WLTM: clashing patterns for eyewatering good-times
This summer I’m gonna make like a Versus Calyspo Queen on a bad acid trip and wear all my patterns at once.
McQueen is dead, long live McQueen.
My A-level fashion/textiles teacher was a massive Alexander McQueen fan. I got put in his textile/fashion design class having not got my first choice of graphics (which was massively oversubscribed by the time of my late registration) and after having been passed on from the head of sculpture department who washed her hands of me in dismay as I refused to touch clay or wire in favour of ‘designing’ club flyers in my sketch book.
So there I was in fashion & textiles, again with the wire but now encouraged to structure bodices with it using recycled packaging. Our teacher told us not to bother thinking about a career in fashion unless we studied at Central St. Martins after Foundation. He then told us none of us would get in anyway (with this kind of coursework set, it seemed he was engineering our failure) and suggested we should aim low to avoid disappointment. He projected his own shortcomings onto this eager class who believed his narrow vision to be gospel. He believed himself to be the last word in creation of aesthetic beauty and the very font of original ideas. In fact, he was frustrated, mean and discouraging to his class, and took most of his ideas (it would appear) from Blue Peter.
As a compromise instead of making a dress from persil bottles, I developed my flyer design into fashion illustration (copying from the photos in Vogue) in my sketch book. It was when I did a project on Alexander McQueen for my coursework did I strike upon the topic which made Mr.Textiles soul blaze. He was into this dude, big time and jealously discussed him with me when I intermittently showed him my work. His bitter St. Martin’s-word-to-the-wise speech makes sense now as though he saw himself as something of an un-discovered McQueen gathering dust in the sixth form textile department.
He gave me the kind of mark for that piece of work that smacked of a man who would not allow himself to be outdone on his chosen subject. Even if I had attached a piece of that season’s collection to the work with a letter of authentication he probably still would’ve given me the lowest mark he could.
In the end I dropped out of A-level Art all together, amongst other things I was railing against my formative years as an über geek. His approach to deflating the dreams of his students was representative of the department who, it seemed, were not looking to nurture creativity but ensure it would not outshine their own. This only served to feed into my own lack of self belief at that time, fueled by a penchant for weed smoking and not turning up to class. At least I was 17 and had time to turn the corner, my teacher then was already a lost cause.
I thought about him when I drove past the sombre McQueen offices in the 55 today. How he drew an unsaid parallel between himself- a narrow minded, unfulfilled, small town boy- and Lee McQueen- a visionary, accomplished, not-such-a-small-town boy- without seeing the obvious ironies. I’m sure Mr. Textiles had a lump in his throat today, a mournful waste to mirror his own. 
We Have Band (and another anecdote).
Darren Bancroft and I used to work in a bar on Kingsland Road. We enjoyed the odd tequila and tonic together and spent our Sunday afternoons sitting on the street outside the bar making each other laugh with our weak impressions of people we knew or swapping anecdotes (true or half true) on the Shoreditch locals that passed by, usually tales of friends of friends of friends with just a grain of truth, created solely for our own amusement. From this misty eyed account, you’d be forgiven for thinking this was a vague, rose-tinted episode in my oft-recalled distant past. In fact, it was just the the beginning of last year but life moves fast in London town and much has happened since. Darren then, had recently joined forces with Tom and Dede, friends of his from his days as an intern at EMI, they’d just started kicking out dance pop jams as We Have Band. As it turned out, this went rather well. After a short run playing east London’s club nights, they were caught on French label Kitsune’s radar (who released their first single), played SXSW, won the Glastonbury Emerging Talent competition and haven’t looked back since. Last New Years Eve they played the 333 on Old street. This New Years Eve they’re playing the Pyramid festival in Melbourne, Australia. Love that.
This is their latest offering Honey Trap as remixed by Le Matos. The original is available for free download on We Have Band’s website, but I think I almost prefer (no offence WHB) this remix for the Housey piano riff and its Acid-Disco dark-depths-of-the-dancefloor feel.
Go see them live, they are very good. They are playing Kill Em All’s spectacular on 11th Dec with Hercules and the Love Affair and some other friends of mine the equally fabulous Stopmakingme and Disco Bloodbath.
I-D Parade
I used to buy I-D magazine and the Face (before it folded) when I was at school, mostly to cut out the pictures but also to prove to myself that I knew what was ‘cool’ on the inside, even if I looked like Harry Potter on the outside. But then I discovered other lame props that can be obtained to promote an air of ice-cool and make people think you’re ‘ok’ to invite to parties like smoking fags and drinking booze and being a bit more like everyone else. It also dawned that perhaps cutting things out of magazines was actually probably a lot less cool than looking like a child-wizard. Anyway, the booze thing worked out pretty well, I got some friends and gave up the magazines. I haven’t stopped looking at fashion magazines but I’m certainly less obsessive and can handle throwing them away once they’ve been drained of their contents. However, the last time I picked up I-D was when they did an ‘Icon’ issue about Agyness Deyn, which smacked of a bandwagon being mounted and I lost interest. Anyway, I read I-D for the first time in a while the other day and was suitably impressed again. The shoots and styling were quite stunning, I loved the old-school supermodel cover and there was a strong relationship in the fashion stories between high fashion and influential looks from ‘the street’ without either losing its authenticity. My collecting days are over, but the ghost of the Deyn issue can at least be laid to rest.
First time I heard this I was like ‘ouch, album track’. But it’s a grower. Some good looks: big fan of Bey’s Bettie Page fringe at the end and the scraped back snake-plait at the beginning. And some bad looks: Lady G must’ve upset the make-up artist cos they’ve done a shocking job- she looks like she should be serving behind the bar in the Queen Vic circa ‘85. And the cheap hair extensions? What happened to the sharp bob a la Paparazzi? Bad scene.
Layer up. Get your glow on. A/W ‘09 = good times.
Getting up for and returning home from work in the dark are, admittedly, joyless experiences. As are guaranteed rubbish weather for 6 months and being sneezed on the tube daily. In fact, one could argue this time of year to be a bleak and miserable one, dished out by a particularly malicious unseen force so we might remember to be humble in the presence of sun for two days between May and September. On the other hand, you could also argue, in this country the weather sucks more or less the full 12 months, getting up for work can be painful in any season and gross people frequent the tube all year round. These things removed from the equation and replaced with a bumper crop of good times: Halloween, Bonfire Night, Christmas, New year, a month of doom in January, Valentine nausea in Feburary etc, we can surmise that Autumn/Winter is the best time ever when it rolls around. And is much easier to dress for than Summer.
