Last Day of Classes + The Fashions of Walter Van Beirondonck

Today was the last day of winter quarter classes.

Boardwork for the LGBTQ American lit class discussion on "trans"

Such is this year's calendar that reading week begins tomorrow, and exam week commences next Monday. I shall have many short stories to read, but I decided to follow a colleague's lead and allow students in the literature class to choose between a critical paper or a creative project, and thus I'm hoping for some very interesting submissions alongside the more conventional essays.

I almost cannot believe the classes are over; the writing class was three times a week for 50 minutes, so it felt like a running relay in which I was the only one holding the baton, while the literature class felt like a half-marathon in which I got a second wind after the third class, the advanced fiction writing class, ended halfway through the quarter. That would felt like the 100-yard/meter dash, if a jet-fuel pack were on my back.

I am still recovering from that class, and missing my wonderful students (who I do get to see, even enjoying the benefit of reading with one of them at the final winter quarter student faculty readings last Monday, before the Associated Writing Programs conference blew through town), and the combo, along with Chicago's slightly warmer but still chilly weather has made the past 10 weeks come to feel like 50.

Last night it even snowed, lightly, before the fine lace covering my windows and the roadway dissoved in the sunlight, though outside its grasp a gossamer pane of ice remained. My apartment's radiators crank frequently, but for whatever reason the rooms themselves stay chilly, or my bones are no longer holding the heat so well. At any rate I will have more time to chill: now, no classes, just theses (honors, MFAs, a dissertation to read), final stories and papers and projects, and I hope somewhere amidst all this that I can find time to compete a paper for a spring conference, and my own creative projects, as well as my capacity even for short form entries on this blog. I do miss it.

In lieu of something not even slighly coherent from me, and given that it's still the fashion season (now drawing to a close in Paris, after the spectacles in New York and Milan) and I have always loved watching fashion shows as a way of brightening my day (disidentification, you know), here are three videos of rather male fashion shows by a not very well known but very innovative queer designer and artist, Walter Van Beirondonck. Note that the second video starts automatically (it's an iframe-coded video, and I'm not sure how to turn that autoplay off in html), so turn off the sound or just click to stop if you don't want to watch it right away.  Enjoy!

UPDATE: In the comments section, Jenny (thank you!) links to this note from Racialicious on Van Beirondonck's racial fetishist thrust in many of his collections. I hadn't seen it before nor had I seen his Fall 2012 collection, which it particularly calls out, but I do agree with its ambivalent take on his work, and would suggest it could apply to any number of major designers, from Jean-Paul Gaultier to the disgraced John Galliano to Diane von Fürstenberg to many others who have sampled the "tribal," trafficked in self-proclaimed "exoticism," and engaged in Orientalism,  as a way of creating luxury commodities for the richest among us to consume. Just two years ago, in the Financial Times, reporter Marian Hume, in an article that began by talking about young fashion sensation Doru Olowu, quickly segued into how von Fürstenberg and other heavy hitters were "interested" in exploiting this cultural material as much as they could...

Brothers: Hand on Heart: Winter 2011/2012

Walter Van Beirendonck Winter 2011/2012 from Walter Van Beirendonck on Vimeo.

Billows: Cloud #9: Summer 2012

Bears: Wonde®: Summer 2010 (if you don't like seeing big hairy men in underwear, skip the end)


Walter Van Beirendonck Summer 2010 from Walter Van Beirendonck on Vimeo.

Happy Rosh Hashanah + At the Fashion Tent

Shana Tova Umetukah. שנה טובה

I hadn't realized a week had passed since my last entry, on 9/11. My days have been melding together in a balmy, pleasurable fashion. Although fall officially arrives next Monda it's already begun to settle in. One of the major harbingers of the new season is the beginning of the academic year, and another is New York Fashion Week, which concluded today. It's headquartered at the giant tents that devour a huge central swathe of Bryant Park, just behind the Research Branch (now the Steven Schwartzman Branch) of the New York Public Library, where I've been spending a good portion of the summer writing and research. A little while back I posted some photos of the tents going up, and then two days ago, I decided to take a break from several writing projects to get some air and see up close what was going down.

My feelings about the fashion world are conflicted: on the one hand I'm drawn towards its focus on aesthetics, beauty, creativity, innovation, wit, glamor, and style; on the other hand I detest its overall sexism, racism, classism, its psychologically and emotionally damaging effects on women (and men), and its endless recycling, its self-importance and its essentially exclusionary quality. Perhaps someone will draw or has drawn a theoretical line between the arguments of J. J. Winckelmann's "Essay on the Beautiful in Art" and Anna Wintour's editorial eye (and I haven't yet seen The September Issue); it might make make for an interesting conversation or not. But I'll hold off on that for now. I did notice that the models arriving and departing, like the people working (wheeling in those suitcases filled with who-knows-what, the photographers, etc.) were a diverse lot, but those who appeared to be attending as VIPs were far less so. I also found it telling that when the models of color were leaving, most of the photographers took far less interest in them. (Cf. fashion magazines, etc.)

