what in stockholm is the lykke li bun
and so many girls wear this top of the head topknot
marc jacobs made it look so fine
the ballet
in love with an acne programmer, something about tall shy tech nerds and fashion is so fine
i supposed to be helping tommy research who to invite to the march fashion show
inspired by art school kids . . .
and by the girls in the square trying to bring harujuku to stockholm.
we spoke of the repressed robot same-same no personality thing here in stockholm.
no words do it justice. you have to feel the ice.
in support of freedom of expression and creativity
between barbara kruger at moderna museet
or designtorget
the new
is nice
the aesthetics of new languages
i may start taking pictures of gorgeous people here . . .
and the music of the language to delight . . .
and really
to be a starving artist in any city, is the same . . .
except i feel so safe and happy and healthy here, i don't feel slightly agoraphobic.
it was the oppressive political situation in america which caused me the feeling i want to hide
from sexism, racism, hatred
but if if i were magically happy
in a future utopia
there would be no agoraphobia
but balances between
silence and sound
the active life and the passive
politics and art
reading, writing, and speaking
joy and more joy
get really happy about the term karasuzoku, or karasu-zoku, the crow tribe women who would wear the all black yamamoto kawakubo aesthetic. or this goth punk thing. but it seems little is written about it. the fashion book on japan design at the tate modern was took me to the term.
if only i could have enjoyed the museum more. all the surrealism. but you have to be willing to be completely trampled.
from wiki on zoku:
One of the Japanese manifestations of the 1970s punk movement was known as karasu-zoku, which translates as 'crow-tribe'. As the name suggests, the group in question expressed themselves by wearing black clothing and accessories, just as the goth subculture and some branches of the emo phenomena would be associated with this preference today.
i was long puzzling over a certain lovely look as it has evolved, huge swaths of baggy black, the very modern yamamoto rip, as if he wasnt ripping from punk and grunge as they evolved with eachother----in the early eighties. well----what do i know, i was just a child.
who wears it where: usually gay men wear it, and they are my fashion idols. worried that i cant see visibly a gay culture in stockholm, and wonder if there is here too much homophobia, or that people are just more shy? i miss it. viva LA, viva london. but they dont have fresh air like stockholm air. my body refuses to leave. it wants more air!
maybe it is different here. there is an extreme dandy look, that is quite mysterious and elaborate.
overnight it seems the stockholm girls are wearing these huge jumpery coats with wide sleeves, that are smocky and kind of sixties, but deconstructed, minimal, but the opposite of a form fitting trench. kind of mod too.
i love the sculptural elements of kawakubo, the against nature effect of too much cloth----
or as yamamoto said about the samurai resonance . . .
they pertain, loosely to the kawakubo effect.
or gareth pugh, he pertains too, loosely.
my wonderful japanese art history courses with . . . a wonderful formerly vegetarian zen buddhist scholar . . . from columbia via vanderbilt . . . whose name i have lost . . . was it christopher something?
in searching found this ridiculous article from 1996:
how inspired often, i feel about this extremely minimal apartment design, from an architect with five identical jil sander suits, a chrome mini-fridge and lots of emptiness. a bed. it was this total minimalism----
it cleans out the brain, the emptiness
promotes creativity
i am shamefully addicted to the lovely rich ambiance of the nordiska kompaniet http://www.nk.se/
i do not feel beautiful enough to be there!
they have tofu and goji berries and sencha tea in their gourmet food handle on the bottom floor.
but no internet!
too much fur, and too much chanel.
my inner austere communist revolts at the consumerism, but to go in and see all the beautiful girls made up and perfect, and the proper boys puzzling over what next they need . . . really some lovely boys stride through there . . .
its so funny to see skyscraper gorgeous boys with no ego, as opposed to the hyper-ego-ed-out LA model type, who might not be all that . . .
but really all the humans are lovely, all of them.
but certainly more fresh air and exercise does benefit the human. and less junk food. less cars.
found the comme des garcons temple incense, lovely, but too smokey
found a brand called all saints. i saw it in the otherwise sedate/oppressive edinburgh dept store, where briefly the tom ford perfumes revived me, or almost made me cry with nostalgia.
