The work of John Stezaker

John Stezaker is one of those artists I really should have heard of before, but haven't until now.

Mask XXXV

His photocollages are reminiscent of Linder Sterling (click here to read about Sterling at the Crawford Gallery) in the powerful subversion of imagery and the unending questioning of the images around us; what makes the day to day pictures we see, whether in advertising or editorial or promotion, such instruments of influence.

Stezaker (a word more difficult to pronounce that 'licentiate') takes the core elements of a picture and turns them on their heads by splicing in another image that is dischordant - with a weirdly harmonic result.  It tread the line between beautiful/ugly - often both at once.

That's basically an incredibly pretentious way of saying 'I like this artist.  His work is damn cool and I can't stop staring at his pictures'.  Here's some more images of Stezaker's work.  If you happen to be in London, stroll on down to the Whitechapel Gallery, who are hosting a retrospective of his work before it goes on tour.  Click here to listen to a short interview of Stezaker talking about his work

L - Third Person, R - Underworld I

This post is quite photo heavy, so click to see more...

Licentiate Column 03/02/11

Paddy Englishman, Paddy Irishman and Paddy Scotsman walk into a bar. Englishman is wearing a riding habit, resplendent in jodphurs and red jacket. Scotsman is no less magnificent in tweed plus fours, wielding a golf club and swinging his familial tartan scarf over his brawny neck. Paddy Irishman is decked out in a three piece suit in varying shades of emerald green and pristine patent slippers, offset with unnecessarily large silver buckles.

Who's the odd one out? Surprise, surprise, it's the Irishman. While all three men are exemplary cliches, only the Irishman's clothing has no basis in fact whatsoever. Englishmen have been known to wear riding habits and some Scottish people don tweed from time to time (where do you think Chanel got the idea for all those suits?) but the Jolly Green Getup? That territory has been untouched by Irish Man, with the possible exception of Paul Galvin.

What is Irish style? The French have their innate chicness and tendency to favour quality over quantity, the Americans their cult of grooming and the English their mix of heritage and eccentricity. What do the Irish have that marks them out from everyone else? Could you pick out an Irish person in a foreign country if they weren't wearing a hurling jersey and a bad case of sunburn?

It's not that we don't have a long tradition of manufacturing distinctly Irish clothing. We did that hundreds of years ago and still do now- it's just that the Irish message has got lost in translation in an effort to engage in global communication. Consider the Aran jumper; originating from the Aran Islands in the west of Ireland. Even the stitches are imbued with a Celtic mysticism. The cable in the cable knit signifies an integral part of the Aran fishermen's trade as well as a talisman to ensure safety while on the sea. How much does this matter to the Topshop stylist who believes that they are an integral part of Scottish life, as well as being totally on trend? Zilch. Zippo. Zip.

Irish clothing also has the tendency to assimilate with the style of other countries. Take the brogue, the most famous manufacturer of which is Church's, a quintessentially British brand. Church's brogues come with different tips, perforations and colours, English stamps on an Irish template. It's not a bad thing (if it's good enough for Alexa Chung, it's definitely good enough for me) but a smidge of Gaelic recognition wouldn't go awry. The same goes for Irish lace and linens, Donegal tweeds, sturdy woolens and intricate Celtic patterns.

But what gives an Irish person her style? I don't think that it's as easy as popping on a geansaí; it's something else - indistinct, but still indelible. I don't think that Irish style is truly represented by the beaming, perma-tanned, body-conned lovelies that we often see hanging off rugby players or doing promotions for Bavaria on Stephen's Green.

For me, great Irish style is loose and slightly rumpled, like a poet taking in a liquid lunch in a boreen. The look is always slightly undone; hair is loose and natural, a top button on a shirt must never be done up. It's well put together, nicely thought but never overwrought. Low maintenance,high impact. It's always been there, so we don't think to much about it or wonder why other people don't notice.

We're so laid back that we don't question the implications of our appearance. And, with the typical luck of the Irish, it's that laid back casualness that makes Irish style great.

