As one of the French capital’s young shopkeepers within the longstanding vanguard of fashion houses, Carole and Clarent Dehlouz of FrenchTrotters have conceived their own fashion business with both tenacity and audacity. Like any Parisian who has travelled abroad, they have developed a cultural sponge – a melting pot of those still dedicated to the design of fabric and garmentmarking for which techniques have remained unchanged for many years.

The Dehlouz’s envisaged a shop front not for the en masse but the local neighbourhood variety, one that could have an inconspicous veneer that sits flush in-between a chemist, restaurant and café. The shop’s primary location on Rue Vieille de Temple is situated on the main artery of Paris’ Marais district where visitors and onlookers are cloistered by a narrow bouvelvard walkway, fronged by numerous eateries.

Not simply dictated by the style trends that consume the menswear market each year, the couple realised that even their local Parisian community lacked the kind of sophisication amongst brands and notable companies endured by other cities. This microcosm stil unyielded a generation of clothes that the jeunesse dorée would be enarmoured by with the absence of baroque high-end luxury.

As far as the Dehlouz were concerned with, FrenchTrotters aimed to please their own customers with communicating a dialogue of quality in the spirit of tradition and modernity. By affixing old with new, they have specifically developed relationships with longstanding companies in Levis, Alden and American shirtmaker Gitman Vintage where in-between them use such perennial loom machines, Japanese fabric and American manufacturing.

So far in FrenchTrotters’ artisanal lineup of products, they are the patrons of national emblems in Jean Touitou’s Atelier de Production et de Création (A.P.C.), Commune de Paris, Les Prairies de Paris, Maison Fabre and enlisted other national identities such as Our Legacy and Bryedo of Sweden and Oliver Spencer and Nigel Calbourn of England.

Apart from their own store curation, the Dehlouz have established a prolonged collaboration with French company Redingote to bring a specialised online boutique that sells Made in France products only. Called La Belle Échoppe, it’s proposal is charmingly simple by which the contemporary garments, houshold goods and stationery that it expresses and emphasises handmade. There are goods from manufacturers like Andrée Jardin making french beech wood brooms, iron cassarole pots by Staub, fragrances by Institut Très Bien and outerwear by Comme Des Garçons.

FrenchTrotters - www.frenchtrotters.fr
La Belle Échoppe – www.labelleechoppe.fr

At the most wispily tone of hearing Central Saint Martins, the school which has been estbablished for more than 150 years is key and central to producing some of the most talented dramatic performers and designers of our modern age. The immeasurable list of names that have graduated from the school is only reflected by fashion designers who currently hold positions of creative directors and within ateliers across the world. This undoubtly impossible without a well-renown fashion programme that has seen Alexander McQueen, Stella McCartney and Christopher Kane arisen to fame. But who to kindle its long-standing history and shed illuminance ontowards those who orchestrated the disciplinary course? Oleg Mitrofanov, junior editor of ACNE Paper who most recently produced a spellbinding story of the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow is currently developing his own film documentary. A series of intimitae portraits with interviewees including illustrator Julie Verhoeven, Judith Watt and Howard Twenge try to synthesise the school’s purpose and existence intrinsic to British history and culture.

What propelled you to instigate a film documentary about former fashion graduates of Saint Martins in London?

The idea came to me, by accident. It was later that I realised that actually none ever done it before. Saint Martins is such an important institution. There are all those myth and legends that surround it, trust most people don’t even know a quater of the amazing stories that Saint Martins has to offer. That is what I am trying to do, I am collecting the stories of CSM’s alumni, tutors and current students by putting it all together, I hope to create a portrait of the school.

There has been a continued series of documentaries from various cultural tangents from fashion to the world of graphic design, has it been more important to document your chosen subjects as a study of what makes us cerebrally excited by the creation of clothes?

Saint Martins has nothing to do with manufacturing or producing clothes. Saint Martins is an ART school, it has always been. That what makes it different from any other fashion schools.You see, Muriel Pemberton who started BA Fashion at Saint Martins was an artist, what she was interested in was the ideas and it’s development rather then technical aspects of design. That is why even today they stick to this tradition, there are of course brilliant technicians who help students to actually make the garments but that’s the least important part of the whole process. I guess people who interested in manufacturing, production and commercialization of clothes go to LFC.

British illustrator Julie Verhoeven who has produced works for Louis Vuitton and Martine Sitbon being interviewed in her London home – Photography by Oscar May

Saint Martins as an education institution has infected the lives of many young people who have sought or only could dream of studying there. Almost to the point of the college being mythologised and whatever talents inside are concealed. Having studied there, is it really an intensive akademie?

At Saint Martins I studied Fashion Communication and Promotion which is an amazing course and part of BA fashion. My experience was slightly different from people who study womenswear or menswear. Saint Martins is a very free spirited college, and in a way very egosentric. Once you get in, it’s all about you, what you like, what you what to achieve. Tutors are there to guide you and help you to develop your potential, they can’t force you, they don’t need to, none can force you to learn. And because on the nature of education there and high level of competition, students work days and nights on their collections. Some have nervous brake downs and some become the world famous designers.

The student’s condemnation of moving from Charing Cross to its new grandiose purpose built location by architectural firm Stanton Williams resembles from its exterior the fourth dimensional form of the Grande Arche de la Défense in Paris. The students at Gerrit Rietveld held protests about abandoning its school built since 1966. Do you see the move to Kings Cross affect radical creativity because of its clean interior compared with the defaced ones of past

I personally never liked the idea of Kings Cross prison like buidling. And I think it is a big mistake, but I guess time will tell, let’s hope I am wrong. The old rundown building on Charing Cross road was Saint Martin’s home for decades, it had that amazing energy, it was alive! It was there where the history was taking place and it was safe! You could come in drag or look completely ridiculous and feel safe and none would judge you by the way you look. This is very important because for example years ago when there was no social networks or internet, Saint Martins was a place where all those mad, eccentric and amazing people would go to meet alikes. It was practically a social club for people studying fashion and fine art.

