Vanessa Paradis, ph. Inez & Vinoodh , Vogue France
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Vanessa Chantal Paradis (born 22 December 1972) is a French singer-songwriter, musician, actress, model and since 1991 a spokesmen for Chanel.

Short Biography

ph. Paolo Roversi

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Vanessa Paradis is daughter to interior designers Corinne and André Paradis. She began to develop her singing career at age seven when her uncle, record producer Didier Pain, helped her appear on the local television program, a talent show for child singers.

She recorded her first single, “La Magie des surprises-parties”, in 1983 and performed it in an Italian festival in 1985. Although not a hit, it paved the way for the song with which she became internationally famous, “Joe le taxi“, in 1987 when she was 14. It was No. 1 in France for 11 weeks and, unusually for a song sung in French, was released in the United Kingdom, where it reached No. 3. It was taken from her first album M&J (it stands for Marilyn & John).

In March 1989, at age 16, Paradis left high school to pursue her career.

She released the album Variations sur le même t’aime in 1990, containing a remake of the Lou Reed song “Walk on the Wild Side“. The album was written by acclaimed French composer Serge Gainsbourg, whom she met when she received the best singer award at Les Victoires de la Musique, on 4 February 1990. The same year, Paradis won the César Award for Most Promising Actress for her role in Noce Blance.

In 1991, she promoted the fragrance Coco for Chanel. In the advertisement, she was covered in black feathers, portraying a bird swinging in a cage. The advert was shot by Jean-Paul Goude. 

In 1992, Paradis moved to the United States to work with Lenny Kravitz, whom she also dated at the time. The new album was her first in English. Written and produced by Kravitz, the album, titled Vanessa Paradis, topped the French chart. One of the singles from it was “Be My Baby“, which made number 5 in France and gave her another Top 10 hit in the UK.

In March 1993, Paradis started her first international tour, the Natural High Tour. In April 1994, she filmed Élisa, under the direction of Jean Becker. Elisa was a big success in France, and was released internationally.

From 1997 on, she played in movies with the great French actors/actresses.

Ligne Cambon, Chanel handbags

The New Mademoiselle, Chanel handbags

ph. by Karl Lagerfeld

In 2004, Paradis promoted Chanel’s new handbags called Ligne Cambon. The next year, she modeled for Chanel again for The New Mademoiselle handbag. In 2008, she modelled for Miu Miu.

Miu-Miu Fall/Winter 2008

Ph.Mert Alas & Marcus Piggott

Vogue Paris cover

 ph. by Mert Alas & Marcus Piggott
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Paradis released a new album (Divinidylle) in 2007. She started the Divinidylle Tour in October. Paradis won two ‘Les Victoires de la Musique‘ awards for this album in February 2008. 

Canadian film director Jean-Marc Vallée cast Paradis in a starring role in his film Café de Flore, in which she plays the single mother of a down syndrome child in the 1960s. She garnered a Genie Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role at the 2012 Genie Awards.

In 2010 she became the face of Chanel’s new lipstick, Rouge Coco. She also became the face of their new handbag line, Cocoon. 

Paradise’s 2011 international tour included performances in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Europe and Turkey.

In May 2013, Vanessa Paradis released a new album, Love Songs. And this year she starred in the movie Yoga Hosers with her daughter Lily Rose (by ex-husband Johnny Depp), as a history teacher. She also was a member of the main competition jury of the 2016 Cannes Film Festival.

Vogue Paris December/January ’15/’16

ph. by Inez & Vinoohd

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info: wikipedia

Vanessa Paradis by Bruce Weber

Serge Lutens & model
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Serge Lutens (born 14 March 1942, in Lille, France) is a French make-up artist,  photographer, filmmaker, hair stylist, perfume art-director and fashion designer.

Short Biography

Serge Lutens was born during the war, on March 14th, 1942 in Lille, in northern France.

Separated from his mother when he was just weeks old, his personality was indelibly marked by this original abandonment. Permanently torn between two families, he lived life at a distance and through his imagination. He was a dreamer. At the École Montesquieu, they said he was “on the moon”: he paid no attention, although his teachers recognised that he was a gifted storyteller.

