"I think perfection is ugly. Somewhere in the things humans make, I want to see scars, failure, disorder, distortion." 
— Yohji Yamamoto

FAILING- NICK KNIGHT / NICK NIGHT ON YAMAMOTO

“That’s exactly what creation is, it’s not being frightened to fail. Every time I take a picture I have to go through a series of failures to get there, usually under extraordinarily excruciating circumstances. It’s very hard to have Kate Moss in front of you – someone considered one of the world’s most beautiful women – and the first Polaroids that come out aren’t very good. All of a sudden she doesn’t look very pretty and it’s because you didn’t photograph her very well. There’s a humbling experience to that which I think is healthy, and you have to work your way through it.”

The disarmingly honest and articulate Knight has always championed the process over the end product. He sees his body of work as “an ongoing communication, a response to events” – from the documentary photographic book Skinhead he published in 1982 (the year he graduated from Bournemouth Art College), via his nine-year-strong ad work for Dior, to his internet baby, the art and fashion website Showstudio www.showstudio.com.
  
“I’ve never seen myself as a classic photographer,”  (but frequently flying. “I don’t particularly care for defining myself in specific terms. I don’t mean that arrogantly, I just don’t find it helpful. I don’t view my work in that triumphant way of producing trophies to hang on walls. That’s why I’ve always shied away from exhibitions and books.” Working “right at the end of what could loosely be described as photography,”


Knight felt that the newer possibilities of the internet offered the perfect outlet for his interests. Having worked for publications including i-D, Vogue, Dazed & Confused, The Face and Visionaire and clients as varied as YSL, Björk, Alexander McQueen, Massive Attack and Calvin Klein, Knight sees Showstudio as a multifaceted platform for exploring his obsession with the process of creating imagery. He’s an unashamed technophile who regards his online experiments as a natural progression of the generations of image-manipulation software (Sitex, Paintbox, Photoshop) that he grew up alongside as a photographer first plying his trade in the 1980s.
  
One of his key relationships of that decade was with Yohji Yamamoto, for whose catalogues he was recruited to shoot in the mid-’80s on the back of his work for i-D. In collaboration with art director Marc Acoli and designer Peter Saville (whose contribution was at Knight’s behest; nobody had previously conceived of a role for a graphic designer in such projects), he helped rethink catalogue convention in ways so distinctive that the team went on to create the next 10 for the label.

  
He’s worked with Jil Sander, Louis Vuitton and Vivienne Westwood. And Comme des Garçons’ visionary designer Rei Kawakubo, who didn’t share Knight’s fascination with exposing the construction of fashion artistry to public view. “She’s a very difficult person to get any process out of at all. She’s very closed in that respect.” Such differences of approach, though, are clearly part of the creative dynamic of fashion, and engagement with the medium’s difficulties and contradictions is key to Knight’s enduring interest in it. “I particularly like fashion because it’s a hard thing to come to terms with. People don’t like the idea that it’s largely motivated by surface, which sadly we are. Going all the way back to Skinhead, it was all about surface.”


That was then. For Knight now, it’s very often about the internet. He explains, recalling the development of his interest in the technology, “a whole load of doors opened up at the same time, with great views through them and lots of promises. It avalanched. It seemed to become coherent with the advent of the internet; it all seemed to be going in the same direction, which was very exciting.”


YAMAMOTO WORKS-


Catalog collections 1984+

''Design Clothes that have never yet existed''

One of the most elusive fashion designers in the world, Rei Kawakubo of Japan, is known for remaking the forms of clothes. Her sweaters full of holes, jackets with only one sleeve and dresses that are part dress and part pants are unique, yet always wearable.

''I wold like the audience to feel their heartbeat. I want them to feel something when they wear my clothes. If they don't feel anything when they wear my clothes my creations are meaningless. That is to say my clothes have to be new. My greatest fear is that I won't be able to create anything new. I always have that fear.''

 Rei Kawakubo, established the high fashion house Comme des Garçons in Tokyo in 1973. Kawakubo's concepts originate from her education in fine arts and literature rather than a formal fashion design training, and incorporate elements from the famed Fruits subculture of the Harajuko district of Tokyo. Driven by concepts, she is known for conveying her ideas verbally to her patternmakers to interpret. Kawakubo is considered a key figure in re-defining sexual identity in new terms of feminity, and is often discussed in the company of such figures as Coco Chanel, Elsa Shiaparelli, and Vivienne Westwood. With the introduction of her line in Paris in 1981, Kawakubo created a sensation with her androgynous and innovative design, and solidified her stature as one of the three major avant-garde designers from Japan, alongside Issey Miyake and Yohji Yamamoto. 

Kawakubo has consistently managed to challenge conventions with each facet of her presentation. Kawakubo's broad-based design practice has included collaborations across genres, including architects and artists such as Steven Meisel, Gilbert and George, Francesco Clemente, Philip Johnson, Julian Schnabel and others. Her designs have inspired a generation of new designers including such luminaries as Martin Margiela, Ann Demeulemeester, Helmut Lang, and her own protégé Junya Watanabe. 

INTERFERENCE

INSP.....New project. New Thinking.............

Jonathan Callan is an english artist born in Manchester and now based in london. his work is quite varied, however many of his works utilize books and paper as a sculptural medium. some of the piece combines books into large masses held together by screws, showing their pages and covers from the side angle. However what caught my attention as a form of inspiration for my next project is his use of silicone and plastic mediums, which seem to ooze out of his works,much like marble, the twists and curves contrast against the crisp clean lines of the book. I feel Inspired !

 Callan is currently represented by kudlek van der grinten gallery in cologne.

''I read a book talking about passing through systems in particular kinds of ways and that energy being routed in such a way due to larger arrangements within societies. In some ways it felt as if i was doing something similar in the things i was trying to make. I was introducing certain processes or patterns across combinations of different kinds of things''

Jonathan Callan

TAIT

"My collection has a specific focus on an exaggerated bone structure but specifically from a profile view." 

Thomas Tait

Canadian-born Tait is a fashion designer with British roots. Educated in both Montreal and London, he debuted this February during London Fashion Week with an Autumn/Winter collection that has already earned him widespread interest. Absolutely Amazing!!!