Bravo Reality Star Debuts CARNIVALE for 2010 NYC Fashion Week

Annabelle /Autumn Winter 2010 CARNIVALE

designed by Anna McCraney 

(NEW YORK) Anna McCraney, winner of Bravo's The Fashion Show, presented her FW 2010 collection, CARNIVALE, Saturday night at Collective Hardware on the Bowery.

 

Yes, the pics are a little...artsy. Sorry. My camera died right before the show started, so I borrowed my friend's iPhone, which has no flash, and the models were walking pretty fast, so, using available light, with movement, usually ends up...artsy. But I think you can get the show's vibe with these images; just pretend Deborah Turbeville shot them.

Interesting that Turbeville's name comes to mind----because McCraney's collection was totally Deborah Turbeville: skeletal models (seriously skeletal), crimped, red hair, '30s make-up, and the occasional walking stick. It was kind of like watching The Bob Newhart Show, if Fassbinder, or Hans-Jurgen Syberberg had suddenly stepped in to replace Newhart's director (Peter Bonerz, according to IMDB).

Fashion Week's Deep Sea Adventure (Complete With Champagne, Limousines and Japanese Paparazzi)

SUSAN CIANCIOLO
(NEW YORK) Veteran NYC fashion designer and multimedia artist Susan Cianciolo doesn't consider herself a designer, but rather an "artist who occasionally makes clothing,".

Not that Cianciolo doesn't have the chops to become as big a design force as her Parsons' classmates Mark Badgley and James Mischka; in fact, she helped launch their line upon graduation from Parsons, before branching off to help create Kim Gordon's influential X-Girl clothing line in 1995.

Despite never having become a household word like her aforementioned classmates, Cianciolo has nonetheless remained an influential creative force in the fashion world, designing clothes and costumes for musicians and artists, while creating occasional collections constructed from organic and "re-purposed" fabrics.

Cianciolo's garments are custom-made at her loft in Chinatown, and can be ordered via her website, susancioniolo.com

While Cianciolo won't divulge the names of the artists and performers with whom she works, one can find her aesthetic when looking at recent images of Bjork, MGMT, Yoko Ono, Antony and the Johnsons, and Annie, to name a few.

Cianciolo's FW 2010 collection, inspired by deep-sea photos from the National Geographic, was presented as one element in a group show incorporating photography, clothing and sculpture, the sculpture in question being the accessories. I guess you could count the models' extravagant up-dos as sculpture also, but no credits were given for these individual works of art. However, a quick visit backstage revealed makeup artist Christopher Drummond touching up the models' hair, so maybe he's the mystery artist behind the hair sculpture.

The collection, part of a show called Underneath the Sea, Inside a Mountain was presented Tuesday night at SoHo's White Box Gallery, where, inside, throngs of Japanese paparazzi huddled around a slab-like, rectangular plinth dominating the center of the room. The black-clad Japanese paparazzi army, with their intimidating equipment, made some lesser-equipped photographers feel a bit abashed, but we soldiered on bravely, snapping away with our humble Nikon point-and-shoots (which don't work very well, by the way).


The paparazzi, grouped as they were in the center of the exhibition space, presented a unique reversal of their role as as media, turning them into the spectacle, as opposed to communicators. Was this intentional? Cianciolo won't say.