DEAR FRANKY

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

isabeli fontana- vogue us december 2009

isabeli fontana- vogue us december 2009: "Isabeli Fontana in Vogue US December 2009, Blow Up.

Monday, November 16, 2009

Peter Lindbergh’s saddest town

Peter Lindbergh’s saddest town: "

Award-winning German photographer Peter Lindbergh has been described as a ‘poet of glamour’, a fashion photographer with an eye that captures the intrinsically human elements within an image – those that are so often surpassed by the opulence and excesses of adornment and decoration in fashion. With a strong history in black and white film, Lindbergh has positioned himself amongst the world’s top fashion photographers over the past two three decades, toeing a line between the commerce of luxury campaigns and the more avantgarde worlds of more daring fashion – working with Japanese designers such as Comme Des Garcon’s Rei Kawakubo, and the curator of A#2, Yohji Yamamoto.

Peter has contributed a series of stills to Yohji’s magazine, taken from a series shot in Beckley, West Virginia in the USA. These are not fashion images. The photos evoke a quiet, sleepy town – snaking powerlines through a cloudy sky, lonely reflections through window panes, shadows cast long in an empty street – all images support a harmonious narrative of peace, stagnation and melancholy.

“Beckley, in West Virginia USA, was probably the saddest town I have ever seen, but there was something interesting about it..”

Beckley, West Virginia USA by Peter Lindbergh

The new Prada Book

The new Prada Book: "

Prada Boook
Website: www.prada.com
Prada is the first book that documents three decades of ground-breaking fashion, architecture, film and art by the Prada company, including the work of the design studio and the workshop. Documenting extensive creative partnerships with photographers, designers, architects and film directors, with large scale architectural commissions, the Fondazione Prada, and the development of a new museum. More info after the jump:

Among the many features of this rich innovative book with its thousands of images are a photo-essay by renowned photographer Brigitte Lacombe, stills taken from short films documenting the craftsmanship of the factory, images of the unique fashion show environments, an overview of all Miuccia Prada's collections with thumbnail pictures of 3,885 different “looks,” collages of the most influential shoe and bags, photographs of the final product on the runway, celebrated store designs in New York and Los Angeles by Rem Koolhaas/OMAand in Tokyo by Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron, a film collaboration with director Ridley Scott, Koolhaas’s radical “Prada Transformer” pavilion in Seoul, costume designs for a Japanese manga heroine, Prada found on the street and celebrities photographed on the red carpet, and blogs expressing the almost fanatical devotion of lovers of the brand.

Prada both chronicles and epitomizes the achievements of one of the world's most influential and enlightened fashion and design companies.

About the Author
Fashion designer Miuccia Prada inherited the Prada company in 1978, and with her husband entrepreneur Patrizio Bertelli built it into one of the world's leading and innovative fashion and design companies. Prada brings to her work a deep commitment to the visual and performing arts, a history of political activism on the left, and an openness to new materials and ideas. Michael Rock is a founding partner and creative director of the award-winning design firm 2x4 in New York and Professor of Design at the Yale University School of Art. Sung Joong Kim is a designer at 2x4.

Purchase PRADA book on Amazon.com for only $78.75

Side Projects for Olivier Zahm: A Chanel Magazine and a Carine Roitfeld Book

Side Projects for Olivier Zahm: A Chanel Magazine and a Carine Roitfeld Book: "

>> Olivier Zahm, the man who recently described his trademark look as 'a disguise' - 'five or six years ago, I decided to wear this kind of outfit and behave as if I were a celebrity. It’s not out of narcissism. It’s for the magazine. For an independent magazine to exist, I had to incarnate it personally' - has been busy with projects other than Purple Fashion lately. He and art director Alex Wiederin have been working together 'on Carine Roitfeld's book' - no further details given, and he's also 'art directed and designed' the first issue of 31 Rue Cambon, a Chanel magazine - which seems to be in a similar vein as Yves Saint Laurent's Manifesto - to be distributed worldwide in Chanel stores. Featured, of course, are Chanel favorites like Lara Stone, Baptiste Giabiconi, and Freja Beha Erichsen.