In 1956, at the age of 14, he was given a job against his will – he would have preferred being an actor – in a beauty salon in his native city.

Two years later, he had already established the feminine hallmarks that he would make his own: eye shadow , ethereally beautiful skin, short hair plastered down. He also became known for the colour black, from which he never deviated. He confirmed his tastes and his choices with the female friends of his whom he photographed.

Serge Lutens at work, 1973
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He was 18 when he was called up to serve in the army during the Algerian War. He was remoulded. This was an important break that led him to make his decision: to leave Lille and head for Paris. This was 1962.

Helped by a friend, Madeleine Levy, and bearing large prints of his photographs of his friends, Serge Lutens, experiencing his first years in Paris at a time of insecurity and want, contacted Vogue magazine. For him, this magazine represented the essence of beauty: a sort of convent that he mythologised. Three days later, he collaborated on the Christmas issue.

Makeup artist Serge Lutens’ 1973 beauty shoot for Vogue. Each image is inspired by various renowned French Artists throughout history. This particular image pays homage to Fernand Léger’s 1922 painting, “La Femme et L’enfant”

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The creator of a vision through makeup, jewellery and extraordinary objets, Serge Lutens quickly became the person to call, and the fashion magazines were not mistaken: Elle, Jardin des Modes, Harper’s Bazaar were constantly after him: he worked with the greatest photographers of the time, all the while pursuing his own photographic work. During these years, his talent was fully acknowledged.

In 1967, Christian Dior, who was preparing to launch its makeup line, called upon him. For the House of Dior he would create colours, style and images. Finally, his vision was unified through photography.

Serge Lutens for Dior

In the early 1970’s, the famous editor-in-chief of US Vogue, Diana Vreeland, was unstinting in her enthusiasm: “Serge Lutens, Revolution of Make-up!” His success was resounding. Serge Lutens became the symbol of the freedom created through makeup, for a whole new generation.

In 1974, mirroring his taste for films and the legendary actresses in them, he made a short: “Les Stars.”

During this period, he travelled widely, exploring Morocco and later Japan. These two countries, with their rich and yet so different cultures, came together in him and confirmed his way of seeing and feeling.

Serge Lutens & geisha, ph. for Le Monde, 1971
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He recalled them some years later, in 1980, when he signed on with Shiseido for a collaboration that was to enable the Japanese cosmetics group, until then unknown on the international scene, to establish such a powerful visual identity that it became one of the world’s leading market players in the 1980’s and ‘90’s.

In 1982, for the same brand, he conceived Nombre Noir, his first perfume, dressed in lustrous black on matte black, a concept that foreshadowed the ubiquitous codes of the 1990’s. While his first perfume marked the 1980’s, it was through his creation of Féminité du Bois and Les Salons du Palais Royal in 1992 with their dreamlike décor, that Serge Lutens led his first true olfactory revolution in the field of perfume.

Fragrances like Ambre sultan, Tubéreuse criminelle, Cuir mauresque… have since become indispensable, writing a new page in the History of Fragrances.

The logical culmination of this came in 2000 when Serge Lutens created the brand that today bears his name and establishes his uncompromising style. Perfumes and makeup (“Nécessaire de beauté”), his expressions in this area, are marketed through specialised and selective distribution and more confidentially at the Palais Royal-Serge Lutens.

His innovations in this field have received many prestigious awards, including several FIFI awards from the Fragrance Foundation.

In 2004, at the invitation of “Lille, European Capital of Culture,” he designed an olfactory labyrinth around scents from his childhood: this installation met with great intergenerational success.

In 2007 Serge Lutens was awarded the distinction of Commander in the Order of Arts and Letters.

Starting in 2010, Serge Lutens established a connection between perfumes and literature and opened up a new path with what he calls an anti-perfume: “L’Eau Serge Lutens.”

