I first saw a Jackson Pollock painting at a gallery in New York. I don’t have an art education and I didn’t know anything about the painter or his work, it just appealed to me very much. Years later I saw the movie Pollock by Ed Harris and it is one of my top ten movies of all times. It is both the work and his life that inspires me so much.

Pollock was self-educated and he had to travel a long road before he found his own style. He experimented in abstract expressionism. Jackson Pollock’s work and private life could not have developed without Lee Krasner, later his wife and a painter too, who dedicated herself to Pollock knowing he needed a lot of guiding and taking care of. Lee gave up her own ambitions for Pollock and only started painting again after his death.

Lee Krasner & Jackson Pollock during the interview for Life Magazine
Jackson Pollock & Lee Krasner 1949

Jackson Pollock & lee Krasner

Lee Krasner was the one who made sure Pollock got noticed by art dealers and buyers. She asked Howard Putzel to introduce Jackson’s work to Peggy Guggenheim, who realized his unique talent and commissioned him to make an enormous wall painting for the hallway of her new townhouse and this fabulous work of art called ‘Mural’ was the start of his recognition.

Mural by Jackson Pollock, 1949
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The film ‘Pollock’ contains a fantastic scene about Jackson painting ‘Mural’. Click on the link underneath to watch this scene….

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Lee & Jackson in Long Island
Photograph of Jackson Pollock for the Life magazine article

Lee Krasner and Pollock moved from New York city to Long Island, trying to get Pollock’s alcoholism under control and get him more space and solitude to work in. That’s the place where he finally found his style; dripping. Later he was nicknamed ‘Jack the dripper’. To achieve the complex and subtle structural interlace that characterizes his mature work, Pollock had indeed dripped, poured, and spattered his pigments across the vast expanse of raw canvas. The painting is the result of both split-second decision-making and happenstance, choreography and chance. Each physical “performance” was a unique, spontaneous, and unrepeatable event, but the final product was always subject to artistic will. I can control the flow of the paint,” Pollock contended. “There is no accident.”

It’s also during these years, Jackson got his global recognition, after a raving article in Life Magazine.

Dubble page from the article in Life magazine

Number 31, by Jackson Pollock

During the dripping years and enormous success of the paintings produced in this period, Filmer Hans Namuth followed Pollock for a longer period and made a beautiful little documentary. Not only the paintings are spectacular, the way Pollock moved in the process looks like a dance performance.  In the course of the process of making this documentary Pollock discovered he couldn’t work with people watching/being around him.

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Last picture of Jackson Pollock before his death, together with Ruth Kligman

Pollock’s fame only lasted a few of years, from his recognition at 37 till his death at 44. By the end he was no longer painting. Lee Krasner could no longer stand his adultery and went abroad for a while, when Pollock ‘staged’ his own death by drinking himself blind, driving his car at night with his mistress Ruth Kligman and her friend Edith Metzger in it, into a tree. Edith and Pollock died in the crash. Lee Krasner lived for another 28 years in which she managed Pollocks estate.

I would like to write a lot more about Jackson Pollock’s work and life, but this is a fashion blog not an art blog… If you want to know more I can recommend you to watch the movie Pollock by Ed Harris, who not only directed the movie, but also played the character Jackson Pollock, was nominated for Best Actor for an Academy Award. Marcia Gay Harden, who played Lee Krasner, won the award for Best Supporting Actress for her phenomenal performance in the movie.

http://www.amazon.com/Pollock-Ed-Harris/dp/B003NVN0QO

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Jackson Pollock’s paintings influenced fashion at different times in different ways.

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The First time Pollock’s work inspired fashion was when some of his paintings were used as background in a series of pictures in a Vogue issue of 1951, photographed by Cecil Beaton.

Another influence of Pollock’s work in fashion is the dripping technique reproduced on fabrics and clothes by designers like Ann Demeulenmeester, Dries van Noten, Dior Homme and Dolce & Gabanna

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Ann Demeulenmeester

Dries van Noten

Dior Homme

Dolce & Gabbana, spring-summer collection 2008.

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Alexander McQueen, 1999 a performance attributing to painting and painters....

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Jackson Pollock's genuine work shirts

Jackson Pollock's paintcans

An art-director I work with, send me a link to this commercial…  Ine,thanks! The best I’ve seen in a very long time.

For some time now African patterns have inspired designers. It’s understandable, because these patterns are gorgeous and so different from any other folklore fabric. The beautiful combination of bright colours and the big, repeating graphics are so authentic. Some graphics are based on everyday objects as alarm clocks, coffee pots, heeled shoes, umbrella’s, mirrors, leafs, laptops, even buildings. Others are geographic or almost child-like drawings.

