Gareth Pugh FW0910 live blog

Fashion never sleeps - and nor does frockwriter. Especially not when we’re on deadline. But another live blog calls people. And who are we to ignore it? Nick Knight’s SHOWstudio is thoughtfully providing a live stream (correction, video) of Gareth Pugh’s FW0910 collection at 5pm today Paris time, which is 3am AEST tomorrow. Join frockwriter, Bryanboy and Imelda live as we slice and dice Pugh’s sure-to-be theatrical extravaganza and ponder the second biggest rumour of the season after Alessandra Facchinetti working on Tom Ford’s new womenswear label: is Pugh headed for Dior Homme? Beyond LVMH’s statement that the company is bankrolling Pugh's shows, some believe an announcement is imminent. Today? Ironically, Pugh’s FW0910 show timeslot immediately follows that of Kris Van Assche, the Dior Homme incumbent Pugh is tipped to replace. In the interim, here is Pugh, above, in some other SHOWstudio vignettes.

05/03: As becomes obvious at the kickoff of the blog, Pugh did not do a runway show yesterday, but showed a video. That's fine and it was still a first look, however we can't help expressing our disappointment in SHOWstudio's lack of transparency. The website advertised "the exclusive opportunity to watch Gareth Pugh's eagerly-awaited A/W show, live on SHOWstudio... we will be able to simultaneously show exactly what press and buyers will see". Several phone attempts last night to clarify the exact nature of the presentation were blown off, with a SHOWstudio rep refusing to confirm or deny whether it was definitely a live stream of a runway show. We received confirmation that it was a video from Sonny Vandevelde in Paris at 2.28am (Cover It Live's time code here is one hour out for some reason). We can't help feeling SHOWstudio deliberately misled readers - possibly also showgoers. Apologies to anyone who stayed up until 3am on our recommendation, expecting to see a runway collection.

Hellboys

gareth pugh FW0910/reuters via daylife

“We have to sell the dream before we can sell the clothes” noted Gareth Pugh prior to his first Paris-staged womenswear show in September. Last night in Paris, with his first menswear collection, it was a Gothic nightmare Pugh was selling this time around. In the face of a financial apocalypse, with retailers folding right, left and centre, while others report gains – in the case of London’s Browns boutiques, a 200percent increase in the online shoe category in 2008, the more extreme the design, the better – Pugh’s attention whore couture shone like a beacon in a fortnight of predominantly play-it-safe, predictable mens clothes. The closing show on Sunday, it was bookended by the menswear season and the kickoff of the haute couture collections, which commence in a few hours' time. And the front-row presence of LVMH director Delphine Arnault has fuelled inevitable speculation that Pugh might be the latest Brit enfant terrible in the sights of the world’s biggest luxury conglomerate.



gareth pugh FW0910/reuters via daylife

Typically dark and brooding, Pugh’s debut menswear show was a hookup between Mad Max and the Marquis de Sade.

Highlights included button-down leather trenchcoats, nail-studded singlets and blousons, a shaggy goat fur gilet, a pewter chainmail-like mesh shirt over matching skinny pewter trousers, extravagant funnel-neck coats - one whose diamond patchwork leather applique echoed the trademark geodesic armour of Pugh's womenswear - and slashed skinny jeans or leggings that were so distressed, they resembled the shrouds of a cadre of post-apocalyptic zombies.

With longtime collaborator Nicola Formichetti on styling, the collection was worked back with multistrap knee-high biker boots, enigmatic cocktail hats by Brit milliner Stephen Jones and ghoulish makeup.

Pugh's Gothboy cast included, if frockwriter is not mistaken, fashion’s new dark prince, Australian Jethro Cave:


gareth pugh FW0910/reuters via daylife


Click here to see the complete collecton on men.style.com.

Gareth Pugh: "We have to sell the dream before we can sell the clothes"

gareth pugh SS09/nicola formichetti

And so Gareth Pugh, the son of a Sunderland policeman, set sail from the Topshop-sponsored fashion hinterland of London Fashion Week - and stepped ashore in the City of Light.

The show was scheduled to take place at 5pm yesterday at the Palais de Tokyo. At time of filing few images have surfaced on even the complete Getty Images archive.

The only mainstream print story I can see so far is from the UK Telegraph. With two dedicated blogs covering SS09 – The Moment and On The Runway, which have not updated since Milan - frankly The New York Times is a disappointment.


gareth pugh SS09/rene habemacher via diane pernet

The blogosphere on the other hand is burning.

