on the mauve

some sections from 'What is Chic? Investigating Fashion's Favourite Word' by Matthew Schneier:

'the majority of Carine Roitfeld's 2010 interview in Russian Vogue was all but unintelligible to the Western world — at least to the large swaths of it not versed in Cyrillic. alongside a characteristically moody Hedi Slimane portrait ran a Q&A with Roitfeld, then the editor in chief of Paris Vogue. it found its way into the Roitfeld-worshipping corners of the blogosphere, where eventually a helpful fan provided a complete translation. but for the last question, she needn't have bothered. though there is a Russian word for the single term she chose thrice over when pressed to describe herself in three words — шик, or 'shikarnyi' in everyday speech — her final answer was printed in Latin case: chic, chic, chic.

the French have a way with indefinable qualities. they have a long-established phrase for it: je ne sais quoi. so does the fashion world. it's chic. chic is when something is stylish, when something is cool, when something is proper, when something is ineffably, indescribably, great.

open a fashion magazine, load a fashion web site (including this one), attend a fashion show, or eavesdrop at a fashion party, and it is a given that you will read or hear one particular word: chic. (it hardly matters on what continent you're looking or listening; as we'll see, chic is chic is chic, in America and abroad.)

but despite its dalliances in other spheres, it's in fashion where the word has enjoyed the most constant usage. 'the word does get linked to pretty much everything at the moment and it does get thrown around pretty easily,' complains Peter Copping, creative director at Nina Ricci, whose fluttery Parisian ready-to-wear may have a better stake on the term than most. Marco Zanini, creative director at Rochas agrees. 'it is so overused, it really lost its meaning, from my point of view,' he says — so much so that a few seasons ago, he dedicated his entire collection to exploring what the word actually means. when he began searching on Google and Google Images, he 'realised that basically on the Internet it doesn't have any meaning at all. if you Google 'chic' you'll be amazed by the cheesy stuff that will pop up.'

those on the editorial side have noticed, too. two years ago, says Heather Wagner, copy director at Elle, 'we even had a meeting about it. it was on every other page. it was back when Carol Smith was our publisher; she actually noticed it and said there's a moratorium on the word 'chic.'' some arbiters are recommending restraint. 'i don't throw that word around lightly,' Tommy Ton tells me. and what the repercussions of constant usage are remains unclear.

'chic is about a way of being, because there is no specifically chic item or dress, it only depends on the person; it depends on you,' Zanini says. 'i don't think it's purely on appearance or the way somebody dresses, i think it's how they live their life,' Copping adds. 'i keep thinking back to a woman like Pauline de Rothschild, who was very refined in the way that she dressed, but then she was also known for doing the most beautiful tables for any dinner party that she gave; her apartment was beautiful; and i mean, then i want to say very chic. those people, when they have to thank someone it would be a handwritten note, not just a text that's flashed off to somebody. and i think in culture at the moment there's kind of a dumbing down on a lot of those fronts.'

voilà chic: the journey, not the destination.'

swimwear 101

with sewing, to a certain extent, there are general rules that you can learn, follow, and master - and be sure that your outcome will be of a certain quality. but sewing swimwear is a whole different beast. the machines are different, the fabric is different - its as if you are sewing for the first time in your life. and with such great expectations of quality each time we hand in a piece of assessment, its pretty unnerving to think that there is a pretty great chance that regardless of how hard we will try this semester, that we will probably be handing in some pretty sad looking stuff.
as our co-ordinator keeps mentioning, our swimwear teacher is perfect in this area - but she couldn't sew a suit to save her life. juggling both sets of skills is satisfying - and terrifying. but i know that having someone with such amazing experience be able to teach us in this area is totally rare, so i'm very excited and appreciative.
when we started this semester, i was hesitant. the thought of sewing lycra made me cringe. but i've found it really interesting - and she has reminded us that you can be completely modern and high-fashion with this fabric.. it's not all just about overpriced tights.

