Fields of Vision (NYT) - Francisco Costa's most recent obsession

[DosViolines]

nytimes.com

June 4, 2006
Possessed
Fields of Vision

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"Viaggio in Giappone" by Felice Beato.[/SIZE]

By DAVID COLMAN


SURE, we all know black from white, but not all judgments are so easy.What separates the adequate from the blah? Where does fact leave off and fiction begin? When does fashion turn from a dress to a costume?


These tricky questions are ones that fashion designers address with every sketch, swatch and old magazine they thumb. While their models stalk the runway, they tread a tightrope, balanced between fantasy and reality. In his collections for Calvin Klein, Francisco Costa walks this high wire with such poise that he was rewarded with fashion's version of an Oscar nod: a nomination from the Council of Fashion Designers of America for women's wear designer of the year, which will be awarded tomorrow night.


But as clear as it is that Mr. Costa has a grasp on the realities of women's wear, his head is where a designer's ought to be: in the clouds. If as the creative director of Calvin Klein he travels less than he once did, he takes mental trips whenever possible, going to bookstores and peering into the secret windows all those covers enclose.


"It's life," he said. "It's in my blood. I can't live without it. It can be a book on photography — Steichen, Avedon, Mapplethorpe — or a book on Belgian lace or an amazing architecture book."


Fittingly, his latest obsession is a fantasy on many levels: a book he bought three or four years ago, "Viaggio in Giappone" ( "Voyage to Japan"). It is an Italian edition of Japanese works of the 19th-century photographer Felice Beato, whose place in photographic history was secured by the remarkable war scenes he shot in China and India in the 1850's and 60's.


Those who are more familiar with Beato's methods might also peg him as a forerunner of postmodern art photography, in which the camera is as much a filter as a lens. Beato was never content to stay behind his camera, frequently tinkering with even the most gruesome set-ups to achieve more striking effect. He went so far, the stories go, as to move and sometimes exhume the bodies of Chinese soldiers to make war scenes more theatrical.


Mr. Costa is not drawn to this fantastic aspect of Beato's work but to the more tranquil landscapes and portraits he did in the 1860's and 70's — most of all a series of typical Japanese. Despite being given extraordinary license by the shogunate to photograph in the country, Beato was often rebuffed when he tried to get Japanese people to pose. As a result, he hired and costumed models to portray his native types: monks, officials, villagers, an aged doctor, an antiquarian, a samurai. All of them rigged.


"Esthetically, they're incredible," Mr. Costa said. "First, there's the color, the deep saturated indigos and browns, the oxidation of the pigments. Then there are the garments, the natural materials. They make the culture look so pure. There's no excess. Then there's the fact that none of it is reality, and yet it's so gentle, so beautiful."


A mystery wrapped in an enigma, tied with an obi. "It's very back to basics, and yet it seems quite perverted," he said.


And now that plain simplicity has run its course in fashion — "No woman wants just a jersey tank anymore," Mr. Costa says — it makes sense that the Calvin Klein designer would prefer a twist or two. Fact, fiction, fantasy and fashion — as Signor Beato proved, long before Cindy Sherman came along — is all in the eye of the beholder.

 

[Pastry]

i read this article just now in the times...

i don't care what anybody says, i think his last two collections were excellent..
and his approach where he uses architecture, and fantasy, and common sense all at once is really enviable, i can't wait to see his next collection, i suppose he's going for an oriental feel with some rich colour judging from the article?