I.T Post magazine

Back in January I wrote two articles for the ambitious and incredibly well designed Chinese fashion publication I.T Post. Here's the first. I hope you'll enjoy reading it! Thank you Kwannam for your constant enthusiasm...


The cover and article


My wall of David Hamilton photos at home

I grew up in a house filled with books. Thousands of them. From English and French masterpieces, cult literature, scabrous and absurdly funny crime novels by San-Antonio to a substantial collection of art publications. Introduced to the pleasures of reading at a young age, my parents’ undeniable obsessiveness with books added an essential extra dimension to my life. They brought home their boundless interests in the shape of hardcovers, always pushing the envelope and fuelling my imagination. The experience was magical and I spent hours concentrating with uncontrolled enthusiasm on narratives and photography until I discovered the fresh intensities of boys, love, music and late adolescence mysteriously took over. Since then, and in the course of a long reading vocation, books have tended to come and go. I look back at the little notes I used to keep and I’m surprised at the exhilaration I once felt for books I don’t remember owning or enjoying. And then there are the ones that stay forever. The ones that occupy a central position, the ones that have influenced you, taken you on a sentimental journey and continue to provide enchanting and emotional moments. They have the capacity to express something that speaks to your soul and are immensely powerful.
Time always passes quickly when I’m at my parents’ home: their vast collection of books is such a wonderful mixture of new, obscure and unexpected ideas. A fusion of literature, poetry, photography, painting, travel writing encapsulating who they are today. Sometimes, when I feel that words are not enough, I like to turn to photography, a form of expression for which I have a tremendous appetite. I remember being 13 and discovering a David Hamilton book in our living room. It was tightly squeezed between a limited edition Joan Miró and a pile of old seventies Paris Match magazines. I had found a photographer who I thought was startlingly free from convention and turned his back on modernity to play with romantic beliefs, eroticism, sensuality and nudity. I was fascinated. His intriguing optical and photographic compositions whispered tenderly in my ear. The girls, his muses, captivated me. He offered a firework of exciting, lyrical and whimsical portraits and gave me access to a world of slightly out of focus and soft-toned imaginary characters far from reality. I used to be a very shy girl growing up and his photographs just took me to this fantasy place where unconventionally and classically beautiful teenage girls could live innocently in bohemian settings. The intimacy and various stages of undress only added a necessary frisson. I just fell in love with David Hamilton’s work and was immediately converted. It was a revelation and I saw nothing crude, pornographic or vulgar in his images, only compelling and intensely moving portraits in caressing pools of light. Years have passed and I now have my own collection of his exquisite works and films put together with passion. His genius and purpose has been a source of inspiration for many fashion photographers today but none of them have managed to reach such thrilling qualities. I often find their ambition is slightly wrong, embracing cheap muted pastel hues and natural lighting but unable to disguise their creaking lack of creativity. It’s the original stuff that gives me consistent pleasure. Delicate and elegant beyond belief. I keep telling friends that he has created a language that should be recognized as contemporary and classic. A genuine and compelling influence on the world of fashion. His deliberately blurred scenes and pale colours used to heighten the emotional effect are hugely seductive and have been copied again and again by fashion photographers. It’s certainly not a complete coincidence that echoes of his style can be found in some of my favourite fashion stories. Hamilton’s rigorous control of his material and the eerily perfect models and settings represent an aesthetic formula that will continue to play a significant role in the history of fashion. It is timeless and still manages to steer away from predictability.
I know that in 20 years time I will look at David Hamilton’s books and know that he encapsulated a big part of my overwhelming infatuation with fashion photography. The very vagueness of his imagery will always tell me something uniquely accurate about those times, a concrete thought about escapism with its incomparable naturalness and unsettling imagery. The perfect fusion of innocence, soft provocation, intriguing situations and a beautiful kaleidoscope of slow gentle movements, costumes and misty effects. A hypnotic ritual.

