frankly, i’d like to know what happened to the emperor’s previous groove

as continuation from my previous design studio post, here is the second installment.
for this third of my assessment, i focussed on the boys behind Proenza Schouler.

i've always held a special place in my heart for Jack and Lazaro, and i think part of the way that i can relate to them is through their youth / educational backgrounds, but also through the way in which they design.
Lazaro initially studied pre-med, which is somewhat aligned to the way that i was 100% sure i would study something scientific (eg. pharmacy, biomed..) up until the day i handed in my fashion portfolio for uni. they were also super young when they started their label - straight out of uni / 'college'. though they did study at Parsons in New York, i like to pretend that i am on a similar level to where they were at during their early academic years, and that i could some day achieve 1/1000th of what they have achieved so far.
i also have a strange contradiction regarding my most favoured design vibes. while primarily i most love pieces that are fairly muted in colour and focus mostly on the actual design, i have a part of me that will always love the exact opposite: clashing and innovative prints and surface texture that can be found amongst the likes of Dries Van Noten and the Proenza boys. they will, for some reason, always be some of my favourite collections - season after season.
aaaaaand i LOVE the Proenza slouch. i tried to highlight in my oral presentation that the marriage of slouch / downtown vs old world hemlines and details / uptown is one of my very favourite things about Proenza designs. the fact that their first boutique was located in Madison Avenue, while they advertised its opening on posters all over downtown New York is amazing proof of this balance.

+ some of my favourite parts of my research:
- 'there is something to be said for being true to your brand in times of wealth and times of scarcity. being too extreme and blowing to the wind can be definitely very dangerous.. shoppers are more educated than they've been and want luxury for luxury prices.'
- they create clothing that has fashion-forward silhouettes but isn't inaccessible to the shopper. 'nothing is too precious for reality. these are clothes that you desire and can also wear.'
- 'i often wonder, sometimes i think the people who buy our clothes live in a parallel universe. hell, we can't even afford our clothes.'
- 'i'm from Miami, i knew there was a fashion community in Miami, but i wanted to do something bigger than local, so i moved to New York. you have to decide for yourself on what scale you want to work in.'
- 'it just felt so wrong, in a good way, to open uptown. the reality is, the clothes are expensive and the customer is here. our sensibility leans more towards urban. but we like things that are aged and have a patina. urban doesn't have to be slick. we are not catering to 'uptown' customers - we are not into definitions. we want to avoid being pigeon-holed.'
- 'high fashion is always seeking newness. but newness in construction and the development of new textiles and treatment is always expensive. the price isn't inflated at all. we seldom make the margins people say you are supposed to be making. creativity is everything to us, unfortunately, this costs money. the prices simply reflect the process.'
- 'for us, it isn't about creating a jacket with three sleeves. it's not about inventing a new silhouette. for us, it's about surface. we are really interested in the surface more than anything.'
- 'our strongest collections take many abstract ideas and bring them together in a way that hopefully doesn't look specifically like one thing, or something thematic.'

ipad, therefore i am

an embarrassingly long while ago (i can't believe it's taken me this long to put this post together), i was fortunate enough to score a reasonably last-minute ticket to the QUT fashion graduate show 'Chaos and Control'. from memory, i've only been able to attend twice so far (including this year's show), due to growing up outside of Brisbane..
this year was wildy inspiring. aside from the many awe-inspiring designers and collections, the whole environment continually made me feel giddy. when an award was handed out at the end of the evening, i got teary, even though i didn't know the girl in person ! i think that was partly due to a culmination of emotions throughout the entire night, which were sort of a result of the gradual realisation that in two shorts years i would be presenting my own pieces at a similar evening in the exact same room. totally surreal..

i found it quite difficult to get some good pictures of many of my favourites looks as i only had my phone camera with me, which didn't respond too well to the movement, distance and lighting. i also found the images that i did source elsewhere pretty poor in terms of captioning who the featured designers were.
so from memory (and i hope i have recounted all of these accurately), here were some of my favourite looks and guys / gals from the evening..

