I was considered the fastest pencil in the field, a mannequin need only do her turn down the catwalk at a fashion show, and voila – an illustration.

- Joe Eula

A famous, venerable fashion writer (who was once an illustrator himself) told me that fashion illustrators “say they sketch at fashion shows, but they don’t really.” At the time I remember thinking, somewhat arrogantly – I’ll show you that they do! Of course, people have been sketching away at runway shows ever since runway shows emerged at the turn of the last century, though this history has yet to be written. This post is just a few scraps of information I’ve managed to collect.

Very few runway sketches ever see the light of day – it’s a challenging task to capture the fleeting moment of a catwalk turn with any kind of elegance, and most runway sketches aren’t much more than scribbles. Scribbling is just fine – sketching at fashion shows is another way to take notes, and it makes sense to capture visual information… well, visually. Occasionally critics and journalists will dash off doodles in between point-form notations – I’ve heard that Suzy Menkes does this – but of course such information is anecdotal, and not much evidence can be found of it as writers aren’t known for being proud of their artistic efforts.

It’s hard to imagine now, but early fashion shows were small affairs intended for wealthy clientele, and there was very little access for either photography or illustration. Photography, as a new medium, wasn’t considered to be classy – and sketching was frowned upon because it was used to steal ideas. In her wonderful book Fashion Is Spinach, Elizabeth Hawes recalls her early years in Paris in the 1920s, surreptitiously sketching at fashion shows so American department stores could knock off Parisian designs:

When I stole designs from the French dressmakers, it was, originally, a game which I developed between me and the mannequin. Her part was to try and get the dress out of the room before I could master the cut of it. My part was to digest its intricacies without missing a seam or a button. I was good. By the time I’d finished my second season of sketching, I could have designed you as pretty a Chanel as the master herself.

But swiping her designs accurately was violent mental exercise. If you made any more moves with your pencil than enough to write the equivalent of a number, someone suddenly leaned over your shoulder and grabbed your paper out of your hand. And these were the sketches the buyers wanted most.

- Elizabeth Hawes, Fashion is Spinach

[Kenneth Paul] Block travelled regularly to Paris to report on the couture shows from the early 1960s onwards. He never knew what kind of reception he might receive, since WWD was often feuding with designers. Sometimes he found himself ‘off the list’ and had to work ‘from dictation’. At other times there was special treatment and access. It is a tribute to Block’s skill that it is impossible to tell his real and imagined images apart.

- David Downton, Masters of Fashion Illustration, pp. 151

By the 1960s, fashion houses were photographing their runway shows using in-house photographers, but the shows still weren’t constructed around the photography pit as they are now. By that time, illustrators were made welcome as part of the press. John Fairchild, the EIC at Women’s Wear Daily wanted his paper to appear distinctive and artistic, and so WWD had a whole department of illustrators, most notably Kenneth Paul Block, whose runway work is incredibly prolific and admirable. His drawings aren’t fanciful or abstract, they are essentially reportage, showing the clothing with both accuracy and flair.

It is important to learn the phrase “La Premiere Rang Surélevé”, the first raised row, usually the third or fourth, where the view is better. Yves Saint Laurent used to seat his mother in the first raised row.

When the rows are not raised, it is another matter. From the second row, you can find a sliver of a view. From the third row you see only the heads in the first row. The fourth row is death. I have perfected the spot-and-sprint approach. Wait for the right moment, crouching, just before those with the standing tickets are let in, then leap—vault, if you will—into the front row. Timing is everything. If you leap too soon, the rightful occupant of the seat may turn up (generally Marie-José Susskind of L’Official who is always late) and you have lost both your new seat and your old seat.

- Gladys Perint Palmer, Fashion People

Block’s successor is undoubtedly Gladys Perint Palmer, whose book Fashion People is the only exclusive collection of live runway sketching I’ve ever seen, and contains a few comments on the challenges of runway sketching itself. I would categorize Perint Palmer as a “society sketcher” as well as a runway sketcher – she is able to recognize and record the fashion show attendees along with snippy little over-heards and humorous gossip. She’s not just interested in the clothing and the fantasy, but in the absurd scene as a whole, and she records the fashion show phenomenon as it reached it’s apex in the 1990s, when runways became theatrical and the scene was beginning to explode into the media spectacle it has now become.

