20 YEARS OF PROGRESS, AS SEEN BY LEPAGE
Association Nationale pour le Développement des Arts de la Mode, better known as ANDAM, has joined forces with celebrated photographer Jean-François Lepage to create Modernes – 20 Ans de Mode Contemporaine, a tome celebrating 20 years of cutting-edge fashion (and ANDAM’s catalysation of it).
A comprehensive retrospective of the organization dedicated to supporting international design talent since 1989, Lepage has been given free reign to interpret the visions of the featured designers in his own way. In collaboration with the Art Director Pierre-François Letué, with text by fashion historian Florence Müller, it’s part-document, part-artwork – a hybrid celebration partly due to the multi-layered approach of the photographer, where aesthetics have several interpretations in his subversive approach to beauty. Impossibly romantic post-grunge icon Hannelore Knuts is seen here.
Founded by Nathalie Dufour, ANDAM was conceived from the very beginning as a structure for assisting promising young designers on the French and international fashion scene. Its founding marked an important milestone in recognizing the importance of the new and next within the hierarchical, antique conventions of fashion world. Put simply sizeable money was (and still is) given to those with designs on life who can make good use of it.
With Martin Margiela the first winner – just a year after founding his Maison blanc in 1989 – Dufour has been more than vindicated, her bold dream becoming revered reality with a role call of today’s most innovative stylists passing through as prizewinners. These names of course including Viktor & Rolf, Bernhard Willhelm and Gareth Pugh.
Ph: Jean Francois Lepage
Styling: Darryl Rodrigues
By Dean Mayo Davies | images courtesy of Jean Francois Lepage