eurbanista

OLD FASHION ROMANCE

eurbanista — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 21:31:08 +0000

A Couturier’s Tale

Periscope Magazine

STYLE/DESIGN
Text: Ashley Davidson / Photo: Seth Tillett
April 20, 2012

Vanity, that most punishable of vices, so often exposes the one thing we most intend for it to conceal: our selves. The couturier serves as wizard, historian and heretic, harnessing vanity to create deities from the detestable, while disguising the average as extraordinary. Above all, the couturier is a storyteller. Unfortunately, it seems that we have forgotten how to read.

Camilla Huey is this breed of couturier. She is the mistress of the House of Execution, one of New York City’s few remaining couture houses, aptly named on September 12, 2001. Born to the great State of Louisiana, she inherited a Southern reverence for history and a knowing respect for the art of gossip long before her training began as an artist of fashion. Camilla’s life is threaded with stories shared and created while dressing the last of the Great Dames, theater starlets and socialites who have passed through The Island of Manhattan on their way to infamy.

Camilla has the ability to tell a story through exquisitely constructed fashion, thoroughly blurring whatever lines may exist between art, invention and couture. Simply put, she brings dreams to life in physical form. She is currently working on a new story apart from the red carpet and Broadway stage, which will be realized later this year as her first solo exhibition. The installation is comprised of sculptural corsets, each representing one of six remarkable women who share in common one of the most entertaining scoundrels in all of New York.

The particular scoundrel of reference was a young orphan and runaway who studied law, became a war hero and a notorious ladies’ man, climbed the political ranks of the United States government, got away with murder, fell in love and married an older woman who soon left him a widower; who was arrested on the Mississippi River disguised as an Indian in a canoe while making his way to Mexico, and was then banished for treason, exiled to Europe, grieved at the loss of his only daughter to pirates, and eventually returned home to marry one of the richest widows in New York, who, according to Camilla, was “born a bastard, lived a whore, and died a recluse.” (Yes, it’s all true.) The man was Revolutionary War hero and former Vice President Aaron Burr, best known today for killing Alexander Hamilton in a duel.

Only in New York? Perhaps not, but this is where it all went down… New York remains a city of opportunity and catastrophe; a city that draws together the ambitious and adventurous onto a seemingly fictitious stage where anything can happen.

Camilla would know. Arriving in New York as a fresh graduate off the train from Memphis, she would come to dress the likes of Katherine Hepburn, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and Oprah, and would outfit the sets of Broadway productions including Beauty and the Beast, as well as the Metropolitan Opera. She has continued to execute the couture pieces of Donna Karan, Ralph Lauren and Zac Posen, to name a few. Camilla knows couture inside and out, and through her stories I’ve come to realize that the couturier has yet another role – that of the psychiatrist or priest who hears all confessions and hides a multitude of sins from the confines of her fitting room.

However discreet, couture – that most personal and symbolic of fashions made just for the individual – gives clues about the person behind the veil; their dreams and fantasies combined with their secrets and earthly reality. In this spirit, Camilla’s art reminds us that the personal objects we surround ourselves with and cherish tell the private story of who we are better than any biographer could.

As a couturier and artist, Camilla thrives on these stories. Her world is a menagerie of unique characters whose stories are so rich that you can be sure she’ll never run short on material. She is married to Kurt Thometz, a connoisseur of literary and social history who began his career as a private librarian by curating the library of Diana Vreeland. Camilla and Kurt live in a brownstone in the furthest reaches of Harlem, directly across the street from the Jumel Mansion, which is the oldest residence in the borough of Manhattan. While this Mansion may best be remembered as Washington’s headquarters during the Revolutionary War, its most riveting residents were certainly the bastard/whore/recluse Madam Eliza Jumel and the scoundrel Aaron Burr, whose lives are as ludicrous and brilliant an example of New York adventure as I’ve ever heard.

Camilla has been immersed in the world of Jumel for the past decade, and it’s no wonder she’s been so captivated.

“As a Southerner, you are brought up to revere the past,” Camilla asserts from the fitting room of her atelier, surrounded by antique dress forms, rare books and treatises on fashion.

