The Cult of Beauty at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London

This is the first major exhibition to comprehensively explore Aestheticism, an extraordinary artistic movement which sought to escape the ugliness and materialism of the Victorian era by creating a new kind of art and beauty and it's at the V&A Museum in London until 17 July 2011.

Victoria and Albert Museum features an exhibition about Yohji Yamamoto

This exhibition explores the work of idiosyncratic and ground-breaking designer Yohji Yamamoto. Fabric, he said, 'is everything'. This deep interest in textiles is at the heart of his approach to design.

Yamamoto became internationally renowned in the early eighties for challenging traditional notions of fashion by designing garments that seemed oversized, unfinished, played with ideas of gender or fabrics not normally used in fashionable attire such as felt or neoprene. Other works revealed Yamamoto's unusual pattern cutting, knowledge of fashion history and sense of humour. His work is characterised by a frequent and skilful use of black, a colour which he describes as 'modest and arrogant at the same time'.

This retrospective, experienced through a series of site-specific installations throughout the V&A and beyond, includes Yamamoto's menswear for the first time. The main exhibition space houses over 60 creations and a multi-media timeline which reveals Yamamoto's wider creative output. 

More info on: http://www.vam.ac.uk

Grace Kelly exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London opens tomorrow

Photograph by Erwin Blumenfeld, New York, 1955. Copyright The Estate of Erwin Blumenfeld 2009.

The spectacular wardrobe of Grace Kelly will be on display at the V&A. Tracing the evolution of her style from her days as one of Hollywoods most popular actresses in the 1950s and as Princess Grace of Monaco, the display will present over 50 of Grace Kelly's outfits together with hats, jewellery and the original Hermès Kelly bag. Dresses from her films, including High Society, will be shown as well as the gown she wore to accept her Oscar award in 1955. These will be accompanied by film clips and posters, photographs and her Oscar statuette. The show will also include the lace ensemble worn by Grace Kelly for her civil marriage ceremony to Prince Rainier in 1956 and 35 haute couture gowns from the 1960s and 70s by her favourite couturiers Dior, Balenciaga, Givenchy, and Yves St Laurent.

Fascinating and beautiful...

More info on: www.vam.ac.uk/exhibitions/future_exhibs/index.html

Last days to see Golden Age of Couture at the V+A of London

"The Golden Age of Couture, Paris and London 1947-1957" exhibition will last until 6th January at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. Run if you haven't seen it yet as this was one of the best exhibition of 2007 !

Completely dedicated to the period of post-war workshops revival, the show focuses on the aesthetic turning point of this decade: in 1947, Christian Dior presents his famous line "Corolla" that the famous journalist, Carmel Snow, called the " New Look". The success was instant and global. This collection marks the beginning of one of the most famous moments in the history of fashion. The "New Look" forever changed the canons of fashion and femininity.

This show explores the way for this change, but does not forget to celebrate other virtuoso such as Balenciaga, Norman Hartnell, Givenchy and Balmain. John Galliano, the current artistic director of the house Dior was among the guests of the premiere of this exhibition... so glamourous.

As I had not written about this exhibition yet, I though it was important to underline its importance so run run run !

To learn more : http://www.vam.ac.uk/

"New York is a fcuk you attitude"

New York is in identity, a culture, a melting pot, a creation craddle, an artist shelter, and of course an allure !


That is what the Victoria&Albert Museum (again?) decided to show us through the exhibition called "New York Fashion Now" dedicated to the young generation of designers : Zac Posen, Dereck lam, Maggie Noris and so on, twenty incredibly talented designers who launched their own labels in the five years between 1999 and 2004.
They're all coming from Big Apple of course and managed to demonstate a same ability, a same energy, a same approach that convinced everybody, ranking first... the Stars.


New York Fashion Now captures this significant moment of design productivity, both within the city's mainstream fashion culture and outside it. The twenty featured start-up stories provide insight into how so many young hopefuls have prevailed at this particular moment.


Menswear, Sportswear-Chic, Avant-garde , Atelier, Celebrity are the few areas of the exhibition to admire. Go run there or tun to NYC !

Duckie Brown, underpants with attached gloves, Autumn/Winter 2002-3, photograph by PLATON

More info on :

www.vam.ac.uk/collections/fashion/new_york/index.html

Victoria&Albert Museum goes surreal

Antonin Artaud used to say that surrealism was " the scream coming from the mind". The freedom in the design of objects, that is what the exhibition presented at the V&A, intends to explore.

Mae West Lips sofa Salvador Dalí (1938).

In the 20th century the surrealism movementreached every area of creation. Its anti Cartesian aesthetic founded on the association of oniric images and Freudian fantasies overwhelmed our perception of objects. From Dalí to Monty Pythn, the collective unconsciousness has mixed a large range of absurd representations such as giraffe in flames or a tennis match between custards.

Surrealism takes its origins from the Dadaist movement and the artists adopt a radical attitude which aims to develop " the entire emancipation of the Human Being". Their values are the following : Poetry, Love and Freedom. André Breton, pope of the movement, and author of "Manifeste du surréalisme" published in 1924, excomunicates any person that desires to mix business with art. The design is also touched by this scream of the mind. When Max Ernst and Joan Miró create the set of the Russian Ballets of Serge Diaghilev, a group of opposers try to avoid the show to happen. They believe art shouldn't be mixed with business. Art should serve honnest wished, free from money considerations. Besides some artists have well understood the importance of commercial activities : for instance Man Ray also takes pictures for the fashion industry if we can call it so at the time. Therefore there's a little contradiction when Breton, himself, involves its art in the making of surrealist canvas work with the collaboration of the Marie Cuttoli gallery. He was also the private adviser of the collecter Jacques Doucet...

The lobster telephone, Salvador Dalí, (1936)

The great exhibition of the V&A of London, underlines all those paradoxes and reaveals the close collaboration between design and surrealism thanks to symbolic objects such as the lobster telephone. Salvador Dalí, Ernst, Magritte, Oppenheim, Elsa Schiaparelli... are still alive.

More info on : www.vam.ac.uk

Surreal Things : Surrealims and Design, at the Victoria&Albert Museum, in London.

From 29th of March to 22 July 2007.