TAKE A BOW

goodbyes are never easy. who could ever forget sain laurent's last kiss to the world with his spectacular couture retrospective, hedi slimane's final collection for dior homme, or tom ford's last hurrah at gucci. but who would've thought that raf simons' final collection for jil sander could provoke the same sort of heart wrenching reaction by ending with one of the most beautiful and poetic collection we've seen in a very long time. this coming from a designer who made a name for himself channeling the brooding angst of youth made this collection even the more poignant. or the fact that he really wasn't given that much expectation when he became creative director for the house seven years ago.
i'm not gonna lie, tears were shed when i saw the video of everyone giving him a standing ovation which kept on going until he re-appeared for an encore, visibly overcome with gratitude and emotion. anna dela russon said it best, it showed the humanity in fashion. his work is never about pretentious intent. there are some, like simons, who's passion for their craft goes beyond the idea of mere dressing and decoration. there's a soul behind his work, and that's where the humanity comes from.


photo: style.com

INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION

from its humble beginnings as the uniform of miners and blue collar factory workers, utilitarian workwear has been welcomed with arms wide open by the apostles of high fashion. and no one does it better than junya watanabe! i reckon levi strauss is smiling down from heaven with a grin as wide as the big, blue sky! there's enough rivets and denim here to make a thousand pairs of 501s.


photos: style.com

LIFE AQUATIC

the romance of the sea never gets old! nor do the rugged, bearded men in cable knit sweaters and yellow rain coats that forever tries to tame the waves. imagine how dreadfully dull our wardrobes would be without nautical stripes, wool pea coats and beanies to keep our ears snug and warm. now to find me self a hunky captain to rock the boat with like aaliyah.


photo: style.com

JACK CHAMBERS

it's been ages since i went to the AGO (art gallery of ontario fyi). the last time i went was a couple of years ago for the re-opening after frank ghery pimped out the joint and made the once non-descript building one of the architectural wonders of toronto.
it does cut quite a dashing figure. all those wooden beams soaring up to the sky, over a path almost a whole city block wide, curved like a sail. i reckon its quite hard to paint a picture of it in your head. even if you google image search it, it doesn't quite capture the scope and magnitude of the structure. anyways, the last time i went i came purely to look at the building, didn't even look at any art because i've seen all of it countless of times.
a couple of weeks ago i thought it would be a brilliant idea to take some of my staff to the AGO to bond and hopefully be inspired (i dare say they were). we went on a wednesday because its free after five on wednesdays and they would be much more inclined to go when no dollars are involved. i didn't really have any expectations because although its been a few years since i had last gone, there were no major exhibits going on. so in my head seeing all those works of art that i've seen countless times would just be like seeing your neighbour you see on the lift every morning on your way to work.
i was wrong.
when you walk in, the first gallery you pass through is rather a long one. unchanged even after the ghery addition. it was still long and quite narrow, but it was exactly the same. raoul duffy's "yellow violin" hung where it always had been. pretty much right across the emil bernard, right around the corner from the o'keefe which is directly across the miro. seeing them for the first time in years, i felt a sudden, unexpected rush of nostalgia. like how you would feel when you randomly flick the remote and it lands on a channel playing one of the saturday morning cartoons you used to watch when you were little.
i was by no means little when i saw those paintings, but it was, to risk sounding incredibly corny, like running into an old, dear friend.
i used to go with my art class in highschool to the AGO every wednesday without fail. then walking over to china town at this little restaurant called champion house for some grub and sitting there for hours having a good laugh. those were some of the most memorable days of my highschool life.
but i digress. as we went from room to room, seeing all those works of art that i was once so familiar with, to my surprise, i felt the same way i felt when i saw them for the very first time. they remain unchanged, still beautiful, still as powerful as it ever was and the only thing that's different was my age.
in the canadian wing of the gallery hung jack chambers's "highway 401 towards london no.1". it is massive! situated on one of those free standing walls that divides the room and acts like a barrier to persuade you towards a certain direction. when you're standing in front of it, you literally feel like you're flying over the highway and that is your view.
to be honest, i've seen that painting so many times and this is the first time i've ever remembered his name. it also helped that the gallery held a special retrospective of his work so most of his important pieces were housed together in one room.
i never really paid that much attention to canadian art. mainly because i've always associated it with the group of seven and i'm not really keen on their work, nor do those landscapes have any affinity with my connection to anything canadian. so i knew nothing about jack chambers. didn't have a clue that he was once canada's highest paid living artist before he passed away from leukemia in 1978. but there was something in chamber's work that was especially familiar. i connected with it. the view outside the window on his domestic paintings looked like the view out of my parents' window from the house i grew up in. huge suburban backyards knee deep in snow with towering pine trees. i used to play and make snow angels in that exact same backyard when i was a kid.
that day, i felt like a child. i felt the same way i felt every time i visit the philippines. i left as a child and came back as an adult. time and experience has given you a new perspective, but your eyes see everything through memory.

