Designer Julia Min is boldy exploring the territory where fitness and fetish meet. Her MIN-US label debut, titled Courtship, is a collection of leather accessories which invite new interpretations of reconizable forms. Welcome to the bondage gym, an arena where fantasy becomes luxury and athleticism becomes foreplay.

In a tale of catwalk meets perp walk, it’s looking like these Italians may be thrown on ice. According to the BBC, legendary design duo Dolce & Gabbana were just handed down a 1 year, 8 month jail sentence for tax evasion, the culmination of related legal troubles which have been ominously simmering for the past two years. Unfortunately for courtroom fashion voyeurs, they were not present when the sentence was handed down.

It seems like just yesterday that Naomi Campbell wore a Dolce & Gabbana gown to end her 2010 community service stint. The pernicious pair, who deny all charges, hit the town two days ago to hobnob at their Bond St. store opening. It will be interesting to see whether the sentence will be altered upon certain appeal, and if not, how the two will proceed, as those of their means typically leave the clinking to Krug-filled champagne flutes.

Cue the inevitable Vogue (or Vice) editorial, with a shackled Lara Stone clad in D&G, straddling a desk in some kind of law office. The lights haven’t gone dark on the proverbial runway yet, but if you own the original 1999 collection silver handcuff bracelet, we highly recommend you hold onto it. As the suspense grows, so will its value.

In 2013, fashion brands are no longer just about the clothes, and their platforms extend far beyond a runway. The contemporary fashion consumer has a wider scope of cultural influence to construct her identity — one where music, design, technology and other various creative capital all come into play.

British fashion brand AllSaints understands this, having recently launched LA Sessions, a new digital music series featuring live music performances and accompanying artist interviews. To kick off the ongoing series, AllSaints invited band OneRepublic to record an acoustic show and interview in the brand’s Beverly Hills newest flagship. Led by frontman Ryan Tedder, OneRepublic gave an exclusive performance of their brand new single “Counting Stars” alongside material from their third album “Native”.

Designed with both the artist and the consumer in mind, the “state-of-the-art” space offers advanced sound equipment, an in-store acoustic studio, and most importantly, a uniquely immersive retail experience.

This isn’t the company’s first push at innovative brand integration. AllSaints has been working towards a more digital and interactive approach evident by their site’s music and video collections showcasing highly stylized campaign films, behind the scenes lookbook shoots and exclusive recording sessions with emerging musical talent.

Combine all this with their consistent collections of gorgeous and smartly-designed clothes and it’s safe to say AllSaints is hitting all the right notes.

In quick succession Vice has just done both the most and least stereotypically Vice-y things ever. First up they published a fashion editorial as part of their Fiction issue that depicted a series of famous women authors at the moment of their suicides, including  Sylvia Plath, Virginia Woolf, and others. Edgy stuff, to be sure, but nothing too out of the ordinary for the controversial brand (who I’ve written for, and have long-admired, I should point out). But then, following an overwhelming backlash online, they pulled their most shocking move yet: they took it down and apologized, releasing the following statement today:

“Last Words” is a fashion spread featuring models reenacting the suicides of female authors who tragically ended their own lives. It is part of our 2013 Fiction Issue, one that is entirely dedicated to female writers, photographers, illustrators, painters, and other contributors.

The fashion spreads in VICE Magazine are always unconventional and approached with an art editorial point-of-view rather than a typical fashion photo-editorial one. Our main goal is to create artful images, with the fashion message following, rather than leading.

“Last Words” was created in this tradition and focused on the demise of a set of writers whose lives we very much wish weren’t cut tragically short, especially at their own hands. We will no longer display “Last Words” on our website and apologize to anyone who was hurt or offended.

Offending people is essentially Vice‘s raison d’etre. I’m frankly more offended that they bowed to the pressure from concern trolls than I was by the original editorial itself. As Jezebel chided:

Another example of Vice‘s subtle wit? The spread is called “Last Words.” Making light of suicide and underlying mental health problems — or treating those topics as an opportunity to establish your so-edgy-it’s-Viacom-and-HBO-affiliated magazine’s continued capacity to épater le bourgeois — is sick, sick stuff.

And while time doesn’t necessarily lessen the grief of suicide, it’s perhaps especially distressing that some of the people Vice depicts died very recently — Chang in just 2004 — leaving still-living loved ones behind. These weren’t fictional characters; these were real women, who lived and struggled and died, and to treat their lowest moments as fodder for a silly fashion spread is shameful and sad.

Sick, sick stuff indeed, all of which you can only now see at sites like Jezebel—who are, again, offended by these images—or in our spread above, because suicide is sexy and we obviously want to condone it.

Not sure I want to live in a media climate where Vice, or The Onion for that matter, have to apologize and retract something for being offensive. I’m going to kill myself.

To learn more about the authors depicted check out some of their best works.

Dorothy Parker’s Enough Rope.

Iris Chang’s The Rape Of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust Of World War II.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper.

Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar.

Virginia Woolf’s The Waves.

Elise Cowen’s Poems and Fragments (forthcoming).

Sanmao’s The Stories of the Sahara.

Photos and styling by  Annette Lamothe-Ramos and Annabel Mehran.

