Flashback: Look Back At Men's Fashion In 2015

WORLD WORE ‘15

Look back in wonder at the year in men’s fashion trends and themes in this flashback. By Daniel Goh

This has been a big, dramatic year in fashion; Not only did men’s fashion thrust forward decisively in looks that completely broke from the past, it zoomed ahead without nostalgia or sentimentality for eras past, and menswear is finally freed to move into the 21 Century. 

Doherty, whom no fashion can now save, looking very much like Stephen Fry.

If Only Pete Doherty Was Slim

There was a sense of déjà vu when Pete Doherty, now a pudgy uncle at 36, appeared at Saint Laurent’s show in Paris last October. The former rake thin Rimbaud of rock (and former squeeze of Kate Moss), who was the “thin-spiration” behind Saint Laurent’s seminal Spring 2015 collection, appeared to be twice the size (and age!) of his former self (albeit still sweaty, unwashed and clutching a pack of cigarettes like a ball of used tissue). Nonetheless, the skinnier than thou models, squashed into frayed jeans and stovepipe leather leggings, a flail of beaded chiffon or a shrug of shrunken jacket recalled the poet/punk of The Libertines in his fey days. If only he were thin again.

In this hit collection for Saint Laurent, Hedi Slimane seemed also to be citing his own gloriously slim self, and by the way celebrating the marginalized, the freak, the fragile, the queen, the poet, making a case of relevance for the disagreeable, disgruntled, and preternaturally sour. That such a stance actually strikes at the heart of, and is a comment on, the happy, shiny hordes of Instagram, the hordes that have clicked their approval in waves of “Likes”, seems to be lost on the Social Media generation. This can only prove that the Social Media generation is dumb and lost and that Slimane is beyond cynical.

(Spring/Summer 2015 examples: Saint Laurent SS 1 8 16 17 38 46 53 61 65; Lanvin SS 8 10 14 23 38 43)

Part 1 of 4 - Part 2 will be posted up later

Young Man With A Flower

For Valentine's Day and for Chinese New Year, I give you this quite rare 1981 oil portrait by Gauguin. So pretty!

PASSION FOR MONSTERS: NOTES

Parco dei Mostri (Garden of Monsters), a renaissance garden an hour's drive from Rome.
"Ogni pensiero vola" - "all thoughts flee".

Vincino Orsini, a warrior duke and poet, started arranging the garden in 1552.
Located outside the small town of Bomarzo, northern Lazio.
Villa d'Este at Tivoli.
Cerberus, a three-headed dog who guards the entrance to hell.

Demetria, goddess of the harvest.
Terme dei Papi, papal thermal baths outside Viterbo
"il sacro bosco" - the sacred wood

LET'S BE ECCENTRIC!

JAY CHOU: HOW ARE YOU?

I didn't immediately fall in love with this Jay Chou song but on repeated hearings, in DH's car, in one taxi after another, I got hooked, and decided to upload it onto my iPod (yes, I have two!) and iPhone (obviously, this technical feat deserves a long blog posting all by itself). I've been listening to it ever since. Here's the quite-strange video. The wonderfully gifted Mr Chou has suddenly gone quite matured, so this song, for me, has the added sadness of lost youth.

Isn't it great though that this video has the lyrics translated in English? It immediately lifted what could have been merely another superb sentimental ballad into something memorable, quite up there with any of Mr Chou's best. There's metaphysical poetry in the lyrics - unexpectedly, movingly used. In my mind's eye, Jay is still the youth in this picture

I've said this many times before, and written about this a few times: Jay Chou's appeal, for me at least, is because he seems the ideal Ah Beng (none Singaporeans may not understand this genre of masculinity). He is the soul of the Ah Beng. His singing is like the sweet and strong essence of 10,000 Ah Bengs rolled into one keening, sobbing, sighing tune.

The Morning is Already Ancient

"He snaps on the electricity just before daybreak. For twenty five years he has not lived in this country, though up to the age of eleven he slept in rooms like this - with no curtains, just delicate bars across the windows so no one could break in. And the floors of red cement polished smooth, cool against bare feet.

Dawn through a garden. Clarity to leaves, fruit, the dark yellow of the King Coconut. This delicate light is allowed only a brief moment of the day. In ten minutes the garden will lie in a blaze of heat, frantic with noise and butterflies.

Half a page - and the morning is already ancient."

Michael Ondaatje, Running in the Family

不悲 不喜/neither sad nor happy

你見，或者不見我
我就在那里
不悲 不喜

you see, or do not see me
i am there
neither sad nor happy

你念，或者不念我
情就在那里
不來 不去

you miss, or do not miss me
affection is there
neither coming nor going

你愛，或者不愛我
愛就在那里
不增 不減

you love, or do not love me
love is there
neither adding nor subtracting

你跟，或者不跟我
我的手就在你手里
不捨 不棄

you follow, or do not follow me
my hand is in your hand
neither leaving nor abandoning

來我的懷里
或者
讓我住進你的心里
默然　相愛
寂靜　歡喜

come into my embrace
or
allow me to live in your heart
quiet loving
silent rejoicing

- 傳 六世達賴喇嘛 倉央嘉措 [1683-1706] 作﹔ 待考

This really lovely poem was the alleged work of the Sixth Dalai Lama, Tsangyang Gyatso (1683-1706)

There Will Be No Peace

Though mild clear weather
Smile again on the shire of your esteem
And its colours come back, the storm has changed you:
You will not forget, ever,
The darkness blotting out hope, the gale
Prophesying your downfall.

