The third of my three part illustration series is starting with Neil Gilks‘ work. I went to Central Saint Martin’s with Neil, and he was one of the only students allowed to put actual illustrations in his portfolio (our course director was not tolerant of crappy drawings…) The drawings below show exactly why. He has a genius hand, and I am so lucky to have one of his drawings in my house. If you live in New York City, Neil runs some illustration workshops.

Hildur Yeoman’s beautiful images would make gorgeous wall hangings.

Leigh Viner’s powerful use of paint and pencil make for stunning work.

Noumeda Carbone’s work looks more like art canvasses than fashion illustrations.

Silja Goetz’s cheerful collages and illustrations are so pretty!

See Pretty Pictures: Illustrations Part 1
See Pretty Pictures: Illustrations Part 2

More beautiful illustrations…

I love the realism of Carmen Garcia Huerta’s illustrations.

Kathryn MacNaughton’s collage illustrations are delicate but with attitude.

Abbey Watkins illustrates under the name of Tobacco & Leather, and she works from photographs.

Cecilia Carlstedt’s illustrations would make gorgeous editorial spreads.

I love the detail in some of Echo Morgan’s drawings.

Read Pretty Pictures: Illustrations Part 1

I went to an illustration exhibit two weeks ago, and it made me realize that I haven’t covered enough illustration in this blog. So I’ve put together a three part post with the work of some fantastic illustrators. While doing the research, I realized that there is a such a lack of good illustration out in the media. Fashion illustration started to die out in the 50’s when photography became cheaper and more accessible. It is a shame magazines don’t include more of it… I love to see editorial shoots done as illustrations. You can still have models, stylists, and hair and makeup, but with a fantastic illustration in lieu of a photograph.

The first one is my good friend Dougal Graham, whose work has been featured on this blog, because he is also a fantastic jeweller and painter. His work was in the exhibition I saw, and I’ve added some other pieces.

The exhibition, at Michael Bjornson’s TAG gallery, also had some collaborative work from other artists. This piece is by Michael Bjornson, Geoff Carter, and Kitty Blandy.

Alena Lavdovskaya’s work is very glamourous and retro, I love her style.

Cloud Zero Two’s digital collages are a combination of fashion illustration, fantasy, and photographs.

Anna Higgie’s work has a great play on texture and shape.

Camila do Rosário’s drawings have so much beautiful detail.

Kris Atomic is one of my most exciting illustration discoveries… I love the naivety and sweetness of the retro drawings.

Read Pretty Pictures: Illustrations Part 1

Where Children Sleep is a photography book by James Mollison that features children’s bedrooms from around the world, with a portrait of the child. His introduction explains “I hope this book will help children think about inequality, within and between societies around the world, and perhaps start to figure out how, in their own lives, they may respond.” The photos here are very touching, what a beautiful concept.

Mollison is also the photographer behind the book The Disciples, photographs of fans outside concerts. Very cool too.

Four-year-old Kaya lives in an apartment in Tokyo, Japan.

Seventeen-year-old, 'X' lives in a 'favela' in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Eight-year-old Harrison lives in a mansion in New Jersey, USA.

This unnamed four-year-old boy lives on the outskirts of Rome, Italy. He and his family all sleep on the mattress in the photograph.

Fifteen-year-old Risa lives in a teahouse in Kyoto, Japan.

Images and captions from Creative Review, a great advertising and design magazine.

While I was in Arizona I read Linda Grant’s The Thoughtful Dresser . Actually, devoured is probably a better word than read, and that was followed by my mother’s devouring of the book, and plenty of discussions, readings out loud of key passages, etc… Basically, it is the best non-fiction novel about fashion in the entire world. So all of my fashion-loving readers, those of you that don’t have it, go and buy it. Borrow it from the library. Tell your Mom to buy it, and share it with her. Nominate it for your book clubs. Do whatever it takes, but read this book. (And a special little note to all of my over 50 readers, yes, I know all about you ladies, and I am telling you that this book is an absolute must-read.)

The full title of the book is The Thoughtful Dresser: The Art of Adornment, the Pleasures of Shopping, and Why Clothes Matter. It reads like a really long, interesting newspaper article, and Grant’s stories are so incredibly close to my life, my mother’s life, in fact, any woman’s life. It is a well-written exploration and analysis of the fashion scenarios we all face on a regular basis.

