Leandra Medine's Blog, page 659

Calvin Klein Shines On

Any designer can make an educated guess about what will be craveable next based on quiet signs of present fatigue. Those who focused on ladylike street-wear this season in soft retaliation against 90s grunge can tell you that — but Calvin Klein’s Francisco Costa does more than react.

The collection opened with a glossy black pony hair jacket and leather shoe-pants which are at once as fun to say as they were to question. How does one put shoe-pants on? Is assistance required? Baby powder? A wax? Were they, indeed, body-con trousers with feet, or were they thigh high boots that I imagined as otherwise?

Never mind, because clothes that cause confusion feed the soul.

Just as vitally nourishing but instantly easy to understand was Costa’s unwavering attention to detail. Each item was cut with a razor sharp eye and the X-acto knife equivalent of predictive aesthetic. Costa must see wavelengths of energy as it ripples below the black heeled feet of his front row in the same way that animals can sense a storm. But he doesn’t immediately take action for movement’s sake; rather, he thinks methodically. He’s careful. Precise. There’s order in the layered plackets of leather and suede. There’s rhyme to the hems that — per his reasoning — needed shredding.

Costa is able to reference and apply influence in the way that an expert makeup artist can make you bronzed, not “tan.” Sure we’ve seen these shapes before; these large buttons before; these shoe-pants before; Mod when it was actually modern and mod when, years, later, it became popular again. But have we seen it done this well?

Or perhaps the question to be asking is: have we seen it done in such a way that it feels as important (as this one does) to right now?  These clothes are needed immediately.

Well before the closing black perforated dresses stormed the second-to-last runway of the New York Fall 2015 show season, the crowd was already buzzing about whether or not this meant the trending 70s were already over. (Confusing, seeing as the original 70s obviously came after the 60s,  but at this point it’s chicken versus egg.)

Designers like Francisco Costa know that to create a moment means you’ve materialized what’s ultimately ephemeral. And that’s okay. As tenured artists they’ve given in to the loop and have accepted that if fashion is cyclical, all trends are technically dead. But stars die millions of years before we stop seeing their light, don’t they? Doesn’t make them any less bright.

Want more? See all our Fashion Week coverage here.

Images via Style.com

Marc Jacobs Closes New York Fashion Week

Fashion Week was over in New York last night, and that couldn’t have been more apparent at the Park Avenue Armory where Marc Jacobs was set to reveal his fall collection. Scores of waiters stood in single file formation, holding silver trays with shots of vodka to, I don’t know, warm the frigid soul? Celebrate the city’s closing look? Or possibly foreshadow events that would unravel at the prompt 6 p.m. start time.

The venue was dressed in a deep red painting said to mimic the Jeremiah Goodman rendering of Diana Vreeland’s living room. And as the clothes began to traipse — first as quiet wool plaid dresses in dark shades of blue and gray adorned by bands of tightly sewn black beads, then as an exposed set of nipples on a sheer, embroidered and belted smock, and pleated mid-length skirts with his signature big button jackets plus not-new, not-old leopard print details — the story unraveled.

The 54-look show also included leather grommet floor-length skirts coupled with fitted blazers and cropped jackets.

There were embellishments and embroidery and funky knit sleeves and this attitude that exuded demented, angry edge — possibly because of the deep plum lips set on the models’ faces or the especially forward-facing top knots. I got the sense that I was watching an Old Western, like these sociopathic power women had just poisoned their husbands or children or something and were now headed toward the market — business as usual. I always get the sense that I’m being fed a story by Marc Jacobs. What is remarkable is that when the story is broken apart, what you’re left with are really well made clothes. They don’t suffer for the punchline and anyone — fan or foe — can see that.

The clothes are vast and wavering. The collections are frequently twisted and exploratory. They don’t attempt reliability and don’t care if that’s uncomfortable — it’s supposed to be. There is no element of restraint in the way in which Marc Jacobs designs, which is possibly a result of his understanding that fashion (and its trends) are transient. And like the week that has just ended, they can taxing and time consuming and make you feel like nothing else is important until suddenly, with no real advance notice, they’re just gone.

