An interview with Bless

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Ines Kaag and Desiree Heiss, who founded Bless in 1997, exist in the design-as-art, art-as-design school of production, creating objects and clothing that both question the nature of consumption and fuel it as well with their highly coveted limited edition products. Each Bless collection starts with an object, an idea, a garment or an all-encompassing design solution for life – the Bless version of “basics” – often incorporating recycled goods as materials. They have sought out alternative business models to continue production according to their own vision, through creative funding, in some instances, via corporate sponsorship and collaboration. In this sense, they are like commodity artists, using the language of contemporary commodity culture – the buying and selling of goods – as their medium. Not surprisingly, their work sits equally well as a gallery installation, a pop-up shop or on the racks of a (carefully chosen) boutique. For the customer also seeking substance as well as style at the point where art and fashion blurs, Bless is the go-to, always ready with a new answer to everyday life that is as fashionable as it is functional. Here, we talked to Bless about their take on denim – the greatest symbol of the “everyday” if ever there was one – as well as their past collaborations and future dreams.

An interview with Antistrot

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Excerpt:

You could call Antistrot a crew, definitely, though not of the graffiti variety – the output of the Rotterdam-based collective might look like street art from a distance, but they’re really Academy-educated muralists making paintings reflective of a generation raised on a diet of magazines like Vice and The Fader, graphic novels and classic comic books and the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy. They combining pop cultural references on densely painted canvases or in epic murals, like an extended YouTube video re-imagined by a group of bad boy muralists run amok. There’s lots of sex in the form of porn-perfect female characters, who might be juxtaposed with some very nerdy-looking guys next to a Papa Smurf yogi. In another painting with a beer theme, they’ve rendered New York hipster artist Dash Snow slurping a brew. And then there’s violence: Guns, tanks and scary-looking animals. Chaos on canvas.

An interview with Threeasfour

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Once upon a time, at the dawn of the 21st century, art and music and fashion and dot com money were colliding in New York City, which had finally come out of its ‘90s recession funk. It seemed like anything was possible, and the boundaries between art and commerce were blurring at an ever-increasing rate. Being creative and making money were not mutually exclusive activities. Art fed off fashion and vice versa, and no one was accused of “selling out.” There were pop art collectives like Fischerspooner dazzling the art world and garnering corporate sponsorships from Levi’s, and Threeasfour – then As Four – who designed costumes once for Fischerspooner in the early days – were the darlings of a new indie spirit in New York fashion. Hype was the machine that fueled this new creative revolution. Then September 11th happened and the bubble burst. Art for art’s sake needed a smarter business plan….

Betsey Johnson Turns 30

Originally published in Fashion Wire Daily on August 1, 2008

Betsey Johnson’s Soho store in New York pulsed with pretty young things in party frocks on Thursday, July 31, for a very special birthday party. As guests tried to stave off sweat with glasses of chilled pink champagne, Betsey Johnson and her business partner and CEO Chantal Bacon celebrated the 30th anniversary of their business surrounded by their friends, family and fans.

Johnson and Bacon met in 1975 after Bacon moved to New York from London – Bacon was selling Johnson’s children’s wear line at the time – and they instantly clicked, both sharing a mutual glam rock style sensibility and unbridled energy to make clothes.

“We had even dated some of the same men!” said Bacon.

Johnson and Bacon officially launched Betsey Johnson the brand in 1978, on Johnson’s birthday, Aug. 10.

“We were very much in the moment every day,” said Bacon. “There was never a big grand plan, we just wanted to have a nice time, make good clothes and have a successful business.”

“When we started, we were doing everything. It was crazy!” chimed Johnson.

Michael Stipe’s “Relics” Immortalize the Ephemeral

Originally published in Fashion Wire Daily on June 27, 2008

There was something appropriate about a show of bronze sculptures on view in the black box space that is the newest Rogan store. Housed in the former Bouwerie Lane Theater, a historic cast iron building on the Bowery in lower Manhattan, the store’s dramatic interior, intensified by a sweltering late-June heat, provided the backdrop for R.E.M. frontman Michael Stipe’s latest turn as a sculptor in “Relics,” an exhibition of his bronze castings, which opens to the public June 27 for one month.

“Michael and I had been talking it over for a while,” said designer Rogan Gregory, who said he plans to do specially curated collaborations in the new Bowery space on a regular basis, to bring a different kind of element to the retail environment. In particular, he’d like to highlight the space’s history as a theater.

“I don’t want to pretend that it’s not a commercial endeavor,” said Gregory. “We opened this as a retail store. But the Bowery is known for its nightlife, and for its music. I like doing things that are interdisciplinary, across mediums.”

