Is Millionaire Speedy a luxury bag or merch? What about the Balenciaga Maxi Pack? Some people’s idea of merch is Trump’s gold high-tops. Merch as a status symbol. Merch as a subgenre. Merch as a style statement. Merch as an identity marker. Merch as something of waning cultural relevance.
When Denise Martinez and Jorge Arturo Ibarra were introduced to each other by their families some years ago, they realized how much they have in common, from their Mexican heritage to their interest in a certain aesthetic and interior design. Martinez’s father was an engineer; “I grew up in a household full of blueprints,” she says. Ibarra comes from a culinary family, where he learned blueprinting of a different kind, recipes. He got the architecture bug from his grandfather, who designed his own house, down to the furniture, and each of his restaurants. He decided to study architecture, though he eventually settled on furniture design.
The designer Sruli Recht continues to stand as a pioneer in the art of world-building, seamlessly blending ancient techniques with his futuristic vision. His new project, Abyssicide, was created in collaboration with Roland Snook’s Tectonic Formation Lab and Mark Edgoose, in response to the climate crisis, in particular rising sea levels.
Eugene Rabkin speaks with the writer and fashion commentator Derek Guy. Derek has come up in the days of forum culture, has written much about menswear, and has become a reluctant Twitter star. We talk about his style journey, the death of masculine shame about fashion and its unintended consequences, about why so much clothing has…
On this episode we speak with Lorenzo Osti, the son of Massimo Osti, about the life and legacy of his father, the pioneer of modern men’s fashion. We talk about Osti’s design ethos, work methods, and innovations, and how the newly established brand Massimo Osti Studio carries on Osti’s legacy today.
The Stone Island Prototype Research_Series 08 titled the “Multiaxial Project” features 100 unique capes crafted from newly developed fabrics using techniques from the automotive industry. The treatments and fabrics used were born from research and experimentation processes that have yet to be industrialized. The Multiaxial Project pays tribute to the brand’s inaugural collection while continuously pushing the boundary of innovation.
Paolo Roversi is one of the greatest and of the most elusive fashion photographers. His collaborations with designers like Romeo Gigli, Yohji Yamamoto, and Rei Kawakubo are legendary. Yet, his persona is tinged with the same kind of mystery as his images. He rarely publishes books and he rarely exhibits his work.
This last January during men’s fashion week in Paris I visited the showroom of a new brand called K’ANG, and it was one of the most exciting discoveries of that week for a couple of reasons. First, there hasn’t been much going on in the avant-garde space that StyleZeitgeist has championed since its inception in 2006 as a forum for men’s fashion enthusiasts. That niche has exploded and then imploded, with few survivors and few newcomers. Juyoung Kang, the designer of K’ANG, the brand he launched in 2023, has apprenticed with some of the best of the avant-garde – namely, Maurizio Amaded of m.a.+ and Deepti Barth, the former right hand of Carol Christian Poell. AtDEEPTI, he assisted with patternmaking and fabric sourcing, and at m.a.+ he also designed menswear and womenswear across all product categories.
What is art? Does something become art when it’s put into the art context; because it’s shown in a museum or a gallery, or becomes art because an artist says so? Marcel Duchamp certainly thought so. But Duchamp statements had a political purpose, they were addressing the politics of art.
We would like to present to you TAKAHIROMIYASHITATheSoloist’s Spring / Summer 2024 Tokyo collection.
Photos courtesy of TAKAHIROMIYASHITATheSoloist.