Business as usual.

Want more? See all our Fashion Week coverage here.

Images via Style.com

Happy Birthday, @BadGalRiRi

Rihanna.

The name alone calls to mind a well of imagery and emotion, harmonious sounds and of course, umbrellas. The Barbadian singer turns 27 today — although, to call her “singer” alone would be a limitation of her full capacity — and I just want to say:

Hey Riri, Happy Birthday.

You’ve taught me many things, but chief among them, how to take an Instagram leave of absence with true panache. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, but it felt like our hearts would burst.

The Insta-man couldn’t keep you down for long, though. Not with your fans rallied behind you, crying out:

I want you to stay

I want you to stay, oh

Ultimately, even Instagram Incorporated fell at your knees. And can you blame them? Your clothing choices or lack-there-of gave users something to not only talk about, but post about. Meme about, and dream about. You need not Valencia, Rihanna. Valencia needs you.

How is it that you’re able to maintain both a career and the scroll-hungry attention span of our generation? How do you effortlessly keep us at the mercy of your long-nailed fingertips? It’s more than just exposed nipples or sartorial SEO.

Last year, the CFDA granted you with the Style Icon Award and you accepted in a bare-it-all, curve-hugging Adam Selman number that pioneered Old Hollywood Erotica. For that, there shines no diamond brighter than thee.

Sometimes, your style is so elusive, so far out of reach, it makes me think…damn.

I hate how much I love you.

Rihanna, you’ve had more hair color variations than a mantis shrimp could process and somehow, all of them work. You have more tricks up your sleeve than Gandalf at the end of every Lord of the Rings movie; more Billboard chart hits than Rebecca Black could ever dream of; more vocal range than Alvin and all of his Chipmunks, high on helium.

We wish you a very happy birthday, and a cake with more layers than your Grammy dress — which was dope, by the way. May your songs continue to Pon on dat Replay, may you find love in every hopeless place (I hear Leonardo DiCaprio is a good area to start), and may you always have a giant-ass umbrella to stand under because that song will never get old.

And to us, neither will you.

MR Writer’s Club Prompt: I’m a Time Capsule in a Bottle, Gotta Write Me the Right Way

They say that hindsight is either 20/20 or super funny. That we’d all be rich if we had a nickel for every event that felt all-encompassing and dramatic then later turned out to be no big deal.

But what about future-sight?

Do we know things now that could help us in the future that we might unwittingly disregard once the future turns into present? Did that question just explode your mind? It’s true that what we go through shapes who we become — and what a welcome, comforting thought it is to know that what doesn’t kill us does, in fact, make us stronger. But I think it’s also important to remind our future selves of who we are now. What we like and don’t like and what makes us happy as well as sad.

It probably keeps us grounded, in some way.

The thing is that our memory is crap. It’s too easy to forget the person we were once the present catches up to the future. So, let’s make a reminder. A written time capsule that we can all print out and stuff into glass bottles and send off into the ocean (if the ocean nearest to your drop-pin isn’t frozen).

Consider us your time capsule keepers, and send a letter to your future self to write@manrepeller.com. We’ll all probably be super busy in 2025 (proposed date of opening), in which case, keep it around 500 words.The deadline is Thursday, February 26th at 12 PM.

And attention future J. Lomelia — I’m still Jenny from the Block.

For past MR Writer’s Club prompts and winners, click here.

Jessica Williams Tweets, “Lean the Fuck Away from Me”

In an act that initiated an unofficial day of lamentation, Jon Stewart announced last week that he would abdicate his seat of power and step down as host of The Daily Show. Like just about everyone else we know, we cried, we mourned. And then we speculated.

