fashion
Jenny Gilbert
What price a pair of seats at the ballet? If you’re talking the latest starry Russian import then, with a few perks thrown in, you might not see much change from £800. And yet the size of the first-night crowd queuing for Modanse, a double bill starring the Bolshoi prima Svetlana Zakharova and a bunch of her pals, apparently required the erection of crush barriers along St Martin’s Lane.The evening is dominated by Gabrielle Chanel, an hour-long biog-ballet in the course of which Zakharova gets to look chic in no fewer than seven of the couturière’s iconic outfits and slouch moodily Read more ...
Florence Hallett
If leafing through the pages of Vogue is a soothing balm, Wonderful Things is a bracing full-body immersion. Though it builds on the V&A’s reputation for blockbuster fashion exhibitions, this show, dedicated to one of the most celebrated photographers of the day, follows no known formula, steering a course somewhere between retrospective and walk-in fashion magazine, without being either. At a time when curators’ voices have a tendency to be dominant to the point of intrusive, falling down the rabbit hole of Tim Walker’s fantasy world feels a bit like stepping inside the photographer’s Read more ...
Kitty Finstad
What does one wear to watch a Fashion Freak Show, FFS? On the eve of London’s hottest day probably ever, the fashion faithful still turned out in sequins, PVC jackets, knee-high lace-up boots, turbans, wigs and floral headpieces, a skin-tight silver jumpsuit, full drag and even a white beret courtesy of Mr Nile Rodgers, who must have been blushing every time his disco anthem “Le Freak C’est Chic" erupted from the speakers. Such is the influence of fashion’s favourite bad boy (don’t make me say enfant terrible…) that not to make an effort for the UK premiere at the Southbank Read more ...
Katherine Waters
Mary Quant first made her name in 1955 with the wildly fashionable King’s Road boutique Bazaar. Initially selling a “bouillabaisse” of stock it was not until a pair of pyjamas she made was bought by an American who said he’d copy and mass produce them that Quant began dedicating herself to her own designs. Fittingly then, the V&A’s exhibition is not so much about the clothes as the attitude – commerce topped Quant’s priorities, fashion was the means.The roughly chronological exhibition is spread over two floors. While the lower level deals with the early, post-war years when Quant’s Read more ...
Katherine Waters
The heart of the V&A’s sumptuous Christian Dior: Designer of Dreams is a room dedicated to the workmanship of the fashion house’s ateliers. A mirrored ceiling reflects dazzling strip-lit cases which hold the ghosts of ballgowns, slips and jackets — adjusted prototypes, haute couture maquettes — made in white toile by the seamstresses of Dior’s Paris studios before they begin work on the final garment. The pieces tower overhead, stacked in an apparently infinite iteration of shoulders, waists and necklines, cuffs. Over here’s a grouping with jester fastenings, over there, jerkin Read more ...
Katherine Waters
When in 2004 Frida Kahlo’s bedroom – sealed on the command of her husband Diego Rivera for 50 years from her death – was opened, a trove of clothes and personal items was discovered. They shed new light on the life of this iconic Mexican painter and female artist, who, born in 1907 to a German father and Indian-Spanish mother, lived through the Mexican Revolution, the emergence of Communism and the accession of America to the position of world power. In the V&A’s exhibition, these personal effects act as a prism through which to understand how she placed herself within this Read more ...
Markie Robson-Scott
Lee Alexander McQueen said that he pulled the horrors out of his soul and put them on the catwalk. Eight years after his death, and three years after the record-breaking Savage Beauty retrospectives at the Metropolitan Museum and the V&A, his extraordinary story remains as powerful as ever. This moving documentary by Ian Bonhôte and Peter Ettedgui (son of late designer Joseph Ettedgui) provides a glimpse into that soul.Full of archive footage, it’s a chance to see those stunning catwalk shows as well as new interviews with assistants, friends, models and family, some of whom haven't Read more ...
Matt Wolf
A perfectionist says goodbye to an art form he has done so much to nourish by playing – you guessed it – a perfectionist. From the minute Daniel Day-Lewis first appears in Phantom Thread, looking sartorially splendid and more aquiline than ever, there's no doubt that the thrice Oscar-winning actor (and a nominee again this year) owns this movie as he has so many previous ones. Playing the wonderfully named Reynolds Jeremiah Woodcock, a 1950s fashion designer possessed of killer charm and something darker and more unknown as well, the actor cuts a presence at once alluring and Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Daniel Day-Lewis doesn’t look like a 60-year-old retiree. He’s wearing a striped T-shirt under a dark blue shirt, light brown trousers which descend no further than mid-calf and boots laced high above the ankle he could easily have worn as a young actor in My Beautiful Laundrette. Ditto the earring. He remains as thin and sleek as a whippet. Only the silvery stubble of his hair betrays the march of time.Phantom Thread, he has announced, is to be his last film. After a screening at the Victoria and Albert Museum, he answered questions alongside director Paul Thomas Anderson and co-star Vicky Read more ...
David Kettle
It’s shameful to admit it, but it’s perhaps rather surprising that a film about a fashion photographer and designer should end up being so profoundly moving and inspiring. Lisa Immordino Vreeland’s deft biopic about Cecil Beaton starts off dancing across the surface of his achievements – his iconic fashion images; his striking photographs of the royal family; his sumptuous designs for My Fair Lady, Gigi and other movies. But by the end, the director achieves a really rather remarkable portrait of a complex, cussed and equally remarkable man, one whose work continues to exert a profound Read more ...
Alison Cole
The wonderful Estorick collection, tucked away in Highbury Fields in London, is internationally renowned for its collection of modern Italian art, with a core of major Futurist works. Its new temporary exhibition focuses on one of these Futurist enfant terribles, Giacomo Balla, with a joyous assembly of works spanning the artist’s entire career (1904-51), drawn from the private collection of the fashion designer Laura Biagiotti and her husband Gianni Cigna.The show, which is the first to be dedicated to Balla’s work in Britain, features 116 works from their 300-strong collection, and includes Read more ...
Saskia Baron
What is Personal Shopper? Is it a haunted-house horror movie, a woman-in-peril thriller? Is it a satire on celebrity and the fetishistic world of fashion or an exercise in existential angst for the generation more familiar with texting than talking? It’s all those things, and more. Director Olivier Assayas reunites with Kristen Stewart from Clouds of Sils Maria and again, she’s playing an assistant to a celebrity/actress. This time she plays Maureen, a personal shopper, picking out couture outfits and Cartier jewellery for her boss’s various glamorous appearances, skittering between the Read more ...