Irving Penn: Beyond Beauty end at the Smithsonian Museum on 30th March 2016

 “Young Boy, Pause Pause,” American South, 1941
Portrait of Salvador Dali, New York, 1947
“Girl Behind Bottle (Jean Patchett),” New York, 1949
“Kerchief Glove (Dior),” Paris, 1950
“Head in Ice,” New York, 2002
“Frozen Foods,” New York, 1977
Truman Capote, New York, 1979
“Issey Miyake Fashion: White and Black,” New York, 1990
“Ball Dress by Olivier Theyskens for Nina Ricci,” New York, 2007 

Photo Courtesy of Condenast, Smithsonian Museum, The Irving Penn Foundation

Exhibition shows at the Kensington Palace
Ends 31^st December, 2016

Photo Courtesy of AP images, Getty, Rex Features, Wireimages

The Art of Style
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Exhibition ends February 21, 2016

Photo courtesy of the MET Museum

Photo Courtesy of Tate Modern

At KOTUR, our approach to shoes is to imbue them with decoration and pizazz, making them little parties for your feet. In our Moroccan inspired Guzels or our flower festooned Jardines, the idea is that the shoe, like our bags, does plenty of talking. This exhibition is a wonderful celebration of extraordinary designs with just the same approach. Starting with the very oldest pair in the exhibit, some slippers from ancient Egypt adorned with gold leaf, through a pair of leather Venetian mules complete with a foot high platform from 1600, some jewel encrusted heels designed by Roger Vivier for Christian Dior in the 1950’s (often known as Fabergé for the feet,) and Zaha Hadid’s six inch high Nova shoes complete with cantilever system, it becomes immediately clear that the intention behind all of these no matter which era they come from is to elevate their wearer to another place. The most recognizable pairs from the show – such as Vivienne Westwood’s purple platforms, responsible for Naomi Campbell’s famous catwalk fall, Carrie Bradshaw’s Jimmy Choos from SATC, the tiny pieces of history that are Chinese silk embroidered slippers designed for bound feet in 19^th Century China, Alexander McQueen’s Armadillo booties or Moira Shearer’s Red Shoes from the 1948 film of the same name, seem to only to enforce the point. In this wonderfully laid out walk through the history of shoes, one that reflects on what they say about both their wearers and their makers – the power, pain and pleasure is there for all to see.

Shoes: Pleasure and Pain is on at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London until 31 January 2016

Photo courtesy of Victoria and Albert Museum

Head of Fernande (1909)
Glass of Absinthe (1914)
Head of a Warrior (1933)
She Goat (1950)
Guitar (1924)
Baboon and Young (1951)
Woman in the Garden (1929)
Vase, Woman (1948)
Flower Watering Can (1951-1952)

Photo Courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art, 2014, 2015 Estate of Pablo Picasso, ARTISTS RIGHTS SOCIETY (ARS), NEW YORK/MUSÉE NATIONAL PICASSO, ARTISTS RIGHTS SOCIETY (ARS), NEW YORK/THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART, NEW YORK

 ‘As a child, my attention was always drawn by those women who didn’t look like everyone else’ – Jean Paul Gaultier

‘It’s beautiful to be what you are’ – Jean Paul Gaultier

Photo Courtesy of Pierre et Gilles, Dominique Maître

Photo Courtesy of Tate

Frida by Ishiuchi Miyako is at Michael Hoppen gallery, London SW3, from 14 May to 12 July, 2015

Photo courtesy of Michael Hoppen Gallery

Claude and François-Xavier pair met in Paris in 1952 at his first gallery show. François-Xavier had started out studying sculpture and drawing at the Académie Julian, Claude had studied at the École des Arts Décoratifs and been known primarily for her painting. It wasn’t until when, bound together by their shared passion for animals and nature, they started working together in 1956 that they both turned almost exclusively to sculpture. From that moment on, their own particular brand of ‘living art’ was born.

Whilst Les Lalanne are most famous as a couple, working together on a daily basis and exhibiting only as a pair, they actually produced as co creators rather than collaborators. Each always had different approaches, techniques and specialities. It is François-Xavier who created their huge and playful steel plated sculptures, their menagerie of animals that includes life size rhinos that double as a desk, hippos that fold out to reveal an entire bar and their wonderful gorilla complete with concealed inner safe. Some of his most famous pieces were his life-sized fluffy sheep that double as benches – Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé had a flock in their living room. What strikes me most about these works is how the humour and joy to be found in them seem as important as the craftsmanship and creativity. This is art that’s full of personality, that’s not afraid to provoke a smile as much as it is appreciation, and as such it reflects what we try to convey in our own designs.

Claude, meanwhile, (my personal favorite,) has historically been more concerned with flora and fauna, creating extraordinarily beautiful bronze chandeliers, chairs and tables hewn out of a tangle of delicate branches with an almost fairytale like effect. Frequently taking inspiration from nature at Kotur – we return regularly to floral motifs, animal skins, natural fibres and botanical prints as a starting point for our designs – her transformation of the natural into something almost jewel like is endlessly inspiring to us.

Francois Xavier died in 2008 but his wife now aged 91 continues the Lalanne name, still producing pieces from their rural studio in Ury an hour outside Paris. Their work was the subject of a major retrospective at the Museum of Decorative Arts in Paris in 2010 and is now on show at the Paul Kasmin Gallery in New York. With pieces including a version of the famous ‘Hall of mirrors’ created for Yves Saint Laurent in 1974 by François-Xavier and Claude’s ‘Lustres,’ a chandelier of bronze entwined flowers and branches that dangles above them, it is really not hard to see why the wow factor of and appetite for Les Lalanne shows no sign of abating. This is art with a strong personality, creativity that revels in the unexpected and mixes the playful with the beautiful. For those and so many other reasons, at Kotur we turn time and time again to it for inspiration.

Les Lalanne is on show at Paul Kasmin Gallery, Hong Kong until May 2^nd 2015. For those who cannot make the exhibition, a book, Les Lalanne, Fifty Years of Work 1964 – 2015 has also been produced.

Photo Courtesy: http://maryandmatt.net, benbrownfinearts.com, bornrich.com