‘MAKING THE CUT’ WINNER YANNIK ZAMBONI

Swiss designer Yannik Zamboni introduced the world to his brand maison blanche on the current season of Amazon’s MAKING THE CUT and immediately viewers knew that his approach to fashion would stand out amongst the other contestants.

Zamboni works primarily in white, and his gender inclusive designs are based around conceptual social and political themes. Despite his decidedly avant-garde tendencies, Zamboni‘s appearance on the show showed a softer side of the designer: His sense of humor, sensitivity, and warmth towards the other contestants even surprised judge Heidi Klum, Nicole Richie and Jeremy Scott who commented on an early episode on the contrast between his intimidating designs /personal appearance and his endearing vulnerability.

In an interview with Iris Covet Book just days prior to his debut during NYFW, Zamboni explains his unique take on fashion and how he serves as a guinea pig to his own collections.

ICB: Your entrance on season 3 of Amazon’s Making the Cut is the first time many people became aware of you. What were you hoping you convey to the audience about you and your outlook on fashion?

YZ: I hope people see and feel my positive energy, the will to address socio-political themes, to create social change and the love for sustainable and fair fashion.

ICB: On the show, more so than any other contestant, your personal style mirrored the designs you created. Would you say you are your own muse?

YZ: I see myself more as a guinea pig than a muse. I believe that improvements to my fashion can only be made if I wear them myself and thus feel the clothes. In addition, I create things that I would like to have on the market, which I miss or simply do not exist yet.

ICB: Prior to establishing your label maison blanche, you worked as a model and a Swiss-certified marketing specialist. How have your previous occupations influenced your designs?

YZ: My commercial training, my studies and work in marketing and modeling have made me what I am today. Each of these steps was necessary to create and run my fashion label maison blanche.

ICB: How has being Swiss contributed to your work (e.g., culture, language, geography, etc.)?

YZ: Swiss people learn at an early age that everything must be perfect, regulated, and orderly. This certainly spurred me on to test boundaries and do things differently, as I always had the feeling of being different and not fitting into the system.

ICB: What other designers past/ present do you look up to?

YZ: Martin Margiela, Rey Kawakubo & Rick Owens

ICB: Why have you committed to only designing in white? What about this color holds special significance to you?

YZ: I find white to be an extremely calming color but more importantly I wanted to set myself the task to design, cut and surface design / change to create a silhouette so exciting that the color no longer plays a role. I noticed that a lot of designs with bold color or prints worked because of the good composition and not because of the design itself. By not using color, I am able to focus on pure design.

ICB: Your work also seems to blur the lines between traditional women’s and menswear. Gender fluidity undoubtedly is the future but how does a brand address the very real physical limitations to doing a unisex collection (e.g., biological men and women have differing body characteristics)?

YZ: Basically, I don’t want to think in binary terms. 2% of our society are intersex people. Moreover, there are very different ways to live and feel gender. Gender has never been binary. I rather approach designs that I create them on a body. A body with a bulge, or a body with breasts, or finding a way to make designs work on different bodies. I don’t see it as a limitation but as a liberation.

ICB: Do you view the future of your brand as being mass market or boutique?

YZ: I see maison blanche comprising of three lines to satisfy both mass and niche customers. An accessible line that is suitable for every day, a fashion line which is suitable for everyday but more fashion driven and a high-end line for special occasions or stage wear.

ICB: What is the best part of being on Making the Cut?

YZ: Through Making the Cut, consumers understand why something is made and what its purpose is directly from the designer by watching the entire creation process. I increasingly feel the need to be understood and reach the masses.

ICB: As of this writing, you are in the semifinals of the show. If you win, what would you do with the prize money?

YZ: I would put everything back into the company. Grow slowly and invest in the right people to build a small maison blanche family.

