....slowly, but surely.....

Tuesday, March 08, 2005

Fashion Forewarned

Yes, I am addicted to style and fashion like most brain-dead Americans.
However, my passion has a little twist, I'm very interested in the artistry involved in designing and making a collection and the different ways in which designers contribute to the garment aesthetic.

For example, John Galliano (see link at right) is known for his wacky and overcomplicated couture designs which leave the uninitiated boggled and disgusted. But when viewing his collections with the trained eye, one can notice that there isn't just a story being told in the ever more conventional 'visual prose' sense, but there is a unique connection to time and culture that allows for the much more useful analysis of why and his clothes are made with so much overlapping, looping and revisiting of designs, structure, technique and composition.

In his most recent Winter 2005 mens collection, he does what he does best, turning the old into new again by taking the clothes of George Washington's time and warping them with current trends in fabric, color, print and embellishment. Its genius, its fun, its silly, but it makes sense and all the while tells the story of how European settlers in their time of rebellion meshed and mixed with native Americans and Africans in a bloody nation forming cultural encounter.

From time to time on this blog, there will be little crots of pseudo intelectual fodder just to make the day a little more interesting. Its good to provoke complex thought and awareness in spaces where they don't usually exist. Pop culture, Globalized media infotainment and day to day metropolitan interaction definitely qualify as examples of these shallow spaces. Snizatch won't be able to adequately illuminate what should be in these spaces, but I'll be able to bitch and rant about the things that rotate my prostate so who cares?

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