No sooner did Stewart make his proclamation than the chatter began. The fact is, all kings need heirs. And so although the revelation may have at first dampened the national spirit, it was quick to ignite what Stewart always has: A fiery conversation. Someone would have to replace him. And quite a few people thought that person should be Jessica Williams.

Here is what we know about Jessica Williams: She is twenty-five years old, hilarious, very smart, and very much not interested in this job.

The actress is no stranger to fans of the show. Williams made her debut as its youngest correspondent just over three years ago. She was twenty-two. Since then, she has moved to Brooklyn, appeared on Girls, and earned the undying devotion of at least this girl. I’m almost positive she’s a genius. Given that, I was pretty disappointed to read that she would not attempt some kind of comedic coup d’etat at The Daily Show

Addressing the rumors, Williams took to Twitter to thank supporters for their encouragement but called herself “extremely under-qualified for the job.” Later, she claimed that she was “super not right for it.” Finally, she responded to an apparent barrage of emoji-laden messages with the assertion that “I’m not like, dead. This is the beginning of my career.”

“Bullshit,” cried the writer Ester Bloom at the Billfold. “All Williams needs is a pep talk.”

Bloom diagnosed Williams with a grave case of Imposter Syndrome, which she defined as a phenomenon in which women routinely doubt their abilities to perform — especially at work.

“Jessica Williams, respectfully, I reject your humility,” Bloom declared. According to her, what Williams really needed was to Lean In.

Williams did not miss a digital beat. “No offense, but Lean the Fuck away from me for the next couple of days,” she tweeted. “I need a minute.”

I am a black woman and I am a feminist and I am so many things. I am truly honored that people love my work. But I am not yours.

— Jessica R. Williams (@msjwilly) February 17, 2015

Ouch.

“It’s a compliment,” I wanted to explain in the alternate universe in which Williams and I are best friends. “We just like you! We think you’re really, really cool!”

But then I read this.

“In a culture that already serially doubts women, this is, in its own way, just another way we doubt women,” wrote Katie McDonough for Salon.com. What it suggests is that “we can’t be trusted to narrate our own experiences” and that making choices that don’t “match narrowly defined…expectations means we are somehow weak or self-defeating.” That is, women don’t have the luxury of making individual decisions. We are still bound by that old feminist motto: the personal is political.

Someone else will take over for Stewart in the end. He or she will be ecstatic about it. But while we all tweet encouraging emojis at Chelsea Handler and Amy Schumer, I wonder what the stakes are in this latest Internet fracas. Do we undermine women when we question their drive? What does it even mean to be “underqualified” in the era that has witnessed the varied and various successes of Tavi Gevinson and Lena Dunham and Ilana Glazer? Should we all just Lean the Fuck away? Would that help? Let’s talk about it.

Proenza Schouler Reborn

One of the first times I felt overwhelmed by fashion was while I was clicking through Proenza Schouler’s Spring 2010 collection on Style.com. Those neon tiered feather a-line mini skirts, worn with belts and long sleeve cotton t-shirts looked like nothing I’d ever seen. They felt so fresh that it became an impossibility in my mind to not try and achieve them.

The following spring, Proenza Schouler introduced their technical tweed — a fabric that would sew itself into the brand’s DNA next to neon, black and white slip dresses adorned by chain and opposite-color ruffles. These were one of the first to challenge the boundaries of where intimates are to be worn. For the seasons that followed, the designers — who have been acknowledged as two of the best and most important in New York fashion — continued to produce clothing that would provide points of discussion but last night, they turned fashion and their own ethos on its head with a collection that did what few others have attempted this season: experimentation.

They elicited emotion.

And presented something new.

They didn’t just grow up vertically, they swung from side to side, pulling references from disparate corners of the earth but honoring the tradition of their young house. If it started out soft with metallic thread in jackets and placket skirts as well as shoulder hugging curly fur snoods, it turned into something not quite hard, but certainly uncomfortable, with long-sleeve knee length dresses boasting angular lines of fur, creating broader shoulders and this contoured movement across the models’ bodies.

