INDIE is proud to present ROLE/PLAY, an homage to both the world of cinema as well as the art of book making.

Created in special partnership with Chanel, ROLE/PLAY celebrates the transformative power of fashion in film. Starring actors Suzy Bemba, Marlene Burow and Galatea Bellugi, photographed by Daniella Maiorano, and a featuring an interview with Olivier Assayas’ go-to costume designer, Jurgen Döring, ROLE/PLAY marks INDIE’s most standout print project to date. As an ode to the transformative power of fashion in film, it playfully probes how costume empowers character.

Referencing the the iconic designs of 80s and 90s VHS tapes with their eclectic font mix and handwritten stickers, all 500 copies of the limited edition carton page book in special matte finish were lovingly numbered and labelled by hand.

Les Savoir-faire de la mode: Sources / The Crafts of Fashion: Sources covers various issues relating to know-how in fashion design and raises the crucial question of sources. From publisher Éditions 42:

Fashion encompasses a vast array of professions and crafts, and as many singular histories; how can we think about this object of study when faced with the diversity of the practices that make it up? Plaiters, tailors, embroiderers, and other model makers, often anonymous, animate the worlds of fashion and their technical cultures, but how is this technical knowledge, which is also “knowledge of the body”, studied, preserved, and transmitted? This volume looks at the existing anthropological and historical traditions in this field, and examines current methodological innovations that enable us to understand this dynamic, little-explored area of research.

The contributions that make up this book were given in the form of lectures as part of the research seminar Chaire CHANEL et le19M des savoir-faire de la mode at the Institut français de la mode.

The book was published in French and English editions. It was edited by Émilie Hammen, with translations by Phoebe Hadjimarkos Clarke, has 232 pages and measures 190×250 mm.

Cover of the English edition

Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty was published at the occasion of the eponymous exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (The Met), New York, shown from 5 May to 16 July 2023.

From The Met:

The book, the first complete investigation into Lagerfeld’s (1933–2019) artistry, explores his extraordinary sixty-five year career, from the designs for Chloé and Fendi in the 1960s and 1970s to his celebrated leadership in the 1980s and beyond at Chanel and with his own label. Inspired by the ‘line of beauty’ theorised by eighteenth-century English painter William Hogarth, this publication pursues the straight and serpentine ‘lines’ and their intersections in Lagerfeld’s work as a means of understanding his unique creative process.

Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty was designed by OK-RM and is entirely typeset in Mercure (Abyme, 2021). The typeface is also used for the exhibition graphics and communication materials, designed by the museum's in-house team, as well as for the Met Gala 2023, which celebrated Lagerfeld’s legacy and the opening of the exhibition.

The Art of Lace is an exhibition organized by the TextielMuseum Tilburg that ran from 16 November 2019 until 6 September 2020. The show presented a selection of haute couture creations, never showcased before in the Netherlands, and all of them using the delicate craft of lace. Lace has seen a revival in high fashion these last few years and has become an essential of the most prestigious catwalks: from Maison Martin Margiela to Chanel, lace is everywhere.

Studio de Ronners was in charge of creating the graphic design of the exhibition. In order to keep up with the theme without being too illustrative, the studio developed the idea of “typographic lace”: something that would only play with the information to display in order not to be too invasive regarding the subtlety of the objects displayed, and on the other hand, a typographic treatment that would still be visible as a kind of pattern of threads mimicking lace. To do so, Studio de Ronners based their design on Cardinal from Production Type: indeed, the typeface on one hand evokes the classicism of haute couture with its elegant caps, and on the other hand puts its italic letters to their limits, with their dancing rhythm and their tight ligatures.

The titles of the explanatory parts of the exhibition are set in Cardinal, and so are the names of the fashion designers exhibited, which are repeated in columns as high as the ceiling, bringing to mind classical lace rolls to be cut and sewn onto any piece of clothing. Regular text is set in Helvetica, which contrasts with the arabesques of Cardinal and offers stability to the more technical explanations.

Published in 2009, Chanel’s Russian Connection features the first use of KLTF Kerl. The condensed all-caps grotesque was specifically designed for this application. While the book by Karl Lagerfeld is out of print, the font is now publicly available for the first time. Previously referred to under the working title KLTF Titles, Karsten Luecke revisited this “simple, no-nonsense, honest” face and released it on his KLTF label. The final name, Kerl, is the German equivalent of the English guy, sport, or chap. The retail version of KLTF Kerl comes in bold and bold italic styles. There’s no lowercase, but wider alternates for some characters in four widths, Cyrillics, and circled numbers, among other extras.

Peripatetic Chanel head designer, book publisher, photographer – and now, film director – Karl Lagerfeld founded Metiers d’Arts in 2002 to showcase the talents of Chanel’s seven specialist ateliers (that provide the couture house with costume jewelry, embroidery and millinery). This volume focuses on Chanel’s 2008–2009 Metiers d’Arts collection Paris–Moscow. If Paris–Moscow indulges Lagerfeld’s fascination for Russia through fashion, then Russian Connection is that fascination embodied in book form. Lagerfeld’s images evoke Imperial Russia, Constructivism, Catherine the Great, Faberge, Russian folklore and Coco Chanel’s own passion for Russia, via the great Ballets Russes, Byzantine jewelry and her affair with the Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich.

Paperback, 22×25 cm. ISBN-13: 978-3865219237.