SPRING 2017 MENSWEAR: LONDON REVIEW

Three of the best at the on-going London shows:

J W Anderson

Whimsical, joyful and relevant in these rather depressed, cynical times - a jolt of inspiration.

Margaret Howell 

Elegant, thoughtful, desirable clothes with hidden wells of sensuality. Cuts out the social media noise instantly and suddenly you see, and think, clearly.

E Tautz

Rumpled academic meets Talking Heads - more deliciously desirable clothes that will stand the test of time.

MAKE IT RIGHT THE SERIES - REVIEW

I hadn't planned on being hooked to Make It Right The Series (MIR), because its trailers had promised a formulaic follow-up to the hugely successful (and iconic) Love Sick The Series (LS) which ended last year (also by Thailand's Mcot Station). As predicted, MIR has hewed lazily to the boys' love genre conventions, casting a few extremely pretty boys to enact what is less of a plot than a trail of tropes: Confused Uke (Fuse) ensnaring Passionate Seme (Tee); Nerd (Book) falling for Younger Flirt (Frame); Out&Proud converting Straight-for-Now, and in these combos, throw in some third parties (in Thai, these are called "third wheels"); and then stir in a few disposable girls into a sweetly fluffy meringue of a story (MIR, like LS is adapted from a Thai online novel). 

After watching the first four episodes (subtitled in English by fans), I can assure you that the story is just as twig-thin as any of the cast's scrawny arms. It's hard not to compare MIR with LS, as the two are almost identical - I would go so far as to say that MIR is the production team's attempt at getting LS right, ironing out some of its wrinkles and creases and smoothing out the edges (for instance, they made MIR a lot more racy, with sex in Ep 1, and lots of skin - whereas LS muddled along and it wasn't till towards the end of Season 1 before Noh and Phun actually got down to business). However, because of its similar territory, MIR suffers in comparison, possibly because it comes later, and thus carries the weight of having few/no surprises/ novelties. It's obviously mining a formula (as many are doing - even the recent Chinese webseries Addiction was inspired by LS) that had proven successful - I hope that I will be proven wrong in due course with a compelling twist or two - but I'm not holding my breath.

Of course what's really working, and credit should be given where it's due, is the excellent casting as usual. The four main leads (plus quite a few more in the supporting cast) are spot-on heartbreakers (but then Thailand is like a factory that keeps churning impossibly cute boys out - I need to take out all my savings and move there pronto!) that give MIR its sparkle and life. Again, this is like LS - you don't really watch it for the plot, but for those coyly seductive moments and intense looks of longing that only the really young can carry off - that's the heavy lifting there. The rest is merely working out the various moments/situations where Peak, 16 (as Fuse), Boom, 15 (as Tee), Ohm 15 (as Frame) and Toey, 20 (as Book) these looks can dart those deadly stares into the camera or wrap their nubile limbs fetchingly around each other. For now, Tee has emerged the real star - he's like the new Captain isn't he? Tee represents a new type, very Chinese-looking with the most sculpted of noses and full juicy lips. 

I think fans are watching because MIR fills the void that LS left - it's a pale shadow of LS, but it's a familiar shadow. MIR has to make it on its own merits to matter, and to prevent any more comparisons to LS. 

4 FASHION STYLES: GOOD CLOTHES, BAD CLOTHES, WELL OR BADLY WORN

Good Clothes, Bad Clothes, Well Worn, Badly Worn are four factors that can result in four possible variants of style. Who are you in this scheme of style?

1. Good Clothes Well Worn:

Attractive, well-fitted clothes worn with confidence and deliberation

eg Hillary Clinton

After a long career of failures of dress, Mrs Clinton are now well-tailored classics of simple design and strong colours. She will never look great, but she looks as good as she can possibly look.

2, Bad Clothes Well Worn:

Ill-fitting, or ugly clothes that nonetheless project the desired image. 

eg Justin Bieber

Often quite strange, borderline-trashy, badly fitting, clothes but warn with great charm and confidence, contributing rather than subtracting from, his effect. 

The President and the Strange Blue Dress/Belt

3. Good Clothes Badly Worn:

Attractive, good quality and fashionable clothes worn without sense or understanding.

eg Michelle Obama

Mysteriously acclaimed dresser, Mrs Obama has a dream wardrobe budget; Unfotunately, she's assembled some good clothes that sit uneasily on her person and her role. Her hair is increasingly desperate and she seems to harbour delusions about her actual size.

4. Bad Clothes Badly Worn:

Ill-fitting, ugly, poor quality clothes worn without care or taste.

eg Madonna. 

