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  • Mojo1990
    Member
    • Oct 2015
    • 31

    Thank you Geoffrey for your reply ;) I have contacted Ryne and I hope to proceed further very soon.

    Thank you

    Comment

    • Geoffrey B. Small
      Senior Member
      • Nov 2007
      • 618

      Geoffrey B. Small in Please 3

      Thank you Mojo 1990, your support and patronage is already much appreciated. As our 97th collection presented in Paris since 1993 opens today, Geoffrey B. Small "Hearbeat" collection coverage is out now in the new issue of Please magazine in Japan with images shot by Yusuke Shiiki. Please is a new independent magazine in Japan being created by veteran magazine editor Toru Kitahara. A big thank you to everyone who has helped us get this far.











      Comment

      • Mojo1990
        Member
        • Oct 2015
        • 31

        Geoffrey, I have one remaining question.
        Which stores will be receiving the lovely HBC04 Coat?

        Thank you ☺
        Last edited by Mojo1990; 10-02-2016, 08:43 PM.

        Comment

        • Geoffrey B. Small
          Senior Member
          • Nov 2007
          • 618

          .


          Dear Mojo1990,
          thank you, if you are interested in the HBC04 please contact Ryne at Hotoveli. He will take care of you.
          Best wishes, Geoffrey







          "Summer Days of Tyrus, Alta, Clementine, Lizzie, Edith and Amanda" Paris spring/summer MMXVII women's
          collection presentation
          photographed by Yusuke Shiiki.

          .

          Comment

          • t3hg0suazn
            Senior Member
            • Jan 2013
            • 199

            Hi Geoffrey (or any other experts here),

            I've noticed that the collar on my GBS Edwardian length coat is a bit too wide for my neck. I don't what parts of the garment control for this, so I just wanted to ask if the coat is designed so a (good) tailor could shrink the collar width?

            Here's a fit I've been meaning to post anyways since it is a beautiful coat:

            Fantastic antique linen fabric, makes me smile every time I look at it. (Coat details were posted by Geoffrey earlier in thread.)

            Comment

            • Geoffrey B. Small
              Senior Member
              • Nov 2007
              • 618

              Dear t3hg0suazn,

              Thank you for your purchase. The collar looks fine. Please note that the design you are wearing is an NVJ18 which comes from a reproduction 1850-1870 historical pattern and is meant to fit and look that way. I would seriously leave it alone. If you really feel you need to alter the neckline there is some risk... unlike other parts of the jacket, the collar assemblies in this type of jacket are generally not designed for easy alteration access or work. And certain junction points where collar is attached to lapel are normally trimmed and clipped inside to get a nice square edge or corner. If handled too much during the alteration procedure, especially when taking stitches out and taking apart assemblies, what little fabric is left in those corners can unravel and then you are in big trouble. The lapel and collar design will not be able to be put back together using the same design, shape and proportion because the base pieces will be smaller and no longer of the same shape before they were cut, clipped and then unravelled. This could result in a really bogus looking lapel/collar relationship. Understand that lapel and collar shapes and proportions are critical visual elements of any serious men's tailored jacket design. If you mess with them and they get changed, the design will no longer be as cool looking as it was before. The collar can be tightened or shortened a little, depending on fabric condition, and extra fabric availability if a new collar needs to be cut, with an alteration procedure- but this must be done by a tailor who really knows what they are doing. Please do not try to have this operation done by anyone. We can perform the procedure in our Via Spalato workrooms in Italy if you wish, and have the fabric to be able to cut a new collar if necessary (unlike other tailors), but there will be significant shipping and duty expense in and out of Italy to consider and our (also significant) workroom charges as well for the service. Again, I would strongly recommend you leave the piece as it was originally designed, it looks very good on you in your photo.

              Hope this info/advice is helpful.
              Best wishes, Geoffrey

              Comment

              • t3hg0suazn
                Senior Member
                • Jan 2013
                • 199

                Thanks for the prompt reply Geoffrey! Now that I know this is the intended pattern, I will leave it alone as you suggest. I was just unsure because it looked different from the "usual" suit collar fit. And thanks for the detailed information about the collar and lapel tailoring process, it was educational.

