‘Valentino: Master of Couture’ will focus on the haute couture created by the Italian designer during his 50-year career. On display will be over 130 hand-crafted designs worn by women such as Jackie Kennedy Onassis, Grace Kelly, Sophia Loren and Gwyneth Paltrow. Highlights will include the vintage dress worn by Julia Roberts when she won an Academy Award in 2001, Jackie Onassis’s wedding dress from Valentino’s 1968 White Collection, and Princess Marie-Chantal of Greece’s pearl-encrusted ivory silk wedding gown from 1995.

Featuring dresses from the couture catwalk and red carpet events, as well as designs commissioned by private clients, the exhibition will bring together a comprehensive collection of couture, much of which has never been seen outside the Valentino atelier.

“Each of these designs has a beautiful story,” says Valentino. “The atelier crafted each so diligently by hand, taking hours, sometimes days to complete. The details are incredibly intricate, though outside the runway shows and events, the dresses have rarely been seen, so to be able to showcase these designs at Somerset House, where they can be seen in great detail by the public, is very unique.”

The exhibition design has been created by design team Kinmonth Monfreda, long time collaborators of Valentino, and realised in collaboration with Valentino and Giancarlo Giammetti. The exhibition has been curated by Alistair O’Neill for Somerset House with Patrick Kinmonth and Antonio Monfreda.

The first room of the exhibition will delve into Valentino’s life featuring previously unseen personal photographs, couture invitations, and images of Valentino at work and play from his personal archive in Wideville, France. The Embankment Galleries will be transformed into a couture catwalk where each visitor takes the place of the model walking along a 60-metre runway to view the ‘audience’, all of whom will be dressed in Valentino Couture. Descending the stairs from the catwalk, visitors will be able to see Princess Marie-Chantal’s wedding dress made with 10 different kinds of lace. Beyond this will be a room dedicated to Valentino’s current passion, the Valentino Garavani Virtual Museum, which will allow visitors to explore Valentino’s legacy even further through interactive and multi media content. In the final room, visitors will be able to see behind the scenes at the atelier through a series of specially made films that show in minute detail the artistry of the couture techniques that go into making a Valentino gown.

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The largest concentration of skyscraper factories in the world, the 18 blocks that were the heart of New York’s Garment District, once supported more than 100,000 manufacturing jobs and produced nearly 75% of all women’s and children’s apparel in the United States. The rapid development of the district (the area of west midtown from 35th to 41st Streets and from Seventh to Ninth Avenues) occurred almost entirely within the boom decade of the 1920s, when more than 125 stepped-back loft buildings took the pyramidal forms dictated by New York City’s new zoning law.

Most of the high-rises were built and owned by immigrant entrepreneurs who had begun their climb from clothing manufacturers, to builders, to real estate moguls. Some made and lost fortunes as boom turned to bust in the 1930s’ Depression, and their names (Lefcourt, Adler, Bricken, amongst others) have faded. The work of a handful of little-known architects (all Jewish, like their clients) responsible for nearly a hundred buildings within the district is highlighted in the exhibition.

For followers of fashion, particularly in New York, ‘Seventh Avenue’ means Fashion in the same way that ‘Wall Street’ means Finance. The architecture of the Garment District shaped the urban stage of Seventh Avenue: the high-rise lofts and showroom towers housed myriad small manufacturers, patternmakers, cutters, sewers, pressers, and finishers, as well as the executives, designers, and models for the leading labels. From these factories clothes were shipped to department stores across America or rolled on racks to Macys or Gimbels close by. Within the anonymous architectural infrastructure of zoned massing and speculative development, decades of enterprising creativity and human toil flowed out onto the streets of the city.

Urban Fabric is guest-curated by Andrew S. Dolkart, the Director of the Historic Preservation Program and the James Marston Fitch Associate Professor of Historic Preservation at the Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation.

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In Hadid’s ‘Arum Installation’ and exhibition at the Biennale, the London-based architectural practice wanted to show that (apart from the dialogue with the work of contemporary competitors that existed all along) their recent work connects to a rather different historical strand of research. The more their design research and work evolved on the basis of algorithmic form generation, the more they learned to appreciate the work of pioneers like Frei Otto who had achieved elegant designs on the basis of material-structural form-finding processes.

