I did a brief interview with Rick Owens about his inspirations. He’s into Katie Got Bandz rn. http://www.mrporter.com/journal/journal_issue108/4

Former Brand Specialist for Harrods, Armani and many more Alexandra, who is deaf, has now launched her own baby wear for boys and gift brand called I Miei Cherubini, which simply means My Little Cherubs. Italy to Hong Kong, Armani to Asda, fashion designer Alexandra Kay, who is profoundly deaf, bumped into your blog and would love to have you do a quick intro post about us or mention Girl Meets Dress on one of your upcoming features?

In keeping with its philosophy of delivering a stylish and value-added hospitality experience, The Strand Hotel NYC has created all-inclusive Style Confidential Personal Styling package. The new “Bridge” model is stripped down to the bare minimum, like a miniature work of architecture. It consists of a micro-steel casing which crosses the shoe from the sole to the heel, tracing an illusory, transparent mirror-like effect available in both the skyscraper or kitten heel version. Throw on your loose-fit vest and team with a pair of shorts. It’s all about the easy fit, lasting wear and looking good while staying dry – Superdry have your Festival Survival Kit covered! Get into the swing of things with eye-catching fringed dresses and trimmings  that will keep you dazzling from sun up to sun down and beyond. The micro-exfoliating beads provide a multi-faceted action approach, helping to scrub away toxins and dead skin cells from the upper dermis. Choose your favourite style maker for an envy-worthy look.

The Marni bags come in a graphic form and focus on the precision of the cut and preciousness of material. Patent leather ribbons are hand woven with raffia ribbons, creating a three-dimensional motif in contrasting colors or tone in tone. This heavenly collection is scented with products designed to soothe and pamper the skin. Nestled within a beautiful keepsake box, utterly feminine and with a touch of glamour, this set provides the perfect gift. In this short film, men’s suiting fabrics becomes a metaphor for heritage and tradition.

The sudden cold snap hitting the UK is a red alert for dry skin sufferers! If you are doing anything on emergency dry skin remedies for this cold snap, please consider Skin Shop’s excellent dry skin rescue serum Defensil, developed in the Swiss mountains to help relieve very dry skin. Each season, A PEACE TREATY travels to a particular region and seeks out local village artisans to re-create an authentic accessory representative of that demographic. Brit Award nominee Alex Clare kicks off proceedings with his unique and beautiful strain of dubstep-inflected balladry, as showcased perfectly on “Too Close”, his breakthrough hit which reached the top 10 both here and in the US. Did you know that protein is a key nutrient in our diets which is needed for many functions in the body? For example it is used to make enzymes, antibodies to help us fight infection as well as providing the building blocks for structural cells. Meanwhile, Spring 2013 marks the arrival of Vivienne Westwood’s first boutique in Hawaii. The new boutique will be housed in the Moana Surfrider Hotel at Waikiki Beach, which is known as “The First Lady of Waikiki”….

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And so the dross goes on, and on. And on. And on.

I have stitched together all of the above, having lifted it verbatim from the various press releases I have received WITHIN THE PAST 24 HOURS.

Need I add, all punctuation and grammar malfunctions are publicists’ own.

I had an incredible revelation recently, in the midst of the women’s fall/winter 2013 shows: I don’t give a fuck about fashion any more. Sure, Hedi Slimane’s latest Saint Laurent catastrophe was entertaining (then again, spectacular falls from grace by arrogant anorexics are hilarious to witness in any industry) but “fashion” as an entity isn’t doing it for me anymore. Don’t get me wrong, on a basic level I’m still into clothes – as in the things you wear to express yourself, and so you don’t get arrested – but the fashion world? I’ll pass. Sit on my bony backside on the sofa and pop some prescription pills with a Disaronno and vodka instead. Here’s why.

First up, everything in fashion has been done already. Everything is old-hat and played out. Fashion is not an “art” with endless creative possibilities. Martin Margiela did it first. Yves Saint Laurent did it first. The Victorians did. It doesn’t matter – the point is, there is nothing new under the sun in fashion. In itself that’s not necessarily a problem: there’s nothing wrong with doing new versions of old ideas, or even repeating them verbatim, if they’re done well – that is, with integrity, taste and craftsmanship. But in fashion at the moment, by and large, they’re not! Just look at the fall/winter 2013 collections. Dire – the lot of them! Even Raf’s Dior RTW wasn’t brilliant (and I don’t say THAT lightly). And why do we, as (former) fashion fans, place so much belief and emotional energy into an industry that provides so little that is new, exciting, or provoking? I wouldn’t criticise Coca-Cola for producing similar riffs on the same sweet beverage, or Apple for releasing incrementally different devices that play music and let you browse the internet, but then again I wouldn’t have started a blog about either of them, or have devoted a good part of my life thus far to them.

