Hip hop goes Owens

[Fuuma]

You reacted to my initial comment that they wear this stuff because it's cool. Given their IMAGE, the thing I had to go by, I don't think this was an unreasonable assumption, an educated guess, actually. I am assuming that ASAP bears no relation to Rick's body of work because his body of work has an ethos that is very different from Rick's. (To give you a music analogy I have given before, I cannot see how privileged kids from wealthy suburbs could relate to Rage Against the Machine's music, yet a ton of them listened to it. Because it was cool.)

The same way when I see a Rick Owens jacket paired with a Chanel bag, and Tory Burch boots - the de riguer uniform of the Upper East Side women - I assume that they wear Rick because it's cool and not because they subscribe to Rick Owens's cultural vision and ethos (gothic, austere, monumental, sweeping, etc.). Is that a stretch on my part?

Say what you will, Rick has become a brand that straddles both sides of the market - the avant-garde (for lack of a better world) and the bourgeois. It is not his fault though that Anna Wintour loves him and it's not Raf's fault that Cathy Horyn loves him.

I have no problem with Rick's clothes because I can relate to Rick's worldview as expressed in his aesthetic. This is why I don't wear DSquared - I cannot relate to it.

So, we are back to the problem of authenticity. I never said that everyone must be authentic, I simply prefer those that are because I can find points of connection with them. I cannot like everything, nor do I want to like everything (thus my paragraph about editing).

Why this is so important and such a touchy issue has a simple answer - culture is a part of you and when your cultural choices are criticized, your whole being is criticized.

I very much agree with the last paragraph. However let me point out, once again, that your cultural capital is not only about what you consume but mainly about how you combine the different cultural products (books, furniture, garments, food, travel, etc.) together and provide an appropriate narrative for that consumption. In other words, in that specific rick+rappers discussion, you are engaging in a game of distinction to establish who can rightfully take the spoils from consuming Rick.

As for Rick aesthetic it is also about camp, androgyny and even cross-dressing, american streetwear, Rock'roll/glam. A lot of these things do go fittingly well with this new breed of more tortured rappers while others would go with eccentric fashion homosexuals. One thing is sure though, name all that Rick stands for and NONE of it can be related to a 30something bourgeois intellectual like me and I own a few leathers and other Rick stuff. Isn't it a lot more ridiculous to see me wearing dunks than A$Ap?

[shah]

name all that Rick stands for and NONE of it can be related to a 30something bourgeois intellectual like me and I own a few leathers and other Rick stuff. Isn't it a lot more ridiculous to see me wearing dunks than A$Ap?

i can think of one way some rick relates to you. it has to do with architectural ruins ...

[Fuuma]

i can think of one way some rick relates to you. it has to do with architectural ruins ...

I think I broke my pinky last night, drunken ruins are very Rick...

The truth of the matter is that what we relate to aesthetically doesn't have to be in direct reference to our own experience.

[Faust]

What about campy, decadent, street, etc.? Surely at least as much of the vision/ethos as those qualities that you mentioned?

I think a lot of women wear Rick because he provides easy and comfortable basics....it's less about cool (whatever we mean by that) and more about flattering and appropriate to the moment. Those leather jackets and draped cardigans have become classics in their own right, so it doesn't surprise me to hear of them paired with a Chanel bag.

So do plenty of other designers. Why Rick?

[several_girls]

I think you confused me with someone who cares about what celebrities wear. I was not the one to pass judgement - in order to pass judgement I'd have to care in the first place.

I agree with you: yes, it is true you don't care! Carelessness often produces such cheap judgments as, "Kanye is a sewage cultural backwater."

You reacted to my initial comment that they wear this stuff because it's cool. Given their IMAGE, the thing I had to go by, I don't think this was an unreasonable assumption, an educated guess, actually.

It was not the only thing you had to go by. There are plenty of interviews; is it not possible to accept A$ap at his own word? There is no need for inferencing or guessing when the guy gives his own reasons.

I am assuming that ASAP bears no relation to Rick's body of work because his body of work has an ethos that is very different from Rick's. (To give you a music analogy I have given before, I cannot see how privileged kids from wealthy suburbs could relate to Rage Against the Machine's music, yet a ton of them listened to it. Because it was cool.)

On this point I disagree strongly. I found the title of this thread to actually be inverted. Rick Owens had already been hip hop for a long time, now hip hop has finally recognized itself in Rick. I made this point on page 2 in greater detail, but it only seems Patroklus bothered to respond to it. Secondly, Rick's body of work explores so many different, at times divergent aesthetics I find it hard to say Rick has a single ethos. So what is his comment on menswear, then? Is his ethos crossdressing, or as he said for the latest collection "masculine swagger"? Is it decay and roughness (crust) or dandy and formal (limo)? He has done it all.