                Comment

                • AVerdantShore
                  Senior Member
                  • Jan 2011
                  • 112

                  I just had the opportunity to view some of the PDFs with images of your work over at the Gullam site. The interior detail shots were just lovely--there is one pair of trousers, in particular, that I found completely admirable from a construction and finishing standpoint--quite breathtaking in it's own way. Cheers!

                  Comment

                  • Geoffrey B. Small
                    Senior Member
                    • Nov 2007
                    • 618

                    .

                    Thanks so much AVerdantShore.... Now back and somewhat rested and catching up from recent Paris women's presentation. As long-term participating designers in Paris fashion week (it was our 97th collection presented there since the early '90's), we feel we have a rather special perspective on what goes on each time from the other side of the "show" that most journalists, buyers and even designers, rarely see.




                    Above: entrance to our showroom in Paris. As we abhor the majority of the industry,
                    and to prevent walk-in attempts to see our collection by uninvited buyers and journalists
                    without appointments, we withhold divulging the address and location in our invitations.




                    And this past session was no exception. Much is changing, or seems to be changing, in the fashion capital of the world as well as other control centers of the fashion system at the moment.


                    First, is the endless line of commentary about a new dearth of real design product in the vast offerings of collections that was shown last week. Some one thousand five hundred collections are presented in Paris alone during the women's week across the gamut of brands from big corporate owned luxury houses to first-time young designer independents, and it was embarrassing to see so many first-time press and purchasing professionals looking at and touching our prototypes and suddenly exclaiming in amazement that this was the first collection they had seen in over a week of shows that had anything close to this level of real fabric and real design. My first reaction was that they were not going to see the "right" collections, but invariably after querying where they went I was surprised to hear that their lists were in fact, the "right" ones. What on earth were they seeing and what on earth was going on out there in our competitor's (or colleagues should we say) showrooms?


                    Second, apart from a very small minority, the massive amount of bad clothing and for lack of a better, or more diplomatic term... ridiculous and amateurish styling that so many designers and companies sent out on the runways, notwithstanding the huge budgets that many of them had spent on these operations. Topping the list were the richest, biggest funded lux-houses owned and run by Kering and LVMH. You would think the companies selling in the tens of billions of euros per annum, who are- unlike H&M and Zara- not targeting low-price mass markets but defining themselves as luxury top-end companies, might somehow be able to do a little better than what they just showed, no? I make note of this, because this situation has become increasingly evident to trained eyes in recent seasons, and this season,like global warming… it struck a new level of alarm. Clearly something is going on inside those corporations and their systems.


                    And finally, the new "trend" towards a return (if you can call it that) to a so-called 21st century version of designer streetwear being pushed by the likes of Vetements, Off-White, Gosha Rubchinsky, Hood by Air and a slew of other "designer-stylists," "DJ-creatives" or "just-plain-incredible-genius-of-whatever-types" from Justin O'Shea to Kanye West to Tory Burch to Gloria Beckham is now being seen among buyers for what it is...

                    perhaps as oftentimes eloquently addressed by SZ founder Eugene Rabkin in an array of online media articles he has written (for example you can see his "What Revolution?" or "Instagrammable Fashion" pieces on SZ-mag.com, BoF and others)…

                    or as beautifully and succinctly called "The rise of over-priced, over-hyped streetwear" by The Rosenrot's Gracia Ventus, or even better yet defined in a recent piece by her as follows:
                    "If you've been reading this blog for some time, you would be aware of my disdain for Hedi Slimane's Saint Laurent, and how he has destroyed a reputable Maison in favour of pandering to commercial success by reproducing derivative stereotypes of youth culture. But there is a new zeitgeist that may have trumped Slimane's laziness. I call it faux luxe-streetwear, i.e., streetwear masquerading as high fashion..."

                    even commercially-driven store buyers, owners and brand producers are starting to realize the quick-fix, temporary nature of this so-called new "direction" in Paris fashion and perhaps even more importantly, the type of consumer that it attracts who is willing and susceptible to buying it.