CAMP IN FASHION – COSTUME INSTITUTE’S SPRING 2019 EXHIBITION AND MET GALA

(New York, October 9, 2018)—The Metropolitan Museum of Art announced today that The Costume Institute’s Spring 2019 exhibition will be Camp: Notes on Fashion, on view from May 9 through September 8, 2019 (preceded on May 6 by The Costume Institute Benefit). Presented in The Met Fifth Avenue’s Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Exhibition Hall, it will explore the origins of the camp aesthetic and how it has evolved from a place of marginality to become an important influence on mainstream culture. Susan Sontag’s 1964 essay Notes on ‘Camp’ provides the framework for the exhibition, which will examine how fashion designers have used their métier as a vehicle to engage with camp in a myriad of compelling, humorous, and sometimes incongruous ways.

“Camp’s disruptive nature and subversion of modern aesthetic values has often been trivialized, but this exhibition will reveal its profound influence on both high art and popular culture,” said Max Hollein, Director of The Met. “By tracing its evolution and highlighting its defining elements, the show will embody the ironic sensibilities of this audacious style, challenge conventional understandings of beauty and taste, and establish the critical role this important genre has played in the history of art and fashion.”

In celebration of the opening, The Costume Institute Benefit, also known as The Met Gala, will take place on Monday, May 6, 2019. The evening’s co-chairs will be Lady Gaga, Alessandro Michele, Harry Styles, Serena Williams, and Anna Wintour. The event is The Costume Institute’s main source of annual funding for exhibitions, publications, acquisitions, and capital improvements.

“Fashion is the most overt and enduring conduit of the camp aesthetic,” said Andrew Bolton, Wendy Yu Curator in Charge of The Costume Institute. “Effectively illustrating Sontag’s Notes on ‘Camp,’ the exhibition will advance creative and critical dialogue about the ongoing and ever-evolving impact of camp on fashion.”

The exhibition will feature approximately 175 objects, including womenswear and menswear, as well as sculptures, paintings, and drawings dating from the 17th century to the present. The show’s opening section will position Versailles as a “camp Eden” and address the concept of se camper—”to posture boldly”—in the royal courts of Louis XIV and Louis XV. It will then focus on the figure of the dandy as a “camp ideal” and trace camp’s origins to the queer subcultures of Europe and America in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In her essay, Sontag defined camp as an aesthetic and outlined its primary characteristics. The largest section of the exhibition will be devoted to how these elements-which include irony, humor, parody, pastiche, artifice, theatricality, and exaggeration-are expressed in fashion.

Designers whose works will be featured in the exhibition include Gilbert Adrian, Cristóbal Balenciaga, Thom Browne, Jean-Charles de Castelbajac, John Galliano (for Martin Margiela, House of Dior, and his own label), Jean Paul Gaultier, Rudi Gernreich, Guccio Gucci, Demna Gvasalia (for Balenciaga and his own label), Marc Jacobs (for Louis Vuitton and his own label), Charles James, Stephen Jones, Christian Lacroix, Karl Lagerfeld (for House of Chanel, Chloe, and his own label), Herbert and Beth Levine, Alessandro Michele (for Gucci), Franco Moschino, Thierry Mugler, Norman Norell, Marjan Pejoski, Paul Poiret, Miuccia Prada, Richard Quinn, Christian Francis Roth, Yves Saint Laurent, Elsa Schiaparelli, Jeremy Scott (for Moschino and his own label), Viktor Horsting and Rolf Snoeren (for Viktor & Rolf), Anna Sui, Philip Treacy, Walter Van Beirendonck, Donatella Versace (for Versace), Gianni Versace, Vivienne Westwood, and Charles Frederick Worth.

The exhibition is organized by Andrew Bolton, Wendy Yu Curator in Charge of The Costume Institute, with Karen Van Godtsenhoven, Associate Curator. Theater scenographer Jan Versweyveld, whose work includes Lazarus with David Bowie as well as Broadway productions of A View from the Bridge and The Crucible, will create the exhibition design with The Met’s Design Department. Select mannequin headpieces will be created by Shay Ashual. Raul Avila will produce the gala décor, which he has done since 2007.

A publication by Andrew Bolton with Fabio Cleto, Karen van Godtsenhoven, and Amanda Garfinkel will accompany the exhibition and include new photography by Johnny Dufort. It will be published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art and distributed by Yale University Press.

The exhibition is made possible by Gucci.

Additional support is provided by Condé Nast.