Today we bid a fond farewell to our long-serving Art Director Paul Bruty who is leaving us to start a new life in Australia with his lovely wife, Tamara. Paul joined SHOWstudio in December 2000, a month after the site’s launch and worked alongside Creative Director Paul Hetherington and Motion... [more]
With the gloom of winter drawing in and foreboding portents promised by every newspaper headline, I for one grab every opportunity to bury my head in the sand and celebrate glorious excess - and, with garments glittering like the proverbial festive bauble the KCD press day provided ample opportunity. Packed... [more]
Nick Knight has just posted the first Violence film to the Violence process section. Click here to see the project's first fiery foray into sample collection.
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An evening with Stefano Pilati is the dream of many red-blooded females (and males, for that matter) - and yesterday evening, several hundred of them packed into the London College of Fashion to hear Mr Pilati in conversation with the always-erudite Colin McDowell.
An insight into a designer's working practice is... [more]
Yes, the latest round of press-days is upon us to showcase designers' wares from Spring/Summer 2009 - and what better way to start than with the indominable Mandi Lennard, a mere snow-dusted (or rather, sludge-speckled) hop around the corner from SHOWstudio on Hoxon Street. Mandi has the edge over much... [more]
Fashion, it seems, is getting nicer by the minute. After Alber Elbaz's politely deferential explanation of the lateness of the Lanvin show, today Rick Owens sent a handwritten note of apology for the problems experienced at the door to his Paris show. Unexpected but more than welcome as Rick's note... [more]
The very idea of 'eco-chic' conjures up images of hemp, hessian and, to borrow the words of Colin McDowell, "do-gooders having a go at fashion". But the London College of Fashion went a long way to countering these accusations last night in a catwalk show dedicated to 'Fashioning the Future.'... [more]
Opening the doors and allowing the public inside their world, Viktor Horsting and Rolf Snoeren invite us inside the house of Viktor & Rolf for a rare glimpse behind the scenes. Filmed live during the final week of the exhibition 'The House of Viktor & Rolf' at London's Barbican Gallery,... [more]
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I remember Wode first being touted at Boudicca's A/W 2001 show 'The Battle of Altruism', where an ever-evolving scent-scape of a battleground drifted across the audience during the presentation. While our own Violence perfume is currently under development, it is fascinating to see Boudicca's ambitious and unique olfactory vision finally... [more]
Following his recent Dazed and Confused cover, shot by Nick Knight, Brit Wunderkind Gareth Pugh met up with the aforementioned Mr Knight to survey the latest edit of the video short filmed during the progress of the 'Dark Magic' shoot documented on SHOWstudio earlier this year. Currently being painstakingly edited... [more]
The first of the T-shirts for the fighters has arrived from Berlin. Sealed in its plastic bag, it is now just waiting for the date of Ryan's fight.
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A kind chap named Ollie Roberts sent us an email this morning with details on a downloadable dashboard widget he has created. The widget pulls the data from our blogs and presents them all in one handy window for your perusal. So if that takes your fancy and you are... [more]
The 24th Hyères International Fashion and Photography Festival is now accepting admissions for its 2009 competition. Held at the Villa Noailles in South of France every spring, Hyères proposes diverse exhibitions, professional panel discussions and two competitions showcasing the best new talents from the fields of fashion and photography. Previous... [more]
If you head on over to the process blog in violence then you'll see it has been updated with more details on how Nick is going about creating his groundbreaking scent. Zimmerli have supplied the t-shirts which, after being worn in a fight by an unnamed combatant, will be used... [more]
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Any of our viewers located in Reykjavik in the next week should make time to go and see Japanese photographer and artist, Fumiko Imano's 'Icelandic Tour of Me! 2008'. Showing at Belleville as part of the real-time art festival 'Sequences 2008', the exhibition will showcase a selection of Imano's delightful... [more]
Peter Saville has declared 'it all looks like art to me now' - and evidently he is willing to put his money where his mouth is. His latest exhibition, Accessories to an Artwork offers just that: the chance for anything and everything to be presented as art by its placement... [more]
So, with the dust settling on another season, the overriding question is, as always, 'What am I going to wear?' After soaking up all London and Paris had to offer, and casting a sideways glance at New York and Milan, here are our observations, from excess and extraterrestrials to prehistory... [more]
To celebrate eight groundbreaking years of SHOWstudio, we are proud to announce that we will be staging an ambitious, multi-layered exhibition at London's Somerset House to open in 2009. Showcasing a retrospective of SHOWstudio's mould-breaking fashion and art projects around the three central themes of 'Process', 'Performance' and 'Participation', the... [more]
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A triumph. And under multi-coloured disco lights, no less. A wonderful, wonderful way to end Paris Fashion Week.
