There's no place like London...for Fashion exhibitions

Christian Louboutin – Less about the foot, and more about fetish.

           

Celebrating twenty years of Christian Louboutin’s art, the Design Museum presented a variety of shoes: from fringed boots for Tina Turner reflecting her movement in performance, to a ‘fetish’ shoe collection in collaboration with David Lynch, as well as designs for characters like The Muppets Miss Piggy! Christian Louboutin’s exhibition embodies a variation of styles, each incredible in their design, making it “hard to pick a highlight from this slick theatrical show”, as commented in The Guardian. But amid this variety is a great continuity in the cabaret theme of the exhibition and the ideal that all women want to be a showgirl.

The exhibition room was made up of a bright lit up lighthouse in Moulin Rouge style and a moving carousel carrying the shoes – it looked absolutely spectacular. With the cabaret having been a great influence on Louboutin during his childhood, he asserts that dancers and showgirls “are the ultimate icons”, wearing and dancing in heels as if they were part of their own body. There was one quote printed on the wall that really transformed the idea of the shoe in my eyes, the fact that the shoes primary aim is to highlight and ensure that the leg makes the impact – it is not about the foot! It seems almost hard to believe this standing in a room that is shoe heaven, with every style, embellishment and eventuality being shown, that it is the line, the silhouette and the shape that is of primary importance rather than the spectacular embellishment of the design.

But another more controversial aspect of Louboutin’s ideals about the shoe is presented in this exhibition, in his fascination with nudity and sex in shoes.

Christian Louboutin: “people must see shoes as an accessory to walk in, however, some shoes are made for running – and some are made for sex.”

I’ll admit, on reading this statement I thought “that is just ludicrous!” But with deliberation and the quashing of the feminist inside of me, high heels are a design created to make a woman’s silhouette more attractive: they couldn’t be more about sex! And Louboutin’s 2007 ‘Fetish’ collection in collaboration with David Lynch demonstrates just that.

Whilst some of the ‘Fetish’ pieces verge on having an S&M quality, this section of the exhibition reflected the darkness of passion; consisting of dark walkways with shoes displayed in lit up bell jars, and images of nudity pictured on the walls. This odd collection featured mainly black shoes, caged leather effects and the ‘La Lynch’ shoe, essentially a black ballet pump on a large stiletto heel - sexy but impossible to walk in! A similar shoe covered in Swarovski crystals was sold to fund the English National Ballet, and so in the same shoe style women can be either an elegant goddess or a scandalous seducer, a differentiation between a heeled woman that Christian Louboutin himself asserts:

 “For me, the front and back of the shoe make two different aspects of femininity. The front is about poise, allure, stature, elegance…the back is the Gait, the movement, the heel…there are thus two types of women with regard to shoes – those who symbolise the look and those who symbolise the walk.”

Louboutin’s own fetish with nudity, designing shoes with transparent materials and minimal decoration embody the importance of the shoes fit and design, so that it becomes almost part of the body. A great deal of work goes into a shoe; what is viewed as the mere accessory to walk in has been tailored down into a group of 150 styles or so for a collection from hundreds of prototypes. Alike to the efforts put into the shoe design itself, equal if not greater effort put Louboutin into his current position as a god in the shoe making industry; and after seeing these shoes, I assure you, that you will struggle not to spend your student loan on a classic pair of Louboutin’s!

Hermes Leather Forever

The Hermes Leather Forever exhibition presented not just a love of leather, but the malleability of leather and the history that has seen the transformation of a saddler’s into one of the greatest designer brands. This exhibition had something truly magnificent to it, and I say this not because it was the only free exhibition – which of course appeals to students a great deal more! – but because viewing the handbags in their lengthy and detailed process of creation defined them for me as a true art form.

