Archive for September 2008
OK UK
Maybe it’s the BBC America in me talking, but I believe in London Fashion Week.
I don’t think it’s a dying blip on the four-week fashion calendar, or a breather between New York and Milan to conveniently skip out on because, come Paris, names like Krystof Strozyna and Louise Goldin fall and don’t make a sound at Balenciaga, Givenchy, and Lanvin.
Too bad. Because if you really listen, you might hear notes you never knew were missing from the bigger capitals.
Runaway Runways
Following is a piece I wrote semesters ago for my history of photography class.
I know street style photographers have been around for years, and that this article needs a good dusting. I thought however it might be worth posting as I wait for things to heat up in London.
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“The rise of abstract art and decorative design permitted the citizens of Western Europe to accustom their eyes to visions of themselves as shapes.” –Anne Hollander, Seeing Through Clothes
In late 2007 Colette, the European arbiter of cool, held an exhibition titled “From the Street to the Night” in her boutique/gallery in Paris. Compiled of work by a slew of younger photographers who prowl city streets around the world for shots of stylish denizens about town, the show proved a successful showcase of a genre Colette herself has christened social photography. Whether this “new” coinage is precise or appropriate with consideration to the established history and influence of street photographers like Henri Cartier-Bresson or Warhol’s “Factory Fotographer” Billy Name, there is indeed something novel about how the featured photographers were discovered and recognized through their own regularly updated photo blogs. Moreover, that they exclusively photograph in metropolitan milieus evokes a revamped vision of the twentieth-first century flaneur. Once characterized as a detached stroller/aesthete of the urban experience, Baudelaire’s “botanist of the sidewalk” now comes armed with a digital camera, a specialized interest (in this case, fashion), and the motivation to share his spontaneous encounters with the masses via Internet.
Scott Schuman’s rising popularity from his work on The Sartorialist is a particular testament to the blog’s effectiveness as a media channel. At thirty-nine, Schuman is slightly older than other photographers included in the Colette exhibit, and arguably more proficient. Street style bloggers often overlook the subtleties of a person’s dress, the small cares that make it artful, and instead zero in on the exhibitionism and uniform trendiness parading around only the hippest and youth-oriented of neighborhoods. But fifteen years in high-end fashion marketing and sales–not to mention a stint in college learning couture construction– have conditioned Schuman’s eyes to appreciate the most minute clothing details as well as the nuanced diversity of the people sporting them. His photographs have an innate element of double composition: the subject’s own composition of dress and Schuman’s subsequent composition of the subject. By first dissecting the relationship between photographer and his subjects, and then examining examples of his work, I will demonstrate how Schuman contextualizes his subjects through the aesthetic synthesis of dress and the urban landscape.
You Say You Want a Revolution
New York Case Study: Rodarte
Rodarte’s spring ‘09 collection has become something of a litmus test in the fashion crowd. Initial internet chatter resounded positively and negatively as: WOW . . .
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AGAIN?
Reign, Reign. Now Go Away.
In Edna St. Vincent Millay’s Fontaine, Je Ne Boirai Pas De Ton Eau! the speaker cynically refuses to drink from the fountain of youth because “the young are so old, they are born with their fingers crossed.” But it’s hard to believe that aspiring designers today have enough time to lift (let alone cross) their soft phalanges for a go in a fashion industry where a big break is a write-up in WWD that reads a like a snappy, name-dropping obit.
In a pre-fashion week slideshow, style.com showcased this season’s ubiquitous “it” newcomers, all neatly arranged into categories au fait to those in the know: think “New Parsons Duo,” “New Boy Wonder,” and “New Crossover Sensation.” Think also more presuming monikers such as the NEW! Alaia, the NEW! Y & Kei, the NEW! Peter Som, and the NEW! Miguel Androver.
Forget crossing fingers– it isn’t so much as luck but imitative re-incarnation that survives the modern marketplace.
