this is fyf

Weekend viewing: "Portfolio", 1983

Fashion Bug is a fun game you and your friends can play while walking the streets during Fashion Week.

It's Fashion Week, and even if you're not into the parties and shows, you can still have fun by playing a super fun game.  Perhaps you have played Love Bug (or Punch Bug) before, maybe even as a kid.  The rules are simple (although there are variations).  While travelling in a car, if a Volkswagen Beetle is seen, you call out "Love Bug" and punch your friend in the arm.  (True story, my mom and aunt beat the hell out of one another in the back seat of a cab on a recent visit while playing this.)

Fashion Week can be fun, but not as fun as punching a friend.  To remedy this we have the game Fashion Bug.  While walking down the street, if you see a person that is obviously in town for Fashion Week, you call out "Fashion Bug" and set to walloping your friend.  Woman with pom-pom scarf, dark lipstick, yelling "Taaaaxiiii" in a French accent while running down the street with a tear in her eye?  "Fashion Bug!"  Tall man in "department store" attire with a Dillard's bag drinking a cosmopolitan and mispronouncing Donna Karan?  "Fashion Bug!"  Super-thin, tall girl with stringy hair wearing all back eating a sandwich?  "Fashion Bug?"  NO!  Punch your buddy back as that girl is eating and has not fainted so is obviously just a normal girl.

Please note that playing this game around Seventh Avenue in the Thirties or around Lincoln Center is less a game and more a likely case of assault.  Have fun!

How to pronounce Herve Leger, Proenza Schouler, and more.

Want to join your friends in conversation about fashion brands you've read about but aren't sure how to pronounce? Pronunciation Book on YouTube has many that have been troublesome over the years. It includes not just fashion brands, but also Canadian hockey players, Swedish sportscars and even very basic words. For almost two years, they've been filling the gap between lexicon and locution. In fact, they've even spawned a mind-bending spawn.

For Your Friends, the 2011 gift guide: Give Amyl

There is a personal rule about men over 30 never wearing shirts with pictures, words or logos on it.  Rules have a purpose.  In this case it is to restrict the wearing of pictures, words or logos to those which are so amazing that the rule can be broken.  Such is the case of this "Amy L Nitrate" shirt from Curateur's Luke and Rodrigo.  The recipient will receive quite a rush, no?  (And it's just $20!)

Dolce & Gabbana's Foray into the Arena of Genderqueer

The LGBT community has made enormous strides since June 28th, 1969 and with our increasing visibility and acceptance into mainstream culture has come a greater understanding of the nuances and shades of human sexuality and gender identity.  Some would like a Q added on, as Queer better describes a fluid and malleable sense of self where concepts of male/female mix freely like sample scents at the Saks perfume counters.

Of note was the recent kerfuffle around Mx. Justin Vivian Bond’s profile in New York Magazine. Admittedly New York is a publication catering toward an urbane and educated readership, but this was still quite a mainstream outlet to be addressing something as niche (even in the gay community) as a type of gender fluidity that is beyond even Trans; not being born in the wrong gender, but essentially having no gender.

My own social circle casts rather a wide net: variety being the spice of life and myself being a rather curious individual who is absolutely fascinated by people. I pride myself on having friends from all walks of life, and count many persons with no self-identified gender as intimates and associates. From boys who love heels, to girls who bind, to the explosive diversity of the (often tiresomely narcissistic) Club Kid scene, I have more than a handful of people in my life who change personalities as often as they change their jeans.

In the Downtown milieu (Downtown now also includes Brooklyn) waifish androgyny is a social cultivar and there are lots of pretty boys that look like pretty girls, and vice-versa.

So it was on a lazy Sunday after a dinner party, watching movies with my friend Jess, when I was flipping through the past two issues of Vogue when I was delighted by, among other things, a series of spreads for the Fall ’11 campaign for Dolce & Gabbana.

This week Bill Cunningham went out looking for leopard prints and had a more rarefied find on the streets:  Rollerina!

(Photo via)

Even plus-size male models have to sell the garment.

Earlier this week New York's Amy Odell asked a question:  Where are all the plus-size male models?  Her answer explores the booking agent side of the equation and touches on the big-and-tall market.  With the bourgeoning of the bear-clones still in progress, there are many gay men in their twenties pursuing the burly aesthetic.  So should there be models representing their body types?

While many fall into the "okay so I'm a bear so that means I wear plaid or an ironic  or maybe vintage tee because I'm both vigorous and youthful" contingent, many are looking for other options for their wardrobes.  With respect to that growing market, Fantastic Man did do their fashion bit in Summer 2010.

 

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So, there they are, your plus-size male models in of-the-season fashions, but there is a problem.  The shoot becomes about the models and less about the clothes.  Check the bathing suit shot, the model on the left is "sucking it in" (or at least appears to be).  What happens now is that you look at the models and not the clothes.

