W E B B

WEBB MAGTHIS IS THE FIRST AND MOST PROBABLY THE LAST EDITION OF WEBB MAGAZINE AS IT HAS BEEN MADE PURELY FOR THE PUR-POSE OF SHOW CASING WHAT I CAN DO.

WEBB MAGAZINE CONSISTS OF PHOTOGRAPHY, ILLUSTRATION, AN ARTICLE, AN ESSAY, MY BRAND BELLE FLEUR AND MOST IMPORTANTLY MY IMAGINATION.

ALL WORK IN THIS MAGAZINE HAS BEEN CREATED BY NATASHA WEBB, APART FROM SOME IMAG-ES IN ‘CAN FASHION BE ART???’ HAVE BEEN TAKEN FROM MAGA-ZINES AND THEN USED FOR COL-LAGES. IN ADDITION, REFERNCES FOR QUOTES HAVE NOT BEEN INCLUDED AS THIS MAGAZINE IS SIMPLEY TO SHOWCASE MY WORK.

NATASHA wEBB

contents

HOLLYWOOD TRAGEDY

toeCracker

Urban Outfitters meets metal

CAN FASHION BE ART???

I’ll be the Princess

CONTACT:natasha.webb@hotmail.com07703381366

HOLLYWOOD TRAGEDY

HOLLYWOOD GLAMOUR MEETS GREEK TRAGEDY

IT ALL ENDS IN DRAPES

Beautiful

Ballet...?

toeCrackerWORDS BY NATASHA WEBB

PHOTOGRAPHY BY NATASHA WEBB

Part of The Tivoli Ballet and lock-ing in the leading role of Clara for the Christmas performance of the Nutcrack-er at the young age of 19, Corey Annand talks to Natasha Webb about the reality of being a ballet dancer.

“Everywhere you go in life you will come across rude and disrespectful peo-ple,” Corey clarifies with a tight bun on her head. It seems she’s always prepped for a dance rehearsal. With the leading female role for one of the most demand-ing ballet companies, she knows exactly how stressful dancing can be. “It’s a difficult and demanding role.” Being a ballet dancer is an all-consuming pro-fession.

Corey tells me the dancing world is a difficult place to work. “Your work is personal and judged by a persons pref-erence.” There’s nothing worse then opening up your heart and soul through dance and being ripped to sheds. Not very confidence building, right? Even when you’re the top of the class, there’s always a desperation to try your best and impress the big shots, and it seems there’s no holding back her cho-reographer. “I’m told that it’s not good enough when I have tried my best.” The role of Clara would make you think Co-rey is talented enough to need no harsh criticism, however she is constantly be-ing put down, after hours upon hours of what any audience would find inspira-tional and mind blowing dancing. Even the littlest mistake will incur shouting, humiliation and starting over. There is no chance of showing weakness Corey explains, “You don’t want them to think you can’t cope because your role might be taken away.” The strength Corey has is incredible; to be able to hold in all emotions and despair in fear of loosing what could be the making of her as a dancer.

"You dont want them to think you cant cope be-

cause your role might be taken away"

Ballet conjures up images of pretty tutus, ribbons on shoes and a tight bun. Unfortunately the realistic and unpleas-ant truths are such images like bleeding toenails and bunions. One of the worst parts can be the injuries. Corey has been through them all, from an over stretched Achilles tendon to bleeding toes, the hard and demanding career comes with a price, not that is hasn’t got enough of them already. Only 19 years old, and having just graduated from Elmhurst dance school, the oldest vocational dance school and in association with Birmingham Royal Ballet, Corey is still young, which isn’t taken into consideration with her work. It’s all about the talent and personality she brings to the character of Clara. “Sometimes I think they forget that I am so young and inexperienced.” Mov-ing to a new country completely alone is a brave step not many have the guts to take. She understands that it’s not so easy for her choreographer, “they are under pressure too to meet deadlines and reach standards. It’s easy to forget that we are all human.” When it comes down to it, any human emotions have to be thrown out of the picture to create an extraordinary and truly remarkable per-formance.Corey understands where she stands. Every bit of her blood, sweat and tears is worth it in the long run, as long as she gets to dance.

Urban Outfitters

meets metal ....

BILLY WEARS:LEFT PAGE:JEANS Black Five Pocket Cord Trousers, £40; BLAZER Grey Nep Shawl Jacket, £95; ACCESSORIES, stylists own.RIGHT PAGE:JEANS BDG High Rise Ankle Cigarette, £50; SHIRT Black Diamond, £60ALL URBAN OUTFITTERS

BILLY WEARS:TOP Ecru Nep Tee, £20; JEANS BDG High Rise Ankle Cigarette, £50 URBAN OUTFITTERS

Belle F leur started as a bridal hair accessory brand in 2011, after I hand made clips for the seven bridesmaids at my sisters wedding. They were so well received that I then started making more and de-cided to create a brand to start selling them. This project was put on hold as I started university. However during my f irst year at Cardiff School of Creative and Cultural Industries, I developed my brand, Belle F leur, into a T-shirt brand for one of my projects. To this day, Belle F leur is a working progress but hopefully one day will be up and running as a small successfu l brand.

