Fashion Voyeur

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Categories: The Archives, The Fashion Closet

Kicking off the Festive Season with Mulberry Lights

Is it just me or does it feel like Christmas has snuck up on us out of nowhere this year?  I think with every year that goes by, I feel a little less ready, and a little less prepared – which I’m sure  is the exact opposite of what life experience teaches us.  Anyway, this year for most of the last few weeks I’ve been up and down to London working on a top secret project meaning that I’ve been to lots of different and exciting events whilst I’ve been in the capital.

In the run up to Christmas London is an exciting place to be, first up I got to go to #MulberryLights.  It’s a festive light installation from Mulberry (yes the English heritage brand behind the bags), they’re a brand I’ve worked with quite a bit over the years, from the days of Emma Hill, right through to Johnny Coca and that period of uncertainty in-between.  A few seasons ago Mulberry even created my own custom backpack for me which is still one of my favourite pieces for travelling.

So, #MulberryLights.  A completely new concept for Christmas 2018 tapping into the art market, it’s basically a series of illuminating interactive experiences that celebrate how light, colour, shapes and people come together to create a modern British Christmas.  It was a celebratory event that kicked off the festive season on Regent Street right before the Regent Street switch on which saw those gorgeous fluttering angels make a return to the shopping district.

The series is basically a giant sensory room using light and music as one big art installation.  Eerie readings from Dr Seuss’ The Grinch are performed over 90’s trance music to light projections at 100 Regent Street.  It’s a pretty amazing sight to behold, but one that’s very difficult to explain, basically, I could have spent hours and hours in there, it’s completely transfixing and sadly one with a super limited run.

The creative in me loved everything about it, the concept, the modernity and the fusion of fashion, art and inclusivity.  With Mulberry’s direction still not fully realised, perhaps this is a hint at a new market for the brand.  With share prices at an all time low it’s about time this English stalwart tried something new.

Pixie

Categories: The Archives, The Glorious North East

Scream Factory Halloween Nights 2018

Frights are in fashion and terror is trending, it’s most definitely the season for haunt couture and with that comes the obligatory Halloween walk through experience.  We brought you the preview of the chilling Psycho Path yesterday, and last night we were invited along to the press and blogger preview night of annual scare-fest Scream Factory where we were given a tour of your favourite horror films old and new, with a few terror cliches thrown in for good measure.

Lead Image of Scream Factory 2018 Halloween Experience featuring killer clowns for Fashion Voyeur Blog

On arrival at Kirkleatham Nursery in Redcar, we make the walk down the tree lined drive papered with posters for missing neighbourhood kids, a prelude to what might be coming our way and a huge clue to the movie Scream Factory 2018 takes its inspiration from.  Once inside it’s a similar set up to Psycho Path, there’s a holding area serving food and drink, in this case pulled pork sandwiches and hot chocolate, Prosecco or poisoned lemonade.  We’re called forward in groups of ten and given a safety briefing before being given once last chance to back out.

Rounding the first corner we’re faced with an impressive set piece called the ‘Tates Motel’ (named after the family behind Scream Factory) and our first, very unexpected scare which literally makes me throw the nearest person in front of me as a human shield and it’s not even a person who arrived with us.  We’re off to a great start and Scream Factory just gets better from there.

It’s literally a roller coaster ride of scare after scare after scare, think hidden doors, windows, curtains, pop ups, anything that gives that dramatic fast scare that makes your heart race and your pupils flare; Scream Factory has it all.  The team behind this annual Halloween Horror Night attraction work all year round building each set piece by hand and dreaming up new horrors to terrify guests with in the hope that you’ll make the journey to Redcar just so they can get your pulse racing.  Let me tell you, it’s worth it.

It’s a different attraction all together to Psycho Path, where Psycho Path is a slow and atmospheric build that plays on its surroundings, Scream Factory draws on everything that is associated with horror.  Haunted houses, fun fairs, clowns and every fan favourite horror movie out there, its deliciously satisfying when it comes to the re-telling, if you make it out that is.

