BIG in the ROM Costume and Textile Gallery

BIG at the ROM with John Galliano for Dior Spring/Summer 2011
Photo by Ingrid Mida 2012

This exquisite couture outfit by John Galliano for Dior from Spring/Summer 2011 is the centrepiece of the latest installation called BIG which will open at the Royal Ontario Museum's Patricia Harris Textile Gallery of Textiles and Costume on November 3, 2012.

Crinolines and corsets are back....Alexander McQueen Spring/Summer 2013

In Sarah Burton's exploration of the feminine silhouette for Alexander McQueen Spring/Summer 2013, the body has been transformed by the extraneous supra-structures of the crinoline and corset. Playing with transparency and concealment, Burton has carved out a wasp-waisted, hyper-feminine look, reminiscent of the crinoline craze in the mid-19th century and Dior's New Look in the mid-20th century.

Alexander McQueen Spring/Summer 2013

The designer said: “The collection is a study of femininity. We looked at erotica. Vargas girls, cages, corsets and crinolines and the idealisation of the female form. Nothing is set in a particular period. It’s about sensuality and skin but not nudity. We also wanted to express lightness, for the clothes almost to hover over the women who wear them.”

Creative Process Journal: Fashion Images and McQueen Backstage by Anne Deniau

New York Times Style Section Page 8, Sunday, September 9, 2012
Photo by Anne Deniau

A red and white strapless evening gown by Alexander McQueen hangs on a clothes rack. The dress is reminiscent of a Dior's New Look with a skirt is so enormous that the dress takes up half the space on the rack. The dress is ready for the runway, waiting for the model who will wear this glamourous confection and fill it with life. A small head shot is visible on a runway log. Until then, the dress hangs like a disembodied form - the deep red of the bodice and skirt front reminiscent of blood. The high contrast of the lighting creates patterns of light and dark across the image, with the huge shadows from the dress filling more than a third of the frame.

Harold Koda on Fashion in the Art Museum at the Bata Shoe Museum Founder's Lecture

Harold Koda (Photo by Karin Willis)

Last night, Sonja Bata introduced The Founder's Lecture series at the Bata Shoe Museum in Toronto as being part of a new initiative to bring "one truly outstanding personality" related to fashion to speak about their work. Harold Koda, the "rock star of fashion curators",  is the curator in charge of the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, was the first speaker in the series.

Harold's talk was entitled "The Arrangement: Fashion in the Art Museum" and traced the history of the costume collection at the Met from its earliest incarnation in 1947 as a resource collection for the fashion industry through to the present as one of the largest costume collections in the world.

The history of the Costume Institute is a story of personalities - from Diana Vreeland through to Richard Martin and Harold himself. An engaging speaker, both brilliant and humble, Harold kept all of us in rapt attention throughout his talk.

The 18th Century Back in Fashion

Maison Christian Dior (f/w 2004-2005 on left and f/w 2007-2008 on right)

The extreme silhouettes, elaborate trimmings, and pouf hairstyles of the French Court dress in the 18th Century have served as a rich source of inspiration for haute couture and ready to wear fashion designers like Vivienne Westwood, Yves Saint Laurent, Karl Lagerfeld, Azzedine Alaia, Alexander McQueen and others. In an exhibition called The 18th Century Back in Fashion at the Palace of Versailles, original garments from that period have been shown alongside the modern interpretations to demonstrate the influence of the 18th century on contemporary fashion.

An Exhibition Review of Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Photograph by Solve Sundsbo/Art + Commerce
Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art

It was a day I'll never forget. While at the Metropolitan Museum's press preview of Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty,  I rubbed shoulders with Harold Koda, Philip Treacy, Hamish Bowles, Suzy Menkes, and Anna Wintour.  Read my review for Fashion Projects  here.

Alexander McQueen's Savage Beauty at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Alexander McQueen Dress, autumn/winter 2010
Photograph by Solve Sundsbo/Art+Commerce
courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art

At 10 am on Monday morning, I will be handing over my assignment letter from Fashion Projects to the press officer at the Metropolitan Museum of Art to gain admittance to the press preview of Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty.

The exhibition will feature 100 ensembles and 70 accessories which span the period from McQueen's postgraduate presentation in 1992 until his death in 2010. Some items have been borrowed from collectors, models and friends of the designer but most of the items come from the McQueen and Givenchy archives. I'll be writing my review for Fashion Projects tomorrow and will post the link here soon thereafter.



The show opens to the public on Wednesday, May 4th and runs until July 31, 2011.