Yet much of written history is blurred by politics, vanity or propriety, and as Camilla puts it,”the facts don’t add up to the truth.”

“Because so much of what we gain from (historical) documents tells us so little about who a person was, I prefer using the genre of feuilleton, a hybrid of gossip, melodrama and weird news. Gossip tells me more about a person’s point of view, sense of humor and nature and of those surrounding that person.”

If truth exists somewhere between the lines of written history, it is especially difficult to interpret the lives of women from what little has been recorded about them. Camilla began adapting her interest in powerful women from the footnotes of history over a year ago with sketches of their intimate wear: something much closer to the body, more honest and real than any written statement. “It seemed to me only possible to construct something akin to (an individual’s) intangible presence by bringing together elements representing their tastes, their desires, wit and humor in something personal.”

Camilla’s installation of corsets captures the dreams and uncertainty of the women most influential to the exceptional and oft forgotten legacy of Aaron Burr. The corsets are made from a wide range of carefully selected and exquisite materials that reflect the diversity of the women, as well as the nuances and titillating details that brought them to infamy. Among the completed pieces is the voluminous corset representing Theodosia Burr, Aaron’s first wife and great love.

Theodosia was a highly educated and wealthy woman who cleverly balanced her station as both a Colonial daughter and the wife of a British Loyalist. She shrewdly played both sides of the Revolutionary War by lodging Tory generals in one house within her holdings, and General Washington’s officers in another. It was during this time that she met the young and dashing Aaron Burr, who would marry her within a year of her husband’s death, thus securing her lands from confiscation.

She was the intellectual equal of Burr, and their remaining private letters are a testament to their romance. In fact, they were a rather sexy couple – the intellectual and Revolutionary version of Ashton and Demi, pre-divorce. Burr and Theodosia had one daughter together before her death 11 years later (though he was thought to have had other children outside of the marriage).

Early in their relationship, Theodosia expressed desire for the freedom to explore her own non-domestic interests without interruption. Burr encouraged her to take the time and space for this in a “room of her own,” and it was with this sentiment (made famous a full century later by Virginia Woolf) that Theodosia was liberated to expand on her own writing.

Camilla channels that eruption of intellectual passion through a pink silk taffeta corset, bursting from its silk bindings and reinforced with bookbinding threads. Handmade cotton papers representing Theodosia’s body of work overflow from the corset’s open form, and a ribbon of bias cut silk organza with feathered edges tumbles from the spine of the corset, delicate as a whisper. It’s a moving sight of exquisite execution, and you can feel the spirit of the woman and the romance personified by the object when viewing it.

In stark contrast to Theodosia was Aaron Burr’s second wife, Eliza Jumel, the scandalous prevaricator who divorced Burr on his deathbed. Eliza was a wild card with a rags-to-riches story that began in Rhode Island where she worked the streets with a monkey perched on her shoulder. At age 14, she claimed to have given birth to the illegitimate son of George Washington, and was then sent to Europe by an anonymous benefactor and found that her street education was complimented with something a bit more formal. She returned to New York City where she set forth as an aggressive social climber, audaciously spreading tales of Napoleon’s great admiration for her (the accuracy of her stories has never been verified).

Upon successfully securing the role of wife to Stephen Jumel, the richest man in New York, Eliza became both Madam Jumel and untouchable in the eyes of society. She married Burr only months after the mysterious death of Stephen Jumel, and also quite late in Burr’s life when he had returned from exile after being accused of an act of treason wherein he had allegedly utilized U.S. provisions in a failed attempt to become the Emperor of Mexico. After Burr’s death, Madam Jumel would live out her days as a recluse within the confines of her mansion on 160th Street.

With Madam Jumel, then and now, one is left anxiously wanting more. It is with great anticipation that we await Camilla’s interpretation of the famed tart.

Corsets created with the couturier’s hand in the spirit of animated narrative and gossip bring these stories back to life and remind us that the personal object – fashion – carries a meaning beyond the superficial. In her emerging exhibition that visualizes the illustrious lives of six bold women who shaped a much forgotten history, the artist cunningly expresses that Southern reverence for the dead and for a story lived by someone else. This reverence is combined with a knowing respect for the history of New York which, although rich and entertaining, is constantly demolished or ignored in the pursuit of modernity. It ties in with our present reality through the fact that we are now at a social and political crossroads of protest and debate, when life’s uncertainty is unbearable, and the fate of all is suspended.

