THE SPECIALS

this makes me want to get crunk and disorderly and slam about recklessly in a mosh pit in my spiffiest threads. these original rude boys needs to school all the young bloods on how to do it proper. imagine if they performed live during the dries van noten show. that would have been fucking epic!

YOUTH IN REVOLT

this collection makes me want to dig the crates and pull out the jam, and the specials records, get pissed off red stripe, and go mental with the bleach bottle. mods, and their eventual successors the skin heads have always been consistent points of references for my own taste. i admire how their sense of fashion intentionally antagonized the propriety of their parent's generation. even after decades it still hasn't lost its visual potency and the dress codes of the originals, and the music that helped inspire it, continues to find new life with today's young rebels. ergo, this collection made my sartorial glands sweat buckets! although my idol tim blanks criticized this collection for lacking the romanticism one always expects from dries, i would argue with "what could be more romantic than youthful rebellion".



photo: style.com

THESE NEW PURITANS

you know the world is in a right mess when yohji yamamoto is having financial problems. it vindicates my belief that ninety percent of the consumer population have rotten taste. who else can turn ichabod crane into the american equivalent of beu brummell? a pair of pilgrim shoes, a powdered wig, a loosely tied cravat, loads of black, and voila, magic! i don't really fancy american fashion, and the whole goth trend has bored me to bits, but i must say, i'm proper liking this mash of american gothic, puritan severity, japanese proportions, and a little of your grandmother's wallpaper prints thrown in to lighten things up a wee bit. well done mr. yamamoto!



photo: style.com

SO FRESH, SO CLEAN

you might remember me saying that one of the reasons why i love prada is because of how she brilliantly straddles the thin line between good and bad taste. well case in point, who else can make me want to raid my best mate's closet who happens to be a radiation therapist and borrow her medical scrubs and go to town with it. it takes an extremely intelligent person to elevate the humility associated with a piece of clothing and make its potential and pragmatism so embarrassingly obvious that it kinda makes me want to put my head down in shame. but i will draw the line with those wrap-around, hyper reflective sunglasses. it looks like something brainless american jocks would wear to an afterhours.



photo: style.com

EASY RIDER

christopher bailey is such a talented fellow. he's made me consider selling a lung for a quilted leather trench, a kidney for last season's shearling flight jackets, and now i'd be willing to part with half of my liver for one of next spring's buttery soft biker number. but i'd probably die since my drinking habits isn't really conducive to the well being of said organ. it would be pretty bad ass to be buried wearing one of those studded bad boys though.



photo: style.com