Tonight I’m watching the first round of Olympic women’s figure skating. As these teenage girls, weighed down by pancake makeup and pressure well beyond their years, parade in front of millions in precarious footwear, I can only think how different it is from that other world cultural event going on right now: fashion week.

latimes.com

While the Olympics are about the pursuit of a specific goal, be it the individual’s or the collective’s, fashion’s trajectory is a bit more aimless, and certainly places way less value on the idea of progress. Olympic commentary is probably the biggest selling point for this idea. All you have to do is watch for an evening before you hear phrases like “following in x’s footsteps” or “surpassing of goals” or  “overcoming/rising above obstacles”. Not that any of these things are bad, but they do seem to align quite squarely with a very specific ethos, namely Hegel’s concept of historical dialectic.

In Hegel’s Introduction to the Philosophy of History, he goes into painstaking detail about each phase of human existence, and how each generation is challenged and eventually surpassed by a better one. This process of thesis, antithesis and synthesis is referred to as dialectic. We don’t have to delve into his level of detail to fully understand the broad strokes of the idea (especially since most of us are probably already familiar with the concept of evolution).

Suffice to say, in Hegel’s philosophy there exists an idea of history as a teleology (acorn to oak tree!), which logically asserts that we are, as a species, working towards some type of common perfection. (Car and computer advertising come to mind.) In Hegel’s case it’s God’s self-awareness as absolute knowledge (eventually he ends up at communism), but one can easily see where ideas of absolute progress are a stone’s throw from some of the more unseemly tenants of national socialism.

So the Olympic spirit is obviously not that of the Third Reich. But, with all the talk of bigger, better, faster, stronger, I can’t help but revel in fashion’s blithe relationship to progress. The industry seems to have, as a whole, long abandoned any pretense of progress and is perfectly content with historical meanderings, making references to past collections, eras and events at will. On TV, the athletes wear the latest technologically advanced equipment and clothing, all very functional, all the better for out-doing their grandparents. Meanwhile, the fall 2010 runways have been a swirl of nostalgia, making textural reference with tweed, leather and lots of fur. Designers like Chris Benz, Philip Lim, Badgley Mischka and Burberry Prorsum (to name a very few) all recycled silhouettes from previous decades to evoke the glamour and sentimentality of times past.

l-r: 3.1 Phillip Lim, Chris Benz, Burberry Prorsum (style.com)

Speaking of which, how very au courant is Kristy Yamaguchi’s costume from her winning skate in 1992?

What started as a movement to rethink the way Americans mass-produce and mass-consume food seems to be inspiring an even closer-to-home slow movement. For years we’ve all been buzzing over the vast internet’s triumph over quaint print media. Meanwhile, multitasking was made easier with the help of 43 folders, women’s magazines, as shrill as ever, insist we can do it all (so long as we organize it correctly) and Apple trumpets in on a daily basis yeah, there’s an app for that.

via coolhunting.net

Fashion, of course, is one of those consumption-driven industries (perhaps more like the food industry than any other) that requires a constant fount of new material and ideas. Take the random appearance, for instance of a new “pre-fall” season — as if three collections per year, plus whatever pop-up/collab/capsule collection designers are required to churn out, isn’t work enough. And on the other side of the looking glass, bloggers and internet celebrities skip the whole career-building process, occupying front rows with the old dogs who’ve worked decades to be there.

Is it just me or does the whole thing feel really 1990s in a hyper-competent, democratized, tech-bubble kind of way?  It feels like the fast food and the fast fashion and the internet wunderkinds and the meaningless parade of information down an RSS feed is beginning to buckle. We’re finding more value in local produce than big business bulk, handmade and vintage items over fast-fashion replicas and an artfully considered opinion over a newcomer’s musings.

courtesy jeremyscott.com

We were all really psyched about H&M, for instance, because the looks we craved were suddenly affordable — until we began to suffer from bulging closet syndrome. Value did not valuable make. Like the local farmers markets popping up all the time (and which are notoriously expensive), sites like Etsy.com, which sells only handmade and vintage wares, are also flourishing.

