This week the Fashion and Textile Museum opens a new exhibition that takes a look at the literature adored by fashionable women since the 1950’s. Curated by writer and journalist Sarah Vine the selection features novels such as Bonjour Tristesse, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Couples, Lace and The Secret History. The fiction in question has been choosen from the archives of Penguin Books, displayed together with designs by British couture house Bellville Sassoon, they explore the changing taste of some of Britain’s most glamourous women across six decades. With both literary classics and conterversal titles alike, authors such as L.P. Hartley and Truman Capote to Shirley Conran, Marian Keyes and Zadie Smith are highlighted, giving us an alternative view into a certain social history.

‘The design of Penguin paperbacks has always both captured and contributed to the visual culture of the day, connecting writers both old and new with the contemporary reader,” says Joanna Prior, Managing Director of Penguin General.  “This selection of novels, alongside the glamorous Bellville Sassoon dresses on show, provides a glimpse of what the fashionable, style-conscious woman was reading during these decades.’

Fiction in Fashion is open until 11 January 2014.

www.ftmlondon.org

Tags: fashion and textile museum

British label, Casson London, was born out of the desire to provide easy-to-wear urban style staples with a cool contemporary design aesthetic. Hannah Casson and Ben Fletcher create minimalist styles with an unmistakable London edge. The line takes super-soft, comfortable jersey fabric into designs ensuring the highest of quality.

This unisex printed t-shirt range, modelled by Lizzy Jagger, takes inspiration from music and London life. Casson has quickly become a firm favourite amongst a devoted London crowd including; Cara Delevingne, Sam Smith, Adwoa Aboah and Chelsea Leyland to name a few.

The label prides itself on its collections being made in Britain. Any outside sourcing is always checked by the Fair Wear Foundation of Ethical Trade and Justice for Workers. £1 of every T-shirt sale on their website is also donated to London based charity Kids Company.

cassonlondon.com

Tags: Casson London

One has been able to spot jumpers, skirts and hats from the French fashion house KENZO, outside Fashion Week the last couple of seasons. It seems like everyone wants to wear something from their modern tailoring, innovative sportswear and creative prints.

In November this year they are launching a new bag. KENZO’s street chic Parisian heritage meets laid back west coast cool in the House’s new timeless handbag, Kalifornia.

Kalifornia brings their urban sensibilities, honed in downtown Manhattan, together with the spirit of sun-drenched afternoons between the shore and the pavement.

Kalifornia is relaxed, yet precise, blending KENZO’s French atelier craftsmanship with Humberto and Carol’s pacific coast nonchalance. The soft, deconstructed design is punctuated by two “K“ zip details flanking either side of the bag that double as pockets, an ode to the ultimate biker’s perfecto.

The bag is available in multiple colour ways including biker black and racer red.

kenzo.com

Tags: Kenzo

Struggling with the demand to be everywhere and everything at all times, (despite having only the ‘capacity to exist in one point in space and time’) Jenna Sutela is a Helsinki based writer, curator and New Media experimenter who has recently probed discussion by creating the ‘living’ media project, New Degrees of Freedom (2013).

Realised with graphic designer (and frequent collaborator) Johanna Lundberg, the project, existing offline and online, entails the creation of an avatar that transitions back and forth between real and virtual space. Featuring contributions from fields such as architecture, programming and music, the body (avatar) continuously alters its presence, acquiring a new flexibility. As the divisions between online and offline, work and non-work, presence and absence dissolve, Sutela offers a refreshing take on what actually defines the body today.

On New Degrees of Freedom there’s a line that reads ‘every new link between one’s online and offline identities removes a “degree of freedom”‘…edging towards the implications of Zuckerberg’s claim ‘you have one identity’. Is a singular identity the ultimate prison?

I guess Zuckerberg’s notion originally referred to the blurring of boundaries between private and working life. In that case, my question would be – when everything is turning into work, is there anything that’s not work? What could non-work be? How can it be enabled? To me, his statement also speaks about how the freedom to invent identities has disappeared together with the Internet turning into a visual arena where we are exposed to constant imaging, surveillance, and the workings of information economy. The idea of adding degrees of freedom to our existence by means of real-life avatars can be read as an attempt to obscure our behavior in real space, leading inconsistent lives, or atomizing our presence in order to refuse the identity politics of marketing communications. It’s time to assume physical formlessness.