RUINS

the result of a five year collaboration between photographers yves marchand and romain meffre, "the ruins of detroit" is a fascinating study of a once great city slowly crumbling into dust. once the heart of american industrialization, detroit was a beacon for forward thinking ideas. it is the spiritual home of the automobile and the birth place of motown. can you even imagine a world without cars or how different the music we listen to today would sound like? detroit is now but a shadow of it's golden past but the cultural impact this city has had is immeasurable.
looking at these images, with their grand interiors of towering arches and intricate plaster work falling into decay, it gives off an almost eerie impression of looking at helenic ruins such as the parthenon. a micro example of what our civilization would eventually look like if it ever were to collapse. greece was the center of the western world for a thousand years, egypt even longer than that. and what we have left of their great civilizations asides from their intellectual inheritance, are, let's face facts, dilapidated monuments. but to see it happen in our modern age makes me wonder about the mortality of our way of life. quite a heavy thing to propose to my thoughts, but it is works like this that affirms that brilliant ideas that provoke will always be the engine that drives us forward. even though some, including cities, become casualties of progress.

PARK LIFE

toronto winters are excrutiatingly long and painful. everything becomes a mission of epic proportions. even just stepping out to the corner shop to buy a pack of fags is like an olympic level sporting event. first you thrown on about three layers of clothes, and then a parka, plus your scarf, beenie and gloves and then hype yourself up to take the first step outside your door and make like usain bolt and run as fast as you can to the store. all the while avoiding sheets of ice that's carpeted the pavement. so when lady summer comes around batting her sunshine eyelashes, the whole entire city goes mental.
by mental i mean five times more drinking than most of the year. four packs of cigarettes more each week. an extra hundred dollar spent on the weekend. too many nights you can't remember. a little bit of slutting around. bands galore. gallery openings with open bar to "look at art". and bringing a proper large picnic blanket to the park so you and your mates have something to lie on and watch the sun go up. a perfect way to end an amazing night. until a few hours later when you wake with the most horrendous hang-over of your life. so then you go back to the park and drink some more cause in your head it's much better to be drunk than to feel hung-over. but that's not how i spent my summer at all. just kidding.

RIFAT OZBEK

with fashion month slowly approaching and dozens of young desigerns set to be heralded as "next big thing" by the fashion press, i however have been pre-occupied going back to "the next big thing" from two decades ago. yes gaultier and marc jacobs still are able to pack a wallop, but with galliano's unfortunate fall from grace i've gotten bit with a case of hopeless nostalgia.
also, having been let down by fashion for the past few seasons i really haven't got any other alternative to get my fashion fix but to go back to past, when designers were still concerned with radical ideas and not the opinion of their financial backers and board of directors. a time when fashion was still able to juggle commerce and creativity. not to say that there aren't a handfull designers at present capable of doing so, what i'm refering to are ideas that were so forward thinking then that have become so prolific now.
case in point, rifat ozbek. once the torch bearer of east meets west fashion, his legacy has now been passed on to highly influential designers such as dries van noten. who, like ozbek in the eighties and early nineties, manages to introduce ethnic references with a jolt of youthful, contemporary energy giving it a relevance that is at once timeless and completely modern.
born in turkey and raised in england, ozbek took the multi-cultural collision from the streets of london and his own turkish background and brought it to the world of high fashion. coming out around the same time as lacroix's bourgeois excess of poof skirts and lavish embellishments, the youthful, kinetic energy of ozbek's designs provided a much needed contrast to the almost unattainable vision of french fashion.
his concerns were more of what was happening now. referencing traditional ideas and adapting it with a much more youthful sensibility heavily influenced by london's riotous club culture of the time. where english dandyism met africal tribal motifs but without the overt romanticism of other designers who borrowed from other cultures like saint laurent.
with the world getting much smaller and more obessed with youth than ever before and cultures and traditions melting into one big giant flavourless pot, i think an ozbek come-back is well long over due to add some spice to the stew.

