HYÈRES 2013: CROWNING GLORY

Hyères 2013 is officially over (the competition ran from April 26-29 - blink and ya missed it!) and 29-year-old Finnish designer Satu Maaranen is the grand prize winner. Menswear designer Camille Kunz took home a special prize awarded by the label Chloé and Shanshan Ruan took home the "prix du public de la ville d'Hyères" (public prize of the city of Hyères.) You can see some details from Maaranen's collection, "Garment in Landscape," below:

I really love Maaranen's collection. I get hints of Viktor & Rolf (am I allowed to say that?) but a bit more artful; note how the design is actually an oversized shirt worn with arm tubes (uh, technical term?) that meet the shirt sleeve. And that bow! Talk about bringing a "pop of color" to your face. Oh, and one more outburst - those shoes! I'm dying. I want them now. Oh, shit, one more (more) outburst - those hats! So #fashion. Read more about Maaranen here and here.

AN INTERVIEW WITH IMRAN AMED

Imran Amed runs The Business of Fashion, a blog that covers what you'd expect it to cover through serious and engaging discourse between top industry professionals. You'll find articles on everything from the burgeoning e-commerce market in the middle East to how top bloggers are monetizing their content. Here, he answers questions from myself and a panel of other Hyères blog partners. Photo Scott Trindle.

Click through to continue reading!

EAT, PRAY, CREATE

The Hyères festival is now underway in the sunny South of France and I am here in weirdly November-ish NYC blogging about it (I think today is a bit better than yesterday, but yesterday was pretty gross.) It's bittersweet, to say the least. Hopefully the winning designer (and his or her competitors) will get picked up by a more progressive NYC retailer and I'll be able to try on some of their designs...until then, I'll be living vicariously through Filep's continuous coverage while basking in the sun in Washington Square Park.

The post title comes from designer Tomas Berzins' interview (portrait top left; his design, right) when asked to describe Hyères in three words. I think that's a nice motto, no? "Hyères gives us opportunities to know people [and] build connections, but also to get us designers known by other people, to let people hear our voice [and] know about our work, our stories," said très quotable designer Shanshan Ruan (portrait bottom right; her design, left.) "Hyères is not just an event that happens and ends, it’s a continuation."

You can check out a video of the Hyères judges in action below (in French, natch) and read all of the designer and judge interviews at Un Nouveau Ideal. For daily updates, follow Filep and Villa Noailles on Twitter!

Les 10 candidats finalistes du Festival d... by VOGUEPARIS

SCHELTENS & ABBENES

{portraits René Habermacher}

As blog partner for Hyères 2013 I was offered the chance to submit a few questions to the panel of judges, a diverse group of industry professionals whose talents any aspiring creative would be eager to parse - what makes these people tick? What inspires them? How do they apply that? To what? The creative duo of Maurice Scheltens and Liesbeth Abbenes is of particular interest to me as I've known their work for a few years now, having first discovered it in an editorial context in Fantastic Man (the latest issue of which I purchased last week; I recommend it.)

Scheltens & Abbenes' work reduces without being reductive; it distills, is elemental, essential. It's incredibly inspiring and demandingly beautiful; compositions that may at first seem distant or stark reveal a hidden sense of humor, in a French New Wave sort of way. Their clients include Valentino, Hermès, COS, Louis Vuitton and the brand formerly known as Yves Saint Laurent, and magazines such as the aforementioned Fantastic Man, The Gentlewoman, Pin-Up, The Plant and T the New York Times Style Magazine. In addition to their independent exhibition works, the duo also shows their projects in cultural institutions such as Galliera Musée de la Mode Paris, museum of photography Foam Amsterdam and the Kunsthal in Rotterdam. See below for an interview with the duo featuring questions from myself and other blog partners, PLUS there's a video!

{all images Scheltens & Abbenes}

How does a garment get your attention? What are you searching for while on set?

Sensitivity in material and design. Looking at a garment it often tells if the designer understands it's own work without stopping to early (or to late) in the process. This attitude is connecting in the way we are also trying to stretch our own sensibilities.

Your work is striking in its simplicity and for its reductive qualities - is fashion more interesting to you in theory more often than in its execution?

We are more interested in what we see then in what we know or should know. After 'building' is the moment of truth. Our curiosity by testing an idea for it's visual qualities is the driving force. That is also why we keep on searching, experimenting and checking during the shoot instead of making photographs from a sketch made on the drawing table. This doesn't mean that thoughts or drawings as they are can be beautiful and interesting to. It's a matter of where to put all these aspirations.

As jury members used to shooting Fashion as objects, can you abstract the mise en scene, the show, the person to judge only the garments?

Actually we see the same struggle and solutions in the garments as we face while shooting fashion or any other object in front of the lens. Maybe it's a healthy distance that we have looking at fashion because we're not 'over informed'. We're responding to what we see with the same critical eye as we do in our own work.

Look closely at Liesbeth's outfit - she's wearing a tie! Oh, to be a Dutch creative...for more of Scheltens & Abbenes, check out this feature on Nowness and this post at Trendland. And don't forget their website! I'll be tweeting and Facebook sharing the other parts of this interview series in the coming week; keep your eyes peeled!

HYÈRES MENSWEAR 2013

{photos Brea Souders}

And now for some exciting news...I've been selected as one of the blog partners for this year's Hyères festival! The 28th International Festival of Fashion & Photography, Hyères 2013 celebrates rising talents in the fields of, you guessed it - fashion and photography. These are pretty well two of my favorite things, so I 'm really excited to start sharing these artists with you. You may remember last year I blogged about festival finalist Daniel Hurlin's collection?

The work of the three menswear designers among this year's finalists is nothing short of fantastic. Henning Jurke (top) is a German designer whose collection depicts an allegorical party and is inspired by the roaring twenties; Camille Kunz's collection (middle), The Boy Vanishes, is inspired by the designer's brothers and her own desire to be a boy; Xenia Laffely's collection (bottom) was designed for a "graphic and sentimental" character and is "cut along the lines of classical suits." (You can see more of her work on This Is Paper.) All three finalists have a unique perspective that provides some intriguing fodder for the greater dialogue about dressing as a modern man. On that note: my thoughts on The New Masculinity.

If your interest is piqued regarding the festival, check out a behind-the-scenes video of the judges here. It's entirely in French, so grab a small coffee, put your glasses at the end of your nose and smile and nod appreciatively at your screen. The festival kicks off from April 26th-29th; exhibitions are up from April 27th - May 26th. If you happen to be in the South of France, check it out! Keep your eyes peeled to the *fruitpunch Facebook page and Twitter (and Pinterest!) for more information about the festival.