With such an illustrious history, it seems as though the house of Chanel embarks upon a new milestone every other day. This time around it’s the 100-year anniversary of the opening of first Chanel boutique in Deauville. In celebration of the event, Karl Lagerfeld directed a short film starring Keira Knightley as Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel, and Clotilde Hesme as her aunt, Adrienne.
The film chronicles Chanel’s initial success selling hats in the boutique to European aristocrats, celebrities and bourgeoisie. The set was designed to exactly reproduce the street where Chanel’s first boutique was located, an ambience largely reinforced by Lagerfeld’s custom costume designs for the production. While only thirteen minutes in length, the film and its characters manage to communicate an eerie kind of foresight as to the monumental success the house would later enjoy. Check out the video in its entirety below:
Scion is teaming up with cult fashion label Hood by Air for a new installation project opening this month in their gallery and retail space in Los Angeles. Dubbed the “Scion A/V Installation,” the space merges Scion product and lifestyle for the first time by showcasing artwork and limited-edition products, alongside vehicles from the Scion collection. This month’s project will bring New York-based fashion label Hood By Air to the west coast for the brand’s first pop up retail installation.
The Scion A/V Hood By Air pop up exhibition, entitled “MORPH,” will serve as the debut of a capsule luggage concept collection and feature three silicone art objects inspired by hiking luggage, tattooed skin and jewelry piercings as the focal point for the exhibit. Scion A/V has also partnered with Hood By Air to produce an entire inventory of limited edition Hood By Air items that will sell within the space, including but the coveted Hood By Air “Classics” T-shirt collection in never before seen color-ways, backpacks, posters, water bottles, Emory boards and small accessories.
The opening reception of Scion A/V Presents: Hood By Air “MORPH” will be held this Saturday, May 18th from 7–10 p.m. RSVP details on the flyer below. The exhibition will run for three weeks and close on June 16th. Head over to the Scion A/V Installation, located at 7667 Melrose Ave in Los Angeles.
Francesco Rugi and Silvia Qunitanilla, better known as “Carnovsky,” are a Milanese creative duo specializing in RGB installations. The duo’s psychedelic installations take full advantage of the RGB colour model (using red, green and blue light) as a means of compelling viewer interaction.
As part of Milan design week 2013, Missoni called on the duo to transform their Via Solferino showroom into a swirling kaleidoscope of the brand’s signature zigzag motif. The result was an entirely new conception of an iconic print, an evolution of the overlapping chevrons through exaggeration and distortion.
In their unmediated state, the installations serve as disorienting manifestations of the most amazing (or perhaps frightening) acid trip. Forms and figures are layered one on top of the other, almost reminiscent of an anatomical diagram in the duo’s non-commissioned works. It’s only with the aid of tinted lenses that each layer can be momentarily isolated. In that fleeting moment, carnovsky’s muddled reality is suspended – temporarily revealing the chromatic complexities of what lies beneath. Check out the video below:
It’s one thing to draw praise from The New York Times (who lauded his “considerable talent”) or NPR (who wrote that he, “elegantly bridges the seemingly disparate worlds of classical music and pop R&B”) but when your music is drawing praise from Beyonce, people start to take notice. That’s what’s been happening to Marques Toliver, a Florida-born, UK-based artist who is making waves with his debut album, “Land Of CanAan,” due out this week.
Toliver’s music is smooth and confident, a mix of classic R&B with the spirit of an indie rocker. His music is so good in fact, that it was spotlighted by Beyonce on the London edition of her members only BEYHIVEBLOG. The new album was inspired by the autobiography, ‘My Bondage My Freedom,” by abolitionist Frederick Douglass. It was while reading the book that Toliver would come across the refrain found on the album’s opening title track. “Oh CanAan, Sweet CanAan, I am bound to the land of Canaan…” The song sets the tone for the rest of the album, which is sure to land Toliver on more than a few “best of” lists this year, and possibly get him another celebrity shout-out or two very soon.
Check out Marques Toliver’s single, “Control” below:
Relative to the painted image, the work of Chilean artist Josefina Concha is a paradox. Instead of directly applying pigment to the image surface, Concha opts to sew her forms onto cloth. In her attempts to imitate the painted medium, Concha inadvertently (or perhaps intentionally) replaces it, effectively rendering it obsolete.
The result is something irrevocably tied to the artifice of the sewing machine, a mechanical mediary which distances the artist from the work she creates. Despite the particularities of her art making process, Concha’s work translates as a kind of disguise – often indiscernible from the gestured brushstrokes of abstract impressionist works from afar.
It is only upon a closer examination of Concha’s image surface that all is made clear. What seems to be dried layers of pigment are in fact an intricate network of stitches, the blatant evidence of mechanical intervention hidden within plain sight. Concha’s preoccupation with disguising through imitation is a subtle displacement of an all but ubiquitous medium. As an alternative to painting, Concha proposes something all at once familiar and unfamiliar.
