Hints and tips:
...That photographer is Thomas Ruff, with whom H&deM have been collaborating for decades....
...His other hand holds the rod with the Hand of Justice made for the 14th-century king Charles V, destroyed during the revolution and remade in 1804 for its new sovereign....
...The house has won prizes at the V&A Illustration Awards, as well as being recognised in the book trade for its bindings, production and indexing....
...Today, the most potent symbol of social distancing is the face mask, and institutions including the V&A are already researching examples to collect....
...Ruff’s works mark the completion of the first phase of the expansion of the V&A’s new photography gallery, which more than doubles the space devoted to the art form....
...“I went to see Savage Beauty [the 2015 Alexander McQueen retrospective at the V&A] many times. It felt like the opposite of the fashion industry, which was really speeding up....
...The palette was soft and appealing; the prints and embroideries (some of which had been developed alongside the V&A) were charming and worked as well on the men as the women....
...At that time, says Clare Brown, curator of European textiles at the V&A, lace was the epitome of power, with the lace ruff as its most visible, and fashionable, statement....
...The only decoration came in the form of a random gold stripe running down the back, or part of the side, of a garment and seams sewn on the outside to create a ruff....
...The huge now looks vulgar unless it can be justified for coherent reasons – as in Thomas Ruff’s gigantic Nudes (Gagosian showed one), whose scale is part of the point. There is a reason for all this....
...Tinchy and his “Ruff Sqwad” are now, quite possibly, set to become more famous than anyone on the Lib Dem frontbench....
International Edition