Ossie Clark: The King of the King’s Road Reigns Again

For this year’s London Fashion Week, Ossie Clark takes the throne once again: bringing floaty florals, skin-tight crepe and structured snakeskins back to the forefront of British fashion.

Designer, artist, photographer; Clark dominated 60s and 70s style, his iconic pieces embodying the freedom, love and peace associated with this eminent era.

For the release of a new collection from Ossie Clark London, Clark’s legacy turned label, a collection of original photo shoots, candid portraits of the designer himself and a vintage Ossie Clark are premiering at Proud Galleries, Chelsea (kingdom of Clark). The star of the show, a vibrant emerald dress, actually hangs delicately and rather unassumingly at one corner of the room; but as we see in his photographs, it is the wearers who truly bring these garments to life.

Although Clark’s designs are absolutely emblematic of 60s culture, it is his unparalleled understanding of the female form which is most noticeable. His pieces cinch, drop and crease in all the right places, celebrating the dainty curves of his models.

This designer’s photo shoots are not the made-up, doe-eyed images you might expect – his women frolic on rocky beaches, flit around stately homes and roll around luxuriously on marble floors. Rather than stiff studio photographs, these are images of heat, confidence and enjoyment.

Peeping through the glass doors of Proud Galleries, this exhibition appears to be like any other regimented commercial show; but once you step inside, a wave of soft, dreamlike music hits and Clark’s ethereal imagery draws you into a calm and peaceful state.

The designer’s otherworldly style is said to be a mishmash of Pop Art and Surrealism – a bright, brash colour palette coupled with organic shapes and, in his photographs, gentle poses which breathe of Surrealist paintings and performance. Clark may be predominantly a designer, but there is no denying a definite nod to the art of his times: his garments inspired by his girls, like artist and muse.

While Clark’s bizarre shoots display his collections, they celebrate his women further. Working with beauties Ingrid Boultin, Lynn Sutherland and Maria Berenson, the models absolutely wear the clothes – unlike contemporary designers, for whom the clothes often seem to wear the women. In the way that Clark’s gothic silks sever just above the waist; or in the way that his sheer pieces stretch taught across the chest then flutter around the neck as lightly as curled hair, it is patent that this designer really does understand his audience.

Never too overstated or adorned, Clark’s clothes function foremost to portray the feminine form in the most flattering way possible.

His supremely artistic approach to fashion is unsurprising considering the company he kept: David Hockney appearing repeatedly in an array of intimate photographs of Clark with friends and family. Other particular gems include a portrait of Clark with a young boy, the two wearing almost identical fur coats: Ossie standing tall, cigarette in hand, whilst the little boy – less sophisticatedly – licks a dripping ice cream; or another elegant image of the designer, asleep in a lounger and warmly lit by the afternoon sun.

Not only does Proud present the designer’s past and future collections; but gives an honest insight into his life, both professional and personal. Clark’s clothes were wearable and becoming, very much part of a particular lifestyle – and that lifestyle was his.

Although the exhibition is only on for another two weeks, a new collection inspired by this member of fashion royalty is now available online from label Ossie Clark London, and in Debenhams stores very soon. Prepare for a summer of fancy-free frolicking and a wardrobe of strong colours, swirling prints and sensual shapes to match.

Comfort Station… adorn yourself with artworks.

When I was looking at Hannah Zakari’s website a few days ago, I discovered a couple of pieces from another fantastic independent designer, Comfort Station. Set up by Fine Art graduate (see, Fine Art degrees are useful!) Amy Anderson, the company has been showing at London Fashion Week since 2003 and in 2004 set up its flagship store in London, just off Brick Lane.

The store is decorated with the token East London Taxidermy pieces, vintage suitcases and books, chandeliers and lengths of genuine ship rope. Honestly it’s worth visiting just to see the store itself, and if you can’t pop down there then have a peek at the virtual tour – stunning!

Comfort station sells limited edition hand-printed crockery as well as countless pieces of beautiful jewellery, all of which is handcrafted at their East London studio and – another responsible designer – without the use of any animal products, with use of only sustainable wood and every little bit manufactured within the UK.

My favourite pieces are these ‘sliced’ pieces: maps, music, poems are laser cut to fit silver or gold booklets which are ornately engraved on one side, and inscribed with the geographical co-ordinates for the Bahamas’ town of Love on the other.

They might come up a little pricey but every piece is unique, every paper coated for protection and all made of sterling silver or gold so you should be able to flick through these tiny artworks for years.

This silver barometer is another piece on my wishlist – it even features a movable pointer which you can set to suit your mood, letting everyone else know how excellent you’re feeling, or warding them off when things are stormy.

