Journal de bord

[Photo Aischrolatreia.]

Messieurs, cet été, osez la transparence !

Les “blogueuses mode” n’ont aucun intérêt par définition, elles ne causent que de trucs de filles.

Par contre, les hommes parlent de questions essentielles à la vie comme “Le blazer, droit ou croisé ?”.

Je n’ai pas honte de l’avouer, j’aime les “blogueurs mode” (surtout ceux qui gravitent autour du mouvement “Chap”, qui a récemment célébré ses “olympiades de l’inaptitude athlétique et de l’excentricité, avec emphase portée sur le style et le panache au détriment des prouesses sportives”).

Et je suis tombé raide amoureux de Pierre-Antoine Lévy, qui officie sur “For The Discerning Few”. Quel style, quel port, quelle allure !

Jeremy Hackett: “Look 33.”

Lightweight wool morning coat in black; striped wool trousers in black and charcoal; city collar cotton shirt in white; silk dogtooth check tie in black and white; linen waistcoat in sand; linen waistcoat in sand; black umbrella.

J’adore. Le “morning dress” (jaquette), quoi de plus beau pour un homme…

(Qu’en pense mon sartorialiste préféré ?)

Je suis tombé par hasard sur le blogue de Julien Scavini qui ravira les hommes en quête d’élégance.

Place au crossplay.

“Crossplay is exactly what you think it might be, cosplay that involves crossdressing.”

[Source image.]

The hipster underground is also where musical retromania intersects with the related phenomenon of vintage chic. From the fad for collecting quaint manual typewriters (either as decorative objects or to actually use) to the continuing boom for vintage clothing, there is a striking parallel with underground musicians’s fetish for obsolete formats such as vinyl and cassette and with the antique-like trade in early analogue synthesisers. But the trend that is most emblematic of our time-out-of-joint culture is the vogue for digital photograph apps such as Hipstamatic and Instagram, which give snapshots the period look associated with cameras and film from the 70s and 80s. (See also ShakeIt, an app that mimics the Polaroid and works faster if you actually shake the iPhone.)

What does it say about our era that so many people think it’s cool to place these pre-faded, instant-nostalgia filters on the images that will one day constitute their treasury of precious memories? When they look back to the early 21st century, their pics will look like they were taken two or three decades earlier, summoning up a long-lost era they don’t have any reason to feel nostalgic about.

Just like retro video games such as Mega Man 9 that simulate quaint 8-bit visuals via a modern console, these retro-photo apps embody a central paradox of contemporary pop culture. We have all this futuristic technology at our disposal, endowing us with capabilities that would have seemed fantastical in 1972, but it is getting used as a time machine to transport us into yesterday, or to shuffle and share pop-cult detritus from long ago. We live in the digital future, but we’re mesmerised by our analogue past. Hipstamatic-style apps also raise another question: when we listen back to the early 21st century, will we hear anything that defines the epoch? Or will we just find a clutter of reproduction antique sounds and heritage styles?

The Guardian, Simon Reynolds: “Total recall: why retromania is all the rage”.

Plaque en porcelaine, XIXe s., 20 x 15 cm. Estim. 1 500 - 2 000 €. Lot 537.

Vente au profit de la recherche sur le V.I.H. et de la lutte contre le sida - Collection Yves Saint Laurent et Pierre Bergé - Deuxième vente. Du 17 au 20 novembre 2009.

Le Figaro : “Collection St-Laurent-Bergé, dernier acte au Théâtre Marigny”.

En parlant de Saint Laurent, Tom Ford, designer texan botoxé tendance “dépoitraillé-velu” reconverti dans le cinéma, se laisse aller à l’aigreur avec l’élégance qu’on lui connaît…

But being at Yves Saint Laurent was such a negative experience for me even though the business boomed while I was there. Yves and his partner, Pierre Bergé, were so difficult and so evil and made my life such misery. I’d lived in France off and on and had always loved it. I went to college in France. It wasn’t until I started working in France that I began to dislike it. They would call the fiscal police, and they would show up at our offices. You are not able to work an employee more than 35 hours a week. They’re like Nazis, those police. They’d come marching in, and you had to let them in and they’d interview my secretary. And they can fine you and shut you down.

Pierre was the one calling them. I’ve never talked about this on the record before, but it was an awful time for me. Pierre and Yves were just evil. So Yves Saint Laurent doesn’t exist for me.”

Ford didn’t buy anything from the YSL estate sale in February 2009. “God, of course not. I have letters from Yves Saint Laurent that are so mean you cannot even believe such vitriol is possible. I don’t think he was high when he wrote them either. I just think he was jealous, and Yves and I were friends before I took over the company. But then we began to move the company forward and were very successful…he just became so insanely jealous…that phase in my life just doesn’t exist anymore.”

The Advocate, Kevin Sessums: “Tom Ford Tells All”.

Juste pour faire plaisir à Samantdi… Dans mon garde-robe, il y a queue-de-pie, smoking et costume de ville, je choisis quoi ? Après avoir vu mes tourtereaux de Séville, je me pose des questions.

(P.S. La photo ridicule date de 1993…)