Local fashion

Promotion of local talents is always a nice thing to do. Especially if you're one of the most powerful photographer couples in the world and you share a collage of Duch and Flemish baroque masterpieces through your own work.

Inez van Lamsweerde & Vinoodh Matadin, Nina Ricci FW 12

(Abraham Mignon, Fleurs dans une carafe de cristal, branche de petit pois et escargot
Jan Van Huysum, Flowers in a Basket on a marble Ledge
 Jan Davidszoon de Heem, Bouquet of fruits)

I'm legally entitled to write this blog.

From now on, I'm legally entitled to write this blog by Polish Ministry of Education.

Just got my final results in Art History. Scored 90/100. Wooooohooo!

TOP TEN (OLD) NEW FACES: Annette X

Alberto Giacometti, Annette X, 1965

This is how a genuine top model should look like. You see her once, look in her eyes and you will never forget her.

Since orange is not in fashion anymore...

The Doors, Orange Country Suite

... we can start using it according to our taste and needs.

Necromancy?

Vogue Japan, August 2012

Anja is gorgeous, Giampaolo Sgura is great and the eighties are (fortunatelly) over. So what's the point of calling their spirits? Did Japan stop making horror movies and start making haunted fashion?

It's not a Haloween issue!

Moves like Stella Tennant

A year ago "Moves like Jagger" was a party hit. But I believe that this summer moves like Stella Tennant will conquere all the dancefloors from NYC to Tokyo through Paris and Berlin.

Neither Elle's nor Gisele's body.

The mysterious body from the title is Judith's body. Judith Reigl's.

In the month when Gisele's divine shapes are popping out of the cover of Vogue Paris, it is not a bad idea to give a body itself a little thought.

What is more, in Paris, the location to Centre Pompidou, which is boasting about its new purchases being several paintings of Judit Reigl, it would be a shame to let the  images of body by this Hungarian yet long residing in France artist fall into oblivion.

These shapes are as impossible to be back in fashion as Elle McPherson's curves. However, it never hurts to take a look at the oldies, but goodies.

Judit Reigl, Homme, 1966

Judit Reigl, Homme, 1969

Judit Reigl, Drap, decodage, 1971

Judit Reigl, Drap, decodage, 1973

TOP TEN (OLD) NEWFACES: Madame Ginoux

Paul Gaugin, Portrait of Madame Ginoux, 1888

Definitely not the kind of woman we are used to see in Prada campains, Madame Ginoux resembles in a few points Miuccia herself. She emanates with unexpected tranquility and her gaze is so alive, mysterious, gentle and intriguing that you cannot turn your eyes from her face. From the first look you can say without any hesitation than she has something that so many young girls lack in - an unique personality.

Saint Sebastian, come to Paris for the men's fashion week!

Hans Memling, "The martyrdom of Saint Sebastian" from the triptych "The Resurrection" (the left wing),  1490

Oh, Saint Sebastian, come to Milan and Paris, please! With your body perfectly sculpted with suffering and nicely pierced with arrows, with your spider-like, long limbs and mysterious facial features you will undoubtedly become the biggest sensation of the upcoming men's fashion weeks! All the blue chip clients with fight till blood to get you for their shows and Hedi Slimane will cast you for 10-pages exclusive editorial for i-D afterwards.

C'mon, Sebastian, dump Jesus and join the fashion industry!

How to pose for jewellery advertisments

Lucien Levy-Dhurmer, La Femme a la medaille, 1896

Colour hunter

Look at this colours, they're so incredible that I almost get rid of my dislike for pastel! Die Antwoord, you officially made my day.

Haute couture casting

Pieter Paul Rubens, The Wedding by Proxy of Marie de' Medici to King Henry IV, 1622-1624

Marie de Medici, can't you talk to Jesus Christ and asked whether it is possible he ressurected you slightly earlier? We all the fashion people definitely need you to come back. And do so before Last Judgement. Elie Saab makes too beautiful dresses to let him die from hunger and there is no one on earth to truly WEAR his clothes. Mother of six and actively involved into humanitarian work, Angelina Jolie can cope with haute couture, but please not Kim Kardashian!