Your projects span across both the digital and physical – what medium do you most enjoy working with?

I have worked on several printed publications before, such as artist’s books, and these objects continue to appear magical to me. However, the experience with New Degrees of Freedom, producing a sort of living medium and including performances and installations, feels even more relevant right now. It has allowed me to explore narrative constructions beyond the physical limitations posed by pages and screens, ephemeral stories and illustrations. I find this interesting in the face of a general information glut.

Do you think the separation between the real and virtual is a permanent one?

I believe that there is a constant oscillation between the real and the virtual – between what can be imagined and the dimension that imagination has in reality. For example, digital technology once had an alien quality in our lives, but now it represents the norm. And what happens on the Internet also changes our relation to its surrounding world.

ADD METAPHYSICS is a publishing project that thinks about the digital through materials and vice versa – what drew you to this subject in particular?

I was asked to edit a publication at a digital fabrication laboratory where artists, designers and architects meet mechanical engineers and material scientists. The publication was to spur new subjects and perspectives for approaching the shared workspace between digital representation and physical realization. ADD METAPHYSICS turned out something like an experimental foundation course on digital materiality: a schoolbook of sorts, with invited essays and assignments around topics such as the autonomy of objects, the ‘mediality’ of matter, reproduction as a site for revolution, the ideological origins of computational design…

How important do you think it is to think about the digital in terms of materials and ‘the physical’ rather than as something formless?

The Internet, for one, depends as much on material and energy as it depends on information. A network of machines and cables supports our online activities. It’s a jungle of conducting, reflecting and insulating materials—an air of electromagnetic radiation and solid residues, mixing with atmospheric currents and bodily fluids—inseparable from the Earth’s geo-processes.

Text by Monique Todd

New Degrees of Freedom, Act 2: The Spirit of a Real-Life Avatar(2013) at Antagon art event. Photos by Hertta Kiiski.

Tags: Jenna Sutela, Johanna Lundberg

Penelope Lively wants to reinvent our idea of widow. Her new book Ammonites & Leaping Fish: A Life In Time was published last week, written ‘from the view of old age’. In a piece for the Telegraph on Sunday’s Stella magazine, Lively writes ‘I had more than 40 years of coupledom; to find yourself alone after that is to feel curiously curtailed, as though now you are only a half, no longer a whole.’ She has had to adopt a whole new way of living, and she is not alone. It is a common known fact that women outlive their male counterparts, and she reflects ‘life expectancy for women in this country is 82, for men – 78. But in reality, looking around, the gap seems more pronounced.’ She believes widows of today are a force to reckoned with – they’re in better health and want to spend their time being active and engaged, ‘I look around at my widowed friends, and the stereotype evaporates: one is a briskly busy academic, another writes books that are read around the world, another – at 85 – is a sheep farmer’. Not Victorian matriarch’s dressed head to toe in black then.

Ammonites & Leaping Fish: A Life In Time is available from Penguin Books now.

Text by Beccy Hill

Tags: Penelope Lively, Penguin Books

Yesterday Rizzoli Publishing released a book about the legendary editor in chief, Diana Vreeland.

Diana Vreeland Memos: The Vogue Years gives us a look behind the scenes when Vreeland became editor in chief of Vogue in 1963, where she initiated a transformation and shaping the magazine into the dominant U.S. fashion publication.

Vreeland rarely held meetings and communicated with her staff and photographers through memos dictated from her office or Park Avenue apartment. This extraordinary compilation of more than 250 pieces of Vreeland’s personal correspondence—most published here for the first time—includes letters to Cecil Beaton, Horst P. Horst, Norman Parkinson, Veruschka, and Cristobal Balenciaga and memos that show the direction of some of Vogue’s most legendary stories.

Each chapter is introduced by commentary from Vogue editors who worked with her, giving readers a truly inside look at how Diana Vreeland directed the course of the magazine and fashion world.

Buy your own copy from rizzoliusa.com

Tags: Diana Vreeland, Rizzoli New York

Quentin Jones is a London-based illustrator, a Cambridge philosophy graduate and one of fashion’s brightest young filmmakers, specializing in a cartoonish style of surreal photo-montaged animation.

