13 posts tagged "Selfridges"
A Night At The (Fashion) Pictures
As creative director of her family’s business, Selfridges’ Alannah Weston has turned the massive department store on London’s Oxford Street into her private fiefdom of fun with a series of large-scale events that have brought together artists, filmmakers, musicians, and designers in the name of underscoring the store’s retail vision. Wednesday night saw one of the smartest, artiest events yet, to mark the opening of the Women’s Designer Galleries. Curator Emma Reeves commissioned a set of short films to interpret seven of the collections carried in the new space. The single criterion? A strong female character at the heart of each film. For Ann Demeulemeester, for instance, Michael Pitt filmed his fiancée, Jamie Bochert, as a wraithlike figure moving through the desert (top), like a contemporary version of Isabelle Eberhardt, the 19th-century French traveler who inspired the designer’s collection. For Comme des Garçons, Katerina Jebb filmed concert pianist Madeleine Malraux, the widow of cultural nabob André Malraux, still playing at the age of 90.
Ruth Hogben made a typically brilliant piece of film for Gareth Pugh (above), a hectic slice of Cabaret-style decadence. She also created a sepulchral German-expressionist short for Rick Owens: harsh angles, shadowy reveals, eldritch textures, and an opera soundtrack. Her grasp of atmospheric moviemaking is so acute it came as a surprise to hear Hogben admit that all she wants to do is take still pictures. I swear everybody’s going to be reading real books again in a few years.
Speaking of atmosphere, set designer Simon Costin has made Mars out of molehills, and here he turned the derelict Selfridges’ hotel into an outlying branch of the Overlook, with curtained-off spaces intended to obliquely echo the building’s former use. There were “rooms” with oversize sofas, long dining tables, cracked vanity tables, and huge beds, with the movies projected on the ceiling above them. That was how we got to see an edit of the film Christopher Doyle had made, but not used, as the backdrop for Dries Van Noten’s show for Fall 2005. (Technical issues pulled it at the last minute.) Doyle was the man whose camerawork made In the Mood for Love into the swoonsville date movie of the millennium. A perfect match for Dries’s own romantic leanings. It was kinda nice watching it lying down, too.
Funny, only one of the films—the McQueen one—really featured recognizable clothes. The others were all projections, figurative and literal, like Delfine Balfort’s erotic equine dance for A.F. Vandevorst. You can see them all on Selfridges’ Web site, but you’ve got till March 26 to experience them in person. More fun that way.
Kate Moss To Appear On Ab Fab, Uniqlo To Take On Shopping Malls Next, And More…
Absolutely Fabulous has recruited Kate Moss to star in a spin-off episode of the show. Moss will be joined by Stella McCartney, who outfitted the supermodel at her London showcase of her eveningwear last month. The episode’s plot is expected to revolve around the 2012 London Olympics. [Vogue U.K.]
Selfridges is continuing to up its digital game. After unveiling its revamped womenswear department at the end of last year, the department store has just released short videos from Alexander McQueen, Rick Owens, and Comme des Garçons to screen alongside their merchandise. The films explain inspirations and references but are tied by the common thread of a “strong female character at the center of each film,” the store’s creative director explains. [Independent]
Uniqlo CEO Shin Odake has revealed plans to increase the Japanese retailer’s stateside presence in shopping malls. While major cities like Los Angeles and Chicago are also important targets, Odake tells Racked that “in order to expand in the U.S., we also need to open successful mall locations throughout.” Uniqlo’s anticipated collaboration with Undercover designer Jun Takahashi hits stores tomorrow. [Racked]
A Lane Crawford customer is seeking 50,000 Hong Kong dollars, plus two Chanel bags, as compensation for allegedly being locked in the store’s VIP room for over 90 minutes. The customer had returned to the department store after noticing defects on a recently purchased Chanel handbag. [WWD]
Selfridges’ Bright Young Things
Selfridges has announced the latest round of designers for its Bright Young Things initiative, a project it launched last year (with emerging designers Simone Rocha, Kirsty Ward, and Alex Noble in the mix) to support young designers in London. This year’s 15 Bright Young Things include womenswear designers Maarten van der Horst (the recent Central Saint Martins grad who made a big splash at Fashion East with his Hawaiian prints), Alice Lee, Adam Andrascik, Sorcha O’Raghallaigh (who has worked with Lady Gaga and Nicola Formichetti), and MASC; menswear designers Shaun Samson, Astrid Andersen, William Richard Green, and Alex Mattson; and accessories designers Oliver Ruuger and T. lipop. The group also includes photographers, graphic illustrators, interior designers, and prop makers.