@lukeoneil47

Goth, grunge, punk, nope —the best collections this Resort/Spring 2014 are finding inspiration in the most far out places.

Two of the largest news stories in fashion of late—John Galliano’s 2011 racist meltdown and his since-then baby steps towards rehabilitation. and Nicolas Ghesquière leaving the house of Balenciaga—have been illuminated this past week with the publication of a series of lengthy interviews with the aforementioned designers. In his first-ever sober interview, John Galliano defends and atones in a piece by Ingrid Sischy from this month’s Vanity Fair. The incomparable Charlie Rose followed up on Sischy’s expose, interrogating the shamed designer in a 53-minute video interview, which aired last Wednesday. While Galliano had to explain his fall from grace, Nicolas Ghesquière voluntarily spoke out on his graceful departure from Balenciaga in two generous interviews—one for 032c and the other with the new System magazine—which address why he left (he left) and what might be next.

Both Galliano and Ghesquière had been mum until now and both stories roused a great deal of speculation. So, what did we learn?

First, Galliano. His story, like most mediated tales of atonement, is rehearsed. What he gives Sischy and Rose is the same careful telling of his childhood and career and the pressures that led him to alcoholism and drug abuse, which climaxed when he was videotaped slurring a louche anti-Semitic rant at his local Paris bistro. After that video went viral, he was fired from both his posts at Dior and his own label of John Galliano. Now, he is two years and three months sober and is claiming that he doesn’t remember the incident or any like it (witnesses stated they’d heard such profanities from him before), as he was, at that time, a “blackout drunk.”

On Charlie Rose, Galliano is uncharacteristically underdressed and visibly nervous. He apologizes for his violent prejudiced words and claims that “he knows” that he is neither a racist nor an anti-Semite. He reaches for reasons to why he behaved like he did. One explanation, which is also offered in Vanity Fair, is that, when one is in the kind of prolonged state of intoxication he was (mixing alcohol with prescription meds), the brain can go “haywire” and bring together ideas from the unconscious. In this case, he may have been recalling the harsh language of his childhood, growing up in the mixed-culture of South London, or perhaps he was channeling Rudolf Nureyev, a pronounced anti-Semite, who Galliano was researching at the time. Galliano does not proffer such explanations as an excuse; he admits there is no excuse. He is searching for explanations “for himself,” as much as the for the public he offended.

Galliano’s vocabulary is that of a recovering addict. He speaks of “atonement,” his “disease,” and “the work” of rehabilitation. He speaks of then: “I was going to end up in a mental asylum or six feet under.” And the now—it’s “one day at a time”:

That was part of my problem before. I was so worried about what had happened yesterday and my head was in 2018. And having done the work I’ve done I’ve realized that that wasn’t living. Living is now, the present, being connected… I’m alive and grateful.

Though their stories and their styles are quite different, there are many parallels between the Galliano and Ghesquière interviews, particularly when it comes to the luxury fashion industry and the demands it places on its designers. Galliano was always pushing forward and trying to outdo himself: his “head was in 2018,” he was designing “32 collections a year,” and so he used until he crashed and burned. Ghesquière experienced a similar temporal stress: “When I started, there were only two seasons,” he tells Pierre-Alexandre de Looz for 032c, “but by the end there were 15 collections per season, which is more than 30 per year.” The accelerated fashion calendar was one of the reasons he wanted to stop designing for Balenciaga:

As long as the production scheduled kept sight of the creative side, it felt human. Then it accelerated to such a degree that at a certain point I was totally miserable. I simply didn’t have enough time to search for new, sufficiently interesting ideas and I had to keep churning out proposals, meeting deadlines, taking up gigantic studios that required interacting with greater numbers of people and in the process I realized I would lose what defined me… I created many things but it can’t last. It’s unhealthy. You lose your identity, which is priceless and I didn’t want to jeopardize it.

Ghesquière felt he didn’t have enough time to “innovate” at Balenciaga, which is his definition of luxury: “I’m here to evolve and hopefully innovate; that’s my role as a designer: to move forward, to take risks, and generate commercial incentives.” He connects the current speed of luxury fashion to fashion’s profitability (“you feel better if you own a luxury group than a steel group”), to its entry into pop culture (“fashion has never been so in fashion”), and to the luxury market’s parallel industry of “fast fashion” (“they have the big bosses of luxury drooling because everyone fantasizes about achieving that level of efficiency”). Ghesquière suggests that as “fast fashion” entities like H&M and Zara edge into the luxury market with designer collaborations, they may become “the next multinational luxury goods groups.” Asked what he will miss most about Balenciaga, Ghesquière tells System:

I will definitely miss the studio and the atelier, but the rest not at all. Quite the opposite in fact. I really do feel as though I am no longer being sucked dry. No one is asking me things endlessly, asking for ideas all the time: what’s next, what’s next, what’s next?

A person can be addicted to many things: to drugs, to alcohol, to love and/or sex. To shopping. From Galliano’s interviews, one gets the sense that he was as addicted to the gratification of the forward-march fashion schedule as he was to the drugs and alcohol that helped him meet its demands. The industry wanted his industry and so they kept him in it. “I lived in a bubble,” he tells Vanity Fair, “I would be backstage and there would be a queue of five people to help me. One person would have a cigarette for me. The next person would have the lighter. I did not know how to use the A.T.M.” Ghesquière felt similar pressures but instead of using, as many in the industry end up doing, he worked hard and gorgeously and then took a break.

