Vintage Dior Campaign

This is perhaps my all times favorite Dior campaign – I love the messages and the way it connects with the client. As far as I’ve dug into the web, it was shot in the late ’70s by Chris von Wangenheim.

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Fetching is your Dior”

 

Magazine from 1938 Giving Tips for Single Women

I know that when you are having your daily dose of glossy magazines you think it has always been like this: pieces of advice, photos to illustrate the stories, dressed up men and women. You are partially right.

This is an article from a magazine in 1938 about single women. We use to read loads of advice of any kind in our press nowadays, but these are simply delicious.

Take a look at some of them.

Credits: Retronaut

Bill Cunningham New York Trailer

“Before the internet and before the likes of fashion bloggers, there was Bill Cunningham, the street-fashion and society chronicler for The New York Times. After 50 years of cycling the streets of the Big Apple with his camera, snapping the great, the good and the stylish, Bill Cunningham is now in front of the lens in this loving and intimate portrait of a remarkable man and a chronicler of a city”

Source: Youtube

Kurt Cobain – The Painter

People who were fascinated by Kurt Cobain’s personality will not be surprised to find out what is the value of his artwork. Four  never-seen-before paintings and a drawing came to the attention of the public when Courtney Love, his wife, decided to auction off the artwork together with several guitars and other belongings. The estimated value of the artwork is $100 million.

Here are two of the paintings that might suggest the ambiguous perception of life that Cobain had.

For more information check The Fix

Five Supermodels in One Place: Another Vogue Cover That Made History

Once upon a time there were five princesses of fashion who never met on the same cover. Each of them had successful careers and people linked them to the meaning of beauty. But as they could not be seen together until Peter Lindbergh came up with this fantastic idea of having Evangelista, Christy Turlington, Naomi Campbell, Cindy Crawford, and Tatjana Patitz on the cover of the British Vogue in January 1990. Furthermore, this was the first step for the “Supermodel Phenomenon”, which was so popular in the ’90s.

 

The story of some of the most famous photos in the world of fashion photography was as simple as that – Lindbergh only wanted to bring a new interpretation of women. And he did it. His black&white photos are created with a technique inspired from the early German cinema and manage to show the beauty of the ’90s supermodels in a natural way.

Je suis Winnie l’Ourson

You might think this collection of photos is nothing but an irony to the Disney characters that we grew up with. This it would be a sever misunderstanding. The pictorial made by Benjamin Bechet is actually a play with the concept of identity in the way Luigi Pirandello explained it in his book, “One, none, or a hundred thousand”. The main idea is that we cannot have just one, but many identities, according to the perception the others have about us.

This is how Disney characters play different roles to show us that in our society people can be more than we might believe about them. “I have put superheroes, icons, celebrities known throughout the world into these marginal shoes. To serve as a reminder that what you see is never what you get, that people are always more complex, that each identity is only partial and that we are all one, none and a hundred thousand”, he explains on his website.

Photo credits: http://www.viralblender.com/

Source: http://bechet.site.picturetank.com/fr/site/cover/m2330-home.html/

Dali:”I know what I’m eating. I don’t know what I’m doing”

Dali by Philippe Halsman in 1943

Dali was once saying that if you act genius you will be one. If I’m thinking about the people who were considered genius, he is the first  one to cross my mind. Besides the nature of his paintings, he was a showman. He knew how to sell his creations better then nobody else. He promoted himself in such a provocative way that it was practically impossible to ignore him.

The craziest person of the “surrealism crew” was best described in the documentary called “Salvador Dali – a Soft Self Portrait”, made in 1970 by  Jean-Christophe Averty and narrated in English by Orson Welles. The documentary not only tells the story of his life (in few words though), but is also doing a remake of the pictures who made him famous. It is built as a self portrait, as Dali is talking about himself using the third person and acting according to every scene and the subject of his painting. The documentary is basically a a play with surrealism, a hallucinating mise-en-scène.

“It is very normal that nobody understands Dali, because myself never understood my work. Never Dali understood the paintings of Dali, because Dali created only enigmas”, says the artist about his work. He is playing various characters during the movie, trying to remake the micro-universe of some of his paintings.

