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.

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Ann Demeulemeester Book Signing

Culture, Fashion

Last night the designer Ann Demeulemeester was signing her new monograph at Barneys in New York City. With her was her lifetime friend the singer Patti Smith, who cosigned the book and gave an intimate, heartfelt performance for the crowd of Demeulemeester’s diehard fans.

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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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Editorial: Welcome Oblivion

Editorial, Fashion

Welcome Oblivion, with Mariqueen Maandig Reznor, the singer of How to Destroy Angels, shot on El Matador beach in Los Angeles. Photography: Emilie Elizabeth; Styling: Eugene Rabkin Makeup: Caroline Ramos @ ArtMix;Hair: Johnny Stuntz @ Crosby Carter Management; Additional Post Production: Kraw

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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.

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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?