Although our Constitution is established and our wilderness now tamed, in many ways we live in a time as sensational and uncertain as the days of Aaron Burr. But it’s not all tragic! History can be lived as well as it can be imagined, and nothing captivates the imagination quite like fashion and gossip.

“Burr,” the exhibition by Camilla Huey will be completed in 2012. The venue has yet to be determined.

via Periscope Magazine

Fashion’s Heretics

eurbanista — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 04:21:49 +0000

Heretics in the fashion industry? Sure.

But I’m not talking about the fashion victims or people who just don’t “get fashion” – those geeky girls who are shunned by the cool girls -the opinion leaders- and then go on to become the prom queen or get the dreamy guy after a makeover in the movies (Clueless, Never Been Kissed, Devil Wears Prada, Princess Diaries - video, Miss Congeniality - video, She’s All That…).

Before and after shots from “She’s All That” (via agentlover)

I’m talking about industry outsiders who see things that people submerged in the Industry Kool-Aid cannot.

Underdog Advantage: Loners become Leaders

As in religion, fashion’s heretics rarely view themselves as heretical, but more often as fervent worshippers. Beyond mere style, today’s fashion heretics are becoming the authority in a new doctrine less focused on style and more focused on substance. They have no profit-based incentive to lie, and so people trust their voices with increasing loyalty.

In digital media, they may have an audience reach that challenges known fashion editors, or they may hold influence in a tiny niche, but they are there and they are growing. The irony of human nature is that those in power rarely embrace the lessons of the heretic, but it always catches up to them.

Speaking of heretics, last September IBM hosted a Forum on the Future of Leadership called THINK where Carmen Medina, former Director of the CIA’s Center for the Study of Intelligence told the audience:

You all have Heretics
They are not your problem. They are not your enemy
They are trying to help you.
They are probably the start of your solution.

Read that again, because she is so right.

Technology is a Tool for Engaging New Ideas, & That Shouldn’t be Threatening

For the last couple of years I have witnessed an extreme reluctance in the fashion industry to embrace technology, both in the back-end of logistics and planning and in the front-end where the buff and polish of marketing occurs. Business practices in the industry remain archaic and a fear of “losing control of the message” still exists to the point where strategic tomes of policy must be written before upscale fashion brands even consider engaging in social media – engaging with the very people who love fashion so much that they go online to talk about it all day long. For free. #facepalm Some notable exceptions have been made, but they are rare.

However, I’m talking less about a cute voice that banters with potential customers than I am about directed engagement, education, and the preservation of the intrinsic value behind key brand assets – the talent. We have been sold on buying into the “lifestyle” offered by a brand and reinforced by their product offering, and while the lifestyle message has grown stronger, the product value has grown weaker due to countless financial pressures and a cannibalistic business strategy.

Brands have become absolutely fixated on building mythologies and pumping funds into glossy campaigns while their skilled makers – the backbone of the industry – are laid off, and manufacturing is moved to cheaper, unskilled labor pools. The cost savings of these workforce shifts are heralded at shareholder meetings, while untold funds are hemorrhaged into marketing and PR – increasingly important as the intrinsic value of the product (quality, technique, and tradition) diminishes.

This marketing madness has gotten to the point where my generation knows little of intrinsic value but suspiciously knows everything about brand image. We have been told again and again that a logo was a sure sign of value and everyone wanted the lastest “It” thing. Then people started asking questions.

Enter the Countermovement.

At one end of the movement against marketing fluff are those who are furious with the disillusion from a lifetime of having false mythologies forced on them, to the point that marketing is now considered a dirty word and not a helpful way to find what you need. Good luck coming back from that – the symbolic brands have already lost these folks.

At the other end, you have industry outsiders, bloggers, and interested “amateurs” finding information, exploring and talking with one another. Tired of being told what to think, they are finding their own answers, becoming experts and leaders in their own right. Publicly. Online! And often without a degree in fashion design, marketing, or merchandising. Yet they are still very open to a dialogue with brand leaders.

