In early September of 2010—prior to the start of New York Fashion Week—I wrote an article for Fashionista.com, called “XXL: How BBW Became Fashion’s Latest Prey,” as a response to an article published in July called “Plus-Size Wars,” written by Ginia Bellafante, in The New York Times Magazine. The article talks about how “recherché” V magazine was for featuring a size-16 model named Tara Lynn in a fashion story.
So, I wrote the article, explaining how long before Tara Lynn exposed herself in V, and way earlier than when Beth Ditto, the lead singer of the band Gossip, landed on the cover of LOVE magazine and captured the Parisian...
Sunset Stripped: The Mistaken Identity of the Los Angeles Art Center
Los Angeles is trying. As per our Twitter feed, actors and hip hop stars are visiting Jeffrey Deitch’s pet project Art in the Streets—a problematic street art retrospective at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art—which should pump steroidal numbers into the museums 236,104 visitors from 2010. The Los Angeles County Museum of Art must have seen a challenge by Deitch through this and last year’s posthumous Dennis Hopper photo exhibit. The ostensibly more prestigious of the two (and far higher attended, with a turnstile count expected at over a million for 2011)...
These days, we burn through the anti-fame decrees of young “up-and-comers” almost as fast as the meager caloric intake of said “unintentionally” famous person. Sure, bud, you’re strictly putting yourself out there for the sanctity of artistic expression. You hate the attention. It’s just so shallow. And while it’s easy for us to be snarky about such declarations, it can be difficult with the predatory internet fondling your every move from afar. How does one stay relevant, and aurally sexy, though, without brash and/or charming public stunt-play? This column suggests it’s through diffusion of sound to visual...
No less an authority than Roger Ebert said: “To enter the world of Guy Maddin is to understand how a film can be created entirely by its style, and how its style can create a world that never existed before, and lure us, at first bemused and then astonished, into it.” Indeed, the 55-year-old Canadian filmmaker may well possess the most singular artistic voice present in the current cinema. Over the course of his nine feature films and countless shorts, Maddin has developed a filmic sensibility that is resolutely his, a complex amalgam of revisionist aesthetics, bizarre psychosexual themes, and a constant fascination with and manipulation of time...
I love Pucci. I love the prints. I love its heritage, and I also love the girl—the attitude and her vibe.
Giving a fashion brand presence today necessitates a real cocktail of elements. You have to establish a look, hopefully one that is pleasing to the press and the public. Besides the usual collections, you must constantly feed the media with products, events, and happenings that give the brand presence and excitement. One of my early efforts was the launch of the Pucci Marquise. It started out as a test run for a new bag. It stuck and is one of our main accessories today.
Next, you have to meet sales goals. A...
I’ve never met Dasha Zhukova. Just want to get that out of the way, lest we run into sticky ground. All of the following information has been culled directly from hearsay, slander, and libel (not mine, of course), as well as the odd interview and fact. I’ve seen her in a bunch of places. Galas and such. The camera trains on her—snap, snap—while I down wine and pretend there’s art involved. Dasha’s a few months older than me.
Our age isn’t the only thing that links us. Zhukova’s father, Alexander Zhukov, was an illegal arms dealer who, according to Wikipedia, funneled a shipment of 30,000 AK-...
When I was a kid, condoms were called prophylactics, prophylactics were called rubbers, and rubbers were called scumbags. My friends and I would find used scumbags in a vacant lot or in the alley between buildings. Once, while snooping, I found a large package of unused prophylactics in my father’s sock drawer. It must have held a dozen. Now there were nine left. Each was tightly rolled, bound by a miniature cigar band. I selected one, took the band off, and carefully unrolled it.
There was a legend imprinted on the prophylactic: “Sold in Drug Stores Only For the Prevention of Disease.” What hypocrisy! They were sold for the...