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Books

L’Esprit Serge Lutens: The Spirit of Beauty (Editions Assouline, Paris, 1992)

bookcover

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Serge Lutens (Editions Assouline, Paris, 1998)

Photographer, make-up artist, interior and set designer, creator of perfumes, fashion designer and designer of extraordinary objects, autodidact Serge Lutens is an “image maker” of genius. He first began working for French “Vogue” in 1963 where he worked with, among others, Bob Richardson, Richard Avedon, Guy Bourdouin and Irving Penn. At the age of only 27, already acclaimed for his inimitable style, he moved to Dior to develop the company’s image and create their make-up lines, after which he transferred his talents to Shiseido, where he has been “image creator” for over 15 years. He divides his time between Paris and Ben Youssef, the medina in Marrakech, and his work reflects a sophisticated blend of European refinement and rich orientalism, taking the femme ideale, or ideal woman, as its central motif. His first book – published in 1992 and now a collector’s item – was an “event” in the publishing world. Today, with his second book, produced in luxury edition, Serge Lutens returns to reconfirm his art, which brings together pure aesthetics and a quest for perfection.

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Serge Lutens currently lives in Marrakech, Morocco.

Serge Lutens, 2012
.info: http://en.sergelutens.com/all-about-serge-lutens/serge-lutens.html

James Galanos, ph. Richard Avedon, 1975
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Hubert de Givenchy, the illustrious French couturier, ones looked at an inside of a James Galanos garment and exclaimed “… we don’t make them this well in Paris!”

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Short Biography

James Galanos was born in 1924 in Philadelphia, PA. After graduation from high school in 1942, Galanos enrolled at the Traphagen School of Fashion, in New York City. He completed two semesters before leaving to gain experience as a designer at the New York East 49th Street emporium of Hattie Carnegie. His job there turned out to be more clerical than creative, and, disappointed, Galanos left.

After a failed launch of a ready-to-wear dress business by textile magnate Lawrence Lesavoy, the intrepeneur agreed to send the 24-year-old Galanos to Paris, just as couture houses there were rebounding from the war. Couturier Robert Piguet absorbed the American into his stable of assistants, among whom were Pierre Balmain, Hubert de Givenchy and Marc Bohan. At the Piguet atelier, Galanos met with fabric and trimming suppliers to choose materials, sketched and draped up designs under the eye of Piguet, who oversaw his work on a daily basis.

James Galanos with supermodel Dovima in his studio, 1960

In 1948, Galanos decided to return to the U.S and accepted a job with Davidow, a dress-making firm in New York. The new job allowed him very little creativity, and he resigned shortly.

In 1951, James Galanos decided to take a shot at California, and when the opportunity arose for him to open his own company, Galanos Originals, in 1952, he created a small collection, which was immediately ordered by Saks Fifth Avenue in Beverly Hills. He then opened his New York showroom where a Neiman Marcus clothing buyer discovered him and predicted his styles would soon “set the world on fire.” Stanley Marcus, the president of Neiman Marcus, agreed and soon proclaimed that the greatest and most treasured luxury in the world for a woman to have would be a dress by James Galanos. Legendary magazine editors and style arbiters such as Diana Vreeland, Eleanor Lambert and Eugenia Sheppard became fans, ensuring that he would become a household name within months. From this first collection, his clothing has been admired for its particularly high quality, especially considering it was ready-to-wear, not custom-made. His chiffon dresses in particular made his reputation in the early 1950s, with their yards of meticulously hand-rolled edges. Many designers worked with chiffon, but Galanos was a true master of the genre.

Chiffon dresses 

In 1953, Galanos embarked on another venture altogether – he began designing for movies. His first job was to create costumes for Rosalind Russell, the star of the forthcoming film “Never Wave at a WAC.” Russell, who at that time was considered the best-dressed of all American actresses, loved Galanos’ designs, and she became his friend and a loyal client.

