DAPPER DAN explores Anthony Vaccarello’s continuing transformation of Saint Laurent’s menswear in a film featuring Lennon Gallagher wearing Saint Laurent by Anthony Vaccarello SS18, shot in Volax, Tinos
DAPPER DAN 17 Is Out!
DAPPER DAN is hot off the press with its 17th issue, in which we pore over Anthony Vaccarello’s take at Saint Laurent, probe Jean Paul Gaultier on the male gaze and investigate Clare Waight Keller’s stealth subversion at Givenchy. We also speak to arguably the world’s most famous curator, Hans Ulrich Obrist, who tells us about interviewing artists, and conduct our own artist interview with Katerina Jebb, ahead of the upcoming exhibition at The Met Museum in which she was involved. In addition to this, Swedish blues singer Brør Gunnar Jansson tells about mixing music and storytelling, and we visit multi-talented tattoo artist/designer/publisher Maxime Büchi in his studio in London.
Julien d’Ys talks to Filep Motwary
Julien d’Ys is more than a hairstylist. He is a storyteller, a poet and a fashion veteran who finds amusement in mixing the strangest materials together for the sake of beauty. Each of his projects serves as a testimonial—a point of reference in contemporary fashion’s history and the key to the gates to dreamland.
A good fashion show is everything together: the clothes (of course), the music, lights, casting, hair and make-up. The most incredible hair stories have carried his signature for almost 40 years. He also likes to paint, keep his notes in sketchbooks, and to flirt with photography. Julien d’Ys responds to my phone call in a very good mood. He has just returned from New York where he participated in “Art of the In-Between”, the Metropolitan Museum’s retrospective on Comme Des Garçons and Rei Kawakubo, with whom he has worked closely for more than two decades creating the hair for her shows and occasionally the make-up as well. He asked me to call him precisely at 11:32, as 32 is his lucky number. Continue reading “Julien d’Ys talks to Filep Motwary”
Mats Gustafson talks to Filep Motwary
Fashion illustrations, landscapes, erotic portraits, plants, floating swans; the broad sweep of his brush transfers the most exquisite garments, senses and emotions, memory and fragility to paper, suggesting an almost poetic arbitrariness. A solemn simplicity even!
Mats Gustafson boldly uses watercolour to express his personal thoughts, desires or virtues, but most of the time to reflect the work of others through his talent in illustrating fashion. Ever since his multi-chaptered creative journey started around 45 years ago, his majestic work has been featured in the glossiest of the glossies while being exhibited in museums since 1986, as well as in galleries and renowned publications. He is soon to present a series of unrevealed works in Tokyo’s MA2 Gallery. I call him at his wonderful apartment in Sweden where he only arrived the day before, straight from New York. Continue reading “Mats Gustafson talks to Filep Motwary”
DAPPER DAN 16 Is Out!
DAPPER DAN is back with its 16th issue, on the theme of poetry, in which Daniel Askill— Sia’s filmmaker of choice—tells us about what it’s like to have reached meme-able status. But would a man by any other name be as dapper? To find out, we interviewed hair stylist supremo Julien d’Ys who tells us about his creative process in collaboration with Rei Kawakubo, artist duo Elmgreen and Dragset who take us to the Istanbul Biennial, and fashion illustrator Mats Gustafson who shows us his previously unpublished nudes. There’s also a dreamlike trip on the Trans-Siberian railway and a reflective piece by Angelo Flaccavento on less being more. In addition to this, Chinese fashion designer Sun Yun shows us the collection he debuted in a former slaughterhouse, photographer Michel Lamoller fractures our perception of time and space with his collages and Thomas Persson—the man behind Luncheon magazine—gives us a tour of his London studio.
Richard Kern talks to Stamatia Dimitrakopoulos
It’s questionable if, during the 80s, when he raised the flag of New York’s underground gore Cinema of Transgression and shot for porn mags, Richard Kern had visualised himself decades later: shooting Instagram-friendly young models and interviewing them about their dreams, aspirations and addictions with the tenderness of a kooky uncle. Kern’s lifelong career is characterised by an unending adaptation to the constantly shifting social patterns of each epoch. What has remained constant is his liberating depiction of young women. He celebrated the girl-next-door concept before it was cool, handing down a legacy for a new generation of artists—like Petra Collins, his muse and protégée—to play with and take a step further through a female lens. Yearning, desire and nostalgia are not only the characteristics of a Richard Kern photograph—they are also the virtues behind his charming personality. After our Skype started, I was feeling safe and relaxed enough (I guess that’s a talent one masters after shooting some hundreds of nude teenagers) to share my own Richard Kern “transcendental” experience. Continue reading “Richard Kern talks to Stamatia Dimitrakopoulos”
Pornolepsia
We can, of course, date the first pornographic representations back to the Venus of Hohle Fels—in other words, 35,000 before the present day. She nevertheless retains signs specific to fertility, despite the obscenity of the sexual parts. Ancient Greece then, in turn, consecrated the concept of erotic scenes, whose sole justification was the pleasure of observing fellow human beings giving themselves pleasure. Pornography has no other aim than to reduce divine urges to the principles of flesh and lowly humanity. Continue reading “Pornolepsia”
Evangelia Kranioti talks to Kim Laidlaw
Greek-born artist Evangelia Kranioti is already the stuff of legend, taking to the high seas to create her multi-award winning documentary film Exotica, Erotica, Etc.: 450 hours of footage condensed into an intimate 73-minute portrait of sailors and prostitutes, ports and seas. Kim Laidlaw spoke to her to learn more about her epic voyages, the call of the ocean and the ephemeral yet eternal notions of love and desire. Continue reading “Evangelia Kranioti talks to Kim Laidlaw”
Dendrophilia
The word “Phytophilia” has now been adopted by some in the sexology field to refer to those who have a fetishist or paraphilic interest in plants (i.e., individuals who derive sexual pleasure and sexual arousal from flora). It is an extension of dendrophilia, which is literally a love of trees. Both of these may involve actual sexual contact with trees and plants and their veneration as phallic symbols. Continue reading “Dendrophilia”
Time Tourist: Alessandro Michele’s Immortal New Gucci
When Alessandro Michele was appointed Creative Director of Gucci in 2015, the fabled Florentine house seemed to have fallen into a sluggish trance. Michele’s immediate antecedents had allowed
Gucci to lapse into the “good-taste” bad habits of drooping houses: they devoted their energies to resuscitating heritage loafers from the archive and putting out collections of perfectly unobjectionable peacoat-friendly ensembles in bourgeois tennis-club pastels. It had been years since Tom Ford’s tenure electrified Gucci with a depraved iteration of deviant Hollywood glamour. Continue reading “Time Tourist: Alessandro Michele’s Immortal New Gucci”