CAN FASHION BE ART???

‘Art requires time, contemplation and thought. Fashion is instantane-ous.’ This concept of fashion as temporary and functional underpins the criticism of fashion as irrelevant to the world of art. Despite being ‘instantaneous’ it is one of the largest global industries, with expected revenue of 558 billion just for 2012 and has never been more crucia l for the economy. This argument it countered by the view that it takes just as much thought to design a dress as it does to produce a piece of artwork and this is considered here by outlining the changes in perception to the role of fashion over the last century. This leads to the incorporation of fashion and dress by artists as a symbol of what their art is trying to portray, and focuses in particular on the issues of identity addressed by Alicia Framis, Marie-Ange Guilleminot, Y inka Shonibare and Alexander McQueen. This raises questions about how fashion is most importantly used as ‘a form of self-expression’ and therefore retains longevity through its socia l and cultural references across different eras and genres.

Fashion is seen as having less of a status due to its ephemerality. Clothing can be temporary, as it can be bought at such a low cost; however, true fashion, couture, is regarded a lot more sustainable due to the quality and price, but also due to its connection with different arts movements since the early 20th century. As time has moved on, fashion has adapted and transformed into being a dignif ied art, ‘Artists turn to fashion, just as clothes designers turn to the f ine arts’.

As fashion developed through time, there was a global recogni-tion for the growing sustainability of clothing, and how the design, cut and creation of clothing could allow it to be as beautifu l as art once ‘the right conditions were cre-ated for radical change’. This gap between fashion and art gradually bridged due to the changes of art throughout the twentieth century. Peter Woollen gives an insightful analysis as to how this bridge oc-curred in Addressing the Century. He notes that the ‘clothes had no lasting market valu e beyond the original transaction between de-signer and client’ at the end of the nineteenth century and were more linked to artisans design rather than art.

Clothing was seen as being made for one purpose, to be worn and un-til they had lasting market valu e, overcoming transcendency, Woollen argues that fashion was not able to achieve the same status as art. The arts and crafts movement brought these two worlds together and ex-panded into dress design, illustrated by Gustav K limt’s ‘Art Dresses’.Although the 1920s saw a threat from modernism in again separating f ine art from decorative arts ‘signs of a new rapprochement between art and fashion began to re-surface only in the 1950s’ after the Second World War when luxury fashion was born . Christian Dior started off the golden era in 1947 with his New Look, which completely changed women’s fashion, and allowed fem-ininity back into women’s fashion.

One area that helped to bring together artists’ inter-est in clothes was the de-velopment of the new youth cultures and pop culture from the early 1960s, which refer-ence the 1920s and prompt-ed artists to f ind ways of bridging ‘the gap between avant-garde art and popular culture.’ This bridging of the post-modernist movement saw fashioners designers look to f ine arts, just as art-ists gained inspiration from fashion. Movements such as ‘Wearable art’ and ‘Concep-tual clothing’ in the 1980’s helped to develop the transi-tion to combine the two art forms.

The collaboration between art and fashion occurred in 1982 when the March edi-tion of New York magazine Artforum used an innovative cover created by Issey Mi-yake and Koshige Shochi-kudo, which brought together a fusion of sculpture, artwork and fashion. It signalled the start of this new relationship between couture fashion and art.

The art world gradually came to use clothing within its pieces, and as these pieces are being more widely exhibited, artists are in-creasing exploring the world that was once only available for fashion designers. There is a power that can be achieved by an artist’s ex-pression of fashion and expressing their take on the role of cloth-ing. There are many examples of contemporary artists who absorb their practice into their art pieces by using clothing to symbolise global issu es that focus on hu-man identity. Some of these is-sues may not directly relate to the clothing and fashion industry it-self, although a number of artists do use clothing to evoke particu-lar connections related to clothing and identity, such as criticisms of mass production by Alicia Framis. Other artists use dress to relate individual and cultural stories, as can be seen in the work of Ma-rie-Ange Guilleminot.

Others look to the role of the class system and colonia l exploitation, as demonstrated in the work of Y inka Shonibare and Alexander McQueen.

I’ll be the PrincessPhoto shoot inspired by Taylor Swift’s music video, Love StoryStyling and Photography: Natasha WebbModel: Sophie Croft

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