It happens very quickly! It’s really difficult to get details, so I focus on the shapes and the silhouettes–the shoulder, the length of the jacket, the shape of the head/hair. It’s challenging but so much fun–like a quiz show where you have to answer 20 questions in a minute!

- Richard Haines

The most successful live runway sketcher working now is Richard Haines. He’s the master of capturing menswear – his experience as a designer, and interest in a specific, sophisticated-casual aesthetic has served him very well. The rumour I’ve heard is that is his sketches sell for $1000 each, and considering there’s no one else who can do what he does, I’m inclined to believe it.

… and then there’s me. I’ve been live-sketching at runway shows for over five years now, so compared to the masters of the craft, I am still just a baby, though I’ve had the remarkable opportunity this past season to adapt the form to the touchscreen and bring live runway sketching into the 21st century.

Most live runway sketchers do their greatest work towards the end of their career. Elegance only comes with experience. It’s a skill that takes a lot of practice, and getting access to get that practice isn’t easy to do, either. But the rewards are many – it’s a rush of adrenaline as your eyes and hands race to render an immersive experience in a bizarre, overwhelming environment. When a great sketch appears out of nowhere in seconds, it feels like fashion is an electric current coursing through your body. I believe my runway work has given me a more profound understanding of fashion at an instinctive level. It brings fashion illustration into the physical moment.

Welcome to click click, the sporadic review of what I find worth clicking on the internet.

Like many, I discovered Harlem hip-hop tailor Dapper Dan via the New Yorker (excellent audio addendums here and here), and now it seems Jay-Z and the powers that be are bringing the master logo appropriator a much deserved second round of notoriety. These photos show an example of his work from Dapper Dan’s official blog.

• When The Gap Was Everywhere – a wonderful art photography project from the 1990s, revisited now for peak nostalgia, featuring clothing from The Gap back when The Gap was THE GAP.
• Sex Pistols and The Clash – London Weekend Show 1976 – I’ve just finished reading England’s Dreaming (thanks to a reco from Charlie Porter) and loved it. This is a terrific show – great interviews and footage of the beginning of the punk phenomenon in London in 1976. The incredible charisma of young John Lydon is so captivating, and this post-breakup interview in 1978 is a charming bit of video.
• Kitsch-Slapped – “specializing in bad taste from a feminist perspective”, I particularly enjoy the posts from Deanna who is quite the collector of vintage printed ephemera. Check out Fitting The Female Form Has Always Been Complicated for a taste.
• Soft Film – there is still so many stories that haven’t been told, and I love finding a blog that conscientiously covers a neglected corner of cultural history rather than the same old stuff that everyone is always on about. This one is all about Chinese and Chinese-American entertainers in the early 20th century.
• The Suspects Wore Louboutins - of course even the mainstream culture occasionally offers me a gnarly artifact that hits so many of my proclivities I become part of the fanning herd.
• Prince Has Ruled In The Style Stakes For Four Freakin’ Decades – I also love a good sartorial biography. Via Barima.

Karma, namaste.

• WIRED.co.uk – I’m quoted in an article about how fashion illustration is adapted to digital – if you can’t get enough of my babblings on this topic, I posted the extended version on tumblr.
• Sequin Queen – “Sparkle, Anytime.”
• Your Fashion Finder

Fashion is the devil in the mirror. Fashion is a signal of antisocial behaviour – the sins of vanity and excess, deviance, raising fears of false appearances. Fashion in ancient woodcuts is demonized.

Throughout history, there are always small groups of fashion extremists and individual eccentrics who take fashion well into the moral panic zone, occasionally even risking their lives for it. We consume a lot of breathless media outrage about these outsiders, even as we forget that the vast majority of ordinary people just aren’t fashion nuts and just don’t find freakish fashion victimhood appealing enough to be corrupted by it. As Valerie Steele argued in her book, our perception of corsetry through illustration and other propaganda is (surprise!) revealed to be vastly exaggerated when the physical evidence is examined.