The set pieces throughout Scream Factory are amazing, there are some which have been designed to deprive your senses and are so effective, you come out the other end so disoriented that you actually need a moment before moving on.  Whether it’s the thrill of the funfair and it’s tilted floor, strobe lit rooms or optical illusion rooms, you’ll leave there feeling like you’ve been upside down and literally chased through a live action horror movie.

The section which pays homage to your favourite horror movie including the Jigsaw series (which left me feeling haunted yet again by the time I broke that guy’s nose in Florida), Nightmare on Elm Street, IT, Halloween, Psycho and a couple of other cult movies is spectacularly terrifying.  It’s the type of haunt that’s filled with fast scares as well as those spooky re-enactments including little Georgie’s super softly spoken and uber chilling “Have you seen my boat?”

I don’t want to fill this post with spoilers, it would be so easy to do with this one, because of how much they’ve managed to cram into Scream Factory.  There’s no huge space between scares, you pretty much leave one clear scare zone, before progressing into the next ‘themed zone’ and telling you what they all are would just ruin it for you.  What you do need to know is that it’s definitely worth a visit.  I travelled from Newcastle to Redcar with my sister which is around an hours drive and we felt it was easily worth it, parking is free once you’re onsite and very close to the venue itself.  We talked about it all the way home and loved the references to the horror movies, although if you haven’t seen those movies it definitely doesn’t detract from the experience, you’ll still be utterly terrified in the moment no matter what.

Our advice, go, it’s here once a year, it’s the first year we’ve done anything like this in the UK and we were really impressed at the standard of the acting, the sheer scale of the production and the set pieces and the commitment to the themes.  It’s such a fun night out and it absolutely lives up to the hype.  With tickets starting at just £20 screams really do come true.

Pixie

Categories: The Archives, The Fashion Closet

Jayne Pierson SS19 at London Fashion Week

This season Jayne Pierson showed her Spring Summer 2019 Collection ‘Because de Change’ as part of the British Fashion Council’s London Fashion Week at the Conde Nast College of Fashion and Design.  Known for her art driven collections, for SS19, Pierson literally took the canvas to the body and let the art do the talking.

As with every season, this runway show told a story, award winning designer Pierson used a diverse cast of models to tell and conceptualise the story of the contemporary woman who refuses to conform to societies outdated expectation.  Pierson seeks to redefine what it means to be a woman who has her own aspirations and what it means to fulfil them.

The woman who wears Jayne Pierson is complicated, just like the designer herself.  Her stream of consciousness is sublimated with her seemingly random set of doodles and scribbles on her garments but these actually seek to convey her most inner self.  Her deepest thoughts and feelings are displayed and valued as contemporary art.  She wears these garments as an armour to empower and celebrate herself, ourselves and our sublime differences.

Because de Change explores the recent criminalisation of hate crimes based on sexuality, disability, race, religion and gender and serves as a platform to talk more widely about consent, harassment, hate crime and the abuses of privacy and trust.  Digital prints for SS19 are historic but surprisingly topical looking at very current and political subject matter such as up-skirting, religious iconography, motherhood, the gender pay gap, and size-ism.

Pierson is known for pushing the boundaries and taking conversation into her collections, as a lot of designers are now doing.  This season we’ve seen Teatum Jones take their round table discussion to the mainstream accompanied by a presentation for SS19 with similar topics up for discussion.  More and more designers are using their roles to bring the discussion to #MeToo, #TimesUp or discrimination and it’s becoming more widely accepted that this is now just a part of the fashion industry.

The Because de Change Collection is inspired by organic shapes created with perfect symmetry and balance.  The silhouettes in this collection are crafted in the spirit of luxury and pay homage to re-appropriation and the cultural process of reclaiming artefacts.  Luxury takes on a brutal harmony, exploring and reabsorbing subcultural styles and commodification.

