ArtEZ Fashion Show 2019

On June 7th, ArtEZ, as the first in line of the graduation fashion shows in The Netherlands, presented their Class of 2019 at Musis in Arnhem. The space, with its very and hard to beat own ambiemance, was successfully brought back to the essence by Studio Dennis Vanderbroeck.
The show featured first and second year experiments.  In addition, Collectie Arnhem 2019, the third year collaborative project was presented.
The quality of the mostly raw proposals in the Collectie Arnhem was generally lacking in the graduation collections. Undoubtedly committed and with the best of intentions, the new generation presented itself to the world. It was a show with varying levels, leaving the room with an unanswered quest to know more about the stories behind the work. Often strong in material research and application and not always strong in form and consistency of the collection line up. However, there was enough talent to be enthralled. Especially enjoyed the proposals of Dylan Westerweel, Michelle Vossen, Django Tetteroo, Kevin Pleiter, Manon Romeijn, Joline Kwakkenbos, Nina Librud and here and there individual pieces.

www.artez.nl

Take a look at the highlights and my picture report.

Andy Summers, A Certain Strangeness

Andy Summers, A Certain Strangeness at Bonnefantenmuseum Maastricht
07.06.2019 t/m 27.10.2019

With over 400 pictures from the period 1979-2018, the exhibition A "Certain Strangeness" is the first retrospective of the photographic work of British photographer and guitar legend Andy Summers. The geographical locations of the shots range from the Alto Plano in Bolivia to the alleyways of the Golden Gai in Tokyo. Besides showing a preference for night-time photos, his work is characterized by a sense of intimacy and surrealism, and dynamics that can best be described as 'in media res'.

Part of the exhibition comprises a series of photos taken by Summers during his tours with The Police. This series called "Let's Get Weird" will also be shown in the Bonnefanten Pinkpop-up Museum at Pinkpop, from 8 until 10 June 2019.

Since 1979, the year that The Police gave a legendary performance at Pinkpop, Summers has also been a fanatic photographer. He has published four books: Throb (1983), Light Strings (2004), I'll be Watching You (2007) and Desirer Walks the Street (2009). In 2012, he made the film Can't stand losing you, based on his autobiography of the same name, in which an important role is played by his photography practice. Summers says that his photographs may be influenced by his interest in music and that photography forms a visual counterpart to the music constantly playing in his mind. Just as his musical preference can be described as a taste for the melancholic, the convulsive melodic line, the dark chord with a few stray notes added, in his visual practice, too, he is drawn towards photographing in a brooding minor key.

https://www.bonnefanten.nl/en

We're in This Together

Maison the Faux

Museum Arnhem presents the new exhibition "We're In This Together" in its temporary De Kerk presentation space.
Curated by Renee van der Hoek, the exhibition shows international fashion designers that break with fashion conventions in the field of identity, equality and diversity.

Fashion reflects the zeitgeist and gives everyone the opportunity to express themselves. We're in this together shows work by national and international designers, including Hardeman, Bethany Williams, MAISON the FAUX, Neith Nyer, GAMUT, Lisa Konno, Ludovic de saint Sernin and Camiel Fortgens. Their designs are diverse and for both men and women. They offer a place for those who cannot agree with the existing expectations and provide a different sound in the fashion world.


In addition to the exhibition you can take part in JOIN Collective Clothes workshop by Anouk Beckers.

More information: https://www.museumarnhem.nl

GAMUT

Fashion + Design Festival Arnhem 2019

MAISON the FAUX

FDFA | Fashion + Design Festival Arnhem 2019 - We Are People

On June 1, the 6th edition of the FDFA was officially opened at the FDFA Showroom. The Showroom will remain open until June 8.
During the month of June various fashion related events will be taking place through out the city of Arnhem. Over 50 events are scheduled including the ArtEZ Graduation Shows, Nacht van de Mode, We're in This together exhibition and so on.