                    At this point, although I have withheld commenting for over a year almost, I feel some obligation to do so now.

                    Because though most people today know us for something that seems quite different, few other designer companies in the game had more to do with the creation and launching of both recycle/remake design, and subsequently, the whole idea of the "designer streetwear" category at the Paris level… than us. We pioneered both in the 1990's and know both genres extremely well in their original sense, purpose and context. And we can only smile and try to appreciate the new versions that this wave of poser DJ-creators is proposing. Technique? Forget it. Not even worth discussing, let alone comparing. And when it comes to the remake aspect of things, the people who claim and use Martin Margiela's namesake as their heritage and training have been quite misleading. Their actual time working with the label was long after Margiela himself and the other real collaborators who worked with him were around anymore. The MMM that their experience took place in was the Diesel-ized version of the house-- a corporate-owned-and-operated typical Italian large industrial operation from design to distribution. A far cry from the original thing and all of its fundamental technical innovations and artistic merit. Thus, their real technical base is shallow. Using the name as a form of "street-cred" with a new generation that does not know any better just long enough to exhaust the few poorly executed ideas they have managed to try to lift from their short and meager time at Margiela, they have quickly transitioned into a collaboration-dependent, overly PR-driven, "concept" that is now using "luxury streetwear" as its main raison d'être. But the luxury offered is far from that. And only time will tell how far down price/value ratios will drop on the actual products over time.


                    And therein lies for me a critical difference in what streetwear was and still is meant to be. When we began to introduce the idea in 1995 with the world's first menswear recycle design collection, the design/quality/price/value ratios were unbeatable relative to mainline designer collections at the time. We were the first to put sneakers and trainers on a Paris runway with our collections then and like now of course, the clothing had to be able to be worn with sports-related footwear. But they also had to have some merit as garment designs in themselves via fabric, cuts, details and techniques. And everything and everyone was the real thing. The skaters walking and skateboarding in our show were real skateboarder people wearing our clothes. The skulls on the clothes were some of the first ever to be put on clothing. The people who were inked did so not because it was fashion but indeed for what it really was. The tags and the graffiti were real. The trans-gender and cross dressing people who were some of the first ever to walk in a Paris-level show were being themselves, not trying to fake something or fit into some trendy politically correct look. And the idea of simply printing slogans on basic goods and then ramping up enormous and exaggerated margins was completely unacceptable for both the spirit and the budgets of the market, and most importantly, the cool new very intelligent generation of customers who were keen on dressing themselves in a far more relevant and functional manner than had been previously addressed by the designer world.







                    A scan of some coverage of our "Take Your Glamour and Shove it" March 1995 Paris collection show (one of the first designer streetwear collections in the world) in the very first issue of Sport & Street Magazine which was launched in the same year to cover an entirely new fashion and design genre that was emerging on the market that was being called "streetwear." The photos focused on our tagged graffiti pieces, the first to ever appear in a Paris runway collection. The idea was used 2 seasons later by Alexander McQueen in London who took it to the bank and a big licensing deal with Gibo/Kashiyama. But like many of the innovations below, we were the first.





                    (to be continued)



                    .

                    Comment

                    • zamb
                      Senior Member
                      • Nov 2006
                      • 5834

                      Hello Geoffrey,


                      I am very happy that you have decided to address this subject.
                      It is something I have been looking at and pondering very deeply. I said this to a few friends in Paris in June, that this metier is in a serious state of creative rut, as many of the companies with the resources and the historical know how, seem to have losing their way in hiring good talent. They are also failing to provide them with the resources and demanding that good work be done fitting the standard of the house.

                      Now there is war between "bloggers" and "journalists" started by journalist calling out bloggers while many of these Journalists make no real distinction between designers and DJ's / Copyists/ samplers parading around as designers.
                      “You know,” he says, with a resilient smile, “it is a hard world for poets.”
                      .................................................. .......................


