Random Rhetorical Hypebeast Fashion Thoughts

[adiabatic]

[noodles]

This Hender Scheme jacket is so cool

[khayandhi]

for the first time in about 3 years I thought to myself "hmm, it's a good day to wear skinny jeans" and if that's not proof that skinny jeans are absolutely, completely, definitively OVER I don't know what is

[UnwashedMolasses]

Also found these in Nordstrom Rak, by Marc Jacobs. Are these different enough to just be inspired by BW or are they rips?

[CheerUpBrokeBoy]

i shit on SLP as much as the next guy for being boring, derivative, overhyped etc. but i can appreciate how their clothes help straight dudes express their sexuality through their clothing, sure it's a very white/european variety of male sexuality but it's a step in the right direction at least

it feels like most of menswear has a serious fetish for utilitarianism (influences from workwear/militaria/athleticwear) and concealment through heavy layering so it's kinda cool to see otherwise unadventurous, "normal" straight dudes feel comfortable in drapey silk shirts, skintight jeans and pointy boots, especially since fashion as an expression of sexuality is almost a foreign concept in even the more esoteric sides of menswear

[alby]

that is the SI x supreme hat (thermal sensitive version) they hat is nice. very big. it does not breathe at all, so it gets kind of smelly. the heat reactiveness is fun.

[teck]

[adiabatic]

[jujumaster]

Fashion romanticising poverty? Is it some art shit I dont get? Or is it just not that deep?

anyway, was browsing Wales Bonner when I saw this, I suppose 'Stemmi' has a point when its a 700 quid track top and 500 quid trousers.

[teck]

fashion constantly draws from the poor, marginalized, and underprivileged. see: hip hop, workwear, punk, skaters, starving artists

[adiabatic]

[oucho]

it's from an editorial shot by harley weir who went and photographed the Calais migrant camp recently (not for a fashion shoot), I think all the guys in the shoot are wrestlers from Senegal. It's an editorial so it's not supposed to be a definitive representation of the brand, like a lookbook would be. It definitely feels like there is a strong drive for designers right now to be like: we're not part of the industry, we're outsiders, we're more like a subculture. The way vachement sold themselves as outsiders is a good example.

There's a short video of the wrestlers here: https://youtu.be/IEgcq5Jwz5Q

[pirxthepilot]

makes no sense at all to discuss this in the context of 'art'. ('but but leni riefenstahl'... fuck off)
often seems every gap year kid/office drone i meet who has no obvious ability but nevertheless considers themselves 'creative' purely because they're seeking diversion from their boring life reckons they're a photographer. step 1. spend a couple of grand on idiot-proof camera. step 2. visit photogenic location, preferably india/s america/africa. 3. take competent picture of 'colourful' slum kids.
this type of editorial's just an extension of that bourgeoisified 'global image consumption culture' at this point and in that sense it's.. unremarkable?

[Bartender]

Pirxthepilot walks into a gallery:

"I could do that," he thinks to himself.

[pirxthepilot]

for sure, i could become a competent photographer in 2 weeks (max). so could you/anyone. technique is meaningless, you have to have.... an idea, for want of a better word.
that image is banal, from spending 30 seconds on google it seems her basic shtick is dreamy low saturation white kid pre raphaelite nonsense (highly commercial tho for obvious reasons), so i guess she deserves some praise for pointing her camera at a black person (yay!). but honestly if that is the kind of thing people are going to talk about as 'progressive', let alone in the context of 'art' then jfc

[jujumaster]

Oh yeah theres nothing that fashion loves more than a good lower class subculture, cant swing a cat without hitting a late 20th century punk reference. But then they are still western world subcultures and maybe a bit different to literally having some kid in a crumbly scene with dusty sandals and a grands worth of clothes, one of the reasons I brought it up was it being Harley Weir and Grace Wales Bonner who are entirely about pushing the progressive alternative. Though the video on the Senegalese wrestlers gives much more sense and context now.

Theres definitely something there with what you guys said about the ethos of striving to do new things and find new creativity but then if the quest for that comes at the cost of what might be a distasteful nature of your work whats the point. Fashion and Art world though, theres always a crowd out there who can come up with some deep, profound, spiritual mantra in a fucking lampshade init.

Anyway, Stemmi turned out to be a stylist for L'officiel Hommes http://christianstemmler.com/ some alright stuff there.

[CheerUpBrokeBoy]

[bels]

but still what? Not sure pirx is taking potshots at the entire medium of photography (though surely it deserves some shots at this point) but rather saying that this photo/editorial is boring and not a part of an "art" context more part of a "rich guy" context, which you seem to agree with. So what is the but still for?

[James Nachtway is probably not part of an art context either but I don't see how he's relevant to this conversation (don't see how leni riefenstahl is either for the record)]

[ramseames]

For someone who's so renowned for their photography Weir's instagram looks a lot like any other crappy art student taking intentionally "bad" (read: zoomed in/faux edgy) pictures

https://www.instagram.com/p/BKadBclgfGO/?hl=en

https://www.instagram.com/p/BCKuGe_Adin/?hl=en

Maybe a weird angle to look at it at from but I feel like a big part of whether or not there are moral issues with the gwb shoot lie in how much she paid that kid (I imagine it wasn't a lot)

[freddy]

How do you get toothpaste out of suede?

