Body Double, Inez and Vinoodh, Vogue Paris

Gisele two times, November 2013

These images reminded me of the passage I wrote that inspired this blog here:

"There is in imitation an affirmation of the other, a love of the other, a love of the neighbor and a denial of the self and singularity. The larger idea of doubles, assimilation, subcultural formation...we have reached the excess with imitation. Everything can be duplicated and imitated. Whatever it is that we have culturally considered with virtual reality, the simulacra, the mirror image, the other... is not so much one another, or even the culture industry but we are imitating indeterminate images and those images are an imitation of real life itself - that is the rupture to imitation."

Raymond Meier: Selling Fashion, Selling Art

These photos by Raymond Meier were first printed in Vogue US, February 2012. Meier then prints his photos, without the magazine information, alongside his yearly ad campaigns without their logos, together in books as art. The very same photos used to sell fashion, are re-sold in a book as art. See all his books here.

above original Vogue layout and below Meier's book

What makes a photograph fashion or art? Largely context. In a disposable magazine, or online fashion site, it is fashion, while printed in a book or framed in a museum it is art. One of the reasons I began this blog was because I have long felt that many, not all, but many fashion photographs are essentially art history of our time, transformed into commercial advertisements through logos, placement and circulation. These photos make a record of our time, like all art history before it, and in many instances are the most avant garde images being produced. Top fashion photographers like Steven Meisel have archived negatives and limited edition prints that vie for blue chip status. Fashion photography is art photography, but often in the secondary, post-production, post-publication consideration.

Raymond Meier, Vogue US, 2010

Meier's photographs are consistently beautiful. But there are also a group of photographers with such consistent vision that what we always see their lens over what we are even seeing. Irving Penn always delivered a Penn photo, no matter the client. In our era, we see similar consistency with Juergen Teller. When I see a Juergen Teller photo, I notice his color palette and his view of the world, then secondly the brand he is working for at the moment. 

Juergen Teller, Marc by Marc Jacobs, S 2011

Juergen Teller, Vivienne Westwood, F 2012

Juergen Teller, Celine, S 2013

Is Juergen Teller selling fashion? art? or Juegen Teller? Is he even selling, or simply showing us a beautiful view of the world we live in like every artist before him?

Insta Mode: SS 2014

Mary Katrantzou, SS 14 by Susie Bubble

Insta is SO in. If you have been following fashion media, you will find the most insta show season yet. Official corporate live streams are accompanied by more Instagram snaps than ever. iPhone cameras are becoming the lens of fashion and according to a new study are influencing consumption. The Instagram image above by Susie Bubble was issued as a "catch up," two days following the show, due to failed battery. Two days now requires an explanation because we occupy insta-now, and do not give much regard to yesterday. And before we can process what we see, we are on to the next one.

10 Crosby by Derek Lam SS 14

Designers spend months creating concepts and overseeing production that in seconds we visually consume. This has always been the case, but there are now more designers and more immediate images of them. These simple chic looks, 10 Crosby by Derek Lam above and Altuzarra below, were two in a stream of thousands. They are both made with understated strength for consideration. But as I began to reflect on them, they were already out of the media consciousness and discussion and not as relevant. Insta mode is a focus on the new, which is always already being replaced.

Altuzarra SS 14

YSL 1969

The fashion show has an interesting history. For the first seven decades or so, shows were a considerate presentation of a designer's work to a room of invited, informed guests who were interested to buy or support the fashion. Looks were slowly presented to the public, and now are seen immediately by anyone, anywhere. The media spotlight builds the fame and brands of designers, as well as the insta media stars, but nothing can replace being there. Below Coco Chanel's last show in 1971 was a privileged room to occupy. Being at a show delivers the music, environment and guests that reveal a designer's character and the value of the brand. 

Chanel 1971

Derek Blasberg at Erdem SS 14

So "big deal" some may say. Fashion is still similar with a select few present, and just more visible. We can ride with the times and embrace this instantaneous experience along with official press. Media appears to only make fashion bigger. Just love the player, and the game, I always say. But then there is the other consideration, the divide between first hand experience and the illuminated images that divert us all from reality and make everything bigger than life. Even people present at shows are forfeiting the show for images. The alternate global-consciousness-image-reality is rising above all things, not just fashion. Fashion has long been the avant garde forward player, and only insta media seems to have what it takes to compete for our attention. If we look over the media stream of fashion week, when we should be focused on clothing, we find a lot of other content. There is a risk of having more interest in the fashion of seeing it first, than in what we are even seeing. 

P.S. Susie Bubble responded via Twitter saying "I would argue though that you do not miss the show experience just because you are welding [sic] a camera. The brain can multi-task." Yes of course we can see and consider a fashion show and also document it. This is our insta moment and all is possible. The question is if insta media is shifting the focus or attention span. Like every era, we want to see beauty in it's latest form. More on that here.

