Vive La France!

So today is Bastille day! Everyone go celebrate the French, it's fun and it's delicious to do so! Here in New York we celebrated it last weekend on a couple of blocks in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn. So aside from the food, the art and romance, personally I'm very happy that Paris Fashion week is still considered the centre of the fashion world. It very much is a place that can showcase worldwide talent. Yes London really is a phenomenal petri-dish for incredibly creative designers, yet Paris still retains it's place as the centre of it all. It may not be the most open to new ideas, but because everyone goes there you're bound to find someone who is! If you can get them to see your wares...

Thanks to the war raged by Kawakubo and Yamamoto in the 1980s, this city acts like a speakerphone to the world. So, if you're out to "Destroy" our pre-conceptions of what clothing can be, thus moving us forward, Paris is the place to do it.

Last weekend for Bastille day I went French by way of Japan and was utterly shocked by the lack of Breton shirts! This is Brooklyn! Everyone wears them everywhere! This one I got last year from Uniqlo that I don't wear much precisely due to that point, but felt I needed to add a little more french to the otherwise obvious Japanese overtones.

Now about this stunning addition to my heaving bedroom/closet. Somehow I own one of the showpiece deconstructed jackets from the Spring/Summer 2007 collection. When I was in London for the Future Beauty exhibit, a dress from the collection was the poster-girl for the show:

Standing at the beginning of the exhibit, the dress felt like a standard bearer for all the Japanese designers, hell any designer that ever thought outside the box of what was possible. Clearly I'm deeply in love with Japan and her visions and yes I'm going to treat a day to celebrate the french to celebrate the Japanese and to finally (six months later...) start dissecting the many new concepts I learned from that exhibit and through reading the truly fantastic exhibit catalog, interspersing these esoteric concepts I'll try to illustrate them as best as possible with my own way of dressing.

What is more wabi-sabi then a pair of delicate, off-white, calfskin shoes with a white leather welt (?)?

Now about the jacket. Aside from it's obvious perfection for summer and all the humidity that can be thrown at me, it has pockets that are perfect for a metro-card and a phone. It floats when one wears it, as if one is shrouded in the deconstructed, highly charged ideas of Japan. I think everything I could say doesn't even surpass what the graphics designer Kenya Hara writes in the following excerpt from his book White (which is currently on my book wishlist). I HIGHLY recommend you read the essay below. I remember standing in front of the white mannequin at the Barbican awe-struck and to get some essence of why, read it.

[Click to see larger version]

So if you can't tell I am tickled pink to be able to wear something that quite literally can bring hope and peace to me when I wear it, whilst affecting other people in such a myriad of different ways. This red circle is a metaphor for the way I personally view clothing; loaded with psychological meanings, but in the end, meaningless.

[Comme des Garcons Tulle Underjacket with flocked red circle (and useable pockets!), Uniqlo Bretton shirt, Club Monaco altered shorts, Yohji Yamamoto Off-White calfskin brogues, Ned Sewell Goggles (heat + humidity = summer necklace for now), Crazy hair: All mine and this seasons doing] Thankfully I just laundered that Breton shirt....

"The wearer can feel it, If the clothes are free-spirited." — REI KAWAKUBO