The Clothes On Their Backs

Riccardo Tisci's Givenchy couture offerings this season were all about Asian influence. It's little wonder, because Asia and all the rich facets of it's culture are slowly permeating Western consciousness. Asia also has a major commercial influence, what with Prada joining the ever-increasing ranks of companies choosing to list in Hong Kong as opposed to their home markets.

This collection draws on a LOT of Asian influences (butoh, Kazuo Ohno, anime, embroidery, cranes, dragons... the list goes on) but I'm really interested in (as far as my incredibly amateurish, untrained eyes can see) the samurai and origami influences.

Japanese samurai circa 1870

When you go on websites that feature this collection and the insano, day-glo Philip Treacy headgear, the comments section is inevitably clogged with cries of 'VIKING!' - you can really see the influence of the samurai helmets.  Irrelevant note alert - One of my favourite places to go in the V&A Museum in London is the Japanese section to look at all the samurai uniform.  It's all so intricate and well crafted.  Every aspect of the samurai uniform is carefully considered; every colour, every fold, every image has a cultural or practical significance.  Perhaps it's this attention to detail that aligns it so well with Givenchy.

Samurai circa 1880

You can really see the samurai and origami influences in the sharpness and angularity of the shoulders.  The pink motif above looks like it could be a representation of a samurai helmet (or a backpack in the shape of a bug if you think about it in a Rorschach kinda way).  I love the pristine whiteness of this dress.  It's like a fresh piece of paper begging to be folded into all sorts of magical shapes.

Origami samurai helmets

The headgear made so much more sense when I saw these mini samurai helmets made out of paper.  I know that it's supposed to be based on robots... but I like thinking it's an origami samurai helmet.  Let me have my wrongfooted delusion, ok?  Here is a link if you want to make a tiny samurai helmet and wear it on your finger.

I'm not very good at conclusions, so let me just say that the Givenchy collection is beautiful and batshit crazy.  Just the way I like it.

2010 Roundup - favourites, highlights and everything in between

It's that time again.  Sluggish bloggers, slowed down into a cosy Christmas chrysalis are sloughing off the excess of too many mince pies and slices of blue cheese and evaluating the year in order to burst into 2011 a beautiful blog butterfly.  Like the alliteration?  I wrote it just for you.  Here's my 2010 'best of' blog mixtape.

Blog Highlights:  I started this blog in March with the aim of sharing what I liked and meeting a few like-minded people.  In the space of a few short months, I've racked up readers from around the world, landed a fashion column, learned a hell of a lot about the fashion industry, joined the Vice Blogging Network, went to London Fashion Week, networked like a mad thing, was mentioned as one of Ireland's most influential bloggers and made some truly exceptional, hilarous and supportive friends.  All of this due to blogging aspersions.  So, to my readers, I'd like to say a massive THANK YOU!  You guys are the best.  Seeing all your comments really brightens up my day.

(source)

Click 'Read More' to, ehm, read more, look at nice pictures and watch some fashion films...

Mixtapes @ The Glucksman - A closer look at Linder

This post has been a long time coming, and I certainly hope that I can do the subject justice, as I now schedule what must be the millionth post tonight before I head to London.



Last week I took a wander with my friend Hayret to the Glucksman Gallery, situated smack bang in the middle of a leafy enclave in the UCC campus grounds. Our target was the Mixtapes exhibition, which explores contemporary art through the work of artists who are heavily influenced by music.

It's fairly safe to assume that a majority of art is visual, and so the art involved is not so much involved with music itself as the visual aspects of music, like dancing, instruments, album covers and of course, the fashion that separates out followers of one musical tribe from another.  One of the things that drew me to punk as a young'un (and at a later stage, No Wave) was how different the clothing was to everyone elses.  It might seem like a shallow response, but that's because it is.  In my defense though, ask yourself, 'would Lady Gaga be half as interesting if she wore Clarks and sensible sack dresses instead of JC de Castelbajac and Thierry Mugler'?


Dancehall Danceoff from Sarah Doyle on Vimeo.

