Vogue on Vogue

 
What happens when you place every issue of Vogue from 2010 on top of eachother?
Doing the rounds on the internet are these 'Vogue on Vogue' layered composite images, which were originally posted by LiveJournal. Containing every issue from every country, and flattened to one image, these pictures offer an insight into the creative mapping of a cover as well as being beautiful stand alone objects. Some covers remain quite similar, resulting in a heavy colour in the middle, when as French and Italian Vogue have darker and more varied tones.

                                                                               Italia

                                                                              Paris

                                                                             India

                                                                             Korea

                                                                                US

                                                                              Turkiye

                                                                                UK

Stella McCartney- The Botanical Collection

 

I am thoroughly enamored by Stella McCartney's Spring 2011 collection and it's beautifully decorative and horticutural theme, which was inspired by 18th and 19th Century botanical drawings. The simple, mannish silhouettes are complimented by floral prints of fushias, poppies, butterflies and peonies. The pieces in the collection never appear cluttered or over worked, but on the contrary, seem fresh and modern. “I was looking at gardening books from the fifties and found these old botanical drawings and was very inspired by them,” she explains. “They became a bold part of our spring collection, and then we adapted the print into the Falabella bag for this season.” (source: http://www.vogue.com)

Here are some images from 18th Century botanical painters. On the left and right are two by Robert John Thornton and the middle picture is by Pierre-Joseph Redoute.
Redoute was nicknamed the Raphael of flowers and was well-known for his watercolours of roses and lilies. While Thornton was both an English physician and a botanist, who produced over thirty coloured plates engraved in aquatint, stipple and line for his 'A New Illustration of the Sexual System of Carolus Von Linnæus'. Below is Sasha Pivovarova in Stella McCartney in Vogue's March issue.

 

Cecil Beaton- Scrapbook

'Cecil Beaton, The Art of the Scrapbook', is a book documenting the musings behind the legendary photographer, with newly revealed images of his own private sketchbook. Beaton's personal scrapbooks contain clippings and images of society girls and magazine shoots. Having stated that 'He lived by his eyes', these books were a way to direct his creative energy and record ideas and inspirations. Beaton sold his archive of scrapbooks to Sotherby's before his death in 1980, but it was not until 2010 that Martine Assouline directed a new coffee table book, with 8,000 scans, to be published.
The publisher, Assouline states that the book is; "Composed of his own prints and clippings from magazines, newspapers, and playbills, the pages are an instructive record of his creative process....To flip through the pages is to enter a fabulous and surreal party where Tallulah Bankhead rubs shoulders with a bust of Voltaire and a portrait of Stravinsky; where Beaton's first trip on the Queen Mary coincides with Queen Elizabeth's coronation. Beaton's scrapbooks allowed the artist to play with pictures he had taken (and perhaps those he wished he had) in the dreamspace of artifice that was always his favorite setting." Source: http://www.shopassouline.com/9782759404728.html

 

Cecil Beaton was renowned for his captivating photographs, emanating style, sophistication and glamour in the early 20th Century. He claimed that he was inspired from a very young age to become a photographer, when he collected postcards of a famous actress called Miss Lily Elsie. After the age of 10, and with his first camera in hand, he was able to photograph his two sisters, Nancy and Baba. (On a side note..After glancing through the Wikipedia page on him, it seems he was bullied by Evelyn Waugh at Heath Mount School. It is interesting how famous names meet and collide.) Beaton started photographing for Vogue regularly from 1927, where he started to become well-known for his society portraits and fashion photographs. In 1937 he was commissioned to photograph Wallis Simpson, by the Duke of Windsor, who wanted her to appear softer and more appealing to the public. Beaton took a series of photographs of Queen Elizabeth and Prince Charles in the 50's, which were then released to the public. Another extraordinary achievement, was photographing famour actresses, such as Audrey Hepburn, who he shot on the film production of 'My Fair Lady' in 1964. His career spanned 50 years, until in 1973 when a stroke left him partially paralysed but determined to keep working.

Sources http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/photography/8128794/How-Cecil-Beaton-captured-the-world.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cecil_Beaton

                                                                  Audrey Hepburn

                                                                        Francis Bacon

                                                                       Lucian Freud

                                                                       Jackie Onassis

                                                      Queen Elizabeth and Prince Charles

                                                                      Marilyn Monroe

Marni, Milan Fashion Week AW'11

Marni, this week, showed off a chic 1950's couture silhouette, with sophisticated geometric shapes and patterns. The looks managed to be roomy, with boy jackets, whilst maintaining a lady-like gesture. “It’s was all very ladylike but wrapped up in the Marni imagination – wonderful rich colours and an overload of jewels and sequins and furs but in no way is it ever vulgar. It’s the Marni way,” said Vogue’s Harriet Quick afterwards.

Images: www.vogue.it

The Affordable Vintage Fashion Fair

This afternoon my flatmate and I headed down to Bethnal Green for the Affordable Vintage Fashion Fair, hosted by Judy's in York Hall. We were really taken with the vintage french magazines but unfortunately did not part with our cash for them, the photos below will have to suffice. Other very affordable purchases included some vintage cigarette tins, as well as, old watch faces, later to be transformed into individual necklaces. The Affordable Vintage Fashion Fair also have a blog, which is well worth a look. http://theaffordablevintagefair.blogspot.com/