My realisation has left me feeling a little bit cheated. I suppose there were warning signs, though. Take the fashion media, for example. It’s hard to imagine a phonier outfit! What gets shot in the editorials and covered in the features and news items in magazines is dictated, almost exclusively, by which brands advertise (or are likely to advertise) in the publication concerned. British GQ maintains a spreadsheet system so they can calculate EXACTLY how many mentions a particular brand is due, in relation to the size of their advertising spend. When fashion editors tweet that they just loooooooove XYZ collection, whether or not they actually love it is a minor part of the equation: it’s all about who it is expedient for them to jerk off. When Ms Totally Important Bigshot Editor is snapped toting the latest IT-bag, it’s not because she liked it enough to buy it full-price: it’s because some savvy publicist “seeded” it on her, by sending it to her hotel suite along with a vast bunch of first-class flowers and a white card as stiff as morning wood, knowing full well that a picture of her holding it will be snapped by a hundred quasi-paparazzi outside the show venues and beamed into the bedrooms of a million fashion fans around the world. Pity the mugs who see the photos on Jak & Jil or Style.com and actually purchase said bag at full price, when all the celebs and editors who are seen with it didn’t pay for it, and don’t necessarily even like or endorse it! There is a massive lack of integrity in everything.

At the other end of the fashion media spectrum, there is a tendency to “intellectualise” fashion, either as a rarefied art form (which, frankly, it is not – it’s all about cold, hard cash and SELL, SELL, SELL) or by providing (inevitably) imperious and disapproving analysis of some of fashion’s alleged issues (too thin models, “misogynistic” male designers, etc.)  I find that just as irritating. To me, to take an intellectual approach to fashion is to make a category error. It makes about as much as sense as trying to write a thesis on a children’s television show. Of course there will be some academics who do go there, and best of luck to them, but it doesn’t make interesting reading for the rest of us. And fashion critics. Do we believe in them anymore? Do we give any fucks? It’s always fun to read Cathy Horyn tearing some halfwit designer to shreds, because she’s a clever and talented writer, but in the wider scheme of things it all seems a bit… futile? What the critics say has no bearing on whether or not a collection sells (case in point: Saint Laurent – hated by critics, loved by customers) or whether a designer is a success. This is a diversion though (a Chanel-branded Segway trip, if you will) from my disillusionment.

Let’s talk about 90% of the people who work in fashion. Because fashion is indexed to appearance, body image, social class, confidence/self-esteem, and various other prickly issues, it attracts (and perhaps creates) a diabolical bunch of people, many of whom have deep, underlying insecurities regarding any number of the aforementioned things. And the fashion industry is where they can play them out, in true high-school, Mean Girls style (only without the wit). It’s quite awful, and definitely not aspirational. Then again, when the whole world is in a Complete Fucking Mess, who can blame them for choosing to exist within this insular, insulated, bitchy, la-la land.

I am loath to give the impression that, having achieved a fair degree of success with this blog (a job and an acquaintance with Raf Simons), I’m trying to kick down the ladder for others trying to reach such dizzyingly stratospheric heights, but this whole fashion thing is not what it is cracked up to be. I find it freaky how almost everyone these days seems to want a piece of the pie. How fashion is now longer a means to an end (looking good / getting laid / intimidating others) but a “thing” in itself – a means of entertainment, a way of passing time, an interest… a “passion” even. I can get behind it if it provides a means of escapism and hope for young gay men and disillusioned girls stuck in small town America, but otherwise the mass popularity phenomenon does my head in. I don’t follow popular music (I don’t know, or want to know, who Taylor Swift is and whether this cryptically named entity is male or female) or TV or Hollywood movies, and equally I’m not into the fashion-as-entertainment circus.

What’s my conclusion? Fuck knows. At the end of the day it’s only bloody clothes, but because fashion is so intrinsically linked to appearance (a base human obsession) we’ll all no doubt keep worshiping it until the cosmos consume us in a massive ball of fire.

DISCLAIMER- I’VE HAD A BOTTLE OF RED PRIOR TO WRITING THIS AND TWO DOUBLE VODKA AMARETTOS IN THE COURSE OF TYPING // PEACE AND LOVE (OR SHOULD I USE THE DEFAULT NEED-A-DILDO-UP-MY-BACKSIDE-THINK-IM-BETTER-THAN-YOU-SNARKY-FASHION-INDUSTRY-SIGN-OFF-OF-SIMPLY —- “BEST”—-) / HAPS

thx - and yes, I hate it. I don’t even look at menswear streetstyle pics any more bcos they cause me unnecessary stress.  I PROJECTILE VOMIT all over the tweed blazer, tie, pocket square, scarf, gloves-in-chest-pocket, sunglasses, bright corduroy trousers, patterned socks, brogues, vintage briefcase look.

“I was never a fat heroin addict. I was a skinny heroin addict” - Marc Jacobs.

+more

OH

MY

GOD

penisyiapenis.tumblr.com (NSFW)

There’s a Tumblr dedicated to badly Photoshopped porn images with designer and editors’ faces superimposed.

“head from hedi. balls licked in balmain. missionary in missoni. donnatella doggystyle. layed down for chalayan. galliano get in me. alexander’s wang. Siki suck me. rick owens rimming. margiela mastrubation. preen peen. helmut wang. raped by raf. Number Sixty(N)ine. touch me theyskens. damir do me. vivienne suckonwood. fucked in ferragamo. junya wantitonme. jizz on jil. Harder Fuckermann. yohji putitinme. cum on comme. rim owns.”