 

Finally, a couple from Amy Anderson’s wind-up Hybrid series and machine cog earrings, yes please! I’m only now realising the full extent of what was stolen when we were burgled on Boxing Day (sad but true) so maybe this is the perfect excuse to replenish my jewellery boxes with a couple of teeny tiny masterpieces, and support a fellow Fine Art graduate in the process.

Yay for British designers, goodbye to mass produced tat and hello to the hand made.

Digbeth Day! Part II.

Next stop: The Bead Shop.

I refrained from shopping for myself any more but bought an obscene amount of beads to make prezzies for two friends of mine – retail therapy is fine if it’s for other people!

I made a little necklace, and a charm bracelet for my travelling buddy with every bead representing a little travelling story. This shop is amazing, some of their beads are almost exactly the same as the pendants that hang off some of those £28 Urban Outfitters necklaces but are a fraction of the price. Digbeth is not only arty and fun, but also perfect for a bargain hunter!

There’s also a great screenprinting place called Get a Grip, Sam and Kay who run it use beautiful old screenprinting machines to print up Tshirts, bags, cards, whichever piece you fancy with whatever design you bring them! They’re also really really friendly. Friendliness is like gold dust in a city as big as this.

 

Beautiful workshop!

We then restored our energy with a doorstop of a sandwich at Yumm before beginning our march around Digbeth to investigate the exhibitions from Trove, Eastside Projects and many more of Birmingham’s artist collectives which were open on this rainy October weekend as part of The Event.

Smoked salmon, cream cheese and rocket! MMM!

Digbeth Day! Part I.

My housemates and I sometimes need a little bit of perking up in this big grey city and our grand day out in Digbeth most definitely restored our faith in Birmingham and its budding arts scene. 

First things first: shopping! We were so eager for our ‘grand day out’ that we may have turned up before the shops even opened at 10am – eager beavers! So after a reviving Starbucks we went to see what musty second-hand – ehem vintage, I mean – bits and pieces Digbeth had to offer. 

Cow provided me with a beret, Urban Village had a beautiful sheepskin jacket for only a tenner and the Flea Market in The Custard Factory was full of snazzy neon trackies and other vintaaage pieces we weren’t quite brave enough for – but SO cheap! The great thing about Digbeth is that it’s actually vintage that’s still affordable, none of that £70-for-a-1960s-bag-that-Twiggy-may-have-touched-but-smells-like-urine malarkey!

Look at my hat! Only £7!

Ahh the Custard Factory, once our weekendly haunt, where people wore sunglasses inside and it’s £3 for a bottle of water (think you can guess what I’m getting at…), sadly it’s now no longer a venue for nights our so we can’t risk our lives dancing at the edge of a filthy swimming pool or climb up on stage with Chase and Status. Travesty!

Now it’s just a cute little abandoned shopping centre filled with cafes, shops and offices and with ‘arts’ splashed all over it – it’s gone so upmarket they’ve even put a fountain in the swimming pool, ravers would cry. 

Toin Adams‘ amazing metal works jump out at you as you wander through this glass maze; they’re completely unexpected but perfect in the clinical white spaces, adding something organic which is so refreshing in this otherwise concrete jungle. The Custard Factory isn’t pretty, it’s messy and weird and cracking and crumbling, but once you’re inside, you forget that there’s a dual carriageway buzzing with traffic right around the corner. Of course it’s no city park haven but it’s refreshing to be in a part of Birmingham where the shop keepers say hello and aren’t part of a massive chain, and people turn up in colours other than grey and black on shiny motorbikes, and there’s just bits of art made by freelancers and students floating about everywhere. It’s as if there really is a quiet little community of artists and creatives here in Birmingham and Digbeth is certainly the hub.

 

 

The September Issue: genius stylist Grace Coddington gets some well deserved recognition!

An old woman is standing on the stone steps of the palace of Versailles, her fiery red hair flying about her face in the wind as she looks out at the beautifully tended gardens… “I think I got left behind somewhere because I’m, you know, still a romantic.  You have to go charging ahead; you can’t stay behind.”

This was Grace Coddington, the Creative Director of American Vogue and the star of  The September Issue which featured on More 4 last night: a medley of stunning couture, striking models, lettuce leaves, more than a little bitchiness but most of all beautiful photography.

The woman who stole the show was surprisingly not Vogue's editor Ms Anna 'Nuclear' Wintour but the brilliant Grace Coddington: a flame-haired woman who grew up in rural north Wales. Coddington's journey to the top began with a subscription to Vogue in her early teens, she would catch the bus to the post office to collect her "probably three months out of date" copy before studying the pages and enjoying the escapism it gave her from her far-from-chic lifestyle. Her copies of Vogue were her only connection to the fashion world until her big break came at 17 when she won a Vogue model competition after a friend entered some "awful" (can't have been that awful!) pictures of her – from there she went on to have a successful modelling career and eventually landed a place at the Vogue head office at 28. At 68 Coddington's not doing too badly for herself – still working, still proving the sharp-tongued Wintour wrong, still styling her photoshoots and even dressing the models herself to produce fashion photography which could easily hold its own alongside the work of leading photographers in top galleries.