On entering the first room exhibited you are confronted by an array of rainbow coloured leather sheets, hung up for the observer to touch: calf, buffalo, goat and crocodile skins. From this room stems a workshop, with peep holes in the walls to show up close the immense detail of the sewing - one of which to my embarrassment I very nearly broke - and two French women sat making Hermes bags in front of you! These two ladies spent two years studying how to make a Hermes bag, and stated that each bag takes from 20-50 hours! By watching them it is no surprise that the bags are expensive, as for every stitch a separate hole has to be made with a leather punch – there are no industrial sewing machines in this process. What also makes it worthwhile is the quality of the material; the plume bag, for example, has become a very popular shape and I myself own one from Topshop. But the difference is that where mine is made from synthetic materials, a Hermes plume bag is made with Sand Camel Wool Serge and black Clemence Taurillon calfskin, with a goatskin lining and gold plated brass fastenings – luxurious materials that will last a lifetime.

What was most interesting about the exhibition was the origin of Hermes as a harness and saddle workshop set up in 1837 in the Grands Boulevards of Paris. Saddles were exhibited in one room decorated with horse jumps and real sand on the floor as if in a riding school. The first bag that Hermes actually created was the Haut a Courroies in the early twentieth century, a bag that was shaped to allow a rider to transport his saddle. Hermes did not become a fashion garment manufacturer until 1925 when they created a suede buttoned jockey shirt, and the hugely famous Hermes scarves were not created until 1978 when Jean-Louis – Dumas put energy into silk for his ready to wear creation line. In the short time that the scarves have been available, considering that this year was Hermes 175^th anniversary, they remain a whopping £280 per scarf, having been quoted that by a lady in Harrods last week. But if the scarves are as well made and as beautiful as the handbags, I am convinced that they are worthwhile if not certainly an investment. 

V&A Ballgowns – flawless couture to contemporary creativity

                The British ballgown lay prominent in the country’s royal roots, in the expression of regal elegance and the strength of British design. The intricacy of the embellishment of the couture pieces by royal couturiers Norman Hartnell and Catherine Walker make the gowns absolutely divine, using luxurious fabrics like silk taffeta and jewel embellishment as on Walker’s pearl covered dress for Diana. The style of the large puffed skirt with endless layers of netting are an aspect of design that has become regal in itself, associated with fairy tales and essentially not as desired presently with the shift into contemporary styles and the loss of formalities, such as traditional debutante balls. Hartnell in the run up to the coronation of Queen Elizabeth, however, was advised by a doctor to take some days rest, because he had been so flooded with ballgown requests!

Zandra Rhodes Modern Renaissance Dress

The ball gowns are said to often have been designed in order to compliment a piece of jewellery, and often the designers were also commissioned to select the jewellery. A titled lady is said to have asked Sassoon to select a pair of diamond earrings from Garrards, and on arrival he was given 22 pairs to choose from! But many of the dresses are complimented enough without the jewellery: Belville Sassoon’s embroidered piping detail on his 1968 dress for Princess Anne, the quilted silk wording into the hem of Cindy Beadman’s design, and Cavanagh’s head to toe beaded blush pink marvel. My favourite dress of the exhibition was Zandra Rhodes' truly elaborate Modern Renaissance dress, the fluted gold hip panels themselves are just spectacularly mesmerising! I felt almost personally insulted when one woman beside me commented, “ugh that is just disgusting, only Kate Moss could wear that well”. I admit, on first glance, it is different and reminds me almost of gladiatorial armour in the use of the panels, but one cannot dispute that a dress like this will certainly turn heads and as long as you have the confidence to wear such a dress, anyone could look spectacular in it!

The second part of the exhibition held on the mezzanine displayed contemporary gowns by names such as Gareth Pugh, Atsuko Kudo and Erdem that had transformed traditional gowns with the experimentation of new materials and shapes. Erdem’s gorgeous yellow dress with a spectrum of colours seeping up the hem will have been seen by many of you in adverts for the exhibition, and on close observation, the smooth intermingling of colour in this fabric is spectacular, and is enhanced even further by embroidered beads. Other dresses were made with unusual materials such as tin foil; Osman used a silk wool boucle to create a textured but still gorgeous dress; and Atsuko Kudo’s use of printed latex produced a shiny crocodile like appearance. Thus in the contemporary gowns there is a new essence of colour and obsession with texture, that has essentially innovated traditional perceptions of elegance.