Voxfrock found two books, vital as bibles for Paris and New York, and met two impressive young women, one a curator, one an importer, both passionately concerned – in disparate ways and from opposite ends of fashion – with fostering fine quality and good design.
(Longform post: allow five minutes to read. Main Picture: illustration by Christine Pan, one of six artists selected by curator Sigrid McCarthy for The Ethics of Style – Sustainable Fashion exhibition.)
Mind your ethics
Sigrid McCarthy, 24, curated The Ethics of Style – Sustainable Fashion, a breakthrough exhibition opening today at The Light Factory Gallery in the Melbourne suburb of Eltham. “Breakthrough”, because Miss McCarthy elegantly addresses the nose-crinkling myths of her subject matter. “That stigma against sustainable fashion,” she says, (and Voxfrock knows what she means.) “The assumption it’s all hemp sacks, ill-fitting clothing, that it doesn’t value good design.” (Voxfrock also observes, the crinkler myths are often broken by good designers, but as quickly built up again by a mish-mash of bad designers also working in fashion’s fast-evolving sustainable/ethical niche.)
Handpainted denim by Joseph Jang
Miss McCarthy’s plan of attack involved three avante garde fashion designers, Gemma Anastasiou, Rachael Cassar and Joseph Jang, known in certain circles for their striking aesthetics and sustainable methods ranging from recycling and low wastage, to strict ethical supply chains. “I chose these designers because they blend ethics and beauty seamlessly,” Miss McCarthy explains. “And, I hope they’ll alter people’s perceptions.”
She selected works by the trio that err on the spectacular side of wearable. Each illustrates a particular sustainable fashion technique, from dye methods to heat bonded flower petals. She complemented the mannequins in the gallery’s sleek, airy space, with a series of fashion illustrations by Michel Canetti, the internationally renowned Kerrie Hess, Christine Pan, Angie Rehe, Cairlin Shearer and Edwina White.
Most of the artists link loosely into the sustainable fashion idea by their own ethics. Others, such as Miss White, who works on recycled paper, are more directly engaged. More than anything, their works sharpen the exhibition’s focus on high fashion and help unhitch it from that “ill-fitting hemp sacks” myth. “I also wanted to showcase the beginning of every great design – the sketch,” Miss McCarthy says. “I wanted to bring this whole idea (sustainability) to a wider audience.”
From The Ethics of Style – Sustainable Fashion exhibition
Miss McCarthy took time out from her professional writing and editing studies at RMIT to curate the exhibition. “I am a rookie,” she says, with a passionate tone. “But, we can’t go on the way we are, producing so much (fashion), and such a high consumption rate. Some people think (sustainability) is as simple as buying an organic shirt. It is so much more. There is a slow fashion movement that encourages people to think about changing the way they shop, take better care of their clothes, have a more curated wardrobe of better quality rather than impulse buys….”
Illustration by Kerrie Hess
The Ethics of Style – Sustainable Fashion, is her plug for a better future. It runs until July 21 at The Light Factory Gallery, 21 Brougham Street, Eltham, (03) 9439 1206. An official opening sponsored by Naked Range Wines will be held this Sunday June 23. Many of the artists and designers will attend. A “refashioning” workshop, by Peppermint Magazine writer Leeyong Soo will be held on Saturday, July 20 and a fashion illustration workshop by artist Angie Rehe, will be held Saturday, July 27, a week after the exhibition’s official close. www.thelightfactorygallery.com.au
Frocky Books
Voxfrock recommends The Fashion Insiders’ Guides with gusto. Jot this down. New editions of TFIG New York and TFIF Paris were recently released. And, Voxfrock freely admits we haven’t sighted either, let alone flipped through their lists of sights, travel trips, cafes, bars and restaurants, gym and yoga classes, beauty salons and what-all other vital information every girl and her poodle needs (NEEDS!) in her non-home city.
The Fashion Insider’s Guide to Paris
So we won’t bang on about what we don’t know. But, we highly recommend them regardless, on account of we are intimately familiar with the preceding TFIF guides and found them easy to pop into a tote and lug about, prettily illustrated (see pictures), a joy to paw, and utterly invaluable when wifi was weak or Google rendered useless by such common international conditions as lossofipad and cellphonedowntoilet.
From The Fashion Insider’s Guide to New York
The Fashion Insiders’ Guide to New York and The Fashion Insiders’ Guide to Paris, are both available now. Author Carole Sabas is a Parisian living in New York who also contributes to French Vogue. (How chic!) Her insights are renowned for their rabbit-hole rarity, bulls-eye accuracy and relevance to a wide range of fashion tastes and specific needs. They are published by Abrams Books, distributed here by Thames and Hudson, and cost a relatively paltry $29.95 considering the unbridled joy they can bring in the right circumstances.
Shoes News
Somewhere between $1000 Loubitans and $100 pin-money imports, is a finely crafted shoe collection of un-fussy design, excellent quality and reasonable price. Young entrepreneur Caroline Chagas appears to have found it. Arezzo is a tiny experimental collection – just 15 designs – crafted in her birth country Brazil from fine leathers and nubuck, with delicate details designed to flatter feet and ankles and minimise wear, and a price range of $260 to $320.
Arezzo for Tragen
Arezzo is the largest manufacturer and retailer of shoes in Brazil (eight collections of 400 designs every year), so the economies of scale and quality control of Miss Chagas’ tiny tangent collection, are unusually privileged. “I’ve always thought; if your shoes aren’t right, then nothing’s right,” Miss Chagas told Voxfrock. “But, I couldn’t find that quality anywhere in Australia for the price.”
She was lamenting precisely that lack, of good quality shoes priced between pin-money and preposterous, when she happened to run into one of Arezzo’s owners backstage at a show during a business trip to London Fashion Week last September.
Kismet.
Her Arrezzo debut collection is now available on Miss Chagas‘ Tragen webstore. It includes Voxfrock’s favorite, a disarmingly simple dagger pump with thin 10cm stiletto heel, polished metal toe cap and elegantly scalloped upper in finest nubuck, (the superior sister of common suede). Its leather inner and sole are finely stitched and a tiny metal stub embedded near the toe, reduces wear. Like most of the collection, it comes in black, deep purple, grey, green or teal. The price is an extremely fair $260, however, Miss Chagas recently joined Australian retailers’ frenzy of winter sales and reduced all her prices by a whopping 30 percent. That includes the glossiest nubuck and ponyskin bootlets Voxfrock has encountered in recent seasons, and an eye-catching wedge pump that tapers backward to a thin finger of polished metal. Gorgeous.
www.tragen.com.au
Janice Breen Burns, jbb@voxfrock.com.au with Terry Carruthers, intern@voxfrock.com.au