MATCH PLAY

lace, suede, golf? what do these three have in common? well miuccia hates all of them! and as usual, it becomes the starting point for one of her critically lauded collections. the latter jump starting one of her most exuberantly joyful collection to date. prints versus prints on colour versus fabric. tacky much? perhaps, but no one can make tacky on point and as sophisticated like the grand dame of milanese fashion can. after all, this is the same woman who bravely challenged our notion of good and bad taste those many moons ago. and its her special sort of genius that can time and time again force us to change our opinion about the ugly and the beautiful. armani probably think its straight up atrocious, but tell that to her billion dollar listing at the hong kong stock exchange as she laughs her way to the bank!



photos: style.com

THE BEAT

bless christopher bailey's heart for bringing back that quirky, english eccentricity he once brought to this institution of british-ness. while there were still loads upon loads of delicious trenches and macs, the collection didn't turn into a procession of outerwear (unlike last season, and the season before, and the season before that). it actually felt like this collection had a specific point of view. and more importantly, a story to tell. which frankly we haven't seen since his derek jarman's garden inspired collection three years ago. the artisan details, the brilliant use of colour on those drool worthy jumpers, ethnic inspired prints, and the footwear which will be next season's equivalent to this season's prada espadrilles, there were so many elements here that harmoniously worked together into one confident idea. it served as a reminder that bailey is capable of doing so much more than fashionable raincoats. i dunno about you, but my faith has been restored!



photos: style.com

TAIT MODERN

my oh my! canucks are running rampant in ye old london towne! did all the good designers abandon the great white north for the promise of england? following erdem, mark fast, and todd lynn's yellow brick road is young upstart thomas tait. a young man who holds the title of the youngest designer to graduate from central saint martin's grueling m.a. in fashion design. architectural cuts that frame knife pleat skirts and razor sharp trousers brilliantly mixes experimentation with old world technique. while his contemporaries in fashion's most exciting city are favouring wild abandon, the youngest of them all is a study in masterclass and restraint. and we all know that it's those sort of fellas that have the longest life span of them all.



photos: style.com

LITTLE WOMEN

lolitas in spades! if a modern adaptation of nabokov's scandalous heroine were to ever grace the silver screen again, miuccia prada is the most obvious choice for the costume designer. who else but her can so brilliantly summarize the connection between youth and sex? between the ugly and the beautiful? between the past and the present? while the prada signature has always been that of a girlish naivete, underneath it all is an exploration of the things that women usually associate with femininity (this season it was the tactile suggestion of furs and python, plus the shimmering glamour of paillettes). it gives it that tension between girlishness and grown up that always gives her collection its erotic charge. it's always quite naughty but you can't exactly pin point what it is that makes it slightly perverse. regardless of all the sexual subtexts that underlines each prada collection, the end result is always beautiful.


photo: style.com

MERLIN

i'm alive. apologies for the well long hiatus but i guess you can clearly understand why i've been m.i.a. this little guy whose name is merlin has pretty much taken over my entire life.

in fashion related news, i cashed out kirsten owen at my store about a month ago. i cried a little down there. she was lovely.

FALL FROM GRACE

the road to redemption is an epic task that if someone triumphs over, is able to reap the rewards of salvation and praise. but what happens when a man's reputation becomes unsalvageable? when one action will forever define the character of a person? a permanent tarnish that becomes his mark of cain.
bigotry and racism isn't something alien to the rarefied world of high fashion. no high profile fashion editor will ever openly accuse miuccia prada of being a racist, but let's not forget the fact that not one black girl walked a prada or miumiu show for a whole decade. the act of not casting a model of african origin might be considered to be a racist act, but unless she flat out says she doesn't approve of black models, the rest of the fashion world does what it's always done, turn a blind, ignorant eye.
then there is john galliano. once fashion's most notorious enfant terrible with the brilliance to back it all up. an alchemist who merge multi-cultural references with history and fantasy. evoking the past to move fashion to the future. a future that until a mere two days ago was destined to be one of the industry's great, immortal geniuses. sharing space at the high altar with christian dior himself. the man whose house he would eventually helm for almost fourteen years.
by now everyone has heard of his termination at dior. seen the video of his drunken tirade spewing venomous words i don't think needs to be repeated any longer. i don't condone the things that he said, and although i have the greatest respect for his talents, i ultimately and broken heartedly approve of the decision to terminate him.
we've all said things, horrible things to others even when we don't mean them. whether as a joke, or drunk, or even just from the tone of our voice, the things that we say, no matter how much we think to be inconsequential, leaves its trace on everyone around us. ultimately painting a picture of us and the things we believe in to the world at large. a world that does not intimately know our person.
galliano was the man responsible for taking me on my first fashion fantasy. it was 1995. linda evangelista just came out wearing a massive yellow tulle skirt with a feather bustier twirling around while nadja auermann, in an equally large pink tulle skirt, struck a pose like an old varga girl around a vintage automobile.
i remember being glued in front of the television in awe with just how magical the whole thing was. even though i was watching it from a television screen, i knew i was witnessing what fashion people call a "moment".
it made me believe that fashion isn't just throwing something on to cover our modesty. it could have a purpose higher than just plain necessity. there could be emotion. there could be fantasy. a passion to create a world where the most beautiful women in the world can walk around a car garage wearing the most beautiful dresses and it makes perfect sense. even if it's just for just that tiny sliver of time.
that is the memory i want to associate with john. the dreamer who invited us to his own dreams and allowed us to explore our own. now it's suddenly eclipsed by hateful words. by sentiments i don't really think he believes in. he made a mistake. a drunken, foolish mistake. i can find it in my heart to forgive him. i just don't think the rest of the world will.