Here’s the blurb about the book, from Amazon.

““You can’t have depths without surfaces,” says Linda Grant in her lively and provocative new book, The Thoughtful Dresser, a thinking woman’s guide to what we wear. For centuries, an interest in clothes has been dismissed as the trivial pursuit of vain, empty-headed women. Yet, clothes matter, whether you are interested in fashion or not, because how we choose to dress defines who we are. How we look and what we wear tells a story. Some stories are simple, like the teenager trying to fit in, or the woman turning fifty renouncing invisibility. Some are profound, like that of the immigrant who arrives in a new country and works to blend in by changing the way she dresses, or of the woman whose hat saved her life in Nazi Germany. The Thoughtful Dresser celebrates the pleasure of adornment and is an elegant meditation on our relationship with what we wear and the significance of clothes as the most intimate but also public expressions of our identity.”

My mother and I were incredibly cheesy during our holiday in Arizona and we chose to read each other passages aloud from the book, even though we’d both read it. Some related to her and her mother (the author appears to be the same age as my mother), others to our views on fashion and shopping, and the emotions surrounding clothes.

I am probably risking some copyright infringement here, but I need to share some passages from the book with you all. Read this quickly in case I get asked to take it down! Originally I bookmarked about 30 pages from the book that I felt I HAD to share with my readers, but now it is reduced to much less than that, for copyright reasons, and also because you should all just go and get the book yourself.

The first is a passage about shopping. Whether it is about a coat, a pair of shoes, or a ring, I am sure everyone has had a similar experience to this, and I love how Grant has so beautifully articulated how we all feel when we find the perfect garment and it is way out of our price range.

“There are two ways of shopping. One is a mission expedition, the search for the scarf with a bit of red in it to go with the navy linen jacket. Or a new winter coat [...] The second is [...] not actually shopping at all, but an exercise in pleasure in self-education, just to see what is in the shops.

The mission shop is a military exercise. Suppose one has as the aim the purchase of a winter coat, which, one decided, will not be black but a colour. The expedition involves a survey of the winter coats and their styles this season, the length, the arrangement of the buttons [...] Then, having arrived at what color you’re looking for – say a deep chocolate brown – you start to try on coats.

It is axiomatic that the coat which is the right chocolate brown and the right style and the right length and which fits like a glove will be by Armani and costs £1,500. Everything now descends in increasingly depressing order from that utopian perfection which you cannot afford. It has established itself as the Platonic ideal of coats for which you will spend the rest of your week (or perhaps your life) searching.”

Grant’s thoughts on sexiness:

“When we dress to feel sexy, as opposed to to dressing to look sexy, we’re doing something so complicated I can’t even begin to understand it, and perhaps only a psychoanalyst could. We are going with our instincts, [...]

It is not the dress that is sexy, it is the person in the dress. Whatever she wears, Victoria Beckham is not sexy. Whatever she wears, Scarlett Johansson always is. And so is Helen Mirren. These are ineluctable facts.”

Helen Mirren, left, is sexy. Victoria Beckham, right, is not.

A lovely story about why it is important to take care of your clothes:

“A friend told me that as a child she had been forced to listen to a bedtime story, a cautionary tale about a little girl who did not look after her clothes, and feeling neglected and unloved, they ran away while she was asleep and went to live in the wardrobe of another, tidier child. You could give a child nightmares with this scenario.”

Grant on her mother’s style:

“[My mother's] generation, at least the women who liked clothes and fashion, deplored sloppiness of any kind. They worked ladylike chic for all it was worth. You would not see my parents on their annual trip to London dressed in windbreakers, shorts, and huge shoes with velcro tabs, heaving backpacks, like a party of mature anthropologists on a field trip.”

Just reading that passage send shivers down my spine…there is nothing I hate more than tourists in big cities dressed like they are about to climb a mountain.

And lastly, a very interesting passage about fashion and 9/11.

“…if there was ever an indictment of the vacuity of the fashionable mind and its stubborn (occasionally heroic) insistence on ignoring reality, it was the revelation that on September 11 the Yves Saint Laurent store on Madison Avenue, which had just taken delivery of its $2,500 purple gypsy peasant blouse with puff sleeves, received over forty calls to find out if they were still open and if the blouse was available.”

