Miu Miu Summer Collection Video Taster

Vivienne Westwood @ The Foreign Office

I don't think the fashion business should be talking about climate revolution when the idea (not the business itself) is the worst ideological offender for changing something with no great pragmatic reason. Other than that it's a great show. Aunty Viv is still producing beautiful clothes.

Versace Tries To Break The Industry Record For Sleb Programming References

The blatant references the sleb fashun/booty/movie/song industry make in their commercials and shows like the recent Superbowl and Grammy ritual feeding frenzy are no longer the subtle cues and symbolism once used. There's a tonne of evidence to suggest a lot of photographers and stylists even pay homage to it as if it doesn't ruin lives and poison young minds. 

Oh well, some people got their 'They Live' glasses and some aint. Thanks to Robert for pointing this out in his terrific new Friday podcast 'Free Association Radio' FAR show.

Update: Original video removed. Replacement is similar.

Miu Miu - Alchemical Magic & Pentagonal Sunglasses

There's been a sharp uptick in the use of, reference to and presence of magic in my life so I thought I'd pass on Miu Miu's 'The Woman Dress' Video. 

I'm too jaded to ignore that it's less about 'The Woman Dress' than about flogging the handmade Pentagon sunglasses. However the all female narrative, use of magic and alchemical transformation, Kubrickesque Eyes's Wide Shut reversed music and speech references are signature Miuccia Prada who I have said before, knows a lot more about how the world ticks than most other designers except for Karl Lagerfeld and the late Alexander McQueen.

Vivienne Westwood - Red Label

The difference between scene and style. Aunty Viv still has it in spades all these years later.

Miu Miu & Monarch Mind Control

 

The Monarch mind control program came straight out of the CIA's MKULTRA trauma-based mind-control program. They nicked it off the battalions of high ranking Nazis imported by the CIA after the second world war through Project Paperclip. The Nazis nicked it off the Vatican who kept records of  what their unspeakable torture techniques did to the minds of victims during the inquisition (priests are especially sadistic) and they in turn learned much from the Egyptian Book of the Dead.

The monarch butterfly taught geneticists from its migration that cross generational information can be carried over. So why waste a victim when you can sexually abuse and mind control the victims kids who are prepped and good to go from the start. That's why inter-generational child abuse is how the CIA took the game to the next level (and several more).

Through Vigilant Citizen I learned how the fashion, music and media business use the Monarch butterfly to declare in a public manner that the talent being used (if you can call GaGa, Britney et al talent) are micro controlled  and/or not of their own mind.

Why do they do that? 

Well that's kind of interesting. There's a sort of braggadocio by declaring who is in charge and also a karma-deal respected by occult elites at a 'universal law' level that if they (sort of) publicly declare what they are doing then they have a karmic 'get out jail free card' in much the same way that the NeoCons told us they were going to invade Iraq to protect freedoms before 911 in 1997, through their Project For A New American Century Website (PNAC).

Last night I was checking out Prada Brand - Miu Miu's latest collection. I wasn't that impressed with it, but I noticed the Monarch Wings above and thought I'd share it with you. As you'd expect from Miu Miu it's done very elegantly, but no amount of tasteful design should prevent you from knowing that the epigenetics of Monarch butterflies are about control and fucking with kids heads and bodies through trauma based mind control or at worst ritual satanic sex abuse. This post is dedicated to Vigilant Citizen, and Secret Arcana who do a sterling job of pointing out the concrete symbolism that is irrefutable in the entertainment and fashion industry.

Jaeger - London Fashion Week

Jaeger's colours and proportional straight line cuts at London Fashion week are working for me. I've always enjoyed the quality of this business but this latest show is most elegant. almost worth reconsidering the value of cold weather.

Alexander McQueen, Gen-X, Post Futurism & Star Wars (Help me Obi Wan Kenobi)

One of my probably duller-than-I-think, and self important (dinner party) pieces I'm prone to doing now and again (usually if there's a good red to hand) is how surreal it is to be a Gen X'er. 

Don't misunderstand me. I know Baby Boomers and older who have more life in them, than many Millennials and so on and so forth but allow me a Gen X tale.

Below is the first taste of hologram technology I witnessed at the age of 8, living in West Germany watching Star Wars.