Grace Jones at the Royal Albert Hall

Several months after having felt jealous of my friend Joanna when I read her thoughts on the high-octane and thrilling Grace Jones performance at the Hollywood Bowl, it was my turn to enjoy a musical experience to remember! I’ve been taken in by the magic of Grace Jones since the age of 9 when I first heard my mum play “Slave to the Rhythm” in the car on a long journey from Luxembourg to Spain. That was my first exposure to her music and I was irrevocably under the spell. Last night’s show at the Royal Albert Hall in London was a hypnotic process. I’m normally quite resistant to gigs and don’t usually like them (despite having a husband and some of my best friends in the music business) but yesterday evening I lost all sense of space. Time simply dissolved. I was transported into a world of imagination so intoxicating that two hours passed in what seemed one minute. At 62, Grace Jones continues to be a major star. A myth. One of the very few remaining in my opinion. Her voice is intense, playful, powerful and subjugated the entire audience who kept erupting ecstatically into applause and screams at her naughtiness, humour, sexiness, seductive dance moves and incredible body. The elaborate costumes created by Eiko Ishioka involved follies and excesses that proved as absorbing as the gig itself. Money definitely well spent!

Masters of black in fashion and costume

It felt like the best time of year to be in Antwerp. The weather was wonderful, the temperature not too high and the sun was out constantly. The city has many museums but the one I headed to as soon as we arrived (or to be accurate after a romantic horse and cart ride) was the MOMU to see the exhibition “Black. Masters of black in fashion and costume”. The museum is easily one of Antwerp’s main attractions and quite a progressive place in terms of its commitment to fashion. The latest exhibition investigates the colour black through a wonderful combination and collection of paintings, historic costumes and contemporary fashion (Ann Demeulemeester, Olivier Theyskens, Dirk Van Saene, Givenchy (Riccardo Tisci), Chanel, Yamamoto, Raf Simons, Undercover, Viktor & Rolf and Gareth Pugh among others). The show’s curator, Kaat Debo, has put together works of extremely high quality in a number of small rooms making it a manageable selection on which to concentrate. This is genuinely a fashion exhibition at its most inventive. I was fascinated and loved it. It took me on a tour of social changes linked to the colour black from the 16th century to the 21st century and clearly displayed its associations with mourning, sophistication, Goths, fashionistas etc. Looking back at my pictures I realized that I had unconsciously disregarded most of the clothes and favoured the old books, objects, strands of hair, examples of dyeing techniques, hats, collars and lace. My only major criticism of this informative and beautiful exhibition is that it won’t travel to other places in the world. I wish everyone could see it!

All pictures and collage by me

Brussels stole my heart

All pictures are mine

I ♡ Anne-Constance

I bought a copy of Mirage in Paris during my Christmas holiday, left it unopened in a corner of my parent’s flat, returned to London and after a hectic month remembered to look at it when I found a male friend in my kitchen grinning at the pictures in the same way he would when looking at the … sports pages (although he may think that this is an unfair caricature)! This “incident” was precisely what encouraged me to finally sit down and turn the pages of the magazine. I was immediately seduced by the intense vintage quality of the stories and the direct and indirect softly erotic references. In the days after having looked at Mirage in its entirety, I realized that it had been a quality investment: the shoots reflected an aesthetic I love and a sensuous visual exploration you don’t always see. In parallel, it is coherently creating a new understanding of nudity combined with fashion. Another vital element is photography. A lot of mainstream fashion publications don’t have the freedom to commission new or more imaginative photographers and express their sense of identity through the use of the same “banal” image-makers year after year. Finding Anne-Constance Frénoy’s work in Mirage was delightful on every level. It felt like I had discovered a jewel among the erotically charged dimension of the magazine’s pages. I was fascinated. She is a remarkable and original photographer who seems to have a fundamental obsession with the female body, nature’s marvels and romantic atmospheres. In her images the dreaming world appears to mingle freely with reality, combining the unlikely with the closely observed (almost naked girls in sun-drenched gardens or fields) and for the technically minded she also demonstrates how to lead the eye to wonderful light games. This is the kind of work that leads me to make an exciting connection to David Hamilton or Tana Kaleya. They all share the same desire to please the senses and develop a poetic and nostalgic vitality. Looking at Anne-Constance Frénoy’s pictures it is inevitable to see that her narratives are sometimes based on her personal experience as a dancer and model giving her a better awareness of a woman’s body.
She’s a new firm favourite of mine!

All images courtesy of Anne-Constance Frénoy