Cryptic.....

Ivory silk chiffon and lace dress by Joanne Fleming Design

I first met make-up artist Siwan Hill on a shoot for my 'The Beautiful and the Damned' collection, and loved the 1920s look she created for model Samia.....so when she contacted me to suggest that I might like to get involved with a creative shoot she was putting together with photographer Ellie Harvey and stylist Lauren De'Ath., I jumped at the chance. It was inspired by Aubrey Beardsley's illustrations for Oscar Wilde's 'Salome', and as I was designing a piece also inspired by the work of Beardsley, for an exhibition at Brighton Museum and Art Gallery (called 'Couture Brighton'), it seemed a particularly fortuitous collaboration. You can read more about my design for the exhibition here.
Siwan found the very atmospheric location....the crypt of St Andrews Church in Holborn, London. It was a very bright sunny day outside, but down in the crypt..........

'Couture Brighton'; the story of a design....

'La Dame aux Camelias' by Aubrey Beardsley

When I was invited to contribute a piece to the 'Couture Brighton' exhibition at Brighton Museum and Art Gallery, with the brief to take inspiration from the city as a starting point for my design, I pretty much immediately thought of one of Brighton's more esoteric sons....Aubrey Beardsley.

The plaque outside Beardsley's Brighton birthplace

Born in 1872 at (what is now) 31 Buckingham Rd, Beardsley attended Brighton Grammar School, before going on to Bristol Grammar School (which my father also attended, though not at the same time!).He went on to become one of the most admired and stylistically recognisable of the illustrators associated with the Aesthetic movement

At the age of just 22, Beardsley was a co-founder and  art-editor of The Yellow Book, and the iconic covers often featured his frequently controversial works.

I was clear from the start of the project that I did not want to just recreate one of the gowns from one of Beardsley's illustrations. Rather, I wanted to evoke the feel with a silhouette, a graphic fabric, a detailed embellishment.....and then work in the other influences and muses that have helped to inspire my current collection, ''The Beautiful and the Damned''. 

This is probably best summed up by the couple of sentances I wrote to go on the card accompanying my dressed mannequin....

The decadent and rather sinister aesthetic of Beardsley's intricately clothed women is a starting point for an ensemble that would be entirely appropriate for one of the dangerously sensuous characters he loved to draw.....Salome and Mademoiselle Maupin re-imagined, with a nod to Poiret, Vionnet, and Jeanne Lanvin along the way