Sample: 100 Fashion Designers; 010 Fashion Curators
Bronwyn Cosgrove (ed.) (Phaidon, London, 2005), , London, UK
The fashion design compilation Sample is the ninth outing of Phaidon’s ’10 × 10’ package. It follows a simple formula: ten high-flyers pick ten up-and-comings, they write a short text about each, and these are published alongside a clutch of illustrations, headed with a ‘big themes’ introduction. This approach has always struck me as lazy. Curating through networks has long been a fashionable means of ducking the dilemma of choice, and these books represent an equivalent editorial dodge. That said, spreading the responsibility does at least raise the possibility that one or two of the contributors may offer something interesting.
In the case of Sample that responsibility is shared by journalists, designers, stylists and a lone academic. Editor Bronwyn Cosgrove compares the book to a catwalk, but it is more like a shuffled deck of images: a suite of Alexander McQueen acolytes (including Sophia Kokosalaki, Hamish Morrow and Sebastián Pons) cut with the stylist Patricia Carta’s Brazilian seamstresses (Fábia Bercsek, Isabela Capeto and Karlla Girotto) and the designer Walter van Beirendonck’s northern European pranksters (with cartoony clothes by the Dutch designer Bas Kosters and the Swede Patrick Söderstam).
Similarly uneven is the tone of the writing. Where the academic Ulrich Lehmann constructs ten mini-essays, each addressing a cultural or psychological theme, the stylist Brana Wolf remembers the time she was ‘styling Lauren Hill for the September 1999 Harper’s Bazaar cover’. The character of these entries is an index of the status of their authors, and I don’t think I am imagining the tone of resignation in Cosgrove’s introduction when she describes Van Beirendonck’s eccentric selection as that of ‘a proud father’.
Of course, this doesn’t detract from the book; speculating about the negotiations that went on around the editing is a welcome diversion. Much more problematic is dealing with the very distinct styling and art direction of those selected. Designer Julia Hastings rises to this challenge valiantly, but a number of spreads refuse to submit to the overall will of the publication. Balenciaga’s elaborate graphics, for example, are clumsily compromised by a sprinkling of runway shots, while, at the other extreme, pack shots of Rupert Sanderson’s shoes are simply dull. The most successful spreads, such as those of Jens Laugesen or Kostas Murkudis, consist of strong, unfussy images set straight on the page.
Wrapped in paper pleats and weighing nearly three kilos, the book’s design looks convincingly pricey, but there is a significant discrepancy between physical mass and intellectual load. All told, Sample is an entertaining feather-light survey that has been hamstrung with the ungainly heft of an encyclopaedia.
Emily King
