Paper as Couture: Katsuya Kamo

I have been thinking about paper the past few days: folding origami cranes from colorful Japanese paper for a greeting card idea that's stuck in my head. This is followed by my search on YouTube for more intricate and impressive paperfolding. This then reminds me of Katsuya Kamo, a brilliant artist & paper wizard recruited by Karl Lagerfeld to turn the Spring 2009 Chanel Couture show into a spectacle in white. What Kamo and his assistants created for this show was nothing short of breathtaking - all white flower hair and head pieces for a couture collection itself almost completely white. These intricate assemblages of flowers are made out of PAPER, paper. Incredible.

Tropical Mosaic Table

This is a mosaic table in which I was allowed to create the design myself. I have a fondness for those clients in the past that have such a faith in one's talents that they just say "create something, anything..." All the information I was given was that she loved tropical flowers, and the colors red and yellow. No blue, no birds, and basically that was it. We found the extremely heavy antique iron base from an antique dealer, the top of which was four feet across, the perfect size for the breakfast nook in her house. With her color suggestions in mind, I chose four well known flowers - hibiscus, bird of paradise, plumeria, and anthurium - and arranged them 'in the round' so that no matter where one sat at the table, he or she would still have a flower pointing in their direction. Combined with various greeneries, I thought it came out quite well, don't you? I'll cover various aspects of my mosaic process as well as techniques I learned along the way in future posts.