Yves Saint Laurent Retrospective

Original sketch for the Wedding Dress from the collection sketchbook; Fall-Winter 1988; Graphite on paper, gazar sample; Fondation Pierre Bergé - Yves Saint Laurent; Photo Fondation Pierre Bergé - Yves Saint Laurent

***Update: Yves Saint Laurent died Sunday, 1 June 2008. His obituary is here.***

The opening of this retrospective exhibition at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts has flown surprisingly under the radar for being so close to New York City. Curated by the French costume historian Florence Müller, the emphasis is on the dialogue between Yves Saint Laurent and art, both in terms of considering his garments as actual art objects and in recognition of his inspirations found in art. The display is broken into four themes: sketches, gender-bending, color usage and lyricism. The exhibition includes over 160 looks spanning his entire career culled from over 5000 ensembles and 15000 objects belonging to the Fondation Pierre Bergé – Yves Saint Laurent.

The museum’s website, while lacking a bit in object photographs, does have a few video clips along with brief biographical notes on his life.

Montreal Museum of Fine Arts The exhibition runs from May 29 to September 28, 2008, before moving on the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco.

Veronique Branquinho exhibition

VB, Autumn/Winter 00-01, Photo Annick Geenen (All photos courtesy of MoMu)

If in Belgium this summer, don’t miss the exhibition dedicated to Veronique Branquinho currently on view at the ModeMuseum in Antwerp. As an accompanying article by Cathy Horyn explains, Branquinho—the daughter of a Portuguese father and a Flemish mother—emerged in the generation of Belgian designers following the Antwerp 6. After her studies at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, she presented her first collection in Paris in 1997 as a series of photographs featuring a white-robed woman running through a forest and was soon embraced by the celebral fashion establishment.

Recounting the ambivalent position Branquinho occupies in the over-signifying market-driven and spectacle-laden fashion world, Horyn writes of the Belgian designer’s work:

“Over time, her work would encompass many of her character traits such as independence, self-reliance, tenacity, and perhaps, above all, mystery. Even if clothes cannot adequately express the complexities of human behavior, Branquinho seems to approach design with idea that not everything needs to be explained or understood.”

VB, Spring/Summer 2000, Photo Jean François Carly

On Fashion Curation

Specter: When Fashion Turns Back (V&A, 2005)

Don't miss the new issue of Fashion Theory, which is entirely dedicated to fashion curation. Edited by Alistair O’Neil, founder of the MA in Fashion Curation at the London College of Fashion (and, in the interest of full disclosure, one of my thesis advisors), it has a great range of engaging articles exhaustively covering debates on the topic, which have taken place across the academic, journalistic and museum realms.

Among the articles included is an assessment of the history and various iterations of the fashion designer retrospective and its attendant criticisms by N.J. Stevenson, as well as an account of the history of fashion photography in the museum by Val Williams, the director of the Centre for Photography and the Archive at LCF. Also included are articles by Amy de la Haye and Judith Clark, and an interview with Penny Martin of SHOWstudio (also a subject of the second issue of Fashion Projects), about the notion of virtual curatorial practice as it pertains to fashion.

In addition, the issue features a range of exhibition reviews: Caroline Evans reviews the recent Victoria and Albert exhibition "Surreal Things: Surrealism in Design." O'Neil reviews the ground-breaking exhibition by Judith Clark "Spectres: When Fashion Turns Back”—an exhibition which, in my opinion, highlighted the blurring of boundaries between curator and artist and exemplified howcuration can be understood as an artistic practice in its own right.

Francesca

Frau Fiber, Knock Off Enterprises

UE Western Regional Council Building

"Frau Fiber, activist and textile worker, will mimic the expenditure of apparel production, reconstructing a white shirt and business suit originally produced offshore. A suit and shirt, the archetypal white-collar uniform, is an American icon, standing for quality, dependability and style, enhancing the wearer’s professional image.

The remade garments will be available for purchase in the storefront, priced on a geographical sliding scale (hours worked to make the reconstructed garment multiplied by the wage scale in the original garment’s country of manufacture—China, Guatemala, Taiwan—equals KO’s cost of the uniform)."

For detailed information on dates and locations, please visit Gallery 400

"Tescos’ White Collar Shirt, purchased for 4.50 euro; KO White Collar Shirt, assembled from recycled fancy dress."

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.