Make it McQueen Times Two

The Duchess of Cambridge and The Duchess of Cornwall before the Wedding Supper

One McQueen was not enough. The Duchess of Cambridge chose to change into another exquisite McQueen gown for the wedding supper. With her hair down, a jewel encrusted belt and an angora bolero sweater, she looks like a happy bride ready to party.
While neither gown really looks like the avant-garde stuff of a McQueen runway show, no doubt both gowns have the details of workmanship and tailoring that define the McQueen label.
Sarah Burton must be ready to collapse with exhaustion. She only has a few days to recover before the Costume Institute gala and the official opening of the McQueen exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art  on Wednesday. The Met blog is up and running if you want a sneak peak before my review. Check it out here.

Make it McQueen

Sarah Burton adjusting the dress

It was elegant, it was tasteful and it was McQueen.

According to the official press release, "Miss Middleton chose British brand Alexander McQueen for the beauty of its craftsmanship and its respect for traditional workmanship and the technical construction of clothing.  Miss Middleton wished for her dress to combine tradition and modernity with the artistic vision that characterises Alexander McQueen’s work.  Miss Middleton worked closely with Sarah Burton in formulating the design of her dress."

The happy couple

I have to applaud Miss Catherine Middleton,  not only for her choice of gown but also for her incredible grace, poise and elegance. While she seemed to be channeling Grace Kelly, she clearly is a modern woman who knows her mind and I look forward to watching her bring a fresh sensibility to the royal family.

The royal bride's choice of McQueen sets the stage for next week's upcoming McQueen retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. I'll be attending the press preview of Savage Beauty on Monday morning and filing my review for Fashion Projects soon thereafter. Stay tuned!

My Fantasy Fashion Calendar for 2011

A new year always holds so much promise and potential. This is my fantasy calendar for the first half of 2011.

Fashioning Fashion 

I'd begin my tour in Los Angeles to attend  the fifth R. L. Shep Triennial Symposium on Textiles and Dress entitled On Fashioning a Collection: Vision and Viewpoints at LACMA. This event which will be held on Saturday, January 15 begins at 10:00 am and  will focus on the museum's recently acquired collection of European costumes and textiles. Held in conjunction with the exhibition, Fashioning Fashion: European Dress in Detail, 1700–1915, currently on view, this daylong program features international scholars Akiko Fukai (Director and Chief Curator, Kyoto Costume Institute) and Pamela Golbin (Chief Curator, Twentieth Century and Contemporary Collections, Musée de la Mode et du Textile, Les Arts Décoratifs, Musée du Louvre, Paris) as well as Fashioning Fashion co-curator Sharon Takeda and other experts in the field. Rounding out the program will be a conversation between curators and collectors as well as presentations by LACMA experts. The symposium is free but tickets are required. Please call 323 857-6010 to reserve a ticket.

My next stop would be at Loop Gallery in Toronto to see my series of limited edition black and white chromogenic photographs on display in a show I called Vanitus Vanitum: All is Vanity.  These photographs reference the transitory nature of beauty and life and seek to portray a journey of grief and acceptance. My opening reception is on Saturday, January 22 and the show runs until February 13.

Chanel 2010

On Sunday, January 23rd, I'd fly to Paris to attend the Spring Summer 2011 Haute Couture designer runway presentations which run from Monday, January 24th to January 27th. Of course, I'd have front row seats at the Dior show on January 24th at 2 pm and Chanel on January 25th at 11 am.

In March, I'd jet back to Paris for the Fall Winter 2011-2012 Ready to Wear runway presentations which run March 1-9th. Then it would be off to San Francisco to attend the opening on March 26th of the exhibition Balenciaga: Spanish Master at the de Young Museum. This exhibition which originally opened at the Queen Sofia Spanish Institute in New York will be expanded to include more garments from the Spanish couturier Cristobal Balenciaga. The show runs until July 11th.

In May, I'd attend the retrospective of Lee Alexander McQueen's work at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. This exhibition entitled Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty opens May 4 and will run until  July 31, 2011 and features approximately 100 garments created during the designers 19 year career. Signature pieces such as the bumster trouser, the kimono jacket, and the origami frock coat will be on display along with a selection of garments from the Alexander McQueen archive, the Givenchy archive, and private collections.

