of the nine-tees writes Sarah Mower in vogue.com. I would say he is my favorite designer and I miss him. He never disappointed, always ramped up his agenda. He was so much fun, a lot of his styles look good today. I have still have a leather jacket I wear every winter. When I arrived in New York in 1997 I noticed all the taxis had Helmut Lang advertising on their top. How delighted I was. I grew up with Helmut Lang in Munich. He was well known in Germany way before and moved then to Paris before he landed in New York.
What he achieved in the nineties is so little written about, so far beyond the existing reach of the Internet—and was so elusive, even at the time—that it’s hard to capture its enormity. What he did went far beyond inventing a casual-formal, elegant-subversive uniform—things to wear every day that emitted confidence, centeredness, and sexiness. It was more than that. It was the coming of age of the cool.
Yes cool he was and the news of his departure from the label were received sadly. What should I wear and my friends? We all went to his sale and store closure in New York in 2005. The coolest members of New York’s creative class were present.
It was a coded disguise, a knowing way for the cool of both sexes to hide their origins in plain sight.
Who is Tom Ford? I think of him as a very smart guy who brilliantly markets his good looks. But is he a good designer?
My friend Gaby, who is a Designer in Paris, once told me this anecdote. He came to Saint Laurent, stood up in front of his team and said, “browse the archive, make the collars wider and the skirts shorter. Let’s meet in a few weeks before the show”. It doesn’t really matter, he is super human.
I just saw this documentary and think did he really say that? He did a great movie, showing off his more intellectual capabilities. The clip shows his deeper side:
We live in a material world, velvet feels good, cashmere feels good. Colors excite us. there is a certain enjoyment be gained by materialism. We live in a material world. But we have to keep it in perspective. It is nothing. We own anything in our life. I ususally think of it as a bunch of stuff I am kind of swimming through, I must say I sometimes struggle, I am attracted to beautiful things.yet the same time I am very aware of their lack of value and the most important thing in life is the connection to other people. So it is a little struggle.
I am very familiar with this struggle. I don’t need all this wonderful crap. But I love beauty. Quality. Art. Ideas. Creativity. Craft. And some very prominent designers are referring to it as well. Buy less. Buy quality. Be with it. – I think I have my solution and will share my thoughts soon.
Fashion is not just clothes it is a mirror where we are culturelly at a moment in time or it can be or it can be an indicator where we are going.
We convince people they are not perfect enough, you need this and that. We promote materialism, which ultimately is not the thing which brings you happiness.
Fashion is a business. Fashion is something deemed by popular culture at a moment in time, to be the thing, that you should be wearing. You should have, but every one lives in their own world. Fashion is really in the eye of the beholder. Style for me is something completely different. You can be, what we consider in our culture unattractive and have great style. You can have no money and have great style. You can have a lot of money and have great style. More often, you have plenty of money and have terrible style. You plaster yourself with what you think you should be wearing and you lost yourself.
Style for me is somebody how figures out who they are, what works on them, what they feel good in and develops that. Develops their character. The outer expression of their character is style.
DKNY has named Maxwell Osborne and Dao-Yi Chow as creative directors of DKNY. Mr. Osborne and Mr. Chow are the founders of the haute New York street wear brand Public School.
Public School have a rough, gender-neutral appeal that is very of the moment, though not necessarily very DKNY, which has tended to the more neon-tinted, young-girl-in-the-big-city side of things.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/30/fashion/dkny-maxwell-osborne-dao-yi-chow-public-school.html?ref=fashion: In a statement, Caroline Brown, the Donna Karan chief executive, said the team would “re-energize and redefine what authentic New York means for DKNY right now given today’s world of fast living, extreme innovation and global competition at the highest level.”
The name Iris van Herpen popped up for me on a Hong Kong billboard the first time. So many “Iris” and “van” in the fashion world, I was thinking this is just another freeloader. But Iris van Herpen became the Dutch North Star of innovative, experimental and intelligent fashion. Just amazing.
Vanessa Friedman bemoans the choices for The Time most influential people in fashion. Among Diane Fürstenberg, Kanye West and Kim Kardashian, she thinks, Alexander Wang is the least deserving. Really?
I think these lists are only editorial hyberbole without any meaning then to entertain. But I think she gets her so wrong.
At least she gives him that much:
What Mr. Wang represents, however, which these names do not, is a certain kind of cheerfulness and lack of neuroses: He bounds down the runway! He is having fun! He makes fashion look like a neat job.
And maybe this is where his influence really lies, in that he may persuade kids to go into the sector. Maybe he’s an accessible role model, changing the image of what a fashion designer is. Maybe that qualifies.
What do you think?
I think this is it! It is so important to approach any industry with joy and create a fun environment. So we have no two fashion people leading the field. Alexander Wang and David Hsieh.