In connection to Fashion Week earlier this month, Louis Vuitton released a new accessories film, directed by Quentin. Through her signature aesthetic, illustrative bold lines and pop colours brings the rings, sunglasses and belts to life. The film is styled by Fashion Editor Agata Belcen.

quentinjones.info

Tags: Louis Vuitton, Quentin Jones

Paul Smith is about to display a new series of photographic work by London-based artist Walter Hugo at the Albemarle Street shop. The exhibition, titled We Are An Island opens to the public on October 16 to coincide with the Frieze Art Fair London.

The show will bring together two major series of works that have never before been shown in their entirety. The exhibition space will host Reflecting the Bright Lights, a collection of portraits of inspirational and creative peers from the worlds of performance, art and fashion captured in silver nitrate on glass sheets. With luminaries like Eddie Redmayne, Alice Dellal, Carson McColl, Polly Stenham, Maia Norman and Jaime Winston captured by Hugo’s 1870’s lens, Reflecting the Bright Lights creates a portrait of today’s cultural pioneers.

The second series, The Nature of Interdependence, is Hugo’s 10-piece series of giant seascapes depicting the shores of Britain and will be on view upstairs at Albemarle Street.

Walter Hugo is a multi-disciplinary artist, working within the mediums of sculpture, 19th century photographic process, film and performance. He frequently teams entrancing expressions of beauty with the application of complex methodology or scientific research and process.

paulsmith.co.uk

walterhugo.co.uk

Tags: paul smith, walter hugo

From today one can see the young British Goldsmiths graduate Phoebe Colling-James’s first solo exhibition at the Ritter/Zamet gallery in London.

The show’s title is inspired by the wise and endlessly rich oeuvre of seminal American writer James Baldwin. It thus sets the tone and mood for Collings-James’ exhibition and her continuous concern with racial and gender-based inadequacies played out against the austere, formal language of minimalism. Violence, sex and desire are subliminal in these artworks; they are at once beguiling and unsettling, seemingly fragile yet laden with menace.

The exhibition will be on display at Ritter/Zamet gallery, 80a Ashfield Street London E1 2BJ, from October 11 – November 23.

www.phoebecollingsjames.com

www.ritterzamet.com

Tags: Phoebe Colling-James, Ritter/Zamet

Meet Alice Ashby, the designer behind BLAKE LDN. With an impressive resume and thorough understanding of the British craft, Alice founded the luxurious knitwear brand just last year and this week annouced that the designs will be stocked in the French concept store Colette. This is one brand to keep on your radar.

Twin caught up with the designer to find out more…

Having worked as Assistant Knitwear Designer for Rag & Bone, co-founded The North Circular and now BLAKE LDN, when did your love for knitwear begin?

I was taught to knit by my Grandmother one Christmas when I was around 10 years old, so that was when I held my first knitting needles. I was always doing something creative, be it sewing, stitching, anything to do with texture when I was growing up. Then it was not until I was at Central St Martins when I specialised in knitwear that I realised this was what I wanted to do and there was actually a career in it.

How would you describe the BLAKE LDN aesthetic?

It is British luxury design, it is wearable and all about texture, be it the yarn, stitch or pattern. The Blake girl is very effortless in her style and can team a piece with jeans or dress it up.

When it comes to knitwear, quality is key. How do you go about choosing the Merino wool, Angora and Loro Piana cashmere for your collections?

I travel to Pitti Filati in Florence twice a year. It is the tradeshow for yarn suppliers. It is great, as I can catch up with our current suppliers and see their new yarns, textures and colours as well as sourcing new suppliers and fibres from around the world. I use a lot of British lambswool and cashmere as well as Italian yarns for angoras and more fancy yarns like boucle and textured yarn.

What inspired the AW13 collection?

AW13 was inspired by vintage ski images, adapting and creating a modern day take on this traditional chunky knit. Looking closely at the yoke, panelling and racing stripes we modernised this by adding angora and clashing hues of cashmere.

What knitwear staples do you constantly return to?

Our Adelaide is one of our signature pieces, we adapt it each season to cotton for SS and cashmere or wool for AW. It is the perfect slouchy sweater and so comfortable. Other than that, you have got to have a great cashmere sweater – when you find the right one it should last forever. Our Aubrey double ply Loro Piana hits the spot. For beanies – it has to be our cashmere Nova beanies. Perfect simple cashmere beanies, the bonus is that they are unisex too.

