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| Undercover FW06, Petrina Hicks, Hussein Chalayan SS99, Tumblr, Amy Winehouse Inspired CDG FW08, Streetstyle Snap. |
Lately at work I've been researching up on wabi-sabi (I'll do a post on it probably this week, it's super interesting) and looking more into my favorite designers like Jun Takahashi and Rei and the like. Not that it don't do it already, I've amassed a respectable library of awesome papers on fashion theory and Rei since I started blogging. But, when I was on the phone with Scott the other day (I hope you all know who I'm talking about by now, you'll see a lot more of him on FP, just saying) I mentioned how misleading my closet can be.
On one hand, I have an excessive amount of cute, twee vintage dresses and skirts that I love and wear on basically a daily basis. But if I had the means, I'd only wear macabre complicated and absolutely man-repelling situations. I basically wear vintage because it's all I can practically afford and it's easy to wear and it makes me feel pretty. But most of the time I don't want to feel pretty, I want to feel safe and dangerous and strong and powerful, which is what I feel when I wear avant garde stuff like Junya Watanabe. I think Grandpa Yohji said it the best, when he describes why he creates clothes.
“My role in all of this is very simple. I make clothing like armor. My clothing protects you from unwelcome eyes”I like that. That is what I like. What I absolutely despise about summer dressing is I can't treat clothes like an experiment in solitude or like armor. It's annoying.
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Junya Watanabe FW 08, Sasha Grey for Exit Magazine SS11, Undercover FW06, Jun Takahashi's Graces, FRUiTS, CDG SS 1997, Aimee Mullins for Alexander McQueen, Tumblr.
I've written about street style many times before, or at least, FRUiTS before, and some of these pictures are very old but they never seem to lose their magic for me. I'm really interested in the way some designers repeatedly use masks, and almost puritanical motifs when it comes to clothes.. how often can you call someone wearing head to toe Yohji or CDG sexy? Edgy, maybe (gag at that word), cool, certainly. Beautiful, certainly. But never sexy. Or at least, hardly. I like that the most about it. You basically force people to see you on your own terms, something that might scare them a little.
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| FRUiTS, White Gauze by Robert Mapplethorpe, Undercover FW06, Tumblr, Tumblr, Tumblr, CDG FW1983-84, |
Going through old fashionspot forums looking at pictures of my favorite CDG collections at the moment (F/W 2008, 2006, the two collections the majority of my own cdg stash is from) and it's funny to me that those are like some of the least liked collections, because they scare people. I dunno, they were always my favorite because they were literal interpretations of mixing 'gendered' clothing, masculine with feminine. Suits with dresses bursting out of them, crushed Victorian frills peeking out from really formal menswear. So, so so cool, so beautiful. It is so strange and different it is beautiful in it's own respect and redefines the standards of beauty, and that is what is so fantastical. They are such perfect examples that you don't need to be sexy or even pretty or cute to be beautiful. In fact, you can be downright frightening.
I did an interview with Cyrena from ReFashioner, she was really cool and I think you might enjoy the interview. :) We hit it off and I'll be working with ReFashioner in the future.