Saturday, November 14, 2009

Zaha Hadid by Joseph Giovanni

Zaha Hadid by Joseph Giovanni: "

Iranian-born Zaha Hadid is one of the most acclaimed architects of this century, a woman who shot to international acclaim with a stratospheric rise that began shortly after leaving London’s Architectural Association and working alongside her previous teacher, AMO’s Rem Koolhaas. Her deconstructivist style was a revolution in large scale architecture in terms of interior layout, the use of spatial parameters and the pure ambition of reaching for the sky, with projects that hold “a huge robustness with infinite refinement”.

Inspired by Russian Avantgarde artists such as Vladimir Malevich, Zaha has been responsible for works of grand scale and abstract form across the world, including some of her earliest work being the Vitra fire station in Weil Am Rhein, Germany, to Rome’s Contemporary Art Centre, and more recently the travelling Chanel Mobile Art Container. Rem Koolhaas calls her work:

“Commanding yet graceful, the buildings all harbour huge power and huge delicacy. The buildings are like Zaha, full of amplitude and generosity.”

For A#2, Joseph Giovanni has written about this mistress of form on the eve of her 2004 Pritzker Prize win, the highest accolade in the architectural field. He speaks of her enigmatic personality that exists on as large a scale as her buildings, and her dynamic creativity that delivers a constant in her aesthetic yet never repeats on itself. His words are accompanied by Hélène Binet’s specialist architectural photography of Zaha’s projects. Not only concerned with architecture, the piece details Zaha’s interest in fashion, designing her own from an early age in Baghdad. On Yohji Yamamoto, for whom she has a great fondness, Zaha Hadid says:

“Sometimes they’re deconstructed and sometimes more tailored, and he often makes use of material folding. But the cuts are always fabulous, and he is an expert in the transformation of a piece laying flat to when it’s worn.”

One design prophet speaking of another with reverence and respect: a beautiful exchange.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Friday, November 13, 2009

Anastasia Kutznetsova - Dazed & Confused, December 2009

Anastasia Kutznetsova - Dazed & Confused, December 2009: "Ph: Mark Pillai

The Yes List - Wes Anderson's Fantastic Fox

The Yes List - Wes Anderson's Fantastic Fox: "Each week, The Daily Beast scours the cultural landscape to choose three top picks. This week, Wes Anderson's magical Fantastic Mr. Fox, a provocative Man Ray retrospective, and the Newport Jazz Festival goes digital.

Wes Anderson's Fantastic..."

Thursday, November 12, 2009

Travels to the Ukraine, by Yelena Yemchuk

Travels to the Ukraine, by Yelena Yemchuk: "

Yelena Yemchuk is a Ukrainian-born photographer, whose illustrious career crosses the fields of music and fashion photography, photojournalism and video. Based in New York and a graduate of Parsons School for Design, Yelena has been integral to the formation of the aesthetic vision of the Smashing Pumpkins, through her personal and professional involvement with their frontman Billy Corgan through the late 1990s and early 2000s. The power and melancholy of this rock supergroup has been translated with high emotion through Yelena’s lens with her blend of intimacy and alienation – the sense of connection with the eyes and proximity of her subjects that is offset by her dream-like settings.

Working with both colour and black and white film, Yelena’s style has developed not only through a technical aptitude and natural eye, but through a long journey – a pilgrimage that spanned several years and has taken her across the globe photographing personal interactions in ethnic, rural and urban life.

One series from Yelena’s travels has been resurrected in Yohji Yamamoto’s A#2, five images taken in the Ukraine of young holiday-makers at the sea and in the countryside. The serious gazes of the children seem amiss in their recreational surroundings, and gives a haunting quality to the soft, black and white images.

“I continue to be interested and inspired by the adolescents in the Ukraine. This is perhaps because I was their age when I last lived there, and I revel in the years I spent in Kiev. Or, perhaps it is just the fact that their eyes seem to have seen so much already at such a young age, almost as if all the years of their nation’s history are held in each ot their expressions.”