Move

I advise against watching the entire video as the quick cuts can induce a feeling similar to motion-sicking, but I suppose that’s the point of MOVE.

MOVE from Rick Mereki on Vimeo.

Our ability to extend ourselves through media has given us meta-problems…being car-sick without leaving the couch. Feeling like you went with your friend to Prague, extending your voice via phone has been enhanced with FaceTime and Skype and the like.

So all this media helps drive us forward (perhaps at such a rapid pace we begin dependent on it to record our travels and correspondences so we can refer back to the cyber-trail of our travels). What are the ramifications of this network expansion and democratization of technological advances for the fashion industry?

For one, luxury brands are forced to jump in the social-media water and hope that the instant exposure doesn't level the field too much. Basically, that the technological plane we all operate on doesn’t erode the platform of exclusivity their houses worked hard to bolster. For the most part though, it means fashions can be shared as quickly as a trip to japan can be uploaded to facebook or (RIP) Flickr.

The rapid sharing can been sited as a positive but the impact to our self-image can be splintering. Shot by Ben Sandler for Amusement Magazine "Net Effect" is an editorial that explores the issue of our digital identities affecting our corporeal identities in the real world. Net Effect project, according to their website, depicts the “philosophical dialogue between the human form and the immaterial representation of our digital selves.”

The metallic installations created by Bonsoir Paris “serve as metaphors of representations in the digital realm.” The caged-in models showcase the shadowy side of instant-sharing: a psychic scattering of the self. With interaction linking us indefinitely to the opinions and thoughts of our peers it becomes challenging to have untainted thought instead of a reactionary thought to the stream of encoded messages we receive.

The emphasis on communication means look-at-me looks can be uploaded to websites and validated with an audience of eager participants consuming a screen image of the idiosyncratic style of one trend-setter and appropriating it the very next day. The Museum of Modern Art “Talk to Me” exhibition demonstrates the cybernetic quality of our interactions from a broader platform. The predominant point of the exhibition is that communication has become the driving force in design.

Trends spread across the blogosphere like super novas, burning brightly, not sustainably. What is a stylish gal to do? Embrace the experience and soak it up but don't let all the other opinions stand in for your own. One should never get dressed in front of a computer screen as a mirror.

Toast Points

If you know me personally, it is not news that I am an unofficial spokesperson for toast. The way the farmers have started to brand milk as a general commodity, I have begun my work, to get everyone excited about the four-cornered, dry-humored carbohydrate that is often forgotten about-- toast. The dry-humored bread needs better pr, and lucky for it the majority of my conversations with my roommates position us as brand ambassadors: long live the loaf! But besides the obvious outreach we do on behalf of hung-over party-girls in the tristate area, I have decided it is time to appreciate the way wheat-shaded fashions are dominating the runways. (You didn't think I was really going to write an entire post about toast in the middle of fashion week, did you?)
Anyway, to me toast is the basic staple of a diet the way that wheat is the grounding force in a collection (and both are underrated and overshadowed by "experts" throwing around opinions on high-protein rigor and the omnipresence of black).
Once you find the right shade of cream, wheat or beige for your skin you will never go back. Just as the life-saving properties of toast on an uneasy stomach are not soon forgotten. The key to finding the best shade for you is to figure out the undertones in your complexion. Magazines, sephora sales people, and mirrors are your best allays here. Cheat-sheet: if you are Asian, Mediterranean, Italian or have olive or golden skin tone consider yourself yellow; if you are British, polish, German or have fair to flushed skin, think pink. If you have deeper hues than olive you don't need to worry about wash-out and can move along to step number two: choosing your dream crème. If you have yellow undertones avoid yellowed cream because you will look bright and vibrant in pinker shades of beige.
When thinking about the variations in cream words like sensible-dressing, or blah may pop into your mind. Don't be fooled, tapioca is exciting in the fashion world. Just ask Francisco Costa whose women’s collection for Calvin Klein marked the last of the major shows in New York's Fashion Week, and showed the flirty side of the trend when Lara Stone came out in a gold jacquard shift-dress.
Costa referred to the number as "wheat" which reminds me that the girls at Rodarte where literally swaddled in full-length evening gowns that had been dipped in wheat at the hem. Kate and Laura Mulleavy cited the American Plains as their inspiration.
According to style.com the operative word to describe Micheal Kors’ collection was sleek, and the luxurious looks featured monochromatic take on beige—it was breath-taking and all the better to create that long, uninterrupted line Kors favors (Nicole Phelps reporting for style.com).