British architectural firm StantonWilliams oversaw the new state-of-art campus which includes the Central Saint Martins school – Photography by StantonWilliams

In the new building all the campuses were united. Which means all those straight graphic and product designers, students who study animation etc they all in the same building as fashion students. As the result, the general look of the college now is completely normal. If someone guy from womenswear decide to come to the college in a dress people will stare at him and in the worst case they would make fun of him. This actually happened recently, I have heard that some fashion student who was working in the library in drag was bullied by some graphic design students. This is absurd, if you can’t dress the way you like in Saint Martins where can you do it ? I was so angry, if one can’t tolerate these matters they should really be going somewhere else and not to Saint Martins.

The documentary title is I Hate My Collection. It is more piercing than a homage to the institution, which would be exhausting to film and research. But you have found crucial names in Howard Tangye and your teacher Judith Watt. How has Tangye been a great influence in the life of Saint Martins for the students and what kind of empowerment does he give in his teachings?

Howard is an amazing tutor and an inspirational one. He is a brilliant artist, he has been teaching life drawings in the college for many years. I can’t really tell you his teaching technics because I don’t know them. But Saint Martins BA Fashion keeps its tradition alive and it is still the same as when Muriel Pemberton started it.

British milliner Stephen Jones’ live recording at his residence – Photography by Holly Hay

Howard Tangye is an Australian born artist and illustrator and a luminary at Saint Martins. Painting menswear designer Lee Roach – Photography by Hugo Yangüela

In the background of Howard Tangye’s studio in London with Lee Roach – Photography by Hugo Yangüela

Watt explains that Saint Martins has been at the crucible in being the provider of educating the incredible designers that currently work in our industry. However, many of which were autodidacts or gain precursor training like in Alexander McQueen of his Saville Row training

People come to Saint Martins from completely different backgrounds, Lee McQueen was trained in Savile row and I studied international law in Moscow and that what makes it really interesting. As people apply those knoladge and experiences that they had in their design process. Success is a very abstract category, particularly in fashion. The very nature of fashion is a change. Today you are a superstar and everyone wants you and tomorrow you are nothing. If you look at Saint Martins history there were so many great designers who were legends in their own time, but now none remembers them anymore, apart from the historians who know the truth. In ten years out of all those young designers who are so popular now perhaps one will survive, the rest will be forgotten.

You have mentioned that Dutch illustrator Julie Verhoeven( Julie is English, born and bred, he father was Dutch but she truly is an english eccentric) who was profiled in British graphic design magazine Grafik in 2006 was not accepted into the school but has now become a tutor. Like Verhoeven’s student cards you have shown, similarly Henrik Vibskov has shown his after not being accepted at Danmarks Designskole but into Saint Martins. Could you link the title I Hate My Collection as Saint Martins’ raison d’être for wanting to produce unsafe designers

Who wants to produce safe designers anyway? Well I don’t really see any like with the title of my film and the fact that Saint Martins want to produce ‘unsafe’ designers. I also don’t neccesserly think that Saint Martins wants to produce ‘unsafe’ designers, original yes, but that’s a different story. Originality is everything! A simple garment can be original just like an avant guard design can be a sad copy of great Japanese designers.

I am interested in why Bernardi mentions that ‘we were the most hated’. Those outside possibly noticed that it was one of the oldest art and design institutions, that its amalgamation echoed similarly the seminal establishment of the Bauhaus school of design?

The were most hated because they were the best dressed and the most pretentious of course.

Former director of the MA Fashion programme at Saint Martins Bobby Hilson and Oleg Mitrofanov – Photography by Valerie von Kilttlitz

You most recently produced a major story about the famed Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow speaking with principal dancer Nikolay Tsiskaridze. He says, “And even when you compare Bolshoi to the biggest theatres in the world, it still has the biggest stage, which is around 500 square metres.” In retrospect, could you say Saint Martin’s enviable success in fashion education has been its unbridled determination to fight for youth and creativity?

It is a constant search for originality, forcing students to produce something that the tutors haven’t seen before, making them realise that we are all different and we have something different to offer. Great designers always have a vision, that’s why you go to Saint Martins, to form that unique and personal vision. It has nothing to do with technical aspects, that you can learn somewhere else.

Is there a sense of poignancy and tragedy for the school given that some of its most accomplished students have been struck down by death and illness? Past interviews with contemporary designers have commented how the MA Fashion programme can be brutal and disheartening. Is there a sense of needing pastoral care for new graduates as they embark on an ultra-competitive industry?

You know in the trailer, Bobby Hillson asks a rythorical question ” What’s the point of being kind?” What is the point ? If Louise Willson, who is the head of MA Fashion in CSM will be nice and gentle with everyone, none will produce any work, and I am not even talking about good work, or brilliant work. Yes of course we all need pastoral care, some people get it and some don’t that’s life. The strongest survives, welcome to the fashion jungle!

I Hate My Collection – www.ihatemycollection.com

Beijing born Australian designer Yang Li has besieged the fashion industry by triumphly earmarking his statement of intention as a serious designer. With an excelled background in painting honed at the Australian National University in Canberra, the young designer had already established his own company called Cloth that demonstrated both business and design maturity. Soon after joining the esteemed cohort of fashion students at Central Saint Martins in London, he had assisted the designs of British designer Gareth Pugh and gained a long year internship at Raf Simons’ atelier based in Antwerp.
Still at fashion’s tender age of 24, London based designer Yang Li has masterfully shown his aptitude to a resounding collection that has struck an elemental chord within the fashion industry.

The accompany film was created in collaboration with English photographer Scott Trindle (whose works include for i-D, Dazed and Confused, Gareth Pugh and Industrie Magazine) and fashion writer Dean Mayo Davies

Zero Hour, his Spring/Summer 2012 presented late last year in Paris signalled a birth, a kindling that drew a respoistory of memories and reactions. The accompanying video to the Zero Hour pret-a-porter collection is as viscerally haunting as it has blindly raptuous. Membranaceous layers of the Chinese communist regime evoke scenes of military might, discipline, robotic co-ordination that splices with a recurrence of Yang Li’s wool and silk garments.

