The MOMU fashion museum of Antwerp unveils it’s latest exhibition this evening, entitled “LIVING FASHION, Women’s Daily Wear 1750-1950″.

“In the 19th century, the growing social importance of the middle classes brought with it a new group of wealthy citizens who wanted to show off their status through their clothing and behaviour. This stimulated consumption and fashionable activities amongst the women in these social circles. Travelling, sports, walking and shopping became new forms of passing leisure time, all requiring specific apparel. In addition to the clothes they wore, the organization of their days also followed fashion trends. Mornings were for indoor activities, the afternoons for visits and ‘outdoor activities’, and each moment of the day had its own particular dress code.
Taking part in ‘high fashion’ increasingly became a must for an ever-growing group of consumers, but these women did not simply let themselves be dictated by fashion. They also helped form fashion through their own changing customs and living habits. As they still do today, consumers were frugal and creative with ever-changing fashions. Dresses were remade and sometimes completely transformed to fit the new, fashionable silhouettes. Re-using fabrics was perfectly normal, even for the upper classes.
On the basis of historical silhouettes from the extensive apparel collection of Jacoba de Jonge, now almost entirely incorporated in the MoMu collection, we sketch a picture of the relationship between the fashion ideals of the day and the clothing that people were actually wearing.”

LIVING FASHION. Women’s Daily Wear 1750-1950. From the Jacoba de Jonge Collection runs from Wednesday 21st of March till Sunday 12th of August 2012.

Check out a sneak preview below of some of the historical dresses, from the new MOMU Blog:

From 11 December 2011 to 6 May 2012, the Groninger Museum will present the exhibition entitled Azzedine Alaïa in the 21st century. This exhibition displays the most fantastic Alaïa fashion creations of the last ten years. Azzedine Alaïa is one of the last major living couturiers.

The exhibition, curated by Mark Wilson, focuses on Alaïa’s work in the 21st century. It is the sequel to the presentation of his designs from previous decades, also shown at the Groninger Museum in 1997-1998, and which subsequently travelled to the Brant Foundation, Guggenheim Soho in New York in 2000.

A monograph ‘Azzedine Alaïa in the 21st Century’ will be published by BAI and the Groninger Museum with an essay by Annie Cohen-Solal and introduction by Mark Wilson. Tunisian-born Azzedine Alaïa is one of the most important fashion designers of the last decades. The name Alaïa stands for glamour, sensuality, style, cut, self-confidence, comfort and, of course, sex appeal. His tight dresses embrace the bodies of the world’s most seductive and successful women.

During the exhibition period, the Groninger Museum will organize special step-in guided tours on the theme of Azzedine Alaïa in the 21st century. More information on the activities can be found at www.groningermuseum.nl

Mirte Maas wears Azzedine Alaïa Autumn Winter 2011

Abbey Lee Kershaw wears Azzedine Alaïa Spring Summer 2008

Azzedine Alaïa Autumn Winter 2010

Azzedine Alaïa Autumn Winter 2010

Coccodrillo is extremely pleased to announce our involvement in the 20 year retrospective of the Belgian fashion designer Walter Van Beirendonck, who will unveil his exhibition ‘Dream the World Awake’ this week at the Antwerp MoMu fashion museum. Coccodrillo’s co-founder Geert Bruloot is co-curator and scenographer of the exhibition.

See more at: waltervanbeirendonck.momu.be

A generation ago, she was an obscure footnote to the Surrealist movement. Today, she has become almost a cult figure. For the second time in 15 years, a Paris museum devotes a major exhibition to the eccentric photographer Claude Cahun.

She was born in 1894 as Lucy Schwob. Her assumed first name, which can be male or female, reveals her obsession with role playing. Openly lesbian, she liked to dress as a man, cut her hair short or even shave her head. She was lucky enough to find, at age 15, a soul mate who became her lifelong companion — Suzanne Malherbe, who called herself Marcel Moore. So intimate was their collaboration that it’s often unclear whether a particular photo was shot by Cahun or, following her instructions, by her friend. By a curious twist of fate, the two became sisters when Cahun’s father later married Malherbe’s mother.

Until 1938, when they moved to Jersey, the largest of the Channel Islands, they lived in Montparnasse, the preferred quarter of the Paris intelligentsia, only a few blocks from another lesbian couple, Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas. Most of the pictures on view at the Jeu de Paume are self- portraits (the previous show was at the Musee d’Art Moderne). Cahun never tired of disguising herself and adopting unconventional poses. She appears as a butterfly, a cross-legged Buddha or with dumbbells and the warning: “I am in training, don’t kiss me.”

