It is hard to believe that we have not updated our Antwerp guide since 2013, what with it being one of my favorite cities in Europe. What keeps pulling me back to this city, besides professional obligations? Fashion, obviously, as well as a mix of medieval and contemporary architecture, with some Art Nouveau buildings thrown…
On some level writing a guide to Paris is an exercise in futility. What can one write about a city where you can get a good glass of wine and a decent meal in so many places – as long as you stay away from the touristy areas – and where there is no such thing as the best bakery, since you can only get bread that is either fine or excellent. Therefore, this guide to Paris is the guide to what I have gotten to know over the years of traveling to the City of Light.
I’ve been to Paris about fifty times, I’ve walked it back and forth, and I know I am not nearly close to discovering all the good things it has to offer and have not sufficiently explored all of its neighborhoods (for example, I rarely find myself in Montmartre, or in Charonne, and some day I’d like to eat my way through rue des Martyrs). I’ve not been to the 20th arrondissement, which is where the epicenter of hipsterdom has moved to. I have not yet been to the Catacombs (very ungoth of me), and I’ve never had any luck record shopping in Paris. So this guide is flawed and deeply personal, and I am all ears if you want to add to it.
For the aesthetically inclined and designed conscious there is probably no better place on earth than Tokyo. And for science fiction fans it’s probably the closest thing to encountering another humanoid civilization – things are similar enough and foreign enough in Tokyo to make it all the more exciting, even though in the last couple of years the intractable march of globalization of culture has left an indelible stamp on the city. I’ve been to Tokyo three times and by now feel confident enough to write a guide of sorts. Because there is so much to do and see here, I decided that the best approach is to break it down by neighborhood rather than the list of places, because there are too many of them. Tokyo is vast – don’t even think about spending less than a week here. I’ll list the neighborhoods more or less in order of preference or proximity to each other. Aside from these recommendations, the best advice I can give you is to get lost in the wonderful maze of Tokyo’s streets – because the best spots are often in the back alleys off the main thoroughfares. You’ll need your GPS.
When future historians will examine the list of crimes against humanity of our time, the work of Dolce & Gabbana will feature prominently, or, as they say in fashion, boldly. The current exhibition of the dismal duo’s oeuvre at Grand Palais in Paris drives this point home with such ferocious force as to make one’s eyes bleed from all the ludicrous pomposity on display. Mistitled Du Coeur a la Main, it should have been called The Kingdom of Kitsch, because that’s what Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana have built, both at their brand and with this show at one of the world’s most venerable museums, whose stones are undoubtedly groaning with shame at having been burdened with so much bad taste.
Last year I promised to lean into supporting smaller brands, and I have valiantly tried to visit as many showrooms as possible, so much so that I have not seen much of Paris this time. Each season I receive an avalanche of invitations, but I am just one person, so I am taking an opportunity to offer my apologies to those I was not able to visit. In general, many of the brands I’ve seen have stuck to their guns. This is fine, but it also does not provide much food for thought. Quite a few are struggling, but I hope that now that the so-called luxury is in tailspin, it’s their time to come in and offer a superior product at a better price. There is certainly a contingent of men and women ready for it. And I see it as my job to connect these brands with a new audience. So, here it is.
This January Paris greeted us with rain and more rain. In the seven days I saw sun only once – proof that god hates fashion. The weather put a damper on a season that was already decidedly mid. If fashion is supposed to reflect our culture, what it tells us is that our culture is mired in mediocrity. Note that I did not say that it was an awful season, nor am I particularly disappointed, which means that I got exactly what I expected – mids. Pretty much all the editors I’ve spoken with this season did not expect much either. We’ve capitulated to fashion in the say way the American left has capitulated to Trump. We shrug our shoulders because we know what to expect. We troop from one show to another without much joy and without much anticipation. We are tired; what was once fun is starting to look an awful lot like work.
“We are not a fashion company,” said Satoshi Kuwata, the designer of SETCHU, emphatically, after showing a foldable origami blazer he developed with Davies & Son, the oldest Saville Row tailor. We were at the press preview for his show at Pitti Uomo, the premier men’s trade show in Florence. It was the first SETCHU show, and, according to Kuwata, most likely its last; the reason being that Kuwata’s clothes require careful examination, not to say contemplation.
To say that Kyoto is a magical city is like saying that Francis Bacon is a great artist – neither words nor pictures can relate the firsthand experience. The feeling of peace that washes over you as you stroll the zen gardens or feel the wooden floors of Buddhist temples creak under your unshod feet. Even the hordes of tourists cannot spoil the experience if you are in the right mindset. There is no season when Kyoto is not full of visitors, or at least I have not experienced it. There are ways to avoid them somewhat by visiting the smaller temples, but no way to avoid them by visiting the bigger ones, but visit them you must, at least on your first trip. But you would also be missing out if you viewed Kyoto as just a temple destination; exploring its rich fabric of shops, restaurants, and a maze of architecture is a joy in itself. If you want to do it right, you’d probably need a week or so.
The work of the French-American artist Louise Bourgeois is primal. Primal attachment and primal fear, harking back to her childhood, are intertwined in the tapestry of her work, sometimes literally, inseparable and inevitable. The mother is a smothering, fearsome spider (have you ever noticed that in our stories of dread the spider is always female?), and the angry, vengeful father is constantly on the verge of committing some kind of violence. Both are often reduced to their primal functions; mother becomes a predator with breasts, father is reduced to his sexual organs. Freud would have a field day, as they say, if only Bourgeois, who throughout her life spent countless hours in therapy, would let him.
Speak to fashion enthusiasts today, and they will tell you how impoverished today’s fashion has become, and how hard it is to envision a change. Inevitably they look back, more often than not to the ‘80s and the ‘90s, which many see as the golden age of fashion, the era when a generation of designers created clothes that did not serve as status symbols but had deep cultural roots. In this new, exciting milieu, the Camp greats like Jean Paul Gaultier and Thierry Mugler coexisted with the seriousness of Rei Kawakubo and Yohji Yamamoto, the sober minimalism of Helmut Lang and Jil Sander was juxtaposed against the playfulness of Franco Moschino and John Galliano, and the Antwerp Six and Martin Margiela ushered in a post-bourgeois sensibility that was taken up by the second wave of Belgian designers and culminated in the brutalism of Rick Owens. The idea that fashion could be the provenance of intelligent, culturally educated people, and not that of Houston oil housewives and Thai princesses, came to a climax in the late ‘90s in London with the awe-inspiring work of Hussein Chalayan. And then there was Alexander McQueen, whose clothes-making skills equaled his aesthetic edge.