Instagram story viewer> @a_bias_cut> Posts

Dolla Merrillees

@a_bias_cut

278

followers

385

following

Curator | cultural historian
All things fashion reviewed
All reviews © Dolla Merrillees
Personal account @mer_dsh
🎞️ my own unless otherwise stated

POSTS STORIES REELS

Vanessa Friedman’s latest NY Times article, ‘In France, Raging Against the Luxury Machine’ is worth a read. Her comments raise questions that deserve a much broader discussion, particularly the growing tension between luxury brands that position themselves as guardians of craftsmanship and patrimoine, yet have increasingly become symbols of conspicuous wealth, excess and inequality.

In France, as elsewhere, the gulf between rich and poor continues to widen. For those at the bottom, poverty is entrenched and passed down from one generation to the next, while the middle class faces growing economic insecurity. Meanwhile, billionaires accumulate extraordinary wealth and retreat into increasingly exclusive, protected worlds, largely insulated from the consequences of climate change, food insecurity and social instability.

None of this diminishes the extraordinary craftsmanship and artistic traditions these houses preserve. But against this backdrop, luxury is acquiring a different meaning, its association with artistry and refinement increasingly overshadowed by its role as a symbol of concentrated wealth and privilege.

And in France, where luxury is so closely intertwined with national identity that shift is particularly significant. After all, France has witnessed what happens when entrenched privilege, economic hardship and popular anger collide. It was called the French Revolution.

@vvfriedman @nytstyle
Getty images. by @a_bias_cut

I loved the premise of LOOK! 40 Years of Fashion at the Museum, which celebrates the 40th anniversary of the founding of the Musée des Arts de la Mode at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs. Its history is a little complicated, but the exhibition does a good job of untangling it, while also giving us a glimpse into how garments are made and what goes on behind the scenes to care for and conserve the museum’s collection.

More on that in my review, but one little nitpick. I love that you provide labels in English, but if you’re going to use AI to translate the French texts, you really need someone with a reasonable command of English to proofread them. At times, they were just incomprehensible. And, well, let’s just say I don’t think Azzedine Alaïa ever intended to “sublimate women!”

@madparis by @a_bias_cut

This was a wonderful, if equally frustrating, exhibition. Frustrating because it was so crowded that at times it felt claustrophobic, particularly at the bottleneck near the entrance. And then there were the infuriating audio guides, which drive me wild! I understand the importance of accessibility, but in an already confined space, having large groups of people standing around zombie-like makes the experience maddening for everyone else. There must surely be a better way of managing the flow of visitors.

That aside (deep breath), I loved this exhibition, not least because it offers such a fascinating snapshot of British fashion history from 1926 to 2022, seen through the wardrobe of one extraordinary woman. But what makes it particularly compelling is the constant tension between Elizabeth II’s public and private personas and the extent to which her wardrobe was both an expression of personal taste and an instrument of monarchy. Besides you have to love a woman who isn’t afraid of colour.

Beautifully conceived scenography and the curation was equally thoughtful. by @a_bias_cut

Press preview this morning at Tate Britain for ‘The 90s Art & Fashion’ edited by Edward Enninful OBE. Started off a bit meh about this show, got unexpectedly nostalgic for the ’90s somewhere in the middle and came out the other end not quite sure what I thought. More to ponder in the review. by @a_bias_cut

An exhibition tracing Africa’s enduring presence in Alaïa’s imagination, yet one in which the continent itself is evocatively suggested but never fully explored.

*Review* Azzedine Alaïa | Africa published today in the Costume Society UK. Link in bio.

Images courtesy Fondation Azzedine Alaïa, Paris. Photos: Stéphane Aït Ouarab

@2ebureau @costume_society @fondationazzedinealaia #azzedinealaia #fashion #hautecouture by @a_bias_cut

Interesting to hear today at the V&A seminar ‘Objects of Fashion: Unravelling Stories’ how three artists use dress to explore embodied memory, biography, loss and material histories. Hannah Lamb uses stitch and making to gather and materialise personal memories of dress; Dr Sarah Casey turns to drawing to explore fragile and disappearing objects; while Dr Ellen Sampson considers wear, bodily experience and the traces left on clothing. Three very different approaches, but each deeply attuned to the delicacy and fragility of the lives and stories held within dress.

