BigShinyThing

BigShinyThing reader Daniel — a Swiss graphic design student — writes in to alert us to his site Wear Palettes.

The site features images from the Sartorialist fashion site, from which the dominant colour palettes behind the look have been extracted and catalogued: a daily-growing database of fashion colours.

Nice idea. At the moment the site is bloggish, and we assume Daniel is doing the hard work manually in Photoshop or similar. We’ve no idea where this will go, but can only hope Daniel gets some investment or mainstream interest which would allow him to expand the scope and functionality. It’s easy to imagine Wear Palettes growing to include user-contributed, geo-tagged data from across the globe, and becoming an essential style/design resource. We wish Daniel every success and will be keeping an eye on the Spring palettes to come.

To advertise its Spring/Summer 08 collection, the fashion house has produced a short film. In it, a blank-eyed nymph both models and interacts with the product: a couple of scuttling crabs become shoes and a fish transmogrifies into a handbag. Further blurring the lines between advertising and product, the illustrator behind the short – James Jean – has also worked on Prada prints and bags for this season, as well producing the backdrop for catwalk shows and in-store decoration.

And whilst we have absolutely NO IDEA what the film means, it sure beats the usual grumpy-looking models staring out from the pages of Vogue.

From the early London punk scene, through Leigh Bowery and the clubs kids, to street culture in Japan and the Asian mainland, Hartnett has been there to capture the look while it’s still fresh and raw. We were keen to ask a few questions of the man who’s seen it all.

BST: You’ve been documenting youth and street culture for over 30 years now. What is it about those worlds that keeps you excited?

PAUL HARTNETT: I started documenting street and club culture at the age of eighteen as a means of social lubrication. I wanted to get close to the key punk players such as Soo Catwoman and Sid Vicious, who lived in the next road to me in West London back then. I wanted to go beyond the visual. A camera seemed a perfect excuse to talk, exchange ideas, develop a rapport. Sometimes there’d be very little beyond the hair spray and eye-liner, sometimes there were all kinds of viewpoints, the most brilliant perspectives.

At the core of my work there is a continuing look at customising, how individuals have crafted a look. My pictures are portraits, executed with a Kodak Instamatic, a Polaroid camera and a range of Nikon stuff. I’m not a technical person. For me it has always been about faces, dimly lit, content driven, not style driven. Faces, colours, textiles, soul. The messed-up, the dressed-up. The fucked-up.

You’ve recently been exploring Chinese youth culture. What were the most interesting things they’re up to?

I recently visited Shanghai and Beijing for i-D magazine. I was involved with a street and club exhibition at Source’s Kong Gallery and this was a way in to meeting some creative souls. Visiting fashion schools such as IFA Paris and Raffles Design Institute was my focus, away from the gallery. There is such a rawness to Chinese fashion. It is often quite crude and quite different to the work Chinese students do at the likes of Central Saint Martin’s in London or FIT and Parsons in NYC. Having observed over 600 fashion students at work, having photographed a selected few, I gained insights. The Chinese are so very different to the Japanese. The work at Shinjuku’s Bunka, for example, is on another planet compared to what is happening in Shanghai and Beijing. Yep, it’s superior. That said, I was fascinated by the grounded approach of so many students at IFA Paris in particular. It’s a place to watch, they certainly have the technical skills.

You’ve covered the most important musical and style movements of the last 30 years. Which of those do you feel the most empathy with, and what’s going on at the moment that you are most excited by?

I saw The Sex Pistols perform many weeks before the Punk Festival of 1976. It was just electric, kind of like Brecht entering the stage. Before that I’d only seen Sparks, Bowie and Cockney Rebel perform live. I was in a band as a teenager, Missing Presumed Dead, so inspired by the DIY ethos of Punk and Power Pop. What I love about fashion and music is when people are totally fired up, and a bit ‘bonkers’ with it. Really exploding internally and doing something individual externally, going beyond a commercial formula, a safe established pattern.

