This image is from the walls surrounding my pattern table, the place were I spent every second of the summer, making patterns for this collection.
At the beginning of researching a collection, I usually put all of these images on the walls of my office, where I can stare at them and contemplate the collection and have ideas and stuff. Once I begin to actually make the dress patterns, I put all of these images around my pattern table…
…which is what we can see here: all of the images that influenced me while making this collection. I wanted to include representations of every classic beauty (within the parameters of my aesthetic): sex symbol, goddess, Hollywood goddess, showgirl, little girl, Shirley Temple, Marilyn, Jayne Mansfield, old paintings and portraits from Ingres, Marie Antoinette, dolls, the Virgin Mary. Basically I was thinking about extreme artificial beauty, appropriated female beauty and all its trappings and languages—loving it and hating it at the same time, jamming it all together into one great big giant joyful scream of rage and delight.
This was taken just outside of my office (you can see my black ceiling). Here you can see a self-portrait by Arvida Byström. I love this image so much. You can see her hairy armpits, and she has drawn a mustache in pink on herself. It says so much to me that I can’t explain. She looks so cool. It’s such an interesting sexual image from a rarely seen perspective. Tavi and I used this for the pull-out zine we did together for Garage Magazine. I really wanted to use Arvida as the centerfold, putting her picture onto a photograph of pink satin, to reference those old classic glamour shots where the starlet would be shot on a satin bed. For me this image of/by Arvida is the perfect modern positive readdressing of an old cliché. This image was very important to how I thought about this collection.
The wall of our sewing area in the studio.
Bits of spare T-shirt artwork elements.
Our fat kitty, Wendy.
Oh god! Well, this is my office, a desk which is still just a heap of books, drawings, pens, and tons and tons of barrettes, tiny dolls, bits of dolls, Barbie shoes, Hello Kitty loveliness—all the objects that I collected while thinking about the collection.
On the walls you can see the pictures from my teenage bedroom walls. I’ve always kept them. Now I live in a permanent 1994-1995 time warp…
I thought I would put them up in my office, as it’s about the same size as my teenage bedroom and pretty much serves the same purpose.
These are my drawings of the collection.
So much changes in the process of making a collection that I often draw the collection twice, once at the beginning of the process and once at the end, so I can see and understand what it looks like with all the changes.
I drew these sketches halfway through the making of the collection. Lots of stuff changed, or died, between this point and the show.
There were five looks in the show that we called the Madonnas. This is my drawing of all the Madonnas on the cake. It changed a bit before the show, but not much. Nobody seems to have taken a photo of the Madonnas-on-the-cake reveal—they were revealed from behind a gold curtain, holding flowers like pageant-winner bride goddesses, and they dropped their flowers like Courtney at the end of the Miss World video and stomped off of the cake, rejecting their elevation. When I call them the Madonnas, I don’t refer only to Madonna Ciccone and the Virgin, but also to all of the venerated icons of beauty.
All the Courtney dresses bagged and hanging.
Aaah … this dress died! It happens every season at some point, when elements of a garment just don’t work for whatever reason. This was going to be one of the Madonnas. She was going to be like a Virgin Mary baby-bunny-girl in a frilly lace dress with the back of her skirt over her head like a veil, revealing a blue-sequined bunny-girl corset with a bunny tail, and she would have blue-sequined bunny ears too. But something or everything went wrong with every aspect of the look, so she died. We tried to save her right up until waaaaay past the last minute, but she wasn’t to be.
Often with beading, even though you get the embroidery done to fit specific pattern shapes, you still have to fill in some gaps. Here we are filling in the gaps on some pink-sequined and crystal-embroidered knickers.
This is a close-up of a Broderie Anglais–type embroidery, where there is no unembroidered fabric. This one is called Abigale and is a pinafore dress made entirely from that type of embroidery. We wanted it to look like those paper-cutout snowflakey things that you do in primary school, where all the ladies and their cats are holding hands. Between each band is stitched an iridescent tinsel yarn that’s actually meant to be used for something to do with fishing???
The Madonnas’ zardosi embroidery and fluff.
We made these shoes with Nicholas Kirkwood, who’s been doing our shoes pretty much always. These ones were quite successful. We had just gotten them when this picture was taken, so I was in the middle of stitching the crystal bows to the Madonnas’ embroidered shoes, and making marabou pompoms for the others.
I wanted the shoes to be the most ridiculous and entertaining things, like if you wore them they would keep you amused all day. Big, glittery, cakelike frilly bed things.
The studio rails full of patterns, prototypes, and the beginnings of the real finished garments.
