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Black Coffee’s Jacques van der Watt and Daniça Lepen are the worthy winners of the 2009 Mercedes Benz Award for South African Fashion Design (clothing). Their otherworldly installation is dense with African analogy but looks to the future. Now all I want is to miraculously stretch so I can float away in one of these. Catch the exhibition before it goes to Berlin at the Seippel Gallery ( cnr End and Pritchard street in Joburg – today, tommorow and Monday)
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(Pic credit: Moeketsi Moticoe)
I like what they had to say about their winning design – read it after the break Read More…
The IFP has warned that South Africa risks becoming a banana republic.
I have mixed feelings about this. I like Banana Republic’s sharply-tailored smart-casuals. But I’m not sure you get enough bang for your buck.
The jewellery in particular looks like it looks more expensive than it is, when actually it is pretty expensive, considering what it is.
I once bought a delicate but very wearable resin necklace as a gift.
“It’s beautiful. You shouldn’t have.”
“Cost me forty quid.”
“Oh. You shouldn’t have!”
Locally, Stuttafords stocks some Banana Republic, Gap (boring) and FCUK.
(Picture: eko)
Bracing myself for the sodden dash to Kauai, I’m almost ready to capitulate and buy an umbrella. Paul Smith often bores me, but I really love the number below – amazing how warping the lines is all to takes to make the fabric so visually arresting. And it strikes a nice compromise between the old, stately and expensive and the young nifty and cheap.
Speaking of water:
Felu Kuti is probably the artist I’d most have wanted to watch live.
I saw Femi and his band last year, which was inspiring, but the crowd turned electric only on the closing number, when he played a song by his great father.
- s (shout out to YB)
Bryant Park here come the Africans. I just got the following press release and I give it to you verbatim with an added bonus- LCD Sound Systems:
Stoned Cherrie to Show at New York Fashion Week, February 13, 2009
Stoned Cherrie, the South African fashion label, will be showing on schedule at Bryant Park during New York Fashion Week as part of the inaugural This Day/Arise Magazine: African Fashion Collective 2009.
“I’m incredibly excited about this opportunity,” says Nkhensani Nkosi, Founder & Creative director of the distinctly Afro-Urban label. “I’ve always dreamt about having this kind of platform for Stoned Cherrie and it launches us directly onto a world stage.”
The Arise/This Day: African Fashion Collective 2009 is the initiative of Nduka Obaigbena, This Day publisher and editor-in-chief of Arise magazine. Read More…
One of these Paul Smith babies.
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(Pic: Judy Lelliot)
This week’s Sunday Times printed a piece from the London Times on the Cialdini effect, which states, very basically, that a disordered environment can lead to disorderly, or even criminal, behaviour. A response, as advocated in the seminal 1982 ‘Broken Windows’ essay, is to keep neighbourhoods scrupulously clean and maintained. If a few windows are broken, soon vandals will break some more, culminating in all sorts of anti-social activities.
Unfortunately, the ST article was illustrated with a photograph of a person walking past some striking graffiti, with the following caption:
Well sort of Sanlam SA Fashion Week is sadly not flying Simon and me out to that delightful city, but we are all going to vicariously experience the joys of Paris through the eyes and blogging talents of three of SA’s top designers Clive Rundle, Karen Ter Morshuizen of Lunar and Ephraim Molingoana of Ephymol.
They arrive in Paris today in the thick of Paris Fashion Week for a ten day stay. The idea is to spearhead a research collaboration between the Sanlam SA Fashion Week (SSAFW), a leading French design academy – GIH Mode and the Department of Arts and Culture (DAC), to make international fashion industry savvy available to South African designers. For ten intensely exciting days they will get the inside track on important aspects of the European fashion design and retail environment under the expert guidance of GIH tutor, Marie Faure.
The Frock Report is proudly collaborating with the intrepid three, we look forward to experiencing the delights of Paris with daily updates from each designer. I believe they are off to a heady start with some intensive market research this morning – in other words they are going shopping.
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DAY 1….
Read more about the programme after the break . Read More…
Paris Haute Couture started counterintuitively on Monday – John Galliano for Dior set the frothy tone.
“So much for austerity chic” said Suzy Menkes
It’s been fantasy all round – Gareth Pugh at the other end of the spectrum romanced the goths at the closing Menswear show – this Vogue.com blog post says it all.
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So here is the proof – aah how sweet – if you want a blow by blow account of Coco’s top model life – she is obliging by putting it all out there on her blog Oh So Coco for you…
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