Jayne Pierson creates directional, luxury womenswear that redefines the female form in empowering and uncompromising garments in leather pleating, luxe woven fabrics, future print, silks and draped leathers. Juxtaposing innovative material directions with avant-garde details inspired by a warped sense of history and intangible glitches in space and time, where historical references get confused and hybrids emerge, the collection encompasses high-end details and signature premium finishes.  Because de Change SS19 integrates hand-painted leathers with engineered historic digital prints and woven painted fabrics. Delicate hand embroidered tulle, mesh and lace, silk jersey and lace lingerie contrast with structured architectural silhouettes. Colours are bright yellow, teal blue, lamb nappas and a pop of primary red leathers.

More over, Pierson bucks the fashion industry norm when it comes to models and puts together a diverse cast every season – and that’s what was on everyone’s lips as the vestibule emptied out after this show.

Pixie

Categories: The Archives, The Fashion Closet

Fyodor Golan SS19 at London Fashion Week

Fyodor Golan is a house that manufactures fragile silhouettes with great quality, with a youthful look.  My very best but least eloquent way of putting it, is that they are the best at creating a niche something for everyone, which other people are creating poorly for a target audience only.  With me?  No, I thought I’d lost you.  You’ll need some imagery to see what I mean.  The house  produced its SS19 collection Lost & Found which showed at the BFC showspace at London Fashion Week this season and I was lucky enough to have a front row seat – literally the best place to take you on a guided tour of this epic collection.

“Sporty survivalism guided us through the understanding of water as the source and a symbol of progression.  Castaway elements found on beaches, from seashells and pearls to plastic waste, influences fabrications and detailing”  FYODOR GOLAN

Models took to the runway like a tribe of ocean warriors, real, sustainable pearls are used as a feature detail throughout the collection in their raw form and inspiration was taken from painter Jamie Adams in some of the collaged pieces used.  80’s shapes appeared on the runway in the form of puffball skirts, elongated shoulders, peplum minis and wingback skirts, something that makes me nostalgic every time they come back around and I’ll definitely be embracing those shapes next season.

This season Fyodor Golan collaborated with SEGA’s Sonic The Hedgehog with a focus on the earlier pixelated imagery which adds another nostalgic touch to the collection using cyan blue, cerulean, cobalt and fuchsia to highlight tones and texture throughout to great effect.  Looking throughout the collection there were so many standout pieces for me in terms of editorial, including the first look out the gate and a dramatic wing flare skirt with blue and white chevron stripes that I’d literally book for a shoot tomorrow.

“Working with SEGA using the early Sonic (The Hedgehog) made perfect sense to our Lost & Found collection.  We wanted to explore Sonic’s iconic look into items that would feel like your favourite childhood pyjamas contemporarily reimagined.”

The set itself was sculpted from flowers and abandoned fishing nets to emulate coral covered driftwood, Fyodor Golan are another design team to have teamed up with the charity Plastic Oceans UK in order to help reverse the damaging impact the fashion industry has on the oceans, or at the very least to support ocean clean up and the repurposing of waste found in our oceans.

Lost & Found is a co-ed collection meaning that it was shown on both men and women, and garments were designed with neither a male nor female body in mind.  All shirts and sportswear produced within the collection is also completely gender unbiased so there’s no male or female section when ordering from the brand.  This athleisure, I could easily see it appealing to the male and female fashion market and anyone identifying anywhere inbetween, I mean that white suit on the right?  I’m already dreaming of how I’d style that up.

So, to refer back to my earlier statement, you see highstreet brands who target a very small portion of it’s already limited audience, then they make something, poorly.  For example, New Look make a leopard print skirt, they take a classic pattern which appeals to about 70% of its audience and then make it into a very, very young shape which further cuts its audience.  They then make a poor fabric choice, usually something textured, either shiny, or “feely” like cheap velour, and then overlock it meaning that it’s prone to ruching and it effects the way the garment then hangs.  Every choice narrows down the audience in a negative way.  Fyodor Golan do the opposite.  They take a youthful idea and make it appeal to a majority market.  It’s refreshing and the quality of each piece is just perfection, it’s a rare find in fashion.

This one set the bar high for me, it helped that I arrived fresh off a plane from Mahon and was greeted by a team of smiling PRs, something pretty rare in fashion, and everyone I was sat with was really, really lovely.  Day one of London Fashion Week, I’m calling this one a 10.