During the opening week the work of MAISON the FAUX, Anne Kluytenaar, Nina Pen and Victor Klijsen, among others, can be viewed at FDFA Showroom.
Their work ties in with the theme of FDFA’19: WE ARE PEOPLE, and has a special link with identity, diversity and inclusiveness.

More information: https://fdfarnhem.nl

Redress Design Award 2019 Finalists

Redress announces the Redress Design Award 2019 Finalists - 10 emerging design talents shortlisted from hundreds of applicants from across the globe who are ready to transform fashion’s waste into want. Representing the cutting-edge of fashion creativity, the finalists, (who include menswear designers for the first time in the competition’s history), now have just 11 weeks to bring their concepts to life before presenting their collections in Hong Kong later this year at the live Grand Final where the winners will be announced.

Sangue Novo Calls for designers

ModaLisboa continues to focus on the discovery and promotion of new talents in Fashion and the development of emerging author brands, through the Sangue Novo – Young Designers Competition. The applications for the next edition of the competition run until July 5, 2019.

JOIN Collective Clothes

JOIN Collective Clothes 
A project by Anouk Beckers i.c.w. Beau Bertens

JOIN Collective Clothes is a design and research project which explores fashion as a collective practice, focusing on making and wearing clothes together. Everyone is invited to design and make a part of a garment – for example a sleeve - which together can be connected into full outfits. The pieces made by various makers form an ever-growing collection, questioning constructed values created by the (fast) fashion industry. The launch of an open-source manual marks the start of the project, and is followed by a series of workshops and designer commissions. All results will be exhibited at the end of 2019.
JOIN Collective Clothes is an initiative by fashion designer Anouk Beckers and graphic designer Beau Bertens.

JOIN Collective Clothes – a modular system The base of JOIN Collective Clothes is a modular clothing system that consists of four different shapes which can be combined into a full outfit (a sleeve, a top, a trouser leg and a part of a skirt). An easy-to-use open source manual invites people to get started in designing and making the pieces themselves. This manual is available at San Serriffe for €10,- or can be downloaded for free at www.joincollectiveclothes.com. On this website, all the results are collected to create an ever-growing collection of garment-pieces, designed by people all over the world.

“What if we open up the fashion system and explore it as a non-fixed entity, a system where people can playfully join in, where everyone is invited to create fashion together?” Initiator Anouk Beckers on JOIN Collective Clothes:

Workshops - JOIN the collective Fashion is a collective practice, although it is often perceived as something that is not for everyone. To grant everyone access, JOIN Collective Clothes will set up a workshop tour. Everyone is invited to join one of the 4-hour workshops to design and make a garment-piece. At the end of the workshop, the results from the participants are joined into one full outfit. The process is playful, but at the same time critically questions the characteristics of the fashion system. Subjects such as ownership, identity, (intellectual) property, production methods, alienation, mystification and value creation are discussed through this project.

JOIN Collective Clothes 2019 Tour
1 June 2019: De Appel Amsterdam
8 & 29 June 2019: De Kerk by Museum Arnhem
7 July 2019: Capsicum Amsterdam
13 July 2019: De Kerk by Museum Arnhem
September 2019: Casco Art Institute Utrecht
October 2019: Dutch Design Week Eindhoven
1-3 November 2019: FASHIONCLASH Festival Maastricht

Check www.joincollectiveclothes.com for details and how to apply

Slanted Squares - Marwan Rechmaoui

Slanted Squares van Marwan Rechmaoui, winner Bonnefanten Award for Contemporary Art (BACA) 2019
24.05.2019 - 08.09.2019

The exhibition Slanted Squares gives a glimpse of the wide range of Marwan Rechmaoui's practice from the last two decades. It includes works in which Rechmaoui (b. 1964, Beirut, Lebanon), laureate Bonnefanten Award for Contemporary Art (BACA) 2019, is concerned with urban structures, and mapping in order to talk about the political and social landscape of Beirut and the region as a whole. What makes Rechmaoui's work so exceptionally influential is both his unique exploration of the layered social dynamics of the city and the way in which he masters the sculptural aspects of form, volume and material in this exploration. This exhibition is the most significant of Rechmaoui's work to date.

https://www.bonnefanten.nl/en

Warrior with a Crown

Warrior with a Crown is co-directed by model Francesco Cuizza (Storm Management) and LA-based photographer and filmmaker JMP (Playboi Carti, Lil Uzi Vert, XXXTentacion), in collaboration with jewellery designer Ugo Cacciatori.

