Fader

Project Runway is probably one of the most epic reality shows on television, mostly because it has all the right ingredients: drama by the bucket load, crazy sleepless bitches, bad haircuts, badder attitude and a panel of steely-balled judges. But good fashion, as far as we're concerned, has never been one of them. Basically, Project R has about as much to do with style as America's next top model has to do with supermodeldom. Like zilcho at all. Hark back a few and you might remember Zulema Griffin, a feisty contestant from season two (as she tells it she was "misrepresented"). There are few Zulema pieces on the show really worthy of any note, although we do vaguely remember a wrap dress in there somewhere that was half decent. But in a recent unrelated YouTube session, we stumbled on Zulema's fall '08 video quite randomly, a genuinely delightful and quietly clever piece of work.

First off, there's nothing more amazingly impractical and awesome than an all-white collection for fall—the big ruffled coat might be a tad dramatic for our taste but those white cropped pants and Victorian blouse have Indian summer picnic written all over them. Oh, and the hats! The hats!! The video stars a trio of black bodystockinged models stumbling around New York, like some fashion version of Toy Story, where all the storefront mannequins come to life and tiptoe around Manhattan while the rest of the city sleeps. Turn down the sound completely (sorry Talib!) second time around and it feels like the silent fashion movie playing right now in our minds that we've always wanted to star in.

Sometimes you put two pieces together in your wardrobe and you think, wait, this is too much of the same color, if we wear this we’ll look like that weird lady whose always wearing pink on pink. While on most occasions we’d look at this ‘on the street’ ensemble and be critical of all the red happening, but she pulls it together with multi-toned huaraches and a bright geometric sweater. It’s so messy and not over thought that we’re inspired to take our own fashion vacation and see what we come up with, even a complete vacated thoughts trip altogether where we find ourselves in some strange grunge dream and Marc Jacobs is waiting for us on a cloud ready to drape us in vintage Perry Ellis 'kinderwhore.'

*kinderwhore is the term for Marc Jacobs antique flowing dresses from his infamous Fall 1992 Perry Ellis collection. more...

Besides French dudes like Christophe Lemaire, we regularly obsess about the Danes (Henirk Vibsov, Wood Wood) and the Swedes (Acne Jeans, Carin Wester). Carin Rodebjer of Rodebjer happens to be one of our all time human beings/designers and was in town from Sweden a couple of weeks ago for little a work and play. It's Carin's immaculate shirt dresses that first got us hooked—always beautifully constructed with a extra stylee twist thrown in, like the huge pussy bow pieces from her spring 2006 collection featured back in Issue #36. Part of the secret, she confides, is the Italian shirting factory where they are produced. And up at her NYC showroom, she showed us the new custom rope-print shirting she has lined up for fall, as well as some other key pieces, including a double breasted coat dress and a cropped blazer with exposed almost football-esque shoulder pads. What's ultimately most awesome about her clothes is that she has all the best super feminine flourishes (yeah, we're wearing our coat dresses with nothing underneath this fall) without sacrificing any practicality. It's chic with two feet on solid ground. Before we said our goodbyes and Carin went to meet her Swedish friends at a Peter Morén show, she told us her next collection would be all about (wait for it) neat and tidy hippies!!! Like we said, Swedes are the best! more...

Playing hunt-the-peace-sign is our new fashion favorite game, especially since the symbol turned 50 earlier this year (CND forever!). We snapped accessory designer Lizzie Fortunato supporting the cause a couple of weeks ago in a shirt by Sophomore. Although unfortunately we are unable to identify the awesome white tux jacket that she also has on (probably vintage) but the button-studded headband is most definitely one of her own designs. Also the style team actually hasn't bathed since the last hippie post on tie-dye, and half of its members are currently out on the field researching a story on the 50 best places on the planet to buy patchouli oil. Stay tuned. (Click the image to see it full.) more...

The word "swagger" comes up in the office a lot, and luckily our style intern Charles has lots of it. On a weekly basis he rolls in wearing the most amazing shoulder padded leather coats, rolled shorts and boots—all styles that could never be pulled off without swagger. To top it all off, dude rolls in all the way from Jersey(!) with these gems. It’s enough to make us pack up and cross the Hudson. Click the picture to see the whole thing. more...

We just received mail from the Northwest and at the bottom of the envelope it said, ‘What does it feel like to be on the thirteenth floor?’ Well, it feels alright, a little stuffy at times, but no evil witch voodoo if you know what we mean. Point being that the Northwest is full of these sort of snarky folk. That’s why when our Seattle On-The-Streeter sent us this image, we weren’t surprised by its beret-wearing record store gentlemen. In fact we kinda liked it, even the John Waters mustache. Thing is, you can’t really hate on this guy’s style because it’s like Kanye’s Hadron Collider, he vortexed the universe to fit his look, ‘cool pins’ and all. more...