Pixie

Categories: The Archives, The Fashion Closet

TEATUM JONES SS19 ROUND TABLE NOT RUNWAY AT LONDON FASHION WEEK

For their SS19 collection ‘Global Womanhood Part Two, 16 Days Of Activism’ shown at London Fashion Week, designers Catherine Teatum and Rob Jones have partnered with YouTube, Google and the British Fashion Council in support of United Nations Women.  In a move away from the regulation runway show, the designers behind the label Teatum Jones have created a presentation to highlight the collection itself, accompanied by a powerful round table discussion.

Teatum Jones SS19 LFW Fashion Voyeur Blog Round table not Runway three models posing separately in pieces from the spring summer collection

The first of its kind, the Teatum Jones led ROUND TABLE not RUNWAY discussion has been recorded and features a panel of industry experts including:

  • Caryn Franklin MBE – Fashion commentator, Journalist and Professor of Diversity
  • Claudia Croft – 10 Magazine – Deputy Editor & Fashion Features Director
  • Felicity Haywood – Model, Activist, Campaigner
    Lotte Anderson – Art Director, i-D magazine ‘Future Females’
  • Lucy Banks – Google / You Tube – Head of Content and Brand Partnerships across EMEA
    Marai Larasi – Executive Director of Imkaan
    Munroe Bergdorf – Model, Activist, Campaigner
  • Simran Randhawa – @ Gal-Dem – Politics Editor, i-D magazine ‘Future Females’
  • Sophie Matthews – British Fashion Council – Head of Media & Retail Partnerships
  • Tamara Cincik – Fashion Roundtable – Founder and CEO

“The SS19 collection has been inspired by the interviews we’ve had over the last six months with activists and campaigners.  From our research and interviews we conducted in relation to 16 Days of Activism, we have extracted the most powerful messages and literally woven them into a body of textiles, such as; “I DEFINE MYSELF” and “I OWN MY STORY.”  Recognised for our textile development, we wanted to present a collection of bold, vibrant and unapologetic textiles that speak louder than previous seasons and reflect the courage and determination in the voices we’ve listened to throughout this season.”  Designers Catherine Teatum and Rob Jones.

Teatum Jones SS19 LFW Fashion Voyeur Blog Round table not Runway three models posing separately in pieces from the spring summer collection

I was invited to an intimate gathering at London Fashion Week at a private members club on Greek Street to take in the new collection and chat to Fashion Commentator Caryn Franklin MBE about just how important this whole discussion is to the fashion industry as a whole.

The collection itself is strong and vibrant, the hand painted Love Floral print takes centre stage in flame burnt orange, mustard yellow and royal blue with contrasting textures.  The sequins used in the collection have been repurposed from past season sponsored water bottles and old stock jumpers have been used throughout this SS19 collection.

Teatum Jones SS19 LFW Fashion Voyeur Blog Round table not Runway three models posing separately in pieces from the spring summer collection

There are hints at the struggles that women are facing in today’s political climate and this is discussed in the short film which accompanies the collection, the sports tape strapping used throughout which cinches and pulls, almost dragging and tightening the clothes on the body in a way to express those hurdles faced by women today.  It’s a politically rich collection, made more uncompromising by the strong message in the ROUND TABLE not RUNWAY film screened alongside the presentation.  The film is being made available for public consumption on YouTube and if you have an interest in fashion, sustainable fashion, political fashion or feminist issues and how they’re represented by the fashion industry today, then it’s an absolute must watch as it’s spearheaded by some of the most influential activists in the industry.

In terms of the fashion itself, it’s typical Teatum Jones, it’s beautifully crafted for the female form echoing batik print, elegant cuts, elongated sleeve detailing and proportions that seem to add height without any effort at all.  The fashion most definitely hasn’t been diluted in order for the brand and its associates to deliver a strong message about how fashion can play a part in the protection, unification, inclusion and equality of women and girls

Pixie

Pixie Tenenbaum Editor's signature with fashion illustration graphic