Right now there’s a musician named NIYI who DJs at club nights such as Gauche Chic. As a producer, NIYI is unpredictable, he uses the most unexpected samples. He is very playful and could certainly be categorised under ‘bonkers’. He is my #1 muse right now — a joy to photograph, when he can be bothered to turn up.

You’ve run clubs as well as documenting those run by others: have you always been that involved in the scenes you cover photographically? Have you ever had issues with access — scenes or subcultures who you wanted to document, but who simply closed ranks and didn’t let you near them? How do you deal with that? Who or what scene have you not covered, but would most have wished to?

I ran a club named Kawaii in London back in 1983. It was very inspired by Japan’s club culture. I also ran the world’s first club for drag kings, women who dress as men, back in 1995. The majority were female to male transvestites, some were heavy-duty transexuals. Every Thursday night there’d be 150 toughies, and me. There was one simple rule: NO CAMERAS! This allowed me a somewhat strategic exclusivity.

I’ve never had issues re access. I’ve had good coverage over the last three decades, and I tend to be guest-listed without ever having met the promoters. Door whores just know who I am. Being fat and a few months short of fifty seems to be a plus nowadays. Verification for clubs abroad is easier than it was in the past due to my website, people can check out editorial content, photographic approach, fast as click-click-click. Some fetish clubs can be stand-offish, they live in fear of News International and local councils.

The only club I have ever experienced shit with is that shit club named Boom Box. Oh, what a Hoxton hole. Just so hyped, so over-rated, and so over. I took a few pics… then pressed the delete button and left. I have little patience for fashion sheep.

You seem both fascinated by style and its associated fantasy worlds, but your photos are raw and uncompromising
– you talk about showing the ‘reality of fashion’. What does that mean to you?

Take a look at street-style pics in magazines such as i-D and Dazed & Confused and you will often find credits for an entire team of mag slags; hair stylists, make-up performers… an entire circus. To me this ain’t street-style, it’s manipulation. What I have done for the last three decades is SNAP with seconds of seeing. No touching, no altering, no upgrading. SNAP. Same location, same same same reality. Sure, sometimes I’ll ask for a plastic bag to be put aside or an event bracelet to be concealed, that’s all. So many magazines provide clothes that their advertisers wish to be promoted. That sucks.

What’s the future of street and club photography as you see it? What’s the role for ‘photographers’ as such, when the ‘kids of today’ have MySpace and a bunch of club photo websites on which to show off their poses, and every phone is a camera?

The Internet has come along and fucked so many people sideways. The music industry is in a tizz, everybody
seems to be online so much of the time. Punk’s DIY ethos is everywhere. People pimp their profiles to a narcissistic extent on myspazz and facebore. There are street-style photographers such as Facecunter (I think that’s his name) who snap at fashion events, but in a really bad way. So cheesy and hap-hap-happy. All very Grazia or Closer, Heatish.

I think it’s great that so many people are taking photographs, even if it with with dinky telephone toys. I love that crap quality, that low-res fuzz. I love the diversity available. That said, I continue in my own way. I have CCTV eyes, and pay an almost forensic attention to detail. I like clarity and the portraiture I have amassed is for a future audience I have never met.

Paul’s work will be on display at the Vibe Bar in Brick Lane from 14 February 2008. Go see. Also check out the PaulHartnett.Com and PYMCA sites.

[Thanks to Adz!]

We LOVE Kristen McMenamy here at BST. Stuff Cindy Crawford, the fabulously alien-looking supermodel is our ideal of female beauty. And her now-grey hair has made her look even more A-M-AAA-ZING (as our dear friend Gerardo would say). However, fashion followers would be wise to avoid the ‘glad to be grey’ trend unless — like Kristen — you have cheekbones that you can stab puppies with.

It gets better. Courtney tells the Fashion Informer blog:

…I know a lot of people are doing lines (no sniggering at the back) but my first job, other than stripping, was on Mommie Dearest as an assistant in wardrobe. My first boyfriend, his mother was a third generation wardrobe lady so she ran the Paramount wardrobe department, which was three hangars like this [gestures to the Lexington Avenue Armory space]. And I was in charge, some of the time, of throwing stuff out. I mean, they had four tiers of Mae West’s clothes that went on for, like, six racks… they’d get rid of stuff like Frances Farmer’s clothes and lace that was made out of 24kt. gold that had a little rip in it – so I had the best wardrobe in LA in 1986 since I was in charge of throwing stuff out.