We’ve already seen the emergence of fashion heretics utilizing digital channels to edge into the industry on their own terms and influence great change in the process. It’s begun in fashion media (Tavi, Bryan Boy), fashion photography (The Sartorialist, Jak + Jil) and retail (net-a-porter, Gilt Groupe). I have the utmost respect for all trailblazers, but I have a feeling we ain’t seen nothing yet.

A second generation of fashion startups is soon to emerge, and when combined with what is happening in the startup world of technology, they are about to do some disrupting! While some of the heretical disruptions we will see in the coming years will be geared towards giving branded storytelling a little kick, the REAL value will be in the back-end of the fashion business, where artisans are empowered to do their jobs more efficiently and information can be properly managed for analysis by executives. Consumers are becoming more intelligent about their purchases, and glossy ads will not be enough to capture their loyalty – they want real value and responsiveness, and they deserve our respect. Consumer demands and technological innovations will soon push the “art” of fashion merchandising into much more of a science, with less focus on intuition and greater focus on demand that meets location-specific criteria.

I believe it is time for the pendulum to swing back away from heavy reliance on fantastical marketing schemes, to go back to the real substance of intrinsic value. Fashion and luxury brands that have maintained intrinsic value with skilled production have nothing to fear from “amateurs” asking a few questions about their products, and trying to understand just why those shoes / dresses / bags cost so much.

These “heretics” are not asking permission to get involved and to learn more. They are not asking permission to ask questions or have conversations about topics that interest them. They don’t care about industry rules and bureaucracy, and are happily unconcerned with rituals of dues-paying enforced within the industry by “gatekeepers” of the Old Guard. This generation has access to information, and they will use it.

If this is upsetting to brand managers, they are probably not playing the game effectively.

Walk the Talk on Intrinsic Value

Brands: Customers know WHAT you do. They want to know HOW and WHY you do it, and you have to be honest because things are only becoming more transparent over time. Now is time to walk the talk.

*sign image thanks to PR Connections

Prada Menswear FW2012

eurbanista — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 19:39:02 +0000

Looks like the Tom Ford strategy of substituting celebrities for models has caught on with Team Prada.

Basic Bitches: Kreayshawn & Anti-Luxury Marketing

eurbanista — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 05:08:56 +0000

On my last trip out to California, I was thrilled to be introduced to Kreayshawn’s beats which have by now made their way across the country (okay, the world) and into the Brooklyn scene. Amazing as this girl is for building her own empire – and I LOVE the entrepreneurial ascension from IKEA staffer to 2011 MTV Video Music Awards nominee for Best New Artist and director of a Red Hot Chili Peppers video – I of course was thinking about what her song “Gucci Gucci” represents in terms of consumer psychology: specifically, the backlash against luxury labels that the bourgeois have long since adopted as status staples.

Gucci Gucci Louis Louis Fendi Fendi Prada

Them basic bitches wear that shit

So I don’t even bother

-Kreayshawn, “Gucci Gucci”

As a new wave of scrappy upstarts move from rags to riches (okay, relative riches) in the era rife with Kardashians and Occupy Wall Street protests, they are rejecting the highly marketed global luxury labels in favor of smaller indie brands, local, artisan, or vintage finds that reflect their sense of individuality and creativity – and state clearly: “I am NOT one of THEM.”

Not what the cool kids aspire to wear these days...

Yes, it’s a case of How Luxury Lost its Luster, but this time, the luster is lost on what was once considered the “aspirational” market – the people who wish they could buy something but are left out of the loop. Kreayshawn and her “White Girl Mob” have blatantly rejected these symbols of wealth as uncool and “basic,” although Kreayshawn attributed this in an interview (which I can no longer find online) as a result of their being unable to afford these brands which they once considered cool before they discovered that putting together their own looks from vintage stores and smaller artisans gave them far more satisfaction and street cred than any logo-saturated handbag ever could.

Where’s your originality, Louis Vuitton girls?! The sun might be setting on your status as fashion’s elite.

