“It’s everything I want in my closet,” Narciso Rodriguez said, reflecting on the 11 men’s outfits he had just shown with his women’s collection. “A black cashmere coat, a nice tie… and you can’t have too many white shirts.” But because this was what Narciso wanted, that cashmere coat was paired with the baggy, below-the-knee shorts that are one of his own style signatures. Maybe there won’t be too many men following him there, but the rigorous cool of the other clothes on offer should find its share of takers.
Using a palette reduced to black, white, and gray (or silver, as he called it), Rodriguez presented clothes that were as meticulously constructed as his womenswear. Seams were emphasized on a black leather blazer, cut with his signature body-consciousness. The same spirit dictated the nipped-in waist of a gray suit and a wool twill coat. The show music—by new L.A. band She Wants Revenge—had the harsh, angular drive of early-eighties Anglo groups. It complemented the New Wave aerodynamics of a sleeveless cashmere top, with sleeveless white shirt and tie underneath. Sleeves are clearly superfluous in the streamlined world of Narciso’s men.
David Sylvian’s sonorous tones crooned the dark, waltz-timed Night Porter on the soundtrack, invoking images of a Mittel Europa-isch world out of time. It’s a place Miuccia Prada has visited before. This trip, however, she opted for a more monochrome approach than usual. “This is my childhood,” she stated after the show. “I grew up wearing Tyrolean clothes.” But there was little sense of youthful playfulness in the outfits—the worn-looking gray suit, the loden coat and trousers, the high-waisted houndstooth jacket—that made their way down the catwalk. The models, on the other hand, were so young that some seemed to be having trouble mustering the strength to raise feet shod in huge studded hiking boots.
Ok guys you were right it’s the beautiful Rusty Joiner. Rusty Joiner (born on December 11, 1972 in Montgomery, Alabama) is an American fashion model, fitness model and actor.
Raised in Atlanta, Georgia, Joiner attended Georgia Southern University, where he was a successful athlete, cheerleader, and gymnast for four years. He was discovered by a model scout in Atlanta and spent the next several years modelling in Milan, Paris, and South America. He became well-known in the fashion industry very quickly and modelled for Prada, Abercrombie and Fitch, American Eagle, Levi’s and Powerade. Joiner was the official underwear model for Structure from 1998 to 2000. He has appeared on the covers and pages of Vanity Fair, Cosmopolitan, Rolling Stone and Men’s Fitness. In February 2005 Rusty graced his eleventh Men’s Fitness magazine making him a recognizable face in fitness over the past five years. Beck said it best “Think I’m in Love”.
It’s something of a Burberry first: both Kate Moss and Stella Tennant in the same campaign. The two Burberry regulars have been united for the visually stunning autumn/winter 2006 (so we’re running a little late) campaign, shot, once again, by Mario Testino; and this year it’s a real family affair. In one key scene, the two supers appear alongside Stella’s daughter, Jasmine, and Otis and Isaac Ferry, the sons of the famous ex-Roxy Music frontman. Meanwhile, a multi-generational cast appear in another picture, from legendary Sixties model Penelope Tree through to bright young things Lily Donaldson and Tom Guinness. This season, there’s also a distinctly musical flavour to proceedings with Brit band Kasabian making an appearance, along with Bryan Ferry and singer/songwriter Louis Eliot. And if some faces look familiar, but you can’t quite place them, it might be wise to ask about their parentage. Jeremy Irons’ son, Max, makes his Burberry debut, as does Sophie Hicks’ daughter, Edie Campbell, and Andrea Dellal’s daughter, Alice
A British watchdog agency criticized Italian fashion house Dolce & Gabbana last week for ads that showed models aggressively brandishing knives. The Advertising Standards Authority said the company acted irresponsibility and breached standards of good taste (excuse us while we comprehend the fact that we just said good taste and Dolce & Gabbana in the same sentence), which showed male models waving knives while surrounded by glamorous female models, in poses inspired by the French romantic artist Eugene Delacroix (and here you thought we were only experts in porn). One man was shown lying on the ground with a gunshot wound to the head.
The ruling amounts to a girly slap on the wrist and doesn’t ban the ads.
The independent authority, which regulates the industry, issued the report after 166 people complained that two ads which appeared in The Times and Daily Telegraph last October, glorified knife and gun crime.
It upheld complaints that Dolce & Gabbana had shirked its social responsibility (?) and breached standards of decency. Now if you ask us their last two collections under the Dolce & Gabbana banner breached standards of wearablity, but that’s just us. The watchdog dismissed a complaint that the ads would encourage people to harm themselves.
Clive Owen will be the face in ads for Lancôme’s new men’s grooming products, including a fragrance and anti-aging skin-care line.
Lancôme chose Owen, who stars in Universal’s Children of Men, not because of his tall, dark handsome look (are you kidding us!) but because of his talent and work ethic, said Odile Roujol, General Manager of Lancôme International.
“The way he has built his career so far, privileging the quality of the director rather than the high-profile nature of a role, makes us feel very confident in the fact that if he chose to accept this collaboration with Lancôme, than it truly means ours partnership was meant to be,” Roujol said this earlier this week. So we can assume that Fat Cruise was passed over for the opposite reasons that Owen was chosen?
