In this century we can see it all over the runways and funways, celebrities strutting care freely, challenging the assigned gender roles and dressing, and the designers mingling handsome with pretty; the phenomenon is androgyny.

It all started way back in 1920s, what I love to call – Coco Chanel’s era. The fancy free designer notably walked around in her beloved Boy Capel’s blazers and bestowed androgyny to fashion. Later, YSL Le Smoking tuxedo suit for women further blurred the differentiating lines. Moreover, today’s fashion is unlike that painful girdle corset fashion of 20s, it’s more about unrestricted comfort where ‘form follows function’. The biased sexual perceptions and supposed gender roles are irritatingly nostalgic in this world of fast fashion. We all have male and female qualities, why not be able to show both? People are being looked at for what’s in their eyes – their inner sexuality.

Generally, it’s my impression that truly androgynous clothes are pretty tricky to find – but most androgyny followers achieve their look by mimicking the styles of the gender that they were not born into. So an androgynous biological female might cut her hair short and wear a lot of menswear, and an androgynous biological male might grow his hair longer, shave his legs, and wear more makeup. The idea is not to do it to the point of actually being in drag (not that there’s anything wrong with drag), but just to the point where it’s difficult to tell what gender you are. 



Fashion has always played with androgyny, but lately it has taken a provocative step onto center stage. Remember when Balenciaga sent a bevy of androgynous-looking models, including the fierce Jana K., down the Spring ’11 runway? It transformed the fashion house’s heritage into a plasticised graphic wonderland, combined with cocoon shaped coats, rigid vests and mini skirt. And since then, we’ve seen Lea T. smooching Kate Moss on the Love cover, Armani Prive fall couture 2011 has an androgynous hair do with Asian inspiration,a major moment for the transsexual model who made her debut as the Givenchy muse.Jean Paul Gaultier’s Spring ’11 ad features Karolina Kurkova leaning in for a kiss with a beautiful blonde that looks like a girl, but it’s delicate-looking male model Andrej Pejic. These models are blurring the lines of sexuality and the fashion industry is loving it.

Fashion and music has played important role in bring the change into the life of a modern life Androgyny is in, and it’s about time! The popularity of androgynous dress, was seen in 1980’s copying the styles of Boy George, Michael Jackson, David Bowie, and the Punk scene.


In Bollywood we had spotted Kalki Koechlin,Kareena Kapoor, Soha Ali Khan, Shilpa Shetty, Anuskha Sharma, Sonam Kapoor, Ira Dubey in the androgynous style.

The year 2011 introduced JJ Valaya as a fine art photographer to the world. It is therefore no coincidence that this season’s fashion lines also stand inspired by the evolving palate of the still image; starting with Black & White, Sepia, Natural and finally culminating in todays Digital undertones. This fascinating journey of colors, though distinctly ‘blue-blooded’ Valaya in spirit, also reflects, very subtly, this incredible evolution within the colors.

Whilst the camera may have had a hold on JJ Valaya since his initiation into fashion, the resultant magic ensured the pace for his latest collection for Delhi Couture Week 2011 is not retro, yet remarkably resplendent and glorious. The collection, very holistically, emphasizes fluidity in perfect harmony with the tailored. 
 

A revered couturier, Anju Modi has been a strong force in the vehement increase of potential, awareness and growth of fashion in India. 

Her ever-evolving designs are the result of her tireless work with master artisans from varied parts of the country, revitalizing and revisiting forgotten crafts and lost legacies. She strives constantly for their revival and relevance.  



This season, she presents her collection Maya, at Delhi Couture Week on 24th July’2011.

Bejeweled, beautified and bespoke, Maya was conjured by the Gods, the goddess of wealth herself. She was said to possess the combined material power of all the Gods and Goddesses. She was the ultimate seduction. 

Drawing from this mystical epoch, the collection is incensed with craft, style and grandeur, all of it spectacularly captured in hues of Blue, Ivory and Maroon.  
Impossible angrakhas, opulent saris and exaggerated lehengas in magnificent porous fabrics have been passionately illustrated, creating a magical vision, of the ultimate illusion. 
 

She has gained hands on experience while negotiating the dust…

A fashion designer and the creative head of Genesis Luxury Deepika Gehani started her fashion career in the year 2000. Elegance, a quest for perfection, impeccable finish and sophisticated forms are the catalysts that spurred Deepika Gehani to launch her own label.