The video is the first of a series in which the subconscious is explored. Shot in the early hours on a beach in California, Warrior with a Crown employs movement and an original choreography to share how failing should be seen as the fuel for one’s success.

“In an armor of scars, I fight the illusion of my fears. I’m a warrior”

NATURE - Cooper Hewitt x Cube Design Museum

AnotherFarm

NATURE is an unique cooperation, hosted simultaneously at Cooper Hewitt in New York and at the Cube design museum in Kerkrade, Netherlands, "Nature" shows how designers are responding to human-induced climate change and the impending environmental crisis.

Are the limits of nature stretchable? How do we use our finite source of natural resources in the right way? What can we still learn from nature? How do we bring people and nature together again? Designers around the world are getting more and more inspired by nature, driven by the need to use our earth and natural resources in a sustainable way. Plastic made from algae, textiles colored by raindrops and bandages that mimic the natural healing benefits of snail mucus are some examples of the ingenious projects from the exhibition.

Cube and Cooper Hewitt have selected the most promising projects of the past three years for NATURE. The exhibition shows work by international top designers, such as Neri Oxman, Oron Catts and Mathieu Lehanneur, and acclaimed Dutch designers such as Klarenbeek & Dros, Atelier NL, Nienke Hoogvliet, Kirstie van Noort, Aliki van der Kruijs and Teresa van Dongen.

Kokosmos - Anna Radchenko

Kokosmos is a purely visual, experimental piece inspired by space and our fascination with the unknown. A surreal fantasy, aimed to extend our perception of reality by letting us wonder over the existence of a higher being and our connection with her.

Synopsis
Shot in Moscow by the award-winning director and photographer Anna Radchenko, Kokosmos is a tribute to Russia’s infatuation with space. Somewhere between a fashion film, a music piece and an experimental video, Kokosmos embraces reality and extends it through magical realism by visually answering the question: what if? The video is Radchenko’s first piece combining CGI with real footage, a direction that she is looking to explore with her future productions.
Kokosmos is a collaboration with model Yana Dobroliubova, recognised for her striking and ethereal looks which break away from traditional beauty standards. Inspired by Dobroliubova’s unearthly aesthetic, as well as Japanese manga artist Shintaro Kago, Radchenko expresses our constant need to explore and search by focusing on the concept of the all-seeing eye.
The music and sound was custom made specifically for this piece. Collaborating with creative music and sound design duo Playhead, they worked with the London-based singer songwriter Alyusha Chagrin to create an otherworldly-sounding language to fit the scenario.
Similarly, the choice of clothing and make-up is also meant to fit with post-soviet space theme; Radchenko brings in elements of folklore by specifically selecting Russian fashion designers and sticking to a neon color palette featuring bright shades of green and purple.


“Growing up in post soviet Russia I’d be constantly dreaming about space, the unknown and what was out there, almost like an unknown entity we were trying to reach out to. With Kokosmos I wanted to express exactly that: my vision of what space and this god-like presence would look and feel like” - Anna Radchenko

Anna Radchenko is an award-winning director and multidisciplinary artist from Moscow, who now resides in London. Her specialisations are short films, music videos, commercials, mixed media editorial projects and art installations. Graduating with a distinction in MA Fashion Photography from London College of Fashion, Radchenko’s films have been selected for the world’s major fashion and short film festivals including London, Berlin, Los Angeles and more. In terms of vision, she uses surreal ideas to create content that is both optically arresting and memorable.
Anna is represented by Kode Media in the UK.