Right now, Ghesquière is working to try and imagine new modes of production that will enable greater creative experimentation. “The system has become totally saturated,” he says in System, “but there is nothing better than a saturated system for reinventing yourself and finding new ways of operating.” Both Galliano and Ghesquière want to continue working in fashion. Galliano, having offended a market share with his racist remarks, will have to find a new means; he can no longer be the flamboyant face of a multinational brand. Ghesquière may offer some inspiring alternatives. “I don’t want to sound pretentious and say that I am going to invent an entirely new model of operating in fashion,” he explains, “but that’s my ambition. In terms of rhythm, in terms of seasons, in terms of what I offer.” I look forward to seeing more from both of them.

One of the chief criticisms of the fashion industry is that in order for the clothes that they’re selling to actually look anything remotely like they do on the runway or in print, you have to have the same perfectly-sculpted body of a model yourself. But even the most in-demand working clotheshorse has nothing on these, well, perfectly-sculpted bodies, if you see what I did there.

These styled classical sculptures dressed in modern clothes, by Léo Caillard and Alexis Persani (via Today I Learned), are a juxtaposition of this that and the other thing, sure, but they’re also just really fun to look at, which is what the internet is here for.

Forever 69 is a bi-weekly, bi-curious column about fashion and sex. You can read the first installment here. 

The hardest thing about creating this column hasn’t been coping with the hard-ons it’s inspired (though you are *cops a feel* very very hard). No, the hardest thing so far has definitely been coming up with the title. What to name this glorious mess! My column, my baby. The vehicle for my textual exhibitionism and sure manifesta (I have an agenda). A good title is vital. Mine had to be funny and inclusive. Attention grabbing and hashtag-able. Hot.

Wanting for ideas, I turned to my editors and friends. “What should I call my new bi-weekly, bi-curious column on fashion and sex,” I tweeted, status updated, emailed, and texted. The replies were brilliant: Shine Bi Like a Diamond, Eat Wear Fuck (EWF), Bi-Me, Fuck/Fashion, Voguina, Men are Worthless & Therefor Women Have The Right to Be Bi Weekly [sic]. And the very first response…

Sex and the City

***

This second installment of #Forever69 (thanks goes to BULLETT Editorial Director Nick Haramis for that) was going to be about the schoolgirl uniform. I was already deep into the research when my various “news” feeds started echoing—Sex and the City Turns 15! Sex and the City Celebrates Its 15th anniversary! 15th… 15th… 15…

I was fifteen the last time Sex and the City meant something real to me. At that point in my virginhood, I could list every episode aired by season and title. Like my favorite: season 2, episode 15, “Shortcomings”—the Salinger-esque episode in which Carrie dates a prematurely ejaculating short story writer named Vaughn. Vaughn is immature and refuses to talk about his sexual issues, but Carrie keeps at it, because she wants to keep seeing his family, a classic New York intellectual cabal. Valerie “Rhoda” Harper played the mother of the family,Vaughn was played by Justin Theroux who—get this—appeared in another bit part on the show, back in season 1 (episode 7, “The Monogamists”), again as a hotshot fiction writer, but this time cockier and with a unibrow. His name was… Jared. This is all, still, from memory; it serves.

Last week, when my feed started to read “Sex and the City Is Old and So Are You,” I immediately dropped the plaid skirts, and started downloading the series. I hadn’t watched it in years, but I couldn’t help but wonder… How would the show seem now? Would I still identify? Am I a Carrie or a Miranda?

Watching Sex and the City again was like reading my teenage diary. Kind of humiliating, like *I can’t believe I thought that.* But with compassion, like *I wish you’d known better, little one.* And some pride: both *what a precocious devil I was* and *look how far you’ve come!* The show’s flaws made me cringe like my first failed kisses (why did I keep biting those poor boys?). Because, like those first kisses, the sex “in the city” was far from open, far from GGG. Except for Samantha, the characters weren’t game for fetish play, bisexuality, polyamory, or even anal sex. Storybook “true love,” a.k.a. monotony, was their goal. And their only goal. All the characters talked about were their love lives and closets, except for Miranda, who would occasionally call them out on that. The women of SATC were also (conscientious feminist critic checklist): attractive, white, able-bodied, upper-class women living in one of the most privileged countries in the world; the SAMO.

When my friend Tate suggested “Sex and the City” as a title for my column, I lol’ed because when she and I moved in together, at seventeen, I brought seasons 1 and 2, she brought 3 and 4, and together we bought 5 and 6. Freshman year, we spent more nights watching the DVDs in our respective bedrooms than hooking up. We did, however, wear ghetto gold jewelry like season 3 Carrie and flashy ankle booties à la season 5. Before Tate called me out, it honestly hadn’t occurred to me that, in launching this column, I was fulfilling a not-so-secret teenage fantasy: a New York fashion slut types an embarrassingly confessional beat about sex… in the city.

