Well a couple recent forays into the Big Smoke made us feel we should highlight a few elements that we think should be given knighthoods or sainthoods or ‘national treasure’ status at the very least:

Boudicca- We attended the closing screening of the Fashion in Film Festival at Sketch called ‘Co-Conspirators’, a series of short films commissioned from various artists/designers tackling the overall theme of ‘If Looks Could Kill’. Boudicca’s contribution was so gobsmackling magnificent that we ended up staying for five run-throughs of the cycle just to catch another glimpse of their work. Entitled ‘The Library Kills’ its simply a gallery of stills taken from their personal image archive and set to music. Not very complicated but the intensity of the piece had us goose-bumped so badly we looked like a couple nervous chickens in an abattoir. What Boudicca reaches for in their work should not only be celebrated or canonised but given its own postcode and council tax. They are a fervent and shaming reminder of what UK fashion is capable of. The film will soon be available for general view in the news section of their site:

Boudicca News Page

TimeOut- The majority of culture magazines on the market leave you feeling strangely bereft, cleverly designed to germinate a seed of self-loathing into a giant redwood of credit card debt. You quietly berate fate for not providing you with a favela birth so you could pimp and drug-deal your way to Baille Funk superstardom, or send your father a resentful email for not conceiving you with his sister in a Wichitaw trailer park so Harmony Korine could propel you to 21st Century P.T.Barnum infamy. TimeOut is one of those few bizarrely generous magazines that show up to your party with more booze than they drink. They do there job so well that its often more fun to stay home and read their reviews than book a ticket. We even have a friend who regularly turns down an invitation to go out on a Wednesday or Thursday night so he can stay home and read TimeOut (!?). Though a magazine’s success is inevitably down to a team it’s only since Gordon Thompson’s appointment as editor in 2004 that TimeOut seems to have graduated from a weekly listings publication to a deeply personal London almanac capable of eliciting frightening levels of enthusiasm for its comprehensive coverage of the city and (most remarkably) its inhabitants.

TimeOut Website

The Golden Heart/Sandra Esquilant- There could be no more appropriate name for the social fulcrum that is Sandra Esquilant’s pub than the Golden Heart. We have been frequenting this drinking hole cum East End sunset patio for seven years and have gradually become friends with its beautiful matron. Having not been there recently we strolled past on Thursday night and were powerless moths to its compulsive flame. A bright young fashion pack was in residence with Richard Nicholl, Dead Or Alive frontman Pete Burns was wandering around in ragged tattoed drag and artists of varying degree of fame or infamy burbled over there bitter while the stern, generous and elegant figure of Sandra presided over it all with all the aplomb of a family barbecue; clearing glasses, settling disputes, smacking the odd punter round the head as though twisting the ear of an upstart pupil. If the sunlit corner of The Golden Heart were to sink into the ground of a given night it would decimate the art and fashion worlds (as the Marchionness did the club world in 1989) and yet unlike a host of London bars where you can watch every has-been, was-not and wont-be strut their cocaine-addled stuff, loudly discussing their latest wordwide success the Heart somehow manages to ban ego and promote humility. The very same punters will go to another bar and behave like ego-maniacal shrews (ourselves included) but Sandra’s pragmatic East End character is so dominant that a passing tourist unfamiliar with London glitteratti would be completely oblivious to the cultural titans (Hirst, Emin, Chapman & co…) that rank among her admirers. All they would see is a quiet heavingly popular pub and an elegant bustling woman clearing glasses and barking the odd reprimand with her bifocals perched at the tip of her nose.

Beer In the Evening Review

Tate Modern- Yesterday a friend invited us to join him at the Tate for breakfast. Nana couldnt make it but I joined him on the high terrace overlooking the river. As I approached across the Millenium Bridge the graffitti commissions were visible decorating the riverside wall. Gigantic, smile-making swathes of colour and form that can’t help but tickle the ‘fuck-the-system-man’ gene of even the most hardened anti-tag hum-bugger. I found some 8-year old interior monologuer had brain-jacked my inner-voice to repeat ‘that’s SOOO cool’ again and again ad nauseum as I crossed (and he cackled maniacly at the site of the 8ft flaccid penis dangling from the giant yellow man by Os Gemeos, screened from the river by some trees, this is Britain after all). After coffee on the rooftop terrace we strolled round the colossal Street&Studio: An Urban History of Photography exhibition. We didn’t leave until after five. Whatever detractors may say about Tate’s popularisation of art this institution has done more to invigorate, exhilarate and engage than possibly any other comparable gallery in the world. And if being excited by this makes me a ‘them’ instead of an ‘us’ then give me the damn keys and let me out of this ivory tower.

Tate Modern

The Skin+Bones exhibition has been beckoning since its opening on the 24th April boasting an exploration of “Parallel Practices in Fashion and Architecture”. Ever keen to display our shallower side the main reason we hadn’t visited was the simple fact of a rather weak looking title font. But an aimless stroll through the heart of London on Saturday led us past the doors of Somerset House. Following a debate on the wisdom of spending 24 pounds (for 3) on an exhibit which was tidily concluded by inquiring passing/exiting students the value-for-money question we decided to give it a shot.

As with so many exhibitions eager to validate fashion’s mission with a conceptual or artistic context Skin+Bones plunders the 80’s and 90’s with nostalgic thumb-sucking glee (and, with a few exceptions, even the post-millennial samples are contributions from designers who made their names in that era). So the usual suspects are rolled out; Alexander McQueen, Boudicca, Vexed Generation, Viktor&Rolf, Vivienne Westwood, Yohji Yamamoto, Comme Des Garcons and of course the Godfather of architectonic haberdashery Hussein Chalayan. We were sensitive to this point for a few reasons:

Firstly it would have been nice to see some of our contemporaries represented, Gareth Pugh for example or a menswear designer we have recently taken a shine to, Aitor Throup. Even some of Marios Schwab’s work could have sat comfortably here rather than relying exclusively on the safe staple of former glories.