Alber Elbaz's show for Lanvin began, uncharacteristically, with an apology for lateness: unheard of in the fashion world. This note of politesse set the tone for the collection, a well-behaved, well-bred selection of basic satin skirts, trousersuits and cocktail dresses that carried on where his last outing left off. Decoration... [more]
Why should the velvet seats be restricted to an already-priviledged front row? Alber Elbaz - always a perfect gentleman - extends his way way back throughout his Lanvin venue, although with a flickering projection of the house's name on a backdrop of cinematic curtains and Marlene Dietrich on the pre-show... [more]
More of El Odeh's wares were on display a mere Marais walk away in Marios Schwab's showroom. Taking a decided turn for the commercial this season (then again, hasn't just about everyone?), Schwab was evidently looking to widen his fanbase by offering a piece of Schwab at every level. From... [more]
Having missed the London Fashion Week exhibition almost entirely due to a jam-packed show schedule (who says we don't need six days?!), I had a lucky opportunity to venture into Paris' Marais disctrict to view the work of these two Future Tense designers, exhibiting together in a gallery space. Which,... [more]
Even before Star Trek and the Cold War Space Race, Cristobal Balenciaga's remit was always to go where no man had gone before. Nicolas Ghesquiere continues this house tradition, albeit often more in the vein of Balenciaga's decidedly Sci Fi protege Andre Courreges. This season, Ghesquiere was inspired by light:... [more]
That theme tune wasn't from Scottish Widows, it was from Lloyds TSB, and perhaps John Galliano had matters financial on his mind when creating his latest collection. Indeed, this show seemed very much grounded in the here and now - witness a catwalk of derailed trains and glowing embers eerily... [more]
Luckily, that ruddy glow does indicate a source of heat to stave off frostbite for another season. Galliano's set this time - far less schematically complex that his recent shows - is a railway yard's sidings, complete with barricades, bollards, jacked-up carriages and what looks alarmingly like a real catwalk.... [more]
If anyone ever tells you fashion is glamorous don't believe a word of it. John Gallianos show is held way outside the perimeter of Paris in this rather unwelcoming steel bunker. Chic. We've ticked past the start time of 8, but as yet the doors remain bolted. I also swear... [more]
Despite its considerable creative clout, London is unfortunately relative small fry when it comes to financial matters, therefore much of the selling of British-based design goes on in Paris. This season, The British Fashion Council exported a whole raft of Brit young guns to the continent under a single roof... [more]
Visiting the Pierre Hardy showroom is always a pleasure: this time not least because I got to meet the eponymous Monsieur Hardy himself. The collect built on many of the codes established last season - those hit flat metal Escher cubes were reworked in enamel, and even patchworked into rather... [more]
On the back of Thursday's sensational show, I quite frankly couldn't wait to get my hands on Stefano Pilati's latest collection for Yves Saint Laurent. And I was in luck as I managed to snag a re-see the day after the show. Spectacular as the runway shows usually are, its... [more]
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Fashion, to an extent, is Darwinian. It's all about the survival of the fittest. And, after 10 years in the wilds of Parisian fashion (including his period at Givenchy), Alexander McQueen has proved his talent can tough it out with the best of them. Darwin formed a central theme to... [more]
A taxidermied myriad of fauna form a fitting backdrop for Alexander McQueen's S/S 2009 collection , 'Natural Dis-tinction Un-Natural Selection'.
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Martin Sitbon's Rue Du Mail show was another example of fashion's flash-in-the-pan fascination with the polar extremes of the distant, even neolithic past and a brave new future of sharp tailoring, pointy fins and super-sheened fabrics. It's a pity that Sitbon's show came so late in the week and after... [more]
As an alternative to the hectic pace of Paris Fashion Week Viktor and Rolf chose, this season, to again say 'NO' - no to the show, that is, opting instead to show their wares online at www.viktor-rolf.com. V&R are, of course, no the first to do this - Helmut Lang... [more]
Castelbajac fan Carri Mundane of Cassette Playa heading backstage after the show.