Anti-porn advocates have claimed that porn is harmful to young minds as it conditions the brain to associate certain media-specific behaviors with RL sex; it patterns and misguides. Post-freshman and post-virginity, in my Women’s Studies years, I started to believe that Sex and the City was my harmful porn. The show’s lessons continually failed to apply to my real life but I kept recalling them. My early SATC education was so thorough, I couldn’t not think of Miranda’s “big hard sausage” dirty talk when a lover prompted me to be more verbal in bed. I couldn’t not think of Carrie in the elevator with Big when I started to have my own affairs. Flipping the switch on my vibrator, I’d hear Carrie’s first season words to the Rabbit: “How lazy do you have to be?” Memory wasn’t serving, it was enslaving—enslaving me to bad puns, prudish behavior, and clichéd segues…

But then things got better. I stopped watching Sex and the City and started watching Weeds and Sasha Grey. I started reading Anais Nin and then Chris Kraus, started listening to Dan Savage. I had a new slew of sexual role models to accompany me on my adventures. Carrie quips were quieted.

***

Realizing I could watch old episodes of Sex and the City as “work” this week was as rousing as remembering you’re working from home and can masturbreak whenever you want. As the familiar opening sequence da-da-da-da-’ed from my laptop speakers (over and over again) and I relaxed into a familiar stupor of underage voyeurism, I got to thinking about sexual educations: the lessons we learn and then unlearn. Fifteen years since its premiere, ten years since the height of my fandom, and five years since I’d seen it last, I found myself laughing at things on Sex and the City that I’d never laughed at before, and sighing with generous humility at those things that used to make me laugh. And that’s when I had a thought: Maybe bad educations are good. Maybe holding preconceived notions and then proving them wrong in practice can teach you more than firsthand experience alone. In many ways, my unlearning of Sex and the City was as formative as the learning. Now I can proudly say, understanding the other side, that I AM A MIRANDA!

As for style, like the writing on the show, everything was better in the early years: season 1 and 2 (1998-1999), when Carrie talked to the camera Annie Hall-style, when the show showed more reflexivity, when the girls were bad and we knew it. The style then was minimal, restrained, and realistic. Carrie was still a fashion plate but she hadn’t turned into the Man Repeller she would in seasons 4-6 (I refuse to even acknowledge the movies). Simple bodycon dresses—mini, knee, or ankle length—with an oversized clutch and strappy sandals. Capri leggings and shoulder pads. Spaghetti strap tank tops. At fifteen years old, I hated the early season’s style, but now that the show is fifteen, I’m dressing just like that. That’s another lesson, and the title of a pretty decent episode: “What Goes Around, Comes Around,” season 3, episode 17.

Next time on Forever 69: Style reporting from the fetish show! 

I am speechless, y’all, that adult baby Miley Cyrus appeared in public—at a Myspace party, no less—wearing a pair of pants that’s 50% jeans, 50% sweats, and 100% molly-inspired (or so I imagine). Granted my fashion sense can be described somewhere between “square” and “dad,” but the getup is so ostentatious that it must demand an oral history on how it was birthed into the world. What else is journalism for?

MILEY: I was sitting on the couch in sweats, high as hell watching the Batman movie with Two-Face, when my assistant told me it was time to get dressed for the party. I was too lazy to put on jeans and thought, “Isn’t there something there?”

MILEY’S ASSISTANT: You don’t know how hard it is to sew the two materials together. But I did it, and Miley finally unblocked the ventilator before I ran out of oxygen. 

The rest of her outfit is, like, whatever—nothing out of place at a party DJed by Tumblr users, and anyways who am I to talk. But man, those pants. (Facebook commenter Amy Antunez says: “That is the stupidest piece of crap fashion I have seen in forever!!! you look like you shit your pants!!!”) Do teens still worship Miley? Is this the newest teen trend? Miley might not be able to stop, but why should she?

Whether playing on her own iPad or having her every meow meticulously jotted down in a diary by two maids, Choupette the cat has it made. Throw in the fact that her owner is none other than Karl Lagerfeld, and it’s easy to see why Choupette has become a four-legged, international heartthrob, making the rounds amongst society’s elite. Now, her coronation as fashion’s First Feline is complete, with her first cover in German Vogue’s July issue. But Choupette isn’t alone in the pantheon of fashionable pets. The above slideshow will prove the statement we just made.

#DADS, gotta love ‘em. Whether the dad in your life is a grandfather, a new father, a love partner, a BFF, or a sperm donor, show him your love with a gift that suits him. Here’s our father’s day guide with gifts to fit sports dads, travel dads, book dads, cool dads, every dads!

If we set aside the fact that there is nothing less funny than a hipster joke, not to mention our typical distaste for pop-culture-nostalgia-based doses of serotonin as a media form, then fine, OK, this new Tumblr, Hipsters Who Dress Like Jackie From ‘Roseanne’ is a mildly amusing diversion from our normally scheduled programming of anger-clicking and spite-Tweeting. As usual with these type of “one thing that looks like another thing” deals, the comparison is often tenuous—they’re looking in the same direction in the same colored shirt!—but the majority of the posts here make it clear that Jackie Harris was an unwitting style icon for today’s youths/fashion nerds.

Check out the Tumblr for the comparisons.