Just another sheep wearing Louis Vuitton, Fendi and Chopard

It remains to be seen how this will affect the established luxury brands – how many aspiring bad bitches will turn their backs on the leading fashion and luxury brands as they climb the ladder of fame and fortune? If the luxury brands lose their “cool” status with the emerging opinion leaders… well, they probably still have enough loyalists to keep them in business for a long while to come.

I rest my case, Mr. Kanye West.

Headline Review: ‘Specifications for the Way We Live Now’ – FT.com

eurbanista — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 16:04:31 +0000

In my interest for building communities around fashion, I have long been drawn to the notion of Slow Fashion – which in my interpretation is the practice of employing artisan communities to produce rare and skillfully-crafted pieces that have a timeless quality about them, as well as a story.

Today’s headline: ‘Specifications for the way we live now‘ by Financial Times writer Rachel Sanderson announces the merging of fast fashion via the Italian retail company Pinko with the Slow Fashion notions of Alessandra Facchinetti, who was abruptly dismissed from Valentino via a press release after two well-received seasons. This collaboration – a collection called Uniqueness – delivers the concept of Slow Fashion to the masses via a fast fashion retail outlet, and compliments the business model by building out a lifestyle showcase via social media: in essence, the perfect storm!

Alessandra Facchinetti

Ms. Facchinetti has joined several of her peers (Jil Sander for Uniqlo, Olivier Theyskens for Theory) who have departed from the major luxury brands after finding distaste with the politics, and subsequently found refuge with retailers. However, this collaboration is unique in that the “fast fashion” garments will be quick-to-market but designed and presented as seasonless, a concept which flies in the face of all things “fast”. In the case of Ms. Facchinetti, she has partnered with Pinko, an upper-mass market retailer of fast fashion, in order to sell fashions that are seasonless, well-crafted and altogether “slower” than the trend-oriented stock normally carried by Pinko stores.

‘“I really had the desire to break the system; to make what I like, present it and sell it.”

Hence the fact that Uniqueness will have a catwalk presentation this week and afterwards the 60-piece collection will go on sale on www.uniqueness.it and multibrand site www.thecorner.com. It will also be sold in some department stores and on their websites. The collection is aimed at “no season” and “the fabrics give a feeling of not needing to be changed every six months”. Think cotton, polyester and chiffon.’

The notion of no-season garments being carried by a fast fashion retailer is incredibly interesting! Surely the threat of consumers being satisfied by garments that can be worn all year will be overridden by the belief that Ms. Facchinetti will continue to produce designs that consumers simply cannot resist. Another interesting point is that Pinko and Ms. Facchinetti are combating the belief that fast fashion involves low quality by pairing a strict Made in Italy policy with a reasonable price point:

‘As with Theyskens’ collection for Theory, the pricing for Facchinetti’s venture is aimed at the high-middle market: T-shirts start at €90 ($121), and most of the collection is about €200 to €500. The most expensive item is €1,200 for a fake fur jacket. All the clothes are made in Italy, at Ms Facchinetti’s specification, in a factory in Fidenza. “We’ve managed to get a good balance between quality and price point. It is really well done,” she says.’

Further elevating the image of the collection, Ms. Facchinetti will bring with her a lifestyle aspect to the collaboration via social media. She will develop content with various interesting characters in order to provide an aspirational-yet-accessible dream world around the collection. This practice has become a critical component to many brands, both at the luxury and mass level. However, it has become clear that although luxury brands often have the most interesting stories, characters and histories to work with, it is often the mass brands who are making a greater effort to explore the potential of the digital world. Ms. Facchinetti will be bridging the gap by articulating her glamorous lifestyle with accessible content.

‘The Uniqueness website is also going to work as hub for a lifestyle alla Facchinetti. She will be writing on Twitter and Facebook, and have readers help her create a mood board. Ms Facchinetti, a music buff and the daughter of an Italian rock star, will be making her own playlists and inviting her DJ friends to add their own music choices as added inspiration for her designs.’

This collaborative effort brings seasonless, “slow” fashion into the mass market while utilizing a fashion-forward digital strategy and retailer. It will be interesting to see how the collection is received.

Read the full article at FT.com.

