Granularity X

1. Dior Haute Couture Fall/Winter 2014
2. Helmut Lang Surrogate Skin, 2008
3. Raf Simons/Sterling Ruby Fall/Winter 2014
4. Helmut Lang Make It Hard, 2011
5. Dior Haute Couture Fall/Winter 2014
6. Helmut Lang Arbor, 2008
7. Dior Haute Couture Fall/Winter 2014
8. Dior Haute Couture Fall/Winter 2014
9. Helmut Lang Arbor, 2008
10. Helmut Lang Fall/Winter 1996 & Dior Haute Couture Fall/Winter 2014
11. Dior Haute Couture Fall/Winter 2014
12. Helmut Lang Front Row, 2009
13. Raf Simons/Sterling Ruby Fall/Winter 2014

The Raf Sandior universe is a hermeneutic one. Like father, like son. Or like 'Fathers Fathers' and 'Abus(ive) Lang(uage)'. And as we know, this letter similitude is no coincidence. What would father say?
/HORST

Twombly Dialogues

1. Cy Twombly Cycnus, 1978
2. Helmut Lang Fall/Winter 2004

When looking at Cy Twombly's sculptures from 1953 to 2009 I see Helmut Lang, Rick Owens, Ann Demeulemeester. And I will attempt to compile a synchronous collection, restricted to white. Starting with a palm leaf in pleated organza.
/HORST

Frills, 2013

or 'Bring In The Clowns'






























T-Shirt Comme des Garçons Homme Plus
Waistcoat Issey Miyake
Sleeveless shirt Valentino
Frill bib Comme des Garçons Homme Plus
Trousers Acne
Sandals Damir Doma

Staged in a Comédia Japonais, we are witnessing a frivolous play in three parts. A tragic costume drama based on the true story of a rose-frill shoulder, a crinkled stripe and a rushing collar piece.
/HORST

Worm Therapy

1. Proenza Schouler Fall/Winter 2013
2. Ettore Sottsass Bacterio, 1978
3. Proenza Schouler Fall/Winter 2013

With his pattern design for the Memphis Milano movement, Ettore Sottsass turned geometric forms into texture, and laminate became textile. What originally had an op-art effect on furniture, turns into fake fur on clothes.
/HORST

Post Paris XXV

25th anniversary double feature with John-Michael O'Sullivan, discussing:
Balenciaga Fall/Winter 2013

"It's about America. It's not about couture." Those were the words Helmut Lang used to explain why he turned down Balenciaga in 1996, and instead packed up his label for a new life in New York. Couture was the past, then; and no-one could have dreamed then that the past would come to so utterly dominate the future.

There have been four designers at Balenciaga - or rather, at the brand set up by a company who purchased the name from Balenciaga's family long after he'd died, and even longer after he'd abruptly closed his business. Michel Goma, the old-school couturier; Josephus Thimister, the tortured dreamer; Nicolas Ghesquiére, the temp who managed against all expectations to escape the archives and translate Balenciaga into the 21st century; and Alexander Wang, the American picked because the label's owners decided they wanted it to be 'approachable'.

But instead of a brand new start, the cracked black-and-white marble floor on Wang's runway felt funereal, like the marble in Slimane's intensely divisive remaining of Saint Laurent. Chill, cold, unyielding: less a new start than a requiem mass. Chill, ice-white bark textures, cold colours, unyielding shapes: and yet the 'approachable' , marketable, profitable energy of a young American designer kept breaking through the cracks.

/JOHN-MICHAEL

The premier appoggiatura of 'Wangciaga' confronts us with a backwards-minded collection that puts the hard-edged feminity of Nicolas Ghesquière into question. Its anti-tools: the nostalgic, ladylike elegance of Cristóbal Balenciaga combined with the retro-fiction of Kenneth Price and cyber-organic wood-carvings of H.R. Giger.
/HORST








1. Balenciaga Fall/Winter 2013
2. Balenciaga Vogue Paris, July 1948
3. Balenciaga Henry Clarke, 1951
4. Saint Laurent Boutique, 2012
5. Balenciaga Evening ensemble, 1967
6. Kenneth Price Mountainside Sculpture, 2009
7. H.R. Giger New York City X, 1981
8. Balenciaga Fall/Winter 2013

More reviews by John-Michael O'Sullivan 1972 Projects