Whether he likes it or not, FADER editor Matthew Schnipper is an honorary member of the style team. His classic uniform of button-downs, personally worn-in APCs, plimsolls and famous Slept On specs has had a calming effect on the more schizophrenic stylings on our side of the office (80s/90s meets 70s?) for as long as we can remember. So when an invitation to Thomas Pink's "Personally Pink" made-to-order shirt service came in the mail we figured Matthew was the right man to put the service to the test. Could TP make a shirt fit better than one from the MS collection of carefully sourced-out standard fits? more...

We dropped by the I Heart showroom to pay Jill and Cosmo the cat (showroom moscot and super fluffly Wowch model) a visit last week just in time for the new fall collections from Lonely Hearts, Wowch and PAM. Helene Morris of the label Lonely Hearts gave us an inkling of fall 08 things to come when we spoke to her about the US launch of the line in issue F53 so we were psyched to see the slightly grungy inspiration take shape in moody plaids, bomber jackets with jumbo-sized polka dots and some very intense saturated color dip-dyed shirts. If Cosmo the cat could speak we're sure he would tell us that he is equally excited that Wowch is dipping his animal brethen into a sea of purple and turquoise tie-dye for fall 08 . Of course you can always count on Perks and Mini to get weird, and the new collection looks like a trip down the Nile in a spaceship with nothing but magic mushrooms in your knapsack for nourishment. Our favorites picks for next season after the jump. more...

We get a lot of slack sometimes because we roll around talking about how cool little old ladies are and how we think they may be our best friends (or our style icons.) So this time we're not going to mention them at all, we're just gonna talk about how cool this girl's patent dress boots, lightly patterned rose blouse with gentle frills and loose fitted powder blue slacks are. We're hoping that this little pretty has champagne in that plastic cup because if we could pull it together this much everyday we'd be constantly drunk from celebration as well.

If you haven't checked out/purchased/dreamed about and saved money in your piggy bank for designer Christian Joy's debut collection of women's wear then we strongly recommend you do, right now. We were lucky enough to get an invite to her studio a couple of weeks back, and extra specially psyched that our studio visit coincided with a package from the mailman—more precisely a package of spectacular archival Joy pieces created for her BFF Karen O straight off the exhibit floor of a museum in Tokyo. CJ and Karen O have been friends pretty much since the Yeah Yeah Yeahs started out and as well as talking us through the inspiration behind some of the most iconic costumes, she gave us some really great insight into what makes their creative chemistry sparkle.

We're not mad at the idea of having 200 pairs of sneakers in our closets but really only breaking out the dress shoes. Times change and we get older, so when we saw this presentable gentlemen at the Brooklyn Museum we were stoked on the dad-loafer voodoo he was giving us. In fact, his whole dad looking knitted sweater and slacks combo isn't harshing our mellow either, so we're gonna ride with it like the time our dad's told us they drank too many Harvey Wallbangers and ended up dancing with a curtain. Dads like to party too.

This post was initially supposed to be a pick of all the awesome things we saw at the Archetype Showroom fall preview. But honestly there was just too much awesomeness to squish in to one post. For sanity's sake I've narrowed it down to two of our favorite labels: Fremont and Samantha Pleet. That's Devin and Brittany who split men/womens designing duties on Fremont up top. more...

The Sukhahuta sisters are the trio behind the label Sretsis (sisters spelled backwards, natch!). Matina, the youngest of the bunch, has been designated accessories-maker for Stresis since she was a junior at Parsons and launched her own line of jewelry Matina Amanita last year. We stumbled across her cocktail rings a couple of seasons ago--crazily gorgeous chunks of gold and silver moulded in the shape of her favorite global landmarks like the Bondi Beach ring, our pick of the season as featured in issue #52. Sometime between Bangkok fashion week and a recent sejour in Paris, this well-traveled fashion lady emailed me a sneak peek of next season's collection--The Totem collection-- quite literally a masterpiece of Transformer proportions. What starts out as a 10-ring homage to forest dwelling creatures ends up as one glittering totem pole of awesomeness, with each stunning piece staking perfectly atop the other. The new collection doesn't drop until next season, which gives us approximately six months to get our mani-game in check. more...

Ashley Hanosh is what you might call a dress curator. She's been a dress-only lady since she was a nipper and the store that she runs on the LES is a dress-only playground with the odd cheeky onesie thrown in for fun (but definitely no separates!). I was introduced to Honey In The Rough, Ashley's store, by an expert dress-wearing friend of mine about a year ago and I've been completely fascinated by Ashley's ability to connect the dots between dress and occasion ever since. In Ashley's world, first-date outfits and easy summer numbers happily sit next to power-lunch ensembles, and she effortlessly administers dresses like prescriptions for every lady that walks in the store. I recently paid a visit to Honey in the Rough to find out what Ashley had lined for Spring 08, and asked her to pick out some of her favorite dresses for the season. more...