Sarah Doyle's artwork plays on a loop (I think her stuff will most definitely merit a much longer post when I have the time), zooming in and out on watercoloured ladies gyrating in tight denim, crop tops and bikinis to a tinny, merry-go-round sound.

The one artist that I came to see though, had her work displayed under glass at a small display table.  Here were a few works of Linder Sterling, an artist I knew from her simultaneously jarring and sexy collages from the late seventies to early eighties.  Like Cosi Fanni Tutti, but less obvious, or Duchamps with a decidedly feminist bent, Sterling succeeds where others have failed.  She manages to create a cohesive feminist statement, but remains a part of mainstream consciousness.  Her early work was concerned with music and her collages were used as covers for Buzzcocks singles, but today her work has been more broadly translated into fashion, with Richard Nicoll using her prints to form the basis of his A/W '09 collection.

Richard Nicoll's A/W '09 Collection.  Pics - style.com 

It isn't such a big jump from music to fashion and we can see that Sterling's work is easily applied to both.

Left - Sterling in 1981.  Right - Sterling's cover of i-D, October '09

Take the Punk Ladies series for example.  Sterling takes a photo and makes two different collages, the focus being on the new and different textures that are added to the clothes. 

The original photo

One of the resulting collages.

Want to see the other collage?  It's one in a series of three posters promoting the exhibition.  I've got one, which is tacked up safely on my fridge.  If you want to see it, maybe you should check out the exhibition or the Glucksman website (I know, I'm such a spoilsport).  Last I heard the posters were given away for free by patrons who mentioned the gallery's twitter feed, but this may not be the case anymore.  Free swag or no, it's still a must-see and Linder Sterling's work alone makes this well worth visiting.
The exhibition itself is well worth a visit and runs until October, should you want to spent a diverting afternoon learning, getting your fill of culture and generally having good, clean fun.

Anyone seen this?

The new M.I.A video for XXXO, which is being hailed by some as a new height in retro 80's cheese or a damning indictment of social networking sites (depending on whoever's overblown Youtube comment you want to believe).

Personally though, I like the video and have to give serious props to M.I.A for her style chops, She knows what she likes and doesn't listen to anyone else's opinion, which can only be commended.

What do you think? Retro throwback or MySpace circa 2007 nightmare?

Kinderwhore - not as original as one might think

So, for most people, the word kinderwhore brings to mind images of Courtney Love and Kat Bjelland wearing torn, dirty baby doll dresses and thick smeared red lipstick with messy, peroxide-blonde hair. Bad little girls up to no good.





People might think that Both Love and Bjelland have fought about who came up with the disengenuous combo of clumsy make-up with children's clothing, Love even going as far as to allegedly say that she got it from Christina Amphlett on the cover of the Divinyls 1982 album, Desperate.



Erm, yeah. Totally.

But I'd like to introduce you to the granny and grand dame of Kinderwhore.







Bette Davis in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? She is the result of a dirty battle between mutton and lamb with a crooked referee. Baby Jane is duplicitous, nasty, childish, impetuous and a terrible singer. More than a coincidence that Hole and Babes in Toyland chose to adopt this image?

Weinerdog: Welcome To The Dollhouse

There are some films with iconic style that you want to emulate, and then there are some films where the clothing just makes you want to cry.

One of these films (for me at least) is Todd Solondz's film Welcome To The Dollhouse, which is about nerdy Dawn Wiener and her trials and tribulations as she navigates the perils of being the biggest loser in middle school.

It sounds like a cliche, but this is a Todd Solondz film. There is no happy ending. Dawn doesn't fall down a well, or discover the redemptive power of being herself, or uncover pirate gold in a hidden cavern under the school. It's bleak and black, and like most bleak and black moments in life, is almost too unbearably funny to handle. If you ever, ever had a tough time in school, watch this film, re-evaluate just how shitty it really was and possibly thank your lucky stars that all you got was Ribena poured into your schoolbag and not rape threats.

The clothes in this film really serve to highlight just what a terrible time Dawn has. Her tees, earrings and backpacks are plastered with fluorescent yellow smiley faces and her many jumpsuits are floral-patterned and cloyingly cute.  She wears pink and trainers and ankle socks and all the kids in school hate her because she has no social skills whatsoever and gets good grades (sniff sniff violins etc).

