Imaginary Pen Pals: Alex Kazemi On Why He Started The Advisor, A Hub of Handwritten Letters by Male Icons

text by Alex Kazemi

Most of my life I felt ashamed by the creative impulses I had. And yet something forced me to follow them. I didn't think writing made me cool or different, and I never took pride in it. I felt like a freak. I felt embarrassed. I was horrified by anyone who identified as an “artist” or “creative”. I spent hours doing drugs to high away but I still came back down hearing the same old song. Every time I tried to slash the beast, he just grew another head.  Every night before bed, I used to pray someone would cut off my fingers so I could never write again. I wanted to trap this demon in a mason jar, drop him in the ocean and watch him sink to the bottom, but the more I resisted, the more angels would come by to drop presents into my brain tied off with a feeling that is like seeing a new color for the first time every time my fingers hit skin, paper, or keyboard. I wrote all the time. Everywhere.

One of the scariest moments of my life was the morning I woke up and walked to my bathroom mirror only to see writing all over my legs and arms.  I thought, “If this is the life of a writer - I do not want this. I do not want life at all.” I never tried suicide, but I talked about it obsessively on chatrooms and message boards from ages 13 to 20. Mostly with other dudes who were dealing with their own neurosis but as I spoke to more and more depressed people, I learned that we all had one thing in common: Fear.  Fear of accepting our own individual truths. There were days I was so exhausted by my own brain to the point I wouldn’t talk at all. Total Mute. If everything I look at is causing a new idea, if every conversation I hear is creating dialogue, if everything I see needs to be preserved, what is the point? Was I put on this world to be a servant to detail and novelty? “How am I supposed to relax? How does one get to the other side of the glass? I need to be on the other side of the glass.” I couldn’t talk about what was going on with me without sounding like a delusional grandiose OCD teen that just discovered Kurt Cobain - so I felt isolated.   Who was there to reach out to?  Other artists, my imaginary pen pals.  I spent hours and hours reading and watching interviews of iconic male artists discussing their processes. Even if they didn't know it, these people saved my life, they let me know I wasn’t crazy, they let me know that they deal with the exact same bullshit I do but all in a different and individual way. They hate it, they love it, they want it to end, they want it to start again. 

I wanted to start The Advisor, a monthly digital gallery of handwritten letters dedicated to young men out there, so they can have a place to see creative men side by side and read their uplifting letters of inspiration that let you know that every artist has their own path, and no path is the right or wrong path. There is no set way to doing things, and you shouldn’t be ashamed for being the only one who can understand your language. 

Officially launching today, The Advisor is a new digital platform that features handwritten open letters penned by contemporary male icons to young men, curated by Alex Kazemi. Published once a week, the site debuts with letters from Richard Kern and Bruce LaBruce. Later contributions will original writings by a bevy of pioneering heroes such as Marcel Castenmiller (04.08), Rad Hourani (04.15), Justin Tranter (04.22), and NABIL (04.29). Visit The Advisor here. 

[Friday Playlist] Late '60s Peruvian Rock n' Roll

text by Adam Lehrer

Sometimes the circumstances in which music was made amplifies the effect of the music itself. Case in point: the rock n' roll coming out of Peru in the late '60s and through the early '70s. Rock n' roll hit Peru like a thunderbolt in 1957 with the country's youth finding themselves captivated by the music of Elvis Presley. Buddy Holly, and Bill Haley. Peru's indisputable first rock band, Los Millinarios de Jazz, formed that same year and birthed a movement.

It was in the late '60s however, psychedelia's peak years, that the rock bands of Peru found their most scorching  sounds. The Peruvian rock bands of that time still sound utterly fresh. This could be for a couple reasons. For one, rock music's interest in mysticism was at an all time high with psychedelic rock, but Peruvian bands by virtue of geography already had a more direct connection to mind expansion and spirituality. Traffic Sound, a Peruvian rock band that used a flute way better than Jethro Tull ever would, found a fan in Mick Jagger who invited the band to open for The Stones in 1969. Meanwhile, Black Sugar employed big band swing, salsa-inflected rhythm patterns, wah-wah heavy guitars, and a blissfully communal sound that created a political funk most in line with American bands like Sly & The Family Stone.

But also, rock music at its best is supposed to be anti-establishment, and the Peruvian bands had much to rage against. Juan Francisco Velasco Alvarao, a communist military general, took control of the country in 1968. Though his ideals were in many ways idealistic, as he hoped to restore the power to the working power, he also completely obliterated personal expression. At first, Peruvian rock bands could not be silenced. For testament to that notion, listen to Los Saicos. Los Saicos took elements of garage rock, psych, and surf and created an aggressively political rock assault that is often considered to be a forebear of punk rock, similar in sound to The Sonics. Eventually rock music would find itself smothered out of popular culture in Peru, but by the '80s a fertile underground of punk rock and later death metal bands would re-emerge, bringing attention back to the country.

Side note: I would like to thank the excellent Spanish record label Munster Records for introducing me to Los Saicos and as a result, Peruvian rock n' roll all together. 
 

Sweetness and Other Conflicting Attributes of A Domme

text by Audra Wist

I never thought I would think twice about being sweet, too sweet, nice, expressive. I’ve been thinking about sweetness the last few weeks and my complications with the term, the idea, and the enactment of a certain kind of feminine softness. “You’re sweet,” he says.

This issue first came to a head for me when I started out as a professional dominant - I thought to myself, oh, am I not bitchy enough for this? Should I start being mean to people just ‘cause? I realized how silly that thought was and saw my kind demeanor as an ally, not something to distance myself from. Certainly, men see me for cruel and extreme encounters, but these encounters rely heavily on fantasy and developing the fantasy relies on an origin of vulnerability and love, respect, and in a lot of ways, sweetness.

I remember a woman, an artist I looked up to at the time, met me and told me I was “too nice” to be a domme. That really irked me and I seriously questioned (again) my legitimacy as someone practicing domination. Can you be a sweet person and impeccably cruel at the same time? I thought, well, what are the characteristics of a good domme? I made a list: self-aware, intelligent, alpha, controlling, managerial, caring, thoughtful, stern, empathetic, passionate, etc. To be mean, bossy, tyrannical, perhaps more “negative” items on the list - I thought these things all came from a delicate spot, too. Never once was “ultra bitch” or “psycho cunt” mentioned. Sure, those are roles, but to practice domination it requires a wheelhouse of generally positive and sane attributes. I determined her read to be bogus and her perception of me limited. My sweetness actually feeds into all these descriptions and it is a place where I like to be - in contradiction. It is an asset to my sexuality to be a chameleon, not something I have to hide.

And really, my sweetness comes out in strange ways. Because I want you to be better for me and I care for your betterment, you must take 40 lashes. That’s an element of sweetness in my mind. I’m being generous to that person who needs it. I press my ass up against you when we’re in bed together and grab your hand, showing you how to feel me up that right way. You acknowledge my kindness with a delicate sigh. I will make you a flower arrangement for your birthday, slapping and spitting on you later in bed. I show my sensitivity in all kinds of ways and in varying degrees. It’s what makes a good lover.

Whitman famously exclaims in Leaves of Grass “I contain multitudes” and I subscribe to that fully. I have permission because I am a human being. Something I forget frequently, but remember in times of desperation or sadness at my divided self. Another famous busting passage is in James Joyce’s Ulysses where Molly Bloom exclaims:

“I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.”

I use this as a cornerstone to describe sexuality: distracted, zipping, direct, sweet, biting - it contains multitudes and that’s what makes it so accurate, all frayed at the edges and a bit urgent. We identify with the fluttering from one thing to another and feeling moments as they come. Sweetness or rage or bliss is never a permanent state. They live and they die but were true for the moment. Perhaps sweetness isn’t a trait inherent or needed in a D/s context, but being able to draw from sweetness in a moment of passionate boundary pushing dominance can amplify one’s read and dismantle their expectations in a pleasant and memorable way.

[FRIDAY PLAYLIST] Primal Scream Alternative Dance

Text by Adam Lehrer

Primal Scream just released its 10th album, Chaosmosis, this week. The band has always flirted with mainstream pop and dance rhythms, but on this record the band is fully embracing indie pop, collaborating with Sky Ferreira on the excellent Where the Light Gets In and Haim on the less good Trippin' On Your Love. The band has evolved past the alternative dance sound they helped define. I won't comment on the quality of the album, but let's ust say Bobby Gillepsie has not let the past define him.

Alternative dance more or less set the pace for what pop music would become in the decades to follow. It was the first time when indie rock kids would dance at raves and DJs would open for rock bands. In the Information Age, peoples' tastes have grown even further outward, and no one blinks twice when you see the lead singer of your favorite rock band dancing on Molly at Output.

Alternative pop was basically broken down into three eras. The first came out of England in the early and mid-80s, starting with the Madchester (but that's for another playlist) scene based around Factory Records honcho Tony Wilson (immortalized by Steeve Coogan in 24 Hour Party People) and his club The Hacienda. New Order, formed in the ashes of Joy Division after Ian Curtis' suicide, was arguably the first band to approach dance music from a traditional rock attack. Later,The Stone Roses and The Happy Mondays would own the club with their own riffs and dance rhythms. Primal Scream, formed by Gillepsie after his tenure in The Jesus and Mary Chain, was an amalgam of a love for LSD-worshipping psych rock, amphetamine-driven punk, and MDMA-laced acid house. Scream's debut Screamdelica is the landmark album of alternative dance music.

The second wave, in the mid-'90s, had more in line with techno and dance music that it did rock music. Groups like The Prodigy, The Chemical Brothers, and to a lesser extent The Crystal Method, had the anthemic bombast of punk and rock but used all electronic sounds. These groups did however predate mainstream EDM with their ability to take the sounds of the acid house and make it work within a stadium context.

In the early '00s, the rock sound came back into the onslaught of Alt-Dance bands. For a while, it was the sound of New York, with The Rapture's House of Jealous Lovers blaring out of every speakersystem south of 14th street. Kathleen Hanna followed up her legendary riot grrl punk band Bikini Kill with a decidedly dance-leaning trio, Le Tigre. And perhaps the most successful of all of these bands proved to be James Murphy and LCD Soundsystem, who used Alternative Dance as a conceptual art project and had massive effect on popular music at large.

What To See and Do, and Where To Stay, In Dubai During Art Dubai 2016

When most people think Dubai, they think money, flash, grandeur and excess. In fact, there is a theory that the word Dubai literally means “money” – from an old Arabic proverb, "Daba Dubai,” which translates to, “They came with a lot of money.” So it makes perfect sense that Dubai has become a major force in the art world with galleries, such as our friends at Carbon 12, that are popping up in the industrial region of Dubai known as Al Quoz. This is a mirroring of the art scene that is currently growing in the industrial regions of Los Angeles, London, New York and even Miami. In Dubai, much of this growth is thanks to Alserkal Avenue, an arts hub that fosters and provides architect designed warehouses to galleries and creative institutions. And this week marks the start of Art Week in Dubai, with the central focus being on the Art Dubai, the foremost art fair in the region that is currently in its tenth year. We asked Nadine Knotzer and Kourosh Nouri of Carbon 12 to provide a list of things to do and see, and where to stay, in Dubai during Art Week. 

1. Place To Stay: The Mina A'Salam Boutique Hotel 

Located next to the Arabian Gulf, this gorgeous boutique hotel has a more intimate vibe than many of the other hotels in the Dubai region. Click here to book a room. 

2. Get Energized for the Fairs and Galleries at Urban Yoga 

Art Week can be stressful, so we recommend Urban Yoga, a loft style yoga studio overlooking Dubai, to get energized and inspired. Click here to for classes and schedule. 

3. Go See Ghazel’s Show Mea Culpa @ Carbon 12 Gallery

Ghazel is back at Dubai’s Carbon 12 from March 14th to May 1st, 2016, and so is her tongue-in-cheek, vehemently insightful work commenting on the state of the world and pushing the boundaries of art. The solo exhibition, Mea Culpa, revolves around the map motif used in diverse, sometimes derisive, ways. Click here to for more info. 

4. Take A Stroll Through the Gallery District @ Alserkal Avenue

After visiting Carbon 12, take a stroll through Aserkal Avenue to visit many of the other galleries and project spaces. Must see: Zahra Al-Ghamdi's 'An Inanimate Village' installation, pictured above. Learn more here. 

