Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion at the Met Museum

Fashion

The 220 artifacts for Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion, the latest exhibit by the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan museum of art in New York, opening to the public this Friday, were drawn from its archives with the stated aim of “reviving [their] sensory capacities.” After all, clothes are not just for looking at; they are tactile objects, and they smell. Or so the exhibit tried to remind us, in a rather clumsy way, by jumping through some snazzy scientific hoops that I doubt an average exhibit visitor will care about. In real life the olfactory experience of clothes has to do more with their wearer, that ineffable familiar smell of your lover, for example, an experience diametrically opposed to what was offered, the smell of dead, disembodied clothes. To their credit, Andrew Bolton, the head curator of the Institute, and his staff, are well aware of this, but their attempts at resuscitating the sartorial corpses felt forced.

Op-Ed: The Avant-Garde Post Mortem

Culture, Fashion

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.

STONE ISLAND PROTOTYPE MULITAXIAL PROJECT

Events, Fashion

The Stone Island Prototype Research_Series 08 titled the “Multiaxial Project” features 100 unique capes crafted from newly developed fabrics using techniques from the automotive industry. The treatments and fabrics used were born from research and experimentation processes that have yet to be industrialized. The Multiaxial Project pays tribute to the brand’s inaugural collection while continuously pushing the boundary of innovation. 

Introducing K’ANG

Fashion

This last January during men’s fashion week in Paris I visited the showroom of a new brand called K’ANG, and it was one of the most exciting discoveries of that week for a couple of reasons. First, there hasn’t been much going on in the avant-garde space that StyleZeitgeist has championed since its inception in 2006 as a forum for men’s fashion enthusiasts. That niche has exploded and then imploded, with few survivors and few newcomers. Juyoung Kang, the designer of K’ANG, the brand he launched in 2023, has apprenticed with some of the best of the avant-garde – namely, Maurizio Amaded of m.a.+ and Deepti Barth, the former right hand of Carol Christian Poell. AtDEEPTI, he assisted with patternmaking and fabric sourcing, and at m.a.+ he also designed menswear and womenswear across all product categories.

Notes on Alessandro Michele’s Valentino Appointment

Fashion

Today Valentino announced that it hired Gucci’s erstwhile creative director Alessandro Michele to lead its storied house. The appointment came just days after its current designer, Pierpaolo Piccioli was let go. 

This is a curious case. Usually, big guns are brought in to fix something, but Valentino did not seem to be broken, though “seem” is a key operating word here. Just like Michele, Piccioli is a talented designer and one of fashion’s darlings – his collections are universally lauded. And Valentino’s sales seem fine. In 2022, according to Reuters, it had revenues of 1.42 billion euros, 10% higher than its sales in 2021, which in turn were 15% above the year prior. On the strength of these numbers, Kering bought a 30% stake in Valentino from Mayhoola, a Qatar government investment fund that also owns Balmain, with an option to acquire the entire company by 2028.