There is no shame in this category when you mean to be in it, but Madonna doesn't. 

Spring 2016 Review: TOUGH AND TENDER LOVE

And three’s a trend: the rough with the smooth at Burberry Prorsum, Calvin Klein Collection and J W Anderson. By Daniel Goh

For 2016, the traditionally pretty Spring season is shaping up to be full of challenging concepts. One of the most important trends is for the uncompromisingly unpretty, even in the slightest and most delicate items.

Tough and Tender 1

Calvin Klein Collection:

An example of this is the Calvin Klein slipdress – a hallmark item at this label, the 1990s slipdress has undergone a rethink by designer Francisco Costa to become something a lot more intellectual, with its waft and tenderness undercut by gashes hanging and straps flying, uneven hems and unseductive slits. The severe and violent vibe goes on in the intellectual (though fluid) suits (look 22), the destroyed black dresses (look 28) and knits (look 29). Softness is always served with a side of aggression, sweaters have holes and are clawed to shreds, cuts and slits mark gowns.

In this collection, the ambiguous hard/soft contrasts of leather with silk in the same colour is an ambiguity that throws you off and makes you uneasy. The palette is severe and even the floral prints look unsweet, abstract and almost cosmic.

Spring 2016 Review: Burberry Prorsum

Tough and Tender 2

In almost a textbook illustration of this trend, the talented Christopher Bailey sent out yet another commercially-viable yet always interesting collection which seems to ask “how do you make lace, crochet and old lady florals not matronly and twee?” The answer is to contrast with everything opposite, of course. Lace babydolls are matched to quite utilitarian trenchcoats, clompy sandals decorated with chain, a backpack to go with almost every look, night or day. Gold military braid and embroidery – which is masculine, not pretty, is always paired with the delicate and sheer – fragile cut-work, beading, and lace. The florals look geometric rather than romantic or painterly. While the dresses are seriously delicate, outer wear is usually bold, adorned with buttons. All looks are styled with unlikely stompy sandals, rendering the bare legs unseductive. Always with the presence of metallic elements, a chain or buckles from a bag, a bold belt, studs on sandals, the looks have an aggressive gladiatorial vibe, and recall the bold work of Gianni Versace in the 1990s.

SPRING 2016 REVIEW: J W ANDERSON

Tough And Tender 3

Henri Matisse, Woman in Blue, 1937

A romantic version of the tough/tender trend can be seen in the courageous and confident collection by J W Anderson – how new and fresh to bring Edwardian dress to the present! Prim leg-o-mutton sleeves were exaggerated to such extremes that they ceased to look feminine, becoming instead aggressive. The constrain of structured little black bras and corset type belts, worn on the outside, with a bold squiggle of a Vivien Westwood print is again unseductive and aggressive. Ruffled Edwardian tea dresses, a couple clearly recalling Woman In Blue in the paper doll outlines, are truncated, worn with bloomers showing, look rakish if anything. Lace, little ruffled collars, bowed sleeves and legs, the pretty style touches that make up a Matisse woman, is always undercut with something quite angry, like an insistent zipper, or unfriendly proportions, with a cross hatch of two messenger bags. Anderson's vision is thought-provoking and idiosyncratic - and for me, always memorable.

Vivien Westwood dress with Matisee print, 1982

PASSAGE OF TIME: Hermes's Must-See Exhibition

Becoming Again, Ran Hwang’s meditation on transience, is a fitting last exhibition at Third Floor, before the gallery closes for a one-year refurbishment. Launched in 2006, Third Floor is a non-commercial art space that promotes contemporary art by commissioning and presenting works in the Hermes flagship store on Orchard Road. Next month, the iconic Liat Towers flagship store closes for a one-year refurbishment. 

It is fitting then, that the last exhibition to show in that space, South Korean artist Ran Hwang’s Becoming Again, is a meditation on time. For indeed the 10 years since the inauguration of Third Floor (located on the third floor of the store) have flown by in a flurry of shows including works by Takashi Kuribayashi (in conjunction with the Singapore Biennale 2006), Laurence Dervaux, Heman Chong, Flavia Da Rin, Luis Terán, Rei Sato, Ming Wong, Yeondoo Jung, Ranjani Shettar, Christine Ay Tjoe, Shinji Ohmaki, Joo Choon Lin, Nadim Abbas and Aiko Tezuka. 

