a you-can't-fire-me-i-quit approach to baldness

i would not claim that i always have a definite non-paranormal explanation for every case that is put before me but there are usually several plausible possibilities. one thing to bear in mind is the unreliability of eyewitness testimony. there is also the possibilty of deliberate hoaxes.
'unreliability of eyewitness testimony' - and yet we put such stock in eyewitness testimony in the legal system.

x x x x x

Q how do you come up with the cute names for the stuff in your collection?
A mythical lands in my head etc
- Rumi Neely

'i sometimes find it more satisfying for a girl to check me out than a guy to check me out'
'i've started to just smile at people because i've realised the power of smiling at another woman'
@nowness - when women look at other women on the street #thewaywedress #thefemalegaze

don't be afraid to be open minded. your brain is not going to fall out.

he knew why he wanted to kiss her. because she was beautiful. and before that, because she was kind. and before that, because she was smart and funny. because she was exactly the right kind of smart and funny. because he could imagine taking a long trip with her without ever getting bored. because whenever he saw something new and interesting, or new and ridiculous, he always wondered what she'd have to say about it - how many stars she'd give it and why.

'it's one of those things where i'm right, so i'm just going to keep stating my argument calmly. i'm reading [philosopher] Kierkegaard and truth is a power -- but it's A power, it's not THE power. people don't do it just because it's the truth, people do it because they're afraid.
everybody in this situation was afraid of getting in trouble, so that's why they were stopping me. they weren't listening, they didn't use common sense.'

xxxx

i am presently experiencing life at a rate of several WTFs per hour

xxxx

fashion is one of the very few forms of expression in which women have more freedom than men. and i don't tink it's an accident that it's typically seen as shallow, trivial and vain. it's the height or irony that women are valued for our looks, encouraged to make ourselves beautiful and ornamental.. and are then derided as shallow and vain for doing so. and it's a subtle but definite form of sexism to take one of the few forms of expression where women have more freedom, and treat it as a form of expression that's inherently superficial and trivial. like it or not, fashion and style are primarily a women's art form. and i think it gets treated as trivial because women get treated as trivial.
- Fashion is a Feminist Issue - Greta Christina

'i'm really trying to grow up the brand and appeal to a wider age group than just young, cool girls who can wear short lengths and want relaxed styles. i just make clothes i think are missing, what i want to wear and what my friends wnat to wear, what Mum wants to wear.'
- Kym Ellery
'you wanna be upper class, first class. but on a plane crash, everybody dead.'
- Kanye West

evolution rather than a revolution
the too-hard basket isn't for recycling
wearing our flag as a cape; a racist superhero
we're all boat people from the UK
Australia in the scheme of things; you're the Tasmania of the world
clicking likes; your protest for the week
i wish i had Synesthesia

sui generis

'we always have said we want our customers to buy into our product because they have an emotional connection to the garment, not because they are buying into a trend or something. there's heart in what we do and i know it sounds lame but it's the only way we know how.'
- Luke Sales, Romance was Born

'the online world is one thing ; make sure your connections and work become tangible at some point.'
@StreetEtuiquette

work for a cause, not for applause | live life to express, not to impress

injustice remains untouched by the ravages of time and commerce. imagine if Jay had lived through the release of The Blueprint and then got cut down right before dropping The Black Album. how many churches would have been erected in his honour? now he must contend with rumours about the Illuminati and faking a pregnancy.

as a true child of the Internet, he finds himself in a near-constant state of flux; a restless neo-artisan with a penchant for cross-pollination.

