BROOKLYN IS BURNING
March 7, 2010
It is indeed a jungle out there, so you have to be prepared no matter what! We strive to style a wardrobe for every nasty/amazing occasion that may present itself. What to wear when the pipe bomb explodes in the parking garage? Or, when you find out your boss’ child was swallowed by a shark at beach camp? Or, when you’re CENSORED and the lights go down on your performance art piece? We have to ponder the pipe bomb and shark swallowing situations a bit more (we’ll get back to you), but you might ask artist Ann Liv Young—errrr, her performance art alter “Sherry”—about the latter sitch. She should know as the lights went down (down as in the C word) during her performance at PS1 in New York last weekend. First of all, meet Sherry (pictured above from her blog). Sherry created a little ruckus (’cause that’s what Sherry does)…or rather, the audience responds and Sherry responds back. Read the rest of this entry »
SUSTAINABLE FUTURES
March 3, 2010
The Sustainable Futures exhibition opens later this month at London’s Design Museum, showcasing cutting-edge and forward-thinking movements in ecologically conscious architecture and design. The show celebrates the excitement of how design can positively contribute to a more sustainable future. Sadly, fashion is lacking from the showcase—albeit as the scope of the show is to mostly highlight architecure and green building practices. Still, the fashion industry needs to step more boldly into this dialogue. True, Green Fashion Week just took place last month in New York and that is to be applauded, but many of the major players in the industry still haven’t moved beyond simply using the green chic bandwagon in some of their ad campaigns, regardless of whether any of their business practices and manufacturing are green at all. It’s time for fashion to fully embrace sustainability in actual practice, rather than in just empty rhetoric. Author Celestyna Brozek penned an excellent article at Green by Design about how fashion, often overlooked in its historical importance, is actually one of the most important tools for the historian, as it is a visual display of democracy, but also acts as a harbinger of paradigm shifts. The article goes on to applaud Alexander McQueen’s vision: Read the rest of this entry »
UN LAC
February 28, 2010
In a last homage to winter before we embrace spring entirely, we explore the tableau of Philippe Grandrieux’s 2008 film Un Lac. Set in a remote mountain forest somewhere in Northern Europe, we are thrown into a series of disjointed scenes vaguely reminiscent of Caspar David Friedrich canvases: awe-inspiring—yet foreboding—icy summits, otherworldly snow clouds, placid winter lakes, and lonely souls left vulnerable in the unforgiving splendor of nature. In this universe, language breaks down, and knowledge and being are experienced exclusively on the visceral level. We become out-of-focus creatures wandering in the snow, dizzy and clamoring for our very survival. Desperate and beautiful, grotesque and sublime. Pleasure Principle assymetrical button down in soft black flannel (Bonnie & Clyde’s), Prophecy-Basin organic jeans (Loomstate), Vegetarian Shoes Timbercat Boot (Moo Shoes NY), Vibskov blue 100% cotton jacket (Farfetch), and a glacier-white watch from ToyWatch (Aphrodite).
RING OF FIRE
February 23, 2010
When I was a boy, I started a forest fire. It was an accident. I stole a box of matches from the kitchen cupboard where my mother kept them, filled a bucket of water, and journeyed off into the woods behind my house in the rural South Carolina town where I grew up. I must have been about ten years old. Maybe eleven. I had no doubt I could start a bonfire and control the flames. I was a boy, and that is something boys innately know how to do, right? It’s like primordial. The fire in a boy’s bones. My bonfire was beautiful and secret. It’s smoke signal my soul visualized before me. Until my mother called me out of the woods to accompany her on an errand in town. I poured the bucket of water over the flames and watched them die. I kicked dirt over the blackened mound. All was still. I was sure. I left… When we returned and pulled into the drive, I could see there in the distance the ring of flames flickering between the trees. Neighbors had begun to congregate in the yard to gawk. I was filled with an excited shame. I ran into the woods and began to stomp the flames with my feet. My white little boy sneakers melted and turned black. My mother screamed for me to come back. But I never did. Somehow, we manged to extinguish the flames and save the forest and all of its creatures, but my boyhood perished in that ring of fire. If I were a stylist to mother nature, I would dress us all in rings of fire. Knitted top with slit side by Rick Owens (Browns), Chatac Ectabit jean (Atelier NY), Chronicles of Never brushed black metal pendant (Oki-ni), Swiss Army Camper Knife in black (SwissArmy.com), storm proof matches (REI), Creative Recreation sneaker in white…watch them melt into the forest floor.
