As some of you know I really dig fashion. It always seems to shock people when they are out with me that I am picking out the shoes people around me are wearing, or occasionally being overly critical of someone else’s outfit. I don’t even really know where this passion sprung from, possibly from growing up with my mother and my sister and all her friends. Lots of Vogue’s and Marie Claire’s around, and I guess I just soaked it up. Years later, now really, I discovered that I was incredibly influenced and moved by the world of fashion: by the dedication and artistry involved in haute couture, by the impenetrability of fashion, by its otherness. It’s such a distinct world, and over the past few years as I’ve met more and more people involved in that world, whether its working with small fashion lines, or occasionally dating a fashion editor, my interest was piqued. I don’t know why but fashion, both the personal (what i buy, how i dress, what i covet) and the impersonal (the world of fashion, the art and history, the intense scrutiny, the business) somehow redound on my own creativity. I get really inspired by it, so I finally thought I would officially join that community.
To that end, I started a fashion blog a few months ago, and decided to use Tumblr as the medium. I maintain several tumblr’s and one of the things I noticed was that the fashion and style contingent on Tumblr was very high. Maybe it is the ease with which people can share and re-share other peoples visual goodies, maybe its a community thing, but the fashion world has completely taken to Tumblr as a platform. That’s not to say there aren’t some high profile fashion sites and brands that aren’t down with Tumblr and have bigger budgets and technological knowhow to build something truly unique, but for a certain kind of influencer, a certain kind of aesthete, Tumblr was, and is, the way to go.
Up til now, my fashion blog has mostly included images and items that I’ve found personally captivating. But as is my wont, that usually isn’t enough and I like to dig deeper into the various worlds that I find myself interested in. It’s happened in the food world, it’s happened in the art world, and now, its happening in the fashion world. Once I survey an industry, gathering intelligence for a period of time, I’ve gotten quite good at unearthing the critical touchpoints, the fulcrums if you will: those areas where the business, creativity and passion all seem to come together.
One of the easiest ways to do that is to find people on the front lines. I’ve often found, probably due to my experience with my mother and her retail operation, that retailers in any industry are great sources of knowledge. They have to be for a number of reasons, foremost being that their livelihoods depend on them being as knowledgable and up to date as possible with the goings-on in their industry. On top of that, it is often shopkeepers that have the most passion, dedicating their lives to helping others dress well. This is true across many industries.
Anyway, I recently interviewed a series of mens retailers around the country and will be sharing those interviews over on my Tumblr: Here is an excerpt from the first interview I conducted with Darren Gold of Alpha, a men’s store in West Hollywood helping discover new brands and unabashedly staking a claim in the world of men’s fashion. Here is an excerpt:
What brands or lines do you feel are absolutely essential right now?
Riviera Club, Gitman Brothers, Life After Denim, Onia, Copy, Original Paperbacks, Splendid Mills. I’ve made a real switch lately to some smaller brands that have it going on as opposed to the usual suspects that can be found at every men’s store and are in GQ every single month. I love the element of discovery.
Any brands that you’ve discovered that you believe deserve more attention? Why?
Publish, a local LA brand that started as more of an action sports line, but is so fashion sometimes I think he is way ahead of the curve!
What is one trend in men’s fashion you could do without?
Plaid. Done and Done. But it’s not going away. When I shopped for Fall I couldn’t believe how much of it was still being shown. Companies that had only done T-shirts before were showing plaid wovens to jump on the band wagon. I think my customer is way over it.
You can read the rest of the interview here