City guides

Cities Highlighting The Fashion Industry

1st July 2015 Established fashion capitals – Paris, New York, Milan and London – make headlines each season as models strut the catwalk showing the latest creations by leading designers. These destinations and emerging cities that include among others, Berlin, Istanbul, Seoul, Stockholm, Russia, Mexico, and Sao Paulo – are the theme of an intriguing exhibition, Global Fashion Capitals, at The Museum at FIT (Fashion Institute of Technology) in New York City.

The show examines the rise of emerging cities to global prominence, and supports the theory that fashion communicates identity and spreads cultural influence throughout the world. Fashion weeks continue to multiply as cities also realise the economic value of the fashion industry. More than seventy garments and accessories from designers including Coco Chanel, Chrsitian Dior, Prada, Yohji Yamamoto, Ralph Lauren, Donna Karan, John Galliano and Alexander McQueen,  Dries Van Noten, Alexandre Herchcovitch from Brazil, and Christian Louboutin’s amazing stilettos, demonstrates the scope and power of the fashion industry.

Global Fashion Capitals is a stylish tribute to the international reach of today’s fashion creators. Certainly an exhibition to visit if in New York City. Continues through 14th November 2015. www.fitnyc.edu  Top image: Homo Consommatus Ensembles Spring 2015 St. Petersburg Gift of Homo Consommatus JG

Shoes to Dazzle and Delight at V&A

1st June 2015 “Shoes are one of the most telling aspects of dress. Beautiful, sculptural objects, they are also powerful indicators of gender, status, identity, taste and even sexual preference. Our choice in shoes can help project an image of who we want to be,” says Helen Persson, Exhibition Curator for Shoes: Pleasure and Pain. 

Included in this splendid show are shoes from the unrivalled collection at the V& A, plus international collections, and wardrobes of private individuals. Shoes worn by or associated with high profile figures including Queen Victoria, Marilyn Monroe, Sarah Jessica Parker, David Beckham and the Hon Daphne Guinness, among others, are featured. The famous ballet slippers designed for Moira Shearer in the 1948 film The Red Shoes are on display. Footwear for men and women by seventy designers including Manolo Blahnik, Christian Louboutin, Vivienne Westwood and Jimmy Choo will also feature in the more than two-hundred pairs of shoes included in the exhibition.

Shoes from ancient Egypt, men’s shoes from India, shoe fashions from the European royal courts, and today’s trend-setting designers provide amazing examples of footwear through the centuries. Shoes: Pleasure and Pain is the latest in a continuing series of fascinating fashion presentations at the Victoria & Albert Museum. The exhibition opens on 13 June and continues until 31st January 2016. www.vam.ac.uk/shoes JG

Photos: Top image: Freed of London red ballet shoes made for Moira Shearer in The Red Shoes (1948) silk satin, braid and leather, England 1948. Photograph reproduced with the kind permission of Northampton Museums and Art Gallery; Roger Vivier for Christian Dior image Copyrighted Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Chopines: image copyrighted Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Parakeet Shoes: Photography by Dan Lowe