Galanos gathered some of the most talented craftsmen available in his workrooms; many were trained in Europe or in the costume studios of Hollywood, for whom he continued to design from time to time. Nondas Keramitsis, Galanos’ head tailor, moved to Los Angeles from his native Greece to make women’s clothing. He had heard about Galanos through relatives and soon started working with him in his Los Angeles studio. Keramitsis and a crew of about 22 tailors he oversaw made everything by hand. If Galanos’ work was compared to that of anyone else, it was compared to French haute couture. His business was more comparable to a couture house than a ready-to-wear manufacturer; there was a great amount of hand work in each garment, and all of his famous beadwork and embroidery was done by his staff. Galanos always chose fabrics and trimmings personally during trips to Europe and Asia. Though he constantly looked for the best fabrics, Galanos often felt compelled to create his own. So he would make jackets out of different colored ribbons to toss over his chiffon dresses in impressionist colors. Or he would cross black satin ribbons over black lace for the bodices of delicately frothy short evening dresses. He often lined his dresses with silks that other designers used for dresses themselves, and he was always a firm believer in the importance of hidden details. These details made a difference in the feel of the clothes on the body and the hang of the fabric, and his clients all over the world were willing to pay a great deal for them. Details that were not hidden included sequins, feathers, metallic brocades and laces. He often balanced his most glittering dresses with quiet tie-dyed velvet sheaths and long, clingy styles in black crepe or crushed velvet. “Galanos: Perfection, and Lots of It,” read the headline in The New York Times after Galanos’ show of some 200 designs in 1988. “While he travels to Europe for his fabrics – many are the same as those used in the Paris couture collections – most of Galanos’s designing is done in California,” reported the Times. “His standards are as high as those found anywhere in the world. If a comparison is made, it is usually with the Paris couture. It is reasonably astonishing that an American designer of ready-to-wear should merit that kind of homage over so long a period of time.”

Daywear 

Galanos was also famous for his exquisite furs. He used mainly mink, sable, lynx and broadtail and handled the furs imaginatively, as if they were fabric. He smocked and quilted the surfaces, nipped the waistlines and used drawstrings, ruffles and capelets to give a strong fashion slant to all that opulence. He often designed for Peter Dion, the furrier who made sure that the quality of the pelts and the workmanship supported the innovative design. At the top of the line were coats made of lynx bellies, so soft and fluffy they looked airborne. The short style was selling for $200,000, the long one – for $300,000. The fitted coat was a Galanos specialty, successful in almost any fur, including fox.

Coctail dresses

1963-'64

Galanos was also famous for his exquisite furs. He used mainly mink, sable, lynx and broadtail and handled the furs imaginatively, as if they were fabric. He smocked and quilted the surfaces, nipped the waistlines and used drawstrings, ruffles and capelets to give a strong fashion slant to all that opulence. He often designed for Peter Dion, the furrier who made sure that the quality of the pelts and the workmanship supported the innovative design. At the top of the line were coats made of lynx bellies, so soft and fluffy they looked airborne. The short style was selling for $200,000, the long one – for $300,000. The fitted coat was a Galanos specialty, successful in almost any fur, including fox.

Many of the world’s most socially prominent women were Galanos customers. “James Galanos designs for wealthy women who go to luncheons and cocktail parties, dine at the finest restaurants and are invited to the best parties,” reported The New York Times. “His clothes are rarely seen in business offices. It isn’t only because of the five-figure price tags, although they are daunting to all but the highest-paid executives. It’s also the glamour quotient of the clothes.” Galanos agreed, “I design for a very limited group of people,” he told Time magazine in 1985.

Evening wear

1955
1950's
1958-'59
1959

1960’s
1966

1977-’78


In the 1980s, Galanos made national headlines as First Lady Nancy Reagan’s favorite designer. The fact that Mrs. Reagan wore a 14-year-old Galanos gown to her first state dinner at the White House attested to the timelessness and durability not only of his workmanship, but more importantly, of his design. This type of occurrence was commonplace among his faithful customers, which included Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor, Jackie Kennedy, Lady Bird Johnson, Grace Kelly, Diana Ross, Betsy Bloomingdale, Rosalind Russell, Marlene Dietrich, Dorothy Lamour, Judy Garland, Loretta Young, Ali MacGraw, Ivana Trump, Carolyne Roehm, Kim Basinger, Arianna Huffington and many other notable personalities and film and media stars.

