Sharna Osborne’s Images Look Like Nothing Else in Fashion

There’s something girlish but gritty, nostalgic but not retro about Osborne’s work that sets it apart from anything being made in the fashion world today.

By Christopher Wallace for BoF

The videos and stills made by the New Zealand-born artist Sharna Osborne don’t look like anything else in the fashion world — or at least not like anything else being produced today, this decade, or this millennium. What reads at first as nostalgia in her work — nostalgia for 1980s and ‘90s style video imagery, perhaps (and specifically the heavily-duplicated VHS tapes of your favorite early MTV videos) — quickly leads the viewer to something else, to an awareness of the surfaces of the image: the flattened, washed-out cyan and magenta tones of early video, yes, but also of the materials by which the images were made and on which they were displayed — the clunky cameras spinning a wheel of tape, the convex screen of an 80s television… To the point that, after watching her videos and scrolling through the stills which she has drawn from them, I, for one, become convinced that Osborne’s pictures are almost as much about the tools and mechanisms by which they were made as they are about their subjects.

“The texture of her image cuts against anything saccharine and it’s just really interesting,” says Francesca Burns, the stylist and co-founder of Print, who recently collaborated with Osborne on a 260-page zine insert. “I loved [her work] because there is something nostalgic about it but not at all retro. I find her images very sexy but not objectifying the subject there is real honesty there. They’re also incredibly feminine but not passive: the colour tone, the girlishness… but the grit.”

That grit, the texture she gets from her tools, Osborne tells me, down a phone line, is important, as are the tools themselves. But not in any retro fetish sort of way. It’s just that they can help her to forget that she is using them to make her work and so operate on a more instinctive level. The machinery, she says, “needs to be physically an extension of me so I'm not self-conscious when I'm using the tool and I'm not over-thinking anything.” Come to think of it, the artefacts she’s creating are really incidental to this process. “I could have landed on anything,” she says, with a little smile in her tone. “But somehow I landed here. It's not really that conscious.” And once she’s out on the other end of the project, only then can she sort out what she’s made and why. “I think that's how I do all of my discovering: through making, and then hindsight enlightens me.”

Growing up in rural New Zealand, Osborne had a lot of time to roam, to play, to think, and to fantasize — necessities, all, she says, to avoid the doldrums or discomfort of her solitude — and all of which comes to bear on the process she still uses. “It was just about me being able to fluidly disappear into [a fantasy world],” she says. “When I was young, I would pick up a bunch of sticks and, with that, I could create a world. The tools I use now are sort of the same.”

From building a Narnia with twigs to using a super-8 camera for a video of Mariah Carey — as she did for a recent issue of Love magazine —  is the same magic, she seems to be saying. And Osborne’s particular magic has landed her squarely in the centre of a lively generation of creators in London, her home for the last ten years and where she is a member of fashion’s new guard.

“Sharna’s fine art approach to photography and film becomes quite radical when put into the commercial context of fashion,” says London- and Paris-based photographer Thomas Lohr. “Rather than compromising in her aesthetic in order to meet the standards of commercial photography and filmmaking, she managed to get big brands to buy into her world vision.”

In the last year or so, Osborne’s work with super-stylist and Love editor Katie Grand, including on the Mariah Carey story, have caused a stir of attention. She has worked on videos for Miu Miu, editorials for Document Journal and Novembre, and was one of the first wave of artists to contribute to the relaunch of the British style and culture bible The Face. But she has described her fashion commissions, specifically the snickeringly sexual film she did with Martine Rose, as the most complete expression of her aesthetics and abilities. Perhaps that is because, even if she is shooting still images, she is always conceiving of the story as a moving narrative.

“I used to study Matthew Barney's work non-stop,” she says by way of explanation. “The stills more than his films, because the films are a painful experience. I wasn't interested in how he got to be on a big expanse of ice with a horse or whatever it was. I was fascinated that the imagery that I found so beautiful and so incredible was essentially a by-product of his film making.”

