FTV Review

This week's program featured Calvin Klein, Jean Paul Gaultier, Lieve Prins and Jennie Shimizu.

Calvin Klein

While other designers are going for glamour, Calvin's fall collection had a more functional feel, with longer lengths, his new length for this season - just above the ankle for day and evening. He said he was not concerned with following the pack. He knows how he likes women to look. He doesn't want women to look like children. His styles are clean- cut in plain fabrics.

Lieve Prins - Amsterdam

Lieve is a photocopy artist. That might sound boring, but her works are far from it. They are exotic jigsaw puzzles; lifesize surreal murals, pieced-together shots done on a colour photocopier.

A former interior decorator, Lieve discovered her true calling at a local copy shop nearly fifteen years ago. In the beginning, when she started her work, she would look at the copies for hours, and think "This is amazing." To her, it is more than just a colour copy. It's a hard process that requires accuracy. One image is sometimes built up of forty compositions.

This unique direction has made her a folk art hero. Some of her work has made it to galleries and a Dutch TV show on pop art. Her work has appeared on a Tragically Hip CD cover.

The models that she works with have to suffer for her art; she smears them with paint and then rolls them over a working photocopier. The models get hot and dirty, but the result is well worth it.

Jean Paul Gaultier

Paris

Gaultier presented his mass market line at a clothing trade show. The runway was set up as a Paris street the way JP sees it. As this collection is based on street fashion he wanted to show all the things one can do in a city - walking, eating, even taking showers. Maybe these clothes aren't the kind of thing you'd wear walking down your street, but if you're young, you could wear it to a night club.

Many of the people in the audience were arty street punks, probably unable to afford his collection. But, I'm sure they were making mental notes, preparing their own interpretation of them. He wanted this collection to be commercial, and not just for the elite.

New York

Two weeks after his show in Paris, Jean Paul launched a new perfume called JP. It's packaged as a bottle in a can. It looks like a soup can without the label. Inside, a female shaped bottle is revealed. He describes it as smelling like a mixture of nail varnish remover and vanilla. He said you should smell edible when you wear perfume.

Jennie Shimizu

A 23-year old tomboy, whose passion is motorbikes, Jennie was discovered at her garage by a talent scout. Her looks don't conform to the modern standard of beauty. Her hard-edged graphic look may not get her on the cover of Vogue magazine, but her tough beauty suits many designers just fine. They use Jennie to catch the eye of their clients.

Her life doesn't only revolve around modeling; she has other hobbies. She works on her bike and truck, rides with her friends, and visits family in LA.

As she walks down the runway with all the people looking at her, she feels like someone else, and she wonders what she is doing there. She says she kind of sneaked into modeling, so when they're fed up with her, she'll just sneak out again. As long as they keep booking her, she'll model. When she's not working anymore, it'll just seem like a fantasy in her life.