DressSpace

There can not be two tigers on the same mountain, a local saying says, because the animal is wild, angry, passionate and above all solitary.

Daring, imperial, it does not fear anything and anyone.

It is very difficult dealing with her.

However the lunar year starting from 14 February and that according to the traditional calendar will be under this sign, for an actual astral coincidence, which is something very exceptional, unites the two new years’ eve, the Chinese one, the chun jie, and the Tibetan one, the losar.

A sign of union, but maybe also a sign of troubles, because the two tigers on the top of that single mountain will fight and one of the two will be defeated.

For astrology lovers the white tiger’s year, masculine and metal sign, is full of contradictions.

The tiger is in contrast with the metal element and this will cause problems and torments, the risk is to have an unlucky year.

But what does it happen if to the Chinese new year’s promises it is added the sum of the Tibetan lunar year’s contradictions?

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MOSAIC DATING FROM THE PERIOD BETWEEN THE YEARS 546 AND 548 – CHURCH OF SAINT VITALE, RAVENNA.

The hieratic splendour of Byzantine clothing is represented here in this image of the emperor Justinian.

A two-tiered gemstone encrusted crown, purple imperial chlamys with a large lozenge shaped golden panel (tablion) and an opulent  brooch, a white silk tunic with tight sleeves (Divitision), decorated with gold strips and circular roundels and gold embroidered red shoes (calcei).

Dignitaries wear a white chlamys with a purple tablion and an embroidered tunic.

The archbishop Maximianus is depicted with an ecclesiastical pallium ( a white wool strip draped around his neck and with a loose end on the front decorated with a cross),a golden chasuble, white dalmatic with very wide sleeves and purple strips.

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Jan Fabre, horror dresses

When dresses express the hallucinations of a soul

There are artists that follow one only idea all their life long, an obsession, a discipline, but Jan Fabre, Belgium artist (1958) among the most popular at international level, seems to overcome every frontier, firmly switching from theatre to the direction, from writing to art.

Jan Fabre seems to mix two different points of view from his vision of things, an alchemy of analytical science and dream imagination.

Jan Fabre prefers much more combining the cruel provocation of the material constituting the dress to, for example, the dress encouraging and familiar shape.

The harmonic and captivating appearance of these works reveal its true nature to a close glance, it is constituted by cut bones or by a weaving of coleopters, completely covering the metallic structure of the clothes.

Jan Fabre’s passion for the insects, with which he has realized several works, up to covering an entire vault of a castle, should come from his great-grandfather, one of the most famous entomologist of his period.

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Fifty years of T-shirt.

It has a T shape, but it is not always a close end road.

What is it?

It is the T-shirt.

The t-shirt with short sleeves is living a second life.

It is actually a third, maybe fourth or even a fifth life.

It was part of the navy dress during the XIX century, the t-shirt to be in contact with the skin has reached, thanks to the American soldiers, after the Second World War, the breast of many Europeans.

It has then become the symbol of the burnt youth of the Fifties’, until when in 1960, in Miel Valley, California, some proactive guys of the Monster Company, musicians and fashion agents, have started to decorate it.

It has then become a surface to write anything on: a cotton tattoo.

Today it is its 50^th anniversary and on the internet there are many websites proposing catalogues of decorations carried out with different techniques; the trend diffused among the mothers now is to ask small craft laboratories to re-elaborate with buttons and fabrics the t-shirts bought at the market: something original for their children.

How could it happen that it was a poor element and has now become a sought for object?

Malcom Gladwell believes that some clothes reach their “critical point”: unknown to most of the people, they become suddenly popular, in a contagious way, like an epidemic.

There are people, Gladwell says in his book

The critical point (edited by Rizzoli),

Those working for fashion brands have a sixth sense in individuating districts, coffee places, clubs where it is possible to find the new trends and looks.

In those places there are those ones that Gladwell calls the Innovators: they wear a certain kind of shoes that can be found only in some department stores of the province, or a white and tight singlet, leaving uncovered the straps of the bra, or using shower flipflop as evening shoes.

The expert sees them on the Innovators, he informs the Users about them – the opinion makers – therefore the object, produced in series, reaches the inertial and skeptical Majority, which buys it in the shops.

It should be happened the same with the t-shirt, always present in any boutique or trendy fashion house.

Today it is evolving and becoming more and more sophisticated, almost chic.

The purpose of fashion is to make us believe to be different, even though we are all the same.

T-shirt: the difference represented by a t-shirt.

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This is a rather peculiar shape and relatively unknown after the thirties.

It is a fairly tall type of bowtie with drop shaped extemities.

