>Project Blog
By SHOWstudio, 18:00 Wed 24 Sep 2008
The unfortunate side-effect of concluding our Future Tense project during London Fashion Week is that some of our contributions were inevitably delayed by the hectic demands of the press junket. Daryoush Haj-Najafi's essay 'Glamour's Changing' is a case in point - but it was definitely worth the wait. Dissecting the modern glamour and overriding sense of positivity evident in the work of the Future tense designers, Haj-Najafi's piece is an apt post-script to an exciting, inventive and exhaustive (in more ways than one) look at a new generation of fashion stars.
By Alex Fury, 10:16 Fri 19 Sep 2008
As yesterday marked the end of our Future Tense project, we figured the best way to go out would be with a bang. Or rather, with a bash. Celebrating the launch of Hywel Davies' book '100 New Fashion Designers' along with the film season's finale, SHOWstudio, Laurence King and Diesel threw a party at Diesel HQ in King's Cross. With striking and innovative set design by Alun Davies and our Future Tense films projected across the crowd (including contributors Todd Lynn, Petar Petrov and the Felder Felder sisters to name but a few), the 7pm-til-9pm party was still raging when I departed at 10pm. As all the best shindigs do...
By SHOWstudio, 18:00 Thu 18 Sep 2008
After five intense, immense weeks of daily Future Tense films from a huge range of talents at every level of the industry, we end on a high courtesy of Parisian shoe supreme Pierre Hardy. Accessories mastermind of Balenciaga and Hermés in addition to his eponymous label, Hardy’s film focuses, of course, on his exquisite, futuristic and directional footwear in a unique and visionary style. Encompassing all the aims of Future Tense – expressing the dynamism and vitality of new design through innovative moving image – Hardy’s film is a fitting close to a stellar season of moving image.
By SHOWstudio, 17:59 Thu 18 Sep 2008
As Topman's design initiative MAN is due to show tomorrow, we decided our last Future Tense essay should similarly focus on the interesting and increasing wave of new menswear design that has contributed to the project, shown on the schedule and indeed often passed through the MAN initiative. Fashion features editor of Tank magazine Isaac Lock uses his essay examines the idea of 'New Dandies' (our words, not his), the postmodern man of fashion and how so many of our Future Tense names have dressed him.
By SHOWstudio, 12:00 Thu 18 Sep 2008
Our penultimate Future Tense contributor is New York-based designer Kai Kühne and his aptly-titled ‘Myself’ label. Starring none less than Chloe Sevigny and filmed by fashion photographer Marcelo Krasilic, Kuhne’s film is reminiscent of the hard emotional sell of many a modern fashion behemoth – perhaps Calvin Klein’s mid-nineties ‘Obsession’ spots coming closest. Then again, any brand would kill for Kühne’s creativity and undeniable cachet.
By SHOWstudio, 06:00 Thu 18 Sep 2008
It seems fitting (pardon the pun) to show Sinha-Stanic’s Future Tense contribution on the same day as their London Fashion Week show, focussed as the piece is on preparations for their latest collection. Minimal and severe (just like their uncompromising clothing), in a time of fashion hyperbole Fittings does exactly what it says on the tin.
By SHOWstudio, 00:00 Thu 18 Sep 2008
Today’s first Future Tense film from Swedish label Nakkna, titled In the Flesh, has a decidedly haunting melancholy quality. Focussed on a slowly-moving tableau intercut with footage of complex lobes of pleated fabric like innards and rich, bloodied colours, the film has the odd feeling of a Géricault oil-painting come to life. Precisely what it seeks to express remains an ever-intriguing enigma.
By SHOWstudio, 18:00 Wed 17 Sep 2008
For Future Tense, Pelican Avenue truly pushed the envelope, working with a displacement video to transform the moving part of an image – namely a model in a Pelican Avenue outfit - by shifting pixels across time to create an abstract form liquidly changing its shape with every frame. The resulting film is surreal, impressionistic and utterly mesmeric.
By SHOWstudio, 18:00 Wed 17 Sep 2008
With London Fashion Week well and truly underway and Britain's latest and greatest putting their wares on the runway and their hearts on their sleeves, it seems a fitting time to launch Kay Barron's Future Tense essay, examining the integral role - and inbuilt pitfalls - of London's current position as accessible, essential platform for young designers to launch their brand
By SHOWstudio, 12:00 Wed 17 Sep 2008
As the name suggest, Carola Euler’s film Serve focuses on the bright whites of tennis and all it entails. However, her Future Tense offering is no simple ode to sportswear. Distinctly eroticized - often subtle, occasionally blatant - with visuals focused on her chalky palette and a striking, amplified soundtrack, Euler’s film is as strict, sexy and unmistakably trademarked as her signature skinny suits.
