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saturday
Reading other people’s blogs is the only thing that keeps me posting so far…out of jealousy or inspiration – I do not know. Today I have switched my computer on for the first time in the past 4 days – only to pay for a pair of lovely trousers I won for a cheapo on eBay…
Hello World! Did you miss me?
My absence is justified though: I’ve been substituting a sick colleague this week, hence merchandising Dries Van Noten, A.F. Vandevorst and Cathy Pill pre-fall collections, learning to sing (sorry neighbours) and searching for a new flat (to no avail).
To relax I’m cutting a suit – sleeveless but masculine, to be constructed in a soft silk/linen blend. Financially, this is the best solution for a new wardrobe, yet I have made a formal blazer only once in my life – generally I like to avoid lapels and passepoils, but driven by desire above reason I embrace the challenge.
How to turn a banal title into something entertaining? Well, say it is really dedicated to an amazing track by an amazing band – for instance,‘Saturday' by Oneida of their recent work ‘Rated O’. Oneida is probably the only band that I own quite a few albums of, but I have never seen them live – in my world that is next to absurd.
I’m a slave for the grinding repetitive riffs.
22 July 2010
...has gone missing
O the day when I posted five times in a row, where art thou? I do at times wonder.
I have said once that through many posts I speak coded language to the people I know. Strawberries or song lyrics – don’t be surprised but there are people who understand why I occasionally regurgitate that Blood Brothers stuff…
But this week I’m alone, babysitting the kitties while my parents visit our home-town. I have no intention of going back to the middle-of-nowhere-Ivanovo, and choose to be trapped in the middle of nowhere Waterloo with 2 birds, 3 cats, 6 fish a sewing machine and satellite TV. Not bad for starters…
After discovering the movie channels I have managed to watch everything from X-men to Avatar and a whole other bunch of no-brainers, all while knitting a scarf. Was there any fashion in my leisure? Apart from the scarf?
Well I made a good use of the sewing machine completely resurrecting my abilities to make clothes. Four years of Antwerp Academy have not gone to waste, and the result is this pair of trousers – very simple, but that’s exactly what I’m looking for these days. The fabric is double-sided (I can’t wait for the next Stephan Schneider stocksale, that’s where this fabric comes from), so the front is made from the satin side, the back from the textured mat side. The belt has ‘gone missing’ and only the loops remain – that’s the design twist, so to speak. Oh well.
worn here with:
I have said once that through many posts I speak coded language to the people I know. Strawberries or song lyrics – don’t be surprised but there are people who understand why I occasionally regurgitate that Blood Brothers stuff…
But this week I’m alone, babysitting the kitties while my parents visit our home-town. I have no intention of going back to the middle-of-nowhere-Ivanovo, and choose to be trapped in the middle of nowhere Waterloo with 2 birds, 3 cats, 6 fish a sewing machine and satellite TV. Not bad for starters…
After discovering the movie channels I have managed to watch everything from X-men to Avatar and a whole other bunch of no-brainers, all while knitting a scarf. Was there any fashion in my leisure? Apart from the scarf?
Well I made a good use of the sewing machine completely resurrecting my abilities to make clothes. Four years of Antwerp Academy have not gone to waste, and the result is this pair of trousers – very simple, but that’s exactly what I’m looking for these days. The fabric is double-sided (I can’t wait for the next Stephan Schneider stocksale, that’s where this fabric comes from), so the front is made from the satin side, the back from the textured mat side. The belt has ‘gone missing’ and only the loops remain – that’s the design twist, so to speak. Oh well.
worn here with:
Zara t-shirt
H&M blazer
Dries van Noten shoes
some random belt
some random belt
and here with:
A.F. Vandevorst shirt
a necklace from Nigeria
shoes from this eshop
11 July 2010
desperately seeking Martin
He is the invisible man.
In the mid 90’s he was gone out of our sight, but the presence of the genius was apparent in each garment, show, installation and even in every invitation letter. In the mid-noughties he was gone out of his own fashion house. Oddly the official website begins the archives with the year 2003 – that’s not even half-way down the historical path of the Martin Margiela’s oeuvre. What is R. Rosso’s enterprise trying to hide? I may imagine the reason behind such bias timeline is to show the ‘future’ of the brand designed by the ‘new fresh team’ as Mr. Rosso likes to put it – that is a positive commercial reason. But when I look behind it, I see a database of innovative and ground-breaking ideas that may just be The Archives of 1988-2002. The new team works in-line with the former aesthetic, and sure they would – they’ve got a provision of innovative ideas good enough for a couple of years. And then what? What will happen to the future MMM collections when they will run out of the references?
