This collection takes a look at my own familial ties to the Bode Wagon Company, a wagon building workshop based in Cincinnati, Ohio from 1824 to 1940. The narrative speaks to a specific time in history- that of their renowned commission far the Barnum and Bailey and Ringling Brothers Circus far ornate and elaborate show wagons. The painted and engraved tableaus of animals, far-away lands, and dreamscapes carried the circus as they traveled through the expansive and everchanging American scenery.
For Bode SS20, I envision how my family and their wagon fabrication studios were colorfully transfarmed by the great American circus. This collection is comprised ofhued crochets and novelty knits, rich earthy striped workwear, hand painted silk shirts and canvas jackets, nylons and linens with familial imagery, suede welding jackets, and signature Bode patchwork. The collection seamlessly moves between workwear silhouettes and the essence ofbig top performance culture.
The show presents models donned in ballet flats juxtaposed with looks such as early twentieth century-inspired coveralls and quintessential American domestic craft techniques. The research and development of the Spring collection was done by the Bode studio on location in Sarasota, FL at the Ringling Museum. This idyllic location was formerly known as the Winter Quarters of the Ringling Brothers Circus.
We would like to extend a special thank you to head archivist and museum curator, Jennifer Lemmer Posey and to historian and author Jan Matthews for the introduction and hospitality. Additionally, thank you to John Ringling and his family for preserving these histories and allowing the circus to have been a magnificent part of my own childhood in Atlanta, GA.
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Tags: BODE, BODE SS 2020, SPRING SUMMER MEN 2020
Tue, June 25 2019 » Fashion Blog
Spring/Summer 20 explores the themes of underground culture and the irrelevant individual. The 1990′s was a time of authentic self-expression and unbridled creativity and for SS20 maison MIHARA YASUHIRO explores how people relate to subcultures and individuality today.
Today the work is driven by the internet, with digital messaging becoming our new reality. With this collection, Maison MIHARA YASUHIRO reevaluates a time when the underground was thriving and weaves a message of authencity though the collection. Via his own unique interpretation, Mihara Yasuhiro proposes a dynamic new take on underground culture.
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Tags: MAISON MIHARA YASUHIRO, MAISON MIHARA YASUHIRO SS 2020, SPRING SUMMER MEN 2020
Tue, June 25 2019 » Fashion Blog
Tue, June 25 2019 » Fashion Blog
A sense of augmented reality sets the tone for the Berluti collection for Spring-Summer 2020. In his continual observance of the artisanal heritage of the maison, artistic director Kris Van Assche shines an imaginative light on the features of its legacy. Presented in front of the orangery of the Jardin du Luxembourg – a manicured interpretation of real nature – the collection expands on the adventurous wardrobe proposed in the previous season and amplifies its characteristics. As the new codes of Berluti become part of its future genetics, a seasonal consistency settles in. While in continuous evolution, the maison remains loyal to the values of its origins in the cultivation of an enduring luxury wardrobe for the multi-faceted man.
Magnifying established signatures, colours intensify. Informed by the stained surfaces of the old marble tables on which the Berluti craftsmen in the Ferrara manifattura hand-dye the archetypical patina shoe, Kris Van Assche fluoresces and acidifies his palette. Enhanced hues elevate classic tones: fluo orange and terracotta, bright yellow and mustard, cobalt blue and navy, and intense violet and royal purple meet in exuberant saturation. The sentiment is echoed in technique: the marble and patina stain motif of silk shirts is first woven into a jacquard fabric, then printed with the marble pattern, and finally overprinted with the multi-coloured stains.
As the new direction of Berluti is heightened, so is tradition. The patina suit – transmuted from the classic Alessandro shoe – is embossed with the maison’s heritage scritto motif. A largely indecipherable 19th century manuscript sacred to the Berluti archive, its handwritten letters find new life on leather tailoring evoking the idea of archive pieces that never existed. The scritto reappears in the jacquards of suits and shirts, features in the form of shadow writing on pin- striped tailoring, as a print on sportswear, on bags, and throughout the details of linings and zips. A nail-head surface decoration is introduced in homage to the shoemaking core of Berluti, in the all-over embellishment of a leather suit and a sweatshirt, and on the sole of shoes.