Li’s attraction to elements of the Red Army is apparent as they are Whilst appearing monastic and ecclesiastical, Li’s deceptive engineering lies within the exquistive tailoring. Hooded anoraks are beautifully refined so as to the shreathed wrapping effect of a wide-legged trouser pant in carbon black and rochet vestments, one of which contrasted by a vertingious fluro orange strip.

A carbon black front ulility jacket worn over a floor length robe dres, the military pilot sleeve and a midnight blue floor gown, these uniformed detailing are as surgically perfected as they are about Yang Li’s ultimate search for an individual zeigitiest.

Yang Li – www.yangli.eu

New Zealander Jeffrey Burch has circumnavigated the world and throughout this time, his writing, design and publishing roots have grown fruitfully since his birth in Palm Springs, California. Currently dividing his time between his music imprint The Spring Press and as a designer for New York fashion publication Visionaire the adriot designer slash musician slash photographer seamlessly combines all these creative endeavours into a synthesised body of work.

Burch had moved to Sydney after completing art studies in New Zealand entered the publishing fold through his first employment at GQ Magazine as a designer and freelanced for Vogue Australia. Australian photographer Max Doyle who worked for Vogue on a regular basis has his own publishing title called Doingbird. The Australian title as a cultural/fashion paragon portrayed a cross-section of designers working in contemporary fashion, American photographers such as Taryn Simon, Collier Schorr and Hedi Slimane that as a designer, Burch found himself in the company of the publication. He had contributed to the magazine on a periodical basis with a special piece on French composer Sébastien Roux.

The Spring Press first realised its imprint volume with Magik Markers and a black and white printed edition of Max Doyle’s personal photography. In 2008, a year long book collaboration with French photographer Henry Roy had been realised. Entitled, “Out of the Blue” the visual explorations into the African born French émigré, shoned a quality with storytelling cinemetography on uncoated paper. The canon white perfect-bound book was launched first in Paris at OfR Librarie, at Published Art in Sydney and at Now Idea in Tokyo to a widespread fanfare. The celebratory bystanders, writers and publishing fans were perfectly captivated by the arousing, saccharine visual layers of portraiture that Henry Roy had photographed as part of his own personal works.

Maybe fate had brought Burch and Doyle together whose zeal were for old New Zealand bands. Together, with Steve Uren and Ela Stiles they formed a band called Songs. Their music publisher Popfrenzy had described their first LP album as, “Echoing the repetition and minimalism of John Cale and La Monte Young, the guitar work shimmers and sprawls into long summer drones. With the same attention to simplicity that inspired The Clean, the rhythms are stark and mechanical. Lead singer Max Doyle rambles, even chants, over the top, at times invoking a laissez-faire Tom Verlaine offset by the aching, morning after voice of Ela Stiles.” Now out of print and carefully taking the black vinyl record out of a soft matte illustrator cover by British illustrator Paul Davis, Songs’ EP released by The Spring Press comprised of two memorable tracks KC’s In Trouble and Keeping It Clean, the latter of which transformed into a music video that played homage to the domesticity of school life.

Burch’s spirit remained creatively embedded in New York City. The following year, he had migrated to the American city to produce a special pressed vinyl that released the New York four-piece band Psychic Ills. It culiminated for Burch, a re-focus on his music whereby his publishing writing transmogirifed into aural sounds. After briefly returning to Sydney, Burch permanently transplanted himself. “I arrived in October and freelanced for a small downtown studio before a short period freelancing at a department store fashion brand. Since the end of February I have been working for an independent publisher in Soho.”

Burch’s adriot ability transcended across his graphic design. Securely a role as one of three designers working at Visionaire, it deepen his publishing role at Doingbird. “I work in the art department across Visionaire, V, Vman and V Spain. Currently there are just three of us doing all of it, so we just work together to get everything done, no matter what it is. In terms of creative publishers working within America Visionaire were atop my list, so I feel very fortunate to be there.”

New Zealand has culturally bred talented individuals and Burch is not the first Kiwi-raised to work at Visionaire. Jeffrey Docherty another New Zealander designed a series of issues for V also emphasising the visual motif of the singular letter that marvelled any other magazine by it’s vertinguous x-height. The focus for Burch has been to immediately translate a visual dialogue and langugae in which the subversive fashion magazine aims to incessantly collide the world of arts and culture as an inescapable film.

Jeffrey Burch currently works as a designer for New York fashion publication Visionaire, initialised by Stephen Gan. The publication’s offices and gallery occupy 11 Mercer Street, New York

Issue 61 of Visionaire captured within the magazine’s gallery/office space in Soho New York. With artworks by Chanel’s artistic director Karl Lagerfeld and American photographer Ryan McGinley

The art department at Visionaire designed the last September fashion issue and the exhibition design displays for the Larger Than Life 61st issue featuring the works of Karl Lagerfeld, Ryan McGinley, Bruce Weber, Steven Klein and Steven Miesel. To date, the issue was celebrated as the world’s biggest magazine issue at 36 by 49.48 inches in size.
Apart from his Visionaire employment, enquiring what Burch’s moonlighting activities included, he explains, “I would say mostly it is music related; seeing Paul Metzger play solo at Zebulon, Sir Richard Bishop with Jozef Van Wissem at Issue Project Rooms new space in downtown Brooklyn, or someone like Alan Licht at the Stone in Alphabet City. When I first arrived I worked briefly as a stage-hand at Santos Party House and happened to be working during an OFF! show. It was great to see a punk band again, and if you are going to see a punk band who better to see than Keith Morris.”