On your RATM analogy, I do not think it entirely apt. On one hand, I think the idea that wealthy suburban teenagers love RATM to be extraordinarily appropriate. RATM would love to be listened to by those in a very privileged position, they are presumably the most impressionable "center" of wealth and power in American society. Second, someone's wealth does not determine their political views. It might be the case that I am myself a wealthy white teenager from the suburbs, but I actually loathe my social condition, and resent my parents and the community for their values. What music would speak to me better then RATM, then? Third, it occurs to me you might be thinking of Paul Ryan. In his case, its simply a mis-match of what constitutes the "machine." For RATM, it's wealth, for Ryan, it's the state. What remains a common factor between them all is emotion, feeling, rage. Alienation from society and a skepticism towards prevailing norms is common to all human experience, I would not find it troubling to see RATM listened anywhere on the globe.

I assume that they wear Rick because it's cool and not because they subscribe to Rick Owens's cultural vision and ethos (gothic, austere, monumental, sweeping, etc.). Is that a stretch on my part?

For the point made above, and other reasons, I actually think that's a stretch. You interpret it to just be raw social-climbing or status symbols. Sure this occurs in the more vulgar examples like LV monogram bags, but how can you tell that the person has 0 appreciation for the jacket's shape, quality, design or look? You could work a Rick leather into an outfit that had no other Rick pieces and it could still look good. On the flip side of this coin, your cynicism is only self-serving. "We buy the same thing, but I am the true customer." I do not see what gives you the authority to make exegesis on Rick's clothes and how they should be worn. There is no gate as the Penny Arcade strip explained, and it is even more silly to pretend to be the gatekeeper.

Say what you will, Rick has become a brand that straddles both sides of the market - the avant-garde (for lack of a better world) and the bourgeois. It is not his fault though that Anna Wintour loves him and it's not Raf's fault that Cathy Horyn loves him.

And are these markets exclusive? I take your division to have a normative quality. IE: "The bourgeois do not consume fashion in an authentic way. But I am a member of the avant-garde, who are loyal to Rick." Bourgeois in the Marxist sense was a function of income, not their devotion to aesthetics!

I have no problem with Rick's clothes because I can relate to Rick's worldview as expressed in his aesthetic. This is why I don't wear DSquared - I cannot relate to it.

This I have no real problem with. I understand it. Don't fully agree though... (a. hard to make the jump from aesthetic to worldview b. what if i like someone's clothes but don't agree with their worldview (hugo boss ca. 1930s anyone?) or c. isn't someone's worldview expressed elsewhere than their aesthetics? for example, isn't Rick's worldview also expressed in his refusal for advertisement, or Boris' worldview expressed in the labor he either does himself, or the firms he chooses to source production? worldview comes out in many more ways than clothes)

So, we are back to the problem of authenticity. I never said that everyone must be authentic, I simply prefer those that are because I can find points of connection with them. I cannot like everything, nor do I want to like everything (thus my paragraph about editing).

Here again you conflate people and things. When you talk about "liking everything," that is different than saying you cannot like everyone. In order to decide who you like and don't like, you pass a judgment on them. In this instance, you write off A$ap, Kanye, the bourgeois, and likely many others.

Why this is so important and such a touchy issue has a simple answer - culture is a part of you and when your cultural choices are criticized, your whole being is criticized.

But in this case no one is criticizing SZ, it is SZ that is criticizing "hip hop". Your answer would suffice if A$ap was actually talking trash about the cultural choices of SZ, but he isn't. Your logic only remains true if the bare fact that the hip hop community adopts Rick, Raf, et al, gets interpreted in such a way that SZ feels criticized.

[laika]

So do plenty of other designers. Why Rick?

Why not Rick? Who else would you say consistently offers a range of good leather jackets that, as I said above, are really classics at this point? Is it really so hard to believe that many women would find his mix of edgy and elegant so appealing? Isn't it possible to appreciate something aesthetically or viscerally without relating to some kind of "worldview"? Is a purely aesthetic response not an "authentic" one?

Really good posts from Fuuma and s_g.

[Shucks]

laika: no, focusing only on esthetics is a very disconnected approach to reality. thank god we have people here on sz who make an effort to understand and contribute to some deeper narratives and are not just trying to latch on to some simplified (and down-dumbing) brand images nor merely concerned with (parasitically) using part of an esthetic to spice up a 'look'. and thank god some of the same people also do their best to tell both brand name-dropping hypebeast rappers and blogger fashionistas to go die.

it's time to start enforcing that one-month ban a bit more thoroughly i think. i'm ALL for making a gate and that we close it right now. in fact, let's delete this whole thread while we're at it and ignore the shit out of this shit.

