Best of 2017!

[LA Guy]

+1 love that design. I've never heard of East West ... sorta like a Nudie?

And from San Francisco! It's like it was made for you!

 

[MaiLam]

I think this fits in here, it's kind of a summary of what I came to realise this year about interest in fashunz etc. I thought about trying to beg @LA Guy to shoehorn it into the journal, but then worried he would force me to do ridiculous things, like saying belts are cool.

-----

This isn’t an ‘I wish I had known when starting out…’ or a list of blunders. It’s more a lament for the half-conceived notions and flights of fancy that turned out, rather disappointingly, not to be true.

1. Price - This one was a real pain. Price comes up often when starting out, with the belief that there’s a beautiful sartorial formula in existence, where:

X (Essential Modern Basic) + Y (Made in Canada)

----------------------------------------------------------- = V (*Value*)

Z (Price at 30% off, might not make it to final sale?)


But even getting past the idea of value, what a convenient framework that would be, where I could look at a $20 t-shirt, then one at $80, and know without a shadow of a doubt that the latter is going to be the better one and that my life will also be better because of it. Then, foolishly, I browse further and a $300 Rick Owens tee pops up. And I think yeah that is probably the best t-shirt in the world and that a man could live, die and ascend in that one garment alone.

Then Visvim appears, for even more, and I learn that although the t-shirt isn’t better than some others, it will make me better than other people.

Then I see a Balmain t-shirt.

And the whole thing breaks.

And it dawns on me, the realisation taking hold - that past the fabric, the brand, even the hype - there’s taste. What a horrible fate, to discover that not only do I have to spend time looking and comparing, I’m also going to have to formulate and apply my own concept of good and bad, beautiful and ugly, Blue Blue Japan and Philipp Plein.

2. Materials - Good lord there are a lot of ways to describe cotton. I’ve probably forgotten more types of weave than I’ve actually owned. And although looking online at clothes can be baffling in the beginning, it’s also full of possibilities, sheer wonderment at what these terms like broadcloth and tiger fleece (goddamn what a cool name) will actually feel like. Surely my hands will have never felt such things? Do my fingers even have enough nerve endings to truly process what has been wrought? In short - yes. This was a hard one to take, that no matter how divine or enticing the description, the clothes are still of this earthly realm.
I’m a hardened bastard now, you can keep your fancy text, I need composition percentages, a close-up shot of the fabric and then these digits will trace the air and know. But still... the faint hope will come back and linger. I don’t know what camel hair or angora feel like, and oh do I want to, but at the same time I know that they will never feel as heavenly or as soft as when I’m seeing and reading about them on a screen.


3. Brands having good and bad periods - In truth this hasn’t affected me too much, as the brands in question are mostly either French or Italian and too pricey + too elegant + not made in Japan enough for me. However, it was still a discomforting moment to discover that not only are there cool and uncool brands (depending on the crowd), but these cool and uncool brands also had cooler and more uncool periods (depending on the smaller crowd who talk to other weirdos on the internet about clothes). It’s really quite a roller-coaster.

First off, I see hunks on TV showing me that that of course Armani is cool, these are cool guys representing cool things with their cool bods. So, armed with this precursory knowledge, I wade through forums only to discover that Armani is not, I repeat not cool. Uncool, even. I begin to lose my grasp on the universe at this point, floundering without the Armani Constant ™. But wait. I stumble upon a thread, deep in the under-forum, extolling the virtues of loose, 90’s tailoring and - gasp - the Armani of yesteryear.

My manager walks past and reminds me for the third time that looking at menswear, with or without its hashtag, is not the answer to being productive. I agree and appear to get back to work, whilst in reality I sit there and contemplate the idea that everything means nothing and that I need a Metacritic for designers.


4. That clothes maketh not the man - ‘You are what you wear’ would be a nice mantra to live by. The notion that by donning the costume of your desire, you will be able to live the fantasy that it promises. How often I have tried on a suit, adjusted my shirt cuff and extended my hand to clasp the imaginary one of another, the final act to complete the multi-trillion dollar merger that I have just negotiated, ending capitalism and beginning the era of the All-Company…

Or even something as innocuous as a Levi’s Sherpa jacket, leaving me with a near unassailable belief that next week I’ll probably be in a log cabin, living off the land and occasionally scrambling up scree to get a good enough signal to check in with loved ones and ask when the next Mr. Porter sale is.

