Ximena Valero and the Art of Transformation

Ximena Valero

Ximena Valero, the acclaimed designer, calls her line "Transformables".  I asked, where did the concept come from?  "I was working in New York and began experimenting with folding garments into shapes, and how the shape created from the folds inspired the next fold and then shape."  This reminded me of Jackson Pollock, entranced by the free, impulsive and immediate drips proceeded to the next ones in a controlled accident.  She smiled and took from her purse a fabric swatch with patterns echoing the great American abstract expressionist painter.


         
                               Transformable in Action                                        

Stop Staring!

Eva and Alicia Estrada

The sisters Alicia and Eva Estrada, CEO/Designer and Assistant Director respectively of Stop Staring! admired for their "retro-evolutionary" dresses came to the bookstore hunting for anything new about the '50's, the '40's, and the roaring 20's.  I asked Alicia, how did you come to call your company Stop Staring!  "In high school I wore outlandish clothes of my own design and other kids constantly made fun of me, so one day I wrote across my skirt 'STOP STARING', and promised myself if I ever became a fashion designer, I would call the line after that moment of confident defiance.

Fashion Statements (2) Wittgenstein and Clothes

“Language disguises the thought, so that from the external form of the clothes one cannot infer the internal form of the thought they clothe, because the external form of the clothes is constructed with quite another object than to let the form of the body be recognized.”   

Ludwig Wittgenstein
                                                                                      
                            Student Fashion Show Wittgenstein House, Vienna 2010

Rico Lebrun's Costume Art

 I knew the artist Rico Lebrun (1900-1961) as a student at UCLA.  Articulate, he learned English by reading and re-reading Moby Dick, and Melville's urgency and grandeur was in Rico's talk and imagery.   To my surprise I find currently on Ebay a drawing of the costumes he designed for Camelita Maracci's ballet Circo di Espagna, New York 1951.   Clearly form does not follow function, for these drawing do nothing to let the body convey suppressed feeling or achieve meaningful shapes.   There is no music here.  Instead, the fashions of the pretty senoritas have taken on the raw emotions of the bull-ring: fear; anger; the need for protection; defiance of vulnerability with decorative patterns; doom, for in the bull-ring there must be a death.

Women for Bull Ring Scene

Designer at Sea

Harken Performance Wear

Dawn Moore enjoying being here

Dawn Moore designs clothes for one of the world's largest sailing and yachting hardware companies, Harken.  Her team performance technical  gear is worn by athletes who are expected to defy the forces of watery nature, compete, and look good. This means clothes must be waterproof yet breathable and fit to accommodate spontaneous and rapid movement while remaining comfortable.  And for good measure all designs have to be confined to four colors: red, navy, khaki, and charcoal.   But limitations focus the creative mind by uncompromisingly pointing to what must be resolved.  Educated in London, "I've traveled and surfed the world. I love putting a slightly contemporary spin on my work while keeping true to the beauty of the ancient island cultures."  She spent over an hour with us exploring.

Pilgrims and Pilgrimage

Jacob Zakaria, Designer

 
Boccaccio (1313-1375) in Italy and Chaucer (1343-1400) in England advanced our literature by creating tales from common life about people traveling to inspirational, holy places.  They wrote stories about  pilgrims "on the road" to somewhere special.  Jacob Zakaria, fashion designer, was asked: What do you do when you need inspiration, when the juices are dry?  "Every year I go to Art Basel in Miami Beach Florida."  Is it to find shapes from new art, or glean from snippets of conversation phrases that ignite inner poetry?  Reminding us that fashion is a down-to-earth activity [the word comes from the Italian facere=to make], Jacob states: "I want to see who is wearing what."

Parenting

Mikayla Shaffer came into the bookstore with her dad Edward to find a book for the holidays.  Appropriately shy and yet curious, she said: "I love drawing."  When asked what do you like drawing, what inspires you she explained: "one day dad was working with cartoon characters and a figure caught my eye and I drew a dress. "  As it happened, dad had a picture of the dress in his phone which he proudly sends us.  Mikayla is 7 years old.

Daughter and Dad

"I love drawing"