Last night we got smart and caught a free margarita-serving party bus downtown for the release of Sideways: A Smart Art Project (more on the party bus later.) Sideways is the collaboration of contemporary multimedia artists who were inspired by a greener future. Somewhere in there the new Smart Car had a role in the art pieces—trees growing out of cars? What we really got inspired by was the "smart" styles lingering about, making spectacles the official clever endeavor for attendees. This all fits perfectly with our newly established office attire of well-placed scarves, rolled pant legs, statement eyewear and as always, PLAID (which one particular editor will still be wearing at eighty.) All in all we’d say it was quite a learning experience.

Note: The La Palapa Party Bus runs through Sunday, taxiing you back and forth from the St. Marks restaurant to their spot in the West Village, and, yes, we are well aware that it lands nowhere near downtown but it still made us feel smarter then walking to the subway. more...

Fact: Lots of folks get super dressed up in their cutest outfits at music festivals because of the abundance of attractive folks with similar interests, and of course, the potentiality of whirlwind holiday make-outs and subsequent longing bi-coastal email relationships. We are all gluttons. Naturally, we spent our short time at the FADER Fort snapping flicks of the sartorially fine, managing even without Chioma by our side to advise. After editing out our drunken misfires (five cups of Soco punch = not conducive for anything, much less still-lifes with a digicam), we present: the FADER's Spring '08 Austin, TX look book, in which we spotted Mannie Fresh wearing the funniest T-shirt ever, reconnected with our old friend Pandemonium Jones (that's him rocking pre-Memorial Day seersucker and red cord deck shoes), and found an editor a girlfriend (in our minds), who he promptly dumped (in his). more...

In these cold and blustery times it's rare to see the entire Fader style trio out on the streets en masse, but that's exactly what we did last night, since Thursday is the new Tuesday is the new Thursday. Thankfully Spring does seem to be creeping its way back into our wardrobes and our hearts (peep the couple we spotted at I Heart's party for photographer Jody Fausett ) and there was plenty of breezy spring outwear moments, particularly from the boys—classic trenches, tweeds, military coats and even a Rick James-worthy floral blazer. Our favorite and most fearless gents ramped up their man-accessorizes (feathered pins, bowler hats, braided bangs, pendants) to a brave new level of spiffiness. more...

Color Chart premiered at the MoMA last Saturday eve and to kick off the exhibit the DFA roster (Holy Ghost!, the Juan MacLean, T&T, Justin Miller & Jacques Renault) spun us into a psychedelic electro rave—think Damien Hirst meets glow sticks. Ok, so maybe not that dramatic, but we definitely had a healthy serving of color-clad styles and even some Jasper Johns ‘Grey’ enthusiasts to counter the neon spray. While we sported our own versions of vintage black, others balled out in bright pink jumpers and electric yellow-blocked sweaters. Still, there’s no denying the subtle dark shades of one particular geometric coat and a finely executed cap'd couplet. Lesson learned: grey does love neon. more...

Tie-dye is a bit of a dirty word to some people. Which is why when it started creeping back this Spring in marvelous colorful puddles, the term ombre popped up as a fancier tag for good old fashioned tie-dye. A bit like dip-dying, ombre is a technique that falls under the same umbrella but has more to do with demure graduated color then crazy curling patterns. Personally I'm a 100% pro-tie-dye supporter, and wholeheartedly cosign all the hippie-dippy barefooted connotations and manic color swirlery that comes with it. It's also particularly heart-warming that some of my favorite designers have embraced tie-dye with the same amount of shiny-happy-people gusto—all of Berardi's awesome sporty tie-dye dresses, tanks and skirts (pics after the jump) are on my list for Spring with Karen Walker's indigo saturated Fall '08 white jeans a good investment for when the weather cools off again next season. Skater Andrew Reynolds has been using tie-dye in his line Altamont for a couple of seasons too, as have Rockers NYC, and I've even spotted a pair of tie-dye splashed SB dunks that Nike has lined up for next season.

But what makes me most excited about tie-dye is that I can actually factually do it myself, as I did one cold, blustery weekend this winter with an equally dedicated friend of mine (there is talk of a tie-dying party) a Spring-prepping season of sorts with buckets of dye, rubber gloves and hot toddies to beat the winter blues. There are a lot of techniques to play with in the tie-dye family, from the more mystic marble effect to the traditional twirling color pattern. In my opinion though, nothing beats the stripe effect for modernity (see my efforts after the jump). My only hope is that one day I'll be able to make a shirt as perfectly tie-dyed as the one Molefi of BLK JKS is currently sporting on the cover of the new FADER. more...