Some original Vlisco patterns:

Lots of people  think these fabrics are made in Africa, but actually they originally come from Holland, where the most famous wax print company still is based in Helmond. Vlisco is the name of this company and the founder of these fabrics. Vlisco made the wax printed fabrics as a knock-off of Indonesian batik fabrics, but that didn’t work out. It found its way to Africa instead and Vlisco became and still is the most important and original Dutch Wax company.

In some African counties it’s considered very chique and high-class to wear Vlisco fabrics from head-to-too and its patterns are often copied by others fabric manufactures. There are even counterfeiters trying to pass their fabrics as genuine Vlisco… To make faking their products less easy, Vlisco produces limited one-time runs of their prints.

Guaranteed Real Dutch Wax Print

The core element in Wax Print is of course the wax. Using two deep engraved copper rollers, with the mirror image of the design, the two sides of the cotton fabric are printed with a pattern of melted wax, hence the name Wax Print. The fact that the cloth is printed on both sides enables you to wear the product either side. This is the true sign of a quality wax print. Following this, the cloth is immersed in a bath of dye, often Indigo, that penetrates into the areas that are not covered with wax. After the wax has been washed off in varying stages, a negative image of the printed pattern remains on the cloth. This intricate wax printing process results in unique effects that makes the product so outstanding. In fact, not one single centimetre of fabric is identical to the other!   www.vlisco.com

Designers working with the African fabrics are not only African, like Duro Olowu, Dries van Noten is working with African prints for years already.

Duro Olowu  

Dries van Noten

This summer Burberry Prorsum has found its way to these fabrics/patterns, also Miu Miu and Consuelo Castiglioni, designer of Marni, has used African prints for the H&M collection which will land in stores on March 8th.

Burberry Prorsum

Marni for H&M 

Stella Jean a/w 2014

For his Spring/Summer collection 2009, Junya Watanabe combined the African prints with faded, torn-up jeans. I love this collection!

Junya Watanabe

Some years ago I was visiting New York. I brought my (then) favorite dress, a simple model I made from Dutch wax fabric, bright yellow coloured with a repeating green fish pattern. In Amsterdam nobody looks up when you wear African patterned fabric, but in New York it provoked some people, specially Afro-Americans. They gave me spontaneous thumbs up or complimented me for wearing something so typically African. It surprised me, coming from a multi-culti community where clothes from different backgrounds are worn by all. I hope it becomes more habitual in America too….if you know what I mean.

MMKA exhibition:  Six Yards Guaranteed Dutch Design

29 January — 6 May 2012
As early as 1846 Vlisco served the West and Central African market with Dutch Wax textiles. From 29 January through 6 May, 2012, the Museum voor Moderne Kunst Arnhem will present Six Yards Guaranteed Dutch Design, an exhibition about how Vlisco’s Dutch textiles became a part of various West African cultures and found their way into international fashion, the visual arts, and photography.

www.mmkarnhem.nl

The Amish intrigue me, because they make the most beautiful handicraft. I’ve been a craftsmen myself, since I was very young and I am still improving my skills. At school, I was the best in crafts-classes and eager to learn everything about needlework, knitting and sewing. My love for manual skills makes me curious for all/new techniques (like the embroidery with shoelaces) and I am always customizing, because of my different way of looking at things. If I had to choose between making or wearing my clothes, it would be would making, because it gives me such a kick!

The Amish women wear over-the-knee dresses and black or white hats, because they must have their heads covered when they come to God. The white ones are for prayer, which they almost wear all the time. Jewelry is not allowed. Men wear straw hats in summer, the black cloth hats are only worn at certain occasions. Their shirts are coloured in earth tones ,trousers are dark and hold in place by suspenders plus they have vests and simple suit jackets. In the older order of the Amish they never used buttons and buttonholes, but hooks and eyes to close their garments, called Häftler, this name is also used as a nickname for the Amish. The men have to grow beards after they are married, but aren’t allowed to grow a moustache, because moustaches are linked to militaries in the army and Amish are pacifists. Plain Fabric without patterns is a must and never the colour red, I couldn’t unravel why…. Their clothes are inspired by lower and middle-class in central Europe, 17th and 18th century. Most people think, they still make their own clothes, but nowadays they buy their clothes at special Amish clothes stores.

The Amish way of dressing has definitely had an influence on fashion, like all folkloric costume. The simple and devout look is detectable in early collections by Comme Des Garçons and Yohji Yamamoto. Ann Demeulenmeester was inspired by the Amish for her men’s collection summer ’09.

And the Dior Homme autumn/winter collection 2011/’12 had an Amish feeling too.

In february 2008 Vogue Italia published a fashion story by Steven Meisel, called Country Style, but could have been called Amish Style…The next post will be about Paul Harnden Shoemakers, who is an devoted craftmen himself and his clothes and shoes are absolutely brilliant!!!

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