sections from Front Row with Tim Blanks - October 2010

'the world loves a good fairytale. the teenagers love Twilight, music's got Lady GaGa. we have Avatar, Inception.. there's something irresistible about a dream state. fashion's fairytale is haute couture, the twice-yearly parade in Paris of outifts that have as much to do with the practical concerns of everyday dressing as a chinchilla coat in a sauna. a fairytale is supposed to cloak a germ of instruction - there's a moral to this story - which is one reason why couture always brings on a bout of media breast-beating about its relevance. a dying art? its already stone cold, cry the doubters.

it didn't used to be that way. there was an era when the Countess Mona Bismarck had even her gardening clothes custom-made by Cristobel Balenciaga, the greatest couturier of them all. those were different times. now, depending on who you listen to, haute couture is a laboratory in which an ever-declining number of designers experiment with ideas that htey will translate into their ready-to-wear. or its a loss-eader promotional vehicle for designer fragrances, where there is still some real money to be made. or its a clothing resource for a few hundred wealthy women around the world. or its still a fairytail that is sustained by fashion's faith in the beauty of decades-old craftsmanship. or its a gorgeous zombie.

i used to cover couture regularly for television, and it always yielded a telegenic spectacle that knocked the major read-to-wear trend of the day into a cocked hat, on screen at least. so that was my own purely selfish reason for appreciating the four or five days in Paris when Chanel, Christian Dior, Valentino, Emanuel Ungaro, Givenchy, Christian Lacroix and Jean Paul Gaultier, among others, would parade heights of extravagance unattainable at any other stratum of fashion. i hadn't been to the couture shows for a few years until this past July's presentations for autumn 2010. i'd love to tell you i come to praise couture, not to bury it, but the thrill had gone (along with a number of those names whose shows i used to attend).
execept, that is, for John Galliano's latest couture collection for Christian Dior.
Flowers were his theme, and it was the perfect marriage of designer and inspiration, given Galliano's native flair for colour and shape. there all sorts of reminders - petals and fronds and ruffles - that nature is unmatchable for special effects.

Galliano offered daywear, too, in the sense that there were jackets and skirts in which you could perambulate through a hotel lobby without scarring the horses. there's always wit in the window-dressing of any Galliano collection. this time, Stephen Jones wrapped the models' heads in florist's cellophane and the belts looked like the raffia that ties a bunch of flowers - such playfully humble accompaniments to clothes that cost a queen's ransom. Galliano nails that notion so well: in this pragmatic day and age, haute couture is designer playtime, the one moment when commercial considerations, the dreaded cost effectiveness, for exmample, can take a back seat. but playfulness was in short supply over the rest of the couture calendar. Givenchy's Riccardo Tisci, for instance, offered a masterclass in the extraordinary techniques, fabric treatments and embellishments that are the traditional stuff of haute couture. a gown in Chantilly lace appliqued with leather that was a tone-on-tone duplication of the pattern of hte lace was utterly, impressively obbsessive in its detailing. another lace dress had taken six months to make. in these years of fast-food-fashion-everything, such conspicuous consumption of time and effort has evolved into a strut for couture's luxury cred, almost an end in itself. i think that's kind of decadent, but Tisci's fascinated with decadence. and he's not alone. maybe that's why couture endures, if not as an actual code of dressing, at least as a form of popular entertainment.

Karl Lagerfeld can lay claim to being the last real grand master of couture. so he understands all about creating a wardrobe that should technically dress a couture client for every conceivable exigency in her life. and he has always done this with an enviable lightness of touch. but this couture collection was heavy, almost morbid in its palette and elongated proportions. it took me by surprise, and i found that rather seductive.

i've been saying for quite a while that the future of fashion will belong again to the tailor and the dressmaker, as people search for somethign that is truly informed, special and personal, rather than the product of a huge fashion concern. perhaps that presages the end of couture as we know it now. but it will never be "The End".'