Ultimately, the meaninglessness inherent in the fast was the straw that broke (or will break) the camel’s back. In this month’s GOOD Magazine, themed the Slow Issue, Jamais Cascio says that “recognizing that humans can’t compete with the processing speed of computerized systems, the slow movement is a catalyst for rules that support greater reflection and consideration.” As people we happen to be endowed with a unique ability to reflect, consider, deliberate and opine. There’s no reason we should force ourselves to be second-rate computers.

It doesn’t seem like I’m alone here either. The recent Allstate commercials (yeah, lame I know, but I do get moved by commercials now and again) claim this recession may have made us great. I would claim (well, hope) it made us slow. The commercial shows images of growing backyard produce, refinishing a chair, sewing a garment, biking to work. I’m not sure if it was financial ruin or one too many 4-star Yelp restaurants that turned out to be shitty, but I’m excited that right now, this year, we’re going to start doing things the old fashioned way.

courtesy nytimes.com

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To see more from Zinzi Edmundson, visit: http://evilmonito.com/author/zinzi/

As every tech company seems to be releasing tablet e-readers, nearly every publishing giant cuts down on both their staffs and titles, and even seasoned media vets move online, I suppose it should be pretty apparent that the newer, democratically conceived voices undercutting established ones are, indeed, undeniably potent.

In a New York Times Op-Ed piece last July entitled Bright Lights, Big Internet, Bill Wasik convincingly supports his thesis of the internet as the new New York. Wasik nearly scoffs, though wistfully, at the creative twenty-somethings emptying out onto Manhattan streets in search of a big break. “Meanwhile,” he writes “another destination beckons, a place that courses with all the raw ambition and creative energy that the hard times have drained from New York.” Online, he claims, is where the new big breaks lie; and to be there doesn’t require worrying about things like the cost of urban living.

Suddenly the advantage of Being There is deflated and further, the post-youth anxiety of impressing your betters and ‘making it’ is moot. As Wasik recollects, “In the old model, young creatives dreamed of entertaining the millions, but in practice they could do so only be first pleasing a small group of gatekeepers: established figures who controlled access to the audience…” Now, it seems, the editorial assistants (or gallery-sitters, or artists’ apprentices, or production assistants) can enact what they’ve always already known for decades: that they can do the job just as well as, and sometimes better than, their superiors.

potential apple tablet rendering courtesy thenextweb.com

And as it turns out, they are.  Not necessarily news — certainly not to an Evil Monito audience — are the dozens of online success stories trumpting out daily. Many are savvy enough to make their blog or website a fulltime gig, and some have decoded the ever-elusive puzzle of personal branding well enough to garner some kind of fame. Fifteen minutes? Maybe. But fame nonetheless.

Again, the Times catches wind and in a recent piece Alice Pfeiffer runs through a veritable laundry list of online fashion blogs and magazines who are already successful online and are now gaining respect from established print institutions. But that, ultimately, seems to be the problem with the creative exodus (which was the problem all along): validation. Sure, these online outlets are successful in and amongst themselves, but really Making It, having that moment, as Wasik puts it, where one finds oneself on the opposite side of the glass from one’s noseprint, still seems to require the well-wishes of an authority.

photos courtesy theselby.com

That requisite validation paired with our relentless cultural obsession with print media and its production seems to belie a general reluctance to fully commit to online. In entertainment, we see success after success on projects related to magazine work (especially fashion): The Devil Wears Prada and How to Lose Friends and Influence People both on page and screen, Ugly Betty and The Hills on television, and most recently, The September Issue.

So while the debate over How We Get Our News has more or less been settled (sorry, newspapers), the question of How We Get Our Editorial Content Selected For Us By A Panel Of Largely Faceless But Nonetheless Trustworthy Editors remains a somewhat saltier and more complicated conversation. One has to wonder, as the debate swirls and titles close with each passing quarter, which is it? Has the internet won? Is the future of content an endless RSS stream of pleasing images and text-snippets? Or, are authoritative voices, Editors, still relevant or, dare I say, necessary?

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To see more from Zinzi Edmundson, visit: http://evilmonito.com/author/zinzi/

It seems that, for a genre of often overlooked or under appreciated art objects, fashion is something that everyone’s got an opinion about. Whether it’s a divisive new trend or an essential idea, like my Long Island Dad always says, everybody’s got a rap. So when a fashion designer, or just an enthusiast, starts musing and it sounds like more than the usual rambling and, in fact, sounds a little like philosophy, I perk up.

