KENZO | MARRAS | V&A

A few of Uzo Oleh's beautiful behind-the-scenes photographs from the recent 40th Anniversary KENZO show at the V&A.  Antonio Marras reworked the sublime SS11 collection into an extravagant homage to the KENZO archives.  A perfect blend of talent, exquisite clothes, perfect set design, stunning lighting, amazing styling, fantastic casting, wonderful music and goodwill on all sides.  Kudos and gratitude to the venerable Antonio Marras, Paolo Bazzani, Sylviane Rudier, Oriole Cullen, Shelley Durkan, Nick Gray, Jeii Hong, Pamela Chapman, Andrew Lamb, Adam Cripps, the teams at L'Oréal, Toni & Guy and MAC, and my superlative compatriots at Bacchus Studio (Carmen, Lucy, Spencer, Martha, Daize +++ our scores of brilliant, interns, dressers and runners) for helping make it happen.

PAPER

An amazing collection created entirely in paper by Polish Artist Bea Szenfeld, a part of her "Sur La Plage" exhibition at Stockholm's Design Galleriet earlier this year. Fell on this whilst playing with origami and researching traditional paper-manufacture techniques (and obsessing about freckles).

S/S 2011 | P/E 2011

A stellar-season of beautiful design.  We found ourselves captivated by the designs of some extraordinary talent whose shows we felt very fortunate to produce.

MARK FAST | EMILIO DE LA MORENA | DAVID KOMA | HANNAH MARSHALL | HOLLY FULTON | FELDER FELDER | JW ANDERSON | CHRISTOPHER SHANNON | JAMES LONG | BASSO & BROOKE | ISSA LONDON

KEY

To say we had limited time to turn around this original montage-work would be understating things. Always amuses us how crazy pressure can produce some excellent results. The finished product measured 24m x 4.5m and graced the main front hoarding at London Fashion Week.  We particularly love the frame... a scan of a striped, knitted jumper casually thrown-down and squished on the scanner glass.

DIRECTIONAL

Saturday 18 September 2010. A '50s car park in Soho. Emilio de la Morena's already much fêted SS'11 show. And an uncanny double-set of directionals. We heartily thank Jérôme Puch for the silver metal tape he brought with him from Paris. So chic.

HEAVEN

Oh won't someone please buy me Simon Costin's amazingly perfect huge fibreglass and resin cherry from the SHOWStudio shop? I could happily spend days positioning this around my house and studio just to see what wild reflections I could conjure up.

PARKING

This was a while back... but continues illicit a smile. A  '50s Soho Car Park and a huge chevron-shaped backdrop painted in a white-to-black degradé by a theatrical set designer. Dead-flat grey floor, a network of beams and pipes and cables, and overhead daylight Kinoflos. A chilled palette thatmade us all think of Duchamp. The perfect foil for a collection by visionary designer Josh Goot. The Car Park came complete with an amazing glass ceiling, RSJs, the odd pigeon and the discovery of a junky's stash and paraphernalia in a corner. Plus the fun of moving an Aston Martin, a Porsche and an Audi on a hydraulic skate, accompanied by a Ligety-style car-alarm cacophony.

PROPORTION

A few months back, as we forged into pre-production for the forthcoming London Fashion Week season and as one ephemeral concept lead to another, we found ourselves yet again falling into turbulent debate about proportion.  Vetruvian purism is all fine and well... but to follow it? Or to deliberately skew it?

Proportion is the unsung hero of production.  You can't really teach it.   If it works beautifully, it never gets the glory... rather one of its big brothers or sisters (lighting, set design, etc) will take the credit.  It requires confidence.  It gets really interesting when you start looking at a 'jeu de proportion'.  Suffice to say, proportion has been keeping eyes open at night of late.

Kudos to Vincent Bousserez.  As I hit fifth-gear in my struggle to get unusual proportions to marry the realities of building a show production, I came across this image in Elephant.  The irreverence made me laugh (finally) and an answer to the problem followed suit the same day.

As an aside, I also love the fact that it features the little '50s Bencini Comet S camera.  Happy.

DOORS [1]

Found on the side of a motorway heading northwest. Rather beautiful. In a Huxley kind of way. Looks like a bulkhead hatch.  Set in slats of wood that are actually concrete. Great effort of execution for something evasively functional.

POLAROID

Stumbled across a new secret stock of amazing and rare Polaroid film. Impatiently awaiting delivery so we can start work on a new installation project.

We do love digital. We just shot a 'court-mettrage' on the incredible Canon D1 Mark4 SLR, which will be posted in September. But balance in all things...

And this new stock of Polaroid silver film will allow us to generate some one-off analog gems. Unique, flawed and - due to the nature of this film - unpredictable, sometimes even fugitive and self-destructive.

The project (still under wraps) will create a specific archive, capturing a specific moment in time in a specific creative industry. More to follow.