Yasmin Sewell, the portentously powerful consultant behind the rising prominence of British fashion, has finally set her sights on America. “I just decided tonight that I’d love to move to New York, but don’t make it official!” she said at last week’s launch of Paper Mache Tiger, a London-based fashion sales and marketing agency that just opened its first showroom in the U.S.

The 36-year-old chief creative consultant at London’s Liberty department store has an infallible eye for forecasting next-level talent: she was an early champion of Christopher Kane, pushed  J.W. Anderson to branch into womenswear, and introduced the world to now-famed designer Rick Owens.

These days, the Australian-native is teaming up with her husband, Kyle Robinson, as partner and director to fashion distribution agency Paper Mache Tiger. Wearing high-waisted, acid-wash jeans and bouncy black curls tucked behind her ears, Sewell explained her game plan:  “The kind of brands [Paper Mache Tiger] represents  — contemporary, affordable, with a point of view — will work really well in America.”

The party was celebrating London-based Peridot and Melbourne-based Alpha 60, two brands that, to Sewell, exemplify precision and quality.  “I think it’s very hard to find a collection that’s really well made, hitting all the right points in terms of what you want to wear,” she said of Peridot, a label founded in 2009 by Rachel Wilson. “[Peridot] is sophisticated dressing, but it’s also price-pointed really well. It looks like it could be a $1,000 jacket, for example, but actually, it’s a $500 jacket. It ticks every box; the aesthetic is understated and chic and very relevant for now.”

Meanwhile, Alpha 60, an under-the-radar boutique streetwear label designed by brother and sister duo Alex and George Cleary, is another label Sewell is personally championing. “I think they’re what people want to wear right now,” she said. “Their pricing is great, you don’t see it around a lot, and that’s refreshing.” For Sewell, price-points, especially the lower ones, seem to resonate. “I appreciate, in the right way, good commercial fashion that is different,” she said. “I’m not saying basics, I’m saying a great item that you don’t have to think about too much, that’s not going to set you back a grand. I respect that, and when you can get that right, with the right level of quality…” she trailed off, before adding, “It doesn’t have to be luxury to be good.”

For Sewell, a street style star who is frequently photographed wearing designers like Proenza Schouler and Saint Laurent, this eschewing of luxury goods seems kind of surprising – if not slightly incredulous. But Sewell is a businesswoman first, a clotheshorse second. “I love luxury,” she said. “But I can also appreciate a great brand that’s hitting the right point and that knows its customers, and knows the price point to make it sell. It’s great to have a brand that sells! I would like to have a brand that’s on everyone’s back, that’s success.”

There’s a theory of study that goes, fashion is its image. That is, that fashion becomes fashion when it is represented as fashion, when it’s photographed, illustrated, put in context; it’s in the pose, not the clothes. The proposal is convincing and its counter arguments are all semantics (obviously, there are many different ways to define “fashion”), so we’re going to go with it—fashion is its image.

This is especially true in our era of street style photography, when any stylish spin through public space could land you forever still in an image. The trick to this definition of fashion is that x look doesn’t even necessarily have to be photographed to be considered fashion, it just needs to be photogenic, made to be seen. We’ve internalized the fashion image as such: when we wear fashion, we wear it as if in an image.

Why am I going on in this utterly indulgent theoretical spin? Really, it’s not that relevant to this post, except in that it’s exactly what Comme des Garçons designer Rei Kawakubo inspires in me.

The news to report is that one of Bullett’s favorite fashion retailers, LN-CC, has curated a collection of rare Comme des Garçons publications, and that they’re all gorgeous and intellectual and worth a peruse, if not a purchase.

CdG has always made printed matter alongside their clothing materials. At LN-CC right now, you can get the best of it, including the highly elusive Comme Des Garcons 1981-1986, published in Tokyo in 1986 (original obi slipcover intact); issues of the brand’s in-house magazine Six, which ran between 1988 and 1991; Visionaire *20, the Rei guest-curated issue from 1997, with “visual interview” photographs by Mario Sorrenti, Phillip-Lorca diCorcia and Nick Knight, plus a sealed muslin dress pattern, included to mark the launch of the CdG ‘bump’ collection; and more.

I count Comme des Garçons among the most democratic fashion brands, not because it’s cheap (it’s not), but because you don’t need to own and wear it to appreciate it. Rei Kawakubo understands fashion as image (how spectacular, bizarre, and ogleable her clothes are; how seminal her printed image/texts are to them), but the CdG image has always been about more than fashion, and that’s what you’ll learn from the LN-CC CdG library—about geography and history, gender and philosophy, nature and sociology, music and architecture, and I’m going to shut up now.

Last night, friends and fans of veteran fashion photographer Brian Bowen Smith crammed into Bookmarc, Marc Jacobs’ West Village bookstore, to celebrate the release of Smith’s new book Projects, a hefty collection of images showcasing his renowned work in celebrity photography over the past ten years. Models Carolyn Murphy and Jessica Stam showed up, as did Robert Duffy, longtime friend and President of Marc Jacobs International. “I think it’s great!” Duffy said of the book. “I hate my photo—I’m the only one who has their clothes on. I told Brian, Please don’t let me be the only old man in this book surround by all that beauty.”  At 18, Smith met Duffy at the gym while working as a professional gymnast and model. The two became close friends and worked closely together on projects and collaborations for the Marc Jacobs brand —a relationship that helped catapult Smith to top-ranking industry status. We caught up with Smith to discuss the book, his nontraditional career trajectory, and the challenging dynamics of working with fashion and Hollywood’s biggest names.