This is my fantasy.... It's a full schedule, but I'd make it work if I had to ;)

What I'm Reading (and not Reading) This Week

Isabella Blow, one of the fashion world's brightest lights, committed suicide in May 2007. It has been said that her untimely death weighed heavily on Alexander McQueen, who spurned his friend when he sold his label to Gucci. Two books were recently released about Isabella and I chose Blow by Blow which was written by her husband Detmar Blow with Tom Sykes (brother of Vogue editor Plum Sykes). While Isabella had a difficult and painful childhood, what was even more painful was to read the authors spin on it. The tenor of this book is whiny, unimaginative and unpleasant. Detmar manages to insert himself into the story as much as possible, name-dropping on every page and making the story more about him than about Isabella. I could not finish the book even though I read to page 190. I really wanted to like this book but I cannot recommend it.

In stark contrast to the blow-hard style of Blow by Blow is the witty and poignant memoir written by Toronto gallery owner Leo Kamen called Rolling the Bones. 

Like most creative people, Leo Kamen had a difficult childhood, but he writes about his experiences with a degree of detachment and humour, allowing readers to laugh along with him.  His direct style and deft touch with the pen moved the story along and kept me engaged. There is no bitterness or rancour in Leo's memoir and his fighting spirit and joie de vive make me wish I knew him better. His descriptions of people and places are vivid and amusing. For example:

"Mrs. Fluck, our grade eight art teacher, was as thin as a stalk of asparagus. She dressed in long sweaters and grey skirts. Whenever she spoke, she sounded as if she had cotton gauze stuck up her nose. I had vague ideas about what artists were like, but Mrs. Fluck didn't fit the bill. I assumed she went straight home every day after school, wrapped herself up in a housecoat and crawled into a can of sardines for dinner. Only her name, cursed as it was with one too many consonants, gave her a racy reputation she didn't deserve. I never created anything of artistic note in her classes, though towards the end of the year I managed a ceramic lion that bore a striking resemblance to our family cat. I glazed it bright spinach green and placed it on top of our television set at home, where it remained for years." 

Rolling the Bones is available at the Leo Kamen Gallery in Toronto and in e-book format at www.leokamenauthor.com. There also is a contest on Akimbo which runs until December 9th offering three books to lucky winners.

Title: Rolling the Bones, a memoir
Author: Leo Kamen
Publisher: General Karma, Toronto
Category: Non-fiction, Memoir
Number of Pages: 248

Savage Beauty by Alexander McQueen

Fall 2008 Collection of Alexander McQueen

The work of the late Lee Alexander McQueen will be the subject of the spring 2011 exhibition at the Costume Institute of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. This exhibition will celebrate McQueen’s contributions to fashion from his Central Saint Martins postgraduate collection in 1992 to his final runway presentation, which took place only weeks after his death in February 2010. Titled Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty, the exhibition will celebrate the work of  McQueen in challenging and expanding the scope of fashion from mere beautiful clothes to a conceptual expression of culture, politics, and identity.

This exhibition will be on view from May 4 through July 31, 2011 and will be preceded on May 2 by The Costume Institute Gala Benefit. The evening’s Honorary Chairs are François-Henri Pinault and Salma Hayek, and the Co-Chairs will be Colin Firth, Stella McCartney, and Anna Wintour.

Here is an extract of the press release describing what will be on display:


The exhibition, in the Metropolitan Museum’s second-floor Cantor Galleries, will feature approximately 100 examples of Mr. McQueen’s work from his prolific 19- year career. Drawn primarily from the Alexander McQueen Archive in London, with some pieces from the Givenchy Archive in Paris as well as private collections, signature designs including the bumster trouser, the kimono jacket, and the Origami frock coat will be on view. McQueen’s fashions often referenced the exaggerated silhouettes of the 1860s, 1880s, 1890s, and 1950s, but his technical ingenuity always imbued his designs with an innovative sensibility that kept him at the vanguard.


Galleries will showcase recurring themes and concepts in McQueen’s work beginning with “The Savage Mind” which will examine his subversion of traditional tailoring and dressmaking practices through displacement and deconstruction. “Romantic Gothic” will highlight McQueen’s narrative approach to fashion and illuminate his engagement with Romantic literary traditions such as death, decay, and darkness. It will also reveal the main characters of his collections, including femme fatales and anti-heroes such as pirates and highwaymen. “Romantic Nationalism” will look at McQueen’s fascination with the distant past, while “Romantic Exoticism” will examine his focus on distant places. “Romantic Primitivism” will explore McQueen’s engagement with the ideal of the “noble savage.”


