Le Book Convo

I came across LeBooks's Conversation Series . This one is very personal to me since I grew up with Neville Brody's The Face and Terry Jones' I-D. Latter is still very strong and I get occasionally. I felt like picking up an i-D immediately but felt disappointed thinking I have to wait until April until I am back in NY. I came back after lunch and passed an english bookstore. And surprise they had the last four i-D mags for 4$ each. Who would have known to get those cheap in the middle of China.

Lady With Two Trash Bags

Play

Channeling Corinne Day

Scaffolding

Hong Kong - Guangzhou

I was sitting in the train restaurant. Dowdy and kitschy, I pretty much felt like being in East Germany. A waitress walked the isles with a big green plastic bucket filled with chicken wings. The guy in the middle took one and was supplied with a plastic glove and pulled the chicken out of the bucket.

Let's Go

Train ride from Hong Kong to Guangzhou.

Synchronicity

Elaste

New York - China, and Munich seems to be right in the middle. So I dropped by and met my mates from Elaste having our annual Pils Out at Schuhmann’s. Thomas “It’s alright as long it looks good” Elsner, Ian ” I am an intellectual“ Moorse, Michael ”We need a manifesto“ Reinboth and I were sitting and debating a possible relaunch which most likely won’t ever happen. Why should we even bother after Thomas muses: ”Fashion is totally overrated. "In my polar opposition, I feel fashion is possibly underrated. (I think it is doing just fine). Fashion is an insane amount of creativity, it’s politics, business, logistics, social commentary and awareness, it marks history, it is style, craftsmanship, design, media, a big economic factor, the spearhead of globalization.

Why not quoting somebody who thinks of fashion seriously: In Showstudio Christopher Breward writes:

If politics is about the exercise and regulation of power in public and private life, then fashion would appear to be the ideal mirror of, and vehicle for political action. In all aspects of its production, dissemination and use the fashion product engages in a distinctive polity. Its materials relate to ethical values; its manufacture is informed by the legal and illegal practices of government and business; its promotion entails an engagement with a visual politics of persuasion; and its wearing ignites the fiercest moral debates. And yet….
The history of dress provides a familiar roll-call of self-consciously ‘politicised’ items, where an over-literal interpretation of ideology seems sometimes to leach the political life out of the very fabric. From the sans-culottes of Revolutionary France, through the utopian prozodezhda of constructivist Russia to Katherine Hamnett’s iconic anti-nuclear slogan t-shirts of the mid 1980s, the potential of clothing to act as a form of sartorial agit-prop, seems to me to have been fatally limited. When garment becomes bill-board, all the nuances of signification in which political meaning ultimately lies are amplified into a one-dimensional propagandist rant. Context, as ever, appears to be all. It’s the savage imagery of the sans-culotte in eighteenth-century satirical print-culture that terrifies; the face-to-face confrontation of Tory prime minister and campaigning fashion designer that inspires – not the item itself.
So, rather than embed the politics in the dress, far better to recognise the paradoxes and tensions which position fashion itself as paradigmatic of the broader politics of the time. Fashion at its most vibrant is in and of the political – and no more so than when its surfaces coalesce to ‘epater le bourgeois’. The provocations of Punk have often been cited in this respect. But in my view the Italians were doing it better and earlier. Anyone doubting this should turn to Paola Colaiacomo’s recent and excellent book ‘Factious Elegance: Pasolini and Male Fashion’ (Marsilio: 2007) and in particular to the illustration on its back inside.

Cat Woman

Bird Market - Hong Kong

Flower Market - Hong Kong

Star Spangled

:)

Thanks for nothing, Tony Shafrazi.

David Lachapelle: Auguries of Innocence

I was never inspired by David LaChapelle’s work. His trailer trash chic and shrill aesthetics rather offended me. I am more drawn to the Jürgen Teller camp of “realism” maybe with a shot of narrative like Phillip Lorca di Corcia until I get bored and take refuge in some glam in the likes of Alas and Piggott. (oops, all Dubya)
– But this show was the only highlight in an otherwise dull Chelsea Saturday afternoon. Simplistic yes, but that’s what Pop is all about. Nobody else seems to share my sentiments:

What makes LaChapelle's outing at Shafrazi particularly offensive, though, is that he's staking a claim on satire without offering an alternative behind the tart, blunt, and rather simplistic parables. He has a good line in exposing total vulgarity and total wastefulness because he's not simply engaged in total vulgarity and total wastefulness—he's also very passionate about it. So this is not critique, not at all. It's celebration, and I have no idea why we're celebrating. Thanks for nothing, Tony Shafrazi.

-Bones

Tommy Hilfiger

Mickey Mouse

Diesel

Phishing

I was catching some rays of sun at N 7th street park when I took notice of this guy. I was to complacent to inquire. It still haunts me, what is this guy doing?

Bodo Vitus

Every person owns a famous quote. My very best friend Bodo Vitus, fashion photographer once said to me: "Being an artist is letting your pants down". I am still trying to live up to it.–

Jürgen, you are a true artist.
\

Jürgen

I went from I envied Jürgen Teller to I hated his stuff to I really admire and respect his body of work. I still remember when
my friend Sabina and Jürgen decided to live in London and they both left Munich with only what fitted into his Volkswagen.

Stepping out of Bikram L.E.S.