•(red-e too war / Josie ‘i just linked myself’ Edwards, Timba ‘computers are whack’ Smits

'LEGO, Birthday cards, microsleeps, drunkenness, sobriety, overwhelming cities, wrapping paper, punctuation, the scent of used book stores, smiling at strangers, writing letters (among so many other things), knock knock jokes, Italian futurism, femme fatale, postmodernist, mermaid, loveyoumoon, waxwayne, thesis, monotonous, idea, fumemployment, vehemently, manufactory, nicola, nicolour, menageries, November 1997, ubiety.' thoughts not my own.

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'when Summer starts, there are suddenly an awful lot of very pretty people dressed in Summer clothes, which are sexy in a different way from Winter clothes. and i find myself swinging wildly back and forth between thinking, 'calm down, Joey. these are real people, who should be treated with respect. i wonder what she thinks of that book she's reading?' and half a second later thinking, 'i want to spend the rest of my life just kissing that one spot on her neck oh god oh god.''
– www.asofterworld.com


'my Mum used to have this loaf waiting for us when we got home from school. when we were older, we’d let ourselves in with a key hidden inside a fake rock in the front yard. we grew up in St Kilda and there was an asylum nearby. sometimes when we came home from school, a man from the asylum would be sitting on the front porch with his suitcase, trying to convince us that he had bought the house from Mum and that we didn’t live there anymore. but we always got past him and to the yummy afternoon tea inside!
- p84, Anna Krien - Date and Nut Loaf recipe, Afternoon Tea cookbook by Frankie


'i would guess in a world of billions of people conformity is a necessity to run a smooth functioning culture. everything is directed at sameness. uniformity is security. but sometimes polyps develop in the ___ of ___, and i just might be one of these distracting anomalies. i wouldn’t dare hide behind the cloak of artistic privilege myself, and especially classify all other artists as mavericks. being an artist and associating with artists for more than fifty years i would have to confess many artists are simply close followers. artists tend to huddle together under the safety of movements and trends, they milk the prevailing crazes dry. of course this isn’t true of all artists, but the rare original few are generally sidelined until they eventually surface. with all due respect, i myself can't avoid nonconformity, its not an affectation with me, its my psychosis. i am a born recalcitrant, and unfortunately an unrepentant miscreant. ‘recalcitrant’ is the military term for those who cannot be brought into line, a reactionary malcontent. i know this because i faced this problem in military school as a child. if that wasn’t enough i show all the symptoms of being an unbridled ‘miscreant’, an old biblical term for someone who has been miscreated, an incorrigible person. i don’t revel in my personal anomalies, i just keep them in check. that is, until a pencil or brush gets into my hands. at this point i seem to exalt through my compulsion (in my mind anyway).
i see this in other artists.
this is the malady of true ____ such as painters, sculpturs, writers, poets, musicians, actors and other people who are driven to do things that aren't socially accountable. in my opinion however, one thing to be cautious about is this ____ ____ mind is only two degrees away from the criminal mind. ____ ____ many cases they overlap. this is not a chance coincidence. irregularities in any system causes problems, problems ___ work out accidentally for the good is in fact evolution ____ ____ grants its favours only through the benefits of mistakes. i would say, if it had been a perfect world we would never have gotten here.'
- Robert? Williams, 06/04/08, Monster Children? magazine


'if you go into a war zone with a camera and manage to come out a) alive and b) with a roll of film, then you’ve qualified as a Photojournalist. this is the kind of artform that calls less on ego and more on instinct. danger isn’t necessarily a prerequisite. maybe you only go as far as the local swimming hole, or a drive in. either way, your images capture and record a series of a moment in time. frequently, these shots are featured in the monochrome pages of a paper, only to disappear the next day. some are never published. this is why the Reportage Festival exists, to exhibit a wider body of local and international photojournalistic work.
now in its eighth year, the 2008 showcase travels from a rioting Pakistan, by Tijuana prostitutes to a Melbourne drive-in. the well-versed eye of festival co-founder Stephen Dupont was charged with guest curation along with Jacqui Vicario. Dupont has captured his fair share of stories, from India's fading steam trains to Port Moresby street gangs. the following five stories grabbed our guts and taught us a thing or two about photojournalism.
in northern Scotland, Agnes Rose Willmington lived at this address for over forty years. during this time she only spoke to one other human being, her mother, who died in 1951. upon Agnes’ death in the winter of 1979, authorities found in the old house: over 1,000 bibles, 297 prayer books, 50 statues of Mary, over a 1,000 crucifix’s, and 70 mason jars filled with urine and feces.
conceptually and visually, this is a compelling work, a modern-day version of 17th-century Dutch vanitas paintings, which remind viewers of man's mortality. when i suggest that the piece resonates with religious references - blood, death and renewal - he does not demur.'
- www.reportage.com.au/festival