Now, I am sure my regular readers all know that I rarely say “You MUST buy this…” but in this scenario I must insist that you all try to get your hands on this book. (I should note here that I will in no way profit from sales of this book or anything like that…I don’t know Linda Grant, although I hope to soon, as I have already sent her a love letter about how much I adore her book.)

Go forth and read! You won’t be disappointed, this is the most beautiful tale of fashion, clothing, style, and the emotions they evoke. Here’s the Amazon link to purchase the book.

Title quote from The Thoughtful Dresser.

I just finished reading Deborah Ball’s House of Versace. I prefer fiction when I am on holidays, so I wouldn’t say all of you should run out and buy this book for your summer vacation, but if you are at all interested in the history of the brand, it is definitely worth a read.

The book tells the story of the Versace siblings’ (Gianni, Donatella, Santo, and the others) upbringing and story of the Versace brand up to the present day. You can’t help but love Gianni, respect Santo, and despise Donatella, although I know the author has a great impact on how we feel towards them, since she definitely describes Donatella as a megalomaniac who nearly ruined the Versace brand after Gianni’s death. (By the way, Santo is the brother who controlled Versace’s finances.)

Alice Drake’s The Beautiful Fall had a similar tone. Her book, which traces the history of Karl Lagerfeld and Yves Saint Laurent, clearly favoured the latter. I am not surprised that Karl Lagerfeld kicked up a legal fuss and managed to get the book off the shelves temporarily, because she definitely portrays Karl as the lesser designer. Personally, I think Karl Lagerfeld is more of a legend than Yves Saint Laurent. They both played an enourmous role in forming the way women dress today, but Karl has had the longevity that Yves did not, which has meant his genius has spanned several decades.

Anyway, back to Versace. The company has been on the brink of bankruptcy for the past few years, and it seems pure luck that they have managed to stay afloat, no thanks to Donatella’s refusal to hand over the reigns to a qualified creative director. She is no Gianna Versace, and will never come close. Also, I feel sorry for Allegra Versace, Donatella’s daughter, who inherited Gianni’s share of the company upon his death. In fact, Gianni was quite idiotic to do that, who gives leaves their “favourite niece” 50% of a multi million dollar company, meanwhile leaving the rest of his nieces and nephews almost nothing? No wonder she suffers from anorexia, that’s not fair to any child.

So if you like a bit of fashion history and hearing about other families’ drug habits, eating disorders, insane spending habits, and murder, this is the book for you. I highly recommend The Beautiful Fall, which is also wonderful read about two of the fashion geniuses of the 20th century.

Dezeen, my absolute favourite design blog, features these Stefan Strumbel cuckoo clocks last week. I love them. My friend Erin has a really amazing cuckoo clock, and I’ve been yearning for one of my own recently. I’ll take any one of these. Unfortunately for me, Stefan Strumbel is an artist more than a designer (the rest of his stuff, on his website, is AMAZING), which means that 1- these clocks aren’t probably available for sale in a normal shop, and 2- if I could find one, it will probably be very expensive. Boo!

Photographs by Oliver Rath or Sarah Davies, and were found on Dezeen.

Diem Chau is a Vietnamese artist who is based in the US. These crayon sculptures are so pretty and innocent. She also does commissioned work, she will carve the image of your child’s face into a crayon. What a lovely alternative from bronzed shoes!

Images from DiemChau.com. Thanks to Trendland for bringing these to my attention.

Yesterday was fun and very productive, and I am being a bit lazy today, so I’m throwing a bunch of photos into this one post.

I started off at an “interesting” shoe store. Usually overcrowded displays and shoe boxes stored on the shop floor is bad news for a shoe store, but in this case, it was funny. By the way, I didn’t buy anything but am toying with the idea of going back to get the thigh high shiny boots.

"Scalie" is not a good name for a shoe store. I guess that's what you get in Kingsgate Mall.

Great merchandising...

High class footwear.

Shoes displayed on boxes = bad news.

I can totally picture the fake tan girls who would wear these boots.

They have thigh high boots in many colours!

Great embellishments.

The largest selection of clear plastic heels in Vancouver.

Amazing.

This one has poker chips and dice in the platform.

These ones are very high.

This one's platform has a slot in it so "customers" can deposit tips.

Strips of clear plastic in the platform = classy.

I liked the lace up details on this pair.

My friends Hannah and Jordan hosted the most fantastic second birthday party for their daughter. It had a Japanese theme, and they hired a sushi chef, a bouncy castle for the kids, and two bartenders for the adults. That’s the way to do a party!