For all his name recognition and accessibility, Michael Kors has had a tough time making money in the 21st-century fashion business. This is in part because he started his empire at a time (1980) when big department stores, which had been so crucial to other designer businesses, were becoming less dominant in the retail universe, and in part because Kors’s love of classics is at odds with a trend-driven industry.
In 2003, Kors was acquired by fashion financiers Lawrence Stroll and Silas Chou, who intended to spread the name across multiple categories and make it a billion dollar brand. Fragrances and accessories did well, but other categories—menswear, lower-priced lines—didn’t. In summer 2006, the company began opening the first of a planned 100 Michael Kors stores that would mix all his various products in one space. “Everyone says it’s all about the mix, and that she wears couture with denim, or sable with flip flops,” he told WWD that August. “This is how a lot of people want to shop.” Clich HERE for our coverage of the men’s Fall 2006 collection.
The runway was a cement sidewalk, and the boys and girls who marched up and down it were the urban magpies that Marc Jacobs always imagines in the clothes he makes for his second collection. A little vintage, a little military, a little grunge—they pick and choose across a gamut of thrifty options, then layer it all together. That’s how a gray flannel pajama shirt ends up as the partner for a worn suit in a deep brown, or how an officer’s coat gets thrown over a herringbone waistcoat over a Henley over a pair of air-force-blue trousers.
In the end though, it wasn’t about the dressed-down student that other designers seem to have in mind with their second collections. His target customer is way more adventurous than your average college boy. For instance, Jacobs injected a healthy whack of the volume he’s been toying with in his signature collection, so his trousers were as floor-sweeping as the skirts the girls were wearing. There was also a new sophistication in outerwear. A paisley shirt worn with high-waisted trousers, meanwhile, had a dandy edge, but don’t say we didn’t warn you that wearing this combo will label you “fug” and rightly so. And, to top it off, there was even a satin-lapelled tuxedo.
Imagine a cross between a French peasant and a refugee from the Russian front, and you have some idea where the John Varvatos man is headed for fall. In sartorial terms, that translated into washed fabrics cut into clothes with a strong military influence. If that sounds somewhat drab, Varvatos’s knack for what he calls utilitarian luxury elevated the collection (as did the scale and sophisticated styling of the show itself).
A washed leather jacket was croc-stamped, while a trench, also in washed leather, was hand-painted to add a patina of faded luxe. Other fabric treatments included dip-dyeing (on a tweed jacket and poncho) and metal threads woven into the herringbone of a collarless coat. In keeping with the military inspiration, tailoring was highlighted, often in traditional tweeds, and the construction details emphasized (seams were trimmed or exposed). But it was the gutsy outerwear that truly shone, especially a double-breasted officer’s coat, a plush number in goatskin, and an epauletted nylon trench in a shade labeled “quagmire” (a veiled reference, perhaps, to the current situation in Iraq).
Menswear designer John Varvatos’ debut collection was for Fall 2000, and before the clothes even hit the stores he’d been granted a Perry Ellis Award. A Michigan native who came to New York in 1983 to work at Polo Ralph Lauren, Varvatos has gone on to dress the likes of Hugh Jackman, Adrien Brody, and Brad Pitt. With an emphasis on old world craftsmanship, Varvatos takes an eclectic approach to fashion, combining luxurious fabrics with casual pieces to create understated yet elegant looks worthy of the office or the red carpet. Varvatos headed up menswear design at Calvin Klein and again at Polo before launching his own line, which quickly expanded to include tailored clothing, sportswear, leather accessories, and footwear. He even paired up with Converse in 2001 to transform the classic streetwise Jack Purcell’s into something a little more civilized. Here is the video of the collection.
We like UndiesDrawer.com for its simple celebration of the stuff guys sport under their pants. That’s right. A celebration of boxers, thongs, briefs and jockstraps. Absolutely the best source if you want to track down some new knickers for the new year or just need some of the latest hot eye candy of studs in underwear. Worth a peek at undiesdrawer.com…
We’re huge fans of Singaporean fashion photographer Leslie Kee [See our previous article on SuperMag 2] so imagine what we were like when “Super Stars”, a pictorial culmination of 3 years of hard labour was birthed recently.
The “Super Stars” photo exhibition showcasing 300 top-billing Asian stars opened in Japan earlier this month to great response and is now showing in Hong Kong. However it has now drawn protests from Hong Kong actor-singers Aaron Kwok and Andy Hui, whose managers have complained that pictures of their clients are too racy for public consumption.
The 7000 limited copies which is being sold as a book to raise funds for victims of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, includes pictures of top Asian stars including actresses Zhang Ziyi and Shu Qi, singer Faye Wong and action star Tony Jaa.
The women are generally dressed in colorful outfits – Gong Li is shown in a head shot and Zhang Ziyi wears a silver and purple dress – but the men are in different stages of undress.
Kwok, who just won best actor at the Chinese Oscars, the Golden Horse Awards, is shown standing, holding a pair of jeans to conceal his genitals.
