Moscow hosted the exhibition Faces and Laces 2011

The fifth interactive exhibition FACES & LACES, dedicated to contemporary street fashion, subcultures, visual communications and alternative contemporary art, was held in Moscow on June 3-4. Leading sports brands - Puma, Adidas, Nike, Le Coq Sportif, Converse, as well as casual wear brands - Levi's, Uniqlo, Zoo York, Blank, ATO, Izreel, Mykita, Element, HUF and many others - have transformed a house on Vetoshny Lane opposite GUM into an oasis of youth life, sport and style.

This year, more than 30 projects from local artists took part in it, 100 unique prepared projects from official exhibitors, including such as FRED PERRY, LEVI'S, ADIDAS ORIGINALS, NIKE SPORTSWEAR, LE COQ SPORTIF, PUMA, KIXBOX, SIXPACK, SNEAKER FREAKER and many others. For the first time in Russia, official collaborations of FACES & LACES with PUMA, CASIO G-SHOCK and SIXPACK were presented.

At the Le Coq Sportif booth, petanque and acrobatics competitions were held. In the neighborhood, Levi's presented a summer collection for DJ sets and gifted everyone with branded bandanas and coupons for an 30% discount in Levi's salon in GUM. At the Puma booth, everyone was invited to fight at the ping-pong tables, while Converse played badminton.

The central hall of the complex was divided between a ramp for skating and stunts on skateboards and an impromptu gym with treadmills from Nike. The audience was greatly interested in an exhibition of enthusiastic collectors of sneakers, the Sneaker Head group, who demonstrated their treasures in a room decorated as a meat department of a Soviet supermarket - with glass display cases, scales and even fake carcasses on a hook.

The manufacturers of T-shirts with prints were not lagging behind - the Uniqlo chain, which regularly collaborates with contemporary artists, presented a collection with prints from young Japanese designers (Yasushiko Yoshikatsu, Okewara Kunio, Katoki Hajime and Owada Hideki) called Gundam Illustrations.
Designer Max Kiryanov gave a lecture “Fashion of the 1970s. A Decade of Bad Taste. He spoke about how changes in the economy, politics and society influenced the emergence of new styles, as well as forms and types of clothing; on the development of styles such as disco, military, folk, sports, diffuse, deconstructivism, retro and minimalism. The analysis of changes in clothing was presented based on the work of predominantly European designers: Karl Lagerfeld, Laura Ashley, Ozzy Clark, Yves Saint Laurent, Roy Halston, Giorgio Armani, André Courrez, Tony Smith and others. To analyze the contextual development of the form of clothing through the mixing of cultures of different countries, the lecturer gave examples of collections of Japanese designers: Hanae Mori, Issei Miyaki, Kenzo Takado.