The sashimi was delicious.

I left before they cut the Thomas Haas cake, but it looked beautiful.

After the birthday party we had dinner at a friends and then headed to the Emily Carr University of Art and Design graduate show. I was so lazy, I didn’t make a note of any of the work I photographed. So here’s a bunch of beautiful artwork, but I can’t remember whose it is. I managed to find a few names from their website, but if any of my readers know the artists, please send over the credits.

There was tons of beautiful painting in the show, probably the strongest work was painting.

Wendi Copeland: Andy Warhol inspired.

There was a bit of clothing and fashion in the show.

A Transformer painting.

Kenneth Brodie: Lots of cow skulls.

Each cow skull was different.

This empty burger packaging was cool.

Packaging in rainbow colours.

Painted ceramic milk packaging.

This was my favourite piece. I didn't get a photo showing the entire painting in one shot, but there are two more pictures of it.

There is something so beautiful about this piece.

And it looks so real as well.

This series looked at fashion branding.

I'd wear a Gucci t-shirt like this.

This was part of a very large painting that we spent quite some time staring at. I've included some close ups below.

This was the best outfit of the evening.

And on our way home, we saw this neon dog with an umbrella sticking out of his butt. Weird.

I missed many designers during my catwalk coverage, it was impossible to cover them all. There are a few noteworthy ones I’d like to mention over the next few weeks, but one that was (shamefully) accidentally forgotten was Viktor & Rolf. I definitely saw their collection, but for some reason forgot to write about it.

On the other hand, Viktor & Rolf is not the type of brand whose shows can always be covered by a few images. Their catwalk productions, particularly this one, are best appreciated by video.

I didn’t truly appreciate the Viktor & Rolf brand until I saw an exhibition of theirs at the Barbican in London. I love the way they work on one concept for each collection. Here are a couple of images from their previous collection. The book, The House of Viktor & Rolf, is a great guidebook of some of their most fantastic collections.

Autumn Winter 2001 The "Black Hole" collection. Here's a description of the collection, according to Viktor & Rolf: "The all-black collection was presented by models whose faces, hands and legs were painted black. Each of the sets was given a specifically strong silhouette with sharp outlines. Since there are no strong contrasts within a silhouette, it appears as if it is a cut-out. What does become visible are the different textures and patterns of the materials. The seemingly flat appearance thus obtains a certain depth, but a depth without ground. This collection is a response to a feeling of loss and depression we felt at the time. We wanted to find ways of making empty shapes visible, taking the black hole as our lead."

Fall Winter 2005

Fall Winter 2005

Fall Winter 2005, the "Bedtime Story" show. This was inspired by bedclothes, and included a single red rose and the words "I Love You" as central motifs. Tori Amos performed at this show.

Spring Summer 2006

Spring Summer 2006 The "Upside Down" collection. Each piece could be worn bottom up or bottom down.

Fall Winter 2007 "The Fashion Show" collection. The models had lighting rigs strapped on to them. This got a lot of negative press because of the potential danger to the models carrying the heavy equipment on their backs.

Fall Winter 2008

Fall Winter 2008

Fall Winter 2008 The "No" collection. Viktor & Rolf explain "We love fashion, but it's going so fast. We wanted to say 'No' this season." "

Spring Summer 2010

Spring Summer 2010

Spring Summer 2010. Viktor & Rolf explain "With the credit crunch and everybody cutting back, we decided to cut tulle ball gowns,"

Their fall winter 2010 collection had some very beautiful pieces, but I think its important to see a short clip of the show first, to understand just how genius the shapes are. Kristen McMenamy was the main model for the collection, and she came out onto the catwalk wearing the entire collection. Viktor Horsting and Rolf Snoeren then proceeded to peel off her layers and put them onto other models, wearing bodysuits and baseball caps.

Here’s a great video of the collection. It is amazing how they manage to design those items of clothing so they work layered one on top of the other, and as individual garments as well.

I Love…

not knowing what to wear, so deciding to wear it all.

this relaxed looks. Expensive fur doesn't need to look stuffy.

the fur vest over the satin tailored jacket.

Viktor & Rolf, for being the only fashion brand that can get away with this crazy ass shit.

(In case you are wondering, although they sell clothing, they make most of their money from perfumes.)

Images from Style.com.