While models over the years have had some degree of celebrity, their function is to sell clothing. The best way to present clothing is on an angular, thin frame, not on a larger body that can distort the cut and fit.  It's for this economic need that you won't be seeing a lot of shoots like the Fantastic Man spread.

Is it "size-ist" or just economic pragmatism?  At the end of the day, the rule is "Sell the garment, sweetie".  And that is something better done by the model with angles like a hanger, not a donut. 

 

The Yves St. Laurent sample sale started yesterday.  The J Press sample sale starts today.  They both end tomorrow! 

Is the V-Neck sweater back?  Maybe.  Personally I like it paired with a hairy chest and a gold pendant necklace.

Kevin Tachman takes us behind the scenes at the McQueen show.

See the set at Vogue.

Is glow-in-the-dark this season's "thing"?

First jeans, now a Halston dress? This isn't the chic news™* I was expecting from Paris...

* - Trademark of Mac Folkes/Downwit DeSlant

A question for the ladies.

Okay, yeah, it was Fashion's Night Out last night.  Me and some pals hid out at one of the least fashionable places we could in the West Village and watched the crowds go by.  Amongst us were some "in the industry", seasoned professionals that didn't care to get caught up in the melee.  As we looked out the windows into the streets we saw the obligatory high heels on cobblestones and tons of shopping bags.

We then noticed a trend that is not on trend, and we started asking one another a question that I now present to the ladies out in the ether:

WHAT IS UP WITH ALL THE FUCKING SEQUINS?

Beth Ditto to perform for Fashion's Night Out.

 

Okay, Fashion's Night Out is sort of high on the treble for my tastes, but if there is something that could drag me out into the melee it must be amazing.  Beth Ditto is that kind of amazing.

She'll be performing a two song set at MAC Soho at Spring and Mercer.  (That's the cosmetics line, not the computer.)  The two-song set starts at 8 p.m., and in case you don't want to be in the fashion crowd you can also watch it live on the MAC Facebook page.

 

Image via The Arting Starvist

Glow in the dark jeans are now available at Barneys.

It is my decision to not have an opinion of these.   Do you like them?

Via Geek Chic

When Lanvin met Pitbull.

This is a Helmut Newton photo of Karl Lagerfeld in St. Tropez in 1973.

There are about thirty-seven thoughts that come to mind viewing this, but perhaps yours are less viscerally sexual?

Via

The Alexander McQueen showcase at the Met was almost a Galliano showcase.

 

The original plan was for a John Galliano showcase, not Alexander McQueen.  Plans were still just plans when McQueen committed suicide in February 2010.  The Costume Institute then decided to change direction toward Galliano's successor at Givenchy, McQueen and thus the show Savage Beauty. 

 

FYF After Dark: Plenty of room for improvement

A one-time (and recently refreshed) favorite, "Diego Valentino" (99.9% certain NOT his real name.) posed for Advocate Men some years back. Here, he's looking pretty fine and nothing too terribly objectionable's going on in the shot.

But wait...

Cut to: (rest of post NSFW)...

What. Is. Gay. - Our heritage? Or the current "heritage" trend in men's fashion?

Gilt MANual Minute: Peskowitz vs. Wooster: The Ultimate Street Style Showdown from Gilt MAN on Vimeo.

First of all, does anyone else experience VAST frustration with online video players such as YouTube and Vimeo? No matter what computer I'm on, I can't recall a single time I've watched a video via either service without experiencing a great deal of buffering and/or pausing throughout. Is this just me? Is there someone techie enough to explain to me, in laymen's  terms, why a video inevitably plays in fits and starts, completely nullifying the point of watching a video (particularly one of a song or piece of music)? Further adding to my frustration is the fact that Netflix does such a good job streaming. Sure, they're a subscription service and thus demand is limited, but...? It just doesn't seem right.

Back to the actual topic of this post: Does twee equal gay? In the video above, the opening makes (a very well-shot and edited) reference to old Westerns and the gun duels that were often central to their plot. Perhaps purposely; perhaps not, Nick Wooster and Josh Peskowitz look a bit foolish in their Thom Browne-length suit pants and sockless shoes when compared, mentally, with the traditionally rugged (read disheveled) gunslinger of the Old West (as imagined by countless Hollywood movies, anyway).

Question then... Does their foppishness, contrasted with the rugged, (and frankly) dusty men of old Westerns make them "gay"?

Grouse

On a favorite subject of mine:

"Douglas Durst, chairman of the Durst Organization, said he has no current plans to acquire any more buildings in Manhattan because prices are not corresponding with value."

I'm of the opinion that price and value have never had a more arbitrary relationship. And a $600 t-shirt is only the beginning.