                      Zam Barrett Spring 2017 Now in stock

                      Comment

                      • Geoffrey B. Small
                        Senior Member
                        • Nov 2007
                        • 618

                        Thank you Zam, Sorry to you and everyone else for the break-up intermission of the current post story. We are having a lot of learning curve difficulties with the new V-bulletin forum format here, especially working now with a long post, high content piece, which is causing serious delay in our being able to finish posting the above story. As soon as we can figure a bunch of work-around issues we should be able to finish the story...Thanks for your patience and understanding. Geoffrey


                        We are also incapable of trying to send reply to an old PM message from shum88. The new PM system seems to provide way less storage than previously and informs that both our and his message boxes are full and that our reply cannot be sent until both boxes are cleared out. Honestly, I don't have that kind of time, but I do wish to finally get an answer back to shum88's questions so I am posting it here below. To all SZ people, please do not try to reach me via PM. Shum88 here is your reply:

                        thanks Stewart for the note and the repurchase. The TNC02 is definitely a spectacular piece and the fabric was woven in a super limited edition run and is no longer available--so the piece is now more rare than before. The Moessmer tyrolean wool is indeed very special and with the hand dyeing effects and its weight and super-slim fit- we felt that lining this piece would add too much bulk and additional weight, and limit it's stretch bodyforming capability. Remember, that the coat was created for our dealer and the market in Shanghai not Toronto as well. So for sure, for that climate there, we were already plenty on the warm side for their winter. Aesthetically too on the inside, we preferred to go with the taped seam detailing and sleeve and side panel lining only, to give a nice contrast with the Moessmer wool. I would note also that we felt somewhat impelled to also follow the correct tradition of the tyrolean style of working with their types of wool fabrics. The typical traditional tyrolean wool jackets are most often not lined as well, there is a natural stretch factor inherent in these kinds of fabrics that provide great movement, warmth and breathability (excellent for working, moving around in the high mountains of the Tyrol and Alto Adige regions)... that make full-linings somewhat technically non-compatible. Hope this is helpful, best wishes, Geoffrey


                        Originally posted by sshum88
                        Hi Geoffrey,


                        I did have 1 question - more out of curiosity and your thought process. I always enjoy reading the extensive descriptions that share about your pieces.


                        All of my winter coats are lined - curious about your choice to leave this piece unlined?


                        cheers, stewart


                        Originally posted by sshum88
                        Hi Geoffrey,


                        I hope you are doing well. I recently purchased the size Medium from a person who just happened to live in the same city as me - Toronto. It's the 1 of 2 pieces that you created specifically for Ethos.


                        I just had to drop you a note and say how wonderful it is and a piece I will cherish forever. The feel to hand is exquisite and it drapes beautifully. It really does make me think of selling off my other winter coats but it's hard to let go.


                        Lucky for me, the previous owner felt it was too long for him and never wore it once!


                        I had to Google what Tyrolean wool was as I never heard of the term. I love what you have done and I look forward to wearing it lots during the expected arctic winter we are supposed to have this year.


                        I look forward to having more of your pieces in my closet one day.


                        Take care,


                        Stewart

                        Comment

                        • sshum88
                          Senior Member
                          • Dec 2007
                          • 531

                          Geoffrey, thank you.
                          Originally posted by eat me
                          If you can't see the work past the fucking taped seams , cold dye wash or raw hems - perhaps you shouldn't really be looking at all.

                          Comment

                          • Geoffrey B. Small
                            Senior Member
                            • Nov 2007
                            • 618

                            our pleasure sshum88. now let's get on with another part of the story...





                            (…continued from above 10-23-2016, 11:21 AM post)


                            ...who took it to the bank and a big licensing deal with Gibo/Kashiyama.
                            But like many innovations below, we were the first.










                            From January 1995 to 1997 we ran a very modest but award-winning ad campaign in Vogue Paris, Vogue Italia, Vogue Hommes International and L'Uomo Vogue that brought a new generation of authentic street style and spirit into a completely new area of fashion and media. The rest of the industry soon followed with a long line of derivative iterations.





