NANO Future - Fashion TRENDSETTED

As most of the designers stay in the safety of the good old tradition, some do dear to experiment with new materials and techniques. And that's what I like to call a real designer a real avant garde and a real trendsetter.
At the time of nanotechnology materials and many new possibilities just a few dare to explore, or more or less, the ones that do have the possibility to play with these future materials. But soon to be the design will be all and only about these new materials.
But I do have to admit, I didn't expect Marks & Spencer to go out on the market with tech clothes before the most of the designers did! But no worries, fashion designers do follow, or at least try to. Far from the eyes of the mainstream and far the high street market. One of the first to get involved is certainly Angel Chang that made a kick-start collaborating with hi-tech gurus, back in the 2007, continuing with collections for 2008 but it seems that the designer is to busy partying lately the scene of NY to continue the work. The preview for the SS2011 is on but no collection on the site.
My question is, when will the designers, follow the conceptual ideas of Philips design and other companies already patented the technology for fashion. Not to mention a simple usage of smart fabrics that cant get dirty or don't need ironing, that appeared on the market from 2007. Imagine no dry cleaning and ironing, and no risk for our favorite couture to get ruined!
Guys, wake up its 2011, time to rethink design and catch the step with future and technology.

Just as an example of tech design and smart clothing are the designs of the amazing Husseyn Chalayan.
www.husseinchalayan.com

Sotiris Georgiou - Multidimensional

During the 13th Athens Fashion Week this video has been presented. All compliments to the team! Effex! Finally the Greek scene presents a hi quality work that goes out of the concept of what we are used to seeing around here. Congratulations and I hope the rest of the creative people in Greece will follow soon. Finally crisis is just the state of mind, and if we treat it like that, we can go further and beyond. My compliments to the designer too!

Dirty Housewives

Dirty Housewives project embodies a sadistic and unchained transformation of housewives daily slavery tools, revisited as wearable trophies.

Pictures refer to the four different materials used (Brooms, mops, steel scourers and sponges). The collection includes twelve items: one t-shirt, one dress and one accessory for each material.

The Dirtyhouse ideals grow from the will to smash the social axioms about the connection between humans and domestic walls promoting new beliefs where caos means order, impulses mean spontaneity and rebellion stands for fervor.

This project just one of the of expressions of the concept that manifests itself thug the gerneral dirsuption fo the role of daily life objects. (under construction)

Julie Johnson, illustrating fashion

After graduating from art school, which included graduate study at Parsons School of Design in New York City, Julie Johnson’s fashion illustration career began in the early 1980’s by doing ads for Bloomingdale’s department store.

Over twenty years later, she was hired to do ads for the store again under completely different creative directors, who still recognized the beauty and skill of her individual, fresh fashion illustration style.

Awards for her work have spanned the decades including those from Communication Arts Illustration Annual in 1984, Society of Illustrators “Best of Fashion Illustration” for three awards in 1993, and again in 2006 for Best of Illustration. She considers her full roster of clients award enough and enjoys drawing fashion more than anything.


“It’s the combination of colors, line and shape with the human form and the personality. Nowhere but in fashion, do you get that explosive combination,” Julie says. “Not only do I love drawing fashion, but I love the people that stand out as personalities in fashion, who exude their own creative, and oftentimes, outrageous style. Dancers, performers and anyone who is comfortable in their own skin are also favorites of mine to draw.”

Her skill at drawing the figure has pulled her into other areas for clients such as book covers for romance novels by Jackie Collins. Her portrait of Anna Wintour for the cover of a book on the fashion editors life was captured in a few quick strokes of brush and ink. Her work has been seen in the Wall Street Journal, Fortune Magazine, the New York Times, Womens Wear Daily, and on posters, beauty products, and inside books by Oprah Winfrey.

Julie Johnson has lived in both New York City and San Francisco for over twenty years. She is now settled in the Midwest of the United States, enjoying how the internet makes it easy to find clients internationally and working out of an art studio that is converted from an old brick school house in the middle of beautiful farmland.

During the month of April 2010, look for her work to be on billboards and walls throughout New York City’s Union Square subway station. Eighty-eight separate ads will showcase her fashion drawings for Filene’s Basement, a discount retailer in the United States.

For more of Julie Johnson’s work, click on the links below.

www.juliejohnsonart.com
www.lebook.com
http://juliejohnsonart.blogspot.com
www.facebook.com/pages/Julie-Johnson-Art

Kikka&Kitten, get dressed for success by Shu Uemura

Milan design week 2010 is showing up this year full of surprises and unmissable events such as the design combined with the make-up signed Kikka & Kitten by Shu Uemura.

The Colombian designer Ericka Olaya Andrade - Kikka pays homage to nature, proposing on her creations the spectrum of rainbow colours.

As always Kikka’s kittens dressed with fabrics and natural materials, innovative and eco-friendly, from cashmere to organic cotton, felt to the renewable tissues Ingeo ®, some of which are selected in the international platform ecosustainable CLASS (Creativity Lifestyle and Sustainable Synergy).