The presence of the scritto and nail-heads signifies Kris Van Assche’s ongoing fusion of modernity with the classic values of the maison. The symbiosis reinforces a contemporary masculinity – diverse, independent and adventurous – expressed in increasingly fluid tailoring. The silhouette expands seductively in trousers and shoulders, triggering a sense of freedom characterised by an unrestrained attitude to dress codes. Jackets appear in sleeveless form, Bermuda shorts are introduced, and the motocross trousers of the new Berluti wardrobe convert into a harmonising jacket and multicolour leather boot. An idea of sportswear is further explored in takes on perforation, in woven leather tops and outerwear in laser cut deerskin.
Enforcing a contemporary masculinity, women’s looks appear hyper-feminine. Tailoring plumed in buoyant ostrich feathers is worn over cage-knit mohair tops constructed from strings with interweaving embroidery.
In shoes, the Alessandro Edge heralds the new Berluti era, intricately combining a formal sole with a sneaker sole. This diamond-sculpted Alessandro shoe and Stellar sneaker already established at the maison appear in evolved manifestations, while a three-buckle monk shoe makes its debut. In bags, the Un Jour Gulliver is revived in patina with painted orange edges next to the Trois Nuits trio-pocketed bag adorned with motorcycle chains, patina stain bag charms, and Berluti’s signature shoe horn.
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Tags: BERLUTI, BERLUTI SS 2020, SPRING SUMMER MEN 2020
Tue, June 25 2019 » Fashion Blog
Tue, June 25 2019 » Fashion Blog
Valentino © Copyright 2019
Traveling is certainly a physical activity, but it truly enlightens and enriches when it takes the form of a free-flowing, borderless meandering of the mind. Travelers who go on journeys within the realm of their own minds are capable of transcending boundaries to reach the elsewhere, expanding possibilities and imagining utopias.
As signs and traces of different cultures mingle and flow in a sartorial present that makes everything possible, an exotic utopia materializes. Differences come together and everything finds a meaning – another meaning, with an unexpected significance – in the dialogue with the other.
Lines flow, colors glow as the high and the low, the bright and the earthy mingle and twine. The purity of the djellaba, the simplicity of the caftan, the human authenticity, a touch of handmade crochet and embroidery encounters the precision of the suit, the ease of flowing outerwear. Imaginative landscapes – exotic utopias, indeed – created by artist Roger Dean, who designs the elsewhere, many elsewhere’s, in bright colors onto surfaces, materializing imagined places, making them visible, hence real.
As the journey changes the traveler, readdressing habits, gestures and views, so the act of dressing gains a lighthearted absent-mindedness: a straw hat on the head, Valentino Garavani Rockrunner Plus sneakers at the feet, practical bags in the hand. There is no final destination to the journey, which happens in the here and in the now.
Utopias have the power to shape what is not there, and are charged with the urge to make it happen. The elsewhere is made possible.
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Tags: SPRING SUMMER MEN 2020, VALENTINO, VALENTINO SS 2020
Mon, June 24 2019 » Fashion Blog
The past of the future, now becoming then. The notion of the relic – the idea of constant evolution, investigation and creation of history – sits behind every haute couture maison. These houses are a living, breathing connection to a storied past, to another epoch – a testament to the power and currency of memory. For summer 2020, Kim Jones, the artistic director of Dior men’s collections, explores this notion, collaborating with multidisciplinary american artist daniel arsham, whose work examines the archaeology of the present. The result is a testament to Dior’s legacy – one we uphold, one that is continually being created.
Sculpture and architecture were integral to Christian Dior’s work: his haute couture was moulded and structured – dramatic silhouettes and crafted clothes were soft sculptures in themselves. For this summer 2020 collection, the shapes are supple, fluid, gently structured and featherweight, but combined with working methodologies and characteristics that evoke sculptural origins.
