If you’ve leafed through the front of this month’s DETAILS, you might have seen the usual bunch-of-stuff section titled “Investment Pieces.” It’s not a bad angle—they certainly need to address economics in some way—but they don’t seem to have told their writers about it.
The result is a few safe staples mixed into the same trend-driven stock they’ve always specialized in. Luckily we’re here to separate the wheat from the chaff…
| ALL Dept. of Corrections |
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These are rugged times. Rugged materials are called for.
But hopefully we can keep them confined to garments that won’t actually touch your body. After all, it’s all fun and games until somebody gets a rash.
This burlap tie may be the first good item we’ve seen to make use of rougher fabrics, but we’re pretty sure it won’t be the last. (Hat tip to UD Chicago.) A good contrast of fabrics can make a whole outfit, and burlap is pretty much guaranteed to set off whatever texture your suit is. Plus, it’s tough enough to last until the next bubble.
We’ve been shopping our musings on recession-chic around to a few other bloggers to see what ideas they came up with, and so far the response has been nothing short of intriguing. A Suitable Wardrobe has been one of our favorite trads since we started in the blogging game, so we thought we’d start things off with their response.
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If we were to write up a list of recession-proof commodities, nudity and beer would be pretty near the top. But apparently beer isn’t the staple it used to be, and nudity isn’t doing too well either.
Playboy lost $156 million last year, prompting the CEO of its parent company to say they were “open to discussions” on a sale. It’s the media equivalent of a fire sale…which makes us worry for the financial prospects of the Girls Next Door.
While Playboy has been rolling downhill for the past few decades, but it’s still jarring to think of a world without it. After all, you can’t hide a laptop under your mattress.
| ALL Current Affairs |
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via LIFEIt’s tough to say what luxury looks like during hard times, but it’s a question fashion houses are going to have to answer one way or another. We’ve got a few ideas ourselves—most notably this one—but we imagine the Louis Vuitton folks have smarter minds than us working on this one as we speak.
The Choosy Beggar just weighed in with an answer we can get behind: sturdier, more durable clothes to last through whatever comes our way. This is what raw denim was reaching for, and it might be the only thing that would get modern consumers to drop serious money on clothing again. But after 15 years of churning out disposable duds, are labels ready to think long term?
Only time will tell.
Just Long Enough to Reach the Ground: Esquire declares the return of the leg…via the well-cut slit skirt. [Esquire]
To the Moon, Alice: Commuting from the moon is getting really expensive… [BlackBook]
Mansion on the Hill: You haven’t seen tragedy until you’ve seen the look in a billionaire’s eyes when he walks away from a $750 million mansion. We don’t blame him: those stone lions look pretty sweet. [Luxist]
Bear Alert: Seth Rogen is set to appear on the cover of Playboy. We predict it will be the only issue anyone actually reads for the articles. [Page Six]
Weigh Station: A German designer has declared Heidi Klum too fat to be a model. Something tells us Seal is beating the crap out of this guy as we speak. [Page Six]
Four Score…: Keeping score at fashion week is a full time job. So far, we’d say Robert Geller by a nose. [The Moment]
Lonely at the Top: The real victims of the downturn are Russian billionaires. [Luxist]
Think Big: Jonathan Demme finally spills the beans on David Byrne’s famous big suit. [The Guardian]
Some might say that a $1900 beanbag chair is out of step with the times, but not necessarily…
We’d guess right now there are a lot of bankers that want nothing more than an enormous pillow to collapse on.
We knew things were getting rough for Dubai, but we didn’t expect people to be in such a hurry to leave.
Apparently people are skipping town so fast, they don’t even bother to take their cars: more than 3000 have been found abandoned in the airport parking lot in the past few months. Sharia law is pretty tough on debtors, so folks in dire financial straits tend to skip town rather than face jail time over a bounced check or two. But with boom times definitely at a close, the sheer volume of people sprinting towards the nearest outbound plane is becoming downright remarkable.
On the bright side, we bet the used car market is really taking off.
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Fully Spread: Fashion Indie honors the work of Ms. Karen Collins. [FashionIndie]
The Most Wonderful Time of the Year: The essential Conde Nast guide to spring. Umbrellas not included.
[Men.Style]
Angry Young Men: A trek through the Faile studio…including a prayer log or two. [PSFK]
Times is Hard: The Times recounts the current difficulties facing young designers. Conclusion? Your trip through that blowout sale may be more important than you think. [NYTimes]
With the downturn getting serious, we knew we were going to see fewer big ticket items, but we didn’t expect to run out of places to wear a suit.
Maybe we should have. Desperate to draw in more clientele, the New York institution 21 has relaxed its dress code. In their words, “Ties are still preferred and greatly appreciated, but they are no longer a must.”
We’ve written similar words, but under very different circumstances, and despite it all, we’re sad to see the jacket-and-tie requirement go. The trad life is a noble one, and it’s worth preserving. We’re sure there are other ultra-formal restaurants in the city…but we can’t actually name another. Until now, we’ve never needed to.
At least the market for bejeweled iPhone cases is still going strong.