As part of the program, which launches today and runs through the end of February, the designers will get to showcase their work in the retailer’s Oxford Street or Duke Street windows, and their collections will be for sale on Selfridges.com and in three pop-up shops.
An Art Star Turned Scarf Tsar
British artist Marc Quinn is no stranger to the fashion world. The so-called YBA made headlines in the aughts with Siren, his solid-gold statue of a nude, yoga-posing Kate Moss, reportedly the largest gold statue made since the days of the Pharaohs. And while Kate herself is branching into jewelry with a collection for the French label Fred inspired by her own tattoos, Quinn is also taking his first steps into the accessories market, with a new capsule line for Selfridges.
Not that he draws a distinction between one genre and another. “I don’t consider these works as accessories, I just consider them as part of my work,” Quinn told Style.com. “They are, in a way, living artworks when someone wears them and I have always been interested in taking art out of the gallery and into the real world. Clothing is the perfect way to do this.”
The limited-edition collection of scarves, T-shirts, and jewelry draws on some of the same imagery that inspires his work: eyeballs, flowers, and skulls, that last being a symbol still enjoying a long moment in both fashion and art. (Think of Quinn’s sculpture of his own head made of his own frozen blood, or Damien Hirst’s diamond-encrusted memento mori.) “The skull has been used for centuries in art and design,” Quinn says. “Why it has come up particularly at the moment is perhaps because the more virtual our existence becomes, the more immortal we feel and we have a deep anxiety about death which these decorative skulls somehow dispel or mock.”
London Fashion Week Is Off To A Royal Start
Nothing like a royal benediction to kick off fashion week, and last night, that’s exactly what London got. At the lawn of Clarence House (Prince Charles’ London pad), Mayor Boris Johnson, Livia Firth (the eco-minded Mrs. Colin), Laura Bailey and a smattering of ladies, lords and baronets attended an eco-sustainable fashion show, presented as part of the Prince’s START festival. (For those not in the know, the old guy is rather a hippie where the environment is concerned.) Appropriate pieces from Stella McCartney, Vivienne Westwood and Emma Watson’s collection for People Tree hit the catwalk, with Erin O’Connor leading the way. The garments were made of recycled fabrics, buttons, and military-issue shirts. (Scratch that, the Prince’s people are calling it “upcycled” rather than “recycled”—upcycled is “the more fashionable cousin.”) The whole thing charmingly embodied England’s old post-war credo of “make do and mend.”
Speaking of making do, who couldn’t make do with a vending machine that sells couture instead of M&M’s? LOVE‘s Katie Grand and Selfridges got together to create such a vending machine, which will be housed for the duration of LFW in the lobby of the swankiest hotel in London, St Martin’s Lane. (Appropriate, considering it’s the temporary home to tons of visiting editors, models, photogs, buyers, and fashion clients.) Grand ran riot through Selfridges and cherry-picked her favorite items for the 32-slot LOVE Machine (below). It dispenses a Stella McCartney Falabella bag (left), an Alexander Wang leather and sequin dress, a one-off pair of Rick Owens trainers customized by Chrome Hearts, exclusive Dior nail polishes, Diptyque Mimosa candles exclusive to Selfridges in their signature yellow, and for the gents, Falke’s new “secret socks” for men. A word to the wise, though: Know your size. It’s tough to return an item to a vending machine.