The Wall Street Journal’s Deborah Kan speaks to fashion designer Diane von Fürstenberg about why she believes Chinese women are stronger, empowering women, and DVF´s non-consideration of retiring. Here are my favourite excerpts:

DK: What does the Chinese woman symbolize to you?

What I like about women is always strength, but Chinese women are even stronger. It’s like strong women on steroids. I also realize they are fragile. All women are the same really: They are strong, but they are afraid of their own strength.

DK: You talk a lot about empowering women. What do you mean by that?

I think all women are strong, but sometimes a father, a brother, a religion, a lifestyle, or sometimes on their own—you don’t want to show your strength. And then, sometimes, a tragedy happens, and miraculously the strength of a woman always comes out. So let it come out before tragedies, you know?

I think what I love in women is their strength, their real strength that is from within. What I think I sell with my clothes is confidence, so hopefully all my dresses, my accessories, are friends to the women. When you open the closet, and your eyes are swollen, and you don’t like the way you look, you go to your friends.

DK: You have now had this fashion empire for decades. What’s your advice to women who are trying to build something of their own?

The best trick is never to blame everything or everyone else. Whatever happens, you’ve got to deal with it. You process it and go on.

DK: Who has been your best role model?

My mother was my role model, because she was an example of strength. Before I was born, she was a prisoner of war in Germany. She went to the death camps and survived. She weighed 49 pounds, so she wasn’t supposed to survive. She always told me that God made her survive so that she could give me life. So my birth was a miracle, and therefore I carry her flag.

Would you ever consider retiring?

I think I will be DVF till the end. I don’t want to retire from life. I am too engaged, I am too curious, too interested, and I still think I can make an impact. And in this part of my life, I want to make an impact.

Interview and interview transcription by Deborah Kan

Image Courtesy by Chinese artist Zhang Huan

The Prince of Wales: Style icon

The beard, a centuries old regal look favoured by the notable kings of history, was road tested by the Prince during naval duties in 1975. The tabloids had a field day, ‘What a hair raiser’ screamed The Sun’s headline. While the Daily Mail decreed ‘the beard has transformed our most eligible bachelor from simply a pleasant looking chap into an extremely sexy man’. Sadly, the beard was short lived, shaved to a moustache the following day when he was installed as the Great Master of the Order of Bath at Westminster Abbey, which in turn was shaved off when he returned to duty.

Text by Helen Seamons

Photograph: Howard / Associated Newspapers/ANL

“HYPERHUMAN. This is how Terry views me. I am so real, he says, that I am unreal.” Lady Gaga

During an almost year long global odyssey, renowned photographer Terry Richardson brilliantly captured the intimate, random, behind-the-scenes moments of Lady Gaga in all aspects of her life. This visual dialogue showcases more than 450 stunning, provocative color and black-and-white photographs — beginning with Lollapalooza in August 2010, to the February 2011 Grammy Awards, to the final shows of her Monster Ball tour.

Text by www.ladygagaxterryrichardsonthebook.com

Image Courtesy © Terry Richardson/Lady Gaga

Jeff Koons in Frankfurt
20. June - 23. September 2012

In the summer of 2012, the SCHIRN and the Liebieghaus Skulpturensammlung turn their attention to the work of American artist Jeff Koons (born in 1955), an artist who has been setting trends in the art world since the 1980s. The two simultaneous exhibitions dedicated to Koons’s oeuvre deliberately separate his sculpture and painting, presenting each in its own context. The SCHIRN presentation JEFF KOONS. THE PAINTER will focus on Koons’s structural development as a painter. In his monumental paintings—whose motifs draw upon the most varied sources of high and popular culture—both hyperrealistic and gestural features give rise to highly complex concentrations of image and content. By contrast, in the exhibition JEFF KOONS. THE SCULPTOR at the Liebieghaus, both world-renowned and new sculptural works by Koons will enter into a dialogue with the historic building and its collection spanning 5,000 years of sculpture.

