Fashion in the Mirror



It’s taken me ages to write my critique of the Fashion In The Mirror exhibition at the Photographers’ Gallery which I saw during my whirlwind day of action last Thursday. Truth be told, I wasn’t that taken with it but for what it’s worth, here are my thoughts.

Fashion In The Mirror is a small photography exhibition curated by the people behind the Hyeres Festival. The blurb promises this exhibition will ‘undress the theatre of fashion and question the creation of perfect beauty. Revealing the fashion industry’s secrets and undermining its glamorous illusions, the photographers in this exhibition create work that exposes this world from within.’ The exhibition charts how over the decades, fashion photography has chosen to document itself more and more. In the 1950s, photographers panned out Wizard-of-Oz-style to reveal some of the paraphernalia of the shoot itself – Lights! Colorama! Crew (how dapper the crew were in those days)! I love this fold-out cover of Harpers Bazaar.


By the ’60s we were seeing the photographer himself in action, adding to the energy and ‘Blow Up’ spirit of the time. The ’60s also saw the ‘model as personality’ come to the fore as witnessed in Twiggy Parade by Melvin Sokolsky – similar to William Klein’s recent Karl Lagerfeld shot for Harpers Bazaar, no? And come the nineties, the designer became the focus of the shoot as well as the clothes on the model while the noughties was the turn of fashion editor as model, as evidenced by ‘Anna Wintour’ in French Vogue.






Much as I enjoyed the visuals, I didn’t feel the exhibition fulfilled its potential – it just didn’t excite me. The Photographers’ Gallery is a small space, perhaps that’s the problem. An exhibition that suggests it will reveal the inner workings of the shoot (because that’s what ‘exposes this world from within’ suggested to me) would really benefit from some added value – Polaroid books, notes, contact sheets (remember those?), retouching equipment – to complement the framed works. Kooky as it was, the umpteen-page Steven Meisel ‘Models In Rehab’ shoot, displayed in a long glass cabinet, didn’t quite cut it for me. Criticism aside, it was a good excuse to take in some beautiful photography and subject-wise it’s interesting to note how fashion photography seems to have become more fascinated with itself.

The good thing about the Photographers’ Gallery is its diary of events. To complement this exhibition, there is an evening discussion with the curators Raphaelle Stopin and Michael Mallard, photographer Jonathan de Villiers and Penny Martin from Showstudio on Tues 2nd September at 7pm. Now that will be worth attending.

Fashion in the Mirror, 18th July -14th Sept 08, Free

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Quote of the day




‘When I start on a collection, I ask myself a lot of questions. I get very philosophic. I’m against consumption so doing my job—which is about fashion—is always a bit hard for me.’
Isabel Marant

This quote is taken from a gallery on Elle.com which Hebsen from Style…A Work In Progress alerted me to. I love Isabel Marant and adore her aesthetic but I can see where she’s coming from. Her look is very much the worn-in, thrown-together-just-so look which could easily be fashioned from stuff we already have…a bit of army surplus, a washed-silk blouse, an ethnic trinket. The fact is, the way she presents it makes us want to take the easy option and just buy it off the rack. I guess that’s her skill, to make us want to buy it, even though we could probably get the look without buying anything at all.

Pic: Elle.com

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Now we’re talking…




Catwalk Queen reports that Liberty has finally gone live with its transactional website after months of gentle teasing. Like many other transactional sites – Harvey Nichols for one – they’re taking things slowly, concentrating on ‘easy’ purchases like gifts, homewares and fabrics before jumping into the fray with clothing (although their shoe boutique launches on Friday). I have harped on before wondering why it’s taking so long for many stores to go online with proper stock, not just the easy options of leathergoods, perfume and make-up. Clearly I wasn’t thinking straight. Having discussed the issue with contacts at My-Wardrobe and New Look, it appears that having an online arm to your business is no breeze. In the words of my contact at My-Wardrobe, selling online ‘is like opening a whole new department store’ – it can take years.

The main issue is where to store the stock. Net-a-porter house theirs in a huge warehouse, so for a department store it’s not a matter of just taking things off the rail, otherwise as my mole at New Look explained, the rails would be permanently empty. Next is the issue of returns. In order to keep returns to a minimum, it makes sense to stock things that don’t need to be tried on, hence the success of wallets, sunglasses and – kerching! – handbags. (Even though the economy is on the slide, handbag sales are still going up.) Once the transactional site has been up and running for a while, with teething problems mostly ironed out, the clothing can then be introduced. If you think about it, launching a transactional site really needs to be thought out, there’s just no way of hurrying it up. Online users are impatient and vocal and it only takes one or two bad experiences to spell disaster. Better to think things through, take baby steps and do it properly, even if it means potential shoppers champing at the bit while they wait.

Pic: Catwalkqueen.tv

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Is TopShop killing fashion?



The following comment on this post at The Sartorialist got me wondering…is TopShop really killing fashion?

Suzanne Nelson said…
‘Re: eveyone who comments individual style is a rare thing in London – sadly they are right. Chain stores and ‘the high street’ – the main street in every town that nowadays has the same selection of stores pushing low budget designer rip-offs – is killing individual style in Britain. London for the most part has become one huge high street in terms of it’s choice of stores. Blame TopShop…’

A few months ago I might have said the same. Friends of mine who ran successful independent shops throughout the nineties then floundered through the early noughties when TopShop found its groove, admit the competition from the high street became all too much. Where once the high street consumer was very different to the discriminating customer who shopped at Start or Browns Focus, now the lines have blurred. The reason? The high street suddenly became very good at producing a high fashion look on a shoestring, making the independent designer seem vastly overpriced. But the blame can’t be placed squarely at the door of 216 Oxford Street. For starters, magazines like Grazia have their part to play by introducing high fashion to the masses and making us more fashion-aware than ever. Ten years ago, would the average girl in the high street know what a Chanel 2.55 was? Or a bandage dress, or a harem pant? Probably not. The media has introduced high fashion to a mainstream market and as a result, we’ve all become more knowledgable and discerning. On the flipside, the success of TopShop meant that it became cool for a high-end shopper to clock a fantastic find in TopShop and show how savvy she was. Same with Primark. But when everyone’s doing it, sadly it’s not all that clever any more. So what does a shopper do when she can’t buy designer cos the Look and Heat readers have muscled in on her precious labels? And she can’t do high street because everyone’s there as well? Oh, she shops vintage. But hang on, that’s in TopShop too, and everything new these days is based on vintage anyway, so that rules that out. Well, what about jumbling it all together – a bit of on-trend designer-derivative high street, a bit of under-the-radar designer, a natty vintage scarf, an American Apparel tee or two, some beat-up Converse from forever ago, all topped off with a classic Chanel 2.55. Surely that looks original? Um, not when the likes of Alexa Chung and Daisy Lowe have trademarked the look, no.

The ‘problem’ is, fashion is all around us, all the time. When designers show their collections, they’re on the internet in a jiffy and disected in detail on blogs like this. So no wonder everyone is tapping into the same looks before they’re even in the shops – when we’re all responding to the same stimuli it’s pretty inevitable. But it’s rather rich to blame TopShop for doing their job and giving us what we seem to want, they are a business after all. Fashion is for everyone and it’s a bit sniffy to complain that it’s too easily available – no one has more right to it than others. Agreed, this all-too-ready availability does make it more of a challenge to stand out but all that’s needed is to think a little more outside the box and be even more creative when it comes to styling. After all, surely that’s the fun part of fashion?

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