Is Foreign Cinema Overrated?

Last night I tried to watch an Austrian film called Revanche. It actually put me to sleep, before 11pm.

I'm not entirely sure which artistic movement films like this should be associated with. The camera work is simple and direct; scenes are shot from one angle, with few cuts. For the most part, nothing happens. Yet it was a well-received film and was nominated for an Academy award; more evidence, if any was needed, that the Oscars don't count for much.

The story is about a Viennese prostitute who robs a bank with her boyfriend. As they flee, a policeman tries to shoot out the tires of their car but hits her instead. It might sound like an exciting formula - plenty of opportunities for car chases and explosions. Instead, every opportunity for excitement is ignored, and the rest of the film is uneventful as a film can be while still having a plot.

Perhaps the lack of action is meant to reflect the boredom of Austrian life. Maybe it's a European way of getting back at Americans for the fast-paced brutality of American movies. Either way, I've found the limit of my tolerance for cinematic boredom.

But it's not all bad! A few nights before, I watched Terribly Happy, a Danish film about a policeman who is reassigned to a small town in the countryside. It was GREAT, and much more frightening than I'd expected. I'd watch it again in an instant.

Here's the Danish version of the poster, and no I can't pronounce it. Were there a movie like this for every movie like that, I'd be happy.

Narrow Thinking At The Times

Cathy Horyn is a distinctive fashion critic, primarily because she seems to hate fashion and therefore feels no compunction giving bad reviews. Unfortunately, for one who doesn't seem to care what others in the fashion business think of her, she has a lot of trouble taking criticism. Her blog, On The Runway, is usually a good read, but it could be better: it could tolerate some dissent.

I should know because I'm a regular reader. When I have something to contribute on a given topic, I leave comments. The funny thing? Anything even faintly challenging of her will not be approved.

Now, if Horyn's blog works the way other New York Times blogs work, it's the author who does most of the work of reading and approving comments (that's how Paul Krugman's blog operates, at any rate). If it's not policy at the Times to squash criticism, it's Cathy herself approving the comments she agrees with and dismissing whatever she doesn't.

What's wrong with that? you might wonder. After all, it is her blog - if you don't agree, start your own blog.

First, that's exactly what I've done.

Second, no serious newspaper should get away with publishing only one point of view. An editor who published an article stating a controversial opinion, then refused to publish any dissenting letters from readers, would be seen as a partisan hack. Why should it be any different for a blog about fashion?

There are two things here that Horyn needs to think about. Does she want to become a Devil Wears Prada-like figure with whom polite disagreement is simply not possible?

Perhaps more importantly, does she want to drive discussion away from her blog? At times, her commenters are little more than a chorus of sycophants. That means that the real discussion must be happening elsewhere. Wouldn't she prefer to keep it close?

Think about it, Ms. Horyn. They don't call it the Grey Lady for nothing.

Racism in Fashion

Fashion is not the most politically correct industry. Rarely will you find anyone who is fat, short, ugly or poor being made much of, and people with darker skin are often treated like curiosities, brought in to illustrate exoticism and then shown to the door.

Yet it's not clear that anyone has a workable solution. For example, bloggers frequently demand more women of color in fashion shows. But how many is enough? Should fashion shows be like universities, where a certain number of spots are reserved for minorities? Ideally, modeling would be a color-blind job. The best girls would be hired regardless of skin color or quotas.

Another time, I heard someone ask when an Asian woman would be featured on the cover of Vogue - with the same tone with which one might ask, When will I be free of these shackles? The answer that I didn't quite have the heart to give her is that it will happen whenever an Asian - American actress or model becomes famous enough to warrant it.

Then I came across this, an article at the Guardian in which the writer angrily takes Christian Dior to task for this advertisement, shot by a Chinese photographer and on display at the Dior store in Shanghai.

What do you see? I think it's a perfectly sensible depiction of the sameness of Mao-era China contrasting with modern splendor. Since the photographer is a Chinese artist, I don't see the neo-colonialism angle. Isn't the multiplication of identical faces a theme in contemporary Chinese art?

The writer also seems to lack a basic understanding of what drives the luxury market in China. Criticizing a Chanel ad, she writes, "The message couldn't be clearer – the Chinese are ignorant of their own history, desire to imitate the West, and need a cultured European to educate them." Now, I don't know whether Chinese people are ignorant of their own history or not, though according to the New York Times the answer seems to be yes.

As for the idea that they imitate the West, there's not much to dispute - how else do you explain the explosion of French and Italian luxury goods in China? Ditto for acquiring European tastes.

In short, I doubt that any of Dior's actual Chinese customers (as opposed to Chinese-Americans) will be bothered. After all, they're hardly buying Dior out of a desire to celebrate Chinese heritage.

Conquerors of the useless

Last night, I veered away from my usual Netflix diet of foreign cinema and noir thrillers to watch something a little different: 180 South, a documentary about mountain climbing and surfing in Patagonia. It was a gorgeous film - how could a film set in Patagonia not be gorgeous? But I had a realization: no matter how much I admire the outdoors, I'm very different from the kind of person whose idea of fun is a yearlong hiking trip.

Jeff Johnson, the film's narrator and protagonist, quotes Yvon Chouinard, founder of outdoor clothier Patagonia, to the effect that mountain climbers are "conquerors of the useless." Indeed. Since retirement, Chouinard has been involved with land preservations efforts in South America, including the sometimes controversial work of Conservacion Patagonica. It's an interesting case, yet one the film explores with little depth. Shades of neo-colonialist environmentalism? Perhaps.

Mostly, I was struck by one of Johnson's statements: that every time he finds himself in a wild, desolate place, he comes back with answers to questions he didn't know he had. I'm completely the opposite: when I find myself in a wild, desolate place, my thoughts go something like this: Wow, this is pretty. Is it time for dinner?

Regardless, I enjoyed the movie. I think I'd love to go to Patagonia someday.

(Photo credit: DailyHiker.com)

Imperial Decline

Chanel is the most idolized name in fashion, and consequently the one least likely to be looked at objectively. It's not just the advertising dollars, it's Karl Lagerfeld's personal celebrity and the loyalty he seems to inspire among critics and editors. I've long felt that his creations are a special form of ugliness - perfect for rotund little old ladies upholstered in tweed, the kiss of death for anyone else - but his shows are guaranteed a rapturous reception in the press.

