Editors Letter

Hello and welcome to our very first edition.Let me introduce you to Blurred so you can get to know what we hope will become your favourite magazine.

At Blurred we believe our readers are boundary pushers, independent thinkers and above all have a thirst for all things art and fashion.

Through thought provoking editorials, interviews and photography we want to feed our readers creativity.

Every issue will run on a different theme. If you have any areas you would like us to cover please get in touch via our social networking pag-es and we will happily consider all ideas.

Issue 1 brings the Louis Vuitton Edition. We felt it was fitting to pay hom-age to the French fashion house as they have been pushing boundaries between art and fashion ever since Marc Jacobs took the helm.

Be sure to look out for the smart phone barcodes. They grant you ac-cess to secret blogs and 3D areas.

Fashion and art is what gives us our daily inspiration and we wanted to know what gave our contributors whom this issue wouldn’t have been possible without, there inspiration. Check out the contributor’s page to see their answers.

We hope you love the first issue as much as we did making it. Enjoy! Simmone X

Contents

P7 Stephen Sprouse & Debbie Harry - From the beginning Article Simmone Gardiner Photography Simmone Gardiner Model - Ciara Henry

p17 Need to see -Takashi Murakami Article - Simmone Gardiner Photography - Simmone Gardiner Model - Katie Wu

p21 Louis Vuitton - The aret of collaboration Article - Simmone Gardiner Imagery -

Photography and editing: Simmone GardinerModel: Ciara Henry

Edition 1 Autumn / Winter 2010/ 2011

Contributors

Andy Robson is our resident creative director. Always reliable for quirky sug-

gestions when everyone else has hit a wall. Currently residing in Durham and

likes to sprend his spare time taking pho-to’s of ‘randomness’.

“Dreams, I have had my best ideas in a dream”

Rachel Carroll, the ever so talented make-up artist. Responsible for making our models look flawless and glamorous. When not on a shoot for Blurred Rachel

spends her time working for Mac cos-metics and with her adorable husband.“The weather. I love every season they

are all so magical in their own way”

Vic Johnstone has an eagle eye for beautiful places and so makes the

perfect location manager. She was the 1 that found us the graffiti wall used in the Debbie Harry shoot.

“ Colour. I never wear black its so morbid, colour makes me feel any-

thing is possible”

Roma McGeean can make an outfit out of just about anything, there is no one else we could have as our stylist. From sunny Derry she brings that cheeky Irish humour to the

Blurred family. “ Music....it makes positive things happen”

It is 1973 downtown New York. Stephen Sprouse was spending his day’s working for Halston dressing movie stars and socialites. At night he would feed his love for music and explore the under-ground music scene. It was here that Sprouse first became aware of Debbie Harry lead singer of the band Blondie. After discover-ing they lived in the same building they soon became friends and Sprouse started dressing Harry for her gigs. It was Sprouse that helped Debbie Harry find the style that she is so well known for today. Dressing the lead singer of Blondie had huge advantages for Sprouse as it propelled his designs into the limelight and got peo-ple talking about him. As their friendship went from strength to strength so did both their careers.

1976 saw the launch of Blondie’s self-titled album. There was no one else who could have styled the videos for the album capturing Blondies style well as Sprouse did. The green dress Har-ry wore in “Heart of gold” is a Stephen Sprouse original. The design was inspired by a photograph he had taken of a static television. Sprouse didn’t have boundaries in his work; taking inspiration from a static TV is prime example of how he could see something special in the simplest of things. Sprouse and Harry went so well together as she wasn’t scared to experiment and she was a blank canvas that he could work his imagination on. Spouse’s styling on Harry helped propel her into the iconic rock legend she is today.

Of course Stephen Spouse’s destiny wasn’t only to be Debbie Harry’s personnel stylist / designer. In 1982 the year Blondie went their separate ways and Harry went solo, Stephen Sprouse showed his very first collection. It was only a small collection of 15 pieces.

Stephen SprouseDebbie Harry

From the beginning

Polaroid were hosting a fashion show of up and coming designers to launch their new Polaroid SX-70 camera. The show was a huge success and gave Sprouse the confidence he needed to start his own line.