Nancy Reagan in a dress by James Galanos, ph. Horst P. Horst, Vogue, May 1981
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Despite his retirement in 1998, Galanos continues to make his presence known in the fashion world. In 2002, he blasted the fashion industry for catering to only young women with perfect bodies. In an interview with WWD over lunch at the Pierre Hotel in New York he asked the reporter, Eric Wilson, shaking his head in contempt, “How many women can wear just a patch over their crotch and a bra? Aren’t you embarrassed when you see a young girl walking down the street practically naked? Fashion is geared only to young people today,” Galanos continued. “All we see is Levi’s and bare bellies to the point of nausea. There are no clothes for elegant women. Let’s face it, some of the things you see in the paper are absolutely monstrous looking – and I’m not squeamish. God knows I made sexy clothes in my day, but there’s a point when you have to say, ‘Enough, already’.”

“While he officially retired in 1998,” wrote Alix Browne in The New York Times, “he shows no signs of falling out of fashion.”.Galanos’s vintage gowns remain chic, sought after and popular among the international jet-set, Hollywood stars and supermodels.

Vintage James Galanos can be found on: http://www.shrimptoncouture.com/collections/designer-galanos

Amber Valetta wearing vintage James Galanos
Celine Dion wearing vintage James.
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James Galanos with model, 1961
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info:
Wikipedia
http://fashion-history.lovetoknow.com/fashion-clothing-industry/fashion-designers/james-galanos

Bill Gibb, a forgotten fashion hero from the Scottish Highlands, incarnated the romantic essence of British style – according to John Galliano. “British designers are storytellers, dreamers, and I think this was really the essence of Bill Gibb”.

With the encouragement of his grandmother, a landscape painter, Gibb moved from dressing up his sisters with bedcovers and curtains to the Central Saint Martin’s school in London and ultimately to the Royal College of Art. His fellow fashion students were Ossie Clark and Zandra Rhodes, who shared an unbridled vision of “fabulosity.”

His story could be played in London like a broken record: a designer comes from nowhere (or, in his case, from a farming family in the far north of the British Isles), becomes famous and feted, dresses high society and rockers, loses his backer and goes bust. Fade out of this familiar film without a happy ending…

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Biography

Born near New Pitsligo, a small village in Aberdeenshire in Scotland Gibb went to school in nearby Fraserburgh. His teachers at Fraserburgh Academy encouraged him to go to art school in London, and so, in 1962, Gibb went to Saint Martin’s School of Art. After graduating top of his class, Gibb was awarded a scholarship to the Royal College of Art, but before completing his degree, he left to start up in business.

Bill Gibb and Kaffe Fassett, 1960s
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In 1967 Gibb was one of six young designers invited to present their designs in New York, which led to a three-month research tour of the United States with his then boyfriend, the artist and textile designer Kaffe Fassett, who would remain a very close friend and design collaborator. On his return to London, Gibb and a group of friends had co-founded the Alice Paul boutique, for which Gibb designed typically late 1960s outfits of miniskirts and long coats, whilst his friends handled the marketing and manufacture. Between 1969–1972, as a freelance designer, Gibb designed for the London fashion house Baccarat. In 1972 Gibb launched his own company, Bill Gibb Fashion Group, which ran until 1988, and in 1975 he opened his first shop in London, on Bond Street.

Beatrix Miller of Vogue selected one of Gibb’s designs for Baccarat, a pleated tartan skirt and printed blouse worn with a Kaffe Fassett knitted waistcoat, as the 1970 Dress of the Year. Gibb’s design was described as the epitome of the new emerging trend for romantic eclecticism in British fashion design, as well as demonstrating how traditional handicrafts, such as hand-knits, were becoming acceptable for mainstream fashion. That same year, Harrods opened a dedicated area for Gibb’s designs, calling it the “Bill Gibb Room”, and the model Twiggy approached Gibb to create several historically-inspired dresses for her. She wore a “Renaissance” evening dress featuring printed textiles based on 1520s Hans Holbein drawings to the Daily Mirror’s Fashion Celebrity Dinner in 1970. Another gown made from various patterned textiles that Twiggy wore to the 1971 film première of The Boy Friend drew a great deal of media attention.

