Eugene Rabkin is the founder of stylezeitgeist.com. He has contributed articles on fashion and culture to The Business of Fashion, Vogue Russia, Buro247, the Haaretz Daily Newspaper, and other publications. He has taught critical writing and fashion writing courses at Parsons the New School for Design.

AT PITTI UOMO SETCHU ASKS MORE OF US BY ASKING LESS

Fashion, Features/Op-Ed

“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.

THE STYLEZEITGEIST GUIDE TO KYOTO

Culture, Features/Op-Ed

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.

Louise Bourgeois at the Mori Art Museum

Culture

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.

Op-Ed: Why There May Never Be Another McQueen

Fashion, Features/Op-Ed

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.

Op-Ed: Is the Era of Primacy of the Brand Over the Designer Coming to an End?

Fashion, Features/Op-Ed

In 2004 Gucci was flying high. Tom Ford, its designer, and Domenico De Sole, its CEO, were on top of the world, having turned around a flailing brand in the mid-90s and making it one of the hottest tickets in the world of luxury fashion. The pair seemed untouchable; after fighting off a takeover attempt by Bernard Arnault, the founder of LVMH, and having found its perfect white knight in François-Henri Pinault, they formed a rival conglomerate. Who in their right mind would fire them? Pinault did, sending a very clear message across the industry that was in the throes of corporatization – no designer was as important as the brand, even the one who brought it back from the brink.

Paris S/S 2025 Women’s Fashion Week Report

Fashion, Features/Op-Ed

The City of Light welcomed this edition of women’s fashion week with pouring rain; proof that god hates fashion. No matter; the influencers influenced, and I am convinced that a tsunami could not stop the fake dressing for the cameras — mother nature is no match for late capitalism. At Dries Van Noten without Dries Van Noten the change in the makeup of the audience was palpable. The editors were mostly relegated to the second row to make room for “content creators.” In front of me sat a girl who must have been in her early twenties. She was armed with an iPhone ensconced in some gizmo that allowed her to record the show on video in a semi-professional way. Preoccupied with filming, she did not look at the clothes once. And what did she miss? A definite change.

Op-Ed: It’s Time to Stop Calling For Young Designers at Top Fashion Jobs

Fashion, Features/Op-Ed

Over the last several years the generational-divide-as-culture-wars has penetrated fashion. The narrative goes that it’s the same handful of old people who keep juggling for top creative director positions and that those positions should go to younger designers who could bring fresh blood and new ideas, and rejuvenate the stale fashion establishment. That narrative is…