The first fashion show Sprouse had done after launching his own label was so fashion forward for it’s time and it got everyone talking for all the right reasons. The show opened with the models wearing all black, followed by day glo contrasting colours and then the now signature graffiti print dresses saying “Rock” and “Love”. There was an electric buzz among the fashion industry audience as that season had seen a sea of beige from other designers. Sprouse had captured the New York street style and made it into high fashion by using luxurious fabrics and design techniques he had learnt from his time at Halston.

It wasn’t only the clothes that got the audience excited it was the whole style of show. New York was used to fashion shows being a simple catwalk presentation but Sprouse didn’t want that; he wanted to get the true energy of his collection across. He wanted it to feel like his apartment when he was dressing celebrities such as Deb-bie Harry. The models where walking down the catwalk preening themselves in the enormous mirrors as if they where getting ready for a night on the town. The where having fun as they walked and their energy seeped into the audience.

The success of the show got Sprouse vast amounts of coverage in the fashion press and buyers were desperate to get hold of his col-lection. The Stephen Sprouse label went onto have huge successes in both his design but also with more breath taking fashion shows. Teri Toye was the main model in the fashion show for Sprouse 3rd collection which caused a huge stir amongst the tabloids as she is a transgender model and it was the first time a transgender person had modelled in a show for a high end designer. Sprouse loved that kind of attention though as he wanted to be pushing boundaries. Despite his success and talents as a designer Sprouse wasn’t gifted as a businessman and his label collapsed. It was a pattern he would see repeated throughout his career.

With the help of Andrew Cogan the chairman of one of Ameri-cas largest privately owned companies Sprouse bounced back and opened ‘The Stephen Sprouse’ store in Wooster Street New York. As with his previous collections the success of the store was be-yond expectations. After 2 years in New York Sprouse and Cogan felt it was time to expand. However it never went the way they had planned and the company again went bankrupt.

With another failure in fashion Sprouse decided to work on his art. He once said, “ Rock, art and fashion are my favourite things, in that order, but I don’t know how to play and instrument, so I had to work on the other two”. It seemed to be a natural progression for him to move into art.

Sprouse found a release in art that he never had in fashion. The pressures of money and production times had been a massive stress on him, one he was finally free of. His first art collection did have

a subliminal nod to the fashion industry. As The Stephen Sprouse book explains “The work he created at this period drew on many of his fashion themes, but now they where free of human form. At his first art show at the 56 Bleeker Gallery in August 1986, six silk screened portraits of Sid Vivious were encased in plastic and hang separately in a blackened corner of the gallery, linked by chains and padlocks. Although Stephen was free of the daily pressures of designing clothing, the connection to his previous work in fashion was clear”.

Stephen’s artwork also touched on the subject of religion. His cru-cifixion of Iggy pop is just one example of this. The bold colours he used in his work where sure to grab your attention and make sure you understood the subject matter he would outline everything in black marker.

To fund his art Sprouse was doing independent work in fashion. Then in the early 90’s as fashion was in the midst of a throw back to the 80’s Barney’s commissioned Sprouse to do series of collections. It was at this time Blondie where re-forming and it seems fitting that as they make their come back so is Stephen Sprouse.

Following his successful collections at Barneys he was appointed fashion director for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. A position that seems perfect for the man who was at the centre of the rise of Rock and Roll in New York.

With 4 failed attempts at running his own label Stephen Sprouse was not a man to be defined by past failures so for a 5th time he launched a label under his name. Once again his collection re-ceived rave reviews from the fashion industry and went on to be a sell out.

Marc Jacobs has been said to be a fan of Sprouse’s work back in the early 80’s so when he became creative director at Louis Vuitton he saw this as a perfect opportunity to collaborate with the designer. They went onto create the now iconic LV graffiti handbags. The collaboration with LV opened many doors for Sprouse as he went on to collaborate with Target, Diesel and Knoll.

Regrettably as Stephen Sprouse’s success seemed to be at an all time high he was secretly battling cancer, it was sadly a battle that he lost on March 4th 2004. He was only 50 year old.

