Op-Ed: A Guide to Fashion’s Pseudo Events

Fashion, Features/Op-Ed

Earlier this month the streetwear brand Aimé Leon Dore released a collaboration with the storied Italian coffee equipment manufacturer La Marzocco. Besides the usual merch, the star of the tie-up was a limited edition espresso machine. Here is how the collab unfolded. First, the drop was touted by the streetwear media, which duly noted that its centerpiece, the co-branded Linea Micra espresso machine, costs a whopping $11,660. The egregious markup of the device that retails for $4,200 became a talking point. Then the drop happened, with the machine quickly “selling out,” the fact that spurred further coverage and online conversation.

Guy Bourdin for Charles Jourdan

Fashion

Guy Bourdin’s 30 year collaboration with Vogue France began in 1955, where he was hired by editor and chief Edmonde Charles-Roux. In one of his first photos for the magazine, a model daintily holds the tips of her white chapeau, staring sweetly at the lens. Above her hangs five severed calf’s heads, their lifeless tongues extended, as curved hooks penetrate the tops of their heads. It is an arresting image, and it would not be Bourdin’s last. Before running the image, Charles-Roux instructed the art director to crop out the decapitations, leaving only the model’s softly elegant gaze. Perhaps 1955 was too early for such explicit visualizations of sex and death.