Intrigued ¬by the rich and timeless fabrics of India, Deepika spent her teenage years, delving into and reviving the famed age-old weaving techniques. Her constant research coupled with intense creativity, have helped her spawn new techniques of embroideries to adorn her garments.

She has gained hands on experience while negotiating the dust and grime of the fashion world. Holding the three C’s – Cut, Cloth and Creativity – close to her heart, this talented designer enhances modern silhouettes with the use of Indian embellishments and indigenous textiles.Inspired by the woman who sports an attitude of intangible class and sophistication, Deepika has steadily scaled the ladder of success through sustained hard work and single-minded devotion.

With her vision of creating fabulously feminine silhouettes, Deepika’s collections are retailed through her stand-alone store at Kemps Corner in Mumbai and at the multi-brand luxury oulet – Samsaara in Delhi, Mumbai, Chandigarh, Kolkatta, Bangalore, Dubai & Kuwait. Deepika also retails her feminine and refreshingly chic couture through high-end fashion boutiques in the Middle East, South East Asia, USA and the UK.

You can get Deepika Gehani designs at:

www.deepikagehani.com
 

July 18, 2011
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Julian Schnabel


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An American artist and film maker has won Golden Globe, BAFTA, Cesar Award & Golden Plam. He is specially known for his plate painting – large-scale paintings set on broken ceramic plates.

Recently holding an exhibition at the Museo Correr, located on the Piazza San Marco in Venice, Italy. The show is produced and organised by Arthemisia Group in collaboration with Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia. Maybach is the event’s main sponsor, as well as BNL Gruppo BNP Paribas. 

American artist whose paintings have influenced and continue to change the landscape of what we call contemporary art. His work has given license to generations of new artists to expand art’s boundaries.

This retrospective illustrates his aesthetic, his connection to Jackson Pollock and Cy Twombly, also drawing on the European and Mediterranean tradition. His art takes us backwards and forwards in history, recalling the style of the old Spanish and Italian painters like El Greco to Tintoretto, and speaks to ancient and modern literary and cultural references from Homer to William Gaddis – from Giotto Goya, from Antoni Gaudi to Pablo Picasso. 

Permanently Becoming includes early plate paintings as well as works that display the infinite variety of mediums and materials -velvet and oil cloth, pieces of wood, sails, photographs, rugs, tarpaulin, and in general any surface that can be painted on – and illustrates a way of using these materials that has taken them to a new artistic precipice, commandeering their prior meanings for a new set of meanings as painted reality.

In the late 70’s, the plate paintings, in their own way, reorganized the logic of painting and cultivated a new artistic terrain, serving as a cure to the so-called death of painting. 

Painter, sculptor and film director, Julian Schnabel stands out, first and foremost as a painter, but equally as a filmmaker, having directed Basquiat in 1996, Before Night Falls in 2000 (which won the grand Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival), the Diving Bell and The Butterfly in 2007 (which earned him the award for Best Director at the Cannes Film Festival and the Golden Globes) and Miral in 2010. Schnabel’s films are a natural continuation of his paintings, sharing the same visual sensibilities and warmth of surface. 

The exhibition opens with one of his sculptures: “Queequeg”, the most recent addition to a series of sculptures started in 1981 and were shown in 1982 in the mountains of Chantarella, in the Alps. “Queequeg” is the first result of a two-year partnership between Julian Schnabel and luxury automobile manufacturer Maybach. “Queequeg – The Maybach Sculpture” was first shown at Art Basel Miami Beach 2010. With this cooperation Maybach is further enhancing its involvement in the world of contemporary art supporting well-known artists and their engagement in mentoring young, art protégés as well as supporting art institutions such as the Louvre and the Fondation Beyeler. 

The sea is a recurrent theme in Schnabel’s paintings and films, and the vastness of this subject is what leads the artist to paint in such large formats, capable of engulfing the spectator in the visual experience, as happens with film. In his masterpiece “The sea”, created in Amagansett in 1981 using shards of broken Mexican vases, the sea is not represented as a natural element about to be heroically conquered by a surfer, but becomes evocative of time, history, and maybe the path towards the end. 

“Portrait of Father Pete Jacobs” of 1997, of Schnabel’s friend and “Portrait of Rula” that depicts his current partner and author of “Miral” subject of Schnabel’s most recent film. This will be exhibited in the neoclassical Dining Room of the Museo Correr. 

