Black - The Queen of All Colours

Attended a lecture hold by National Museum of Singapore at The Salon –Level 1 of National Museum- on May 18^th 2011. The lecture was held in conjunction with Beauty in Black exhibition (Please refer to Beauty in Black Part ) and Part 2 for more information) that will be held up until June 13^th 2011.

The speaker for the lecture was Anthony Tan. He is a Senior Lecturer of Department of Fashion Studies of Nanyang Academy of fine Arts. The curator for Beauty in Black exhibition was also present at the lecture and assisted Anthony in answering the questions from the audience during the Q & A session at the end of the lecture.

Anthony shared his knowledge of the evolution of the colour black and why black continues to be staple affection and obsession by so many around the world and across cultures.

Anthony started the presentation by explaining about the history of modern black dress and how Coco Channel started the “black dress” trend.

Coco Chanel and her famous black dress

Black colour is always being associated with “funeral” and “death” especially in Asian culture. However, how amazing it is that every where thou go, thou shall see that lots of people are actually wearing black colour nowadays. The trend and people’s perceptions had changed.

One of Anthony’s statement does real for Mel. He mentioned that one could express himself by wearing black colour. In contrary, those colorful clothes actually drew people’s attention to the clothing rather than one who wear the particular clothing.

Personally, Mel thinks that it does true. Black is simple and elegant plus it’s easy to mix and match with other accessories and clothing. Let say with one plain black short skirt for instance, thou could create different kind of looks -sporty, casual, formal, etc-. Thou could express those feelings and mood easily without drawing the attention away from thou as the wearer.

Anthony also mentioned about how the changing of trend of Black colour. Black, which once was considered as luxury items due to its pricing and exclusivity, is no longer treated conservatively. The design are varied and become more sophisticated in the recent years especially with more young designers with more creative and rebellions side come into the scene.

REi KAwakubo’s –founder of Comme des Garçons- twisted padded jacket.

Note: Anthony mentioned that REi KAwakubo stated in one of her interview that she always work with three shades of black.

Victor & Rolf with their A/W 2001 collection, with the theme of “Black Hole”, went extreme by painted the model’s body with black paint even themselves.

Gareth Pugh, young fashion designer from the UK, whose collection is beyond wow. Gareth Pugh collections are real crazy and weird but yet there are amazing and totally different.

Gareth Pugh's A/W 2009

After showing some of those amazing collection, the lecturer was closed with Q&A session with discussion about black colour and its recent development.