Your first book signing for Projects was held in Los Angeles a little over a month ago. What did it mean to you to celebrate the release in your hometown?
Unbelievable. It was one of the most surreal things in the world. Robert Duffy even put a billboard above the store with one of my photos and just my name. So it was literally like being a celeb-superhero for one day. It was really, really cool, and to have all my friends and a lot of the celebs who are in the book there was unbelievable.

You mention Robert Duffy, the CEO of Marc Jacobs. Why is your book signing here at Bookmarc?
I’ve been collaborating with Marc and Robert for about fifteen years, so I’ve formed a special relationship with them. I think this is one of the best bookstores in the world, and that’s not just because he’s my friend. I’m very honored and glad. You look around at the people who are in here and it’s the best of the best, so to be involved and be a part of that is all their doing and a blessing for me.

Let’s talk a little about the book. It’s a collection of images throughout your career, with a primary focus on celebrity portraits. What is it about celebrities that you find so intriguing?
You never really know who a celebrity is because most of the time you’re watching them as characters. So to get into their personal life and have them give you something they don’t give other people is extremely special. You learn a lot about them in that short period of time, and it becomes such a different animal. You look at them different and it makes you feel a lot more honored that they’re doing this for you.

What are some of your favorite photos in the book?
The picture of my son is one of my favorite pictures. Selma Blair was one of the first celebrities I ever shot, Cindy [Crawford] — of course, because it’s Cindy — everything in that book is my favorite. I had to cut 300 photos so every photo in there means something special to me.

As a veteran beauty and celebrity photographer, you’ve photographed hundreds of music, TV, and film industry A-listers. Is it ever challenging to work with celebrities who are already under insane amounts of pressure and likely stressed or tired from a life of constantly being in the spotlight?
Absolutely. For anyone who’s overworked or has so much going on it’s not as special to them [compared to] if I just shot some random girl who’s never done a photo shoot. When you’re filming sixteen hours a day for two months straight and you have to come in and do another photo shoot, we make it fun. We make it about them and really try to listen to what they’re telling me and get something that they’re proud of. My main goal when shooting celebrities is to keep it fresh, keep it fun. I want them to be proud of their photo; I don’t want it to be a job.

In what ways has your background as a professional gymnast and roller blader translated to your career as a professional photographer?
Sports will teach you dedication, discipline, and mental awareness. I think that after doing those sports and getting to a certain level in those sports it’s very hard — you go through a lot of ups and downs and sometimes you don’t even make it. But when you do, you realize you can do anything. When I started I gave up everything and said, ‘I’m going to make this work’. I think that my drive that I got from sports has totally helped with everything that I do in life — even raising children and relationships.

You were the assistant to late iconic photographer Herb Ritts for four years. How did his work with celebrity portraiture influence or nurture your own work?
He was who I wanted to be. Everyone loved him, he was so mellow — there wasn’t an ounce of diva in that man. And he was extremely generous — he gave me one of his number one cameras for my birthday when I started shooting and said, “keep it up, you’ll do fine.” He gave me all the confidence in the world to follow [my] dreams and make them come true.

I was recently engaged in a conversation about how various forms of experimental creativity are being subsumed into the art world. Where there was once a field called “experimental cinema,” with programming and an audience to support it, there is now “video art,” including feature films, exhibited and distributed by galleries. What was once considered “experimental fiction,” is now sometimes called “art writing,” and is commissioned by galleries for catalogs. I’ve heard of philanthropic endeavors carried out as “art,” philosophical inquiries presented as “art.” The content of the work from before this phenomena versus now hasn’t changed—cinema is still cinema; poetry remains poetry; charity, charity—what’s changed is the context, and with it, the market.

The art market lends certain things to a creative product that other industries may not, like an active, educated, often-moneyed audience. Like international distribution through fairs and galleries. Like discourse: the anchorage of intention, the default expectation of an artist’s statement, which adds conceptual value to things like movies, novels, GIFs, video games, or fashion. This is the sphere within which Anna-Sophie Berger is making clothes.

Anna-Sophie Berger takes photographs. She makes videos. She creates performance and text-based art. She is currently working on a digital/print publication called ohneohne with two of her friends. She also designs fashion collections. This is how I first came in contact with Anna-Sophie Berger. One of the garments from her 2011 “m/m2” collection was included in an editorial in a fashion magazine I like to read. That collection was photographed for several magazines, among them Vice, AnOther, Nylon and Indie. It was also exhibited in a gallery in New York earlier this year. Artist/curator Margaret Lee bought a dress from that show and was spotted wearing it to the Frieze Art Fair in New York last month. (Fashion as fashion. Fashion as art. Art as fashion. Fashion with art.)