Nick Knight’s SHOWstudio has one shot and a brief collection outline.

Images, but no reviews, are also to be found on the blogs of Diane Pernet, backstage snapper Greg Kessler and Pugh’s stylist collaborator, Nicola Formichetti.

The Telegraph reports that the collection was inspired by Hamlet, Millais' Ophelia and Elizabeth I (with jewellery by Judy Blame and gloves by Simon Azoulay, according to a pre-show profile in WWD - the origin of the Pugh quote in this post's title ^).

I would have added Stormtroopers to the reference mix.


gareth pugh SS09/greg kessler

Elizabethan ruffs and articulated body armour are not new for Pugh, whose trademark sci-fi opera ensembles traditionally made for great editorial – and Kylie Minogue music clips – but rarely, the retail floor.

In the shots on Pernet's blog, you can see a hint of what SHOWstudio reports were some more commercially-nosed lightweight silk and wool dirndl-length coats, as well as ruffled silk chiffon blouses.

But the two-tone collection – whose garments were all, reportedly, white at the front and black from behind – did mark some new territory for Pugh.

For once, Pugh seemed to jettison the Gormenghastian grunge that so typified his brooding early collections – and step into the light.

As SHOWstudio reports:

“the fright-club make-up was gone, as were the jokey Tranny catwalk appearances, dodgy sex-shop shoes and occasional bodged seam. In their place was a coherent, cohesive and (dare we say it) commercial collection that still managed to make the hair on your neck stand to attention. Isn't that just what we come to Paris for?”

What prompted the Paris move?

A new business deal – and a cash windfall of almost a quarter of a million euros.

In June, Pugh won France’s 2008 ANDAM prize, which is supported by the French government and French luxury companies.

Earlier this week WWD reported that Pugh sells through 22 doors internationally, including Barneys New York and Colette in Paris and will be offering his first shoe for SS09 (presumably, the chunky white multi-strap platform seen in this show).

Most interesting of all – WWD also reported that in July, Pugh established the Hard and Shiny company, selling a 49percent stake to Michelle Lamy.

Lamy is the wife of Paris-based US designer Rick Owens, who has mentored Pugh for the past two years.

Hilary Alexander reports that the founder/director of ANDAM, Nathalie Dufour, described Pugh’s fashion arrival in Paris as “the most talked about since that of fellow-Brit, Alexander McQueen”.

Pugh is the latest 'avant-garde' Brit designer from blue collar origins to be welcomed into the bosom of the luxury goods mecca of Paris.

Pugh joins John Galliano and Alexander McQueen, the progeny of a plumber and a taxi driver respectively - both of whom have commercial connections with the world’s biggest luxury conglomerates, LVMH and Gucci Group.

Their collections, frockwriter wagers, would be dubbed 'unwearable' if they were to be shown in New York.



Click here to see the complete SS09 collection on wwd.com.
My illicit backstage foray at Gareth Pugh's FW0708 show in London.
A chat with Rick Owens two weeks later in Paris.

Abbey Lee gets on her high horse

SHOWstudio

Obviously Abbey Lee Kershaw never got the WC Fields memo - that you should never work with children or animals. Following hot on the heels of Vogue Nippon’s April 2008 ‘Daughter of the jungle’ editorial spread, for which Kershaw was shot in the amorous embrace of a clutch of behemoth plush animals (see below), comes a new shoot for Britain’s Dazed & Confused magazine.

Overnight on Nick Knight’s SHOWstudio blog a series of almost one dozen posts popped up with behind-the-scenes reportage on the shoot.

The posts include a number of videos which feature Kershaw (^).

In the clips, Kershaw attempts to negotiate not only the precarious operatic ensembles of Brit enfant terrible Gareth Pugh – one tabard fashioned entirely from safety pins and reportedly weighing as much as the designer – but also a 16.3 hand Friesian stallion.

Shot inside a west London studio, with the assistance of stylist KT Shillingford, makeup artist Alex Box and hair stylist Martin Curren, both Kershaw and the horse – whose name is Castiano – get kitted out in Pugh.

Prior to the addition of a unicorn's horn, here is Castiano being covered in Pugh's black geodesic 'armour':


SHOWstudio

Kershaw appears in one video practicing “her spinning” on the ground – balletic moves which she is then seen deploying astride Castiano in another video called “A final flourish”.

The “Charge” video sounds like it’s straight out of an episode of Absolutely Fabulous.

In the clip, Kershaw is mounted on Castiano. As the horse moves, a small voice in what sounds like an Australian accent can just be heard saying:

“Where are you going??”

