Erwin Blumenfeld

Fashion film has come a long way since its beginnings thanks to pioneers like photographer Erwin Blumenfeld whose experimental film Beauty in Motion, shot between 1958 and 1964, was originally deemed too groundbreaking for the public. Blumenfeld’s use of hybrid techniques such as photomontage, solarization and colour slides pioneered the way for modern photography, stepping away from the traditional techniques and stiff images of those before him.

History focused fashion film

“A Luxury Timeline” by Christian Borstlap

The filmmaker Christian Borstlap’s charming, whistle-stop trip through the history of luxury, including the invention of the Burberry trench, the first bottle of Chanel No5, and the founding of Miu Miu. 

Notes

20th Century Fashion

Alistair O’Neill

Georg Simmel 1904 essay (see sheet) > Man has…

Two types of reforms in terms of fashion: One is about fitting in and one is about standing out

> this could lead in to how we decide to dress in the morning

Lecture Aim

Not only thinking about fashion but its contribution to our culture

British Pathe 1921

Commented on new stories from around the world and cultural narratives

The Wheel of Fashion

Haute Couture & Pret a Porter

Haute Couture had a reign from 1860s to the 1960s when the rise of Pret a porter came to form

Mass production (means produced at volumes of more than 20,000) or more so batch production which means a few to 20,000

Origins Haute Couture

Gaston Worth – Charles Frederick Worth’s son

1973 – formally recognised the genre of pret a porter despite it being around before WW2

Mass Production & Mass Consumption

People’s wardrobes growing in size in the 20^th century = mass consumption

Mass production coined by Henry Ford i.e. factory assembly process (prior it was known as Fordism)

Chanel little black dress/ford model T car = LINKED

Machine Age & Digital Age

Machine Age:

1880s through to outbreak of second world war

End of first world war 1918 and end of second 1985

Where we get art deco from < A style influenced by industrial materials

Digital Age:

Need to understand the Information age (a term now dated), computeration of information starts in the 1970s and reaches critical stage in the late 19^th century with the creation of the computer

Modernism & Postmodernism

Relate to not only art but philosophy also

Response to modern industrial societies

Modernism

Comes out of post great war

Felt the Victorian houses they were living in were notoriously out dated

Russian Revolution 1918

Rejection of 19^th century history

Adolf ‘Lose’ architect – evolution of products quote

Maxim that capsulates this is ‘form follows function’

Postmodernism

Developed 1960s and 1970s

Robert van pury – Less is a bore? More? CHECK

Interest in surfaces symbolism pastiche

V&A – modernism and postmodernism museum catalogues  READING

Futurism & Historism

Pierre Cardin and Henri someone = shows they are interested in the space race in the 60s

As a result of all the futurism – people enjoy history

examples: Viv Westwood tweed

The Look - YSL 1992

Part 1 3:07 – 5:00

Fashion producing a commentary on 20^th century art = The Mondrian Dress

Men Women and Clothes: How Fashions come and go

First programme on fashion history ever

BBC

Costume History & Fashion Studies  

Mode en France 1986

Music: Gainsborough < COOL FILM

Words in fashion

Trickle down & Bubble Up

moments

transitions

cycles

revivals

Beyond fashion = her majesty the queen

Formal & Casual

Social Idealism & Capitalism

Globalisation & Westernisation

Global Encyclopedia on world dress in library

Privilege & Meritocracy

Privilege pre 60s

Meritocratic society = post 60s

twiggy poster girl for this:

Man alive top class people

13:20-17:15

What you own what your family title suggests to What skills you have and what you can do. Working class excelled in the creative industries

Needs and Desires

Johanna burton on Cindy Sherman’s Untitled £299, 1994 (2012)

0-04:23 <GOOD ANALYSIS

Notes

The corset

Corset wearing necessary and appropriate to wear in the olden times.

1900 new style of corset introduced. Meant to be healthier as there was less pressure on the body. Placing emphasis on the bust and on the derriere.

> Watch old films with corsets in etc.

> Look at corsets in books

> Look in to etiquette

Role of fashion in Modern life. Not only clothing the body but protecting the body. Individuals could protect themselves beyond labour. If you did have to work you never got your hands dirty. The corset assisted this as you can’t do manual labour in a corset.

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The beginning: 

Lucille - her history (already known from Illustration project & group project) 

Sense of being partly dressed, more underwear than outwear

Watch Peggy Guggenheim documentary

Fashion films: Animation

Trussardi's Sky Watcher 
To celebrate the 40th anniversary of its signature Greyhound logo, Trussardi has teamed up with Japanese illustrator Yuko Shimizu and Director and visual effects master James Lima to produce Sky Watcher,a short animated film set around Milan. Supervising the music was British musician and record producer Steve Mackey, former member of the cult britpop band Pulp.

