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NYT article on celebrity designers (Justin Timberlake)

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  • Faust
    kitsch killer
    • Sep 2006
    • 37852

    NYT article on celebrity designers (Justin Timberlake)



    Ok, normally, I wouldn't even post anything like that, but this article actually had a few hopeful things to say about people actually NOT buying into all that garbage. If Bloomingdales refuses to carry most of it, I take it as a sign of hope. I don't think this will last long. The only celebrity lines I see enduring are those that are targeted at the malls and are cheaply priced. This part does not bother me, because it does not aim to be designer clothing, it's simply kitsch, and, to paraphrase Clement Greenberg, kitsch does not pretend to be art, all it wants is your money.



    October 22, 2006



    O.K., He’s Sexy. Can He Design?













    LOS ANGELES




    WHAT’S sexy to you?” asked a disembodied voice playing over a
    speaker in a barrel-shaped theater in Hollywood, straining to be heard
    over the sound of a thousand camera shutters clicking at once.




    “Mmm, sexy,” the voice of Justin Timberlake answered, his words
    echoing. “It’s not the clothes. It’s the way you wear them. Sexy is a
    state of mind. It’s about that attitude ... attitude ... attitude.”




    Mr. Timberlake, in the flesh, was sitting dead still on top of a
    speaker box while the previously recorded interview played on, his
    silver argyle Vans splayed apart and his head hung low under a slim
    black hoodie. He sat that way for several minutes, a pop buddha
    preaching the dharma of bringing “SexyBack,” motionless as people moved
    lights all around him and B-boy dancers polished the floor with their
    chests. Then in a blink, he was sitting next to a reporter on a
    bleacher with his arm on his shoulder.




    “I’m stressed as hell,” Mr. Timberlake said. “How was your flight? When did you get in?”




    Aw shucks, Mr. Timberlaaa —




    Oh. The performer had just as quickly gotten up and was standing by
    the runway, watching models rehearse for the first fashion show of a
    collection called William Rast, a year-old collaboration between Mr.
    Timberlake and Trace Ayala, his best friend since childhood. The
    singer-designer was stressed. He was aware of the critical trouncing
    delivered to other celebrities who have attempted to commercialize
    their personal style with a fashion line.




    “I don’t want to look like a celebrity who is cashing in on celebrity,” Mr. Timberlake said. “That’s my fear.”




    Although Mr. Ayala designed the clothes, it was Mr. Timberlake who
    was making the fashion show a production, selecting the music,
    conceiving the set, taping the fake red-carpet interview as a sly
    statement on the hyped nature of celebrity collections — it would play
    as other celebrity guests took their seats — and personally casting the
    dancers and models.




    Monday afternoon last week, the day before the show, several of the
    models were moping or chomping on gum, unable to manage a fairly
    uncomplicated routine that required one turn and one half-turn. One
    stomped down the runway like a Clydesdale, comically attempting the
    signature march of Gisele Bundchen. Mr. Timberlake made a bug-eye face,
    then pretended to stumble across the room.




    As most music-conscious people have heard, Mr. Timberlake is
    bringing sexy back; that is, his contagious single of that title has
    dominated global pop charts since September, and it has even been used
    as a punch line by Al Gore, when he appeared on the Video Music Awards and said he had heeded Mr. Timberlake’s call.




    Critics have praised the album with the single,
    “FutureSex/LoveSounds,” the second solo album by Mr. Timberlake,
    formerly “the cute one” in the boy band ’N Sync. In another step toward
    his transformation into an adult act, Mr. Timberlake has taken on
    serious acting roles, including a part in Nick Cassavetes’s crime drama
    “Alpha Dog.”




    And now he wants to expand his claim on sexiness to fashion, with a
    runway show he and Mr. Ayala named “Street Sexy.” Showing restraint,
    Mr. Timberlake did not plan to play his hit until the finale of an
    after-party concert following the fashion show. He seemed well aware
    that its popularity is in danger of becoming oppressive.




    “At least I didn’t bring Lycra back,” he said.




    What has been interesting about Mr. Timberlake’s approach to fashion is that, unlike other celebrities turned designers like Sean Combs,
    Jennifer Lopez and Beyoncé, he had not heavily promoted his involvement
    until last week. Mr. Ayala, 25, who worked with Mr. Timberlake as a
    personal assistant and designed clothes for ’N Sync, convinced the
    singer to start the collection a year ago, after being approached by
    Danny Guez, the owner of the Los Angeles denim company People’s
    Liberation.




    Mr. Timberlake’s name was kept off the label to avoid the overt
    appearance of cashing in on his celebrity, but he approves all of the
    designs and comes up with some of them. William Rast, named after two
    of Mr. Timberlake’s and Mr. Ayala’s grandfathers, began selling $180
    boot-cut jeans at Bloomingdale’s and a handful of other stores. The
    idea was that the partners would perfect their basic designs before
    making a more ambitious fashion statement.




