Jacquie Severs

So it happens that the blog post I want to write is about Fashion Week, while the blog post I need to write (in order to stay true to my own blogging rules) is Illustrator of the Month. So, since this is my party, I'm gonna combine the two into a fashion extravaganza! Details about my illustrator of the month are below, and his images will decorate this post, along with some tidbits about my trip to the fashion shows yesterday.

Frederick Watson is a Toronto-based fashion illustrator who first rose to prominence in the 1960's when he launched a series of illustrative black and white posters that sold like wildfire. Here's an example:


Over time he worked in creating theatre advertisements and eventually moved onwards towards painting as his primary passion.


His best-known works are of glamourous art deco-inspired women; women who appear to be from a bygone era.
These femme-fatale characters evoke a sense of freedom and luxury, ideal for works that are designed to promote luxury items and the upscale lifestyle. I got to thinking about the concept of the femme fatale  at the Attitude by Jay Manuel runway show last night.

attitude by jay manuel img src

attitude by jay manuel

Jay Manuel, if you don't know, is the guy from America's Next Top Model (and Canada's too). The runway models were from those shows, which didn't mean much to me since I don't watch, but the crowd was pretty excited about the celebrity factor and the house was packed. The line is a celebrity diffusion line for Sears, which isn't really something to be that excited over (I mean really....Sears?) but I really enjoyed it anyhow. The secret to  making his clothes-from-Sears wearing models look like glamourous femme fatale characters was all in the styling. He started out with greys and blacks with berets and sunglasses, very Bonnie and Clyde. You get a sense in the picture at right (my snap of Jeanne Beker looking on).

the artist Watson and Jeanne Beker

Then later in the runway he mixed colour and texture to create rich looks and then piled on a dramatic hair and makeup look. Above pictured is one of my favourite femme fatale looks; a model in a teal coat, rusty red hose, patent pumps, a dramatic eye, pin curls and a patterned blouse with dramatic jewellery.

The connection to the femme fatale illustrations is the illusion of glamour and luxury. After all, glamour is just a perception. And done right, even clothes from a department store can have the upscale luxury look pictured in these illustrations if curated in such a way as to create the illusion of total style freedom.


Speaking of style freedom, if you've been following for a while you know I'm pretty into colour. My favourite look last night was a woman who was wearing an outfit just like this red and green illustration. She was wearing bright green pants and shoes and a red blouse and blazer. Amazingly, the look didn't scream CHRISTMAS! which is truly no small feat. It worked because of the exact tones of green and red, and the multi-hued necklace. And her fierce attitude! Being able to pull off green and red is style confidence, is glamour. Here's a little spy picture I snapped of her.

You can also see her pictured above in the front row for Comrags in this panoramic shot I snapped waiting for the show to start. Amazing how much she stands out in the sea of black and white. Though colour is in  style and there was the odd person working it, she was really taking it to the next level.

comrags f/w 2011

Comrags is not a line that I am a huge fan of, their styling isn't always for me. Typically made up of sheath dresses and high necklines the overall look is more minimal and austere than I prefer, but the show last night had a number of really lovely textile prints that I liked. All of the textiles appeared vintage with a definite 1940's feel.

We were able to take in Lovas, Comrags, Attitude by Jay Manuel and last but not least David Dixon.

David Dixon F/W 2011

Dixon's show was his 16th anniversary show and it started off with a dramatic nostalgic video about his family and lives loved and lost. He showed a few items from classic collections such as 2009's Barbie by David Dixon. The Fall 2011 collection was inspired by a trip to Jakarta and was a basic colour story of black, white, grey and hot coral red. It featured some of the most incredible coral jewellery items I've ever seen.

David Dixon F/W 2011 img src

His styling and cuts were the most luxurious I've seen up close, (we were lucky enough to be in the second row for this show!) as his work is truly that of a designer who focuses on tailoring, cuts and drape.


He had some incredible pieces with texture and shape that can't be properly described in photo, only the movement of wear does proper justice. I loved this show and loved the hot red tone.

In the last few posts I've talked about colour, I've been talking a lot about orange and teal. One of my favourite colour vibrations and definitely hot for fall 2011, this trend was all over the runway.





Bringing it back to my Illustrator of the Month, here's a great illustration using my beloved orange. Orange is definitely hot for fall. One of the shows I didn't catch this year that I like to is the Joe Fresh line. Joe Fresh featured loads of orange and teal this season, luckily for us the internet lets us see it all!

