• LA DOYENNE: TRANSITIONAL LUXURY FOR A POSTMODERN WOMAN

    Written by Ksenia Rundin

    New York fashion has never stopped surprising the world with its revolutionary phenomena as the “flapper” of the 1920s, Bell-bottoms and Halston designs in the 1970s and Norma Kamali with her Sweat Collection in the 1980s. Today, in the era of hypermodernity, the New York based women’s luxury wear brand La Doyenne is a true reformer of the established fashion system, conceiving its own hybrid of luxurious haute couture and high end fashion.

    Co-Founders, Laura Day Webb and Rachel Hearn searched for a name that would embody the woman who wears the brand finding it in The French connotation of La Doyenne which denotes a woman who is a leader in her field. Odalisque Magazine had a pleasant telephone conversation with the co-founder Laura and enjoyed her captivating story about how La Doyenne is making accessible luxury for the modern woman.

    Created by women, for women and being about women, La Doyenne bestows a joyful aesthetic experience mixed with a contrasting feeling of integrity and eagerness, spiced with a slight pinch of the Italian celebration. According to Laura, the fashion house is primarily using e-commerce as a retail channel, accentuating personal-service strategy, hand-made garments, and custom designed art prints on their fabrics and linings. Their goal is, by means of small collections, a defined number of designs and a wide array of sizing options, to create unique and elegant garments with an intimate touch for a specific person, who “fully embraces life, much as she does her own aesthetics”. It takes about a week to produce an order and later ship it to a consumer or a retail customer, who La Doyenne also work with.

    The Spring Collection 2018 was La Doyenne’s first collection, inspired by Laura’s wedding dress, which Rachel and Laura crafted together, and built on their shared passion for the arts. The flowing aristocratic silhouettes and vivid colours are galvanized by, as Marlene Dietrich once expressed, “the most beautiful woman who ever set foot in Hollywood”, a Mexican actress and great muse of many artists and poets, Dolores del Rio. The collection was launched with the participation of the Brooklyn Ballet dancers, who served as models and performed throughout the evening for the attendees in La Doyenne's coats. Such partnership, as Laura acknowledges, “Created a beautiful marriage of fashion and art, across multiple disciplines.”

    Creating a playful diversity, the brand’s latest collection, The Transitional Collection with its loose constructions and architectonic beauty brings the postmodern woman out in a new chic and multi-faceted context, where silhouettes can easily transition seamlessly from a ball gown to a pair of jeans. With such a myriad of ways to wear the garments in the collection, the woman becomes the CEO of her own style. Furthermore, the zeitgeist of the collection is constituted by Rachel’s intriguing oil painting of a still life, which has been skilfully integrated into the textiles that the collection is made of.

    Seemingly, the luxury of the brand is hidden in the laconic completeness of the details and the masterful quality of the craftsmanship. Moreover, there is also an element of charity integrated into their business model, with La Doyenne taking into consideration voluntary giving as part of their strategy and a means of positively impacting their community and beyond. Particularly, Laura and Rachel are aiming through their business model to empower women by working on multiple partnerships with well-established charities around the world, along with fundraising initiatives with various museums.

    By working with a made-to-order business model, the company also make an important investment in the sustainability issue. They can plan their production resources and costs in detail, allowing them to have less inventory, minimise and recycle leftovers, and thereby reduce the impact of the production process on the environment. When I ask Laura what La Doyenne’s next collection will be inspired by, I hear her smiling on the other side of the phone and she answers, “We have already started brainstorming. It will have a few new silhouettes in play and certainly no detail will be left wanting. So, wait and see!”

    Nevertheless, the young luxury brand has to struggle with a number of challenges in the industry. One of the main issues is visibility. It is not easy to establish a unique voice on social media and stay true to your vision, but by focusing on sustainable quality and genuine transferrable elegance, La Doyenne is truly optimistic about their future. “Luxury fashion should be accessible!” claims Laura. There is a special relationship established between a beautifully made garment and the woman who owns it, allowing the piece to evolve with the woman’s sense of style and be worn across a lifetime. Therefore La Doyenne focuses on that feeling instead of trends. Having international customers in Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United Arab Emirates, Laura and Rachel want to engage a global audience, affording women the opportunity to feel passionate about their own wardrobe, not the ephemeral trends outside.

  • EVELYN BENCICOVA: ‘MERROR’ – RECONCILING THE VISUAL AND THE CONCEPTUAL

    Written by Ksenia Rundin

    Evelyn Bencicova was born in Bratislava just a few days before Slovakia became an independent republic. Nevertheless, she could experience the heritage from the socialistic past that provided her with important evidence to base the understanding of the postmodernity upon. Having a vivid imagination and great ability to create stories in her head, Evelyn converted it into her own visual language, giving the beholder a hint and offering the latter to conceive own interpretation of her art works.

