You'll know what we know.
A blog dedicated to the interesting, scandalous, useful and cutting edge in the world of men’s style, fashion and grooming.
Photographed by our fearless lensman, Patrick McMullan.
Yes, we know what you’re thinking: What the hell is he doing here? Certainly no-one in their right mind would call larger-than-life art world provocateur Julian Schnabel well dressed, but you’ve got to admit he’s got a lot of style—inimitable and even unenviable as it might be. When he first started wearing pajamas in public we were more than a bit skeptical; but when he threw some cashmere on top we started to see the light.
A Beautiful Day in The Neighborhood: Please join us on March 20th by wearing a sweater in honor of Mr. Rogers, won’t you? [AP]
Teenage Wasteland: Okay! Enough with the Cory Kennedy already. [Everyone, Everywhere]
Man of Letters: Original preppie king, Goldwater Conservative and trad icon William F. Buckley grabs a wing chair in that great club room in the sky. [Observer]
Theme Song: Remember Rock&Roll? Their new tribute to Milan Fashion week is called, “Coke Freaks and Fashion Whores.” Sounds right to us. [WWD]
“You’ll Never Go Wrong Dressing Plain and Dull”: This only works when running for national office. Otherwise, feel free to dress like a Somali elder. [Chicago Tribune]
The Keith Richards Workout: “For me, doing a Rolling Stones show for two hours a night, that’s enough f*in’ exercise, you know? Then I’ve got to go to bed with the old lady, bonka bonka. You know?” We know, Keef. We know. [Digital Spy]
Simple Statutes: Oh, sorry, did we forget to post Esquire’s New Laws of Casual Style? Here, let’s fix that. [Esquire]
Duty Free: Paul Smith takes off at Heathrow, unlike some. [Vogue UK]
Rabbit, Run: Furry chic makes its unsettling debut at Tokyo Fashion Week. [Boing Boing]
“Composition with Yellow, Blue, and Red”: Nike goes all Neo-plasticist on us with the Piet Mondrian Dunk Lows. [NikeSB.org]
Goose Steps: The Cut hashes out this whole Adidas-Puma-Third-Reich thing. [NYMag]
Repeat Performance: Daniel Craig, star of Lara Croft: Tomb Raider and some other stuff, wins GQ’s best-dressed award for the second year straight. [Vogue UK]
Signing Out: Portfolio’s fashion blogger Lauren Goldstein Crowe waves a “Peace the Fork Out” to the rest of the linkable world. [Portfolio]
Pig-malion: The classiest classy guy in the world of high class wants to play Henry Higgins to Ashley “The Governator” Dupré’s Eliza Doolittle, though we suspect she’s already had her elocution lessons if you know what we mean. No? Us either. [NY Daily News]
Big Top: David Coleman snuggles up to our favorite dandy fabulist and his long, thick hat. [NYTimes]
The Princess and The Peacoat: Amanda Brooks has a thing for men in uniform. [Men’s Vogue]
Okay, Who Farted?: Gucci and Louis Vuitton unveiled diamond-encrusted, WMD-proof gas-masks at the Bucharest Luxury fair because, really, who wants to survive a ricin attack in just any old thing? [Complex]
So? New?: R29 introduces us to our new neighbors. [Refinery29]
Spin Cycle: Damien Hirst shows no mercy to Levis Jeans. And you thought that cow had it bad. [Gawker]
Long May it Rain: Barbour employees worldwide will enjoy tea and cake tomorrow at 4pm to celebrate the waxed-cotton giant’s centenary - and nothing could be more just and perfect. [Vogue UK]
Deal Alert: Again, Racked comes through with discounts on Original Penguin. [Racked]
Moleskines have been a staple of the scribbling, sketching and café-going set for a while now, but recent etching trends have made them a lot more stylish. And as arts collectives start devoting their attention to the new medium, the result is a lot of very good stuff.
Case in point: this Clint-inspired sketchpad with more than enough glower power to balance out the coffeehouse vibe the notebooks usually suggest. The collective is Modofly, and they’re turning all their attention to moleskine creations like this one. (Canvas is so 18th century.)
Pouring wine has long been considered an art form, requiring the proper balance, technique, dexterity, and, perhaps most importantly, an elegant appearance to be suitably performed.
And if it’s shaped like the roots of a tree, even better.
Of course, pouring wine from the glorified decanter is a challenge in itself, but as the carafe drains, you’ll get a separate artistic kick from seeing which strands drain early and which stay full until the end. Of course, the weight will be unbalanced, but the carafe will just tilt over onto one of the other finger-like bases.
Made of borosilicate glass, only twelve decanters will be produced, with eight numbered and signed and four artist proofs. Our only suggestion: make sure you have enough room behind you when serving.