Played out on catwalk a patterned with Disney clouds, Jean Charles de Castelbajac's S/S 2009 collection was, as anticipated, an colourful, cartoony antidote to the current sturm und drang of reality. It was classic Castelbajac - opening with a loony-tunes style primary splodged suit and giant jokey lego-brick spectacles and... [more]
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Brave. An apt summary both of Stefano Pilati's S/S 2009 collection for Yves Saint Laurent and indeed for the very act of taking on the mantle of one of the great couturiers. Brave too is Pilati's entire output during his tenure, neither purely reverential, referential or iconoclastic, but all of... [more]
Stefano Pilati's steel cage setting within the confines of the Grand Palais.
Bernhard Willhelm may have scribbled out the words 'SPRING' and 'SUMMER' on his invitation, but his latest collection was both springy and summery. Inspired, it seems by the garb of indigenous tribespeople worldwide, it picked up on the primitive streak we have seen elsewhere - although typically for Willhelm,... [more]
Two out of three isn't bad - and here are two of New York's DJ trio The Missfits (although besides Leigh Lezark, I'm not sure which two thanks to Mr Willhelm's outfit!)
The always-fabulous Diane Pernet outside Bernhard Willhelm. An even more dedicated fashion blogger than I!
Androgynous clones rather than erogynous zones are the standard at Haider Ackermann (if you pardon the rather witless pun), but this season Ackermann proves he can do sex appeal with the best of them. His collection opened with the shortest of short tan suede romper suits, rising high over the... [more]
Any fashion historian knows that in the 1950s there were, essentially, two overriding silhouettes: a highly-constricted waist, ample breasts, softly-sloping shoulders and a to-the-knee skirt either hobble-slim or massively buoyed with frou-frou petticoats. Night or day, town or country, that was your lot. It was pretty much the same story... [more]
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A Fuzzy Felt packet on every seat (and a huge backdrop of said stuff courtesy of Jake and Dinos Chapman) got us all thinking about childhood before Stella McCartney's latest show, and indeed Papa Paul slipped seruptitiously into his daughter's decidedly grown-up front row just before the lights went down.... [more]
Amidst this week’s pictorial, written and audible coverage of Paris Fashion Week, courtesy of our Fashion Director, Alex Fury and model Lily Donaldson, we are pleased to launch, Perroquet, a recent body of work by the Norwegian fashion photographer Sølve Sundsbø. Feted for his striking editorial and campaign imagery, here... [more]
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Coffee - strong, black and in copious amounts - is a must for fashion week. Luckily for us, Stella's got it on tap. God bless her!
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I will admit outright to a frank, severe and unashamed bias when it comes to all matters of Lacroix. Short of going minimal (which luckily doesn't appear to be on the cards anytime soon) I find it difficult to criticise the outright optimism and exuberance with which this man meets... [more]
Dries Van Noten's show opened with his models walking through two narrow walkways denoted by shafts of light, to nothing more than the delicate sound of birdsong. What they wore was equally understated and delicate. Moving away from his recent riots of colour and print - indeed, the colour was... [more]
This season Dries Van Noten handily pitches his tent - quite literally - bang in the middle of the Jardins du Palais Royal, fountains and all. Both scenic and terribly convenient, although the best bit is undoubtedly the Laduree macaroons.
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Esteban Cortezar is one of those young designers referencing Lagerfeld's eighties - in his mid-twenties, it is a decade he can only remember through the rose-tinted glasses of childhood nostalgia. Although perhaps that is appropriate, given that the house of Emanuel Ungaro has always been about rose-tinted hues, particularly the... [more]
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The Kaiser himself in the flesh
Kaiser Karl is known as a veritable pundit of fashion's zeitgeist - whatever the flavour of the moment is, he's guaranteed to catch it, give it a Lagerfeld spin, and make it his own. The sci-fi femininity gripping much of the collections for spring is what Lagerfeld latched onto this... [more]
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