Me and Phil spent the weekend in London recently. While there we visited The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier at the Barbican. The exhibition is wide ranging featuring Gaultier designs from the 1970s to the present. It’s one of the best fashion design exhibitions I’ve seen. Unlike a lot of exhibitions the pieces aren’t behind glass so you can get up close and admire the skill and meticulous finish. Focusing on a single designer means you get a much greater sense of the designer and their work, and how it has developed over time. It’s also a lot more fun than most fashion exhibitions – the curators have included lots of creative elements including video projection and a revolving catwalk – totally befitting the clothes being exhibited. The generous size of the exhibition and the time period covered mean that they have included pieces from Gaultier collections with many different themes – mermaids, religious imagery, folk, nautical, punk, animal skin/feathers. I love Gaultier’s work because it has such a great sense of humour – like the man himself. I’ve watched various interviews with Gaultier and he always seems absolutely lovely. There are lots of people I admire that I don’t like very much, but Gaultier is someone it is very easy to admire and to like. Having visited the exhibition I now HAVE to own the LP of Gaultier’s 1989 single Aow Tou Dou Zat. As you can see they allowed photographs, a few are below.
We also visited The Glamour of Italian Fashion at the V&A, which told the story of Italian fashion from the end of the Second World War to the present day. This was also fascinating but was a relatively small exhibition and due to the scope of what the exhibition was trying to cover it felt like it was only scratching the surface. I would have also liked more early (1950s) pieces which were my favourite (with the exception of an amazing Miu Miu parrot print fabric that I wanted badly). Excitingly Fashionary had produced an exclusive design to accompany the exhibition so I treated myself to a copy. Gorgeous.
While in London I also treated myself to a couple of metres of Liberty fabric from Shaukat and a Flamingo cardigan from a rather classy charity shop, both in South Kensington.