The death of the tie may be a little exaggerated, but stylistically, neckwear is definitely in a rut. Outside of the skinny/wide dichotomy and the increasing influence of the Britons, there isn’t a lot of new stuff happening. If the tie aisle is ever going to show us something we can’t find in a vintage store, someone is going to have to step up.
And we’ve got a few ideas about who.
Just Because Jay-Z Does It: Do you think Beyonce will look back and be sated by an engagement tattoo? Why Bristol Palin, Tommy Lee and Jigga are bleeding ink all over tradition [NY Times]
For What Ails You: Queer Eye expatriate Ted Allen finally cracks a compelling case in his gastro show Food Detectives. Instead of identifying ambiguous mushrooms, his culinary genius finally serves your hangover, not your taste buds. [Men.Style]
Winning Season: GQ takes a crack at updating Brett Favre for autumn style in New York and, hopefully, dancing in the end zone. [GQ]
What Recession?: Controversial commodity Damien Hirst sells $127 million worth of art. Including that Indiana Jones-looking skull. [Yahoo]
The art world’s a rough place, but apparently people are increasingly unwilling to call a fraud a fraud. Does this skull look familiar to anyone?
We weren’t thrilled about the crystal skull idea the first time around, but by the second…things are just getting out of hand. The designer, Swarovski’s Quinn Gregory, is just playing his angle, but the rest of the world should know better.
It’s time for some new jewel encrusted objects. And, as it happens, we’ve got a perfectly good coffee cup just laying around. Any takers?
Quiksilver isn’t the only line with a forward-thinking label coming along for the ride. Adidas has managed to pull the same move without going to the bother of actually producing any shoes, or even designing shoes could possibly be produced. After all, why go to the trouble of putting together samples when all you really need are a few shiny pictures to send around the blogosphere?
Vagant let us know about this promotion, which comes courtesy of German sneakerhead Fritz Träumer. There’s the ultra-green sneaker, the Kraftwerk-inspired sneaker, and a few more, but we couldn’t help wondering…weren’t you supposed to put these on your feet at some point?
We’re on record as cautious observers of Damien Hirst, but after this he might want to stick to embalmed predators.
Labeled as the Damien Hirst x Levi’s x Warhol Factory Collection, these paint-spun jeans are part of a line that should be hitting Barneys in not too many weeks, but to get these pants in particular you’ll have to find your way to one of the silent auctions Hirst is setting up. It’s a clever bit of art/fashion mashing, but as usual, the joke is on you.
They may look good on a wall, but don’t wear them outside.
The art tee business is getting pretty crowded, and new ideas are always in short supply. An outfit called The Affair has come up with one: limited editions.
This tee comes out of a closed batch of two hundred…impressive until you realize that the Threadless print runs aren’t that much larger. They just have the foresight to call the number up front, and stick to their guns when it sells out early. It’s the same gimmick that lets Shepard Fairey sell an Obama poster 350 times and the gallery owners of the world grab a slightly bigger piece of the pie.
If they’re going to be art tees, it’s time they started acting like it.
Things are getting a little grim in the art world lately, with more than a third of the lots going unsold at Sotheby’s impressionism auction this Monday. Apparently the folks that have $10 million to spend on impressionist paintings are investing it in gold bars or bulletproof jets instead. The only good news to come out of the auction was for Edvard Munch’s Vampire, which sold for three million more than expected.
We’ve always been financially savvy, so we’ve come to the following conclusion. The art market may be depressed, but the market for depressing art has never been better.
The Hirsts and Murakamis of the world had better take note: what the people want is paintings of people crying, preferably in black. By the time the year is out, the Met will be handing out Kleenex at every show.
Anyone want to go halfsies on Goya’s Saturn?
Just when it seemed like things were cooling down for Takashi Murakami, the holidays roll around and everyone in retail goes completely insane.
In the case of Louis Vuitton, that means wrapping an entire store in a vinyl sheet imprinted with your latest pattern. As branding moves go, it’s hard to beat dressing up your store as an enormous handbag, although Marc Jacobs could still top it by tattooing his name across his forehead.
Mostly we’re just surprised they’re still standing by Takashi after so long. After all, the store doesn’t look that different from one of the walls at Murakami’s Brooklyn Museum exhibit when this whole crazy trip started off.
Maybe they’re in it for art after all.
We may have been a little hasty when we predicted a depressing art boom.
New York favorite Mark Rothko landed sales as high as $72 million before the troubles—possibly fueled by eccentric advertising executives—but the latest sale couldn’t even pull a measly $10 million bid. That’s even more remarkable given that the painting depicts the gaping emotionless void within us that no light can pierce…so it would seem to have the depressing art market cornered.
Maybe we should hold on those Van Goghs a bit longer.
Whether it’s Africa or flight attendant training school, the subject often makes the photographer. And as subjects go, brothels are a pretty good one…as long as you keep the kids away from the coffee table.
