9 posts tagged "Visionaire"
Metal Heads
Visionaire’s latest book, Issue 63: FOREVER, comes out on May 11. And this year, the project has been underwritten by G-Shock—the watchmaker known for its durable timepieces. What’s the tie-in, you might ask? Visionaire’s avant-garde edition is rendered entirely in metal, and features images by artists and fashion designers that have been either hammered or laser-etched into 9 x 12 inch plates. Thus, both the timepieces and the tome are, in essence, everlasting.
“The word indestructible is the catalyst—if G-Shock does the indestructible watch, we want to do the indestructible publication. It was a nice, tight concept,” said Cecilia Dean, Visionaire’s cofounder and editor in chief. G-Shock, who’s celebrating its thirtieth anniversary and a recent store opening in Soho, liked the pitch and came on board to sponsor the inevitably “expensive” production
The idea for an all-metal issue was spawned during Dean’s time spent with Givenchy’s Riccardo Tisci, while working on Visionaire’s Issue 60: RELIGION. “In religious iconography, there’s all this incredible metalwork, the metal on the altars, gold painting—it’s just so beautiful and rich,” said Dean, adding, “I have to say, it’s so funny, everything goes back to Riccardo—a big inspiration was also the Jay-Z and Kanye West album cover he designed,” referring to 2011′s Watch the Throne.
FOREVER features everyone from a nymph-like Kate Moss, shot by Mario Testino, to a Karl Lagerfeld-lensed in-the-buff Baptiste Giabiconi, to a suggestive Lady Gaga snapped by Inez & Vinoodh, to Linda Evangelista ringed in light by Maurizio Cattelan and Pierpaolo Ferrari. “It’s Linda as a saint, basically,” said Dean.
To commemorate the coupling, G-Shock will open a mini-retrospective of Visionaire’s past (above) in its downtown outpost tomorrow. The exhibition runs through the end of May.
Visionaire In 3-D
For its last issue, Visionaire set a world record for the largest magazine ever produced (it was fittingly dubbed the Larger Than Life issue #61). The newest edition might not win any awards for its physical size, but #62, which is all about Rio de Janeiro, has a cool factor all its own. Boldfaced names like Gisele Bëndchen, Mert Alas & Marcus Piggott, Lea T, Adriana Lima, Richard Phillips, Karl Lagerfeld, and Marilyn Minter collaborated on a series of 3-D images celebrating Brazilian culture that appear on double-image slides. To look at them, there’s a stereoscope (which creates the illusion of depth), designed by NYC-based design studio aruliden, that comes along in the 3-D lenticular case. Visionaire 62 Rio ($375, available this week at www.visionaireworld.com) made its debut at the Iguatemi-hosted private launch party last night in São Paulo, but here, Style.com has an exclusive first look at some of the issue’s best images by Lagerfeld, Minter, and Jason Schmidt.
Exclusive: Visionaire 60 By Riccardo Tisci
As if it wasn’t enough to design women’s, men’s, and couture, not to mention land one of the biggest Oscars gets of them all in Cate Blanchett, not to mention maintaining the front-runner position in the who-will-replace-Galliano-at-Dior guessing game, Givenchy’s Riccardo Tisci has revealed exclusively to Style.com that he’s collaborated with Visionaire on its 60th issue. The topic? Only Tisci’s favorite, of course: religion. The designer curated the entire issue, and all of the work was specially commissioned for the project with the exception of two photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe. Tisci’s one stipulation to his collaborators: no Givenchy credits. Among the contributions, Karl Lagerfeld photographed Carine Roitfeld, Paolo Canevari envisioned Franca Sozzani as a saint, and Givaudan perfumer Yann Vasnier created a Religion scent. Tisci’s proudest achievements: convincing Helmut Lang to participate—”he’s my god,” says the designer—and working on a project with the performance artist Marina Abramović, whom he calls his mother. “Any religion, it’s like a family,” he said. And he means it. The limited-edition issue is a leather-wrapped 228-page hardbound book complete with a case inspired by a church altarpiece. It will be released in June and retail for $425 at select bookstores worldwide and at Givenchy flagship stores. Continue Reading “Exclusive: Visionaire 60 By Riccardo Tisci” »
School Ties
For every fashion student toughing it out in the university, take hope: You may just find your future collaborator in the trenches. “We met in a college dorm,” Visionaire‘s James Kaliardos said of meeting his magazine’s co-founders, Stephen Gan and Cecilia Dean (left), during their Parsons days. “Stephen needed my food card to eat back then in the cafeteria.” Twenty years later, the trio is still raising eyebrows with their evocative flagship publication and receiving accolades too; they took home the first ever Future of Fashion Award at the 45th Annual YMA FSF Geoffrey Beene National Awards dinner last night.
Despite a Northeast snowstorm warning, a bevy of Visionaire admirers and original supporters (including Diane von Furstenberg, Italo Zucchelli, and Milk Studios’ Mazdack Rassi) turned out anyway. “I feel like we’re the grandpa and grandma of the publication,” Isabel Toledo said of her and husband Ruben’s involvement. “We used to put together the issues in our kitchen and it was the second issue where I literally bound each magazine with thread.”
Needle and thread will always have their place in fashion (and maybe even in publishing), but the business proposals of last night’s newly-anointed Geoffrey Beene scholars, who took home $25,000 scholarships for their work, ranged from tech-oriented to Web 3.0. But if online offers instant gratification, print still has the potential for shelf life. “I have this edition of Visionaire that I kept from the nineties,” Calvin Klein’s Zucchelli said. “It’s about birth and religion and all these different visual ideas. It’s old now, but it’s still really special.”
Designers And Artists On The MOVE!
At Visionaire‘s Halloween party on Saturday, an elaborately costumed crowd took to the sweaty dance floor to cut loose. The designers on hand deserved it. They’d been in the museum all day, installing MOVE!, an exhibition curated by Visionaire‘s Cecilia Dean and journalist David Colman that paired artists and designers to create—well, whatever they wanted.
“MOVE! is a unique experience of art and fashion, where one is a reflection of the other,” explained Italo Zucchelli. “Reflection” was literal in the case of the “live sculpture” he and Terence Koh created: two silver-painted and -cloaked men (above), walking continuously toward and away from one another. “Bringing the future into history and presenting it as a perfect present,” Koh described it in a rare moment of verbosity.
Performance artist Ryan McNamara—who recently completed five months of public dance lessons for a project called Make Ryan a Dancer—took the weekend off to act as instructor. McNamara and 11 dancers, in costumes designed by Robert Geller, taught museum-goers everything from strip dance to traditional Korean moves. “We created this McNamara/Geller carnival of dancers, with Ryan as this kind of crazy Andy Warhol carnie directing the whole thing,” Geller said. “Sometimes art and fashion can be too serious. This was meant to be fun, and even a little funny.” Continue Reading “Designers And Artists On The MOVE!” »