Georgia Grainger: Georgia Grainger / Monique White: Hayley Elsaesser / Georgia Grainger: Paige Thorley: Dobin Moon: Dobin Moon: Dobin Moon: Dobin Moon / Hayley Elsaesser: Austin Moro / Dobin Moon: Austin Moro:
i also particularly enjoyed Megan Pilon and Shea Cameron's womenswear pieces.

and a special note to some of the inspiration that i could find documented online:
Austin Moro - 'my collection plucks random ideas from the past and delivers them in a romantic and innocent way. i was inspired by The Life Aquatic, Bananas in Pyjamas, André Courrèges, and images of masculinity and seaside life from the 1960s. in fact, i wanted to look back solely at the 60s and only take the sweet things. we live in an imperfect world, but we don’t necessarily have to dress with that in mind. the overall effect is rather odd, but creates a world that empathises with people that do not fit into our own.'
Megan Pilon - 'a Second Skin revolves around the idea that reality and misrepresentation are ambiguous and dependent on the perceptions of the observer. the way people perceive themselves and the world can distort and pervert their sense of what is­ real. a 'second skin' – donned to conceal reality – became a theme in the collection, leading to a visual translation of contrasts and depiction of voyeuristic revelation.'

design studio - #1 of 3

my final design studio assignment at uni for the year involved a journal research / design section as well as the practical side. for the journal, we had to research at least 3 designers (or creatives - eg. architects) and their design process - as a way to form our own designs.
for my first person, i chose Riccardo for Givenchy. he is possibly one of my absolute favourites. whenever i see his work, i feel as though i have been subconsciously attempting to design the exact same things the whole time leading up to each collection. i feel as though i am on such a similar level to him (in my dreams, at least).
his balance and opposite / equal reaction is what i relate to most. there is ALWAYS the perfect mix of masculine vs feminine, light vs dark, chaos vs control.. which is how i always find myself shopping for clothing and also designing.

i did about 30 pages of reseach on him - a lot of them purely text. here are a few of my favourites:

+some of my favourite excerpts (not pictured):
- 'there's something of the night in myself. a childhood memory of possessions. veiled women, pale Madonnas, that has never left me.'
- 'they were saying, 'why an Italian who acts Gothic?' never mind the fact that Italy is one of the main exhibitors of Gothic art in the world. but it was like, 'no, Italians should only do sexy!''
- 'i work a lot on the back. i love the back of clothes for men. i love even t-shirts printed behind. i think, 'why do you want to show only the front?''
- his Catholic upbringing permeates all of his fashion designs, appearing in everything from the swirling heads of barking rottweilers which from a distance, look like Baroque church embellishments, to gilded embroidery on dresses that were inspired by the patter of a cape adorning a Virgin Mary statue or the robes of a pope.
- 'two years ago, i put plastic zips onto super expensive couture dresses. i thought all of the clients would ask to change the zips to invisible zips - which is classic. but it has actually now become such a sign for Givenchy. that for me; for us, is the future.'
- 'dark for me is not always black, it's not always dark colours, it's not about Goth and black cloth.'

the launch of Socks & Sandals zine

toward the end of last week, a zine that i contributed to was finally launched. it was originally to be launched over winter, but was pushed back to ensure everything was in tip-top shape before revealing itself.

at this stage, its plans for (free) distribution are still TBC, but it can be read in full online here for the moment. i wrote two articles, including this guy (it can be so hard fitting so many thoughts into so few words - i hate tiny word limits!): i styled this shoot also. it was a bit of a group effort, but i suppose i get to hold the official title. the idea was to pull clothes all from a vintage store in a little town called Dayboro north east of Brisbane, and we took most photographs nearby: > this is mine also: there are some aspects to the zine that certainly aren't 100% 'me', but it's not my baby so i don't think i really have the right to comment. i'm pretty happy with a lot of the content though, and it was an interesting process. it was fully created by university students from Brisbane, and i met a lot of great new people along the way.

reminder: available to read here if you are interested.

what's a bit of unpicking between friends?

i'm finally employed (by a fashion wholesaling firm), and celebrated with some small purchases from Hello Parry and Molten Store online.

launch party for my fashion zine project

fellow Brisbane fashion enthusiasts may be interested in attending the launch party for a fashion + lifestyle zine that i have been working on for about a year now.. i wrote two contributing articles, and helped to style one editorial. the rest has all been written and photographed by fellow university students.



details can be found here.

