Edit Her loves…

Dior exhibition and book

Christian Dior’s greatest love was flowers and plants (the New Look itself was inspired by the shape of unfurling petals). Each successive designer at Dior has paid homage to the motif in his or her own way. John Galliano studied real flowers for his 2010 couture offering, sending tulip-shaped silhouettes floating down the runway. Raf Simons adorned the stage with peonies, goldenrod, dahlias, carnations, delphiniums, orchids and all kinds of roses for the brand’s haute couture collection in 2012. Kim Jones used exotic blooms to evoke sunny beachside days for his menswear fall collection in 2020. More recently, Maria Grazia Chiuri has used real flowers to imprint on the fabrics of her designs, a process called ‘eco-printing’.

Now, a new exhibition will celebrate Dior’s enduring love affair with flowers, and a coffee table book detailing its history will accompany the show. The exhibition, titled ‘Dior and Roses’, will be staged at the Musée Christian Dior in the French seaside town of Granville from 5 June to 31 October. And the 160-page tome will be available for purchase from 2 June in Europe and from 7 September in the US.

More information here.

Fashionscapes: A Living Wage

Eco-age, a London based agency for sustainable business and strategy, has just released a new fifteen-minute short film about the living wage. Titled Fashionscapes: A Living Wage, it’s a great place to start if you want to learn more about unethical practices in the clothing industry and what brands are doing to fix it.

“We all need these jobs, but we want them with dignity, and dignity doesn’t come until we have a living wage. We need a dignified job – it’s that simple,” says activist Kalpona Akter. Eco-age founder Livia Firth speaks with activists, experts and garment workers in Bangladesh, most of whom don’t earn nearly enough to meet even their most basic needs. Produced to mark the 8th anniversary of the Rana Plaza disaster, which killed over 1,000 people, the documentary sheds an uncomfortable light on the systems of corporate greed and exploitation at the centre of the global fashion industry, highlighting the urgent need for change in respect of workers’ rights.

But it’s not all doom and gloom; the documentary poses some solutions, including a new EU legal framework which would hold brands accountable for how they treat the people who make the products we consume.

Watch the documentary here.

Diane Pernet’s A Shaded View on Fashion Film Festival

There is evidence to suggest that fashion brands are beginning to take digital advertising more seriously. Fashion films certainly flourished last year as brands sought out ever more novel ways to engage with their customer base in a socially distanced world. Such as Marine Serre’s mysterious ‘Amor Fati’, which features multi-disciplinary artist Sevdaliza in the brand’s signature catsuits and moon-patterned designs. As well as Martine Rose’s digital fashion show, which captures the strange quirks of life under lockdown.

Former designer and journalist, and one of the industry’s first fashion bloggers, Diane Pernet spearheaded the fashion film when it was still an emerging art form, launching A Shaded View on Fashion in 2005 to showcase the best in global output around fashion, style and beauty through film. The festival’s thirteenth iteration will run from 3 to 7 December 2021 on FNL Network – which (lucky for us) means anyone can tune in. (The festival is usually held in Paris at the Centre Pompidou, as well as at satellite events in New York, London, Rome, Milan and Antwerp.) As in previous years, the festival will include film screenings and conversations where industry insiders, designers and experts will discuss everything from “the state of art direction to cultural symbolism in fashion”.

Interested filmmakers can submit their work up until the 31 July. This year’s jury will be led by film director and writer Bruce LaBruce, and also include journalist Susie Lau, influencer Bryan Boy, designer Andre Walker and deputy editor-in-chief of Vogue Italia, Sara Maino. Previous festival winners include Brooklyn-based Colm Dillane, founder and designer of streetwear label KidSuper, and Chomwan Weeraworawit, co-founder of New York City clothing label Philip Huang.

Watch the films from last year’s winners here.

Browns Focus

London boutique Browns is re-launching its Browns Focus initiative, a programme to nurture and support the next generation of international fashion talent. As part of the programme, a carefully selected roster of womenswear and menswear designers, including Bianca Saunders, Maximilian, Saul Nash, Conner Ives, and more have produced an exclusive collection for the boutique.

“With everything that’s going on in the world, it’s so important to continue to support smaller brands and give them the confidence and power to succeed at what they know and do best,”said Ida Petersson, Browns’s menswear and womenswear buying director – reported by Wallpaper.

Browns’ East London space as well as its newly opened Brook Street space have also mounted installations to showcase the designers’ collections.

Browns Focus was introduced in 1997 and is credited with discovering and nurturing a host of British design talent, from Alexander McQueen to Christopher Kane, and introducing international designers to the UK market, from Comme des Garçons to Calvin Klein.