The multi-talented designer had also previously lent his graphic reportoire by engaging in the overall branding identity for several forefront Australian fashion designers that included Arnsdorf, Therese Rawsthorne and Karla Spetic, not to mention the online porter for Australian photographer Rene Vaile whose work has spread across Australian Vogue and most recently for Australian skincare company Aesop.

Burch’s magnetism for music is unequivocal. I Dream of Mezzadine/Cloudplanes is a 200 gram black vinyl by musical artist Richard Youngs. As beautifully haunting, languid, and with distinctive scores enlisthing a capella and a diverse range of instruments, the pressing released orchestrates a multiple range of enriched vocals that are aurally peripheral much like that of Soon It Will Be Fire from Youngs’ fifth album Sapphie released in 1999. The recorded vinyl is cover packaged by American photographer’s Tierney Gearon’s photograph in a series called Explosure. Gearon’s work is Burch’s paragon for Richard Youngs’ release which distinctively underscores a natural cadence in rhythm and sound mimicking life.

Origin of Silence by Compound Eye LP

Another striking release by The Spring Press is Origin of Silence by Compound Eye. The seismic distortion of the clear vinyl packaging earmarks a compositional release by Drew McDowall and Tres Warren from bands Psychic TV and Psychic Ills respectively. A photograph by Jessica Gordon shows both artists creating eclectic and electronic droning using an electronic keyboard and a signal amplifier to melodically explore musique concrete.

In whatever medium be it film, video, writing, the context of Jeff Burch’s oeuvre is never disparate. Though, the notion of home is transisent in the way that Burch microtravels through time and place – dividing time between his design role at Visionaire and multiple projects of his imprint The Spring Press, layers of aural experience, cinematography, punk and electronica are collectively imbued by a prolonged and beautiful synthesis.

The Spring Press – www.thespringpress.com

One could endlessly marvel at Marcel Wanders’ Skygarden lamp. With its baroque, highly decorative suspended interior, the pendant lamp could illuminate a fixed position with a closed environment and give off a heighten luxury of light. Yet, designers ponder unequivocally at their own condrurum – beauty versus function, function versus nonfunction, what is tangible and nontangible. These are what fundamentally consume a product designer’s reasoning to inititate the first ideas for a manufactured product.

Design partnerships and collectives have become the cornerstone, the de rigeur for successfully output product design. Erwan and Rowawn Bourellec, Charles and Ray Eames, SANAA, Le Courbusier and Charlotte Perriand. In Alexandra Gilmour and Dominic Chong they believe their Australian design company named Evie Group embodies a contemporary realisation for products that are both ritualistic and enlightening in form. “We both met each other at university and were competing against each other. After working for different companies, I wanted to work for myself and starting a company with Dominic seem like a natural progression” Gilmour expresses.

Gilmour, 28 and Dominic 33 both with masters in design, their collaborative work ethic stems from their roots. Alexandra whose Australian born and her partner Dominic Singaporean interrelate their shared experiences as holistic. The embryonic design process is linked to ideas generation whereby both sit down, compound, absorb and edit as a cyclic process. Gilmour explains, “We look at visual images and we come together to have the best bits of both.” Chong ermours, “Half an idea here and there, then we tear it down and do it up again.”

Gilmour had submitted her Emily tea set made of white and bone ceramic as part of the Qantas Spirit of Youth Awards (SOYA), an initiative in partnership with the professional fields of design industries in Australia. Famed Australian designer Marc Newson emotionally responded to her design aesthetically and the outcome had resulted in Gilmour winning the Industrial Design category. She spent September of last year with the designer at his London office with which she recalls, “It is a team consisting of four designers and all of which work incredibly hard.”

The design of the Emily Tea set seem to amplify a calm cleansing effect as the teacups themselves act as the river to the soul. A tea drinker can sip and pour the contents of his her drink into the body. This effect is ritualistic and emphasising this is the absence of handles. Chong emphasises the absence and the effect the tea drinking process has for the user experience. This concept of emptiness conveyed by Japanese designer Kenya Hara alludes to Chong – the spatial cylinder of tea is what governs the purity of design.

Embarking on their premiere lamp called Spun, the physicality of the design exudes strong character. Its construction is clever in the way that it consists of no external screws, using a clever ploy in the glass shell itself. Like a twist of a bottle, originally the design was conceived to be made out of wood but the porous material made it impractical. It is this scrupulous attention to detail that harnesses a strong design outcome. “If you don’t put it out [design possibilities], it will never become a reality and your ideas can continue infinitely”, Chong explains.

Asked if the concept of the Spun lamp was to allieeve light’s suffocation and harnessing light’s ability to enlighnten an insular environment, they detract from this. Notably, Danish designer Louise Campbell’s Collage pendant and lamp using laser-cut acrylic to refract light, Le Klint’s pleated light ostensibly shade light’s intensity. The frosted glass shade of Spun, inspired by the humble children’s spinning top empowers the LED or energy saving bulb to transform darkness conpiciously.

Marc Newson, arguably Australia’s most renown design export whose design of his wood chair that showed wood’s extreme flexibility hinted at the illuminary’s citing to have chosen Evie Group as a Bombay Sapphire Award finalist. The combination of Gilmour’s confidence and simplicity was described by the designer as deserving. On the contrary, Gilmour and Chong are both self-effacing. Anonymity, as aptly informed by their company name Evie Group, they prefer to remain behind-the-scenes. After our initial success of the Spun lamp, we realised that if you designed something, it hits a nerve. If you design something well without needing to give a full explanation, then people will come to you”, Chong explains with the current quintet of products.

Amongst names that have been enthused by Evie Group have included Martha Stewart Weddings in New York. From February 2012, they have decidely to open a special pop-up gallery at Gaffa Gallery in Sydney’s Central Business District to hone in on allowing the broader public to be exposed to Evie Group’s design ethos. They hope to however, break into important markets citing Singapore as their gateway to overseas buyers. “If we decide to open an office in Singapore, this would allow us to break into Europe and the USA.” To do this, they denote their products need to expand and the level of quality scrupulous. Chong, who regularly oversees the production in China says, “We demand a lot and they are surprised by our demands. I went to a factory one time who were manufacturing Apple products. I met the head engineer and he showed me one of the adaptors and Apple says it has to be like this. We have to do four processes whereas one would be enough. But Apple says, “we don’t care”. “ Without the large capital, both Gimour and Chong strive for absolute quality and ensuring the processes needing to make their product up to standard.