In a way though, this one is comforting. That although in many circumstances clothes can be a uniform, armour, acceptance, an act of defiance or an escape - they can’t do all the work. It’s still the wearer who defines what they say, how they’re used and what is accomplished in and with them. That with the right desire, mentality and sheer force of will, myself and others like me can take life by the horns and say ‘Hello world, this is me! The texture is actually really interesting up close. Please give thumbs.’

 

[NycLondon]

They did really cool, often custom-made, psychedelic leather jackets in the '70s. Many of the more iconic pieces, like a bird-inspired leather jacket, were made for women, but they also had some cool menswear pieces.

Some cool images here:

https://www.pinterest.com/kasarco/east-west-musical-instruments-company-leather/?lp=true


View attachment 896433
View attachment 896434
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Bit scary!?

 

[NycLondon]

I think this fits in here, it's kind of a summary of what I came to realise this year about interest in fashunz etc. I thought about trying to beg @LA Guy to shoehorn it into the journal, but then worried he would force me to do ridiculous things, like saying belts are cool.

-----

This isn’t an ‘I wish I had known when starting out…’ or a list of blunders. It’s more a lament for the half-conceived notions and flights of fancy that turned out, rather disappointingly, not to be true.

1. Price - This one was a real pain. Price comes up often when starting out, with the belief that there’s a beautiful sartorial formula in existence, where:

X (Essential Modern Basic) + Y (Made in Canada)

----------------------------------------------------------- = V (*Value*)

Z (Price at 30% off, might not make it to final sale?)


But even getting past the idea of value, what a convenient framework that would be, where I could look at a $20 t-shirt, then one at $80, and know without a shadow of a doubt that the latter is going to be the better one and that my life will also be better because of it. Then, foolishly, I browse further and a $300 Rick Owens tee pops up. And I think yeah that is probably the best t-shirt in the world and that a man could live, die and ascend in that one garment alone.

Then Visvim appears, for even more, and I learn that although the t-shirt isn’t better than some others, it will make me better than other people.

Then I see a Balmain t-shirt.

And the whole thing breaks.

And it dawns on me, the realisation taking hold - that past the fabric, the brand, even the hype - there’s taste. What a horrible fate, to discover that not only do I have to spend time looking and comparing, I’m also going to have to formulate and apply my own concept of good and bad, beautiful and ugly, Blue Blue Japan and Philipp Plein.

2. Materials - Good lord there are a lot of ways to describe cotton. I’ve probably forgotten more types of weave than I’ve actually owned. And although looking online at clothes can be baffling in the beginning, it’s also full of possibilities, sheer wonderment at what these terms like broadcloth and tiger fleece (goddamn what a cool name) will actually feel like. Surely my hands will have never felt such things? Do my fingers even have enough nerve endings to truly process what has been wrought? In short - yes. This was a hard one to take, that no matter how divine or enticing the description, the clothes are still of this earthly realm.
I’m a hardened bastard now, you can keep your fancy text, I need composition percentages, a close-up shot of the fabric and then these digits will trace the air and know. But still... the faint hope will come back and linger. I don’t know what camel hair or angora feel like, and oh do I want to, but at the same time I know that they will never feel as heavenly or as soft as when I’m seeing and reading about them on a screen.


3. Brands having good and bad periods - In truth this hasn’t affected me too much, as the brands in question are mostly either French or Italian and too pricey + too elegant + not made in Japan enough for me. However, it was still a discomforting moment to discover that not only are there cool and uncool brands (depending on the crowd), but these cool and uncool brands also had cooler and more uncool periods (depending on the smaller crowd who talk to other weirdos on the internet about clothes). It’s really quite a roller-coaster.

First off, I see hunks on TV showing me that that of course Armani is cool, these are cool guys representing cool things with their cool bods. So, armed with this precursory knowledge, I wade through forums only to discover that Armani is not, I repeat not cool. Uncool, even. I begin to lose my grasp on the universe at this point, floundering without the Armani Constant ™. But wait. I stumble upon a thread, deep in the under-forum, extolling the virtues of loose, 90’s tailoring and - gasp - the Armani of yesteryear.

My manager walks past and reminds me for the third time that looking at menswear, with or without its hashtag, is not the answer to being productive. I agree and appear to get back to work, whilst in reality I sit there and contemplate the idea that everything means nothing and that I need a Metacritic for designers.


4. That clothes maketh not the man - ‘You are what you wear’ would be a nice mantra to live by. The notion that by donning the costume of your desire, you will be able to live the fantasy that it promises. How often I have tried on a suit, adjusted my shirt cuff and extended my hand to clasp the imaginary one of another, the final act to complete the multi-trillion dollar merger that I have just negotiated, ending capitalism and beginning the era of the All-Company…

Or even something as innocuous as a Levi’s Sherpa jacket, leaving me with a near unassailable belief that next week I’ll probably be in a log cabin, living off the land and occasionally scrambling up scree to get a good enough signal to check in with loved ones and ask when the next Mr. Porter sale is.