Decadence and a Stroke: Marc Jacobs SS 2014

Pop friendly creator Marc Jacobs always intrigues me, but not for stylish fashion. He began with the grunge collection for Perry Ellis in 1993 and has not stopped presenting decadence. Decadence, in the sense of my book All for Nothing, is the cultural excess we are experiencing at its greatest height today. We have great density of over production of materials, styles and ideas, all accessible online. Jacobs often pulls from the excess, like a DJ, or mastermind. For spring, typically light and bright, he turns to macabre 19th century styles of bull fighting and the opera. The temptation is to ask, what is really going on here? Overly indulged showmanship a la Galliano? But why bash a party maker, an extravagant one at that. And then there is the one stroke of genius.

From Steve Oklyn, of NOT VOGUE: If you saw the MARC JACOBS s/s 2014 that just ended COMPLETELY OUT OF TOUCH. The inner 500 are defined-repetitive & aging [not in any relevant manner]. TIM BURTON MEETS Z-BOYS WITH A STOLEN AMEX BLACK CARD. 

In a book by Klaus Ottman, he suggested the idea of a "genius decision," in the sense that there are not geniuses as people, but every once and awhile there is a genius decision, as in this shirt above. It is always something so simple anyone could have thought of it, but this person actually decided to do it. The genius is in doing it. There are only a few ways to complete the icon on the shirt without the Coke, either "is it,"or "enjoy."

Prabal Gurung: The Show Does Not Fashion Make

Prabal Gurung, SS 2014

Don't hate the player, hate the game. Yet we love the players, and the game. In the middle of fashion show frenzy, we lose site of the power of shows. Shows impress. The show is a moment, an environment, music, atmosphere. Of course, the shows of the most interesting type, historically from Galliano to Thom Browne, may not always translate to wearable fashion. More on extreme shows here.

There is also expectation to evaluate a collection as a whole, while there is often variance between looks. Two looks form the same show, above fitted and flawless, below certainly not passing the mark if Kors were voting. Creation is variable. And while designers position looks for the season, some are more consistent than others. It is the consistency that becomes vision, and the vision that develops brand.

Oliviero Toscani for Jalouse

critique or faux critique?

FAD Profile: Not Vogue

At FAD, we often feature Vogue, but are also mindful of mass media framing. In Fall 2010, Carine Roitfeld explained her editing technique for Vogue Paris as “YOU ARE VOGUE, OR NOT VOGUE.” In 2011, an anonymous figure under the name "Steve Oklyn" launched a blog with the idea of NOT VOGUE. In the past two years, Steve has been bringing the fashion system into full light. Here is an brief interview with Fashion Art Daily.

“NOT VOGUE” is a name from contrast. So to begin, how would you describe “Vogue”? The magazine presents a perfected dream world, a forever aspirational decadence in which power collides with bohemian seduction, all in a way that is relevant to the now…but how?

I would describe the current globalized VOGUE brand as a network for consumer control. A fashion network built with one operative purpose: addictive consumption. How it ensures control is through a tightly guarded series of rules referred to as style and a tightly organized hierarchy of rewards for obeying and promoting the guardians [Newhouse's-Arnault's-Pinault's...] ironclad control of those rules and hierarchies. I believe repressive is the clearest description of the editorial consequence when referring to VOGUE. That is also a definition of Anna Wintour's role and source of her contrived influence.

Following Guy Debord, “what appears is good,” Vogue appears good to most. It is the ultimate fashion authority, always already exempt from critique. You magically expose the fault lines. What are they?

As long as the guardians are operating at full strength which they have been since 2000. They have built a global system of fashion mythology that they, and only they control. The guardians are fully aware of the current lack of relevance of these myths. These myths protect their artificial system of good taste. Their secret society of definitions and histories is written by the guardians and so far can only be altered by the guardians.

The system of review is not truly built for critique but for product endorsement and consumer control. The world of trends is a completely false construct that is there for one reason propaganda for the sake of an endless cycle of irrelevant consumerism. "IT" products are just a cover for a fashion addicts one fleeting moment of painful pleasure. A hit that endlessly but with diminishing returns has to be satisfied over and over again.

The fault lines are a purchased sense of power [advertising budgets-event sponsorships-artist collaborations and global ambassadors] plus the guardians false sense that they are the guiding leadership of societal power. Pay to play is not power but if that is the only sanctioned fashion industry process then it becomes power. Currently the weakest of fault line narratives is the young tastemaker. The guardians are baby boomers and
older. They have begun to use their children and grandchildren to retain their false sense of eternal youth and influence. To extend this fabricated influence their progeny are repackaged as tastemakers. Acting as global agents of irrelevant consumerism. Remember rule number one: they own and control the media to own and control the message. A question. Who would Andy Warhol be besties with The Kardashians or The Roitfelds? Just posing this question exposes a major fault line.

If Vogue is a dream, is Not Vogue a dystopia?

