Archive for the 'fashion' Category
November 10, 2006
[Originally appeared in productdose, November 2006]
A stylish take on the classic bomber jacket, this Cockpit B-17 Golfer Jacket blends classic fighter pilot themes with sophisticated materials and contemporary design elements that are both more versatile and formal than your standard bomber. The jacket’s herringbone wool exterior, with an inner velveteen and nylon lining, is the type of thing you can expect from Cockpit, a menswear line we’ve seen twice this year at Project and have been watching since (before) it launched.
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November 7, 2006
[Originally appeared in productdose, November 2006]
It’s not often we run features on any of the several dozen online shops we love and follow, but occasionally we see an innovative retail space that demands a little extra attention. As you’ve noticed, we’ve been directing readers toward Karmaloop since productdose launched. The store’s informed mix of streetwear and progressive sportswear labels speaks to buying that is in touch with the frontier of emerging casual fashion. As impressive as the retail space may be, Karmaloop’s positioning as an innovator in progressive apparel and online retail just got stronger: Enter the Karmaloop Kazbah.
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September 1, 2004
When I reach Patrik Rzepski on the telephone in his New York studio, which also doubles as his apartment, his nothing like the pretentious, egotistical prima donna I expect to speak with. “Right now, I’m working — four friends of mine are working in my one-bedroom apartment,” he tells me. “We’re cutting fabric on the floor. We sew everything; we do everything here.” Maybe it’s projection on my part to expect him to be stuck on himself, but if you had managed to get your first fashion collection together at 18 and to then be featured in the pages of Elle and Bazaar before you could legally enter a bar, wouldn’t you have an inflated sense of your own importance?
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August 1, 2004
[Originally appeared in Sportswear International, August 2004]
Fifty years ago, the area 30 miles south of Los Angeles was populated almost completely by orange groves, a sea of agriculture in which the occasional islands of culture were few and far between. The draw of the year-round perfect weather, seemingly boundless housing developments and the increasing popularity of surf culture were only too suitable for many Angelenos fed up with the grit of the city. They came south in droves, tanned and sculpted by the physical obligations of looking good in a bikini or board shorts. They mated with each other, muscling the un-beautiful out of their way and out of their neighborhoods, creating the current crop of Orange county youth: wealthy, gorgeous (in a Caucasian sort of way), obnoxious, fit and toned by actions sports.
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July 1, 2004
Smack dab in the middle of Main St., Surf City, USA, lies The Closet, long one of Orange County’s most popular streetwear boutiques. For the past three years, Huntington Beach’s The Closet (with a sister location in Costa Mesa) has been refining an action sports aesthetic into a fashion resource that’s not just for the surf-skate-snow crowd. The Closet is a traditionally classic purveyor of all tings trendy in OC, where the climate calls for casualwear year-round and longstanding local giants Volcom and Stussy still hold court on all fronts (especially menswear). Local upstart Modern Amusement is also making considerable progress with the boutique’s more discriminating clientele. Like everywhere, denim is still flying off The Closet’s racks. Levi’s Premium, Seven and Diesel lead the pack, but a few conspicuously thick stacks of Evisu are hidden in the fray. It’s all there, way south of LA, a slice of classic OC.
[Originally appeared in Sportswear International, July 2004]
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April 1, 2004
[Originally appeared in Clear, Spring 2004]
Exploring the space in which fashion and art overlap, inform each other and compete for public attention, “Fashion: The Greatest Show on Earth” is bound to be one of spring’s most talked about events in both the art and fashion worlds. The exhibition, which will be hosted by the Bellevue Art Museum in Bellevue, WA, will be on display between April 27 and August 31 and will feature contemporary fashion that draws upon both political activism and performance art of the 1960s and 1970s, including Fluxus and Dada traditions.
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March 27, 2004
[Originally appeared in metro.pop, spring 2004]
Created “for progressive individuals in pursuit of mastering the art of life,” Triko is a menswear label with seemingly lofty goals. The line is focused on creating a lifestyle brand that offers a collection of casualwear that looks about as fast-paced as a vacation in the Caribbean. Triko is also concerned with a design, production and marketing philosophy that speaks to higher ideals. Founded in 2001 in New York City by Hector Estrada, Triko offers clothing for a new global community — informed, conscious and self-confident.
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March 1, 2004
Female sneaker freaks, thanks for waiting. There’s finally a store just for you. No more scouring the tiny sizes of shoes made for men in colorways that don’t speak to you; no more following your man around the shoe store and being made to feel like the outcast; no more beef with Lena from GreyOne about being recognized as West Coast female sneaker-head number 1. Ladies, your day has arrived.
Kendo is a sneaker store for women. That’s right: a sneaker store for women. As Arsen from Kendo puts it, “We wanted to create a sneaker boutique for women that had rare and exclusive product” — a surprisingly rare thing, you’ll note. “We wanted to create a destination that women could feel was specifically tailored for them,” he continues. “We figured that there were plenty of stores that offered hot sneakers for guys, but the selection for women was usually confined to one wall.”
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December 14, 2003
While the big shoe manufacturers continue to allocate larger budgets to lifestyle lines, the consideration of fashion in the world of global sneaker marketing is still far surpassed by that of performance on the athletic court or field. Fashion is still very much an afterthought in sneaker design. And when it is a consideration, retro lines are so often reinvigorated, or merely recalled, with no serious thought given to new design.
Where an interest in fashionable sneaker design is thriving is in the smaller companies. Independent companies concerned with making stylish, comfortable kicks, which are never intended for athletic activity of any kind, are increasingly popping up. These designers are filling a void in casual footwear that had previously been filled by “fashion-conscious” lifestyle lines from athletic shoe manufacturers. We’re now seeing sneakers produced by designers whose primary goal is fashion, creating products for consumers whose primary goal is fashion.
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November 1, 2003
At first glance, Reebok’s Diamond Collection seemingly embodies the distinction between a lifestyle range and a globally active shoe company’s larger interests as an athletic footwear manufacturer concerned with branding a singular, iconic design style. Unlike many lifestyle lines, Reebok’s Diamond Collection in many ways looks like the product of another shoe company altogether. The fine, exotic leathers and daring color combinations of the current Diamond Collection create a chasm between this exclusive range and Reebok’s ubiquitous athletic lines. This gap is seemingly bridged only by the quintessential inverted check, the base of Reebok’s design language, without which you would not recognize the shoe as having been produced by the company.
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