Following the motto of the legendary Japanese make-up artist Shu Uemura art of beautiness, Kikka&Kitten exceeds the boundaries of imagination by giving her kittens to the make up artist beloved by Hollywood stars, creating exceptional artworks under which combine art, nature and Design.

DaRousso in CHEW Magazine

One big apology for being late to let You know whats going on. I've been in a terrible mess with my dissertation.... But that doesn't stop things from rolling. And I'm proud to announce that our work has been published in CHEW Magazine, The red issue under the title THE PRINCESS OF THE RED KINGDOM on pages 86-91. Check it on http://www.chewthemagazine.com/. Its easy and free, just register and sign in, and believe me its spam free. It is a serious on-line magazine for fashion and art.
The Shooting took place in Greece actually tree months ago, but we couldn't announce it before the magazine was out. Even the clothes are DaRousso, not all the designs are a part of collections but were specially made for the shoot and are available upon request. The rest are mainly from the fall-winter 2009-10 collection Papermoon.

Congratulations to the whole team for creating THE PRINCESS OF THE RED KINGDOM. Thanks to Marina for wonderful Make - Up, thanks to Fenia for being patient and bringing her soul in everything she does, thanks to Liss for being so inspirational and wonderful. It was such a pleasure working with You guyz!

Fashion Invasion

Just before the DaRousso show on AXDW, we did a wonderful photo-shoot. When I say we, I mean Fenia Lampropoulou, photographer and a dear friend, and also Marina Koutsoumpa, make up artist and a friend. We were shooting with an excellent model Tyrin Achiele from Fashion Cult.

It really was hard to shoot in the rain in the cold that day. And we just couldn't call it off because it was 2 days before the Show and we needed the material for the show.

The styling of the shoot was the alien woman look: hair was shaped into the elongated profile of the extraterrestrial head shape. The face was matte and pale with flesh color rouge lips and dramatic, super eyes. Eyes had a deep distant look, somehow calm and indifferent - clean! The characteristics of the face are in the second plan, the make - up brings out the superior, strong and indifferent physics of a creature from another planet. The move and the feeling of the whole shoot was different.

I didn't wanted to follow a fashion shoot cliche. That was easy. We tried to move the philosophy behind the collection trough the actual mood of the shoot. This is why the general expression of the model is observatory, relaxed and powerless, and finally upset and angry. Just like I really picture a felling of facing the human degradation, natural destruction and economical crisis that we all witness today, and which inspired me to design this collection.

The shoot took place in nature, no industrial surrounding (been there- done that), because the nature gave the perfect frame for the whole story.
If anyone would notice that each landscape has something....... that just spoils the picture of a perfect nature balance: the cloudy sky, land erosion, metal sticks in the beach, the dry broken bamboo like plants, the tree that has dramatically shaped roots and it is growing from the side of the hill, dry, naked roots......

It is all a message to be passed, the message that fashion is not just being pretty, its not just about beauty, it is about passion and awareness, it is about passing a message. This is my fashion, right now that is how I feel. This time I designed not consulting the trends or fashion forecasts. I let myself free and I designed consulting life and world around me.
Hope You take the message.

The story

Finally the material from the "Burnt dreams" is in! The first story of our Spring Summer 2010 collection is completed. Congratulations to the whole team : Fenia Lampropoulou photographer, Marina Koutsoumpa Make Up, Liss Bouwens model and me, Dusanka Duric designer, hair and styling.

 We already talked about the inspiration on the theme and its complete philosophy in the post "Somewhere on the edge" that gave us a starting point of our story telling in hope that we'll awake awareness on certain issues around us, awareness that shall contribute to the salving the problems leading to the ecological catastrophe and to the destruction of life.

 

The story again promotes the individuality and personality, its totally against uni-formation of style and the tendency of identifying ourselves as a part of a group. Yes we all belong to a certain group, but is it really necessary to give up our personal expression  because of that? In the age of variety and no utilities why do we tend to create them? Is it a safe ground to walk on, or would we feel much more comfortable to walk proudly expressing our own individual sense of style, our personal interpretation of beauty and fashion?

Just looking into the past, when a man lived more closer to his nature to himself, can't we find many answers to our modern problems? As we reached the peak in development as a civilization, we reached the bottom of the moral existence and respect towards one another. We reached a peak in exploitation in terms of survival, where the target justifies the mean and where we stopped caring at all about anything around us.

Its like putting up a show each time we walk out on the street with the style that is not an expression of a personality but a manipulated choice by the desperate battle to make an impression and a statement. Just a step back away from the ordinary and a step further into ourselves would make more than an impression and would certainly make a hell of a statement.....

Introducing the Fashion Ideal

The Fashion Ideal, was just a thought - a thought to connect with all the mind-like people in the business that share the same passion for art and its creation. And suddenly there was an idea to try to reach for them. So many scattered, lonely souls around this planet that somehow do not fit into the industry just because they don't believe in the creative exploitation of others, and never the less the being creatively exploited by others. Our society is based on certain rules, even more the fashion world is based on "certain rules". These rules clearly point to the integration and belonging to a group, or otherwise there is no survival. Finally, the theory says that in the age of communication, we are able to create our own group, our own little fighting brigade and break the rules of exploitation, creativity destruction and only self-preservation. Is it really possible?