Fash·ion [fash-uhn] Pronunciation Key –noun
1. a prevailing custom or style of dress, etiquette, socializing, etc.: the latest fashion in dresses.
2. conventional usage in dress, manners, etc., esp. of polite society, or conformity to it: the dictates of fashion; to be out of fashion.
–verb (used with object)

Having worked in and around the world of Haute Couture (High Fashion) for a good 6 years now,I consider myself acquainted.

Alas, the more I learn, the less I wish I knew.

Yes, folks I do believe the Honeymoon is over and that if a few changes are not made soon…
divorce papers may be signed.

First off, take the fact that most of the clothing brands your average American has access to and can afford are sewn in sweat shops by tiny children in third world countries.

YES! Guess, Abercrombie and Fitch, Calvin Kline, Forever 21, Victoria’s Secret, Target, Old Navy and Banana Republic are a mere handful of names on the long list.

for more info on such dreadful matters visit www.sweatshopwatch.org

Now, multiply that by idea that there is no true middle ground between the cheaply sweat shop made ‘Ready to Wear’ garments (1.clothing made in standard sizes; ready-made clothing ) and pocket book emptying one of a kind ‘Couture’ pieces (1.high fashion; the most fashionable and influential dressmaking and designing ).

that’s right, except for a very select few exceptions to the rule (which i am currently working on compiling a list of) the fashion forward young person of today must make one of two choices when purchasing a brand new garment.

1. Buy a moderately cute but horribly sewn inexpensive garment at say Forever 21 (I like to call this “disposable clothing” the garment equivalent to a tampon due to the fact that it will most likely fall apart after one wear and wash) and support the mistreatment of fellow humans at the same time.

or

2. Take out a loan and skip eating out and other social outings like movies and bowling for a few years in order to purchase an exquisite hand made dress by Christian Lacroix but chances are you may be accused of looking like an escapee from the its a small world Disneyland ride if you are caught wearing it out.

You also have the problem of how shallow and competitive this industry is.
Jobs in fashion are all who you know and not how talented you are and even if by chance you do get your foot in the door of one of the major companies most of the fun and creative side has been taken out and replaced with pure business and many a rule and regulation. How can we create a product for as cheep as we possibly can and mark it up as much as possible?
Not fun. Not interesting. Not ethical.

I am not going to even get into the horrible stereotypes fueled by the greedy fashion industry that start even in grade school.
comments like “Did you see her shoes?” or “Is that a faux Chanel bag she is carrying?”
are yet another hurdle our youth have to overcome to feel “accepted” or “normal”.

DISCLAIMER-

I am by no means telling you to avoid trying to look “cool” or shopping at the normal places you go to find that last minute dress you really need for the office Christmas party. I myself on occasion do darken the doors of several of the clothing chains that I previously mentioned. I personally believe that one must feel 100% conviction about something in order to properly boycott it and boycotting is not convenient in the busy fast paced country we live in.

We can do a whole lot more good in this world by finding and creating alternatives for the things we disagree with rather than standing outside businesses with signs and yelling at all who pass by.

That being said, here are a few positive things you can do to counteract all of the horrible things that go on behind the scenes of the world of fashion

• Be Creative Enough To Re-Invent The Clothes You Already Own

instead of reading to cheesy shopping magazines like Lucky that just make you want to BUY BUY BUY I would rather refer to The sartorialist and see what REAL people all over the globe are actually wearing on the streets. It is always visually inspiring, never boring and I usually come away with ideas of how to put pieces together that have been sitting in my closet forever in a whole new way.

• Buy Vintage and Thrift

It takes a little more time and yes your hands usually smell a little funny after sorting through chaotic racks of old clothes for a few hours but you are doing amazing things for the environment and mankind and chances are you will NEVER run into another girl with the same crazy floral print dress. You will be random, fashionable relevant, avant garde and one of a kind all wrapped up in one.

• Support Your Local Designers

Look into who the local designers are in your city. When starting out, young up and coming designers often have a hard time charging the money they want to get for their pieces due to the fact that no one has heard of them. Help them get their name out there by wearing their pieces and in turn you get great deals on exclusive clothing and a chance to be a little different. There are also scores of designers with merchandise available on the Internet take Jared Gold’s Black Chandelier line for example. Both inexpensive and interesting.

