(c) Walter van Beirendonck

“It’s all about the American Dream… I had two obsessions when growing up; going to America which is where the flag came from, and Minotaurs. First I took the sharpness and the composition of the stars, I’ve been obsessed with them all my career, and secondly I used the Minotaurs, who are half bulls and half human beings, for the prints.” (Riccardo Tisci, Dazed Digital).

(c) Givenchy

For my generation, Ball Culture is something known and experienced through “Paris is Burning”. The famous price winning documentary film portrays the people involved in the scene in the late 80s, the rules of it, but keeps the distance of the anthropologist’s eye.
By starting chronologically where the film ends, the picture book “Voguing and the House Ballroom Scene of New York City 1989-1992″, offers a different look on the phenomenon, by being temporally set when balls and voguing gains the attention of the mainstream. Madonna’s single “Vogue” hits the charts in 1990.

The book offers three types of photos: the formal studio portraits by Chantal Regnault in a papier glacé look can be seen today as documents for the relativ fame the protagonists of “Paris is Burning” reached, after they confessed in the film they wanted it so much. Journalistic photos taken at balls and casual-but-posed outdoor snapshots portraits gives a conterpoint, a more spontaneous mise-en-scène of the selves.

In addition to the pictures, interviews with protagonists done for the purpose of the book in the last two years gives an often nostalgic look backward. But most interesting is the introduction text by Tim Lawrence, who describes the late 80s Harlem ball scene as part of a 150 years old tradition.

“Voguing” is currently on discount, you can order it via Soul Jazz’ website, you also find more information about it there. Here are some more preview pictures (via Dummy, (c) Chantal Regnault)

Check out both artist’s websites:

Frederick Heyman
Six Lee

Andrea Cammarosano is an italian-born, Antwerp trained fashion designer. He studied fashion design and tailoring in Florence before and then continued and graduated from the  Royal Academy in Antwerp in 2008. Ever since he gained experience by working as Walter van Beirendonck’s assistant, doing menswear design and accessories design. He now lives and works between Antwerp and San Francisco.
“East West Home Best” is Andrea’s second commercial collection (the first one being “I’m A Monster” ).

In the period of February until May 2011, Andrea was hosted and sponsored by the Rijksacademie in Amsterdam as an artist in residency, this was when the collection got realized. The collection was inspired by his first trips to California in 2010, it is built around a fictional character which he calls “the Beauty Rancher”, a mix between a cowboy and a geisha.

Along with a collection of garments he also created sculptures, which is a recurring element in his work. At the end of his residency in Amsterdam he did a performance to present the collection. Squeezed in the wooden sculptures, he cooked and arranged plates with his favourite food (eggs) for a model whom wore different garments from the collection. The set was decorated with tablecloths and flower arrangements (read: tullips in protein powder pots).

East West Home Best will be on sale next spring in MAC / Modern Appealing Clothing (San Francisco), 6000AD.co.uk (London), RA (Paris) and in Antwerp at WalterStore. Andrea is currently working on AW 2013. Check out his website for more information and images!

Photography – Matthew Stone
Styling – Matthew Josephs
Models – Shaun Ross @ AMCK/  Omari @ Select / Nino
Make up – Daniel Sallstrom using Illamasqua
Hair – Teji Utsumi

Via Matthew Jospehs blog. We’ve also recently posted their awesome i-D collaboration “Excess All Areas”.

This latest drawing of Toronto based artist Sholem Krishtalka‘s ongoing “Lurking” series is a portrait of blogger and zine maker Topher McCulloch, who happens to wear our fancy hand-printed new shirt by artist J.Morrison. A good occasion to mention that you shouldn’t forget to order one right here as long as they’re still available.

The Antwerp Fashion Museum (MoMu) is currently showing the first big solo retrospective of fashion designer Walter Van Beirendonck entitled “Dream the World Awake”, which opened on September 9 and will run until February 2. The exhibition shows Walter’s work of three decades, reveals his sources of inspiration and investigates central topics of his designs. It also features a collaborative project between Walter, photographer Nick Knight and stylist Simon Foxton, who together have worked on a fashion film, which presents some sort of “best of” of the designer’s work, as well as on a huge photomontage (detail on top), which seems to be one of the highlights of the exhibition (you can watch the video below and scroll through the whole image on SHOWstudio). It  will appear as a retrospective editorial in the Autumn/Winter issue of GQ Style.
Furthermore, the MuMa also has digitalized all videos of Walter’s past collections and will post two of them every week on this page. I posted one of the first two ones below, it’s the runway show of the W&LT Winter 1996/1997 collection “Wonderland” (the other one is a rather boring video of the exhibition opening). For more detailed information about the show check out the MoMu website + there are also interviews with Walter about the exhibition on Dazed Digital and on AnOther Web.

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