We wonder if Courtney will be reworking her infamous ‘kinderwhore’ look? Can’t wait.

Pictures from Studio Neon at Egg on Friday 24th August 2007. You can access our Studio Neon photos directly on Flickr, with the rest of our London club photography. [Image © Darrell Berry]

[Thanks to Helen @ Film Noir]

Dansistor launched 11th August and will run monthly. Horse Meat (like you didn’t know) is every Sunday. You can access our Dansistor photos directly on Flickr, along with our other London club photography. [Image © Darrell Berry]

[And thanks to Tim for last-minute Nikon CLS tech assistance!]

In a très élégante piece of pre-film release publicity, The Simpsons feature in a spread with ubermodel Linda Evangelista and other fashion darlings.

Via Dlisted.

We tripped along to the Surrealist Ball at the Victoria and Albert Museum last night where lots of people had made a Big Effort to dress up — as is the way in London nowadays. With thanks to the people we photographed who patiently waited for us to work out how to use the camera.

Isabella Blow was known for her glorious millinery and ardent support of young fashion talent: she famously bought the whole of Alexander McQueen’s graduate collection. The last words should probably go to Blow herself:

Hats make you look good and feel beautiful. You can wear them for lunch, a wedding or for breakfast. It is like taking drugs: it is more fun and less dangerous. You don’t have to look like an old bat. You can be a crow and look like a hen.

Everyone loves to talk about the iPod’s ‘halo effect’ whereby consumers fell in love with one product and then got sucked into the whole Apple brand. But now Rei Kawakubo and her husband, Adrian Joffe of directional Japanese fashion label Comme des Garcons have hit on a new way to pull ‘em in.

Instead of air-lifting the usual flash flagship store (we’re talking about you, Abercrombie & Fitch) into the capital, Kawakubo and Joffe opened a market in Dover Street, Mayfair, which Vogue describes as “a 13,000 sq ft, six-floor love letter to all things design and visual”. They invited a number of exclusive luxury brands such as Lanvin, Azzedine Alaia and up-and-coming ones like Undercover and Giles Deacon; let them design their own spaces within the store and then mixed it up with taxidermy, vintage Chinese posters, rare books and a bakery.

The space breaks many retail rules — not least in that the designers weren’t allowed to dictate who they sat next to in the store. It is essentially a posh co-op. Thirty percent of the shop is taken up by designer concessions, from whom Dover Street takes a small cut of their profits; 30 percent more goes to the smaller designers who Joffe, Kawakubo and the store’s general manager Dickon Bowden find, what to help out and buy from. Rei doesn’t even edit the collections, allowing the designers to create their own mini-markets within it. Joffe says,

Rei thinks it is not that clever to have a big ego, but that it is much easier, much nicer, much more intelligent to give people their freedom.

The resultant mish mash has attracted not only the cream of the fashion world (that should probably be creme) but lead Vogue to breathlessly describe the space as “the coolest shop in the world”.

One of the featured designers, big-in-the-80s accessories guru Judy Blame, says, “Being in Dover Street has made people look at my work again. Theirs is a real creative generosity, which is unusual in this business where everyone is usually so guarded. Because it’s Rei’s store, it has a personal tone and is like being invited into a family home.”

And it’s not just the invited designers who are doing well. Joffe says that since Dover Street Market opened, sales of their own line Comme des Garcons have gone “way, way up… because we have gained customers who wouldn’t have come into the old store. They had a preconceived notion of what Comme des Garcons was all about and now that has been changed for the better.”

Vogue terms this effect ‘commercial karma’ — a revolution in the bitchy world of fashion retail. We like to think of Dover Street as fashion 2.0 because a collective intelligence prevails. Just listen to Rei describe her vision — it mirrors that of Linux, Wikipedia and so on:

I want to create a kind of market where various creators from various fields gather together and encounter each other in an ongoing atmosphere of beautiful chaos: the mixing up and coming together of different kindred souls who all share a strong personal vision.

