mcqueen

Hawthorne & Heaney Visits The House of Bandits Exhibition

October 30, 2020 by Intern

On the 16th of October I got the opportunity to visit the House of Bandits exhibition, which is based at Rembrandt House in London, just down the road from Savile Row. This exhibition is part of the Sarabande foundation created by the late Alexander McQueen to support the new and upcoming visionary talent of today. Offering both studio space and scholarships the foundation has helped many inspiring artists to date.

One of the artists in particular who I went to go see was Esna Su. She creates handcrafted pieces which explore ‘the subtle issues of identity and memory and how these are shaken in the context of political instability’. Within her work she uses the traditional Turkish techniques of weaving, twinning and crochet. As a fellow weaver myself I can understand the complexity and detail that goes into her woven pieces.

Below you can see the process that Esna Su goes through to create some of her final creations. When it comes to knitting, Su uses strips of vegetable leather and knits them together. She lets the designs take shape in their own way as once the leather is dry the organic shapes are exposed. In her own words ‘’through irregular and hollow shapes, she exposes the burden of displacement but also sketches an aspiration towards protection and preservation’’.

“It’s a big part of my life being at Sarabande and I’ll always remember my time with a big smile. I would never have been brave enough to do this without the support of Sarabande.”

Along with Esna Su’s work was another Turkish artist called Berke Yazicioglu who showcased his woven wall hanging which had a particular inspirational point of view. The following designs shown below are woven representations of Igor Stravinsky Rite of Spring. Listening to this piece he used the sound colour theory by different sounds, notes and instruments meaning different textile aspects. For example, the beat inspired the framework, the instruments represent a specific colour and the notes equal to a certain colour tone.

This exhibition is free. And for specific artists you can buy tickets. This is a great exhibition to help support fellow designs and is one to check out.

Words and Images by Isabelle Humm

Hawthorne & Heaney visits McQueen’s Old Bond Street Show Space

February 6, 2020 by Natasha Searls-Punter

London is very lucky to be able to offer a wealth of great free exhibitions and museums on many subjects. This open to all attitude really helps to keep feeding the minds of our designers and innovaters that one can go out and have your eyes opened to all sorts of information. One such jem that might be a little lesser known is the top floor of the flagship Alexander McQueen store on Old Bond Street.

They have started to use the stop floor as more of an exhibition type space, sharing insights from the vast archives that the house of McQueen holds. At the moment, the space is dedicated to roses, curated by the Creative Director Sarah Burton.

What we found really special about this space, as an embroiderer in particular is that you can get right up close to the pieces to see the details often lost in show and large scale exhibitions. Something that we found even with very well done exhibitions like Savage Beauty. In addition to this they are sharing a lot of the background research and technical craftsmanship that goes into making a collection and show with this kind of dramatic results. There are development moodboards, fitting notes, embroidery placements onto pattern pieces and draping directed onto the model. There is also a viewing booth with footage from the shows to fully round out the experience and see it in the final context for which it was intended to be consumed.

If you find yourself in the area, it’s definately worth a trip it to see some beautiful things and get some of the background scoop on how these things all come together. The notes and quotes from behind the scenes really give you a sense of being emersed into their world. We are already looking forward

Hawthorne & Heaney Visits Fashioned from Nature

June 1, 2018 by Natasha Searls-Punter

The Victoria and Albert Museum in London has a new Fashion exhibition now showing in their fashion and textiles area called ‘Fashion from Nature‘. The exhibition provides an overview of how nature is used in fashion as well as how nature is reflected by fashion, which gives it a broader range of items to show and issues to call into question.

Waistcoat, Maker Unknown 1780 – 1789,

Like most of the exhibitions held in this area, downstairs displays the historical items, talking about the production of fabrics such as linen and silk with videos showing the full process. From an embroidery perspective, there are a few real treats for the traditional embroidery enthusiasts such as this silk-shaded waistcoat featuring these gorgeously expressive monkeys.

Fish Scales Headband, Maker unknown, Circa 1800

There are unsurprisingly a number of pieces which include animal harvested materials which are undoubtedly beautiful but the issues surrounding their use are well discussed in the displays. These are presented next to some alternatives to the use of feathers and bones which help to stop the exhibition from getting too heavy as you may be surprised at when people started to discuss the place of animal cruelty in fashion. Some pieces are just surprising in themselves such as this fish scale floral headband from the Bahamas.

Pineapple Fibre Lace Handkerchief, Maker unknown

Some pieces are hard to believe they are what their descriptions say they are, such as the lace sample above which is made of pineapple fibres, an exquisite demonstration of how delicate this material can be used.

Cellulose evening Coat, Alix (Madame Grès), 1936

Upstairs, the pieces are all much more contemporary, focusing more on how fashion imitates and draws inspiration from nature rather than taking from it directly. The piece above is by Madame Gres which uses a combination of silk, cellulose fibres and artificial pearls to create an effect to imitate mother of pearl shell linings.

‘Cat Woman’ Dress, Jean Paul Gaultier, 1997

As the theme of this exhibition is quite broad, it is a great opportunity to see a hand-picked selection of great pieces from some legendary designers; Alexander McQueen, Stella McCartney, Vivienne Westwood are all there as well as this piece from Jean Paul Gaultier which demonstrates how well skins can be replicated in other materials like beads.

‘Rootbound #2’ Dress, Diana Scherer, 2017

Finally, we are presented with some exhibits which explore some of the alternative materials and developments which may become viable alternatives for the future of fashion. There is a piece by Diana Scherer where she has been training grass root systems to grown into lace designs which is quite incredible. It is not a fully resolved material as yet but demonstrates potential opportunities in clothing.

This exhibition is quite heavily loaded with questions of the issues that fashion has caused in the past, destruction of animals such as osprey, turtles and whales or the poisonous effects of dying and military as examples; and the way we continue to deal with these issues in the future. Therefore it is one that you can expect yourself to have to think about as well as admire the pieces on display. Fashioned From Nature is on at the Victoria and Albert Museum until the 27th Jan 2019, tickets start from £12.00.