As you can imagine, in the present media climate, Osborne thinks a lot about format, platform, and medium. Lohr says Osborne’s success “highlights the shift away from print to online and social media,” not that she’s ready to give up on any platform just yet.

“There needn’t be any hierarchy among images — still or moving or whatever — today,” Osborne says. “I think that's a really important thing with the way we view imagery. Because you know, lots of the moving image work I do is five-second loops for Instagram and sometimes I find that more interesting than if I had a one-minute platform to do something.” Which leads us to something of a discovery about her process: obstructions. Working within limited parameters. “Like me using VHS,” she says. “It's like, ‘Here's your brief and here's your set of utensils.’ So, then, how do you communicate within that?”

After her decidedly bucolic childhood, Osborne went to school for fine art. “I studied at a kind of inconsequential school,” she says. “It wasn't like a good art school or anything, but, literally, I was the only student that really focused. And I hung out with my teachers. I went to galleries with them and I learnt so much. I mean, I'm almost grateful that I went to this strange place, because I was very well looked after. Probably because I cared about what I did.”
She probably cared more about the work, she says, than wherever it was she would live. Ending up in London was a bit of a lark but looks a whole lot like luck in retrospect. “The night I arrived,” she says, “it was Princess Julia's 50th birthday. So, you can imagine the crowd that that brought. It was brilliant. It was perfect timing, and it sort of sums up what I landed into.” What she landed in was, for her, the very opposite of a culture shock. She’d traveled half way around the world to finally meet her people.

“You know when something's not right,” she says, “you keep searching and you just trust that process. So, I moved from a small town to a bigger city to study, and then I moved to Australia, then I moved to London simply because a friend said, ‘Come.’ I had nothing to lose. And as soon as I landed, I found all of these inspiring weirdos — weirdos in that they were just being themselves, with all the eclecticism that comes with that. That, in itself, was inspiring. I worked at a gay bar. And, being gay, and your boss is gay, everyone knows you're gay: even that was a thing for me. Where I'm from, you just don't have that. Washing dishes at Dalston Superstore, I was always just revelling in the ability to be myself that comfortably. That was step one — before even applying things to work. The work was quite a slow process, I think. I did some bits and bobs until it became what it is now.”

Or anyway that’s how it appears to her in hindsight, with memory or maybe modesty doing their thing in miniaturising the steps along the way. Steps like, when she first arrived in London, being immediately incorporated into a very open and fertile creative community. As she describes those early days, “A bunch of these cool young designers were doing things that really blew my mind.” Edward Meadham and Benjamin Kirchhoff were two of those designers. “And they were like, ‘come with your video camera and do some stuff,'" she says. “So, I kind of landed at this really nice time, which has now crumbled, but that was really inspiring for me.”

It has been quite a landing. Now it’s her time.

MARINE SERRE: FW19 Radiation

In a not-so-far future the distinction between culture and nature is erased from memory.

Welcome to Radiation, a virtual playground of Marine Serre’s pluriverse, a hybrid utopia-dystopia built to simulate futurewear in post-apocalyptic conditions.

This short film from MARINE SERRE is a collaboration with the tech-art video couple Rick Farin and Claire Cochran, who specialise in the rendering of speculative futures within video game engines.

 

Our debut at Melbourne Fashion Week

TOWN HALL RUNWAY 5

Featuring Slow Waves, Claudie Pierlot, LEFT Melbourne, Madam Virtue & Co., Maje, MASONS, Reina Melbourne, Sandro Paris and Shifting Worlds

“Get set for one of Melbourne Fashion Week’s most anticipated runways as it showcases a collection of the city’s most innovative multi-brand international retailers. As the home to some of the world’s most desirable and coveted labels, these go-to stores will showcase key trends of the season encouraging a fashion-forward wardrobe. Featuring looks from the most prestigious ready-to-wear collections and accessories for women and men, Town Hall Runway 5 is the ultimate luxury fashion destination.”