5. Cocktails On The Beach at Jetty Lounge at One & Only Royal Mirage

Sit down for a cocktail by the beach at the Jetty Bar at the One&Only Royal Mirage, Dubai. You can make reservations here. 

7. Lunch @ The Concept Store and Healthy Cafe Comptoir 102 For Organic Bites

If it's lunch you are after, visit Comptoir 102, a healthy cafe and concept store that has organic bites and brilliant design selections. 

8. Visit The Main Art Dubai Fair 

Art Dubai is the leading international art fair in the Middle East, Africa and South Asia. The tenth edition of the fair takes place March 16-19, 2016 in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Visit Carbon 12's booth, B1, where they will be exhibiting 6 artists from their roster, including a new video by Anahita Razmi. Click here to learn more about Art Dubai. 

9. Visit The Elyx Bar During Art Dubai

Inspired by Elyx House New York, Elyx Bar has now come to Art Dubai 2016. From March 15th to 17th, Fort Island will play host to the pure raw aesthetic known as Elyx. Art, luxury & flavor have a new temporary address. Experience quality cocktails, great tunes and immerse yourself in the world of raw luxe that is Elyx. Open from March 15th - March 17th, 9:30PM onwards. 

10. Locals Favorite: Eat Dinner At Flooka, A Lebanese Fish Restaurant

Make reservations at Flooka, a Lebanese fish restaurant that is a local's favorite. Click here for reservations. 

[FRIDAY PLAYLIST] A Siltbreeze Records Retrospective

text by Adam Lehrer

“I can’t say why I’ve always been drawn more to the lo-fi stuff,” said Philadelphia-based avant-rock record label head Tom Lax in an interview with VICE from 2008. “You could blame it on The Fall and Pere Ubu. As much as I dug The Buzzcocks and The Ramones, those bands helped set a course of no return for my head.”

Such is the philosophy of Siltbreeze, that since its inception in 1992 (started by Lax so that he could release the first 7” by Minneapolis noise rock band Halo of Flies) has released music from a plethora of bottom-dwelling underground rock bands from a spectrum of little-heard genres: the guitar and drums blistering punk noise of Miami-based Harry Pussy, the abstract guitar rumblings of Alan Licht, the lo-fi sound art of Graham Lambkin and his ‘90s project The Shadow Ring, the feedback-drenched ‘00s garage rock of Times New Viking and Psychedelic Horseshit, and a whole lot of music from New Zealand that Americans would have never heard without Mr. Lax’s extra-developed ear for sound.

Siltbreeze was at first a zine published from 1987 (my birth year!) to 1992 and featured as many photos of ‘70s porn (particularly black women) as it did reviews of avant psych, noise, punk, and rock bands, according to Magnet Magazine. The Halo of Flies release came with a copy of the magazine, but Siltbreeze really started taking off when Lax started learning about the music that was coming out of New Zealand, which was amazing but utterly obscure in the United States.

Much of these bands were being released in New Zealand on seminal Christchurch-based label that gained fame for pioneering the “Dunedin sound.” Bands like The Clean, The Renderers, The Verlaines, and The Chills started playing in shimmery power pop with a twist of avant sound experimentation. Lax started releasing much of this music in the U.S. on Siltbreeze, most notably with musician Alastair Galbraith who balanced his sound between jangly melodies and atonal skree.

Perhaps the most notable New Zealand discovery of Lax was experimental rock trio The Dead C (Bruce Russell, Michael Morley, and Robbie Yeats). The Dead C used a rock approach to free improvisation and noise, proving massively influential on U.S. bands like Harry Pussy, Mouthus, and even Sonic Youth. The band’s 1992 Siltbreeze double album, Harsh 70s Reality, is a noise rock landmark and one of the best albums of the ‘90s.

Siltbreeze went through its most prosperous years in the mid-‘90s, when they were able to attract the attention of popular indie rock bands drawn to Lax’s unique taste and approach to releasing music: Lou Barlow’s Sebadoh project, Guided by Voices, and psych rock band Bardo Pond among them. At the same time, the label was releasing super obscure avant punk and rock bands like Thomas Jefferson Slave Apartments, The Strapping Fieldhands, and Charalambides.

Around 2000, a Siltbreeze partnership with indie titan Matadaoe didn’t work to plan, and the release schedule slowed. But, Lax took the opportunity to reissue bands from the fringes of punk rock of yesteryears and introducing them to whole new audiences. Due to Lax’s taste, ‘80s Aussie avant punks Venom P. Stinger (due yourself a favor and stream the band’s amazing Tearbucketer album now), late ‘70s British DIY art unit Desperate Bicycles, and ‘70s Aussie proto-punks Slugfuckers all have music out in the United States.

But a renewed interest in weird rock music (maybe due to The Strokes, probably not) brought attention back to the underground rock (and noise) scenes in the mid ‘00s. In 2005, producer and musician Mike Rep (of The Quotas) introduced Lax to an Ohio-based lo-fi garage rock trio called Times New Viking (Jared Phillips, Beth Murphy, and Adam Elliot). Times New Viking had a serious energy, but also potential for Pitchfork-approved popularity, Lax released the band’s debut Dig Yourself in 2005 to acclaim and popularity.

Though Times New Viking quickly blew up and moved onto Matador, the media took note of this lo-fi noisy pop punk sound and quickly dubbed it “shitgaze.” Though the name left much to be desired, Siltbreeze experienced a resurgence as the premier home of this movement. Lax released music by psych pop unit Psychedelic Horseshit, garage punk band Sic Alps, no-wave revivalists Naked on the Vague, and so much more.

In my opinion, the one record that best exemplified Lax’s uncanny knack for hearing something special is the 2007 release by Aussie one-man-band Pink Reason entitled Cleaning the Mirror. Using guitars, banjos, feedback, droning, and a deep gravelly baritone, Kevin Debroux took the post-punk of Bauhaus and the slowest songs of Joy Division and stripped them down to a beautiful skronk of despair. Pink Reason used the medium of punk rock to express the deepest of feeling and create capital A Art, as Lax seems to admire in most of his bands. But Cleaning the Mirror was the most important record to me that I owned when I was a softmore in college (when I was discovering this whole dearth of underground rock) and struggling with some substance abuse issues and homesickness. It was one of those records that seemed to sound how I felt. Sadly, Debroux has never followed Cleaning the Mirror with another full-length. I should know. I’ve been longing for one ever since.

The influence of Siltbreeze is still felt throughout the indie rock world. It’s hard to imagine the success of garage rock superstars like Ty Segall and The Oh Sees had Lax not been able to prove that this type of music could be popular in the first place. Record labels like Burger, Goner, and SS all recall the spirit of artistic freedom and sonic palette that Lax set forth.  But garage rock was never his sole vocation. The only common theme that runs through the Siltbreeze catalog is that all of its releases have a 100 percent commitment to never compromising their sounds. These bands make music because no one else is making the music they want to hear. 

[FASHION REVIEW] Paris Ready-To-Wear Collections 2016

Text by Adam Lehrer

Demna Gvasalia is the newly minted king of Paris. Showing FW 2016 collections for both Vetements and his first ever for Balenciaga, Gvasalia proved that he has a concrete vision for how he thinks people should dress. At Balenciaga, he has already impressed his vision upon the house in a manner that Alexander Wang never was able to. Why is that? Most likely this is because Demna understands desirability of products, turning something as standard as a denim jacket into a contorted silhouette that looks totally unique. Wang is a marketer and a brand builder, but seldom do people hunger for his products the way that the fashion crowds have been hungering for the designs of Demna. Kering deserves wild applause for the hiring of the Vetements chief; it was a truly inspired and modern decision for a brand that saw its visibility wane under its previous creative director.

Other big stories were Dior and Lanvin that had to show their FW 2016 collections sans creative directors after the departures of Raf Simons and Alber Elbaz, respectively. Dior did ok, with its atelier coming through with a collection that at least looked like a Dior collection, though without the distinct ideas of Raf. Still though, I think I prefer it like this, considering Raf’s Raf Simons FW 2016 menswear collection was his best in seasons and I need cash flow so I can buy all of it. Elbaz was sorely missed from the schedule, and Lanvin fell absolutely flat without the man’s subtly poetic designs. If Lanvin doesn’t want him though, they should really start courting Haider Ackermann. His vision of fashion and his ideal customer is perfectly in line with the house.

Elsewhere, it was Paris as usual. The good stuff was great, the boring stuff was boring, there were Kardashians and Kanye, and Faith Connexion proved itself to be the newly buzzed about design team with a line of vintage grungewear taken to the highest degree of luxury (personally, I have no desire to buy my huge flannel shirts anywhere other than my local thrift, but I can see the appeal).


Balenciaga

I already knew that Demna Gvasalia was a perfect choice for Balenciaga for no other reason than that he is the most talked-about designer in Paris right now. But I could not have anticipated how well Demna was able to bend Balenciaga to his will. The avant-garde shaped denim, the gigantic double-breasted trench coats, and other Vetements favorites all were jacked up to Balenciaga quality for the magnificent FW 2016 Balenciaga. With Demna asking, “How do you persuade a woman to wear a two-piece suit who is not the German chancellor?” He answered by exaggerating proportion and silhouette thereby infusing luxury with a simultaneously more relaxed and striking visual appeal. Demna clearly had fun with the variety of fabrics now available to him as head of the house, making abstract sculptures out of puffer jackets, slicing shearling coats in half and reattaching them at odd angles, doing the same with a biker jacket (the best leather jacket of this season), and then allowing floral boho dresses to wave their freak flags. Best collection of the week; modernity incarnate.


Undercover

Jun Takahashi is probably still thought of as a menswear designer first, and Undercover a menswear brand. But the past few Undercover womenswear collections have been excellent, and this was a pinnacle. Setting the FW 2016 shows to Lou Reed’s ‘Perfect Day,’ Takahashi sought to make “relaxed wear for all ages.” To Takahashi, relaxed wear meant the obvious in print sweatshirts and relaxed trousers to the completely fucking bonkers in a gold printed dress with a wide-as-fuck skirt. Indulging his avant-garde whimsy, Takahashi also sent much of his models down the runways with headpieces that looked like the set design of Carcosa in True Detective’s first season (i.e. good season). I love how Takahashi is able to delineate between spectacle and products. He certainly has a flair for showmanship, but the indulgent demonstration never distracts from the desirability of the clothes. He’s the rare designer who is equal parts artist and product manager, trés Japanese indeed.



Vetements

I wasn’t as into this Vetements show as much as I was the Balenciaga show, but Demna Gvasalia’s design collective is at peak undeniability at this point. The brand’s superbly shaped oversized print hoodies were the most recognizable pieces on the streets this season, and the brand has certainly won over the fashion crowd in a way that seems more genuine than in past cases when something like the HBA logo was all over the place. Why is that? I’m not sure, but I think it’s because Vetements speaks to the modern fashion buyer more than other buzzy labels. You aren’t just buying into a logo; you’re buying a piece of creativity. Fashion is in a weird place now because everyone is making less money these days than they were 15 years ago. So, the women and men who get good paying jobs are probably too responsible and rational thinking to even consider buying a $700 hoodie. The fashion obsessives are mostly young artists and creative types; kids that can’t afford to buy everything but are style-obsessed enough to buy a product that they believe will make them look cool as fuck. Let’s face it: Vetements products do indeed look cool as fuck. Though I didn’t love FW 2016 as much as the previous two seasons, this stuff was still mostly amazing. Especially exciting was the menswear actually cut for men, such as the oversized western rodeo shirt and matching pants (I want one), the gold velvet unstructured suit, and a belted trench coat in camel. Demna incorporated some bondage looks into the womenswear, with a fantastic skin tight black leather jumpsuit and bombers with attached hanging chains that sort of collided into one another. There were riffs on Hot Topic outfits that looked awesome: punk, metal, rave, goth, and more. Demna is a connoisseur of all the disaffected youth cultures. The collection was shown in a church, because Demna said he was in a “dark place” designing this collection (maybe the prints reading “Sexual Fantasies were the reason for this, but I imagine the newly minted creative director of Balenciaga can’t be having much trouble getting laid regardless of preference). If that’s true, is it awful that I hope Demna stays in this dark place?

Side note: Veronique Hyland of The Cut pointed out the casting problems of the Vetements show. She is right; a brand that prides itself on being revolutionary should be casting diverse models. I don’t buy the excuse that they are casting friends of the label; surely they could find some non-white people to join their army. That is the same excuse Raf Simons used in his earlier collections, that he was casting the street-punk Antwerp youths that inspired him. But in his wiser age, his shows have grown more diverse and they have only made his brand more desirable. Kanye West and Rihanna are partly responsible for putting Vetements on the map. Diversify the cast and Vetements will undeniably be the coolest high fashion brand on the planet.


Noir Kei Ninomiya

I’ve been trying to limit my roundups to one Comme des Garcons-affiliated brand. And though Rei Kawakubo’s acid warped Victorian gowns were some fascinating art works and Chitose Abe’s Sacai collection had some decadent ornamentation, it was Kawakubo disciple Kei Ninomiya that I felt best exemplified his particular fashion philosophy with his Noir FW 2016 collection. Using all black of course, he had six models change outfits numerous times in an open space utterly devoid of any noise. Ninomiya is an expert at using details to convert wardrobe staples into avant-garde rebel statements: biker jackets, summer dresses, jacket and trousers, and Macintosh coats were all prominently featured in the collection, but appeared brutal, sharp, and unignorable. Ninomiya left his studies at Antwerp’s Royal Academy of Fine Arts to be a patternmaker for Kawakubo, and Kawakubo’s influence is undeniable. However, Ninomiya is still concerned with building a brand and innovating products that customers still want to wear. Now that Kawakubo has more or less made Comme des Garcons womenswear shows a display for pure creation while selling more conventional products to build revenue, it is Ninomiya that is best balancing concept and retail. He is constantly shifting form and structure, but these clothes would also look undeniably great day-to-day.

Givenchy

Of the big luxury houses, I think Givenchy is definitely my favorite. I loved Lanvin, but they are without a creative director. Hedi Slimane’s Saint Laurent Paris has been fun to watch him re-brand the label, but I am still irked by the idea of Saint Laurent selling cut-off denim skirts. Raf left Dior and Kris Van Assche has never really cut it for me on the menswear side of things. So there’s Givenchy, a label that is now as much the brainchild of creative director Ricardo Tisci as it is the brand’s founder Hubert de Givenchy. Yes, I’m arguing that Tisci is as important to Givenchy’s history as Givenchy himself.

At the time of Tisci’s appointment in 2005, the label was floundering. Alexander McQueen’s tenure as creative director didn’t work and Julien Macdonald’s was poorly received. Tisci made Givenchy culture-relevant again, noting the brand’s importance to a multi-cultural audience. He has a specific taste, and that taste has resonated with everyone from Park Avenue women to hypebeasts (those Air Force Ones he did were fucking uggo though, no? doesn’t matter).

Though it will be hard to forget the dark but soft romantic flourishes of Givenchy’s SS 2016 show that took place in New York last summer, the FW 2016 show back in Paris gave it a run for its money. Tisci’s last show was extremely tasteful, with soft fabrics, minimal details, and utter commitment to craftsmanship and quality of materials. FW 2016 feels more opulent, but was actually expressing Tisci’s newfound interest in Egyptian mysticism. The curiosity resulted in wild psychedelic prints, like mandala-decorated blouses and dresses that were not all that unlike Anne Spalter’s recent exhibit at Spring Break Art Show. There were the usual streetwear looks, but also extreme experiments in military tailoring with coats that outlined every sinew in the models’ bodies. Tisci doesn’t shy away from opulence, but he also doesn’t exploit it. What can I say? I’m a fan.
 

Ann Demeulemeester

Few designers have stayed as committed to their truest design visions as Ann Demeulemeester. So when Ann retired two years ago, it was hard to imagine her brand remaining relevant, and yet her protégé Sebastien Meunier has been so good as her successor that it doesn’t even feel like she ever left. Some would say that Meunier doesn’t have a vision of his own, but I tend to believe that Meunier is just a kindred spirit. Romanticism was the key word for his FW 2016 collection. But as opposed to the elation of romance, Meunier focused on the pain of love, emphasized by a raucous soundtrack of Swans’ ‘Screen Shot’ (is it just me or does it seem like Swans is becoming a fashion show staple? Yang Li and Siki Im have used the apocalyptic boogie of Michael Gira in recent shows as well) and a cover of Joy Division’s ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ as well as a reminder of the brand’s unique relationship to rare fabrics. The clothes were mostly black, and largely devoid of skirting, instead opting for Meunier’s singular approach to trousers. The best look in the collection was a three-piece suit, patterned in black and white with the sleeves of the jacket running well past fingertips and the trousers sitting up at the calves. For some reason I thought of the buzzy but decidedly excellent UK-based post-punk band Savages while looking at this collection, or perhaps just thought it would be amazing to see the band dress in these clothes.



Rick Owens 

We might as well just give Rick his own column because the man never ever disappoints. FW 2016 was different than his last three years or so of collections. There were no grandiose displays of showmanship. There were no black sorority line dancers, European metal bands, models wearing models, or cocks. There were structure, lines, silhouette, and virtuosic displays of draping. We all know that Rick is a master pattern cutter, but his products have more or less stayed the same for years. He has created so many garments that he could live off them for centuries. But Rick has been thinking about wastefulness. How can he infuse a product with enough of himself that people would never want to let it go? He did so by draping every garment until they were contorted into wonderful pieces or architecture. So even though the garments are going to be recreated, they will be done so with the exact lines cut by Rick himself. Who would ever throw away a piece of clothing that Rick had his hands on? Exactly.
 

Chanel

It must be weird for fashion editors that have been doing this thing for decades. That means they have been writing about Karl Lagerfeld’s Chanel collections since 1982. It’s hard to find new ways to write about the brand, let alone for the 82-year-old Lagerfeld to come up with new ideas. And yet new ideas he comes up with indeed: airports, casinos, supermarkets, art fairs, Zen gardens and more are all recent Lagerfeld dreams made Chanel realities. Perhaps a little exhausted by the pressure to consistently come up with the world’s biggest fashion show, Lagerfeld focused on the clothes for Chanel FW 2016, 93 looks worth of clothes. Classic Chanel going on here, with feminine elegance as in the selection of pink dresses and delicate masculinity with Lagerfeld’s eternal takes on Coco Chanel’s power suits.
 

Dries Van Noten

Dries Van Notes has one of the most vibrant imaginations in fashion. He always has a specific story in mind, and fiction or non-fiction, he vividly bring those stories to life in garments. For FW 2016, his imagination swayed towards the love affair between early 20th Century poet, journalist, playwright, and World War 1 soldier Gabriele D’Annunzio and Italian heiress, muse, and patroness of the arts Luisa Casati. And despite this very succinct explanation, Dries still manages to never over-indulge his ideas in any way that would result in his collections coming off as kitsch. Casati’s pet leapords were exemplified by leapord prints scarves, trousers, and over-coats, but they looked smart and clean. As did the rest of the collection, with pin-striped jump suits, brown polka dot blazers clinging to the hips military-style, and a dragon-printed black dress. Dries is an artist, but he isn’t Leigh Bowery. He manages to find the art in fashion design while not allowing the art to rule over the need to make beautiful products that will be worn by his worldly and sophisticated customers. Between this and his FW 2016 menswear collection, it appears that Dries is back at the top of his game. God Bless Belgium.
 

Louis Vuitton

Unlike Ricardo Tisci who has utterly re-defined Givenchy, Nicolas Ghesquire works within a Louis Vuitton code but has re-interpreted it into his forward-leaning futurist vision. Ghesquiere’s Lou V collections keep getting better too. His SS 2016 collection was my favorite that he had done at the house so far, but FW 2016 is even better. His penchant for futurism was indulged here to the max with Louis Vuitton quality sportswear defining the collection. The mesh color-blocked jumpsuit and dress were the most adventurous pieces of this collection, and possibly of Ghesquiere’s tenure at Louis Vuitton. They absolutely worked too, and it was hard not to imagine Ghesquiere muses like Grimes and K-Pop star (and undeniable smoking hot beauty) CL wearing them. Ghesquiere has not steered Louis Vuitton away from luxury, he has modernized conceptions of luxury. Instead of just designing clothes for massively wealthy French women, he seems to very much revere the success of millennial artists. Bjork could totally wear this.


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Virgil Abloh is nothing if not self-aware of the prejudices that define the fashion industry and the people carrying those prejudices trying to hold him back. And yet, he has emerged as an undeniably fresh talent with a voice that the fashion industry desperately needs. His Off-White FW 2016 collection used a custom-made neon sign quoting the rude salesclerk in ‘Pretty Woman:’ “You’re obviously in the wrong place.” As a result, Abloh makes his own place, mixing streetwear and conceptual garments into a definable whole. Iris Van Herpen proved that fashion can be surreal by staging a truly remarkable show with models performing in front of optical light screens that acted as both mirror and window. Utilizing choreography by filmmaker and dancer Blanca Li, the models’ experimental movements emphasized the experimental nature of the garments: two dresses were made with 3D printing and some were made in collaboration with architect Phillip Beesley. Van Herpen seems to be the only designer around solely driven by a need to push the medium of fashion beyond expectations. Saint Lauren Paris FW 2016, possibly Hedi Slimane’s last for the label, did what the label did best: ultra luxurious clothes for rocker girls. But, the shows are starting to feel ever more predictable season-by-season. Maybe it is time for a change. JW Anderson’s work for Loewe is starting to make much more sense, as evidenced by FW 2016. As opposed to creating theatre pieces that merely draw attention to accessories, the clothes were extremely luxurious, such as an all tan leather look. Bernard Wilhelm continues to be underrated, and his FW 2016 presentation showing off menswear and womenswear looks drew upon African garb but made it palatable to a fashion-savvy audience. And the gods of Japanese fashion design, Yohji Yammamoto and Rei Kawakubo, didn’t disappoint (as if they could). Yohji indulged his love of goth, shaping dresses and jumpsuits as coffins, and the black lip-gloss emphasized the “death beauty” appeal. Rei Kawakubo imagined “punks in the 18th century” at Comme des Garcons and disregarded all worries about selling. Her designs reached peak decadence with abstract royal gowns that towered over their models like pillars. 

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A Feminist Argument For Wet T-Shirt Contests

text by Jill Di Donato

 

For a moment, as the water hits her skin, she becomes sex.

She shimmies. She sways.

She’s fantasy.

Like bamboo, strong yet flexible.

And then the moment is passed.

Exit stage left.

          A blank canvas—an item to be styled or worn alone, the white tee is lazy or elegant, sexy or grungy. When wet, however, the white tee becomes something else entirely.

          It’s a complicated cultural symbol. Like most garments, its significance is defined largely by its wearer and the style in which it’s worn. When you factor in ideas about class and the friction of hedonist concupiscence rubbing against American Puritan ethos, the white t-shirt contest opens a dialog of sociological intrigue.

           But can the wet t-shirt contest be feminist?

           At one time, I used to think that as an object, a woman was unable to gaze astutely at the world herself. But people slip in and out of dominance and submission all the time. What appeals to me about the wet t-shirt contest is the ease with which a woman can shift states of modesty at will. That’s a powerful feat, especially because historically, women have struggled to move freely within trappings of modesty. Or rather, expectations of feminine modesty have been historically limiting to women.

          For detractors who point out that wet t-shirt contests are judged and winners pronounced, isn’t that the American way? But before the first playhouses opened in the Colonies, across the pond, Shakespeare’s Jacques says to Duke Senior, “All the world’s a stage/And all the men and women merely players. ” This pronouncement couldn’t be more relevant today, when personal exhibitionism is de rigeur.

         Human obsession with spectacle is not new; what’s new lies in the aggregation of images—the sheer multitude of them, the myriad ways they can be manipulated, and the rapid speed with which all this can happen. The diversity in the types of images that people put out into the world is a choice opportunity, especially for marginalized groups to reclaim power by getting on stage and showing their breasts: big breasts, small breasts, augmented breasts, natural breasts, brown breasts, large-nippled-breasts, pierced breasts, lactating breasts, post-sex-reassignment op breasts.

          Welcome to the democratization of tits.

          But even though potential to find a sundry of images exists, are people taking the time to seek them out? Or do they go for the easy definitions of what’s sexy/sophisticated/crass/erotic/tasteful/raunchy?

           The infinite aggregation of images on platforms like Instagram, Pinterest, Tumblr—media forums that allow viewers to post, rather than simply consume images, say looming from Hollywood billboards or from inside fashion glossies. However, has this new access actually changed social attitudes about female sexuality?

           New media platforms do take some power away from the male gaze. A shift is happening, and even if change doesn’t occur immediately, the camera is now in the hands of more people: women, especially, who can turn the camera onto themselves. Whether millennial media habits can chip away at some of the ingrained images of hegemonic sex appeal remains to be seen, but the way people consume media these days helps make an argument for why sartorial events like the wet t-shirt contest can indeed be feminist.

            The wet t-shirt contest predates sexy selfies and Snapchat videos: it’s a living photograph, a tableaux vivant.

           But what about its history?

           The first iconic image of a wet t-shirt is credited to Jacqueline Bisset. Swimming underwater, the English actress surfaces wearing a white tee and bikini bottoms in the 1977 pulp film, The Deep. Goggle-faced and sun-kissed, the underwater swimming scene opens the film. As she comes up for air, Bisset appears elegant, her near-nudity referencing Aphrodite.

          Two years later, Frank Zappa’s 1979 track “Fembot In A Wet T Shirt” gives props to the gals on stage. “Well the girls are excited/Because in a minute/They’re gonna get wet/‘N’ the boys are delighted/Because all the titties/Will get ’em upset.” These lyrics underscore an exciting view of female sexuality and its power over male spectators—a reclaiming, if you will, of the male gaze.

          The 1980s saw the rise of wet t-shirt contests, where models like Stacey Owen and Debbie Quorell used their coronations at these types of international events to lead to successful careers in porn. And so, the evolution to Girls Gone Wild, who, today, are likely to be what people think of when they think of a woman in a wet t-shirt contest.

          Because the women in these videos seem so interchangeable to me, I picture “her” face wearing a somewhat quizzical look, as the director of photography is more interested in catching the gaze of cheering frat bros in the background, to whom the franchise is marketing the show. The woman in the wet tee is secondary, more of an object than actor, like Bisset in The Deep.

           Or is that distinction indicative of my tastes—my desires…my choice: Bisset (urbane—old Hollywood) over a Girls Gone Wild (tawdry—Hollywood Boulevard). What can I say: I’m a snob.

           While I don’t love the idea of women competing with one another in a wet t-shirt contest, people engage in contests in everyday life all the time. I choose favorites, handpick who and what I want in all kinds of situations, casual or intimate, and doing so is a freedom I wouldn’t want to give up. 

A FOMO Sufferer's Highlights During Armory Week In New York

text by Keely Shinners

Art Fair weekend in New York is a dream for the travelling collector, but a thorn in the side of the press. How does one feel like she has seen all the best work without running around to galleries and exhibitions like a mindless consumer? The feeling only elevates when you’re a girl like me, stuck in Los Angeles, living vicariously through Instagram feeds. New York art fair weekend FOMO is real and poignant. To organize and categorize, I make lists. I make a folder on my desktop labeled “new york art grrrl shit” and dream about “being there.” If you’ve got FOMO too, check out this list of seven amazing pieces from this year's art fair weekend:

1. Tony Gum “Twiggy” presented Christopher Moller Gallery at PULSE Art Fair.

In these portraits, Tony Gum, hailing from Cape Town, reimagines herself as Twiggy, Frida Kahlo, and the Virgin Mary. Her work is innovative, questioning the politics of visibility and reproducibility (which proves especially poignant, as she is the only African artist to exhibit at PULSE this year) but not devoid of humor and humanness. Her Instagram from the other day reads, “If you’re at the @pulseartfair, come through so that we can do humane things like chatting, hugging, and dancing.”

2. Namsa Leuba “Sarah, from the series NGL” at Echo Art’s booth at the Armory Show.

Leuba’s work explores African identity through Western eyes. She has her finger on the pulse of the innovation and vibrancy of Africa’s art and fashion worlds. The series “NGL” focuses on a collaboration with Art Twenty One in Lagos. Leuba does an amazing job of capturing and translating the vibrations of the Lagos fashion and art world to New York.

3. Macon Reed “Eulogy for the Dyke Bar” installation (and real bar!) presented by Mackin Projects at PULSE Art Fair.

Despite so-called “victories” for lesbian, femme, and bisexual women this year, traditional strongholds for queer-girl culture are closing down. As the lesbian bar is threatened with extinction, Macon Reed recreates an empowering, generative, and reformative space. With real drinks!

4. Adriana Marmorek “Brasier Girasoles F (Triple D)," made of glass, on view with Nora Haime Gallery at PULSE Art Fair.

With a glass Triple D bra, Marmorek channels both the beauty and the fragility of the feminine. That which supports the woman, that which makes her beautiful, is also that which might break her. Her work is not all forlorn; the glass is also easily broken.

5. Wallpaper by Michel Auder and paintings by Alex Chaves at Martos Gallery booth at the Independent Art Fair.

Chaves’s watery, impressionistic still lives paired with Auder’s wallpaper gives one the comforting feeling of being at home, or at the very least, a home once dreamt of. But there is also something defamiliarizing about their work – the cinder block on the table, the acute intricacy of the wallpaper pattern. Here, we are once at home and somewhere strange.

6. Chris Johanson and Johanna Jackson, “Untitled” at Fleisher/Ollman booth at the Independent Art Fair.

Johanson and Jackson’s painting looks like 2016 invited us into her medicine cabinet. Aesthetically, there is order, form, complementary colors. But a closer look between the apothecary bottles reveals a hot dog, an impressionistic lightbulb, and an 8-track. Once again, we are confronted with the colorful absurdities of our time!

7. Patti Smith “18 Stations” at Robert Miller Gallery

Though not part of a fair, Patti Smith’s third solo show opened this weekend at Robert Miller Gallery. Smith exhibits emotional, black and white photographs from her familiar haunts: the Greenwich café where she starts her day, Rockaway Beach, where she seeks repose. Like her music and her prose, Patti Smith’s photographs have an emotive tactility, like the memory of a place you have loved for a long time, a place you’ve never been before.

8. Genevieve Gaignard “Muscle Beach” at the SPRING/BREAK Art Show

In the middle of the New York minute, we get a smoggy breath of LA. Genevieve Gaignard’s installation feels like stepping into the kitschy apartment of your washed-up television star aunt’s Pasadena apartment – living room beauty parlor and all. Her self-portraits, which dot the walls of the installation, explores the LA alter ego, with our narcissism, our nostalgia, our desire to be “looked at” but also to be hidden. If anything, go for the cat knick-knacks.

Friday Playlist: When Visual Artists Make Tunes

People are justifiably skeptical about artists that decide to step outside their known mediums and experiment with something else. Musicians painting, or painters making records, or Kanye West designing fashion, are all often written off as "vanity projects." The reason for this is simple. The idea that someone can be exceptional at more than one discipline seems to strike at the heart of one's inferiority complex: how can one person be blessed with so much talent, and I be left with nothing? It's a near impossible pill to swallow. If you can look outside yourself, however, you should be able to see that true artists get bored working in the same discipline for the entirety of their careers. By their very natures, they feel compelled to experiment, even if that means failure. The refusal to be frightened of failure is the essence of an artist, and by that notion we should celebrate those willing to take a step outside their comfort zones. I forget who said it, but some famous artist of one discipline or another said that all forms of art wish they could be music. Music has the power to physically connects its listeners, which makes it an attractive form to any artist. That is most likely why so many visual artists have decided to make records in one capacity or another, to varying degrees of success.

In many cases, artists that worked in visuals to begin with actually gained notoriety with music before their art. Kim Gordon, now a rock n' roll icon, was actually an aspiring artist and working in the art world when she joined Sonic Youth. Though she is enjoying a newfound interest in her fine art, she is also still making punishing noise rock as one part of duo Body/Head. Performance artist Lydia Lunch found the first avenue for her extreme expression as a member of the no wave band Teenage Jesus and the Jerks. Robin Crutchfield, who has showed his art at MoMA and other venues, was first a musician as a member of no wave band DNA and also as the leader of synth punk act Dark Day. Perhaps most notable is Destroy all Monsters, a Detroit noise rock band from the 1970s that took the garage fury of The Stooges and melted the sound down to its noise essence. The leaders of that band were art icons Mike Kelley and Jim Shaw.

Filmmakers, in particular, seem to have a modern day fascination with making music. Perhaps that is because sound is such an essential part of the cinematic experience, that these artists just want to explore this aspect of their processes further. Sometimes it works wonders, especially when the records are made by filmmakers who already have a deep connection to music. David Lynch for instance is extremely involved in the music composition in his films and in Twin Peaks and his collaboration with composer Angelo Badalamenti is legendary. Perhaps that is why his first solo record, Crazy Clown Time was such an unexpected delight. Jim Jarmusch also has a well-documented fascination with music, and his soundtracks for films like Dead Man, recorded by Neil Young at his most sparsely experimental, and Ghost Dog, recorded by RZA at his headiest, are as iconic as the films they were made for. Jarmusch's musical collaboations with Josef Van Wissem sound like great avant rock, not like a filmmaker just mucking about (Jarmusch also played in no wave band Del-Byzanteens and in Crutchfield's Dark Day as a young man).

There are of course a million other examples of this, but Spotify is coming up short on quite a bit of the tracks I'd like to include. The point is, we shouldn't immediately write off a project because it is made by an artist that is known for making different things, because the most talented artists can express their ideas in myriad ways. That we should celebrate. 

7 Best Collections of Milan Fashion Week

The fashion industry, much of it anyway, wants to tell the story that Mr. Alessandro Michele has not only cemented a cultural revolution at Gucci, but that his revolution has reverberated throughout the entire city of Milan. This is simply not true: Milan is still Milan, and Milan is at its best when its storied luxury houses do what they do best. Luckily, many of those houses were in fine form for FW 2016: Prada, Bottega Veneta, Marni, and Jil Sander all introduced stunning collections. Nevertheless, Milan is still marked by gaudy and opulent brands never too easy on the eyes, unless that’s your thing: Phillip Plein, Dolce & Gabbana, Etro, and the like feel increasingly out of step with the current tastes of style. If Dolce really has found influence in Gucci, it is only a step towards finding relevance. That relevance savored during the brand’s Sex and the City glory days will probably never come back.

The best Milan-based brands right now have an indefinable quality that makes them seem like they might be weird fits for the perceived traditionalism defining Milan but nevertheless find themselves better suited to the city than they would elsewhere. Damir Doma, for instance, has flourished in Milan after seeming to be buried under the heft of the Paris schedule in the first few years of his brand’s existence.

This was a good season for Milan, with lots of the brands using a sense of giddy romance and poetry that emphasizes the state of mind of the Italian state. I was just in Florence and Milan, and the feeling that I felt there was pure bliss and contentment. It’s hard to separate the best of the Italian fashion from that feeling. But maybe I’m getting ahead of myself.

1. Marni

Fashion design at its simplest is the identifying of interesting shapes and color palettes. When you have those two aspects in your collections, embellishment and decoration become far away after-thoughts: icing on the aesthetic cake. That is most likely why Consuelo Castiglioni of Marni is continuously revered, as her brand always remains an exploration or architecture and light. Her FW 2016 collection was perhaps one of her least minimal, but the shapes were still the first thing striking about the clothes. The sleeves on the knits were widened to epic proportions, while the garments lay cropped to the hips. Though the clothes drew attention, they didn’t at all draw attention away from the female form. They accentuated it, and even sexualized it. For a brand so revered as a “clothes as art” label, I don’t think Marni gets credit for how sexual it can be. These are seductive garments, or maybe captivating is the right word. As stated before, Castiglioni got a little taken with embellishment in this collection, as in the kaleidoscopic blue and white prints that featured on both a dress as well as a knit and trousers pairing. But they weren’t opulent. They were sort of dreamy. There’s still nothing like Marni.

2. Prada

With Prada being the global juggernaut it is, it’s safe to say that many of the women that wear the label aren’t aware of the fact that Miuccia Prada is a communist with a taste for radical art and the spirit of rock n’ roll. As if to remind the world of this fact she presented her FW 2016 collection. Set to a roaring soundtrack of songs by radical female musicians PJ Harvey and Nico, FW 2016 was Prada’s most freewheeling collection in seasons. Ms. Prada said that this collection was about a woman starting over with what she has, as in throwing all one’s clothes on the ground as assembling something new from it. As such, the collection used a variety of garments seemingly out of place with one another coming together and creating something fascinating to look at. Pseudo technical outerwear sat atop cocktail dresses, while other coats brought to fruition a post-WWII referencing ensemble. The colors in this collection were mesmerizing, the way the hues of brown and green and orange and blue all clashed but complimented one another. Prada, as wild as it gets in its stories and ideas, still focuses on product. There wasn’t one item here that women won’t want to buy. Ms. Prada says she is interested in teaching after the show. Teaching women to dress? She certainly could, but still Prada can really work for every woman once broken down.

3. Jil Sander

I haven’t thought much about Jil Sander in a while (other than the brand’s Uniqlo collaborations because I needed a suit at a nice price) but it feels like the house creative director Rodolfo Paglialunga has finally gotten a grasp of what the Jil Sander customer wants. That was evident in the menswear collection that was characterized by minimal lines and an overall harsh militaristic aesthetic and color palette. In a similarly toned down but different palette of black, white, grey, and silver, the FW 2016 womenswear collection also felt quintessentially Jil Sander: minimal but strong. Sander herself was always able to create a striking and imposing look with the least bit of gesture, and that is evident here with the masculine-leaning dresses and coats. Nothing much going on, and yet I imagine if I saw a woman walking down the street like this there’d be no way my eye wouldn’t be following her around. Bravo Rodolfo (plus replacing Raf Simons is a thankless job from the get-go).

4. Missoni

It’s being written by many that Angela Missoni’s best collection in years is in someway due to the success of Alessandro Michele at Gucci. But really it just seemed like Missoni doing what Missoni does best: knits, knits, and more knits. The first 14 knits featured Missoni’s hippie-luxe chunk knits cut into sweaters, dresses, robes, beanies, and scarves. It all seemed older Missoni than new Gucci, looking back on the 1970s Laurel Canyon women that made Missoni the brand it is.

5. Bottega Veneta

Tomas Maier revolutionized the idea of luxe sportswear, but now that every brand has more or less started ripping him off he’s abandoned casualwear for something more adult and powerful. Really, nothing looks as sharp as Bottega Veneta when Maier is at his best, as in the FW 2016 collection. From the first look, an oversized pantsuit, you can see Maier’s ability to infuse a touch of brutality into elegance, that is only furthered by the increasingly technical looks that came thereafter. Maier is of course one of fashion’s master technicians, evidenced here by a multitude of plaid looks in knit and leather. A leather plaid trench coat was one of the most striking looking pieces of the entire season. The collection didn’t seem to have any single theme or inspiration; Maier is a product man and uses the best technologies to bring those products to fruition. He utilized new Italian machinery for the knitting in the collection, best evidenced by the paper-thin dresses that defined the middle part of the show. And as usual, the shoes and boots were quite nice. 

6. Damir Doma

Damir Doma has flourished since leaving Paris for Milan last year. It’s not just he no longers finds himself overshadowed in the glut of revolutionary designers that show in Paris, it’s that his brand feels a little more Italian. Though it is conceptual, it is vague in its conceptions. It’s very much about structure, and the poetry is in the architecture of the garments. In some ways, he has just as much in common with Jil Sander as he does with Rick Owens. For FW 2016, Doma consulted his actual models to see how they would like to wear the clothes, capturing the inner being of each woman in the show (yikes that sounded pretentious didn’t it?). The patterned dresses flowed loose off the bodies, while a white hoodie clung tailored to the waist while its sleeves flared out. Everything looks free but considered. Some of the looks were a bit safe, as in the clunky knit sweaters that you see time again. But the best pieces were all essentially Damir Doma: architecturally vibrant but poetically minimal.

7. Gucci

Of course. Celebrating his one-year anniversary as head of the house, Gucci creative director Alessandro Michele has radically altered perceptions of the brand and has seen his aesthetic reverberate throughout the entire fashion world. Though the gender ambiguous aesthetic has been a part of fashion for some time, seeing it at Gucci and more importantly seeing it successful at a house like Gucci proves that people are ready for irreverence in fashion. FW 2016 had a very vintage aesthetic, but also a more palatable one. Now that Michele has solidified his vision, he seems intent on turning it into a legacy and not a flash in the pan. There were so many things here, from a cat print sweater to magnificent tye-dye dresses to elegant but retro-leaning pantsuits. You also see Michele’s talent in how every look seems to carry so many products, from jewelry to bags. It could be just idea diarrhea, but they way he presents everything really is rather artful. Somewhere, Frida Giannini is cursing the name Alessandro.

Text by Autre Fashion Editor Adam Lehrer. Follow @AUTREMAGAZINE for the latest in fashion, art, culture and more.

At War With Popular Culture: Kate Durbin Is Kicking Ass On the Front Lines

photograph by Jessie Askinazi

text by Luke Goebel

I won’t pretend to know visual art, as that is my sister’s side of our art cult/community URANUS which is being formed in Landers, Ca, but I am versed in the wheelhouse of parlance—I mean I drive the language barge to sea and back, communing with the whales. Kate Durbin is someone who I first encountered through her art work, visual art and conceptual art shows, although she is perhaps as prolific and successful in her written work as she is in the conceptual art communities. This interests me immensely as I know so few artists who occupy both territories and bring a conceptual and critical theoretically informed and cultural critique to conceptual art and poetry.

Durbin’s work first came across my radar through social media, seeing works from recent shoes of her such as “HELLO, SELFIE! NYC” which featured Durbin looking very serious in a clear Hello Kitty adorned smock with identically dressed, for lack of my better words, fembots, covered in Hello Kitty stickers on their exposed skin and each rocking a red bow in the hair, except Durbin, each with a diversely different build and body shape, with a kitten print on the crotch of their white underwear. They are wearing only a pair of white kitten print panties and a white sports bra like top. The show was performed in a public space, before the locked gate of a storefront, and the models are all holding a very serious expression regardless, or rather intentionally, with their turquoise and hot pink lipsticks. The models took real time selfies and posted them for one hour on social media, and the show was purportedly focused on creating a “New form of passive aggressive performance art, reveling in teen narcissism and the girl gaze. Inspired by surveillance culture, Hello Kitty, Apple products, the teen girl Tumblr aesthetic [we will return to this], Miley Cyrus…”

I feel like I have been seeing these iconic images from Durbin for years, although perhaps I have not. Her name especially sticks out to me because of the strain Durban Poison, which is spelled differently of course. Yet, her art does have a sort of intoxicating, heavy sativa, altering effect on my mindstate. While I would usually find myself turning away from anything with the word Miley Cyrus in the artist’s statement, Durbin’s work seems hyper-intentional, socially critical, radicalized, and affronting. I also see and sense with Durbin a constant effort, work, and drive to make and to present. It is only after investigating and engaging more with her that I find this to be absolutely correct. I do not know how she manages to be as prolific, as funded, and as consistently engaged as she is.

"...she is driven, accomplished, and kicking ass on the badass front lines of war with pop culture, gender, and drivel—making it new, pointed, and barbed and in formations of attack as well as celebration...."

Somehow our ropes have crossed through various friends, interests, and even housing needs. She has a great, large space and office/studio for sublet which is where a great deal of my current novel in progress is set. To be completely transparent, or rather more transparent, I was to interview her but I fell through twice on my end of the bargain. The interview was to focus on her new iPhone app, called ABRA, which we will be getting to in a bit. I haven’t forgotten to talk more about TEEN GIRL TUMBLR AESTHETIC either. Having failed her twice without warning on the interview front, she texted, “This is too many reschedules for me. Sorry.” Now that might seem like a bit of nothing, a scraplet of word matter, but the truth is that is quite the perfect response to the constant presence of flakes, or better yet, people, who are too thinly spread to come through on their promises to you. If you work in the art world, or the literary world, or the industry of film, et al, by now you know what it feels like to be promised things that don’t materialize—interviews, edits, features, representation by agents, meetings, and to have the person fall though, repeatedly reschedule, etc., and one of the great tasks we all face is how to respond to these folks and their soul-crushing failure to let you know you matter at fuck all! When they flake, how do you strike the perfect tone of 'I’m so annoyed at you but I’m going to be the big person' and smile through it while still setting my limits so my soul isn’t crushed by forced passivity, which I effectuate only to try and get what I need now and or later. Well, that’s exactly the way to do it—steal her response.

“This is too many reschedules for me. Sorry.” It makes them want you. In the written word, Kate Durbin has two collections of poetry, has founded and runs Gage Stigmata: Critical Writings and Art about Lady Gaga, which has been featured in NPR, Yale’s American Scholar Magazine, The Atlantic, Huffington Post, and by tweets from Gaga’s stylists as well as visual artists, et al. Her Tumblr Project, Women As Object, created an online archive of Teen Girl Tumblr Aesthetic (see), and led to a live performance by Durbin as Bellyflop in LA and two video performances and several artist talks. Her book, The Ravenous Audience, was selected for publication by Black Goat, and imprint of the incredible press Akashic Books. The book was blurbed by a friend, poet laureate of the United States POTUS Juan Felipe Herrera. It was glowingly reviewed in Rain Taxi and elsewhere and is a work dealing with coming of age and myths and various media dealing with female archetypes. Her next collection E! Entertainment consists of “meticulously reworded transcriptions of reality television shows… Keeping up with the Kardashians, Real Housewives of Soup Kitchens, the Real Lives of Housewives of Gypsy Tweekers." They are revisions of transcripts of reality television as well as courtroom trials of Lindsay Blowhand, Amanda Knox, and Anna Nicole Smith. For this book Durbin has been hailed as “pop culture’s stenographer.”

Needless to say she is driven, accomplished, and kicking ass on the badass front lines of war with pop culture, gender, and drivel—making it new, pointed, and barbed and in formations of attack as well as celebration.

Her app, ABRA, is something really interesting and new from Durbin and her collaborators, Amaranth Borsuk and Ian Hatcher, which took six years and countless collaborators to create. It’s a bit difficult to explain how it works and what it does in an article. I also have already used up a fuck load of your attention span if not all of it. But the app basically presents to you texts, poems, living poems that are randomized, and you interact with these words, replacing words with your own creations, moving words around, selecting bits of texts to morph the poems. It would be a hell of a thing to explore in the sunshine stoned for a little while, or to use while writing your work, crafting poetry, a novel, a text message. The sorts of words that come up and the quality of the poems that are offered up and that morph from your engagement with the app are really actually quite intriguing, lovely, well made. It’s the first generator that I have explored that begins with quite marvelous arrays of meaningful poetry and morph into user-directed and meaningful, i.e. not slop, new poems. The interface within the app is seamless, if not delightful to engage with. It really is a very well made and sexy app and it’s worthy of downloading, playing with, stealing from while writing, and now I will take a few words from the app for you readers, “Ball is sticks ass butt her given a girdle of stretch to cheek eeeeeeeeeeeeeee! bare hind water mark falt boat fur below odd a fussy hussy was he under where…” And there are buttons to change, to MUTATE, GRAFT, PRUNE, ERASE, and CADABRA as well as a wheel at the bottom of the words to run and watch the words change and be replaced and deckle and it’s actually quite a lot like tripping.

You can download Kate Durbin's app, ABRA, which is described as "a magical poetry instrument/spellbook for iOS," here. Text by Luke Goebel. Photograph by Jessie Askinazi

[FASHION REVIEW] London Fashion Week Autumn/Winter 2016

by Adam Lehrer

London Collections. The young creative one. The cool one. All that. God it can be boring how the entire fashion industry jumps on the same narrative train. But it’s true at its core: London is the best city for emerging fashion talent. Of course much of the designers that helped put London on the map as a hotbed of radical fashion thought, like JW Anderson and Gareth Pugh, are in their ‘30s now and are entering into mature phases of their brands. Or if not more mature, at least older. Then you have someone like Molly Goddard who three seasons in already seems to be tapping into something that actually does seem to be missing from fashion, and not just in a stock quote, “I became a designer because I felt it was missing something,” kind of statement (usually that means there’s a rip in a shirt or something). Claire Barrow seems to use fashion more as a means to show her art, which is very cool and different and radical and I love her for it. And then Marques ‘ Almeida, fresh of its LVMH prize, is still nothing approaching commercial but still cranking out clothes that a specific customer can’t get enough of. So, as much as I hate these pre-written narratives, I’m in agreement with the fashion consensus: London rocks.

Marques Almeida

Designers Marta Marques and Pablo Almeida prefer a frayed and lived-in quality to their clothes. Less we forget the heavily treated and distressed denim pieces that the label made its bones with. And while their line of products has grown exponentially, the label remains intimately aware of its customer. That lived-in quality was all over the FW 2016 show. Watching it, I envisioned a strong and self-assured woman who had just finished a near-degenerate night of partying but finds herself not on a walk of shame, but a walk of triumph. The clothes, while gorgeous, make the wearer look incredibly self-assured. Not quite a “don’t give a fuck” vibe, but a confidence it one’s own beauty. With a perfect party soundtrack of contemporary hits by Beyoncé and Rihanna (two stars arguably at the zenith of their powers and making the best music of their lives), the pieces came in metallic leather and featured over-the-knee boots, corseted bustiers, distressed and fucked up looking bags, and so much denim. Blue denim dresses, blue denim hoodies, pink denim, and more all tied the collection together into the Marques ‘ Almeida world. This is the best the label has ever been.

Anya Hindmarch

Designer Anya Hindmarch locked her models inside a retro arcade game and it worked wonders. The garments while ostensibly minimal appeared retroactively maximal. A trench coat and a bag were emblazoned with visions of Tetris and creepy digital animated graphics were used as continuing motifs throughout the collection. Hindmarch’s customers are going to love this stuff regardless, but she really gives to the fashion press with awesome presentation. As someone who is more an appreciator of aesthetics than anything else, I must give Kudos to how thoroughly Hindmarch brings her ideas to life. The set, the lighting, the color-blocked garments, all of it made for something a little more special.

Gareth Pugh

I pretty much always include Gareth Pugh on my favorites list, but it’s clear to me now that he has softened his aesthetic approach and that is in no way a bad thing. He was once a disciple of Rick Owens and Michelle Lamy, and his clothes were fittingly brutal and architectural. He’s still conceptual, but his SS 2016 collection and his similar FW 2016 collection seem to have a sense of humor about themselves. For FW 2016, Pugh was playing with the idea of female authority; he examined the ways in which a woman commands the respect of everyone around them. The collection featured Pugh’s magnificently sculpted take on the female power suit alongside power suit glitzed up with star prints. I loved the masks clearly rendered from Hannibal Lecter’s infamous mouth guard, there was something very Margiela about them in a collection that was by most standards one of the most conventional that Pugh has ever designed. Pugh has struggled with money, even having had to squat for a period of time to make ends meet. He seems ready to make clothes that sell, but not ready to give up on his ideas. That’s a good thing.

Claire Barrow

Does showing 12 looks qualify as a “fashion show?” I don’t know and I don’t care. Unlike almost every other designer in the world, I can truly say that there is no one on Earth doing what Claire Barrow does. Into punk rock, the occult, and historical gangs, Barrow applies her illustrations to near every garment she produces. A pink tye-dye dress came blazoned with vague and slightly demonic faces, there were wide leg trousers with a dragon motif, and outerwear accessories like gloves and scarves were etched with patchwork graphics. Barrow truly uses her brand as a way to express herself and her interests, and her taste is so succinct that she is still able to find her customer. People want her outlook.

Molly Goddard

Molly Goddard gets talked about for designing party clothes. That is true, but she also seems to be designing party clothes for specific woman, maybe we could use Broad City’s Ilana Glazer as that ideal woman. The woman emanates a specific cuteness derived out of an immense comfort inside her body. She’s free. That party DNA is carried through the shows, which as planned by Molly’s friends and casted with women off the street that all seem to have that Molly Goddard vibe. On a set inspired by Tokyo Drifter, Goddard indulged her very pronounced for making dresses. Those dresses came in magnificent proportions, all ruffled at the hem of the skirt emanating playfulness ad seduction. Also of note were the sliced to almost nothing leggings that literally revealed half the model’s leg. Goddard at three seasons in has already carved out her fantasy woman: this woman might hate dressing up, but if she has to she is going to have some fun with it.

Simone Rocha

Simone Rocha just had a baby. With that, numerous fashion medias have tried to find a matronly theme in Rocha’s FW 2016 collection. But Rocha’s clothes, to me, are far too austere to draw upon any single narrative. Her presentations evoke a feeling, maybe a message, much more than they do a clear storyline. Like poetry. This collection shifted between romantic hues of white and sharp dashes of black, ending with a pink robe coat and a blood red dress. Romance was optimal here, with the knits and the dresses both winking seduction.

Alexander McQueen

Sometimes it feels like Alexander McQueen is still alive, and that is largely due to his protégé Sarah Burton’s unbridled dedication to keeping the conceptual approach of her mentor alive. Case in point, Burton’s FW 2016 Alexander McQueen collection. As the label should be, the clothes were opulent but simultaneously macabre. Describing the collection as a world between reality and dreams, the clothes honed in on something mystical. Evening gowns came with the metallic butterfly motifts, a dress exposed half the female form, and my favorite piece was a lace dress that had a unicorn graphic cover half the body. The clothes were so utterly beautiful it was hard to imagine them as corporeal, and that was probably the point.

Text by Adam Lehrer. Follow @AUTREMAGAZINE to stay up-to-date on the latest fashion.

Ennio Morricone's Ten Most Notable Film Scores

For the score of Quentin Tarantino's The Hateful Eight, Ennio Morricone won his first official Academy Award at the age of 86, after scoring more the 500 films. Here are ten of Morricone's most notable film scores. 

1. The Ecstasy of Gold (from the film: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, 1966)

2. Amore Come Dolore (from the film: The Forbidden Photos of a Lady Above Suspicion, 1970)

3. L'Arena (from the film: Il Mercenario, 1970)

4. Piume Di Cristallo (from the film: The Bird With the Crystal Plumage, 1970)

5. Duck You Suckers (from the film: Fistful of Dynamite, 1971)

6. Theme from Salo (from the film: Salo or 120 Days of Sodom, 1975) 

7. Harvest (from the film: Days of Heaven, 1978)

8. Chi-Mai (from the film Le Professionnel, 1981)

9. Cinema Paradiso Theme (from the film: Cinema Paradiso, 1988)

10. L'Ultima Diligenza di Red Rock (from the film: The Hateful Eight, 2015)

[FRIDAY PLAYLIST] Remembering Fort Thunder, Providence's '90s Radical Art and Music Space

For some reason, people fail to acknowledge the importance of the city of Providence, Rhode Island on music, art, design, and culture at large. Less we forget that Rhode Island School of Design has the most impressive creative alumni in the country: Artists Jenny Holzer, Kara Walker, and Ryan Trecartin, designers Mary Katranzou and Eckhaus Latta, director Gus Van Zandt, animator Seth McFarland, and so many more all studied their vocations here. But nevertheless, much of the city’s creatives leave for other cities once they get their degrees: New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, wherever. But there was a time that Providence was the most important city in the country for avant-garde music and radical art. That time was Fort Thunder.

Fort Thunder was a radical art and music space established in the late 1997 by artists and musicians Brian Chippendale (Lightning Bolt, Black Pus, Mindflayer, etc.) and Mat Brinkman (Mindflayer, Forcefield, etc.) in a former textile factory in the Olneyville district of the city. Though the venue closed in 2001, it was legendary in its short life span for shining light on a diverse array of fiercely individualistic and radical artists and musicians.

The music could largely be classified as noise rock, but all the bands were still measurably different. They were noisy, to be certain, and tended to work in a rock format, but all had unique approaches to the aural assault. Lightning Bolt, perhaps the most known of all the bands to emerge from the scene, used the fury of Chippendale’s drums and a heavily effected and distorted bass from Brian Gibson to punish the listener. Perhaps most impressive about the duo is that as brutal as they could be, there is a defined pattern to their sound, almost having as much to do with the spasms of early Boredoms as the mathematical approach of early King Crimson. Playing in the middle of a crowd, there are still few things on earth as thrilling as a Lightning Bolt concert. Perhaps that is why the band is still playing and enjoying an immense cult following today (their last record Fantasy Empire came out last year from Thrill Jockey Records).

The other band to get pseudo-famous was Black Dice. Originally formed by Hisham Bharoocha, Sebastian Blanck, Eric Copeland, and Bjorn Copeland in 1997, Black Dice was actually something of a screamo-reminding noise punk unit, vastly different from the band that they eventually come. The band was eventually signed by DFA and they released Beaches and Canyons. The record is made up of swirling and kaleidoscopic psychedelic electro-pop, and quite beautiful really. Blanck and Bharoocha eventually left and were replaced by Aaron Warren. The band still records today, and Eric enjoys quite a successful solo career as well.

Forcefield, led by Brinkman, were arguably the Fort Thunder house band cum art collective cum spiritual guides. Brinkman, along with Jim Drain, Ara Peterson, and Leif Goldberg, applied a conceptual approach to psychedelic stereotypes. They self-designed their own multi-colored seizure-inducing outfits, while using various light structures and set props to create a total experience. Sometimes the band used pure drawn out noise. Other times they used a degraded acid house beat and just looped it forever. The point was total agitation, making the viewer as uncomfortable as possible. This approach garnered the band an appearance at the 2002 Whitney Biennial, believe it or not.

And there was of course lots more music and much of it was released by Ben McOsker’s excellent Providence label Load Records. John Dwyer, who is now Pitchfork famous for his band The Oh Sees, originally played in a noise rock duo called Pink and Brown as well as noise garage band The Coachwhips at his Providence hometown venue (yes, Fort Thunder). Dissonant post-punk bands Six Finger Satellite and Arab on Radar made the warehouse their home. And less we forget, Fort Thunder became a base for American noise, hosting early shows by Prurient, Wolf Eyes, and so many more.

The musicians who played Fort Thunder were almost unanimously artists that played music and not musicians who painted, but don’t quote me on that. Despite his being preposterously good at drums, for instance, Chippendale has had an illustrious career in illustration, and his graphic novel Ninja has become a cult favorite. His partner in ear-splitting, Brian Gibson, works on video games in his time away from the band. Brinkman works in illustration and fine art. Hisham Bharoocha, who played in Black Dice and Lightning Bolt and has a solo music project called Soft Circle, is massively successful as a photographer and a painter. He has exhibited at Deitch Projects and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts and his maximalist style is nothing less than delight for the eyeballs.

When is someone going to do a documentary on this space? Should I start a Kickstarter? Do it myself? That’s what the Fort Thunder crew would have done. 

[ART REVIEW] The Bathhouse Show in Tokyo Japan

text by Yuki Kikuchi

I met Dorothy at the first ever Hunx and His Punx show here in Tokyo. After the gig we found our way to a local bar where we bonded over beers, and Dorothy spilt her heart out about losing touch with good friends and her anxieties about what the future held. Her earnestness in that moment made me aware of the difficulties of leaving home and living alone in a foreign country - especially while trying to follow one’s dreams.

That was already two years ago now.

After a time she became friends with gallerist Ella Krivanek, who came from Australia to work in Japan.  During her time in Tokyo, Ella established a non-profit, contemporary art gallery, Space Space, while Dorothy worked as an artist and writer for Wooly Magazine. Combining their efforts, they spent nearly half a year planning The Bathhouse show: a one-night event combining music and art, held in an abandoned bathhouse scheduled for demolition. They transformed the huge building for the event. The first floor, which was previously the public bathhouse, became a space for bands to play and the dilapidated apartments above became an art gallery.

Their event captured that indefinable something that makes Japan “cool”, which we as Japanese tend overlook because it has become part of our everyday. Everyone at the show existed within the same chaotic moment, sharing a sense of excitement created by the tense juxtaposition of the casual atmosphere characteristic to Americans and Australians, and a brittle anxiety brought on by Japan’s deep sense of social order.  

The bands that performed on that night, and the art in the apartments above were of course spectacular. Playing their foreignness to their advantage, Ella and Dorothy were able to bring out a huge variety of people.

The bathhouse was torn down the next day. There is nothing left of it now. Ella returned to Australia the following month, and Dorothy to America soon after. I have no idea when they will have their next event here in Japan.

The only thing that I can be sure of is that the event was poignantly moving. It had the ephemeral beauty of a firework, which sparks with acute exhilaration, then drifts into darkness, leaving behind a bittersweet feeling. Ella and Dorothy worked hard to create something new, something that isn’t definable yet…

Thanks to their efforts, I feel that on that day I glimpsed what true art really is. What does it take to bring in a new era? Is it technology, talent, or could it be money?

I have always believed that it is passion.

[FASHION REVIEW] The Best and Worst of New York Fashion Week Autumn Winter 2016

Text by Adam Lehrer

As the fashion industry makes its trek across the Atlantic for womenswear shows in Europe, I think it’s time we start acknowledging the fact that there is something striking going on within New York fashion. While the common notion that New York is eternally more commercial than London or Paris is still true, it is starting to appear like that won’t always be the case. While there are still your Diane Von Fursternberg’s and Vera Wang’s and Ralph Lauren’s doing their wildly accessible products (and doing them well, of course), there is a real undercurrent of subversion going on at New York Fashion Week that is hard to deny. People often forget that someone like Marc Jacobs was at one point strikingly against the grain, and it feels like there are new designers in town picking up that mantle. This season, brands such as Rodarte, Eckhaus Latta, Moses Gauntlett Cheng, Creatures of Comfort, and more offered radical interpretations and presentations of the ways in which they believe that women should dress today. Less we forget the success of a brand like Hood By Air, which finds itself in a transitional phase after the health goth (whatever the fuck that was) craze dies down. Even big designers like Jeremy Scott present beauty and humor in equal dosage. All this tension (not to mention champagne and illegal drugs) between high concept fashion and big dollar fashion makes New York Fashion Week all the more fun.

What really separates New York’s younger conceptual brands from those in Paris is a sense of humor. Eckhaus Latta, which was just named to the Forbes 30 under 30, for instance very much comes off as a brand figuring it out as they go along and creating a never-ending party for their friends. Sure, something like Vetements can seem fun too, but it’s hard to imagine Rei Kawakubo cracking a smile to a joke she let slip in to a couture dress. Fashion is kind of silly at the end of the day. I mean, it is just clothes. Yes, it can be fun and interesting to critique these collections and identify the various cultural references within them, but they are still just very expensive things you put on your body, or don’t. New York designers seem to get that.

MARC JACOBS

When Marc Jacobs is at his best, Marc Jacobs is the best, period. FW 2016 felt like a return-to-form for Marc. It was all goth glamour and a macabre taste of the whimsical. Beautiful but not self-serious. Decadent but not opulent. Marc doesn’t seem to care about pushing fashion towards any future, as if we could actually define what that might be. He just wants to make excellent Marc Jacobs collections. This was one with the crazy huge platform shoes, concert sweatshirts paired with dollies, coats with useless but wonderful belt straps, and dresses oversized to bejesus and undersized to hell. Those dresses came glitzed up with spooky cat graphics, and pants suits came in black and white polka dots while shaped in the most subversive of cuts. Maybe some will say that Marc caught the Vetements but with the massive silhouettes, but subversive shapes have been Marc’s specialty since he turned Perry Eliis into a cool grunge brand. The soundtrack, silence sparsely interrupted by chimes recorded by Japanese free improv icon Keiji Haino, made for an utterly haunting collection. The Lady Gaga stunt casting didn’t even matter after the first look. Too cool.

THOM BROWNE

I really dig how Thom Browne’s man and woman dress pretty much the same. He might be the one designer who does weirder looks for his girls than guys, basically because his slightly strange power suits look more suitably odd on a woman. Odd, but awesome, I should add. Recreating Washington Square Park in the 1920s, or something, the collection found the women walking through a wooded lane wearing tweed, wool, and jacquard suits sliced up, sewn together, and re-appropriated for the uber confident alpha female. There was a tornado effect running through the clothes, and some things made absolute no sense. The usual Thom Browne customer is utterly well put together, so I don’t know id a dress or suit made of a dozen different patterns is going to have much market power. But does Thom Browne seem like a label that is financially strapped? Hardly. The shoes with the stripe logo will keep his fantasies alive for seasons to come. 

RODARTE

Rodarte is always quite amazing, but Laura and Kate Mulleavy really tapped into the ethos of the brand with the FW 2016 collection. The sense of subversive is in the ideas, celebrating femininity while incorporating leftist political ideals and never shying away from intellectual thought processes. With a non-flame retardant set designed by French furniture designer Alexandre de Betak, the Mulleavy’s tapped into the heyday of cultural importance of their Alma Mater: Berkeley in the 1960s. Was that so easy to pick up on? Aside from the Judy Collins covers of Leonard Cohen and Joni Mitchell, maybe not so much. But the clothes were magic. The multi-colored furs, the leather pieces, the white coat/dress hybrid, and all those jet-black pieces found the models looking independent and hot. If I could pick my girlfriend’s clothes, they’d probably all look like this.

CREATURES OF THE WIND

Creatures of the Wind: first of all, great name! It sounds like a latter day new wave band that could have opened up for Flock of Seagulls or something. Second, the clothes are nice and subdued, but not at all lacking quirk. It actually reminds me of prime ‘90s Jil Sander with its tapping into the garb of New York gallery women (Tavi Gevinson is a fan, after all). Designers Shane Gabier and Chris Peters aren’t re-inventing the wheel, but instead seem keen on tapping into historical notions of modernity: the clothes first mentality of Yves Saint Laurent, the retro color blocking of Miuccia Prada, maybe even some of the philosophies of Franco Moschino. Some of the looks are utterly simplistic, like a trench over a dress. But then you see a gorgeous Asian model with a brown printed halter-top, extravagant trousers, and pencil thin sweater wrapped around her neck. In a brutally crowded and commercial schedule, this new brand doesn’t seem intimidated to be anything other than what they want to be: a high fashion brand.

ECKHAUS LATTA

The little art-centric brand that absolutely fucking could and clearly does. The RISD alumni designers Mike Eckhaus and Zoe Latta were named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 this year. Considering where this brand comes from (the art world, etc.), I almost assumed that that kind of exposure might unravel what it stands for. Not so much, as evidenced by FW 2016. If anything, more eyes have only sharpened the brand’s identity. Still tapping into their inner artistes, they staged the show at MoMA PS1, with an eerie ambient soundscape provided by Richard Fellyd setting the vibe. The immediately obvious thing was a massive sharpening of tailoring and textile skills by the designers. While the deconstruction that they no doubt helped back to bring in vogue was there, they also were undoubtedly luxurious products. Performance artist Julianna Huxtable wore a golden chiffon dress, and gold appeared throughout the collection. A pink pantsuit came with shorts and all sorts of architectural embellishments. The men’s looks (the actual menswear looks not the men in dresses) were nice as well, especially a patch worked turtle neck sweater. Eckhaus Latta is defining the fashion of New York’s burgeoning under 30-art world, and that sense of taste making reverberates throughout the culture.

HOOD BY AIR

It’s pretty clear that HBA is in a transitional period. Health Goth, that born to die sub-culture, came and went and seemingly did the HBA logo from street style photos. But HBA has always been about so much more than rappers wearing their hoodies. They did after all popularize the gender bending that every designer has taken on in one-way or another. For FW 2016, Shayne Oliver went back to his queer club roots and delivered the best HBA collection in seasons. Whether it was Beyoncé’s Formation, the most talked about track of the moment, shaking the ground as the show soundtrack or the appearance of Russian LGBT artist Slava Mogutin wearing a leather puffer jacket, it appeared Oliver was utterly comfortable in his brand identity as well as his own. Gender politics, queer issues, racial tension, and the sociology of now were all heard loud and clear through the presentation. Though Oliver moved the brand to Milan, HBA is still firmly representative of modern day New York. The bucket hats (made with Kangol, awesome), rubber waders, Emperor Palpatine hooded robes, and exaggerated straight jackets were made for NYC radicals and attention seekers. HBA is made for HBA, and no one else.

PROENZA SCHOULER

Set within the almost mystical walls of the Whitney Museum, Jack McCullough and Lazaro Hernandez towed the lines of control and release with a collection of exaggerated silhouettes and tight lines and tailoring. Maybe due to the artist’s recent late-career retrospective at the museum, the designers cited Frank Stella as the primary influence on the collection. “We were looking at ways in which process informs the outcome,” said the duo to Vogue. That process was all about reconstruction, slashing the garments to bits and then putting them back together. Sweaters cut in half were tied back together with seams. A dress was slashed at the hip and at the shoulder, winking seduction. Proenza probably doesn’t get enough credit for their casual wear either: a leather trench coat with shearling collar, a red denim jacket recalls motocross, and a blazer looks re-imagined as a kimono. Everything luxurious.

PUBLIC SCHOOL

I have not always been mum in my criticism for the hype that surrounds Public School. To me, it always felt like the brand was just doing Yohji for a more commercial (New York) buyer. How many “high fashion for sneaker heads” brands do we need? But FW 2016 womenswear felt right. Maxwell Osborne and Dao-Yi Chow staged their show at the Hauser and Wirth gallery, formerly the Roxy nightclub. Appropriate, considering the designers were tapping into the pre-gentrification 1980s glory days of this eternally transitioning city. A lot of the clothes would look as good on dudes as women, particularly the massive mock-necked faux fur hoodie in hunter green and the suede bomber jackets. The post-apocalyptic thing in fashion isn’t exactly new (Rick and Raf were doing these things 15 years ago), but Osborne and Chow have a way of taking experimental shapes and making them effortless and extremely easy to wear. I’ve never been particularly drawn to Public School as a menswear brand, but their ideas on women seem to more clearly spell out a particularly customer: a disaffected, jaded, but deeply intelligent anti-fashionista. Or something like that.

ADAM SELMAN

I have not always been mum in my criticism for the hype that surrounds Public School. To me, it always felt like the brand was just doing Yohji for a more commercial (New York) buyer. How many “high fashion for sneaker heads” brands do we need? But FW 2016 womenswear felt right. Maxwell Osborne and Dao-Yi Chow staged their show at the Hauser and Wirth gallery, formerly the Roxy nightclub. Appropriate, considering the designers were tapping into the pre-gentrification 1980s glory days of this eternally transitioning city. A lot of the clothes would look as good on dudes as women, particularly the massive mock-necked faux fur hoodie in hunter green and the suede bomber jackets. The post-apocalyptic thing in fashion isn’t exactly new (Rick and Raf were doing these things 15 years ago), but Osborne and Chow have a way of taking experimental shapes and making them effortless and extremely easy to wear. I’ve never been particularly drawn to Public School as a menswear brand, but their ideas on women seem to more clearly spell out a particularly customer: a disaffected, jaded, but deeply intelligent anti-fashionista. Or something like that.

YEEZY SEASON 3

Maybe I’m a bit biased. Ok, I’m totally biased. Kanye West has been my favorite pop star for as long as I can remember, and being able to see 500 of his look on stage along with hearing his triumphant new record pretty much solidified that I was going to love this. But also, whether you love or hate his clothes it’s hard to argue that within a year he has already massively altered the fashion industry. He has brought distressing and militaria back to the forefront of fashion, with major fashion houses and H&M all ripping off the aesthetic and delivering garments of similar or (much) lower price points. I don’t go to H&M for a cheap blazer anymore, I go there for a massively oversized washed sweatshirt. As much as I’m sure fashion editors hate admitting this, Yeezy is as responsible as Vetements for fashion’s movement towards tastefully grunged out silhouettes. And Season 3 was just too massive to deny. Much of the aesthetic from the first two seasons carried over, but Kanye also tapped into the urban normcore aesthetic of his protégé Ian Connor as well as a little Balmain opulence with a lineup of mink coats. He also staged the biggest fashion show in history. People can hate him all he wants, but Kanye’s insistence on saying whatever he wants and being an asshole and yet still being judged by his artistic output, well that’s progress. That is freedom. This is America, and the man can say what he wants. I also love that, like his music, Kanye’s collections are the result of a massive think tank of ideas, with designers like Vetements’ Demna Gvasalia, Robert Gellar, John Elliot, and more all rumored to have helped along the way. Who else could get Pusha T to help him MC his show, or Cali DeWitt to do his merchandise, or Vanessa Beecroft to stage the biggest presentation of her life? So much to love, or loathe. So Kanye West.

HONORABLE MENTIONS

Perhaps I’m just still trying to wrap my head around the Olsen twins being serious fashion designers, but their FW 2016 collection for The Row was the most luxurious display of minimalism New York has seen in seasons. Speaking of minimalism, Francisco Costa’s FW 2016 CK Collection line was crisp and clean as they come, if a little underwhelming on the ideas. More Maxwell Osborne and Dao-Yi Chow, who seem to be on a real roll, their second collection for DKNY tapped into the spirit of the brand: downtown NYC in the ‘80s. Now that they understand the brand DNA, they can start building their own. Eschewing a traditional fashion show for a beautiful presentation, Moses Gauntlett Cheng imbued a sense of isolation and vulnerability into a fleshy set of clothes. The casting, made of friends of the designers Esther Gauntlett, Jenny Chang, and David Moses, provided an immediate sense of the customers who are going to love these clothes. It’s no surprise that they sold out at Opening Ceremony in a second. Gypsy Sport, showing many of the menswear looks we saw at NYFWM on models, solidified the brand’s vision with FW 2016: high fashion for those with no connection to high fashion but much connection to a sense of freedom. Jeremy Scott FW 2016 was fun, loud, and gross as he ought to be.

DISAPPOINTMENTS...

Alexander Wang, fresh off his freedom from Balenciaga, couldn’t narrow the focus of his FW 2016 collection. There was just too much going on, from political slogans to elevated prep. As much as I love Alice Glass, Travis Scott, and The Weeknd, I highly doubt anyone wants to buy coruduroy carrying the label “Alexander Wang.” Sarah Burton’s new McQ collection, showing in New York this time around, couldn’t seem to help but imbue the casual McQueen line with Vetements rip-offery. VFiles, which is traditionally extremely reliable with giving you a sense of interesting new designers, failed to deliver on that grand tradition with some rather underwhelming collections for FW 2016.

[Friday Playlist] A Celebration of Tri Angle Records

Text by Adam Lehrer

The best new record I heard this week, aside from The Life of Pablo obviously, is the newest release by London-based producer Brood Ma, Daze. A volatile collision of funk, noise, house, and techno, the album sounds viciously contemporary, indicative of the evolution of London and New York-based label Tri Angle.

Never in my life have I seen a label that has almost as much influence on the underground as it does on the mainstream. Label boss Robin Carolan has proven himself a gifted curator and arguably, an artist in his own right. Though the label has broadened its scope in its six years of existence, Carolan has a keen eye for fitting the acts he signs into his own world. A world where goth is funky and noise is fashion and anti-fashion is art. I sound pretentious here, maybe as per usual, but it is undeniable that the label has been profound in unleashing what are quite possibly the most excitingly contemporary forms of music: "alternative" R&B and abstract dance music.

It all started with 808z and Heartbreak, but before Frank Ocean, Drake, Kelela, and others all started breaking new ground in an R&B form, a Chicago philosophy student with a taste for the avant-garde and an angelic voice named Tom Krell found himself floored by Yeezy's baroque musings of self-loathe. Krell, re-named How to Dress Well, took the goth pop stylings of Kanye and Janet Jackson's The Velvet Rope and incorporated it with his love of Aphex Twin and avant-garde 20th century composition to define the possibilities that can be explored within the context of rhythm, beat, and voice. Krell never gets as much recognition as other geniuses like Ocean or the Weeknd, but his first album released on Tri Angle, Love Remains, was an era-defining record. Not only did it set up Tri Angle as a label that would be beautifully balanced the realms of pop and avant-garde, but it also made people think, "Holy shit, why haven't people realized how fucking cool R&B can be with crackling electronics, tape hiss, and gut wrenching philosophical lyrics?" Hello 2010s.

On the flip side, Carolan's taste for noise and weirdo techno paved the path for artists like Arca, who is in his own way blurring boundaries between popular and niche taste. The Haxan Cloak's record Excavation, released in 2011, approached dance music as sound design. Within it, beats weave through landscapes of thick pulsating drones. You can dance to it, but you can also just get really high and get lost in it. The best electronic music of today, from Surgeon to Jlin, all try and find a beat to dance to within a warped sonic scape of weirdo sounds.

It isn't surprising that artists like Bjork and Kanye, the more willfully experimentally of our most famous musicians, have something of a reciprocal relationship with the artists that record for Tri Angle records. Bjork especially, rumored to be dating Carolan, has been particularly vocal in her fondness for the label. On Vulnicura, The Haxan Cloak was co-producer and Carolan provided creative support. Tri Angle is good for the music industry, period. The success of the label helps scared executives see the value in stars that skew more experimental, like FKA Twigz or even Sky Ferreira. Not to diminish the success of those two gifted artists, but Tri Angle is opening eyes while in no way dumbing down their roster: Brood Ma is as atonal and all out strange as anything the label has released.

[FASHION REVIEW] Kanye West's Yeezy Season Three Collection

text by Adam Lehrer

I, admittedly, am a Kanye West apologist. I find myself profusely defending the man anytime a friend of mine has something even slightly negative to say about him. I, truly, am a massive fan. And then he has to go and drop a bomb like the “COSBY IS INNOCENT!!!” tweet and I’m left thinking, “Kanye why you doing this to me bro? You’re putting me in a tight spot.” So heading to Madison Square Garden in sub-freezing weather for an upclose viewing of Yeezy Season 3, (thank you Adidas) I had an unexpectedly sour taste in my mouth. It didn’t matter though..

Anyone who tells you something as blasé as “it sucked” clearly has a very personal hatred for the man in question. This was fashion as pop art and pop art as high-octane “Holy Fuck!” entertainment. Big is the operative word here. A filled Madison Square Garden gazing upon what seemed to be at least 500 models. For those naysayers of which I’m sure there are many of (though perhaps not as many as the 20 million fans that tuned into the presentation’s live stream however), try putting this into perspective: it was the biggest conceptual art project of all time and certainly the biggest presentation Vanessa Beecroft has ever assembled, the biggest listening party of all time, and quite easily the biggest fashion show of all time. It was so much more than fashion though.

As expected, celebrities came in spades for this show. The whole Kardashian clan: Kim, Kris, Kendall, Kylie, Kourntey, Khloe, and Caitlyn all came out to support. Pusha T swayed his head behind his brother Kanye throughout the entirety of the listening session. Vic Mensa showed up to play a new track of his own. I could have sworn I saw actress Shailene Woodley walk by as I found myself entrenched in the scene. Even our friend and artist extraordinaire Ryan Mcginley was sitting a few rows ahead of me wearing an excellent self-patched denim vest and dancing along with all the new Kanye tracks. The models, of which there were so many it was near impossible to identify them all individually, had a few celebs amongst them as well. In addition to Yeezy regulars like Ian Connor and others from the previous two seasons, Atlanta weirdo art rapper Young Thug and super super super model Naomi Campbell both found themselves center stage adorned in new Yeezy looks.

At this point, you have probably decided whether or not you like Kanye’s clothes. Personally, I love them (I’m wearing a Season 1 short sleeve sweatshirt that I got 80 percent off at Antonia in Milan as I write this, it makes me look like some sculpture artist or something), and it’s hard to doubt that Kanye has identified a look. I mean, every brand is ripping him off after just two seasons, from his friends like Jerry Lorenzo of the Fear of God label and Ronnie Feig of Kith to fast fashion conglomerates like H&M.

It appears that every season Kanye maintains his interesting palette of beige to black military garb but also implements new styles into the mix as the brand goes on. This season, he seems particularly taken with his young co-hort Ian Connor’s urban normcore look, as there were amazing overalls, college logo sweatshirts, and workwear pants in seemingly magnificent materials. At the same time, Kanye’s claim at the show that he sought to one day be creative director of Hermés wasn’t as ludicrous as it should have been with the introduction of some of his most capital “F” fashion pieces. Campbell led a group of stunning female models wearing honest-to-gooness mink coats. One couldn’t help but be shocked at the sheer volume of clothes. Yesterday I thought Saint Laurent’s 90 looks was pretty astounding, but this show numbered in the hundreds. There is such a cool posse mentality to the Yeezy brand. Like, you’ll look pretty cool on your own in this stuff but if your entire group of friends starts donning these looks, you guys will be a goddamn wrecking crew.

I don’t want to say much about the album, but I will say that TSOP (The Story of Pablo) is in no way a let down. It has that propulsive energy that I so loved about Yeezus but Kanye is once again opting to amp up soul and funk melodies to house tearing effects as opposed to experimenting in atonality. Most songs are bangers, but the record ends beautifully with the haunting Sia collaboration Wolves that was premiered at Yeezy Season 1. Kanye tweaked the sound a bit and it sounded crystal clear and almost psychedelic in its atmospherics.

The sheer spectacle of Yeezy Season 3 was unprecedented. Beecroft’s choreography was fantastic, applying the minimal approach of the first two seasons to an army sized diverse casting of youths. You’d find yourself gazing amongst the models and then catching an interesting detail: a female model puts her fist up like a civil rights sign (pun intended) or Ian Connor lights up a cigarette and puffs away. How this thing worked is beyond me, but Kanye’s DONDA creative team is really doing tremendous things. I’ve never really seen something so massive and mainstream present itself at what can’t be described as anything other than a magnificent temporal art work.

And it didn’t stop there. After Kanye’s record played, he expressed excitement about a video game he developed chronicling his mother Donda’s travels to Heaven. Yes you read that correctly. After a clip from the game was shown on the jumbotron, the crowd responded lukewarm. Kanye, looking stunned, scolded us, “You act like making a game about your mom traveling to Heaven is regular,” he said with a smile. And then he played the clip again. The crowd cheered loud the second time around. 

Click here to see more photo coverage of the collection. 

[FASHION REVIEW] Siki Im Fall Winter 2016 Collection

text by Adam Lehrer

Why are we always so thoroughly and eternally transfixed by the myth of the Vampire? Siki Im, in his FW 2016 collection playbook, tries to answer that question: “The represent a mythology of libido and destrudo. They seduce and prey, and kiss and kill. Some yearn for affection and compassion, but all question what it means to be human and liberated.”

I am thoroughly convinced that German-born and New York-based designer Siki Im would be ranked among the Raf Simons’s, Dries Van Noten’s and Gosha’s of the world if he decided to show his collection in Paris. His collections are beaming in interesting (and cool) cultural references at the same time as offering products that this critic wants all of. As stated above, Siki Im and Den Im FW 2016 explores humanity’s interest in vampire fiction. The notion of the hip, poetic, and artistic vampire is not new to fashion, arguably having been covered by designers ranging from Ann Demeulemeester to Rick Owens, but never has it presented itself as such a succinct idea.

Siki’s collection was oozing in references to goth and post-punk culture, with a soundtrack that started with goth Vampire post-punk band Bauhaus, finale’d with a track from the first Swans album Filth, and had people walked out to Joy Division. The music was welcome. It’s extremely nice to hear bands that you actually enjoy after hearing endless jungle techno tracks that usually fuel fashion shows.

Vampires were all over this collection, though. The amazing prints on the Den Im t-shirts depicted scenes from Siki’s favorite vampire films, the makeup was grotesque and monstrous, and the models (though racially diverse) all looked startlingly pale. And the clothes? Sublime. A stunning mohair overcoat in burgundy and grey blend looked akin to the striped robe worn by Tom Hiddleston in Jim Jarmusch’s vampire arthouse film Only Lovers Left Alive. The more streetwear-akin looks, such as a bomber over one of Siki’s excellent hoodies and jeans, came in blood red. Never have I thought I’d so desire a pair of bright red jeans. Siki, an architecture major and nerd, also paid homage to the German architecture and art schoold Bauhaus (happily sharing a name with the band) as evidenced by his magnificent leather work. A red asymmetrical leather jacket had sleeves coming down below the wrists but rolled up exposing only the fingers, while the seams moved triangularly away from the down zipper. There was really some excellent stuff here.

SIki Im is truly Autre’s kind of menswear designer, constantly engaging his creative impulses at the expense of commerciality. He shows no signs of being worried about whether or not Nordstrom will buy his collections. Perhaps chalk it up to his time under Karl Lagerfeld and Helmut Lang, or maybe just his commitment to the fine arts, but he does seem much more in line with Parisian and London-based designers than he does New York. And because of that, New York needs him, and his commitment to building the design identity of the city is admirable.

And if you’re wondering, Siki’s (excellent) list of favorite vampire films is as follows: Les Vampires (Louis Feulilade, 1915),  Nosferatu (F.W. Murnau, 1929), Dracula (1931), Vampyros Lesbos (Jesus Franco, 1979), Nosferatu the Vampyre (Werner Herzog, 1979), The Hunger (Tony Scott, 1983), Der Kleine Vampir (René Bonniére, 1985), The Lost Boys (Joel Schumacher, 1987), Near Dark (Kathryn Bigelow, 1987), Nadja (Michael Almereyda 1994), From Dusk till Dawn (Robert Rodgriguez, 1996), Let the Right One in (Tomas Alfredson, 2008), Thirst (Park Chan-wook, 2009), Only Lovers Left Alive (Jim Jarmusch, 2013), GirlsWalks Alone Home at Night (Ana Lily Amirpor, 2014)

The only one I would add, personally, is Abel Ferrara’s The Addiction, Lili Taylor knocked that one out of the park. 

Click here to see the full runway presentation during New York Fashion Week Men's.