At any rate yesterday I stationed myself right on the other side of the banister and barricades dividing the park's open, public sections from the private pitch leading to the back entry, by which models and VVIPs arrived, of the Mercedes Benz-sponsored big tent (House?), just as Phillip Lim's show had ended, Alexandre Hercovitch's and Milly by Michelle Smith were beginning, and people were beginning the process of arriving for Anna Sui's spectacle later in the day. I stood right next to a number of stringers, freelance and amateur photographers, a few of whom nearly got into fistfights with the official paparazzi when a celebrity (I'm not sure who it was, because I couldn't see her) arrived. One paparazzo bragged that he was ready to engage in a smackdown, though given how expensive his camera equipment looked, I suppose it could have occurred only after he'd safely stored everything away.

The fashion industry is supposedly suffering, like most aspects of our economy, from a serious downturn. There are simply not enough people financially able, let alone foolish enough, to drop thousands of dollars--cash or even less likely these days, credit--on a frock or pair of shoes or a handbag. Or one of those Peewee Hermanesque Thom Browne tiny suits that became the rage a few years back. This reality, so evident in all the empty storefronts dotting Manhattan's streets, has led to some ridiculous whining by some designers, as this New York Times piece recounts, but it also has led some designers, as is the case for people across the country and globe, to greater resourcefulness amid their despair. From what I could see, the parade of very rich and stylish people, many of them so thin they could pass through keyholes, continued, but perhaps there were fewer of them this year, and their hold over the larger society has lessened. A sequel to the first Sex and the City movie (and the TV show) is filming right now in Manhattan, and I wonder if this new reality will inform its script. Hollywood seems not to have gotten the message, from what I can tell, a few films notwithstanding. In terms of celebs, I spotted the one and only übersocialite Tinsley Mortimer; Ramona Singer, one of the Real Housewives of New York; and Lauren Conrad, who is a star of the popular TV show The Hills, though there were other famous-looking people, but I must admit I don't regularly read the New York Social Diary so I didn't know them from Eve.

After a few hours of snapping photos, observing the waves of excitement and ennui, chatting with the security guards and other photographers, counseling (as if I knew anything about anything) a young publicist who was trying to get into the fashion industry, and talking with an elderly tourist from Texas who was alternately bemused and bored with the procession while expressing repeated concern about the models' emaciation, all of which I found more enjoyable than any of the reality TV shows I regularly watch, as it was unscripted, far more democratic (anyone and everyone, from the employed to the homeless, took seats or positions, behind the barricades, and commented freely as the parade of wealth and privilege proceeded, with alternating bursts of awe, delight and annoyance), I went back to the library and continued my writing projects.

Today, I returned, for a briefer visit, but when I was leaving the library, I noticed one of the main first-floor auditorium had been sealed off, behind a cordon, for one of the last shows, Anne Klein's. (I thought they'd gone out of business.) I couldn't convince the guard to let me snap even one picture beyond the closed door--public library though it may be, contributor though I may be, the space, like that of the park, was turned over unyieldingly to private, very wealthy interests. Instead, he let me photograph him. It was supposedly the show of the season.

Photos follow, enjoy!


Library alcove curtained off for a fashion show event

Disappearing behind the curtain

Behind the curtain, pre-show schwag, lined up in the library

Outdoors, in between shows

One of Milly by Michelle Smith's models, before the show

Rich attendee, waiting to be admitted

Philip Lim models, post-show

Fashionista tumble (over a park chair!)

Fashion insider, in a kilt/skirt

Daring style

Three fashionistas

Fashionista arriving

Rich attendees, arriving

Young woman holding her pose, while the frenzy begins behind her

The official paparazzi go crazy over whoever the famous person was

A model and photographer, pre-Milly by Michelle Smith show

Fellow photographer, videotaping the entry of the grandees

Lauren Conrad, of The Hills

Tinsley Mortimer, socialite

Fashionistas arriving (cf. the ruffled sleeves; according to The New York Times, they're a "trend")

(Model?) lolling

Fashion march

A model, someone notable (or both)

Photos: On the Periphery of Fashion Week

One of the signs that I'm approaching the end of my summer sojourn at home and consequently my last weeks at the library writing and researching is the presence, in its varied forms, of Fashion Week. The tents and fashionistas not only turn Bryant Park into their hive, but claim parts of the library's research branch as well. I was hoping to see André Leon Talley milling about, but no such luck. Here are a few photos from this past week.

Workers putting up a new Sean John poster in the 42nd Street subway

Folks snapping photos, with the tents in the background

People having lunch and strolling, some I'm sure oblivious to all the nearby excitement

One of the tent entrances

Models and fashionistas gathered outside another entrance, at the library

"Fashion" screams out from magazine pages as well

Gertrude Stein serenely presiding: "and then there is using everything."