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пятница, 22 апреля 2016 г.
Украшения Miu Miu навеянные сокровищами королей - Vogue
Не драгоценные серьги, кольца, браслеты и тиары с кристаллами и жемчугом, очень похожие на те, что хранятся в дворцовой кладовой
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#CNILux Stephen Webster: Goldstruck - Vogue
Mount street is one of the fanciest areas in London, home to the classy Connaught Hotel and luxury boutiques from Céline, Dior and Lanvin to Marc Jacobs, high-end leather goods Moynat, Oscar de la Renta and shoemaker Nicholas Kirkwood.
But where is Stephen Webster? The most flamboyant of British jewellers is nowhere to be found, although his colourful stones and equally colourful stories made a bestseller of his autobiography, "Goldstruck: A Life Shaped by Jewellery" (published by Salma Editions).
The entrance to his showroom is discreet. After trawling Mount Street, I finally spotted it, with his name in gilded letters on the door. Up two floors and I finally struck gold — along with diamonds, opals, and the entire spectrum of stones the jeweller could muster. Among the art objects furnishing the two display areas there was also jewellery by his artist friend, Tracey Emin, who also wrote the foreword to his book.
But why the hide-and-seek discretion for such a flamboyant designer? "Under-the-radar jewellery shopping seems to have become the preferred experience amongst our clients for some time," Webster explained.
"In our original Mount Street boutique, clients always sat in the VIP area at the back, even when they came as a group," he continued. "And in Beverly Hills, more shopping is done in the upstairs 'No Regrets' lounge than in the store. In response to this, we have removed the potential intrusion of a door on the street." Once inside the showroom, which is attached to the working studio, clients have a full-on vision of Webster's taste. Devised by architect Guy Holloway, the live-and-relax room has a Fredrikson Stallard "crumpled paper" golden chandelier, a pony skin-patterned rug by Alexander McQueen, and a gilded guitar made in honour of "Goldstruck" from Marlow Guitars.
I asked Stephen if this modern hideaway was made in response to social media's interference in what should be his celebrity clients' private world.
"I'm not so sure social media has become a problem for our shoppers," Stephen said. "I know they use it themselves while shopping in private, so maybe the salon works in reverse: more privacy, more self-generated social media."
Apart from the dramatic paintings, the interior design includes a stuffed swan from taxidermist David Wildart and thought-provoking Tracey Emin jewellery based on her artworks, including "Angry Owl", "Bird and Fix", "Squirrel and Hare" and others.
"For many years I thought the emotion and sometimes subjects Tracey shows in her work could translate beautifully into my world as a jeweller," explains Webster, who comes from Kent, the same area of England as Tracey Emin. "It all started when she made the neon, 'I Promise To Love You' for my LA store," he continued. "She said it should be in a place where people buy and give tokens of love. After that our collaboration had to be."
"The new area is artistic, it's a reflection of my studio — where people love to come — and my home," Stephen said. "In both places I have artwork by many other people. I have built this up over time. I deliberately decorated the new space in a way that I can add to it as I feel fit. This way the evolution will be more authentic and in a way homely — and everyone likes to feel at home."
It struck me as quite a contrast that Stephen, who has been through many adventures with his Russian wife Anastasia (known as Assia) and has had half of Hollywood in his LA boutique, should try the discreet approach in his other boutiques.
"The London showroom is definitely a template for further such spaces in other markets and hopefully Seoul will be one of those," said Webster, who will talk about his "Goldstruck" life at the CNI Luxury conference in South Korea this week.
Compared to the heady days of opening showrooms by the dozen in Russia, which he vividly describes in his book, the new softly, softly approach seems a welcome change of pace.
The Second Condé Nast International Luxury Conference runs from the 20th-21st April at The Shilla, Seoul. Visit www.cniluxury.com for more details; follow the Conference on Twitter and Instagram: @CNILuxury; and search #CNILux
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#CNILux: Chanels Material Girl - Vogue
Originally from South Korea, Kim has been dedicated to the Rue Cambon headquarters in Paris for 17 years. She opens the Chanel fabric studio to show me the depth and breadth of weaving originality into the collections.