Hui is shown lying back with a pair of jeans in between his crotch. His pubic hair is visible.
Kwok’s manager, Leung May-may, said in a statement Kwok was wearing black swim trunks at the time of the photo shoot but that his image was digitally altered to show him naked.
“It’s acceptable to use sexiness as a theme, but the limits we agreed on during the shoot should be followed,” Leung said.
Kwok said in the same statement that companies he advertises for have “complained slightly, putting slight pressure on me.”
The above pictures of a sarong-clad Kwok were also taken by Leslie for a marketing campaign for a fitness centre. We’re guessing the digitally altered image was taken off this same batch of photos.
Hui’s manager, Wallace Kwok confirmed to The Associated Press that his photo wasn’t tampered with but that they had asked Kee, the photographer, not to show the picture in public.
He said Kee, who shot photos for Hui’s new album, had originally shot Hui topless and wearing jeans but wasn’t happy with the outcome and pushed for more nudity.
Kwok said Hui relented but after viewing the photos didn’t want them to be used in public.
“We think the pictures are beautiful. It’s a healthy form of sexiness, but we also understand if the pictures are released they’ll provoke a reaction. It may not be suitable,” he said.
Kwok said Hui skipped the opening ceremony of Kee’s exhibit in protest.
Personally, we thought Leslie Kee did a great job with the digital alteration. The resulting image is evocatively great to look at. What’s the difference between hiding your genitals behind a pair of denims and a speedo? And what’s the big deal with showing a wee bit of pubic hair? You mean celebrities aren’t supposed to have them?
Furthermore, there are illuminating sources which now say that it was actually Kwok’s manager, Leung, who suggested digitally altering the original image so the Heavenly King need not strip further to achieve what Leslie had in mind. But the former is now denying that and blaming the entire incident on the photographer, insinuating a lack of integrity. Ahhh… the plot thickens.
Whatever the furore, we’ll let Super Stars do it’s own talking. We reckon it’ll fly off the shelves faster than you can say SPEEDO!
[More wonderful shots from Super Stars after the jump]
Could this be the black speedo?
Johan Lindeberg may have taken his own lanky frame as the starting point for his latest collection, but the items that really registered in his show were a handful of trousers that offered a silhouette so full, they amounted, in one case at least, to a “paper-bag” waist. They seemed to be a comfortable alternative to the pipe-cleaner silhouette that Hedi Slimane and his imitators have made the catwalk norm for men. Worn with a wheat rollneck sweater, these particular pants suggested succor, not strain. Lindeberg, however, is rock ‘n’ roll at heart, and the looks that mean the most to him and his wife (and muse) Marcella are those that suggest life lived on the razor’s edge, where his current poster boy, Depeche Mode’s Dave Gahan, has teetered time and again. So there was an abundance of cropped skinny jackets, tight little waistcoats, and jeans as fitted as a leotard. Bridging the gap between rock and a soft place were droopy low-closing cardigans and billowing nylon coats.
There were a mere ten male models in his tableau vivant for fall, but Andrew Harmon compressed a whole world of adolescent sartorial dreams—Rocky Horror, Roxy Music, CBGB—into those outfits. (For his accompanying womenswear, meanwhile, he was channeling Christiane F. and Jodie Foster’s Foxes!)
There was a whiff of Roxy’s Bryan Ferry in a gray velvet smoking jacket worn over a glam gold shirt, and Rocky’s Riff Raff was evoked by a boy in cotton gabardine tails. That combination of elegant form and prosaic content has always been a Harmon signature, and it could also be seen here in a pair of denim dungarees paired with a double-faced satin jacket, as well as in leather jeans topped by a little satin vest. Elsewhere, Harmon stepped up the fabrics this season. Witness his silk mesh evening shirt (decorously sheer) or the silk satin suiting he used for high-waist trousers. “If you’re going to go glam, you’ve got to do it right,” he said.
The venue—a mirrored salon in the Carlyle Hotel—spoke volumes. Steven Cox and Daniel Silver, unabashed purveyors of fashion wackiness, were taking their label Duckie Brown uptown, and to prove the point, the first outfit was a dark gray houndstooth crombie. “It’s our most serious, most classic collection,” said Cox, confirming the shift in sensibility. “And our most experimental,” he quickly added.
If at first glance the uncharacteristically somber palette appeared to give the lie to that statement, a closer look revealed Duckie’s signature odd cuts to be present and accounted for, especially in full trousers draped and gathered at the waist. And items were doubled up in trompe l’oeil effects: a waistcoat over a jacket, both with a lacquered sheen, or wrap shorts over full trousers with a matching jacket.
The peculiar little details that have always distinguished Cox and Silver’s clothes were more subtle than usual. A white shirt was beaded in black, suggesting it had been slashed by animal claws. Silver said they’d been inspired by a children’s tale about a scary night, which was a salutary reminder that part of the charm of the Duckie Brown label rests on the fact that it’s in touch with its inner child. The final jacket, whorled in bright colors, was further proof that, for all the new seriousness, Cox and Silver haven’t lost that touch.