A Family Affair For Now at Hermès

Pegged as “one of the world's most elegant businesses” Hermès is also one of the most resilient. It fairs substantially better than its competitors during slower economic times and spikes in demand during times of economic recovery. Perhaps as synonymous with the brand as its trademark horse and carriage calèche is its dedication to family ownership. It’s familial vigilance that enabled Hermès to maintain control over its company vision while gracefully expanding.
While most luxury brands today expand to increase accessibility, Hermès focuses on quality. The focus has paid off, as Hermès is a leader in luxury brands. LVMH, a French conglomerate, bought 15,016,000 shares of Hermès; it holds a total of 18,017,246 shares, or a 17.1 percent stake. At 17.1 percent, LVMH has become the largest non-familial stakeholder, prompting some to inquire if an acquisition is around the corner.
Whether LVMH’s move bespeaks a takeover remains unclear, but charting Hermès’ evolution highlights its covetable nature. Its ability to keep a semblance of its original vision in-tack when so many luxury brands have turned to mega-marketing schemes, distinguishes it in the minds of consumers when compared to rival brands, like LVMH-owned Louis Vuitton.
According to a LVMH company-issued statement, “LVMH has no intention of launching a tender offer, taking control of Hermès, nor seeking board representation.”
Ask analysts, like Luca Solca at Sanford Bernstein, and a different picture materializes. Solca theorized to the Wall Street Journal of the move: "LVMH is in a pole position for a future Hermès acquisition.” Solca predicts the nature of Hermès’ role if the potential acquisition takes place. She explains, “LVMH is very much in 'mass luxury' and Hermes could complement that with a higher-end focus."
If Hermès joins the LVMH family, it would be the chic and studious equestrian-loving older sister (who remains aloof when siblings try to engage her). Sibling rivalry might rear its ugly head, with brands like Fendi being owned by the same parent company. Hermès gained notoriety for timeless pieces that embody the intimacy of a whisper, whereas LVMH brands often shout their message in monograms. Would the tone of Hermès change if it became adopted by LVMH?
The distinguishing feature of the Hermès brand is within its iconic Birkin and Kelly handbags, silk scarves and classic pieces that emphasize craftsmanship. The inherent craftsmanship of a Birkin connotes an intimacy that its consumers crave. If it acquired by LVMH will its bags be bathed in logos, sprayed with sequins, embellished with a goal of democratizing merchandise in mind? If Hermès gets adopted by LVMH will its merchandise start to resemble its new siblings?
If the reins change hands, new tactics that forever alter the brand’s reputation and relationship with its niche customer could be tested out. Look at Louis Vuitton’s shift, when Marc Jacobs sought to bring the brand up-to-date, he collaborated with artist Takashi Murakami (who played with the notion of superflat by splashing anime figures atop LV monograms).
If the thought of a bedazzled Birkin elicits a heart stopping response, it must be noted that this would be especially arresting to the prototypical Hermès customer. Altering Hermès would alienate its loyal customer.
By creating covetable and classy pieces Hermès maintains its position as a power player in luxury goods; it doesn’t need a face-lift. CEO of LVMH, Bernard Arnault, jockeys his brands to win and will most likely realize Hermès needs to remain a familiar face, if not a familial one.
This means lower-priced accessories, cheaply made street fashion spin-offs – such as cotton t-shirts, toiletry cases and denim handbags— which have never been options for expansion of this French powerhouse, would not become viable avenues to explore if under LVMH’s direction.
Fret not, lovers of the label. With a Hermès silk scarf allegedly sold every 20 seconds, the brand is not in danger of going under the metaphorical knife, even if some prophesize it is about to get adopted. Hermès has proven its success in its high-luxury heritage, aging with the grace of a French film star. Therefore, it dodges the bullet of brand-surgery. Even if Hermès is about to be taken over by LVMH we predict its leather goods will remain regal and wrinkled.

