Friday 29 October 2010

Roland Klein

Roland Klein

I was fortunate enough the other day to hear a talk by Roland Klein, arguably made all the more enjoyable by his divine French accent. It was fascinating to hear about his experiences working within French couture, during the 1950s, at Dior, and later how he worked as Karl Lagerfeld's assistant for about 5 years. Interestingly, apparently Mr Lagerfeld, is a very kind, generous and funny man, and nothing like his austere, 'Kaiser', persona that he seems to portray, especially through those big black sunglasses. Also he was telling us about how he studied at the same fashion college as Yves Saint Laurent, and apparently the teachers there didn't think that he was anything special, and couldn't see him going far. So the moral there is that teachers aren't always right....

I was also really impressed by the sheer volume of celebrities and famous models seen wearing his clothes in the images he showed us - such as Yasmin Le Bon and Naomi Campbell. He even showed us some of the original sketches for dress designs for Princess Diana, and I even recognised a few of the outfits!

All in all, a truly inspirational talk by a fascinating man.

Thursday 28 October 2010

Shadow Catchers....and other London escapades...




Shadow Catchers - The V&A



The Shadow Catchers: Camera-Less Photography, is a truly beautiful exhibition at the V&A, which I managed to see last week when I was in London. It is basically, as the title suggests, photographs and images made without using a camera. As a result the images have a wonderful, ethereal quality to them, and in a world where every photo seems to have been photoshopped the hell out of it, so they look ridiculously saturated and contrasted, it is so refreshing to see images with such subtle, soft qualities about them, and where people with actual skill and talent have made them. For it does seem increasingly like anyone these days can take a substandard photo, and transform it into something amazing using a computer....anyway I digress...panic not..rant over...

I think my absolute favourite artist shown would have to be Floris Neususs, one of his photographs is shown in this blog post. His work is just so interesting to see, so different to anything I have seen before, kind of like really intricate and delicate photographic negatives. The other main artist I liked at the exhibition would probably be Susan Derges.

So anyway, go and see it, I highly recommend it, it is one of the few exhibitions I have seen recently where I haven't been disappointed with it, by thinking that a five year old could have produced half of it....

Also if you do have time, you must, must visit Harrods, which is only up the road, and indulge your inner child by visiting their Christmas section. I realised I probably get a bit too excited about Christmas, when I found myself running through the handbag department, which usually I find to be an almost heaven on earth type place, even if I can probably only afford to buy a keyring at a push...., straight to the escalators and zoomed up to the Christmas area.

They even have Sex and the City Christmas decorations! So exciting! although, even for a die hard fan like myself, a bit much at £10 a bauble....it would be just my luck to have some chubby business man sit on my bag on the tube and break my new purchase, so I decided not to risk it...