Filed under: Musings
Slow and snowy day in London. I’m in a great mood. Went to the David Hockney exhibit this morning at the Royal Academy of Arts – it was nice! Uplifting! Personal #STYLES post because… well, just because:
Marc Jacobs dart necklace – I heard she eat one cracker a day.
Fashion For Men, Vogue Paris (Daria’s issue-spectacular – Vegas never looked better), Lindsay’s boobs, ASAP Rocky, Baku – Azerbaijan’s somehow Conde-owned rich-girl mess-of-a-magazine.
ACNE patent slip-ons. Did I ever tell you about that time I saw Trina getting home to our apartment building in Miami? Big gold Louis, Intermix bags, and a marijuana mushroom cloud out da’ Escalade. Shit was amazing. Then Gabrielle Union showed up and I had the best night of my life.
This post was inspired by this amazing song from my childhood:
-Elliot Elliot HAHAH
Filed under: Musings
-Azealia “S/S12′s Biggest Hit” Banks. She’s everywhere! Karl’s house, Nicola’s runway:
-Elliot
A word to the wise, though the intrepid may ignore: Edinburgh, Scotland, is incredibly cold in January.
You know you have to question your outlook on life when a friend says, “there’s a Missoni Hotel in Edinburgh,” and you say, “I know, let’s go?” and your friend says, “OK I’ll book for this weekend,” and then you take a 4.5 hour train up the UK’s coast both wearing Missoni jumpers, giddy like Japanese school girls at a Lady Gaga concert. #firstworldproblems.
So there we were, in blustery, frozen Scotland, affronted with the motherland’s finest of drunken behavior, beautiful sea-to-slope vistas, and confused as to why there was so little by way of fine dining. PS – if you’ve heard of KITCHIN, one of the city’s few Michelin star rated restaurants, beware – the faux-politeness of a bob-haired hostess is actually as icy and rude as the gusts coming up off the nearby ocean – one of the most shockingly poor interactions I’ve ever had at any restaurant worldwide. Do not go, it’s not worth it.
Getting back to point one, the Scots can drink, and then they can’t, come 10P or so. Cue: adult woman in nice clothes, with husband also in nice clothes, puking her brains out at the Missoni Hotel’s doorstep. There was so much drinking in and around the damn place, all I had was two Aperol Spritzes because it seemed defeatist to try to keep up with these people!
Anyway, the main reason for this post is to comment on the hotel – Missoni currently has two licensed outfits, the other in Kuwait, with a handful opening in 2012/2013 at important business and tourist locales around the world. It is a novel concept – brand everything in sight with your signature, but don’t charge SO much money than it is inaccessible to the normal world. Thus as it turns out, the hotel is more Missoni for Target. But, the beds are comfy, the decor is… well it’s not great, but it’s fine for the experience, and you get to at least check it off your bucket list.
-Elliot MacLeod Kirkady Abercromby
Filed under: Musings
If you haven’t seen The Tree of Life by Terrence Malnick, block aside some two hours and twenty five minutes and maybe a few hours recovery time.
The film is among the most beautiful and moving pieces I’ve ever seen… and that’s mostly because it leaves the viewer up to their own devices – and shows just how devastating the imagination can be. Moreover, if you took any single shot from this movie, someone like Christopher Kane could put it on a t-shirt and sell it for 300 bucks. Cosmos, love, hate, industry, glass… it’s just so f*cking perfect.
-Elliot IMPRESSED
Filed under: Jean Paul Gaultier
I may have jumped the gun on criticizing Chanel’s 50+ look Couture assemblage. Jean Paul Gaultier’s had 70.
Then again, there’s obviously more camp and “smile factor” (what) in a Gaultier show – and the big number didn’t bother me as much as Lagerfeld’s. The best part about Gaultier was it’s who gives a f*ck drunken starlettedness of it all – cigarettes indoors, possible nip-slips. And of course, OF COURSE, Andrej Pejic working incredibly hard:
Does Gaultier really still have Couture clients?
-Elliot Van Buuren
Couture is really something I can’t write about all that accurately or intelligently because I’ve been in the presence of maybe five couture gowns in my life which only happened because I’ve accompanied friends to fittings who…do that sh*t. You know how weird it feels when everyone’s out having a great time and then someone’s ex-boyfriend walks into the room with a new person? I think that’s usually how I’ve made everyone else in my presence feel during a couture fitting/viewing because everyone can literally feel how jealous I am–and it’s uncomfortable for them.
Aaaaaannnnyway, I saw Versace was all like, “Do I LOVE THIS? Or do I HATE THIS?” Verdict: It’s in-freakin-credible. You could come up with a different superhero persona turned successful porn franchisee for every single look. And you could tell that the models in that show – the girls in those dresses, jumpsuits, LACE KNEEPADS, and….shorts – LOVED wearing the clothes. I mean, look at the second photo posted below…
HOW MUCH FUN WOULD THIS BE TO WEAR OUT!!!!!!!??????????
And this is just gorgeous. Again, do you know how rare it is we say that here?
Oh and one more thing! Elliot reviewed it, but I needed to reiterate some Givenchy love/fangirldom. Holla.
