Articles by faggoting

Increasingly over the past few seasons designers have been syncing up their men’s and women’s collections keeping color, texture, and silhouette in tandem. It makes for a stronger brand image (an asset that’s become more and more difficult to control) but slowly it blurs the lines between what is and isn’t gender appropriate. It harkens back to Cardin’s futuristic unisex outfits in the way Miuccia Prada presented the same wide-neck and abutting hemmed jackets in both her men’s and women’s collections. Or in the way Anne Demeulemeester kept the same stripes, earthy beige fabric, and languid lines in her own presentations. In the 10+ years Nicholas Ghesquire has been at the helm of Balenciaga he’s been searching for a way to interpret the brand’s heritage and yet keep his own integrity intact. When the company began to offer a men’s RTW collection that challenge was tripled in that the original Balenciaga did not design men’s clothes and years of bad judgment with licensing deals ruined any credibility the name could have placed on the inside of a man’s garment (subpar Balenciaga men’s dress shirts still haunt ebay auctions). To forge an identity with no heritage while at the same time fighting back a dishonest and regrettable history is no easy feat.

It’s to Ghesquire’s credit that he plays to his strengths; one of his gifts is that he’s relentless in his severe sci-fi aesthetic creating imaginative worlds far beyond our own. The other is his knack for taking a foreign object and idea out of its context and seamlessly integrating it into this vision. And with a difficult yet obvious look to the past and Monsieur Balenciaga’s greatness he’s been able to do for men what he’s been doing for women for years. Now Ghesquire has taken the lead, forecasting the future for both sexes.

Photographer and stylist Ari Versluis and Ellie Uyttenbroek have undergone a study for almost a decade and a half exploring the sociological and anthropological implications of dress and group psychology. The immediate realization is an innate and global desire to surrender one’s individuality. They’ve photographed dozens of style tribes around the world and containing each subject in a sterile frame. It highlights a pattern of repetition and monotony and raises skepticism in our culture’s exaggerated praise of individuality. The ongoing project is called “Exactitudes” and it could only be a matter of time before you find yourself amongst the lot. Or maybe you’re already there.

View more of these extraordinary portraits at exactitudes.com.

It’s a testament to Slimane’s uncanny likeness to the late Monsieur St. Laurent in which he grabs at street style and unapologetically serves it to the heights of fashion, embracing the spirit of St. Laurent’s all black “Beat” collection (alienating an older and stuffy clientèle) and his 1974 hooker collection (provoking accusations of camp on Yves’ part). No surprise then that three years later after Slimane’s initial infatuation with Peter Doherty and the London indie rock scene that the fundamental components have found their way in the vernacular of the “young” and “cool”. But once a trend is disseminated it must redefine its appeal and adopt a new meaning for “coolness”- meanings lost to the originators of the look and abandoned by those who propelled it into popularity. If timing, location, exclusivity, availability and distribution are any means to judge a trend’s hip factor (and they are) you’d begin to assume that Hedi and his admirers have long since found some new ideas to embrace. It’s in this esoteric manner that fashion serves us identifying those who know and those who don’t.

The above images are from the Dior Homme Spring 2006 collection presented in Paris in June of 2005. The below images are selections of Urban Outfitters’ current online offerings. Urban Outfitters’ internet retail presence ships to all parts of the U.S., Canada, and the U.K. They also operate stores in Alabama, Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Washington D.C., Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Kansas, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Maryland, Michigan, Missouri, Nebraska, New Jersey, New Mexico, Nevada, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Vermont, and Washington.

Not shown is the notorious Tilby/Porkpie hat which is unsatisfactorily represented on urbanoutfitters.com and can be ordered from topman.com.

Thursday night I was privy to a book release party sponsored by Burberry and Men’s Vogue, the affair was for graphic designer Peter Saville’s new volume Peter Saville: Estate 1-727, a survey of his archives. Based from an exhibition originally held at the Migros Museum in Zurich the book was compiled by Saville and holds written contributions from Heike Munder, Michael Bracewell, Wolfgang Tillmans, T.J. Wilcox, Sarah Morris, and others. It chronicles Saville’s involved process and how his designs, through his considered and carefully executed concepts, become artworks. As a cultural survey it sheds light on the British New Wave and Pop scene, as a historical survey it offers a glimpse in the grueling world of graphic design before Illustrator and Indesign. A must read for any fan invested in Saville’s cultural and social revelations in the worlds of advertisement, branding, fashion, and music. 

Paperback released by JR Ringier.

Credit has been given to Norman Rockwell for defining the quintessential American ideal with his covers for the Saturday Evening Post: the nuclear family crowding around a thanksgiving spread, high school dates in the midst of courtship, stoic athletes at a Saturday night football game, etc. But in rare case of queer history another name emerges. The illustrator J.C Leyendecker, trained at the Art Institute of Chicago, created a name for himself doing advertisements for Arrow Collars and Shirts (using his model-turned-lover as the face for the company) and creating covers for publications like Collier’s and The Saturday Evening Post. It was Leyendecker who invented the genre of idealistic portrayals of quaint American life.