Calvin Klein’s Modernist Mix

Originally published in Fashion Wire Daily on March 28, 2008

Kevin Carrigan, the creative director of Calvin Klein and Calvin Klein Jeans, looked perfectly at home in a trim gray suit, standing against a monolithic plywood structure erected in the center of the Calvin Klein showroom’s stark, white interior, which he had specially constructed. The fresh, polished faces of models, in an assortment of indigo denim, tweed pants and jackets, navy coats and performance wear, were arranged on three stepped levels, as though plopped down onto an unfinished mock-pyramid for a movie about teenage tourists visiting ancient Mayan ruins.

This was the setting for the Calvin Klein Fall 2008 presentation on Friday morning, March 28, and given the longstanding association with Calvin Klein and minimalism, it made sense that the set was inspired by the sculptures of minimalist artist Donald Judd.

Donatella Versace’s New York Minute

Originally published in Fashion Wire Daily on March 19, 2008

Life for Donatella Versace during the last ten years has been nothing if not dramatic. She’s been parodied on “Saturday Night Live,” she’s publicly battled drug addiction and she’s been the primary creative force behind the whole Versace empire since Gianni Versace was murdered in 1997. With her unmistakable blonde mane, Barbie doll proportions and glittery roster of celebrity friends, she’s arguably the most visible and well-known female designer in the world.

So even if menswear collection launch in a department store doesn’t sound like the most thrilling event in the world, when it’s helmed by no less than Donatella Versace herself, a cocktail party held in her honor becomes a mega-happening, inspiring one of the more eclectic and dynamic set of guests than your average store party.

Vera Wang: Fauvist Femme

New York – Dutch fauvist painter Kees van Dongen inspired the artful, frequently stunning Fall 2008 collection by Vera Wang, which she showed early Thursday morning, Feb. 7, in Bryant Park. Van Dongen’s charged portraits of women, with their crimson lips, emotive, smoky eyes, and draped in loose folds of richly colored fabric, proved to be a ripe starting point for Wang, who was an art history major in college. Wang’s collections exude romantic eroticism in a way that is as sensuous as van Dongen’s paintings are.

Fauvism (“les fauves” or “wild beasts” was how this circle of artists was known, Henri Matisse and Georges Braque among them) is characterized by strong brush strokes and vivid colors in their depictions of French bohemian society.

In van Dongen’s paintings, silk stockings might peek out from underneath a lifted hem. For Wang, opaque stockings could be viewed beneath sheer slips of silk gauze, with an overpowering allure of transparency taking hold. That which is revealed (the legs) still remains concealed.

Marc Jacobs: The Emperor’s New Clothes

Originally published in Fashion Wire Daily on Sept. 11, 2007.

The Marc Jacobs show started two hours late last night, but then again, who ever expects it to start on time? All the conventions of a typical fashion show are hardly the point at Marc Jacobs, one of the only designers in New York who can get away with doing just about anything he wants and still retain pope of American fashion status.

Indeed, it’s almost like taking a semi-annual trip to church to worship at the altar of MJ. For good reason. Whether you love his collections or hate them, they have a way of setting the tone of the season. And because he and his people are so clued into what’s cool, you are pretty much guaranteed to find out what trends to expect from fashion in the next six months. Will it be Wednesday Addams goth punk? Grunge? Soviet Constructivist? Jacobs had everyone waiting at the edge of their steamy seats for his Spring ‘08 presentation, held in the Lexington Armory, wondering what would happen next.

Shana Moulton Wants to Believe

Originally published in Blend (Netherlands) Issue No. 30.

“I’m completely convinced that I’m almost a diabetic, even though I’m really careful,” says video artist Shana Moulton, who as an undergrad once did a performance where she covered her face with a caramel mask, waited for it to dry, peeled it away and ate the entire mask. Then she washed everything off in a basin filled with white sugar. “I was almost puking,” she says, and explains how at the time, she’d just learned her parents had Type 2 diabetes. So her self-professed hypochondria isn’t completely unfounded. In Moulton’s ongoing video series, Whispering Pines, she plays a character named Cynthia, an alter ego who is plagued with a variety of illnesses, perhaps more imagined than real. She’s constantly looking for a cure, or some kind of answer to all her problems. Cynthia tries everything from beauty products promising miracles, to water fountains spouting New Age energy speak, to an Avon lady hand healer. It’s these illnesses and the subsequent remedies that are the catalyst for Cynthia’s fantastic escapist adventures through the looking glass. Whether Cynthia actually finds liberation – or salvation – is unclear, and the video’s low-tech aesthetic and over-the-top citric acid color scheme make the viewer feel a little loopy, as though you’ve just stayed up all night, bleary-eyed, watching cable access infomercials for crystal-wielding psychic healers. Moulton grew up in Northern California, a hotbed of spiritual self-help and seekers of healthy alternative lifestyles, but she’s recently moved to Brooklyn. We meet up around the corner from her house just as she’s finishing the final edits of her latest video, “Sand Saga,” to discuss Cynthia’s fate, New Age kitsch and why Kombucha tea is Moulton’s new hope in a bottle.