-Isabel Tiesto
Filed under: Chanel
Chanel’s almost intimidating amount of looks at S/S2012′s Couture came in one-hundred-fifty shades of blue – you know this, the internet is buzzing like an expensive honey-bee. Vaguely space-race inspired, should there have been such an odyssey in 2012, the collection featured commonplace couture details – strong collars and shoulders, sleeves, beading. Yet, the sheer excess- the so-many cyanotypes, the long silhouettes, the wild and voluminous hair – felt… well, it felt overwrought. Then again, Karl’s biggest weakness is that he cannot edit.
Perhaps, though, Chanel’s admins should not continue the unlimited spoilage of the Kaiser… he was quoted last year as saying he “can do anything he wants,” which, I think, might not be a good thing?
Don’t get me wrong, there are some excellent pieces, but doesn’t such… output… dilute the brand, if not the infrastructure of Couture as a tradition? I think so. A wise old fashion journalist recently told me that designers are like “nature” – they “produce” and need people like us, the journalists, to trim the hedges and take away the weeds. Pick and send those great pieces down the runway, we don’t need so much.
Didn’t know Frida was still walking…
-Elliot
Filed under: Givenchy
Riccardo rebounds, much like in basketball, a sport which he made reference to in his S/S2012 Couture presentation. So funny – I just finished an opinion piece on Versace’s sporty contribution to Couture this season, and here’s Tisci, putting Natasha Poly in an old Parisian gym.
His couture designs far outpace his RTW – this collection was beautiful and weird, stern, almost like housemothers assigned to watch the boarding school boys play their dodgeball or whatever it is they do in gymnasiums, albeit in six-figure dressage. Skins and beads, beads and skins, little asymmetric straps, and another absolutely definitely full order book from whoever it is that can afford these treasures (Kuwaiti doyennes? Probs).
An incredibly beautiful dress – do you know how rare it is that I say things like this?
Obsessed with Kristin.
-Elliot invigorated.
Filed under: Givenchy
It seems sometimes that falling down hard is inevitable. Reasons be as they may, it happens, especially to those without consistency – the steady “good” factor is all but invisible from their bloodlines – they’re either “great” or “very poor.” Unfortunately, Riccardo Tisci has taken a pretty bad spill, and he’s compound fractured his tibia.
S/S12 was my sartorial utopia – botanical mirrored prints on greens and whites, baseball hats, leggings, tank tops with tails, a sharp blazer here and there – the kind of elegant sportiness often seen best in American design. Go back a step to the Rottweilers of F/W11, and you have a full year of Givenchy excellence, and that much less in your checking account. So, even though he took away the prints for women, one would think maybe he’d go another round for the guys with some new big, unique motif – rumors heavily favored sharks before the show.
Unfortunately, the let down is something like being the person who has one number left on their BINGO card early, but the jackpot goes to someone else. You’re f*cking pissed. Tisci’s F/W12 man is adorned in stars, in skirts, in trendy leather, in absolutely positively nothing original. Cathy Horyn called those embellished collars “sequin dandruff.” She’s pretty much right. While the harshest of critics think Riccardo has all but given up on menswear, I’m hoping this was just another valley before we see more peaks. Until then, I’ll just be sleeping in my attack dog sweatshirt and my orchid leggings, dreaming of days gone by. Because that’s how much I loved the past two collections.
-Elliot Jagodinska
And you thought Givenchy was bad!
Do you know when people use the term “rears its ugly head?” As in, referring to a dragon, or disease, basically anything dormant coming to life in a violent and/or unpleasant way? Say hi to Thom Browne. Say hi to please put on your serious evaluation caps.
It should be noted that Thom Browne’s designs are, before the criticism sets off, accessible in their basest forms – button-downs with tricolor ribbon trim, banded-sleeve jersey pieces, even an iPad case if you’re feeling spendy. That’s pretty much where it all ends, this time for F/W12 in a sadomasochistic, Shelleyan and ‘roided-up teenage horror story inferno.
Let’s start with the obvious football-pad silhouette, counter-weighed by skinny twinky boys in sparkly blazers and belly shirts. Mix that in with studs and gauges, and get-over-it WASP-o-grams (this time, some mallards and some safety pins), and what you get is something that really begs the question: at what point does conceptualization fizzle out, or, possibly, not exist at all? And if Browne’s point is to engage in a less meaningful way, ie. chatty entertainment, then why is he here? Go design the outfits for Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.
If you look at Walter van Beirendonck for F/W12 (he also used fetishistic masks with suiting and tailoring) the avant-gardism shows through with AT LEAST believability, if not some sort of emotional mechanical instrument imbued in the clothes’ constructs. One get’s chills from his intelligence and his context. Or, at least, those who take this business seriously. It’s probably even blasphemous to some to compare these two, but, what’s done is done.
Browne could in a way be his tier’s Alexander Wang – the more “High Street” the pieces, the better they are (Wang’s T is fine by me. Wang’s collections are, as we all know, disgraceful). Let’s not forget Browne’s background: Club Monaco.
Depthless.
Much better.
-Elliot