Five of McQueen’s landmark collections that explore his engagement with the Romantic sublime and the dialectics of beauty and horror will be interspersed among the galleries -- Dante (autumn/winter 1996-97), Number 13 (spring/ summer 1999), Voss (spring/summer 2001), Irere (spring/summer 2003), and Plato’s Atlantis (spring/summer 2010). “Cabinet of Curiosities” will include various atavistic and fetishized objects often produced with milliner Philip Treacy and jeweler Shaun Leane, longtime collaborators of McQueen’s. A separate screening room will display videos of McQueen’s renowned runway presentations. 

Made with Love Atelier in Memory of Lee Alexander McQueen

In collaboration with the LABoratoire Créatif and the Canadian Mental Health Association, Made With Love Atelier is presenting an event in Montreal today that will honour the memory of the late Lee Alexander McQueen. Five Canadian designers,  Cluc Couture, Chiara, Jean-Paul Corbeil, Héricher and Helmer will create haute couture looks in front of the audience.  The passion and intense creative energy intrinsic to a designer’s studio will be on stage for all to view.  The outfits created will later be photographed as part of the evening events.

This fundraiser for the Canadian Mental Health Association will take place at 207 De la Commune which is adjacent to the Pointe-à-Callière Museum. Tickets are $15 for access from 3 to 5 pm or $25 for access for the evening 3 to 11 pm. Profits will go towards increasing mental health awareness.

The late Lee Alexander McQueen committed suicide in February of this year. Although his bouts of depression and anxiety were common knowledge, it only recently was revealed that he had attempted drug overdose twice before. If you live in Montreal, support mental health awareness by attending this event.

Links:
http://www.enjoymadewithlove.com
http://www.twitter.com/_MadeWithLove_
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=116930595017447

Back to the Drawing Board

10 minute Sketch of 18th Century Lady on Book Paper in Pencil by Ingrid Mida 2009

My first memory of making art goes back to age 9 when I copied drawings by Michelangelo with a stubby pencil on discarded envelopes. I continued to use scrap paper and the margins of my notebooks  to draw whenever I could and it was my drawing skills that earned me a spot in architecture at university. But somewhere along the way, I stopped drawing, thinking it more of a preliminary tool for painting than for an art form unto itself.

The death of Alexander McQueen caused me to stop and think. I also surprised myself after a recent interview when I was asked what part of my art practice gives me the most pleasure. Without hesitation, I answered drawing even though I rarely do it anymore. And then yesterday, I met with a prominent Canadian artist who looked at the sketches pinned up on my studio wall and told me my drawings were "exquisite" and suggested that I draw my own versions of toile de jouy. I laughed but what she said kept me up half the night thinking about the possibility.

I think it is time to put down my mantle of mourning and get back to the drawing board.

Me and McQueen

 McQueen Corset, Copyright of Ingrid Mida 2010

Lee Alexander McQueen: 1969 - 2010

Breaking News: The Death of Alexander McQueen

How can it be?  This morning Alexander McQueen was found dead in his apartment having committed suicide by hanging. Reports say that he was distraught over the recent death of his mother. No stranger to the dark side,  he often used darkness and ugliness as sources of inspiration for his highly theatrical presentations. He recently said "beauty can come from the strangest places."

I  am at a loss for the proper words. The world has lost one of its greatest talents. May he rest in peace in the company of his beloved mother and his friend Isabella Blow (who committed suicide 3 years ago).

Photos: Fall 2008 Collection of Alexander McQueen

Crinolines in Contemporary Fashion

Elsa Shiaparelli's 1950 dress

In spite of its impracticality, the crinoline has occasionally resurfaced in contemporary fashion. In the post-war period, when traditional female roles were emphasized and female curves were celebrated, Elsa Schiaparelli, Balmain, Christian Dior, Jacques Fath, Yves Saint Laurent and others created gowns mirroring the influence of the bell-shaped skirts of the Second Empire.

More recently, designers have used the crinoline for inspiration. Vivienne Westwood designed a whole collection called the mini-Crini collection in 1987. John Galliano created a gown in black silk with a skirt nine feet wide in 1998 and Alexander McQueen created this spun-sugar-like shell reinforced by plastic in his 2000 collection for Givenchy.

Alexander McQueen for Givenchy Haute Couture, Spring-summer 2000

And check out this confection from the latest collection of Giles Deacon.

A crinoline is a beautiful object in and of itself and creates a striking sculptural effect. And those that chose to wear them, whether for bridal wear or a fancy dress ball, can swish about in their full skirts celebrating the timeless element of seduction created by a garment with a heightened sense of femininity.