You must live with your knowledge.
Way back, beyond, outside of you are others,
In moonless absences you never heard of,
Who have certainly heard of you,
Beings of unknown number and gender:
And they do not like you.

What have you done to them?
Nothing? Nothing is not an answer:
You will come to believe - how can you help it? -
That you did, you did do something;
You will find yourself wishing you could make them laugh,
You will long for their friendship.

There will be no peace.
Fight back, then, with such courage as you have
And every unchivalrous dodge you know of,
Clear in your conscience on this:
Their cause, if they had one, is nothing to them now;
They hate for hate's sake.

W.H. Auden, 1956

The Poems

He Said She Said

"Perhaps in order to write a really great book, you must be rather unaware of the facts. You can slave away at it and change every adjective to some other adjective, but perhaps you can write better if you leave the mistakes."

"I have known many poets here who have written well - very fine stuff - with delicate moods and so on - but if you talk to them, the only thing they tell you is smutty stories. They take things for granted. They know they have to write, then, well, they have to suddenly become rather sad or ironic."- Jorge Luis Borges(1899 – 1986)

He Said She Said

"A poet must take as his material his own language as it is actually spoken around him. The music of poetry, then, will be a music latent in the common speech of his time." - T S Eliot
That would mean Singlish to you and me.

Paradise

A Book is a Garden

A book is a garden,
an orchard,
a storehouse,
a party,
a company by the way,
a counselor,
a multitude of counselors.
- Charles Baudelaire

In Trust

You go from me
In June for months on end
To study equanimity
Among high trees alone;
I go out with a new boyfriend
And stay all summer in the city where
Home mostly on my own
I watch the sunflowers flare.

You travel East
To help your relatives.
The rainy season's start, at least,
Brings you from banishment:
And from the hall a doorway gives
A glimpse of you, writing I don't know what,
Through winter, with head bent
In the lamp's yellow spot.

To some fresh task
Some improvising skill
Your face is turned, of which I ask
Nothing except the presence;
Beneath white hair your clear eyes still
Are candid as the cat's fixed narrowing gaze
- Its pale blue incandescence
In your room nowadays.

Sociable cat:
Without much noise or fuss
We left the kitchen where he sat,
And suddenly we find
He happens still to be with us,
In this room now, though firmly faced away,
Not to be left behind,
Though all the night he'll stray.

As you began
You'll end the year with me.
We'll hug each other while we can.
Work or stray while we must.
Nothing is, or will ever be,
Mine, I suppose. No one can hold a heart,
But what we hold in trust
We do hold, even apart.
- Thom Gunn (1929-2004)

As The Poets Have Mournfully Sung

As the poets have
Mournfully sung,
Death takes the
innocent young,
The rolling-in-money,
The screamingly-funny,
And those who are
Very well hung

- W.H. Auden

You Meet Someone

You meet someone.
The other.
You meet the other.
You are polite. The other is polite.
You eat each other a little.
After his departure you are slightly damaged.
And what do you do then?
Do you repair the damage and do you become again what you were?
Or do you go on as you are?
Damaged, but lighter.

From A Glimpse of Nothingness by Janwillem van de Wetering [1931-2008]

Syllabubs and Jellies

"Though we eat little flesh and drink no wine,
Yet let's be merry; we'll have tea and toast;
Custards for supper, and an endless host
Of syllabubs and jellies and mince-pies,
And other such ladylike luxuries."
- Percy Bysshe Shelley

Amelia

People will tell you where they've gone
They'll tell you where to go
But till you get there yourself you never really know
Where some have found their paradise
Other's just come to harm
Amelia, it was just a false alarm

- Joni Mitchell

Spring

To what purpose, April, do you return again?
Beauty is not enough.
You can no longer quiet me with the redness
Of little leaves opening stickily.
I know what I know.
The sun is hot on my neck as I observe
The spikes of the crocus.
The smell of the earth is good.
It is apparent that there is no death.
But what does that signify?
Not only under ground are the brains of men
Eaten by maggots.
Life in itself
Is nothing,
An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs.
It is not enough that yearly, down this hill,
April
Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.
- Edna St. Vincent Millay

Weekend Reading List

Did the weekend fly by without me noticing? In honour of Valentine's Day, sadly eclipsed by CNY, I shall dedicate this weekend to reading to Nancy Mitford's The Pursuit of Love, published in 1945, and still in print today. It's this or Shakspeare's famous sonnets. Yes, I love you too. XPainting of Nancy Mitford by Mogens Tvede.