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 I founded StyleZeitgeist in 2006, my aim was to build a forum for people who genuinely love fashion as a creative discipline that speaks to a wider culture. I did not mean for it to solely concentrate on the fashion that I loved, the forward-thinking, boundary-pushing, one connected to youth culture, especially music, especially of the goth / industrial / postpunk-tinged kind. But it kind of morphed into that, because it attracted like-minded people. And so StyleZeitgeist became a hub for what’s come to be called the avant-garde – the truly IYKYK stuff, a fashion subculture.
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.
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.
On this episode we review the Fall/Winter 2024 fashion season in Milan and Paris, including the Alexander McQueen debut and the feedback it has received, the state of Balenciaga and Demna, Ann Demeulemeester, Sacai, and more. Philippe shares thoughts on his new favorite brand, Hodakova, and we talk about why the Dior show was an…
On this episode we speak with Natasha Degen, Professor and Chair, Art Market Studies, Fashion Institute of Technology about the uneasy symbiosis of fashion and art that she examines in depth in her recent book Merchants of Style: Art and Fashion After Warhol,. We talk about the encroachment of corporate luxury fashion on the art…
“All photographs are memento mori. To take a photograph is to participate in another person’s (or thing’s) mortality, vulnerability, mutability. Precisely by slicing out this moment and freezing it, all photographs testify to time’s relentless melt.” This excerpt from Susan Sontag’s book On Photography serves as an epigraph to a recent monograph, Deborah Turbeville: Under…
On this episode we are back with Philippe to discuss this past men’s season shows at Pitti Uomo, Milan, and Paris. We talk about the contrast between Luca Magliano and S.S. Daley, Gucci, Prada, and Zegna (best of season in Milan), why Rick Owens was the show of the season and Yohji Yamamoto was a…
On this episode we speak with Maria Wiesner, the styles editor of Frankfurt Allgemiene Zeitung and the author of a book about the life and work of Jil Sander (published earlier this year in German by HarperCollins). We discuss the formative years of the Queen of Minimalism, how Bauhaus and Hamburg honed her aesthetic, how…
On this episode we discuss the work of Phoebe Philo and the role she has played in defining contemporary fashion, the aesthetic direction and the business model of her new eponymous brand as compared to her work at Celine, the reception of the first two drops, and what the future holds.