you're going to miss every moment of this.. of everything.
sometimes i feel like i'm already gone / ahead and im just vividly remembering everything that's happening in the moment. fur real. sometimes everything feels too familiar to be just happening for the first time. the show feels like that sometimes. you can't understand something totally and enjoy it at the same time, i think. but it's fun to not know all of it. everybody wants some magic. something they can't quite figure out.
the rules of the Internet are the rules of our new universal language like the Bible, like the Constitution, we make rules to break later and be better. pushing forward until we are all just a bodiless conscious, buzzing through the air trading information, conversing, testing ideas without fear or violence. free from limit. this is the moment we decide if we want to be the kid pouring salt on a worker's head at the sit in, or the kids sitting calmly in the face of what everyone else identifies as futility.
..or we can be the kid sitting back, just trying to eat. ignoring what's happening in front of them. not having an opinion until the aceptable choice is handed to you by people you don't know.
we have reached a moment wehre there is no 'real' because we don't care anymore we can curate what's real every day on our timeline feed. the boundary of what's real and what we want to be real is as volatile as the worth of our bitcoin or human heartbeat.
this is an important moment.
but be[a]ware that we are all making it up as we go. together.
our human collective unconscious.
our deep web.
learn [to/the] code.
they're arguing about driving, or cooking with coconut oil instead of olive oil, or something else they themselves will not care about or remember in a month, year, ten years, 100 years, the age of the universe.
it's not a very pretty or perfect love, or even necessarily a romantic love. it doesn't look cool. it's more like two helpless things in the wild, and one says 'i'll protect you', and both parties know it's a lie because there's no way either of them can protect the other from anything. that lie is the best way to describe this love. that feeling of not having to say 'i'm scared', because you share the exact feelings without having words over or under complicate it, that's worth more than protection. it's a connection. the less alone. this is all we look for on Earth.

- i'd like to say Holden Caufield, but that's untrue. i'm probably more Gonzo. he's just a weird dude that just wants to be liked. no one really knows what he is. he's into chickens. why is everyone hatin' on dude being into chickens?

we are the dreams of our parents lost in the future | who hide the deepest desires and wear a mask like a lucha
- Life: The Biggest Troll

make your own momentum
truly the Salvador Dali of our time
make a diagram of how art makes you feel
stop in front of a painting that you like. call someone you miss and describe it.
find something that you don't understand. embrace it.

'i knew you must be feeling strange. i think its the lack of comfort zone and the anonymity.' - a loved one

i wanted to read one last thing to you. it's actually something a good friend had wrote describing my world. it says:
'the caterpillar is a prisoner to the streets that conceived it. its only job is to eat or consume everything around it, in order to protect itself from this mad city. while consuming its environment, the caterpillar begins to notice ways to survive. one thing it noticed is how much the world shuns him, but praises the butterfly. the butterfly represents the talent, the thoughtfulness, and the beauty within the caterpillar.'
- 'Mortal Man', Kendrick Lamar

never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world. indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.

'look at Scottish guys wearing kilts - you could look at them and laugh, but the way they carry themselves, how can you? you can wear some of the weirdest things and be cool. if you believe in it,s that's what makes it cool' - Andre 3000
'find someone who has a life that you want and figure out how they got it. read books, pick your role models wisely. find out what they did and do it.' - Lana Del Rey

'coding is a beautiful thing. if there is a God, he definitely codes. there are fail-safes in the world. that's code. i don't want young black kids to aspire to be rappers or ballers. even lawyers and doctors - those are service positions. i want them to be coders. they can make their own worlds then. they don't need anybody else. i love hearing those kids' ideas, all these kids on the Internet. the excitement of making something, that's the spark of God.' - Donald Glover

why Salvador Dali is his multihyphenate hero

'people are afraid things won't work. you work in the Arts! everything isn't supposed to work.'
- anonymous
@Steve_G_Lover

like it's crazy but the more i understand the world of art and commerce and fashion the more i realise how truly corny everyone is.
i used to take my cool for granted. never again. you shoudn't either.
when companies come for your cool make em pay. make it expensive for them to do you. whether its immediate or the long con make them pay.
i dont really mean money when i say expensive. i mean always make a company risk something pricey to associate with you.
just value your cool for reals people. don't let motherfuckers skate when they do shit that cheapens your cool like 'street style'.
required reading on the subject: http://genius.com/Outkast-hollywood-divorce-lyrics
@IbraLikeZebra

i often wonder how many good artists die in NY daily that we'll never discover because they suffered from a lack of distribution.
it's okay kid. it's okay to die cool and poor. let's stop 'failure' shaming people that live with their mama. do you.
know your worth. the money you're offered is rarely what you're worth anyway. power. power is what you want.
@IbraLikeZebra