Headline Review: ‘Magazines Begin to Sell the Fashion They Review’

eurbanista — Sun, 25 Sep 2011 19:06:02 +0000

As the glossies have always credited the samples featured in their editorial spreads, and listed retailers in their “Where to Buy” sections, it only seems fitting that they would benefit from a commission or other rendition of affiliate marketing when their recommendations lead to a sale. Today’s NYTimes published an article on the plethora of glossies that are moving towards affiliate marketing models: Magazines Begin to Sell the Fashion They Review.

Fashion magazines are suddenly getting into the retailing business.

While the glossies have long had a reputation for accommodating the designers they cover, sometimes guaranteeing coverage to those who advertise in their pages, a wave of new ventures and partnerships suggests they are willing to go even further by selling the designers’ clothes.

It is a move that is raising some eyebrows in the industry, as magazines like Vogue, GQ and Esquire, struggling to survive in an online world, could potentially become competitors to stores like Saks Fifth Avenue, Neiman Marcus and Barneys New York.

To be clear, it is not the magazines who are selling the fashion – they are merely referring the reader to a point of purchase in a more direct way than could happen in the past through print alone (without a direct web-link or barcode). This is essentially affiliate marketing. The logic of this content+affiliate marketing business model has been amplified in recent years with the proliferation of technologies that enable e-commerce websites to understand where their traffic is coming from, as well as technologies that enable consumers to scan samples from the pages of a magazine with smartphone apps such as RedLaser – all parts have fallen into place to capitalize on the built-in audience of trusting magazine readers, and to follow their actions from the pages of a magazine to an e-commerce site where the transactions occur.

Further, I believe that NYTimes writer Eric Wilson makes an excellent point in highlighting the fact that retailers – AND brands, I might add – have been in the content-producing game for years. Whether through the Barneys catalogs or LVMH’s www.nowness.com, there is media competition coming from all sides for the simple fact that brands and retailers need to control their brand message.

In the end, I believe that a unique form of affiliate marketing for fashion publications will be more a complimentor than a competitor to brick-and-mortar stores. They can help the department stores and boutiques understand what is selling before going to market, and can take on the riskier items and still maintain a reputation as being a beacon for fashion trends.

The only real risk I see here is one that has not yet been addressed, and that has nothing to do with competition, although it may eventually affect advertisers within the magazines. Fashion magazines and their online counterparts, like Vogue and Style.com, exist to thrill readers with the hottest looks in fashion, and also to deliver styled looks mixed from a range of samples provided by their advertisers. This serves to educate the audience on trends, and drives them to buy from advertisers, including retailers. I believe the focus on monetizing fashion recommendations may lead magazines like Vogue to dilute the high-fashion message and push items with a lower price tag or greater mass-appeal in order to drive up revenue. And THAT is where the message of high-fashion pioneering would be lost and the beacon extinguished, thus destroying a powerful tool of high-fashion marketing for brands and retailers alike.

Independent Fashion Bloggers’ Conference in NYC: Live Stream

eurbanista — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 14:07:24 +0000

Finally, I am in NYC and able to go to the IFB Conference this year! For those of you who can’t make it (fallen homies), I’m pouring out some dry shampoo and espresso in your name… and including the live stream to the event.

Watch live streaming video from ifbconference at livestream.com

Nigel Cabourn: the immaculate re-conception

eurbanista — Tue, 31 May 2011 16:49:51 +0000

I see incredible collections like this and wonder: with strict fashion copyright laws, would Cabourn's work be possible?

Johanna Blakley: Lessons from fashion’s free culture

eurbanista — Thu, 26 May 2011 23:02:17 +0000

Copyright law's grip on film, music and software barely touches the fashion industry ... and fashion benefits in both innovation and sales, says Johanna Blakley. At TEDxUSC 2010, she talks about what all creative industries can learn from fashion's free culture.

Williwear lifestyle marketing

eurbanista — Sat, 14 May 2011 13:16:35 +0000

This video from designer Willi Smith's collection Williwear demonstrates early efforts in the 1980s to introduce lifestyle marketing, while telling a story about the collection that provided design inspiration and a story to educate and thrill customers. Given the available technology, his marketing strategy was ahead of its time.