As the womenswear FW2020 season draws to a close in our hometown, we take a look over the last month of fashion shows in the fashion capitals. The womenswear ready-to-wear shows are as renowned for material innovation as they are for trend, here are some of our favourites in all senses.
American Supply is pleased to present materials at Material District Rotterdam. The salon takes place from the 23rd to the 25th of June, and is one not to be missed for material enthusiasts!
This year’s edition will be the biggest yet, with a focus on sustainability in a curated selection of 400 materials from Material District’s extensive library for visitors to see, feel and experience first hand. All selected materials fall within one or more of their sustainable themes.
Material District Rotterdam will show our Flash-Luminium, which is composed of our Rainbow Flash retro-reflective nylon material fused on an aluminium support. Flash-Luminium is almost black when not activated by light, but once it is activated it becomes a prismatic gradient rainbow-colour. The retroreflection is achieved through light activating micro-glass beads on the nylon surface with a gradient refractive index. Even when not flashed, the dark surface has a subtle rainbow tint.
Its lightweight aluminium support is easily manipulated by hand and able to hold the form you give it with ease. Once this is combined with its retro-reflectivity, it becomes a material that needs to be seen to be believed!
Dates & opening hours MaterialDistrict Rotterdam
Tuesday 23 June 2020: 10:30 – 19:00
Wednesday 24 June 2020: 10:30 – 19:00
Thursday 25 June 2020: 10:30 – 19:00
Material District Rotterdam
Rotterdam Ahoy
Ahoyweg 10
3084 BA Rotterdam
For more information visit:
Rotterdam.MaterialDistrict.com
American Supply is expanding its collection offers to help you with your material research. Our collections are invaluable additions to any discerning Materiotheque and are available in three distinct formats. All the materials come in exclusive American Supply binders, housed in gold embossed American Supply Cubes to keep them in order.
Our first offer is The Classic Collection, which segments our iconic materials into their process families – Applied / Laminated, Coated / Projected, Extruded / Calendered, Pressed / Cast, Relief / 3D Effect and Woven / Braided. This makes it easier to discern the varied manufacturing processes behind their creation and aids your imagination to understand the possibilities of combining and transforming them.
The American Supply Classic Collection is composed of 12 binders in 3 American Supply Cubes, containing 140 materials. Our 6 manufacturing process families are divided into 2 binders each. At the end of the year, in December, a thirteenth binder will be sent with all 12 Material of the Month in a bonus binder of new materials. The American Supply Classic Collection contains 152 materials.
Our second offer is the new 2020 Annual Collection which is based around our Material of The Month initiative, with complementary materials alongside the creative team’s monthly choices. The 2020 Annual collection is released in quarterly instalments and with each instalment, you are invited to enjoy an exclusive breakfast in our studio here in Paris to learn first hand about the materials with our founder and our material experts.
The 2020 Annual Collection is composed of 4 binders in one American Supply Cube, using the Material of the Month as its base. You will receive 1 binder each quarter, the first quarter ends March 2020 and the final is in December 2020.
Each binder contains the past three months of Material of the Month and 8 – 10 complementary materials, and new developments, chosen by our creative team. The 2020 Annual Collection contains 50 materials in 4 binders housed in 1 American Supply cube.
Our final offer is The American Supply Full Collection, combining The Classic Collection and The 2020 Annual Collection together in a complete package. This option gives you all the tools you need to understand the American Supply materials, and gives you first-hand access to our material research and exclusive breakfasts each quarter where our founder and our material experts will disclose our newest materials and reveal their potential and transformative possibilities.
The American Supply Classic Collection as above – Contains 140 materials and the 2020 Annual Collection containing 50 Materials. A total of 16 binders in 4 American Supply Cubes, with 190 materials.
Hotel Molitor Paris has an enviable history, even when it was closed in 1989 it attracted the Parisian underground. Constructed in 1929 by Lucien Pollet, in an avant-garde Art Deco décor style, and immediately established itself as the go-to destination for Parisians to bathe, socialize and exercise. The hotel maintained its crown for 60 years before closing its doors to the public in 1989.
It was in this period from 1989 to 2014 that The Molitor became a social hub for the Parisian underground; artists, photographers and eventually the fashion world embraced this electric atmosphere and the forbidden became the norm. The Molitor’s subcultural position was cemented into the fabric of Paris itself.
Since re-opening in 2014 the latest incarnation of Hotel Molitor Paris continues to reflect on its artistic heritage by hosting an art installation in their outdoor swimming pool area each year. This year, the artist Amélie Lengrand has taken over, creating a giant spherical structure suspended above the water, taking inspiration from the reflections of the pool, and the architecture of the hotel itself.