so far, we have learned to make a triangle bikini, bikini bottoms, bike shorts, a long-sleeved rashie with a zip, basic tights, a backless leotard, a sports bra and different variatons of bra cups. i haven't hard time to finish all of them (like the rash top), and not all are pictured here.
oh, and i certainly didn't choose the colours of fabrics that we have been working with!
aaand the machine spewed when i made the bikini bottoms - i may be self-taught, but i'm not that poor of a sewer.

you may have already seen these via my instagram (@rachelmcgann):

the fashion conspiracy

some of my favourite parts from the book 'The Fashion Conspiracy' by Nicholas Coleridge:

i wondered why it was, alone in world fashion, that the Japanese inspired introspection. the idea that one might discuss Georgio Armani's design and its relationship with the Holy Spirit was absurd, and yet the distance between trousers and theology in Japan seemed to be a matter of punctuation.
- p85
'the egos of these people are really quite staggering, especially the hat people. half the things they're doing are like Valentino twenty years ago but they're too ignorant to know it their heroes are Body Map and Galliano but it's all been said and done by Vivienne Westwood.' - Scott Crolla
'on the other hand, the British have never quite understood what we've got here. it's like British pop music all over again. you have to go abroad to realise we're bloody influential.' - Katharine Hamnett
- p130
'my job takes up all my time and energy. creating is a harrowing business. i work in a state of anguish all year. i shut myself up, don't go out. it's a hard life, which is why i understand Proust so well; i have such an admiration for what he has written about the agony of creation.' - Yves Saint Laurent
- p192
when the Milanese chide Alaia for having no tailoring, they are really chiding him for its simplicity. Armani's tailoring is complex in structure but made to look easy; Alaia's tailoring is simple in structure but flawlessly cut his clothes appear to follow the contours of the body very closely, but actually create their own shape, inventing curves where there actually are none. it is this ingenious and counterfeit sexuality that so greatly incenses the Italians.
- p227
in Anna Piaggi there is a puzzle. mention her name in fashion circles, anywhere at all from Tokyo to Manhattan, and people say, 'ah, Anna Piaggi. but of course she is brilliant. great friend of Karl Lagerfeld's. eccentric, but very important.' and that, give or take the odd detail of her odd appearance, is just about it. for someone so much discussed, remarkably little is known about Anna Piaggi. her fame is underpinned by her rumbustious cameo roles.
- p239
right around the block from where the editors sit, way across the metaphorical Berlin Wall in the commercial zone of the fashion audience, sit the store buyers. six factors distinguish them from the fashion editors.
1 - they are dressed in newer, more powerful clothes
2 - they manager to have their hair combed out every single morning for the shows, even on the 21st dawn of the 25 day tour, 4 capital circuit
3 - their underlying paranoia is 2 or 3 points higher than even the fashion editors'
4 - they have tens of millions of dollars to distribute in orders between New York, Milan, Paris and London (and spend it in that sequent to this percentage: New York 82.3%, Milan 9%, Paris 8.5%, London 0.2%)
5 - they stay in enormous, expensive suites at the Crillon or the Bristol in Paris, or Claridges or the Berkeley in London. their rooms are three times as comfortable as those of the editors
6 - they are irritated by their bad seats at fashion shows. they feel discriminated against, and cannot understand why even quite mediocre fashion writers, whose influence they doubt will shift so much as a single trapeze-line skirt, should be given priority vantage points, when they - the store buyers - are there with their massive corporate cheque books and a combined 'open to buy' (as they call their bugdget) of $700 million a season.
- p258
'people who intellectualise fashion, it makes me sick. history and fashion, thought and fashion, i hate it, my god i hate the talk. all those buyers are so serious, i can't believe it, they're so fickle those stupid buyers.' - Manolo Blahnik
- p269
a strange phenomenon of people in fashion is that, paranoid about each other though they are, the impulse to eat together at the same few restaurants is overriding. they will fly from one seam of the globe to another - from Milan to New York for collections, from London to Tokyo for a Hanae Mori showcase of designers - and no sooner have they arrived than they're checking out the fashion restaurants. these are by no means always the same places as fashionable restaurants. fashion thrives on shortages: shortages of tickets for the shows, shortages of front-row seats, shortages of available clothes to photograph from the designers' public relations offices. the competitiveness, the potential for humiliation, the worry and paranoia over the availability of a table for four is only another station in the fashion victim's descent into mania.
- p298
what is striking about the new generation of the copyist, is the speed and cynicism with which a designer collection moves into un-designer labels in peripheral markets, and of increased designer consciousness.
'South Africans are the worst of the lot and impossible to sue. they have the pictures of your show over there within three days and they're ready to swing. they turn the stuff round in seconds and in the townships, especially dresses. there's one company in South Africa that specialises in ripping of Kenzo, line for line, seam for seam. they make a fortune - more than Kenzo i reckon - and there's nothing that Kenzo can do about it.' - Jasper Conran
overnight couriering of catwalk photographs to pirate manufacturers is the Archilles' heel of designer copyright. it is difficult to prevent, since the photographers themselves are not always aware of their part of the conspiracy. a bogus South African or Far East news agency asks for second rights on catwalk pictures the photographer is taking for an accredited magazine. a price is set, not on the number of pictures published, but at an inclusive rate for three sets of transparencies of the show. the photographer then has no way of knowing that his pictures are never published at all. instead they are parcelled up in a Jiffy bag together with sketches from the designer's publicity portfolio, and directed to the factory. what is new is the widespread counterfeiting of designer clothes, including the label sewn inside, and the attempt to pass them off as the real thing.
- p287

