Fashion

Kinee Ph. Josh Olins : Another Magazine Winter 07 Kinee Ph. Josh Olins : Another Magazine Winter 07 Kinee Ph. Josh Olins : Another Magazine Winter 07

Damien Hirst's $100 mil Man vs Ezra Pound's High Mind

Have you been having a good time with the massive ...errr...ad buy behind Djimon Honsou's Calvin Klein underwear ad ? On every phone booth, and on every corner in NY the ubiquitous Djimon looms just in time for the 25th anniversary of Calvin Klein underwear. It was a very persistent in-house casting director for Calvin that fought like her life depended on it , who made this all happen. If you want to measure person against picture then inflitrate Calvin klein HQ (205 W 39th St) on Sept 5 circa 9.00pm. Oh and Hilary Swank's co-hosting. Again, cocktails are par for the course but Calvin Inc hopes to retain its snob appeal with its tightly edited dinner party at The Gramercy's Wakliya. But you already have your invite.

Alice Delall/Select: Ph. Mario Testino for Vogue Paris Sept.07

The London kids have been descending on NY in droves , vibrating with energy and excitement and hungry to eat this city alive! They're telling all about what's fun in London right now. On the list:

1. Do a dinner at Mahiki in Mayfair, though you think it would have gone dead by now. But that's London for you. A Tiki spot that still keeps pulling in Prince Willie and Kate Middleton, Kanye West (who's a prince willie in his own right), Madonna and Giles Deacon. No guest list, no attitude no drama. Sounds like a vacation after the guest lists, attitude and drama of NY Fashion Week parties!

2. Stick to Shoreditch. It too, is still carrying on. Boombox still booms, Bistroteque will be mad. Loyalty's a gorgeous thing!

3. Set up an interview with Alice Dellal (she of that Casaraghi clique) now over at Select and Testino's new muse as seen in the current issue of Paris Vogue. Well we always love girls who shave the left side of their heads.

4. Expect big things from Henry Hollland! Awesome Aygness Deyn tips us off that Holland's SS08 LFW collection is going to be proper, full on and may-jah! "I'm really proud of him. It looks amazing!" hypes Agyness. Sold!

Ph: Jayson Keeling. Styling: Sterling. Perforated leather jacket : Helmut Lang. B+W striped tie: Missoni. Black Shirt: Jean Colonna

This photograph was taken in May 2000 back when I fancied myself a stylist. The image is an out-take from a 10 page black and latino hair story that tried to capture the extravagant hair-styles the kids on the streets were beginning to rock . The photographer, Jayson Keeling and I were working for a "edgy" urban magazine at the time that would freak out everytime you showed anything outside of expected values. This particular pic was not a problem but the one with a kid with a "wipe" (think early Prince: hair straightened, flipped to one side, asymmetrical over one eye) was to be edited. I walked out . I felt guilty for years that the hard work JK put into this shoot was never rewarded. So we're going to re-shoot the whole thing again. From scratch. Just because. Except for this pic which we are not going to try to replicate, though I could probably execute all its mechanics in a much slicker way now.

Teri Toye with her very own Greer Lankton doll

Teri Toye was born a boy but found being a boy a bore
So Teri Toye had second thoughts and dashed quickly for the door
It was the door of a very good doctor, a genius at the switch
The snip was done, the past was shunned, the boy became the bitch
Her ice cold beauty a weapon, her whip the dead blond hair
And when Teri surfaced at club Area, suddenly she's “Girl Of The Year”
Since it was the Hi-80's the unwritten rules were bent
Such was Teri's chic even the mainstream did relent
From the Boy Bar clique of Meisel to the rising Stephen Sprouse
Teri runway walked her way up to Chanel. Yes, the venerable house
Now comes a downpour of adoration, now comes thundering applause
Teri is now not just ironic, the joke has become a cause
And this where our ballad now takes a sad and tragic turn
It is always sad to watch an icon, as quickly crash and burn
The clique it turned its back, the princess is expelled
Ariane became the new toy before Teri's moment gelled
But her hard jawed ghost still hovers in those neon NY nights
I've heard that certain agents have Teri Toye dreams in sight
So if you're tall and lanky and swing a dead blond bob
The editorial kids are waiting to hand you that blue chip job.
True story!

Mercedes Benz Fashion Week S/S 08

While trawling the agencies all week (its not as seedy as it sounds) to scan the scene, TI picked up on a strange frequency. Apart from a faint enthusiasm as to what referential/vintage road Marc might go down next, there is not, in general, a sense of excitement at the modeling agencies regarding the upcoming shows. Of course there is the customary dread as to the 17 non-stop days of booking between now and the end of the NY shows. There is the bracing for the daily abuse that is sure to come from stressed out, harried casting directors screaming “What do you mean Calvin has her exclusive? How about if I don't book a single one of your models then?” And then there are the endless after-parties that one is obliged to trot your prize girls around as if NY had become one massive pony show. So make that 17 non-stop 17 hour days. And the windfall from all that? Obscure designers who pay in trade, offering unwanted clothes to the models in lieu of cash. An off-skelter schedule toe-jammed with shows which means major conflicts every day. Clients switching around casting directors with reckless abandon. Casting directors taking shows that pay a grand total of $4,000. And the compensation to the models is still “trade” which means said casting director is expected to solicit top girls for next to nothing while being paid next to nothing. It is not as glamorous a living as you'd hope to think.

Some of Marc Atlan's Greatest Hits

From I-phones to limited edition Nikes, why has design become this much of a market force? Is it that we're experiencing an on-going visual evolution of contemporary culture in the same way we are under-going a technological revolution? I'm not trying to write a master's thesis. (Part of the discipline of The Imagist for me is to learn to be...succinct). I'm just trying to figure out how the hell the whole world got to be so design sensitive. When did American product packaging start to overwhelm its content? To personalize the issue a little bit... I was out out to dinner last night with a pal from an ad agency, when the subject turned to Fabien Baron and his powerhouse agency Baron and Baron. Its not a company anymore it seems.Its a brand in itself, if you'll pardon that dirty word..."brand".
Baron you know from the firm's traditional image management of magazines : Paris Vogue, the 90's Harper's Bazaar- which obviously I've been looking at a LOT- Interview magazine, Arena Homme +, as well as fashion ads -most notably Calvin Klein. We gossiped a little bit about the influence Le Baron and Karl Templer now had over the direction of Calvin, down to the models, in which that team seems not to be as personally invested in. Certainly not the way Calvin the man invested in Kate Moss and Brooke Shields and now no girl or boy for Calvin is allowed to be a bigger story than the clothes.

Inventory/Inventoire

Who misses the controlled extravagance of the M/M (Paris) pages of Paris Vogue? Who didn't buy extra copies of V Man 1 to archive that landmark "Alphabet Story" that turned the leading male mannequins of that moment into letters of the alphabet? . The Imagist is guilty on all counts and is planning to pay penance by buying Alphamen,a limited edition box set of 27 one colour silkscreen prints (in an edition of 26 at aprx. $8,000). That is, unless you beat TI to the punch. If you do we're just going to have to settle for the book Inventory/Inventoire (multiple edition at aprx $20).