CULTURE VULTURE: FIVE EXHIBITIONS TO SEE NOW

Posted by Bethan Holt, Fashion Junior at Large

There are still two days left of our extra long bank holiday weekend, so we thought we'd let you know our top picks of fashionable things to see and do in all this magical free time we've been granted. If you should you need a break from all the union jack waving and cupcake eating, here are our suggestions of things to see in London right now...

DESIGNING WOMEN: POST WAR BRITISH TEXTILES

Following the rationing and hardships of WWII, Britain's textile reinvention is brought to life in this exhibit at The Fashion and Textile museum in Bermondsey. It focuses on designers Lucienne Day, Jacqueline Groag and Marian Mahler whose work is about as much of a departure from floral, cutesy, quintessentially English prints as is possible. A great tie-in with this weekend's 1950s nostalgia but from a less overdone angle.

Designing Women is on at the Fashion and Textile Museum until 16th June

Lucienne Day and her quirky textile designs (image from www.fetchingthings.com)

PICASSO AND MODERN BRITISH ART

Anybody vaguely art literate will be familiar with Picasso's work. Tate Britain presents a new angle by examining the influence his work has had on Brit artists such as Francis Bacon, David Hockney and Henry Moore.

Picasso and Modern British Art is on at Tate Britain until 15th July

One of the works on show... Picasso's Three Dancers (image from http://swowen9.blogspot.co.uk)

CHRISTIAN LOUBOUTIN

You don't get more iconic than a Louboutin red sole, it's hard to believe that they've been around only twenty years, so ingrained is his aesthetic. What was a world without the ultimate red sole even like? The definitive exhibition for lovers of footwear full of glamour and va va boom.

Christian Louboutin is on at the Design Museum until 9th July

Dream shoes... Louboutins by Khuong Nguyen (image from www.searchingforstyle.com)

BRITISH DESIGN: 1948-2012

One of the V&A's big exhibitions this year and another nod to the Jubilee celebrations. The FashEd has seen this and tells me it's a must-see. Spanning everything from the 1948 'Austerity' Olympic Games through to 70s Punk and 90s Cool Brittania as well as much much more in-between this is a comprehensive look at the defining design concepts to have come out of Blighty since a little before the Queen came to the throne.

British Design: Innovation in the Modern Age is on at the V&A until 12th August

Sex Pistols' punk iconography (image from fastyling.blogspot.co.uk)

THE BODY ADORNED

Walking around London, it soon become pretty obvious that around every corner a new culture and its influences can be discovered. This show, which forms part of the Culturl Olympiad, at the Horniman looks at many of the ways Londoners chose to express themselves and the cultures they identify with, whether that's wearing  sari, getting a tattoo or having our nails done.

The Body Adorned is on at The Horniman until 6th January 2013

Urban Street portraits by young people, part of The Body Adorned (image from horseman.ac.uk)

SOUL TO SOLE WITH CHRISTIAN LOUBOUTIN

Posted by Melanie Rickey, Fashion Editor at Large

The lovely Mr Louboutin (image from afanovafashion.com)

Earlier in the Spring I interviewed Christian Louboutin for Ponystep, a brilliant and fun style magazine with an irreverent and camp yet informed tone of voice. It is not a cheap purchase; £12 is a LOT to pay for a magazine - and we all do the work for Richard Mortimer, its founder and editor-in-chief (he also created BoomBox), for free because we know he can only just about afford to eat himself. As more people discover the magazine - and they are, in droves - he'll gain the ability to bring the price down.

Personally, I love how Ponystep documents the creative class together with pop and club culture in a big crazy soup of glossy pages. Its not everyday you see One Direction a shiny page away from a gay fetish-obsessed architect and trangender porn stars. But then, as a woman who spent most of her 20s hanging out in gay clubs, I appreciate a bit of diversity.

Which brings me onto Christian Louboutin, a designer and man I have a huge respect for, mainly because, after celebrating 20 years in business, and a massively successful one at that, he is still independent and has never sold out to the big boys for cash. Mr Louboutin has personal and creative integrity and is not afraid to stand up for himself, a David in a world of Goliaths.

The amazing "Pigalle Flat" £635 from Christian Louboutin

He gave a startlingly honest interview, to the point that he called me afterwards and asked me not to put some stuff in which was too personal and emotionally raw (I had tears in my eyes a few times), and if you don't know, he is also in the middle of a trademark case with PPR, the conglomerate which owns Gucci, Yves Saint Laurent, Alexander McQueen and Balenciaga. An Yves Saint Laurent shoe design incorporated a red sole into its design, something he rightly took huge exception to - if you know a Louby shoe, you also know they famously have pillar-box red soles.

Piou Piou £495 from Christian Louboutin 

The case is still ongoing. But one thing he said that didn't make it into the final edit has stayed with me, and it should be the way all designers operate... "You know I respect people. Sometimes you are designing things and you look closely and you think it looks too much like something of a certain designer. If I see that in my work then I immediately erase it, so it’s not even talking about logos or signatures of different brands. I would never approach that type of thing, never. Also, your work is about creating. You have to have your brain functioning rather than just copying, you know? You can’t be in both fields, you have to decide."

Loubi Zeppa £625 from Christian Louboutin

If you haven't already seen it, his exhibition currently at the design museum is wonderful and gloriously risque as well as being highly educational. If you ever wondered how a designer shoe is made, you can see it at the Design Museum. Now time to enjoy the interview....

