Sunday, my desk is in the Huntington Park  in Pasadena California. The reason to be here is the opening of Figaro at the Walt Disney Hall in Los Angeles with costumes designed by Azzedine Alaïa – I admit a long way to travel for an opera, but I could not miss seeing the Alaïa designs  for this new expression in his work.  And they were clearly wonderful.  Reds and Whites that worked with and played off of the sets of Jean Nouvel.  A memorable evening and worth the journey.

PUNK

Chaos to Couture

“ The clichè is that the original American version of “punk”

was about art while the British was about politics.

There’s truth to it. In New York, in 1974, we did want to make art.”

So starts the book “punk: chaos to couture” quoting Richard Hell, musician, artist, mentor of the Sex Pistols and film critic for BlackBook magazine from 2004 to 2006. Punk’s iconoclastic aesthetic was originally rooted in street culture, but its subversive style has had an enduring influence on high fashion, from the do-it-yourself ethos of punk’s originators to the perfection defined by its couture descendants. This impact is explored between the polished, black covers of “punk: chaos to couture”, published to accompany the spring 2013 exhibition at the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Pentagram’s Abbott Miller has designed the graphics to capture the immediacy of Punk style in a cover design inspired by a vintage LP cover. It is superbly illustrated with photographs of punks and high fashion from

the 70’s until today, and edited with commentary by Andrew Bolton, the curator of the fashion collection at the Met, the inspiration behind the show.
An introduction to the period by Jon Savage writer and filmmaker, and prefaces by Richard Hell and John Lydon also known as Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols, give some weight and direction to Bolton’s curated images.

Punk. Chaos to couture

by Andrew Bolton

published by Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2013

32,5 x 32,5 cm; 240 pp

€ 54.00

Order online from 10 Corso Como Bookshop

Fred Perry presents at 10 Corso Como Gallery Shop
“Collage”, the new collaboration with Raf Simons.
The SS13 Men Collection features variuos traditional
menswear patterns in electric colours and prints. Classic pieces are adorned
with checks, crest and pied de poule, floral print and camouflage in contrast colours.

On show and on sale
at 10 Corso Como
from Thursday 16th May

The week’s excitement has been so much talk about punk, and black, and music, and
fashion because of the gala exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum in NY.
Looking at the books, and sitting quietly  reading

about the clothes on display,  and somehow trying to
understand how the movement happened.  As with almost everything, it had its reasons planted in the past and grew quickly to its future.
And the news of Tai Missoni came this week.  And I remember his quote on
black, “black is the mother of all colors” he would say.

And he was the master of colors.

Overview on Punk Couture designed by

Alaïa, Rick Owens and Kris Ruhs.

On show and on sale at 10 Corso Como.

[View with PicLens]

On Saturday 4th May,  opened 56th

World Press Photo Exhibition at Galleria Carla Sozzani.

It is the 20th year that the Gallery hosts this important photojournalism event.

Grazia Neri and Femke van der Walk,

representative of  World Press Photo Foundation in Amsterdam,

celebrated this anniversary together with numerous visitors.

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Grazia Neri

La mia fotografia

“The camera is a different tool from a pen. It can be used to produce an instantaneous masterpiece, to upset society with a scoop, to amaze people with something new. Each of us reacts to the picture on the basis of our own sensitivity, culture, intelligence, mood and passion” so writes Grazia Neri in “La mia fotografia” published by Feltrinelli.

This book is not only a personal journal about her life, her mother, her missing father, her loves, but also an important story of the history of photography in Milan after the war. Written by a woman who has worked for over forty years with the best photographers of our time as agent and champion and confidante, Grazia Neri has pulled nearly 100 images from her collection of thousands for this publication. It is a book that sharpens your eye in how to read an image, to see the complex stories these images tell, and to understand why it is now so difficult to find clean journalistic images in a press that can no longer afford to support the field of journalistic reportage.

Grazia Neri

published by Feltrinelli

454 pp, 25 euro

Order online from 10 Corso Como Bookshop

Books.  I will never get tired of talking about books.  They nurture the mind but also the eyes.  Getting lost in the beauty of books, their covers, their pages inside.

This week I was lucky to see the preview of an exhibition in Paris at Palais du Tokyo on Chanel parfum and the many inspirations that led Mademoiselle Chanel to the creation of the legendary No. 5. The most incredible journey in writings, photographs, and books, with many of the books from the ’20′s and ’30′s also objects of art.

WORLD PRESS PHOTO 2013

20 years at Galleria Carla Sozzani

10 Corso Como Woodstock T-shirt

On sale at 10 Corso Como and at The Shop on Line

Kris Ruhs new light at 10 Corso Como Cafè

www.galleriacarlasozzani.org

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A passion for Jean Prouvé. From furniture to architecture

has been published on occasion of the exhibition open to September 8th

at the Pinacoteca Gianni e Marella Agnelli in Turin, Italy.

Featuring pieces from Laurence and Patrick Seguin’s private collection,

the exhibition and the book showcase architecture and furniture from metal worker, architect and designer Jean Prouvé.

On sale at 10 Corso Como.

Today, from the Terrace of 10 Corso Como

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