Wed 4 Sept | 6.30 – 7pm

Buy tickets from Ticketek HERE

Return to the boarding school of young girls with D'heygere

Stéphanie D'heygere, winner of the 2018 ANDAM accessory prize, returns to the boarding school of her youth in Belgium to shoot students in uniform accessorized with her latest collection

In January 2018, Stéphanie D'heygere surprised with a first collection of semi-jewellery and semi-leather accessories, double-function pieces, diverted as Dadaist. Earring-flower, necklace-cigarette, glove bracelet, eyeglass case bag, chain stitching, jewellery box earring etc. : at D'heygere accessories use Trompe-l'œil effects, out of context that make the salt of the brand. The designer uses everything and is inspired by everything around her to create: BIC pen, metro ticket, shirt sleeve ... Like so many bases for her future "readymades". "It's sacred because it's chosen” said Marcel Duchamp, one of the leading figures of the Dada movement and one of the first artists to amalgamate his work notes to his work, an inspiration for the Belgian designer. Stéphanie D'heygere graduated from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp and received ANDAM's Fashion Accessories Award. It was by chance during an internship at Lanvin that she discovered the world of accessories. In 2011, she joined Maison Martin Margiela as an accessory designer until 2015. She was then appointed senior jewellery designer at Dior before launching into freelance and collaborating with several fashion brands including Y / Project.

The designer unveils her latest campaign, shot by Arnaud Lajeunie, with Ursina Gysi in style. For this occasion, she returned to her Belgian boarding school in Loppem to photograph the last year students accessorized with parts of her collections from SS19 and FW19. On navy blue uniforms, the accessories stand out - accentuating the contrast between the rigour of the clothes and the creativity of D'heygere jewellery.

"Once, during an interview, the reporter asked me where my passion for accessories came from. Very spontaneously I replied that it was perhaps related to my years of internship, where I had to wear a uniform. The only elements that were not part of it were the accessories: backpack, little jewels, shoes, socks that allowed to reveal a little personality. It gave me the idea to go back to school to do something. I was afraid the management would be reluctant to this project but she loved the idea. We photographed girls between 17 and 19 years old: all those who wanted to participate could, we did not make a casting. When we arrived at school, we had never seen them before. They were born about the year I left school. Nothing has changed except that the skirts are much shorter than in my day!“

No makeup for the photo shoot:

"We wanted it to be as natural as possible, not a disguise. The girls were able to choose what they wanted to put on, we wanted to make sure they were comfortable.”

Always in the spirit of the brand, practicality and aesthetics are mixed, worn and features multiply.

"We find a very slender bag, inspired by a flea-chipped model created to store woollen balls and knitting needles; detachable earrings accumulated on a Creole that remind us of these jewellery presentation stands; horn comb charms: you can comb your hair and attach them to your belt or bag; a silver scarf holder with a detachable wool scarf reminiscent of the idea of ​​a coat rack.”

The designer has fun codes, hijacks the symbols as with this silver engagement ring set with Zirconia which shines like diamond (fruit of a collaboration with Swarovski) and which can be worn as an earring, this necklace support bra or this ankle jewel connected to the waist inspired by a wallet chain.

"My aesthetic is realistic, I'm not in fantasy and I'm not trying to sell dreams, so to speak.”

By Sophie Abriat for i-D

How Will Fashion Find Validation Without Instagram Likes?

The move will cause brands to shift from paying influencers for sponsored posts toward more paid advertising.

NEW YORK, United States — The popularity of a social media post is typically judged by its number of likes. The thumb’s up button on Facebook, the upvote on Reddit, the favourite on Twitter; they indicate user interest, and they also help content travel, because usually, you like what your friends like.

This system on Instagram, however, could soon be turned on its head.

The social media platform began experimenting with hiding likes in Canada back in May, and last week rolled out the test to Japan, Italy, Ireland, Brazil, New Zealand and Australia. In those countries, users are now no longer able to see the number of likes or video views on other people’s posts.

Instagram posits that this shift will minimise the social pressures that come with social media. “We want your friends to focus on the photos and videos you share, not how many likes they get,” Instagram wrote in a tweet last week.

"We want your friends to focus on the photos and videos you share, not how many likes they get."