Secondly it highlighted a topic of conversation that has been appearing with considerable regularity, that is what has happened to contemporary conceptual design? Even academics seem strangely reticent to abandon the rich fodder of the 90’s by making any kind of comment on the current climate. Does conceptual design even have a place any more? And can fashion design be conceptual without constantly referring to that golden age?

We should point out here that this exhibition makes no claim to be displaying conceptual design. It is quite simply drawing a parallel between architectural and sartorial use of space, material (be it steel or satin) and the manipulation of planes to create volume.

For Aganovich the future of conceptual design lies in the stitch. But only time will tell if we are right.

Musings and reservations aside this is an awe-inspiring and privileged exhibition. To see up close the work of such accomplished designers is enough to make you weep. Whether it’s the rustic philosophy of Margiela, the clumsy eloquence of Kawakubo, the swashbuckling economy of Yamamoto, the infantile genius of Viktor&Rolf or the historical bulimia of McQueen, to see the work and vision of a great designer is a deeply humbling experience and Skin+Bones delivers humility in spades.

Oh, and there’s some nice architecture too.

Somerset House/Skin+Bones Web page

Revealing two of the common interests at the House of Aganovich we watched ‘Zizek!’ and ‘Lagerfeld Confidential’ this week. Ostensibly two extremes of a spectrum, a master of depth and a master of surface the similarities are greater than the differences. Both are ultimately endearing but while the designer exhibits considerable insight and the philosopher seems preoccupied with his image they both seem to share a common prison of representation.

Zizek! website
Lagerfeld Confidential website

The 2nd biennial Fashion in Film Festival kicks off today. A five-venue extravaganza “‘If Looks Could Kill’ explores the compelling links between cinema, fashion, crime and violence”. Aganovich provided a catalogue illustration for the film ‘Leave Her To Heaven’, the tale of an immaculately groomed and murderous wife with a suspiciously strong attachment to her dead father. Rare films dating back to 1908 will be shown over the next 3 weeks across London.

The blurb:

“Founded in 2005 by curators Marketa Uhlirova and Christel Tsilibaris and costume designer and stylist Roger K. Burton, it quickly established itself as a leading forum for research and the retrospective exhibition of international film in which fashion and clothes play a significant part. Drawing on a rich film history from its beginnings to the present, and a wide variety of genres ranging from feature and documentary film to artist video, animation shorts and newsreels, FFF investigates how the moving image has represented and interpreted fashion as a concept, industry and cultural form.”

The website:

Fashion in Film Festival

We are pleased to announce that our long time supporters Helen Marnie and Mira Aroyo of Ladytron have chosen Aganovich to provide stage outfits for their forthcoming ‘Velocifero’ world tour. With their darkly intellectual/sexual aesthetic we couldn’t think of two better pop/rock stars to carry the Aganovich torch.

You can find details of the tour on Myspace:

Ladytron’s Myspace Page

Thanks to our recent brush with SHOWstudio we discovered the site of Jason Evans. Hardly a photographer who requires introduction but his website is giddily infectious. No miles of achievements, no slow-loading gargantuan portfolio, no ‘he took the fashion world by storm’; just one picture that changes everyday and is not stored meaning you can’t review his entire catalogue. You can’t appropriate his work and feel ‘oh yeah I got the whole Jason Evans thing’. It’s generous and stingey at the same time, extremely more-ish and, strangely, incredibly effective as a portfolio and in a discreet way asks some relatively big questions about how we use the internet.

The Daily Nice

Our short film with photographer Trevor Forrest ‘The Angels Fell’ goes live this Thursday on SHOWstudio. You can check it out here:

SHOWstudio Political Fashion

More manifesto than manicure but has anyone else noticed that you can zoom in on Guantanamo Bay on Google Maps…?!! Looking forward to them including the Street View facility…On which note we’ve been reading about REX 84, a presidential directorate signed by the supremo golly-gee King of Xenophobia Ronald Reagan apparently allowing FEMA to construct ‘concentration camps’ on US domestic soil..

Red Dawn or Red Herring? Judge for yourself with some links below:

Wikipedia on REX 84
YouTube Oliver North Video
Global Research Document on REX 84

By the way we couldn’t find any of the ‘800 camps’ on Google Maps. Must be a conspiracy…

Lauren’s an absolute charm by the way and we wish her all the best.

Handbag/Tigra

SHOWstudio’s ‘Political Fashion’ and the biannual Fashion in Film Festival whose theme this year is ‘If Looks Could Kill: Cinema’s Images of Fashion, Crime and Violence’.

And to our delight it looks like we will be taking part in both. SHOWstudio issued a brief back in November-ish asking for short film submissions that tackled the topic of the political within a fashion context with Nick Knight emphasizing a point, with which we are fervently in accord, that for him all fashion is inherently political. We chose a politics of the sexes type theme featuring Daisy Lowe and Serbo-Danish actor Momir Subotic. The film will go live sometime in the next month but meanwhile you can find out more and tune in to what is proving to be a highly interesting and controversial campaign at SHOWstudio’s site:

SHOWstudio Political Fashion

Our friend Sarah Bunter introduced us to Marketa Uhlirova one of the founders of the Fashion in Film Festival back in January. Marketa had heard about our ‘Murder in Room 158′ project at the Great Eastern (now Andaz) and thought we might be suitable candidates for a contribution to the book being published alongside this year’s festival. With a highly challenging and astute theme the festival looks to be an exciting project.

Fashion in Film Festival