Andre Leon Talley is my spirit animal

my belated picks from the Margiela x H&M collaboration (which i was surprisingly impressed by..):


via.

a secondary post, for good measure

‘The Language of Gender':
'the fashion media has a way of sensationalising trends - everything with a scrap of colour has been dubbed 'colour blocking' recently, and it only takes a couple of celebrity pictures before they start heralding the new must have bag, the new must have shoe that replaced the must have bag or of course the easy target of the 'new' black. the energetic language that enthuses over the next phase every season is part of what keeps the fashion cycles turning - of course red looks new when you’ve just seen a lot of blue and crisp pastels will look fresh when we’ve just filled our wardrobes with muted dusky tones. despite the fact that this can make for repetitive reading for the savvy consumer, it’s generally harmless, and simply a bit of over simplification for the sake of creating a story or pushing a product.

so it is mainly when gender is used as a trend or selling point that fashion language hyperbole goes into tricky territory. perhaps it has always been this way but it seems that of late there has been a particular focus on the trend of 'Masculine' dressing for women that raises some interesting questions. when the media start using masculine and feminine as adjectives to describe an outfit it assumes that the reader is going to associate all sorts of other attributes to the clothes. for example, when a journalist says that a shirt is masculine are they referring to anatomy, to a cut of clothing more suited to the male body? or are they using the word to recall the stereotypes that we have of what it means to be masculine?

often it seems that the terms are used to represent opposites that play into the stereotypes of feminine meaning soft, delicate, fragile, pink, sparkly as opposed to masculine meaning strong, bulky, large, tough etc. in the screen grabs of the Topshop newsletter and website above, the language used definitely reinforces the idea of feminine and masculine dressing being opposites. the feminine 'prim and polished' trends use the flowery language of 'sweet' and 'delicate' to describe pleats and prints. in contrast the masculine theme inspired by the mods uses 'sleek tailoring', 'rebellious' and 'outlandish' to describe the collection. it must be said of course that Topshop are going for a 1960s theme here, so it does play into more old fashioned ideas of what it means to be a man or woman. but this seems to be part of the problem..as soon as you start dividing fashion up into masculine and feminine, it does seem dated. the old notions of what it means to be a man or a woman has evolved so much that surely simplifying the description of feminine and masculine dress codes in this way is going to lead to a lot of misunderstanding? then there’s the problem of where you draw the line between what is feminine dress and what is actually masculine.

in the screen grabs above it seems that the definition for what constitutes masculine dress is now anything tailored - be it blazers, trousers, or halter neck jumpsuits. if it’s monochrome, oversized or drop shoulder, it’s possible that again you are probably dressing like 'one of the boys'. at the end of the day surely this is all based on context, and what we consider to be masculine or feminine dress today will shift season after season over the years ahead of us. and i’m sure that when women first began to wear trousers back in the 1930s and 40s perhaps it came as a bit of a surprise, but after seventy odd years wouldn’t you think that some of the garments such as trousers, blazers and shirts would have shrugged off their male only label? if this seems like a one sided article, then this is because this appears to be a largely one-sided problem at the moment. the guys seem to be able to get away with wearing pink, frills, or gemstones in their menswear collections without it being dubbed feminine.

this is also a problem that can be easily avoided - just don’t use gender to describe clothes. if a blazer is sleek, tailored, crisp, strong or boxy then there are plenty of words such as these that will describe the garment, without insinuating that a woman may be cross dressing by wearing it. it is equally true that every delicate, light weight or floral garment does not have to be dubbed feminine. there are many shades of what it means to be feminine or masculine, so it is a shame not to use the full scope of vocabulary to describe the dress codes of both sexes and to allow for all the grey area in between.'