    Her first major solo exhibition Merror (error/mirror) at Fotografiska has been a fusion of the conceptual and the visual, bestowing the audience with ambiguous feelings, evoked by human bodies, animals, architectonic structures, fashion, portraits and gasmasks. Evelyn appears to be unique in her ability ‘to meet the other people’, showing a genuine interest in her objects and their communication with the world in the context of her eerie artworks. The photographs create an emotional withdrawal from the reality by intensifying its errors and opening up a mysterious layer for the audience, experiencing an intellectual turbulence.

    The series 'ASYMPTOTE', created by Evelyn together with Adam Csoka Keller (video) and Arielle Esther (sound), consists of “a complex of illustrations of the era and a kind of eye-opener especially for the younger generation”, which juxtaposing human and architecture into an ideological hereditary integrity. It creates a deep reflexion over the artworks as such and the reality they seem to be interpreting placed in the context of the individual perception.
    The Victorian paleness of the models posing in long Dior dresses enhances the postmodern discourse about the disruptive power of fashion and thereby creates an intellectual interplay between the context presented in the photographs and the reality outside those.

    Seemingly, Evelyn’s art creates a sublime platform for an emotional dialogue between the artworks and the beholder, where the artist plays the role of a mediator, reconciling the visual with the conceptual.

    How did you find your way to the world of photography/visionary arts?
    This is the question I am now answering a lot. But it is interesting to be asked again and again, because I do not want to be bored by my own answer, really trying to look deeper and deeper. I do not find the photography to be my main point. So the moment I started learning photography, does not mean for me the start of my real work. During your whole life you are continuously developing your visual sense. While working with photography, I work on my vision.

    As a child, I would never sleep at kindergarten, observing any object instead and creating a story about it. My family lived in a proper flat, which as a jest was called ‘prison’, due to the view from the window, which consisted of a square of windows of other people. I used to take binoculars and watch the people in those windows, without any thought about photography. It was my favourite activity. You could see a certain frame of a photograph with somebody in it, doing something and you could just create a whole story around it, using your imagination. I took those stories out of my imagination without knowing how to grasp it and I did not really care or saw it as a chance to do something; I just kept myself busy. I think this is what happens in the minds of a lot of people, if not everyone.

    Before I turned eighteen, I had a very bad eyesight and relied on my imagination in order to able to ‘see’, while my visual fascination did not work that well. Then I undergone an eye surgery, where my sight was totally repaired. For me it felt like I went from darkness to light, like in Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. I was aware of things having meaning but the visual part was not that clear for me. Thus from that moment I really felt that I had just discovered the world visually. In my photography I am less interested in documenting and much more interested in a dialogue. Trying to understand the term ‘photographer’, I see that it has a defence layer, what creates a strange relationship between me and photography. Before, I was convinced that I was a photographer, now, when I am saying the word, I am not so sure anymore. I do not know what I am.

    When I look at some of your photos, I recall the quote, belonging to the disillusioned and paranoid Dr Snaut from Tarkovsky’s movie Solaris (1972): “We don’t want to conquer space at all. We want to expand Earth endlessly. We don’t want other worlds, we want a mirror.” Do you see any of it in your works?
    Not intentionally, actually. Nevertheless, I am acquainted with his film called ‘Zerkalo’ (‘The Mirror’). A lot of my work is based on the intuition, therefore I like people telling me about their associations and impressions of my work, where we together create a new perception. To create a name for a project has always been difficult for me because each project is very different from others. The name of the current work “Merror” is very intuitional and it kind of spoke to me, because it is composition of two worlds. There is a mirror but there is also an error. The project tells my personal story and really reflects on me but at the same time it creates a story for people to be able to visualize their own story. I do not want people to follow a certain direction, whether it is political or not, for example. There is a layer in there but it is also about how you can interpret the latter yourself and find your own explanation. I want people to see themselves and their own emotions. At the same time it also influences how you look at the body aesthetic. The bodies are perfect and controlled but there is something in there, like a crack, which is very, very tiny. But when you see it, it is actually the way inside. The mirror is slight but you should go under the surface and look inside. For me layers are very, very important in life, in work. When you get to know an artist, you suddenly start looking at his/her works very differently.

    Who are the people in your photographs?
    They are friends. Some photographs were taken 4-5 years ago, like in ‘Ecce Homo’. It was one of my first works and looking at those today I find them very strong. I was totally different at that time, a bit more expressive. I am aware that these works can be interpreted in many contrasting ways, but I do not want to be afraid of that. I am inspired by how humans change over time.