FLESH OF MY FLESH
February 21, 2010
“A lot of our thinking on vision is guided by three axioms that were introduced in the 1960s and ’70s and consolidated in the 1980s. They are that the look is violent, that images are ideologically mystifying, and that politically engaged artists and theorists must expose this violence and undo this mystification. I have never been comfortable with this account of vision or of art…”
~Kaja Silverman (from Art Forum, February 2010)
Flesh of my flesh. Blood of my blood. This is a response to the times. A call for love. For joy. For the analogy of the seeming and the meaning. A move from “of” the world to “in” the world. A deliberate act of non-sacrifice!!! All you lovely dreamers embrace non-sacrifice!! For inspiration, find a copy (and read immediately!) of theorist Kaja Silverman’s Flesh of my Flesh (Stanford University Press, 2009), which contains a dizzying and blissful odyssey of love through the works of Gerhard Richter (work pictured above), James Coleman, and Terrence Malick. Apron Shirt by Vivienne Westwood (via Boheme), Welder Transparent Raincoat (Muji), Henrik Vibskov Anja Short (Oak NYC), Dore Dore French white socks (KJ Beckett), and solidify it with a 1950s classic-gone-intellectually-subversive vegan Vida Penny Loafer (via Moo Shoes New York). Silverman is in (not of) the future. Follow suit. Be swift!
I LOOKED AT THE SUN THROUGH FILTERS
November 14, 2009
We hope to keep this winter’s drear away by evoking the warm, breezy, fuzziness of the better bits & pieces of the euro-lounge revival of the mid-90s, ushered in most interestingly by the era’s darlings, Stereolab (think 1996’s Emperor Tomato Ketchup). Stateside, the sartorial mood continues to hover between fuzzy-faced grunge revival and the Americana traditionalists (not that we don’t love boutiques like Odin or lines by Rag & Bone—we do, but it’s starting to get stuffy in here!). While the boys continue to play dress-up with the detritus of nu-rave tribal and grunge for the first time around, and the men continue to beat the trad thoroughbred horse to death, sipping classic cocktails, and watching Mad Men in their Thom Browne, we have our sites set on something, well a bit more colorful, a bit less pensive, a bit more euro, a bit more high-fi. The mid-90s was an era much more optimistic than the recession-shrouded present. There was the feeling that an intelligent technology was going to change the world in brilliant ways, and it was! Stereolab’s sci-fi, day-glow tinted point of view was all right for the times, and the fashions. We are starting to see nods here & there to the era—Marni’s Spring 2010 line with those round, space-age sunglasses and Dries Van Noten with the amorphous post-op-art prints, and even a little bit with Marc Jacobs with the mylar and polka dot sportiness of his latest collection. At any rate, it’s a mood we hope to feel and see more of! Cull your inspiration from Stereolab’s 1996 video for their single Fluorescences. Annitian tri-colour sweater (wok-store.com), acetate sunglasses by Marni, Philip Lim Box T-Shirt (Refinery 29 Shops), wool trousers (Uniqlo), blue border shoes by Lanvin (colette.fr), Arne & Carlos scarf (via Alogha Rag), and Flouro ski beanie (Topman). To be vacuous. To be infinite.