But it’s already raising anxiety among influencers and the fashion brands that advertise through them. Experts believe the move could nudge brands to spend more on ads and less on posts that feature influencers.

“Getting rid of likes is a big deal,” said Alessandro Bogliari, chief executive of the Influencer Marketing Factory. “There are pros and cons to the decision, but it has the potential to hurt the entire system.”

Marketing agencies and brands that analyse influencers look at several metrics, including likes, followers and comments, to measure the popularity of an influencer and how their audience reach can translate to sales. Bogliari said all metrics are important to consider because everyone’s audiences are different, and some followers prefer to like while others prefer to comment.

“With one less metric for engagement, I think it will be harder for influencers to be scouted,” he said. Because likes have always been an integral part of a social media presence, Bogliari believes influencers will likely start to leave Instagram and move to up-and-coming platforms like TikTok.

Voices from those in the space have already echoed this sentiment.

Hiding the number of likes may encourage brands to lean away from working with influencers and focus more on paying for targeted ads, added Dan Goldstein, the president of digital marketing agency Page 1 Solutions. Instagram currently has 25 million Instagram business profiles, but only 2 million of them advertise on a monthly basis, according to Australian marketing site Mumbrella — a number that the Facebook-owned platform is keen on increasing.

“Getting rid of likes will make it harder for ads to travel,” Goldstein said. “This is basically going to force brands to opt for spending on ads over influencers because that’s a route they know will work, and will give them the numbers they want to see.”

In a statement emailed to BoF, a Facebook spokesperson said "by making the number of likes private, people will be able to focus more on the photos and videos posted in Feed, and that this will ultimately drive deeper engagement. We understand that likes are important for many creators, and while this test is in exploratory stages, we are thinking through ways for creators to communicate value to their partners.”

Joe Gagliese, the co-founder of influencer marketing agency Viral Nation, believes the move could also be hard on fashion brands that have looked to Instagram to grow their following.

“Likes have typically been a bragging right for fashion brands on Instagram, because it’s become a symbol of success,” Gagliese said. “The psychology of this is that consumers like posts that other people like.”

Gagliese also foresees the hiding of likes resulting in influencers and brands purchasing fake followers in order to boost their numbers that actually are visible. Accounts that have bought followers have tell-tale signs like engagement numbers that are off when comparing followers to likes; with the latter number gone, says Gagliese, the floodgates could open.

But Gagliese also sees the pivot away from likes as an opportunity. He believes Instagram engagement will eventually evolve into focusing on comments, which could provide more meaningful interactions between brands and customers. After all, the most liked photo of all time on Instagram was a picture of… an egg— a photo that was posted by a marketing company that figured out how to crack the Instagram algorithm.

The egg might have rendered more likes than Kylie Jenner, but its popularity proved that likes on Instagram don’t always go to the most interesting content.

Moving more towards comments could inspire work that emphasises quality over quantity, and create more authentic connections with audiences.

“I think this will implore people to ask followers to comment more, and that usually works in a brand’s favour,” he said. “A comment is more meaningful than a lazy like.”

By Chavie Lieber for BoF

Y/PROJECT SS20

Y/Project SS20 Challenges Everything You Thought You Knew About Clothing, Again

Glenn Martens has been rewriting the rules of fashion since he was appointed creative director of Y/Project in 2013. His womenswear found a fan in Rihanna, who adopted the voluminous denim as a part of her signature style, along with the wild UGG boots collab. Meanwhile, last season’s menswear evolved streetwear aesthetics with a couture edge for the designer’s guest appearance at Pitti Uomo 95.

For Spring/Summer 2020, Y/Project returned to its home turf of Paris, putting a runway in the Oratoire du Louvre church, where George Bizet’s opera Carmen and its Muppets parody reverberated around the chamber. It was dramatic, yet humorous — just like Y/Project.

SS20 honed in on the elements that patrons of the label are probably starting to expect. That is to say, heaps of deconstruction and garments that wrap around the body in ways that don’t really make sense: a pocket becomes a sleeve, a bomber worn upside down, and so on.