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With Damien Hirst testing the limits of just how conspicuous art consumption can get, it was only a matter of time before we stopped messing around with jewelry and went straight to cold, hard cash.
This installation piece from Art Marcovici stacks 10 million $100 bills on pallets in the middle of a gallery. Aptly titled “One Billion Dollars,” it’s supposed to incite your capitalist urges, but it just makes us wish we had a more colorful currency. Maybe Marcovici should think about One Billion Euros as a follow-up.
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We were browsing through the latest Gargyle stock when we came across this Fred Perry Chambray shirt—call it one more upside to deflation.
Of course, we’ll want something a lot heavier than chambray for the next few months at least, but it never hurts to plan ahead. In this case, it even pays off a little.
Rabbit, Run: Surreal photography continues to scare the crap out of us. [NotCot]
Winter Sports: A friendly face introduces us to the terrifying world of snow polo. [Luxist]
Going Minimal: Does good design flourish during a depression? It depends how you feel about the barrel-top. [Unbeige]
Going Gray: The enduring appeal of the gray flannel suit.
[A Suitable Wardrobe]
Speaking of workwear, we ran across this snap of a West Virginia family circa 1908 that should give you an idea of what it looked like the first time around. For a long time, this was the uniform for hard times.
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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.
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Market capitalism has had a rough few months, and everyone seems to be piling on. It lost the bankers to corporate bailouts and now it may lose its most vocal and culturally important spokesmen: the rappers.
The new single from the production team N.A.S.A. manages to lure Chuck D out of obscurity for an impressive verse, and that’s a MOTH you’re hearing on the chorus, but the song—titled “Money”—doesn’t seem to think too highly of the stuff. In fact, it’s downright skeptical. Maybe it’s Shepard Fairey‘s video, but the paper chase comes out looking pretty unseemly. And if we can’t believe in material wealth, what’s left to rap about?
Whatever happened to putting five carats in your baby girl’s ear?
For a little over four years, Dubai has grown in the public’s imagination as the Vegas of the middle east, where Islamic devoutness could forge a local truce with unrestrained capitalism and a flood of oil money could fund obscenely ambitious construction schemes. But now that the boom times are over, the idea of a luxury oasis is seeming a lot shakier.
The Telegraph recently devoted 1500 words to cataloguing Dubai’s troubles, but the gist is familiar enough: lots of construction debt, less money than they thought, and a dwindling supply of optimism. The buildings are still going up, but no one is sure how they’ll pay for it all…at least until oil prices go back up.
Somewhere, Dana Thomas is smiling.
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We were all set to write about Kendi—the ties look good right?—only to discover that in the few months since we heard about them, their website has reverted to a zombie site plugging GoDaddy.com. In case you forgot, it’s rough out there, and a dearth of interesting ties is the least of our worries.
If anyone has any news on the fall of Kendi, drop us a line. Otherwise, we’ll just wait for the leftovers to show up on eBay.
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.
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The eCommerce bug is spreading across the East Village at an alarming rate. The latest culprit is Cry Wolf, who launched a site this month to bring brands like Harmon, Cronicles of Never, and Public School to whoever is wise enough to log on.
To our eye, it’s only a matter of time before someone draws together all the boutiques Alibris-style and makes hard-to-find labels a thing of the past. But until that time, this’ll do pretty nicely.
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Things have been pretty rough for the American car industry over the last few decades, but we never thought the solution would be sculpting hubcaps into decorative bowls. Isn’t this the sort of thing you’d usually buy from impoverished villages in Mexico?
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.
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We’ve sifted through a lot of advice, but it’s rare that you find anything approaching real wisdom in a magazine. To get the good stuff, we recommend going to a slightly smellier, more grizzled source.
We’re talking about the Hobo Code.
Inscribed in the Annual Convention Congress of the Hoboes of America in 1894 (we hear the buffet was amazing), the Hobo Code has stood as the gold standard of vagrant ethics for more than a century, guiding famous vagabonds like Fry Pan Jack, Stormin’ Norman and Waterbed Lou as they rode the rails through the country. It holds up surprisingly well, especially if you ever find yourself in Hobo Court…
Business may be slowing down lately, but the menswear business is doing just fine according to the Bloomingdale’s CEO. Of course, he probably wouldn’t mention it if he were hocking the family jewels, but it’s nice to know we’re out-consuming the fairer sex.
Our theory: It’s all those desert boots.
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Style: some people have it, and some neighborhoods really have it. To show you what we mean, we’ve partnered with Cadillac to present Style Shifters—a five-part, in-depth look at what the hippest gents in some of the country’s coolest neighborhoods are wearing now. Our intrepid photographers have roamed the streets in search of the most stylish guys around. Herewith, a few photos of what they found...
Williamsburg, Brooklyn is home to some of the country’s best bars, coolest restaurants and, of course, some of the best menswear shops in the world. Naturally, you’ll find more than a few stylish individuals perched outside those locations (and no, not all of them are Billyburg hipsters). See what we mean below...
Oh, and up next: we take a peak at another handsome-as-hell neighborhood, the Mission District in San Francisco. Stay tuned...