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'i’ve heard of a Chinese folk belief that we have a certain number of days allotted to us in our lies but any time spent fishing doesn’t count. its an appealing notion, the idea that some activities are outside time.'
– p45
'their first child was born a year later and died from pneumonia the year after that. that would hollow a face.'
– p48
'London was beautiful yesterday. the sky was like a painting, perfectly still, scudded clouds against pale blue, and i walked a long time, pounding out the post-24-hours-on-a-plane blues. passed by the Royal Academy and saw they had an exhibition called Rembrandt’s Women so i went in. it was the perfect antidote.
i walked out afterwards in an exalted state - a kind of alchemised melancholy – which i stayed in all day and all through the gig last night, and which lent a back note to my singing.
he paints age and beauty, health and decay, sagging bellies, cellulite thighs, blotches on the skin next to bejewelled fabrics and threaded gold, the dark thread of hair trailing down from the navel to the mound of Venus; a woman peering out of a canopied bed, pulling back the curtain with her large clumpy hand, with a tendy, steady gaze that says, We are one.
there was a painting of his mistress later in her life when she was beginning to get ill that ripped my heart. i wanted to put my arm around you and stand in front of it together. instead, in my weird jetlagged state, i just stood there and wept – for her, for him, for you, for us all. i miss you like sleep. - P'
– p114
Sonnet 147:
my love is as a fever, longing still
for that which longer nurseth the disease;
feeding on that which doth preserve the ill,
the uncertain sickly apetite to please.
my reason, the physician to my love,
angry that his prescriptions are not kept,
hath left me, and i desperate now approve
desire is death, which physic did except.
past cure i am, now Reason is past care,
and frantic-mad with evermore unrest;
my thoughts and my discourse as madmen’s are,
at random from the truth vainly expressed;
for i have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright,
who art as black as hell, as dark as night.
- William Shakepeare
'no-one ever did themselves any favours putting their lyrics next to Shakespeare’s. but its you, sweet reader, not me i’m doing the favour for. songs often remind me of other things after i’ve written them. you don’t start with somebody else’s poem or song and try to rewrite it, but years later, maybe, you come across some lines that bear a resmemblance. had you been carrying them unknowingly? or are there only so many themes and only so many ways to arrange words and images? anything you write of any pith you can be sure to find in Shakespeare eventually. if I could be re-incarnated backwards – if one’s solid flesh could melt and resolve into something old/new – i’d gladly re-fledge with those upstart feathers.'
– p234
'one evening in the Hunter Valley, as i was halfway through singing ‘Everything’s Turning to White’, a flock of seven snowy egrets flew across the sky above the huge crowd, large birds radiant in the setting sun as they carefully stroked their way back to their nesting grounds. golden days.
you never know what’s around the coner, though. as Leonard (Cohen) himself says, ’the older i get, the surer i am i’m not running the show.’ the wheels keep turning.
i opened once for Ani DiFranco in Madrid. the venue was a noisy rock club filled mostly with loud-takling ex-pat Americans. it was one of those nights when youre singing and thinking to yourself, What the fuck am i doing here? who talked me into this? one of those nights when you have to square your shoulders, take a deep breath and say to yourself, Sing to the people listening. they’re out there. they just don’t make as much noise as the people talking. sing to the shy Goths.
– Paul Kelly, p422, How to Make Gravy

