plastic palace people

Is it just me, or did Resort 2012 fucking rule this year? I've never paid attention to it much, since I would never be a luxury season's target demographic. But this year, a lot of designers opened up to it in a way they haven't before; it's got the longest shelf-life of all collections, and pieces can be multi-seasonal. There were lovely urban greys from Helmut Lang and really cool (leopard???) prints and trousers from Preen, but the unstoppable Phoebe Philo really took the cake at Celine:


I have genuinely been thinking about plastic outerwear a lot lately. First there was this amazing PVC motorcycle jacket from Comme Des Garçons, and then I gave Diva a revisit. It's one of my favorite films for many reasons -- the blurring of the lines between high- and lowbrow, the balance of style-over-substance to a totally nebulous, convoluted plot involving an opera obsessive on a motorbike, a philosopher in his "cool period" who sits in a bathtub while his teenage Asian petty-thief girlfriend (?) rollerblades around, and a prostitituion ring, and I love the early '80s overuse of blue light. The aforementioned teenage Asian petty-thief teen has a killer plastic raincoat that scrunches with every move:


There's also plastic -- mixed in with other transparent, reflective materials -- in Bildnis Einer Trinkerin as one of many extraordinary hi-glam anarcho costumes designed by star Tabea Blumenschein (let's talk about her for a moment: did you know she was part of Die Tödliche Doris? And recorded a cracked-out Christmas single with Bettina Köster and Gudrun Gut of Malaria!? SO AWESOME). I'm sure we could find plastic coats in a whole host of late '70s/'80s hyper-stylized films...Liquid Sky, The Hunger perhaps? (Actually, none in The Hunger, not even that glorious opening scene. I think I like to misremember that movie as better than it actually was.)


I thought I'd gone all minimal. Is this my New Romantic tackiness coming out? Is there something we can make of this fleeting obsession (kids, never trust your film fashion inspirations: I have a friend who bought a denim vest after seeing the brooding antihero in some 1950s kitchen-sink drama and just ended up looking like a scrawny gogo dancer), especially when it comes to trenchcoats? Something about the teasing hypersexuality, the exhibitionism of a flasher coat + the exhibition of see-through material? Its artificiality or outdated vision of a dystopian sci-fi future? Wouldn't it just smell really bad?


klaus nomi and friend mean muggin'
Designers lately seem to have tempered its more outlandish tendencies and used plastic as an interesting, textural layering piece. The Celine coat above is divine -- the softness, the gradated grey, everything. If there's anyone who can make me feel right about plastic, it's the (active -- sorry Jil Sander) queen of minimalism.


jil sander mens s/s 2012

comme des garçons PVC motorcycle jacket
Please, weigh in with examples of your own -- perhaps some from the '90s? -- to convince me I'm not crazy or tasteless.

TASTEFUL EDIT! How the hell could I have forgotten Joanna Cassidy's coat in Blade Runner?


Okay. NOW weigh in.

one-week flashback! katie gallagher f/w 2011 BTS

renegade designer + intrepid girl reporter in a quite unflattering candid, photos throughout by corinne schiavone
Last Sunday, Milk Studios did not have their shit together. Capacity issues the night before, leading to crowded elevators and the fire marshall being called, made those in charge extraordinarily paranoid, and all designers showing on the 13th had to un-invite half of their guestlists and inform the rest that, due to tight capacity, their attendance might not be granted.

Katie Gallagher's people very begrudgingly (trust, none of her PR wanted to do it) sent out the email at around 5 PM, so a lot people, feeling fucked over, didn't want to bother with a fight. On the other hand, I was already (im)patiently waiting at Y-3--which was AMAZING and SO MUCH FUN and EVERYONE WORE BLACK and SANDPAPER FLOORS but COULDN'T SEE SHIT--and had planned to meet up with the lovely Corinne for dinner before the show. I wasn't about to shut both of us out.



(As an aside, could someone help me set up a decent cut/jump feature? I have loads of images I want to share, but it's getting to be really cluttered.) So the two of us, armed with excellent makeup, a giant camera, connections, and a touch of moxie, got to Milk at 6:45 for an eight-o'-clock show.


And so went "Gris-Gris," Katie Gallagher's presentation for F/W 2011. She said she was influenced by African voodoo; the titular gris-gris is in fact a magic amulet, “little leather sacs for spells. People would put little bones in there, nails, hair, different things.” That sort of witchy, pastoral influence was felt throughout the entire space, anchored by imposing monolith of wooden grids and crumpled black sculpture, almost like The Wicker Man in scope. The shock of sumptuous mustard yellow leather (can I HAVE the jacket posted above? Please?) went straight back to voodoo: “It’s kind of reminiscent of cornmeal,” Gallagher said. “These tribes would draw little sigils in cornmeal, and I found this really cool leather to match, it’s a really nice mustard. Plus, I wanted a little bit of color to go with the grey."


the opening runway pass, video by me
And let's talk tunes. Katie and her boyfriend, Nikolay, score the presentations to industrial perfection. Last season, it was Einstürzende Neubauten and Front 242 to set an intense, high-energy EBM mood for "Arena;" this season, it was all Death in June (you can hear the very opening strands of "The Only Good Neighbor" in the video posted above--remember when Prada used it too? Sorry, Douglas P.) and Coil (can anyone identify the song in the video? It's really bugging me, I KNOW I know what it is). Even better than sitting at a runway show and recognizing something in utter shock--like the Prodigy seemingly fucking everywhere this NYFW--this almost neurotically perfect blend of sight and sound is just what I like.

from boys to men (from NYT sunday styles)

Well, scratch everything I said about men's fashion, body image, and androgyny four months ago; seems Guy Trebay and LEADING INDUSTRY EXPERTS like the editor of Maxim have declared that pipe-cleaner prepubescents are out, and rugged, MANLY MEN are in.


josh brolin + jeff aquilon, both v man
I needn't repeat the obvious about Hedi Slimane's history at Dior Homme and as a photographer. We know he loves youth, pin-thin tailoring, and the indie rock world; he's credited with making those baby-faced androgynous male models on the catwalks ubiquitous. But the industry is tiring of "skinny skate-rats," as Trebay so eloquently puts it, and looking towards older, weathered, more traditionally masculine standards. Which, as it tends to do, leads to really offensive language about the nature of manliness.

