Karlheinz Weinberger

Next season is looking to welcome a much-needed upbeat, disco-dazzling theme if all the YSL, Studio 54 and Bowie glam rock references are to be believed. I’m well up for a bit of disco-luxe in my life but equally I appeciate a grungy, mis-spent youth undercurrent. Which is generously being supplied by one JW Anderson. I was glad to see The Fashion Editor At Large’s post-LFW blog post on the young designer, where he discusses the influences for his SS11 collection – namely acid trips, young love and the work of photographers Willian Gedney and Karlheinz Weinberger.

Although Gedney is a new name for me, Weinberger is not. Like Joseph Szabo’s pictures of teenagers in the 70s/80s and Joseph Sterling’s studies of adolescents in the late 50s, Weinberger’s images of 1960s Swiss biker kids have had a wide reaching influence amongst contemporary photographers, fashion designers, stylists and other creatives. You can see why can’t you?

One of my favourite Corrine Day images for Vogue has the unmistakable imprint of a Weinberger classic…

KARLHEINZ WEINBERGER

CORRINE DAY

The highly collectible Karlheinz Weinberger book published in 2000 is now fetching silly money on Amazon but thankfully Rizzoli is on standby with a new 200-pager, Rebel Youth, set to launch in March 2011. Maybe we’ll get an exhibition as well?

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