Parade 1917

Picasso and dance parade,performed in paris in 1917
with music by Eric Satie and a one act scenario by Jean Cocteau,for Sergei Diaghilev's ballets russes.
Set designed by Pablo Picasso.





the costumes..
somewhat surreal

Picasso inspired Fashion...

1930's

http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/d/decoration-in-stage-costume/

Play Mas

In Trinidad, play mas means carnival. Playwright Mustapha Matura took the phrase as the title of his play produced at the Royal Court Theatre in 1974, when the designer was Peter Minshall, himself born in Trinidad.

The glittering lurex and metallic fabrics of this spectacular cloak capture the riotous extravagance of present carnival while linking back to the African tribal past of the Trinidadian people. Its decoration incorporates symbolic images like the dove of peace, alongside a plethora of 'found' objects including coins, buttons, bottle tops, even budgerigar mirrors and bells, which glitter and move alongside the black and gold fringe and hanging bobbles.

Carnival costumes would naturally use such found items, but other costumes around the same period show similar influences, notably Timothy Goodchild's design for Ian McKellen as Richard II from 1968, a heavy ceremonial tabard, glittering with gold fabrics, paint, thread and metallic milk-bottle tops.

Another great influence on costume design of the period, were John Bloomfield's widely toured costumes for the 1970 award-winning television series 'The Six Wives of Henry VIII,' which borrowed many theatre techniques, using cheap materials and working them with paints, resins (see The Revenger's Tragedy) and screen-printing before drawing on them (see Le Coq d'Or) and decorating them with bottle tops. On screen they looked both rich and authentic.

Decoration in Stage Costume

Coronation robe for Boris Godunov in Modest Mussorgsky's opera 'Boris Godunov', about 1910. Museum no. 2006AC9855

Decoration on a costume can range from the extravagantly expensive, like Chaliapin's costume for the Coronation scene of Boris Godunov, to ingenious ways of suggesting opulence with inexpensive materials or the unexpected use of, say, industrial substances. Oliver Messel famously used coloured sweet papers, raffia, pipe cleaners and chandelier crystals, while Lila de Nobili mixed antique braids from period dresses with contemporary cheaper trims. Others saw the potential of DIY or technological introductions, as maker Ralph Dyer recalled about Desmond Heeley and the glue gun in the 1970s:

'He used to dribble it out onto a piece of lace, trace around and embellish the lace pattern and then leave it. It came out cream or honey gold. And all those puffings on the costumes … instead of being one long strip and all caught by hand, we made an individual one and then glue gunned it on.'

Nicolas Georgiadis used materials of different types and qualities appliquéd to the base fabric to create rich and sumptuous surface texture. His sumptuous costumes for Les Troyens and Aida at Covent Garden exploited this technique to the full. Philip Prowse, too, created richly extravagant costumes, building up layers of fabrics and braids.

Dyeing and painting costumes is a particularly creative field covering creating or painting fabrics and 'breaking down' costumes - this means distressing the fabrics to make them look faded, worn, damaged, etc. A design will indicate colour, texture and pattern, but textile dyers and painters need highly developed imaginations to decide how to achieve the effects - interpreting rather than translating the design, especially when building up complex surface textures.

To achieve a specific effect, textiles can be dyed, screen printerd stencilled, block printed or free-hand painted; bleach can take out colour. A cheap fabric can be made to look like brocade or leather, and silver-painted knitted string made to look like chain mail.

Once completed, costumes may be broken down or distressed to give the impression of age and wear by tearing, burning, painting or even using a cheese grater to simulate abrasions or dirt. A costume can even be made to look like a natural organic growth, rather than man-made.

For textile painter John Cowell,

'The more processes something goes through, the more interesting it becomes. We dye a velvet and print it with something that takes the colour out, then overdye it, paint into it and maybe overprint again and those textures become multilayered - it's like digging a hole in the earth, like stratas almost … We use screens, stencils, blocks, sponges - things that we pick up off the floor if they'll give the right effect.'

Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty - About the Exhibition

14 March - 2 August 2015

 “London’s where I was brought up. It’s where my heart is and where I get my inspiration.”
- Alexander McQueen, January 2000

The first and largest retrospective of the late designer’s work to be presented in Europe, Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty showcases McQueen’s visionary body of work. Spanning his 1992 MA graduate collection to his unfinished A/W 2010 collection, McQueen’s designs are presented with the dramatic staging and sense of spectacle synonymous with his runway shows.

The original version of Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York in 2011 was organised by the Costume Institute and became one of the museum's top 10 most visited exhibitions. 

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Portrait of Alexander McQueen, 1997 photographed by Marc Hom. © Marc Hom/Trunk Archive

London

London was the epicentre of McQueen’s world. The son of a taxi-driver, he grew up in the city’s East End and left school at 15 to become a tailor’s apprentice on Savile Row in Mayfair. In 1990 he joined the prestigious MA Fashion course at Central Saint Martins. Already a highly proficient and inventive tailor, here he learned how to be a fashion designer, drawing inspiration from London’s history, its world-class museums and emerging ‘Brit art’ scene.