Here are examples of those famous Coco tweeds, the texture so loosely woven that they look like grain sacks, except for the enticing mixtures of strawberry pink, leaf green, and straw yellow. Other fabrics are smooth, silken, and classic, but maybe melded with hyper-modern plastic.
"What I really appreciate in Chanel is the freedom of creation — for me that is really so precious," says Kim. "But with freedom comes responsibility; you have to respect the price, but with the custom-made tweed it is impossible to compromise. It is an amazing company, and with Karl there is total freedom. I ask other people how they work, and they cannot have this kind of autonomy."
She tells me how the two creative minds came together: After working briefly at Karl Lagerfeld's own label, one day Kim was at home when a white-gloved deliveryman arrived and announced, "This is from Monsieur Lagerfeld" and handed her a hand-written envelope. The letter inside read, "Dear Kim, I really want to work with you. Please send me a fax."
What Kim calls "a dream come true" developed from her South Korean childhood, her interest in French literature and language when she was in high school, her art studies in Paris, and nearly two decades heading up a small team dedicated to turning Karl's vision and Chanel's history into modern reality.
"Work hard and be nice to people" reads a poster crawling with colourful crustaceous creatures and pinned with what looks like a postcard from Cuba. The subject of that location, where Chanel's Cruise 2017 collection will be staged this May, is out of bounds. In spite of the impossibility of copying work that has such a depth of creativity and handwork, I am not allowed to see a single fabric relating to the new show.
But studying the development of the Chanel Cruise collection, held last year in Zaha Hadid's Dongdaemun Design Plaza in Seoul, is a revelation.
Kim lays out a pile of books she has created in the spirit of the mood boards that can be found backstage at designer fashion shows. But these research images are nothing as simple as past and present photographs pinned to a cork pinboard. Instead, every page of the books shows either images of South Korea - its history, clothing, objects, and vibrant colours — or Kim's inspirations for Chanel. She turns pages that might show the Korean Hanbok — the colourful high waisted, full skirt that is national dress for women — or even the pantaloons worn underneath it.
"It's so beautiful, the culottes give it volume," says Kim. "Everyone knows the kimono, but Korea as a country is not well known. People know Korean culture as K-Pop (the country's modern music), but what is the colour of Korea? We have many — reds, blues, yellows, stripes. In childhood everybody wears them."
As Kim turns page after page showing footwear, ribbons, multi-coloured fringing, lacquer boxes, hair brooches, and those wildly dressed K-Pop figures dancing amid eye-popping graffiti, I wonder at the amount of work it takes to create one single Chanel collection. Kim tells me she took 10,000 photos when she went with her mother to the Korea Furniture Museum in Seoul, where rooms from the past were re-created, complete with wooden cabinets and carved storage trunks.
"I was in love with our collection; it was created from the heart, we were so emotional," Kim says. "I don't usually have time, but for Korea I had to make it so that people could understand — that there is this kind of hairstyle of old-time American girls and all kinds of jewellery boxes. The Korean men's look is completely different in shape, with long trousers."
Kim elaborates on the "eternal symbols" that she sees as being the visual heart of her homeland and I feel privileged to be able to see inside this creative brain through these extraordinarily vivid images in the books. I ask her if another fashion house would give her these creative opportunities.
"I ask everybody how they work at Louis Vuitton, for example, and they can't have this kind of freedom," Kim says. "Chanel is an amazing company and with Karl there is total freedom," she tells me again. "I've worked in France, in Japan, in Scotland, and sometimes with the handcraft artisans in Korea."
The textile expert introduces me to some of her six-strong immediate team. Everything possible is now done in-house, Kim explains, because ideas are now so confidential that she can no longer send instructions directly to the weavers. I realise how much of the detailed handcraft I must have missed at Chanel over the years, viewing the collections on the runway rather than seeing each individual piece up close. But then, Karl's aim is to give a 'perfume' of his style for each season on the catwalk, knowing that each item is perfect in its depth of detail.
"I hope people understand what I am doing, because generally they don't," says Kim. "They know vaguely how I select, but not how I develop it after all these years at Chanel. Before we didn't have so many collections. Now they are nearly every month. I have to prepare a new story each year for up to six prêt-à-porter collections. I want to bring inspiration and excitement. Karl is the first one I want to make happy to open the new season."