Some other people seem to be coming around to my point of view. It's slow, for sure, but then big, famous houses don't become irrelevant overnight. It takes time, and Pierre Cardin is the perfect example: long after his name had been licensed into oblivion and the creative spark had died, he continued to draw favorable reviews from WWD, among others. It was only in the late 80s and 90s, when the degeneracy of his brand was apparent to all, that it became acceptable to say out loud what everyone had known for years: Cardin was over.

Chanel doesn't have a licensing problem. It's problem is that the current sketcher-in-chief, Karl Lagerfeld, is mentally stuck in the 80s and no longer fresh. In some ways, the fashion system knows this: think of the rumors which surfaced earlier this year that Lagerfeld would be replaced by Alber Elbaz of Lanvin, for example. Consciously or not, the realization is sinking in that it's time for a change.

This opinion was articulated by an academic named Mark Ritson, who - not coincidentally - comes from the marketing world, and who is therefore at liberty to think and write freely in a way that fashion people are not. In a tremendous article for Marketing Week, he writes that, according to a marketing consultancy, the Chanel brand lost 11% of its value last year. This in contrast to Louis Vuitton and Hermes, both of which gained.

Ritson argues that Chanel missed the boat in Asia by not entering the Chinese market until many years after its competitors, and that in London it is playing catch up to Louis Vuitton, which recently opened a lavish new store there. To that I might add the online space: most brands by now offer some form of ecommerce on their websites. Not Chanel - as far as I can tell, its online strategy hasn't advanced past the year 2000.

Ritson's most stinging criticism is a very simple one: the brand has simply gotten boring. He writes, "Its shop windows lack inspiration, the new collections are a little too derivative and the clientele looks older to me on each visit. Whisper very softly, but I think Chanel is getting dusty."

I don't care about China, but this is important. Lagerfeld has brought Chanel full circle, back to where he found it. Once again, it is repetitive, mired in the past and undeniably dowdy.

I think that Chanel knows this too: recently, prices for their handbags were raised by 30%. Why would they do this? Perhaps because the brand's managers are afraid of becoming aspirational. For luxury to remain luxurious, it must be kept out of the hands of the masses.

Maximum Francophilia

Today I caved and watched a movie which I had originally made fun of when I saw previews. The movie? Paris. Should I have left it at the previews? Well, it wasn't a complete wash. But probably.

Paris is one of those tapestry of life films where strangers bump into each other and connect across the tableau of a big city - Paris, in case there was any ambiguity. The movie begins and ends with sweeping shots from the Eiffel Tour, as if the picturesque Parisian skyline is sufficient justification for whatever happens in the rest of the film.

The story concerns a young dancer who has a heart condition and is dying, also very picturesquely. His sister is Juliette Binoche, the only character who doesn't come off as trite or two-dimensional. She doesn't have a man and he advises her to "take a chance on life," whatever that means.

There's the aging professor who gets ahold of one of his student's numbers so he can send her flirtatious texts - a story that barely ties in with anything else in the film. Even as the girl becomes interested in her dorky old professor, it feels like a grotesque caricature - the idea that an older man can "regain his youth" with an affair, while the whole time it's evident that she's stringing him along and that he's going to lose her. And then he'll be sad. Which isn't predictable, or anything.

There are some stabs at global significance - a French model meets a man Senegal, who then tries to come to France. Crossing the Mediterranean in a speedboat, he nearly drowns while she is attending a fashion show. Quickly, the film moves on. Instead of registering as a portrait of inequality, desperation and indifference, it strikes the viewer as a bizarre little subplot that could have just as well been left out.

If there's one thing this movie does well, it's the little portraits of ordinary people. For example, the owner of the neighborhood bakery, a pretty blond with a predator's smile who greets her customers with saccharine sweetness, then berates her employees and complains that young people today have no work ethic. She's a minor character, but she sort of stole the show (insofar as there was a show to steal).

After a few of these ensemble movies, I find myself wishing that the directors had instead focused on just one of their stories instead of trying to weave them together. Conventional, perhaps, but probably a better way of telling stories.

Ma chambre a la forme d'une cage…

Project Swedish

Last night, boyfriend and I saw The Girl Who Played With Fire, sequel to Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. Both are set in Stockholm, which, despite appearances, is not a happy Scandinavian paradise but a seething pit of corruption and murder. All sorts of exciting things happen, most of them involving guns and near brushes with death. Feeling that I need more danger in my life, I've decided that my project for the remainder of this summer will be teaching myself a little Swedish.

I'm planning to use Livemocha, a new website offering free language lessons and help from native speakers (you can also help others learn, by tutoring them in English, frexample). I have no experience with online language learning so I'm wary of setting strict goals, but I'll be thrilled if by the end of the summer I can formulate simple sentences and read basic texts. Wish me luck!

Baking!

This is my favorite recipe for a apple crisp. I've also used pear, and one could probably use any kind of fruit. It's a generally-delicious kind of recipe, and it's nearly idiot proof.

3 apples
3/4 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup flour
1/2 cup oats
1/3 cup butter
3/4 teaspoon cinnamon
3/4 teaspoon nutmeg

First, combine all dry ingredients and butter. Second, peel the apples and slice them thinly. Arrange them artfully in a bowl (like in the photo!) and cover with dough. Bake 20 - 30 minutes at 350F.

If you'd like to substitute pears, just be aware that pears are much juicier than apples, so it will come out of the oven with a lot more liquid. This is fine; just give it time to cool.

Either way, perfect with coconut gelato.

Vacation Within a Vacation

Vacations can be so tiring. Lying around all day with nothing to do...

Last weekend, we went camping in Sonoma. We stayed someplace to the north of Jenner, where it was brisk but not too cold and ridiculously scenic.


Anyway, like an idiot I forgot my camera. But this is a fair approximation of what we saw :)

Summer Reading: Balzac

Summer reading is always tricky for me: just when I have time to read, I can't think of anything to read. This summer, in characteristic over-achiever style, I've decided that aimless lack-of-summer-reading cannot be allowed to continue. I need goals. I need a plan, and I need metrics to measure success and failure!

So I set myself some goals: reading the complete works of Honoré de Balzac, the most prolific French novelist of the 19th century. I might not actually read everything he ever wrote - since there's a lot of it, but I'm giving it a try.

Accomplished so far: Old Goriot, The House of Nucingen, The Vendetta and Colonel Chabert. I started The Lilly of the Valley, but it wasn't much good. Up next: A Harlot High and Low.