                   Twiggy called Bill Gibb “my knight in shining armor”.

Gibb presented his first collection under his own name in 1972. His fantastical creations were based on nature, with unexpected combinations of fur, feathers, printed leather, and brightly coloured clinging fabrics. His output during those days was of such a consistently high standard, it verged on couture. He was probably best known for his evening gowns, fabulous concoctions in floaty and exotic fabrics embellished with appliqués or heavily embroidered nets and lace, silks, brocades, and chiffon panels. However, his most important work was in knitwear, co-designed with Kaffe Fasset and hand-knitted by Mildred Bolton. Due to massive demand, Gibb found a manufacturer in Leicestershire who was willing to take on the challenge of machine-knitting Fassett’s extraordinarily complicated, multi-coloured woollen designs, although Bolton continued to hand-knit one-off designs. During the 1970s, Gibb did take on other design commissions, including creating a range of shoe designs for the high-end shoe manufacturer Rayne. Later, in the 1980s, Gibb collaborated with another Leicestershire manufacturer, Annette Carol, to produce acrylic knitwear using a jacquard technique.

Bill Gibb & Kaffe Fassett knitwear

Throughout most of the 1970s Gibb ran a small wholesale business, but was forced into liquidation. A brief period of financial support followed, but it is doubtful whether he enjoyed the restrictions and deadlines implicit in such an arrangement. The mid-1980s saw a brief recovery and, with a renewed collaboration with the knitwear designer Kaffe Fassett, Gibb showed a collection at the London Fashion Week in 1985 , called “Bronze Age”, featuring hats by Stephen Jones. His clothing was roundly applauded, with critics dubbing him the “master of the decorative,” praising his “simply cut, richly colored knitted suits and throws,” and what was characterized as his “fairytale exercises in the baroque, the beaded, and the burnished.”  Alas it did not attract buyers.

Gibb was described as “one of the most gentle, kindly and considerate human beings I have ever met” and a “man without malice” by the journalist Jack Webster. Twiggy described him as her “knight in shining armour”, and as a “sweet, sunny farm boy in baggy corduroys whom I absolutely adored”.

Gibb will best be remembered for his flights of fancy, and his unique contribution to 20th-century fashion. As Vogue said in 1962, in a feature called “Fresh Air in the Rag Trade,” for “the first time the young people who work in the rag trade are making clothes which are relevant to the way they live…ours is the first generation that can express itself on its own terms.” Bill Gibb was very much a product of his time, a free spirit. He died at the very young age of 44, in January 1988, from bowel cancer.

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Book

Bill Gibb, Fashion and Fantasy

Crowned ‘Designer of the Year’ by Vogue in 1970, Bill Gibb (1943-1988), barely out of college two years and yet to launch his eponymous line, was to become a major name in fashion history. Gibb’s career was prolific, and truly visionary at its finest, but sadly short-lived. His legacy, continued relevance and importance as a designer is apparent today in the work of designers from Giles Deacon to John Galliano. Famous for his love of romance, soaring flights of fancy and devil-may-care dynamic, Gibb’s wildly eccentric combinations of checks, tartans, stripes, floral prints and Fair Isle Knits had never been seen before. This stunning book explores Gibb’s background, long-time fascination with historical imagery and the themes that inspired his designs.

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Info:

WikiPedia

Victoria & Albert Museum

Hussein Chalayan given name Hüseyin Çağlayan, (born 8 August 1970) is a British/Turkish Cypriot fashion designer. He has won the British Designer of the Year twice (in 1999 and 2000) and was awarded the MBE (Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire) in 2006.