Bravo to Bruno

Often discussions of branding and promoting a line are centered around: how do we "break through the clutter?" The mere quantity of pictures we are exposed to create a "banality of images." It's a phenomenon that media scholars are both intrigued and repulsed by. With so many fresh faces, so many underground shops, and so many video lookbooks, it is an increasingly challenging job to break through the clutter in a way that emanates meaning not just noise. Vanessa Bruno has the most incredible lookbooks floating through the world wide web with the same sort of ethereal and undying youthful energy of her clothing. Her latest video was incredible:

The video is gloomy and gratifying all at once. She plays with light and dark as dialectic counterparts by revealing a journey of a mysterious figure who reveals the dichotomy of strength: its fist-slamming strength (as Valentine Fillol Cordier pummels the ground under a dark sky) and its delicate sensitivity and sensual nature bathed in the softness of daylight (with Lou Doillon air-strumming a guitar). The video is a montage of scenes open to levels of interpretation that are varied and rich. For example, the image of Valentine Fillol Cordier commanding a tree to sway suggests we examine our realtionship to nature.

By asking viewers to engage with her content on such a deep level Bruno is tapping into what marketers mean (or should mean) by the phrase "breaking through the clutter." She is enunciating her brand's ideology through a visualization of a journey that speaks to the complexity of her creations. From a less-lofty, more business perspective Bruno and her team certainly know the label's most praised pieces are outerwear and managed to incorporate a few terrific jackets!

Semiotics of Style: Studying Proenza

Fashion insiders, critics and even the designers themselves are all guilty of it: overusing, misusing and degrading the term iconic. Often we drop that one specific semiotic phrase into commentaries, a futile fuchsia sword in a watery cocktail, and proceed with surface level critiques. There may be little acknowledgment of relationships between the ideas that spur the clothing and the pieces mirror-like reflection of those ideas. We may rarely use formalism to examine fashion. And we might need to change our approach drastically with radical designers such as Lazaro Hernandez and Jack McCollough of Proenza Schouler at the helm.
Lazaro and Jack been credited with giving their brand its “finest fashion moment” through the presentation of their Spring 2011 collection. I found the collection particularly poignant because it demands examination beyond the traditional barometers of fashion success—it demands a semiotic analysis.
The live show lasted mere minutes, yet somehow Jack and Lazaro successfully signified the conventional symbols of womanhood that have spanned decades. It seems to me that the collection itself can be viewed diachronically, as a subversion of the codes of femininity, through a charmingly rebellious evolution of the “lady.” Traditionally, the first look steers the collection; it informs the audience. This show deviates from that pattern and displays an endless chain of signification that works to expand on their exceptionally fine-tuned point of view. Due to the limited space I have I will stick to the synchronic frames of a few key looks in the show. Yet, to best convey this evolution we should examine the dimensions of the relationship between the pieces synchronically and then place them in a temporal frame of reference.