This week I rented Lagerfeld Confidential and was struck by how Karl’s relationship to anything and everything he creates is not only interesting in of itself, but so in line with Martin Heidegger’s notion of existence in Being and Time. Maybe it’s a German thing.

In Being and Time, Heidegger asserts that we are temporal beings – time orients and delimits our existence. For instance, some experiences are not plausible for us. None of us will be building the transcontinental railroad. That already happened. So, we make choices and build our lives according to what we actually can do.

At the same time, our being isn’t a dot on a timeline, limited by the past but consumed with the present. No, according to Heidegger, our being is oriented towards the future. Our existence is an assortment of projects that we set out to achieve, eventually complete, and then being anew, with a different set of goals. Constantly moving forward, everything we do has the future in mind.

In the beginning of the film, Karl mentions a German proverb, “You cannot borrow from your past” and goes on to describe his interest in the fashion industry’s “futurism”. Like the 1920s Italian painters who go by that name, Karl seems to also strive for continuous change, activity and progress. He says that “the briefness of the cycle [of collections] must mean something to me because I love chance, I’m attached to nothing… Moving on is no big deal.” He says that “Each collection is the first and, luckily for me, not the last, so I can make up for my mistakes the next time.”

Dynamism of a Cyclist by Umberto Boccioni

While fashion’s relentless pursuit of the new may not sit well with some people, I find that for me, that’s part of the appeal. Unlike other art forms, which often strive to capture a moment or emotion, to nail it down and understand it, fashion, by some popular accounts, ‘has no point’ and is free to flit along the surface. Without pretention toward the grandiose, fashion provides an honest and joyful account of us, sociologically and philosophically, in nearly real time. In the movie, Karl describes his love of photographs: “they capture a moment that’s gone forever impossible to reproduce.” He then continues on to say that he himself is not a photographer, but an advertising photographer, therefore allying himself once again with the dynamic and future-oriented world of fashion.

Besides the philosophical implications of an ever-present art form, fashion is an industry in which it is not rare to see people work into their deathbeds. The excitement and creativity are more than these people can part with. In Being and Time, Heidegger draws a clear distinction between his view of us as many different “not yets” (future projects on the horizon) and Aristotle’s teleology (remember the acorn to oak tree?) In the Aristotlean view (or so goes the criticism), once your goal is reached, you have been actualized and there you are. In the Heideggerian view, one is never complete or finished in this way. If our projects define our existence, without our projects we would be the equivalent of dead people.

Heidegger quotes Nietzsche when describing inauthentic beings as those who have “becom[e] too old for their victories.” At 76 years old, traipsing around the world in heeled boots, Karl (and the myriad of designers who work well into their advanced years) hardly seems too old for anything.

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To see more from Zinzi Edmundson, visit: http://evilmonito.com/author/zinzi/

The Bloggomist: Acorn & Oak Tree
Fashion Opinion

Those who know me well know that for the past couple months I’ve been plagued by a relentless obsession. I want anything and everything Navajo printed. Exactly how and when this happened, I’m not sure, but the combination of hard geometry and flashy desert colors has me daydreaming of dusty, remote ranches to come.

Lucky for me (and you), plenty of designers and retailers are into it too.  You can also find a wealth of goods on Ebay and Etsy – simply by searching for the classics from Ralph Lauren and Pendleton.

Top image: Navajo Sunglasses from fredflare.com. From left: Mini cloak jacket from Lindsey Thornburg; Motocross jacket from Pendleton Meets Opening Ceremony; Oxon Navajo bag from Penfield; Mystic Bootie from Osborn Design Studios; Dakala Tunic from Rabbit on the Run.

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To see more from Zinzi Edmundson, visit: http://evilmonito.com/author/zinzi/

Dina Manzo, like Marilyn Monroe before her, just loves finding new places to wear diamonds.

The Bloggomist: Acorn & Oak Tree
Fashion Opinion

Forgive me for becoming the Jerry Seinfeld of fashion writing for a moment, but honestly, what is the deal with the current Jersey obsession? Maybe it’s irony, maybe it’s recessionary escapism, or maybe we’re all just going to admit how much we love gold, but glitzed-out Italian-Americans are running rampant through pop culture.

