Yiqing Yin; Spring of Nüwa

Another fabulous couture collection by the Paris-based designer Yiqing Yin.  After In Carne showed on January, Spring of Nüwa, Yin's new Autumn-Winter 2012-13 collection re-imagines the female form in a world of purely mineral and vegetable composition.

Light cascades of satin and muslin offer oblique suggestions of chasteness through their mounting layers. Skin is laid bare beneath pink-besprinkled tulle. Red remains pure. Silver and blue fade into one.

Yiqing Yin constructs her volumes through a series of metamorphoses enacted upon the body. Rough surfaces are honed and fluid materials sculpted in pursuit of the right weight. Garments are hand-made in Yin's studio, each bearing the mark of the designer's hand.

Yiqing Yin

Spring of Nüwa

Images copyright © Shoji Fujii

Courtesy of Yiqing Yin

Peter Lippmann's Luxury Chicks

Have you ever seen chicks adorned with gorgeous gemstones? This amusing series of images will put a smile on your face.
Peter Lippmann did this photographic shoot for the French magazine Marie Claire 2 to promote luxury jewelry brands. This is not his most recent work, but nonetheless it is unique and stunning!!

Peter Lippmann is a still photographer, born in New York, but has been living and working in Paris for 30 years. Well known in the advertising world, he has collaborated with the most famous brands (Cartier, Audermars Piguet, Christian Louboutin, Fürterer...) and is regularly published in editorials such as Vogue, New York Times magazine, Marie Claire, and Le Figaro.

In his free time, Peter Lippmann writes and sings in a Parisian band "Lobotonics".

Peter Lippmann

Luxury Chicks

H Stern © Peter Lippmann

Gianmaria Buccellati © Peter Lippmann

Cartier © Peter Lippmann

Tiffany & Co © Peter Lippmann

Van Cleef & Arpels © Peter Lippmann

Gucci © Peter Lippmann

Harry Winston © Peter Lippmann

Piaget / Boucheron © Peter Lippmann

Chanel Joaillerie © Peter Lippmann

Courtesy of Peter Lippmann

LEAH GORDON; 'Caste' the 9 degrees of skin color

In 'Caste' the London-based photographer Leah Gordon takes the viewer in 18th century colonial Haiti. Her new photographic series investigates the practice of the grading from black to white of skin color, referred to as Caste.


A measuring system - which moves through black to white in nine degrees - was developed by a French colonialist living in Haiti during the slave plantation period. Moreau de St Mery created a surreal taxonomy of race classifying the skin color of the colony's population, where white, or Blanche was inevitably socially superior to black, or Noir. Using names borrowed from mythology, natural history and bestial miscegenation, St Mery classified nine degrees of shading, from pure black to 1/8 white, and 7/8 black and so on through Socatra, Griffe, Marabou, Mulâtre, Mamelouque, Quarteronné and Sang-Mêlé to White.


Leah Gordon drew her inspiration from Moreau's classification system to make Caste Portraits of the nine skin varieties, with herself at one end of the scale, the Blanche, and her partner, Andre Eugene, a Haitian sculptor, at the other end of the racial spectrum.


The images reference celebrated Renaissance portraits. Gordon found her models in the Grand Rue area of Port-au-Prince, home to the artists' collective Atis Rezistans. She worked with local craftsmen to make the costumes for the sitters and wooden plaques bearing the names of the caste colors.

The series is one of Gordon's many investigations into her ancestral links with Haitian history, a country where she has been working as a photographer, filmmaker and curator for the last twenty years. Gordon was the adjunct curator for the Haitian Pavilion at the 54th Venice Biennale in 2011, and is part of the curatorial team for the upcoming  In Extremis exhibition of Haitian Vodou arts (opening in Sept 2012) at the Fowler Museum and UCLA.

LEAH GORDON

'CASTE'

Copyright © Leah Gordon

 © Leah Gordon

 © Leah Gordon

 © Leah Gordon

 © Leah Gordon

 © Leah Gordon

© Leah Gordon

 © Leah Gordon

© Leah Gordon

Courtesy of the artist

'Caste' is currently on exhibit at Riflemaker Gallery, London

June 11 - July 14, 2012
This post is featured on the Huffington Post

Venetian Interiors

 One hundred deep solitudes together constitute the city of Venice

Therein lies its charm

A model for the man of the future

~~Friedrich Nietzsche

The fabulous interiors of 15 private homes in Venice are revealed in Venetian Interiors, a lavishly photographed volume by Giuseppe Molteni, one of Europe's top interiors photographers. This superb volume takes the reader behind the facades of Venice to explore the greatest achievements of contemporary Venetian interior design and decoration. 

The residential interiors range from fabric designer Mirella Spinella's converted lumber warehouse, and  the blue-and-white harmonies of Rubelli's palazzeto, to British architect Michael Carapetian's modernist brewery conversion, and the home of DJ Spiller who combines high-tech electronics with frescoed ceilings and rocaille wood paneling in an ancient noble mansion.

Venetian Interiors is an enchanting volume essential for anyone who has fantasized about living in one of the most romantic cities in Europe.

Venetian Interiors is published by Rizzoli New York.
Release date: June 2012

This former lumber warehouse in the Cannaregio sestiere, was once part of the building housing the service quarters of the palazzo owned by the Da Lezze family, and now the residence of fabric designer  Mirella Spinella.

© Giuseppe Molteni, from Venetian Interiors, Rizzoli New York, 2012

This home, situated in the attic of a medieval Venetian palazzo, is located in the San Polo sestiere.

© Giuseppe Molteni, from Venetian Interiors, Rizzoli New York, 2012

In Venice much of the architectural remodeling inspired by modern ideals has taken place in attics and lofts. This loft is no exception, and was designed by the architect Paolo Fabris.

© Giuseppe Molteni, from Venetian Interiors, Rizzoli New York, 2012

This Gothic palazzetto embellished by a multi mullioned lancet arch originally belonged to the Pisani family, prominent members of the Venetian nobility, now the home of Matilde Favaretto Rubelli and her family.

© Giuseppe Molteni, from Venetian Interiors, Rizzoli New York, 2012

Palazzo Gradenigo, built in the seventeenth century, is the unlikely facade disguising the laboratory where thirty-six-year-old DJ Spiller creates, and mixes his house music.

© Giuseppe Molteni, from Venetian Interiors, Rizzoli New York, 2012

This refurbished loft in an eighteenth-century palazzo overlooking Campo dei Mori, in the Cannareggio sestiere, is now the home of the artist Pietro Russo aka Pietrorusso.

© Giuseppe Molteni, from Venetian Interiors, Rizzoli New York, 2012

Mark Twain once said that history is Venice

© Giuseppe Molteni, from Venetian Interiors, Rizzoli New York, 2012

Courtesy of Rizzoli New York