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Fashion Feature

Informed for 2024

Press days are always an interesting moment in the fashion business. These are times when professionals and non-professionals a like trek around the city to press agencies to go over represented clients and brands in more details. For me, I am either inspired or informed. For the upcoming season, inform sat in the driver’s seat.

Amazon Fashion, ?yes?, you read it right. When I got the invitation, my expectations were not high. When I entered the apartment, I asked ?What is Amazon Fashion, Help me understand!? The mega e-commerce site has moved into selling high-end fashion. The bigger surprise was why would desired brands sell on a site known for cut rate prices for everything from books to dog collars to grey brands. The Bellevue, Washington tech giant enlisted social media influencers to appeal to Generation Z’s as an aspiring shopping destination for HUGO and Armani Exchange pieces. Well, Jeff Bezo did not earn $200 billion by making the wrong bets. But then again, who remembers Fire? The Amazon smartphone that came and went.

ANNARR in Copenhagen

The second bit of information I was told, Danish corporation Bestseller is introducing a new menswear label aimed at affluent customers. Annarr means ?the next one? in the Norse language. A curious venture for Bestseller, whose subsidiaries include fast fashion staple Jack&;Jones, it means a gamble if clientele want a buying less but better quality. Four collections per year, carefully curated with looks influenced by Copenhagen casual style with a promise of layering abilities. Annarr arrives in stores in Spring 2024.


In the shock and surprise category, G-Star Raw has a 1,200 euro jacket. Normally, one does not associate a luxury price with a known streetwear brand, but as different segments of the fashion market converge in other categories such as trainers and t-shirts, the Dutch label has made a play in the luxury category.





Categories
Book Review

Book Review: Gods and Kings: The Rise and Fall of Alexander McQueen and John Galliano

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Gods and Kings The Fall of Alexander McQueen and John Galliano

British fashion icons Alexander McQueen and John Galliano led remarkably parallel lives, from their humble origins in working-class London, to their education at St. Martins College, to their brilliant and controversial careers abruptly cut short by suicide and hate-speech, respectively. Galliano and McQueen represented the last great age of haute couture, and their tragic downfall resonates in the dissolution of fashion as high art into vulgar commodity. Gods and Kings: The Rise and Fall of Alexander McQueen and John Galliano by Dana Thomas (2015) presents a detailed portrait of both designers, as well as a scathing commentary on the commercialism of the fashion industry at the turn of the 21st Century.

The lives and careers of both men are presented in exhaustive detail. Both McQueen and Galliano are depicted as enfants terrible of the great fashion houses, although the portrait of McQueen is a bit more sympathetic, perhaps in hindsight of his awful death. Their relationships suffered, even as their reputations flourished; ultimately, their personal demons and addictions, which at first sparked their creative fire, burned them to ashes.

Thomas’ meticulous research is evident as the reader is overwhelmed with names and events; it’s hard to keep it all sorted, and the few pictures presented without textual references aren’t much assistance. Nevertheless, it’s a fascinating tale of ambition, genius, hubris, and tragedy, even if the reader doesn’t know much about fashion.

Book Review by L.T. Del Genis

Gods and Kings The Fall of Alexander McQueen and John Galliano is available at Amazon or your local bookstore.

Editor’s Post Script.

A Post Script to the John Galliano Story,  a new ending as the designer is now the creative head of fashion house Maison Margiela where he continues to provoke controversy on the runway with well received looks.

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Technology

The Smart Tech Traveler

Razer Nabu X Smartband
Philips Shaver Series 7000
Dell Stylus Pen
Amazon Kindle paper white
Patrick Gallas Watch
Samsonite Cityscape Class Backpack
Harman/Kardon Esquire Mini

Back Pack

Photo by Daniel Reiter