Shirt collars climbed around shoulders, boots rose from the front of their toe caps, and fanny packs were double-stacked around the waist. The ’fits seen among the pews were so visually arresting you’d wonder how they were ever made at all. Part of Y/Project’s charm is that it makes you really think about construction. How exactly does a designer stitch a shirt so it sits neatly on the body? And why does it have to sit neatly at all?

Clothes don’t have to behave the way we think they do, and for that reason, when it comes to Y/Project “more of the same” is actually a good thing. That Martens, the head of a brand that’s a darling of insiders but not yet stratospheric, can locate his visual DNA and stick with it is a triumph in an age in which newness is lionized yet, in some cases, turns out kind of boring.

Still, there were a few surprises, notably the footwear, which featured high heels and shiny metal hardware to complement the Y-shaped earrings models wore. There were also a few choice womenswear looks, including delicate, semi-opaque catsuits and a rainbow-striped dress with an amendment that wrapped around like a pant leg, presenting pants and dresses together as one chimeric item. As ever with Y/Project, we expected the unexpected and were rewarded in spades.

By Max Grobe for Highsnobiety

AMBUSH Spring 2020

Yoon Ahn had already left Paris for Japan by the time this Ambush showroom visit took place. When we spoke by phone, she was outside of Tokyo, visiting specialized factories that she is considering for production of her ever-expanding brand.

The city, meanwhile, was at the heart of this collection—heart being the operative word. “I live in the middle of Tokyo, almost like living in Times Square,” she said. “I wanted to capture that hyper-animated reality coexisting with unreal emotions, because everything there is always on the move.”

Ahn’s high-octane translation of this spanned retro-future ’80s tailoring, late-’90s motorbike getups, and present-day streetwear. The statement was Bowie meets BTS. In general, her silhouettes were either influenced by Yohji Yamamoto (deconstructed with space between the clothes and the body) or sci-fi robots (blocky and modular). Her palette of red, green, and pink took direct cues from the glow of neon lights.

Hearts, meanwhile, appeared in the corresponding jewelry collection—but in the context of the other automobile-inspired pieces, they had an industrial vibe that read sleek rather than sweet. “I stayed away from cuteness for some time,” said the designer. “Here, I added hearts without them being unbearable.”

Ahn has an astute sense of observation and interpretation that serves her well across the collections. Although she is prone to leaning too literal, this is what allows the looks to transcend the “subcultures” that interested her this season to attract a wider commercial market. In case you were wondering, the cyborg Geta sandals were her equivalent of a concept car: sculptural and for show only, at least for now. But they were made, in part, at a car factory, and they give the feeling that she’s eager to shift into higher gear.

By Amy Verner for Vogue Runway

NIKE Collaborations: Yooh Ahn and Marine Serre

Yoon Ahn and Marine Serre Celebrate the Football Shirt

In sport, the jersey is a garment that at once supports and celebrates brilliant performance.

For athletes, it serves a utilitarian purpose — the jersey is a tool for their crazy dream. For the fans, the jersey serves to support their favored team and, ultimately, their community.

As the world readies for play in France this summer, Yoon Ahn, Christelle Kocher, Erin Magee and Marine Serre transform the jersey in their vision, proving that while a jersey need not take a standard form, it can become a standard reminder of the unifying power of sport.

Each designer has also matched a bra with their jersey. Here they describe the intent behind their respective concepts:

Yoon Ahn’s Nike x AMBUSH® jersey shines a spotlight on the diversity and culture that is celebrated on the international tournament stage.

“My Nike x AMBUSH® jersey is a unisex hybrid football jersey inspired by the Happi coat, a traditional Japanese straight-sleeved coat. I chose the Happi coat because, although we are celebrating the tournament and the incredible female players, I believe it is just as important for the fans, for everyone to have a universal piece to celebrate in.”

Serre presents a slender, articulated jersey designed to be worn over a printed body suit.

“The focus of my designs is always hybridity and adapting to daily life. It’s important to create a purposeful line that makes a female feel good without compromising the style.”