Fashion : Iris van Herpen

Here the promized post about the young Dutch designer Iris van Herpen exhibition in the Groninger Museum (in Groningen in The Netherlands). This was a real treat for me ! I had seen some of Iris her creations on the internet already and I was thrilled to see them in real life. They are even much more intriguing and spectacular in real than on pictures. The dresses were shown on fashion dolls and you could walk around them to see all sides, and to see all details close by, and this was great. Iris makes such intricate structures, that you have to follow the lines on the front over the sides to the back, to get the full picture. I made lots of pics, but most of them were very bad as I told you before (a too long exposure time for me to hold my camera stable enough). But I managed to edit some and so I hope you still can enjoy a bit of what I saw :)

Fashion : Azzedine Alaïa

I told you already that I have been to an exhibition in the Groninger Museum (in Groningen in The Netherlands) about the Tunisian fashion designer Azzedine Alaïa when we were visiting my family. It was fantastic. The dresses were shown on fashion dolls and you could walk around them to see all sides, and to see all details close by. And with Alaïa's dresses, this is quite important, because then you can see the innovative materials he uses and the seams that are almost invisible. He is combining leather, silk, organza, velvet (sometimes in a very real looking animal print), battist, knitted felted wool, lace, etc. I made lots of pics, but most of them were very bad :( It was pretty dark in the exhibition rooms and I was not allowed to use flashlight, so to get decent pics I had to have a long exposure time and with no tripod I cannot get my camera stable enough. But I bought the magazine of the museum, and scanned some of the pics so that you still can enjoy a bit of what I saw :)

Button Wednesday : Designer Name Buttons

It is Wednesday again, so it's BUTTON DAY on my blog !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


In the blog post buttons made for Elsa Schiaparelli, I did not tell you that Elsa was also the first one who designed a button with her own signature on it (from the book "Buttons" by Loïc Allio, Seuil 2001).



The display of the designer's name on the garment buttons became a guarantee for quality and elegance, a token of appreciation for the wearer. This was followed by many other designers, with Coco Chanel as the most famous buttons of all (pictures from Allyson's blog).







A "nice" example of the value of these buttons is the publicized theft committed by Mariolina Fassino. Ms Fassino sold 2nd-hand clothes at a stall in London and bought once a used Versace jacket for £1.5, but it was missing a few buttons.... She took a pair of scissors into a designer store on Oxford street and snipped 11 Versace buttons before she was catched; this costed her £1650 in court .... (from the book "All Because of a Button" by Ellaraine Lockie, 2000)
Designer name buttons has become a hot collectors topic. Here some more from Ferragamo, Armani, Donna Karan, Jean Paul Gaultier, Ferre, Karl Lagerfeld, Pierre Cardin, Dolce and Gabbana and Ralph Lauren, respectively (click on the pictures to go to the reference websites).













Have you seen a lovely, beautiful, stunning, crazy button or button-related thingy, or did you make something with a button / buttons, or did you even make buttons yourself, blog about it on your blog on Wednesday, and give the link here in the comments so that everybody can enjoy it !!