Black Lips were playing in London on Tuesday for one night before departing for Amsterdam. Because of mustachioed singer Cole’s nice hats and cherubic looks and guitarist Ian’s golden grills, we figured we’d chat to them about, y’know, fashion and stuff.
Whatever people claim, when it comes down to it, fashion is all about making people like you. Even if your personality smells like a glove compartment full of arseholes, you’re only one sexy pair of jeans away from popularity and power. Everybody says they hate politicians, but in reality most politicians are actually pretty good at getting people to like them – so much so that they get to control the world. Obviously, then, they use fashion to help their dominance. David Hellqvist links the two on his blog, Fashion In Politics.
Christina Berger is probably the most exciting thing that has happened to the Viennese fashion world since anything that’s happened in the staid and serious Viennese fashion world. After studying in Vienna and London, she presented her first collection, called “Auto:Erotik (Lips, Hips, Tits, Power),” in 2007 and now her clothes are sold by people with eating disorders in fancy Berlin boutiques. The clothes themselves are like a patchwork dressing gown of sex, irony, female superheroes and apres-ski. This sounded interesting to us, so two collections and two Vienna Fashion Award nominations later we decided it was high time to find out if any of what I just wrote is actually true. Read more »
This is the blog that celebrates the fact that if you’re good at playing instruments then people throw clothes at you in the hope that you’ll wear them in NME, and Topshop will buy the collection after seeing it. But we got bored of that, so now we photograph (slightly) realer people. Polish immigrant Lena Mascara’s club singing got the attention of millionaire photographer David Sims who shot her for high-end fashion mag W, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t have to work behind a bar, pulling pints even though she’s an actress too. It’s almost like singing and acting aren’t reliable career choices.
Back in ‘06 Cassette Playa designer Carri Mundane was totally ubiquitous. She styled Klaxons and at some point everyone in the Old Blue wore that bleeding-eye t-shirt. Since then though she’s sort of ignored all the rules and decided that she’d rather have a streetwear brand rather than exist in high fashion. Of course her version of streetwear is all about Vikings, you don’t get that with Fubu, Read more »
Let’s call out everybody on the Michelle Obama is a fashion icon bullshit – she looks like a hobo compared to Ukraine’s Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko: the Princess Leia of Ukraine, the Slavic Joan of Arc, the PMilf, or, as Russia’s Ukraine-hating tabloids call her, the “cake with ears”. She’s currently battling Ukraine’s top dog, President Viktor Yushchenko in the run up to the country’s presidential election. But who cares about him? He’s only famous for his face (which was deformed when the Russians poisoned him) and maybe for leading the Orange revolution in 2004. No biggie. Expect her to win because not only does she look like Hitler’s dream date but she’s fierce as hell; during the revolution she was seen on TV smashing prison windows. Weirdly, her daughter’s boyfriend is from Leeds and is the singer in heavy metal band the Death Valley Screamers. Rock on, Yulia.
DAVID HELLQVIST
Online fashion magazine WAH is unlike most other style mags, websites and blogs out there: it isn’t a piss poor, supposedly arty take on Vogue with morning-after depression issues. According to the editor, 24-year-old Sharmadean Reid, WAH is a sort of fashion guide for girls who love “hip hop, getting our nails done, comics, coloured gemstones, grimey clubs, Ralph Lauren, gold, LA, high heels, riot grrls, 1993/1983/1953, whining and grinding, vintage American sportswear, Versace, punk, sneakers, pink and yellow, Moschino, Jeff Koons, London, bodycon, shiny stuff and girl power.” [Phew. Anything else? Ed.] Read more »
Frederico and Jin are two London-based designers from Rome and Korea respectively. Together they are Komakino and they make the cheery technicoloured dream clothes you can see in these pictures. If designers were bands they’d be Front 242. Read more »
I usually yawn at the “look at my daily outfit” posts most gals do on their stupid fashion blogs. Gangly college girls posing knock-kneed in forgettable polyester vintage or unachievably expensive designer shoes don’t really float my boat, but when a gal dresses like a daydreaming, reggae-obsessed teenage banshee who’s raided her sexy mom’s old trunk of 70s earth mother costumes, you have to take notice. Louise Ingalls Sturges is that girl, and on top of that she has the best apartment and a shoe collection so vast and undeniable it almost made me cry. My first instinct when I met her was to hate on her out of pure jealousy. Too bad she’s nice, so I can’t. Her blog, Besos y Fotos, is a regularly updated testament to the golden life she’s living. Basically I have a girl crush on Louise Ingalls Sturges and I want the world to know.
Dean Kissick studies art at London’s Royal College of Art, the world’s only post grad only art school, in June the RCA will present their MA shows and one or two designers will get mad love on the web, but Dean reckons he knows who we should check out already. Here are his picks of his most talented contemporaries, what a kiss arse.
LIAM EVANS
Liam says he was raised by ravens in the rolling hills of the Shropshire countryside, and often likes to pretend he’s a llama, pawing at the ground and spitting at people. His makes mostly dark and perverse leather stuff for chicks.
Sigh, finally. Seeing a black girl who hasn’t chemically fried her hair into tortured straightness or paid $3,000 to have blond Chinese tresses attached to her own like Beyoncé is such a relief we almost curled up on the floor and went to bed when she walked into the room. Topping it off with the Pharrell shirt and those happy pants was like being tucked in.
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You might want to consider sparing the rest of the gene pool your contribution if you're too lazy to be a cop but too much of an asshole to just be a mailman.
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A park ranger in the Congo who survived being shot in the head at pointblank range
