Banned by Instagram: Matthew Stone's Pussy Riot protest

matthew stone via showstudio

We first met enigmatic British multi-disciplinary artist, writer, musician, DJ - oh, and shaman - Matthew Stone in 2007 backstage at Gareth Pugh. Stone is a graduate of the Camberwell College of Arts and a co-founder of the Peckham art collective !WOWOW! and his work has been exhibited all over the world. Over the past 18 months, moreover, he has crossed over into commercial fashion photography. Stone's work appears on the cover of this month's i-D magazine and within weeks, as we originally revealed, his advertising campaign for Jean Paul Gaultier's Kokorico fragrance – starring a naked Andrej Pejic – will land. But none of this appears to have impressed hipster photo app Instagram, which censored Stone's NSFW artwork in support of jailed Russian feminist punk rock outfit Pussy Riot.

Carl Kapp's couture capers in KL

via balik pulau

A burgeoning Aussiewood fanbase already lusts after Carl Kapp's chic draped silk evening gowns and killer tailoring, but now Kapp can add political stylist to his repertoire. On December 30, the South African-born, Sydney-based designer (pictured below, backstage at his debut Australian Fashion Week show last May) took a call from someone claiming to work in the Malaysian government, asking about the availability of limo parking near his Paddington store/studio. Shortly afterwards, Kapp found himself receiving a party of six and being introduced to the "the First Lady of Malaysia", Rosmah Mansor (above). Kapp was told that the group had come straight from Sydney department store David Jones, which is in its first season selling Kapp's brand. Having apparently become so smitten with his collection, Rosmah wanted to see more. After making multiple selections in Kapp's Paddington store, which was already filled with regular customers, he proposed a far more civilised private appointment. SEE UPDATES BELOW.  

The revolution will be merchandised

zazzle

One of the biggest stories on the planet right now is the arrest, in London, of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. This follows eight months of leaks of hundreds of thousands of classified US government documents pertaining to military activities in Iraq, Afghanistan and US diplomacy; a US military video that documented a 2007 attack on Iraqi insurgents that left 16 people dead, including two Reuters news staff and uncensored Belgian police files concerning a child killer investigation. Detained in custody, Assange awaits extradition to Sweden to face sex charges, which some have slammed as specious. If not extradition to the US, where he could potentially face charges ranging from espionage to receiving stolen goods. Assange, an Australian native, finds himself living a Robert Ludlum-esque plotline. Let’s call it The Bourne Embarrassment. Although in spite of conspiracy theories that WikiLeaks is a CIA psyop – which might seem to address the question asked by others, why hasn’t he been neutralised – on the evidence to hand so far, Assange is no recalcitrant spook, à la Jason Bourne. Nor is he an insider who blew the whistle. He is a self-appointed public servant who created a dead letter drop for deep throats. And no, it’s not his first brush with the law.

Death of an Australian fashion icon

bettman/corbis

Sonia McMahon only spent one year as Australia’s First Lady. Nevertheless, she goes down in history as the Australian political spouse with the greatest international fashion resonance and the engineer of one of this country's most iconic fashion moments. Part Princess Diana, part Bond Girl, one can only imagine the impact that the thirty nine year-old mother of three must have had on February 3 1971 when she emerged in “That Dress” at a state dinner at the White House, totally overshadowing Australia’s 20th prime minister and, presumably, the rest of the night’s proceedings. "My God, who is that?" Richard Nixon is reported to have spluttered, before noting – some three months after signing off on a covert investigations unit designed to put the kibosh on intel leaks to the news media - "I'll have her at my side. I'll have my photo in every paper in the US”.

McMahon got to wear the dress one more time in the US – thirty four years later in Los Angeles, this time on the arm of her son Julian at the Golden Globes. It was in fact a modified Jonathan Ward replica, created for Myer’s 100 years of Australian fashion retrospective.

The original dress, which is now housed inside Sydney’s Powerhouse Museum, was created by Spanish designer Victoria Cascajo, who owned a South Yarra boutique called Balencia Couture.

Cascajo worked for legendary Spanish-born couturier Cristobal Balenciaga for 10 years in Madrid (Balenciaga originally opened in Spain in 1919, before moving to Paris in 1937 following the Spanish Civil War). Upon his retirement in May 1968, Cascajo told The Age that Balenciaga taught her everything she knows.

The thigh-high split and cutout detailing under the arms and on the sleeves, however, were far more in sync with the far younger Paris guns Pierre Cardin and André Courrèges, as well Austrian-born American Rudi Gernreich. Against the backdrop of the Mod fashion revolution of Swinging 60s London, their “space age” styles influenced a generation of fashion designers the world over – including, undoubtedly, Perth’s Ruth Tarvydas, who has claimed Cascajo copied her best-selling buckle dress of 1969.