The closing dresses, three chiffon slip numbers not unlikes the ones shown in 2011, featured Morrocan-style mirrored circles in a variation of red, white and black. It was the exact breath of air that the lungs of fashion, through the wind tunnel, has missed. Whether that works commercially or does not is yet to be determined but worth considering here is how much buzz the show created — how much life it reinstated in a week that has been otherwise identified as largely dull. Should fashion shows concern themselves primarily with what will sell or should they revert back to the fantasy they once promised.

Should they suspend our disbelief, even if it is for just a few minutes and possibly even trick us into thinking that we could be those girls?

Want more? See all our Fashion Week coverage here.

Nicolas Ghesquière by Michelle Williams for Interview Magazine

Interview’s March issue reveals a conversation between Louis Vuitton’s creative director, the ineffable Nicolas Ghesquière, and Michelle Williams, who covered Vuitton ads for several seasons before Ghesquière’s entry into the storied house.

The conversation is charming if not pure at best and opens with a question from Williams’ 9-year-old daughter, Matilda, who asks if Ghesquière always knew what he wanted to do, even when he was a kid. He goes on to relay an anecdote about his childhood in Loire Valley, France and praises his parents for having consistently championed the flights of his fancy.

Williams says something pointed about the way in which he designs: “With your collections, it feels like a convergence of so many decades and so many time periods and they’re pushed straight into the future. It doesn’t feel like there’s anybody that you’re following. The sense I had when I went to the show in Paris, I felt like I was watching memories that I never had.”

To which he replies with a note of relief that her words are exactly what he means to execute.

That’s kind of the thing about Ghesquière, isn’t it? He designs with such acute emotion, you can’t help but feel it when you’re looking at his clothes. This is something that is largely absent from New York, but then again, it’s not quite so prevalent anywhere. To design with the heart but acknowledge the eye is a feat fit for only an artist. Maybe it’s worth considering that what you feel for Ghesquière is actually this strange sensation — one that is familiar, like a déjà vu but can’t quite be traced back anywhere.

The man stands as a beacon of hope, truly, before fashion’s colony, which travels to Europe tonight for three more weeks, eager, no doubt, to feel.

Read the full interview here.

Hey…Can You Not Invite February? No Offense.

iMessage

Thurs, Feb 19, 10:30 AM

A: Hey

B: Hi hi. What’s up?

A: Ok…kind of awkward, but I was thinking, can you not invite February this weekend?

B: Haha.

B: Not really, why?

A: I mean…

A: February is the worst dude.

A: We go out and drink all the time — Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays, on desperate measures, Sundays — to try and make it better, like we’re going to find some magic antidote at the next bar if this one sucks. Some magic moment or some perfect night that’s going to make February feel worth it. It’s never worth it! And we get fat. I have gained 10 pounds since Christmas.

B: Shut uppppp, you’re fine.

A: Think about it. When have you ever looked back on your Instagram feed and thought to yourself, “Man, February ruled!”

B: True, but…

A: Instead of always going out with February we should just stop. We should stay in, work out, eat healthy, do yoga, listen to music, read! When’s the last time you stayed in to read? I think that is what February is for. Not all this late night bull shit that feels like some last-ditch effort to get in on cuffing season.

B: Oh god she just texted me.

A: What did she say?

B: Hang on

B: 

 

A: She’s a psycho!

B: I know. She’s so annoying.

A: SO WHY DO WE ALWAYS HAVE TO HANG OUT WITH HER??

B: Because we literally cannot ditch her. Not unless we move to like, Florida or Australia or something. Just accept that February is that friend who we grew up with because our parents are best friends with her parents. She’s gone skiing with our families. We’ve seriously known her our whole lives. We can’t get rid of her.

A: So we do we do? Suck it up?

B: She’s only here for 9 more days. So yea, we suck it up.

A: Ugh, I miss Summer. When is she moving back?