Meanwhile two women, apparently horse wranglers, can be heard talking directly to the horse:

“Casti - Go back darling, back darling, back. All the way. Good boy”

No words of encouragement for Kershaw – but then she's probably not in it for a biscuit of lucerne hay.

Frockwriter would like to say well done anyway.

We would also like to suggest that if Kathy Ward - a director of Kershaw's Oz mother agency Chic Management and an avid dressage rider - has not already considered conducting some wannabe-supermods-meet-the-nay-nays workshops, it’s probably not a bad idea.


vogue nippon via tfs

Inside the freak show: Gareth Pugh unmasked

Flaubert once advised you should never try to touch idols - lest the gilt rubs off on your fingers. But Gareth Pugh's not a personal idol, just an enigmatic, twentysomething Brit fashion designer whose shows are renowned for their freakish, at times sinister, sci-fi/operatic ensembles. He is the enfant terrible of the London fashion scene - an erstwhile costume designer who apparently hasn't sold a stitch of clothing but who nevertheless keeps handing London Fashion Week the images it needs to pat itself on the back as the world's most creatively fecund fashion forum.

Pugh's shows are also notoriously exclusive. Packed with London club kids and drag queens, his PR entourage, as with last season, can't be bothered replying to (at least my) requests for tickets. Last season I saw the show anyway. This time, again sans bait, I decide to delve a little more deeply into Pugh's mise en scene: the backstage engine room. I wanted to try to take a peek at what makes him tick.

I breeze past the security guard out front who is conveniently bamboozled by the British Fashion Council-issue "Priority Press Pass" in my wallet.

I walk to the back of the venue, where a swarm of people are having a fag.

Inside I find a line of models, half made-up, half-coiffed, standing in a straight line right down the middle of the room, in front of the runway, ready for a runthrough. Although dressed in their own clothes - save one blonde man, who is wearing nought but a flesh-coloured G-string - they are all wearing black pumps with perilously-high stiletto heels, wrapped like pigs' trotters in clear cellophane as high as the ankle.

To my left are several long refectory tables spread with makeup kits and long hairpieces: Pugh's accoutrements for tonight's freak show.

To my right, the clothes racks with the collection. Spying black patent leather and clear PVC, I sniff a 60s odeur. There's a bohemian posse of dressers. One has long, pink hair and they boast a plethora of tattoos. The most elaborate tattoo of all graces the entire back of Mr G-string. Someone has made an attempt to cover his body, and tats, in white makeup. Mr G-string looks like he's about to perform a bit of Butoh theatre.

I walk to the hair table and almost slip over on a giant, synthetic furball that has gathered underneath via offcuts from the hairpieces.

As I compose myself, a man walks past wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the words, "Anarchy is the key".

The music comes up and the models disappear through the proscenium to the runway.

I walk through a side door into the auditorium to watch the runthrough. I can see the models' faces much more clearly now and they are all extraordinarily androgynous, with finely-chiselled cheekbones. Apart from Mr G-string, it's in fact not at all obvious just how many are women. I later clock the model list and of the 15, there are three men's names. Pugh squats in the middle at the very end of the runway and stares intently down its barrel - like a film director framing a scene.

The models storm back through the proscenium and dive back into hair and makeup. Apparently there's a lot more work to be done. Camera crews are getting kicked out. Everyone is getting kicked out, bar one photographer from US Vogue, who I later learn has an exclusive on the show's backstage component.

Hair stylist Eugene Souleiman is directing his team to apply yet more hairpieces to the straight wigs the models are already wearing. It's an intricate affair involving three or four pieces, some darker, some lighter and layered over each other to produce stripes - a kind of geometric skunk effect.

"It's about stripes and lines... sort of Vidal Sassoon" offers Souleiman.

In two separate corners, Mr G-String and a female model, now also wearing nothing but a flesh-coloured thong, are having more white body makeup applied. He's sitting with his legs wide apart. She's standing, attempting to cover her breasts with her hands in front of an in-house video camera operator, the US Vogue snapper and a small throng of people armed with personal digital cameras, all lenses trained on her.

Artist/DJ Matthew Stone walks past. Stone and Pugh are mates - they met as students, at one stage squatted together and are part of the same creative coterie. Stone's doing the music, I surmise.

"It's very operatic, electronic, quite disjointed" he says of the show's soundtrack. "It's stark, but there are also elements of humour in it. And a euphoric finale".

The hair application continues, as does the body washing on Mr and Ms G-String. As for the facial makeup, it's also white. Then the makeup artists begin attaching masks.