Q i feel like crying all the time, what's wrong with me?
A you have an extreme case of human
@FamLikeFamily

(what's a conspiracy you believe but haven't told anyone because you don't want people to think you're crazy?):
- sometimes i feel like peole can read my thoughts. not always and i have a pretty wandering mind so hopefully this isn't true.
- i believe i'm a retard but everybody is pretending i'm not.
- i honestly believe i have a stutter. i don't really think about it, b ut i can sometimes catch myself saying the same words over again. it's not a big one or anything that will cause me to have social problems, but i would have repeated about a fifth of the words i've typed in this comment if i had been saying them aloud in a conversation. no one, and i mean no one, has agreed with me when i bring it up. also, i always feel like it's a task to tell a small story during a conversation. it kind of messes with me because i am always thinking in one straight, cohesive string. i don't stutter when i think, just when i speak.. sometimes.. i think.
- i believe i may have suffered a small stroke or some form of mild brain trauma because everything i do feels as if its in a fog. thinking, reading, hell even going about my day. i certainly don't feel as if i'm learning things as well as i could when i was younger starting some time in my junior year of high school.
- rocks are soft, they just tense up when touched.
- that our minds can see into the future its just not something we understand, we get very fast flashes of the future and then we live the event at some point in the future it feels like deja vu.
- the fashion industry was behind every political assassination of the last 200 years.
- sometimes i wonder if i'm actually yelling out all my thoughts really loudly and people just ignore me because they're used to it.
- Lyme disease was created as a means of biological warfare. we brought over tonnes of Nazi scientists after WW2, one of which was fascinated with using ticks and other insects as a means to spread disease. he was stationed on plumb island near Lyme, CT. a few decades after his arrival, the first incident of 'Lyme disease' occurred after people were bitten by ticks. i don't believe it was intentionally released into the public, but i do think it was an engineered bacteria.
- that time is a loop and we've all been experiencing the universe in the exact same order for eternity. thus meaning that when we die even though it may take an amount of time that we can't even fathom, our universe and everything in it will be delicately rearranged exactlly how it is / was / will be.
- that my life has already been predetermined and that everyone around me is just acting accordingly.
via

'A DECADE AFTER LAUNCHING THE GLOBAL FASHION BRAND WILLOW, AUSTRALIAN DESIGNER KIT WILLOW HAS EMBARKED ON A NEW JOURNEY WITH A PASSIONATE TEAM TO CREATE KITX.
“KITX IS COMMITTED TO BEING AN EXAMPLE OF TRUE STYLE FOR THE MODERN WOMAN IN A NEW GLOBAL ERA. AT THE CORE OF KITX ARE ITS ETHICS AND VALUES – WE SIMPLY DON'T BELIEVE IN QUALITY WITHOUT HONESTY. THE INTEGRITY OF THE BRAND IS KEY AND THE HIGH-QUALITY, SEDUCTIVE, DESIGN-LED STYLE WILL NOT BE COMPROMISED.”
“I STRONGLY BELIEVE IN A BETTER WORLD THOUGH THE SIMPLE MANTRA OF MAKING WOMEN LOOK AND FEEL BEAUTIFUL WITHOUT HARMING OUR PRECIOUS PLANET. EVERYONE CAN WIN.” SAYS KIT
“KITX IS BORN FROM A SPIRIT OF KINDNESS, INTEGRITY AND TRANSPARENCY WITH X REPRESENTING THE FUTURE. KITX WILL FOCUS ON CREATING SEDUCTIVE AND MODERN DESIGNS OUR CUSTOMERS WILL LOVE TO WEAR WHILE ALSO CARING ABOUT THE IMPACT EVERY DECISION HAS ON OUR PLANET AND ITS PEOPLE.”