The transculent Frederick glass jars, hand-blown in Sydney’s Central Coast exude the flawless quality Evie Group aim for. They are produced using wooden moulds to attain a precise consistency in shape whilst strengthening its textural character. The voluminous silhouette is both bold and regal as to the Robin lamp that was a finalise in Workshopped last year, an industry organisation with a yearly exhibition showcasing the best Australian designers. A taxidermic robin placed side by side next to the Robin lamp with its aluminium tubed pivot for adjusting angle of height elucidate less of an industrial form but appear into the visual silence that surrounds it.

For this year, their plans is to extensively make design contacts and seek vast opportunities that will allow them to break further into overseas markets particularly in America. Both Emily and Frederick are already stocked domestically at prominent locations including Top 3 by Design and the National Gallery of Australia.

The close relationship Gilmour and Chong have and their shared spirit of competitiveness makes them question design every step of the way. So what is design to them? “It is something usable and enriches your life. It is quality with functionality and create a sense of cognition. We can’t escape the design past, but we can be innovative. We want to design old but new.”

Evie Group – www.eviegroup.com

The devoted young women who adored a classique taste composed by designer Emma Fletcher were sobbing at the news one year ago that she was closing the beloved NoLita store on Elizabeth Street in the New York neighbourhood. Fletcher, an Australian native who has for more than the past ten years has called New York City home took courage to leave the fashion business amidst the anxiety that the financial crisis stormed and to concentrate on her family. It intimately reminds that of the shell-shocked Phoebe Philo who found the to and fro London to Paris commute punishing when she was at the helm of French maison Chloé.

Fletcher this year has returned to revitalised her métier and to take the reigns of American clothing line TOCCA. The women’s may gently hint of a continuation of what Fletcher produced under Lyell (think sensual singular garments with finished french seams, gossamer French lace – a ruched skirt in bishop purple tucked neatly into lightly pleated shoulder blouse), it’s mystifying to say the least in attempting to pinpoint the raison d’être that ostensibly co-exists in her previous and present work. Speaking with Fletcher, she contemplates and explains by saying, “But now looking back it does feel like a bit of a continuation for me too. I am now working on the 3rd collection for Tocca and it is very much turning into it’s own thing. The pieced lace started at Lyell but I am really taking it to another level with Tocca and I want that to be a very signature Tocca piece every season.”

Having spoken with Fletcher in Sydney more than two years ago, Lyell had been stocked at a prominent women’s boutique in Paris by fellow friend also a designer, Maria Vryzakis. Her store called Marie Louise de Monterey at 1, rue Charles Francois Dupuis had stocked a range of Lyell’s clothing and a footwear collaboration between both designers. The cross-atlantic relationship cemented a picturesque vision of what Fletcher could not answer, that being the label had always undercarried the fantasy of a young American woman coming to study in the romantic rapture of the French capital. After all, these pieces that may harked back to the 1930′s could only suggest the roaring Jazz Age typified also in the accounts of Hemmingway’s A Moveable Feast. With every piece that she has designed, they reflect a time of made to measure clothing and not after the introduction of graded sizing.

Lyell’s remembrance which was presented by Fletcher in a pristine yet unprecious way had embodied a spirit of foreverlasting youth yet never devoid of reverence and demure. Fletcher says that, “I felt like I was coming in fresh and making everything a little cleaner. More sleek, less fussy. More modern shapes than Lyell or Tocca.” In her words of ‘a little taste of Spring’, the forthcoming collection for Spring 2012 encapulates flattering windowpanes in gossamer silk, a wing-sleeved knitted sweater in ash grey, a silk chiffon blouse befitting a midnight blue french seamed pencil skirt, TOCCA will be reawaken by a flattering sense of modernity.

“Firstly I think it was because every detail was cared about and the quality was high level. Also because it was some kind of fantasy for girls I think, the life and image around the clothes. Does that make sense? Mostly though I think It was because it was straight from the hip and from the heart.”

TOCCA – http://www.tocca.com/store

It is sensationally remarkable as you journey on another Melbourne adventure, many visitors will come to adore its logarithmic spiral, how its metropolitan centre is well interconnected by its tram transportation. Only two kilometers north of Melbourne City from Parliament station, you will find the Royal Exhibition Building predating the 19th century and already footsteps away from the inner-city suburb of Carlton.

It is here amongst the flushed Victorian buildings and gleaning wrought iron decorative awnings, flanked by perpetual green turfs you will find the residence of a young femme who stands to design as intelligently and astutely as her fine contemporaries in that of Australian designers Georgia Lazarro, Dion Lee and Yang Li. Hunter sits firmly within this new vanguard of Australian fashion design that for their tender ages, their maturity in approaching the fashion business in incubated stages leaves a mark of intent and longevity.

It’s another typical Melbourne day with her spells of mercurial skies. As a first introduction to Carly Hunter, she is of petite stature, long dark locks but in the same intriguing and alluring deposition like that of Anna Karina and Francoise Hardy. Her residence (occupying the first floor) is atypically carpeted with two adjacent rooms, one that is of her workroom and the other her’s and her partner’s. At first glance of her workroom, the immediate response is how petite and snug the area is – on one side is where she hangs her latest collection’s prototypes and an oversized worktable sits flush against this, bridled patternmaking templates both past and present and like rooms with eyes her conspicuous pasted visual inspiration overlook her sitting desk.