annaradchenko.com

Credits

Director and Executive Producer: Anna Radchenko (@radchenko_academy) - KODE media (@kodemedia)

Co-director: Mikhail Svjatogor (@mikhail_svjatogor)

DoP: Roman Yudin (@yuare)

Producer: Anastasia Limarenko (@sonic__lee)

Model: Yana Dobroliubova (@yananay1)

CG Artist and Supervisor: Murat Kılıç

CG artist: Yanis Georges (@ethikdesign)

CG compositing: Murat Kılıç

Music and Sound Design: Lister Rossel (@listerrossel), Utkucan Eken (@utkucaneken) - We Are Playhead (@we_are_playhead)

Singer: Alyusha Chagrin

Editors: Suga Supiah, Ikki Dhesi (@ikkidhesi)

Colour: Tobias Tomkins - CHEAT (cheat_it)

Post-production producer: Jack Goodwin (@jack_kode) - KODE media

Make-up: Darya Kholodnykh (@darya_kholodnykh)

Stylist: Anna Bakhareva (@bakharevaa)

Fashion designers: o5o.moscow (@o5o.moscow), AVA11, Go Authentic (@Go Authentic), Anya Komyagina (@komyaginaanya)

 

Greetings from Skopje - North Macedonia

Skopje Fashion Weekend x United Fashion

Marija Kulušić

19th edition of Skopje Fashion Weekend x United Fashion

For several years now BPB has been supportive of Skopje Fashion Weekend, following the fashion scene from the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia, recently renamed to North Macedonia. Against the background of the recent political history, tough economic situation and complex social structures, Skopje Fashion Weekend is a recurring fashion weekend that looks primarily ahead. Although I was in Skopje once before, this visit gave a small insight into the relatively small fashion scene of Macedonia.
What made this 19th edition special, is the cooperation with United Fashion, a project funded by Creative Europe. Thanks to this collaboration, the SFW organization has put together an international program with mainly young and emerging labels. In particular, there were many designers from the South East Europe and Ex-Yugoslavian region such as Marko Feher from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Marija Kulušić from Croatia and Sofija Urumović from Slovenia.
The programme contained fashion shows, showroom and an exhibition by Ivan Asen 22 avant-garde fashion collective from Bulgaria. The core of the 19th edition was the United Fashion SEE Showroom.  Skopje Fashion Weekend took this opportunity and gathered designers and professionals from across Europe, making the short trip to Skopje worth the effort.

Unit­ed Fash­ion is car­ried out by a clus­ter of Euro­pean fash­ion sup­port asso­ci­a­tions MAD Brussels (BE), Flanders DC (BE), ModaLisboa (PT), Baltic Fashion Federation (LV), Maison de Mode (FR), Fashion Weekend Skopje (MK), Fashion Council Germany (DE) and Not Just A Label (UK).
The aim of the project was to enhanc­e the cul­ture of fash­ion design­ers across Europe to be more busi­ness mind­ed and at enhanc­ing their com­pet­i­tive­ness inter­na­tion­al­ly, with­out lim­it­ing their creativity. Unit­ed Fash­ion received the sup­port from the Cre­ative Europe pro­gramme of the Euro­pean Union.
Through a num­ber of inter­na­tion­al net­work events and trans­dis­ci­pli­nary train­ing work­shops, over a four-year peri­od, more than 150 fash­ion design­ers will have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to par­tic­i­pate by show­cas­ing their col­lec­tion, get­ting to know and under­standing sev­er­al Euro­pean mar­kets, devel­op­ing new skills in fash­ion tech, sus­tain­able fash­ion, pro­duc­tion, craftsmanship, and business models.

As members of the international association that is implementing the ‘United Fashion’ project, organizers of this year’s 19th edition of Fashion Weekend Skopje welcomed twenty-nine emerging labels from all over Europe. The main goal of the ‘United Fashion SEE Showroom’ project in Skopje is to promote fashion designers from Southeastern Europe (SEE) to international buyers and media representatives, as well as to connect designers from the European Union with Macedonian factories. For this purpose, activities included presentation of the SEE market by professionals in the industry, presentations from selected local manufacturers, visit to the factories and meetings between participating designers and local producers.