'they have no idea what it is like to lose home at the risk of never finding home again | have your entire life split between two lands and become the bridge between two countries'
- 'first generation immigrant'
'you are waiting for someone who is not coming back | meaning | you are not living your life | hoping someone else will realise they can't live theirs without you | but realisations don't work like that'
- 'absence of logic and presence of pain'
- Rupi Kaur

'i just wanted people to get across something that they don't normally talk about, and why aren't they talking about it. i mean, i feel that way: why am i pretending to be Troy? wha am i rapping about puns? when actually, i'm araid that my parents are gonna die or i'm afraid that i'm going to be Tyrese [Gibson].
those feelings are the types of things that connect us, not showing the car you drove or the stack you have.
i used to have this fantasy that when i turn 78 i would do everything i hadnt done thus far. i'm going to do heroin, kill a person, blow dudes, just everything that's left to do in life. but as i get older, i realise that there's a good chance that i won't even make it to 78. first of all, i'm a black male. secondly, every male in my family has a lifespan of like mid-60s. so technically, i'm mid-life right now, even though i'm not that old.
but that's how i started looking at shit, so i started to wonder why i'm doing stuff.
why am i trying so hard to be nice to the guy at the ATM and making him not scard of me, or why am i not doing drugs, why am i living for other people?'
via

everbody's somebody's everything
nobody really cares if you don't go to the party
i like Charlie Murphy's description of a troll: 'Habitual Line-Stepper'
it's about who you miss at 2pm when you're busy, not 2am when you're lonely

'i hope i've never made it. i hope i never make it. i wake up every morning, and i'm like, i gotta fucking get this. i gotta be better. i gotta be better. i don't think i'll ever feel satisfied.'

'on the difficult days, when the world's on your shoulders, remember that diamonds are made under the weight of mountains'
- 'diamonds'
'i don't care if what we have will never be love. if we weren't together in a past life or written in the stars. all you need to know is that when my mind wanders off it is always home to you.
- 'wandering minds'
'it's a strange thing to see you now and be unable to recall how it felt to love you. like a half remembered dream, the essence of what we shared is there but the details are hazy. like a house i grew up in, you're still familiar to me, but the feeling of home is missing.'
- 'half remembered dream'
'the most painful part of losing you was that it didn't matter how close, how familiar we became with one another over the years, it only took a fraction of the time to become total strangers again - for the texture of your touch, the melody of your voice, to become a distant memory.'
- 'familiarity'
'you're a miracle, i still believe that. you just happened to someone else.'
- divine intervention
'i know behind that big brave front is something soft. something that dismantles whenever your song comes on. that still twists up tight when you hear his voice. your prescription, take care of yourself. eat well and rest up. love, like all illness, takes time to sweat out.'
- 'the fever'
- Beau Taplin

earlier this year, Kanye West told media that he hates to smile in photos because of an old book he picked up in a Paris flea market, that showed portraits of 19th Century nobility posing in staunch outfits while looking very serious.

hope for the best. expect the worst.

'the Fibonacci sequence can be seen in nature, where the sunflower, for instance, has 21 spirals on its head in the direction and 34 going in the other - consecutive Fibonacci numbers. the outside of a pinecone has spirals that run clockwise and counterclockwise, and the ratio of the number of spirals is sequential Fibonacci values. in the elegant curves of a nautilus shell, each complete new revolution will be a ratio of 1:1.1618, when compared to the distance from the centre of the previous spiral.'
- p53, Cracking the Da Vinci Code - Simon Cox





x x x x x



- got damn i'm in such a good place, feel like my brain been wearing pajamas to work
- sometimes you gotta remember you're valuable, and can do what you want
- consumers full of shit. media full of shit. music industry full of shit
- undersell, overdeliver
via @famlikefamily

- slow money better than no money. constantly being in survival mode sucks, but the ones that make it out have the most creativity because they have to.
feeling like shit can't get any worse really is empowering or me, it makes me live my life the way i want to with what i have. no internal consequences.
- my dancing once saved a life
- i still think kanye can do better. - kanye probably thinks so too. but he'sa dad now and he has a lot of shit to lose, he gotta eat.
via askf.am

