Picture Credit - PYUUPIRU, Mercury/PLANETARIA, 2001, photo: Masayuki Yoshinaga
Understanding how a creative designer’s mind works is an impossible task and one that very few master. However the latest illustrated publication to come from the Greek cultural organisation for fashion research ATOPOS Contemporary Visual Culture (ATOPOS CVC), offers an insight into the conceivable.
Linked to the exhibition ARRRGH! Monsters in Fashion, Not A Toy is an investigative publication into the growing influence of today’s avant-garde costume and hair on contemporary fashion and design. Using the fashionably grotesque, the monstrous and the radical, international designers such as Walter Van Beirendonck, Charlie Le Mindu and LucyandBart have reinvented the styled and performed body and established new aesthetic norms while creating profound characters both for the catwalk and for cultural interpretation.
In the midst of a time where radicalism is enthralled with the playful, the publication can only be met with sheer delight, if not for the stunning imagery then for the academic knowledge applied to the subject of fashioned bodies and identities. Not A Toy entwines original essays by leading scholars amongst the astounding visuals. These include Valerie Steele, Francesca Granata and Ted Polhemus to name a few. They propose explanations behind the way identity is explored and notions as to how these are perceived within modern world culture.
Also featuring the work of Madame Peripetie whose photographic imaginations will be featured in the launch issue of 5thCharacter in September. Not A Toy will leave you wise with knowledge and rich in contemplation.
Not A Toy: Fashioning Radical Characters. Edited by Vassilis Zidiankis ATOPOS CVC. Published by Pictoplasma Publishing Berlin.
Picture credit - Pandemonia, Dizzy Blond, 2007, photo: James and James
