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Zeitgeist

Here's something timely: So this weekend I stopped in to H&M and noticed their co-branded Coachella capsule collection. With festival season among us, I'd like to submit some commentary on fashion, music and cultural appropriation. Bear with me.

As expected, "festival style" has become a fully exploitable shorthand, monetized by fast fashion houses like H&M and Urban Outfitters for the uninspired masses as a badge of freedom; an air of carelessness and an affiliation with a movement in a time and place its consumer likely knows nothing about. Hey, you in the cutoffs & bindi, tell me about Gram Parsons. Tell me about Laurel Canyon and Lookout Mountain. Tell me about the path to independence from religious dogma. Tell me about the Source Family. Tell me about Joni Mitchell and the Byrds, about Jackson Browne, and feminism. And if you know these things, surely you can tell me it wasn't as glossy and idyllic as its music makes us believe, with Vietnam and the rise of the Cold War; with the draft, and violent civil protests. Or can you? (or truly can I? I wasn't there, either).

Nevertheless, retailers can't keep the crocheted top, the floppy hat, the micro-hotpants, the flowery sundresses and head-pieces on shelves because for festival-goers, "Coachella style" - a festival much of whose music, too, is a far cry from its obvious points of inspiration - is all about a breezy time and a freedom of being and non-conformity, right? It's all about counterculture "indie" and bohemian ideals; it's about anti-culture.

Or isn't it?

I've been to festivals including Coachella several times both in the "before it was discovered days", when you could still jump a fence and water was free and nothing sold out, and in the days since it was discovered. It's about drugs, and street style pics and how many Instagram likes your festival photos get. It's about RSVPs and pool parties and see and be seens. It's also about music and sore feet and fabulous memories.

The new anti-culture is in fact our mainstream culture. This applies to music, and this applies to fashion.

The zeitgeist of the 60s influenced fashion, music, art and politics for much of the rest of the 20th century. So this is less a narrative about fashion and music, and more a narrative about what inspires our cultural ideals. Paris has its 1900s la belle époque; the 40s and 50s had the beat generation; the 60s and 70s had civil rights and pop music. Certainly our generation must be known for more than Instagram photos, Tumblr, emojis, texting, club drugs and the appropriation of those who came before. Right, guys?

Break on through to the other side.

/rant

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This sounds nice.

Each of Smith’s records contains an abundance of small, perfectly formed gems. There are too many to pick from, but just about any would shine anew under this type of respectful reinterpretation.

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Ann Demeulemeester AW 13

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My wedding. #bride #bridal #floralcrown #floralheadress #flowers #wedding #wedding #photographer #groom

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A memory. #wedding #bride #bridal #weddingdress #groom #photography #photographer

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When humans make stuff, we tend to make interesting things.

Taking a quiet Sunday to think on inspiration and creativity. Watched Press Pause Play, a documentary about how digital sharing has created the flattened and homogenized cultural landscape we live in. Technology has completely altered our abilities to not only consume mass quantities of information, but also contribute and disseminate it with the touch of a button. Even twenty years ago, the thought and consideration artists had to put in to their work to make it significant (not just Pitchfork "significant", actually significant) took time and a mastering of a craft. Editing and production technologies and even our devices make us all musicians, photographers, creators in an era of self-opinion. 

Featuring Andrew Keene, Lena Dunham, Seth Godin and a handful of artists and music press, it's worth checking out.

"There's no evidence that we're on the verge of a great new glittering cultural age -- we may well be on the verge of a new dark age in cultural terms, a new collapse of Constantinople, where the creative world is destroyed and where all we have is cacophony and self-opinion. We have a crisis of democratized culture...Right now, all we have is a stream of backlash. It's this embarrassing movement in sub-genres that we thought were the next big thing that were really just critics & bloggers jerking off on each other...I think we're going to be really ashamed. I think we're going to be really embarrassed for ourselves."

It's on Netflix now, and I'm sure you can find the full-length on YouTube. More here http://www.presspauseplay.com/

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Paul Is Dead

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"The aim is to create work towards which there is both an immediate sensual reaction to its form and material, as well as a more gradual appreciation of a larger idea."

Bec Brittain debuted her SHY Polyhedron at american design in Paris in January, 2012. Be inspired: http://www.becbrittain.com/index.php

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“Unfortunately, the clock is ticking, the hours are going by. The past increases, the future recedes. Possibilities decreasing, regrets mounting.”

 - Haruki Murakami, Dance Dance Dance

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every day in every way it’s getting better and better.

john lennon

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givenchy fw 2012/13

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paint it black