evolution rather than a revolution

'beautiful words in English':
- assemblage - a gathering
- dalliance - a brief love affair
- demure - shy, reserved
- eloquence - beauty & persuasion in speech
- ephemeral - short-lived
- epiphany - a sudden revelation
- erstwhile - at one time, for a time
- ethereal - gaseous, invisible but detectable
- evocative - suggestive
- gossamer - the finest piece of thread, a spider's silk
- nemesis - an unconquerable archenemy
- onomatopoeia - a word that sounds like its meaning
- opulent - lush, luxuriant
- panacea - a solution for al problems
- pastiche - an artwork combining materials from various sources
- plethora - a large quantity
- quintessential - most essential
- serendipity - finding something nice while looking for something else
- talisman - a good luck charm

xx x x x xx

'over the course of the last year, i've been whittling down my everyday rotation to fewer clothing items that i really, really like. put glamourously, one might call me a uniform dresser, like Grace Coddington. once could also refer to it as 'literally wearing the same shirt every day'. there are a few reasons for this.
1. i am a writer and live in New York, ergo most of my salary goes toward rent. better to stock your wardrobe with very similar items and let your co-workers figure out for themselves how large your closet really is.
2. i am a creature of habit.
3. once you graduate from college, you cannot slouch around in leggings and a tank top on a weekday because you are too hungover to function. if you are suffering the 7 a.m. mind-fry of last night's cheap white wine, it helps to have a limited (read: no-brainer, because actually where has your brain gone) supply of clothing on hand. preferably one sensible enough to delude people into thinking you are a real life adult.
4. i have, at least for the time being, figured out what works on my body and what i like.
if i'm going to have a limited wardrobe and grow deeply attached to every single thing in it, i need to clean up my act & learn how to take care of my stuff. i'm years away from flossing on a daily basis or actually buying more soap when the bottle gets low rather than just adding some water to it, but by god, i will grow the hell up for the sake of my prized retirement home slippers.
let's be clear: mastering wardrobe maintenance is an ongoing process, because as it turns out, it's kind of a lot of work. i have started taking my shoes to the shoe repair when they get gnarly in an effort to slow their eventual deterioration. i brought a skirt to the tailor to get an undone hem fixed. i even internalised my roommate's advice about separating clothing by colour before washing it and honouring each individual item's tag instructions, which is huge because i hate admitting she's right.
via'



'i've always thought of the t-shirt as the Alpha and Omega of the fashion alphabet' - Giorgio Armani

do not trust atoms, they make up everything

'i think everybody has kind of been lied to. i think everybody is just figuring out that a lot of this stuff is just constructs. like when people were like 'CDs are $20' - they were expensive, and then you found out that that's not necessary to make a CD. and they were like, 'why were you doing that ?' and now people are angry because music can be free and enjoyed by all.
why do we burn crops to make sure that the dollar doesn't get weaker ? why do we not give that food to people who need that food ? there are still so many things were i'm like 'that still doesn't make sense', and we are at a time where an individual person can do mass amounts of good. ..they can also do bad - as the world grows, one person can also make worse & worse things happen, but the opposite is almost true, & i don't see that happening. we have so much good that we can do now with one person, that we should all be looking at global problems. we are still in survival mode. i feel that if we could all back up a little bit & see how important it is for us to start working toward world goals, it would be really great. ..and the internet allows that, but no-one's doing that. everybody's too busy with, i think, things that won't matter in a couple of years..or a year.
i hate niche; i'm so tired of niche. niche is something that i'm glad to see go away from this part decade. it makes sense, i guess, 'after the internet'; that model for a lot of things; making it niche. but like, i think we just need to be smarter. making a product for only a select few; you can definitely sustain that product. but i feel like that risk that you take, of like, maybe its good for everybody, is worth it. i only want to make things that are going to reach as many people as possible. i don't believe in niche - that comes from wanting more money. ..or not even more money, but just stable money - and i'm not interested in making things safe. things are unsafe. people can print a 3D gun right now. things are never going to back to not that, so what we have to do is (looking at humanity from far away), 'that's true, then how do we make things better together?' no-one really talks about that. maybe people are afraid. i know i probably look like a goober saying, 'things should get better', but i feel like i'm the only one that really feels that way. but i don't think i am. every time, people seem to connect. i think that people should know; they are that. they're the ones that do that. people don't feel that way. people are afraid. people are scared. because you have to be vulnerable, and the internet's not a very cool place to be vulnerable. because no-one feels like they're good enough.
we are all around that age where jobs weren't there after they came out, and that's why i feel like i'm being lied to. because everybody just kind of became a freelance photographer, a freelance.. and then you realise, no-one's really happy. no-one's really happy because we're not attaining those goals that everybody told you to. we're supposed to have kids, and do all of these things, and no-one's really happy because they realise that all of those things are kind of not what make you happy. that's what our parents did to have purpose. ..and now we have all of that stuff, and the thing we're supposed to do is really be helping each other. but we've been brought up in this kind of, 'well i'm supposed to be the top-ranking manager at this thing by this point', and its not real. its just not necessary. everybody should just be following their passion, because they're going to be good at that. but people are too worried about their jobs, because people have got to eat. its sad, but its true, and i feel bad. i don't want to be the guy on camera being like, 'you should be following your dreams', and then people are like, 'i have five kids'. i can't do that, but i think its true; people are scared and vulnerable because its dangerous to do that. but i don't think we're going to grow if we don't.
you go on Tumblr, you go online; everything you see is nostalgia because people are afraid of the future. i just don't want to be afraid of the future, honestly.
there's no patterns. i mean, no patterns that work. in comedy all of the time, people used to be like, 'how did you get that job?' big people, like Chris Rock, they're like, 'i don't know'. all of them, not one of them is like, 'here's what you do: you talk to Mr Hollywood..' it doesn't work that way. anybody who did anything good for a bunch of people was breaking so many rules on the way there. there weren't anybody telling them, 'this is good', except their friends maybe. ..and most of the times, they didn't. most of the times, their friends were like, 'you're nuts.' so i feel like, we have those tools now to do that - an 8 year old has that; has a computer - but we're not using it. but that's just how i feel.'
- 'Childish Gambino' / Donald Glover via