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''i’m no good at art, i can’t draw’ – it’s a common refrain, too common. many high school art teachers have a lot to answer for in my opinion for perpetuating the notion that if you can't render something lifelife on paper, then you can’t ‘draw’ and so, by inference, you aren’t any good at Art. sure the great masters, da Vinci chief amongst them, prided themselves on being able to pencil something almost perfectly anatomically correct, but, as society has evolved, so has Art..
‘i could have done that’ – it’s a common refrain, too common. perhaps you could have painted Mondrian’s squares with some masking tape and primary paints on a $10 canvas from Chinatown (and come up with a titled such as ‘Composition with Yellow, Blue and Red’), but you didn’t. neither did you sign the base of a porcelain urinal with the moniker of your alter ego and submit it into an Art exhibition, as Duchamp did in 1917. both these artists broke completely new ground and, while definition of art is certainly not ‘something that's never been done before' (and attempting to tackle it here would be biting off far more than can chew), there's something to be said for being able to imagine that which has never been seen before. indeed that’s surely a better criteria for an artist than ‘a good drawer’ in my sketchbook.'
– ‘Well Drawn’ by Kate Bezar, p40, Dumbo Feather magazine


'ultimately i believe we’re all very selfish until we have children. children force you to consider them just by the nature of your relationship to them, and the fact that they rely on you so much.'
- Matt Grant (founder of Peat's Ridge Festival), p17, Dumbo Feather magazine


'it felt natural to work with Jonathan. a lot of people say to us, ‘how can you work together and live together?’ the way we look at it is that this way we spend the best time in our day together, rather than coming home tired and spending the evening together as most people do. we spend our most alive and active part of the day together. '
- p41
'yes, for me, being creative is such an internal process and when you become a mother you don’t have time for that internal process. zuddenly you have this other person you hve to look after. it took me time to adjust to that. for me, to not be able to create would mean death. nobody can tell you about being a mother, but i feel like an aspect of me - i know this sounds negative, but its actually very postive – a part of me died when i gave birth. i’m not romantic about being a mother because i think its an incredibly hard thing to be a mother and to work and to balance everything. i have to create time for myself by waking up really early so i can do my yoga practice and have two or three hours in the morning before it all starts. also with a child i’m really looking forward to educating him..he’s now almost two, and its fun; its brought me out of myself.'
– Nipa Doshi, p47, Dumbo Feather magazine


'it’s a challenge, but i have the same philosophy with everything i do and that’s to put all my energy into it regardless of what it is. you know, it’s the 21st Century, if you are not getting paid that’s ridiculous, right? i just curated a magazine with fellow designer, Deanne Cheuk, in New York and the whole ceonceprt was about that – people whoe work both in the arts and commercially. the process is seamless..
what do you think is design/illustration’s place in the world? you know, does it matter?
well i do believe that art matters. you have to believe that things matter, regardless of your interests. i’m very aware that everything as we know it will all be gone one day, but that doesn’t stop me from wanting to use my time on this planet as I feel to be important, at least on a small level, i’ll leave the rest up to the sun and the solar system.
– Chris Rubino, p58, Dumbo Feather magazine

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i believe myself to be a small amphibian. / i have sequipedalism.*
i fell over in the shower and a lemon went up my bottom. / my car wouldn’t stop.
i don’t know why you won’t believe me, i’ve worked for days on that excuse.
i didn’t. i wouldn’t. it was HER. / my goldfish is psychotic.
i’d love to help you, but i’m actually quite spectacularly self-centred.
it’s not that i don’t find you enchanting, you just remind me of Ernest Borgnine.
i have a tendency to Isochronal Biperdal Vectitation.**
my pants were unusually tight. / my pants, as it happens, are on fire.
my axolotl died. of course i’m sure. i shot it.
there is a boiled egg stuck in my ear. / i would, but i’m a Pisces.
i would love to help with housework, but you’re so good at it, it’s like watching the creation of Art. another beer would be good.
i would go for a run, but don’t want to frighten my lungs.
i can’t leave the house; i had cosmetic surgery on the weekend and now i look like Melanie Griffith.
at the time, i was captain of the Australian Cricket Team and i just couldn’t get away.
psychologically, it’s important that i’m late so that you feel more strongly about wanting me to arrive.
i hit every red light on the way here. (and now my car is covered in dents.)
i must have blacked out – either that or my skivvy was stuck on my head.
i have a flat tyre and i lent my spare tyre to a friend who was making a swing.
i think i’m dead, but i’ll call you tomorrow and let you know when i’m sure.
* tendency to use long words.
** walk using both feet.
- Kaz Cooke, Little Book of Excuses