Balzac's novels might be nearing their 200th birthdays, but the portrait of high society - ambitious, full of intrigue and gossip, petty jealousies and daring schemes - is completely contemporary. Highly recommended.

Things I Liked: Alexis Mabille

I've ranted at length about why I think haute couture week is a waste of time; after all, these are clothes that practically no one is going to wear, bearing no relation to the rest of the fashion universe. But there's one couturier - a relatively new addition to the calendar - who I do think is interesting.

There are a few things that can be said about these clothes. They are very French, for starters, ranging from youthful chic to mature elegance (but there's nothing wrong with mature - who dyou think buys couture?). They are, perhaps, somewhat stuffy, maybe a bit too far in the direction of the 19th century. But charming, nonetheless.

I hear that Mabille has a ready-to-wear line. No images were to be found on his website; perhaps you have to go to Paris to see.

Let's take the Proust questionnaire

You know it's my duty as a pseudo-literary narcissist.

My favorite virtue: reserve

My favorite quality in a man: warmth

My favorite quality in a woman: wit

My chief characteristic: self - awareness

What I appreciate the most in my friends: generosity of spirit

My main fault: my perhaps excessive self regard

My favorite occupation: eating, drinking, and hearing people say funny and interesting things - in short, going to dinner parties

My idea of happiness: a warm beach with my boyfriend

My idea of misery: being confined to bed with illness

If not myself, who would I be? Preferably, an elephant

Where would you like to live: Paris, in October

My favorite color and flower: Green and poppies

My favorite prose authors: Roberto Bolaño, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Marguerite Yourcenar

My favorite poets: Edna St Vincent Millay

My favorite heroes in fiction: Nick Carraway

My favorite heroines in fiction: I find so little to admire about women in fiction

My favorite painters and composers: Anselm Kiefer, Cézanne, Rachmaninov

My heroes in real life: William F. Buckley, my dad

My favorite heroines in real life: Michelle Obama, Kristin Scott Thomas

What characters in history do I most dislike? Anyone dull and obsequious

My heroines in world history: Elizabeth I of England

My favorite food and drink: Unsure. However, I had a delicious and simple dish the other day. It was braised pork shoulder on a bed of rice and asparagus. I had it with white wine, which may have been incorrect.

My favorite names: For girls, Wilhelmina, Penelope, Gertrude. For boys, I've yet to come across any that really strike me as desirable - each seems as good as the next.

What I hate the most: betrayal by my friends, or those whom I mistook to be.

World history characters I hate the most: I find it difficult to hate historical figures; knowing them a little, one comes to understand why they did such stupid things.

The military event I admire the most: the D-Day landings in Normandy.

The reform I admire the most: the legalization of same-sex marriage in Spain, 2005.

The natural talent I'd like to be gifted with: I would love to be able to dance.

How I wish to die: after those I love.

My present state of mind: Rather bored from thinking about myself so much to answer these questions.

For what fault have I the most toleration? The fault of believing one's own engagements to be more important than anyone else's.

My motto: Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!

A poem from the poetess

'Poetess' may be a somewhat outdated word but I like it for the same reason that I like three-piece suits, women who wear their hair in chignons, and pith helmets. This is one of my favorites, by Edna St Vincent Millay.

We were very tired, we were very merry-
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.
It was bare and bright, and smelled like a stable-
But we looked into a fire, we leaned across a table,
We lay on a hill-top underneath the moon;
And the whistles kept blowing, and the dawn came soon.

We were very tired, we were very merry-
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry;
And you ate an apple, and I ate a pear,
From a dozen of each we had bought somewhere;
And the sky went wan, and the wind came cold,
And the sun rose dripping, a bucketful of gold.

We were very tired, we were very merry,
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.
We hailed, 'Good morrow, mother!' to a shawl-covered head,
And bought a morning paper, which neither of us read;
And she wept, 'God bless you!' for the apples and the pears,
And we gave her all our money but our subway fares.

(Taken without permission from Collected Poems, c 1950)

Things I liked: Vionnet

I'm almost embarrassed by how hard I'm falling for the new Vionnet. The project of former Valentino president Matteo Marzotto, the label is now designed by the former Prada designer, Rodolfo Paglialunga. It's a little odd to see a French classic taken over by Italians but they're doing a fine job. It's the kind of thing glittery older women wear to the Opera, and it never fails to give me a little thrill.

McQueen's last masterpiece

Alexander McQueen's vision spanned from 18th century historicism to fantasies of science fiction and the future. It was a lot to take in, and his shows often left me puzzled. That said, the 16 looks shown in Paris three weeks after his death were wonders of artistry and technical skill. It's as though he wanted to prove himself one last time before saying goodbye to a world he no longer cared for.

Also, Israel?

It is not a happy time for American-Israeli relations. Joe Biden's recent visit to the country went up in flames after the ill-timed announcement of another round of settlement construction in Jerusalem. I think it's time to reevaluate our alliance with this country, which is less of an alliance than a joining at the hip.

Why, precisely, does the United States need Israel? I understand that the Jewish people need a home, but they've got it. It's a done deal. With most of our allies, disagreements are allowed, even expected - with France, for example, most of the time we don't agree on a thing. Yet when it comes to Israel, you would think disagreement is treason.

If Israel were in trouble, I might be concerned for its safety - but it isn't. It has the best military in the Near East, plus an arsenal of a few hundred nuclear weapons. Perhaps the Lebanon war didn't go so well, but war in Gaza was a smashing success. The Jewish state is hardly in mortal danger.

I'm also puzzled by the $3 billion in aid we give to Israel every year. Why does a prosperous country need this kind of assistance? What do we have to show for it? And why don't they have any manners?

What I did with my weekend

I thought I'd share some pictures of my weekend. You can see me in the last one, though I'm very small, among the white and red jerseys in the first row.

Givenchy fail

It's the Paris collections. Some of them are good, some very bad. Though I had my hopes up, one of those that failed was Givenchy.


Describing his pre-fall collection, I wrote that the designer, Riccardo Tisci, is "unpredictable and sometimes a mess; his work smacks of immaturity, as if a thousand hasty ideas had bubbled to the surface without reflection." Unfortunately, this season's outing was a particularly bad mess, as he seemed to be trying for a marriage of frumpy ladies' suits with sexy lace and bare skin. The result was incoherent, to say the least.


The show opened with lots of pantsuits, which may be what comes to mind for him when he thinks 'commercial', followed by some lace and feathers. It was the kind of inanity that Tisci falls back on when he runs out of other ideas. There were also some terrible looks for men. Perhaps we are witnessing the devolution of this house from cutting edge to comical.

