Fashion Vs Filmic Distortions

In a previous post I analysed a few collections that included body morphing designs, briefly exploring the emotional and stylistic implications of the techniques employed to alter the contours of the body.

As stated in that post, asymmetries and voluminous silhouettes are two ways to achieve interesting shapes in fashion, but another useful trick is definitely distortion.

Draping fabric, folding it in unusual ways, mixing different types of textiles together can definitely help producing cutting edge experiments to alter the original shape of the body. 

At the latest Copenhagen Fashion Week (that closes tomorrow) there have been some interesting experiments along these lines especially during graduation shows.

Liza Fredrika Åslund, a graduate from the Danish Design School, played with draped motifs in her designs, then proceeded to sandwich and seal them under plastic veils to give her creations a further impression of fashionable distortion, rethinking in this way tailored and classic shapes to find new methods of construction that go behind conventions and traditions and focus on abstraction and altered perceptions.

I would actually urge fashion, but also film students looking for fresh inspirations for collections or movies, to experiment a bit with the theme of distortions and abstract alterations.

One of the best examples of films featuring some amazing distorted images is Lot in Sodom (1933) by James Sibley Watson and Melville Webber, mentioned in yesterday’s post.

This short film is essentially an expressionistic version of the Biblical story about Sodom and Gomorrah featuring quite a few scantily dressed male dancers (many of whom wouldn't look out of place for their attires and make up on our runways, while the women's costumes in the film definitely had echoes in Rick Owens' S/S 09 collection..) moving on a soundtrack composed and conducted by Louis Siegel and played by students from the Eastman School.

Watson and Webber used multiple exposures, overlaid images and close-ups to maximum effect in this film. In Robert Wiene’s Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari (The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, 1920) the hypnotic sets represented a condition of psychological turmoil, in Lot in Sodom confusion and chaos are instead generated through abstract and avant-garde images and experimental techniques.

Watson was usually more focused on the technical aspects of their films, while Melville worked on the sets, costumes and make-up. The duo first used sets of prisms and distorting lenses that could be rotated in front of the camera lens in their abstract movie The Fall of the House of Usher (1928).  Prisms helped the directors creating a sort of Expressionist use of light, optically fragmenting and destabilising conventional perspectives and form.

Such devices were mainly used to alter the appearance of their subjects, making them look short, wider, tall or thin. This effect was mainly employed to give rhythm to the scenes and endow the main characters with a sort of mysterious aura.

As Watson explained: “In Lot, distortion is often used to keep reality, or rather its appearance, from disturbing the film's mood. And in the final scene distortion makes Lot's daughter seem not only different but formidable as she grasps the wine cup (…) For Lot, we had an optical printer, enabling us to make changes in a scene after it had been shot. Run-ups and pull-backs made with the printer are nearly as good as those made by moving the camera, and if mistakes occur they can be corrected without retaking the scene (…) Many of the transitions in Lot - fades, dissolves, etc. - were put in with the optical printer; also split-screen effects. True prismatic effects are few, although there is one such, a comically sinister scene in which people dancing in a circle are ‘truncated’ so to speak, to the extent that each one appears as a head-and-shoulders capering on a pair of legs, sans trunk.” (check out the embedded film around 2:30 to see this effect).

The advertising campaign recently shot by experimental filmmaker Kenneth Anger for the house of Missoni's A/W 2010 collection could be seen as a modern and more psychedelic reinterpretation of the abstract and fragmented optical techniques employed in Lot in Sodom.

There is actually a sort of connection between Watson and Melville and Anger: they represent indeed different phases of American avant-garde cinema and, interestingly enough, some of the themes that characterise Lot in Sodom - especially surrealism, homoeroticism, the occult, flames and lights - also appear in Anger's works.

Inspired by the structure, moods and colours of Sergei Parajanov's The Colour of Pomegranates, the advert Anger shot for Missoni seems to have a few connections with the occult and esoteric themes à la Aleister Crowley in its atmospheres, though it also references fashion as a cult and the cult of the family (the video includes eleven members of the Missoni family among them also Ottavio, Rosita, Angela and Margherita).

So here's a final exercise for all the fashion design students reading this blog: moving from films such as Lot in Sodom, try to come up with designs that include some elements of distortion using different techniques like dyeing, liberating corporeal volumes yet twisting and bending them at the same time and adding dynamic alterations in constructions. 

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Comments

[Investment in UK]

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[Moncler Jackets Outlet]

The other reason I ran this comparison again is because I was surprised, amazed really, to find that no one seems very concerned that zillow’s valuations are so far off the mark.
And I understand, and have no issue with, the other cutting edge and very usefuadfl tools and features that zillow does provide. Only the valuations, and only in the Foothills, which I know are very important, and I wanted to run this up the flagpole again and double check.