Monday, October 20, 2008
A space-age metallic bar designed for Home House in London by the architect Zaha Hadid (Zaha Haid Architects)
LONDON: Was it a racy bar or a racing car? The conceptual architect Zaha Hadid unveiled two contemporary projects in one venue last week as her ongoing collaboration on dynamic footwear with Lacoste was projected in the space-age new interior for London's historic Home House.
The bar and lounge, with sculpted metallic surfaces finished with car paint or with silvered leather, made an impressive backdrop for the futuristic shoes. Onlookers studied the video images with attention usually reserved for Bill Viola's art, as a digitized version of the famous crocodile logo became a "landscape" that was then transferred by laser on to leather stretched over stainless steel plates.
"Dynamic fluid grids," said Hadid, defining her design expression and explaining how the shoe will expand and contract as it wraps around the foot, allowing the landscaped pattern to come and go.
In March, 1,000 pairs of limited edition Lacoste-Hadid shoes will go on sale, followed by a 10,000-strong diffusion line in May. Meanwhile, Hadid was to be in New York on Monday to open her futuristic construction for Chanel in Central Park.
For Ferragamo, the Frieze fair was a chance to reinforce the company's collaboration between fashion and art, by installing the work of the video artist Cécile Paris with her narrative artistic eye.
"We chose this week on purpose - we wanted to be connected to contemporary art," said Michele Norsa, Ferragamo's CEO, who added that it was an opportunity both to support and sponsor an artist - and to draw in a younger crowd to the store.
At Dover Street market, itself an experimental and artistic project as part of Comme des Garçons, the vision was of "rooms" papered with printed images, especially from Mondongo, the Argentinian art collective with its ironic and ambiguous imagery.
"We don't pretend to be an art gallery, but there is a connection with art," said Adrian Joffe, CEO of Comme des Garçons, who says that the works displayed throughout four floors are drawn from Rei Kawakubo's fascination with printed matter and her many artistic collaborations over more than three decades.
Add to the roster of events, a Cartier dinner for Frieze and an exhibition of the work of Sarah Moon, whose haunting, intimate early images of fashion in her new book (Thames & Hudson) were both of their time and ahead of it (Michaelhoppengallery.com).
But perhaps the most telling reminder of how Frieze has changed the axis of London society came from the dance party for 1,000 guests thrown by the interior designer Nicky Haslam. His incomparable taste and reach brought together artists from the ubiquitous Tracey Emin, to Lucien Freud and Anish Kapoor as well as a conjunction of royalty (Prince and Princess Michael of Kent), formal aristocracy, the private-jet set, fashion and music heroes, politicos, television personalities and everybody who makes up the eclectic, electric social mix that is London now.
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