Carol Christian Poell #1

[Scott]

Poell Vault

Milan
There's a handful of envelope-pushing brands that regularly augment fashion's vocabulary and reduce us here at JC Report to obsequious student types with their every showing. Viktor&Rolf's layered lessons, Alexander McQueen's fearless females, all things Fendi, and Boudicca's bounded boldness are some examples of the labels that make up our avant guardian anthology. However, it's in the enigmatic Carol Christian Poell ó the fabled Austrian working out of Milan ó that we seek out for the best menswear, tailoring, and textile. For nearly a decade Poell has kept diehard followers clad in his uncompromisingly designed clothing, heavy on experimental fabrics and so rigid in construction that his suits feel like elegant armor. Followers of the designer have relished keeping him a secret but with a recent presentation that showed models floating in water, literally, down the Naviglio Grande in Milan (putting fashion veterans like Suzy Menkes in awe) Poell is well on the way to blowing up. But don't expect to start finding this designer's own label in all and sundry places; he has eschewed calls for expansion for years. Visionaries at one of those large fashion conglomerates need only to wake up and capitalize on the many talents of this very gifted designer.
- Jason Campbell

 

[Spacemiu]

very nice, thanks scott

 

[Lena]

thanks scott

 

[Astrid21]

Thank you for the great article, Scott. I'm looking forward to seeing more of Carol Christian Poell's work.

 

[sskhan]

Need info on carol christian poell, anything, cannot find much at all. would love to get pics of past collections any contact info , just anything.


sal

 

[faust]

you've come to the right place. do a search in designers and collections forum.

 

[sskhan]

need to have links cant serach for it in forum , already done so.

 

[sskhan]

just checked again just same articles and o4 river floating show.

any help would be great .

 

[runner]

Hi, sskhan
I received the email.
please wait while I gather info and photos.

 

[runner]

from Austrian Museum of Applied Arts

As part of the exhibition "S.O.S. - Saving the MAK Collection" (2002) the MAK presented Carol Christian Poell's work for the first time in Austria. Poell is regarded as the most important representative of today's subversive and socio-critical fashion design and is internationally acclaimed as such. The presentations of his collections (installations in a kennels, in a slaughterhouse, etc.) have attracted the public's attention time and again because of their performance character.

CAROL CHRISTIAN POELL, born in Linz in 1966, lives and works in Milan, Italy. After having been trained as a men's and a ladies' tailor in Vienna (Michelbeurn), he studied fashion design at the Domus Academy in Milan where he also founded the production and distribution company C.C.P. Srl together with his partner Sergio Simone. After having presented his first men's collection in 1995, he developed his ladies' collection from classical elements of traditional menswear three years later. The distribution network for his articles of clothing and accessories, which are quite extravagant in terms of production technology, includes more than 40 dealers all over the world.

The MAK show focuses on the "Trilogy of Monotypologies" of his first three FE-MALE collections. These show CAROL CHRISTIAN POELL highlighting the various sections of the body: the lower part (fall/winter 99/00: trousers, skirts), the upper part (spring/summer 00: shirts, jackets), and the body in its entirety (fall/winter 00/01: dresses, coats).

Reflecting the different gender roles, Poell outlines the drawbacks of a woman's existence by revealing a being that suffers tragically, feels handicapped, has only limited possibilities, and is restricted in her social position. He employs a range of unusual materials such as blood-dyed leather, bodyplast, plastered leather, and human hair.

Including works by Carol Christian Poell in the collection of the MAK pays tribute to the oeuvre of an outstanding contemporary fashion designer of Austrian origin. The selection presented in "S.O.S. - Saving the MAK Collection" constitutes the cornerstone of a C.C.P. Special Archive at the MAK. The special archives being set up by the MAK Design Info Pool (DIP) center on design pioneers, i.e. innovators pursuing design strategies of their own and thus having a certain exemplary function. Poell's entire oeuvre will be catalogued, and key works will continuously be added to the collection.

 

[runner]

from boilermag

Gloria Maria Cappelletti

Fashion designer Carol Christian Poell connects the spiritual, mental, deep, and unconscious energies (symbolized by water) with the tangible, physical, material, conscious energies (symbolized by earth). It is a wonder to discover in his collections both a theoretical and practical vision, an instinctive binary approach to sensible beauty. What we like to call amphibious aesthetic.

CCP's signature performances like those staged at Milan’s public dog pound and butchery are often disturbing, unexpected, and abstruse. The aesthetic response to his work cannot be but multi-dimensional given the variety of elements he uses to appeal to all senses.

His double or multi-modal aesthetic approach tends to involve more than one sense in the process of his work. The aesthetic value of his fashion collections and the method in which he stages his presentations involve connecting a person’s visual, tactile, olfactory, and auditory systems. By wearing his interwoven intestine sweaters and scarves you can indeed have an intense sensory experience.

The many dimensions of ‘fashion creativity’ and ‘performance’ are masterfully highlighted in Poell’s work. In fact, he redefines fashion as more than just applied tailoring, while exposing it to the broader questions of ‘dressing up’ and its interactions with our inner vitality and deeper nature. This approach makes use of fashion as a laboratory for real action and participatory research, involving both the designer and his audience. It is also a realization of beauty and a critique of contemporary society.

‘Amphibious’ and multitalented, CCP provides performance-oriented phenomenological perspectives on the idea of covering the body. Always negotiating unpredictably between the necessary and the spontaneous, the presentations of his fashion collections are uncommonly charged. During his conversation with Boiler, he argued that the dynamism of the performance confers him a certain degree of freedom and that the spectator's experience is not necessarily analogous to that of the protagonists’ or the designer’s. The audience through its own engagement and detachment becomes, in fact, the final performer, creating the meaning of ‘the game’: an amphibious circumstance of diversities.

 

[runner]

there is more to come.

 

[sskhan]

Thanks runner,waiting....calmly

 

[runner]

Poell has been involved with Premiata recently.
you might recognize his design by the stuff.

http://www.premiata.it/


there are some articles and photos in the first & second issues of German fashion magazine Achtung which made its debut in the U.S. last year.
also Fashion Now includes interview with Poell.

once he staged a catwalk show in S/S 1998, and so you can see the collection in a magazine like Harper's Bazaar of the past.


and more...

 

[runner]

Reflecting the different gender roles, Poell outlines the drawbacks of a woman's existence by revealing a being that suffers tragically, feels handicapped, has only limited possibilities, and is restricted in her social position. He employs a range of unusual materials such as blood-dyed leather, bodyplast, plastered leather, and human hair.

Poell's presentasions have received for and against all the time.

his womenswear line for A/W 2000
phallus trousers
sleeveless long coat made from human hair

 

[runner]

S/S 2000 the theme was "Form"

A/W 2000 "Pure & Impure"

S/S 2001 this presentation took place in a slaughterhouse

 

[runner]

from Uomo Collezioni

It all happened overnight for Carol Christian Poell who dragged fashion victims and journalists, as the sun was setting, to a public slaughter-house somewhere in the outskirts of Milan. So, in the cold stores and in the midst of meat to be butchered he presented her most classic white shirts made from the finest leather, glazed clothes, T-shirts in papery fabric, sweaters wrinkled by acid, extra long trousers, straitjackets, black suede vests, and presenting herself at the end of the show, with an empty chair in front of a mirror, for a poetry collection poisoned by contemporaneity.

 

[runner]

A/W 2001 installation in a kennels "Man in Cage"

 

[runner]

S/S 2002 "Traditional Escape"

shirt woven of cotton tape

 

[runner]

A/W 2002 "Protection / Good Luck"

Poell undertook a mission to dispel superstitions surrounding the number 13