Dawn is backed into a toliet cubicle and told to shit (nice) with the door open.  The ties on her frilled floral dress and her childish figure inside it makes us see that she's just a pre-adolescent, which makes the command even more shocking.  Her aggressor's name is Lolita, nice aside, eh?





















There are no words for this outfit.  This is possibly Dawn's first crack at dressing like an adult, or at least like the kids versions of adults that float around her school.

Poor Dawn's problem is that she's still a little girl being herself in a world of little girls who were becoming sexualised and going into adolescence.  The other girls at her school wear cheerleader outfits, lipstick, shorts, tights and crop tops while Dawn stays staid in her cotton sprigged little-girl-lost suits.  She has a clubhouse while all the other kids in her grade are going to pool parties.

Weirdly enough, some of this stuff is not too far off the faux-naif look that a lot of adult women sport and a million miles away from the frankly disturbing outfits I see on some girls in the city whenever a teenage club night rolls around.

WWDVD? (What Would Diana Vreeland Do?)

I don't work in an office, but a memo of this kind would really brighten up my day.  Another testament to the genius of Diana Vreeland...

These memos were recently discovered (see full post on refinery29) - I wonder if there's more floating around?




However, these recently leaked American Apparel employee contracts make me feel a bit ill in that 'something-heavy-like-a-stone-in-the-pit-of-my-stomach' kind of way.



Full post and information on Gawker.  Please read it - it's very interesting.

The first thing that shocks me (apart from the spelling - Dock Martins anyone? And what is 'chique'? Is that really a word?) is not the fact that they tell their employees what to wear.  As a rule, retailers will make their employees wear company stock.

What is odd is that they don't want American Apparel employees wearing some American Apparel clothing because it "wrecks the image American Apparel are trying to portray".  Without being too crude - are you fucking kidding me?

Employees have been weighing in over at Gawker over unfair and slightly weird recruitment policies, which involve taking several photos of employees and encouraging managers to fire current employees who no longer fit the physical profile (this includes eyebrows, nail colour, slightly scary ethnic profiling and having chests too big to carry off crop tops).

This kills me, because I have a totally shallow love for American Apparel clothing.  I own a LOT of AA bits and pieces.  I love the block colours and the mix-and-matchability.  And I loved it in spite of the ridiculous sizing (European 12, US 8 is a size large).  I loved it even though the dollar to euro mark-up was not inconsiderable.  I loved it even though the founder, Dov Charney is apparently just like this...




There's no clothing quite like American Apparel.  But this kind of news just makes me feel like 1) I'm being told I'm not good enough for this stuff because I'm large of chest and 2) the new standards are abhorrent. This ranks a ten on the Abercrombie and Fitch ranking of creepy high-street retailers.

So, this is a serious question.  What would Diana Vreeland do?

How very Insightful

I'm not really a bikini person.  They're just not for me.  This bikini aversion isn't due to low self esteem or disgust at belly baring or the fact that Irish weather is generally so mild that a trip to the beach usually requires a wooly jumper and a thermos of piping hot soup after a brisk dip in the Atlantic.

My problem with the bikini is that I tend to fall out of them.  And I don't play volleyball.  I have to hold onto my sides every time I flip a page of a book while wearing a bikini just in case my strategically placed triangles of cloth held together with floss come loose.  I can't even think about any motion that involves even the slightest wobbling.

Being of the DD+ persuasion (not as much fun as you'd think), swimsuit options are very tight.  Wear a bikini, and risk exposure.  Wear a DD bikini top, and look like you decided to go for a swim in a Marks and Sparks bra.  Most one pieces are either a) utilitarian Speedo-type things, b) high-cut on the hips a la Baywatch circa 1996, c) have those cut outs at the side and front, which make for interesting tribal print tan lines or d) self-consciously retro (which would be my second choice).

Blissfully bereft of all these cliches, I give you the Insight swimwear collection.  I might actually get to venture into the sea this year.






Photos - Insight at ASOS