Working with a small, closely-knit team, he produced a series of low budget, enthralling and provocative shows set in gritty, industrial locations across the capital. He recalled, ‘There was so much repression in London fashion. It had to be livened up.’

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Jacket, Alexander McQueen, It's a Jungle out there, Autumn/Winter 1997-8. Image: firstVIEW

A Romantic Mind

‘You’ve got to know the rules to break them. That’s what I’m here for, to demolish the rules but to keep the tradition.’
- Alexander McQueen

Alexander McQueen consistently promoted freedom of thought and expression and championed the authority of the imagination. In this, he was an exemplar of the Romantic individual, the hero-artist who staunchly followed the dictates of his inspiration.

McQueen expressed this originality most fundamentally through his methods of cutting and construction. These were both innovatory and revolutionary. He was such an assured designer that his forms and silhouettes were established from his earliest collections, and remained relatively consistent throughout his career.

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Duck feather dress, The Horn of Plenty, Autumn/Winter 2009-10. Model: Magdalena Frackowiak. Image: firstVIEW

A Gothic Mind 

‘People find my things sometimes aggressive. But I don’t see it as aggressive. I see it as romantic, dealing with a dark side of personality.’
- Alexander McQueen

One of the defining features of Alexander McQueen’s collections was their historicism. While McQueen’s historical references were far- reaching, he was particularly inspired by the nineteenth century, drawing especially on the Victorian Gothic. ‘There’s something kind of Edgar Allan Poe,’ he once observed, ‘kind of deep and kind of melancholic about my collections.’

Like the Victorian Gothic, which combines elements of horror and romance, McQueen’s collections often reflected paradoxical relationships such as life and death, lightness and darkness, melancholy and beauty.

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Coiled corset. The Overlook, Autumn/Winter 1999. Shaun Leane for Alexander McQueen. Image © Victoria and Albert Museum, London

Romantic Primitivism 

Throughout his career, Alexander McQueen frequently returned to the theme of primitivism, which drew upon the fantasy of the noble savage living in harmony with the natural world. Eshu (Autumn/Winter 2000) was inspired by one of the most well-known deities of Yoruba mythology. It’s a Jungle Out There (Autumn/Winter 1997–98) was based on the theme of the Thomson’s Gazelle.

The collection was a meditation on the dynamics of power, in particular the dialectical relationship between predator and prey. McQueen’s reflections on primitivism were frequently represented in paradoxical combinations, contrasting modern and primitive, civilized and uncivilized. Typically, McQueen’s narrative glorified the state of nature and tipped the moral balance in favour of the ‘natural man’ or ‘nature’s gentleman’, unfettered by the artificial constructs of civilization.

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Bird’s Nest headdress with Swarovski gemstones, Widows of Culloden, A/W 2006–07. Philip Treacy and Shaun Leane for Alexander McQueen. Model: Snejana Onopka, Image: Courtesy Swarovski Archive

Romantic Nationalism 

Alexander McQueen’s collections were fashioned around elaborate narratives that were profoundly autobiographical, often reflecting upon his ancestral history, specifically his Scottish heritage. Indeed, when he was once asked what his Scottish roots meant to him, the designer responded, “Everything.” McQueen’s national pride is most evident in The Widows of Culloden (Autumn/Winter 2006) which was based on the final battle of the Jacobite Risings in 1745. A grand collection, it presented a catharsis to the anti-romanticism of his earlier, Highland Rape collection of 1995. McQueen’s message, however, remained defiantly political: ‘What the British did there was nothing short of genocide.’

Despite these heartfelt declarations of his Scottish national identity, McQueen also had a deep interest in the history of England. This was most apparent, perhaps, in The Girl Who Lived in the Tree  (Autumn/Winter 2008), inspired by an elm tree in the garden of McQueen’s country home in East Sussex. Influenced by the British Empire, it was one of McQueen’s most romantically nationalistic collections, albeit heavily tinged with irony and pastiche.

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Butterfly headdress of hand-painted turkey feathers, Philip Treacy for Alexander McQueen, La Dame Bleue, Spring/Summer 2008. Model: Alana Zimmer © Anthea Simms

Cabinet of Curiosities

‘I find beauty in the grotesque, like most artists. I have to force people to look at things.’
- Alexander McQueen 

The emotional intensity of McQueen’s catwalk presentations was frequently the consequence of the interplay between dialectical oppositions. The relationship between victim and aggressor was especially apparent, particularly in the accessories. He once remarked, ‘I like the accessory for its sadomasochistic aspect.’

The exhibition’s Cabinet of Curiosities, focuses on atavistic and fetishistic paraphernalia produced by McQueen in collaboration with a number of accessory designers, including the milliner Philip Treacy and the jeweler Shaun Leane. The Cabinet also includes show pieces, one-off creations made for the catwalk but not intended for production.
 

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It’s Only a Game, Spring/Summer 2005. Image: firstVIEW

Romantic Exoticism 

Alexander McQueen’s romantic sensibilities expanded his imaginary horizons not only temporally but also spatially. As it had been for artists and writers of the Romantic Movement, the lure of the exotic was a central theme in McQueen’s collections. His exoticism was wide-ranging. Africa, China, India and Turkey were all places that sparked his imagination. Japan was particularly significant, both thematically and stylistically. The kimono, especially, was a garment that the designer endlessly reconfigured in his collections.