Things I liked

Maria Cornejo has a way of creating dresses that drape equally on both sides of the body; an interesting technique, since most draping crosses the body from one side to the other. Her clothes are modern and simple yet alive with a human touch, free from the sterile minimalism I detest.


This look is from a new line called Reed Krakoff. I like how unpretentious it is: a long black skirt, a great-looking leather coat, and the sweater is just the thing don't you think?


Sophie Theallet, the French designer transplanted to Brooklyn and former Alaia assistant, makes such pretty dresses. This is one of them - I love the drama of the bow at the waist, the exposed shoulder.


For the longest time, I didn't think much of Peter Som. It was a few seasons back, during the financial crisis, that I first took notice: maybe it's because he almost went out of business or I don't know why, but he seemed to go a little crazy and I loved it. Look at this dress: though obscured by a jacket and a hat, it's the prettiest thing I've seen all week.

Clothes, clothes, clothes

My mom came to visit me at school the other day. She asked if there was anything she could bring me, and I asked for my hiking boots. I don't plan to go hiking, I just wanted to wear them with skinny jeans to get that rugged feeling. She also brought me a cake and a bottle of Martinellis, which is about the cutest thing you can think of. Isn't it odd, though, that when I think of what it is I want, what comes to mind is a pair of sturdy old boots?

Something that the world may have too much of, in addition to war, famine, disease, taxes, politicians, bad manners and cars, is clothes. There's an awful lot of clothes out there. New York Fashion Week finished a little while ago, and being casually interested I clicked through a few slideshows on Women's Wear. There were some nice things, but on the whole my starting premise was vindicated: still too many clothes.

New York is often called the most commercial fashion week. I don't know what that means; of the major fashion capitals, the only one that isn't commercial is London, since British designers seem more interested in creating outlandish confections than in selling clothes. In my opinion, British designers should not be taken seriously until they start showing in Paris.

New York is different, though: it follows trends rather than creating them, taking inspiration from a host of designers - Rick Owens, Lanvin, a dash of classic Givenchy. Then there's the ever-present ingredients of American fashion: sportswear (not so much of that, unfortunately), the look of East Coast prep schools and the undying glamor of old money - as imagined by second-generation immigrants, unfortunately without any improvement.

Without naming names, then, you know what I didn't like. In my next post, I'll mention what I did.

How easy is 'literary' New York?

Over the weekend, I found myself reading about the story of Jessica Roy, a student who gained brief notoriety for an unfriendly - but quite lifelike - evisceration of a Brooklyn literary-snob party she attended. It's a scene I think we've all visited: the pretentious wannabe who lives with his parents, throws fancy parties and reels in guests with lots of free booze and drugs. Such largesse is gratifying, but you can't help feeling sorry for the sucker.

I've had my own run-ins with the literati, at first courtesy of campus lit mags, then with one of those English-language reviews which is inexplicably headquartered in Paris (maybe the coffee's better?). The lesson learned was that, no matter how refined their taste in matters of punctuation and syntax, the self-styled literati are, with honorable exceptions, useless people.

The party that Roy attended brought her world crashing down around her - everyone she had admired, in reality so fake! So obsequious, ready to kiss up in exchange for a byline. The thought that kept coming back to me was how little any of them had really accomplished.

Those luminaries of which Roy had been in awe, what were their towering achievements? Some of them had founded Gawker, a jeering blog for those stuck in the peanut gallery. Another of them wrote a novel called All the Sad Young Literary Men, by all accounts a narcissistic mediocrity. And others edit N+1, the only one of their endeavors I'm going to qualify as possibly not worthless.

The cherry on top is a letter written by a 17-year-old from Alabama to the New York Times, which some hack at the Observer thought was so important he devoted a column to it (yes, he was another of Roy's idols). The letter's subject? How said 17-year-old is a future literary titan. Apparently, he's now being queried by publishers who'd like to publish him. In this world, it can't be hard to make a splash.

I'd like to suggest that aspiring writers take a leaf out of Hemingway's book: go drive an ambulance, preferably in a war zone. Death, shattered love, drinking problems - these things don't get old. Literary pretensions do.

Rodarte, show us the future!

Reactions to the Rodarte show, held in New York earlier this week, were almost the same as the reactions to last season's, which is not a good thing. The inner circle of fans loved it, while others expressed puzzlement: why don't the Mulleavy sisters try something new? And when will they get serious about making wearable clothes? Rodarte certainly loves doing innovative things to textiles, but they don't seem to be interested in placating their critics.

Rodarte is a tiny company. Because it's privately held, outsiders can only guess at what is going on the inside, but here's what we know: last year, they sold about 1,000 pieces (according to a recent profile in the New Yorker). Given how expensive their clothes are, they might have retail sales of a few million a year. With a business that size, what you get is a studio, a few employees and some bolts of cloth, which is what they have. So despite being a five year old business and having gotten scads of free press, they're still in the almost-broke start-up phase.

What if they don't plan to grow anymore? Rodarte's product is extremely niche, accessible only to a few: you're either buying sweaters that cost $2,000, or you're not buying anything. No diffusion lines and no licenses, except for their ugly collaboration with Target. It could be a fine strategy, but it could also be fiscally dangerous. Furthermore, you have to wonder what will happen to them once the press loses interest. This is a real possibility, given how monotonous their vision has become.

What would happen if the Mulleavy sisters woke up one morning to find they've been forgotten? Would their clients keep buying? It's impossible to say, but Rodarte got lucky with the press from day one, and it's hard to see how they could survive without it. If worst came to worst, they could always start selling on Etsy.

Attention, fashion police

Today I read in WWD that Kimora Lee Simmons - whom I know nothing about, except that she is somehow associated with a line called Baby Phat, which is a revolting name - is planning a new line, to be called Kouture by Kimora Lee Simmons. It's supposed to be incredibly cheap, so people won't have to choose between paying their bills or going shopping.

I'm all for paying one's bills, but I have wonder: at this price point ($40 for a dress), what kind of garbage is Ms Simmons calling couture?

Second, is this broad illiterate? Why would you ever spell 'couture' with a k?

Let's just say that were I licensed to summarily execute people for crimes against good taste, this mangling of French orthography would be a TOBAS* offense.

*Take Out Back And Shoot.

What's to become of McQueen?