The list of participants featured in the showroom included Andra Handaric (Romania), Arthropoda (N.Macedonia), Chic Utility (Romania), Concepto (Romania), Cristina Real (Portugal), Diana Arno (Estonia), Dragana Mihajlovic (Serbia), Ece Özalp (Turkey), Evgenija Zafirovska (Slovenia), Faulhaber Products (Germany), Hanfaz (France), Kokoro (Montenegro), Ksenija Kotev (N.Macedonia), Lila Style House (Bulgaria), Lommer (Greece), Marija Kulusic (Croatia), Marko Feher (Bosnia and Herzegovina), Mateyaneira (Croatia), MLS – Marie Laurence Stevigny (Belgium), n.d.c. made by hand (Belgium), Oh Suzy! (France), One Wolf (Latvia), Red Juliet (Belgium), Rosica Mrsik (N.Macedonia), Senem Unal (Turkey), Tanja Christiani (Germany), The Mannequin Collection (Greece), Toos Franken (Belgium) and Vesa Gruda (Kosovo).

Below you can take a look at the impressions from the Skopje Fashion Weekend and some highlighs.
Most images are by BPB, several are in courtesy of SFW.

https://fashionweekendskopje.mk
https://www.united-fashion.eu

FASHIONCLASH Festival 2019 - Campaign Launch

FASHIONCLASH presents the 11th edition of the international and interdisciplinary FASHIONCLASH Festival in Maastricht on 1 to 3 November.

The program with fashion presentations, exhibitions, crossovers with theater and dance, fashion talks, expert meetings, master classes and a public program gives designers and (stage) artists the opportunity to show their work to a broad (inter)national audience. The festival offers an opportunity to discover the latest talent and developments in fashion design and to be amazed by the art of fashion. Almost the entire program is accessible to the general public by means of ticket sales, free activities and targeted public programs. FCF is all about discovering new talent, boosting and shaping current developments in fashion art and opening up these developments to a wide audience. The 11th edition focuses on and is substantively shaped from the starting points: the Clash (art of fashion, experiment and cross-overs) and Fashion Makes Sense (sustainability and awareness about the impact and role of fashion in society).

‘For this edition, the starting point was to embody the renewed spirit of FASHIONCLASH, but with attention to where the basis of the platform comes from. The 2019 edition stands for the clash in FASHIONCLASH, the search for creating new fashion stories. With the new festival period (previously the festival took place in June / July) we are looking for a better connection to the international fashion agenda and we want to provide in a platform for the new generation of designers who will graduate in June.’ - FC team

Campaign The campaign images are created in co-operation with artist Lisette Ros and photographer Lonneke van der Palen.

‘Instead of a collection of colour, shape and material, Lonneke and I wanted to bring the image back to the essence; the pure. We tried to find the statement of the ‘clash’ in image and let go of fashion and put creation and searching for boundaries within different disciplines in a broader perspective. That’s why we started experimenting with transparency, in figural and literal sense. It was mostly about the interaction between Produced, Nature and Transparency. I tried to become a literal blank canvas. With my body, I tried to find the boundaries of transparency and ‘being’ and to combine this with other materials that are inspired by what is natural.’ - Lisette Ros

Campaign credits:
Concept: Lisette Ros, Lonneke van der Palen
Artist/performer: Lisette Ros Photography: Lonneke van der Palen
Graphic design: Studio Noto - Ivo Straetmans

www.fashionclash.nl

Van Eyck Open Studios 2019

Gabriella Marcella

Every year in March, one of the highlights of the Maastricht art discourse, the Open Studio days are Van Eyck Academy. The 46 participating artists, designers, curators and writers change every room of the Academy, transforming their studios into galleries with exhibitions, performances, installations and more.

Please take a look at the selection of works presented at the Open Studios 2019.

www.janvaneyck.nl