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.

Dries Van Noten

DRIES VAN NOTEN

Fashion

The Man Who Played with Color: One January evening, before the men’s show of the Belgian designer Dries Van Noten, a crowd bustled outside the Musee Bourdelle, tucked away in a side street near the Montparnasse train station in Paris. Outside, the desperate hangers-on were held back by the implacable PR watchdogs, while inside the buyers and the press were trying to squeeze into the tiny Great Hall, where the most prominent statues of Antoine Bourdelle, one of the most prolific student’s of Rodin, stood.

Thecrowd

Op-Ed: Blame the Audience

Best of, Features/Op-Ed

This weekend The New York Times published an Op-Ed article by Vanessa Freedman, the paper’s fashion director, in which she bemoaned the contemporary culture phenomenon called the “new mediocre.” She gave instance after instance, beginning with fashion and extending it to other areas, of mediocrity as the new normal. This, she said, is the marker of the zeitgeist. As far as fashion goes, she wrote, “The reason for that feeling of déjà vu I had as I sat through fashion show after fashion show during the last ready-to-wear season and saw yet more ‘reinventions’ and ‘homages’ to 1960s rock chick dresses and 1970s flared trousers, 1980s power jackets and 1920s flapper frocks, and wondered, ‘How do I explain this lack of new ideas among so many extremely talented designers?’ The new mediocre.”

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Helmut Lang Parfums

Fashion

When Helmut Lang came out with a perfume duo in 2000 and followed up by a third one in 2002, it was one of those rare fashion moments that occurs when an independent designer with a cult following translates his vision to another medium, thereby expanding his world. Who can forget (and by who, I mean those over 35 and really interested in fashion) the iconic ad campaigns on New York’s taxis or the long narrow SoHo store opposite Lang’s flagship where you could only by those three products, the very definition of minimalism?

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Ann Demeulemeester Monograph

Culture, Fashion

Today, the publisher Rizzoli released a long-awaited monograph on the Belgian fashion designer Ann Demeulemeester (Rizzoli, $100). The book is an exclamation point in the last sentence of Demeulemeester’s career, which is a long novel in itself. When we met in Antwerp this April, Demeulemeester just sent off the final draft to the publisher, and she spoke of it as if it was the perfect closure to her body of work in fashion.

Taiga

Zola Jesus

Culture

I first met the singer Zola Jesus, whose real name is Nika Roza Danilova, this September in New York. She was wearing a black dress with a high collar that formed a dome at the back of her head. It resembled something from another era and a place that has little in common with our modern society.

AsapbyAdam

How Hip-Hop Stole Rock’s Thunder

Culture, Fashion

Some time ago in Paris at a men’s show of the cult Japanese label Julius I found myself sitting next to the singer Usher. As I was chatting with his companion, Grace, I could not help but wonder what Usher was doing in a dark, cavernous space, looking at the goth aesthetic of black leathers and drapey wools that Tatsuro Horikawa, Julius’s designer, sent down the runway. And, I also wondered, where are the rockers?

Labyrinths cover

Josef Sudek: Labyrinths

CultureLeave a comment

In the age of Instagram, where minutiae of life is incessantly documented, Josef Sudek’s new book, Labyrinths (Torst, $60), seems oddly prescient. Here is the minutiae documented so artfully that the subject matter is seen at a remove. Meaning, you are first mesmerized by the masterful sepia of the photos before you realize that you are essentially looking at little piles of trash, scraps of paper, leftover food, unspooled string, and so on.

MyRulesCover

Glen E. Friedman: My Rules

CultureLeave a comment

“Fuck You Heros” – now there is a title for a book. A title for a photo book, to be precise, by Glen E. Friedman, a photographer who first got into a cop’s face to protest his arrest as unconstitutional at the age of 12, had his first photo published in SkateBoarder magazine at the age of 14, immortalized the skating scene around Dogtown in Los Angeles, discovered and produced the punk band Suicidal Tendencies, and photographed the Los Angeles hardcore and punk scene and the New York hip-hop scene, among other subjects, with equal zest. A title of a book that Friedman, in a meta-fuck-you gesture to the world, produced and printed himself because no major publisher would touch it in the 90s.

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Take My Picture!

FashionLeave a comment

One early evening this January I was walking to a Thom Browne show in New York’s West Chelsea neighborhood, chatting with the Italian fashion journalist Angelo Flaccavento, when a commotion broke out right in front of us. We were forced to slow down as Michelle Harper, a street style bait known for nothing in particular except wearing outré outfits at fashion shows, sprung seemingly out of nowhere, decked out in the latest Browne couture-like outfit, street style photographers pouncing on her like wildcats on prey. Harper’s outfit, with carefully constructed white cotton spikes, did not allow for a jacket and even though I was freezing in my down parka she braved the cold so she could be photographed. As she teetered on her high heels on a narrow and icy sidewalk the photographers fought for space. One slipped and almost fell. Another risked getting hit by a car