Appropriately Impractical

I've been toying with some design ideas that may make it slightly difficult for my models to walk.  I say slightly because it's not like they wouldn't be able to walk ... just that their stride may need be somewhat shorter than a natural walk.  If I were producing womenswear I probably wouldn't question the designs, we wear skirts and dresses that make it difficult for us to bend over, jeans that mean we can't cross our legs, tops that we know not to go out for a big meal wearing, full length dresses that we change the way we walk in - and many more variously impractical garments.  Menswear however seems to be a different story.  My guess is that it would be pretty hard to get a guy into something that impinged on his movement or general activities in any way.

So I kept thinking about it - how far can I push impracticality in design until it is inappropriate and unjustified?  Impractical design in womenswear can often lean toward S&M and fetish influences, rendering the final look rather sexy (in a rather unfeminist way).  When menswear begins to become restrictive however, it for some reason can play out in a less sexy manner, representing a loss of power - an idea which has been traditionally sexualised and often empowering in womenswear - but which does not necessarily work in menswear.

So how far can impractical design be pushed in menswear and how can it become sexy and empowering and avoid becoming ridiculous?  How far can you push these designs before they lose all commercial meaning and would never actually be seen on a man?  I haven't found the answers yet ... but if I do I'll be sure to let you know.

Image at http://www.imyouare.com/433/Bondage_Warriors_by_Steven_Klein

Joe Bananas

Today I walked past a shop that I have undoubtedly walked past many times.  What made the occasion special this time was that I actually noticed the store, stopped, stood at the window for a moment, pondered whether it was worth entering, and finally convinced myself that I probably just should go in since I was already in front of it.  The store was Joe Bananas, a simple, unpretentious menswear store in the QVB which sells mainly jackets, suits and some fairly loud printed shirts.  The designs themselves weren't anything unexpected of a menswear store - classic, easy to wear styles which most men would have some version of in their wardrobe.  What made a huge difference to these designs were the amazing fabrics used in the designs.  While not all of them were the most amazingly ingenious fabrics I had seen they were all unique, beautiful and unusual.

I chatted with the designer for a few moments about his label and from memory he said that the brand had been running for 25 (or was it 35?) years.  That's a pretty serious deal in the Sydney fashion industry where a brand that makes it past the 5 year mark is doing damn well for itself.  Clearly this label has been doing something right.  Joe Bananas is proof that good, successful, business-minded design needs a point of difference - found in this case through fabrics.

Sex Still Sells

Now I'm going to admit this right from the start - I don't really understand this film.  It doesn't speak loads about YSL as a fashion label, it kinda leans toward some fleeting ideas about YSL as a lifestyle brand, and as far as I can tell it doesn't really tell us a whole lot about the Fall 2010 menswear collection.  For what seems to be mainly an inspirational, aspirational, dreamy bundle of semi-naked and naked models, YSL has put a serious amount of effort, time and money into this project directed by Bruce Weber.  So there must be a damn good reason behind doing it.

My answer - sex sells.

It's an old story but it seems just as relevant in fashion today as it always has been.  What I find most interesting about the concept in this film is that the masculinity is being portrayed in a bizarrely feminine way.  The sexuality of the models in this film floats between friendship and far more than friendship in a very delicate, sensual way that would not normally be associated with traditional views of masculinity.  And then the baby at the end?  That completely throws a spanner in the masculinity works and takes us well past femininity and on into a strange maternal zone.

While we've all seen masculinity and various views of male sexuality being explored mainly in fashion photography for years, it's interesting to see it played out in film.  So maybe YSL wasn't even trying to create a film about their label or their collection.  Perhaps this film is more to do with getting in touch with the kind of masculinity and sexuality that is influencing and inspiring YSL at the moment.  Whatever their reasons - the film is a nice piece of work.  Sex definitely still sells, perhaps just in a different way to how it has in the past.

'Ain't Nothin Like the Real Thing' - Bruce Weber for YSL
Video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDrezl40Ezgn or on the YSL website http://ysl.com/us/en/index.aspx

Still Stupid

And another from Diesel.

My official design philosophy - may extend to life philosophy in time.


Video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=589qKh_IeLI

Be Stupid

With a lot of talk going on at uni about creating the most amazing, innovative collection that you could possibly think of, there is a fair amount of pressure to be creative - really creative.  Sometimes pressure can be a good thing - other times it can just be really, really frustrating and make you sacrifice the fun of taking chances in favour of playing it safe for something that you know will work.


Two things recently have reminded me that it's worth taking a risk, and it's way more exciting.


1. A conversation with a good friend who somehow linked fashion design to aeroplanes, who suggested that the first person to suggest that a flying machine which could carry hundreds of people around the world would probably have been laughed at but look at 'him' now ... so you should just design whatever the hell you believe in.