Becoming Again is an immersive multimedia one-work installation, comprising a curved wall of Plexiglas that forms a shimmering screen studded with buttons arranged obsessively as a conflagration of cherry blossoms. As you watch, the blossoms glow with projected, shifting lights, changing colour and shapes in a kaleidoscope of moods; a golden phoenix unfurls its wings to the left and majestically flaps through the cherry forest to the right before a climax of golden showers. The artist, Ran Hwang, swathed in a grey dotted shawl, guides us through the work, a meditation on the cyclical nature of time, the brevity and fragility of life, which is represented by the evolving flowers, first chastely pale, then prettily pink, then autumnal gold, then fading into the void as the cycle begins again. The mythical phoenix – a symbol of grace, infinity and renewal – echoes the transient nature of existence that is at the core of Hwang’s work.    

Why buttons?

Beauty can be found in the most ordinary, and the humble button is a metaphor for the ordinariness of human existence. I want to encourage an appreciation of the simple things we overlook in the frantic course of everyday.

Your work uses a feminine vocabulary, with materials from fashion such as buttons, pins and needles.

My first memories of art were of my father avidly painting Chinese inks and I must have been five or six, very introverted, grinding his ink stone for him. While he painted, I would be drawing by his side. I spent all my time drawing, all through school and one day I started making paper dolls and making Barbie dresses for them and all of a sudden I found myself with friends! I became very popular, and from that time I became very interested in fashion.

When I went to study in New York, I scoured the flea markets and I would find old Chinese pieces of embroidery, and that fascinated me. I found many beautiful used items that were abandoned, and that was when I first discovered the beauty in found objects. I began to use those to create mixed media collages. My first job in New York was interning at an embroidery company. One day in the office, I found a stash of abandoned buttons in a corner. These lifeless, worthless abandoned objects were like me. I was working for a living in the day and could only work on art at night and I identified with the buttons. And so I decided to resuscitate these beautiful discarded buttons as works of art. I began to work more and more with buttons and now I make my own buttons using a traditional Asian method. Each button is made of seven layers of paper, then varnished, made just for me.

You also utilize traditional Eastern imagery.

My dad, a writer who passed away more than 10 years ago, and who never got to see my works, had influenced me a lot in this. His paintings were traditional scholar’s subjects of bamboo and plum blossoms, etc. And after I moved to New York, I began to feel the pull of tradition and history, especially embedded in vintage objects. And if I need to categorize my work, then I’m a Post-Modernist; even if the visuals may be figurative and traditional, but the techniques and medium are contemporary, so this isn’t exactly traditional.

When did you decide that you would be an artist?

I never wanted to be anything else! Right from the time that I was drawing Barbie dresses with my father, I knew I would be an artist. Now I have a permanent team of 25 working for me full time, in both Seoul and New York. I have so much to tell after surviving some really challenging personal times. I’m really grateful that I can create the art that I do.

How does Singapore and this collaboration with Hermes make you feel?

Before I arrived, I thought I would only find buildings here and I was surprised to find so much greenery! There’s also this combination of old and new, the organic and the man-made that I find really interesting. The Third Floor-Hermes space was inspiring because the sides consist of glass. This potentially makes the projected image different during daytime and night. Due to the low ceiling, the work also fills up the exhibition space, so the viewer solely focuses on the work and gets overwhelmed by the scale of it.

Becoming Again is on till 31 January 2015.  Time: 10:30 am to 7:30 pm daily. Third Floor - Hermès, 541 Orchard Road, Liat Towers. Free admission

         

  

EXODUS: GODS AND KINGS VS THE HOBBIT: BATTLE OF THE FIVE ARMIES MOVIE REVIEW

This is probably the only movie review that will come right out and say that the much maligned Ridley Scott epic Exodus: Gods and Kings is a much better movie than the generally praised The Hobbit.

Frankly, Exodus is simply more beautiful and finely made than The Hobbit, which feels for the most part like a glorified wuxia movie with too big a budget. You half expect to see Dato Michelle Yeoh leap out out from the cave looking gnarled and bloodied to battle an Orc played by Donnie Yen. (Of course Donnie Yen will die first; As you know Ms Yeoh has survived a disastrous string of flops and will outlive anything.)

Exodus promised to be a stunning epic, and delivers. The CGI and art direction are lushly beautiful in an Old Master way, at once stunning and considered, whereas in The Hobbit, it looks like CGI, at once too real and not real enough - you're never not aware that the actors are wearing a tonne of hair, makeup and polyester (for instance, you're never not aware that Gandolf is wearing a pointy hat made of that Christmas stocking felt - it's too real and not real because that Christmas stocking felt simply looks too NEW), or that the lumbering monsters are created by an army of artists clicking feverishly on a computer. The CGI monsters are summoned up for no reason, felled by any stray pebble hurled by a Hobbit, or elbowed by a Dwarf. They never feel menacing, just numerous.