After the startling suicide of Alexander McQueen on Thursday, the initial outpouring of grief among fashion followers is starting to give way to the question: what will become of his business? Some have suggested that it "cannot continue" without its founder. However, from the point of view of the brand's owners - as well as the employees who depend on it for their livelihoods - simply shutting the business down is not an option.

Fortunately, the Alexander McQueen business may not have been as dependent on Lee McQueen the man as many thought. Yes, he put on spectacular shows - but fashion shows may not be essential to the immediate continuation of the brand. The commercial collections, the bread and butter of any designer business, were always more conservative, and it's likely that Mr McQueen had only a minimal part in creating them. His design team, then, may be able to carry on without him.

That doesn't solve the house's problems: eventually, it will need a new public face. I think it would be a mistake, however, to hire a new designer with McQueen's death so prominent in the public consciousness. It would serve only to underline the (glaring) fact that, in terms of sheer creative bravado, he is irreplaceable. Instead, the house should work on cementing his reputation by continuing to evoke the memory of the founder. Though the collection he was working on at the time of his death should be presented, if possible, afterwards fashion shows should be eschewed, at least for the foreseeable future.

One first step could be an equivalent to the Balenciaga Edition collection, which consists of couture pieces from the house's archive made new as ready-to-wear. I would suggest culling the McQueen archive for its most iconic pieces, offering clients one last chance to get their hands on a piece of the man's formidable skills. In fact, it would be unseemly to hire a new designer too quickly; it might suggest that the brand's executives care too much about the bottom line, disrespecting McQueen.

The brand should take the space of a few seasons to adjust, continuing the creation of commercial collections by the design team now in place. By then, maybe, a new head designer can be hired - and McQueen's fans might be ready to accept him.

Which party?

I'm researching Spanish politics in the 1930s for a term paper; what strikes me again and again is how many political parties there were, ranging from national parties with a million members to tiny regional parties with just a few hundred. This diverse, fragmented political landscape could have been part of the reason Spanish politics proved unworkable, leading to the civil war of 1936 - 39. But there was a positive aspect as well: it gave people lots and lots of choices.

Out of curiosity, I decided to see what my options for political parties are in California, the state I live in. I visited the Secretary of State's website and discovered that there are six: American Independents, Democrats, Greens, Libertarian, Peace & Freedom and of course the GOP. Off the top of my head, I wasn't sure what most of them stand for, so I decided to find out.

The American Independent Party sounded promising, if only because I sometimes think of myself as a political independent, so I started with them. From their website:

Marriage Between a Man and a Woman
We insist that marriage is between a man and a woman and assert the role of the law in establishing and reinforcing the mutual rights and obligations of that God-ordained contract.

Instant fail: not only is homophobia a central plank of their platform, it seems that everything goes back to God. There's little I detest more than mixing religion and politics.

Then I tried the Libertarians. Upfront, they advertise themselves as socially tolerant and fiscally responsible. It's an attractive combination; unfortunately, Libertarians carry their hatred of government to the extreme. Plus, I discovered this under the Articles section:

There is an attempt now to have the voters decide whether to lower the budget passage requirement to 55 percent. Whether you are in favor of the two-thirds rule depends on whether you believe that an increase in taxes and spending is economic nutrition or whether it is economic poison.

This is a terrible display of cynicism. The main reason nothing ever goes right in Sacramento is that passing a budget requires a 2/3rds majority in the legislature. It's a recipe for deadlock; changing the 2/3rds rule to 50 or 55% would be a big step towards fixing California's dysfunctional government. And the Libertarians oppose this, for the transparent reason that they don't want to pay more taxes.

Now, let me be clear: I hate paying taxes. But wishing continued failure on your state's government out of greed is bad citizenship.

Next up? Peace and Freedom. An advertisement on their homepage asks you to 'Drop $10 on 2010: Fund the overthrow of capitalism.' Not good. Continuing to the summary of their platform, I found:

• Double the minimum wage and index it to the cost of living;
• A 30-hour workweek with no cut in weekly pay; longer paid vacations;
• A Universal Basic Income to alleviate poverty and homelessness;
• Tax the income and assets of the rich to meet human needs;
• Provide full free quality public education through university level. Teach the history of workers' struggles and labor's creation of society's wealth and progress.

I don't doubt that all of these suggestions are made with the best of intentions; unfortunately, most of these proposals are just unfeasible.

I agree that government should provide a minimalist safety net for society's least fortunate but it's unfair to tax the hell out of wealthier Americans so everyone else can have a free ride. And doubling the minimum wage? It would ruin small businesses, many of which are only barely profitable, destroying jobs. A 30 - hour workweek with no cut in pay? Look at France, it hasn't worked out so well.

Next, the Greens. Again, I think their hearts are in the right place but their heads aren't screwed on quite tight enough. Key principles include Ecological Wisdom, Nonviolence, Social Justice, Grassroots Democracy, Decentralization, Community-Based Economics, Feminism, Respect for Diversity, Personal & Global Responsibility and Sustainability. All worthy principles, it just doesn't have the air of good, solid policy.

Finally, the two big ones: Democrats and Republicans.

Democrats in California are joined at the hip to unions, which is a big liability in my book since unions are just another kind of special interest group after taxpayer's money. And the Republicans? Judging from their website, they don't have much of a platform at all (and no, loving Ronald Reagan does not count as a platform).

I wish Republicans would get their act together. In California, what they need to make a comeback is a move beyond hating government to envisioning how (limited) government can make life better, a humane social policy that doesn't alienate gays and ethnic minorities, and a workable plan for balancing the budget and stimulating the economy. Good luck, guys.

What I mean when I talk about a good movie

Last night, boyfriend and I saw The White Ribbon, the Palme d'Or - winning film about evil in a small German town. If you'll excuse the incongruity of praising a German movie in French, it was un putain bon film and if you haven't seen it, get thee to the cinema.

I hope it comes up for the Oscars, but if it doesn't who cares - Hollywood, as far as I can tell, is all animated blue aliens and low morals.

Real clear politics

Thank God my personal life is too scandalous for me to pursue a career in public service; I'd be a terrible politician (I can't keep my mouth shut and love to tell people when they're wrong) and, more pointedly, I hate politics. Though at the same time, I'm addicted to political coverage. What is especially frustrating right now is that, as far as I can tell, there is not one solitary politician in this country who is willing to talk about what actually matters.

Maybe you wonder what I'm referring to. The deficit? Job creation? Health insurance reform? National security? Global warming? Whether the President is, in fact, a natural-born American citizen?