I view VOGUE as a dystopia and NOT VOGUE as a possible way out of the intellectual dead end offered by VOGUE. NOT VOGUE believes in the creative and regenerative power of the individual and in the right of informed free speech. That seems from the current controlled state of dialog called SOCIAL 2.0 like a dream. Dystopia is really a world of consensus as is fashion. A world where we are all reduced to LIKE or HATER. A world of BEING IN and MUST-HAVES.  Speaking one's mind in many situations is now social and professional suicide.

You profile fashion’s power players. Are they consciously playing?

In no way are fashion's power player's consciously playing NOT VOGUE. What they are doing is living as if the world is Karl Lagerfeld's beloved 18th century saloniste filled society. They are so sure of their power and superiority which includes artistic superiority-intellectual superiority-social superiority and control of the history and creation of the history of society and good taste that they are living within a bubble of their own creation. Being outside of their bubble NOT VOGUE can review the rules, the hierarchies and history past-present and future. By reviewing I mean opening up the conversation and introducing new points-of-view including new historical readings and relationships which hopefully allow for a deeper understanding of current fashion events. Subsequently each of us can decide what is relevant to us and not what is deemed relevant by the guardians. The fashion-art-society media has a single purpose which is product propaganda and societal enchantment. Not since John Fairchild's days at WWD has real critique of fashion and fashion society existed. Many of today's fashion reports are composed by fifth columnists. That realization was the beginning of the NOT VOGUE project.

You have exceptional visual talent for selecting images. You write haiku critical commentary. Who are the artists and thinkers that have influenced your method?

NOT VOGUE algorithm: James Brady [created PAGE SIX & W Magazine [plus] John Fairchild [created IN and OUT + "fashion victim" at WWD and his alias for Countess Louise J. Esterhazy [foretelling the demise of high society] [plus] Truman Capotes's LA COTE BASQUE [plus] a private formula of post-WWII intellectual anarchists and artistic insurrectionists.

If you were approached to edit Vogue, for a radical rebrand of course, would you? Be honest.

It would be amazing to redesign the brand dna of VOGUE but in a sense that has already happened it is called NOT VOGUE.

If you were approached to reveal your identity in Vogue, would you? Be honest.

I would never reveal Steve Oklyn's identity in VOGUE. Who he-she or they are is not relevant. Anonymity is more powerful and interesting intellectually than visibility.

I love that you are anti-establishment, so Daumier. But isn’t critique also love?

Critique is a love for the free exchange of ideas and opinions without any fear of penalty or reprisal.

You do not have advertisers and you refer to yourself as a freelance outlaw. What is hoped to be gained by counter-culture blogging?

Are you referring to all counter-culture blogging? If so I cannot answer that question. If you are asking what is to be gained by the NOT VOGUE project than the answer is to reveal how truly outmoded the people-the strategies-processes and rewards which comprise the core of VOGUE's source of power are and at best exist as trivial entertainment. There are enormous financial consequences for both the guardians and for their globalized consumers. by opening up the myths to democratic review. NOT VOGUE represents counterculture. Hence no advertisers VOGUE represents over-the-counter culture.

What is the ultimate goal of a power critique?
In a democracy, power needs to be questioned and critiqued continuously or it becomes a dictatorship. NOT VOGUE's logo design states what its editorial stance is in clear visual terms.

Doesn’t fashion swallow all its critique by embracing every point of view, while simultaneously having moved on to the next one?  It balances caring with not caring at all. You seem to care.

Very true regarding the fashion industry taking possession of any and all moments of creativity and moving on. If the current fashion world mythology begins with Diana Vreeland authoring in 1963 the narrative she titled YOUTHQUAKE which just celebrated it's 50th birthday then the VOGUE narrative of ever renewable youth is the key storyline they endlessly use for consumer control. Since 2000 I have been searching for the first narrative of the 21st century pertaining to style and I have not found one convincing enough. The past 13 years have been a cycle of repetitive nostalgia.

NOT VOGUE was created from a sense of boredom, frustration and disbelief that VOGUE could still keep going month to month on strategies and myths that have been devoid of any meaning since the last model walked down the runway at Marc Jacobs "grunge" collection for PERRY ELLIS in 1992. Hedi Slimane please note and also the PR office at SAINT LAURENT Paris that grunge is a Seattle attitude and not a Los Angeles expression. There truly is nothing called California grunge. That is exactly the delusional force of the fashion guardians and their armies. Seattle becomes Los Angeles to support Hedi Slimane's grand fashion meta-narrative. In the end history is just a tool of control whether it is the history of fashion or the history of the world.

Fashion cares to be taken seriously and does not care to be told that in it's current state of decline it has no lasting cultural impact.

I care that the street retain its originality and power over brands. The exact opposite of what the current global consumer has been lead to believe which is that brands have supernatural powers.

When an original idea loses all meaning then it becomes fashion. Steve Oklyn