• Give Clothes That You Don’t Wear to Charities

Why throw things away when you can help others.
If you do not know of any local trustworthy charities to give to visit www.justgive.org

• Take a Sewing Class

If you have the spare time and the interest you should take the basic sewing class at your local fabric store even if all you desire to do is alter the fabulous things you find at the salvation army or take those old boot cut jeans that still fit and make them skinny jeans in just a few minutes.
If this is a little over your head, i suggest getting in touch with the college nearest you that has a design program. Fashion students need both experience and cash and will take in or let out things for much less than any alterations shop.

• Barter and Trade

So you are an amazing cook and your friend Erica can sew
Erica’s boyfriends parents are coming over for dinner and she is petrified. She always burns everything! You can cook a fabulous meal for her and in turn she will make that adorable high-wasted skirt with all the buttons you’ve been talking about for a month now.
bring back the bartering system. It is artsy and cool.
-

1. The first thing you need for a killer picnic is great food. You want to bring something light and somewhat portable since you will be carrying it to and eating it in a park or other outdoor area. Our menu consisted of sandwiches (Curried Chicken on Spicy White Pepper-Jack Bread), plums, and a dry Riesling wine. For the sanwiches we used the cookbook Beautiful Breads & Fabulous Fillings and referenced the book Beard on Bread for help baking the bread. For wine coupling I usually refer to The Wine Bible or, if you live in Nashville, you can go to The Wine Shoppe at Green Hills and tell them what you are having; they always have great advice.

2. Next you will need some gear. I recommend a picnic basket, or a reasonable equivalent, and a quilt. You also need paper plates, plastic forks, and if you will be having wine, wine glasses and a device to open it. I recommend purchasing a 2-Step Waiter’s Corkscrew. If you live in Nashville you can get one at Harris Teeter.

3. Finally, bring a camera, then you can document your awesome food.

This has been the first time in years that I’ve seen a movie with nothing but the poster to go on, I never even saw the trailer. It’s really hard to see a movie these days without being tainted by any sort of baggage. I saw the poster. It didn’t make any sense, but I’m a fan of both David Fincher and Spike Jonze. Tarsem’s only other film was the completely insane The Cell¹, a film I’ve been meaning to revisit for the past few years, but I have yet to make the time.

Tarsem is known for being really artsy. He often recreates or pays homage to paintings in his work, he’ll spend 17 years working on a film (which he did for The Fall), and he doesn’t make a lot of sense to me, but it’s always really pretty anyway.

The Fall is about a crippled stunt man (Lee Pace) in a hospital in 1920’s LA. A cute little girl that barely knows English (Cantinca Untaru, who really didn’t know any English) befriends him. He starts telling her an epic story during her daily visits to him, but he’s really just using her so she’ll do stuff for him. It’s very much like The Princess Bride² in that the story frequently gets interrupted by the storyteller or listener. In fact, the interactions between the stunt man and the girl were filmed first and all improvised. The chemistry they have is the best I’ve seen in a long time. They actually dictated a lot of what happens in the story by their improvisation.

The story world scenes are spectacular. They really are epic. Tarsem shot this movie all over the world. Really. He’d been scouting locations for nearly two decades³. There’s so many amazing places in the world I didn’t know about, but thankfully Tarsem exposes many of them in this film. Palaces, deserts, tiny islands in the middle of the sea (and I do mean tiny, like only 20 wide), ancient ruins and an M.C. Escher drawing come to life.

I’ll admit it, I don’t get the movie⁴, but it still haunts me nearly a week after seeing it. It doesn’t make any sense to me. You’ve got an elephant swimming, Charles Darwin wearing a pimp coat, birds coming out of a dude’s mouth, evil black guards that sound like snarling dogs and this amazing scene. I love really great slow motion and this film really gets it right. The whole intro to the film is a long slow motion black and white sequence that’s just brilliant.

The film is rated R, but really should have been rated PG-13. There is nothing in here that warrants an R rating, I guess it might be because of the violence, but it’s no worse than Lord of the Rings or Star Wars. There is a scene that comes to mind that could be found offensive in this post 911 world, and I’m assuming that’s why they got the R rating. If it is the reason, then I’m offended.

If you like breathtaking photography then you’ll enjoy the movie no matter how weird it gets. If you like knowing what’s going on then buy a ticket to The Fall and sneak in to What Happens in Vegas.

1. I understand that The Cell was pretty much only made because The Matrix was such a hit and the studio heads finally “understood” what Tarsem was trying to do.

2. Turns out The Fall is actually a remake of an old Bulgarian movie called “Yo Ho Ho“, but who’s ever seen or even heard of that movie?

3. He was just waiting for the right little girl to come along, and when she did he knew he had to make it right away because little girls grow up so fast.