Since medieval times, women’s predilection for fashion has been cast as a form of moral and physical weakness. And in a way, it is. Historically prevented from competing fairly in the arena of work or sport or ideas, the most accessible competitive edge for most women was (and often still is) their appearances. The adoption of forms of fashion, occasionally to extremes, is a social stepping stone for the disenfranchised.

Fashionable moral panics directed at women are always concerned with authenticity and purity – the cultural majority is obsessed with the biological implications of women who appear more fertile than they in fact are, or who allow fashion to interfere with their apparent fertility. These days, female-focused fashion moral panics are concerned with plastic surgery, age- and sex-appropriate dressing, and dieting. Whether it’s a woodcut or a tabloid, the essential message from the mainstream is a biological directive, not a rational one: “don’t misrepresent or impair your ability to carry on the human race.”

Ever since youth culture emerged in the mid 20th century, the establishment’s moral policing is often directed at youth. Fashion is often the scapegoat, the shorthand, simply because it’s a visible phenomenon and that’s all most people have time for. The fashionable moral panic of the time, is a symbol if its time. These days, it’s hoodies.

Youth often choose their fashions to deliberately provoke panic. As this documentary points out, the demonization of deviant youth culture only serves to make it more attractive. The media moral panics directed at youth are particularly poignant because in the struggle for control of the media, youth always lose the battle but win, insidiously and inevitably, by eventually becoming the media. The corruption of culture is the evolution of culture.

Participating in mainstream outrage is a waste of time when the panic is focused on a superficial image rather than an actual problem. Fashion is a self-correcting phenomenon – as it reaches the extreme limits of physical possibility, or approaches mainstream ubiquity, it loses its power and the trend will turn on a dime. Sumptuary laws across time and cultures have failed again and again to control fashionable excess as effectively as fashionable excess curbs itself. As for causing human extinction or destroying civilization, fashion has been an utter failure.

So thrilled to get to do another pop-star paper doll for Stylist.co.uk – this time inspired by Beyoncé and the outfits she is wearing on her current Mrs. Carter tour. Since many of her outfits have a cute peplum detail – probably to accentuate the singer’s famous booty, I decided to do my first ever side-view paper doll to highlight all that and those fiercely arched diva brows too.

If you like this doll, click on it, download the PDF for FREE, print it and cut it out! And if pop-star paper dolls are totally your thing, go get the Tulisa doll too.

Welcome to click click, the sporadic review of what I find worth clicking on the internet.

Watched Spring Breakers and thoroughly enjoyed it. Also into these polaroids of the ATL twins (who play themselves in the film) by director Harmony Korine. These kids turned their life into a lifestyle – it’s pretty much what 21st century youth is all about. Via DAZED. (MORE: candid profile here, including their suited-up day job style.)

• Women’s Typical Poses in Advertisements: A Pain in the Neck? – a really fascinating study of why a particular pose is used in South Korean advertising – why it works to sell you something. Makes me curious about reading the body language of other ubiquitous poses in fashion media. Tons of fascinating content on The Grand Narrative – also check out this post on the implications of the trend for “alphabetizing” female bodies across time and cultures.
• I Apologize for Inventing the Word ‘Fashionista’ 20 Years Ago – considering all the casual portmanteau-ing that I do, it never occurred to me how horrific it would be if one of them caught on and endured for decades.
• The Apostate – late to the cult with this one, it’s just so worth reading if you haven’t yet. It’s The New Yorker article about Scientology through the experience of Paul Haggis.
• Fashion Week Internationale – if you can get past the sensational headlines and gratuitous plastic surgery videos, this is some of the best video fashion journalism I’ve ever seen. All over the world people are hungry for fashion – and outside the official bubble, fashion is much more diverse and often more extreme, the delusions of grandeur have more pathos, and the corruption is barely concealed.
• Beautiful Liverpool – one notorious example of a local fashion industry that runs strong despite being apparently oblivious to bland international standards of good taste is Liverpool. This documentary is refreshingly free of narration and judgement. I also found some more info on Liverpool from the source and some historical context via The Beheld.
• Dirty Girls – a subculture can be as tiny as a few girls at a single high school, if they have their own unique style, philosophy, and of course, name. (UPDATE: Amber in 2013, on living wildly. Thanks to Melissa for the heads up!)