I don't remember the opening sequence being so special that I had to duck my head but that doesn't mean Star Wars didn't leave a massive impression on me; lots of things did at that age. However the Princess Leia hologram scene was unforgettable. The idea of not writing down a plea-for-help-message on a piece of paper (this was pre-internet) and instead using a plenipotentiary (of sorts) droid to project an hologram was sensational and yet plausible. The tonality projected through this medium imploring help, felt so much richer than any typewriter or pencil could achieve.

Here it is:

Yet Victor & Rolf's work in the Dutch Pavillion at the Shanghai Expo is just as, if not more seductive; and yet somehow while my experience of it is no more or less than any other person's enjoyment, there's just something delicious about the uniquely Gen X experience of overtaking the future. It happens a fair bit and I haven't even gone into the how amazing it is to juxtapose pre and post internet cultures alongside each other, though I will attempt to some day.

Hopefully here.

It was of course the late (and truly great) Alexander McQueen who did it best with Kate Moss. It's a pity that so much incredible creativity in the fashion industry get's ignored, I guess because, by and large, the egos in fashion leave advertising standing in the dust.

That doesn't mean advertising doesn't plunder fashion's inexhaustible creativity time and again. Above is my favourite piece by Alexander McQueen in 1999. 

Anybody know which brand ripped this idea off? It might be creativity but it is also definitely art. Something our lot could learn something from.

Shirt By Givenchy

Seems a few of you quite like my Givenchy Shirt that some girl snapped me in last week so I thought I'd put it up here for your amusement. I bought it second hand on Melrose, Hollywood in 1995 along with some awesome boot cut 70's Calvin Klein Jeans, a real L.A. County Jail Shirt made by the inmates, a bunch of Skateboard wear that I got into during that time (Including my first Vans) and other bits I'd rather not remember from last year when I was robbed in Hong Kong.

 I wish the girl who took this let me take a photo of her. She had incredible skin colour and the type of immaculate teeth that have never seen a dentist. There's just something quite awesome about unadulterated preternatural teeth.

Digital Necrophilia - I Like To Fork Myself

Now I think about it there's a lot of outstanding posts percolating in my head and which I've made rushed notes to in various places, though this is one post I feel like writing and which was originally sparked by some of the excellent conversations I had with Teflon John, before his Goldman Sachs girlfriend discovered I'm a Metrosexual Marxist. 

Well... (dot dot dot) I'm sure he's got a different perspective but as he was in the rest room during the chilly silence that descended before his return, I can only say that I was admirably unfazed by the inappropriate but not unique assertion of bi/curious sexual preferences that the monologue drifted onto after a long soliloquy on Goldman culture. But I think my conversation switcher of  'let's talk about me' may have closed the deal.

Unlike Goldman Sachs of Hyenaville, money isn't my main driver. Though I hasten to add I don't know if I'd be any better a pack dog if fate had slipped me into that alpha male club instead of the ability to write about it with a mixture of candour, humour and disgust. But we don't really know that stuff until we're in the context itself though having lost all my possessions and money recently I'm pretty happy with what I don't have as well as what I do. Which is a reality tunnel topic I'm dwelling on since discovering Robert Anton Wilson over at the Media squat through the increasingly funny and brilliant Douglas Rushkoff.

Anyways (as the Jamaican bad boys say): 

Digital Necrophilia. 

Like so many subjects in accelerated culture (and it's so fast I'm in my element) the early thinking has been superseded by this podcast I listened to and then followed by Neil's post on learning to forget which is quicker to read though I recommend you check out The Forum on BBC radio to listen to Victor Mayer-Schoenberger if you didn't attend the talk Neil did.

But the reason for resurrecting this topic is twofold. A few years ago I was asked to write a presentation about beauty on the net for Unilever regionally in Asia, and despite having 300 slides chopped down to a very primitive 150 I did pick up on some of the themes in blogging and internet culture including discovering Daul Kim's blog which I predicted would be a taste of the intimacy of reading into the lives of people who inhabit the trillion dollar beauty business. 

This has come back to haunt me like an Ave Maria curling round a cathedral choir during a requiem mass. 

Depressing.

She was seventeen ish when I discovered her blog, and died in Paris on Friday, at the age of 20. Here's her last blog post where she says 'hi to forever' with Jim River's "I go deep". One thing we had in common was our love of British minimal tech. See you on the other side Daul.

