The Belgian fashion designer, who had just taken over in 2012 as creative director at the venerated house of Christian Dior, was tasked with putting together his first-ever haute couture show in just eight weeks, an enormous undertaking which usually requires five or six months.
The inimitable Apfel is known for her irreverent style mixing haute couture with oversized costume jewelry and her trademark large round glasses. She's been the subject of museum exhibits and a documentary film, "Iris," that will be screened during the trip.
Haute Couture: A Fashion Documentary online free
Some clothes are made specifically for an individual, as in the case of haute couture or bespoke tailoring. Today, most clothing is designed for the mass market, especially casual and every-day wear are called ready to wear or known as fast fashion.
Until the 1950s, fashion clothing was predominately designed and manufactured on a made-to-measure or haute couture basis (French for high-sewing), with each garment being created for a specific client. A couture garment is made to order for an individual customer, and is usually made from high-quality, expensive fabric, sewn with extreme attention to detail and finish, often using time-consuming, hand-executed techniques. Look and fit take priority over the cost of materials and the time it takes to make.[5][6] Due to the high cost of each garment, haute couture makes little direct profit for the fashion houses, but is important for prestige and publicity.[7]
Ready-to-wear, or prêt-à-porter, clothes are a cross between haute couture and mass market. They are not made for individual customers, but great care is taken in the choice and cut of the fabric. Clothes are made in small quantities to guarantee exclusivity, so they are rather expensive. Ready-to-wear collections are usually presented by fashion houses each season during a period known as Fashion Week. This takes place on a citywide basis and occurs twice a year. The main seasons of Fashion Week include: spring/summer, fall/winter, resort, swim, and bridal.
American fashion design is highly diverse, reflecting the enormous ethnic diversity of the population, but is largely dominated by a clean-cut, urban, hip aesthetic, and often favors a more casual style, reflecting the athletic, health-conscious lifestyles of the suburban and urban middle classes. The annual Met Gala ceremony in Manhattan is widely regarded as the world's most prestigious haute couture fashion event and is a venue where fashion designers and their creations are celebrated. Social media is also a place where fashion is presented most often. Some influencers are paid huge amounts of money to promote a product or clothing item, where the business hopes many viewers will buy the product off the back of the advertisement. Instagram is the most popular platform for advertising, but Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter and other platforms are also used.[17] In New York, the LGBT fashion design community contributes very significantly to promulgating fashion trends, and drag celebrities have developed a profound influence upon New York Fashion Week.[18]
After the ubiquitous archival exhibition and the building designed by a famous architect and destined to contain the personal art collection of a fashion magnate, there is another plague slowly yet relentlessly invading our quiet lives - the vague fashion documentary.
Believe it or not, convincing an avant-garde independent cinema to do one monthly screening of a fashion documentary was almost impossible seven years ago. The answer was usually the same - it was something destined to a niche audience, quite often a superficial niche audience. At least that's what I was told when I tried to organise some screenings at a Glasgow-based cinema many years ago. Bizarre, but, throughout April, that same cinema screened at least once a day Frédéric Tcheng's Dior & I (2014).
Surprising? No at all, especially when you think it's not just a matter of trends, but of pumping up things online and on the social networks, convincing people that fashion documentaries can be interesting even when you're not a fashionista. Mind you, in a way, they actually are. Dior & I revealed us for example that a conceptual designer doesn't actually draw, but compiles files for his team and the team then submits their sketches to him, and that he quite often reproduces entire modern paintings onto fabrics.
Directed by Alison Chernick's and commissioned by fashion e-tailer Yoox Group, The Artist Is Absent focuses on Martin Margiela. Premiered at the TriBeCa Film Festival in April and released also on line, this short documentary (it's roughly 12 minutes long) features a series of brief interviews with journalists and designers, plus archival footage.
What is surprising about the documentary, though, is that it doesn't comment at all about our self-centered narcissistic age in which the cult of celebrity prevails over talent, and superstar designers and celebrity models rule supreme, nor does it note how the no glamour, no image, no ego designer who subverted the rules of the fashion media-circus is now being namechecked as an alleged inspiration by the same people who represent that circus (think about Kanye West and his pathetic "designs").
There is something that should make us happy about The Artist is Absent, though: at least it's a free documentary, which is a change considering that the Dior & I production house does not even bother replying when you request of being allowed to show for educational purposes short clips of the documentary for free to groups of university students.
From Japan to America, the LV sign dominates the fashion scene. And, one man alone designs the Louis Vuitton creations the exceptional Marc Jacobs. With unprecedented access to one of the world's hottest and busiest designers, Loïc Prigent offers an intimate and revealing portrait of the reclusive Marc Jacobs and the world of haute couture. Whether in the offices and workrooms of Paris and New York, the back of his car, or backstage at a fashion show, we see a genius at work. Jacobs endures unimaginable pressure to chart new paths in fashion as he straddles the demands of the Louis Vuitton conglomerate and his own Marc Jacobs label.
Michelle Elie, also known as the 'Queen of Street Style,' is a former model of Haitian origin and an avid collector of monumental dresses. She is not invited to fashion shows but, one way or another, she always manages to get in. The American Violet Chachki, born Jason Dardo, is a burlesque performer, proud and provocative, winner of the seventh season of RuPaul's Drag Race (a reality show centred on a drag queen competition), she is constantly on the move and changes in her car between fashion shows. Casey Spooner is an American artist-musician, fashion influencer ('the show is no longer on the catwalk, it's on my Instagram'), who has realised his dream of living in Paris and going to the most exclusive parties, gets free coats, shoes (and, if it happens, even a handbag for his mother) which he then advertises on his social networks, but does not have the money to pay his rent, unless he sells back any Prada accessory he has received as a gift.
A section of the exhibition will focus on handcraft and techniques, with undergarments and the insides of dresses on display. To enrich the content of the exhibition, photographs, documentary film, textiles and archival material will also be on view. It will close with a look at the state of haute couture today.
Libby Callaway, a local fashion journalist and the former fashion editor of the New York Post, will lead a conversation with Nashville-based supermodel Karen Elson about her experiences walking international runways and the art of wearing haute couture. 2ff7e9595c
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