How cute was Christian when he was younger?

THE WEEK IN FASHION: OCTOBER 17th-21st

Posted by Fashion Junior at Large

Welcome to another week of  news from the fashion world, brought to you by FEAL. Happy Weekend!

I'm going to start this week's news on a sort of business-y note as I've been a bit perplexed by a lot of the big money news which seems to have emerged over the past few days, despite the doom and gloom of the financial pages. I'm no economic whizz kid but I do find it baffling that while Europe is apparently in deep crisis, spending at the Frieze art fair was brisk and Marc Quinn's statue of Kate Moss in a rather tangled yoga pose was snapped up for a mere £577,250 at a Sotheby's sale; the lucky owner is apparently a private individual from Europe, lucky them!

Marc Quinn's 'Microcosmos' (Image from Vogue.co.uk)

A couple of big fashion houses have posted massive profits this week as well, and not just due to expansion in the East.  This week LVMH and Dior both reported rises of around 15%. Of course, Asia is where the greatest opportunity lies for luxury brands; LVMH saw a 27% increase in the last four months. That said, Europe and the US are not THAT far behind with profits rising by 7% and 18% respectively in those areas. One of the many brands under the LVMH umbrella is Celine, where Phoebe Philo is still being lauded for her game changing collections;  results were said to have been 'remarkable' there, perhaps showing that it is not just a catwalk phenomenon which Philo has masterminded. It's worth highlighting as well that Dior's lack of solid design direction doesn't seem to have done them much harm at all- clearly perfume and leather goods can ride even the most potent of media storms.

Everyone still wants a bit of Celine, according to LVMH results (Image from FashionGoneRogue.com)

The importance of the Asian market is underlined by the expansion which many brands are currently undertaking. The latest is Vivienne Westwood who opened her first Chinese store in Shanghai earlier this week. Dame Viv is in China to take part in lots of activities promoting the opening including being guest of honour at the opening of Shanghai Fashion Week. Never one to be seen and not heard, she's also promoting her concerns about the environment and sustainability by addressing the 'Can China survive the world green economy?' conference.

Dame Vivienne Westwood at the opening of her new Shanghai shop

Enough of the business chat and on to some excellent images by Steven Meisel for W magazine's annual art issue. He has employed the talents of various stars including Linda Evangelista, Karen Elson, Coco Rocha and Joan Rivers to create fake ads for imagined products dreamed up with a little help from the W team. Among them the predicatable next project of Petra Ecclestone and a retro spin on shampoo promotion. I've included some of the images below and somewhere in there is Anna Dello Russo, can you spot her? Hint: You have NEVER seen her quite like this before.

All images from nymag.com

When I read this next story, it made my skin crawl with its subtly anti-woman undertones. Christian Louboutin has been explaining why he thinks women love shoes so much. He says 'That's why women are happy to wear painful shoes. For some a little discomfort is balanced by something else, which has to do with desire. You feel yourself, empower yourself, know yourself. You are aware of your body. This little act of discomfort pays off in lots of other ways... There is an element of seduction in shoes that doesn't exist for men...The language starts with the shoe and radiates over the whole body. A woman can be sexy, charming, witty or shy with her shoes. Shoes for men are about elegance or wealth; they are not playing with the inner character''

Image from ftape.com

I'll let you make your own mind up about whether there's any element of truth in that account of why we wear heels, and we can't argue against the fact that Louboutin has had an epic effect on what we wear on our feet. In the interests of balance, I thought I'd post an extract from Caitlin Moran's amazing 'How to be a Woman'-
 'The unwearability of high heels is self-evidently all around us- coming to a head at the average wedding reception, a uniformly high-heeled occasion. In our minds we see it as an elegant and serene gathering of women in their finest. One of the big chances of the year to pretend you're at the Oscars, in your stilettos. In actuality, of course, it looks like the annual AGM of the Tina Turner Impressionist Union- women staggering around in unaccustomed verticality; foot flesh pouring out over tight, unkind satin, toes going numb for days afterwards''. 

Image from telegraph.co.uk

Miu Miu's decision to hire Hailee Steinfeld as the face of their AW11 campaign caused quite a stir with the debate divided between those who thought she was freakishly young and those who thought the images were charming and sweet (and lots in between). So, the Resort campaign starring 34- year old Guinevere Van Seenus represents something of a leap for Miu Miu. Guinevere was chosen by Erdem earlier in the year to model his Resort 2012 collection, inspired by Hitchcock leading ladies. In a matter of months, the Miu Miu woman has doubled in age and transformed from childish slip of a thing to assured lady, quite the genius move or confusing?

Erdem Resort 2012 (Image from fashionologie.com)

In an interview the FashEd did with Donatella Versace a while back, she told us that the Versace for H&M collection would revive lots of the prints which the label was famous for back in the nineties. True to her word, there is a wealth of fabulously flamboyant baroque references in the full lookbook for the collection which we got to see for the first time this week. It's so darn bellisima, bring on November 17th!

Versace for H&M- Image from telegraph.co.uk

Finally, we may not all be able to fork out the £60,000 paid for a Tracey Emin at Frieze but for a mere tenner you can get your hands on Emin engraved soap at Liberty's Beauty Hall. The project is part of Emin's support for Art Against Knives project which she is involved in 'Because I am against people stabbing each other. Full stop'. Each soap comes wrapped in a poem which Emin has composed especially for the collaboration. If you can't make it to Liberty then you can purchase yours here.