I see the each of the outfits as a syntagm – or simple Gestalt-esque arrangement of symbols—collaborating to build a sort of optical illusion. At first glance, the opening look is demure and connotes “lady.” This look represents all the traditional codes through textiles of lace and silk and a silhouette that grazes the knee. Upon closer inspection, the textiles signifying “lady” actually deconstruct it through a clever subversion, which profoundly alters its original conceptual connotation.
Jack and Lazaro develop ways to channel conventional thought about femininity and then redirect it by physically altering the form of the signs themselves. This involves electronically mapping out a pattern, printing it on tulle and using acid to melt its underside— thus, lace-like remnants become lace’s proxy. The alternative-lace skirt implies that a modern lady is an afterimage of her predecessor. The finished openwork print of the skirt denotes twisting lines that mimic ancient Irish lace patterns. The abrasive melting that spawned the textile’s creation help it retain a fundamental sense of toughness. Layers of semiotic intention are suggested through the laborious and artisanal process required to craft the piece.
The opening look also incorporates a classic – dare I say iconic – Chanel-inspired blazer. I identify it as a blazer only through examining its construction: tailored and a bit boxy. Its creamy shade connote a strong and independent woman, while its form’s inherent modesty foil the over-sexualized 1950s pinup woman. The piece distinguishes its wearer as a refined lady; however, the sequined sleeveless top peeking from behind the blazer is a rebellion against this refinement. This creates a rich tension that forces my eyes to rebuild a more modern emblem of a woman.
Is this emblem representative of a modern lady or in actuality an evolution of the symbol of girl? Rebellion –a behavior associated with adolescence – inspires these looks, according to the designers. Post-show Jack announces, “The suit is the new rebellion.” The suit, to the Proenza designers, signifies a concept of an inner-awareness: the subtext being that society expects young girls to present themselves while only aware of the outside trends, which for girls today means citing 1990s ambivalence as their inspiration and donning a flannel shirt. Jack and Lazaro prudently removed those grunge influences – surfer and bohemian girls— that informed their previous collections. Thus, the “Proenza girl” (the target market consumer the duo speak of often) evolves.
The channels used to analyze the semiotic intention of the show are similar to the channels that guided Seiter’s criticism of more traditional mediums. I appraise the colors of soft lavender and salmon, curdling to sulfuric shades toward the show’s end and a larger societal commentary unfolds. The deepening and bighting hues express the duality between the lady and the girl.
The lady, with her maturity and grace would cease to exist without the germinal existence of the girl, with her naiveté and stubbornness. We once saw the two symbols as anchors along the dichotomy between being pure and being sexual. Modern perspective notes the latitude separating these once extreme states has blurred. A crippling ambiguity is the result. Proenza presents the lady and the girl as dialectic counterparts through its pairings of matronly silhouettes with inventive textiles.
Semiotic analysis of the Proenza show and other fashion shows will illuminate these dualities by exploring the links between articles of clothing and their significations’ permeation of popular culture. It is to take note when meaning is created through a five-minute display of moving motifs. It is to take note that the fashion of tomorrow links naturally to semiotics.

Contra-Ban: Fashion Culturally Prohibited from Social Commentary on Oil Spill

Fashion: a world where most debates center on how many sheer taffeta ruffles should envelope a runway-bound prepubescent model to keep her underwraps yet cheekily overexposed. A world most struggle to take seriously when it enters a dialect reserved for activism and begins to pose questions of an elevated cultural value.

Perhaps the roadblock is a defense mechanism. Fashion houses are fickle, like a fair-weather friend; they tell you to run out in the latest/greatest cropped harem pant, only to run an article the following week mocking those foolish enough to shorten their silhouette with a pair.
Fashion is an industry known for being creative, but it is only alive because it is lucrative.
To stay in the black, financially, industry leaders (especially, it seems, those with a personal aversion to donning color) curate elaborate shows and entertain customers with a myriad of media contests. Essentially, fashion thrives on attention. Some Vogue readers flipped to see model Kristen McMenamy face-down, tangled in a net and saw a disgusting capitalization on a tragic event. Others viewed McMenamy as a personification of the harmful effects of environmental destruction.
The spread entitled "Water and Oil" in Italian Vogue marked a maturation of the type of attention fashion seeks. Shot tastefully by Steven Meisel, it somehow stirred up high-school type drama, according to MSNBC. It was a spread meant to inspire action, liven readers with a powerful visual representation of environmental damage that newscasters had droned on about for months.

