Sculpt Me A Little Something To Wear.

Fashion as sculpture at Gareth Pugh.

Gareth Pugh is exceedingly talented. His draping skills verge on sculpting. He backs leather with neoprene and makes it stiff enough to structure. The folds of his garments flow onto the body or move away from it with a grace that keeps its hard edge. Really, it's quite an accomplishment.

Wearability; Sweet, sweet wearability.

But, the reason why Pugh is poised to last lay beyond his fashion-as-fine-art skills. The man who made Sasha Fierce's stage costumes as pret-a-porter day wear has upped his wearability ante quite a bit this season. There are the garments that you will need a lot of panache to put on, but then there are also those that will let you wear them without your stage persona confidence. Pugh is one of the few this season who has successfully straddled that line of sellable and impressive. His clothes may do well on a retail floor, but they are still designed to be interesting.

Are You Ready For Paris?

You have a little over 36 hours until the Paris portion of fashion month begins. I suggest you brush up in the following ways:

1) Watch this video of Nicholas Kirkwood's Autumn/Winter 2009 line of shoes and then see how many pairs you see on actual editors/models/insiders at the shows. I bet you there's a near one-for-one match!



Did that make you feel dirty? Inexplicably in need of something delightfully wholesome? Move on to two quick...

2) Here's a Warhol-esque screen test featuring Kaiser Karl. Who's more Paris than Karl?



Wait, that didn't make you feel better did it? Maybe you feel worse. Um, here, move on to #3.

3) Watch Anthony Bourdain wait for that most Parisienne staple of life, a baguette freshly made in a boulangerie:



Wait, this is fashion week...nobody eats. Sorry! No bread for you!

4) Ok, why don't you go shopping at Paris's tre magnifique boutique Colette.



I could listen to that man talk for hours. I especially loved how he said "hoodie" at the 4:57 mark. Ooooodies.

5) Last, but not for a second least, take a tour of Alice's Paris apartment.



I have no idea who Alice is, but I thoroughly enjoyed that.

There. Do you feel more prepared for Paris fashion week? Me neither, but that was fun!

Mad Hatter Explained.

Sometimes I fancy this site as a progressive, fashion-heavy version of Mr. Rodgers. Remember when he would take you behind the scenes at the crayon factory or the piano-making shop? I effing loved those segments and remember them clear as day. The video below is kind of like that, only in pretty Paris, and you get to learn about why hatters are mad.



I was going to just URL the Mr. Rodgers video above, but I started watching it and found it more relaxing than my meditation session this morning. Watch and zone out...



No wonder childhood was so happy. That video is like a Valium.

The Horyn Gives The Horns In Paris.

New York Times fashion critic Cathy Horyn gets into trouble because she says stuff like this:

"Recently, however, it has become clear that Paris fashion is less the creative hub of the industry than an isolated universe whose weakness can be sensed even by children."

Her wrap-up review of the Men's collections in Paris takes the hard line, dissing designers for their "naive" and un-in touch collections. But, she gives little wiggle room, razzing others for their predictable, unremarkable rehashing of things boring and staid. Her commentary, via this article and her On The Runway blog, has caused a bit of a stir in the media. With people reiterating Horyn's tendency towards the barb and her lack of qualifications for a post as influential as she holds.

Looks from Rick Owens.

I, like any good fan of anything good, love to see brilliant minds clash over matters of fashion, and Cathy's piece of mind always seems to be clashing with someone else's. She's caught major flack from designers for her harsh commentary, even being banned from Armani and Vera Wang shows. In all honesty, sometimes I think she does go a tad too far, and her voice sounds so haughty it could school Upper East Siders weekending in the Hamptons, but I'm all for point counter point. I'm all for the wind coming out of the fashion sails every once in a while. Actually, it's hot air coming out of inflated heads in this industry. Horyn's lack of qualifications to some, make her an ideal voice of criticism to others. She's enough of an outsider to see fashion for the zoo that it can be if no one puts a thorn in its side every once in a while.

Pieces from Tisci's collection for Givenchy.

Sure, her skewering of Riccardo Tisci's collection for Givenchy comes off a bit heavy-handed, but her point that he's "utterly humorless as a designer" has some legs. Menswear is such a tricky vehicle of expression. Try as they might, designers pushing prints and bodycon cuts and skirts at the male species, are really pushing a little far. Women have so much more freedom of expression when it comes to dressing, and so the more ridiculous flounces of the industry's offerings become a bit more apparent to the outside world when it's men they're after. It's humorous to most to see what is being sold as the new men's look, and when it's done without a hint of irony, humor, or lightness, it can be a very awkward pill to swallow.

Gaultier's look. I think the one on the left is wearing a tube top.

I'm all for men wearing whatever the heck they want. I'm a champion of men's freedom of expression, but to an uninitiated fashion viewer an opinion like Horyn's may make more sense than what's being sold to them. The Times is a newspaper, it's a venue for the average folk to find information and read about the goings on in the world. It is not the industry insider-geared Vogue, W, or Bazaar. It's a populist vehicle. The Times is more elite than most papers, but still, it's an outsider's informant. Horyn's opinions may be built more of personal preference than industry know-how, but there is enough of both to qualify her statements as the right fit for her paper post. No?

And the debate rolls on...

Cheap Thrill: Parisian Chic

When I think of Paris, I think of two things: how much I love everything about it, and This 2006 cover of T Magazine featuring Sofia Coppola and a pair of hot pink, plastic Eiffel Tower earrings:

In fact, this is one of my favorite magazine covers. The stark pop of pink dangling from Sofia's ear is such a great contrast to the subtle softness of the rest of the photo. See the faded Tour de Eiffel in the background? That serious icon gets a perfectly post-modern dunk in colorful, playful electric strawberry plastic. It's a great play on the tension between the Parisian preference for all things traditional and their constant dedication to stretching and molding the rules to find what's nouvelle, especially in fashion. Anyways, enough analysis. A recent Times article about a few proposed plans for possible architecture projects in and around Paris brought this image to mind. All it really does is make me want a pair of plastic eiffels of my own, so I went inter-hunting.

These super cute gold ones from Girl Props may do the trick.

They are 3-D danglers. If you don't mind a pancaked version, and are feeling crafty enough to string 'em yourself, you can get fantastic plastic tour charms in a few great colors.

You get a dozen charms for $4.50 from The Plastic Shop so you can do a bunch of Paris pairs for not a bunch of money. Like it? "Oui, oui," says moi.

About Face

 

Rupert Shrive's art is an undoing of something that's already been done. He paints portraits, or copies of familiar works from the annals of art history on brown paper and then crinkles, crumples, and crushes them. Sometimes he shoves the finished paintings into ceramic sea shells or cracked ostrich eggs, or bursts them through a broken wall, making them look like emerging life forms. There's enough glamour in his pieces to make the damage an appealing contrast to the prettiness that somehow still sticks around. They remind me of a perfectly made-up face that is just begging for a smudging. 

Shrive's damaged goods are on display at Orel Art Gallery in Paris through December 20th. Do a little desktop traveling and check out the gallery's website. It'll definitely save you on airfare.

Image: RupertShrive.com