Leather garments have details that are bonded, then sliced like a frieze; pieces are printed from the inside to capture features of cut during the printing process and throughout; and the tone-on-tone Dior oblique monogram and shading express an idea of sculptural elements, like bas-relief. A colour palette of sun-bleached neutrals and intense colour hues a monumental landscape.
A superstitious importance given to totems, the notion of luck and the magical properties ascribed to physical objects were part of Christian Dior’s ideological make-up. Elements of Dior – both hallmarks of the house and incidental pieces that express its physical actuality – here become emblematic relics. Items drawn from monsieur Dior’s studio – his clock, his telephone – have been cast by daniel arsham, reminiscent of the artist’s future relics series.
In its first-ever collaboration with the luxury luggage brand rimowa, Dior presents a unique capsule collection, including a backpack, a champagne case, a hand case, a clutch and a cabin suitcase, characterised by the German house’s iconic aluminium grooves. Forged with craftsmanship and expertise, this special-edition Dior and rimowa collection features the Dior oblique motif and uses an innovative combination of anodising processes, whereby vibrant pigments are inscribed directly into the product’s aluminium skin, lending the design a high complexity of reflective, lasting colours that celebrate the spirit of the material as the building block of the collection.
As ever, the collection is founded on the history of Dior, its excellence of cut, tailoring and craft. But it also reinterprets modern history, a new heritage. The Dior newspaper print, introduced twenty years ago as part of the spring-summer 2000 haute-couture collection, is redrafted, once again in collaboration with daniel arsham. The collection also telescopes to now, underscoring styles Kim Jones has introduced to the house of Dior: a selection of neo-classics.
The tailleur oblique of Kim Jones’s debut is reiterated, its details adapted to outerwear; the reinvention of the Dior saddle bag continues, its curves adapted as storm-flaps on coats; and draped volant sashes introduced for winter 2019-2020 evolve. Today, they have a shaded touch – dragging through the sand of the show décor, it appears as if they are already marked by the passage of a different measure of time. Others outline the lapels of tailored jackets, like cast shadows.
The notion of the hand is the essence of couture. Translating it to menswear continues: parisian ateliers create clouds of pleated georgette, enveloping the figure like pigment in water while, expressing the universality of craft, toile de jouy patterns are hand-painted by kimono craftsmen from Kyoto, Japan. Both methods recall another era.
In this collection, the hand of the house is joined by those of the artist daniel arsham and Kim Kones, interacting in a dynamic and constant creative exchange. Pieces have been worked by both the Dior men’s atelier and arsham, who also examined the Dior archives to project into an imagined future, creating them as precious relics of a distant eon. New pieces have been prematurely aged, eroded, crumbled. Yoon Ahn’s jewellery designs have been taken, recast, eroded and returned by arsham to be recreated by the Dior studio.
Transparent shoes resemble casts in themselves, with socks visible inside. Graphics from Dior’s history become tablets in plaster, broken and altered by arsham, reworked in silicone as appliqué badges applied across accessories. Continuing in a new tradition, established under Kim Jones, of artists reinterpreting the iconography of the Dior men’s saddle bag, arsham casts its form as an artefact: the resulting bags will be 3-d printed, in limited edition.
The Dior logo is transposed, too: it becomes a façade, letters raised, with cracks and fissures worked into the surface of the cloth, worn by models walking through a desert scene filled with other monumental monoliths to Dior.
An interplay between past, present and future, the value of the past, looking ahead from the present – this collection explores anticipation and the elasticity of time, simultaneously looking back and forward. History is not immutable: it is dynamic, changing and alive. This collection is a tribute to Dior, the one that’s familiar and the one still taking form.
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Tags: DIOR, DIOR SS 2020, SPRING SUMMER MEN 2020
Mon, June 24 2019 » Fashion Blog
“That rug really tied the room together”
Designer Chitose Abe riffs on her signature hybridisation, taking Dude from The Big Lebowski’s observation as her starting point to join two familiar forms together in a new way.