Here's a video.

This year the show was extra hot because the  line is moving to the US market for the first time and rumour has it, representatives for Harpers Bazaar and the New York Times were in the house!

The best part about this news is that I'm going to get some great orange pieces at Loblaws prices! Can't complain about that.
Here we are on the way out the door, stopping for a quick shot in the hallway mirror. The best part of this quick snap is that my friend was actually on the phone, even though the posture  looks staged, it's 100% authentic moment! There will be more and better pictures of us, but what I love about this shot is our attitudes! The amazing thing about Fashion week is people watching. Everyone at the event is there to see and be seen. I've been a handful of times now and though the people watching never gets boring, the whole 'being seen' thing gets boring. I spent all of 5 minutes getting ready (though to be fair I did lay my clothing out a night in advance) and felt perfectly dressed. People ask me about the experience and what I can say is that it is a lot of hurry-up-and-wait.





You stand around (having a cocktail) waiting for the showtime. Then you stand in line for the show. Then wait more. Then you get herded in like cattle and seated. Then you wait again. Then the models walk for less than 10 minutes, then you applaud, then you leave again for another cocktail, while you wait for the next show. Rinse and repeat.


In the case of last night, the Attitude show was an hour and a half behind schedule. Most of this hour and a half we spent standing in extremely close quarters huddled together waiting in line. I was so relieved when we got to sit down. The shoes are fab, and I can walk in them no problem but a straight up hour and a half of standing on concrete floor and I figured either I was going back for another cocktail or I had better get a seat pronto. It is a lot of fun though and you always leave with a goodie bag.

I also always leave with some fresh fashion ideas.  One was a new way to wear one of those giant loop scarves, another a fresh way to mix patterned and colourful hosiery with knits and prints. In particular though you leave with the excitement and admiration for the work designers put into their collections. Months of work go towards preparing for a ten minute moment in spotlights. The pressure is immense and the crowd at times very hard to please.  Over all I can say I'm really into the inspirations for the coming fashion months as the 1940's trend stays strong with nipped waists, lush texture, pattern mixing, incredible colour and over the top glamour. I don't want to rush summer but I'm excited to see the fall lines (and especially fall colours) enter stores.

Frederick Watson is represented by David Leonard Fine Art in Niagara Falls, ON.

Extra special thanks go out to the artist himself who sent along many of these images for my use after discovering my blog.

Thanks so much Fred! I love your work.

Chris Cobb

Chris Cobb

It is possible this trend had it's origins earlier than 2004 but that was the year that artist Chris Cobb did an on-site art installation involving organizing one book shop's twenty thousand books by colour. The exhibition, titled There is nothing wrong with the whole wide world was completed by Cobb and a group of volunteers in one night. The effect (seen at left) was truly magical.

I've noticed that this organizational technique has become a decor trend and it pops up a lot lately in magazines and on blogs. The lovely thing about this is that it creates a sense of order in a room full of books. Have you ever looked closely at an Ikea catalogue, and noticed that the shelves full of books always have white spines? This is because a bookshelf filled with a normal array of books looks messy at best and junky at worst.

But what to do about that little messy shelf filled to the brim with books you love and just can't part with?

This solution is one that creates order in the chaos, is easy, affordable and makes for a really pretty display.Especially if you have colourful books. On that note, I don't advise going out and buying books just because of their colour. That would defeat the purpose of this. Anyhow, I'm seriously considering undertaking this approach with my own library. It creates a sense of peace in me when I look at the books organized this way, I think that's why so many designers are borrowing this idea. I also think I'll be able to find my books faster, because as a visual thinker I tend to remember the cover of a book very easily.

Here are some lovely examples. As always, click to see images at full size.

image source: apartment therapy

image source: design*sponge

source: Better Homes & Gardens

Could you also organize other things by colour to make them look prettier? How about CDs or your Vinyl collection?

I think it would be a great way to organize a collection of kitchen goods, and of course, the classic would be your sock or underwear drawers (if you are the colourful underpinnings type like me.)



Further reading:
Here's an article in the March 2011 Print Edition of Toronto Life Magazine featuring this technique.
An in-depth article on organizing books by colour from Design Observer.
Chris Cobb is also a writer who blogs for the San Francisco MOMA. Here's his page.
The Rainbow of Books flickr photo pool.

