Surreal: Accessories that are "an elegant joke"
By Robb Young
International Herald Tribune
There is a breed of designer that relishes the idea of biting the hand that feeds him. Determined to parody fashion and all its paraphernalia, greats like Franco Moschino and Elsa Schiaparelli teased the establishment with hats made out of model fighter jets or shaped like lamb chops.
But then eccentric accessories have long been a favorite means to mock the glamour of the fashion world or to put a surrealistic mirror up against its iconography. Today, young designers are continuing the tradition by dissecting accessory classics and patching them together again in extraordinary hybrids and ironic caricatures.
"We like an elegant joke, not a cheap disposable gimmick," said David Percival, one half of the London label A'N'D, whose most recognizable item is the "shoebag," a handbag that sprouts from the sole of a ladies pump and is perfectly engineered to sit atop a single delicate heel.
The duo is infatuated with creating such mutant accessories , although more the sleek laboratory kind than an ode to Frankenstein. Satchel purses are molded from the upper of a loafer; wallets decorated with the ribbing of a brogue; eyeglasses without lenses that have been split in half and are dangling from earrings; and leather gloves elongated into a buckled belt.
"It's important to not take things too seriously, but it's also amusing to create things that require the viewer to double take on what's seen, to rattle their comfortable perceptions of everyday life, things that at first glance look somewhat 'normal,' " adds Percival's partner, Azumi Yamashita.
Subverting the ordinary is an extension of the deconstructivist movement of the 1990s, when designers like Martin Margiela turned jackets inside out and reassembled classic garments into unexpected new shapes. Only now it is less of a sober conceptual exercise and more tongue-in-cheek.
"Designers have always been inspired by using everyday objects. However, we become less aware of it as they become part of the design lexicon," said Nathalie Kabiri, owner of the jewelry boutique Kabiri in the bohemian Marylebone district in London.
Harriet Vine and Rosie Wolfenden, the pair behind the cheeky costume jewelry line Tatty Devine, have made a career out of defying the conventional idea that accessories are status symbols or a decorative flourish.
"For some, decorative means tiny diamond earrings. For me, a giant paperweight clothes pin is decorative," said Wolfenden, who admits that their hand-painted series of hyper-real popcorn and potato chip pendants molded from glossy resin could be dismissed as simply ridiculous by casual observers.
"Cuckoo clocks, giant Swatch wall clocks, macrame hanging owls - they all have a voice, an internal story. Sometimes the items we choose make no sense, but they are never random," she said. Fine jewelry too has become a playground for surrealist parody. In the hands of young independent labels like Belmacz by Julia Muggenburg, opal and onyx earrings in the shape of human eyes with tear drops suspended from gold chains pay homage to Luis Buñuel's period films.
Harking back to two surrealist masterpieces, Salvador Dali's melting pocket watches in "The Persistence of Memory" and Meret Oppenheim's fur-covered bracelets, the Belgian designer Natalia Brilli has stretched metallic leather veneer over a Rolex-style watch, transforming it into an embossed bracelet.
It's little wonder that the watch is a recurring theme for this new generation, who find themselves surrounded by fashion's vortex of accelerated time. A'N'D also renders its watch parodies timeless - either as plastic reincarnations, mirrored so that the wearer sees himself in the watch face, or as watch-shaped cutouts in leather cuffs. Desiree Heiss and Ines Kaag of the Paris label Bless have carved rosewood bangles in the shape of an analog watch, and Husam El Odeh of London has used the silhouette of an early digital watch to create a transparent Perspex cuff with two real gears suspended within.
"This came from the imagery surrounding airport X-ray security equipment. I found myself mesmerized by the intimate objects that can sometimes be revealed in public," said El Odeh, who has also used a watch motif in his recent collection, which includes a cast metal pendant and suspenders made of linking wristwatches. "I am a firm believer that fashion needs to question itself. I like the way fashion can on the surface pretend to be important but retains a certain irony about its own function," he said, pointing to his personal favorite, a necklace with an engagement ring trapped in a plastic ID-tag pendant.
And what accessory better marks a member of the all-important fashion pack than the requisite pair of sunglasses? El Odeh has embedded them in a sun visor cap, and the Danish designer Vibe Harslof of the brand Fafafa has curved sunglass lenses into bracelets and cast them in silver miniatures for earrings and necklaces. Whether extremely intellectual or absurdly extreme, designers making a pastiche out of how we wear our finery and trimmings don't always have to stoop to the fashion equivalent of slapstick comedy. But a self-deprecating punch line delivered with the right amount of craftsmanship can be a mighty potent message.
