Burberry Prorsum ready to wear fall winter 2015 in london

OP-ED: PUTTING FASHION BACK TOGETHER

Fashion, Features/Op-Ed

These days the fashion press that still bothers writing about fashion is filled with two types of articles. It’s either opinion pieces decrying the broken fashion system, or news about individual designers taking change into their own hands.

Some of the woes befalling the fashion systems, according to the “broken fashion system” articles, is that the stores demand deliveries too soon and put them on sale too soon, and that the fast fashion system produces knockoffs at far cheaper prices and put them in stores before the real stuff hits the racks. Supposedly, the latter necessitates the former, but designers don’t like to be rushed, and the additional stress put on them is the other reason for the fashion system being broken. We have fall clothes filling the racks in the summer, and summer clothes in the winter. Everyone shops on sale.

CDG_DOT_bottle

Comme des Garcons Dot Perfume

Fashion

Following its European launch, Comme des Garcons is releasing a new scent, DOT, at Dover Street Market in New York today. Though the company has authored seventy-five scents, DOT is its fifth scent created in-house, and the first since 2011. The scent riffs on the polka dot, which could serve as an unofficial CDG emblem. The prime note in the scent is that of the Osmanthus flower, which grows in the parks all over Japan in the fall.

comme-des-garcons-homme-plus-fw16-23

Fashion Week Ramblings F/W 16

Fashion, Features/Op-Ed

This past men’s fashion week was marked by a sense of schizophrenia more than anything else. Half of the shows in Paris were held in opulent palatial spaces and the other half in basements stripped of everything but their concrete foundations. The reactions of critics and buyers were similarly split. The editors I spoke with mostly shrugged shoulders and talked of consistently lowering expectations, while buyers thought the season more than solid.