Frankly, I’m surprised everyone was so late onto the bus. In the spirit of Black Friday, this week I’m going to expose my longstanding and irrational love of what I like to call the Manzo Factor.

O.G. Marisa Tomei in My Cousin Vinny and Michelle Pfeiffer in Married to the Mob

Growing up in Providence, Rhode Island, I had the distinct pleasure of knowing my fair share of Italian-American Princesses. Ethnically speaking, I should fall into this category myself, but in high school it seemed I could only observe those schoolmates who exuded a certain non so cosa of the mother country.

The uniform was always the same (partially owing to our school’s dress code, but I’d like to think it would have been this way anyway): black turtlenecks, sportish sneakers (sometimes with a sneaky Prada sport stripe or Superga tag), messy highlighted hair in a high bun and, of course, big jewelry passed down from leggy moms.

When everyone else was figuring out how and when to shave one’s legs, these girls were already hitting the tanning beds and getting their eyebrows threaded. I mean, when the rest of us pallid plebes are in Gap khakis and running shoes, how could you not look enviously? Sure, maybe their dads’ jobs seemed questionable, but whatever, their moms drove Jaguars and they had the expensive kind of field hockey stick.

Not beyond but one with the glitz, these girls exuded a timelessness that was otherwise void from high school. How any teenage girl could not only resist but float obliviously past passing fads is still a bit confusing for me. When everyone else was begging for Doc Martens, these girls were content with driving mocs and sport loafers. In fact, one of my favorite elements of this subculture is that every trend is routinely adjusted before being fully assimilated. In this way Italian-American Princesses never really alter their essential appearance — for good or ill.

So this week, as the country gears up for a month of forgetting about budget crises, Quicken® and general prudence, I say let’s embrace the Manzo in us all and start writing checks until the ink runs out!

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For more by Zinzi, visit http://evilmonito.com/author/zinzi/.

Yet, the feeling one gets around mid-September, and all the trappings that accompany it, still seem to sneak their way into Southern Californian life. Fall is arguably the most evocative month — even the least romantic among us can’t resist the coziness factor, or the downright quaintness of winding around a scarf.

People from L.A. seem to take the sun for granted and transplants soon end up doing the same, or clinging to a nostalgic remembrance of colder days past (let’s be perfectly clear, I’m fully aware what category I fall into right here). On days when it’s unexpectedly cold Angelenos celebrate the way New Englanders do mid-May when the temperature hits 58 degrees. The novelty of actually wearing your jacket, your rain boots, or even a wool hat is too thrilling. They’re all worn at once. (And let’s be honest, it’s probably also 58 degrees in L.A. with all these things on. Oh, perspective.)

To be fair, New Englanders also experience an abrupt jump from the oppressively sticky August heat to the crunchy, apple-harvesty September cool-down. But, I’m not sure it’s actually just the novelty factor that ultimately interests us, and it’s not just the cold-deprived clamoring for signs of fall. For goodness’ sake, the weight of September’s fashion encyclopedias challenges our coffee tables to remain upright.

September fashion magazines are always the biggest of the year. Maybe it’s because of 18 years of Back to School preparation, but autumn somehow ended up eschewing its reputation as death-symbol and instead became a space of invention, or reinvention. Fall became the beginning, and the trappings of the season, one’s toolbox with which to cobble together something better than the previous year.

Yeah, it might sound creepy in a The Secret or Field of Dreams kind of way. (If you build it, he will come; sounds like a Cosmo headline, right?) But the thing is, we all pretty much do it. We’ve all got a little Jay Gatsby in us and the material with which to construct our best selves is that much more limited in summertime. Come fall, with its propensity towards layering, patterns and texture, and its implicit sense of meaning and romance, there’s simply that much more to work with. In fall, we start re-writing ourselves, swathed in fabrics, new colors and maybe a slightly new story.

So pile it on, raise a hot toddy and cheers, to the new you!

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For more by Zinzi, visit http://evilmonito.com/author/zinzi/.