It's painful to watch Wintour slate Coddington's work in the documentary, especially her collaboration with Steven Meisel, an exquisite 1920s styled shoot named Je T'aime; the problem is that while Wintour is all about the new, looking forward and crisp clean images, Coddington rightfully describes herself as a romantic – her shoots revolve around a central story or character and the images created are soft and look as if they've come from some far away fantasy world. In my opinion that effect is much more beautiful than colour blocks, clean lines and hard faces – but I guess that's why I'm in art not fashion!

 I didn't think I'd enjoy The September Issue as I find the fashion world a little odd, but the creativity involved in shoots and styling fascinated me and I think that's down to Coddington. She's currently writing her memoirs and I think her expert insight into creative styling and some back-handed comments about Anna Wintour sound like a good read!

Here are a few photos from Grace's shoots. Enjoy.

p.s. The first one is my absolute favourite and was actually cut from Grace's beloved '20s shoot by Ms Nuclear Wintour! This explains the small grainy image, I decided I'd share it with you anyway as I think the fact that it was cut for a 22 page spread of Sienne Miller looking pretty average is a travesty!!

Maison Vintage at BHS: Cath Kidston meets Urban Outfitters without the painful price tag!

So… my friends and I have just started renting a house next to Edgbaston Cricket ground in Birmingham and a new room means a new look!

I'd heard that BHS had a new range and thought I'd check it out. 

On entering the store I was a little dubious, surely beige skirts and embroidered polo shirts couldn't be followed by anything half decent, right?

Wrong! 

Upstairs I ended up in the little homeware section and spotted some Cath Kidston-esque bedding and some cute little pieces of wall art I just had to have (see piccies).

Only £6 for plaques and other pieces of wall art and £25 was pretty good for a set of double bedding. 

Although I probably won't be admitting its BHS ("Cath Kidston dahhhling!") it just goes to show that us students can have cute kitsch rooms on a budget! 

So I'm going to be ordering a few more things from BHS online, there's a better range and I won't have to push through rails of some of the high street's worst fashion mistakes.

Next stop Primarni… I do love Urban Outfitters and Cath Kiston but that'll have to wait until the student loan comes in!

In conclusion: poverty-stricken students it's worth checking out charity shops and pensioner's department stores to make your houses look like home!

I'm going to be bargain hunting my way though some of the highstreet's worst shopping experiences to get my little room looking less shabby and more shabby-chic -

 I'll keep you posted.

“I tried to be like Grace Kelly..but all her looks were too sad..” Grace Kelly’s wardrobe @ the V&A

Having heard Mika's review of Grace Kelly's looks, we decided to see if they really were too sad at the V&A!

At £4 for students (another bargain exhibition!) we couldn't resist taking a peek at the wardrobe of this style icon, but afterwards I was glad it had only been £4 as in my eyes any more would have been a bit of a rip off.

The gowns were beautiful and the intimate little films about her life helped to build up a picture of this glamorous Hollywood star but we were left with more questions than answers when we left, and I'm actually going to have to find some of them out now or it's going to drive me mad!

A couple of odd things confused us… the dresses were set back about a foot into the display cases and were raised so we couldn't work out her height, some looked really tall and made for some kind of Beyonce Amazonian woman whereas some were teeny weeny!

Then there was the Bride section including a film of her wedding and info about Prince Ranier… but where was the dress!? Major disappointment there – if there's one thing you can guarantee all girls want a sneaky peek at it's going to be a wedding dress! After researching it I've just found out it was made by 36 seamstresses… now I really do want to see it. 

Oh well, my fault …ignorance is bliss, and curiosity killed the cat.

I think my favourite parts would have to be the hand drawn sketches of Kelly's elaborate hairdos and the fashion photos, however I suppose that's just because I personally prefer illustration and photography so don't take too much notice of my biased view. 

If you love clothes and have a bit of cash to splash on a "must have nice clothes too" post-Kelly shopping spree then go have a look! Just remember to grab a student I.D. from somewhere and you can spend the £1.50 you save on an ice cream in the V&A courtyard (as afore mentioned: new favourite place).

An artist, a photographer and a fashionista take a trip!

Part One.

EXPOSED at Tate Modern.

Definitely worth the £10!

 

So yesterday two friends and I spent about seven hours looking at photography, illustration, painting, costume, architecture, fashion and jewellery…phew!

We wandered up the south bank to the Tate Modern past hoards of people queuing for the Eye and tried to avoid some bizarre looking performers.

