Forgotten? Maybe. But Not Gone.

We all have them.  That favorite ol' shoe, favorite beyond broken-in pair of jeans or favorite old piece of furniture that has by traditional Western standards hit their shelf lives.  Meaning it's time to make the trip to the store to replace the worn and the ragged with the new and the pristine.  However, what if you altered your vision in a way that measured these threadbare sundries as having greater value intrinsically than physically.  Maybe that shoe, as worn as it may be, reminds you of the dance floors it once tore up.  Maybe those jeans, as 'air conditioned' as they may have become, remind you of the happier days of your thighs.  It could be that that old club chair has the commemorative glow of every time you've leapt off of it playing a superhero, cried in it over a love lost or lounged in it canoodling with a potential 'the one'.  There is something to be gained by attaining something new but there is also something to be gained by maintaining the idea and experience of something old.

Many people think that it's just for the look but the look only supports the desire to know that there were grand, emotional and special times associated within each wrinkle formed, each thread bared, each impression made and each color faded.  That's what many a company and their designers bank on.  It's the idea that perpetuating something new as old with character will ignite a memory, a story within our psyche that creates a new longing as if we are recapturing something familiar , once lost or once yearned for.  That is the whole idea of the vintage appeal in art, fashion and interior decorating and the beauty of things repurposed.  I am a big fan of the wabi sabi aesthetic within Japanese culture which states that there is beauty within the impermanent, the imperfect and the incomplete.  We see a bizarre juxtaposition of it reinterpreted into fashion and interior decorating all the time.

I was intrigued recently when I visited a small store front in East Harlem that seemed to be taking the wabi sabi aesthetic and strategically imposing it upon Western retail, interior and fashion ideals.  Co-laborative Laboratory is a collective upstart by two Philly natives who share a passion for clothing and interiors and the way in which we experience them.  They've temporarily taken up residence at 218 East 125th St until mid June to showcase their love for repurposing items of American history that may be in our psyche through past ownership or recognition and presenting them in new visually intriguing ways.  The restitched outerwear and knitwear, the conjoined shabby chic furniture and the crude yet sophisticated melange of culture, beliefs and innuendos on everyday personal possessions are what adhere to the aesthetic of there being much desirous inner-value to our seemingly empty flea market finds and throwaways.  However, far from being trash, the items they repurpose for lack of an update due to more contemporary offerings, have new life breathed into them in new and innovative ways without really stripping the wrought and seasoned value of the items.  To walk through the space in Harlem was an experience that takes observation and creates dialogue as to the ideas and thoughts behind the mixing and functions of such unique creations.  The experience of walking through is part of the idea the designers had in mind to fully capture the idea of the beauty in repurposing and remixing.  However, if you plan to stop by then go soon.  All of the items are one of a kind and several are for sale.  Available to peruse and experience through mid June at 218 East 125th St.

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Dave White

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I Rant, You Read: Learning From the Lesser

The seventh grade marked the middle of my trek into cartooning.  I was infatuated with the 'Archies' and used to draw my own comically formed remix of the band.  It was also around this same time that an affection grew for architecture, so everywhere I went there was a composition notebook in tow filled with my comic sketches and architectural renditions of buildings with no real place outside the society of my inner-psyche.  One lunch period while immersed in my $1.50 speckled black & white bible, a teacher peeking over my shoulder revealed her fascination not at how my drawings were so well done, but at how I achieved them.  See, for my straight lines I used the side of a tape cassette holder (yes I'm telling my age).  Never before had it ever occurred to me to use a ruler.  She remarked at how coolly strange it was that I just found whatever I need to get the job done and ran with it.  I didn't realize that it could be viewed as strange before that encounter.  To me it was just that I made do with what I had.  It was the kind of moment where a traveller stumbles upon an obscure third world village seemingly going the long way about achieving what at an average modernized household for example would consider solved by a quick trip to the strip mall.