Prostitution has been legal since 2001 in Germany, and lensman Patric Fouad recently made a tour of the small-scale dens of iniquity that have popped up in the seven years since, resulting in his monograph, Brothels in Germany. They alternate between sterile hotel rooms and fantastical holdovers from old-world courtesanship, managing to be both exotic and bleak. It might be a place to visit, but you wouldn’t want to live there.
In the Year 2000: Now that we think about it, what’s the holdup on space skiing? [Dark Roasted Blend]
Humble Beginnings: Art and porn continue their awkward flirtation. Hopefully the pizza boy will speed things up. [Wallpaper]
Penny For Your Thoughts: An old New York relic speaks up. [New York Observer]
Funky Bunch: Apparently Marky Mark prefers his girls a little thicker than Kate Moss. That doesn’t narrow it down very much. [The Cut]
The overlap between the fashion and art world tends to be a sly, embarrassed one—at least, as long as you’re name isn’t Murakami. But we’re always happy when designers spread their wings, especially on the web.
Helmut Lang recently put up a virtual gallery with some of his less wearable items—like heavily textured pine tar on wooden boards, or the riveted stacks above. The best part to our eyes is the rotating images on the website that let you see Helmut’s precious creations from any angle.
Of course, it wouldn’t be truly upscale without a liquor sponsor, so Helmut’s latest project gets the moniker “In an Absolut World.” Just because it’s art doesn’t mean it can’t be good business.
At Uniqlo, the T-Shirt Chooses You: The Japanese retailer finally goes completely off the rails. Mimes are involved. [The Shophound]
A Wing and a Prayer: A Continuous Lean visits the Red Wing factory and gets to smell the leather up close. [Vimeo]
The Rise of the Machines: Rudimentary computer art peacefully invades a Swedish gallery. [Cool Hunting]
Democracy in Action: Voting is open on the top five designers of all time. Our money’s on the Finns. [MakeFive]
He may not realize it, but Shepard Fairey is one of the most promising artists of his generation. We can’t think of any American street artists who have managed as thorough an urban transformation as he has in New York, and his Obama poster is easily one of the most iconic images produced by any artist in over a decade. He deserves a cash-in or two; we just wish he could have made it a little more tasteful.
Fairey launched the OBEY clothing store today, and it’s genuinely abysmal. It’s a thrown together assortment of sub-Urban Outfitters schlock that treats Fairey’s meticulously collected phrases as if they were a brand on the level of Bugs Bunny, ready to be silkscreened onto sweatshirts en masse without any attention to actual style or design.
In every item, it’s obvious that Fairey has absolutely no interest in becoming a viable clothing designer. Which is fine by us. We just wish he could have stuck to gallery sales.
It isn’t just banks and magazines shedding employees anymore: even our old pal Damien Hirst has gotten in on the game. Despite having a very good year on the auction circuit, Hirst is laying off 17 of his 22 studio-hands. As of the January 1, they’ll be staring into the diamond-encrusted skull of unemployment.
All Hirst had to say for himself was the usual corporate mumbo jumbo about “efficiency cutbacks” and “not making those butterfly paintings anymore,” but we’re concerned. If Hirst’s not equipped to support an entourage anymore, we aren’t sure who is.
Perhaps some sort of a bailout is in order.
For those of us without fabulous wealth, it’s hard to appreciate the psychic brutality at work in the art collection game. High profile collectors aren’t usually aesthetes or intellectuals; they’re corporate raiders and law partners. They play for keeps, which is why the auction system ends up being so lucrative. The goal is to put together a collection that will command respect, and whoever ends up with the best stuff wins.
Luckily, the aesthetes at Assouline are stepping in to lend a hand. They’ve just put out The Impossible Collection, a guide to the 100 most valuable works of art in the world. It says what they are, why they matter, and where you can find each and every one. The book itself will set you back 500 dollars, but the value of the art is incalculable. Still, it’s nice to have a goal.
At this point, Google is less a tech company than an enormous mass of information, absorbing museums, libraries, laboratories, phone companies and whole species, until eventually it contains everything in the world. (Akira, anyone? Anyone?) At this point, its only competitors are Apple and religion. It’s going to be a brave new world…especially if you’ve got a smart phone.
The street artist known as Poster Boy has been cutting up subway ads for over a year now, growing from a neighborhood curiosity to a citywide phenomenon. And naturally, when the Museum of Modern Art took over a station in downtown Brooklyn with posters of some of their finer pieces, he had his work cut out for him.
Of course, he had the ad exec behind the MoMA campaign along for the ride, so it’s hardly an anti-establishment move, but this time around it may be more about art than politics. After all, he can’t stay an outsider forever, and these reworkings are the best case for mainstream recognition he could have arranged.