The earliest works in show, such as “Jack the Bellboy”, dating form the late 70’s, “Procession (for Jean Vigo)” and “Saint Sebastian” are early formulations of finding a surrogate for a figure in the physical body of a painting. They represent Schnabel’s reintroduction of the figurative element into a world of art completely dominated by reductive and formalist abstraction.Posted by : Amal Kiran Jana from Milan at 04:01 PM

The newly appointed Bill Gaytten of Dior pointed out that Galliano missed the inspirational treasure trove of label. Instead of seeking the archives of Dior, designer kept on creating new innovative techniques. But Bill is all set to sieve Dior’s long fashion camaraderie and rest on its heritage to craft pieces having that vintage element amalgamating with modernity. It made me wonder what is so peculiar about vintage! Are designers uninspired enough to create new? Or, as Mary Quant, the creator of hot pants and miniskirts finds it an imitation, what concocts the beauty of retro?


Well the answer somehow lies in the charm of old; the memories of the past. Nostalgia has always been a major component of fashion and the styles of the past have the stories to say which we love to indulge in; the ladylike 60s, anti-fashion of 70s. But vintage fashion is more than just ransacking the attics and trunks of your grandparents and flaunting the best out of them. It’s about being distinctive. It’s about telling a story and wearing memories on your sleeves. Retro stands for combining old fashions with the current trends to create the vintage inspired looks.



So now in 2011 when fashion is borrowing the best from 20s and 30s, adopting 60s and 70s with a fresh twist and when people are raiding charity stores and thrift stores for those old Burberry classics and YSL pants, the romance of the retro was well defined by Fashion Historian James Laver way back in 1937. He set a timeline by which fashion is viewed over the years and accentuated on the fact that the fashion is cyclical which repeats itself and whether you like it or not 50 years after passing by of a style makes it charming again. He stated:


Indecent
10 years before its time
Shameless
5 years before its time
Outré (Daring)
1 year before its time
Smart
‘Current Fashion’
Dowdy
1 year after its time
Hideous
10 years after its time
Ridiculous
20 years after its time
Amusing
30 years after its time
Quaint
50 years after its time
Charming
70 years after its time
Romantic
100 years after its time
Beautiful
150 years after its time

It’s finally beginning to feel like summer,as Models, Celebrities, VIPS and Fashion Industry Insiders migrated to the sands of Miami Beach to see what’s in store for the swimwear industry in Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Swim 2012. 

“This season is one the most exciting to date; Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Swim has brought  it’s most international roster of swimwear designers yet,” says Christina Neault, Executive Producer of the event for IMG Fashion. “The swimwear industry is such a rapidly growing market worldwide and we are happy to provide a platform for designers to travel from across the world to show their collections. A genuine feeling of a global design community is felt as we showcased designs from Australia, Brazil, Canada, Columbia, France, Peru and the US.”

The activities began with a sizzling runway show by Diesel,in addition to this the opening, shows included collections from:  White Sands Australia, Poko Pano, Beach Bunny Swimwear, Crystal Jin, L*Space by Monica Wise, Wildfox Swimwear, Caffé Swimwear, Dolores Cortés, Mara Hoffman Swim, Aqua Di Lara, Natori, A.Ché, Red Carter, Cia.Marítima, Luli Fama, Luxe by Lisa Vogel, Lisa Blue, Kooey Swimwear Australia, Nicolita and True Religion.



Five days of “invitation-only” shows and events saw  over 12,000 journalists, photographers, buyers, and VIPs pass through two full runway venues: the Cabaña Grande and the Oasis, provide an optimal show venue to over twenty-five designers. The Oasis will also be home to fully-decked cabanas hosted by Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Swim official sponsors as well as sexy and comfortable seating areas for the fun and fashionable to lounge while mingling with the industry’s elite.

The collection at this Couture Week on 23rd July in Delhi showcases 4 diverse inspirations. Kotwara by Meera and Muzaffar Ali has often used paintings by Muzaffar Ali both as a palette and as a form. This collection opens with pastels by Muzaffar Ali in earthy and natural tones printed on crepe de sheen and chiffon in flowing silhouettes. This is followed by the ikat collection, an evolution of appliqué, inspired by the traditional ikat weave in quilted occasion wear coats. 

The same applique technique has been applied to the chintz form, creating silhouettes in layers of organza’s, chiffons and net. The collection ends on Awadhi opulence, a sequence of  farshi ghararas, lehngas, peshwaz, choghas and saris.