This week my sister joined twitter. I was pretty excited because I'm a bit of a tweet-a-holic and am always happy when someone I know joins up, so I can tweet at them. She was saddened to discover that in spite of her name being fairly uncommon her chosen twitter handle wasn't available.Worse still was the discovery that the gal who had taken it doesn't tweet and follows exclusively celebrities like Kim Kardashian and Snooki. What a waste!


Alas she settled for her second choice and joked to me that perhaps she should purchase domain names in the name of her two young children now.

The joke is topical because I had just read an article about people naming their children based on available domain names. While I think this is utterly ridiculous, I also took this into consideration when deciding this week to move this site from jacquiesevers.blogspot.com to jacquiesevers.com. I'm a dot-com now. How about that?

If you are here on the old domain, not to worry, eventually it will redirect to the new address. I think it will be a lot easier to post the link to the dot.com instead of adding the blogspot addition and mostly I'm just excited to have ownership of my name in the web world.

And with that I leave you this little ditty from the late 90's and say until next time.

Anna Sui Fall 2011

Spring has just arrived and I'm already thinking of Fall colour trends. The Pantone colour report is always released in step with Fall Fashion Weeks. Paris, New York and London have passed and I'm getting excited for a trip to Toronto's edition!

The colour I'm most excited for is deep teal. It's one of my all-time favourite colours! (Especially mixed with orange.)

I never really grow tired of this blue-green shade so I'm happy to see it officially listed as a trend, because that means I'll be able to get my hands on some great examples of it in the next few years.  Delicious paired with saffron yellow, it works well with browns, greys and some greens.

One of the reasons I love this tone is the warm/cool vibration. It manages to sit delicately on the line of cool while still seeming to be a warm fall hue. A perfect colour for all seasons, in my books.

Looking ahead at the fall collections, here are some yummy examples of the colour on the runway. I'll keep my eyes peeled in Toronto for more.

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Alberta Ferretti Fall 2011

Marc Jacobs Fall 2011

Mackage Fall 2011

Oscar De La Renta Fall 2011

This past weekend I headed to The Hammer, Hamilton, Ontario to visit with some friends. They live there but were in town so I hitched a ride with them on their way home. Our first stop was the McMaster Museum of Art, on the campus of McMaster University.

Michael Davidson, Distant Shore  2008

I was encouraged to go check the gallery out by artist and curator Michael Davidson who is currently working in Oshawa on a project. He curated an exhibition at the McMaster as a guest curator called Autoplasmic.

The exhibition explores the idea of an artist both being and making art and includes works by the curator himself alongside other Canadian and international artists. Some big names with works featured in this exhibition are Paul Klee and Auguste Rodin, whose works are sourced from the permanent collection of the McMaster Museum of Art.

In his curator's essay Davidson cites Barnett Newman’s 1945 essay The Plasmic Image: “it can be said that the artist, like a true creator is delving into chaos [and] it is precisely this that makes him an artist [trying] to wrest truth from the void.” 


Though the big art names are always cool to check out I was most taken by the artist-curator's works. His technique is a mystery to me, as it is noted as "mixed media". Ah, the elusive claim that is "mixed media"! If I was to guess I would venture to say the artist places wax on heavy paper and then uses gel transfer or another printing method  to transfer photographic works over top of this wax medium, but that is just a guess based on observation. The result is a translucent layering of image and shape that is engrossing and haunting.

Michael Davidson, Caspar   2008

While the essay and concept of the exhibition is challenging, the works appealed to the senses, creating an exhibition of unique experiences for the eye and an accessible art experience for any type of visitor. 


This exhibition took up one of four of the gallery spaces, while other travelling shows assumed other available spaces. A variety of works including sculpture, installation, video and more traditional forms such as print and painting were on view. Just the right size of space to spend an hour or two, the McMaster Museum of Art is well worth stopping into. 






The exhibitions change about every two months, plus it gives you a worthwhile excuse to feel like a student again, whilst walking around on the pretty campus.


It's a pay-what-you-can gallery on the McMaster University campus. 
Learn more about the gallery here.
Read the gallery blog here.

Back in the day (meaning, about 2007), I started a blog that was a lot more personal than this one that touched on feminist topics, social issues, erotic art and trends. It was a bit of a mixed bag. In 2010 I decided to move here under my real name and to change the direction and themes I was writing about. I had a number of reasons for doing this but mostly the reason was that I didn't want to continue to be so personal on my blog and have to remain somewhat anonymous, meanwhile, I wanted to keep certain aspects going. (Trends and Illustrator of the Month, in particular). Going back through the blog and deleting all the personal stuff and changing the name of it seemed unfair to any established readers I had, so I just shut it down. You might even be a reader that came here from that site, because it automatically redirects here.

