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| Le Cirque Macabre at Maria Luisa Boutique |
| October 23, 2007 |
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There wasn't a shadow of doubt when it came to deciding the winner of the Maria Luisa Award this July.
The decision was so certain that the prize was turned from a fashion prize to an accessories one. Simply put, Justin Smith's millinery collection "Le Cirque Macabre" won hands down - which makes two prizes together with the i-D Styling Award - and got prepared to fly to Paris to the windows of Maria Luisa's accessories boutique in rue du Mont Thabor, Paris.
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Justin's road to accessories design started out from a place far away, with disciplines that have apparently no relation what so ever with what he now does so brilliantly. If you were to have met him in the nineties, you would have found him training as a chef. He then abandoned what could have been culinary career to switch to hairdressing where his talent for, let's say, "bringing shape to heads" burst out. After winning several prizes in hairdressing competitions, Justin opened a successful hairdressing salon called "And People Like Us" in London. Almost in the same period he began following part time courses in millinery first at the London College of Fashion, then at Kensington & Chelsea College, where he strengthened his abilities before entering the Millinery MA course at Royal College of Arts, from where he successfully graduated in 2007 with an extremely well received collection called "Le Cirque Macabre". It was inspired by the idea of the hat as a prop in the worlds of circus, variety, music hall, cabaret, burlesque, striptease, magic...Each hat in his collection was tailored to an individual burlesque or circus performer and was designed to be used as part of a performance, while the styling was based on a Victorian funeral. This same collection led him to the awards he won at ITS#SIX.
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Maria Luisa is a long time friend of ITS with a genuine interest and passion for up-and-coming young talented designers, supporting them as much as possible when she believes their talent must not remain in the shadows. She's been doing it for ages now and everyone expresses very high consideration for her taste, since she believed in and would display in her shop windows designers like John Galliano, Martin Margiela and Ann Demeulemeester - only to name a few - when nobody knew who these guys were...
The Maria Luisa Award is an amazing opportunity for visibility: the winner's work is displayed in the shop windows (he/she is also involved in the set up of the windows) during Paris Fashion Week in October, when all of the most important press people, opinion leaders and professionals in the field gather in the "Ville Lumière" for the catwalk shows. And everyone pays a visit to Maria Luisa's shops to have a look at who might be the next big thing...
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Justin's work was so appreciated that he was asked to not only display the pieces of his collection but also some hats from previous projects. Together with the enthusiasm for the opportunity given to him by ITS, he was also very happy to meet Maria Luisa and her collaborators in person. He got along amazingly with all of them (his comment on Maria Luisa says it all: "she is fantastic"), and you can see the results in the photos.
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