Give as good as you get -

• BLOUIN ARTINFO – a great feature about how I use touchscreen to draw.
• H&M Life – what a pleasure to be included among some other very admirable fashion illustrators with blogs.
• dadaDan – “video/food/performance”
• Gay West Bicycle Club – “The only LGBTQ cycling club in Canada with 160 members”

No one’s willing to pay for reality. Why should they? We all get it every day for free. Reality is not an industry. Fashion is. Every time I read an argument for why fashion should more accurately reflect reality, my gut reaction is What? Why? No! But of course I would say that, I’m a fashion illustrator.

Above on the right is an iconic photograph of fashion model Alek Wek by Herb Ritts. Wek is already an unusual example of a human being, with exaggerated features and proportions. She represents a type of beauty which is so extreme, she seems like an otherworldly, fantastic creature. Despite this already outrageous figure reference, when I interpret the same image in illustration, I exaggerate her look even further. Even a bizarre form of beauty isn’t quite extreme enough for me. This is why I’m an illustrator and not a photographer – I resist being limited to the way things are. My drawings are a fantasy, processed through the distorted lens of my own imagination.

Sometimes, I attend life drawing classes for practice, but I find I can’t ever seem to represent the model as she actually is, even if I try. My lines always remodel the model into whatever I want her to be. I guess I’m most interested in trying to interpret the current fashionable ideal – because that is what fashion illustration is. If fashion illustration reflected the way people actually looked, it would just be… illustration.

The most challenging brief for any fashion image creator is to produce something that is both “realistic” and “aspirational” because these two concepts cancel each other out. This is why I find media artifacts like the so-called “real beauty” campaign more unsettling than reassuring. They confuse the viewer, calling a subtler, more insidious version of idealization ‘reality’. A realistic ideal is an oxymoron. I much prefer to see a dramatic divide between ideal and reality, because the corrosive effects of a beauty ideal seem to occur when impressionable minds conflate fantasy and reality. I desire a beauty ideal that is so extreme, it is clear that it is a form of entertainment, a dream world, as distinct from the real world as an action movie or a video game.

Like any form of glamour, fashion doesn’t owe reality anything. If you want to see reality, you can find it elsewhere, everywhere, free of charge.

Welcome to click click, the sporadic review of what I find worth clicking on the internet.

Which Fall 2013 fashion show references from these two film stills? A critical pictorial reviewer, LYNN and HORST juxtaposes images, showing you the visual connections that positions collections in the cultural continuum. A stellar recommendation from John Michael of 1972 Projects.

• Charlie Porter – another tip top tip-off from John Michael. Start with his indictment of bourgeois punk.
  
• Street Style Pics of the Hate Crime(?) Worker – The Grumpy Owl discusses street style in terms of consent, wearables and sinister surveillance. It seems like everything has been said about street style – now the rhetoric is on backlash mode. See also: How Street Style Became a Hate-Watching Sport and Take My Picture. I have a few thoughts on what I call an attention economy.
• I’m Way Totally Ungay And Love Fashion, Bro – writing parodies of fashion writing is almost impossible, they’re never really quite as preposterous as the originals.
• The World’s First 3D Printing Pen that lets you Draw Sculptures – incredible!
• “Firefly” Hat Triggers Controversy – pop culture + DIY culture + the internet leads to some knockoff kerfluffle.
• The Goth Phase - Rachel White writes an intriguing exploration of affecting a persona through appearances.

