Tokion Creativity Now Conference 2008

"Fashion Fades Style Remains" Silk-Screened Poster by Katherine Bernhardt from Picture Box

Coming up this weekend at Cooper Union is the Tokion Creativity Now conference, which always proves quite engaging . Perhaps most topical to my interests is the second day of the Conference (Sunday May 18th), as it will include a fashion panel moderated by T magazine contributor Alex Hawgood and a panel on Gary Panter moderated by Brooklyn publisher Picture Box, which just published a book on the famed illustrator.

The excellent publisher has an actual brick and mortar storefront in Carroll Gardens--which makes it, in this day and age, all the more exceptional.

anp quarterly no.10

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

Books on Fashion and Sustainability

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

Certified Authentic?

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.

Yeti on Leigh Bowery

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

Leigh Bowery, Ruined Clothes Exhibition, 1988