Eugene Rabkin is the founder of
stylezeitgeist.com. He has contributed articles on fashion and culture to The Business of Fashion, Vogue Russia, Buro247, the Haaretz Daily Newspaper, and other publications. He has taught critical writing and fashion writing courses at Parsons the New School for Design.
We figured the more photos from this past men’s fashion week the better, so here are some I have taken. While I possess neither the skill nor the equipment of the three photographers that shoot for StyleZeitgeist in Paris – A.P., Julien Boudet, and Matthew Reeves (thank you all!) – I hope you will still enjoy them, as they are shot from different angles and often at close range. The images are arranged in chronological order – Haider Ackermann, Rick Owens, Boris Bidjan Saberi, Julius, and Ann Demeulemeester.
“Nothing,” answered a prominent New York buyer when I asked her what she liked during this past men’s fashion week. While I wouldn’t go this far, the Spring/Summer 2016 season was decidedly mixed. The overarching question, which began forming in my head during the first day of shows in Paris was, “What makes a good collection?” Is it the theme or its execution? Do we look for a designer to tell an interesting story, to interpret a theme worth exploring through clothes, or to produce beautiful, interestingly constructed garments? Ideally, both.
Yesterday, Thomas Tait, the young, Canadian born designer based in London, presented an installation at Pitti Uomo in Florence. Until last year, when he won the LVMH prize for young designers, Tait’s talent was roundly unappreciated; and even yesterday the shy designer looked as if he still wondered what happened and how he ended up…
The Belgian artist Berlinde De Bruyckere is famous for her striking sculptures of wax and epoxy that resemble flesh in all its disfigured, vulnerable glory. She has been making these since the 1990s, but there has not been a definitive monograph of her work until now.
Two weeks ago the latest of Rei Kawakubo’s protégés, Kei Ninomiya, was in New York to present a preview of his Fall/Winter 2015 collection for the “noir by kei ninomiya” line that he helms under the Comme des Garcons umbrella.
Postpunk and goth are two subcultures that came and went without a bang – amorphous, indefinable, unbracketed. There was something, and its elements were clear enough to see, but to make a structure of the thing was futile. And that is exactly the way the scene liked it.
This week at the Collective Design Fair the Polish-born, Chicago-based interior designer Lukas Machnik is presenting an array of furniture and objects from Rick Owens, Parts of Four, Lonney White III, and Phoebe Knapp.
Last week, the latest protege of Rei Kawakubo, Kei Ninomiya, was in New York to present his F/W 2015 collection of noir by kei ninomiya at the Comme des Garcons Chelsea flagship. Below are the photos from the event and the pieces are available for pre-order.
Undercover was the special guest at Pitti Uomo the first time I attended the Florentine fashion fair. I took a video of Jun Takahashi and his team making a Grace doll, which, in the typical, lightly sinister Undercover signature, is made by gutting teddy bears. It was one of the most unforgettable fashion moments and I wanted to share it with you. The phenomenal music was a live performance by Kan Takagi and Atsuhiro Ito. File under nostalgia…
It is no big secret that “perfume” is a bit of a dirty word in fashion. Often, it is seen, not without justification, as an easy way to make money by capitalizing on one’s brand name. The typical arrangement is to license out one’s name to a big perfume conglomerate, tell them what you want it to smell like, and sit back while the money rolls in. A successful perfume can be immensely profitable. Thierry Mugler, to take one example, has not designed a garment in decades, but his enormously successful perfume “Angel” has made him a millionaire many times over. All you need is a brand name and a good formula. It is no wonder then that every newly minted fashion designer and celebrity is eager to sign a perfume deal.
