China Here I Come

People go through periods where they try on different closes like hairstyles. “Norman used to use ‘Cheers,’ and I tried to appropriate it when he died,” the writer and artist Norris Church Mailer said of her husband, Norman Mailer. “It just wasn’t me.” For now, Ms. Mailer is sticking with the lowercase xx — “which are not really kisses but a placeholder, as if I don’t really know how I feel about this person, and they can apply whatever meaning they choose.” But Ms. Mailer did approve of the signoff I was currently trying on, “Be Fabulous.”

“I love that!” she said. “Of course, I’ve lived in Provincetown for the past 35 years.”

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Living in Margiela

via Nowness

A Hazy Shade of Winter

Janz & Cooper

Some seriously sick shades...






Photos via Style Bubble

Denim at Dries SS11

Photos via Jak & Jil

Fall's must-have fabric: fur, preferably worn long, over-sized and paired with a wide brim hat. [via Elle's November Issue]

Dandelion Lights

Gorgeous. [via]

From Garry Winogrand's 'Women Are Beautiful,' which my mom gave me at 18. [via]

Rainy Day Listening

"The Bosom Is Back." Check out my latest piece in the Wall Street Journal this weekend.

Amazing rugs. [via]

Listen up

Paintings from the amazingly (multi-)talented Michelle Antonisse.

I'm now on Tumblr with The Rackit! To find out more about the latter, click here.

Come to this...

To find out more about the super fantastic 5 brands that I'm including you'll have to show up and see for yourself.

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Olivier Zahm x Zadig & Voltaire @ Le Bain for Style.com here

Check out my What It's Really Like to Work For Marc, on Style.com. Yes, that's me at the launch last night in a killer turban thanks to Yestadt Millinery.

Cathy Horyn on Alexander Wang SS11...

Mr. Wang is not a great designer, though he probably would be happy to accept any laurels that people want to toss him, but he is clearly a shrewd guy.

Unlike some of his dreamy peers, he decided at the outset to make affordable clothes. That’s the traditional, pre-Internet way to reach a lot of people. He also must have sensed that fashion’s memory hole was widening in direct proportion to the numbers of young people Googling his name. The designs were cool, but they didn’t have to stand up to much scrutiny — hey, didn’t Marni do those pants last season? — so long as the stuff was widely and easily available. Mr. Wang doesn’t really have courage in the traditional sense of trying something new and difficult, but he does have China. Nearly all of his clothing is now produced there.

... The collection downloaded the ideas of designers like Ann Demeulemeester and Issey Miyake — naturally, without their sense of energy and intuition — and for that reason, despite some cute looks, the show was a little boring.

But don’t fret for the 26-year-old Mr. Wang: the combined whiplash of globalization and the Internet all but guarantees that these clothes will look new to someone.

So far a bit of fashion week coverage for Style.com (here, here and here) and for BlackBook (all here).

Collier Campbell

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Legs & shoes

Love this series from Kathy Lo...

Actually, it’s a subject with no clear conclusions. I could tell from my conversations with fashion house executives, like Shirley Cook of Proenza Schouler, that online shopping and information is forcing designers to be better designers — sharper and more competitive. But the landscape presents weird paradoxes. Candace Corlett, a partner at WSL Strategic Retail in New York, made me laugh when she pointed out that designers are all focused on their runway shows, comparing the collections to exquisite, “well-crafted sentences,” and yet, more and more, young women are putting their trust in peer reviews with bad grammar and haul videos shot in messy bedrooms.

-Cathy Horyn's "Girl's Rules For Fall"

Dear John

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A must-read on the overexposure of luxury brands via portholes like Gilt Groupe as well as the growing appetite for ‘the next big thing’ at the Huffington Post here.

The one and only Audrey. [via]

Burning Man Inspiration, Part 1

Great editorial in the new Dazed & Confused...




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As if Celine FW10 wasn't enough to get one revved up for a 70s comeback, there's this recent editorial from Vogue Turkey...

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One of my favorite places I have ever visited: architect Luis Barragon's house in Mexico City...


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"When all else is lost, the future still remains." -- Christian Nevell Bovee (1820-1904)

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Missing Miami...

I first came across Dan Hillier's arresting work in a small boutique in Paris last summer. The London-based artist has lent his images to London Fashion Week and sells prints of his evocative, enigmatic etchings on his namesake website. But, now Hillier is offering an even more economical way to nab his work: canvas totes.

Check out the latest issue of Amsterdam boutique Tenue de Nîmes' journal, Journal de Nîmes, here.

Just did a piece on The Webster's new surf-themed pop-up shop, curated by Timothee Verrecchia. Check it out on Nowness.com.

"Cultural insecurity begets its linguistic doppelgänger. The same is true of technical advance. In a world of Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter (not to mention texting), pithy allusion substitutes for exposition. Where once the Internet seemed an opportunity for unrestricted communication, the increasingly commercial bias of the medium—”I am what I buy”—brings impoverishment of its own. My children observe of their own generation that the communicative shorthand of their hardware has begun to seep into communication itself: “people talk like texts.”

This ought to worry us. When words lose their integrity so do the ideas they express. If we privilege personal expression over formal convention, then we are privatizing language no less than we have privatized so much else. “When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.” “The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.” Alice was right: the outcome is anarchy." --Tony Judt

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I'm very proud to be a part of the newly launched online publication The Wild. There is some incredible talent involved in the debut issue, which just hit the web. Check out my piece on designer Siki Im here and the rest of the stellar stories and images at TheWildMagazine.com.

Marmol Radziner prefab. Yes, please.

If you are in LA this Saturday, this looks awesome...

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Amy Odell on Lady Gaga's on stage ensembles losing their luster...

"And that feeling is important, not only for the three-figure-minimum tickets, but especially as Miley Cyrus sheds her stage clothes and Madonna rolls out a line of juniors' clothes inspired by her breakout ultrasexualized self. Meanwhile, the top designers of the world, judging by their fall and resort clothes, are hell-bent on dressing mature, if not necessarily old, women. Women with careers, in all likelihood, with much more to pride themselves on than ass cheeks. Lady Gaga may represent just one example of why designers took that turn. Inspiration and empowerment are not built on a mysterious combination of leotards, glitter, weird capes, and V-cleavage. Sometimes conservative clothes just do the job better. That was probably one reason why Gaga's Cousin It–esque 'Monster' costume was our favorite outfit of the whole night."

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Standard Finery

More here...