i was surprised to see such a wicked display of thin flimsy flowy trashicistic deconstructed ready to wear in all black and grey. and then in glasgow i saw their boutique, with its very singer machine decked industrial display. like i care. of the couture merits i cant argue, but the design is something better and more rocknroll than average. well made, and therefore out of my budget. and the pallette perfectly limited to grey and black and beige. a gal was wearing the most bizarre take on some turkish style pants and said she was selling loads of them. as if one could buy cool.
having poisoned my brain in los angeles, there is a certain attempt to replicate this sunset strip rock vibe. but its a universal, obviously. anarchy in the UK, or whatever.
or maybe its just a more specific topshop.
brand literacy---our lonely world.
the peter doherty song "a little death around the eyes" came to me, upon pondering the predicament of the fur people, the fur woman trolling the surreal department store.
she looked so sad and washed out and imprisoned, and covered in electrocuted fox carcasses, and accessorized with a not so impressive man, who obviously has no shame about animal cruelty, either.
i just began to sing this song . . .
and me, the most pathetic no frills person ever, did have some prada framed glasses, which were stolen in my london youth hostel, the moral of the story being, hail to the thief, and down with capitalism.
and what do i know.
i wont even wear a bra most of the time anymore, though i found the nicest ones to be made by a company called natori. http://www.natori.com/Default.aspx
after a tough day reading law blogs and wikileaks and eating goji berries at the modern art museum, a look in the mirror, cheered me up. i look like any old karasuzoku plus or minus the yamamoto or feu.
and in that, there is a little comfort, androgyny, defiance, simplicity. where beauty might recover loss or lost sense of self, and my hello kitty band-aid is kawaii, if not environmental.
now if i can just get my hands on the right hemp natural dyed karasuzoku look, slouchy and black, asexual and clerical, i might get really happy.
i want to write something poetic called "fur people" about people who wear fur.
and really, as sad as i am about the police cane beating the striking workers in the H&M factories in bangladesh,
amazingly, H&M is offerring tons of organic and recycled fibers.
so that's nice.
i was told in stockholm, used fashion is cool for the ecological impact.
i immediately felt really guilty about my freshly dyed cheap leggings leeching toxic dye chemical into the brilliant water system and into me transdermally! but hey! they are so black!
as for the karasuzoku term, it seems to sit more generally in the tribal subculture ethos of harajuku fashion world, such that group ethos is therein expressed.
the zoku: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoku
being so solitary lately, where is the group ethos? the agoraphobia loves a city where no one speaks. loves the terms NEET and tajin kyofushu http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taijin_kyofusho
i am thinking a lot about MIA, but then also allison mosshart, ladyhawke, and cool rock and roll girls who can be super tomboyish and gorgeous at the same time. a lot about the high necked tshirt five sizes too big, and these overshaped tshirts or those bat sleeves from the eighties.
for demonstation look at this cool blog written in french about japan fashion: http://nagoya-en-francais.over-blog.com/categorie-11235360.html
the karasuzoku term seems also to pertain to some kind of cat burglars or mafia people who wear all black too. http://gethiroshima.blogspot.com/2006/03/karasuzoku.html
collateral damage MIA remix
civilian massacre audio track as remixed for the modern ear
imamekashi---futuristic, up to date---the highest compliment in han dynasty japan, where out of date color kimono, would be ridiculed
iki is elegant chic
fujoshi is girl otaku, nerd, lit. house
fujoshi might work as butler in the butler cafe
must book appointment
butler greets: welcome home, princess
erokawaii i s erotic cute
karasuzoku are the girls who wore black in the late 70s in the style of yamamoto and kawakubo.
i didnt know they were a couple how cool!!!!
they are my favorites plus issey miyaki and junya watanabe
tao for comme des garcons show with handwritten "be inspired always" around the eyes---almost like drown on eyelashes
here is from the same show
what helped was to read the social commentary on what this fashion means.
and then to understand this unnamed fashion that i think of as this mod yamamoto effect, with gareth pugh lingering.