In September, Tarvydas told The Australian:

"I think her dressmaker was definitely inspired by my dress, it was obvious. (Sonia McMahon) really was the first Rebecca Twigley, she just happened to be in the White House."

A reporter for The Washington Post is said to have described McMahon's gown at the time as:

"absolutely smashing. I think the dress is a breakthrough for fashion and a blow for women's liberation."

It was, at the very least, courageous.

Vale Sonia McMahon.

Before Jason Wu dressed the First Lady, he dressed dolls

fashionroyalty.com


It’s difficult to gauge the impact that Michelle Obama’s Inauguration wardrobe choices could have on the careers of the respective designers. Firstly Isabel Toledo, who designed the lemongrass wool lace shift dress and coat worn to Tuesday’s swearing-in ceremony. Then Jason Wu, who created the one-shouldered ivory gown in which Obama dazzled later that evening. In the just-screened interview, below, from MSNBC’s Today show, Cuban American Toledo, a veteran of 25 years in the US fashion business, reveals that people started lining up outside her studio almost the minute the news of the dress broke (a spring version of which will reportedly hit Barneys in March for US$1500). With his gown now etched in history and destined for the Smithsonian Institute, the significance for Wu in particular seems almost immeasurable. While a designer could wait their entire career for the opportunity to design an Inauguration ballgown, the former Narciso Rodriguez intern has pulled off the feat at the age of 26, with a label that is just three years old (and apparently with a legup from US Vogue editor-at-large Andre Leon Talley, who hooked Wu up with Obama). The Obama coup is a career highlight for the Taipei-born and Vancouver- and Connecticut-raised designer – and that's a career, interestingly, which already spans a decade and covers some unorthodox ground.

At the age of 16, whilst still in boarding school, Wu began freelancing for the US company Integrity Toys and created his own line of dolls.

Now sold at FAO Schwartz and reportedly considered collectors' items, Wu’s dolls include the camp Fashion Royalty line of vinyl divas (pictured at the top of this post). In some of their sexier Wu outfits, the dolls look like they are dressed as backing singers in a Beyoncé or Madonna music video clip.

Far more suited to a First Lady of course are Wu’s fashion collections proper. Not including Tuesday night's gown, Michelle Obama reportedly already purchased four dresses from Wu's SS09 range.

Wu told the Wall Street Journal that the Inaugural ballgown “can’t be replicated - it will never appear in any form in my collection. It has to be special.”

That said however, frockwriter spotted the following two gowns in Wu's Resort 2009 collection:



jason wu resort 09/style.com

The designs bear a marked resemblance to Obama’s Inaugural gown – minus of course the silk chiffon flower and Swarovski crystal embellishments:


reuters/daylife

Anyhow, here's the Today vid:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

today/msnbc

Michelle Obama recalls the Reagan, not Kennedy, era for her Inaugural gown

reuters via daylife

Well Barack Obama has been sworn in as the first African American president of the United States and of the deluge of global news coverage, a significant proportion has been devoted to the sartorial decisions made by his wife. That is, a quite luxurious “lemongrass” embroidered sheath and jacket from Isabel Toledo for the swearing-in ceremony and a white, embroidered, one-shouldered evening gown by Jason Wu for the Inaugural Balls. Some have already noted that Jacqueline Kennedy also chose white for John F Kennedy’s Inauguration in 1961. But frockwriter feels the need to point out that the latter was a relatively modest affair compared with Obama’s one-shouldered gown. While very much in keeping with fashion trends, the one-shouldered gown proving big news on the red carpet over the past 12-18 months, the Jason Wu gown is nonetheless a risky - and some might argue, girly - choice. Not that Michelle Obama is risk-averse: she ignited debate over the red and black Narciso Rodriguez dress that she wore on November 5 when Obama delivered his Victory address. But there is one precedent. Nancy Reagan also chose a white, embroidered, one-shouldered gown - designed by James Galanos - to Ronald Reagan's Inauguration in 1981.


bettman/corbis via instyle





frank scherschel_LIFE©time inc. via instyle

Le Rouge et le Noir: Obama makes history, Michelle Obama upsets fashion police

reuters/daylife

Well that didn’t take long. The PA reverb had barely subsided after America’s next First Family stepped off the podium at Grant Park following Barack Obama’s victory speech, when the critics started. Not the political critics – the fashion police. Yes, an African American had just made history by being elected the 44th President of the United States, but some seemed more focussed on a bigger issue: slagging off the future First Lady’s dress. Which may have been designed by a Kennedy fave (now confirmed).