The Second Condé Nast International Luxury Conference runs from the 20th-21st April at The Shilla, Seoul. Visit www.cniluxury.com for more details; follow the Conference on Twitter and Instagram: @CNILuxury; and search #CNILux
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Розовый и уникальный: бриллиант мечты на торгах Sotheby's - Vogue
Прекрасный камень более 15 карат весом предварительно оценили в 28-38 миллионов долларов
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"Undressed": The Victoria And Albert Museums Brief Encounters - Vogue
The black and red rubbery latex corset looked discreet enough, even if Revlon had given the mannequin scarlet lips and the supplier of this fetish underwear was House of Harlot. Then two words on a display panel for an adjacent set of lingerie pulled me up with a jolt: "Porno Chic".
I had been waiting for some cheek and shock at "Undressed: A Brief History of Lingerie" at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. That title was already a pun, for men's "briefs" are included in the selection of underclothes, from Victorian "stays" (made at home from sewing whale bones together in vertical strips) to today's heat-treated vests from Uniqlo.
There is not much "wink, wink, nudge and giggle" at the show, which curator Edwina Ehrman has put together skilfully in the awkward space the Victoria and Albert (or V&A) allocates to its fashion exhibitions. For once, the condensed lower level, with its display windows cheek by jowl, has the right sense of intimacy for its subject.
Not until the 1930s was the saucy side of underwear made public in advertisements for the new garments which, as the 20th century developed, included X-shaped stretch corsets and bras that seemed to reduce in size as the decades went by. I would not claim that 18th- and 19th-century underwear displayed a period of innocence.
Women's uplifting bodices and decorative bows were designed to give the body allure. And already in 1890 there was a shocking-pink silk-satin corset, not really so different from the sparkling creation with a wasp waist produced by corset supremo Mr Pearl for burlesque performer Dita Von Teese in 2011.
There are surprisingly few examples of those baffling bustles that Victorian women put up with in an era when "a glimpse of stocking was something shocking", as the Cole Porter song goes.
Edwina Ehrman, Curator of Textiles and Fashion at the V&A, has drawn a deliberate line between downstairs and upstairs - the latter being the 20th-century period when underwear came out into the public arena, either as a deliberate sex toy or as part of fashion stripping down and revealing the body. The curator also includes casual pyjama-party home wear.
I would have liked to see an explanation of this change, which must have owed a great deal to the invention of the contraceptive pill in the 1960s, when sexuality was underscored in ever-shorter mini skirts, with or without anything underneath. Ehrman does show the 20th century's development of the bra and the way that underwear evolved from female girdles to gender-neutral shape-wear from Acne Studios.
Accompanying films, especially the one by exhibition co-sponsor Agent Provocateur, show the sexuality and the craftsmanship of 20th-century underwear.
The curator also set out her aims in a pre-tour talk: the changing conceptions of the ideal body and the social, cultural, and economic reasons behind those changes. She promised "sex, gender, and morality".
Yet I went away looking for more. I remember the V&A's show from 2007, "Kylie - The Exhibition", which showed the Australian performing artist's outfits, mostly of the corset variety. There seems to be so much more that could be said in the current show: for example, underwear as entertainment.
What about the reduction of seduction in a world where consensual sex is a smartphone swipe away? And whether an obsession with shaping the body through exercise and diet has reduced the power and purpose of lingerie?
Above all, will hi-tech be let loose on our bodies, so that 3D printing and design will customise our underwear to our individual body shapes? "Undressed" raises more questions than it answers. But viewers looking for a visual, rather than an intellectual, jolt will find the exhibition intriguing.
"Undressed: A Brief History of Lingerie", sponsored by Agent Provocateur and Revlon, is on until 12th March 2017 (vam.ac.uk/undressed)
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Постановки Большого театра будут показывать в кинотеатрах всего мира - Vogue
Документальные фильмы и прямые трансляции, чтобы все могли увидеть прекрасный русский балет
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Золотой слиток Narciso Rodriguez во имя розы - Vogue
Давняя страсть дизайнера воплотилась в цветочной эссенции и фирменных для бренда нотах мускуса
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