The movie also makes a better understand about the psychological directions of his work. “All my eccentricities I habitually perpetrate, are the tragic constant of my life. I want to prove I am not the dead brother but the living brother. By killing my brother I immortalize myself”, he explains. You can discover his world here:

Salvador Dali was famous for being so keen on making money. People were even making jokes about the anagram of his name, which was “avida dollars”.

Photo made by Philippe Halsman in 1954

Dali had a collaboration with Walt Disney in the ’40s, working together for a short animated movie called “Destino” Because of objections regarding its content, it was not released by that time, but in 2003.

No matter who was the person next to him, he liked to play the role of the “outrageous’ guy. Here he was next to the french singer Francoise Hardy.

Together with Coco Chanel – as it was a spontaneous photo, maybe he did not have time to use his original attitude that we saw in the previous one.

Gala was the biggest passion of Dali and the muse of most of his art work. He used to say that she saved him from insanity.

Photo: Bettmann/Corbis

Dali- 8 years old

Photo Credits: http://www.all-art.org

http://blog.verdedicieli.com/

htttp://christies.com

http://www.guardian.co.uk/

My Visual Diary – Prague

Trips are like chocolate candies. Once you start eating, you don’t want to stop. When the candies are exquisite, sometimes I keep the wrapping paper and put it aside, as a memory. It’s the same that I do with photos from my trips, I just like to take many pictures when I’m in a new place, so that I can take a look over it whenever I feel nostalgic.

Prague is one of the places that I liked very much. Here are some of the photos that I took (without any artistic intention, just pictures taken with an almost destroyed camera).

“In our age the photographer and not the philosopher is king” – Richard Avedon

Everytime I see a photo by Richard Avedon I wonder what’s the story behind it. On one hand, I am mesmerized by the perfect minimalism that he used when shooting portraits. On the other hand, I really admire him for his originality. His photos makes us ask ourselves “how the hell did he get this idea?”. I am talking here about many surprising photos that also took a hard work, like “Dovima with elephants”, “Ronald Fisher”, the very expressive photos with Coco Chanel or Natasha Kinksi posing nude with a snake.

When I wanted to find out more about the greatness of his work I discovered a documentary that emphasizes everything that I needed to know: stories of his photos, testimonials of  people who knew him, moments of his life.

Here it’s the documentary called “Richard Avedon- Darkness and Light”, made in 1996, while Avedon was still alive.

Dovima with elephants (1955)

Ronald Fisher 1971

Coco Chanel

Photo credits: http://www.designboom.com/history/avedon.html

http://www.temple.edu

Vivienne Westwood, continuitate prin excentricitate

La începutul anilor 90, o creatore de modă primea din partea Reginei Elisabeta a Marii Britanii “Ordinul Imperiului Britanic” într-o rochie transparentă şi fără lenjerie intimă. Undeva între afrontul suprem adresat casei regale şi serviciile deosebite aduse modei britanice se afla Vivienne Westwood, femeia despre  care s-ar fi spus fie că o iubeşti, fie o urăşti, fără cale de mijloc. Succesul nemaipomenit şi popularitatea ei în rândul numeroaselor vedete îi traduc altfel excentricitatea: este mai mult iubită, decât dispreţuită.

În general, o creaţie Vivienne Westwood este corelată cu o apariţie surprinzătoare, cu o imagine şocantă sau cu murumurul presei. La fel s-a întâmplat şi cu personajul Carrie Bradshaw din primul film “Totul despre sex”, care a purtat o rochie de mireasă a creatoarei, ţinută devenită faimoasă atât datorită succesului filmului, cât şi modelului său. Fashion icon-ul Sarah Jessica Parker purtase o creaţie Vivienne Westwood şi nu era singura dintre figurile emblematice ale modei care îşi asociase imaginea cu a ei. Gwen Stefani a declarat la un moment dat că Westwood este designerul său preferat şi că şi-ar da toţi banii pe hainele făcute de ea. “LOVE ANGEL MUSIC BABY” este proiectul la care a ţinut-o foarte aproape pe creatoare.