                            .…. <view




                            "Typical American" our controversial first Paris show in March 1994 which looked squarely at the ubiquitous cultural violence in our country, built upon and greatly expanded the previous recycle work of Martin Margiela and Lamine Kouyate at Xuly Bet. The radical collection introduced the fundamentals of our "metamorphosis" recycle design technology that distorted and reconfigured clothing using an array of first time techniques including inside-out, twin-setting, intarsia stitching- including the first skull designs to be put on Paris collection pieces, metallization, computer circuit boards, and others which opened the door to more new ideas which we developed for later collections, such as the hand-painted metallized leather jackets and completely reconfigured bodices in "Take Your Glamour and Shove it" below.












                            …….……. <click to view






                            THERE were some huge creative advantages in recycle design for a tailoring house that really knew about clothes construction at that time. Unlike almost any of my colleagues, I came into Paris with over 14 years working as a serious bespoke tailor, and it was that huge depth of technique and clothes-making experience which enabled us to begin to lead the industry with a long list of technological ideas that were quickly picked up and used by other avant-garde designers, and then bigger and bigger commercial brands. But there was also a real spirit and a culture that was combining underground music, art, design, and a moral and environmental consciousness to all of this as well. Like Margiela, Xuly-Bet, and Belgians such as Dries and Demeulemeester, we were streetcasting all of our show models, the majority of which we were bringing over from Boston or New York to walk in our shows and be themselves doing so. Many of them were working on our staff as designers and assistants, as well as some super-creative people we knew primarily from the underground club scene at the time. Together with these music, art, dance and fashion people, we were able to bring the message of a new avant-garde fashion culture from America into the Paris fashion week for the very first time. Before us, nobody from the U.S. had ever dared to try to follow the footsteps and join the ranks of a Comme, Yohji, Issey, or Helmut et al., but the amazing rise of the Belgians in the late '80's, along with the creative repression in our own country's industry fired us up to give it a try. We did well enough to stay in the game and show to other U.S. creative designers that it was possible, and that yes, there was another option in the world to show your work other than New York… and within a few years a long line of American designers started showing in Paris from Jeremy Scott to Marc Jacobs to Rick Owens to Tom Ford and even more recently Odyn Vovk, In Aisce, Zam Barrett, and yes, even Hood by Air. In the long run, Paris and the world no longer deny, like they once did to me before we began showing there, that America could possibly field an avant-garde fashion and artistic culture good enough to contribute to the world's most competitive fashion designer arena. That argument has been buried for good. And I would say that much of the credit goes to a lot of the courageous and talented people who worked with us in our early Paris and Boston shows. To give an example, we have dug out and digitally converted an original videotape from our archives of "Take Your Glamour and Shove It" to view along with this story in thanks and appreciation to all those people. And to emphasize the pioneering nature of this work on all levels 21 years ago, you might catch some of the xenophobic comments uttered by the mainstream fashion media photographer's bank during the presentation... this was long before LGBT issues were even considered to be politically-correct, and one of the multitude of reasons we learned to hate the mainstream fashion media and why we don't invite them to our shows anymore. You gotta realize, it was more than just fashion for us. It was a message that there was another side to America and fashion design than what New York, Paris, Ralph, Calvin, Vogue, WWD, and CNN wanted to show everybody. And even today, that battle continues.