All of those things are important, except for the last which is too silly to bear mentioning. No, what actually matters is entitlements reform: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid. Plus, our out-of-control military spending.

The deficit, about which the political establishment is now shrieking its empty little head off, has almost nothing to do with the stimulus or bailouts. It exists because of the obligations the government has taken on to pay for the well-being and health care of elderly Americans after they retire.

Unfortunately, there are a lot more elderly Americans today than there were when these programs were designed. And they are what is driving us towards fiscal ruin.

The solution is simple: decrease expenditures by cutting benefits or raising the retirement age, or increase revenue, which means raising taxes. Or do both - for example, by raising the retirement age to 72, the age by which most Americans kick the bucket, and simultaneously raising the Social Security taxation cap for the wealthy.

The health care insurance reform debate is nothing but a shadow-play substitute for a debate over entitlement reform; no one really cares if several million Americans don't have health insurance, since most of them don't vote. The problem is that the government's obligation to pay for Medicare is fast outstripping its ability to do so. Someday in the future, the entire federal budget will be consumed by two things: buying prescription drugs for the elderly, and paying for our enormously expensive military.

Of course, no one has the courage to tackle this problem because, as we saw last summer, the slightest hint of cuts to Medicare bring out crowds of elderly voters, ready to fight anyone who even thinks about cutting their entitlements. And as for cutting military spending? That also looks unlikely.

The weakness of fashion bloggers

"Bloggers are so attractive to the big design houses because they are so wide-eyed and obsessed, but they don't have the critical faculties to know what's good and what's not. As soon as they've been invited to the shows, they can no longer criticize because then they won't be invited back."

-Robert Johnson, a GQ editor quoted in the Independent

I've been skeptical about the supposed power of fashion blogs for a while because of the very problem Mr Johnson highlights above: they're too easy to co-opt. Though to be fair, most of the 'official' editors and critics are similarly co-opted; holding on to one's objective faculties in the face of all that glitz must be pretty hard.

But for fashion bloggers, there's something a little futile in the juxtaposition of their status as outsiders, empowered to write anything about anyone, and their pathetic desire to be part of the circus they critique.

Fast fashion: enjoy it while it lasts

A favorite blogger of mine, pattern-making guru Kathleen Fasanella, notes an interesting trend: the price of womens' clothes have been declining since the 1970s. Mens clothes, on the other hand, are holding steady. Why would this be?

Her explanation is that womens fashion is driven by trends, while mens clothing is the same year after year. I'm not sure that explains much, but you can't argue with the statement that clothes today are cheaper than ever.

D'apres moi, this has less to do with trends than macroeconomics. In the last third of the 20th century the world entered a new phase unlike anything that had come before: a state of inequality between industrialized nations and their former colonies, combined with faster-than-ever communications. Telephones, cheap air travel, fax and the internet made neighbors of us all, making it possible to manufacture cheap goods with short shelf lives in poor countries, and then ship them around the world to the customer.

In other words, fast fashion - that ever-changing form of consumerist entertainment - is a consequence of global inequality and the information age. But you already knew that.

What few people want to discuss is that given the rapid game of catch-up countries such as China are playing with the developed world, factories are forever being moved to a further shore in search of cheaper wages. Someday, there may not be a cheaper shore - and then the cost of goods will start to rise.

There's nothing wrong with this system. Lovers of humanity condemn sweatshops, but who doesn't like a bargain? And what's wrong with creating in jobs in impoverished, benighted corners of the world like Haiti? It's worth keeping in mind, though, that your supply of cheap junk may not last forever. Enjoy it while you can.

Tavi: the joke's on you

As much as anyone, I've been perplexed and a little repulsed by the overnight rise of 13-year-old blogging sensation Tavi Gevinson. Where did she come from? What's so great about her? Someone, somewhere, seems to have decreed her to be In, though no one seems to understand why.

I should start by admitting - as you might suspect - that, yes, I'm a little jealous. Everyone dreams about recognition coming so easily. Jealousy, however, is not interesting; what is interesting is the way her abrupt rise illustrates the curious, sometimes inexplicable dynamics of the fashion publicity machine.

Certain things become cool overnight, almost without explanation. This is evidence of a pack mentality: fashion people tend to move as a group, especially in how they think. Oftentimes, they have trouble adapting to new things, but if one of the true avant gardists - Katie Grand or Rei Kawakubo, for instance - should take a shine to something, there is no question that everyone else will follow.

Fashion people aren't very independent-minded; mostly, they're afraid to be left behind. What they may not realize, in this case, is that foisting a 13 year-old blogger on the fashion world is Rei Kawakubo's idea of a joke.

This is a joke that Tavi may be in on - if you'd like confirmation, just look at this picture of her at the Dior couture show in Paris. With her grey hair and ridiculous hat, she's sending up the grand-dame editors of the 1950s and 60s. If you ask me, it's quite droll.

The Return of Josephus Thimister: 1917, Come Again?

It looks as though haute couture fashion week will be with us for at least another season - unfortunately so, because haute couture is about as irrelevant as it gets. You might as well be going to a Renaissance Fair. There was one show I was looking forward to, however: that of Josephus Thimister, the Belgian designer lost in obscurity since as long as I can remember.

Thimister's main claim to fame, if it can be called that, is that he designed for Balenciaga before Nicolas Ghesquière took over. The reasons for his firing are unclear - I've heard the music was too loud at one of his shows, or that he rather unwisely took Fascism as a source of inspiration. Ticklish, even today. In fact, for all the fuss I'm making over him I've only ever seen one photograph of his work.

It was in a volume on Belgian designers in a library in Paris: a black gown with a high neck, long-sleeved, utterly beautiful. I'm not sure what made it so lovely, some secret of construction and draping around the hips. It was one of those gowns which could have transformed a plain-looking woman into a hybrid of Cate Blanchett and Susan Sontag.

Well, he's back, or would like to be. I looked at a few pictures on Diane Pernet's blog and was rather sad to see him engaging in costume drama, just like everyone else at couture week. It's the Russian Revolution, or the First World War, or Bolshevism. And at Dior it's the New Look and the 19th century and the 18th century. It's not even faintly glamorous, just dated. Who cares?

Politics: Ew

I wish I wasn't in the habit of reading the Times and the Daily Beast; right now, I'd like nothing better than to forget that government exists.

I won't say anything about the special election in Massachusetts except that, as everyone has noted, Martha Coakley was a terrible candidate - I've heard her described as 'nanny state and police state', a disgusting combination - and a product of the womens' lobby's belief that electing female politicians is a worthy goal in and of itself. She deserved to lose, the question is why was she running in the first place?