But as with many of his themes, McQueen’s exoticism often expressed itself in contrasting opposites. This was the case with It’s Only a Game (Spring/Summer 2005), a show staged as a chess game inspired by a scene in the film Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (2001), which pitched the East (Japan) against the West (America). 

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Dress of dyed ostrich feathers and hand-painted microscopic slides, Voss, Spring/Summer 2001. Model: Erin O'Connor. Image: REX

Voss

‘It was about trying to trap something that wasn’t conventionally beautiful to show that beauty comes from within.’
- Alexander McQueen

VOSS (Spring/Summer 2001), also known as the ‘Asylum’ show, was staged inside a vast two-way mirrored box. The collection featured a number of exoticized garments, including a coat and a dress appliquéd with roundels in the shape of chrysanthemums.

Typical of McQueen’s collections, VOSS offered a commentary on the politics of appearance, upending conventional ideals of beauty. For McQueen, the body was a site for contravention, where normalcy was questioned, and where the spectacle of marginality was embraced and celebrated.
 

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Tulle and lace dress with veil and antlers, Widows of Culloden, Autumn/Winter 2006-07. Model: Raquel Zimmermann at Viva London. Image: firstVIEW

Romantic Naturalism 

‘I have always loved the mechanics of nature and to a greater or lesser extent my work is always informed by that.’
- Alexander McQueen

Nature was the greatest, or at least the most enduring, influence upon Alexander McQueen. Many artists of the Romantic Movement presented nature itself as a work of art. McQueen both shared and promoted this view in his collections, which often included fashions that took their forms and raw materials from the natural world.

McQueen frequently played upon the transformative powers of clothing. In The Widows of Culloden (Autumn/Winter 2006) a dress created entirely from pheasant feathers imbued the wearer with an avian beauty, while a razor clam shell encrusted dress from VOSS (Spring/Summer 2001) formed a brittle carapace. Sarabande (Spring/Summer 2007) incorporated both silk and real flowers, which withered as they fell onto the catwalk.

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Jellyfish ensemble and Armadillo shoes, Plato's Atlantis, Spring/Summer 2010. Model: Polina Kasina © Lauren Greenfield/INSTITUTE

Plato's Atlantis

‘Plato’s Atlantis predicted a future in which the ice cap would melt, the waters would rise and life on earth would have to evolve in order to live beneath the sea once more or perish. Humanity would go back to the place from whence it came.’
- Alexander McQueen 

Nature’s influence on McQueen’s work is most clearly reflected in Plato’s Atlantis (Spring/Summer 2010), the last fully realized collection the designer presented before his death in February 2010. Inspired by Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species (1859), it presented a narrative that centred not on the evolution of humankind but on its devolution. McQueen utilized complex, digitally engineered prints inspired by sea creatures and introduced the towering ‘Armadillo’ boots.

With its mixture of technology, craft and showmanship, Plato’s Atlantis was considered to be McQueen’s greatest achievement. It offered a potent vision of the future of fashion.

degenerate art

Degenerate Art was discovered in Germany by the Nazi regime. It was considered to be virtually all modern art.
The Degenerate Art show held by the Nazis in Munich in 1937 was one of the most famous exhibitions of the 20th century. In the modern styles of art, the Nazis would create paintings and sculptures to show racial purity, militerism and obedience. It was designed to bring out public opinions against modernism, making it humorous to the public. Such art was banned on the grounds as it was seen to be un-German, Jewish or communist, and those that were seen as degenerate artist would be forbidden to exhibit or sell their art, produce art nor teach. Some pieces would be for sale in auction, some were acquired by museums and other private collectors. Some were appropriated by Nazi Officials and were burned. Josef Goebbels ordered a more thorough scouring of German art collections after the exhibition, bringing the total number of works seized by the Nazis to over 16,000.

There were similar opinions with the degenerate music.A label which started in 1930's by the Nazi government.






Self-portrait by Elfriede lohse-Wachtler who was murdered at Sonnenstein Euthanasia Centre in 1943.

Elfriede was a German Painter of the avant-garde whose works were banned as "degenerate art",and some what destroyed by the third reich.She was killed in a former phsyciatric institution at Sonnenstein Castle in Pirna under Action T4,a forced Euthanasia of Nazi Germany.In 1927 to 1931 she painted some of her major works.The portraits of mentally ill people she did in Hamburg-Friedrichsberg and Arnsdof have attracted a lot of interest.As part of the degenerate art,nine of her works were confiscated and more than likely destroyed in 1937.

Artistic movements condemned as degenerate:

Bauhaus

cubism

dada

expressionism

fauvism

new objectivity

surrealism

miss ufo blazer

The shoulder pads..

 

Shoulders/shoulder pads are a very strong,structured fashion statement in a way that it makes a woman look powerful,fashionable,smart and in all outrageously cool..

miss alternative world work so far..