His spirit and memory will live on especially every time there is an 80’s revival as you can’t do the 80’s without Sprouse. He will also be remembered through his friends. At the impressive age of 65 Deb-bie Harry is touring with Blondie and is rarely seen without a Ste-phen Sprouse original.

Louis VuittonThe art of collaboration

Since opening their doors in the early 1800’s Louis Vuit-ton has grown consistently into 1 of the worlds leading luxury retailers.Beginning with there now iconic trunks which had originally been designed for practicality (rounded trunks where all that was offered before the LV trunk, they allowed water to fall from the trunk however they couldn’t be stocked so took up a lot of space when travelling) they have now expanded into handbags, purses, dog carriers, men and women’s wear to name just a short list of what they have to offer.It was when Marc Jacob’s was appointed creative director in 1997 that the company when to a new level. Jacob’s brought with him his love for contemporary artists and pushed for Louis Vuitton to collaborate with some of the most unlikely names. It all began with Stephen Sprouse in 2001 when he ‘defaced’ the LV symbol by graffiting over the ‘Speedy’ bag. It seemed a rebellious move from both the artist and Jacobs and wasn’t intended to be released for public sale. This fresh new look went down a storm and due to demand the bag was out on sale, instantly selling out before it had even his the shops. After the death of Stephen Sprouse Jacob’s paid homage to the artist by reworking his designs into another Sprouse / Vuitton collection which again went on to be an instant sell out.2003 brought the collaboration with one of Japans biggest contemporary artist Takashi Murakami. ‘Superflat Mono-

gram’ brought a blast of rainbow colour into the normally brown, the ‘Eye Love Monogram’ bags where a sell out suc-cess. This led to him creating an animated short film under the same name that was played in all Louis Vuitton stores. Due to the success of the collection this was not to be his last. ‘Cosmic Blossom’ a collection of bags, shoes and accessories with the smiling flower emblazed on them was the look for summer 2010. A follow up animation bringing the designs to life again was also released and selected stores interiors where redesigned to fit the flower bomb designs. Next to the usual brown and gold monogram this bursts of colour was a wel-come change and enticed a younger audience to the LV label.Richard Price was the next artist to collaborate with LV. Like Murakami, Price reworked the infamous LV gold and brown monogram. With the use of watercolours his take on the monogram was antique like. Inspiration was drawn heav-ily from Price’s Nurses Paintings and when the bags where shown on the catwalk models where dresses as nurses with LV monogrammed face masks.These 3 are only a few of the collaborations we have seen from Louis Vuitton in recent years. The list goes on, however I feel that these are the 3 that have the biggest impact. With these collaborations LV have highlighted the movement in the fashion in artwork. Increasingly over the years these 2 contemporaries have been crossing over, the lines are be-coming more blurred what is fashion and what is art? Louis Vuitton recognises early on that you can’t have 1 without the other and they are leading the way of the future.

Takashi Murakami By Simmone Gardiner

If you are anything like us at Blurred, Takashi Murakami’s collaborations with Louis Vuitton will have given you a thirst to discover more about the artist and his work away from LV. We have found 2 exhibi-tions that will get you started.

The Gagosian Gallery is paying a nod to the Japanese artist with exhibitions at their London and Rome Galleries’.

Gagosian “Pop up” is as you may have guest a pop up exhibition presenting catalogues, posters prints and limited edition furniture and design objects. Murikami is only one of an impressive list of artists being exhibited. Richard Price, Damien Hurst, Jeff Koon’s, Ed Rushea, Andy Warhol are to name just a few.

However if you are in need of an adventure why not go further a field and take the next flight to Rome. While taking in the sights of this beautiful city don’t forget to visit the Gagosian to see 2 magnificent paintings by Murakami. This is the first time his work has been shown in Rome and I am sure the people of Rome are not disappointed. “Dragon in clouds - Red Mountain and Dragon in Clouds - Indigo Blue” both at 18 meters ong are truly breath taking. We are already planning visit number 2 before the Exhibition closes on 15th January. “Gagosian Pop up” December 2 2010 - January 29 2011. Takashi Murakami Gagosian Rome November 13 - 15 January. For further details visit www.gagosian.com