Miscellaneous

Faded and Ripped

Photo via nytimes.com: Tony Cenicola/The New York Times (middle); Duffy-Marie Arnoult/WireImage.com (right)
Shredded white jeans, $495 at Maison Martin Margiela; (212) 989-7612. Vintage Levi’s, $148 to $198 at What Comes Around Goes Around; (212) 343-9303. Byrdie Bell with an unidentified male on the right.
I can dress like myself again, and the rest of the world is catching on, that is like a bum. Put away your creased dark raw denim, faded ripped blue jeans are returning in full force. At least that is what the NYTIMES.COM is telling me.

Male Physique

Sascha Kooienga, left, and Artem Emelianov

Photo: Eric Johnson for the New York Times.

You can never be too thin. The ideal male physique on the runway is like 6' and weighs less than 150 lbs. The trend probably began with designer Hedi Slimane who essentially took the men out of men's fashion and replaced men with street urchins.


Thom Browne's Fall 2008 collection.

Siamese Twins.
Photo by Marcio Madeira via men.style.com.

Big Bird.
Photo by Don Ashby via men.style.com

Batman.
Photo by Marcio Madeira via men.style.com.

Thom Browne

Photo: Marcio Madeira from men.style.com

Is Thom Browne a great American men's designer or is he Pee-wee Herman in disguise? Scratch that, the real life Pee-wee. Either way you can't help but notice his works and him. He actually practices what he preaches.

Thom Browne

Well protected from the elements or even a possible light kick in between the legs. By Thom Browne. Photo by Hiroko Masuike for the New York Times.

A piece by fashion critic high priestess Cathy Horyn

Spring 2008 Menswear

All pictures from http://men.style.com.

From left (the pictures are left aligned and wrapped to next line automatically)
Burberry Prorsum. Can you handle the colors? The ninja footwear? Photo: Don Ashby & Olivier Claisse;
Dries van Noten. Black and hot pink. Photo: Marcio Madeira;
Dries van Noten. Green fluorescent highlight pen colored short trench - hot color this season. You just can't be ignored. Photo: Marcio Madeira;
Neil Barrett. Just beige, black and white and gray. Photo: Marcio Madeira;
Prada. Looks oddly familiar a few seasons back. Photo: Marcio Madeira;
Burberry Prorsum. The colors seem more convincing and wearable, similar to what van Noten does. Photo: Don Ashby & Olivier Claisse.
Dsquared. Similar to what Neil Barrett is doing. Add a touch of punk to a traditional Summer suit or Spring? The three button closure is somewhat a turn-off. Photo: Marcio Madeira;
Dsquared. Very clean looking silhouette. Photo: Marcio Madeira;


Other collections aren't shown here, because they are incredibly boring or repetitive or both. And the McQueen collection is just too lad driven, so boy man even by men's fashion standard.

New York Fashion Week Feb 2-9

Fashion Week is underway. I should check out Bryant Park more often if not because of the shivering cold (and the job that actually pays me and keeping me busy even during lunch hour). I saw them building out the space about a couple of weeks ago, I was just thinking how come The Pond was gone and in its place some auto show from Mercedes? I didn't know Mercedes took the place of Olympus to be the Fashion Week sponsor.

Talking about fashion (do I need a reason to justify what I write? It's my own god damn online diary, I write whatever I so please bottomline), I read from the WSJ paper edition that designers of mens fashion are actually turning to more average looking models to sell their clothes. Buff, metrosexual, and waif looking guys are shown the door. It's the average looking dude that get the job these days. Since it appears on the Journal, so it must have a business angle. The rationale of using average looking guy is men, as opposed to women, are actually doing the shopping these days.

Here is an excerpts from the Wall Street Journal article "You should Be So 'Average'" by Ray A. Smith on Friday, February 2, 2007.

Last year, 75% of the men bought their own clothes, compared with 52% in 1995, according to Marshal Cohen ... At middle-of-the-road J.C. Penney, men now make 70% of the purchases of men's clothes, a reversal from about five years ago when women made 70% of the purchases.
That means nowadays the model can make or break a buying decision for male shoppers.

And one of those average looking guy is called Terron Wood, a 6-foot-2, 170-pound model who appears for Dolce & Gabbana. Apparently the fashion industry has a very very different definition of average from you and me.

Official Fashion Week site here.
No picture man, I am not a paid subscriber of the WSJ, so no picture here. If you want to see what Mr Wood looks like, do a search and find out what the fashion world means by average or regular....Well we all need the fashion industry to remind us how ugly we all are.