                            "Take Your Glamour and Shove It" was a direct rebuttal to the blatant and successful corporate conspiracy being orchestrated at the time by Anna Wintour and Vogue, who were exploiting John Galliano's 5th fall into bankruptcy to stop the rising independent designer movement based upon what the french press was calling "pauperisme," and a new value set and ethical consciousness among young generation 90's customers that was fueling the growth of a new wave of independent designers including Martin Margiela, Ann Demeulemeester, Jean Colonna, Xuly Bet, Dries Van Noten, Marcel Marongiu, Helmut Lang, Yoshiki Hishinuma, Fred Sathal, Veronique Leroy, Orson & Bodil, Martine Sitbon, Costume National, John Rocha, ourselves, and up to that point, John Galliano. But Galliano was desperate at that point, having just crashed his 4th backer Faycal Amor, to the tune of over 2 million bucks. And Wintour knew it and smelled an opportunity. She quickly hooked him up first with the heir to the Schlumberger oil fortune in Paris who gave him a free workroom in her Hotel Particulier, and then with over 25 million dollars in backing from Sanford Bernstein the then CEO of American Express, and a job with LVMH as the successor to Hubert Givenchy at their newly acquired Givenchy Couture business division. With a hip, high-profile member of the rebel movement now completely in tow, the Prada and Tom Ford Gucci rollouts would soon follow and the corporate fashion takeover was underway. A takeover that has continued up to the present. In February 1995, Wintour had come out into the open with a story that Vogue's entire editorial staff was going to Paris with a single mandate to "push glamour" at all costs, promising her advertising base that the power of the single magazine in the industry could turn around the falling sales of perfumes, cosmetics, furs, and handbags and accessories that the new "pauperiste" independent avant-garde designer movement in Paris was causing by its annoying focus on pure clothing design. Wintour's coup was very successful. Few people in the history of the game have done more to eliminate the creative energy and capacity in the field. And all of us felt its effects. Over time, just about the entire above named group had sold-out, folded, or dried up, and by the late 90's the corporations were ruling the game hands down. As a young rising name in the circuit, we took a huge hit in sales and coverage that season with our collection as the obvious message in the title scared the hell out of most of our store buyers. And we began the first of our many hard lessons on what it took to really survive in the Paris game for the long run. That season almost killed me in more ways than one- I was barely coming off a life-threatening illness caused directly by the job and was able to start working on the collection just 3 days before having to pack it up and get on the plane to Paris with it. Gaunt, pale and barely able to eat or drink, we worked against all odds and even worse, against one of the most evil P.R's in Paris at the time who was handling (or should I say killing) us in every way possible before and after the show. But somehow by the grace of God we survived it all and made it through. And today, except for Dries, we are the only ones in that original wave still in the game and in the driver's seat of our own art and our own destiny, and I am still proud as ever that we pulled off that show and gave it that title.



                            (to be continued)




                            Last edited by Geoffrey B. Small; 11-15-2016, 03:12 AM.

                            Comment

                            • david s
                              Senior Member
                              • Jul 2010
                              • 492

                              Excellent read, thank you for taking the time to post.

                              Definitely leaves one anticipating the next installment.
                              It's absolutely Hedious!
                              shy poser

                              Comment

                              • Geoffrey B. Small
                                Senior Member
                                • Nov 2007
                                • 618

                                Originally posted by david s View Post
                                Excellent read, thank you for taking the time to post.

                                Definitely leaves one anticipating the next installment.
                                thank you so much, david s. here is the next installment:


                                (continued from above)


                                Less than 2 months before we presented "Take Your Glamour and Shove it" we had also put out the first recycled collection for menswear ever presented in Paris. Throughout the rest of the year, we pushed the recycled technology to a new height with "Racer Futur" which began to explore cleaner, less-deconstructive approaches to recycle design. L'Uomo Vogue in Italy noticed, and quickly did a story on our (at the time) radical new approach to menswear design…





                                We also became the first designers in the field to go on the internet. The internet in 1995 truly was a new frontier. Pioneering artists and other forward-looking people including myself were studying how to use HTML code. In Boston, we had unique access to a lot of very smart people who were working at the cutting-edge of IT tech. Many were friends and supporters of our work and with their help, I was able to learn html code on my own, and soon be way ahead of any other fashion designers or firms at that time.


                                LONG before the corporate takeover, I must say that the internet was truly an amazing space to be. The emphasis was on sharing knowledge not selling things, and networking with other human beings all over the planet and making new friendships and collaborations, instead of the far more ominous environment that it represents for many people today. In fact, there was "netiquette" in those days, that included a strong agreement that it was totally uncool to try to sell things or commercialize just about anything online. Information was to be shared for the benefit of the community overall, not for grubby, or greedy, and especially corporate interests. This was the internet as envisioned by its founders like Tim Berners Lee and the brand new "WorldWideWeb" which he had only made public domain from the NEXT computer in his lab at CERN in April of 1993. During this time, I could not help but resist being the first Paris collections-level designer to have our own space online for the world to begin to find and discover us. I learned html, designed the site to be as simple, fast and easy to read as possible, and put it up on a local server's domain address in Cambridge Massachussetts called TIAC.net (we couldn't get our own domain in those days). We were so excited about this brave new technology and community, and our own recycle and design technologies we were applying to fashion at that moment, that we felt for sure it had to form a part of our first menswear show and collection in Paris. Today, our site may seem old-looking and strangely low-tech (actually we kept it that way for a lot of reasons), and clearly Big-tech and the corporations have changed the internet game tremendously. Over the years since then, I have become, of course, increasingly disillusioned about much online, especially in regards to fashion, spying and personal privacy. But like many of the other things in this story that we have done, I put it up here for the record, that here too, we were pioneering things to the max, and that the "Homme Blue" collection and presentation in January 1996 was also a very historic one for our medium and would lead to even more innovation and development in the following seasons….