Short Biography

Hussein Chalayan was born in Nicosia, Turkey. By the time he graduated from school the population of the island was divided because of the constant struggles between the Greek and Turkish authorities. Ethnic conflicts between the Turkish and Greek Cypriot communities eventually led to the Turkish invasion of Cyprus, which led to human right abuses towards the civilian from both sides. For this reason Chalayan and his family were forced to move to England in 1978. After Highgate School he studied for a National Diploma in fashion and clothing at Warwickshire School of Arts, and proceeded to study Fashion Design at Central Saint Martins in London. His graduate collection in 1993, titled “The Tangent Flows”, contained clothes which he had buried in a back yard and exhumed just before the show where they were presented with an accompanying text that explained the process. The ritual of burial and resurrection was said to give the garments a dimension that referenced to life, death, and urban decay. The work attracted the attention of the Browns fashion boutique in London, who borrowed the collection to feature in their window display

The Tangent Flows graduation collection

 

 

In 1994, having completed an internship with Saville Row tailor Timothy Everest, the Chalayan established his own company, Cartesia Ltd., and his namesake ready-to-wear line, Chalayan, exhibiting his first collection in London’s West Soho Galleries that spring and debuting at London Fashion Week to resounding critical acclaim. 

BetweenThe Panoramic collection for Fall/Winter 1998 expressed the idea of infinity in a surreal cityscape of geometric forms and distorted images. The models were distorted into generic shapes and unified by architectural proportions; cones were fixed to the top of the head and faces and bodies swathed in black to obscure their identity. As Chalayan explored the idea of representing nature in this collection, he broke it down into its most basic graphic representation, pixels. Body and clothing were then merged into a digital landscape, which was recreated in enlarged cube-shaped pixels.

His Geotrophics collection for Spring/Summer 1999 had already featured Chair Dresses that represented the idea of a nomadic existence and a completely transportable environment. This concept was later expanded in Chalayan’s After Words collection for Fall/Winter 2000.which included some of his most well known designs such as ‘the coffee table dress’.  The Table Skirt and the entire set from the show were later featured in the 2001 Tate Modern’s Century City exhibition in London.

The Coffee table Dress

Chair Dresses

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In 1998 Chalayan was appointed as creative director of TSE New York with his inaugural sportswear collection for the brand debuting in March. In 2001, despite this attention and recognition for his work Chalayan struggled with sponsorship and funding, often receiving it from various other companies, independent exhibitions at Colette in Paris and producing capsule collections for Topshop, Chalayan was forced to file for voluntary liquidation, having amassed debts of an estimated $1.5 million.

Subsequently, he restructured his company and staged comeback collection in 2001 without a catwalk presentation, and designed for high-street label Marks & Spencer’s to make ends meet. Italian clothing manufacturer Gibo also helped the designer as did British jeweller Asprey, who appointed him as their fashion director the same year.

Chalayan has been awarded the prestigious ‘Designer of the Year’ award at the British Fashion Awards in 1999 and 2000, as well as being recognised as a ‘Design Star’ at the 2007 Fashion Group International awards. Along with being listed as one of the ‘25 most powerful figures in the industry’ by the British Fashion Council, Chalayan was also credited by Time magazine as one of its ‘100 Most Influential Innovators of the 21st Century’.

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Book

Hussein Chalayan

The comprehensive book on the visionary Hussein Chalayan, one of the most innovative, experimental, and conceptual fashion designers working today. Internationally acclaimed, Hussein Chalayan is known for his inventive use of materials and integration of new technology into his designs. He is also celebrated for putting the creative process itself on view. Some of his best-known designs include a paper dress that can be folded into an envelope and airmailed, armchair covers that transform into dresses, and a coffee table that reveals itself to be a wooden skirt. Original and groundbreaking, his designs are also pretty and modern, and this book explores that continuum. Featuring Chalayan’s complete body of fashion and creative work—including his installations, videos, and photographs—this unique and beautiful volume is as thought-provoking as it is stunning and is sure to be coveted by fashion, art, and design connoisseurs.

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info:

Wikipedia

http://www.businessoffashion.com/community/people/hussein-chalayan