32 posts tagged "Nick Knight"
Barbie Goes Abroad
It would seem that Barbie and co. can’t get enough of the London fashion scene. After receiving a rainbow dye job from East London salon Bleach, as well as a graffitied makeover from Louise Gray, last year, and sending Ken to get some new Gareth Pugh threads in 2009, Barbie has tapped Roksanda Ilincic and Nick Knight’s Showstudio to design her new virtual Dreamhouse. Considering Ilincic, who created a frock for Barbie four years ago in honor of her fiftieth anniversary (left), has a background in architecture, we assume she’s more than qualified for the job. Introduced in 1962, Barbie’s Dreamhouses have, of course, traditionally had a Malibu twist, but the new mini-mansion—set to be revealed later this summer—will pull inspiration from London’s gritty streets. Expect a harder, more subversive edge than the previous plastic abodes, but, knowing Ilincic, no less pink.
Kristen McMenamy Through The Years
As the self-proclaimed “first weird-looking model,” Kristen McMenamy has broken just about every rule there is during her thirty years (and counting) in fashion, which exactly is why we chose to profile her in the new issue of Style.com/Print. Throughout her career, the irreverent icon became renowned for her androgynous appeal, eccentric personality, madwoman-on-a-mission runway walk, and willingness to sacrifice life and limb in pursuit of the elusive perfect picture.
McMenamy was a fixture in the glossies during her nineties heyday (back then, her cropped hair, shaved eyebrows, unconventional features, and sinewy frame made her an ideal poster girl for the grunge movement); she has shot with the likes of Steven Meisel, Richard Avedon, Helmut Newton, Juergen Teller, and Nick Knight, who took the pared-down portraits of her that run in Style.com/Print. Along the way, she has cultivated a support system of designers. “If fashion is her family, then Donatella Versace is her big sister,” writes Jo-Ann Furniss in her profile. That makes Karl Lagerfeld McMenamy’s proverbial father. Lagerfeld did, after all, walk her down the aisle at her ’99 wedding to photographer Miles Aldridge, in addition to casting her in a multitude of campaigns and runway shows.
See them all in our slideshow roundup of McMenamy’s career highlights >
Daphne Guinness Sings the Blues
Artist, producer, muse—all words that describe Daphne Guinness. But soprano? Well, there’s a bolt from the blue. Last night, Guinness unveiled her first single (on vinyl, no less), “Fatal Flaw,” at Nick Knight’s SHOWstudio in London’s Belgravia neighborhood—a fitting setting for the reveal, as Knight actually filmed and live-streamed Guinness singing opera last year. (The shoot resulted in five short films that were played in the windows of the French department store Printemps.) Yesterday evening’s event also served as the opening of SHOWcabinet, an intensely personal display case within the SHOWstudio gallery (consider it like an old-time curiosity cabinet) where artists present objects that have mattered throughout their lives.
Guinness is the first to take a turn in Knight’s SHOWcabinet, and the pieces on view indeed tell the story of her life: an ornate armored glove that she created over the span of five years in collaboration with Shaun Leane, a beloved Gareth Pugh leather cage jacket, and some works from Percy Bysshe Shelley and Shakespeare—her constant companions over the years.
Here, in an exclusive interview, Guinness and Knight speak with Style.com about why she decided to bare her soul—and her vocal chords.
Daphne, who knew you were a singer, and a soprano no less. Did you have any formal training?
Daphne Guinness: I wasn’t trained at all—I just made the song up, by mistake actually. If anything, I probably trained myself by listening over the years. I have a four-and-a-half-, nearly five-octave range. I probably should have had extra lessons as a child, as I am certain my family heard my potential, but I didn’t. I was in the choir as a schoolgirl, but really, it is all self-taught.
Why music now?
DG: After children, I had a break in my top range, as my diaphragm dropped because it naturally stretched out. I couldn’t make that jump to singing smoothly. Holding a note is a very difficult thing—you have to use your whole body to achieve a perfect pitch. So my singing languished a bit, but it has always been there. I know it sounds ridiculous when I say I am not a fashion person, because of course I am, but music has a complete effect on me, and the time was ripe to reacquaint myself with it. I suppose I am known for being very visual, but I realized that, for me, it’s all about sound.
Nick Knight: What is interesting is that very few people know that music and sound are really a fundamental part of you. But I do think there is a lot of crossover in the senses, especially with sound and sight. For instance, when I am creating an image, I am actually subliminally looking for a tone or sound, which I don’t hear, but see. So when I get a great picture, in fact I am hearing this perfectly harmonious sound. It’s almost like I am tuning one of my pictures like an instrument. So there is a lot of swap-over between the senses. Unfortunately, we are so conditioned to use one sense for one thing, when actually it is a whole mixture of senses at play in an artistic process. Continue Reading “Daphne Guinness Sings the Blues” »
Ming Xi in 3-D
Nick Knight—famed photographer, founder of SHOWstudio, and all-around digital fashion maverick—has always been ahead of the curve. So no one expected his Spring ’13 campaign for Chinese luxury retailer Lane Crawford to be a traditional photo spread. This season, Knight teamed up with stylist Katy England and enlisted model Ming Xi to star in digital images and films, which he created with 3-D scanning. “Three-D is a step toward the future of our visual language, which was why I started SHOWstudio,” Knight told Style.com. Knight has been fascinated with this particular method of image making (it’s also used for video games) for fifteen years and has, in the past, done 3-D scans of Lady Gaga, Kate Moss, and Naomi Campbell. The ads—which will appear online, in outdoor media, and in print this month—make Ming Xi look like some kind of fantastic high-fashion android. Watch her strut her digital stuff in Alexander McQueen (above) and Givenchy (below), exclusively on Style.com.
Fashion’s Bodies, Real And Fake, Get Their Night At The Museum
In French, mannequin is used to describe flesh-and-blood models; in English, it means the artificial dummies used to display clothes. Rarely do the two mannequins exist side by side—except in Kim Cattrall eighties hits—but they will in an upcoming exhibition at the Les Docks space of Paris’ Musée Galliera, Mannequin—Le corps de la mode (“Model: The Body of Fashion”). The exhibition traces the development of the model throughout time, much as the Costume Institute’s 2009 show, “The Model as Muse,” did, and includes both physical mannequins (in the English sense) and photographs by Horst P. Horst, Juergen Teller, Corinne Day, and Nick Knight—and some line-straddlers, like the photo by Guy Bourdin above. She’s alive!