Thursday 16 December 2010

Day Sixteen

Yesterday Gill and I had a day away from all the Christmas preparations (something I can wholeheartedly recommend) and spent the day at the Barbican where we saw the most amazing exhibition: Future Beauty 30 Years of Japanese Fashion. It is a comprehensive survey of Japanese Fashion from the early 1980s to the present day. With work from Issey Miyake, Rei Kawakubo and Yohji Yamamoto it is innovative, avante garde, cutting edge... and so exciting! We spent four hours just looking around the exhibition and I still feel I could go back again. There was so much to see it's hard to know what to show you but these are just a couple of our favourites...

The fabulous ruff on this Comme des Garcons knitted dress is actually made from thirty three little dolls - fun, witty yet still beautiful.

Tao Kurihara's take on classic underwear shapes turning them into knitted outerwear also made us smile. There were dresses made from origami folded fabrics, shredded paper and stitched plastic... pieced, twisted, pleated and quilted. And there was plenty to see from one of my favourite designers, Junya Watanabe, like this gorgeous denim dress...

and of course his amazing sculptural honeycomb dresses...

which were the inspiration for my very own carrier bag dress. It made me want to do my fashion module all over again!

We came home full of ideas and inspiration and I can't recommend this exhibition enough... it is on until 6th February so plenty of time to see it. We also came home full of cake... but that's another story!

8 comments:

  1. That exhibition looks facinating, I know my daughter would just love it!!
    Vivienne x
    P.S. Nothing wrong with cake!!

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  2. Sounds like a good exhibition to visit after Christmas. I like the knitted outfit.

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  3. Clever, clever stuff. So innovative.............

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  4. Just a thimbleful....


    Oh, right up my street - will definitely go after Christmas - something to look forward to.

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  5. Amazing exhibits and such clever ideas. I feel as if I have no imagination at all when seeing things like this. Glad you found time for cake!

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  6. Looks like a fascinating exhibition! Tell us more about the cake! ;-)

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  7. What a great idea! It looks like a day full of inspiration -- and a perfect break from the stress of the holidays!

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  8. Oh I desperately want to visit. I recognize the honeycomb dress from the cover of one of my reference books. Hope I can persuade G. Perhaps I could bribe him with cake?!

    K x

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