Sitting desk occupied by two sewing machines

A mélange of depicted inspiration from lace to linear, flowing silhouettes

Geological rock formation, sculptural structures and the contrast of masculine and feminine Hunter constantly revisits

Startled by the interview procedure, Hunter is someone who conceives her clothing design with a designer designer’s approach. Though with euphony, she comprehensively creates without difficulty, being naturally able to transmogrify her cerebral ideas into patterns or directly onto a mannequin. “I usually flat pattern-make or drape fabric over a mannequin until I get the desired shape. I’ve been doing it for so many years now that it’s quite an instinctual process”, she explains. She attempts to recall her fashion education that of fashion and textiles at The Western Australian School of Art Design and Media she completed in her home city of Perth. Compellingly, it was her years of sewing and making her own clothes during her youth at school that lucidly explains her superb autodidact quality. Having just finished her fourth commercial range, already she has been praised and garnered the prestigious patronage of boutiques in Sydney, South Australia and Melbourne that of The Corner Shop, The New Guard and Alice Euphemia respectively.

The conditioning of what Hunter has produced so far is conducive to embracing femininity as expressing individuality, strength and elegance at the same time. She isn’t preoccupied with manufacturing fashion in strict physicality but alludes to communicating her chosen fabrics as the way to delve into an informed dress code. For her initial collection of last Spring, the large circular circles were to establish the transulent fabric and skin that maybe irreconcilable at first yet hint at her wearer’s perceptibility. The asymmetrical ruching, twisted drapery of silk crepe and lyocell emphasised an intricate simplicity that inversed the atypical silhouettes of a sleeveless or camisole blouse but reworked to evoke an insouciant appearance. Carly expresses, “I’m designing for women who have an open mind about fashion, can wear elegant clothing out as well as they do around the house, and have an appreciation for the small unexpected details in design.”

Carly Hunter’s collection Observations in Hibernaton

In those propositions, they appeared embryonic but enlightened by the deft and fine beauty of Hunter’s patterncutting for her succeeding collection entitled, “Observations In Hibernation”. Ostensibly with a fine scalpel, Hunter delicately cutted, hinged and formulated flowing shapes that draped and shreathed the body revealing window panes, a half-moon backline and unstructured merino wool coats. Suggested by one particular piece ‘Drape Front Slip’ the slip which has been ambiguously designed as neither a dress or blouse categorically, Hunter provides a sensual texture constructed from a man’s white shirt.

Hunter’s female wearer will be submerged in the delights of how to coordinate her individual pieces as a consummate form, Hunter however reiterates her work as informed by intuition and not simply by a particular silhouette. “As a designer and someone who buys women’s clothing, I don’t particularly like super feminine designs. But I don’t particularly like super masculine clothing either. I like a balance, and when I’m designing a dress I prefer to create something that is elegant and luxurious and has a certain ease about it, whether you see it as feminine or masculine is up to you. I don’t want to create something that is ‘cute’ or ‘girly’ or ‘fun’, that’s not really my thing. I feel that by creating that balance you create a depth to the clothing and therefore a depth to the person wearing it.”

Revealing her precursor to her vision and design, this is also emanated by the visual imagery pinned to her workroom walls. Nothing is confined by one context only. Hunter is receptive to recontextualising uniformity and exposing herself to a myriad of imagery: Grecian shapes, a chromatic floral stem photographed by Irving Penn, volcanic explosions and her respect for Raf Simons’ work of Jil Sander and the seminal fashion by Austrian designer Helmut Lang. She principally believes women and fashion is inextricably linked to the forces of nature and that the conventions of projecting female beauty through fashion has more to do with emotional intelligence. As such, the haunting accompanying film for Observations In Hibernation heightens the sense of cocooning and protection from the elements.

Such of Hunter’s instinctual instincts, the linkage between how a woman clothes herself to evoke depth and intrigue, her soon to be released Autumn 2012 collection is resolved through couture and pencil skirt shapes and the advancing of a sleeveless and long-sleeved knee length dress. Made from a mélange of wool and linen, the pure statement of a velvet tank, to the shearling and flapped wool coats attached to the underlying dress demonstrates such evening elegance. The turbulent, distorted short and full pencil skirt inspired by, “reflections of white noise, optical illusions, visual data, magic eye images” are as bewitching as to the sheerness of revealing skin as strength in beauty.

Technically, you couldn’t ask more of a tender designer whose ideas maybe aspherically ambiguous, yet being resolved and finely finished. Hunter finds local manufacturing great hinderence to finishing her garments but still manages to find makers that she has established relationships back in Perth and now also in Melbourne.

Leaving her to continue with the finished production of her forthcoming collection for Winter 2012, the lasting impression given by her farouche attitude is that her eponymous existence bares a foundation of contorting the conventions of female beauty, to rather emphasise a continuing existence of reserve, sensuality and above all, discerning.

Carly Hunter – www.carly-hunter.com

Canvassed artworks remain at the fabric redentions of Erdem Moralioglu who for the new Spring 2012 season, devised a collection of knee and floor-length dresses that cross-pollinated themselves with floral pictorials devised in an architecturally graphic way. When Moralioglu had visited the Tate Modern museum, it intimately revealed his impassioned monocle for painters that included Francis Bacon, David Hockney that for himself, preoccupied with unscripted lines, decorative colour and the baroque sequencing of floral minutia.

It was beautifully enchanting that also the ankle kitten heels had embalmed themselves with the same print that wrapped around the dress fabric in variations being off-shoulder, sleeveless or a wispy camisole. Lace was used as a decorative incision across the bodice and shoulder as a reinterpretation of the little black dress.

There is something very classique about the use of lace as some of those willowy wrists were covered in floral gauntlets. And the fastidious, delicate lines that were quasi-vine canopy as the veils of a slinky trenchcoat.

Concealment is very much the preoccupation of Moralioglu because if what under the bonnet of the beauty and strength of Enzo’s Ferrari’s race cars could produce, Moralioglu saturated his sarrachrine silk floral dresses in a structured and humanist form.