HARLEM MAGIC
November 12, 2009
What? Did you think we had died or something. Please. We have merely been spending the past three (okay four) months packing up our atelier (okay virtual atelier) and schlepping it 3000 miles across the great, vast USA from San Francisco to New York. There have been postal addresses to change, brownstones to furnish, and closets to fill (seasons!), and our new nabe to celebrate—Harlem, USA. Besides, if you make yourself scarce enough, people will take notice when you return. Wink. Wink. South Harlem’s Mount Morris Park Historic District is a bastion of new inspiration and a delight to call home. So, gents (and lady gents), when you are next in New York, be sure to make it Uptown. Don’t believe the guide books or boring New Yorkers who tell you not to venture past 86th street (and, especially ignore those passe fools who believe the only culture to be had is below 14th) because Uptown is in the throes of a new Renaissance. Just keep that information on the downlow–we don’t wish to spread the magic too thin. Suit by Harlem resident extraordinaire and designer-to-watch Jose Duran, overcoat by Haversack General Garments (via oki-ni.com), Bolan Boot by Fiorentini+Baker (Gimme Shoes), Heattech Turtle Neck in Brown (Uniqlo), Fred Perry Trilby Hat (via oki-ni.com), and keep an eye on Harlem’s fashion-forward with N Boutique, slated to open this winter at 171 Lennox Ave. For inspiration, check out art by Harlem Renaissance descendent Romare Bearden (his Illusionist at 4pm from 1967 pictured above).
FIREWORKS
July 4, 2009
Fourth of July. 1947. Los Angeles, California. While the denizens of the City of Angels gather to marvel at the tableau of pyrotechnics unfolding beyond the palm trees, you—cast between flashes of light and darkness—are suspended in a feverish teenage dream. In your hypnosis, you walk a tight rope through your own unconscious. Along the way, riddles become visions and logic gives way to magick. Untracing the symbols projected on your body, you enter the portal marked “GENTS,” leading you to the light along the salty waves crashing against ancient shores. Cotton shirt with vintage polka dot lining (Atelier New York), Indigo Classic Button Fly Jeans (Jean Shop), White Lace-Up Oxfords (Rachel Comey via Gimme Shoes), and add some provocative mystery to this classic look with a Silver Agate Stone Neck Ring (Authentic Africa). See Kenneth Anger’s avant-garde short film Fireworks for inspiration (available from Criterion Collection).
CHROME’S ON IT
June 30, 2009
If you haven’t heard of Brooklyn-based Telepathe, well, you obviously haven’t been paying attention. While “the next big thing” rarely delivers very much at all, especially in the music BIZ—these ladies have paid their dues for years, striving for something out of the realm of the ordinary while still keeping dancefloors off the m-eff-freak-n chain. We’re thrilled to see them making waves in the otherwise snoozey indie-electro circuits of late—and just in time for summer. Afterall—whether you’re summering uptown, downtown, or out of town—shouldn’t summers be rioutous, danceable, and just a bit dangerous! Oui Oui Oui! Pair those Henrik Vibskov Africa pants (via Aloha Rag) with an unexpected pair of pristine patent oxfords (Yves Saint Laurent via Browns), a Vivienne Westwood Marl Sweater (a la Boheme) with just the right balance of construction and deconstruction, and a multi-colored beaded choker (from New High Mart), and Williamsburg becomes…well, Williamsburg—but with three months of sunkissed-days, blissed-out nights, and a brand new beat. Download Telepathe’s Dance Mother—the summer begins right now!
LITTLE ASHES
June 27, 2009
It is 1925 and you are visiting Dalí and Ana María in Cadaqués. The days are filled with the magic of the Mediterranean sun, the echoing sea, and breathtaking bicycle sojourns through the lush hills with your mate—the great Dalí! These are days when life is art and poetry is written with each breath. Oh, to be alive with the beauty of youth and intellect and passion! In your great cinematic dramatist mind, you record it all, every moment, every flash of light, each tickle of the wind. Upon your return to Madrid, you will unleash Oda a Salvador Dalí to the world, for you are Federico García Lorca and you have just accepted an invitation to a dream. Low-rise hemp chinos (rawganique.com), classic white linen shirt (Banana Republic), Italian Spectator shoe (jpeterman.com), Barathea brace in khaki via Albert Thurston, and a vintage pale yellow tie, to be worn loosely on an open collar, will complete the mood of carefree elegance amid the splendor of youth and romance. For inspiration, see director Paul Morrison’s film, Little Ashes, or take a copy of Lorca’s Selected Verse with you to the nearest secluded beach.