Mannequin wears Judy Blame, Dover Street Market. From WhatAboutBlack’s flickr.

No doubt intended to cash in on the upcoming Factory Girl-fever (we’re with Mr Dylan on the film — as regular readers on BST will know), Selfridges have excelled themselves with beeeeooootiful silver sixties style windows. We particularly love how our shitty new camera phone has whited-everything out even more to make it look Even More Shiny.

The ex-Gucci designer and iconoclast-about-town has announced that the Internet is useful. Tom Ford told Women’s Wear Daily:

I think it is important to always address and use the primary media of one’s time and we all have to face the fact that there is no more powerful media than the internet. It is how most of us communicate, get our news, entertain ourselves, and increasingly shop.

Unfortunately, Ford has chosen to embrace a retro, 1.0 version of the Web and his site is so weighed down with Flash frills that we couldn’t actually access it. So not a good look.

Story via UK Vogue.

Vaseline and smilies at the ready: rave is back. In its latest attempt distract those pesky kids from their phones/MySpace profiles/life, the NME has christened a burgeoning music movement new rave. Last week it even featured an indie vs. rave covermount. And it’s not just IPG-generated hype (much). We’re increasingly seeing skinny little things in day-glo clothes and eyes-on-stalks stumbling around Hoxton and savvy fashion brands like Cassetteplaya are getting featured in The Observer.

It’s surely only a matter of time before clubnight Antisocial (usual suspect Trash Fashion’s Jet Storm pictured — from Brixtona’s Flickr stream) gets a double page spread in Vogue. And we’ve caught a few local news items about kids having noisy dance parties in fields. Frankly, we’re old enough to remember Ravey Davey Gravy but also think that noisy repetitive beats tend to be a Good Thing.

Still not convinced? Stick new rave through Flickr. My eyes…

See also our other (Mostly London-centric) club photos and stories.

What with all the ruckus over ‘fat’ models and terrorism-chic shoots, we thought we’d celebrate New York fashion week with another fashion silliness: models falling over. In our arse-over-tit gallery, some poor girl for Proenza Schouler this week and an iconic collapse, mobile phone warrior Naomi Campbell for Vivienne Westwood ten years earlier.

And — as we mentioned earlier — the bloggers have certainly earnt their keep at New York fashion week. Whilst the Proenza Schouler tumble has been airbrushed out of American Vogue online, blogger gloat has given the label a nice little spike on Technorati: see below for a graph which shows the number of blog posts that contain "proenza Schouler" per day for the last 30 days.

With apologies to Einsturzende Neubauten.

When asked by the Telegraph Magazine if he thought haute couture could last much longer, Giancarlo Giammetti said:

No, of course not. Why would a young woman want to sit eight hours a day with an eye loupe sewing and embroidering a pattern? And for whom, some princess in Saudi Arabia? Or the girlfriend of some international Russian thug?

In the current issue of Arena Homme, Stephane Raynor, founder of the iconic 80s clothing label reminisces:

The original BOY shop had two controversial focal points in its window. One was the explicit Polaroids of ‘the action in the changing room from the weekend — it was like some darkroom back there.’ The other was the ever-changing window displays themselves. ‘Perhaps there’d be a Madonna and Child that got the church down, or swastikas; then there was the chopped-up dead boy, with a Dr Martens boot by his bleeding head and signet ring on his severed hand.’ This display caused one passer-by to suffer a heart attack, Raynor says…

Eat your heart out, Damien Hirst et al.

Turns out that it’s not just sky-high Manolos and hobble skirts that cause fashion accidents. Fashion Watch reports that iconic singer Jane Birkin has ditched her own Hermes Birkin bag claiming that it was responsible for her tendonitis.

Birkin was quoted as saying:

That bloody thing. I told Hermes they were mad to make it. My one was always full and it ended up giving me tendonitis.

Expect to see young starlets’s skinny wrists snapping under the strain all over LA…

Via a Socialite’s Life.

C/o A Socialite’s Life blog.