B: Not for a while…

A: At least we have time to start working out again.

A: Speaking of blast from the past, March texted me…

B: Oh god. He’s annoying.

A: I know, right.

A: Btw, delete this convo. February just said she’s gonna meet us in ten.

Day in the Life During -17 Degree Weather

At 6:45 a.m. I wake up and contemplate whether or not today is the day I will finally wash my hair. I think it’s Sunday, but I have lost the ability to decipher between days. The good news: my loyal boyfriend (last name: TV, first name: Apple) bestowed me with the Valentines gift of unwatched episodes of Broad City and High Maintenance. I also ate candy for dinner.

7:00 a.m. I double check that everything is good to go for the 9 a.m. post which is Leandra’s Altuzarra review. Man was that a beautiful collection. I decide washing my hair is probably not going to happen once I check the forecast and discover that if you venture outdoors your eyeballs will freeze into glass. Thanks for the update, Cupertino.

I decide that tights are suitable pants and that with 3 pair of socks and two coats I should be okay. I kind of look like this:

Except that instead of a red jumpsuit it’s a dress my mom wore to a school dance back in the 1800s and/or the 1970s.

Feeling very Inherent Vice minus the muttonchops. The wind pushed me all the way to the train.

My first show was Hood by Air  at noon, which continuously remains a favorite each season. To be frank, it is rare to see something entirely new at any of these shows, especially with this appropriation of the 1970s that has proliferated the past few seasons as we continue to recycle old forms and slightly modernize them. Shayne Oliver, HBA’s creative director, has a refreshing talent for taking the familiar and flipping it upside down and inside out to a point of being unrecognizable. He used denim, leather, khaki and fur and the models wore stockings pulled over their faces. It was indecipherable which were male and which were female, and it didn’t matter.

Around 12:45 p.m. I make my way out onto Wall street only to find my eyeballs doing that frozen thing. Cool choice on the eerie unfinished industrial space HBA, but the lack of insulation posed a problem on this frigid day.

1:00 p.m. At DKNY the girls wore white monikered athletic socks with chunky flatforms and the collection had a lot of strong tailoring and menswear-inspired pieces. Ke$ha was there, and has oddly been at a lot of shows– does she have a comeback I am unaware of?

1:45 p.m. I walk out into the frozen tundra of 26th street. Trying not to cry as my phalanges feel like icicles that could snap off at any second, I am greeted by the jovial, smiling Bill Cunningham sporting his signature blue anorak and no gloves, I repeat, NO gloves. He truly is a superhuman.

Meanwhile, I am hiding in a bodega on 10th avenue in an attempt to warm up. I stay for so long that I feel awkward and buy a pack of gum.

2:30 p.m. I prep imagery for Amelia’s Derek Lam review and Leandra’s post chronicling Public school, Hood by Air and Tim Coppens.  I make sure everything is good to go for the Lacoste and Dion Lee review and then set up Leon Bridges’ closet post and have about 7 day dreams in which he serenades me.

Though I fall into a black hole and lose all sense of time and space during fashion week, I do manage to see my typically-elusive friends who also work in fashion because our schedules finally align. I grab coffee with my friend Cleo around 4:30 in her break between shows and then later go to dinner with my British friend Mod who is here for work. It is a divine reunion of sorts.

Around 8:45 p.m., Mod and I head to the Opening Ceremony presentation which was a photo show from Spike Jonze’s never-before-seen archives. Leave it to OC to outdo its own hipness each season. I arrive fashionably late (the presentation is from 8:00-10:00) only to learn the models were fashionably early. They came out for a blip of time and then vanished. Crap. I ran into a friend who had shot beautiful images of the show and I scrolled through her photos in the middle of the photo gallery. It was very meta.

The clothes had a signature OC panache and embraced its partnership with Kodak through garments emblazoned with the camera company’s logo. The clothes felt easy, as did Jonze’s candid, offbeat, youthful moments he captured on film.

