Iconoclasts - Season4 - Stella McCartney + Ed Ruscha

Stella McCartney

DESIGNER

Born and raised in London, Stella McCartney graduated from Central Saint Martins in 1995. A signature style of sharp tailoring, natural confidence and sexy femininity was immediately apparent in her first collection. After only two collections, in 1997, she was appointed the Creative Director of Chloe in Paris and enjoyed great success during her tenure. In 2001, Stella McCartney launched her own fashion house under her name in a joint venture with Gucci Group and showed her first collection in Paris in October 2001. A lifelong vegetarian, Stella McCartney does not use any leather or fur in her designs. Her collections include women’s ready-to-wear, accessories, eyewear, fragrance and organic skincare. Her perfume, "Stella," launched successfully in September 2003. Stella McCartney operates stores in Manhattan's Meatpacking District, London’s Mayfair and LA's West Hollywood and recently opened stores in Shanghai, Singapore and Moscow. Her collections are now distributed in over 40 countries through 600 wholesale accounts including specialty shops and department stores. Stella McCartney has ventured outside the world of fashion through several collaborations with artists including Gary Hume in 2002, David Remfry in 2002, Robert Crumb in 2005, and with Jeff Koons on her Spring/Summer 2006 collection using his prints on dresses and accessories. In addition to the main line collection, a long-term partnership with Adidas was introduced in September 2004. The critically acclaimed sports performance collection "Adidas by Stella McCartney," has since successfully grown to include several sports categories including running, gym, yoga, tennis, swimming, dance and most recently golf for the spring summer 2008 collection. In November 2005, the hugely successful one-off collection "Stella McCartney for H&M" sold out worldwide in record time. In September 2006, "Stella In Two," a new interpretation of her successful fragrance "Stella" introduced a new way to customize fragrance by splitting the notes of the original fragrance into the liquid Peony and the solid perfume, Amber, which can either be worn alone or layered. In 2007, Stella McCartney unveiled CARE by Stella McCartney, the first luxury organic skincare line, containing 100% organic active ingredients which took more than 3 years to develop, in collaboration with YSL Beaute. In 2008, a new lingerie line and a limited edition travel collection with LeSportsac was launched in the spring. The following awards have recognized Stella McCartney's achievement in fashion and social awareness: VH1/Vogue Fashion and Music 2000 Designer of the Year Award (2000, NY), the Woman of Courage Award for work against cancer at the prestigious Unforgettable Evening event (2003, LA), the Glamour Award for Best Designer of the Year (2004, London), the Star Honouree at the Fashion Group International Night of the Stars (2004, NY), the Organic Style Woman of the Year Award (2005, NY), the Elle Style Award for Best Designer of the Year Award (2007, London) and Best Designer of The Year at the British Style Awards (2007, London)

Edward Ruscha

ARTIST

Born in 1937 in Omaha, Nebraska, Edward Ruscha was raised in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, where his family moved in 1941. In 1956 he moved to Los Angeles to attend the Chouinard Art Institute, and had his first solo exhibition in 1963 at the Ferus Gallery. In 1973, Ruscha began showing his work with Leo Castelli Gallery in New York. He continues to live and work in Los Angeles, and currently shows with Gagosian Gallery. Ruscha has consistently combined the cityscape of his adopted hometown with vernacular language to communicate a particular urban experience. Encompassing painting, drawing, photography, and artist's books, Ruscha's work holds the mirror up to the banality of urban life and gives order to the barrage of mass media-fed images and information that confronts us daily. Ruscha's early career as a graphic artist continues to strongly influence his aesthetic and thematic approach. Ruscha has been the subject of numerous museum retrospectives that have traveled internationally, including those organized by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 1982, the Centre Georges Pompidou in 1989, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in 2000, the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in 2002, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney in 2004. Also in 2004, The Whitney Museum of American Art organized two simultaneous exhibitions: "Cotton Puffs, Q-tips®, Smoke and Mirrors: The Drawings of Ed Ruscha," which traveled to the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles and the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., and "Ed Ruscha and Photography." In 2005, Ruscha was the United States representative at the 51st Venice Biennale. The traveling exhibition "Ed Ruscha, Photographer" opened at the Jeu de Paume in Paris in 2006. In 2001, Ruscha was elected to The American Academy of Arts and Letters as a member of the Department of Art. Leave Any Information at the Signal, a volume of his writings and interviews, was published by MIT Press in 2002, and the first comprehensive monograph on the artist, Richard Marshall's Ed Ruscha, was published by Phaidon in 2003. A major retrospective will open at the Hayward Gallery in London in 2009.

Photos from this episode:

Image from Stella McCartney + Edward Ruscha pairing from ICONOCLASTS Season 4.

Image from Stella McCartney + Edward Ruscha pairing from ICONOCLASTS Season 4.