Life: an excuse for an anecdote. Thinking of anecdotes as accessories, carried in a book strap. The title tells you everything you need to know and conveys the essential point. Good title: leaves you wanting more. Bad title: the book stays closed.
Could we walk around with typed pages of conversations on our straps? Or maybe just a calling card: “Here is what I’m about.” A real time saver. Like anecdotes. Just the funny or interesting bits. None of the filler. Andy Warhol would have been a totally different kind of filmmaker if he’d used a filter.
Coaxed into covering a chocolate show involving fashion made of chocolate, I cast aside my inhibitions. “Unleash the chocoholicism!” is what this event invites. Throngs descend upon the West Side Highway, a sight I’m more accustomed to seeing in the daylight, for the Armory Show. West 50th Street is a desolate strip between 10th Avenue and now, all FedEx and horse stables and double parked cars. I stop over the Amtrak rails, my favorite spot in Midtown, it reminds me of Manhattan’s history as a hub of industry and trade, the grand connector between far off lands and the heartland, the mountains, the desert, the Pacific Coast…now Doritos wrappers and Burger King bags line the rails, probably needles and condoms and shit, too. Well that’s history, too. “What opera is like a railwayline? —The Rose of Castile. See the wheeze? Rows of cast steel. Gee!”
Continue reading ‘Crack’
I love how designers are redefining the word “minimalism.”
Merriam-Webster:
- Main Entry:
- min·i·mal·ism
- Pronunciation:
- \ˈmi-nə-mə-ˌli-zəm\
- Function:
- noun
- Date:
- 1929
1 : a style or technique (as in music, literature, or design) that is characterized by extreme spareness and simplicity 2 : minimal art
Today we have Rogan Gregory doing what he terms “soulful minimalism.” Imagine a Richard Serra sculpture (Gregory’s favorite artist, fyi). Minimalism that’s been left outside to rust, weather and age. As the parlance goes: Minimalism with a twist!
Rogan points to the concrete floor inside his showroom and store.
“When they first poured it, they made it perfect and smooth…and I looked at it and thought, no, that’s not right.” Rogan likes things to be a little fucked up, he said. Don’t we all!
How does this translate to the clothes?
Continue reading ‘“Soulful Minimalism”’
This contains the funniest bit of info regarding some of the mysterious receipts recorded by the Federal Election Commission for the Palin makeover: a $4,902.45 charge at Atelier New York, which “carries expensive cut-up T-shirts and tricky suits from avant-garde designers, like Raf Simons, Yohji Yamamoto and Ann Demeulemeester, none of whom typically create beltway-appropriate attire.”
However, calls by the NYT to the store owner to verify this purchase produced only confusion. There were no records of purchases totalling that amount; furthermore, the store’s clientele is so small and specialized, the owner of the store pretty much knows who most of his customers are. Could be a mistake, but I’d like to imagine that there’s some sneaky RNC aide buying stuff for a beau.
Continue reading ‘Amusing Puzzle’
Monsieur Christian Louboutin introduced his BFF Philippe Starck at a fashion industry mega event last night (they were both receiving awards) and Louboutin, a self-described teenage punk and “major safety pin victim” talked about meeting Starck for the first time in a Paris nightclub. He describes their encounter (I am paraphrasing): “Whatever Phillipe Starck, I heard you design some furniture or something, but you’re not a punk and you look totally boring and I don’t like your shoes or your tie.” Plus, Starck was totally old. He was a ripe 25.
Starck on Louboutin: “He was the worst teenager I ever saw in my life…he was terrible. He was a gremlin! You could never take him out because he broke everything. He’d burn the curtains, break all the glasses.”
Continue reading ‘Christian Louboutin: “I was a major safety pin victim!”’
It’s October, and that means pumpkins. As a child, I hated, hated, cake for my birthday. So my mom made me pumpkin pie instead. Oh, the thrill of being the first pumpkin pie eater of the season, a full month before Thanksgiving trotted into town.
Let me tell you about a most surprising salad that I ate at my beloved Marlow & Sons, where I go to remind myself that there is nothing in the world more worth fighting for than food. This salad: the daily market salad, composed of vegetable scrapings, swirls of olive oil and good, strong parmagiano. Those vegetables: Here’s where things must take a bow. Thinly shaved raw pumpkin with a carved crunch in the mouth the equivalent of a spoon scraping pumpkin flesh for seeds. This mixed with pungent broccoli greens possessing an honorable, wholly charming overbite.
Imagine, if you will, a plate that resembled the topography of a New Mexican mesa in winter: Dry, earthen desert parsed with summer’s last green shrubbery. A fine layer of powder precipitates the dish with salty sweetness.
Did not set my alarm for 3am so that I could watch their show in “real” time–it went live on their site at 9am Paris time. Good thing…
I must say, what I saw made me embarrassed for them. Rather than a display of “the future,” the whole Web presentation instead looked stuck in the past, circa 2000. For some reason, fashion houses love Flash and they love bad electro-ambient soundtracks. To spare you the boredom of watching the show, the gist of it is this: It stars ’90s supermodel great Shalow Harlow. She models every look (how clever–get it? It’s the internet so you can use the same model!). We see each design from various camera angles, supposedly offering a more detailed look–but frankly, the cuts are too quick and the resolution too low to actually see what is going on.
Also in a nod to tradition, Shalom walks on a runway. Why not have her walk in space, or in the desert, or on water? Where’s the imagination in this? And the virtual room is filled with empty seats. Guess Anna Wintour’s avatar couldn’t make it on time for the early morning show.
At the end of a presentation that seems to go on forever (in reality, probably 15 minutes, which is nothing for a real fashion show but for a virtual one? A lifetime. And only 21 looks), all the Shaloms come out in their various outfits and flank the runway, clapping, as the disembodied heads and torsos of Viktor Horsting and Rolf Snoeren appear overhead like great and all-powerful wizards. Then everyone dissolves.
The clothes? Fave fashion terms like “architectural,” “futuristic” and “origami” on the one hand, and technology’s influence on the other hand in the form of motherboard prints and pixelated color. How about: “Autobot starship warrior princesses on their way to meet Tron.”
Oh, and wanna know how you make a Web show with no invites and no front row palatably exclusive for the fashion flock? Style.com will tell you how: “…the duo’s new Web show, which Style.com exclusively previewed in advance of its October 2 debut on the label’s Web site….” Advance screening! Some things never change.
Previously…
