Melbourne Fashion Week 2018

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There is so much buzzing around Melbourne right now, we have Bruno Mars touring for a couple of nights, Ed Sheeran doing the same and even did a short surprise performance this morning in Hosier Lane. KAWS is currently holidaying in Melbourne as it appears on his latest Instagram posts of him visiting the NGV and murals in Brunswick – seriously I thought an artist like him would never come here and now he’s actually here…I wish I bumped into him!! Good stuff Melbourne. On top of all that, the Melbourne Fashion Festival is in town and this year you’ll notice global luxury icons Hermes and Louis Vuitton have quietly made headlines this week. They’re here to let Melbourne in on their craftsmanship secrets and behind the scenes work from their headquarters in France. I was happy to see both and just like the awesome NGV Triennial, these are completely free for the public to see (only for a limited time). I’ll talk a bit about it shortly.

Starting off the Fashion Festival week, I attended a “Fashion and e-commerce in China” breakfast with my business partner as we’re currently in the latter stages of prototyping and testing our sleepwear range. The testing and sampling is the longest process so far due to the fact that Australia imposed strict regulations when it comes to nightwear and selected daywear designs for kids and babies. While this process is still going, we thought it’d be good to at least make use of Fashion Week and go to events like these and share a bit of our Lu & Mon journey. The breakfast was super early – I’m surprised we managed to show up on time to watch the sunrise (literally).

Shoutout to Gesualdo Terlato shoes who we met on the day.

 

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Progressing into the week I visited the Hermes at work exhibition and it’s no surprise why Hermes bags are the most expensive. Every Hermes bag on earth is purely handmade and it takes one year of practice to master the Kelly, a base model bag of Hermes. Any imperfections spotted won’t make it to the shelves, instead, it gets sold at a discounted price to its staffers. Most of the people at Hermes have been there longer than I’ve been alive, and it’s a great opportunity for anyone looking into the leather business. Even a non fashion enthusiast surely anyone can find the beauty in the art of crafting. This exhibition is intimate and compact enough for you to get up close with the craftspeople who work in Hermes Paris. There are a few workstations and each one has it’s own specialty: watchmaker, bagmaker, the glover, the printer etc. Each workbench is accompanied by a translator to assist you with your endless queries while the crafters work.

 

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I wrapped up the week with a visit to the Louis Vuitton Time Capsule Exhibition. It was more of an unplanned visit since my boyfriend and I just wanted to shop around Chadstone. But I remember seeing the ads on Facebook and forgot to add this to the reminders list. We were strolling with our coffee when we saw the LV exhibition in the corner of our eyes.

This exhibition takes you back in time to LV’s first few items right until the 21st century with bolder colours and modern collaborations. As soon as you walk in there’s a bagmaker handsewing her way through the iconic LV monogram leather. Like the Hermes workshop, you can ask her questions and get the translator to translate for you.

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The House of Dior

Happy November! 2017 pretty much marks the year of the most gallery visitations for me so far. The only thing I was bummed about was not being able to see Studio Ghibli in Japan this year – my second time missing out on ordering tickets. Maybe the next time I’ll get lucky!

My gallery adventures continue with The House of Dior exhibition which is just about to wrap up in 3 days. This is the last major exhibition held at the NGV for the year.

I didn’t know much about Christian Dior prior to this exhibition however I’m a big follower of Yves Saint Laurent and I eventually learned that YSL worked for Dior at the age of 21. This was his first major gig in the fashion industry and Dior had trained him up to become the first creative director of his brand (other than Dior himself). Their legacy lives on to this day and what I love the most is that the YSL and Dior stores in Chadstone sit right across each other, I get the fuzziest feelings everytime I walk past it.

The House of Dior showcases 70 years of designs by all creative directors including YSL.

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Yayoi Kusama: Life is the Heart of a Rainbow

In my last post featuring a video of my trip, you’ll notice some of the footage was taken at the Yayoi Kusama exhibition at the National Gallery of Singapore.

I sign up to a lot of art and design news and thankfully one source told me some of Kusama’s pieces have landed in Singapore. Just like the KAWS exhibition, the trip was mildly planned around this given that we flew with Singapore Airlines, Mom suggested to stop by Singapore for a couple of days. We do love visiting Singapore every now and then especially since their airport is so accommodating and the city is usually our main stopover to Jakarta.

I first heard about Yayoi Kusama when I saw a Louis Vuitton shopfront a couple of years ago. She collaborated with LV and this is what it looked like (courtesy of Louis Vuitton and Yayoi Kusama): yellow-dots red-dots black-dotsgeorge-clooneyrei

Yep that’s George Clooney for the cover of W magazine and yep, that’s Yayoi in her trademark polka dot outfit. It is considered as one of the most successful art collaborations with a fashion house. The dots however aren’t seen as completely a playful pattern. Kusama says these dots are a representation of her childhood hallucinations where she constantly experienced reoccurring visions of repeating patterns during the events of World War II. Her work can be seen as a means of therapy for Kusama and even for viewers – a therapy of confronting a fear by representing it on a grand scale.

She spent lots of time hand painting polka dots or “infinite nets” as she refers them to in her life. They applied them onto canvasses, sculptures and then onto everything else that was a part of her life, even her body. Kusama’s family had their own plant nursery and she drew pumpkins and flowers with dots. She is literally the queen of polka dots.
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I’m a fan of polka dots (not to the extremities of Kusama) so I was eventually lured into Louis Vuitton that day. I was fascinated by their shop design and their new range of leather-goods. It was like walking into an art installation, learning more about who Yayoi Kusama was.

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The Yayoi cake in the cafeteria after the exhibition!

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My current read is “Yayoi Kusama: Inventing the Singular” by lecturer, Midori Yamamura. A great read if you want to dig deep into Kusama’s life events, many of which affected the art she’s created to date. 

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Design had evolved naturally, as a passion and a lifestyle beginning at an early age when I made trips back to the motherland, Indonesia, I experienced the surroundings and the lifestyle that was vastly different from what I was used to. I found myself passing by villages where children made their own toys with whatever was left around them; scrap metal, bits of cloth, banana leaves, and even cigarette butts. Despite this, the children were happy and proud with anything they created.

This image struck me and forever inspires me to contribute my skills to places that need it the most. Design helps me make decisions, while art helps me take risks. Both areas reward me with opportunities to create something impactful and everlasting!