Feel inspired by the collaborative effort of Bart Hess and Lucy McRae, quite aptly called Lucy And Bart.
In their own words: “instinctual stalking of fashion, architecture, performance and the body”.

We’ve been working with some fashion designers recently and, doing all kinds of research, I’ve been thoroughly impressed with the creativity applied in fashion communication recently (see previous posts here and here). 
The social media expert we work with on this fashion project pointed me in the direction of Chictopia, a community platform for people who are passionate about fashion. People show what they’re wearing, rate each other’s outfits and review products. Obviously, it’s a fantastic way for brands to do some research, talk to their clients and even (subtly) push some of their products (although Polyvore seems to do that better).
And now American Apparel (the 3rd most popular brand on the network) has gone one step further created an ad campaign with the highest rated ‘models’ from Chictopia.
Genius move, yet so simple and obvious. So double genius.

I never mentioned it here and I didn’t manage to vote, but Volvo, Vice Magazine, The Independent and Yahoo ran this competition called Creative 30, to find the leading creative think-ers and do-ers in the UK. The winners have just been announced and the jury chose artist Katie Paterson, while the public vote went to milliner (isn’t that a beautiful word for hat-maker) Will Chambers. Paterson’s pieces are particularly intriguing. She makes various sound sculptures, influenced by science and nature and general cookie-ness. Charming stuff. 

But have a look at the other 28 nominated creative talents and check out their profile films. I particularly liked the work of photographer Jonnie Craig (see picture above), illustrator Mimi Leung, the beach chairs from furniture designer Max Lamb and ‘possible sculptor’ Daniel Mort.  
Nice initiative and interesting to see that a brand like Volvo wants to spend some money on this (Paterson wins £10,000 – Chambers a Volvo).

Following on from the previous post, I’m finding out that the fashion world is embracing the world of film-making in the most creative way. 

I already mentioned SHOWstudio, who have a great collection of fashion-inspired films. But what about JCDC versus Logo, a brilliant piece of animation made by French agency Four H, for the new Spring/Summer collection of JC de Castelbajac. Amazing stuff.

And what about Viktor & Rolf, who skipped their show at the Paris Fashion Week and instead created this online environment, including a full 9-minute catwalk video, featuring only 1 model (direct link via SHOWStudio)? Full creative control, plus making the ‘catwalk’ accessible to all fashion-fans. The fashion world has all of a sudden become quiet a bit more interesting to me. 

And production companies should take note, because it seems that the fashion world has a bit of money to spend. 

Fashion is a notoriously closed-off world, but even this mythical industry is now opening up to its audience. 
SHOWStudio, the brainchild of fashion photographer Nick Knight, has been an internet-based fashion platform for a few years now. Since 2006 Knight’s approach has been to show the creative process as much as possible. Very 2.0 and what-not.

I had kind of forgotten about the project, but I just rediscovered them because of ‘Let There Be Light’, a 3-day fashion shoot that had a live video-stream as well as a Twitter feed. I only just heard about it (2 weeks late), so can’t say how well it went, but judging from the (edited) video excerpts, it looks beautiful and interesting. A great way of inviting the audience into your universe.

Next: the interactive Twitter-Skype-controlled fashion shoot. “Agyness, can you give me that look again, straight into the web-camera”. 

If you happen to be in The Hague or in Holland, pop by the GEM museum for ‘Les Beaux et Les plus Beaux’, what looks to be a fantastic exhibition by Dutch artist/sculptor Silvia B. 

I once had the pleasure of visiting her studio in Rotterdam and was immediately sucked into her wonderful world of hybrid creatures and thought-provoking esthetics. You have to love someone who creates a series of gloves like this Skinover series.