she said she was wearing Jason wu. it was Jason Wu for Target

my moodboard:


i ended up exploring an oceanic theme. this first came about via looking into the Indian / Hindu ideas of reincarnation / karma. i looked at artistic interpretations of this, and found a lot of images that depicted something that was half human / half animal, or even half human / half tree, and etc. out of these images, i found the ocean-themed ones the most interesting - particularly an image of a woman with the bottom half of a squid.
i drew a squid with the intention of also drawing a human and merging the two (for my prints), but ran out of time. so unfortunately, it ended up just being a squid on its own.
the ocean theme got me enjoying images such as squid tentacles, barnacles and mermaids. i am going to lasercut some barnacle/ squid tentacle sort of holes of differing sizes in random locations (particularly concentrated toward the hem) and an uneven, irregular hem line as well with the lasercutter into the ruffles on my bikini bottoms - to address the industrial design part of the brief.

my prints:




some pages from my journal:

homme away from home

this semester, the brief has been about swimwear. so we have gotten a swimwear designer in to teach the design aspect, partially - but more so; the manufacturing. she has been in the swimwear business since she was a teenager, so she knows her away around every machine and every finishinh technique.

the brief included the following points that had to be addressed:
(i) INDIA - implications from growing middle class - from design perspective
= diversity of culture / rich use of textile traditions / modern use of colour and print
= for a starting point for our design research - it could be subtley or heavily influencial in our process
(ii) MODESTY - ingrained in Indian culture / religious values
= forward-thinking social trend with the emergence of our modern global world
= not about being modest in colour / print / texture / design creativity
= revealing less / restraint / being modest (where appropriate) with body exposure
= this part didn't necessarily apply to all garments - we could design a swimsuit, as long as there was something modest to be able to wear over the top, where the situation was appropriate
(iii) CLIMATIC CONDITIONS - pertinent to our region (sun safety in this case)
= a new approach to the sun safe message - perhaps masked by other motives that appeal to all audiences (make sun safety about fashion - not function)
= the message may need to be stealthily applied - modesty may be one of the answers
= it also addresses staying cool in heat - eg. fabrication and natural fibres / laser-cut ventilation)
(iv) DIGITAL PRINTING - experiment with colour / print - design three prints
(v) ARTEFACT PROTOTYPING - use of industrial design facilities at uni - eg. laer cutting / 3d printing / welding..




this is the look i'll be making: