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Leon Emanuel Blanck

Fashion

“I wanted to drape a piece of fabric into a pair of trousers, because molding on a human body was something we weren’t taught in fashion school” – says Leon Emanuel Blanck, the young German designer whose concise and conceptual collections, after only 4 seasons, are stocked by meccas of all things black and deconstructed such as Antonioli in Milan, Ink in Hong Kong, and SV Moscow. “I couldn’t find anyone to do it on, so I ended up doing it on myself. I had to move and turn a lot while I was at it, so I got a very distorted pair of trousers”.

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Yamamoto & Yohji

Culture, Fashion

Today, Rizzoli is releasing a new monograph on the Japanese fashion designer Yohji Yamamoto (YAMAMOTO & YOHJI, Rizzoli, $115). It is a road well-travelled, as there is already a slew of books on Yamamoto – from the collectable Talking to Myself to the forgettable “best hits” pamphlets by the publishers Taschen and Assouline.

The new volume contains 600 photographs and contributions by long-time Yamamoto’s famous friends, including the French actress Charlotte Rampling and the German filmmaker Wim Wenders. It is a hefty, cloth-bound tome, its 448 pages printed on thick matte paper, as it should be, since once cannot imagine anything glossy (read, vulgar) in the Yamamoto world. The cover is red and black, the two signature Yamamoto colors.

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Op-Ed: What’s In a Name?

Fashion

When Ann Demeulemeester departed her label late last year, some of her devotees spoke about the end of an era. They wondered out loud whether they would purchase another garment with the tag that bears the designer’s name. This summer in Paris the label showed an undeniably strong men’s collection, but when Demeulemeester’s former menswear assistant, Sebastian Meunier, came out to take the final bow I could not shake off the lightning bolt of cognitive dissonance, even though I knew that Demeulemeester has been quietly preparing her departure for a while now and that her assistants were being given more creative control.

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Cedric Jacquemyn Antwerp Space

Fashion, Retail

The Belgian fashion designer Cedric Jacquemyn just opened his first retail space in Antwerp, Belgium at the Recollection concept store. Located on the first floor of Kloosterstraat 54, they currently offer selected pieces from his most recent winter collection.

Dries Van Noten

DRIES VAN NOTEN

Fashion

The Man Who Played with Color: One January evening, before the men’s show of the Belgian designer Dries Van Noten, a crowd bustled outside the Musee Bourdelle, tucked away in a side street near the Montparnasse train station in Paris. Outside, the desperate hangers-on were held back by the implacable PR watchdogs, while inside the buyers and the press were trying to squeeze into the tiny Great Hall, where the most prominent statues of Antoine Bourdelle, one of the most prolific student’s of Rodin, stood.

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Ann Demeulemeester Book Signing

Culture, Fashion

Last night the designer Ann Demeulemeester was signing her new monograph at Barneys in New York City. With her was her lifetime friend the singer Patti Smith, who cosigned the book and gave an intimate, heartfelt performance for the crowd of Demeulemeester’s diehard fans.

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Helmut Lang Parfums

Fashion

When Helmut Lang came out with a perfume duo in 2000 and followed up by a third one in 2002, it was one of those rare fashion moments that occurs when an independent designer with a cult following translates his vision to another medium, thereby expanding his world. Who can forget (and by who, I mean those over 35 and really interested in fashion) the iconic ad campaigns on New York’s taxis or the long narrow SoHo store opposite Lang’s flagship where you could only by those three products, the very definition of minimalism?

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Editorial: Welcome Oblivion

Editorial, Fashion

Welcome Oblivion, with Mariqueen Maandig Reznor, the singer of How to Destroy Angels, shot on El Matador beach in Los Angeles. Photography: Emilie Elizabeth; Styling: Eugene Rabkin Makeup: Caroline Ramos @ ArtMix;Hair: Johnny Stuntz @ Crosby Carter Management; Additional Post Production: Kraw

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Ann Demeulemeester Monograph

Culture, Fashion

Today, the publisher Rizzoli released a long-awaited monograph on the Belgian fashion designer Ann Demeulemeester (Rizzoli, $100). The book is an exclamation point in the last sentence of Demeulemeester’s career, which is a long novel in itself. When we met in Antwerp this April, Demeulemeester just sent off the final draft to the publisher, and she spoke of it as if it was the perfect closure to her body of work in fashion.