    What is really human body for you? Is it a part of the human being as an intellectual unit and an identity or it is a toll which been admired, used and abused both physically and ideologically?
    It depends on the project, because I deal a lot with human body in different contexts, what you can see in my works. I do not have one established vision, because I believe that the human body can be interpreted in various contexts. I am interested in all of them. I like to see the body essence as something admirable and also as a part of the nationalist context as in ‘Asymptote’, when people as a part of the system, believe that they are a part of something bigger.

    Concerning the architecture, 'ASYMPTOTE' was done inside a building which once was a key point for the Socialism. It is a huge and monumental, making you feel very small. Notwithstanding the fact that the place is abandoned now, it creates a feeling of grotesque, when you are standing in the huge empty hall. It is also about being overwhelmed with the collective body, where individuals are losing their own, because they believe in something. It is about recreation that does not aim to be a reality but a subject of a personal interpretation. We were trying to understand what the word ‘visual’ really means.

    Once we were filming a scene with female gymnasts jumping together simultaneously, one of the girls could not just cope with that by being tired and slower. Then I had to step in telling her, ‘No! Faster! Faster!’ And suddenly I realised how crazy it actually was, when a person could not fit in and was eliminated for falling out of the ‘perfection’. It was interesting to explore that layer in the system. Another interesting layer is about the today’s reality with the experience from the past. I am not saying that something is right or wrong. I met people who spent a few years in prison for expressing their opinion and people who felt honoured to have been a part of the system. There is no judgement from my side but a certain reaction. Another example is the photograph, depicting children wearing gasmasks, which we once at school learned how to use. Children of today do not use those anymore but there are still shelters full with such gasmasks. They are of no use but they still stay there. There is hidden history behind it that people do not want to touch, pretending it is not there. But it is necessary to touch it in order to create and to understand a country’s identity.

    There are a lot of theories and opinions about the body in space, and I do not know which one is right. I am just trying to explore more and more and it seems to me that nothing is really right. I do not feel I can do a statement, because I am observing right now. I try to express something without claiming it being a truth. It is about exploring. The process of creating for me is always more interesting than the result as such.

    People never smile in your fashion photographs. Why? What does it symbolize?
    This is something I am thinking about a lot. It might be my personality. Nevertheless, I have very light personality but I do not find smile as something positive. People might think that I am creating a negative image, but smile can actually mean something negative to me, being a way of hiding certain things. My view on what is negative and what is positive differs quite a bit from many other people’s interpretation. Cemetery for me, for example, is just a peaceful place. I also work a lot with individuals and for me the composition is of high importance, where people feel confident. Thus I try to make them comfortable to be able to show their confidence by asking them how they feel. How people react in front of the camera is a result of their own reflection, I would never interfere in that part. However, not smiling might for some of them be the way to show the confidence.

    On your webpage it is said that you combine your academic research with interest in contemporary visual culture. Could you please say a couple of words about it?
    I study at a very classic art school. From the beginning I was trying to create a world that would communicate. I think from art to the world there is something unusual, because people do not have to communicate with their work. When I have a commission within fashion and advertisement, I really try to create a work which is valuable but through the media it also gets attention from people. For example in art people have a concept, but they do not try to communicate their concept, what means it stays clear for them, while the audience gets lost. I think you have to give people a chance to interpret your work. This is what I am trying to do the whole time – to have a conversation with people. I do not feel that art world is refusing everything. Visual is not the only thing that exists in there, I think there is also a meaning. And for me the visual and the meaning is something that should be connected, because one without the other is not enough. I always try to give people a visual clue, either it is a commercial work or an assignment at school.

    http://evelynbencicova.com/

    Photography by Marek Wurfl
  • Photography: Annika Sundvik

    L. CHRISTESEVA: 'FASHION SPEAKS' IN COLOURS OF AWARENESS

    Written by Ksenia Rundin

    On August 25, L. Christeseva, Belarusian-born Swedish artist, launched a new project, ’Fashion Speaks’, which was running through Fashion Week 2018 in Stockholm. The artist placed a number of toile-dress sculptures at various locations in Stockholm, letting those evolve from orange to pink, then transforming to off-white and finally fluctuating to white and red. Why would the artist do something like this?