From Frei Otto, Zaha Hadid Architects learnt how the richness, organic coherence and fluidity of forms and spaces could emerge rationally from an intricate balance of forces. Furthermore, they expanded Frei Otto’s method to include environmental as well as structural logics, and moved from material to computational simulations.

One particular area of research intended to be explored with the ‘Arum Installation’ is the domain of light by articulating weight shells in combination with tensile structures. The Arum shell is an installation made from pleated metal, surrounded by the documentation of its research, including key reference projects of the preeminent precursors in this line of research. Alongside the installation and documentation, the architects have chosen to display works by Frei Otto, Felix Candela, Heinz Isler, and Philippe Block.

Zaha Hadid Architects’ ‘Arum Installation’ will be on public display until 25 November at Room 1.9, Corderie dell’ Arsenale.

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In 2010, and after a period as first assistant to designer Yohan Serfaty, Martens decided to start working independently on various projects in partnership with several European brands (including Weekday and Honest By Bruno Pieters), and in February 2012 he launched his eponymous label with an inaugural womenswear collection shown during Paris Fashion week. Characterized by graphic tailoring woven into elegant architectural shapes, the collection received overwhelming praise by journalists. Vogue Italia described it as “a spectacle of volumes rendered even more captivating by a play on the layering”, WWD summed it up as a “unique debut effort that brims with potential”, and Interview Magazine noted that “couture-level attention to details exemplify a refined approach to easy, feminine dressing”.

At The Style Examiner, we concur that Martens’s inaugural collection is an extremely promising one. What on an initial view come across as seemingly slouchy clothes are, on closer inspection, garments created out of very proficient and elegant pattern cutting and multi-layering of luxurious fabrics in a process that seeks inspiration in architecture to reinterpret traditional proportions. We have no doubt that Glenn Martens will most certainly become a womenswear label to watch.

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On display will be iconic frames by British companies like Cutler and Gross, Oliver Goldsmith and Anglo-American alongside world-renowned brands such Ray Ban, Moscot, Cazal, and Stevie Boi (who counts Lady Gaga and Nicky Minaj as fans). Other featured brands include Kirks Originals, Alain Mikli, A Morir, Jean Charles de Castelbajac, Carrera, Chanel, Christian Dior, Linda Farrow, Gianfranco Ferré, Mercura, Mykita, Paloma Picasso, Pierre Cardin, Pierre Marly, Polaroid, Police, Prabal Gurung, Prada, Pucci, Silhouette, Tatty Divine, Theo, Thierry Lasry, Viennaline and Versace.

The exhibition will chart the history of eyewear via archival imagery incorporated into a timeline by Emily Alston. The exhibition design will depict eyewear’s historical development from the mid-twentieth century until the present day, emphasising its role within fashion imagery and popular culture and exploring how celebrities, actors and personalities have adopted spectacles and sunglasses as part of a signature look. To showcase and analyse the luxury status of eyewear, the exhibition will showcase a giant pair of frames by Nairobi-based artist Cyrus Kabiru and will also feature catwalk collaborations and new experimental prototypes by Bernhard Wilhelm, Erdem, Giles, Thomas Tait, Jeremy Scott, Chloe McCormick and NODH, Edward Gucewicz, Emma Montague, SPIT Design and Studio Swine. Frames include pieces not yet available such as American label Eye-bobs collaboration with fashion doyenne Iris Apfel, to be launched in 2013.

‘Framed! Contemporary Eyewear in Fashion’ will be the first in a series of exhibitions organised by LCF to explore different objects and concepts often overlooked in the context of contemporary fashion exhibitions. While these objects have fluctuated at the edges of the fashion system, this series wishes to demonstrate the integral role that they play in the history and development of the industry. These exhibitions will also explore how their visibility and varying status serve as indicators of the complex relationships between cultural tastes and values, advances in design and manufacture, fashion imagery and patterns of consumption. 