[Faust]

Why not Rick? Who else would you say consistently offers a range of good leather jackets that, as I said above, are really classics at this point? Is it really so hard to believe that many women would find his mix of edgy and elegant so appealing? Isn't it possible to appreciate something aesthetically or viscerally without relating to some kind of "worldview"? Is a purely aesthetic response not an "authentic" one?

Really good posts from Fuuma and s_g.

It's not too hard to believe (although the "edgy" part definitely is), it's just boring. I don't see how this "relationship" can extend beyond merely finding something pretty, which is quite banal (the way kitsch is pretty).

Who else? Alexander Wang.

[Hiddenaway]

laika: no, focusing only on esthetics is a very disconnected approach to reality. thank god we have people here on sz who make an effort to understand and contribute to some deeper narratives and are not just trying to latch on to some simplified (and down-dumbing) brand images nor merely concerned with (parasitically) using part of an esthetic to spice up a 'look'. and thank god some of the same people also do their best to tell both brand name-dropping hypebeast rappers and blogger fashionistas to go die.

it's time to start enforcing that one-month ban a bit more thoroughly i think. i'm ALL for making a gate and that we close it right now. in fact, let's delete this whole thread while we're at it and ignore the shit out of this shit.

Wow, I'm not even quite sure how to respond.

I agree with your statement on the members here and how passionate they are about the clothing they buy but I find it very hard to agree about people who enjoy the aesthetics of clothing being "disconnected from reality." However, it is funny reading the above and then looking through Rick's recent offerings, which consists of ipad sleeves, toad leather phone cases, baseball caps, and striped socks. The argument can be made that all of those things somehow fit into his overall 'vision' but that's a stretch. Appreciating something because of it's looks, I believe, is one of the many ways clothing is to be judged. To get rid of that, is to just simply buy something because of the name on the tag, or you like how cool naked Rick Owens' sculptures are.

I'll leave with this excerpt from Dave Eggers;

No is for wimps. No is for pussies. No is to live small and embittered, cherishing the opportunities you missed because they might have sent the wrong message.

There is a point in one's life when one cares about selling out and not selling out. One worries whether or not wearing a certain shirt means that they are behind the curve or ahead of it, or that having certain music in one's collection means that they are impressive, or unimpressive.

Thankfully, for some, this all passes. I am here to tell you that I have, a few years ago, found my way out of that thicket of comparison and relentless suspicion and judgment. And it is a nice feeling. Because, in the end, no one will ever give a shit who has kept shit 'real' except the two or three people, sitting in their apartments, bitter and self-devouring, who take it upon themselves to wonder about such things. The keeping real of shit matters to some people, but it does not matter to me. It's fashion, and I don't like fashion, because fashion does not matter.

[kunk75]

i laughed out loud, really

White middle class creative professionals can relate to drop crotch pants in a much more meaningful way than any rapper ever could.

[kunk75]

RATM are frauds as well, existing for years on big record labels as part of a capitalist money making machines. They remind me of Consolidated. "Fuck corporate america, now buy our tee shirts for $30 on your way out."

Fumma is making a lot of sense. Middle and upper middle class white people pissing on rappers for wearing poopy drawers and high tops with oversized tees is really next level navel gazing, it's like elvis and the rolling stones being upset blacks for playing the blues.

[Faust]

Have you ever been to a RATM concert? Tees were always $10-$15.
Back in that day the only way to be heard on the mass scale was to be a part of a big label. I see what you are doing though - when you sell out it's nice to have company and not feel lonely.

[laika]

Fumma is making a lot of sense. Middle and upper middle class white people pissing on rappers for wearing poopy drawers and high tops with oversized tees is really next level navel gazing, it's like elvis and the rolling stones being upset blacks for playing the blues.

Yes. Funny how the "gatekeepers" are conveniently ignoring this.

Faust, Alexander Wang is too trendy and youth oriented for the woman you are describing. And who cares about boring (in this context)...one can be boring and banal but still be "authentic," I imagine.

Shucks, you and Faust really belong together.

[Faust]

So do you and Fuuma

And Rick IS trendy.

[kunk75]

Tell that to jello biafra, 7 seconds and virtually any other punk or hardcore band. Tom Morello making a quick buck with chris cornell was real subversive.

and what exactly did I sell out? I had nothing to sell.

Back in that day the only way to be heard on the mass scale was to be a part of a big label. I see what you are doing though - when you sell out it's nice to have company and not feel lonely.