By SHOWstudio, 06:00 Wed 17 Sep 2008
Inspired by the sensuous, sexualised and yet surreal work of Italian artist Giorgio de Chirico, our latest Future Tense film from London label Modernist is a black-and-white fairytale of sorts, drawing on the considerable talents of filmmaker Lorna Lavelle and stylist Mary Fellowes to devise its striking and intriguing monochromatic imagery.
By SHOWstudio, 00:00 Wed 17 Sep 2008
Bo Van Melskens is not, as some may reason, the name of this Berlin-based label’s designer, but a fictive character – a female dandy serving as muse and inspiration for both designer Sarah Elbo's collections and her Future Tense film. When I’m Asleep… takes the viewer into Bo’s universe, inventing, constructing and presenting a narrative from her life via Super 8 snapshots of action, all the while dressed in Bo Van Melsken’s 2008 collections to meld fiction with reality.
By SHOWstudio, 16:00 Tue 16 Sep 2008
Maybe it’s in the name, but Future Tense seems to have inspired films that counter the oft-hurled acusation that contemporary fashion relies on the cliché of retro. Take Peter Bertsch’s film under the label Peter Hornstein as an example: inspired by reflections on the face of William Sylvester in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey and featuring Bertsch-designed iridescent body-armour refracting light across the face of his model, this film has a decidedly space-age, futuristic feel.
By Studio, 08:00 Tue 16 Sep 2008
“Pure, graphique, slick, dark” were the words used by Rad Hourani in his Future Tense proposal. The resulting short, in multi-toned black-and-white lit like a Mappplethorpe photograph come to life against a soundtrack reminiscent of a Bruce Nauman installation. Luckily, Hourani’s collection – cerebral without being didactic - withstands both close scrutiny and these art-house bedfellows.
By SHOWstudio, 00:00 Tue 16 Sep 2008
Inspired by ideas of modular dress, restyling, customisation and the age-old adage of share and share alike, our latest Future Tense video from Sabine Braeuninger of Customer’s Own Property updates the ‘swap shop’ concept for the twenty-first century. Braeuninger’s models dress, undress, strap, button and pleat themselves into various elements of clothing proffered by the label, the individual wears stamping their own distinctive mark to bear on Braeuninger’s designs – which bring a new meaning to the term ‘separates’.
By SHOWstudio, 18:00 Mon 15 Sep 2008
As our London Fashion Week coverage and Fifteen Minutes of Fashion projects kick off, we also launch another element of Future Tense. Through until the final day of the project on Thursday – coincidentally the penultimate day of fashion week - we will have contributions from a selection of young fashion writers addressing themes and issues raised in the project. Our first essay is from Leisa Barnett of Vogue.com who, in her own words’ addresses “the combustible mix of couture and humour” in the work of this new generation of fashion talent.
By SHOWstudio, 16:00 Mon 15 Sep 2008
Transforming Jolibe’s garments and model into a series of geometric exercises, like Rorschach’s eponymous ink-blot test brought to life, the label’s video for Future Tense utilises film technique to the hilt to make it’s graphic point. With their mannequin spinning in white space, Jolibe’s camerawork amputates, multiplies and mirrors the cinematic image - subtle, slightly disorientating but fascinating, the film manages to simultaneously showcase, distort and disguise Jolibe's collection.
By SHOWstudio, 08:00 Mon 15 Sep 2008
Transparency, PVC and shrink-wrapping are hardly usual fashion fodder – except, perhaps in rather specialised Soho retailers - but Rie Rasmussen turned to both as inspiration for her latest collection and her Future Tense film. Just as her striking collection exposed, wrapped and framed the body with transparent layers, so her cut-n-paste film strip-searches her clone-like model on a busy city street.
By SHOWstudio, 00:00 Mon 15 Sep 2008
A vision of couture in a decidedly 21st-century mindset, Jantaminiau’s kaleidoscope contribution to Future Tense is certainly bewitching. Focussing on his S/S 2008 haute couture collection, over 500 photographs were edited and looped into this mesmerizing display demonstrating the increasingly complex ‘evolution’ of outfits. With a film redolent of the 19th century zoetrope yet resolutely modern in its fragmented viewpoints, Jantaminau mirrors his modernisation of the age-old crafts of couture.
By SHOWstudio, 16:00 Sun 14 Sep 2008
The fruit of a long-term working relationship with photographer Chris Vidal, Laitinen’s film closes our penultimate week of Future Tense. Filmed just outside the label’s hometown of Helsinki on models cast on the streets of the capital, Laitinen’s black and white silent short has a melancholic and dark feeling characteristic of their design output.
