Archive for June 4th, 2008
Get it out of your system
Posted on: June 4, 2008
Dior is sick. But most people don’t know much about their men’s label, which is very gender bending and mostly monochromatic, giving that arrogant, yet confident fashion feel. eluxury finally has a decent selection of the Dior Homme, for too long they just had some simple black and white pieces which evoked a man’s approach to classic early eighties woman’s fashion but now they have a more comprehensive selection.
They got me over my unhealthy obsession with D&G and other 90s couture. A while back I had made a lot to do about how all of these older labels, whose designers had long passed on even before American sportswear labels like Polo Ralph Lauren were popularized, had been bought up by these mega conglomerates and were sort of homogenizing fashion. My opinions have changed over the years though, because they had the business sense to give those labels some perspective and actually made them a bit more competitive, removing some of the more artistic high-end fluff and bringing them a bit down to earth.
Thing is I’m not really feeling this years collection though. With labels like Dior a lot of times it is about which hot designers they have working there. For example Tom Ford and Marc Jacobs were the real reasons people wore Gucci and Louis Vuitton back in the day. I don’t know what success Tom Ford has these days with his own label but a lot of people were still with Marc Jacobs when he focused on his own label.
Their denim was a lot better back when I first found Dior on eluxury. Take for example these two examples of bleached denim.
They’ve got the eighties bleached denim thing down, if you can squeeze into them these skinny jeans are for you. But I don’t know if people are really ready to bring bleached denim back though. Everyone has tried to bring them back rather unsuccessfully, and perhaps it may take a label like Dior to bring some long needed chic to them.
On the other hand these dark jeans are right on point.
The perfect jeans for those old enough and with the disposable income to do the * right, the way it is meant to be done. These aren’t any fly by night True Religion or Paper Denim and Cloth but a real classic.
On the other hand some stuff about Dior will never change. For example check out this mesh jersey tee, for that rock and roll feel they’re known best for.
You can’t really build anything around that; for one it’s so Versace and Helmut Lang back in the 90s it isn’t funny. So there you have it. Unfortunately Dior is still letting eluxury handle the bulk of their online shopping and I really wish they would just take that over entirely and slowly but surely build a serious presence like Louis Vuitton has done. You know sometimes you can be a bit too exclusive, forcing everyone to take day trips to New York or Paris to get your stuff. So eluxury is great for those that want to take it for a test drive without making too much of a serious commitment.
Classic old-school Nautica
Posted on: June 4, 2008
It’s that time again. I have to admit, if I had my money right I’d cop some of these classic Nautica shirts updated less nineties and more timeless this time around.
Listen, the nineties are right around the corner. The eighties didn’t have much of a run, and at this time people are either going to go deeper into it or go for that natural progression, which was the nineties. I’d get ahead of the curve and go for that classic nineties look now because quite honestly, unless you had the money to afford Dior and got that monochromatic early pre-minimalist look right, or went for the loud Cooji look, you sort of missed out anyway.
The other part of the eighties revival is that the young tween, adolescent and twenty-something crowd completely ruled the revival and left most of us older heads with little room left. It wasn’t really meant for us at all, your best bet was to go with the first choice; the monochromatic revival dominated by black and white striped and solid looks paired together with glimpses of red and yellow. A lot of us were still stuck trying to update the turn of the century metrosexual look. Just skip all of that and go for some of the updated stuff that is available now, Nautica had a definitive look but wasn’t able to carry it through the decade because Tommy Hilfigers massive advertising and marketing campaigns sort of knocked them down a few pegs.
These days though Tommy Hilfiger is diminished and has made itself into a niche label that is more high end, with an unusually small footprint in the department stores. Calvin Klein isn’t likely to expand their efforts any further than what they have because they are very tightly run under the Van Heusen umbrella. They’re not as scatterbrained and all-over-the place as they used to be.
Those days of Calvin being ran like Pierre Cardin with the multiple licensing fees and quality control problems are over. Which leaves you at a crossroads; you can shop online for overpriced Hilfiger at $150 for a pair of jeans or $90 for a shirt, which I doubt most people will do, or you can find something else to do. Nautica may be something else to do until a real nineties revivalist label comes through, unless people go back to wearing Ralph Lauren …
okay so the skinny jeans didn't work out for me so well ... 
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