I like this look, it really should be back in style.
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Archive for April, 2008
4.15.08
Giant.
I don’t know yet whether Muxtape is useful or useless, but if you find yourself longing for the days when you used to make cassette mixtapes for people you had massive crushes on, laboring away at the perfect cover art collage, this might be fun. Except there’s no cover art with song lists made on a typewriter and smeared artistically with white-out and xerox photo transfers. Oh well. You might have fun instead randomly browsing the other Muxtapes already online, or making one of your own.
4.12.08
triplecanopy launches
Triplecanopy, a smart new pub with contributors culled from n + 1, Artforum, et al, launches today at Gowanus Studio Space in Brooklyn. See especially Basic Instinct: Poems, taken verbatim from Descriptive Video Service (audio versions of films created for the visually impaired) and rearranged into verse:
“Now a white horse gallops through a dawning blue sky, // its mane fluttering in the wind. / It sprouts wings and soars up and over a golden triangle / enclosing the words TRI STAR PICTURES.”
Simon Doonan, the fashion industry’s cheekiest personality and disher of irreverent witticisms and style tips for those looking to unleash their inner Little Edie, launched his latest tome, Eccentric Glamour, at Barneys New York last night. First in line for a signing by the author, his copy fresh from Amazon? Mr. John Waters, who’s responsible for creating some pretty deliciously eccentric universes himself. Here, Waters talks to The Nunu about Botox, eccentric glamour, and why Paris is so damn fashionable.
You and Simon Doonan definitely have a similar sensibility. What I’m getting from his new book is that it is really anti-fake boobs and Botox and this tabloid idea of glamour. What’s your take on eccentric glamour?
Well, I played the Grim Reaper on television. If I had gotten Botox, I would have never have gotten the part! I’d be afraid. Even when I see people who have had really good facelifts, they still look like somebody else. That’s my fear - not looking like a freak. But what’s the point of looking like a younger you if you look somebody else? Have you seen Connie Francis’ facelift?
No….
It is the most amazing of all.
In what sense, because it looks so bad?
Well, I don’t want to say that. But it is an extreme look! It is science fiction. Maybe she wanted that. Who’s sorry now? I don’t know. But it is quite a picture. It was in the Globe this week.
Maybe that’s the future, people doing really radical surgeries.
Well in L.A., they all look like that.
Maybe that, in a way, is just another type of eccentricity. Though I guess it’s not very glamorous.
Those people with the really extreme facials, they don’t look old, they just look frightening. They don’t look young. I don’t know. It’s really just a dumb thing for actors to do, though, because unless you’re making a movie about an insane movie star, what can they play?
What does eccentric glamour mean to you?
Eccentric glamour is effortless. It’s just an inner fashion sense that has nothing to do with money. It’s when you’ve just found your look. It can be a band-aid, it can be a rag. It’s a signature look that somebody effortlessly put together that’s singularly them and that other people copy. That’s eccentric glamour. You can’t plan to be it, you just have to have it.
Your moustache would be a good example.
Well, I didn’t say that, you did, but I’ve had it since I was 19. In Baltimore, everybody finds a good look and sticks with it. And New York is like Paris, everybody has a style here, everybody has a look. They’re skinny, and wearing black. That’s a good look, always. Too much eye makeup, too thin.
It’s hard to argue with that.
And good shoes.
I feel like New York is becoming a little bland these days.
Everywhere is today. But in fashion, I don’t think it is. In Paris, everyone looks great.
Paris is a great city for fashion inspiration.
Everybody looks good there. Even charwomen have flair.
[Photo by Ryan Saylor]
[at the silver factory studio of Threeasfour]
4.3.08
Comme des Garcons for H&M
It’s true. H&M announced this morning that Rei Kawakubo, founder of Commes des Garcons, will design women’s, men’s and even a small children’s collection for them, hitting stores in November. (It will launch in Tokyo first, with other international cities following a few days later). When H&M first started doing these collaborations with designers (Stella McCartney, Karl Lagerfeld, Viktor & Rolf), I thought it was pretty exciting. But the reality is, it’s a watered down version of the original. The fabrics are cheap, the cuts are usually bad…you’re better off just sticking to H&M’s own collection.
Kawakubo’s known for elaborately deconstructed design and ample use of fabric, two things that would be hard to adapt for a lower price point. But, she’s a design genius so solving the problems of mass production will no doubt be an interesting challenge for her.
An excerpt from my latest interview for Blend with designer Peter Pilotto…read the full article here.
…..Born in Austria and now based in London, 30-year-old Peter Pilotto is a fashion designer who has created a highly personal, imaginary world, designing clothes that could blend into the set of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis and outfit a few she-bots, or serve as the 21st century interpretation of characters in an H.G. Wells novel. Dresses might look like Art Deco skyscrapers, or be printed to look like the interior of a clocktower or a Victorian time machine. As though time travelers themselves, his clothes are the product of what might happen if an Egyptian princess did a tango with a Soviet contructivist graphic designer. As a fashion designer, Pilotto is like a science fiction author creating a varnished, slightly apocalyptic vision of the future. Just as Luke Skywalker’s universe in Star Wars takes place a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, Pilotto’s setting is a not-so-distant future composed of dwellers in softly draped tunics, pajama pants emblazoned with fiery galaxies and nebulous clouds of gas and wrap vests that Skywalker might have worn, all in a saturated color palette of stars exploding…..
[photo courtesy Peter Pilotto, Autumn/Winter 08-09]
I was searching for an explanation of "fichu" (it's a triangular scarf worn around the neck to cover up a low-cut bodice), a word I came across while reading War ...