Twin loves the Redfern Chunky Sweater and Foskett Beanie from the AW13 collection. Which pieces are your favourite?

The Aubrey is one my favourites, I love the colourway of neon, gold, charcoal framed by rich navy. The Foskett sweater is another favourite, an oversized sky blue angora sweater. Then finally it’s the chunky Redfern in cobalt. I love bright blue and in a chunky knit its just perfect.

You are now stocked at Colette. Where else would you like to see the brand sold?

I would love Opening Ceremony, Matches and obviously Net-a-Porter, to name a few. All stores we are working towards… so watch this space.

www.blake-ldn.com

Tags: Blake LDN, Knitwear

Kate Moss will launch a new collection for Topshop in April next year.

Her partnership with Topshop first began in May 2007 and the first collection was a huge success. The collaboration ended in 2010 but now she is already working on the new range, which will be sold in 40 countries world wide and on Topshop.com.

It will comprise 40 pieces, spanning womenswear, accessories and footwear – and is expected to be inspired by Moss’s personal wardrobe.

Tags: kate moss, Topshop

Next week on Monday, October 14, Fronline Club London is screening Pussy Riot – A punk Prayer, followed by a Q&A with co-directors Mike Lerner and Maxim Pozdorovkin.

Last year in February the Russian feminist punk group Pussy Riot performed a 40 second ‘punk prayer’ on the altar of Moscow’s most esteemed cathedral. Through this act they openly challenged Putin and the Russian Orthodox Church, setting in motion one of the greatest show trials of recent times.

In Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer, filmmakers Mike Lerner and Maxim Pozdorovkin closely follow the trial, which sees three members stand accused of “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred”. Through incredible access to the legal system, they show the courtroom where Nadia, Masha and Katia sit incarcerated in a small booth, articulately defending their actions.

Book your tickets now at frontlineclub.bookinglive.com

Tags: Frontline Club, Maxim Pozdorovkin, Mike Lerner, Pussy Riot

Next week it’s time for the annual international art fair, Frieze London. The contemporary art fair takes place every October in London’s Regent’s Park.

In addition to being able to see and buy art by over 1,000 of the world’s leading artists, visitors can experience Frieze Projects, the fair’s unique and critically acclaimed programme of artist commissions and Frieze Talks, a prestigious programme of debates, panel discussions and keynote lectures.

Don’t miss out, buy your tickets now at friezelondon.com

October 17 – 20 2013 Regent’s Park

Tags: Frieze London

When you think of streetwear, you tend to imagine logo tees, caps and a boy wearing them. Most streetwear brands are aimed at men, and if they do have a girls range, it tends to differ completely to what they design for boys. A woman trying to change this is London based Zahra Swanzy. Zahra created her label Swanz Fly in 2008, born out of her frustration for the lack of attention to women’s streetwear, “There wasn’t any streetwear or street-inspired looks for women at all. I used to wear men’s clothes and I always used to like my boyfriend’s baggy clothes, but mainly I feel like women’s clothes tend to be very tight most of the time. For daywear and casual wear, it’s just not really what you want.” Designing her clothes with a woman’s figure in mind, Swanzy’s latest collection is called Heavy. “Heavy is old London slang for cool. It’s really a feeling I felt when I was a rowdy teenager, but it’s also about strength and weightiness. I just felt like women are not often seen as strong figures and we are as strong, if not stronger than men; we have to give birth and shit. At the moment, I’m really into women empowerment especially with my youth work, so that’s how it’s come out in my clothes. Original streetwear was all about expression and oppression, so that’s what Heavy is.” Check out the full lookbook here LOOKBOOK.com, and read more about Zahra’s work with young girls here londonpositive.org.uk

Text by Beccy Hill

Tags: Swanz Fly, Zahra Swanzy

Leather is becoming a more favoured fabric than before, finding itself in many different hues and forms – the leather tee is now a wardrobe staple of sorts. Last season, the skinny leather trouser was a key player, but for your 2013 update go slouchy and loose. The conventional leather jacket is an autumn winter favourite of course, but take this sport luxe version as this season’s interpretation. So when shopping for your new season wardrobe, take inspiration from Twin’s top picks of AW13’s material of choice.

