Thursday 9 August 2012

Remembering Anna Piaggi

It was sad to learn this week of the death of Anna Piaggi, legendary fashion journalist and editor, as famous for her glamorous and extremely experimental dress-sense, as her fashion reportage. Editor of the now-legendary, short-lived illustration-led Vanity during the 1980s, to many of us she was perhaps most famous for her celebrated DP's (Doppie Pagine/Double Pages) that appeared in Vogue Italia, some of which were complied in a book by Thames & Hudson called Anna Piaggi's Fashion Algebra (which I luckily have a copy of still, but I know is now sadly out-of-print, so maybe track one down in your library, or pick up a perhaps now extortinately priced one on E-bay or Amazon!).
I remember vaguely as a fashion undergraduate at London College of Fashion, long back in the mists of time, being in a class where we were watching a documentary, the title of which I have long forgotten, but in which Anna Piaggi appeared, in all her glorious finery. A hysterical laugh went up from my fellow students, which at the time, and still today, I didn't quite understand. While Piaggi may have appeared a ''figure of fun'' to my peers at the time, I found their response rather peculiar, after all fashion is meant to be fun. And wasn't this also the reason we as students of fashion had signed up to such a course, because this was an industry we perceived as fun and glamorous? Besides, if it wasn't for people such as Piaggi who are prepared to stand up and promote the talents of fashion designers, handbag makers, or milliners, how else is their work to be promoted? In many respects Piaggi has played an important role in both Italian and international fashion circles, using her position as an editor/journalist, and as a true patron, to promote this aspect of fashion culture to its fullest extent. While we are all familiar with the role of the ''best dressed'' as promoted in many magazines, Piaggi took this a stage further, becoming a legendary figure on the front row of fashion shows, a joyful spectacle to keep an eye on, amongst the dreary sea of fashion mavens and PRs in their regulatory black and dark sunglasses. Certainly, the fashion weeks will be a much duller place without Piaggi, and she will be sorely missed, since, despite what my peers thought, every class needs its ''clown'' - after all, it's part of what makes life (and fashion!) worth living.

Wednesday 23 May 2012

The View from CPH

Iconic Hotel
Magasin - Department Store
Colour Combination
Window Display
Traditional Tailoring Shop
Designmuseum Danmark

Wednesday 1 February 2012

Fashioning the City RCA 2012

Getting ready to launch the Call for Papers CFP for the upcoming conference I'm organising at the Royal College of Art in September - Fashioning the City: Exploring Fashion Cultures, Structures and Systems. For more info and to apply visit: www.fashioningthecity.wordpress.com

Thursday 12 January 2012

New Year, New Exhibition...


Entrance to the exhibition - Off the Wall


New Year, New Exhibition...it's that time of year again when the annual Work-in-Progress exhibition comes around, which is a key milestone in our academic year here at the RCA. In previous years the fashion and textile's research students (MPhil and PhD) have usually exhibited as part of the larger cohort of fashion and textile MA students. In a new approach, this year as a group we decided to showcase our current working practice within our own self-contained and dedicated gallery area within the much larger exhibition - Off the Wall an exhibition-within-an-exhibition. How successful we have have been you can judge for yourself - since the exhibition is now open everyday from 10.00 - 17.30 until 18th January.

Here below is a brief taster of my own exhibit in the exhibition entitled Antwerpen (Anvers) [Antwerp]: Towards a Case Study, which focuses on one of my ''case study'' cities in my much larger research project looking at the material and materiality of developing that goes into formulating such a case study. The ''mood board'' is a key part of developing fashion collections, and in the spirit of this my exhibit takes the form of a real-life 3-D mood board or collage of material I've collected and is being used to shape and inform my work.


Off the Wall - because everything in the exhibition was exhibited ''off the wall'', suspended from a central hanging rail running through the gallery space


''Mood-board''/''Collage'' of artefacts


Plinth built of fashion magazines Considering the materiality of my research - what are the research materials?


Caramello - The Original Mokatine - bringing to life the sensory experience of Antwerp


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