I will never quibble with the casting of Christian Bale - in anything - even if he isn't his very best in Exodus, Bale is still always strangely watchable. I have no preconceived notions of what Moses should be like, and I reckon if there was a Moses, he would be heroic, human and conflicted, as portrayed by Bale. I also think that portraying the Old Testament God as a willful child is poetic and appropriate. 

SPRING 2015 MENSWEAR: THE NUDE MEN UNCOVERED

Bottega Veneta

Calvin Klein Collection

This is a lesson in styling: If you look beyond the pale pink/ beige monochrome of these very different collections, you can see that the looks break down to pretty much the same items; I think the germ of the idea of athletic wear is there, also the idea of underwear, the referencing of women's lingerie but styling makes it all so different, and that includes the choice of model. Bottega Veneta's has a ballet dancer's langour, while Calvin Klein's has more of a pornstar appeal.

Bottega Veneta

Calvin Klein Collection

WHAT IS NORMCORE? DO YOU CARE?

NOTES TO THE NEW HIPSTER

Is there to be no end to the indignities to suffered by the chronically clued-in? As the new “Normcore” trend breaks into our collective consciousness, here are some notes on how to be, or not to be.

1. Firstly, don’t worry too much about precisely defining Normcore; Just take it that a silly fashion director somewhere decided to spell Hipster with an ‘N’, and go on making your lunch. It’s only fashion jargon and you have a living to make.

2. The guiding principle for fashion jargon seems always to be on a need to know basis and you, a mere non-fashion professional, need only know this: The fashion pendulum has swung yet again, and now, the epitome of cool is the anti-cool.

3. Normcore is about affordable, bland, functional anti-style. It’s conventional and nondescript drag, stuff you can pull out of your dryer drum anytime and wear with devastating buff nails. 

4. Examples given of this trend seem marked by white sneakers, dull zip-ups and not-skinny jeans, in other words, stuff you wore when you were in NUS. A Normcorer dresses like an undergrad seeking to blend in, rather than stand out. 

5. According to "experts", Normcore is a reaction against the aggressive coolness that relies on vivid difference (studded trophy platforms, K-pop type synchronized dancing, nail art) to a post-cool of authenticity and sameness. To me, this “sameness” thing is troubling. If all around you are synchronized dancing in studded and screaming prints, the Normcorer will not fit in – she will stand out in her discreet denims, plaid shirt-dress and trainers. Is Normcore grunge spelt with an N?

6. The horribly termed Normcore was coined by K-HOLE, a New York-based trend forecasting group. They define it as “a desire to be blank.” But this concept and its assumption that the average hipster isn’t blank would immediately present a challenge for those for which this is relevant. What if you were already blank, as so many hipsters naturally must be? What if you didn’t fundamentally have any identity or persona at all and studied fashion in Perth? What if shopping at Givenchy actually gave your life purpose? Then how do you adopt the Normcore?

7. Who are you if your clothes are brand-free and logo-less? Wouldn’t you be a complete nonentity without a single label signifier? Since Normcore has nothing to do with flashy fashion and more to do with character, it would present a particular challenge to those who would most want to embrace it. The Singapore fashion scene is after all filled with an inhuman army of the vacuous. 

8. So. Instead of scratching your head over every last trend, perhaps you should take a cold shower and then go out there and do something useful with your life.

A version of this piece appears in Style: June 2014.

AUDI FASHION FESTIVAL 2014: IS SINGAPORE A FASHION HUB?

The Audi Fashion Festival this month kicks-start Singapore’s busy roster of fashion festivals. But do these retail-centric events make Singapore a true fashion hub? 

There are times when it seems the shows are staged just to make it harder for you to run your errands. If you have a legitimate reason to be in the mall, say to pick up your dryclean, or pop down to the supermarket to forage for food, there’s bound to be women’s magazine editor blocking your path and insisting that you look at how she’s balancing her Blackberry and Starbucks while clutching her trophy handbag and stumbling on her bizarre platforms. 

She can’t walk properly because she's not wearing her prescription glasses and can’t Whatsapp through her gigantic shades while simultaneously pretending there are street-style bloggers snapping at her heels. 