The Bloggomist: Acorn & Oak Tree

Links for images:
FRANCE MAY

URBAN OUTFITTERS

SLOW AND STEADY WINS THE RACE

CREATURES OF COMFORT
(Rachel comey westley low oxford pump)

OPENING CEREMONY

TOAST U.K.

GRAVITY POPE

LAGAR CONNE

I grew up watching my mother dream up, sketch, draft and construct women’s apparel. I grew up surrounded by my stepfather’s parents’ beloved and unhinging antiques. I’ve never been disparaging of object obsession. Each trinket, jacket, shoe, desk: all seems endowed with significance, whether sentimental or ontological (or both).

In the Metaphysics, Aristotle describes being as a pointed trajectory (teleology), like the development of an acorn into an oak tree. I’m no expert in the question of being, but I do wonder how this idea of becoming relates to the construction of our most beloved and important objects. How does a design, and its eventual construction, marketing and distribution, become your favorite jeans? And how does that purchase become part of a temporally specific aesthetic movement (um, a trend)? And then, after all that, how do we use these objects to construct new meanings about ourselves, our surroundings, our background – anything!

I don’t want to make these things seems precious, but to somehow allow them to be meaningful nonetheless. I think it’s ok if we like our stuff (a lot).

So get ready. We’ll run around town looking at some of our favorite lines, and hopefully discover some new ones, checking out designer’s studios and everything that goes into the transmission of their idea into your zeitgeist. And we might pick up a few items in the process.

Set, go!
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To see more from Zinzi Edmundson, visit: http://evilmonito.com/author/zinzi/

What could be more luxurious than a custom bicycle hand-upholstered in supple tan leather? How about one the comes with a built-in flask?

The newest offering from Atelier d’Embellie’s “Cogs & Bits” line is just that, and more. The lucky owner of said bike can enjoy hand stitching, cushy, extra-large wheels and the pride of knowing that, even if you end up with a BUI, you will have done so in the most wonderfully extravagant (and borderline Steampunk) way possible.

Summer in L.A. can make one think some crazy thoughts. My most recent is a complete re-evaluation of my position on ripped and embellished clothing. On the embellishment approval spectrum, I’ve spent a fair amount of time in a region more populated with funny uncles and grandmas than cool older siblings or, say, internet celebrities.

That’s all changing for two reasons. One, it’s hot in L.A. right now. really hot. And I could use some more holes in my clothing, simply so as to stimulate being nude without the commitment and embarrassment of actually being nude.

The other reason is Ann-Sofie Back. After ten years in London supporting her own line, Back returned to her native Sweden to take over at Cheap Monday. Her debut with the line (whose denim is still overseen by Orjan Andersson) was last week — a black, gray and blue palette, all holes and patches, rips and dye. While Cheap Monday’s Fall 09 presentation offered the buttoned-up and woolly appeal of crunching leaves underfoot, Back’s S/S 2010 is even more evocative of both summer’s oppressive heat and effervescent and optimistic lift. The kind of climate in which one re-evaluates one’s normal routine and just has fun.

Looking forward to summer breezes to come.

www.cheapmonday.com

Spaceland – Silverlake, CA
Live Review: 7/6/09
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Miniature Tigers are pure charm — swaying and stomping in desert-meets-yacht club attire and serving up jingle-jangle indie pop set to the hard-hitting snap of Lucite drums.

Straight out of Phoenix, the four Mini Ts stirred up an otherwise terribly Monday-at-nine crowd at Spaceland with their infectiously cheerful songs. They played standouts from their album Tell It to the Volcano including “Cannibal Queen” and “Dark Tower” in addition to a not-so-startlingly springy rendition “Mamma Mia” by ABBA.

Charlie Brand writes the kinds of pop songs you wish there were more of – strikingly catchy, effortlessly fun and approachable, but lyrically strong and cleverly writ. They keep your toes tapping well after the show’s ended and yet won’t bore you after weeks pushing the backtrack button.

Evidently the feeling is mutual. “You’re a sweet, sweet crowd,” Charlie said towards the end of the set. “A sweet and gentle crowd.”

Miniature Tigers opened the first of four residency shows at Spaceland for Andy Clockwise, whose joyous return to the States is marked by his clearly bringing it – ‘it’ being his brand of bawdy, direct and ebullient rock and roll – to his performance.