[blanket]

u, an outsider, are only allowed into the art/fashion world because i have framed you and flattened u for easy consumption and because u are dressed as i please for our taste.
ur taste doesn't matter, only mine. with my skill i have chosen u and i have chosen what to frame and i have chosen this moment in time, what is best fitting for u to wear and do according to my taste.
i will allow u some choices because it is more Authentic and that makes for a better story.
u r not allowed into the art/fashion world as a person. u r allowed into it as an object (for entertainment, for viewing pleasure, for admiration, to inspire contemplation on Human Nature).
ur life is material for a story for me 2 tell, a sentence or a short video that adds a dash of spice to a photograph among many.

as soon as i am done with u, u as a person do not matter.
the photograph i have constructed is a vessel for my taste and skill.
it is pleasant to think about wot a good person i am, givin voice to the voiceless.

----

a big difference between this and photography with documentary goals (e.g. nachtwey the photojournalist) is that culture and the events and the people here are reduced to just props, mere stage background to add pepper to the real subject.
in the same way, the photographer in pirx's comment reduces the people and things they photograph to pictures to share within their groups, props in their life to show how Cultured and Open-Minded they are.
like most things, lots of issues and problems and noble aims are tangled up an barely anything is wholly good or wholly bad.

even in photojournalism or social documentary kinda photography that strives towards objectivity and recording things "as they are," photographers bring their own biases to the table. their understanding of things "as they are" may be very different from that of the people on the other end of the camera.
i feel like the problem is not only exploitation but that the view of the person with more power is accepted as the Objective or Tasteful view.

i think i enjoyed the video attached to this editorial but i don't think i-d in general (or the wider fashion world for that matter) is very good at framing cultural differences or Other groups.
for example , where it felt like attempts to understand south korean culture were very superficial and where The Foreign Culture is presented as oppressive and antagonistic. the video felt like half an hour of patting the host's back on how progressive an free an etc. her values are.
looking at their videos about Other Folks feels like opening a cabinet of curios.

[pirxthepilot]

incidentally do we know for sure that guy is not a professional male module? could be he getting unlimited £££/coke/blowjobs like my boy

[jujumaster]

maybe im just salty about the fact ive got no mates at CSM to help forge a career despite my obvious lack of talent and need to google references like 'pre-raphaelite'

[pirxthepilot]

also, since people have brought up nachtwey, i'd say i'm certainly glad that model of journalism(white guy goes to scene of conflict/famine, takes unavoidably stylised pictures of other peoples' lives, moves on) is theoretically at least in decline.
to give an example of an alternative model, in aleppo until very recently zaina erhaim was training women to use the internet and become citizen journalists (the men, for cultural reasons, are fighting or being part of the rescue services). i commissioned a little piece from her as part of that thing i did in summer, if you scroll to the bottom and watch the film footage it's incredibly poignant in light of where things are at now. also, zaina is a self-taught film maker, which i think reinforces the point i made earlier.
https://medium.com/not-evenly-distribut ... .ardt63rcn

[oucho]

I quit modelling, but I was never receiving unlimited £ or coke, as for the blow jobs, well... ;) ;) ;)

Fashion editorial is normally unpaid so they may not have been paid anything! Seeing as we are slagging off photographers I'm curious as to what people think of Nick Knight? A lot of his work reminds me of the kind of digital art that was popular in the tagging scene a while back: and what we used to call .

It even looks like he is using the smudge tool and splatter brushes in these: http://nickknight.com/site/assets/files ... 803-kb.jpg http://nickknight.com/site/assets/files ... 1100x0.jpg + gradient and soft brushing background

looks like a bad pentool illustration, is such a digital art cliché, so is , and looks like it comes straight from behance. Then I saw and I was actually wondering if he's doing this stuff as a kind of re-perspective-ing of lame internet art, but I don't think so, and that's a bad idea anyway. Nick Knight is literally a low mod tagger who made it big

[bels]

I could believe in him ripping off digital art as a narrative. I feel like the corporate/art world has been making it's move on internet bohemias for a while now. Look out for some really great "interactive digital art" pieces that are remakes of nidhogg or johan sebastian joust and someone managing to make "memes as art" in the near future.

[pirxthepilot]

re nick knight, he made it big long before the digital era didn't he? presumably now hes trying to embrace technology but has no real idea how. the problem is at a certain level of success everything around you is a self-supporting ecosystem and nobody subjects you to any critique at all.

[jujumaster]

if youve got no creativity, but live in the ends, you can always do point and shoots of local grime MCs

[Lorcan]

Pretty sure Knight's pics from the late 80s for the Yohji catalogues were already using v primitive pre-photoshop digital manipulation, so its always been his thing? I like the old Yohji images, but not much of what he's done since.

[finolino]

seeing that kid from stranger things as a jw anderson model cracks me up every time