                                In January 1995, we pioneered the first recycle design menswear collection to be presented in Paris, and a year later followed it up with the first men's recycled design runway show. In combination both a new non-decon approach to recycle design and our pioneering presence on the then brand new internet WorldWideWeb developed in our "Racer Futur" collections in mid-1995, the new men's "Homme bleu" January 1996 show featured an emphasis on showing the new streetwear spirit including the explorative uses of plastic, sport shoes, mesh, and vintage American college clothing on a Paris runway collection. The idea was quickly followed up in our June 1996 show entitled "American Casual Style" which featured the first skateboarders on a Paris runway, and some of the first uses of American camouflage print, military, workwear, college and casual sport basics for a Paris avant-garde collection. Designers working in Japan at the time like Jun Takahashi and Porter, went to town on this stuff in the Japanese market, and Raf Simons adopted it almost literally in his first collection show in Paris the following season. Above and below: coverage of both in Uomo Collezioni, Gap Japan and Germany's Textil Mitteilungen magazines










                                Things were happening very fast now. Inspite of Anna Wintour's successful derailing of the independent designer movement in women's high fashion, the internet, other aspects of the industry, and a new growing creative movement towards menswear among smart avant-gardists was taking place, and we were at the forefront of it. Suddenly, people like Michele Montagne, the PR guru for Ann Demeulemeester, Helmut Lang and Costume National at the time, were pushing these designers into launching men's collections and doing mixed shows during the Paris women's week to minimize budget risks. We were working with the same PR (from hell) that was doing another very successful (and very good at the time) original Belgian Antwerp Six member named Dirk Bikkembergs who began doing the same thing as well. Important research and mainstream store owners in Europe who were famous for doing high fashion women's shops such as Stuttgart's Horst Wanschura, Munich's Rosy Maendler in Germany, Brescia's Roberta Valentini in Italy (Penelope), and Los Angeles's Charles Gallay in the U.S. opened Marktstrasse 8, Boyslife, and ChaGal respectively, all smaller branch stores dedicated to a new younger designer street-oriented customer. In most of these cases, a new men's street and skatewear consciousness was becoming a major focus and they were all buying from us. Margiela 6, Vivienne Westwood Man and Red Label, Bikkembergs by Bikkembergs, Junya Watanabe Man, Undercover, Masaki Matsushima, Shin Arakawa, Yuji Yamada, Mihara Yasuhiro, Helmut Lang Jeans and Dolce & Gabbana's new D&G were all coming into the market or on the near horizon.

                                More importantly Asia went for it completely, driven by a new young-generation customer whose home economy was far less affected than his western counterparts. Hong Kong and Japan were the juggernauts with retailers like HK's Greenpeace (pre IT) and Nagoya's Midwest driving enormous new businesses based upon this movement. In the next few seasons with Midwest alone, we would produce and sell over 1 million dollars worth of our cutting-edge recycled design pieces at retail in Japan. And they were not alone, by 1997 our collection was being sold in over 40 cities in Japan. Fine Boys, a new men's fashion magazine dedicated to this new movement which had shot to one of the top rungs in Japanese fashion media was calling us the "number one designer for young boys in Japan." And the whole world, at least in regards to fashion designers and the industry, was watching.

                                (to be continued )

                                .
                                Last edited by Geoffrey B. Small; 11-15-2016, 03:10 AM.

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