“We were all out of work so we were going to the charity shops – we were accidentally dressed by Oxfam. In the early 90s, these stores weren’t filled with Gap T-shirts, they were selling clothes made 10 or 15 years earlier. We looked like we had adopted a retro chic style, but in truth […]

On the banks of the River Mersey, between Liverpool and New Brighton, Tom Wood photographs the youth of the mid-1980s trying to fill the void and boredom. Ferry accros the Mersey: first contact with the youth of Liverpool In his first series of photographs Ferry accros the Mersey (1985), Tom Wood captures young people killing […]

“The light diffracted in a prism is the symbol of the 80’s, whereas in the 70’s we were talking more about shadow. Here we are splashed with multicoloured rays that drip onto white dinner jackets like vanilla in a whisky and coke.” Alain Pacadis, Nightdealing, Libération, 24 octobre 1979. After May 68, intellectuals and artists, […]

First painter and then photographer, Émile Savitry makes the artistic and cultural life of Saint-Germain-des-Prés and Montparnasse districts the privileged frame for his shots. Artists’ studios, jazz cellars, café terraces and restaurants on the Left Bank are the theatre for his human comedies. Humanist photography in post-war Paris Along with Robert Doisneau, Willy Ronis and […]

Jeans are five-pocket trousers made of denim: a cotton twill fabric with unbleached weft threads and indigo warp threads. From Nimes to the American spinning mills Denim originates from a town in the south of France from which the fabric takes its name: “de Nîmes” (literally “from Nîmes”). From the 17th century onwards, Nîmes was […]

“I have often seen, in the past, at the back of the bar on the Pont-Royal in Paris, Leiris and Bacon together, leaning towards each other in complicit conversation. I liked to watch them, Leiris being serious and Bacon trying to be.” Philippe Sollers, Francis Bacon’s Passions. Bacon was only lately recognised in France. His […]

In the early 1970s, Claude Sautet met Michel Piccoli. For a whole decade, the director filmed the actor in The Things of Life, Max and the Junkmen, Vincent, François, Paul and the Others, and finally Mado. Sautet met Piccoli through the composer Philippe Sarde, who composed the music for most of his films. The director […]

On the outskirts of Paris, an upright city, an airport concourse, American tourists, Monsieur Hulot, a missed appointment, endless back and forths, a lift, a Household Arts Show, misunderstandings, reflections, open-space offices, an American girl, preparations for the Royal Garden restaurant opening night, cocktail jackets and dinner jackets, dancing all night, mornings at the drugstore […]

Born on may 20th, 1932 in Wiesbaden, Dieter Rams is a German industrial designer considered as one of the founders of the functionalist school of industrial design. His work is closely linked to the Braun company, for which he designed radios, record players, scales and calculators from 1955 to 1995 A synthesis between Ivy League […]

In 1927, Carl Jung had a dream about Liverpool – citing it as “the pool of life.” Literally, it’s true, as England’s North West city is historically a major port for trade and exploration. But Jung’s phrase is equally apt for Liverpool’s cultural scene, because the city has mastered an output of music which, to […]