Next stop London

I'd heard about the Future Beauty fashion exhibtion at the Barbican, which was based on 30 years of Japanese fashion, which I thought was a great opportunity not to miss. Although I am not a huge fan of Japanese fashion, I was really impressed by some of the garments. The way they had been made and the fact that they were so unique was refreshing to see.

Koji Tatsuno, A/W 1993-94

Rei Kawakubo, A/W 1990-91

These are a couple of the examples I saw which I really liked, mostly due to their dramatic effect! They both have great volume and shape which is really interesting to look at. Rei Kawakubo had some amazing pieces, but the one I probably liked the best was a dress made of 20 sheets of binding. This one was very simplistic in form, but beautifully made with just two seams, and some subtle ruffle detail.

Yohji Yamamoto also had some amazing pieces, these were more simple and sophisticated, and quite androgynous, which I really liked. The more simple garments of the exhibition did catch my eye, I guess they stood out in all of the craziness, but it was great to see all of the garments on display!

Whilst at the Barbican, me and my sister thought we would take a look at the other exhibition currently showing by Damian Ortega. It was an interesting concept; over the past month, Ortega had taken an article, image or advertisement from The Independant everyday, and for each one, he had 24 hours to create a sculpture inspired by it.

This piece is inspired by an image of people fleeing from their homes after the Pakistani floods, with all they have.

The idea of getting inspiration from the media, which is a form of communication is a great idea, as it is so influential nowadays.

As we were in London, we also took the opportunity to do a little shopping around Brick Lane and Spitalfields Market. On our way there we passed Whitechapel Gallery which also had a great exhibition by Walid Raad.

This image shows the gun shots he found whilst doing a survey in Lebanon, he had more images and a film of his time out there, all documenting images relating to war and crime. Using his own way of communicating his views and thoughts, he made quite a strong impact on me, however if there were not any captions next to the images, I would not have understood the images in the way he had portrayed them, which is an interesting idea, one that I mentioned in my brainstorm. Its the idea of communicating without words.