A small pop-up window on the MMM website says: “The past is in the future”. That brings me to the first point – we got the Diesel Group’s strategy figured, but I’m scared of a persistent thought.
There is NO FUTURE.
chasing the tabi ghost at Somerset House, London
On the other hand, I’ve heard the story about one intern at Maison Martin Margiela who was utterly surprised to hear that Mr. Margiela did not invent the tabi boots, that they are actually worn by Japanese peasants and construction workers… on hearing that I wonder, will anyone bother to look into the history and value the work signed by Martin Margiela himself, or will most people buy into the Maison’s new marketing strategy?
One Russian proverb goes: “the best new is the well forgotten old”, and that is surely one way of thinking. Unfortunately, I believe that there’s an immediate need to innovate at any given time. Whether one does it through references and re-interpretation or a complete denial of the past – the choice is a matter of a personal preference, but the fact remains that when you begin to repeat yourself, you slowly deteriorate, become a dictionary, a history book, a documentary. Full stop.
And just may be the most logical step was to quit the brand (and by the way, since when do we refer to Maison Martin Margiela as to a ‘brand? Isn’t it a ‘fashion house’?!).
image from amagazinecuratedby.com
Martin Margiela is probably one of the most romanticised figures in fashion industry, so absent that his name almost becomes a concept. That was a 90’s thing to do. But we have entered the teens, and here I will optimistically say that there’s an entire sub-culture that is not looking for any celebrity figure to worship, instead they create their own celebrities – short-lived popularity of many blogs is a bright example. The phenomenon of blogging rests on the cult of presence, so to speak – numerous tiny selfish bubbles of fashion exhibitionism! But think about it, in the sea of personalities that populate the blogosphere one new blogger is mostly invisible, unaccounted for. You can hide so well by putting yourself right out there on a frontline and communicate freely from any chosen identity.
Just imagine for a second a blog written by Martin Margiela – not the team in white labcoats, but the man himself. Communication does not imply visibility.
That is just a thought from one little invisible blog.
In the mid 90’s he was gone out of our sight, but the presence of the genius was apparent in each garment, show, installation and even in every invitation letter. In the mid-noughties he was gone out of his own fashion house. Oddly the official website begins the archives with the year 2003 – that’s not even half-way down the historical path of the Martin Margiela’s oeuvre. What is R. Rosso’s enterprise trying to hide? I may imagine the reason behind such bias timeline is to show the ‘future’ of the brand designed by the ‘new fresh team’ as Mr. Rosso likes to put it – that is a positive commercial reason. But when I look behind it, I see a database of innovative and ground-breaking ideas that may just be The Archives of 1988-2002. The new team works in-line with the former aesthetic, and sure they would – they’ve got a provision of innovative ideas good enough for a couple of years. And then what? What will happen to the future MMM collections when they will run out of the references?
A small pop-up window on the MMM website says: “The past is in the future”. That brings me to the first point – we got the Diesel Group’s strategy figured, but I’m scared of a persistent thought.
There is NO FUTURE.
chasing the tabi ghost at Somerset House, London
On the other hand, I’ve heard the story about one intern at Maison Martin Margiela who was utterly surprised to hear that Mr. Margiela did not invent the tabi boots, that they are actually worn by Japanese peasants and construction workers… on hearing that I wonder, will anyone bother to look into the history and value the work signed by Martin Margiela himself, or will most people buy into the Maison’s new marketing strategy?
One Russian proverb goes: “the best new is the well forgotten old”, and that is surely one way of thinking. Unfortunately, I believe that there’s an immediate need to innovate at any given time. Whether one does it through references and re-interpretation or a complete denial of the past – the choice is a matter of a personal preference, but the fact remains that when you begin to repeat yourself, you slowly deteriorate, become a dictionary, a history book, a documentary. Full stop.