At 9 p.m., a change of pace. We met up with our friend who has been covering NBA All-Star Week and went to some NBA party with the hope that (according to rumors Drake would be there.) Never found out. I decide once we arrive at the club that I do not want to get out of the comfortable, warm car. I drop my friends off, disregard Uber’s price surge and ride alllll the way home.

12:00 a.m. I check my e-mail. My Uber receipt arrived. You would think the car was made of gold and was filled with champagne given what they were charging. Screw New York for having a windchill of -17 degrees and screw the L train for weekend service changes. I’m watching TV and going to bed. Tomorrow begins another fashion week day.

Want more? See all our Fashion Week coverage here.

And the MR Oscar Nominees Are…

I have only ever been truly surprised once. On January 9th, 2015, Amelia Diamond changed my mortal life when she revealed to me that koalas have two penises. Penii, if you must.

I have been chasing that high ever since.

Do you want to know what never surprises me with its inability to surprise? The Oscars. The awards show is so consistently void of bombshells that I wonder why it is I continue to pop bottles and kernels for them year after year. It probably has something to do with my affinity for the nude male form sculpted in gold.

Either that or Neil Patrick Harris.

The 2015 Academy Awards are premiering this Sunday and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t the least bit excited to see Pharrell perform his 2014 smash hit, “Happy”! 

Ah pantyhose, that already happened. Twice.  

Nevertheless, I can’t help but feel as though some serious contenders have been wrongfully overlooked in the year’s nominations. Indeed, Birdman was a technical masterpiece and Boyhood a cinematic slice of life, but what of our silly pleasures like 50 Shades of Grey and The Hunger Games? What of the unsung heroes of the films that were nominated?

Such artistry must be recognized, and because at MR we are all about petting the underdog, behold our nominees for the 2015 Academy Awards:

Christian Grey’s Pencil 

50 Shades of Grey 

Pencil for Best Supporting Role. (His #2 lead pencil that Ana borrows during her interview with him, forgets to return, then chews on for the rest of the movie.)

Joaquin Phoenix’s Mutton Chops

Inherent Vice 

It’s due time that the Academy acknowledge the nobility of the overgrown sideburn.

Tony Revolori’s Mustache 

The Grand Budapest Hotel 

I have so many questions. Was MAC’s Penultimate eyeliner the inspiration for this creeping sloth of a ‘stache? Did it hurt when it fell from heaven? Will Prince be filing a lawsuit for copyright infringement?

J.K. Simmons’ Black Tee 

Whiplash 

J.K. Simmons is marvelous and terrifying as a ruthless mentor in a competitive music conservatory. He throws sticks, he yells bloody murder, conducts an orchestra with gusto and yet, his fitted black tee remains in tact for the entire duration of the film.

Steve Carell’s Prosthetic Nose 

Foxcatcher  

On more than one occasion during the 134 minutes of this film, I asked myself, Really, who is at the center of this story? Because this screen ain’t big enough for both Steve Carell and his beak. 

The Poster for Breastmilk 

Breastmilk 

I haven’t seen this movie nor have I heard of it but if this promo doesn’t scream, “MARKETING 101″ then I don’t know what does.

Jenny Slate’s Knitwear 

Obvious Child 

While I don’t need to be convinced of Slate’s strong turtleneck game, her collection in this film is particularly impressive.

Best Unintentional PR Campaign 

The Interview 

No doubt Sony, Seth Rogan and James Franco did not anticipate the political and media frenzy that their satirical comedy would prompt, but hey, what’s to say the film wouldn’t slip into oblivion if it hadn’t?

Laura Dern’s Blowout 

The Fault in Our Stars 

That’s it.

Ellar Coltranes IRL Mom 

Boyhood 

My mom complained about shuttling me to volleyball practice once a week; Ellar Coltrane’s mom was likely driving him to shoots and such for 11 years. So for her, we declare every day Mother’s Day.