DSM-V

The Dover Street Market in London is a Comme des Garcons project that stocks curated merch for the ubercool. My favorite DSM wear are their playful heart-logo tees that feature some cute characters for your closet. Here are five of my favorites:

If I had the opportunity to wear one of these babies, I have a pretty good feeling that it would be a very self-hug kind of a day. Aren't they sweet? Something about their lack of mouths makes me love them even more.

Blame is Game.

Master Blame.

Judy Blame is a stylist/designer/fashion legend worthy of some space in your brain. I hate to make an ass out of you and me and assume that you don't know Mr. Blame, but he's more of the behind the seams type here in the states than he ought to be. His career was born in the '80s in London. Working with a group of like-minded rabble rousers who went by the name of Buffalo Boys, Blame helped pioneer a look that encompassed hard, soft, masculine, and feminine (think combat boots and lace on boy toy-era beefcakes). The look leaked to pop culture and made a pro-stylist of Blame.

He's worked with musicians like Neneh Cherry, Bjork, and Boy George, contributed to ID and added his accessory design skills to haute houses like Christian Dior, Louis Vuitton, and, most recently, Comme des Garcons. I appreciate his pile-it-on aesthetic and love his repurposed materials (toy soldiers? Yes, please.) You want some of the Blame too? His current work can be found in CdG boutiques and online via dobedo.

Yummy/crazy/colorful. Like a bag of Halloween candy for your wardrobe.

The Shape of Things

Images: Marcio Madeira for Style.com

Rei Kawakubo's latest show for Comme des Garcons was a love letter to black and white hexagons. Maybe she's a secretly huge soccer fan, or perhaps she's trying to reach that coveted goth-glam-football-hooligan demographic. Whatever the reason for the shapes, she certainly made them her own.

Ms. Kawakubo's work for Comme des Garcons is always something of a phenomenon. It is usually shocking in its unique way, but her vision always seems to filter into other collections a season or two later, and ripple on down until every girl in Forever 21 has an outfit on that somehow quotes Kawakubo. In fact, you too can have your very own Comme clothes when Rei teams up with H&M and takes over the duty of translating her fashion for the masses herself.

Images: Courtesy Nitrolicious.com

This collection WILL sell out like Japanese hotcakes so you better go line up now for the November release. I'll see you there.

I just wanted to tell you...

This is the most excited I have been about commercial fashion in a long time. There is a newness in the air. A freedom of expression is floating around, loose from the over-sexed, over-shot, consumerist focus on wearable trends.

I want to be free from the trend, free from the unwashable $15.98, disposable facsimile of a dress I feel compelled to pick off the rack at "insert trend chain name here" because it is so cheap. I want to see how the cheap-o stores attempt to water down the newest Marc Jacobs show, which is all cut up and collaged. It is focused on texture and color with displaced and replaced references to the past, present, and future. In case you can't sense the sarcasm, I seriously don't want to see what they will make of any of the looks from his shows this season, like the ones below for Loius Vuitton.




This is not to say that I am wholeheartedly in support of the elitist, big-bucks fashion houses either. That is exactly why I loved so much shown this season. This is the thinking girl's moment to shine. Comb the racks at a vintage store, raid your mom's closet, and cut up everything you own then stitch it back together sideways. Follow Rei Kawakubo's example at Comme des Garcons and let your clothes out to play.





As for the claims that both Marc Jacobs shows this season were hijacked from Kawakubo? I say maybe. I also say so what? None of us lives in a bubble; no ideas are unique. If this random aesthetic is going to be the poached prize of the season, I say let it spread. This isn't polka dots or sailor stripes. This is mash-up randomness. Everyone should try it. Looks like fun.