International Herald Tribune
There is a breed of designer that relishes the idea of biting the hand that feeds him. Determined to parody fashion and all its paraphernalia, greats like Franco Moschino and Elsa Schiaparelli teased the establishment with hats made out of model fighter jets or shaped like lamb chops.
But then eccentric accessories have long been a favorite means to mock the glamour of the fashion world or to put a surrealistic mirror up against its iconography. Today, young designers are continuing the tradition by dissecting accessory classics and patching them together again in extraordinary hybrids and ironic caricatures.
"We like an elegant joke, not a cheap disposable gimmick," said David Percival, one half of the London label A'N'D, whose most recognizable item is the "shoebag," a handbag that sprouts from the sole of a ladies pump and is perfectly engineered to sit atop a single delicate heel.
The duo is infatuated with creating such mutant accessories , although more the sleek laboratory kind than an ode to Frankenstein. Satchel purses are molded from the upper of a loafer; wallets decorated with the ribbing of a brogue; eyeglasses without lenses that have been split in half and are dangling from earrings; and leather gloves elongated into a buckled belt.
"It's important to not take things too seriously, but it's also amusing to create things that require the viewer to double take on what's seen, to rattle their comfortable perceptions of everyday life, things that at first glance look somewhat 'normal,' " adds Percival's partner, Azumi Yamashita.
Subverting the ordinary is an extension of the deconstructivist movement of the 1990s, when designers like Martin Margiela turned jackets inside out and reassembled classic garments into unexpected new shapes. Only now it is less of a sober conceptual exercise and more tongue-in-cheek.
"Designers have always been inspired by using everyday objects. However, we become less aware of it as they become part of the design lexicon," said Nathalie Kabiri, owner of the jewelry boutique Kabiri in the bohemian Marylebone district in London.
Harriet Vine and Rosie Wolfenden, the pair behind the cheeky costume jewelry line Tatty Devine, have made a career out of defying the conventional idea that accessories are status symbols or a decorative flourish.
"For some, decorative means tiny diamond earrings. For me, a giant paperweight clothes pin is decorative," said Wolfenden, who admits that their hand-painted series of hyper-real popcorn and potato chip pendants molded from glossy resin could be dismissed as simply ridiculous by casual observers.
"Cuckoo clocks, giant Swatch wall clocks, macrame hanging owls - they all have a voice, an internal story. Sometimes the items we choose make no sense, but they are never random," she said. Fine jewelry too has become a playground for surrealist parody. In the hands of young independent labels like Belmacz by Julia Muggenburg, opal and onyx earrings in the shape of human eyes with tear drops suspended from gold chains pay homage to Luis Buñuel's period films.
Harking back to two surrealist masterpieces, Salvador Dali's melting pocket watches in "The Persistence of Memory" and Meret Oppenheim's fur-covered bracelets, the Belgian designer Natalia Brilli has stretched metallic leather veneer over a Rolex-style watch, transforming it into an embossed bracelet.
It's little wonder that the watch is a recurring theme for this new generation, who find themselves surrounded by fashion's vortex of accelerated time. A'N'D also renders its watch parodies timeless - either as plastic reincarnations, mirrored so that the wearer sees himself in the watch face, or as watch-shaped cutouts in leather cuffs. Desiree Heiss and Ines Kaag of the Paris label Bless have carved rosewood bangles in the shape of an analog watch, and Husam El Odeh of London has used the silhouette of an early digital watch to create a transparent Perspex cuff with two real gears suspended within.
"This came from the imagery surrounding airport X-ray security equipment. I found myself mesmerized by the intimate objects that can sometimes be revealed in public," said El Odeh, who has also used a watch motif in his recent collection, which includes a cast metal pendant and suspenders made of linking wristwatches. "I am a firm believer that fashion needs to question itself. I like the way fashion can on the surface pretend to be important but retains a certain irony about its own function," he said, pointing to his personal favorite, a necklace with an engagement ring trapped in a plastic ID-tag pendant.
And what accessory better marks a member of the all-important fashion pack than the requisite pair of sunglasses? El Odeh has embedded them in a sun visor cap, and the Danish designer Vibe Harslof of the brand Fafafa has curved sunglass lenses into bracelets and cast them in silver miniatures for earrings and necklaces. Whether extremely intellectual or absurdly extreme, designers making a pastiche out of how we wear our finery and trimmings don't always have to stoop to the fashion equivalent of slapstick comedy. But a self-deprecating punch line delivered with the right amount of craftsmanship can be a mighty potent message.
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