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THE ELEGANCE OF THE ARMY BOOTS

THE RETURN OF A MYTH

It is the 50th anniversary of the Dr. Martens: a symbol for the right and left foot.

The invention: the entrepreneur William Griggs after having supplied for years the military forces, launched on the market the civil use shoe.

Without time: the Dr.Martens are survived to the against-culture of the 80’s.

It is the 50^th anniversary of the Dr.Martens and this is an historic day.

The first April 1960 in a factory in Wollaston in a lost village of the Northamptonshire it has origin the prototype of the civil army boot.

The owner William Griggs, who until then has been producing shoes for the military army, adapts the military style to orthopedic soles of the German doctor Klaus Martens, so comfortable to seduce the austere teutonic housewives.

After ten years and without the minimum marketing strategy, the black and cherry colour Dr.Martens are worn by the English post men, by the workers, by the police men, obliged to blacken the yellow sewing forbidden by the code.

In the black and white photo of the protests during the 70’s the Dr.Martens are the only common denominator among the militants of the left wing, the skin right wing and the Bobbies carrying the truncheon.

The Dr.Martens are street shoes.

The Dr.Martens have now come back and are loved most of all by the top models and girls wearing leggings, shorts and romantic mini-dresses.

With the Dr.Martens the hoped effect is the one to create a “sexy-rock” look.

Donatella Versace, very high heels shoes lover says:

“When I saw the evening dresses combined with heelless army boots I was shocked……

But I realize that the young generations like this kind of contrasts between poor and rich, beautiful and ugly”.

If today the yesterday symbols have lost their breaking meaning, surrendering to the fashion rules, which are the today rebellion codes?

The revival of the classic loved by the vintage boom says a lot about it.

Does it mean that kilt, “Sunday woman” style middle class bags and bon ton sheer tights are becoming the elements of an aesthetic language in opposition to the surrounding chaos?

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The discover of a young Milanese photographer, Daniele Tamagni, and the story is very interesting: a fashion-victims community of absolute elegance lovers, able to run into debts and to do a lot of sacrifices for an impeccable man suit, all living in Bakongo, the district of a until yesterday unknown small city of the Congo: Brazzaville.

Tamagni has won different Italian and international prizes for his reportages dedicated to this subject, he has shown his images in different galleries and in 2009 he has published a photographic book “Gentlemen of Bakongo” (Trolley books), which has scored in the fashion world.

Furthermore Paul Smith’ 2010 spring collection is entirely dedicated and inspired to these Congolese dandies, mentioning with a very similar version the suit that the gentleman appearing on the cover is wearing.

But who are these unexpected and original inspiration sources?

They are African men and guys who are now called “sapeurs” mixing the initials in which they identify themselves: “SAPE, societé d’ambianceurs et personnes elegantes” (elegant persons society influencing the environment) together with the French word “sape” which means getting dressed.

The “sape” is more then a costume phenomenon, it is almost considered a clothing religion and in Brazzaville his followers are a local glory, respected and recognized for their way to show themselves in public, they are often paid to attend parties and weddings”.

Will Africa be the contemporaneous fashion new frontier?

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APSE MOSAIC DATING FROM THE PERIOD BETWEEN THE YEARS 526 AND 530, BASILICA OF SAINTS COSMA AND DAMIANO IN ROME.

The ecclesiastical wear of the gothic period, as well as the secular one, remains faithful to the late-Roman tradition.

Pope Felix IV wears the sacred white Pallium on his chasuble, loosely draped around his neck with one end hanging down the front and the other down the back.

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When the art works on the human body

Rebecca Horn, elegant and free artist, born in Germany in 1944, who became popular in the artistic scene already at the end of the Sixties, at the beginning of the conceptual art, in a period where the scenery was strongly populated by men.

Since the beginning Rebecca Horn has focused her creative interest in the body, in its internal mechanisms and in its movements too, creating a close contact with the audience, who was asked to interact during the performance and in the installations, mainly of theatrical impact, that involved her directly.

A wider reflection on the body led her to think about the concept of dress, not as simple cover or ornament, but as structure able to change or accentuate the sensorial capabilities, extending our limbs and structure.

Rebecca Horn creates then spectacular feathers shells, pointed cones to wear as unicorns on the head and to tie up with ribbons along the whole body, or masks and muzzles with fixed pens, so that it is possible to draw with the movements of the head, instead of using the arm.

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It is almost as if a Sanremo had been cut in half across its length by a slicer.

The choice to tie it with the loops pointing up or down is for the wearer to make and could be influenced by moods.

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