Show: Painting Pictures by MLY

Last afternoon, Emily Hermans showed her most personal collection until now. The collection was called ‘Painting Pictures’, which refered to her youth which she spend on a farm. On the one hand she was a girly girl, ride horseback and do ballet, on the other hand she did very forceful activities in the forest. The collection contains both sites of Emily.

MLY describes memories as fragments, which you colour during the rest of your life. Not like a chronologic story, but more like snapshots. Therefore the catwalk was instead of the usual white catwalk, coloured with spots and splashes. For some clothes, she lent the pattern from paint by number colouring pictures.

Before the show, which was held in Westerliefde, on a big screen her photo and videoshoot could be seen. It took place in Norway, the snow there refers to the white paper on which she projected her memories.

Emily, who is known for her knitwear, showed for the first time also a MLY Woven part. The good news about her whole collection is, that it will be available in a size range from XS to XXL.

Portrait de Karl Lagerfeld: Un roi seul

Yesterday evening the first documentary in a series of three about the life of famous designers took place at the French language instution ‘Maison Descartes’. The honour was to Karl Lagerfeld, a man who, despites he hates funerals, always appears in a black suit with dark (sun)glasses and his white hair worn in a tail, who doesn’t need an introduction.

I really hoped to see him without glasses during the documentary, but unfortunately, his youth pictures were shot in black and white. The film started in his library, where he storages 50.000 books about fashion. After that you saw him taking pictures at Versaille, his great source of inspiration and the reason why he moved from his birthplace Hamburg to France/Paris.

I was a little bit nervous, because there was no subtiteling, and instead of speaking slower for all the foreign viewers, Karl explained why he always speaks so fast: in his youth his mother didn’t have time to listen to his stories, and therefore he had only a few seconds in the morning, to say everything he wanted to tell her. So he practiced a lot with fast, fast, superfast speaking and he told a lot in only 50 minutes.
He said he never wanted to be ‘comme les autres’, even when he was just a small child and a teenager he found everything regular boring and tried to do it his very own way. And he is very successful sticking to that.

There were shots about his first show, in Hamburg in 1948, only for a very few selected customers. Although, he never want to go back to Germany because he will never understand the nazi regime. In another part of the film, he told about how he admires artist like Andy Warhol and excentric artists like Amy Winehouse, who performed in his show in 2008. He will never be like that, because his target is to be reserved (no alcohol, no cigarettes) and mysterious.

The word was also a few minutes to Coco Chanel, which I liked a lot. On the pictures a snapshot from the film, one of Coco Chanel and one of Karl Lagerfeld in his library.

Tonight at there’s a documentary about Sonyia Rykiel at 20.00h and tomorrow about Agnès B at 19.30h @ Maison Descartes, Vijzelgracht 2A, free entrance.

Text and pictures: Valerie Boersma