Some blame for the national mood must fall on the President. He has allowed the debate over healthcare reform to drag on since last summer. That's eight months! In a system built on two-year electoral cycles, that's way too long to spend on one bill. No wonder voters are sick of it, as the economy continues to stagnate.

If I could give the President and Congressional leadership advice, I'd say this: pass the bill you have (the Senate version) and move on to something else. You've wasted too much time.

And then there's the news of the Supreme Court's decision on campaign finance. In short, the Supreme Court overturned a century of precedent and corporations can now buy whichever politicians they like. Judicial activism, much?

Politics can be unbearably frustrating.

Cathy Horyn vs Her Readers

A little scuffle broke out yesterday at fashion critic Cathy Horyn's blog, On the Runway. Writing about the Golden Globes, Horyn quoted an anonymous stylist calling actress Christina Hendricks a "big girl." A photograph published alongside had obviously been stretched, making Hendricks seem wider. Several commenters made a fuss, and Gothamist even wrote a post about it, pompously stating that they had 'contacted Horyn for comment.'

I doubt anyone at the Times distorted the image on purpose; it was most likely a mistake made in a few seconds, made even more likely if, as I suspect, Horyn uploads most of the pictures herself. She's a busy woman. In the end, Horyn simply replaced the stretched photo with an unstretched version and that, one hopes, will be the end of it. What's important, though, is that this shows that an influential newspaper critic can be held instantly accountable by her readers.

Cathy Horyn started blogging several years ago, but she still seems to think of her blog as a one-way street, or at best as a question-and-answer session with She Who Knows Best. She takes an interest in what some of her commenters have to say, but rarely, if ever, does she admit to having made a bad call.

Compare to another blogger, the Atlantic contributor Andrew Sullivan, who regularly posts emails from readers disagreeing with him. Though they write about completely different things - Sullivan sticks to politics - it's an interesting contrast that the fashion critic would seem to be more rigidly entrenched in her authority.

In an area so subjective as fashion, it can be hard to tell the difference between a valid difference of opinion and simple ignorance. It will be interesting to see how Horyn continues to balance her authority as critic with her readers' responses.

One for Almodovar

Pedro Almodovar remains one of my favorite directors years after he made Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown and All About My Mother. His reputation with me was cemented by Bad Education, a story of abuse and deception in a Catholic boys' school. His new film, Broken Embraces, strikes a balance between the screaming camp of Women on the Verge and the quieter Volver.

Any film made in the 1980s - when Women on the Verge was made - is bound to be somewhat campy. The Spanish love of eye-searing color seems to have reached a high point during that decade. Farce and caricature is part of what makes Almodovar himself.

Broken Embraces takes a deeper interest in its characters' emotional lives and moves at a slower pace; compared to the films with which Almodovar made his reputation, there is a shocking lack of transvestitism and perversion.

I won't describe the plot except to say it unfolds slowly and convincingly; some things are given a little too much time, others not quite enough, but in the end it balances out and you leave feeling that the characters were believable and sympathetic.

The cast - the ubiquitous but still lovely Penélope Cruz, Lluis Homar (who one remembers as Sr. Berenguer in Bad Educaton), Blanca Portillo and José Luis Goméz - perform beautifully, and though one hopes Almodovar could get back to his farcical, campy ways, this was a good film for him to make.

Winners and losers

When it comes to fashion, the small collections shown between the big ones, Fall/Winter and Spring/Summer, are a more accurate window as to what's really going on inside the designers' businesses; it's less of a circus, and the clothes have a longer window to sell. Unlike the extravagant nonsense that assaults the senses during Fashion Week (no matter which one), these clothes are meant to be worn. For me, that means they're better.

Everyone seems to show midseason collections in New York, though for all I know the same collections are shown in Paris and Shanghai. One of the best, I thought, was from Céline, which last year hired Phoebe Philo out of retirement. I'm too young to remember her glory days at Chloé but it doesn't matter. The clothes are polished and sporty, not weighed down by their luxuriousness, yet unapologetically posh. They seem simple and modern, the perfect thing for wealthy women today.



I was also struck by Givenchy's collection. The designer, Riccardo Tisci, is unpredictable and sometimes a mess; his work smacks of immaturity, as if a thousand hasty ideas had bubbled to the surface without reflection. I get the feeling that he isn't very good at self-criticism and needs someone to tell him no. But this time, he came out on an even keel with a sharp, elegant collection. It's nothing groundbreaking, but when it's done this well there's nothing wrong with a little recycling.


Strangely enough, Tisci switched places with another rather famous designer, Nicolas Ghesquière of Balenciaga, who fell flat on his face (usually it's the other way around). I always suspected there was some kind of dark secret at the bottom of Balenciaga's success, and this collection might be a clue. In addition to being a staple among thin, robot-like professionals, Balenciaga may be the label of choice for those who wish to swaddle their figures under grotesquely shaped coats and garishly printed trousers.

So as not to scar your eyes too much, I've chosen a picture of one of the more manageable looks - I can certainly imagine this ensemble, very Balenciaga in its proportions, clanking down the halls of power.


(All photographs from Style.com)

Wit and elegance

That was my reaction clicking through Lanvin's pre-fall collection on Style.com; the designer, Alber Elbaz, marks everything he does with warmth and beauty, but with humor as well. I can't get enough, and I'm just looking at little pictures on my screen.

If I were a woman, this is how I'd want to be. I'll leave you with two examples; the first is zany and, I suspect, a fabulous little joke (I hate leopard print! Except when it comes from this guy) and the other is just a really pretty dress, with cute earmuffs.




(Both images courtesy Lanvin via Style.com)

Terrorism - are we overreacting?

I am sick to death of the hysterics in this country every time someone comes close to blowing up an airplane. Yes, security mistakes were made, but mistakes are inevitable and no security system is without flaws.

Americans should make an attempt at stoicism and accept the likelihood that in the next few years there will be more terrorist attacks, some of which will succeed. It's a probability we all have to live with.

Thousands of people die every year in driving accidents or because of gun violence; the chances terrorism will kill you are negligible. Everyone - in particular, the media - needs to calm down and grow up.

