Hi Arachnids, I was thrilled to wake up and read this article the other morning (sent to me by Mary Mangan in MA)!
I mentioned in my IOLI talk on Wednesday that one of my interview subjects from Genoa, Italy told me that more designers should use handmade lace, and I agreed. At the moment, there are only two other mainstream/couture fashion designers that I know of that use handmade lace: Ulyana Sergeenko (who is Russian and uses Vologda lace) and Manolo Blahnik (he used bobbin lace for a special one-off pair of shoes a few years back). So to see Maria Grazie Chiuri at Dior focusing so much energy on traditional craftsmanship and celebrating the processes publicly on all of their social media platforms is refreshing! It's a big change from their previous creative directors. I certainly hope that other designers follow suit; I see it happening with younger designers but we need the older design houses with more money to do the same. It's true that the journalist made some errors in her reporting in the InStyle article, but to be fair journalists of today are churning out tons of online content so it's hard for them to do thorough research (especially when we are all stuck working at home). I have consulted with a few journalists on fashion history subjects and online publications demand they work at a breakneck pace to keep up with the 24-hour news cycle. I did in fact reach out to this journalist to tell her how much the lace community was thrilled to see bobbin lace used in high fashion and that we were circulating her article widely. I also extended an offer that she and everyone she works with is always welcome to contact me if they have any questions about lace. She was very nice and grateful in her response and said that this was her first time ever hearing about handmade lace, and now we follow each other on social media to stay in touch. As has already been pointed out, the obvious obstacle here is that many people in the US have simply never heard of handmade lace techniques. That is why I rely on social media to spread the word, as there are millions of users (even a billion?) that use those platforms. Seeing this article in a mainstream publication gives me hope for the future! Best Wishes, Elena - To unsubscribe send email to majord...@arachne.com containing the line: unsubscribe lace y...@address.here. For help, write to arachne.modera...@gmail.com. Photo site: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lacemaker/sets/
