Like loads of other good fashion designers, 25-year-old American Ryan Noon went to London’s Central Saint Martins. He’s also put some designs together for Nike and art tranny dad Grayson Perry. Ryan also says he didn’t do very much in 2008 because he entered a “black hole”. What freelancer hasn’t? Read more »
Ziad Ghanem answers our questions with pictures
Back in September, Firetrap sponsored London-based Lebanese guy Ziad Ghanem to put on his The Immortalist show – a mixture of his made-to-order stuff, his pretty extreme Maiden Britain line and some Firetrap denim reworked into 3D sculptural forms. Firetrap’s website says the firm is “subversive, unconventional and creative” – which is probably why they got together with Ziad. His clothes are for the sort of people who love fashion for the sheer sake of it, not to look cool or rich or piss off their gran or the government or whatever, but purely because they like having as extreme an aesthetic as possible. We’re talking weird shapes, being as 3D as possible, in your face prints (preferably lots of them at once), slogans, loads of colour and collections called Masturbazar. Recently I got that fashion isn’t all political, so rather than force Ziad to struggle to answer some boring questions, I figured if I got him to answer in pictures, that would be a more fashion/visual thing to do.
Do you remember electroclash?
Macedonian designers Marjan Pejoski and Sasha Bezovski have owned their Kokon to Zai stores in London and Paris for years. The London branch used to sell records and it helped kick-start that whole electroclash thing, but they only launched their own demented label KTZ a couple of seasons back.
Connecting the dots between music and fashion
Since only half of the term “music promo” consists of music (the other half being all visual hype – something fashion types know loads about), asking fashion designers what their favourite music videos are kind of makes sense.
Legally blind
Joeseph Merrick, AKA the real life Elephant Man, used to say if only he could meet a blind woman who didn’t care about his fruity face, he might find love. He asked many times to be moved to a blind asylum, but it probably wouldn’t have helped because looks do matter to blind people. And so, consequently, does fashion. Read more »
What happened in the grotto?
Mariel Manuel is studying at the best fashion academy in Europe and the Universe, The Royal Fashion Academy of Antwerp. I went to see the show a while ago, which, by the way, is apparently the longest fashion show in the world–four hours of talent in your face. And now, a month later, I’m still dreaming of Mariel’s little creatures. They looked like this:
Some people really want to be judged on appearances
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.
Who is that spooky woman at every fashion show on Earth?
There are about four million boring fashion blogs, most are retarded, done from emailed press releases and blog surfing. They’re full of the celeb stuff you’d find on Perez Hilton, rants about some £2000 shoes, and a load of bum-licking copy about some designers you’ve never heard of and definitely will never care about. Odds are, if the blog’s not from New York, Paris or Milan, said writer will also be deluded about the global significance of whichever designer it is. However, Diane Pernet’s A Shaded View of Fashion is very different, it’s a crazed encyclopedia of fashion. Diane travels the world’s fashion junkets picking up on just about anything fashion related and just about every half-decent fashion designer she can find, posting endlessly about her discoveries. It’s an unhinged Rubik’s cube of trends presented to you by a woman who lives beneath a veil. We had a chat.
LFW: Emma Bell likes dogs
We just saw the best show of the week, even though we were made to stand despite having second row tickets and press passes. But the room was so packed there was no point sobbing about it. There was theatre and good music and dancing and the models were all having fun and the clothes were really cute and playful – kind of like if Barbie took over Topshop. Vice caught up with designer Emma Bell post-show. Read more »
LFW: Richard Nicoll show and Alexa Chung interview
Richard Nicoll’s A/W 09 was the most somber show I have been to this week. I know I keep on mentioning the recession but it seems relevant at LFW’s Caligulian wealth orgy and I think Nicoll’s approach was one of the few which actually seemed to take the mood of day onboard. He used greys, blacks and creams in a variety of fabrics and was never pompous. The soundtrack was classical and confident and not as wildly optimistic as everyone else’s. It seemed that there was a weird clinical vibe in the whole space, even on people’s faces; but maybe I was just tweaking on free Red Bull.
Nicoll collects celebrity fans including Chloe Sevigny, Christina Ricci and, of course, London’s indie princess, Alexa Chung – who I caught up with briefly back stage. Read more »
