My newest guilty pleasure - Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries - is like Hercule Poirot and Downton Abbey in one with extra feminist undertones in the storyline, and in fashion. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1988386/
as Christmas is approaching, I have updated my Society6 store with few gift ideas for those hunting for stylish treasures early. These are patterned Tote bags & Throw Pillows matching my patterned art prints that I've published earlier this year. Take a look, and if you like what you see, visit for more (just click on the print to see other products with same design).
In addition to my previous post on being inspired by fashion/costume history, I've found one more great archive (dangerous for Mondays) of iconic fashion pieces - an archive of V&A collections. The best thing is that every item has a very detailed summary for those interested in labels, dates, materials, practical and historic side of things. Honestly, this is dangerous for costume addicts, don't enter the page at work or if you are procrastinating on something.
Haven't written a proper blog update recently because of many reasons, including a lack of cultural impulses around me, but this week compensated empty days with tons of inspiration more than enough, because it was a week of costume history. But let's start from the beginning...
Like many others I am a fan of Downton Abbey for a while now, and, despite a lack of sophistication in the plot-line of the first season, I became one because of two reasons: a) Dame Maggie Smith playing Violet Grantham, b) all those Edwardian era costumes, beautiful morning and evening dresses by Susannah Buxton.
Next to watching Downton Abbey, I've also had a big inspiration moment because of costume history this summer while visiting Berlin and going to a "Fashioning Fashion" exhibition at the Deutschen Historischen Museum , and reading beautifully published book "Russian Elegance" earlier this year. So somehow costume history became one of my inspirational wells next to classic / ethnic ornaments, that demands more and more of my time but in some indirect way feeds my professional work too.
So having said that, there is no surprise in me googling and "pinteresting" fashion history keywords and searching for new sources of information. As I work at home, listening to lectures (instead of reading articles) makes a lot of sense, so I found this keynote speech "Is Fashion Art?" given by Valerie Steele to mark the opening of the exhibition Reflecting Fashion: Art and Fashion since Modernism at the Mumok (Museum of Modern Art in Vienna), on the website of Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) and I can recommend watching it to everyone who is interested in fashion history professionally or as a hobby, because Valerie Steele describes a chronology and conceptual development of XIX-XX century fashion in very simple terms and also mentions a lot of "keywords" (terms and names) worth googling for deeper knowledge:
Just after listening to this speech one afternoon this week, I've turned on TV set and heard a news story on an opening of an exhibition about fashions of Art Nouveau here in Vilnius. The exhibition is based on a part of massive costume collection by internationally acclaimed costume and set designer as well as fashion historian Alexandre Vassiliev and you can see original work by great masters of "Worth", "Doucet", "Paquin", "Cheruit", "Rouff", "Poiret", "Babani", "Fortuny", and other fashion houses there. I've bought a ticket the next day and gave myself a three hour-long holidays in the land of fashion history. This was the icing on the cake that summed up everything I love in historic costumes.
Those shoes and dresses, perfume bottles and hats, corsets and evening gowns, theater accessories and purses, wedding dresses and men fashions... Some of the dresses were dark, heavy and very "Anna Karenina on her darkest days in windy St.Petersburg", others - pink and light, decorated with fabric flowers, more in spirits of "young and naive Katerina (Kitty) Alexandrovna Shcherbatsky fell in love with a wrong guy", but all of them were spectacular masterpieces. While silently walking and looking to all that, I've heard a little girl, probably age of 6, who was holding her moms hand and dragging her in a fast manner from one dress to the next one and diligently repeating "gorgeous", "gorgeous", "gorgeous", "gorgeous", "gorgeous"<...> "gorgeous" about each and every dress she saw. I have to admit, she told out loud what everyone else in the room were thinking.
xxx
p.s. please leave comments with notes on good costume history sources - books, catalogs, speeches, articles, documentary films, images, archives, pin boards, etc. Thank you.
Dear Kata, this is what you promise to yourself for 2012:
Read more. Much more than before. Especially focus on reading Russian authors (at least classics) in Russian and English/American authors (dig more into both classics and contemporary literature) in English.
Draw more. Buy and fill a proper sketchbook with observational drawings, focus on faces, arms and animals, architecture. Find a way to do that in geometric but not too primitive style.
Dig deeper. In anything that interest me. Research now as much or more as I used to research issues back in university - with proper sketchbooks, also write more while researching, stop being such a superficial dilettante as I was in 2011. This promise is especially focused on researching costume history, folk ornaments of different nations, visual propaganda and advertising history history / politics in general, fashion illustration, patterns, collages, marketing basics, hand-written typography, typography in general, art history and personalities (biographies) that interest me. Dig deeper, one issue at a time.
Write more. Take out of my head all those half-stories, characters that live their own life in my head, but never on paper. Give at least few hours per week for writing, re-writing what was written, and try to write a full story, not one of those typical-to-me half stories that have no ending or too many words that lead to wrong direction and distract me from actual story-line.
Send more self-promotional cards to editorial art directors in UK, EU and USA. More than once per year.
COLLAGE MORE. After graduating from Kingston I somehow managed to work in vector all the time, and very rarely cut out something from paper and glue to other piece of paper. This is really bad, and it really starts to scare me, so I promise to actually open my plastic folder of colored card and cut-outs from magazines (the folder, that I always take with me to Moscow and back to Vilnius whenever I change location few times per year).
Try new things, go to new places.
(+ few silent promises that could not be told out loud)
Alius Makackas is a young Lithuanian theater designer and a great emerging self-taught leather master based in London. His work is already published in press and his bags are so great he will be famous and rich very soon. Visit Alius' blog for more. Be fast, write him an e-mail, order one. Leather. Hand-made. Very well designed. Fresh. These will be very expensive in a couple of years or less, so don't wait too long.
Some old work I've found while cleaning my archives - i think this would be greater as fashion accessory than illustration, but still, couldn't just delete it without posting a little note on this fox hiding in a box :)
Paper collages mixed with vector details. Inspired by folk fairy-tales and my recent obsession of folk and royal fashion, decor and ornaments. Self-initiated project for my PORTFOLIO and SHOP.
This is not the first time I'm posting something about HAIRY SOCK , accessories brand created by Lithuanian Ruta Kiskyte, but what she does is so good, you have to see it. Check out her official website or blog. Or you can just follow her news on the official facebook page.
Some of my favorite stuff from her newest collection (great photos by the way!):
Some elegant fashion illustration by Erica Sharp! Lovely classical approach towards silhouette - colourful, soft, feminine - no dramatizing, just a sunny feeling of sunny life. See more at http://ericasharp.co.uk/
this is a very special post in order to present you talented talented talented HAIRY SOCK (www.hairysock.com)
So behind this name stands Ruta - a designer with her own view towards style - beyond other things she does, she also creates wonderful accessories that she sells on Etsy (http://www.etsy.com/shop/hairysock?page=1)
and at culturelabel.com (http://www.culturelabel.com/catalogsearch/result/?q=hairy+sock) - 'one-stop-culture-shop, bringing you an edit of products currently available from over 90 leading museum shops, galleries, artists and culture institutions from around the world. Our partners include leaders such as Tate, V&A, Saatchi Gallery, Whitechapel Gallery and many more.'
check it out and buy something - soon Ruta will be so famous, you will not be able to afford this. Till then you can follow her at http://www.hairysock.blogspot.com/