Challenging Conventions

The Telegraph posted this trailer for Coco Chanel and I thought maybe a few of you would know if it's your sort of thing if my review was rubbish but the embed conveyed the style a bit better than I was able to explain.

Beijing Fashion and Trends

I got caught in Xidan again last weekend. That flat peaked baseball hat thing that was hitting London when I left may not have arrived full-on in Beijing yet, but I do like the perched and slightly tilted action going on below with subverted logos .

These guys really made me think I'd lost my antenna for what's going on because their piercings and punk goth look had in my opinion overstepped what Beijing tolerates as acceptable. Its one thing to be rebellious but in my estimation their look (even though its ace) would surely lead to some kind of 'social alienation' in this part of China. I think Vivienne Westwood collector and fashion lecturer Robert De Niet in London would be particularly pleased with those bondage trousers which, like the rocking shoes she designed, are somewhat impractical but look insanely good. Clothes for heroes indeed.

I bumped into them later in that cheap clothes mall I've been raving about and had a chance to ask them a few more questions where they told me in quite good English that they were of Canadian/Korean descent and here to learn Chinese. This kind of pleased me because I couldn't believe how much attitude their style had, although I will always be slightly disappointed in a city that doesn't have room for a few Punk Goths. I understand that Worcester wasn't the sort of place to wear this stuff in 76/77 either!

Here are some examples of those insane T Shirts I've been going on about.

Does Linda know?

Thus adding another dimension to the uncanny valley.

I have no idea what Beverdially Sweetbones Brondnated Beveriseeds means but its the sort of thing I'm beginning to enjoy and expect from Xidan. One of the things I like about the cheap shops is the resourcefulness they put into making them hip, and here in the Jing it seems that using magazine photography covered in glass on the floor is one way the young can inexpensively add some attitude. A lot of the shops also take pride in having rare trend curiosities to attract people in. Although that is a post for another day that I'm keen capture.

Steamed Buns & Hip Kids (Past and Future)

There's no need to throw out the past to embrace the future. The past is part of our fabric and contributes to our future. If we hide from history and pretend it didn't happen, history disrupts our future happiness. Coming to terms with the past is part of growing up.

I've finally moved out of the dreadful serviced apartment environment to a 2000 year old (rebuilt) Courtyard House by the Forbidden city and I'm loving the sheer history of it all. The peace and quiet of the neighbourhood really appeals; particularly the birdsong in the morning. I only knew I'd missed real twitters once I'd heard it again. Anyway I've always wanted to live only a stone's throw from Tiananmen Square.

Close by is a traditional shop that sells the freshest steam buns and dumpling soup I've had since I've been here, in an environment that is proper Beijing. I much prefer this type of restaurant to the luxury ones so often preferred by the expat community over here.


Some old boy takes that hulking dough and kneads it old-school-stylee into the right consistency by hand. He looks like he's been doing it for decades.


It doesn't take much of an imagination with B&W photography to visualize being back in the past, to a time when secrets were whispered in darkened alley ways for fear of public humiliation from the Party during the naming and shaming episodes of the cultural revolution, or perhaps the rarely mentioned Great Leap Forward which people from the West will know more about than many under 30 who are local.


So to provide some contrast to my morning steamed buns and dumpling soup (cost: 1 1/2 Euros) We did a bit of a Xidan run again on Saturday and I'm starting to like the scruffier shopping mall with mad T Shirts that aren't always trying to be so hip, but because of the sheer volume and variety of output that China produces, sometimes score a Black Swan for creativity and luck on the most random of details such as words and spelling, or Kitsch design serendipity.


Again these Beijing youngster are terribly endearing and for me constitute the really nice side of the people in this wonderful city. There is a naivety there, but as you can see it's not always incongruous with having personality or their own style.


Maybe we should get some of these folk into the agency ASAP because I'm starting to feel the pain of not hearing about creativity or ideas in four months, while definitely seeing it constantly outside the confines of the agency walls. These kids are the future and China is going to be a wonderful place for it. That I'm confident of.

Swishing - Even sexier than swinging

Imago

The Guardian points us to the latest source of fashion inspiration It brings together ethical shopping, bargain hunting and social networking - and is the liveliest fashion trend embracing the 'I'm more than just a consumer' backlash that is rapidly emerging. It's called Swishing by those in the know.