    The toiles of L.Christeseva were previously exhibited at The Army Museum (2016), the residency of the US Ambassador (2016), the Nordic Museum (2017), the Bergman Center located on the island of Fårö (2018) and many other places in Sweden. Constituting different versions of garments made to test a pattern, these toiles have been recycled from different designers and placed on stage by the artist L. Christeseva in order to solve artist’s main concern about her cultural identity. That concrete ‘reincarnation’ of cultural identities seeks to tell different stories by women, about women, for women – and the rest of the world. Nevertheless, the main purpose is to raise the question ‘What makes woman a woman?’ and invite the audience to answer it from an individual cultural perspective.

    ‘What makes woman a woman?’ is a main concern of L. Christeseva, who many years ago moved from the patriarchal culture of Belarus to the feminist society of Sweden. Toiles for L. Christeseva is a material to share her own story as a woman and as an artist. They are a certain embodiment of how the artist has experienced her own identity both personally and culturally. It is a complex matrix extending through many dimensions, and which is not possible to be finished with – recycling, re-forming, re-configuring, re-thinking. Thus toiles, which are usually thrown away in the fashion world, become an important artistic medium to speak about processes of construction, transformation, and learning.

    The project ‘Fashion Speaks’ is designed to extend and to enhance the perception of fashion further as an expression of individual identity by using the toiles as a remedy for creating a platform for socio-political discourses around femininity. Contrasting conceptually and ideologically with the concept of the established Fashion Week, which runs in Stockholm since 2005, ‘Fashion Speaks’ aims to disrupt the current paradigm of the phenomenon of Fashion Week by using fashion as a tool for spreading awareness of important social and political issues and helping to find resources for creating solutions. L.Christeseva claims that ‘The toiles placed in a different context in this case become a symbol, where the past and future create an interlacement, giving rise for the discourse. Today, when we are used to seeing things in black and white, we need to talk, to discuss, to listen and to hear. I use fashion to speak and to make us speak out.’

    On August, 25, the artist dressed her sculptures in orange and placed them around the city of Stockholm: Rålambshovsparken in Kungsholmen, Rosendals Trädgård, Elite Hotel Arcadia, Dansmuseet/Drottninggatan, Arméemuseum, and Norrmalmstorg 6, to mark the Orange Day together with UN Women Sverige and MeToo Sweden. The artistic idea behind the persistent fashion message was to use fashion as a tool for bringing violence against women around the world to an end.

    A couple of days later, the dresses turned into the pink silhouettes, where the colour, charged with ambivalence of pureness and oppression, might often be considered as a secondary colour for a second sex on the one hand. This interpretation is, on the other hand, strongly rejected by the millennials, who see this colour as an infinite trend. The artistic approach here was directed to break the stereotypical rhetoric of the colour and redirect the audience from its superficiality towards alternative interpretations in order to strength the femininity without turning it into a sign of weakness.

    Later, L. Christeseva would turn her creations with aid of the colour of red and white into an elegant and adorable message, bestowing a vigorous effect to the eyes and mind. As Ingmar Bergman once said, the colour creates ‘the interior of the soul’. Bergman interpreted red as a symbol of the female womb, or the source of both life and sexuality. Standing in contrast with red, the colour of white is strongly linked to divinity and faith. Together these colours create a deeply emotional picture, giving rise to a number of new interpretations and feelings. Dressing the toiles in red and white was the artist’s way of paying a tribute to Ingmar Bergman, who brought the image of a strong woman on the stage and often illustrated it by dressing his actresses in red and white on the screen.

    Inspired by August Strindberg, Bergman developed and completed the image of the modern woman, which Strindberg started to build in literature, into a postmodern persona with a deep intellectual side and strong emotional power. Strindberg’s women had to struggle with the social context as much as they had to deal with their feelings, while Bergman’s women stay face to face with their inside, fighting against own fears and weaknesses, looking for their true self. What does fashion give to women today? What does it take from women? Do they have their freedom and will to power? What can fashion do for women today? These issues we wish to be integrated into the contemporary content of fashion, where a fair play can start in reality, without staying an illusion of the latter.

    Interestingly, that the artist always returns to herself and her own story, developing new concepts of works. This kind of u-turn to the original state, where the toiles appeared on stage as they initially were, naked and voiceless, is necessary for each of us before we make a step outside ourselves. Our backgrounds and our cultural differences constitute the way we perceive ourselves and the world around us.

    After receiving an incredible perception in Stockholm, the project ‘Fashion Speaks’ is on the runway through cultural borders now. It will be interesting to follow what colours and what media the artist will address while bringing her works on stage in Turkey on October, 29. How should the different concepts beyond cultural boundaries really be interpreted? Can we find a way to a mutual understanding of our multi-faceted perception in fashion and art?

    Get inspired, create awareness and extend the perception of fashion beyond identity together with the artist on www.fashionspeaks.se.

    Photography: Anna Sundström

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