NMNM

 

Princess Grace: More than an Image is the next stage in a long term collaboration between Pringle of Scotland and the internationally renowned Central Saint Martins College of Art And Design Fashion Courses.

Thanks to the help of the Nouveau Musée National de Monaco, the BA Fashion Course History & Theory students carried out extensive research into the wardrobe of Princess Grace of Monaco through accessing archives of personal contacts of the Palace, as well as Institutions in the Principality including the Prince's Palace Archives and Library, the Archives Audiovisuelles de Monaco, the Bibliothèque Municipale Louis Notari, and the Garden Club of Monaco.

The research focused on Princess Grace's daily wardrobe, particularly knitwear and Pringle of Scotland archive styles, and how this was essential to her personal interests and passions. The findings will be debuted in an Exhibition hosted by the Nouveau Musée National de Monaco- an intimate study capturing her style in the most relaxed and familial situations. The second stage of the project, launched in March 2013 in Paris during Fashion Week, sees Pringle of Scotland and the Central Saint Martins MA Fashion Design students take aesthetic elements from the exhibition and translate them into a knitwear capsule collection.

The title Princess Grace: More than an Image derives from a quote that the Princess gave to Time Magazine in 1955, whilst still the film actress Grace Kelly, "I don't want to dress up a picture with just my face". This sense of exploring the person behind the image is evident throughout the project and the archive discoveries exhibited.

Pringle of Scotland is the iconic brand founded in 1815 at the birthplace of the Scottish knitwear industry. From the beginning technical innovation has led to the creation of knitwear as outerwear, the signature argyle pattern and the classic twinset.

 

Chance and curiosity encourage meetings; walking past a shop window, an acquaintance in common, these are triggers for a collaboration...

When, somewhat haphazardly, Marie-Claude Beaud, Director of the Nouveau Musée National de Monaco,walked into the on aura tout vu boutique-cum-studio in Paris, she discovered a world, two unusual personalities—those of Livia Stoianova and Yassen Samouilov—but above all nothing less than a passion for fashion, accessories, and how to present things.

At the same time the Museum team drew up a cultural project, "Training for a Museum", whose goal, inter alia, is to protect, develop and spread the word about a national heritage that is as little known about as it is varied. The collection of dolls and robots, donated by Madeleine de Galéa - a close friend of Ambroise Vollard, and a passionate collector—is part of it, but its presentation raises both scenographic and museographic issues which are quite different from pictures and sculptures.

These accessories for interiors, because this is indeed what it is all about, call for a special set-up, made possible by the exuberant imagination of the on aura tout vu twosome who devised the exhibition down to the tiniest detail.

on aura tout vu breathes new life into the NMNM collections by comparing two visions of fashion, that of 19th century dolls, and their own!

With their magic wand, they turn the Villa Sauber into a circuit of discoveries and surprises, plunging visitors into an amazing and festive world, where the boundaries of reality are jostled. The Haute Couture costumes expand the refinement of this miniature world, while hybrid beings spring from their extravagant imagination.

From Second Empire society gatherings to contemporary night clubbing, from astonishing black furniture to the universal magic of whiteness, from the dinner jacket to the bridal gown, ... the show offers a playful exploration of the world's customs.

Presenting scenes from the daily round, be it real or dreamed, on aura tout vu mixes codes and modes with great gusto. An invitation to travel in time and space with curiosity, wonderment and fantasy acting as your guides.

This new cooperative project at the NMNM is the second part of the exhibition format "Looking up™ ", devised by the NMNM and ushered in with the artist Yinka Shonibare, MBE, proposing a veritable dialogue between works making up Monaco's heritage and contemporary art.

For more information on high fashion house on aura tout vu click here

Models, sculptures, photographs and videos: the works of Yinka Shonibare, MBE, are an Ariadne's thread inviting the visitor to discover collections that belong to the artistic history of the Principality but have never or rarely been shown. The Nouveau Musée National de Monaco's Art and Performance collections will be regularly reinterpreted in the Looking up...™ series.

 

In his work, Yinka Shonibare, MBE (Member of the Order of the British Empire), an Anglo- Nigerian artist who lives in London and was born there in 1962, unites different worlds in a single space whilst drawing on the multiculturalism that constitutes our world today. His reflections on identity and memory mix together his two home cultures in a highly original aesthetic way. Bringing Dutch wax into a Victorian world and using it to dress the middle classes that he represents with headless mannequins proves to be an artistic gesture that made him instantly recognisable.

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A retrospective of Yinka Shonibare’s work has just been shown at the Brooklyn Museum in New York, followed by the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, and his Nelson’s Ship in a Bottle project was inaugurated in Trafalgar Square in London on May 24, 2010.

Monte-Carlo has been and is still a particularly vibrant artistic hub for stage and performing arts. The public encounters the Visconti “maquettothèque” (set-design models collection) of the Monte-Carlo Opera, the Bosio brothers’ sculptures and engravings, Eugène Frey’s fabulous luminous decors, the Marquis du Périer du Mouriez’s strange collection of transparent paintings, plus the religious boxes from the de Galéa Collection and many other artificialia from the storage collection that evoke the cabinets of curiosities of the 17th and 18th centuries, the ancestors of European museums.

A costume conservation workshop will run throughout the exhibition, providing an opportunity for the public to explore previously hidden elements of the collection as they are being restored.