The circus of the poor

There's something terribly sad about fame, sacrificing a person to create a persona. In the age of celebrity, the celebrities themselves are the victims in our modern version of human sacrifice, their lives eaten up by tabloids and gossip websites as an offering to the masses. Arrests and accidents, public feuds, stints in rehab and divorces, with luck the star's eventual death - all a cathartic spectacle for public consumption.

There are, broadly speaking, two kinds of celebrities: those born rich, and those born poor. The rich ones are as a rule not very smart, illiterate and with no idea what to do with themselves; trying to become famous is a natural outlet for their ennui, the adoration of their fans compensation for what were probably loveless childhoods. They can be found mostly in reality TV.

The most famous musicians tend to be from the other end of the spectrum. As examples, I'd cite Kesha (I refuse to allow her that idiotic $), who was raised by a single mother who got by on foodstamps, or Lady Gaga who grew up in Yonkers. She had the advantage of a good Catholic girls' school education, yet her family could not have been better off than the middle of the middle class.

Despite what Americans like to think about their country, making money is very hard for all but the children of the bourgeois. Conventional wisdom holds that a good university education is the key; whether that holds true today or not (something yours truly will shortly find out), the fact remains that for the children of the lower middle and working classes the best they can hope for is to do about as well as their parents did. For many of them, getting into a good college and becoming a doctor or lawyer is simply unrealistic. It should be no surprise, then, that just as Edith Piaf narrowly avoided a career as a prostitute to become a singer, young women today with bleak economic prospects see the pursuit of celebrity as an escape from whatever other kind of work they could get.

This goes a long way to explaining the crass tone of popular culture, a circus of rather hopeless people whose only way to the top is public self-destruction. It also explains their endless penchant for referencing money in their stage names.

Tom Ford Fail

When a friend tells you to see a certain movie in order to better understand him, what can you do but get yourself to the theater? In the case of Tom Ford's 'A Single Man', I'm not sure any psychological similarity between oneself and the film's characters should be advertised; at best, it seems melodramatic, at worst more than a little self-aggrandizing.

This film was supposed to be the start of the former Gucci designer's grand new life as a man of the cinema. F. Scott Fitzgerald's rueful observation comes to mind ("There are no second acts in American lives") which, though mostly untrue, for Mr Ford might deservedly turn out to be the case.

James, or Colin Firth in the title role, is a depressive but rather stylish professor of English at a little college in Los Angeles, back when Southern California was livable. In the course of a day, he thinks sadly of his partner of sixteen years, who recently died in an accident; goes to school, where a young man with a face like a porcelain doll makes eyes at him in class; comes home, thinks about blowing his brains out but decides against; instead has dinner and drinks, but mostly drinks, with his best friend, Charlie (Julianne Moore), who tries to seduce him; then heads out to a bar, where he picks up said porcelain-faced boy before dying of a heart attack, putting to rest any danger of what would have been a supremely uncomfortable love scene. It's an abrupt ending which left me wishing that, had he been a little more decisive with the pistol, he would have saved Charlie the bother of trying to sleep with him.

In fact, the entire film is constructed around the apparently unbearable sex appeal of middle-aged men in natty suits. In the course of the movie, poor James must fend off not only of Charlie, who one might have counted on to understand that after sixteen years her friend's pederasty was not a passing phase, and the doll-boy, tirelessly enthused for his professor, but a very angular, rather handsome Spanish prostitute who makes a pass at him in the parking lot. "Aren't we going somewhere?" he asks James. "No," James says. There's something off-putting about the stream of younger men flinging themselves at him mere hours before he bites the dust, as if even in the last hours of life there's nothing better to do than think about sex.

More broadly, the film is infused with a sensibility which is emphatically that of a fashion designer, not a director. I don't mean the costumes; they're nice, but nothing you couldn't find in Brooks Brothers. Instead, the film is animated with the melodramatic aesthetic of a fashion show: a woman smiles, and her lips turn brilliant red. A handsome young man enters the room and the screen brightens as if a floodlight had been switched on. Out of the blue, the quality of the image turns grainy and switches to slow-motion; abrupt shifts such as these might not look out of place in an advertisement, but in a movie they seem amateurish. It's as if Ford is trying to bring the senseless, got-your-attention spontaneity of fashion to film but it ends by feeling like a film-school experiment.

I shouldn't pretend the movie's terrible, but neither is it all that. In ten years, it will be looked back on as an oddity - "Remember that time Tom Ford made a movie?" - watched by those curious about its director's career in fashion - if in ten years anyone remembers Tom Ford at all.

Fashion, exhausted

Though I like getting dressed, I don't like to shop; unfortunately, in order to continue with the former I must go shopping from time to time. To that end, between Christmas and New Years I set out for the high street. I didn't buy anything, but I came to realization that, if shared by others, will be bad for designers and retailers: I don't want anything new.

The bottom line is, nothing I found made my heart race. At TopMan I found some nice shoes, which I thought about buying until I realized I only liked them because they look like a pair I already have; at Barney's, I found an intriguing cardigan from Nice Collective which, likewise, I left behind because I already have a cardigan I like (at a quarter of the price and, to my eye, of superior quality).

One of the few items I would have considered was a white formal shirt with a ruffled bib (it sounds infantalizing, but it wasn't). At $600, it was a bit steep; unfortunately, I have a pretty realistic idea of what it costs to manufacture clothing and when it comes to designer duds, it doesn't seem worth the price. The only way a shirt in white cotton - even a nice-looking one - should cost that amount is if it were hand-stitched by expatriate Russian princesses, which this certainly was not.

So I have shopper's malaise; who cares? If it were the case only for me, it wouldn't matter, but judging from recent economic indicators it's a feeling shared by a lot of people. New things just don't seem very exciting. We're happy with what we have. Unfortunately, this could be a serious problem for everyone who makes his living selling or manufacturing clothes.

Fashion has been on an exhausting merry-go-round since the 1990s, when new ideas essentially stopped appearing. The way people dressed changed a lot during the last century: Poiret did away with the corset, Chanel formalized the vocabulary of modern womens' clothing, Balenciaga obsessed over the set of his sleeves and most every other original thought belonged to Yves Saint Laurent. Yet for all the upheaval of the decades that separate us from those designers, many of their designs continue to be relevant - with a modern touch.

The shirt I described above was from a Belgian company called Martin Margiela, which made its reputation copying and deconstructing old clothes from years gone by; this shirt in particular was copied from one made in London in 1945. London after World War II might seem terribly distant, but, strangely enough, the menswear still looks dapper. For all the tumult and change of the 20th century, sometimes we prefer stasis - but where does that leave creativity?