She worked with our iconic Magic Mirror film and its unique dichroic refractive qualities to create her sculptural oeuvre. The film gives the work an unparalleled colourful reflection that mirrors the rich and colourful past of the hotel itself.
“Molitor, above and beyond its current incarnation, has been at various moments a place of celebration, meetings, and parties. For me, it reflects the idea of a village fete, a place of freedom that celebrates the joy of being together. The work is an interpretation of this, inspired by the Mirrorball in the club combined with Hotel Molitor’s architecture”
– Amélie Lengrand.
Lengrand’s installation is free to visit until 29 February 2020.
Maison & Objet returned to Paris’ Parc Des Expositions for their January edition, with an interior focus on reworking natural textures and natural materials. If in September the salon leaned towards nature, this time nature was harnessed, focussed and applied.
The Cypriot designer Michael Anastassiades was chosen as Designer of the Year, which was fitting as his eponymous lighting brand launched in 2007 at the salon. He showed a poetic selection of pendant lights, that evoked the mobile sculptures of Alexander Calder, turning softly on hydraulics for the presentation.
As our world addresses the urgency of looking towards its own future, people take to the streets and the outdoor comes indoor. It’s time to welcome the wild into your domestic paradise and celebrate the beauty of the natural world.
Maria Grazia Chiuri, Christian Dior’s womenswear creative director, is known for championing women’s rights and is an outspoken feminist, so it was a match made in heaven for her to collaborate with the pioneer of Feminist art, Judy Chicago. Chicago’s most well known work is The Dinner Party (1974-79) a sculptural work, laid out like a dinner devoted to historic female guests, celebrating craft techniques created by women all over the world in banners, tableware and table runners. She created the show venue for Christian Dior, a monumental female goddess form that the guests walked into, with a series of Banners hung by the seating and providing the backdrop to runway.
Jamie Reid, the punk-art-pioneer famed for his iconic record covers for the Sex Pistols in the 1970s is the aesthetic embodiment of punk-art. For Hiroaki Sueyasu, the founder of Japanese brand Kidill, it was a dream come true to collaborate with his idol on the collection, aptly titled Fuck Forever!
The artist David Wojnarowicz passed from an AIDS-related illness in 1992, though it seems like his work has never been more relevant. After a career spanning exhibition devoted to him at The Whitney Museum in 2018, his work has been gaining recognition globally for it’s increasingly pertinent themes. JW Anderson, the designer of choice to the art set, used Wojnarowicz’ burning house symbol, and reappropriated his use of Rimbaud to startling effect for his menswear F/W 2020 collection.
James Long, the creative director of Iceberg since 2017 worked this season with longtime friend form London, the artist Eddie Peake. Peake is known for his graffiti inspired text works, and love of rave culture, which marries perfectly with Long’s enduring vision for Iceberg.
This month we experiment with a new material in our sustainable material library: CocoRub.The material itself is composed solely of coconut fibres and natural latex, making it fully renewable and biodegradable. We transformed it in a number of ways using eco-friendly methods: heat bonding it with recyclable PU making it impermeable, colouring it with water-based eco-paint application, and finally, cutting it into strips and weaving it for a three dimensional feel.
For more information about CocoRub, click here.
“Fashion is architecture: it is a matter of proportions.” Coco Chanel
If architecture is the act of dressing spaces, and fashion is the act of dressing the body, then the act of the body moving through spaces is the primary meeting of the two. An ephemeral moment, where fashion invades architecture and architecture envelopes the body cocooning it. There are countless examples of fashion designers being inspired by architecture, and there are many celebrated fashion designers who first studied architecture, before focussing on fashion, than you may realise, including such luminaries as Pierre Balmain, Tom Ford, Gianni Versace, and Pierre Cardin.
It is, however, rare to find such a sensitive example of fashion meeting architecture as the recent collaboration between fashion designer Iris Van Herpen and Rotterdam’s Neutelings Riedijk Architects for the Naturalis Biodiversity Center in Leiden, Netherlands. Neutelings Riedijk Architects won the open call in 2013 to renovate the original museum, including the development of a 400,000 square foot extension, and they immediately thought of collaborating with fashion designer Iris Van Herpen.
“We wanted to evoke nature in all its elements — biodiversity, geology, tectonics — and not do so in a straightforward 19th-century manner. Hence, Iris.” Michiel Riedijk, the project’s lead architect in The New York Times, October 2019
The forms emulated undulating wave forms in pleated silk, or the water erosion that occurs over thousands of years, making the building look like it is in perpetual movement, whilst feeling both ancient and brand-new at the same time.
“The intention really was not to go away from my couture process too much, but instead to still it, and to disembody it” Iris Van Herpen, speaking to Dezeen in August 2019.