the grey album

every step calculated, balanced.
stride.

(swagger).


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what i aim to look like this Summer:




i catch my breath every time i see this image.. so luxurious. i'm so glad that the Olsen sisters (Ashley especially) have got their designing shoes tied on tight:

image via

Azzedine Alaïa: the Master of the Female Form

segmented, via.

one thing alone identified the dress as an Alaïa; well, two things. even without the cold gleam of the First Lady’s arms, it provoked the idea that a woman tends to look her most beautiful in clothes that make her look strong, not glamourous or sexy or powerful. there is a difference. those with a vivid memory of Stephanie Seymour squatting in Richard Avedon’s 1994 portrait to plant a kiss on her favorite designer, her naked buttocks leaving her Alaïa chaps with the whooosh of an automobile in a snowbound slide, will surely debate the point that strength is the essential ingredient of an Alaïa.
and maybe so. maybe the notion of strong-looking fashion, based on concrete methods and examples rather than abstractions and ironic statements, is dying, and there is nobody around with the grit and stamina to map the geography of a woman’s body, as he has done for last 45 years. ballet has its technique and physical rigors. painting has its schools. american music has its places of the heart, like the Delta; cookery, its ingredients and careful preparations. fashion, though, gets its power and unanswerable logic from the female body, and, at roughly 70, Azzedine Alaïa is its undisputed master.

the standard pattern of a designer interview is to give you emotional turbidity. (John Galliano, on a 2003 Dior couture show: 'i want to feel it. i want to rip and tear it and cut it until the pain is in the dresses.')
Mr. Alaïa would show you how to make the dress and shut up about the rest. not talking about it is also a way to avoid a falseness — the falseness of thinking poetic language can be applied to dressmaking. at some point you have to decide what color 'pain' is, and whether it should have long sleeves or short.

like other types of craftsmen who perform the actual work themselves — aside from designing every style, he does all the pattern-making and fittings — he’s happiest when working. he works all the time. and since he has always lived and worked under the same roof (for the last 19 years on rue de Moussy, and for much longer with his partner, Christoph von Weyhe, a painter, and a variety of dogs and cats), this is no problem. his ideal assistant is someone just like him. 'he wants someone who understands his way of thinking, someone who makes him happy when he’s working and gives him feedback,' said the designer Sophie Theallet, who worked with him for a dozen years.

also useful to his fashion education were the few years he designed costumes for the dancers at the Crazy Horse. 'i learned a lot about women’s naked bodies at the Crazy Horse,' he once said.
yhou could certainly find interview subjects with more to say about themselves. but as far as he is concerned, everything that is worth knowing can be observed. you just have to watch him work, and wait.

- Cathy Horyn, 8 December 2010, New York Times

the story delves between two linear timelines, one in the 1970s the other the 1990s, and explores elements of drugs, murder and quantum physical philosophy

had another epiphany dream last night. divine manifestation. the sudden realisation & comprehension of the (larger) essence & meaning.

has been months since the last.

have been having less and less – a sign of maturing & accounting more for own actions, or of an eventless life ?

similar to a mini self-religion - full of morals, warnings, reminders, pseudo fortune telling of what will happen if certain path is chosen / act in a certain way / forget to do something for someone..

only usually happen before / after personal or social events.

was reminded this time to give more, expect less - not live purely on own time and own requirements; take into account the other’s needs, wants, desires.

perhaps just reading into symbolism of dreams too much.