Zadig & Voltaire Leather Sydney Overalls in Black, £587, shopbop.com & Gestuz Women’s Alina Leather Top In Baroque Rose, £80, coggles.com

Derek Lam Leather skirt, £ 765.00, thecorner.com & Just Female Quilted Leather Bomber Jacket, £270, asos.com

Tags: AW13, Derek Lam, Gestuz, Just Female, Leather, Twin Picks, Zadig & Voltaire

George Yabu and Glenn Pushelberg are the design duo behind the renowned studio, Yabu Pushelberg. With bases in both New York and Toronto, their interiors portfolio includes the likes of Louis Vuitton, Tiffany & Co., Bergdorf Goodman, Barney’s, the Four Seasons group and the St. Regis Hotel. Their latest project has seen them collaborate with hotelier Ian Schrager, for the EDITION series of hotels, as a part of the Mariott Group.

The beautiful London EDITION Hotel, which played host to the fashion glitterati over London Fashion Week has already created a buzz and has proved to be the place to stay in London. Located at 10 Berner Street, the hotel just opened this month and we cannot wait to see what the next-in-the-series Miami branch has to offer.

yabupushelberg.com

edition-hotels.marriott.com

Tags: George Yabu, Glenn Pushelberg, London Edition Hotel, Mariott Group

Mother London wants to see your bush. But in the name of feminism of course. Project Bush is an initiative that asks woman from all walks of life to have theirs photographed on Thursday October 3 anonymously, to stand up to the pressures of modern society.

In working with a number of feminist groups, Mother London’s campaign sets out to discuss feminism in 2013 – how does it manifest today, what are the challenges it faces and what does it mean to be a feminist? What they realise already is that it’s all about choice. However, when it comes to waxing culture, some young women feel the choice is out of their hands. And so by asking women to bare all, they hope to challenge the stereotype and help people see the choice is, in fact, all theirs.

All bushes will be displayed in a public exhibition at Mother London and all involved will be invited with their friends to a public viewing. So if you would like to have your bush anonimously photographed by top photographer Alisa Connan, 15 Minute slots can be booked all day and in the evening of the 3rd by emailing bush@motherlondon.com.

#projectbush

motherlondon.com  10 Redchurch Street, E1 7DD

Tags: Mother London, Project Bush

Last week Rick Owens created a stir during Paris Fashion Week, a well needed one and a very appreciated one, as he sent out “warriors” on the catwalk for his spring summer 2014 show. A group of female hip-hop dancers invaded the stage and preformed a dance whiled they showed the collection, an asymmetric collection with lots of leather in a fairly strict colour palette of black to grey to white.

Owens dancers fit the general dimensions of real women, and the show got reviews of being revolutionary and something different to the otherwise rather banal and commercial shows with usual silent, bored-looking models.

Style blogger Susie Bubble was among many to respond positively, suggesting Owens had made “the most powerful and provocative statement this season” while Harper’s Bazaar UK described it as the “show everyone’s talking about”.

Tags: Paris Fashion Week, Rick Ownes

Alexandra Mann started in the fashion industry as a costume designer, working with the likes of Naomie Harris, Zoe Wanamaker, Derek Jacobi and Noel Fielding.

After having caught the eye of the powers that be at Liberty in 2011 with her brightly coloured and vivid cosmetic cases, Mann has gone from strength to strength. Designing her cool and covetable accessories from her Hackney based studio, fabrics are sourced everywhere from car boot sales to waxed cloth dealers. Each washbag is completely unique and can even be personalised with names and initials through the Alexandra Mann website, we love the Skull Monogram bag.

Alexandra Mann accessories are available from alexandramann.com as well as in store and online at liberty.co.uk

Tags: Alexandra Mann

Yesterday the advanced ticket sale for the forthcoming exhibition Hello My Name is Paul Smith opened.

The exhibition will take visitors on a journey through Paul Smith’s world. The exhibition will showcase and celebrate the brand through collections selected by Paul. The different stages of design and production will be explored, offering a rich insight into his design process and highlighting how the principles of traditional craftsmanship of tailoring and techniques are retained but given a contemporary edge.

The exhibition draws on Paul Smith’s personal archive, from the company’s beginnings in Nottingham to its international prominence today.

The exhibition will be on display at the Design Museum in London from November 15 2013 – March 9 2014 and tickets can be booked at ticketweb.co.uk

Tags: paul smith