    Ever since Mr. Combs, building on a career as a rap impresario,
    introduced his Sean John collection in 1998, the fashion industry has
    been overrun by music celebrities. But so far the success of Mr. Combs
    — he was named men’s wear designer of the year in 2004 by the Council
    of American Fashion Designers — has been more the exception than the
    rule
    . There have been reports of production problems for Ms. Lopez’s
    line, exaggerated sales figures from Russell Simmons, and a lawsuit against Jessica Simpson, claiming she did little to promote her own line.




    “We have departments for clothes, not celebrities,” said Frank
    Doroff, a senior executive vice president at Bloomingdale’s,
    paraphrasing the store’s late, legendary fashion director, Kal
    Ruttenstein. “Quite a few of the lines we feel are not appropriate for
    Bloomingdale’s, or that they really don’t sell.”




    The rollout of William Rast has been limited. In early interviews,
    Mr. Guez gave sales projections of about $15 million for the first
    year, but he declined last week to say whether his company, which went
    public in December, had met that target. Still, Mr. Doroff said it is
    one of the two celebrity lines carried by Bloomingdale’s that have
    connected with shoppers, along with L.A.M.B. by Gwen Stefani.




    Mr. Timberlake has been savvy about his image since beginning his
    solo career in 2002. He has successfully erased the taint of his
    adolescent romance with Britney Spears, and he transferred the stigma
    of an infamous wardrobe malfunction at the Super Bowl almost entirely
    onto his duet partner, Janet Jackson.
    He has worked with the stylist Joe Zee, the editor of Vitals magazine
    (now defunct), to transition his own look from a wardrobe of leather
    eight-ball jackets, gold chains and faded jeans to a more adult one of
    rakish fedoras, skinny monochromatic Dior suits and three-piece tweed
    suits from Yves Saint Laurent.




    Before the September release of “FutureSex/LoveSounds,” Mr. Zee said
    he flew to Los Angeles to present the singer with photo-collages to
    inspire his look for the album’s marketing, showing him pictures of
    classic Hollywood rogues like Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr.




    “He got it right away,” Mr. Zee said. “He’s far more advanced than
    Madonna was at his age. You can only imagine where he’ll be when he
    gets to 45.”




    Mr. Timberlake’s music, his performances and his style could be
    described as deliberately unconstructed, as though he had practiced in
    front of a mirror a few times before trying it out in public.




    “My style changes like the seasons,” he said. “I’ve grown up in the
    business, and I’ve had the double-edged sword of having everyone see my
    odd years. You can document them on the red carpet, and they are
    absolutely hysterical. I look back at some of the things I wore when I
    was 17 and I wonder, what was I thinking? Obviously, I was 17.” He is
    now 25.




    His approach to creating a fashion brand comes across as intently
    studied, surreally so when Mr. Timberlake, with a glass of sauvignon
    blanc in his hand, speaks of his desire to build a total lifestyle
    collection, using fashion-industry jargon as if to demonstrate his
    seriousness.




    “In my opinion, there are lot of denim brands out there that miss
    the point of jeans,” he said. “Jeans are a canvas. I see a lot of jeans
    that if I was to wear them, I would have to work my outfit a-round them.”




    Tuesday night, an hour before the show, Cameron Diaz, Mr.
    Timberlake’s girlfriend, was sitting on the runway, talking to friends
    in the front row, and tugging the back of her sparkly shirt down over
    her William Rast jeans, so as not to expose herself to guests on the
    other side of the runway like Patrick Dempsey, “Dr. McDreamy” of
    “Grey’s Anatomy.” Also in the house were Eve, Wilmer Valderrama,
    Michelle Trachtenberg, Paris and Nicky Hilton and Mr. Timberlake’s
    former boy-band colleagues Lance Bass and JC Chasez. They made their
    entrances on a carpet of black Astroturf.




    What’s sexy to you?




    “Him,” Mr. Bass said, pointing to his boyfriend, Reichen Lehmkuhl. “I think confidence is sexy.”




    Mr. Lehmkuhl added, “Sexy is when someone knows how to be confident and how to tell someone else they look good.”




    Mmm. The show included women in short denim skirts and men in
    ultraskinny jeans with cuffs that rolled back to midcalf, good for a
    celebrity runway show but not much different from what one would
    encounter at a Diesel fashion show or one of Dsquared. It was amazing,
    really, that they were having an elaborate event for a collection of
    just 20-some pairs of jeans and T-shirts, styled as the competing gangs
    from “The Outsiders.”




    The greasers wore their hair styled into mullets, with western
    gingham shirts and rockabilly gold bow ties on white blouses; the
    preppy socs wore similar pieces, tidied up with a pale yellow cropped
    cardigan, for example, and Tretorn sneakers. A few short prairie
    dresses, and a retro plaid sports jacket over slim khaki pants for men,
    represented the expansion of William Rast; the fireworks were saved for
    the dancers.




    The B-boys somersaulted over one another, their sneakers at moments
    within inches of celebrity airspace, and a group of lascivious-looking
    women bumped and ground their way along the stage, one reaching over
    into the lap of Mr. Bass, writhing to a Prince song with a name not
    suitable for publication (which doesn’t really narrow it down).




    “What really makes clothing sexy is what you do with it,” the voice of Mr. Timberlake said as he took his bow with Mr. Ayala.








    Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months - Oscar Wilde

    StyleZeitgeist Magazine
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