My endlessly untidy office. On my desk you can see: tons of pens, perfume bottles, tiny dolls, Hello Kitty bits and bobs, Frances Farmer in the frame resting against the wall. On the walls we have the centerfold of the 1993 Riot Grrrl issue of Melody Maker, and lots of old pictures of Courtney, Huggy Bear, Bikini Kill, and Morrissey, and a card that Louise Gray made for me. These images are the ones that were on my teenage-bedroom walls.
These are decapitated dolls’ heads that decorate the sewing area in our studio. Earlier this year we did a secret florist shop inside of a Topshop, where we designed the space and decorated hundreds and hundreds of plant pots with glitter, paint, and stickers. These dolls’ heads are left over from that. As you can see, they have no eyes, because we popped the eyes out and attached them to wire stalks which we then stuck into the plant pots. So the plants had blinking dolls’ eyes.
This is the area around my pattern table. There are balloons and party decorations above my head to try to make me feel happy and to surround myself with the spirit of the collection and the show.
Nicholas Kirkwood’s shoes.
Hanging on this rail you can see most of the feather pieces and the Madonna jacket.
These are my drawings/designs for the collection, with Philip Wiegard’s set design, ostrich-feather and tinsel experimentation, some Catholic Madonna icons, and some Courtney from the Reading Festival in 1994.
These are “the powdering Courtneys” backstage. I have always been so obsessed by Hole’s Miss World video and have stolen from it endlessly. Right at the very beginning of working on this collection I knew that I wanted to have an army of Courtneys powdering themselves for the show.
These women are wearing tights by Meadham Kirchhoff and shoes that we bought from some bridesmaid place and colored with Pantone. All of the Courtneys came onstage and powdered themselves with beautiful pastel-colored goose-down powder puffs from Penhaligon’s, and put on lipstick (Ruby Woo by M.A.C.) whose tubes we had customized in pastel colors and glitter, and then started to dance.
I decided to try to faithfully remake pastel versions of the dress that she wore for the Reading Festival in 1994. I love that dress. It’s one of her classics. And I love the message she was sending to the world with that dress. Reading ’94 was Hole’s first show after her husband died, and the world was waiting to see if Courtney would curl up and die with him. Instead, she showed up in this tiny little gold dress, and really worked and defined her “thing.”
This is the look board, where I put together all of the looks the night before the show. It is customary to shoot each look on the model who will wear it in the show, but I always get really nervous doing all of the looks, as it is often the first time I get to properly see the real clothes—the end of making a collection is always such a huge rush that once things are made there’s usually not very much time for me to pay much attention to them, and quite often garments get made (and sometimes don’t) right at the last minute. So, when I do put together the looks I prefer to have as small an audience as possible. I shoot always them on one of my assistants, Daisy, who helps me to do things like embroidery and painting biker jackets and stuff like that, and whom I do all of the preliminary toil fittings on. (A toil is a prototype garment usually made with a cheaper fabric than the finished garment.)
This dress is called Mary Kate, and is made entirely from ballerina embroidery. It was inspired by those old Spanish postcards where the flamenco dancers have real fabric skirts, so each ballerina has a little sequined tutu that you can lift up, and a pearl necklace and crystal tiaras. The dress was made from bands, or strips, and between the bands are ruffled Broderie Anglaise lace ribbons. The sequins make this dress glittery in the most glittery way.
This jacket is called Madonna. It is a pannier-hipped, sack-backed, zardosi-embroidered frock coat with powder-puff boobs. When Benjamin Kirchhoff and I returned from our first-ever holiday in Spain this past June, I had an epiphany where I pictured this piece and the powdering Courtneys in the show. Zardosi is an incredibly labor-intensive type of embroidery traditionally used in ceremonial Catholic dress and ornamentation and military dress, made by stitching coils of metal to create the pattern.
This is one of the Madonnas. I really love her makeup. I loved the idea of making this Frida Kahlo/Virgin Mary veil thing and putting the wig on top of it. The veil has something like a 30-meter hem. It took me all day to stitch the lace around the edge. I kind of wanted it to be like she was dragging this 1930s dress around from her head.
This looks so good. It’s a painted/melted wig by James Pecis. Usually the hair is the first thing that comes to me for a collection, but this season I was really stuck. I wanted something really traditionally glamorous, but something gross and cool too. And I wanted them all bleach blonde. James sent me this idea he had been working on: melting wigs. It seemed perfect, to combine his melted-wig idea with all of these classic blonde-beauty glamour hair do’s, and a splash of color. Here we can see the nail stickers that Nail Rock made for us, using all the little figures we used throughout the collection.
Another one of the Madonnas (with Ben Kirchhoff in the background). This jacket is called Kathli. It’s a silk zardosi-embroidered ottoman jacket with a sack back, with crystal-and-sequin-embroidered showgirl knickers.
