Vestoj

How Tommy Hilfiger Captured and Lost the Zeitgeist

A Pop Song In Clothes

14 February 2017

by Daniel Oppenheimer

If Hilfiger had a genius, it was less about saying something radically or interestingly new with clothing than about understanding how to curate, translate and market niche aesthetics for a broader audience. His enthusiasm for countercultural fashion, it soon became clear, was opportunistic rather than philosophical. His was a fundamentally pop genius, dependent on his ability to give the mainstream just as much edge and titillation and fantasy as it could handle, but no more.

My Brand Loves Your Brand

On Louis Vuitton, Supreme and Corporate Cool

My Brand Loves Your Brand

6 February 2017

by Alice Hines

In 2017, the collaboration has become as common as the collection. It generates unfailing press, both critical and laudatory. In both scenarios, interest tends to hinge on the brands’ differences, on the inherent edginess of uniting them. In the case of Louis Vuitton and Supreme, the story is that the former brings to the table old-world prestige (and high prices), the latter irreverent youthfulness (and fans rabid enough to pay them). Yet it’s worth asking: how different are Supreme and Louis Vuitton, actually?

Realness With A Twist

Deconstructing the D&G Construction Worker

Realness With A Twist

24 October 2016

Behind these images of ‘real’ people – building, plastering, carrying heavy weights, fixing things or more generally just getting their hands dirty – is a not-so-subtle invitation to eroticise the workers, their bodies, their performance of ‘real’ masculinity. The hashtag #realpeople implies a distance, both erotic and social: they are ‘real’ people, we are not; this is ‘real’ work, ours is not.

WHY BEING A DEMOCRAT IS ALWAYS FASHIONABLE

Dressing in US Election Times

WHY BEING A DEMOCRAT IS ALWAYS FASHIONABLE

27 September 2016

by Alice Hines

Before there was Clinton swag, there was Obama swag. Before there was Obama swag, there was Kerry swag. Whom are these items trying to convince? Do we purchase a Hillary Clinton T-shirt to show solidarity, or to build our personal brands? Do designers create them because they will change hearts and minds – or to reassure themselves that their industry has a role to play in their nation’s critical decisions?

Band of Insiders

Band of Insiders

On the Secret of Success

20 September 2016

by Rob Horning

If fashion ‘wants to kill’ its practitioners, that’s because it epitomises capitalist innovation at its bare essence, consisting of the sort of change that is only for the sake of the system’s survival. Fashion is what is left when all pretence to consumer utility or social improvement is stripped away. The sacrifice of perfectly useful goods to the ever-shifting demands of fashion is a kind of corrective purge, an obliteration of what the philosopher and writer Georges Bataille called ‘the accursed share,’ clearing the field so that capitalism’s competitive mechanisms and requirements for endless growth can continue to function.

The Honourable Woman’s Fashionable Armour

The Antihero’s New Clothes

6 September 2016

The luxurious tactility and visual appeal of silk provide a striking contrast with the panic room Nessa, the star of 2014’s The Honourable Woman, sleeps in every night. It is in this room that Nessa’s layers of identity are removed to reveal her fears and secrets.

Coming of Age

Representing the older generation: a model’s perspective

Coming of Age

1 September 2016

by Alex Bruni

The classic model is a known prototype in the modeling industry, underpinned by a discourse of enduring youthfulness, a woman whose image embodies an ageless beauty, rather than an ageing reality. These classic models appear in high fashion representing an aspirational agelessness; they are called upon to fill stereotypical roles for older women. This creates an impossible standard, one out of reach without external interventions, such as cosmetic surgery, which plays on insecurities of looking old to sell to the older market.

Fashion and queer bonding in Will & Grace

The Antihero’s New Clothes

15 August 2016

Set in a white, upper middle-class environment in New York City, the series follows the life of best friends Will Truman and Grace Adler, a gay lawyer and a straight, Jewish interior designer, and their friends Jack McFarland and Karen Walker, a flamboyant failed actor and a socialite with a penchant for drinks and pills who works as Grace’s assistant to escape her motherly duties. As expected, fashion is central to the characters.

Sartorial transitions in Transparent

The Antihero’s New Clothes

25 July 2016

The first TV show to feature a transgender protagonist, Transparent’s protagonist Mort, and her transition into becoming Maura, sets into motion a process of self-reflection, dialogue and exchange for the Pfefferman family, who find themselves in the situation of having to reconsider and rebuild their relationships with themselves, with each other and with the rest of the world. Their wardrobes reflect these drastic changes in an organic way: sartorial transitions correspond to the characters’ life transitions.

Moral and sartorial dilemmas in UnREAL

The Antihero’s New Clothes

11 July 2016

While initially the difference in ‘UnREAL’ between those dressing for the part – the reality TV show contestants – and those who dress them for the part, the producers, is quite clear, as the series progresses the boundaries become more loose, and the characters’ ethical concerns – or lack thereof – are reflected in their fashion choices.

In Parts and Pieces