- It's nice to see a fashion film not necessarily linked to clothing and more a celebration of a brand using the medium of animation. 

https://vimeo.com/144620281
HIPPOPOLIS
Hermes fashion film where the print comes to life 

- Again a nice short form having fun with the brand's aesthetics rather than 'girl in flirty dress hanging out in a meadow' boring fashion films. 

https://vimeo.com/94005508
Valentino Camubutterfly 
A short stop-motion animation film called Camubutterfly that encapsulates its pre-fall 2014 collection.
Vogue Paris refers to it as mesmerising, and rightly so as each item appears camouflaged against the butterfly background that also remains behind.
The video was shared to the Valentino Facebook page with the caption: “A kaleidoscope of butterflies”.

A further post, read: “Hidden in each colorful butterfly image is an even more colorful and unique Camubutterfly print item of clothing. Look very closely and you will slowly see appear in front of your very eyes dresses, coats and pants hidden in the print. This unique butterfly motif has been exclusively designed for the Maison and has been applied to feathers, brocade, macramè, organza, chiffon and even neoprene. Who needs monotone when you can have Camubutterfly print?”

- Love the use of the pattern as camouflage exploring the collection's colours and textures. 



https://vimeo.com/130105496
REBEL

- Great use of stop motion for a dark slightly weird concept of just guys wanting to beat people up. Seems a bit regressive for the stereotypes around boys. 
















https://vimeo.com/73192234
Brave New World by Reed + Radar 

- Claims to be the first fashion film made from the Unreal game engine. Usually associated with gamers and all virtually made this is an interesting experiment into fashion and the gaming world. I like the concept but the film itself is way too long and boring (not that these are mutually exclusive). 

Taking the couple the entire summer to complete, the project was a real labor of love, with everything crafted by the pair and the models integrated as performers in this circus world, from a miniature girl in a jar to a psychic, even a giant woman busting some Vivienne Westwood. And of course clowns, plenty of clowns. "From dirt and wood textures to circus tents and the performers this world has been hand sculpted by us." they say.
http://thecreatorsproject.vice.com/en_uk/blog/reed-rader-brave-new-world-fashion-film-unreal-engine

Desert Tide 
Proenza Schouler film
Creative Director: Kate McCollough
Second Life Animation: Tikaf Viper
Second Life Clothing: Agatope Carter Lane

- Another gaming fashion film where they made a the models wear the latest collection. Loses my interest a bit in the middle but an exciting innovative experience. 

Miu Miu gets animated 

Film by Molly Schiot

The LA-based artist and filmmaker Molly Schiot brings the stripes and polka dots of Miu Miu’s resort collection to life in a charming animated film chosen by The IdeaLists who sent out an open call to directors to submit treatments for a fashion short. 

1920-1940

1920-1940

Characterised and the war period.

Watch undressed fashion in the 21^st century

late 90s

sally brampton

it doesn’t turnpeople into flowers instead it turns people into warriors

Chanel

She learnt from the people she associated herself with in terms of how they dealt with depreciation since the war i.e. dutchesses and dukes

She learnt with their coping mechanisms of what they were not longer accustomed to.

She used the cardigan for women which were traditionally part of the male wardrobe.

She had a sense of understanding how the sense of dress can be simplified.

PHOTO coco chanel cardi and chemise 1928

not the one but will do:

Another important fact is Chanel being known for leisurewear

Chanel very open about how clients invest in her deisgns

Unlike Poiret wasn’t interested in the haute couture.

She openly sold to wholesalers etc.

Wallis openly bought her designs

Nazi Fashion Research

http://punkrocker.org.uk/punkscene/swastica.html

But most of you with enough
suss will realise the swastica was
never a direct political statement within
punk rock. It was part of the punks
desire to repulse a nation of

convention! 

Meanwhile, 6,000 miles away in Britain, the manager and
future svengali behind The Sex Pistols, Malcom McLaren,
and his designer girlfriend, Vivienne Westwood, were
running their clothing shop, Let It Rock, which had become
Too Fast To Live, Too Young To Die in 1973 in London's
King's Road. The swastika had already cropped up in
Westwood's designs when she worked on the costumes for
Ken Russell's movie, "Mahler".
In a dream-sequence the composer meets his Nazi enemy
who is dressed in a black leather skirt with a swastika
studded onto it. Then came her "anarchist" shirts;
second-hand shirts which were dyed red and black and had
slogans painted on them and sometimes a small portrait of
Karl Marx or a swastika attached. The idea was to shock, and
the shirts were intended to be provocative, outrageous
statements in the tradition of the avant-garde Situatiohist art
movement.
By 1975, Westwood ana McLaren's shop had been
re-christened Sex. One employee was called Jordan who, in
Jon Savage's definitive history of punk, "England's Dreaming"
(Faber And Faber, ISBN0-571-I679I-8), gives
another reason for the appearance of the swastika, "Malcom
was in awe of the symbolism," she said. "He had a stock of
Nazi memorabilia, including Nazi Youth badges, gold SS
wedding rings and swastika hankies." Given that McLaren
was Jewish, anti-Semitism seems a very unlikely explanation
for this obsession. Westwood claimed they were setting out to
de-mystify the swastika. De-mystified or not, another Sex
employee, Alan Jones, was beaten up in Notting Hill for
wearing a swastika armband.