Curators: Vinzenz Brinkmann (Liebieghaus Skulpturensammlung), Matthias Ulrich (Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt), and Joachim Pissarro (New York)

Text by www.schirn.de

Jeff Koons “Bracelet”, 1995-98, Oil On Cancas, Courtesy Gagosian Gallery Privatsammlung © Jeff Koons, Image Courtesy Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt

LCFM at London Collections: Men

DO YOU ♥ MEN?

Click image 4 more info!

Image by Marcello Junior Dino for Matteo Molinari Eyewear Campaign 2011

LONDON, Wardour Street. Beautiful i-D Magazine display in Soho.

Image by Saskia Reis

// PRIVATE PREVIEW of Ozwald Boateng´s biographical film A Man´s Story at London College of Fashion, 23rd February 2012 //

Here´s some stuff I remember …

- The preview allured London College of Fashion students and staff with a great introduction and all the ingredients that keep our attention on track: love, lies, truth and controversy.

- The audience applauded and praised the film, which showcases Boateng´s success story and exposes details of the renowned designer´s private life.

- The film is shot in an enticing, candid, documentary style, mixed with original catwalk footage and extracts of home video as well as parts of an animated comic illustration Boateng had made for Givenchy.

- As the story continues, questions begin to surface about whether or not this fashion film docu-feature is really an independent work of director Varon Bonicos. It seems more like ‘The King of Savile Row’ himself guiding the audience through an appealing condensation of his very own success story: the tale of a highly talented, yet tormented, larger-than-life fashion hero who, as a true artist, inevitably seems to become a victim of his own obsession to create and is finally forced to pay the price: his family, in the form of his wife and children.

- Meeting the classical dramaturgy of the ‘three act structure’, Boateng had Varon Bonicos following him with a camera from 1998 to the present day, apparently without any distance, in order to access the most intimate moments of the designer´s life. This includes the break-up phone call with his ex-wife, at full volume, wherein she hangs up on him, saying: “I wish I would have never met you”. Like in any classic film moment comparable to this one, the tortured man turns to work, which provides him with the opportunity to push his professional boundaries even more.

- Not only do we see a hero but we also see a victim, betrayed by his beloved wife, as well as his suffering caused by the disconnection from his children. Of course Boateng is not the sort of man who enjoys suffering, so he actively seeks for solutions, ironically, or shall we say typically, in the field that brought him into his situation.

- However, obstacles - the ones in the film as well as those in real life - are there to be solved and there is no doubt that this is one of the good messages from Boateng´s film. He mentions that his life, as well as the film, is about experience and we can be sure that he will continue to live up to his standard.

 - The film screening was followed by an exciting Q+A session with a super confident Boateng, who came to receive feedback and to answer some of the audience´s questions. He proudly entered the screening room, enjoying the audience´s tremendous applause.

- He lost a little bit of his self-composure for a moment, when he was confronted by a student questioning why her email she had sent to him a year ago remains unreplied until this day. After a pause, wherein the audience applauded and laughed, he asked her: “Did you mention that you had met me before?” She said: “Yes, of course, I did. Boateng, I am watching you!”

- As the students missed the chance to ask the Teen Vogue-type questions, a LCF course director took over: “Are you looking for a new wife now?” People were screaming. Boateng played clever, taking it as another opportunity to prove that he is quick at repartee: “My mum has taken censorship on all my future activities.”

- “Film is a very convenient tool to communicate emotion in a very short period of time,” Boateng said after the screening. With A Man´s Story, he definitely manages to create a number of different emotions, underlining that “what people see in this film is a man´s journey and my role in it is just to show you that journey.”

- The response from the audience showed that he manages to inspire like-minded people who relate to him and his urge to create, no matter what.

- Seemingly by accident, he also opens an interesting discussion on the approach towards documentary filmmaking, its techniques and the morality of action within the genre as a whole.

- It´s nothing new, that the winners are the ones who write history. Ozwald Boateng is just another example, but he is also an inspiring example. “Every dream has a price” is the subline of the piece, which can also be seen as an invitation to ask ourselves:

What is my dream and what price am I willing to pay?

Words and image by Saskia Reis