It's at moments like that in the lunchroom of John Phillip Sousa Junior High School that can shape one's  perspective (and inspiration).  I grew up with a handy father than instead of just going out and buying something to level his shelf, he built it.  In need of a new work table, instead of skulking down the isles of a massive housewares store, he'd pick up lumber and just make it.  Many is the time while growing up that I've seen a broken-down something old become something else anew.  You learn that money can't always solve a problem (especially when there is no money), so you have to be intuitive enough to create your own way to get by and make do.  Repurposed things can add invaluable shelf life to things once considered to be at the end of the line.  This fosters creativity and what I believe has also fostered many of the trickle-up inspirations that we've seen with the harshness of punk, the urban grit of hip-hop, the homeliness of dancehall, the familiarity of vintage and the repurposed of thrifting being upgraded and infused into high fashion.

I think of this when thinking of one of the hot button designer nowadays.  Riccardo Tisci for Givenchy once recounted in an article how he'd gone to Cuba and seen masculine looking young men wearing women's threadbare sweaters and awkwardly slim jeans while playing soccer outside their homes.  One man's recount is another man's everyday.  These young men didn't let proper equipment and gear stop them and making do with what they had meant that hand-me-downs and poverty sometimes meant wearing things that your sister or mother used to.  These things were donned not with regard to masculinity or femininity since the sheer necessity far outweighed any gender role.  It didn't detract from their masculinities since they were not concerned with being seen as feminine.  Poverty and predicament was enough unify them while their confidence in fulfilling their intentions of wearing the appropriate clothing to live and play in was enough to be all that mattered.  And yes, they probably would change their predicament if they could but making do became an ingrained way of life for them and thusly a source of inspiration and a great perspective on strength of perceived masculinities for Mr. Tisci.

That's the bizarre dichotomy in clothing like what Tisci does for Givenchy.  It deliberately delves into shapes and colors that could be considered feminine but showcases them on masculine looking young men and in strong well-made, durably constructed masculine ways complete with hardware, textile and rigidity analogous to perceived notions of men.  In a way he attempts to be creating a new perspective under which masculinity is scene and thereby disbanding the commonly held beliefs for men of western and eastern cultures, gay and straight, modern and third worlds alike.

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Dave White

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I Rant, You Read: Particularly Patriotic

There seems to be a new kind of patriotism going around.  However, there are no bevy of multicolored ribbons to represent a sickness, natural disaster or cultural catastrophe plaguing America.  Nor are there any more amounts of mass parades to signify the end of a war, the winning of a championship or the recognition of an imposed US holiday.  This new patriotism seems to be a direct result of America's most serious crisis right now: the sluggish economy.  And after all this is a fashion blog, so if you do the math of economy + fashion and trends you'd almost certainly miss the new patriotism but its quite apparent if you know what you are looking for.

This new patriotism, just like most things to be patriotic about, is found in the familiar things that have shaped our culture and built the heroes and role models in society that we and even other nationalities have come to recognize as distinctly Western and über-American.

It's not one thing I'm speaking of, its a collection of things that are copied the world over.  It's the American spirit of fashion.  Huh?  Yes!!  More than ever before that Ivy League, campus collegiate, inner-city lore and laid-back pomp of all that is Americana has been what's driving retail.  How do I know?  Well not only have I had the opportunity to see what designers propose months ahead but I also observe the tendencies of what the young and the old are buying by noting popular culture and also by perusing the stores when I shop for clients.  Also, fashion always almost directly reflects the American happenstance.  It serves almost as an American newspaper in cotton gab and wool worsted.  Investing in the country's resources (which also means its ideas) and having a maintained togetherness as a nation is what's going to fix the economy and hence the US's future.  The fashionable zeitgeist seems to be to take the American framework and modernize it through cut, color, print and styling even if that styling and the cut is more European.   Interestingly, the strip-down is essentially American.  A focus on tailoring, texture, print and color, yes, can be attributed to Eastern culture.  However, the strong allusion to approach the pieces as separates is the essentially the laid-back, toiled-over aesthetic of American Sportswear.

So yes the new revamped classics like Air Jordans, the Converse Franchise, Ray Bans, the varsity jacket, khakis, the M-65 jacket, among others are not to be taken lightly.  They represent how each generation after the next adds to what is essentially American front the American stock along their patriotic journey.

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Dave White

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