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Two things got me thinking about that blog this week. One, I started going through all my facebook notes and deleting them. At least the really personal ones. It's not that I'm ashamed of any info I shared (or once shared) it's just that more and more facebook is becoming a tool for me to communicate with new contacts through work. It doesn't seem appropriate for them to be able to look through all kinds of old notes of mine on various personal topics. I am trying to get through them all but there is no quick method and there is almost 100 of them.



Some I'm ok with leaving up so I want to read them all. It's taking forever! Anyhow loads of them are on feminist issues, and those posts helped shape a lot of the content on my old blog.

One post on the old blog was about the meaning of the colours pink and blue. I got thinking about that post this week because I went out to pick up a mouth guard for roller derby practice. I walked into Sportchek and stood at the mouth guard section feeling a little bit lost. I've actually owned a pretty good quality guard in the past, as I had to wear one for playing field hockey in high school. I've worn poor quality and better quality and knew I was going to have to spend a little bit more money to have something comfortable to wear. I compared and contrasted all of the various options deciding I would try to cap my spending in the $20 range. And then I found a pink one.

I'm not really a pink kind of girl (though I do wear magenta and hot pink from time to time) and in the past have turned down pink things simply on the principle that I hate the fact that just because some company makes something pink I'm supposed to want it more. That said, I was pretty into the idea of a pink mouth guard. And then I noticed something. The identical mouth guard was also available in navy blue. For one dollar less.

Look, I might work in the arts but $1 difference wouldn't stop me from buying something I really wanted. Unless that something was identical to the blue variation, except it was in pink for ladies. In the midst of realizing this fact, a staff member approached me and asked if I was finding everything alright. I said yes and pointed out the price difference to him. He said, "huh, that's weird," and walked away. That is exactly what the woman at the counter said when I was checking out as well. I wasn't rude about it. I simply pointed out, when they asked if I had found what I was looking for that I had found it and would be buying it in blue because pink was a dollar more expensive.

Coming back to the beginning of this post I was reminded of a post on my old blog called "Pink is for Girls and Blue is for Boys". Here's an excerpt:

Pink and Blue have not always have the same gender associations as they do now. In fact, in Western culture, the practice of assigning pink to an individual gender began in the 1920s. From then until the 1940s, pink was considered appropriate for boys because it was the more masculine and decided color while blue was considered appropriate for girls because it was the more delicate and dainty color. Since the 1940s, the societal norm apparently inverted so that pink became appropriate for girls and blue appropriate for boys, a practice that has continued into the 21st century.


I've decided raising this topic on this blog makes sense because I write about colour from time to time. Colour trends are cyclical and by this logic, the overwhelming influx of pink-is-for-girls products should wane and go out of style sometime in the next 50 years. At the rate we're going though it doesn't feel that way. What this feels like is a generalized taking-advantage. The company is taking advantage of the pride girls have in their athletic ability. The product being available in the "feminine" colour is designed to play on the desire athletic women have to be seen as feminine. It is most likely hoped that none will notice the price difference, or will not care enough to feel angry about it. 


Where I'm left with this though is a general annoyance. For one, I got no explanation at the store level. Then I tweeted @ the company, which they didn't respond to. Which I can't really be angry at them for I suppose, the probably don't really 'get' twitter. Now I'm posting this blog and I guess my next step is to email them to inquire about their pricing decision. I'll keep you posted on the results, of course.

By the way, I bought the navy blue.

Oh darlings, I've been itching to make a trend post for weeks! And here I am with a little bit of time. I've mentioned before in my blog that I like to think up style themes on which to base my wardrobe decisions. Anyone who has known me (even by vague acquaintance) for a long time knows I'm a bit of a chameleon style-wise. While in some ways I'm consistent (bit of a spaz, nervous, shy-at-first gal with a loud outgoing sublayer who loves art, music and all things culture) in other ways I love and embrace change. Especially self image. One minute I'm obsessed with mens wear, the next with architectural styles, the next with saturated brights. I think this is what lovers of fashion really are, people who love to experiment and explore various versions of themselves. I guess I caught this bug early on, playing dress up with the big garbage bag full of vintage goodies my mom collected for my sister and I as kids. Side note: I would kill to have that bag now. Ack!

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