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The online shopping experience is focussed on providing clear, informed and swift transactions. “Men want to choose their style of shirt and pay for it with just a few clicks.” says co-founder Claire Adams. “We are confident that all our customers will not only be happy with their buying experience online but also that we have been able to offer a unique product delivered by courier straight to their door.”

The Style Examiner had the opportunity to try the ‘Ibiza Shirt’ and can recommend the shirts by The Men’s Shirt Company for those in search of casual yet stylish shirts for a Summer day off work on the beach or the countryside. We found the tailoring relaxed and comfortable and appreciated the quirky design details such as contrasting buttons, and elbow patches and inside cuffs in a beige floral pattern that contrasted nicely with the light blue shirt. For men in need of an original casual shirt who also appreciate a no-nonsense shopping experience, The Men’s Shirt Company is most certainly a promising enterprise. We look forward to accompanying their development and very much look forward to seeing more design and tailoring options online.

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In 2009, LaCour changed the name of his label to Maison De LaCour and decided that his designs should focus on expressing quality, individuality and originality. With this spirit of haute couture in mind, LaCour decided to create each piece as a unique hand-crafted item while focussing on attention to detail and on sourcing high-quality materials. In 2010, and in recognition of the potential of his label a year after its inception, LaCour was allowed to show his collection during Chicago’s Latino Fashion Week and, as a result, he won the CS Magazine Italian Expo Competition. A year later, the label showed its Spring/Summer 2012 collection in a solo fashion show at the Drake Hotel in Chicago.

The Style Examiner analysed Maison De LaCour’s latest menswear collection and was seduced by the bold details that, while not entirely original, suggest a promising talent in gestation. The look book that we received depicts garments that resort to daring prints and colours, as well as audacious pattern cutting techniques that we are sure will keep Maison De LaCour on people’s radars for a few years to come.

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A few years ago, it was indubitable that the skinny look was unavoidably ubiquitous. Designers like Hedi Slimane banked on this look because, according to a certain view of fashion, clothes hang better on young, thin people and it’s always profitable to invest in the youth myth. However, as the end of the first decade of the new millennium approached, athletic bodies have become increasingly more accepted in the male fashion industry, to the extent that the sartorial world has become somehow bi-polar in its acceptance of more than one dominant ideal type.

Below is The Style Examiner’s list of this polarisation of masculinity for your consideration and enjoyment.

And the list could go on and on…

Relativist post-structuralism has taught us that type A is not better or worse than type B just because it comes first. So these columns are devoid of any hierarchy and are best read with a touch of irony.

If you feel that, as a male reader of these columns, the way you see yourself does not fit in either of them or you can actually zigzag between these basic descriptors, consider yourself lucky. If we have learnt anything from gender theory as described by the likes of Judith Butler, it’s that it’s in the rich grey in-between areas that identity has always gained affirmation.

Enjoy being the man that you are!

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To enter the competition, entrants were requested to seek inspiration in Teatum Jones’ Autumn/Winter 2012 look book, and produce an illustration which would best reflect the collection and the event. Straightforward as it may seem, achieving this brief was no mean feat, as Teatum Jones are renowned (and admired by The Style Examiner) for producing exquisite prints and patterns that are true sartorial palimpsests. However, talented illustrators worldwide jumped at the opportunity to unravel the complex and beautiful layers of meaning with which brilliant designers Rob Jones and Catherine Teatum have imbued their garments.

The Style Examiner was thrilled and honoured to join the judging panel that analysed the outstanding shortlisted entries in order to select a winner. With a large number of entries of extremely high quality, the decision process was not easy, as the judges felt that many illustrations deserved to win the top prize. After an enjoyable debate, the judges agreed on a shortlisted that comprised work submitted by Leeay Aikawa, Timi Hayek, Meline Katchi, Evelina Romano, and Faye West. Following careful deliberation, it was agreed that the winner would be Evelina Romano, whose alluringly intriguing illustration portrayed a beguiling and feminine image that combined (in a very successfully manner) Teatum Jones’ sophisticated inspiration and The Dorchester’s timeless elegance.

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