Amelia’s Magazine | Fashion & Lifestyle Writing

With a focus on art, fashion, music, the environment and design and an almost obsessive emphasis on high production values, cult London publication Amelia’s Magazine was published globally and stocked by institutions including London’s Tate Modern gallery. I contributed features to the Fashion and Lifestyle sections of Amelia’s Magazine, covering runway shows, fashion collection launches, fairs and more.

Phaiz Gallery & Boutique, 673 N. Milwaukee Avenue, Chicago, IL 60622

The enduring flirtation between art and fashion has borne some strange and beautiful sartorial love children. From Yves Saint Laurent’s timelessly chic 1965 ‘Mondrian’ dress to Guy Bourdin’s iconic fashion photography; from the paper ‘Souper Dress’ inspired by Andy Warhol’s achingly prosaic Campbell’s image, to the recent collaboration between Warhol and Pepe jeans. Art and fashion are firm, if sometimes awkward, friends.

Enter Phaiz, a gallery slash boutique in Chicago’s River West neighborhood – an area increasingly awash with converted loft spaces, ergo artists and creative types – which alluringly promises that its visitors will leave feeling like they’ve been rendezvousing with the aforementioned Andy Warhol and enfant terrible Alexander McQueen.

Reticent fashionistas with a cerebral bent, pondering whether to visit a gallery or a boutique are thoughtfully spared the angst, as Phaiz, a concept store with a difference, seamlessly marries art and fashion in a meeting defined by its makers as a ‘collision’, but perhaps more aptly described as a match made in proverbial heaven for those all-encompassing aesthetes among us.

A refreshing alternative to high street mass production and identikit ‘It’ bags, visitors to this cult gallery/boutique can peruse the cavernous 800 square foot space safe in the knowledge that its wares are one of a kind, being crafted exclusively for Phaiz and available for a period of 30 days alongside the space’s site specific installations of the same duration.

With prices ranging from $80 to a credit crunch eschewing $3,000, the work of exhibiting artists and designers virtually transforms Phaiz on a monthly basis, with each collaboration ushering in a new retail phase for the gallery/boutique. Phaiz’s blurring of the lines between art and fashion extends to its pricing scheme. A scheme that sees all items bereft of price tags with visitors instead being gifted a price list upon arrival.

One of many beautiful collisions to have emerged from Phaiz so far saw the juxtaposition of the work of former graffiti artist, Peter Kepha with that of fur designer Backtalk. An unobvious coupling, were it not for Kepha and Backtalk’s shared use of collage. Kepha in his autobiographical 2D installations, and Backtalk, the label of Chicago designer Robin Kyle, in her unique garments comprising collaged fur embellished with feathers and antique ribbons and buttons.

In rubbishing distinctions between art and fashion and the way in which they should be seen and bought, Phaiz provides a very real compromise to ageing supermodel Janice Dickinson’s assertion that we should ‘follow sound business trends, not fashion trends’. A trendsetting pioneer rather than a follower, Phaiz seems to have not just art and fashion, but the tricky business of selling them, quite literally sewn up.

Review of Scott Ramsay Kyle at London Fashion Week, published in Amelia’s Magazine Online

Like many, I often attend events showcasing the work of friends with more than a little trepidation. Understandable given that I’ve fallen prey to that dreadful trap: the good friend’s bad gig that you simply must praise in the name of all that is amiable.

Attending the S/S ’09 show of designer Scott Ramsay Kyle as part of Vauxhall Fashion Scout and on the fringes of London Fashion Week however was marred by no such reticence. Kyle’s two prior collections the stuff of “can I borrow it if I’m really, really careful” fashion friend dreams, being collections that have garnered this young Scot quite the reputation as a burgeoning British fashion talent.

Indeed, Glaswegian Ramsay Kyle, a graduate of both the Glasgow School of Art and the revered womenswear MA at fashion star factory Central Saint Martins is becoming quite the name to drop amongst the fashion cognoscenti. His work appearing in Another Magazine, V Magazine and Italian Vogue and garnering this unassuming designer a reputation as yet another young Scottish designer to watch.

With his sculptural shapes and luxe embroidery – a skill put to good use in his work for Biba and Boudicca amongst others – Ramsay Kyle makes the kind of clothes you can imagine flying off the racks at arts and crafts Mecca Liberty. Even more so in that his untitled S/S ’09 collection was at once more understated and assured than previous ones, bringing new meaning to that term beloved of fashion editors, ‘stealth fashion’.

With a studied palette of subdued gold and sand tones inspired by the opulence of the Riviera and the psychedelicism of seventies pop, Ramsay Kyle’s S/S ’09 collection marked a clear departure from his one time affair with kaleidoscopic colours and statement shapes in its muted tones and decidedly pared down silhouettes.

And in a firm nod to the unapologetic eighties in the form of a plethora of playsuits, jumpsuits and all-in-one’s, Ramsay Kyle’s clever juxtaposition of his signature couture quality embellishment with of the moment shapes resulted in a clever fusion of exquisite craftsmanship à la Dries Van Noten and the avant-gardism of the best of British fashion.

Highlights of Ramsay Kyle’s untitled collection included a micro mini with fluid black and bronze fringing, a long-line tuxedo style jacket with dramatically exaggerated lapels, and a lavishly embroidered jumpsuit in metallic shades that quite possibly achieved the impossible in rendering the all-in-one chic. Hoxtonites take note, the eighties may be back but this time they’re beautiful.

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