This white dress is called Arvida.
This is one of the first garments I did for this collection. There’s a TV show that Ben watched called The United States of Tara. The daughter on that show is kind of cool, and she wears this brown-bear pinafore. I was totally obsessed with it. It looked so cool. So it seemed very logical to me, since we were working with these little figures and illustrations from old cards, and decals from a baby’s crib, that we should do the checkered bear as a pinafore. The bear is called Danni, and is entirely embroidered, with 3D leather-appliqué eyelashes.
I keep reading on the Internet that this pink short-sleeved jacket is laser-cut leather, but we do not do any laser cutting! The jacket is made entirely from very dense embroidery on a silk organza base.
This is a dress called Maude and a pinafore top called Millicent, worn with a tie. Both of these pieces were very late additions to the collection.
These dresses are called Molly and Lacy, and are some of the most difficult patterns I have ever made. They have practically only horizontal seams and have a pannier-hipped inner layer. They are made from silk satin gazar, which is like a really really springy satiny organza type of thing. They both have pin-tucked panels, and although you can’t see it in this picture, they have ballerina embroidery through the skirt.
We worked on this jacket for a long time. It’s appliquéd with a sequined lamb motif that is from an old crib decal that I have on my computer. He is the lamb that is on the invitation to the show under the collection title, “A Wolf in Lamb’s Clothing.”
The front of that jacket.
A little pinafore top that, when hanging, looks like a baby’s dress. It’s made from a linen Jacquard, and has an embroidered girl’s face I stole from a ’70s plastic toy mirror/vanity set I have.
FLUUUUFFFFFFYYYY! Fluff is pretty much where this collection started. I just wanted to lose myself in pink fluffy loveliness. These pieces are made from marabou feathers, and they actually weigh a ton! There is so much volume in them—the hem of the blue jacket, pink skirt, and green dress is like 26 meters, and it took an hour just to stitch the band of feathers onto one of these hems.
I wanted these feather skirts to be endless. If you spin or hold up your skirt it seems like there is no end to it, and if you look up at them from underneath all you can see is fluffy ruffles with little legs poking out.
This girl looks so good. I love that lipstick.
(To see a video of the show by Sharna Osborne, click here.)
47 Comments
love the knowing attitude of this collection. the sweet pastel colours against the cut-out cardigan gives an uncomfortable mix of innocence and sexuality. i’ve been waiting for someone to do this since I saw Little Miss Sunshine….
This is not my style… but I know I’ll be keeping a close eye on a specific blog… (self constructed freak)… I feel like she might like this stuff :)
I just love this so much :)
this rulessssss i’ve just looked through all the pictures TWICE
I just love the label, loved the show and love Rookie!
This mash up has been suuuuper great!
Regards from Spain ;)
The colours and attitude is great! I especially love #59 – the jacket with the lamb on the back is adorable…
Wow god i whish this existed with every collection, god its best thing in fashion i’ve seen for a while, this guys are amazing and rookie too for doing this!!!
this collection and general aesthetic are wonderful! i love how it’s fun and frilly and tween-inspired but also manages to comment on the iconization of women. we’re expected to be either sexy or virginal, sophisticated or childlike, when the truth is that we’re a little of everything. society tends to regard women as paragons of specific qualities without acknowledging that they are human, and complicated. i think attaching women to ideals only further complicates the situation, and this collection really helps express that frustration.
the cardigan in photo 62 is sooooo Regina George!
I thought the same thing as soon as I saw it!
what an amazing process to see!! everything reminds me of cakes. :D
I love this collection, but I love even more the pics Eleanor took!
Love this
The details in this are spectacular! and deffs not overlooked
I love the sweater in 51!
the slideshow by itself is amazing but the slideshow with commentary just KILLED me.
SO BEST.
this is my favorite collection of any designer of all time<333
Now, it must be said that at first glance, this is weird. But all the individual parts ring so… familiar. From the little-girl dressups from my childhood, to the risque, classic images I see on the internet all the time. It’s all very contrasting, but I think it kind of sums up the world of girl.
So in love!!
Also, the video rocks, I love how they used the Edward Scissorhands sountrack!
