updatey….
finally in the process of putting both parents under psychiatric care.
August 4, 2010
April 15, 2010
April 13, 2010
before you splurge on that copy of L’Officiel McQueen tribute sight unseen…
Please note that the print quality is exceptionally, ridiculously low.
While it does contain select images from every collection McQueen has done, most of which published before the age of online collection archives and therefore hard to come by at the moment, I wouldn’t say that the selection process is exactly judicious. Each collection is given the same page space and includes images of 6-10 outifts, and most of the pictures are not well taken. Also, nothing is put into contemporary context, making McQueen’s contribution less obvious, as much of it has metastasized into the larger fashion culture. There are a few short reprint articles on McQueen that L’Officiel did in the past, which are interesting but not illuminating.
It’s a handy reference volume, but not one of good quality. Just potboiler stuff.
If you’re buying it for your fashion history/ culture research library, then it’s probably worth the buck. If you’re buying it as a collectible that you’re not planning to resell for profit or as an inspiration aid, it’s probably not such a good idea.
April 7, 2010
men’s skirt & glamping for the guys
A repost of my comment elsewhere to substitute for something that I’ve been wanting to write about since January, when that particular issue of POPEYE I mentioned below came out…
* * *
Check out the February 2010 issue of POPEYE if you can. It shows that this season’s hip men’s skirt derives its form more from functional mountain-climbing gear (effective to keep one warm) than from womenswear — at least in the beginning and ostensibly. The functional origin is both a ruse and an international trend. The most high-profile instigator of the trend (fake functionality and inspiration from active wear designed for adventures in the wild) is the S/S 2010 DSquared collection, which has “Glamping” (Glamorous Camping) as its theme.
The menskirt thing has been on the scene for a while. The LV creative director Marc Jacobs has been showing up everywhere wearing an about-knee-length skirt and no pants underneath for over a year, and male models in skirts of all lengths and degrees of campyness have been popping up in all the hippest fashion editorials, from November 2008’s i-D to the Contributing Editor blog (like this and this), but of course we need to wait for Japanese men to take that proposition seriously and make it something both hip and everyday everywhere.
March 23, 2010
the neighborhood bakery
Some guy from my parents’ neighborhood bakery just won the title of “Master Baker” in a world baking competition held in France by the Coupe Louis Lesaffre organization, which also runs the “Bakery World Cup.”
Not being a real gourmet myself, I have no idea how prestigious this award is. A couple perfunctory googlings yield little, but the British “Baking Industry Exhibition” site describes the World Cup section of the Coupe (in which national teams compete, whereas the “Master Baker” game is an individual sport) as “a unique international bakery competition that brings together the finest bakers from all over the world to compete.”
Regardless, it’s just difficult to re-imagine your parents’ neighborhood bakery, which you walk by a couple times a week and whose loaves and rolls you see in your parents fridge all the time, as a “world class gourmet place,” especially when the store was only opened a couple years ago and looks just like any regular trendy but undistinguished bread place.
Familiarity breeds contempt?
(I’ve been having serious allergy issues in recent years and cannot eat bread, so no personal comment on their products here.)
The store’s official site (Traditional Chinese only)
Intro on the novelty bread he developed for the competition:
March 18, 2010
quick: the last collection
I don’t think McQueen’s last collection should have been “completed” by others and shown in that way.
Letting the clothes be photographed, or even worn by models, in their unfinished form as McQueen left them would have been a much more poetic gesture and shown real respect for his creative integrity. The pictures are plastered everywhere — the strange, as in the sense of awkward and highly incongruous , crown-of-lizard-like head gear attached to every model’s head is ugly behind belief. And the stiffness of the clothes… oh the clothes…. And the venue? Did they think they were doing a Chanel or maybe a Balenciaga presentation?
I’ve never been a McQueen fan, but I’ve found him interesting and a unique talent. He deserves much more than such unthoughtful and cheap publicity stunt.
What’s wrong with showing the unfinished work of a creative talent as is? Have these people not heard of Laura?
March 18, 2010
quick: a/w 2010 galliano
Well, seems like he’s back at it again.
Many of Galliano’s most fabulous collections for Dior in the ’90s were “inspired” (to put it nicely) by old issues of La Gazette du Bon Ton from the teens and twenties, when it often featured illustrations of fantasy designs, impossible to realize at the time due to the technical constraints, by Erte and Poiret.
It took incredible virtuosity to realize them perfectly, but still.
I don’t have my copy of old Gazette covers album at hand, but some of the clothes from Galliano’s own name brand A/W 2010 runway do look a little too familiar.
March 3, 2010
too tight too short too narrow too good
Note:
- This is not the complete editorial, only about half of it.
- The original red background stings the eyes on a computer screen. Since the point of the story is the proportions and not the colors, I did some simple modifications to tone down the red and make the silhouettes stand out more.
March 3, 2010
March 3, 2010
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