Anna-Sophie Berger debuted her most recent collection yesterday. Titled “Fashion is Fast,” the collection consists of several groups of four garments, with each group exploring a different trope or motif in fashion production, like the measurements of a dress or the pant suit of an elected official. “At the beginning of this collection I was asking myself questions about the formal codes of trends in fashion,” her artist’s statement reads, “If a trend was to be described by its means to contradict the previous, I am interested in these contrasts.” The collection is striking as it both literalizes the methods of fashion production while being commercially viable. There is not an item in there I wouldn’t wear.

I spoke with Anna-Sophie Berger in the weeks before her collection launched about “fast fashion” and what it means to make clothes in an art setting.

What does “fashion is fast” mean in the context of your collection?
I would say “fashion is fast” is an ironic as much as honest illustration of fashion and trend; a formal exploration of the meaning of being IN and OUT of time, as perceived by society. I am dealing with the basic concepts and rules of fashion/collection production. Through serial presentation of garments in groups of four, I allow a sort of formal comparison between aspects that I isolated as essential for the conception of the trends and garments of a time. The mathematical fact of a skirt having a width of 90, as opposed to a skirt width of 360, executed as real garments present the dimension of change achieved through a seemingly banal equation. Fashion is fast. My collection title is an allusion to all of that: to the fact that the industry is fast, the fact that shapes change fast in the pursuit of the new or the innovative. While at the same time, as the artist, I understand myself to be struggling with this urge for commercialized speed.

The collection you showed at the JTT Gallery in New York earlier this year paired a white and black grid print with deconstructed tailoring. This contrast, to me, mirrored the taking apart of field barriers—between fashion and gallery art—that you do in your practice. I was hoping you might be able to comment on how you both represent divisions and also break with traditions?
Your question really nails down a topic I find myself constantly busy with these days. As much as enjoy how I seem to be able to present my work in different medias, it still sometimes puts me in conflict with both fashion and art contexts. There naturally comes this urge to place me, to define where I belong. Going to New York to show my collection at JTT and actually having to, for the first time, price the pieces for an art context—to define these pieces as unique and then getting to see people buy them—that made me happy. It felt more natural than an idea of commercial production ever did. At the same time, I am not fully opposed to doing a commercial run of my garments.

One thing that is key to this question—of whether to produce or not, of whether to have only one piece in a gallery versus having one thousand in a shop—is a certain freedom that I want to save to myself. I am not interested in, what are to me, outdated concepts of fashion industry, like the doctrine of seasonal presentation and these inflicted rules of how one ought to behave as a designer/fashion house. My priority has always been my artistic conceptual ideas. I want to have the freedom to define my relationship with my objects, with my work; to have the freedom to place them in the context that I consider most fit for them. Gallery and art contexts suit what I’m interested in right now, which is to present executed ideas, and to ask the viewer, and ultimately the consumer, to indulge in these ideas with me.

What would you identity as the thorough lines between your work in different fields, besides your hand? What are the questions or challenges that prompt you to create?
What links my work is not an overall formal aim. I would never try to make a garment look like my photographs. I am usually very interested in media-inherent questions: asking questions about dressing when designing a garment; asking questions of photographic practice and perception when working with photography. Ultimately, I have a great confidence in transmedia practice.

Images courtesy of Anna-Sophie Berger. Photography by Maria Ziegelböck. Styling by Martina Tiefenthaler. Hair by Wolfgang Lindenhofer. Make-Up by Nicole Jaritz. Model: Jana Wieland. All garments (c) Anna-Sophie Berger. 

When you want to watch High School Musical on DVD, you really want to watch High School Musical on DVD. We’ve all been there. That’s what makes this prank call on Kate Moss set up by BBC host Keith Lemon so much fun. Lemon had Moss’ old pal, Brit TV presenter Nick Grimshaw call up and ask about the DVD’s whereabouts. As New York Magazine writes, it’s a pretty cute window into what it might be like to call up Moss on the phone and shoot the shit. Not to mention that it’s possible to be one of the most successful and beautiful women in the fashion world and still sound like cockney chimney sweep halfway through your second pack of fags of the day.

Ah, summer. The time, as Eileen Myles wrote, “to do nothing and make no money.” Being and nothingness. Water, sun, and sand. The flesh, the mind, a book. Maybe a michelada. All you need. In honor of this glorious season, we’ve prepared a reading list inspired by our favorite Resort 2014 looks; a time of the mind for the flesh of the world.

When it’s so hot out that you sweat sitting still, the only thing you want on your body is a cold shower, and maybe another body. But propriety rules and we can’t spend the whole summer naked at Fire Island. In steamy, sticky, humid climates like the one we’re suffering through in New York right now, what is a girl to wear? Whether you prefer your look baggy or barely there, skinsational or SFW, we’ve got you covered—or not—with these 10 style tips to help you beat the heat. #humidsery #hairypits #hotinherre

“Most fashion photography is done by gay people finding women sexy, which is sort of not sexy at all, at least to a heterosexual man. She’s so retouched, so airbrushed, without any human response at all, and, well, you don’t really want to fuck a doll.” –Juergen Teller

I’m looking for someone to help me produce a series of pornographic videos based on high-end fashion brands. Alexander’s Wang, Proenza Squirter, G-Spot Raw, Michael Whores, Reed Jackoff, Rage & Boner, Undressed Van Noten, Chloë Sevigny for Opening Ceremony… Stoya will star in XSL [Extreme Saint Laurent]. Karl will voyeur on a gay gang bang in Caca Chanel. Two petite Japanese lesbians will fuck each other with a black strap-on in Cum des Garçons.