Marca aceasta a devenit sinonimă, de-a lungul timpului, cu mai multe noţiuni, unele chiar antagonice: punk, senzualitate, sex, eleganţă, rebeliune, dar şi reinventarea stilului britanic. De la primul său magazin, deschis în 1970, până în prezent, Vivienne Westwood a schimbat mai multe stiluri şi mai mulţi parteneri de viaţă, toţi diferiţi, însă toţi influenţând-o într-o anumită măsură. Şi-a păstrat totuşi look-ul curajos, cu părul său portocaliu  şi curajul de a propune societăţii semne de întrebare. De fapt, semne de întrebare a împărţit de când era elevă şi venea la şcoală îmbrăcată complet diferit de colegele sale, lucru considerat scandalos. Se pare că acest cuvânt, “scandalos”, a urmărit-o pe tot parcursul carierei sale, şi atunci când a iniţiat curentul punk, alături de cel de-al doilea soţ al ei, Malcom McLaren, agent al trupei Sex Pistols.  Aşadar, ei îi datorăm stilul britanic adoptat de atâtea mase de tineri, ce a generat nu doar un mod de a îmbrăca haine, cât şi atitudini.

În 1981 lanseaza o altfel de colecţie, sub numele “Pirate”. De această dată designerul pare interesat nu doar de tinereţe şi de cultură urbană, dar şi de tradiţie sau de tehnică. Adaptează ţinutele la modernitate într-un mod unic, prin croieli curajoase, iar prezentarea de la Olympia, Londra, rămâne memorabilă: modelele poartă walkman-uri, pantaloni largi, trecând la o atmosferă hip-hop. Tot de atunci a rămas şi numele magazinului său din 430 King’s Road, “World’s End”, care fusese schimbat în nenumărate rânduri.

Anii 80 au reprezentat schimbări atât în viaţa personală, dar şi în latura sa creativă.  Îşi expune colecţia “Nostalgia of Mud” la Paris, încheie colaborarea cu Malcom McLaren şi lansează “Mini Crini”, prin care aduce un omagiu feminităţii. Accentul pică de această dată pe senzualitate, atrage atenţia asupra taliilor prin crinolina subtilă sau prin liniile delicate. În 1877, muza ei devine regina, “Harris Tweed” revoluţionând ţinutele britanice. Aduce inspiraţia secolului al 18-lea, corsetul pretenţios, alături de jachete  sau alte elemente moderne.  Fluctuaţiile pozitive ale acestor ani culminează cu nominalizarea pe care Westwood o primeşte în 1989 din partea lui John Fairchild, editorul publicaţiei Women’s Wear Daily: unul dintre cei mai buini şase designeri ai lumii, fiind singura femeie dintre ei.

Cu acest titlu, însă fără prea mare suport financiar şi cu încă un soţ lăsat în urmă, pe Carlo D’Amario, îşi începe noul deceniu. Se implică într-o relaţie care o cataloghează, încă o dată, ca excentrică. Alături de studentul de 25 de ani, cu 26 de ani mai tânăr decât ea, pare şi mai atentă la feminitate şi la senzualiate. Urmează colecţii care nu se apropie câtuşi de puţin de convenţional,  se inspiră din sectoare tot mai diferite inclusiv din perioada 1890-1910 din Franţa. Între timp devine profesor la Royal College of Art din Londra, iar în 1999 îşi deschide magazin în districtul SoHo din New York.

Maturizarea nu îi aduce doar colecţii diversificate, dar o plasează şi pe scena celor mai celebri activişti politici. Aceasta luptă pentru dezarmarea nucleară  şi se implică în apărarea drepturilor civile tot cum se pricepe mai bine, adică prin modă: lansează o ediţie limitată de tricouri cu inscripţia: “I AM NOT A TERRORIST, please don’t arrest me”.

Designerul care aduce argumente puternice împotriva consumerismului şi care trăieşte într-un castel, izolată de orice suflu mass-media, nu poate decât să reprezinte o figură emblematică a nonconformismului, a originalităţii, a modei privite printr-un alt ochi, unul curajos şi creator de păreri. Indiferent de păreri însă, atunci când spunem “Punk is not dead”, ne putem aminti şi de Vivienne Westwood.

Surse foto: http://www.awomanofnoimportance.com/2009/05/vivienne-westwood-english-eccentric-and.html

http://www.vogue.co.uk

http://elogedelart.canalblog.com