In a way though, this one is comforting. That although in many circumstances clothes can be a uniform, armour, acceptance, an act of defiance or an escape - they can’t do all the work. It’s still the wearer who defines what they say, how they’re used and what is accomplished in and with them. That with the right desire, mentality and sheer force of will, myself and others like me can take life by the horns and say ‘Hello world, this is me! The texture is actually really interesting up close. Please give thumbs.’

all stuff is about context, including body covering, at least as soon as it goes beyond that

 

[il_colonnello]

Would love to make a list of my favourite buys of the year, but have never been home long enough recently to go through/take pictures of everything.

My general 2017 year-end conclusions:

- Rick Owens falling out of favour hard. Rick items and fits (here, on gr@iled, everywhere) becoming less common than they used to be and, when they do appear, garnering harsh rather than positive comments (overdone, complaints about decline in quality, and so on) or worse - no comments at all, interest is waning.

- The year that demonstrated that Raf Simons's appointment at Dior was his career peak. (And I'm saying that as someone who just bought two items from his first collection for Calvin Klein.) Whatever made him think this would be a step up on the ladder from D I O R? This is his first employment where it's hard to see a distinction between his work for his employer and his signature line.

- Ann Demeulemeester falling into irrelevance. It probably had to be this way, when she left. I wonder why she allowed her namesake label to continue to exist without her. Maybe she still gets something out of it financially, which is fair. But perhaps it might have been a better idea to leave it in the hands of an anonymous design team à la pre-Galliano Margiela, which would more or less replicate her ideas season after season, than to appoint a single creative director who thinks he has to put his own "spin" on the brand and its aesthetic. The last few items I got were all Grise. Why? Because Grise is a wearable, if very basic, reduction of what used to make Ann D so good. The mainline is mostly terrible now, all those reds and oranges and yellows...

- Lastly, the year of the rise of Vêtements. I began the year hating them, but very gradually have come round. They are the end of pretty fashion, and by pretty fashion I mean everything from Yohji and Comme des Garcons to Margiela and the Antwerp Six to Rick and Raf and Hedi Slimane. They are the first designer collective that doesn't look for inspiration any more in deliberately/studiously dressed sub-cultures (punk, goth, rock, etc.), but instead takes its cues from everyday, post-fashion, mainstream high-street pleb dad-wear normcore ugliness. (The DHL t-shirt is a great example, which is of course every bit as ugly as the original, and I don't think they mean it ironically - they are shooting for that ugliness in all earnestness.)
It's pretty ******* courageous when you think about it, and may be the biggest change that's happened to fashion since Rei Kawakubo.

 

[oulipien]

I'm a little surprised to see multiple people ragging on Ann Demeulemeester, though my context on her and fashion in general is quite minimal, having gained any sort of awareness only in the last couple of years—I got two things from the label for the first time this year, and liked them both a lot. (One from Calculus, though, who I notice is no longer carrying it.) Maybe partly due to the fact that the stores I've been browsing have no oranges or yellows.

 

[Vaudevillian]

Finally got around to buying Kapital's iconic Ring Coat (had it shipped from Australia, of all places!).

Pictured here, although no picture will do it justice:

It already got a lot of wear-time. Super-versatile, comfy and always great-looking.

 

[MaiLam]

I tried on the black moleskin version in Liberty yesterday and couldn't for the life of me figure out the hood thing

 

[Vaudevillian]

I tried on the black moleskin version in Liberty yesterday and couldn't for the life of me figure out the hood thing

It's more like a hybrid thing: part shawl collar, part roof-like hood. Granted, it's more conceptual than functional but I still love it

 

[Vaudevillian]

Here is another fav. from 2017.

A velour sweater by SUNNEI. Over-priced and with mystifying sizing (I wear an XL...and I'm usually between XS and S!) but, once you manage to find the right fit, it's a killer piece.

Wouldn't style it with the matching pants, though.

 

[Vaudevillian]

speaking of "trends", I think 2017 registered a couple of "peaks".

1) Peak Gucci. you are starting to see some wear-out at the top. The brand will keep churning sales for years to come...but I think both the growth and the cultural relevance are starting to wane.

2) peak athleisure/sport-luxe/whatever. The basic need for comfort and clothes that look great "on the move" is here to stay...but I believe the pendulum will swing back to a slightly more "formal" construction.