The microcosm of Melbourne retail boutiques and companies branch out from Melbourne City, outreaching a wider density populating itself around the City Loop, north into Fitzroy and Chadstone and south into Toorak. It’s suburban reach is like none other in Australia and when particularly comparing it to its northern neighbour of Sydney, the latter, obstensibly its own retail fashion precincts only extend as far as Sydney’s new Westfield complex and the affluent leafy area of Paddington. Melbourne emphatically as Australia’s cultural and musical point of origin, great retail fashion spreads also into local neighbourhoods.

A recent trip to Melbourne’s Grand Post Office (GPO) built in 1859 that seen its transformation since 2004 as a boutique trading centre with the patronage of high-end fashion brands. Although with the recent departure of Belinda Seper’s eponymous boutique on the upper floor of the GPO, two specific stores in Swedish fashion brand ACNE and Melbourne retailer FAT remain under the centre’s patronage.

However, the notion of a highly pleasurable, aesthetically pleasing shopping experience seems to extinguish itself when your cloistered by the monotony of Westfield’s own shopping complexes that since the 1950’s the shopping group has embryonically grown. Westfield’s heralded Sydney complex completely transforming the base of Centre Point Tower in the city’s central business district, the dark and cavernous tiered levels designed in collaboration between Japanese architectural firm Wonderwall disharnesses the constant stream of the sun’s rays right into the heart of the complex’s structure. A rued opportunity perhaps not designed by a more befitting Japanese firm SANAA led by Kazuyo Sejima whose deft lightness can be affirmed by her design for New York’s New Museum of Contemporary Art. Even with Westfield’s wielding power over its vast shopping centre control, its influences are left unchristened in the city of Melbourne, a metropolis that has taken pride in its individual boutique offerings.

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Grace, an intelligible Melbourne boutique in the southwest suburb of Toorak is situated on a bustling main road that like many of the city’s arteries are incisioned by tram tracks. Toorak in the words of co-owner of Grace Georgia Danos describes it not too dissimilar to the insouciant leafiness of Woollahra in Sydney’s affluent east district. Yet the rhythmic cadence of the surrounding brown flats and suburban front lawn homes appear softer and radiate warmth without an air of self-importance.

Georgia Danos and Illana Moses direct the boutique itself, shrouded by rooftop awning leaves. Both long-time friends and advancing their architectural and law careers, they meet again serendipitously. “We bumped each other on a plane in New York and immediately decided that a store concept like Grace is what we wanted to achieve back in Melbourne.” They combined their backgrounds with the enlisted help of architectural firm Hecker Gruthie to realise their current retail space. Seamlessly curvaceous in raw and polished material forms, Gruthie with Danos and Moses laid the foundations of powdered white facing walls, terracotta orange floor tiles that splice into the table centre like ‘un appartement parisien’.

Asking why Melbourne works onto its own, Danos’ answers couldn’t be much simpler. “The attention to detail is customer service and that is what’s most important to ask. At Grace, we have special VIP nights; we recently hosted a special fashion bloggers breakfast.” Danos feels lucky to have largely escaped from the economy crisis that hit Australia last year without suffering too much aftereffects. Filled with product conviction for their closest customers from near and afar, it is a diverse coterie from young French designer Gulliumame Henry’s Carven, Marcus Wainwright and David Neville’s Rag & Bone, Steven Alan shirts, Jean Touitou’s men’s and women’s prêt-a-porter label A.P.C., Les Prairies des Paris and their own in-store label Grace. Avid travelers to source new collections under the Grace stable, both Danos and Moses also sample personalised gifts such as Italian jasmine toothpaste by Marvis, Wallpaper travel guides, art and fashion compendiums largely from publisher Phaidon. Grace’s own customers who travel pass on the way from doing their weekely groceries, fruit pickings at the local stander, and meat poultry all down the same road, the boutique feels apart of the community fabric and the appreciation for quality is unequivocally true. One customer covets a camel cashmere trenchcoat designed by Carven concurring it as, “superby exquisite”.

Like the fire that has been rekindled from the ashes it came from, the cauldron for men’s tailoring still burns brightly. It has more recently elucidated itself within the guild that is P.Johnson tailors. Whilst there may have been a seminal effect from international events such as Pitti Uomo, the mecca of men’s clothing in Florence, Italy, it’s a re-balancing act of natural order. That is, men are being reacquainted with the dress standards of a handsomely made suit either formal or casual.

Saville Row trained South Australian Patrick Johnson returned earlier this year to have setup his own tailoring business with a background in oenology. A fitting showroom, the growing list of clientele for P.Johnson work in both creative and non-creative industries. Ill-fitting off the rack suits are the bane of Johnson’s existence like a bubonic plague or a wrath of black sea viruses worn by office workers. Johnson’s raison d’être with the enlistment of his tailoring partner Tom Riley is to get grown Australian men dressing well and most importantly dressing up.

Classically trained ballet dancer Jen Guberek and tailor Tom Riley of P.Johnson tailors at their South Melbourne showroom
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Tom Riley is the principal tailor for P.Johnson in Melbourne. A street front homestead in South Melbourne, the grand marine blue door leads to a leopard carpet living area, acting as the client reception to ascertain the requirements and desires from a suit. Jennifer Guberek, Riley’s executive assistant looks after all the business’ accounts, tracking every appointment and client measurements on file with the grace and verve of Jane Moneypenny. The loft upstairs consists of a centrally arranged table with a large glass jar with authentic light and dark shaded horn suit buttons. On the flush wall table, an arranged selection of British tie and accessories maker Drakes London lay admiring the portrait photographs hanging in the back wall of Prince Charles wearing his trademark suit and half-Windsor with his late wife Diana the Princess of Wales.

“We feel we offer the best value for money looking suits. Although suits can cost in excess of $5000 like Ermenegildo Zegna or admiring how Kiton makes theirs, what we’re doing with our suits is well-suited for the Australian consumer”, says Riley. The techniques envisaged by Johnson and Riley’s business can be immediately seen in the way P.Johnson suits are constructed: canvassed horsehair for body contour movement, bremberg sleeve lining for non-slip and tightly hand-stitched working button holes. The measurements and pattern-cutting is then sent to a specialised workshop in The Netherlands that P.Johnson has a working partnership with.

