I Hurt I Am in Fashion

Screen Short from "I Hurt I Am in Fashion"

A five-month old website "I Hurt I Am in Fashion" manages, through a witty juxtaposition of text and image, to parody the fashion industry (with a particular focus on the modelling industry)—one which is often so over the top to be notoriously difficult to parody. Yet through its dry wit and paucity of words "I Hurt I Am in Fashion" succeeds where many (including Robert Altman) have failed!

Cosa Vostra: Contemporary Art in Italy

Michelangelo Pistoletto

It's sad to report that drastic budget cuts to be enacted in 2011 threaten the health of contemporary art museums in Italy—an area which is already underfunded vis-a-vis the rest of Europe.

AMACI, the association of Contemporary Art Museums in Italy, is launching a campaign "Cosa Vostra" to publicize the imminent cuts and to raise awareness of the importance of contemporary art to Italy's past, present and future.

Among the artists who contributed by allowing their work to be used in promotion of the campaign are Carla Accardi, Stefano Arienti, Maurizio Cattelan, Enzo Cucchi, Marisa Merz, Luigi Ontani, Giulio Paolini, Mimmo Paladino, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Paola Pivi and Francesco Vezzoli.

"COSA VOSTRA. The art of the present is the soul of the future: let's nourish it."

"The title chosen for the campaign promoted by AMACI, through which member museums want to underscore to the general public the community nature of Italy's heritage and artistic production, emphasises a key concept, as "Cosa Vostra" means "your thing." Contemporary art is the soul of the future because, with its ability to offer new scenarios and perspectives, it is a constant stimulus to the creativity of Italians and to social and economic innovation. It is a means through which, thanks also to relations established with leading international museums, Italy offers the world an image that is not built on stereotypes, but is composed of creative and dynamic intelligences.

The decrease in public funding is part of a general policy of cutbacks that have been made over the past few years, in a scenario of public allocations to culture that are far lower than those of other European countries. Consequently, AMACI wants to make people aware of the key role of contemporary art in Italy's cultural, social and economic development."

AMACI, Bergamo, December 31, 2010

The 3rd Fashion in Film Festival: Birds of Paradise

Festival Poster

The 3rd Fashion in Film Festival titled "Birds of Paradise" and curated by Marketa Uhlirova is now running in venues accross London--among which are the Tate, the Somerset House, the BFI Southbank, and the Barbican:

"The 3rd Fashion in Film Festival is proud to present Birds of Paradise, an intoxicating exploration of costume as a form of cinematic spectacle throughout European and American cinema.

There will be exclusive screenings of rare and unseen films, plus two special commissions as part of the season: an installation for Somerset House by the award-winning Jason Bruges Studio and a London-wide Kinoscope Parlour, an installation of six peephole machines designed by Mark Garside after Thomas A. Edison’s kinetoscopes.

From the exquisitely opulent films of the silent era, to the sybaritic, lavishly stylised underground films of the 1940s -1970s, costume has, for a long time, played a significant role in cinema as a vital medium for showcasing such basic properties of film as movement, change, light and colour. The festival programme explores episodes in film history which most distinctly foreground costume, adornment and styling as vehicles of sensuous pleasure and enchantment.

"Hemline: the Moving Screen" by Jason Bruges Studio at Somerset House

Experimental films by Kenneth Anger, Jack Smith, Ron Rice, José Rodriguez-Soltero, Steven Arnold and James Bidgood constitute one such episode. Their decadent, highly stylised visions full of lyrical fascination with jewellery, textures, layers, glittering fabrics and make-up unlock the splendour and excess of earlier periods of popular cinema, especially ‘spectacle’ and Orientalist films of the 1920s; early dance, trick and féerie films of the 1890s and 1900s; and Hollywood exotica of the 1940s."

Please, visit their site for full programming.

Students in the Body Garment Track at Parsons IDC present:

by Angeli Sion

Under the theme of love, a group of fourteen emerging artists will present and perform their varied works at Dacia Gallery on the Lower East Side this Saturday, December 11th. The presentation will traverse across diverse media such as video, performance, fashion, books, dolls, zines and illustration.

As students in the Body Garment Track in the Integrated Design Curriculum at Parsons New School for Design, they take inspiration for the exhibition's theme from their core studio titled Love. They describe Love as a "Collaborative collision collage of mammoth love-orgy proportions between 14 creative beings – alive, afoot, and well prepared to be inspired" under the direction of artists and fashion designers Susan Cianciolo and Gabriel Asfour.

The event is from 6:00 PM to 10:00 PM at Dacia Gallery on 53 Stanton Street between Eldridge and Forsyth.

For more information, please visit Dacia Gallery's website

Julie Gilhart leaving Barneys

Julie Gilhart speaking at the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference

It is quite sad to report that Julie Gilhart will no longer be Fashion Director and Senior Vice President at Barneys. Together with Judy Collinson, who will also be leaving Barneys, she championed emerging, often experimental designers in an otherwise often mind-numbing department-store horizon.

What’s more, Gilhart was an early and outspoken supporter of sustainable designers, such as John Patrick Organic and Loomstate, and also, more generally, of sustainable consumption/production practices of good design which followed a realistic tempo for fashion. She often brought Dries Van Noten, an independently owned company and designer, who produces two well-made collections yearly as an example of integrity in design. Gilhart has spoken on the topic of sustainability in design quite extensively, including at the panel Sarah Scaturro and I moderated at Pratt in conjunction with the “Ethics+Aesthetics” exhibition, as well as contributing to our exhibition catalogue. She also spoke at the 2009 Copenhagen Climate Change Conference.

Partially the victim of an incredibly ill-timed over-expansion, Barneys seems to be destined to go down-market or, perhaps more simply in a generic direction. This decision seems an ill-advised attempt at temporarily saving their bottom line while in the long run diluting their brand identity and potentially damaging their bottom line more permanently. (Brands like the Gap and/or American Apparel, albeit completely different in scope, are clear examples of such a downward spiral.)

If that’s the case—and taking away the unique and quirky aesthetic of Gilhart and Collinson from the mix seems to suggest it is—one will be hard-pressed to see why the so-called luxury consumer would shop at Barneys over Net-a-Porter, or, if outside New York, at a department store such as Neiman Marcus.

Francesca