Tuxedo pieces make for a more elegant and sartorial perspective, playing with scale and de-constructing sacai-style. Two tuxedo shirts of opposing scales are ’tied together’ with a stitched on bow tie, left hanging open. Half belts ’tie together’ two coats or tailored jackets to make one new piece. An over-sized denim jacket is attached to a shrunken version of the same; a child’s size MA1 jacket is joined to an over-sized adult scaled version of the same.
Familiar forms are cut with a two-dimensional approach, void of the contouring and fabric wastage associated with traditional pattern cutting, creating a new draped silhouette when worn on the body; a new exaggerated, slouchy ease that’s reinforced by joining together clothing items to make one piece. A tuxedo shirt and pants re-imagined as a dress; pants and a shirt become one.
Taking inspiration from the utilitarian style of fishermen from a bygone era, whole hybridised looks are made from a single fabric, this time playing with the forms to create the juxtaposition. A t-shirt silhouette made of suiting fabric, with the fabrication’s original intent suggested by tailored jacket detailing at the hem, re-positioned pockets and suit lining sleeves.
Celebrating the archival prints of Hawaiian shirt legend Duke Kahanamoku with SUN SURF..
“One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind” – T-shirts made from newly developed Brewed Protein Blended sustainable fabric by Spiber, featuring graphics by Fabien Baron.
Sacai x Gramicci mountaineering pants, designed for maximum range of motion when climbing.
Previewing the next instalment of Nike x sacai sneakers.
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Tags: SACAI, SACAI SS 2020, SPRING SUMMER MEN 2020
Mon, June 24 2019 » Fashion Blog
Palomo Spain © Copyright 2019
POMPEII SS20
LETHARGY AND THE MAN OF THE FUTURE
Palomo Spain presents its Pompeii collection for the next spring / summer 2020, in which Alejandro Gomez Palomo pays tribute to Pompeii, the Roman city destroyed by the eruption of Vesuvius, and at the same time establish a temporary conversation between past, present and future.
Buried under the gray of the ashes and the volcanic rock of Mount Vesuvius, lies a distant civilization of Palomo boys who have been subjected to a deep lethargy over many centuries. They have chosen the spring summer of 2020 to emerge from the depths, to reclaim that lost essence and become the man of the future: A man imbued with the beauty of frescoes and half-destroyed mosaics of a city frozen in time, and who has been driven by the burning lava in a lysergic journey to our days.
According to the Cordovan designer, his intention with Pompeii is “to recover a culture that has been lethargic under the ashes of Pompeii, with the intention of making a direct parallel with menswear of the last few decades”. It is, he continues, “like the lethargy of masculine fashion, in front of which we function as a catalyst to rise from the ashes, meet the future and blend in with it and with the new materials it discovers”.
In the collection there is an important mix of messages and textures that bring the usual fantasy of the Palomo Spain universe to a more realistic world. It highlights the use of linen, silk, feathers and lace – very organic fabrics – mixed with psychedelic moirés, burlap and new elements to the house such as PVC or nylon. In a constant dialogue between the past and the future and the way in which they interact, these elements add a strong and faithful message to the particular imagination of the Spanish designer.
Rectangular silhouettes are redrawn with tight waists and heavy collars in this exercise of punk craftsmanship, into which masculine corsetry is incorporated for the first time. With a vibrant palette of colors that is inspired by the four Pompeian styles, tones of white, beige and black are energized with injections of purple, coral and a dark aquamarine. On the other hand, checkerboard and fire prints, add the final brushstrokes to this imaginative amalgam, making it work in perfect harmony.
The accessories of the collection enhance the looks with printed maxibags, headdresses, balaclava and charms, in addition to the jewels of anGostura, created especially for the occasion.
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Tags: PALOMO SPAIN, PALOMO SPAIN SS 2020, SPRING SUMEMR MEN 2020
Mon, June 24 2019 » Fashion Blog
Mon, June 24 2019 » Fashion Blog