In attempting to ID the dress a quick check of the websites of some of Michelle Obama’s designer favourites, notably the Chicago-based Maria Pinto, bore no fruit.

The Red Carpet Fashion Awards blog has however just thrown Narciso Rodriguez’s name into the ring and frockwriter thinks they could be onto something.

Teamed with a black cardigan or knit bolero, Obama’s two-tone sleeveless sheath with criss-cross black satin cummerbund under the bust bears a remarkable resemblance to this dress from Rodriguez’s Spring/Summer 2009 collection:


narciso rodriguez SS09/style.com

But while the New York-based Cuban designer has dressed Obama on at least one previous occasion – and of course originally shot to prominence in 1996 after designing the wedding dress for Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy – his design does not appear to have gone down well in the blogosphere.

Here's a comment left by “Skye” on Mrs O, one of several blogs dedicated to tracking the style of Michelle Obama:

“Tonight’s dress was just short of hideous”.

And “Jon” on the same blog:

“Did you see the black and red frock disaster Michelle wore on election night at Grant Park? Barf! Fashion violation #1 and counting! From where, pray tell, did she drag out that fashion dreg? No style queen will she be in the White House if that was ever an indicator. Where are the fashion police when you need them?”

Ditto "Berdine Logar":

“What a disaster that dress was tonight at Grant Park. Someone’s got to help her with her wardrobe!”

And the criticism has not been isolated to niche blogs.

Noted one Gawker editor on the extremely high profile New York media blog:

“It was moving to see Michelle Obama on stage with her husband, and she's not a woman we would ever cross. She's also elegant! But what was the story with that dress? A lucky garment of some sort, perhaps?”

And Gawker commenter “MadamLash”:

“... the dress was a poor choice for TV against a night time background. Reminded me a little of one of those hypercolour T-shirts with odd splotches that show up in unfortunate bodily hot spots.”

Even political blog But As For Me! hopped onto the slagoff bandwagon, dedicating its 'Joke of the Week' to Obama’s dress choice:

“What Does A Hippie and Ex-SDS Wear To A Rally?

Answer: The Dress Michelle Obama Wore On Stage In Grant Park!”

It’s great to see people with their priorities so quickly sorted after yesterday's inspiring scenes.

(UPDATE: 1.39am. In the event that anyone checks the Mrs O blog and spots the exact same images which appear on this frockwriter post, as well as an earlier dateline to this post, please be advised that both at the time of filing, and for some time afterwards, there was no other blog post on the Narciso Rodriguez dress listed on Google Blogs between the Red Carpet Fashion Awards post - which ID'd the dress - and this post. I not only linked to the latter blog, I also spent some time finding an image of the victory podium on Daylife.com (a site which, up until this point, I have always assumed was a division of Getty - hence the original Getty credit). Of the plethora of images from last night, it seems to be a remarkable coincidence that Mrs O chose exactly the same image. Posting times can of course be manipulated. Mine is not.)

Zac Posen fashions the vote

zac posen on fashion the vote

Trust a fashionisto to turn an election into a fashion moment. Following on from the spate of Obama-homage merch from New York to Paris to Auckland (where World has just released a lim-ed ‘OBAMA-RAMA’ T) comes Zac Posen’s Fashion The Vote initiative. The New York fashion young gun encouraged any US punters who were thinking along the Obama-Biden voting lines to send in street style shots of themselves in what they wore as they voted. As the result of this so very historic – whichever way you look at it - 2008 election draws closer, Posen's results are rolling in.

Check out Posen’s Fashion The Vote site for the complete portfolio, which is being updated. Ditto an amusing intro video recorded by Posen, wearing a campaign button-emblazoned Russian sailor’s shirt, as he delivers his keynote address, complete with mandate:

“Make the future. Look good”.

Can’t help thinking Posen may fancy himself as a future politician. Hell if Reagan, Eastwood and Schwarzenegger can do it, why can’t a fashion designer?




all images: fashion the vote

There’s a mix of ages, races and genders on the site – and frockwriter is certain that we also spotted at least one child, one cartoon and one poodle.

Although the latter votes presumably don't count, with just 64percent of US citizens over the age of 18 voting in the 2004 election, candidates presumably need all the voter encouragement they can get.

Recent reports do in fact point to unprecedented voter turnout in some states.

On the subject of fashion and politics, here’s the Jacquetta Wheeler blog for anyone who didn’t spot this on Style.com’s Style Notes blog on Monday. The British model has been in the US working as a volunteer on the Obama campaign.

And here is an interview I did with Posen in March when he was out for the Melbourne Fashion Festival, in which he talks about fashion politics, complacent youth and “the American monologue of chic banality”.