holy chic

some excerpts from a Scott Schuman interview from 2012:

how would you connect fashion to elegance?
'elegance is a certain gracefulness. Garance and i were recently talking about the most elegant people we’ve met and she mentioned a couple of names. i said, 'you know, it’s interesting, i knew of all those people. and i don’t know if we could call all of them fashionable or stylish'. but what they all had in common was that they all had good manners. they were very graceful, very well-mannered, very polite. a lot of these things are what actually most people see as elegance. elegance really expresses itself through one’s actions.'

the word 'intellectual' was coined in a time of great political distress. does fashion have a political role? and in which way?
'maybe not so much fashion as style: it has a political role in the sense that social implications go with the way you are dressed. no political candidate would dress in Rick Owens. that doesn’t say 'political power and stability' to most people. they are dressed in the wardrobe that says 'political power, political stability'. these people are not really expressing who they are through fashion. they’re actually hiding it in the idea of what political power should look like.'

how would you relate the concept of 'fashion' to the one of 'style'?
'i’ve thought about this a lot. fashion and style are like the wheels of a clock. fashion runs more quickly. and like in a clock, the smaller wheel makes the larger work. so many people like to say 'style is eternal, but fashion is right now'. what you have to do is fashion history and see that, even in men’s wear, a navy blazer from 1970 looks totally different from a navy blazer from 2010. lthough most people say that fashion is going faster and faster, yet, my book from three years ago, continues to sell very well; to inspire people. fashion’s cycle may have spinned up, but the way people want to change their look simply hasn’t.'

what does fashion have to do with intellectuality?
'to me, the question would be more about 'style' than 'fashion'. fashion doesn’t have anything to do with intellectual, unless you’re a designer and you have the intellect to put together different inspirations. someone like Dries van Noten really puts together separate ideas, from different cultures, different concepts. style relates more directly to the intellect: everyone uses his or her style to fit in the social group they want to be part of. nobody dresses different from what they want to be. when guys wear football clothes, they want to look like the regular guy, they don’t want to express the same thing as when they wear ties and jackets. the expectations are different. their style is different. they use their intellect to find how to fit in.'