Leyendecker was a homosexual (as was his brother, another illustrator) — and it’s uncanny how vivid and transparent his admiration for the male image was in his work. What was probably at the time interpreted as neo-classical values now belies Leyendecker’s homosexuality expressed in images that are harmonious, erotic, glorified, and raw. Rockwell in his younger days had a deep infatuation with Leyendecker going as far as to follow the illustrator and his lover to their home in New Rochelle in order for closer proximity. It was this relocation that exposed Rockwell to the small picturesque town which would become the basis for the majority of his output.

Rockwell studied his style perhaps perfecting it beyond Leyendecker’s signature hatching, a style that perfectly matched the off-hand quality of his handsome men, but lost the graphic severity of his figures and lines. While Rockwell went on to thrive in our nostalgic memory it was perhaps due only to longevity or chance that another vision of America, an especially gay one at that, did not.

Fluttering wool that drapes and swings around the body, loose trousers that abruptly flap with every step, and a silhouette that is as soft as it is hard. This is a new kind of dressing for men proposed by only a few of fashion’s smartest talents. It’s about swathing the body in fabric, lending men a feminine touch while all the while keeping a man sufficiently masculine. For fall 2008 designers have tapped into an era when Donna Karan was advancing sportswear to couture sophistication, Vivienne Westwood was channeling historical romance to British youths bored with Punk, Rei Kawakubo and Yohji Yamamoto were pulling a mutiny in Paris, and a young(ish) Giorgio Armani was presciently inclined to dress a budding Richard Gere in soft unstructured blazers for “American Gigolo”. It was the Japanese who brought their alien but ancient concept of clothing to a congested Paris for the world to see. The quietness, the volume, the new approach to cutting, it was a beginning. It was the Italians who brought it into the fashion lexicon.

It’s the Italian look, as some may say, that surfaced in the 80’s and was reluctant to recede as it verged on the obscene into the 90’s, creating an excuse for unintelligent and vulgar displays of mammoth masculinity. At its truest it was large but it was sensual and that is the sensibility for today. Layering, wrapping, draping, folding, cocooning, and tenting, this is the new vocabulary and it was Armani, Versace, Ferre, and Gigli of the early 80’s who taught us how to use it. It’s a language that designers like Bruno Pieters and Junn J have proven a driven and articulate fluency in. Allow it to consume you and protect you, to hide you and flaunt you, to transform you into something you have not yet seen.

Regard this as a manifesto as you begin to assemble your wardrobe for fall and beyond.

Michael Bastian | A collection for a mature gay (or Italian) man who’s gotten too old and too proud for Abercrombie and is ready for some real clothes. Genuinely lovely and it looks like Ralph better watch his back.

Thom Browne | A friend and I were having a discussion about Thom Browne and his penchant for large scale theatrics in his shows. It was mentioned that his grand show pieces become gimmicks ala Viktor & Rolf and belie the fairly quiet and ordinary clothes he actually sells. But you can’t hold a man’s sense of humor against him. True, none of us will be clamoring for the stuffed-in bridal look or clown-thug trousers worn at our knees, but you have to learn to look beyond that. It’s been Browne’s M.O. to channel preppy American heritage in the strictest sartorial sense and he’s taken some new liberties. Those ultra low pants suggest a new proportion, dropping the crotch, loosening the fit in the thigh, and tapering towards the ankle - a silhouette that other designers this season are picking up on. But most notably Thom has expanded his universe, known for his suiting and shirts, he’s brought in the element of sportswear in a big way. A tennis polo as immaculately made as his suits? Yes please. And that Michael Phelps get up with the docile sheen? A leisurely approach to the suit? Nothing to run home and slap your mother over but certainly nice enough.

Tim Hamilton | Hamilton designs for men in the same way other designers do for women. His collections are sincere proposals of new ideas and new garments that may or may not be absorbed into an already established system of dressing. With his graphic silhouettes, angular tailoring, and unconventional fabrics he makes an unapologetic and sometimes brash statement. And it looks just too good. Paneled trousers that shape to the leg, doubled breasted cardigans that nip the waist but soften the torso, and his insistence on masculine signatures like epaulets and rivets that frame up the figure rather than leaving it to a tired military reference. It brings to mind the work Claude Montana or Thierry Mugler who worked in a similar way. He looks to the past, historical references are plenty, but it can only feel like the future. It’s such a look and if anything it’s too much of one. Hamilton’s take on menswear is so wrought with his aesthetic it glares and for a practical man’s wardrobe it’s not the most digestible. Doesn’t seem like Hamilton is concerned with such things and that can only be a good thing.

DKNY | Nope.