Interview

Cutlog is the newest addition to Paris's art fair circuit and it arrives at a time when FIAC (Foire Internationale d'Art Contemporain) is looking stronger than in recent years.  FIAC, which emphasizes established artists, attracts about 60,000 visitors annually, putting it on par with London's Frieze, previewing tomorrow. But while the Paris art scene and FIAC can look dowdy on the heels of the more contemporary selection in London, the financial crisis (which has taken a much bigger bite out of contemporary art sales than Impressionist and modern art) may have something to do with altering the perspective. Last February's Christie's sale of Yves Saint Laurent's art collection in Paris, which topped expectations by taking in €374 million, also might have something to do with it.
 
Bruno Hadjadj launched Cutlog with more inspiration than connections. A sculptor and set designer who runs Spree, one of the city's best fashion stores with his wife Roberta, he's an autodidact. In 2006, when legendary venue CBGBs closed in New York, Hadjadj was on the pavement front and center–nearly 48 sleepless hours–to document the crowd that came to pay its respects. The result was Bye Bye CBGB, a self-published visual account of the event. That same year he also produced and directed Banditos, a handmade road movie, along the Eastern seaboard.  

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British design star  Giles Deacon won this year's  160,000€ (223,470 USD) grant from ANDAM, France's association for fashion arts, which comes with an official spot on Paris's show calendar, although in typical 100 Years' War style the French granted  him a slot in the afternoon on the last day, after most editors had departed. But Deacon didn't let that get to him and showed one of his most commercial collections to date. Hourglass pinafores and waist-hugging shirt dresses in light-reflecting print silks, tarantula pins and prints, metallic jeans, prom night bustiers, 3-d knits which looked like dinosaurs' scales and stuffed animal dino bags shows Deacon working with the same youthful, playful mood as Marc Jacobs at Louis Vuitton. (GILES, LOOK 11)

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Sacai's designer Chitose Abe is like a girl who can't decide what to wear. Instead of piling on too many clothes, she simply selects what she likes, the back and sleeves of a cardigan and the sheer front of a chiffon blouse with pin tucks and covered buttons say, and turns them into one intriguing piece. A necklace for Abe might be a detached coat collar covered with a three-strand pearl choker. But more than just combining disparate pieces, Abe folds and twists so that her combinations seem to be blowing artfully in the wind. A longtime collaborator with Comme des Garçons and Junya Watanabe, Abe has kept her brand quiet for eleven years and in that time she has managed to sell the world's top stores (Dover Street Market, Barney's Maxfields, Colette). Now the secret is out and we should be hearing a lot more from her in the future.

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Nicole Lachelle and Christian Nieseen, two German designers living in New York, have an inordinate amount of patience and they're also just plain stubborn. Their brand No Editions is the first to create unique pieces in a series. Using digital printing, the designers work with one print which is laid out differently to create a multitude of variations. Each numbered piece includes a graphic of the print, showing where the edition appears in the series. Printing on sinuous mixtures of jersey, cotton and leather, the prints in very subtle color ways make the clothes look almost as though they've been aged or stained rather than deliberately patterned. This season, the pair shot a web cam film of a girl on Christopher St. and Seventh Avenue in the West Village, inspired by Ondi Timoner's We Live in Public, a documentary of Josh Harris who filmed the life of a group of downtown artists with motion controlled cameras to catch their every move. LEFT: PHOTO BY REBECCA VOIGHT

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