the impact of blogs, and the importance of street photography, seems to indicate that fashion is becoming somehow democratic. do you believe in that?
'the medium now is so inexpensive: it’s so cheap to do a magazine, to take photographs. so it means that more people can produce it, and that people have more choice. they can choose who they want to listen to. i don’t think that the rise of the Internet has hurt Condé Nast, but now, instead of three voices on fashion, it’s like television: there are the big majors, and many other channels to choose from. so people want one international channel, like a Vogue, a Harper’s Bazaar, and something local, that relates to who they are. there’s more of it, and people can select. they want something good.'

faux ever

'that's the thing about the London shows: they only really like you if you are really new, really young and really really poor. they like to discover you and give you your first break. they love it if someone like Isabella Blow swoops in and buys your entire collection. or if Kate Moss walks off in all your clothes.
but if you are already doing okay, chugging along nicely with a rack in Harvey Nichols and some Matches orders under your belt, then they have nothing to write about. there's no story. they are looking for the next fashion forward freak with Perspex frocks and feather knickers to put on their front page.'
- p7
'one of the perks of following New York is that you get to see what all the other designers are doing. it is always worth looking at Marc Jacobs, Anna Sui, Michael Kors, Calvin Klein, Ralph Lauren and Tuleh, and getting the occasional glimpse of Oscar Pay My Renta, as the girls call him, just to make sure that we are on message. as a small company, it is important to get a ew items that are similar to what the fash pack are hailing as the trends for the season - a Russian-inspired skirt here, an Edwardian-meets-modern-looking shirt there, a sharp jacket, a silver coat.
if everyone is going red and you're the only one insisting on turquoise then you won't make the pages and pages of round-ups at the end of the season. those 'essential things for summer/autumn/winter' sections that grace the front pages of the glossies are bread and butter to us new kids on the block.'
- p13
''yeah, well, she's a supermodel,' says Mimi, snorting smoke out of her nose. 'she isn't,' i say. 'she's a top model.' 'anyway, there isn't such a thing these days,' says Alexander. 'there aren't any names any more.' 'tell them that,' says Mimi.
'just last week i was showing some strumpet into a frock and she was giving me such a lot of attitude. and i thought, fuck off, you're twelve and from fucking Siberia or some such shitholde. just because she was the face of Gucci or Prada or whatever, and Steve Meisel has used her in a couple of shoots, she thinks she can lord it about.'
'oh her,' says Alexander. 'my mater booked her for some shows in New York. turns out she can't walk. anyone who booked her for anything only let her come out in one look, so they could say they had her in the show. but other than that she was shit. she can't get down the catwalk. imagine not being able to put one foot in front of the other. how tragic is that?''
- p31
'talking of sizes, we only go up to a 14, and that's a normal 14, not Marks and Spencer sizing. Marks size 8 is equivalent to a Chanel size 12. i often get berated by larger women about why we only go up to a 14 and don't take into account the fuller figure. there are numerous reasons for this sizing decision.
firstly, it comes down to cost. simply in material terms, it costs me twice as much to make a size 16 dress as it does to make the same garment in a size 8, and i can't pass the cost on to the shop and therefore the customer. if size 16 clothes were nearly twice the price of size 8 clothes, then i might be tempted. but sadly they are not. and when the profit margins are as slight as they are, i can't afford to cater for the larger lady.
secondly, there isn't the demand for big designer clothes. maybe it is a vicious cycle: we don't make them large, therefore large girls feel too fat for fashion and aren't even tempted to go designer shopping. but all i know is that at the end of the season i am left with more 14s than any other size. come to our sample sale, or staff end-of-season sale, and all we have are 14s. granted, we have a few shop-soiled 10s, but it's normally large sizes that are left. so we concentrate on the 8-10 market, because that is where our client base lies.
there is also a third reason for a lack of size 16s, and it is probably a lot less diplomatic and a littlce more prejudiced. fashion is a business that deals in fantasy, dreams and illusion, and who fantasizess about being a size 16? unless of course you are a 20, then 16 probably looks rather good from where you are sitting. but on the whole, no woman sits down in the hairdresser's, flicks through a Vogue magazine and wishe she were the large girl in the advert.
