I just left my office job, and now I’m kicking myself for my lack of imagination. I could have fashioned an entire new wardrobe out of paper clips, a la Ted Sabarese.

This gives a whole new meaning to the term corporate casual…

- Haley Mlotek

Several pieces from the recent Spring/Summer 2011 collection.

“I believe we’ve reached a saturation point [in fashion]. The future stopped in the ’60s. Before that, you had everyone looking forward, and now it’s just a tide of people looking back. What I’m really looking forward to is the future.”* Daphne Guinness’ words echo in my head whenever I flip through the newest Fashion Week collections. “Look forward, people! Towards the future!” reverberates loudly in the back of my mind. We are as close to the future as we have ever been, and dwelling on the past is rarely a good thing. So why not approach fashion in the same way?

Mary Katrantzou’s work feels not only like it looks towards the future, but invents an entirely new visual language. Her radical approach to creating clothes sets her apart from her contemporaries. Her past four collections were outwordly influenced by the classic art mediums of painting, photography, interior and furniture design (her mother once owned a furniture factory), but are warped with modern technology. Katrantzou manipulated the traditional methods to create a technological collage of colour and pattern. A major contributor to the uprising of digital print onto clothing, Mary is definitely looking forward.

Autumn/Winter 2009 Ready to Wear
Simplified images of perfume bottles was Katrantzou’s motif for this collection, though digitalized into abstraction.

The perspective, dimensions, tailoring, and concept (”putting the room on the woman, rather than the girl in the room”) are only a few things to admire about this radically inventive collection.

text by Rose Flutur
- Photography via Style.com

*Quote from Interview Mag Dec/Jan 10

Mary Ping’s Slow and Steady Wins the Race
photography by Diana Pau

It was a very encouraging sight. A crowd gathered in a standing room only space on a chilly January night to hear a panel discussion about sustainable fashion. The talk was hosted by Francesca Granata and Sarah Scaturro, curators of “Ethics + Aesthetics = Sustainable Fashion“, an exhibition currently on view at the Pratt Manhattan Gallery. Their thought provoking exhibition explores some of the diverse ways local designers are approaching sustainable fashion. They range from designers who use recycled and organic materials to those who opt for production strategies that challenge the seasonal cycles of fashion. The show’s organizational themes “Reduce, Revalue, Rethink” sound like a spin off of “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle” (a mantra that for better or worse was probably drilled into all of us at some time during elementary education) but “revalue” and “rethink” relate to clothing in specific ways; think of valuing good design and durable quality materials, and questioning the disposable fast fashion cycle. The panel discussion I was lucky enough to get a seat for last week brought together two designers represented in the exhibition: Slow and Steady Wins The Race and Uluru, as well as Julie Gilhart, fashion director of Barney’s New York. One of the highlights of the discussion for me was seeing how makers, curators and retailers agreed that there is sometimes a negative stigma attached to sustainable design. Even Gilhart admits that many of her style savvy conscious customers still wince at label ‘organic’ and its hippie-connotations:’ “They still think its going to be a burlap sack!” But thanks to initiatives like hers at an influential store like Barney’s, these ideas are slowly beginning to change - largely because they focus on seeking the best examples of design.

recycled appliqued sweater by ULURU stitched by Alabama Chanin
photography by Kate & Camilla

Although sustainable fashion has been able to piggyback off of the momentum of related environmental and climate change concerns, these designers are thinking big-picture and are more focused on creating a good product than self-consciously promoting “green design”. Neither Slow and Steady Wins The Race nor Uluru actively market themselves as “sustainable” but their principles are evident to anyone who takes an interest in their creations that employ recycled and repurposed materials, and throw a wrench into the constantly churning wheels of the fashion cycle.

Finally, a point of discussion that is articulated in different ways in the exhibition gave me pause…so much so that I’m rolling it over in my brains still. Part of the notion of revaluing involves “excavating an emotional connection to clothes,” finding that personal link between yourself and the material, whether through a family heirloom or something tied to a significant memory, whatever it is that makes you want to keep and cherish a garment. I warm to this idea intuitively, but the idea of emotional attachment is, in so many ways, the antithesis of ‘cool’ – it’s the opposite of a fashion cycle. Distance and detachment are necessary to be able to replace the old with the next best thing, and have been integral in the fashion system since the start. And tough I believe the whole thing has spun out of control, I’m curious to see how this new consciousness is going to play out, if this kind of revaluing can actually be taught, or if consumers can be won over by good design. Its easy to sit back and say time will tell, but as resources are being depleted, and economic decline is putting the pressure on, it may not be long before we find out.

- Sonya Topolnisky

In keeping with its moniker, most would consider the pieces selected for “Fashion No-no” anything but wearable. (Much to the dismay of the preteen girls who strayed from their class trip to see fashion!)
Instead of couture, we’re offered six reactions to environment, form, and how it all relates to the female body. Curator Paola Poletto, a new media and design professional, reigned in such amorphous ideas by choosing pieces that expressed the most varied points of view. In Traveler’s Tale, Sarah Dorkenwald and Ruth Spitzer printed images from domestic life (coffee percolator, a chair) alongside fuzzy, dream-like ones (a sinking ship?) onto large pieces of fabric meant to “affix to the body,” thereby invoking the notion of carrying – and of being – all the stuff of our life.
The Girl in the Wood Frock, Andrea Ling’s adaptation of a fairy tale (A girl escapes her father/husband by floating away in a river wearing a wood frock. She is saved by a prince, but must remain in the dress.) defies the implicit constrictions of a wooden dress by turning the tale on its head. In the accompanying photographs, the dress is presented in motion; the “girl” jumps and dances while wearing the object of her imprisonment. The dress is beautiful – three nest-like forms made from strips of black cherry veneer attach to a mini-dress made of pressed wool felt. It’s more like a cocoon than a cage.
Joanna Berzowka’s Skorpions are white “dresses” that use a shape-memory alloy called Nitinol to organically move and change on the body. Berzowka emphasizes the parasitic nature of Skorpions, though thematically, they resonate more when considered for their protective and chameleon-like qualities.
One misstep in “Fashion No-no” was the inclusion of Linda Imai’s Purses. Imai used unconventional materials – dog hair, aluminium pop tabs, and recycled plastic – to assemble eight bags. The idea of separating the object from its traditional use is an interesting one; however, Hilly Yeung’s shoes in Objects to Die For nailed this idea by removing designer shoes from their pedestals and presenting them simply and accessibly in crisp white paper.
That said, “Fashion No-no” presents a diverse discussion on form, often concluding with the artist reappropriating and subverting traditional feminine ideals from around the world (see Annie Thompson’s Les Madamoiselles). Since there are so few fashion exhibitions in Toronto, “Fashion No-no” is well worth it for anyone itching for a little social commentary with their design.

Fashion No-no
January 24 – March 8
York Quay Centre, Visual Arts Exhibitions
235 Queens Quay West, Toronto

-Sara Forsyth