Eugene Rabkin is the founder of stylezeitgeist.com. He has contributed articles on fashion and culture to The Business of Fashion, Vogue Russia, Buro247, the Haaretz Daily Newspaper, and other publications. He has taught critical writing and fashion writing courses at Parsons the New School for Design.

Jean Paul Gaultier: Catwalk

Fashion

There is no question that without Jean Paul Gaultier contemporary fashion would not be the same. A pivotal figure, he was a bridge between French classism and its very subversion. Gaultier had great respect for French fashion’s history and craft, while sending up its bourgeois pretensions by reveling in pop culture. He showed fashion that, in Susan Sontag’s words, one can be serious about the frivolous, and frivolous about the serious. His fashion origins were in punk (he saw the Sex Pistols perform one of their two concerts in Paris a month before he showed his first punk-inspired collection), his body of work was in camp, and he finished as the great Parisian couturier.

Rick Owens by Adam Katz Sinding x Stylezeitgeist 3

Rick Owens: The Importance of Being Different

Fashion

On some level Rick Owens, the American fashion designer who works in Paris, and who has made a home on the Lido, the picturesque beach island near Venice, is an anomaly. The fashion industry claims to champion diversity, difference, and aesthetic edge, but underneath the posturing and the virtue-signalling, it is an essentially a conservative, profit-driven enterprise. That Owens has cut out a space for himself in it with his outré designs of exaggerated proportions rooted in a goth aesthetic of black leather and heavy denim that sometimes challenge the very definition of clothing is a small wonder. And yet, at 63, after roughly three decades of establishing a brand under his own name, he is being fetéd at Palais Galliera, Paris’s premiere fashion museum, with a rare retrospective dedicated to a living designer.

MARINA YEE: IN MEMORIAM

Fashion, Features/Op-Ed

“I consider myself more as an artist who does fashion and not the other way around” – Marina Yee

Marina Yee, the member of the legendary Antwerp Six, passed away today after a prolonged battle with cancer. Although Yee stepped away from fashion spotlight early on, she was seen by the insiders as a key figure not only in the success of the Antwerp Six, but in building the Belgian fashion approach that relied on conceptual thinking and which in the early ‘90s ushered in an era when subtly cerebral clothes supplanted the facile glamour of the ‘80s. Her work influenced Martin Margiela, whom Yee was dating early on, and she was instrumental in the launch of Dirk Bikkembergs’s womenswear.

DIRTY LOOKS AT THE BARBICAN

Fashion

Fashion is synonymous with glitz and glamour, the things I generally detest. I got into it for the dirt; Trent Reznor rolling around in leather and fishnets in the mud at Woodstock, Hussein Chalayan burying his graduate collection with iron filings in a friend’s back yard, Carpe Diem and its arte povera look, Martin Margiela making something out of nothing, what Rick Owens called “glunge” early on in his career.

Rick Owens: Temple of Love

Fashion

During this past men’s fashion week in Paris a major retrospective of the work of the American fashion designer Rick Owens opened at the Palais Galliera museum of fashion, titled “Temple of Love.” In case you cannot make it to the exhibit, Owens put out a new book with the same title, published by Rizzoli. 

Op-Ed: A Guide to Fashion’s Pseudo Events

Fashion, Features/Op-Ed

Earlier this month the streetwear brand Aimé Leon Dore released a collaboration with the storied Italian coffee equipment manufacturer La Marzocco. Besides the usual merch, the star of the tie-up was a limited edition espresso machine. Here is how the collab unfolded. First, the drop was touted by the streetwear media, which duly noted that its centerpiece, the co-branded Linea Micra espresso machine, costs a whopping $11,660. The egregious markup of the device that retails for $4,200 became a talking point. Then the drop happened, with the machine quickly “selling out,” the fact that spurred further coverage and online conversation.

Unpacking Kering’s Earnings

Fashion

Today, Kering, the luxury conglomerate that owns Gucci, Yves Saint Laurent, Balenciaga, and Bottega Veneta, among others, reported its first quarter earnings, and the picture of the luxury industry it paints is even more dire than many thought. Overall sales are down by 14%, Gucci’s sales for the first three months of 2025 are down by 25%, as Kering’s biggest brand flounders in the wake of a creative director reshuffling. At Yves Saint Laurent, its second biggest brand, sales are down 9%. Frustratingly, Kering does not break out Balenciaga’s earnings, as it lumps them into “Other Houses,” which include McQueen, Brioni, and a handful of jewelry brands they own. But Kering dropped a couple of hints in its earnings report.

Duran Lantink’s Appointment to Gaultier Proves That Contemporary Fashion Is a Simulation

Fashion

Today we woke up to the news that the up and coming designer Duran Lantink was appointed as the creative director of Jean Paul Gaultier. This completes his recent victory lap that began with sweeping a handful of fashion prizes, including the Andam award and the LVMH prize.

And while it is commendable that a young designer gets a crack at spearheading one of the most important brands in the history of contemporary fashion, it’s also worth taking a fresh look at what he actually makes. The artifacts that can be called garments in his oeuvre are pretty forgettable – there is no innovation there in terms of the silhouette, nor is there a strong discerning aesthetic statement. Lantink’s true strength lies in making outlandish, sculpted outfits that look good on Instagram. The look from his last collection that was shared the most was not a garment at all, but a sculpted male bust, worn on a female model. Things like this are designed to go viral in that look-at-this-silly-thing way. They are fashion as memes.