In 1932, she met Andre Breton, the guru of the Surrealists, and joined the movement. From that period date a number of photomontages, mixing heterogeneous objects such as twigs, bones, insects, feathers, gloves and shoes. In 1936, she explained her “theater of objects” in an essay titled “Prenez Garde aux Objets Domestiques” (Beware of Household Goods). It would be wrong to regard Cahun as a forerunner of the feminists who condemn household appliances (and the publicity for them) as instruments of female enslavement. She was too playful and ironic for any kind of dogmatism. One of her favorite items was a wooden mannequin appearing in various poses, probably inspired by the German artist Hans Bellmer, who frequently visited Paris. Bellmer’s fetish was a life-size doll of his own making that he photographed in twisted postures, suggesting scenes of rape and perverse sex. The occupation of Jersey by the Wehrmacht, in 1940, jolted Cahun from her Surrealist daydreams and brought her back to the real world. Unconcerned by her partly Jewish origins, which already put her life at risk, she joined the Resistance. In 1944, after she was interrogated by the Gestapo and her house was vandalized, Cahun tried to kill herself. Sentenced to death, she was saved by the end of the war. The Surrealist movement, on the other hand, didn’t survive World War II. Most of its leading lights had fled occupied France, and the movement never regained its prewar significance.

Cahun died in 1954, almost forgotten, so much so that the catalog of a 1985 exhibition at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., assumed that she had perished in a concentration camp. Malherbe died in 1972. They are buried together on Jersey.

Claude Cahun at Jeu du Paume, Paris.

Words by Erik Madigan Heck.

< img class=”alignnone size-full wp-image-1154″ title=”Madame Grès at the Musée Bourdelle, Paris” src=”http://www.coccodrillo.be/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/madame-gres-musee-bourdelle-paris-4.jpg” alt=”Madame Grès at the Musée Bourdelle, Paris” width=”590″ height=”443″ />

In a poetic fusion of delicate cloth and weathered bronze, the MADAME GRÈS exhibition housed within the Musée Bourdelle in Paris’ 15th district is a romantic insight into the craft of this extraordinarily talented fashion designer – a woman who’s body of work has inspired legions of modern designers the world over.

Born in 1903 as Germaine Émilie Krebbs, the designer was crowned Madame Grès later in life (as an anagram of her Russian husband’s first name, Serge [Czerefkov]). She established her first fashion house ‘Alix Barton’  in the early 1930s, and begun trading as Grès in 1942. Her designs are characterised by the complex jersey pleating and cut-out panelling in goddess dresses, and have graced the forms of screen goddesses like Marlene Dietrich and Greta Garbo.

The Madame Grès exhibition is extended until August 28th, 2011. To find out more click here.
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Coccodrillo is excited to announce the winner of our Shoe Prize for 2011 is Swiss designer Niklaus Hodel, currently in his 2nd year at the Antwerp academy. In collaboration with the 150 year old Swiss manufacturer Sulzer Innotec, Nik has sculpted six pairs of futuristic boots, each out of a solid block of aluminium.

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With humble beginnings as a hat shop in Istanbul in 1934, Vakko has risen to become Turkey’s leading fashion house and something of a cultural institution in the capital. For 2011, it proudly hosts the 2nd edition of ‘Stephen Jones & The Accent of Fashion’ in the Vakko Fashion Centre – a landmark millinery exhibition originally launched in Antwerp during September last year. Adding to the displays, Vakko introduces a unique selection of pieces demonstrating Turkey and the Orient as an influence on Jones’s work. In a specially-constructed pavillion, Stephen’s hats are literally ‘brimming’ with renewed vigour in this exciting new setting!

From 8th April – 8th June, 2011

vakko.com

stephenjonesmillinery.co.uk

See the Antwerp exhibition here

Above: Stephen himself appreciating one of the exhibition’s billboards in downtown Istanbul!

The Coccodrillo team once again returned to Florence this month, to visit the FERRAGAMO CRÉATIONS showroom for Fall Winter 2011-12. Finding a luxurious spare hour one morning, we ventured across the cobblestones to the Palazzo Vecchio, where DAMIEN HIRST‘s infamous diamond skull “For the love of God” currently resides.

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Our friends at the MoMu fashion museum in Antwerp have launched their latest exhibition for Spring Summer 2011, exploring the realms of knitting and knitwear throughout the decades.

Opening last tuesday, the UNRAVEL exhibition runs throughout the summer with a ten-part installation; with historical examples of the first machine knitting, an homage to Antwerp’s 1970s knitting queen Ann Salens, and a look at the intricately distressed techniques that designers have adopted in recent years.

Coccodrillo’s favourite pieces include the MAISON MARTIN MARGIELA‘s turtleneck mohair dress, the ANGELO FIGUS knitted “Louboutin’s”, and historical pieces like ELSA SCHIAPARELLI’s swimwear and PIERRE CARDIN‘s 60s shift dress.
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The prestigious Les Arts Decoratifs museum in the Louvre presents a new exhibition of fashion from the years 1990s & 2000s as a retrospective of this groundbreaking period of design – a time when the internet, economic conditions & world affairs began to radically influence the expression of fashion designers across the globe.

Beginning in the early 1990s, the exhibition trawls the archives of many of the ‘avant-garde’ pioneers whose houses still remain today – standing as bastions of their iconic, archetypal aesthetics. The wares of Azzedine Alaia, Rei Kawakubo at Comme des Garcons & Jean Paul Gaultier are just some of the many names on show – each piece carefully chosen as a testament to the vision of these willingly provocative & surprising creators.

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