Tip-offs receive tip-ins,

• Of Stranger Sensibilities - thank you Elisa for connecting this wonderful, essential fashion blog to me.
• Dextrous Diva – wherein I offer some non-advice for blogging.
• The Style Confessions – includes an old favourite post of mine in a roundup of posts on fashion blogging as a mature trend.
• Sewing Tidbits – “by a French girl”
• Oranges & Apples – “musings on fashion, society and parenthood”
• Reply All Please –  “a daily blogalog”

It was an amusing switch to go from the front row at a runway show to drawing at the Best Buy store at the Eaton Centre in the same week, such is the career of a fashion illustrator in the 21st century I suppose! Glam to geeky.

This time, I was using the HP ENVY Touchsmart and a Nomad digital paintbrush using the Fresh Paint application. I always love the opportunity to imagine and sketch for a long stretch of time, and the results of exploring digital materials continue to interest me. After having spent over 50 hours on Fresh Paint in December, I was delighted to discover even more new techniques and ideas to play with.

The first day, I was working more with graphic layouts.

On the second day, I went wild with the paint mixing aspect, the red one in particular pleases me.

Welcome to click click, the sporadic review of what I find worth clicking on the internet.

Became curious about Neal Cassady recently – a kind of it-boy, speed-freak inspiration to the influential writers who knew him, with captivating expressions and an anti-conventional conversational style. Photos – with attribution – here. More on Cassady here and here.

• The Source – interesting documentary about the beat movement, of course featuring more Cassady moments. To see Cassady in his Merry Prankster incarnation, among so much more terrific footage, I recommend watching Magic Trip (worth the $).
• Finger Painting – elder fashion creatives Celia Birtwell and Stephen Jones chat (including a revealing, poignant admission of professional regret) and do something in analog that many are now doing with digital – painting with fingertips instead of holding a drawing tool – something I did for this project. Any opportunity to observe drawing in process – and the successes and failures involved in taking on a new technique – is a pleasurable peek into the mind of an artist.
• How Memes Are Orchestrated By The Man – the rise and fall of youtube dance fads is like a compressed fashion trend cycle, somehow both joyfully trivial and profoundly insidious. Another Harlem Shakedown worth listening to is on the Slate Culture Gabfest. Also in music – the lineage of the Amen Break.
• What Will Induce Nostalgia in 2033? – a consideration of cultural myopia – for the more fashion focused version, check Refinery29. Seems that it’s still to early, in 2013, to be able to reduce the 00s to outlines.
• My Gucci Addiction – finally fashion memoir that is truly an urgent must-read. Now jonesing for more, better fashion memoirs.
• Who Watches the Watchmen – complementary to these thoughts, collectors cards of fashion journalists past and present by fashion blog pioneer Diane Pernet.
• Fashion is a Foreign Language – revelatory blog post about why nerds gravitate towards historical costumes and corsets. Another subset who are attracted to corsets = fashion students. Via The Grumpy Owl, these short videos offer a simulacra of talking to Ryan.
• Can Your Style Survive Google Glass? – “wearables” is the watchword for future computers, and the prototypes as expected, appear awkward and provoke weird reactions. The possibilities here are just wild.

All you need is karma,

• blank stare, {blink} – “I wanted to run up to them, the front row seats and beyond, shake their expensive shoulders and scream, “Look where you are! Look what you get paid to do!”
• IFB – my favourite writer at Independent Fashion Bloggers, Ashe, included me on a list of worthy wordy fashion bloggers. Honoured!
• The Lingerie Lesbian – “I’m a lady who likes ladies and I have an unhealthy obsession with cute panties, corsets & garter belts”
• Style Algorithm – “A Slow Fashion Blog”

I’m not the type of fashion blogger who enjoys for posing for photos. Most of the photos of me at fashion week show my head down, back hunched over a pad of paper, oblivious to the camera. Lucky for me, there are professionals out there who insist on capturing me at work using more attractive angles.

Above, at the VAWK show in Toronto I was shot by Raymund Galsim. It’s a good thing I insisted on an iPad cover with a high visual hierarchy, I love how it’s picked up in the model’s lips. Below, I’m shown deep in the audience at the DVF show in New York working Paper, by Georg Petschnigg of FiftyThree.

If you’re curious to see the results of my first fashion season of iPad sketching, check out the complete FLARE.com portfolio here, and my own top selections from the WWD on Paper portfolio here.