They are clear plastic masks that have been partially painted black: covering half the face, or in stripes. Once the masks are attached - hard, transparent carapaces that obscure the whitewashed, chiselled faces - Pugh's models resemble a phalanx of androids.

The hair and makeup area starts to clear. The dressing begins. Pugh flits in and out of the racks vetting operations.

"I don't want to see any girls in hair! (ie the department)" announces a small man. The atmos starts to rev up.

For the first time I get a proper look at the clothes on the models and am surprised: the garments have quite clearly-defined arms, seams and zippers. Apart from one or two pure showpieces, one a Dada-inspired getup consisting of three black styrofoam tranches which transform the model into a human wedding cake, they bear a remarkable resemblance in fact to something traditionally anathema to Pugh: clothes, not costumes.

Once the models are all dressed, the backstage scene resembles a series of images from some sort of retro futurist fashion shoot taken during Sixties' swinging London. Veruschka eat your heart out.

One woman is wearing a clear PVC and black leather striped minidress. Several others wear some quite beautifully-crafted, detailed leather and pelt coats. One coat boasting a high funnel collar is in black leather; another is fashioned from plaited black leather and covered in small strips of black patent. The most striking coat of all is fashioned from layered fringes of what I am later told is black goat hair.

Mr and Ms G-String are being helped into a giant clear PVC/black leather-striped poncho and a clear PVC hooded cape and undersuit respectively. It's got to be hot in there.

"I have another show to go to right after this - I don't know what I'm going to do, I'll have to take a shower" says Ms G-string.

London art director and jewellery designer Judy Blame (a man) stands to one side holding a necklace fashioned from jet beads, black ribbons and black plastic beer six-pack holsters.

"I drink a lot of beer" quips Blame, explaining that this is the fourth time he's worked with Pugh. There is usually no brief, he explains.

"We just get together, he shows me fabrics and things like that, that's why we do quite a lot of work backstage - sometimes the outfits aren't made until the last minute" he adds. "I love working with him. He's got a feel, a sense of creativity and if you actually look into things, they are really beautifully-made, really crafted".








It is approaching 6pm - one and a half hours past the show's slated start time - and the auditorium sounds packed. I briefly consider going back outside to watch the show but as I poke my head around the side door I twig that I'll never get a vantage point, it's too crowded. I have no choice but to stick with my back-to-front perspective of the production.

The models realign down the centre of the room. The music starts. The black and white figures are pushed out into the spotlights one by one - like fledglings from a magpie's nest. I am standing so close as they walk through the proscenium, I am almost on the runway myself.

"We've got a girl down! A girl down!" screams a hysterical PR through his Janet Jackson headpiece.

Apparently the clear cellophane wraps on the feet - which I originally figured were designed to keep the shoes clean until the show - were part of the styling.

Thunderous applause. The fledglings go back out for their victory lap, so does Pugh. When they return they clap - as does everyone backstage. Having not wanted to interrupt Pugh beforehand, I make my move to secure some quotes. And am finally busted by a PR who asks who I am, who I work for and just how I got in.

"I just walked in the door" I reply.

It seems fairly obvious that this is a breakthrough collection for Pugh - who was recently taken under the wing of avant-garde American designer Rick Owens. Owens' studio, as it emerges, helped produce some of these pieces, and the collection will go on sale in Paris in two weeks' time in Owens' showroom. It's a good fit for Pugh - and a big step.




"I'm sick of people thinking it's all like wacky and crazy because that for me has tones of bad quality and nothing that I do is" says Pugh. "I strive as hard as I can to make everything well. So I wanted to strip everything back, remove all of the paraphernalia like shoulder pads and whatever and still have a little bit of that but concentrate more on what I can do. I don't have to just do these big things".

Just as I go to throw to another question, the PR cuts me off to switch to another journalist.

I've jumped the queue - I don't want to be ungracious, so I step out of the way. Besides, I think I already have the answer.

What drives creative people in London? That's what I asked Blame during the show.

"Having a good time I think with it" he replied. "We're not always the most sensible ones about money and normally we have to go abroad to nick the yen or the franc or the euro or the dollar. But we have fun doing it here I think. And there's a nice sense of camaraderie between creative people. I mean you've got Simon Costin doing the set, Eugene doing the hair, me doing the accessories, Nicola [Formichetti] doing the styling... I mean I don't think in another city you'd get quite as fertile a team as that. They'd all be snapping at each other. Whereas in London it's like, 'Right... what do we have to do?'".

Original post and comments.