"The twink thing seems over. When people open GQ, I don’t want them to feel like they’re looking at clothes on 16-year-olds," Jim Nelson, editor of GQ, says. "When we cast, we want a model with some heft to him and a few years on him. Someone who has aged a little bit and who feels like he’s a man.”

I can understand the movement away from boys who look like they've been plucked out of high school; in difficult economic times, male consumers want to see well-built men who work and do manual labor--men who look like they're mature enough to purchase the goods they're selling. They want their icons to embody purchasing power and heritage luxury, and an emaciated teenager isn't going to do it. (Not to mention I'm not super keen on 16-year-olds being pushed onto the runway, male OR female.) Sam Shahid, creative director of Shahid & Company, says, "Look back to movies during the Depression, and all you saw was real guys like James Cagney. In tough times, people want a strong man." (Of course, it's a rather frustrating point that men become stronger, tougher, and more MANLY post-recession whereas women's skirt lengths just get shorter and heels higher--which I STILL CAN'T BELIEVE is a legitimate socioeconomic theory. Male success is rugged, protective strength, female is overt sexuality. Hmm.)


hedi slimane photography
That said, no matter how snappy and headline-grabbing such language may be, there is no reason to conflate skinniness and youth with a false, or rather lacking, manhood. Other than Levy rather charmingly calling models like Slimane's boys "twinks," the NY Times article also throws around words like "waify," "jailbait," and diametrically opposed, "Real Man" capitalized. I suppose it's the gay male gaze of the fashion industry, as well as the objectifying nature of modeling, turned negative and dehumanizing; just because such a homosexual male demographic of "twinks" exists doesn't mean that every ectomorph in the modeling biz is wide-eyed, immaturely naïve, and effeminate.

If I'm allowed to quote/paraphrase myself, it's the fear of more ambiguous gender presentation in fashion rearing its ugly head again. It's the same reason why Polly Vernon declared that "gobsmackingly lean silhouettes" in male modeling would lead to the mainstreaming of "manorexia" in that old Guardian article--it's not that anyone is really concerned about male body image, just that fashion industry darlings like Cole Mohr ("a model with jug ears and the body of a teenager" as Trebay puts it) are too frail, too awkward, and too delicate to be men. Such notions of the Real Man, or the Mad Men-ification of fashion (square-jawed, mature masculinity, a time-travel symbol of a man who likes a stiff drink and who sports a few lines around the eyes), is just a more microscopically-focused expression of queerphobia and misogyny. It's like the bullshit pipe-dream stories about "curvy" female models: how even now, Lara Stone can't give an interview without the writer making reference to her size 4 physique or her tits, or how putting (a recently slimmed-down) Crystal Renn on your runway or in your Vogue is a sign of progress. (Which, Terry Richardson and Carine Roitfeld, we have a problem.)

generation x

i'm just a killer for your love 1997

A lot of my college friends used to joke that I'm so deeply entrenched in 80's nostalgia and fashion that, eventually, time would have to go by and I'd start obsessing over the 90's. Problems with this: my music taste remains strongly rooted in 1982, I hate grunge, and, most of all, I REMEMBER the 90's. There is a novelty to wearing winklepickers and jackets with huge, peaked shoulders; to teasing and spraying my hair into backcombed oblivion; to contouring my non-existent cheekbones into goth/disco (take your pick) perfection...because there are no terrifying photos of me way back when to remind me how shit it could look. 1982 is a fantasy land of New Romantics and Batcavers; if I can dig through the archives and find photos of myself in a gray panne velvet dress circa 1996, I don't want to see it on Alexander Wang's runway, and I sure as hell don't want it ending up on my body again.



mtwtfss weekday f/w 2010 | peter som f/w 2010 detail

But the great thing about fashion is that it's snobby when it counts. No one's looking to bring back crazy-colored JNCOs, thank the lord. But crop tops have been back for the longest time, a good pair of Doc Martens goes a long way, and everyone this side of Blogger knows I love any maxi dress that crosses my path. Chunky knits are great, so is purple lipstick (I WISH I could show you the extraordinary Make Up For Ever Rouge Artist Intense #14. A super-deep violet, paired with neutral eyes and a clean face, it's absolutely glorious and may convince me to swear off black eyeliner for a month or so). Not to mention the early 90's in particular gave us some iconic fashion movements--Helmut Lang minimalism, the heyday of the Japanese avant-garde, and, for better or for worse, that quintessential grunge Marc Jacobs/Perry Ellis collection.


i still immensely dislike grunge music


kool thing 1990

I've been inching towards the dreaded decade for a while, actually; I've developed an appreciation for round, Lennon-style sunglasses, wearing stomping boots with baggy cropped trousers (has to be a looooooose fit), and the Beavis and Butthead video commentary clips. And OF COURSE! 120 Minutes, college rock be damned.


johanna nurm: a fundamental silhouette

Give me neo-psychedelia, scuzzy lo-fi, a bit of velvet, and some crazy layers, but I'll be damned before I touch a fucking kitten heel. Some things are best left to history.