores worldwide, such as a room decorated with 26,000 dominoes at his recently extended Albemarle Street store in London’s Mayfair district. “It shows my passion to make sure all out shops are different,” he says.

Garments from Smith’s archive flank both sides of a long white corridor and are grouped into themes rather than age, while a movie documenting Smith’s most recent menswear show is played in the final room.

The exhibition is laid out around a central space lined with a pictures from Smith’s personal collection, encompassing photographs by Mario Testino to framed drawings sent by fans.

On the way out, a giant Post-it note on the wall reads “Everyday is a new beginning”. Smith finishes by saying: “The idea is you come here, you get inspired, then the next day is the rest of your life.”

The exhibition was curated by Donna Loveday and runs until 9 March 2014 at the Design Museum.

The post “You’ll probably need an aspirin” after my
Design Museum show, says Paul Smith appeared first on Dezeen.

Le réalisateur Joseph Ghaleb nous propose le film « Concrete Love » : une superbe vidéo étrange illustrant le rêve d’une femme, à la recherche d’une romance perdue. Des souvenirs entre réel et imagination mis en images avec style. Le tout est à découvrir en images et en vidéo dans la suite de l’article.

Cecil Beaton described her as “an authoritative crane” or “some extraordinary parrot,” while Nicky Haslam likened her presence to “a sock in the jaw.” Both were referring to the fashionable force of nature that was Diana Vreeland (1903-89), the subject of Amanda Mackenzie Stuart‘s Empress of Fashion, out Tuesday in paperback from Harper Perennial. The dazzling biography delves into the origins of Vreeland’s genius as it follows her from an ugly duckling childhood in Paris and a self-imposed extreme makeover at the age of 14, through her tenure at Harper’s Bazaar, at Vogue, and at the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

“There were imagination and fantasy in fashion before Diana,” says Stuart (pictured below). “What she did, indefatigably, and from a position of great influence at Vogue, was to assert the authority of the imagination—and the idea of possibility that galloped along beside it.” We threw on our most exotic caftan, streaked on the rouge, and managed to narrow our questions for Vreeland’s Oxford, England-based biographer down to an elegant seven.

When/how did you first encounter Diana Vreeland?
I’m British and live in the UK so I was only vaguely aware of Diana Vreeland before I started writing a different book, about Consuelo Vanderbilt and her mother Alva (Consuelo and Alva Vanderbilt: The Story of a Mother and a Daughter in the Gilded Age, HarperCollins, 2005). Before my research for that book, and like a number of people now I think, I knew something about DV without being quite sure why. I wasn’t quite sure what she did, but I did have a blurry image of a snood, a dash of brilliant red lipstick, and an achingly hip granny who ran ’round town with Andy Warhol. Quite terrifying, in other words.

At the very end of my research for the book about Consuelo, I discovered that Diana Vreeland had long been fascinated by her story and her style and had included her in the Costume Institute exhibition in 1976 called “American Women of Style.” So that was the point at which I first properly encountered DV.

Was there a particular aspect of her background or a finding in your initial research that convinced you to proceed with a biography?
Well, when I was writing the Consuelo book I should have been a very self-disciplined biographer and stopped myself from going off-piste for days on end. I should have allocated no more than half a day’s research, or maybe one day maximum, to the curator of an exhibition in which Consuelo appeared twelve years after her death. But it didn’t work out like that. I became completely distracted by DV, who was very funny, and, at first glance, not unlike Consuelo’s mother. (On second glance she wasn’t like her at all, but that’s another story.)
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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

by Emily Millett Originally from London and Northampton, board sports enthusiasts Ludi Ludlow and Amy Roberts are now proud to count themselves amongst the colorfully diverse residents of Brighton in southern England. This surf-friendly coastal town is known for its environmental conscience and…

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Architect Zaha Hadid‘s gallery space in London is to host a show of work by fashion designer Elke Walter, who creates many of the statement pieces worn by the architect.

Elke Walter creates unconventional one-of-a-kind garments that are draped into extravagant shapes rather than cut and fitted, which have become a favourite of Zaha Hadid‘s.

Walter first met Hadid during Design Miami 2006, where her garments were on display at a charity event. “She just tried on, then about half a year later we were contacted by her PA and she asked if the pieces were still available,” Walter told Dezeen.

Since then, Hadid has chosen Walter’s designs to wear for photoshoots and the opening events for her high-profile building projects including the Guangzhou Opera House.

“When I know it’s for a special event, I do something that nobody else would and she looks so great in it and I love that,” Walter said.

She revealed that she’s happy to find a customer who likes her designs. “Regular customers find my designs too crazy,” said Walter. “Maybe [Hadid] has some of the craziness that I have. I can’t explain why she likes them, maybe there’s a link between how we both think and design.”

Her garments are often voluminous and use a lot of material, creating flexibility and allowing them to fit any body type.

“You can move in it,” she said. “Even if it’s a big piece, you always feel comfortable, like it belongs to you. The pieces are adjustable to different people’s bodies and this comes from the way I cut it.”

Instead of using patterns and cutting sections of fabric to sew together, she drapes and folds the material over a mannequin and sometimes herself so form the shapes.

“I create the shape by cutting straight into the fabric, or holding it up like a sculpture but it takes a lot of time,” she explained. “I want to give it a shape from all sides so you could also put it on a hanger and use it as a decorative piece, thats my goal.”

Walter primarily works with synthetic fabrics as they tend not to crease as much as natural materials.

“The advantage of these new fibres is that you can wash them, you can wear them, you can sit on them, you can sleep in them, they don’t change,” she told us. “I can’t stand it when somebody gets up from sitting in a silk dress and it’s all crinkled.”

Walter will be showing and selling her one-of-a-kind pieces along with a simple range of black clothing she calls Essentials at the Zaha Hadid Design Gallery in London’s Clerkenwell district from 21 to 23 November.

The post Zaha Hadid to exhibit work by
her favourite fashion designer appeared first on Dezeen.