i was thinking: what is the name for this look that i prize . . . back turkish pants, punk hair, flowing scarves, baggy everything . . . sculptural . . . glasses, nerdy and modern and eighties
these cute boys, who are in LA, they are in london, they are creating this androgynous, flowy, all black wonderful thing.
and the flat yamamoto oxford shoes have finally come mainstream the flast few years.
such that heals look very un-imamekashi to me
except wedges, i admit . . .
the cultural significance of black and assymetrical coverings, which hid the form, was said to be a rejection of the constant objectification of female flesh. that a return to cover, was about a powerful woman, who did not need to exploit herself, or expose herself constantly.
my friend caleb one day said my style looked very issey miyaki.
love too then the large scultptural elements---such that fashion might distort the form, and take it to a place of mystery and the opposite of nature
junya watanabe for comme des garcons
rei kawakubo
very happily absorbed in a book at the tate modern bookstore on japan fashion
very inspiring
yamamoto said the samurai spirit is black
the samarai must be willing to throw himself into the nothingness
and that color bores him in a few minutes.
rei kawakubo said that she is over the last ten years, liking black more than ever.
and here in oregon function triumphs over form, except that many women have something very dollish .. . going
and i love the boys in their anarchist black . . . a classic northwest punk minimalism that contains thin little black canvas shoes, and really basically nothing.
a t-shirt. black jeans.
oh and the oxford shoes.
the flatness and thin-ness of little black shoes, booties.
and thin-ness. all the cycling and hiking and well, veganism keeps the look so gaunt.
hanging on to the turkish pants too . . .
sad about the factory riots at H&M's plant in indonesia and the police violence . . .
hope to lose more and more and dematerialize into thin air . . .
and wearing silver jewelry agin as a codex against anorexia and depression. something about the beauty of it reinstalls some kind of meaning or grace.
silver conducts light and energy, inspires . . .
and i must admit it is depressing that a material shine could give a spiritual renewal. but i think of it as a feng shui of energy.
that as my life force wanes, metal's conductivity conducts energy and becomes like armor. strengthening my hungry blood.
and since very early october, i have a vision of a metal corset as a coil . . . of silver . . . something like frida khalo's backbrace
as if that could protect my heart from the things it feels and does not feel . . .
and hold me up aright until a moment when i might sit up without support in a coil of sound.
purple mag worth noting i guess?
when the fifty dollar mag makes you sure how hip and rich you are and it involves very little actual clothing . . .
which after a glance at fashion.net recently i realize a lot of fashion tycoonery is based on tasteful soft-porn, or ironic and elegant nakedness.
it doesn't bother me especially, so jaded i am by dov charney's plastering of los angeles with underage nakedness for so many years. but in a tasteful or witty context . . . and then i wonder of the future, is male beauty as universal? who will exploit men to the degree they might be lovely nackt? http://www.purple.fr/fashion.php?i=1
what in the future of the cult of men? in the future men will be worshipped as gods of beauty, in ways beyone the posturing of the GQ's. it will be yoji yamamoto and viktor and rolf forever . . . and gareth pugh . . .
i fell in love with olivier zham after one sight of a new york mag pic of him, what a genius! and then stig harder knew of him.
james oscar said the first edition of purple was shot in his new york apartment.
morte macabre
quiet drops
i love olivier zham's proclaiming himself irrelevant to the future of bloggers . . . too old for point of view . . .
bloggers . . . .
to kill them all!
i care for nothing fashion-wise lately besides worshipping saggy heroin chic and kate moss, and envying hijab and black trenches and leggings and over size tank tops and oversize black t-shirts.
when would a prada budget come????
and that olivier positions purple as the upscale vice, the upscale charney salaciousness, the voice of the eurobourgeois, and keeps true to juergen teller's laconic poloaroid minimalism. the kitsch holds force.
i don't know anything about fashion, except i go to it when i am sad and empty and superficial and trying to reconnect with the material world to which i feel disconnected.
existential and hungry
narcissistic and disconnected
better than dead
