Telfar Fall/Winter 2017

This season, Telfar mixed up materials, making garments made of strips of different fabric—nylons, knits, denims. “It was fusing garments really,” said Clemens. “There’s a jean mixed with a sweater mixed with a turtleneck mixed with a t-shirt. It’s really a blur of genres of clothing.”

The simplicity is deceptive. The garments looked beautifully made, and, on a practical note, cozy. And the looks were scattered with hints of weirdness: knit knee socks that looked like lederhosen, painterly caps, layers of sleeves. And there were sneakers, made in collaboration with Puma, that are sure to be popular.

The show also had a pointedly political take. As he did last season, Ryan Trecartin composed a poem that served as the soundtrack for the show (the artist recited it over music by Andrew David Ross). It included lines like, “All bodies are illegal;” “It’s ninety degrees in February, it shouldn’t be;” and my personal favorite, “I have instructed Homeland Security to get fucking wasted.”

“It’s time to be political,” said Clemens. “It’s time to pick a side.”

Fashion

Feast for the Senses

Founded on the premise of highlighting the Bronx as a cultural epicenter for the culinary arts,

Ghetto Gastro currently consists of four key players: Jon Gray, Lester Walker, Malcolm Livingston II and Pierre Serrao.

Far from the collective’s first venture into the realm of streetwear and fashion, the collaboration is a demonstration of the group’s prowess in and out of the kitchen and their uncanny ability to infuse flavor into just about anything.

Check out the collab below, or cop yours here.

Fashion

If It Ain't Broke, Fix It

Do you remember your first interaction with A.P.C.? What was it about the cultural and design identity that drew you to the brand?

Mine was denim in the early 2000s. I loved that they had no visible exterior branding. That's the main reason why I wanted to feature the original interior label design on the denim.

Luxury & good design, are the two mutually exclusive? What are some similarities and distinctions between the two that you find in your work and approach?

We operate as an agency first, so this is a debate happening constantly: What is considered luxury in 2020? Can good design even be defined? I can’t answer these questions without wanting to simply launch a conversation with whoever is in the room and brainstorm all day.

What was your motivation for staying relatively low key? What difficulties and benefits stemmed from the decision to have hands in many things, but not necessarily being the face of them?

I’m shy. I haven’t done a case study on whether that's good or bad for projects—it is just how I am.

Cash or credit?

Debt-free.

You and Jean overlap in areas of taste. What impact did those similarities have on this process for Interaction #4?

Without overthinking it, Paul Labonte from our team who laid out the details of this interaction outlined the subtle nods in the products from an era of American streetwear we grew up on, but from a sensibilities standpoint super aligned with the A.P.C. Ethos. It was difficult to interact with products that A.P.C. already had executed perfectly. Which is where the line “If it ain’t broke, fix it” came from.

Petit Standards and Oxfords shirts have long been a part of your ethos. What made now the right time for the interaction with Jean and A.P.C.?

We have been making product piece by piece, one project at a time from scratch from the office in Montreal. This for us really was an opportunity to tap into Jean and Judith’s expertise and knowledge and work with a brand that is a real genuine fit for us. We presented our ideas, and they helped bring them to life perfectly.

Fashion

SELF Portrait No. 5

November 14, 2019

Saint Laurent is really feeling itself. In the fifth iteration of a series exploring each facet of the house’s identity, Anthony Vaccarello recruited the Chinese auteur Wong Kar Wai of In the Mood for Love and Chungking Express to curate Saint Laurent’s A Night in Shanghai, directed by Wing Shya. Past self portrait projects with Daido Moriyama, Vanessa Beecroft, Bret Easton Ellis and Gaspar Noé leave us with high hopes for SELF 05. Set in Kar Wai’s Hong Kong hometown, the short promises to give us a taste of Saint Laurent’s delicate balance of the past and the present with dream-state visuals.

Catch a tantalizing clip from the film below or see it for yourself in the Shanghai art district, November 22-24 exclusively at the Yuz Museum.