And just may be the most logical step was to quit the brand (and by the way, since when do we refer to Maison Martin Margiela as to a ‘brand? Isn’t it a ‘fashion house’?!).
image from amagazinecuratedby.com
Martin Margiela is probably one of the most romanticised figures in fashion industry, so absent that his name almost becomes a concept. That was a 90’s thing to do. But we have entered the teens, and here I will optimistically say that there’s an entire sub-culture that is not looking for any celebrity figure to worship, instead they create their own celebrities – short-lived popularity of many blogs is a bright example. The phenomenon of blogging rests on the cult of presence, so to speak – numerous tiny selfish bubbles of fashion exhibitionism! But think about it, in the sea of personalities that populate the blogosphere one new blogger is mostly invisible, unaccounted for. You can hide so well by putting yourself right out there on a frontline and communicate freely from any chosen identity.
Just imagine for a second a blog written by Martin Margiela – not the team in white labcoats, but the man himself. Communication does not imply visibility.
That is just a thought from one little invisible blog.
10 July 2010
why?
Reading through comments I realised there is a promise I didn’t keep, that in turn has launched a totally independent train of thought.
Why am I not at Berlin Fashion Week? My passport has expired and I have been running back and forth trying to fix it, hence no travelling abroad at the very moment I want to evaporate out and away from this country. So I, very unfashionably, sit by the pool and sunbathe in a cheapo H&M bikini. No glamour to share here.
Why have I not written anything for ASVOF? I have actually completely forgotten about it, taken by the heat or apartment hunt…or both, because searching for a flat to rent in this intolerable temperature isn’t fun. On Friday I showed up to a place and the real estate agent has announced to me and three other visitors that he has forgotten his keys…and offered us to wait for about an hour while he goes back to get them – there’s only one country in this world where such oddity may happen, and I’m just right *smack* in the middle of it. 36degrees C don’t seem to help.
Why am I not in London? The new job is in, so I’m coming back to Brussels in September. More on this later.
I’m sorry to leave you with a bunch of excuses and two lousy mobile shots, but my painted nails are probably the most interesting part of any outfit in this heat wave.
mint green and pale yellow Urban Outfitters
red Hema
blue Barry M
white Usly Airlines
Why am I not at Berlin Fashion Week? My passport has expired and I have been running back and forth trying to fix it, hence no travelling abroad at the very moment I want to evaporate out and away from this country. So I, very unfashionably, sit by the pool and sunbathe in a cheapo H&M bikini. No glamour to share here.
Why have I not written anything for ASVOF? I have actually completely forgotten about it, taken by the heat or apartment hunt…or both, because searching for a flat to rent in this intolerable temperature isn’t fun. On Friday I showed up to a place and the real estate agent has announced to me and three other visitors that he has forgotten his keys…and offered us to wait for about an hour while he goes back to get them – there’s only one country in this world where such oddity may happen, and I’m just right *smack* in the middle of it. 36degrees C don’t seem to help.
Why am I not in London? The new job is in, so I’m coming back to Brussels in September. More on this later.
I’m sorry to leave you with a bunch of excuses and two lousy mobile shots, but my painted nails are probably the most interesting part of any outfit in this heat wave.
mint green and pale yellow Urban Outfitters
red Hema
blue Barry M
white Usly Airlines
02 July 2010
4380 days later
I’ve been longing, planning, earning, and finally they are mine! And all you get is the feet-in-the-air mobile shot. My camera failed to function today – probably melted from the heat, what else? Hence, the extensive use of the iPhone camera… It’s way over 30 degrees for almost a week already, so please don’t look for any logic behind the purchase of a pair of winter boots – it has been driven by desire, need, obsession, you name it. But since I saw a picture of Bjork wearing a pair of tabis I made a promise to myself to one day wear those too. And only some 12 years later I am a happy owner.
hunted and collected #1
So finally the big news of this week! Hunted and Collected is out and the reception/launch is tonight. Just to remind you, I’ve verbally doodled for this publication, mentioned fashion blogging and all that. I’m incredibly curious to know what people will think about my writing and about the project in general. Hunted and Collected debut issue is a catalogue of the season – something to keep and to treasure. I’m now trying to recall when was the first time that I came across an interesting publication issued by a boutique… Mode Depesche by Heimat in Cologne was probably the best example, by far not the only one, but probably the most substantial.
THE fashion fanzine it was.
But back to here and now! You are all welcome tonight at Hunting&Collecting to discover the catalogue and ask all participants some interesting questions – otherwise I will, since I’ve been brewing another post for ASVOF. You’ll get the link as soon as it’s up there.
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