2. This video from Diesel who's current catch phrase is 'Be Stupid'.  Thanks to the lovely Ele who's blog I discovered this little number on.  A timely reminder to be a bit stupid and do something challenging and exciting.



Video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTTz1E1uyfE

At the Heart of Menswear ... is the Man

Still bamboozled about Henry Bucks being Australia's favourite menswear store, I've been questioning just how far menswear can be pushed.  Are we stuck in a menswear cycle of standard fits, basic shirts and functional foundations?  Is experimental menswear part of the future of mens fashion or are menswear traditions too dominant for men to adopt a more unique or individual sense of style?

In a lecture this week, a leading designer in a giant Sydney fashion label sent out a warning to any of us designing for men.  She recommended that 'at the heart of menswear is the man'.  One of the problems of experimental and innovative menswear is that it can occasionally forget about the man that has to wear the clothes.  While there is a current trend toward a more feminised male, this is not to say that he has given up his masculinity.  He may be more aware of fashion than previous generations, more willing to take fashion risks and certainly more comfortable in adopting a more individual style - but underneath this is still a man who probably wants to be recognised as one.  He will still pick function everyday and select garments that reflect, while not necessarily following, menswear traditions.

In the preface to Fashion Now 2, an i-D magazine encyclopedia of designers, editor Glenn Waldron pretty well sums it all up.  Menswear focuses "on the substance of 'style' over the transient nature of 'fashion'."  A nice approach really in what can sometimes seem a rather frenetic and frivolous industry.  Menswear is more about an evolutionary process than the quick turn over of new trends in womenswear.  So while the classic black suit will never be 'out', hopefully experimenting with it will become more and more 'in'.

Raf Simon's take on the suit for Fall 2010.  Image at http://www.gq.com/fashion-shows/complete/F2010MEN-RSMEN

A Buck Short

Today I tried a little experiment ... I typed 'menswear' into google wondering where it might take me.

The first link on the list was to 'Henry Bucks Menswear Store', with a short descriptive account that 'Henry Bucks showcases the worlds finest and most wearable mens clothing from top European brands.'  Now I don't know exactly how google search results function but my belief is that the most popular links pop up at the top.  So my powers of deduction tell me that Henry Bucks is a pretty popular little dig for menswear browsers.  Figuring that this store must carry all my menswear needs I decided to spend some time taking a look at what it has to offer and I must admit that I was rather disappointed.  All I seemed to be turning out was standard menswear styles, classic suits, standard pants, boring shirts.  I have no doubt that all of these garments would have been beautifully made in expensive fabrics but all I could think of was how boring it all seemed.  Certainly all of the garments showcased in Henry Bucks have a very clear and stable place in the menswear market but is the most popular menswear link on google really this store?  Is 'the fabric of the city' really a black wool suit as advertised in the Henry Bucks Autumn catalogue?  Surely not.  I like to live in hope that maybe Australian men, or at least the younger generations are becoming more experimental than relying on classic suits and cotton shirts but perhaps I'm mistaken?

Standard menswear shot at http://www.henrybucks.com.au/

Conscious Clutter

What is it that is so appealing about mess?  A cluttered room for me has always been a sign of a creative or curious soul.  A strange collection of random objects, rather than telling a story about their owner, in some way serves to render them all the more mysterious.  What would my muse clutter his surroundings with? Where would he store it all?  What would these objects expose or deny about my man?

Jeff Wall, After "Invisible Man" by Ralph Ellison, The Preface, 1999-2000

Image at http://www.mariangoodman.com/exhibitions/2002-09-20_jeff-wall/

Kirrily Johnston Spring/Summer 2010/11

How refreshing it was, amidst the fashion frenzy, to see Kirrily Johnston once again throw some unique yet wearable menswear at us!  Let's face it - everyone loves a male model - and are they not all the more enticing when layered up in something a little out of the ordinary?  It's not an easy thing to work mens and womens wear into a cohesive collection but Kirrily seemed to achieve this rather effortlessly through relaxing, wearable shapes that might actually hit the wardrobes of some of the more fashion thinking men out there.  While her menswear is a little less fashion forward than some of her womenswear, it is has been designed to be worn, which ideally is what menswear boils down to.  Australia is slowly stepping up our menswear and building a rather neat little portfolio of menswear designers.  With a bit of luck (and perhaps a little push from the ladies), we might begin to see some well considered mens fashion really take it's place within the market.

Image courtesty of Grazia http://grazia.ninemsn.com.au/slideshow_ajax.aspx?sectionid=8828&sectionname=catwalk&subsectionid=204832&subsectionname=rafwspringsummer1011_kirrily_johnston

New Avenues

A beautiful friend at Moda Communicator (go there for more online wonders) has gotten me all excited about online fashion communication and they way that the fashion world is now turning to the internet as a serious means of reaching fans, designers, academics, consumers and just about anyone who has some interest in the fashion world.  The internet has certainly exploded in terms of its significance in fashion, and with lucky (or seriously talented?) little 13-year olds such as Tavi popping up at fashion shows world wide, how can we possibly ignore the potential for web-based fashion promotion and communication.