Tailoring on this level requires having at least some strenght of character. If you lack in this as most of modern celebs do, you can at most be dressed in haute couture. Let's keep it straight - being dressed and wearing are two different kinds of story.

So Lord, be grateful and bring Marie de Medici back to life. Not only Karl Lagerfeld will hire her for a show, but maybe also Raf Simons will anounce her the new muse for Dior?

Models and niggas in Paris

I do understand that weekend with "Niggas in Paris"(who actually were there yesterday and the day before yesterday) can be regarded more thrilling than weekend with art galleries in Paris. I'm not a huge fan of neither Kayne West nor Jay-Z, so instead of diving into rap, I dived into Saint Germain. Yes, this note is going to be personal. Look what I found:

Rafael Canogar, Inercia, 2009

(currently exhibited in Galerie Protee, 38 Rue Seine, Paris)

I cannot stop thinking about this piece not because it was painted by, as it turned out, a super influencial and important Spanish artist, whose works are in MoMA and about whom I hadn't heard a word until today, but because of the context.

Two vernacular stains of paint like two twin towers, massive and white, standing solidly with grace and strenght. Magnificent, monumental. Don't this forms look familiar just a few steps from Seine? If I hadn't looked at Notre Dame from Place St. Michel less than a quarter before I came across this painting, I don't think I would be so tremendously moved. Bud I did.

So I stood in Galerie Protee speechless and amazed.

And I still wonder why I link a painting titled "Inertia"with Notre Dame, which presence is not powerless at all. Why intertia when the forms in the picture seem to be rising, not falling?

I don't really know. But I do know that chosing towers in Paris over "Niggas in Paris" definitely gives much more food for thoughts.

Art history for international models

Dear models,

modelling does not only give you opportunity to stand in Christian Louboutin's strappy sandals for ten hours in a row and wear haute couture gowns. It gives you also a chance to go to museums and learn foreign languages in the meantime. Because, let's face it, if you are a model with enough potential, you will sooner or later start working internationally. So I did and here I state: from now on I will not only try to communicate with Parisian shop assistants in French, speak to my Russian flat mate in Russian, but also write this blog in English.

If I can do international modelling, why can't I do international thinking?

TOP TEN (OLD) NEW FACES: Wenus w łachmanach.

Pistoletto, Wenus w łachmanach, 1967-1974

Zdecydowanie the body. Gisele Bundchen i Elle McPherson zdetronizowane. Na dodatek the body inteligentne, bo kontestujące w seksowny sposób współczesną kulturę ubioru i produkcji. Artystyczna Camille Vallejo, moi drodzy. Choć zamiast organizować protesty w Chile, nasza bohaterka, zmęczona wszechogarniającym konsumpcjonizmem, wyskakuje nie tylko z sideł kapitalizmu, lecz i z fałataszków. Chanel, Balenciaga, Alexander Wang, Haider Ackermann, Celine, Dolce&Gabbana - tak, to wszystko marność nad marnościami, co sezon inne. Skórę i pośladki ma się z kolei na całe życie, więc to w nie warto inwestować pieniądze i energię - wydaje się nam mówić Wenus i dla podparcia tego faktu prezentuje swoje mleczne ciało z pośladkami w środku kadru.

Gdyby jednak ktoś chciał za nie złapać, dostanie ze szmaty. Z Wenus bowiem nie da się lecieć w kulki, gdyż jak siostry od toplessu, aktywistki z Femenu, wie, jak walczyć o swoje prawa.

Posągowa, emanująca mocą, o pociągającym intelekcie zostawia w tyle większość nowych twarzy tego sezonu, obficie importowanych z Ameryki Południowej oraz Europy Środkowo-Wschodniej.

Camila Vallejo

Femen