We’d planned to make it to the Tate Mod, Saatchi, V&A and Photographer’s Gallery all in one day – in the end we managed seven hours (still pretty impressive I think!) between the Tate and V&A and then may have ended up in a pub for four more hours…

We arrived at the Tate to be greeted by the first pleasant surprise of the day – the Michael Clark Company’s dance collaborative taking place in the Turbine Hall! We stood watching twelve dancers performing a smooth warm up and practising a few steps before going to grab our tickets for Exposed:Voyeurism, Surveillance and the Camera. We intended to get back to the dancers as soon as we were done with Exposure but sadly we were so absorbed in the exhibition that when we finally emerged an hour and a half later the dancers had gone for lunch! Serious tragedy – so unfortunately I’m just going to have to go back!

I don’t want to give away too much about Exposure but it’s definitely an incredible collection of photographs. The pieces range from images taken during the 1860s when secret-camera fever took over to some quite shocking sexually explicit and violent images to recent images from no-camera zones. We all agreed that the first half of the exhibition was the best – before we reached what we insensitively nicknamed The Death Room – and that you only really realised how amazing the first few photographs were after you’d had a chance to take them in.

Particularly amazing were the series Heads by Philip-Lorca diCorcia (see man with beard at the top there) – shot with a series of hidden cameras and automatic flashes which were triggered as the subject walked by – and the collection of secret photography devices on show that’d been devised in the early 20th Century to catch people unaware. DiCorcia’s images are incredible: they look as if they were shot in a studio, the lighting and expression impeccable. Later on in the day we visited the V&A and the photography section included some of Gregory Crewdson’s staged photographs, his works appear to be snapshots from everyday life but in fact are meticulously crafted using false lighting, actors and sets. They have to be admired as they are amazing creations, but I think that diCorcia’s works and images like this are so incredibly interesting because they are completely real. No sets, no ‘photo faces’, no poses. Crewdson’s work appears so ordinary but its creation is extraordinary, which seems to defeat the point to me. 

This is why secret photography is so amazing, even when it isn’t shocking or candid it captures people in a way they would never be photographed otherwise. While staged photographs or organised photographs capture a frozen person, secret photographs hold personality in them too.

Exposure was pretty heavy-going in some sections and pretty vulgar too so just be aware! I was pretty glad my mother didn’t agree to a family day out at the Tate when I walked into Room 5 to be greeted by a wall of women in gimp masks! A lot of the work was sickening but also horribly fascinating – a series which we all found pretty disturbing was The Park by Kohei Yoshiyuki, documenting a group of voyeurs who crawl through Japanese parks late at night trying to get as close as possible and eventually touch unsuspecting couples. A shocking, grotesque and perverted ‘hobby’ exposed by secret photography!

We noticed trends in the photographs throughout the ages: sex, violence, humiliation, condemnation. The earliest paparazzi photographs are like a black and white version of Heat magazine, obsession with other people’s lives is an eternal human interest – seeing other people’s dirty laundry makes our own seem cleaner! 

The three of us travelled through from secret cameras, early paparazzi photos and images that exposed grim fetishes and prostitution and then ended up in Room 9. We all agreed if we were to see the show again we’d stop at Room 8 and make a quick turn back to those lovely images of Marilyn and Jackie Kennedy! The images of violence, war, lynchings and capital punishment were of course interesting but the exhibition should have really come with a warning as to be honest, us three girls are all complete wimps.

I faint at the sight of blood, our resident photographer felt too sick for lunch and my fashion student friend propped herself up on my shoulder when she followed me quickly out of Death Room. But despite how horrifying the images are, I’m glad I saw what I did and I admire those photographers for the bravery they show in exposing such atrocities. The photographs are actually fascinating, so fellow wimpy girls: be brave and have a look. 

Room 11-14 were all a bit lost on us as after the celebs, sex and death of the first 10 or so rooms, images from surveillance cameras don’t quite cut it. Exposure hits a climax of such powerful images which could easily reduce a person to tears – in fact I think the reason we didn’t cry is that you can hardly believe some of it is real – and so the ending is a little disappointing. Thinking back though, we were so dumbstruck by the the pornographic and violent images that if we’d been released into the middle of the Tate we wouldn’t have known quite how to recover. As it was we were still flailing about aimlessly and repeating things like “did you see.. with the window?” “oh my god yeah I did’t realise what it was until…” “wow.” even after a few rooms of much calmer – but in some ways more technically impressive – images.

I was intending to do an entry about the whole day but I’ve now spent about an hour on just Exposure. Goes to show how much of an impact it had on me! 

To sum up: An astonishing collection of incredible works but it could have been four shows rather than one. I guess a tenner for four shows isn’t bad then!

Next up…I’ll actually start on the four hours we spent in the V&A.