This caricature of a fashion creature is just symptomatic of the derivative nature of our fashion festival scene. They saw it on a blog, and then it slowly dawned on them that they could borrow that sample and toss it together with something from River Island. Same concept writ large: Our fashion festivals are retail events that have all the sound and fury of a real fashion week (read: season-making ones in Paris and Milan) signifying nothing more than our ability to furiously self-promote, and maybe sell a dress or two.  

Surely to be a truly influential fashion capital you need to show newsworthy, influential and groundbreaking collections and not just glorified trunk shows no matter how many red carpets you roll out for C-list celebs and “couturiers”? Peopling the front row with socialites dressed to attend a gala and “editors” whose only ability is shopping, at ticketed consumer events with warmish sponsored cocktails, does not a fashion hub make. It does make for a busy shopping mall, and a great hindrance to real shoppers but that’s about it – otherwise any city with a fashion week (and its attendant pretentious fashionista) can call itself a fashion hub. Bear in mind that places as far-flung as Mongolia and Dakar have fashion weeks too. OK, they probably do call themselves fashion hubs, just as their denizens have Blackberrys and Starbucks.

According to organizers, our shows are in part (a big part) staged for consumers who otherwise might not get a chance to attend a show in London, New York, Milan or Paris. In other words, our fashion shows are obviously ticketed entertainment — just like rock concerts or the circus (if it looks and sounds like a circus, then it probably is one). It is time that our fashion festivals take fashion seriously and promote the local designers and labels that need to be recognized by the tiny pool of influential international editors. We have the talent. We just aren’t pushing them enough. Originality, intelligence and creativity make fashion, not an ability to emulate and “recreate”. Zeal is wasted on pushing that lowest-rung recognizable name as if a gift was being bestowed on the city. So-and-so will close the festival at midnight after a heavy prolonged black-tie supper. Such and such a celebrity will grace the catwalk. How much was he paid? Really? Who cares? Anyone who cares about fashion, any professional whose business it is to care about fashion, would have seen the original show a few months ago, probably in sweatpants on his sofa.

For the rest, there’s Cirque du Soleil Amaluna. 

A version of this essay appears in the May edition of Style magazine. 

GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL REVIEW: 5 POINTS TO NOTE BEFORE CHECK IN

 1. The Grand Budapest Hotel, identifies Stefan Zweig, an Austrian novelist, as an inspiration (a contemporary of E.M. Forster from the early half of the 20th century). It uses a Zweig-like author as one of its three framing devices, which left me wondering if this was necessary - or just another cute style flourish in a movie composed entirely of cute style flourishes. Form is function in this (writer-director) Wes Anderson film. What is this manically-paced movie about? It is all about style, if it is about anything at all. 

2. It's a meringue of a movie, profoundly sweet and pretty, like one of those confections from the confectionery Mendl's in the movie. It's a heist and a caper, it's a whodunit too, with a body in the library, a butler (in this instance the protagonist, the pompous, mannered and perfumed grand concierge Gustave H, brought to life by Ralph Fiennes in a comic, sympathetic and droll performance), a missing painting, a jail break, a disgruntled heir, a gothic palace, and a guest-list of cameos. The whole thing is finely art directed and exactingly styled, reminding me of nothing so much as one of those big production Tim Walker fashion spreads.

3. Luckily the rather self-conscious thing is enlivened by wonderful little pieces of acting by the ensemble of cameos. These are studded like brandied cherries in an all-cream wedding cake, densely sweet on sweet, with a bit of tartness. We see them all through the extraordinary pragmatic eyes of Zero, the Indian lobby boy (Tony Revolori): I was riveted by a sequence where a chain link of grand concierges of the crossed keys make telephone calls. Tilda Swinton is amazing and memorable (she looks like amazingly like Dame Vivien Westwood here); Adrien Brody adds a darkly sleazy note 

(always!); Jeff Goldblum is surprisingly good (because 

almost unrecognisable, I suspect); Willem Dafoe is really 

rather funny as the ruthless roughneck; Edward Norton is a 

handsome policeman: there are many others including 

Saoirse Ronan, Bill Murray, Jude Law, Owen Wilson, Jason 

Schwartzman, etc. They are uniformly eccentric and 

wonderfully good.  

4. For all its polish and distancing nostalgic style, this work 

still feels human. It has a warmth and heart because it is also 

about rather real human frailties and heroic qualities.

I think also that it is made with great passion and that does translate onto the screen.

5. Lush visuals aside, the movie suffers from a rather abrupt ending (not that it's a short movie). The various threads seem to be knitting themselves into a bigger picture than it really is. As it is, the movie seems to be a tribute to "CUTE" and "CHARM" and that's sufficient I suppose in these rather dark and charmless times.