Vauxhall Art Car Boot Fair

This year, the Vauxhall Art Car Boot Fair will be celebrating their tenth anniversary on Sunday 9^th June at Brick Lane Yard Car Park between 12 noon and 6pm, with an entry cost of only £5.  This extravagant, eye popping event is a million miles away from any other kind of ‘car boot’ with a heap of work from renowned artists alongside fresh new talents, all selling their works at bargain prices from the boots of their cars.  In the past, lucky punters have picked up work from the likes of Gavin Turk, Sir Peter Blake and Emin International.  With over 70 pitches and prices ranging from £10-£1000 there is truly something for everybody.

But make sure you get there bright and early – some folk will even be camping the night before to get their hands on the best buys they can find.  And if the artwork doesn't catch your attention, there are plenty of fun activities to get involved with, such as a good old-fashioned game of pass the parcel, for example, when five parcels will be unwrapped layer by layer as the music stops until that lucky last person captures their own exclusive piece of art – and it could be you!  Alternatively there is a 70’s disco tent where you dance around a pile of covered up handbags until the music stops and you dive in and grab one to keep.  I have my eye on the Jimmy Choo: please be mine.  What’s even nicer is that profit from the money we visitors spend on entertainment will go to the ‘Just for Kids’ charity; so spending on having a good time has the added bonus of fulfilling a good deed for the day. 

When you’re all danced out you can grab yourself a drink or two and enjoy the entertainment, munching on your choice from a wide range of specialty food.  It’s going to be a great day for people of all ages and definitely one I’ll be dragging myself out of bed for.

Festival Des Métiers - A Rendezvous with Hermès Craftspeople

From 21- 27 May the Saatchi Gallery in Sloane Square is hosting this amazing, free event, where you can get up close and serious with the Hermès brand and see the way they combine new skills with traditional craftsmanship.  This is a not your average exhibition and not your average company.  You really get to see the essence of the house in all its glory, with talks from the artists as they create Hermès products, the chance to touch and handle raw materials and products and, brilliantly, a rare opportunity to engage with Hermès craftsmen and women (translators available, thank you) as they work. 

When you first go into the gallery, there are finely cut leathers on each side of the room which, on the first of the ‘stands’, you can watch being lovingly transformed into a Hermès bag.  Creating one strap alone takes two hours and a whole beg takes twenty-five!  The guy at work when I visited had been with Hermès for 25 years.  I was really struck by the fact that each bag is made by one person from start to finish and, if you lined them all up, they could tell who had made which one.

I also loved the scarf-making section, where you could follow the process from start to finish - from purchasing the fabric to the final screen printing.  The preparation of drawings for the printing takes a mind bending 600 to 800 hours! It’s beyond amazing to see the amount of effort these craftsmen and women put into their work.

This was a dip into a whole different kind of manufacturing process – the quality of the raw materials, the dedication, skill, tradition and pride of the craftsmen and women, the tiny details put into each individual piece they make, whether clothing, watches, scarves, bags, printed fabrics and so on … no wonder Hermès products scream out luxury and demand a high price.

The Hermès brand was founded in Paris by Thierry Hermès in 1837 and, over six generations, has developed from focusing on harness-making to a global business producing a broad range of luxury items, whilst still remaining a family business.  And yes, you can still buy Hermès for your horse! 

This exhibition offers a beautiful insight to the heritage of the brand and those working within it, demonstrating just how much love and care goes into making each individual product.  Love it.

A sight for sore eyes

Summer – a time for new swimwear and, even more crucially, new sunglasses, the essential accessory that says so much about us when we might be wearing little else. 

These are the brief months (okay, sometimes weeks) when we all lighten up a little, seem to have more fun and smile at more people more often. 

So take a minute to check out the New Zealand designer Karen Walker’s Forever 1^st Summer 2013 sunglasses campaign ‘Advanced Style’ if you want a big fat smile right now.  Created by photographer Ari Seth Cohen (advancedstyle.blogspot.com.au) whose blog is ‘dedicated to the sartorial savvy and wisdom of the senior set’ and who describes himself as an ‘old lady expert, creator of Advanced Style and lover of all things vintage’ this is an inspirational collection showing Walker’s bold, oversized and colourful collection of 31 sunglass designs for 2013, modeled brilliantly by Joyce Carpati, Linda Rodin, Lynn Dell and Ilona Royce Smithkin.  What’s so special?  All the models are flamboyant, strong and sassy – the kind of women who know what they are about and aren’t going to take no for an answer.  They just happen to be aged between 65 and 92 – bringing a whole new perspective to the concept of ‘advanced style’ and ‘forever 1^st summer’.  Photographed by Ari in their own homes, you can’t deny the strength and wit of the images in front of you – even if you question some of the wallpaper choices.  If we’re gonna grow old – this is the way to do it. 

The Graduate Fashion Week Schedule is now up! 

Pride or Prejudice?

Susan J Douglas, author of ‘Enlightened Sexism, the Seductive Message that Feminism’s Work is Done’ (2010) wants us to think again about what we buy and wear and consider whether wearing that ‘Bitch’ T-shirt or mesh and spandex body suits is really about girl power, or just self-delusion playing straight into the hands of a world where a woman’s place is often still in the control of men.

‘Hipster Sexism’ was a phrase coined in 2006 and, according to our friend Wikipedia, is ‘also known liberal sexism and ironic sexism’.  Apparently it’s increasingly in use to describe the growth in fashion images which depict women as sexual objects.  Douglas attributes this to the success of the media in convincing women that the way to gain and enjoy true power is through the ‘calculated deployment of their faces, bodies, attire and sexuality’ (on the Issues Magazine, Winter 2011), but warns that it’s all a big con – and the ‘clever’ bit is that women think that we are so far beyond discrimination that these clothes are witty, or clever, or ironic.  Admitting that feminism over the last fifteen years has become a ‘dirty word’ conjuring up images of unattractive man haters, Douglas warns us all, in the same article, that we are being sold a fantasy that ‘any woman can become a CEO (or president) and that women have achieved economic, professional and political parity with men’ and again that ‘purchasing and sexual power are much more gratifying than political or economic bower.  Buying stuff – the right stuff, a lot of stuff, has emerged as the dominant way to enact being an empowered female’.

Wow.  This is hard.  Because I do want to look sexy sometimes, I do want to shop and no, I don’t particularly want to spend a lot of time at this juncture to learn about politics and feminism.  But I have always said that what we wear is an expression of who we are, so I can see that it’s important we think a bit more about what we are saying in what we wear.  It’s not that long ago that a welcome offer of a shopping trip to boost my wardrobe had a hideously embarrassing moment when parents wandered into American Apparel looking for jeans and cotton Ts then started discussing whether they were in some kind of sex/fetish shop!  So how far is too far?  I don’t know.  But I’m going to think about it a bit more carefully. 

   

Take 5, Weekly Inspirations.

Inspiration can come from anywhere and anyone.  Here’s five that have had a serious impact on me this week:

1. Norman Parkinson: After watching the documentary ‘AKA Norman Parkinson’ about his life and photographic career I fell back in love with his fabulous fashion images.

2. Beyonce: Seeing her peform live on her Mrs Carter Tour and feeling the full impact of her stage presence and amazing voice!

3. Alexandra Shulman: An inspiring talk at Ravensbourne University from the Editor of Vogue, who introduced us to the life of Vogue and all things fashion.

4. Richard Haines: A new illustrator I discovered this week in the Sunday Times ‘Style’ magazine.

5.‘Facehunter’ by Yvan Rodic:  My new favourite book!  Contains loads of fun street style imagery taken from around the world by Yvan Rodic.