I approve of this wholeheartedly.
man this is so tumblr
know what is SO WEIRD that i couldn’t believe it? when i first emailed with edward he basically said he’s an internet hermit, he had no clue what tumblr was, even though for seasons they’d been making like, the clothing manifestations of tumblr girl brains. and now they know about arvida and there is love everywhere <3
I find it strange that critics of avant-garde fashion think collections like these can’t translate well into a more mainstream market because of the label’s (rather fervent) aesthetic. From the comments it’s clear that people..and not just those directly involved in the industry, but people who are in their teens and are living a live of quote unquote normalcy, find these clothes beautiful. Not to mention stating that if they were able to afford such a label, they would actually buy this and wear it proudly as they walked down their “all american high-school” Fashion (like every other art form) is subjective in terms of beauty. What is unwearable to them is a dream to many others. There are so many other elements that tie into fashion and its appeal on a personal basis. Cultural, creative, and emotional association to an item of clothing ties into the beauty because they don’t just see pom poms attached to a pair of wedges. Those shoes are an item of clothing that in some way or another makes a powerful personal statement that he or she wants to show the rest of the world because it emphasises the best parts of him or her. It’s a shame, rather an injustice, when my generation is accused of not knowing what constitutes beauty because of how young we are.
Go Meadham Kirchhoff!
I love MC!
I love Courtney!
I love Eleanor!
This is by far my favorite Rookie post.
It has this innocent intimacy that not many photographers can capture.
I have an urge to learn embroidery now.
I wish that Meadham Kirchhoff did some “teen-empowerment-project” where they challenged a teen to wear a look from their collection to school every day!
My dream…
(I just want to own this collection! And every one from the past 3 years!!!)
This is totally un-related and I’m a little late realizing this but is that Kim and Thurston kissing on the left of the banner?
yeah!! it’s a photo of my desk. that’s the back cover of the thurston guest-designed issue of zoetrope, with kim’s paint all over it. oh it brings me joy that you noticed that.
oh my god i did not know such perfection existed on this planetttttt
(is that an incredibly tacky thing to say???)
Beautiful collection! I love, love, LOVE Courtney Love – she is my feminist hero who really inspires me to become a feminist. She isn’t afraid to talk about issues – like asking for it/sexual consent or society’s double standards. Additionally, her songs are pure empowerment without being too cliche. The fact that Meadham Kirchhoff is constantly inspired by Courtney makes me appreciate their collection even more and fall in love with the brand.
I think this is the best fashion post, more like this!
my penpal suzy just emailed me this:
“i just had my mind blown by the Meadham Kirchoff 2012 spring/summer runway show. i don’t know if i will ever get over it”.
What a wonderful post. It feels good to feel the camaraderie. Our lives are flashing before our eyes.
Omg omg omg! I cant believe it this is so perfect the pictures are perfect and just evrything is perfect!!! Thank you so much for this inspiration!
This is the most perfect collection ever. Courtney love <3
Oh – my – goodness! Thank you!!!! This is one of the most amazing things that my eyes have ever seen. And so extensive!This alone will keep me coming back to Rookie ’til the end of the year :-))
excellent pastel colour mix!
PLEASE take those models to KFC- their legs are about the size of my arms!!!!
apart from that: I need those shoes!
I’ve been waiting for something like this for ages and I can’t thank RookieMag enough! Meadham Kirchhoff’s S/S 11 show blew my mind and changed my life. The aesthetic is everything that was missing in fashion for me – joyous, playful and ultra-feminine. I love Alexander McQueen, Marc Jacobs, Prada, etc, but Meadham Kirchhoff brings a truly unique element to the fashion world. I can’t help but feel giddy when I see the images from their collections. It had been some time since I was obsessed with the way that I am with Meadham Kirchhoff. Whether you can afford their clothing or not, the designs and overall styling can be wildly influential. This post is so great, having the chance to see Ed’s mood boards and personal inspiration is wonderful! Thank you so much – I can’t wait to get dressed and bust out my maribou and Ruby Woo!
It’s really cool.
That article was really interesting and inspiring. (cliché words, I know) The captions only made it more interesting.
I find that really touching that they actually stitch/sew/make themselves the finishing details and all… (it’s just poetic :o)
I’m surely not a great fashion critic, but I must say they succeeded in sharing what they meant. (also, thinking about *wearing* the collection sort of “stick” to how I view fashion, as something to play with and define myself)
It got me really interested in Meadham Kirchhoff, which I knew only by name. (also, got me into actually listening to Courtney Love and like it, I planned to try and listen but always put it away in my pseudo-schedule…)
I Love Meadham Kirchhoff. However, I am more in love with their fat kitty, Wendy.
But let’s be honest. I want 95% of this collection in my closet promptly. Especially that heart dress for Valentines Day, The rainbow sweater for a rainy day, and the eyes on the sweater for every ensemble you ever wear, ever.
wow…this is endlessly beautiful….
aaaaaaa the details!!! too much beauty in one post! I realllllly want that Mary Kate dress…I’m trying to think if there’s any way I could possibly DIY something like it (despite my total lack of sewing skills).
pastels R luv.
this is so wonderful.
I LOVE THIS COLLECTION , ITS SO PERFECT ;)