The videos will be styled according to each brand’s mandate. The stars of Lick My Versace will be hairless from the nape down with skin no lighter than amber and no darker than tenné on the tan spectrum. Céline by Peepee Phallus will be overexposed like a Juergen Teller photograph; golden showers. Dolce’s Fab-Anus: Vol. 1 and 2 will explore the Madonna/Whore complex. Prada’s will be the best, though I’m not sure how just yet.

I wouldn’t call my imagined series parodic, unless it was in a court defense. In fact, in an ideal world, the videos would be produced in partnership with the brands—they would lend me the clothes, rent out the hotel studio suite, and hire me the best DPs the Valley has to offer (that’s Director of Photography but, yes, that too).

The concept is that this is believable. J’Adore Dior dildos and Armani MILFs aren’t so far from a Gucci-G pubis or “Nothing Comes Between Me and My Calvins”. Fashion brands have come to represent lifestyles and identities. They have come to commodify everything, down to pubic hair, down to one’s sense of self. The only thing left—let’s go the whole way—is for them to make something that will make me come.

***

I have followed fashion for as long as I have been sexually conscious. I remember being 10 years old and dressing in a crop top inspired by Tiffani Amber Thiessen’s Valerie Malone on 90210. I gazed in a mirror at my chest where my breasts would be if I were her, thinking of Dylan (Dylan, Dylan) touching them, as I became newly aware of the seam at the crotch of my jeans. Through puberty, I catalogued my vast collection of fashion magazines according to nation, and made a hobby of online window shopping for bathing suits, year round. When I became reflexively sexual, at sixteen or seventeen, it occurred to me that my interest in fashion may have stemmed from a displaced desire to look at women’s bodies. Chicken, egg, Ego, Id, no matter, the fetish is set—having come of age with fashion, my sexuality is now bound to it. I love a strip tease. Costume role play. If I get dressed in a particularly hot outfit, I can’t leave the house without jerking off. Those are the healthy manifestations. But the rest…

While fashion showcases a variety of sexual attitudes and lifestyles (the industry is pretty open in terms of queer identities, BDSM play, exhibitionisms, etc.), such polymorphous perversity is only sanctioned for those with a very specific body type. My teenage favorite, Carine Roitfeld’s Paris Vogue, may have shown girls who looked like boys and boys who looked like girls doing all sorts of things with each other, but the boys and girls within her pages all looked more alike, as boys or girls, than I or my best friends and lovers do to any of them—that is, they were all very thin, very tall, impeccably groomed and mostly white, while we are all so diverse.

Here’s a story: once upon a time, there was an underage Canadian, virginal and versed in all the Vogues (Paris, London, Australia, America), who, consciously or not, thought that she could only start to fuck if she lost her hips and wore high heels. She was like a Catholic consumed by guilt, but her bible was a fashion rag and the only shame she felt was her fat. She first had sex, missionary style, at eighteen. Bo-ring.

“I know I always say this, but porn helped me to feel more confident with my body, because I realized that I enjoyed watching curvy girls in porn more than the ‘model-type’ girls, because curvy girls bounce more while they’re fucking.” That’s sex blogger extraordinaire Karley Sciortino, in conversation with Devonté Hynes, repeating a sentiment I’ve thought so many times. Even after I started having sex, I was never convinced when my partners praised my “vehicular” hips or my “juicy” inner thighs. It wasn’t until I started watching porn that I began to really embrace my body and the bodies I was attracted to. Fashion patterned my young brain to associate only one kind of hotness with sex, and then porn—BBW, MILF, shemale, ginger, amputee, as Dev replied to Karley, “no matter what you look like, there’s someone out there jerking-off to someone like you.”

***

I remember what panties I was wearing the first time I could sex. I remember the dress I had on the first time I came in a public place. When I’m ovulating, I’m more likely to wear knee socks and lipstick and I like that. Fashion, in that it’s about the desire, fantasy, memory, identity, and the body, is about sex. But fashion, as in Vogue, is far removed from the sticky reality of sex. Fashion sex is voyeuristic and necrophilic. It’s free market, not free love, sex. Commercial. Static. Airbrushed. It’s capitalism hiding behind the allure of sex; seductive promises that, instead of liberating, rake you with insecurities that the shopping guides, diets, and self-tanners on the next page will promise to fix.

Fashion and sex go great together, just not as the likes of Lagerfeld, Wintour, or even Roitfeld would have it. I am very seriously looking for someone to help me produce my fashion porno series because the world needs to see a Lagerfeld lookalike stroking the geriatric boner beneath his skinny leather pants as a group of chiseled men pump each other full of lube. I will call my series Fuck the Commodification of Sex, and through it, I hope to make fashion more like porn—a democratic capitalist entertainment industry after the even the most niche consumer’s pleasure. With more curves. More sweat. And more of Stoya’s laugh.

Since Fuck the Commodification of Sex is stalled at the level of concept, I’ll settle for this—a column. Forever 69. A bi-weekly, bi-curious column that writes sex into fashion in a way that feels. Consider this the first installment.