Feature and Op-Ed articles

Dries Van Noten

Dries Van Noten: The Man Who Played with Color

Fashion, Features/Op-Ed

On the recent evening during the men’s show of the Belgian designer Dries Van Noten, a crowd bustled outside the show venue, the small Musee Bourdelle, tucked away in a side street near 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, who was one of the most prolific student’s of Rodin, stood.

Let the Death of Experiential Shopping Be Its Rebirth

Features/Op-Ed, Retail

Fashion has a tendency to suffer from collective amnesia. Trendy but questionable concepts tend to die a quiet death in order to free the industry from embarrassment of unfulfilled promises. One of these silent casualties is “experiential shopping.” The term came in vogue earlier in the last decade when the fashion industry decided that customers wanted more from stores than a convenient location, a cool interior, an assortment of desirable product, and great customer service. The specter of e-commerce was brandished before retail executives that spurred them into a do-or-die frenzy. Lounges, live events, interactive art, virtual reality changing rooms, digital mirrors were touted as remedies for failing brick-and-mortar retail. Needless to say, only retail conglomerates and corporate brands with deep pockets could afford to invest in such expensive toys.

Fashion Comes for Books

Culture, Fashion, Features/Op-Ed

In his 1967 classic critique of late capitalist society, “Society of the Spectacle,” the French philosopher Guy Debord posited that the West has reached a new stage of relations between commodities and people. Whereas before the laboring classes were alienated by capitalism from the product of their labor, now they were also alienated by it from their entire lives, from their surroundings, and most importantly from each other. He posited that during early capitalism the process of alienation occurred only during the workday. Once the factory lights were out the worker could at least go home and engage in his or her communal life. Now, however, leisure time became completely monopolized by what he called “the spectacle,” a mode of life in which fetishization of commodities has “moved the focus of existence… from having to appearing.” If that sounds like Instagram to you, you are not wrong.

Op-Ed: Fed Up With Fashion? Try This.

Fashion, Features/Op-Ed

“The real issue is that in the fashion business, it’s almost against the law to tell the truth, and anyone who steps behind the silk curtain to show how raw the business is can expect a rough time. Designers go to grotesque lengths to exaggerate their concepts to the press. And the press is just as guilty when it swallows the bait and spews forth huge headlines. The self-importance of our profession is appalling.”

So wrote John Fairchild in his 1989 biography, Chic Savages (quoted in Teri Agins’s book, The End of Fashion). Fairchild being the publisher and editor-in-chief of the Women’s Wear Daily for decades, I see no reason not to believe him. Another reason not to believe him is that over the past ten years I have increasingly come to feel the same.

We Are ANT/DOTE

Fashion, Features/Op-Ed, Retail

Eugene here. I am opening a store in Atlanta with my good friend Lauren Amos, called ANT/DOTE. I can finally reveal my new role as the store’s director. It’s a new and very important chapter in my life, one that’s been in the making for years. I wrote about the store below, but I wanted to add a personal note to say how incredibly exciting and interesting it has been to work on this project. I think that deep down every critic, as a tastemaker – and let’s face it, criticism is in part tastemaking – fantasizes about opening a store. I know I have. In a way a store is another way of testing one’s position, one’s ability, prowess, determination, but also one’s limitations.

As always, I would be nowhere without you, without the StyleZeitgeist audience, without likeminded people. I hope you come on this new ride with me. We are ANT/DOTE.