@ellensampson @drawingthedelicate @hannahlambtextileartist by @a_bias_cut

Vanessa Friedman’s review of Matières Fécales’ The 99%—a show exploring class, inequality and fashion’s dependence on the labour and aesthetics of those outside its privileged 1%—has stirred up quite the debate.

What interests me most is the radically different reading of the models carrying figures on their backs. For Friedman, they resemble trophies, the corpses of a big-game hunters - an image of conquest and display; for others, they represent the 99% quite literally carrying the 1% on their backs - a visual metaphor for who bears the weight of inequality.

The gulf between those two interpretations is fascinating. It says almost as much about how we read power and privilege as the image itself.

@vvfriedman @nytstyle @matieresfecales
#fashion #fashionweek #matieresfecales by @a_bias_cut

I’m not going to lie, I’m a little bit excited to see John Galliano’s collection for Zara and I adore this campaign photographed by his longtime collaborator Steven Meisel, with its historical references and flashbacks to Galliano’s 1984 graduate collection ‘Les Incroyables.’

But the collaboration also raises so many questions: What constitutes an archive in fast fashion? At what point does yesterday’s stock become heritage? And what happens when the language of preservation and memory is applied to a system built on speed, volume and obsolescence?

It will be interesting to see how the contradictions play out.

@jgalliano @zara @stevenmeiselofficial by @a_bias_cut

Waking up this morning to an insta feed full of Matières Fécales’ extraordinary 99% show in Paris — and soooo wishing I had been there.

The Phoenix dress immediately caught my eye, partly because I had only just seen the Bodleian Libraries’ gorgeous little exhibition ‘Wonder of Birds.’ Among its treasures are two very different visions of the phoenix: the Chinese feng huang, a glorious bird of technicolour associated with auspicious rule and marital harmony and the phoenix of the late 14th century French ‘Le Roman de la Rose’, where it appears as an allegory of Nature’s eternal renewal.

Pictured here, the Matières Fécales Phoenix alongside those two earlier incarnations. Across centuries and cultures, the phoenix remains such an irresistible image of transformation, destruction and renewal.

Images:
China, 18th century: Sound of Vertical Flute (簫) allures auspicious phoenix (鳳凰), from an album of 12 paintings depicting Chinese tales. Bodleian Libraries.

France, late 14th century: Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meung, Le Roman de la Rose. Bodleian Libraries.

@matieresfecalesparis by @a_bias_cut

My latest review for the Costume Society UK takes me inside Cartier at the NGV — nearly 400 jewels, precious objects and timepieces spanning more than a century of design, craftsmanship and desire. Dazzling, certainly. But do we find out what lies beneath the sparkle?

Link in bio.

Image: Panther clip brooch. Cartier Paris, 1949
sapphires, emeralds, diamonds, platinum, white gold. Owned by Daisy Fellowes.
Private collection

#cartier #jewellery @costume_society @ngvmelbourne @cartier by @a_bias_cut

by @a_bias_cut

I remember seeing the Bayeux Tapestry as a child on one of our trips to France, and seeing my social media feeds flooded with images as it goes on show at the British Museum reminded me of Clare Hunter’s wonderful book, ‘Threads of Life: A History of the World Through the Eye of a Needle.’

It was such a captivating read. I think it’s in the first chapter that Hunter writes about the highly skilled, anonymous women needleworkers in England who may have embroidered the tapestry in the 1070s, perhaps in a monastic or urban workshop such as Canterbury. I’ve always been struck by the idea that this monumental history of male conquest was made visible through the hands of women.

#bayeuxtapestry @sewingmatters by @a_bias_cut