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.

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.

Geoffrey B. Small at Atelier New York

Events

Dear readers,

This Friday, September 8th, we will be hosting an intimate gathering for Geoffrey B. Small, whose artisanal designs have found a loyal audience over the years of his working in the Venetto region of Italy. During the event you will be able to examine Geoffrey’s work in person. A representative of the brand will be on hand from 4 to 8 p.m., to personally guide you through the collection.

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Work:Space – Geoffrey B. Small

Fashion

Last month I got a chance to visit the studio of Geoffrey B. Small, the American-born designer who has been working in Cavarzere, in the Veneto region of Italy. Veneto is the heart of the Italian fashion industry with a storied tradition of clothes making. It used to be that you could not throw a stone without hitting a fabric manufacturer or a shirt-making factory. Globalization has killed all that by outsourcing much of the work to other countries in Europe and Asia.