designer clothes look better on skinny bodies. i have one designer mater who, when rather drunk at the Vogue drinks before London Fashion Week, once admitted that if he could get his clothes to walk down the runway without anyone in them, he would be a happy man. 'the lines hang in the right places without tits and arses,' he slurred. 'if only a flat piece of paper could move down the catwalk on its own. to be honest, as a designer, the last thing you want is anyone wearing your clothes.'
and i'm afraid i know of understand what he means. dresses, shirts and skirts look so perfect when you draw them on pieces of paper in the studio. it's only when the fabric flaws are introduced and the patter cutter says that the dress won't hang properly. so the thinner they are, the closer they are to the piece of paper the dress was designed on, and the better it is for me or any other designer.'
- p77
'at the moment, all my clobber is made in the UK. well, as anyone in the business will tell you, this, of course, is strictly not ture. you can have your stuff made up anywhere in the world, but just so long as the last hook and eye is put on in the UK, or the zip is finished off here, you can shove 'Made in the UK' on your label.
ten years ago, being British-made and carrying the British quality mark actually meant something; these days it just means that someone's put a button on before it went on the shop floor. and if you look closely enough, you can tell it wasn't made here. the tension might not be right in the stitching, the seam might be crooked, the garment won't be steamed or folded correctly.'
- p78
'the other great problem is cabbage. cabbage is the stuff that falls off the back of a lorry, or indeed out of the factory gate, and ends up on a market stall next to the cabbage - hence its name. cabbage doesn't come from the factory short-serving the client, i.e. delivering 2000 handbags instead of 2200. it comes from the leftover product that the factory hasn't used in the make of the bag/dress/shirt. when ordering material for your bag/dress/shirt you have to add on at least another 10 per cent for mistakes. if the factory is careful and doesn't need this extra material, they are left with another 10 per cent of your product that is unaccounted for. it disappears out the back of the factory and ends up in a Florence or Milan market. the higher the order, the larger the amount of cabbage.
the Gucci handbags in Florence market look just like the real ones, simply because they are the real ones. the Pucci scarf is the Pucci scarf, and the Dior wallet is a Dior wallet. we are extremely wary of cabbage and order all our material to the exact metre rating for all our clothes in Hungary. so there is very little margin for error. we are a small company and can't really afford cabbage.
fake goods are an entirely different story. made of sub-standard product with poor stitching and often to never-produced designs, fakes are a Far Eastern specialty.'
- p81
'in the end, we are catering for a very small group of women who are so highly fashion aware that once a collection has been on the rails for more than four weeks it has lost its allure. most designers are running to keep up. in an attempt to keep piquing the interest of these fickle women they are coming out with pre-Fall and pre-Spring/Summer collections in the middle of the season to keep their sales figures on a more even keel.
some designers who head up their own brand, and others like Karl Lagerfeld for Chanel, Galliano for Dior and Williamson for Pucci, have to design eight collections a year.
it's not wonder, then, that fashion looks like it is running out of ideas. some designs have become so watered-down and derivative. if you are working that hard to keep up with the consumer whose appetite is increasingly insatiable, you have to ask yourself, where will it all stop?
some people are saying that fashion shows will become unnecesary. pre-Fall and pre-Spring/Summer collections traditionally go into the shops without being shown on the catwalks - although some Americans broke that mould last Summer and showed their pre-Fall. but usually they don't get shown, which brings into question the reason for showing in the first place. firstly, your clothes get ripped off and go straight onto the high street before you have managed to contact your stitchers in Hungary.
secondly, the internet, Style.com and the weekly fashion mags deliver their verdict on your show and display the images way before Vogue and Harpers, so your collection feels old hat beore it even hits the shops.'
- p181
'some designers employ companies whose sole job it is to count the number of column inches and picture credits they get in a magazine, and pressure is applied accordingly. so, just as an editor is about to go out on a shoot she'll find her rail of clothes called back in and the white Viktor and Rolf shirt will be exchanged for MaxMara, or a Versace, or an Armani. the black trousers they'd called in from Vivienne Westwood will be exchanged for a pair from an advertiser. it won't be the fantastic silk dress that they change, but something that no-one would really notice.
US Vogue only ever has advertisers on the cover, and there are plenty of magazines that do the same.'
- p187, Fashion Babylon - Imogen Edwards-Jones & Anonymous