THE DREAM

henri rousseau - the dream (1910)

rousseau is criminally underrated.

BLUE VALENTINE

i'm not going to rant about how miserable it is to be reminded of your single status on a day when everywhere you look there is some boy walking around with a bouquet of roses to give to his sweetheart which probably set him back a hundred dollars, three times the amount it cost yesterday and tomorrow.
to me it really is just like any other day. i don't particularly care for the occasion, nor does it bother me that i don't have a significant other to hustle for a dinner reservation on this night either. i had the day off and that means much more to me than a box of chocolates. and it gave me time to pimp out my flat with all the goodies from yesterday's visit to the big blue and yellow better known as ikea.
speaking of blue, there sure were loads of it in the european men's show last month didn't ya think? from the darkest, deepest navy like the double breasted, high stance, hella pimp suit stefano pilati sent down for yves saint laurent, to eye popping yves klein blue seen everywhere from acne to versace to jil sander, the hue was impossibly unavoidable!
i myself don't have any complaints because blue, more specifically navy, is my favorite colour. is it not just the most glamorous colour a boy can wear. and its totally acceptable to call a boy glamorous when he's all decked out in a navy suit cause while a well cut black suit can make any man handsome, only a man with a certain character can pull off a navy suit without looking naff. and it's that kind of man who i want giving me a hundred dollars worth of roses. preferably naked, and preferably a naked henry cavill. after he got undressed from his navy suit of course.

p.s. so apparently henry cavill is the next superman. superman's costume is blue. wicked.

IDS 2011

this past weekend was the annual international design show here in the frigid city of toronto. it was held at the toronto convention center which in my twenty one years living in this country i have never been to. it's sandwiched right smack in between the financial district, the entertainment district, and club land. basically all the places people from the suburbs go to when they say they're going "downtown". obviously being someone who actually lives downtown, i never ever venture around that vicinity. anyways, the place was immense. and by immense i mean oprah's bank account immense! and it was packed with about a million people. not a good place to be on a sunday with a slight hangover. it almost did my head in.
okay fine, i was an IDS virgin so i really didn't know what to expect. what i really wanted to see were independent local designers promoting the things they made with their own hands, which there were some, but the brunt of it were high-end stores featuring all the products that are always featured on interior design magazines. fuck if i wanted to see artemide lights i could've just stayed home and perused design*sponge all afternoon.
there were some gems at the show. the first three images above are from a section of the exhibit entitled "studio north". a showcase for up and coming canadian designers. i usually tend to be very critical about canadian artists because i find that they're always trying to compensate their insecurities by trying to do what creative minds from other countries do. especially when it comes to fashion. with furniture design however its a whole different story.
they embrace the things that are always associated with canadiana. like shawn place's interpretation of the classic windsor chair with its high spindles made from maple. maple flag, maple syrup...can't get more canadian than a maple.
canadian designers weren't the only ones to get some shine. on the other side of the building was a showcase highlighting works of carribean industrial designers. i would've taken more pictures of that exhibit but people were sitting on all the chairs just lounging and being in my way so i only got to take a picture of the leather bowl which i instantly fell in-love with because i've been looking for the perfect fruit bowl forever! but i was way too shy to ask how much it was cause i reckon things sold at these events are not very conducive to my bank account.
well it wouldn't be toronto if it didn't shove its few famous, or in this case, local celebrities a lot of torontonians want to believe are world famous but are most definitely not, in your face. so they've asked some designers from all discipline to interpret their own version of verner pantone's classic "S" chair. most of them were terribly offensive to one of the most iconic piece in design but there were some brilliantly executed ones. i especially like the one with the criss-cross lacing at the back and the one with the arm rest is pretty fucking mint!
if you've been following my blog i think you'd probably know which piece i wanted to run home with if i was superman and could carry anything then fly to get away. the union jack chesterfied sofa of course! me and henry cavill can have so much fun on that thing.
and speaking of hot guys such as henry cavill, O-M-G!! industrial/furniture designers are some of the hottest babes on the planet. they are like every gay boy's wet dream. scruffy, well dressed, semi-dorky, and straight. it was hard looking at those furniture without imagining them undressed on it.