Where I See Fashion || Interview

Within the creative world we can find inspiration from all areas of the planet, be that people, nature, art, music or fashion. All these things work together to inspire each other in every aspect and combine their own elements to continuously enforce creativity within our lives.

Bianca Luini is a fashion design graduate living Milan, and is the creator and owner of Where I See Fashion, a blog with well over 355,000 views that has taken the Tumblr-Sphere by storm and shown the world that inspiration is everywhere. 

Bianca matches fashion images with a variety of art and nature photographs in a side-by-side comparison drawing the parallels between the two. The compilation of two images is often so compelling and mesmerising that its hard to believe that the right side image was not the original inspiration to the fashion designer - or was it...?

I was lucky enough to speak to Bianca and ask her some questions about her blog and the movement she has created within the world of Tumblr: 

Match #195

Picture by Feng Wang published on Vogue Italia’s website | Google Maps view of the “Underwater Waterfall” in Le Morne, Mauritius

What and why made you start your blog Where I See Fashion?

I’m constantly inspired by the beautiful pictures that I see all over the web, and I've always wanted to find a personal way to collect them. I started noticing similarities between pictures while doing image reserch for uni projects (I've studied Fashion Design in Milan), I kept saving and saving pictures on my laptop until one day I tried to put them properly together, as pairs. I really liked how they looked so I decided to start a blog, and that when WISF was born!

Match #159

Benjamin Jarvis by Thomas Cooksey for HERO Magazine | Building in Eindhoven, Netherlands photographed by GIJS LEUSSINK

When did you originally start seeing the connections, primarily visual, between fashion and art/nature etc?

I've always knew since I got interested in fashion that designers are often inspired by art or nature when creating their collections, and as a fashion design student I've learned how important it is to look for inspiration before starting a project. Now whenever I see new collections I can't help but wonder where the designer took the inspiration from, and that's what I love to show on my blog!

Match #181

Dolce & Gabbana Fall 2014 | Interiors of the Duomo di Monreale in Sicily, Italy

I’ve personally always believed that fashion is an art, how do you feel about this? What makes fashion an art for you?

I strongly believe fashion is a form of art! The definition of the word 'art' in the dictionary is the following: “the expression or application of human creative skill and imagination producing works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power”. I just think fashion fits right in this definition, we may call it decorative or applied art, but to me there's no doubth that it is an art form.

Match #153

Elena Sudakova in “Invitation à la Danse” by Sølve Sundsbø for Numéro Magazine #91 March 2008 | Prometheus Bound by Nicolas-Sébastien Adam, white marble, 1762

How do you make your matches? Is it something that comes naturally and spontaneously to you, or is it more of a process that takes a lot of time?

I have built a sort of image archive where I keep all the pictures I find beautiful and interesting, I save many photos every week and I use this archive to create my matches. It's a process that can take a second or weeks, sometimes I’m lucky enough to find two photos at the same time that perfectly go together but usually I find the perfect pair after a few days. Or maybe I don’t find anything for a week and then I create 15 matches in a day! It’s not a regular process, it kind of just happens when it’s time!

Match #176

Details at Céline Fall 2013 | Forest with green moss and white trees

Where do your source the majority of your images from?

Almost every picture I use is from Tumblr, which I love very much as image source and as community! Sometimes I also use Pinterest or Google, but it's rare.

Style Profile || Eden Gasson

Meet Eden Gasson (aka choccyprincess), a sixteen year old retro-fashion loving feminist from Northampton, England and with over 4000 followers on social media. I've been following her on twitter and instagram for  a long time now and, without this sounding horribly over-enthusiastic, she is probably one of the coolest sixteen year olds I've ever seen and spoken to. She is open-minded and isn't afraid to express her opinions and beliefs, and is a strong advocator of positive body image and feminism. For a sixteen year old she seems way beyond her years and exerts a very mature view on the world. 

What strikes me about Eden is her unique and eclectic style, she has the most amazing wardrobe I have ever seen, and with most of it being vintage. Her style illuminates a sort of joy and confidence that so many girls lack nowadays, and that so much fashion does not have. Her bold colours, one-off finds and hidden gems all, I feel, represent what Eden is like as a person and her style emanates her and truly is unique.

After laughing at her tweets and stalking her instagram I found her tumblr and was introduced to much more of her wardrobe than I had already seen and I was, I have to to say, exceedingly jealous. She seems to have this whole fashion thing figured out and she told me that she has no main fashion inspiration, and all at the age of sixteen. It's enough to make you look at your own wardrobe and wonder what you are doing wrong…

"I love fashion and love planning my outfits, getting inspiration off of tumblr and from magazines etc, and colour-coordinating my outfit with accessories. I feel like my fashion sense does reflect me as a person in some aspects and it is a way of expressing myself and my artistic side, but I honestly do just wear whatever I like to wear just because I can."

Anyway, I've haven't done one of these before, but I have been very eager to try it, so I thought I would do little style profile/interview with Eden and see what she feels about her own style, fashion and fashion within feminism.

Tumblr || Twitter || Instagram

Have you always been interested in fashion, and if so can you remember when you first became really interested? 

I think I have always been interested in fashion, but didn't really get fully into it until I was around 15.

What would you consider your style to be?

My style can go from 50s movie star to 90s goth to 5 year old in the length of a week . My style is a mix of anything and everything I think is cool. My classmates used to say I came into school dressed as different person every day!

I've noticed your massively into vintage - can you remember what the first vintage thing you bought was? 

I wish I had both a cool answer to this and a good memory, but no I do not. I can remember the first time I went into my local vintage shop though. It's this ginormous warehouse hidden just out of my town and I had never seen so many different colours and styles in one place. It's called 'A Most Marvellous Place To Shop' and it really is.

Favourite era of fashion? 

I want to say 60s but this is honestly like a mother having to chose a favourite child.

Have your parents (or any other family member) influenced your style in any way? 

Yes, both my parents! I was around 14 and I remember my parents bringing a load of clothes down from the attic and it included my Dad's original 90s Nirvana oversize tie-dye jumpers and my Mum's clothes from her goth and punk days as a teen. My Mum influenced my style mainly though, her teenage days she was a punk with bright red hair and fishnet tights and in her later teens she was a goth with corsets, choker necklaces and these long black pvc coats which were so kickass. In the 90s she also used to go clubbing with my Dad, her in fur coats and him in his pin stripe suits, they'd call themselves the "King and Queen" of the local live music venue. My mum also used to wear a suit jacket whilst topless underneath or with a bra which I always though was super cool (which I'm yet to experience).  

How do you think feminism has influenced women's fashion, specifically today's fashion? I've not had a big think about this. I know it's now acceptable and pretty badass for women to wear suits, I've seen a lot of women wearing them lately too in the fashion world which I think is awesome and is influenced by feminism. 

Would you say your own style is influenced by feminist movements etc?

I wouldn't say my own style is, I do own a few T-shirts with Feminist phrases on if that counts, although since becoming a feminist I don't care if people don't like what I wear, or if it's too "sexy", "shows too much skin" or "isn't 'right' for my body". So my confidence in outfit choice has been effected by my journey as a feminist. 

All images are taken from Eden Gasson's Tumblr with permission.