4. I think it’s a tribute to the pioneers of stunt work in the early silent films. Seriously.

The beer cans act as the logical conclusion of southern living. They were meant less as a criticism and more as an abstraction of a group of people and how they live. With the beer cans I wanted to reflect on and entertain stereotypes of the south with mild cynicism. The entire project came as a precipitation of my attendance of the Southern Literary Festival in New Orleans.

Hush

Mulch

Pool

Sonic

Stairs

Beer Batter

Zeitgeist, an art gallery in Nashville, TN, recently hosted a panel discussion; the panel included Rocky Horton, Kelly Williams, Terry Thacker, and gallery director, Lain York. The goal of the panel was to address six questions relating to the contemporary situation of painting. To no one’s surprise, only four questions were discussed before time ran out. Before the questions were actively addressed the participants explained a little bit about themselves and why they paint.

Terry Thacker, fine art chair at Watkins College of Art and Design, used a biblical allegory to contextualize his painting in a contemporary setting. He was essentially defending the necessity of participating in what some regard a dead medium. He relayed the story of the woman who spent all the money she had to buy perfume for Jesus and then poured it on his feet. He described this as a microcosm of painting in the now and how it is perceived. He said, “[Painting is] tears on dirty feet; it has no pragmatic end.” The disciples were furious with the waste of perfume to no apparent pragmatic end. The woman’s act was branching out from the disciples’ codified cultural text. Jesus understood the end that this means presented. Terry used this metaphor as an example of how painting is viewed in a contemporary setting.

Kelly Williams, another professor at Watkins, described her painting as, “dependent on an aspect of domesticity.” She explained that apart from the Modernist painters, she was seduced by the narrative of painting instead of the paint itself. For her, painting is “A traditional media that has made its way into my every day.” Her art involves things tied directly to her life at home and, often, life as a mother; it is “bound to the parameters of [her] life.” She admittedly lacks concern with the question of where her art lies; whether in the realm of craft or fine art, and she draws tension from this line of demarcation.

The final painter, Rocky Horton, is a professor at Lipscomb University. Rocky started by saying he hasn’t made a painting in two years. He explained that when he was a younger artist he was captivated by the heroism of Modern art, and particularly Minimalism- “I am object, hear me roar.” He now finds himself a painter against his free will. He almost uses painting as a restraint in an attempt to “get where painting isn’t painting.” He described it best when he said that he doesn’t shop in the painting section at art stores anymore. No matter what form or media is used, his work still fits into the conditions of painting.

Luckily, these lengthy introductions basically answered the first question, “Who is your audience, and what conversation do you participate in?” Terry added, “Painting is discursive. It must have more than a cut and paste relationship to history.” These ideas are fleshed out further in the answer to the second question, “Name an artist you should hate, but you secretly love.”

Terry responded with Brice Marden. He loves this artist because he is, “somewhere between Mondriaan and Pollock—perfect.” The reason he feels he should hate this artist is that Marden is painting in what Terry would call a frozen past. His work is not a reinterpretation of Expressionism or a contemporary dialog with it. It is simply a replication of the past. Terry says it is this stale idea that, “I am trying to push against.”

Kelly chose Neil Welliver. She loves his work but hates his attitude and idea of process. Her choice was similar, in reason, to Rocky’s which was Jeff Koons. Rocky hated that he was so, “cool power-tie 80’s.” He described his interest in the work as coming from a sense of surprise and spectacle.

The third question was in regards to hierarchy in painting. This discussion ended up being about what is popular, right now, in the market. Kelly said that “Figurative painting has had its day,” but Rocky claimed that it was coming back, at least briefly in the art market. All three agreed this was to be a brief stay. Then Terry discussed the popularity of Thomas Nozkowski. He claimed that abstraction “from personal sources” was becoming very popular in the market as well as the art community.

The fourth, question they were asked was how to move ahead as a painter. This boiled down to two heavily debated points. The first was discussed by Terry. His main concern was the danger of living in a frozen past. He said, “There are things in Rembrandt that need to die.” He is referring to the necessity for painting to be discursive in the time in which it is created. This was a very controversial statement because it challenged the work of much of the audience.

The second point reached was the idea that now painting is more of a conscious decision. They agreed that painting has been dying off since photography; people no longer paint because it’s the only way to render an image. In the past people often painted because that is what an artist was expected to do. But the advances in technology have vastly changed this context. In some senses, painting is a dumb way to make an image. Therefore, the medium now has a conversation of its own. Painting now evokes meaning in the same way that working in a non traditional medium does.

]]> http://www.readtheloop.com/2008/04/zeitgeist/feed/