Franca Sozzani, editor in-chief, explained that the spread was new means to the same end. Skilled communication is often laden with images, whether those are painted with brushstrokes or assembled in syllables. The images-- a wounded bird spitting up water in a feathered gown coated in oil-- are meant to make an environmental statement.

"The message is to be careful about nature," Sozzani told the AP. "Just to take care more about nature."
While the magazines motives suggest that fashion can enter a dialogue once reserved for social activist groups, the public reaction to the spread indicates some serious mistrust. Forums are flooded with complaints that fashion "has reached further levels of portraying the tragic as hip."

Editor-in-chief Franca Sozzani claims that the spread was a visual means to explore the damage that has been tossed around for months through only some of our means for communication, written and oral. Sozzani knew the risk of publishing social commentary on current events. She said, "I understand that it could be shocking to see and to look in this way, at these images."

Some Gulf residents hope the spread will have a impact, perhaps repackage a message whose initial inertia is fading. It has been reported that some see the spread as a fair attack on BP, while others say it's inappropriate and insensitive. I think the spread has a serious tone that respects the gravity of the issue it portrays. It inspired me to research the damage and I uncovered this indisputable fact: A single gallon of oil creates an oil slick up to a couple of acres in size. The BP oil slick spread over 580 square miles in just its first three days.

Bright Young Things

Our culture is fixated on the intellect and stamina of the youth : the bright young things. BYTs are everywhere: setting records, sewing clothing and tattooing their names into the flesh of their elders (this is not a metaphor, this is an allusion to the 3 year old tat-artist Ruby Dickinson pictured at work above).
Today it appears to be culturally acceptable and even praised for tweens to chase ambitions on a grand scale. Is this a new form of "cradle robbing?" As in: instead of marrying young executives are hiring young, really young. It is now common for a child navigate a shark-eat-shark tank while chasing dreams.
For BYTs with one foot in the business world and the other on the playground it is the ultimate sink or swim situation. Cecilia Cassini knows how to straddle these worlds: at 10 she has designed her own tween fashion line. Cecilia started sewing at age 6 and now is making a name for herself in a larger pond. Recently, celebrities started buying her outfits for their kids!

Besides immense unspoken pressure inherently present in this stories, there is a potential for immense growth and increased freedom of expression. Generations of young adults are getting encouraged to, say, fly a plane across the USA (this is a nod to Kim Anyadike the 15-year-old who navigated a single-engine Cessna across the seven seas). Some might question how parents could let her take off with the thundering risks. These days, parents are ready to see kids soar and seem to respect the laws of gravity: the higher you climb the sky the harder your fall will be. I guess the only issue both the supporters and booers of BYTs agree on is how do you explain adult sized failure to a pint-sized contestant? In India the fact that: "toddlers as young as 19 months are able to distinguish jokes from mistakes" spurred the creation of a TV show that has child stand-up comedians compete for celeb-status.As soon as BYTs enter a commerical enterprise I become spektical. For example, a new young fashion blogger debuted at New York Fashion week-- meet Katie (pictured above). Katie seemed to be a social commentary, rather than be capable of dechipering the underlying ones in designers collections. Racked National Magazine went on a recruiting mission to discover five year-old Katie who attended shows that most fashionistas triple her age would kill to see. Katie explained to Racked how she analyzes the shows: "For me, it's really all about Love, Hate, or Like" Is simple the new black? Or is this a disgusting capitalization on the BYT trend? Judging by Katie's notes ...it is hard to decipher much of anything! As an endnote: if you are thinking about getting inked consider calling Ruby, the world's youngest tattoo artist and then call me to tell me if the job is a permanent version of fellow BYT blogger Katie's notes! All I can think about is that most toys appropriate for this age-group warn parents to keep all sharp edges far from her tiny finger pads; meanwhile Ruby spends her pre- and post-nap time gripping a needle-tipped pen. She is, among other things, a rarity!