Riley cites the Polish technicians that produce their suits as the best who have retained a traditional know-how in making garments and their pedigree once revered with a Jewish button-making factory nearby the South Melbourne homestead. The P.Johnson business absorbs most costs to the customer whereby just an extra $250.00 a fully handmade suit can be produced. “We do this because we want people to wear and appreciate fully handmade goods. We could charge a lot more, but we decided not to because we believe handmade goods are wonderful thing. Our regular finish suits are largely handmade as is, it’s the extra work of top stitching and buttonholes that really show at the surface of the garment.” The tailoring business offers some of the world’s best fabrics from both Italian and English makers: Zegna, Ariston and Lora Piana for wools and for shirts English maker Thomas Mason. Customers can also choose the collar type and a myriad of options for their suits in fabrics and interior linings. Riley reinterates only two things: getting Australian men to dress well as their second nature and ‘Does it fit well?’

Whilst you couldn’t imagine neither Riley or Johnson in attire other than a suit, the simple beauty in a crisp white Egyptian cotton t-shirt has been the longstay of British factory Sunspel. In the same English factory since 1860, the company whose main products focused on slim-fitting t-shirts, polos and fine merino-wool knitwear is just one of many venerable products offered at Henry Bucks.

Henry Bucks, the unparallel Australian purveyor of haberdashery still stands today resiliently, immune to the two-speed economy and when the fanatical speed of consumer fashion has stretched the mechanics of mass manufacturing to its fullest capacity. Its flapship store on Collins Street and its establishments in Martin Place and Mosman in Sydney, the 5th generational family-run business has had the will and means to offer sartorial Italian made suits, double barrel single stitched shirting and sturdy English Goodyear shoes.

Born in 1860, Henry Buck had migrated to New South Wales, Australia in 1887 and had opened a shirt-making business with his wife Laura. They offer this alongside the making of men’s dress robes. A musician by the name of Fred Demett had married Buck and Laura’s daughter Elsie. Suzanne, Elsie and Demett’s daughter married James Cecil from England and gained two sons Timothy and Jonathan and both respectively having their own sons in James, Tim and Romy. The fifth generation sons now manage the business with Craig Cochrane as the flagship manager.

Cochrane acknowledges the relationship between a father and son as emblematic for what Henry Bucks stands for. “Fathers and sons pass down a generation of knowledge of menswear and really learn what quality stands for.” Not only does Henry Bucks cater for simpler undergarments, the harberdashery’s arsenal of suiting blends both master tradition in suit construction but also the contemporary softness of cashmere products. Brands such as Johnstons of Elgin in Scotland (notably making goods for British fashion designer Christopher Kane), Canali, Maurizo Baldassari, John Smedley and Brunello Cucenelli have all been under the company’s stable.

Henry Bucks lower level comprising of ties, shirts and its range of suiting
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Cochrane also acknowledges the price point differences for the choosing of suits. “For a younger customer, a Baldassari suit is less expensive than one from Zegna with a price of $999.00. It would perfect for a young man in applying for his first job or a special occasion.” Granted this is not your typical department store which offers suits for half that price but remitting Tom Riley’s inquiry: does it fit well? The costs at Henry Bucks are reflected by the quality of fabric, the steps taken to construct the suit and by how and what pedigree has it been made?

And how often does the older gentleman is unable to find the perfect sweater without adornments to be left empty-handed? Henry Bucks simply isn’t blackmailed by the fashion schedule who would rather regiment beautiful sweaters, outerwear by John Smedley, Gant, Hackett London for a trans-seasonal customer.

Leo Di Valentino (pictured) is the principal barber providing the full in-house service of The Barber’s Room

Customer service lives in the veins of Henry Bucks with additional in-store services such as a full time barber and bespoke tailoring led by James Davis. Dubbed the Yorkshire Room, it is a hollowed space between a customer and his tailor to invest in the choosing of fabrics from grandeur fabric books, with new silk interfacings for suits that are new for Henry Bucks with a more youthful spirit. Leo Di Valentino is the quintessential image of a forgone barber, one with a corner shop serving only men now fundamentally eclipsed by hairdressing salons. Now the traditionalist techniques of shave cream brushing, old school Wahl barber cutting and hot toweling – Di Valentino ensures a clean cut and shave the reassuring old-fashioned way. Stepping out of his service, you could wonder if you exemplify the characteristics of a Mr. Porter.

Stocking the best in Parisian and Belgian artisanal prêt-à-porter at Assin Melbourne on Little Collins Street – Photography courtesy Assin

Richly invested by the embodiment of subversive deconstruction, the total refinement of noir luxury and the fabric accents of exquiste Parisian and Belgian prêt-a-porter, Assin Melbourne on Little Collins Street permeates a galaxy of star maisons: Maison Martin Margiela, Lanvin, Ann Demeulemeester, and Dior Homme. Replicating the personalised service in Sydney as in Melbourne, the staff there have a memory repository that have the membrane of encyclopedic knowledge of each designer’s collections, specific garments and the recalling of collection shows. The basement level of Assin follows a sequential tale of gauzy and woolen garments stretching to the backend where the women’s of Demeulemeester coexist.

From the extensive listing of great retail and café combinaisons, the commerce of Melbourne values above all a personalised service for all customers. Georgia Danos from Grace wholeheartedly agrees. The real alchemy as to the reasons why Melbourne retail space work incredibly well is the coupling of knowledgeable staff equipped with the scrupulous attention to detail of a humble shopkeeper.

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Melbourne retailers:
Grace - www.gracemelbourne.com
P.Johnson tailors – www.pjohnson.com.au
Henry Bucks - www.henybucks.com.au
Assin - www.assin.com.au