Fake Sartorialist Store - Now Open

The Fake Sartorialist Store launches today!

< Visit it now >
With limited edition (1 of 100, signed and numbered) Designer Essence prints.
I took the design of the whole experience very seriously, so even the packaging has been planned to the last detail, from custom made stamps to protective information sleeve. Its the perfect present this festive season for a discerning fashionista friend.

Get them before they disappear.

Fake Sartorialist Original Prints: Designer Essence

Edition:   1/100, signed and numbered

Quality:   Digital print on archival cotton

Size:        170x170mm
Cost:        $25 for 1, $65 for set of 3
Shipping: Worldwide

Full Set - Victor & Rolf, Vivienne Westwood, DSquared

($65> Store Link)

Victor & Rolf - this one's going fast in store

($25> Store Link)

Vivienne Westwood 

($25 > Store Link)

DSquared

($25> Store Link)

Designer Essence 2010 Series Video:

Prints also on sale at: Guillotine Pop-Up Store (70 Juta Street, Braamfontein, South Africa)

A Tale of Tulle and Genius - Designer Essence: Victor & Rolf

Caught in their grandmothers attic, Victor & Rolf play for hours in mounds of tulle that used to be their mothers, grandmothers and great grandmothers bridesmaid, engagement and wedding dresses. As a piece of stray tulle floats into a glimmering beam of light, V&R have an epiphany. They start combining dresses and cutting away at them furiously.

Their mother nods knowingly through an interview: "They have always been like this you know. I guarantee that in three days they will emerge with something that you have never seen before."

"You know in 1993, they just came out of nowhere to become instant fashion icons." She continued, " I mean they are form the Netherlands for God's sake! No one ambitious comes from the Netherlands." she said matter-of-factly. I disputed this fact, but she insisted and offered me some bland biscuits as proof.

After three days V&R were still not satisfied with their exploits. They were covered with bits of tulle, some random and other rather strategically placed tufts created interesting combinations (see image above)

(Images: Dazed & Confused 2009)

"We haven't achieved what we needed too! Normal utensils just are not enough. We need industrial grade lasers!" And industrial lasers they got. Weeks of testing had left mounds of smoking rayon melted tulle all over their studio. But there in the center of the room stood a series of dresses that defied gravity. Ones with holes blasted through them, others floating magically, some seemed to be hacked by chainsaws, all in exquisite pastel colours. Their job was one, now they could finally go home to play with their babushka dolls, where another illuminating beam of light awaits.

Designer Essence - A New Work by The Fake Sartorialist

In the flurry of NYTimes /NYMag activity I have decided to launch the first series of Designer Essence:

 Vivienne Westwood A/W 2010

 Victor & Rolf Spring 2010 RTW

DSquared A/W 2010

Designer Essence tries to make sense of rampant consumerist culture. How fashion designers can be so detached from their labels that they can continue after their death (Alexander McQueen being a case in point). Where designers create a brand from themselves that is propagated around the world, then creating collections that are meant to be embodiments of those brands. At some point in the consumerist frenzy that connection is lost.

It aims to cast the viewers eye on an intellectual life-cycle, where designers create images of themselves, mass produce collections of those images and are then made to be accountable for those collections through superimposing them once again onto themselves

Alexander McQueen Tribute

Lee Alexander McQueen 1969-2010

RIP

As he walked through the forest, he happened across a fluttering swarm of butterflies. Waving to his assistants urgently, they brought what he required, a mirror. Carefully they placed it next to the swarm. Doubled in symmetry they took on a new form, they moved as one organism, flowed almost like fabric...

Over and over he would give a slight wave to his assistants. A a pit of snakes, rippling pool, chess board, birds-nest with scattered feathers.

The assistants could not explain or comprehend his behavior, these expeditions to forests, deserts, remote streams and treetop canopies seemed unnecessary and eccentric. 

They couldn't catch that moment in their minds. The moment of utter beauty, when all the shapes and patterns would coalesce, in his mind, into a form that would take your breath away.