Blogger and photographer Olivier Zahm at Purple Diary spoke to Dirk Standen of Style.com  in a series of interviews about the future of fashion and suggested that the internet is not a creative medium for fashion and that true creativity for fashion and fashion photography still lies in the papery realms of the magazine.  To some extent I agree with Zahm - there is absolutely a quality caught in the pages of fashion magazines that becomes lost when those images translate over to the internet.  But the internet has also given rise to new possibilities for fashion which cannot be explored simply through fashion photography.  I've posted previously on the potential of artistic collaborations which in that particular case was made possible through web-based media but the more I read, hear and see about the internet being the right or the wrong medium for fashion intrigues me all the more into the issue.
I have never been one to trawl the internet for scraps of fashion related finds.  I don't shop online, I don't jump into the new collections as soon as they're put up on Style.com and I've never found the computer screen the most inspiring place to find or express ideas.  I do however use the internet constantly.  I know how efficiently I can find images, information, videos or whatever I may need and I am quickly learning that the internet can be a very effective mode for recording and in turn communicating ideas, thoughts and inspiration.  For me, the fact simply is that whether we like it or not fashion will become more and more filtered to us via the internet so we might as well learn to roll with it.  A pretty exciting concept if you ask me.  Already we have seen some amazing exploration of fashion through the internet and undoubtedly this will become an increasingly exciting area to work within.
While fashion film is not the only avenue which has opened up through web based media - and one which certainly didn't begin through it - it has become a popular and engaging medium for designers and consumers alike.  The great thing about fashion film is that it toes the line between traditional advertising and traditional fashion photography, not committing itself to one or the other and become a rather exciting brand artwork in itself.  While this video is not the only example of fashion film out there I think that it achieves something unachievable by the pages of a magazine.  It functions to provide that missing link once the catwalk show is over and we're left to understand the collection through photographs and drawings.  It serves a purpose of prolonged communication, an idea that hasn't existed in this scope until recently and for this reason deserves to be fully explored.

Posted below is a fashion film by Joost Van Gorsel at Iconique for the Jan Taminiau Spring/Summer 2010 collection 'Duality' which provides far more meaning for the collection than is received through a line up of the catwalk looks.  While fashion photography can be incredible when worked through with the right stylist and the right ideas, fashion film is succinct and direct.  In this clip, the doubling, the spinning and the winding rise and fall of the music which everything is set to so simply and effectively conveys the off-centered nature and concept of the collection - an idea which is unlikely to have been communicated as such in any other format.

Enjoy!

Video at http://www.jantaminiau.com/

Sartorialist Style

Once again I'm going back to something that Kate Vandermeer of ISpyStyle shared with us in her lecture a few weeks ago.  Now if you don't already know The Sartorialist I urge you to head over there and have a quick scroll before trying to make sense of this post.  Scott Schuman - 'The Sartorialist' - basically rolls around the world taking snaps of attractive, fashionable people and posts them up for all us style hungry folk to munch through.  I can't tell you exactly how many thousands of followers are mulling over his blog daily but I know that the number is huge.  He has somehow managed to develop a rather wonderful online style mecca and since it's on the web for the whole world to follow - it has worked.  

The styles picked up by the Sartorialist are pretty well synonymous with the blog and instantly on trend simply because they fit into the 'Sartorialist-like-styling' category.  The gang at Refinery29 have picked up on some trends that The Sartorialist seems to lean towards and formulated a lovely little flow chart to help us get 'snapped' by the main man himself.  While I'm sure it's not foolproof - it is very funny and very, very true.  A really strong sense of style runs through The Sartorialist's blog and if he were to decide to design a label I think we could all predict the direction of the collections.  The most interesting part in his formation of such an identifiable style is that it is pretty well globally known (not to mention that this worldwide recognition is primarily through his blog!).  Sadly I haven't been able to find a copy of the chart which is high enough quality to post up here for you so you're going to have to do some work and head to Refinery 29 and have a look for yourself.  It's interesting to see that his blog and his style interests have such a strong common thread that can be summed up so succinctly and charismatically by Refinery29.  Have fun!


Some examples I paired up for you ...

Refinery 29: "Want to increase your chances > Yes > Add One > Pop of Colour"

Image at http://www.thesartorialist.com/photos/42010Pinkhat_6023Web.jpg

Refinery 29 "How about pants, you got those? > Of course > Cuff 'em, roll 'em, make 'em too short."

Image at http://www.thesartorialist.com/photos/42010London_5961Web.jpg