LEGENDS OF THE ULTRA-MEGALORE

The UltraMegaLore is formidable in conversation

What a lovely end to Fashion Wreck...I mean Week ... I had yesterday in the form of a long and languorous interview for Spur with the lady called Hannelore Knuts. I've met Ms Knuts in passing on several occasions over the years and each time she was amazingly gracious. But yesterday was the first time I had the privilege of a sustained conversation with one of the cleverest beauties of our generation. Hannelore has always had this image as a kind of "fashion aristocrat" . In pictures she always reminds me this sort of 20's socialite , like a modern update of a Nancy Cunard , drifting with aloof privilege between different worlds: Antwerp and New York, art and fashion...lighting on whatever shore her fancy takes her and logging these elegantly indifferent pictures. But the woman I found yesterday was very much human and warm and funny, revealing yet still...the elegant image.

She spoke about entering fashion in the era of the Belgian explosion around the Antwerp 6, as a photography student in art school who would often time be drafted to model the student collections of her friends who were aspiring designers. And bang, just that chance drift resulted in the Prada and Gucci campaigns, the Vogue Italia covers w Meisel , the power shoots with Inez and Vinoodh, Juergen Teller and David Sims. Hannelore styled the VPL show for Victoria Bartlett this past fashion week and her Brooklyn loft was the evidence of the ex-art student who grew up in the privileged world of image. The personal choices of those art books, the table top assemblages, the piles of jewelry and long racks of clothing will make for a great editorial. We spoke at length about her Ultra Megalore exhibit which was a case of Hannelore taking an invitation to stage a 10 year career retrospective of her modeling career in the direction of an interesting, collaborative expedition with many of the those photographers, designers, writers and artists she had come to know over the years. And I made the point to her that that Belgian clique and the taste-point that the Antwerp 6 built in the 00's is already being recycled for a new decade(see Balenciaga's SS11 Butch Brigade) . In her white Margiela jumpsuit sipping a cup of tea in her sun flooded loft, Hannelore certainly was true to the cause . I'll upload the full transcript of the talk once the Spur hits Japanese stands.