All Fashion is Fiction

The complete writings of Serg Riva

Visit us at sergriva.com or why not buy a paperback?

Delightful Caution: You are about to read a fictional autobiography of the world’s greatest aquatic couturier. If you’re confused, the NYTimes spills the beans here. Otherwise, hold on to your hats…

The shallower it goes, the deeper it gets.

—jb

All Fashion is Fiction

The complete writings of Serg Riva

FRIDAY, AUGUST 25

Interstitial Space

The interstitial space between the fabric and the woman is the essence of all drape. In cutting a dress, you construct this space and nothing more.

Swimwear, however, is another story. It is a lot harder than it looks to consistently nail the trends year after year when your métier is essentially four triangles of fabric held together by string.

THURSDAY, JULY 10

Life Drawing

Swimwear is our only connection back to the idealism of ancient Greek statuary. It has replaced drawing in our arts education.

We needn’t study anatomy—we instead study each other’s bodies at the beach.

FRIDAY, JULY 11

Costume Gala

I ran into a friend of mine at the Superheroes costume gala at the Met. She was wearing one of my one-piece swimsuits as the basis for her Aquagirl look. She wore a white vintage Dior skirt layered on top of an electric-orange slip, which you could just see through the ancient, diaphanous Dior. She finished the look with the most beautiful hand-made shoes from her cobbler in Barcelona: bright yellow soles and high heels.

She said nothing to me as she walked by, but her slight smile verified every suspicion: exactly the type of recognition I prefer.

SATURDAY, JULY 12

Memory Lane

My first bikini design. I was still in school. I hadn’t yet realized that fasteners could be just as fascinating as the choice of print, fabric, or cut. I also hadn’t figured out yet how to finish a design. See how everything looks eighty-five percent of the way to a good idea?

It makes me smile, however, that I included a beach bag and Sabrina heels—even at that early stage in my career I knew that fashion is fiction, and telling a story is as important as choosing a silhouette. The architecture would eventually come, the understanding of sculpture would eventually hit me—it just hadn’t yet. I was young and going wherever my instincts took me.

MONDAY, JULY 14

Straps

I worked on a new design for a client last week and for a while wasn’t sure how we would find our way out of the struggle.

I caught a glimpse of my assistant in the mirror looking truly pensive. He was very concerned, as was I, about the shoulder straps: too thin and they dig in, too wide and no one smiles as you walk by. It was a dilemma. We went with medium-thin straps comprised of tiny golden braids—but the look was not complete. Something was missing. Then I got an idea.

I called in a long white shirt from Charvet (Why not? They dressed both JFK and Marcel Proust). The cut was so long it looked like a nightshirt.

When it arrived eight hours later, I turned it inside out on the dress form and pinned it tight along the side seams. I added a tie as a belt, stitched it all up (or rather, my assistant did), wrapped the whole package in a custom-built leather and linen box, filled with additional gifts such as extra-dark chocolate cigars, a carved wooden rabbit, a collection of miniature sunglasses and a Dalida CD, and presented my client both the swimsuit and the matching belted shirt-dress swim robe. She was thrilled.

She loved tying and untying the tie-belt.
I must remember to call about the shoes she wanted…

TUESDAY, JULY 15

DV

“FAINT, FAINT, IF ANY EYEBROWS…” …is one of my favorite Diana Vreeland memos.

Recently, though, I’ve become more and more interested in thick but well-shaped brows. As a swimwear designer, how important is matching the arch of the eyebrows to the shape of the bikini top? I think very important—the two should speak to each other like siblings in bunk beds. Here my fit model turned around to look at me right after I told an inappropriate joke. Don’t worry, she smiled a second later. Look how thick her eyebrows are! Facial architecture worthy of a Pritzker.

MONDAY, JULY 21

Varsity Belt Buckle

How much does your high school style experience stick with you a decade or more past graduation? Recently, I went running on a high school track that reminded me of my hometown. The track looped around the varsity football field like a belt with the scoreboard as the buckle.

I ran for a while listening to “Maria Callas: Voice of the Century”—an all-aria greatest hits collection. At a certain high note, I cut across the field and ran towards the end zone. I leaped up into the air and grabbed the crossbar on the goal posts.

I did not expect to get all the way up, as I am old and the goalposts are high… but I did. My hand wrapped around the yellow bar and I hung by the post for a second and then swung back down to earth. Grabbing the post made a satisfying sound.

I did not play high school football, so the memories I felt filling my mind were not my own but were from somewhere else: the collective mythology of the experience of others.

Style works this way. Who has not felt the glamour of others transferred by means of a garment?

My mind drifted to swimwear; can there be a varsity element in the fasteners?

Jewelry replaces trophies in our mental treasure chests.

TUESDAY, JULY 22

The Language of Difference

Military style: we are all soldiers of culture. Two things are important here: the billowing box pocket and the slight roll-up on the pant. Both add fabric to the design and cover up more of the form, but a little covering creates narrative. Too much exposure becomes dull, like reading the last page of a mystery novel before you’ve earned the pleasure of the punch line.

Not that swimwear is pulp. Swimwear is the mark of our progress. Nothing is more natural than to swim in the nude, but to do so would be to deny all critical distance, all language. With swimwear we name the unmentionable to mark the continuous as different. With difference, we can break the flow of experience into nouns and adjectives.

The ammo belt here does not contain bullets; it contains custom cosmetics—lipstick, eyeliner, sunscreen, blush, concealer, etc.

Initial sketches included a zippered pouch for cash, but the utility of it all seemed futile.

WEDNESDAY, JULY 30

Wet Blue Oxford

I have been fairly calm about design lately, nothing has been too urgent. However, after cutting that shirt into a swim-robe, I can’t stop thinking about men’s shirts for women’s swimwear. It keeps me up at night; I am lying in my bed, looking up at the ceiling, thinking of things more grand than fashion (such as the origin

of the stars, or the reason some combinations of musical notes sound harmonious and other do not…) when thoughts of re-cutting men’s shirts creep back into my mind. And the fabric! I’ve always said it’s the fasteners that make the swimsuit, but I find myself stuck on fabric and structure. Have you ever seen a properly structured bra? It is an architectural miracle. I told myself I’d post only extra things, little asides in this book, but I am overwhelmed with the urge to discuss actual inspiration. I am inspired by the look of a wet blue oxford. Imagine it re-cut, structured, and properly backed. It just seems like a little piece of perfection. Have you felt a wet oxford shirt? It feels strong like canvas, but soft like a well-worn garment. It feels substantial, like a piece of sailing equipment, able to hold a seam. I’ve been rolling the idea of this re-cut shirt on my mind like a favorite piece of candy I want to last and last. I will start sketching soon.

THURSDAY, JULY 24

Rot

My assistant was looking out over the deck of our seaside atelier. “Rot,” he said, and pointed to a section of deck that connected to the side of the building.

The downside of having a facility on the beach is that you are endlessly fighting a war with rot. Water comes from everywhere, seeps into your building and slowly eats away at your foundation, like a nagging regret or a lost word you used to know in another language but can no longer remember.

The upside of working near the water is the opportunity to go kite surfing whenever the wind is up, the ability to test right outside your doorstep, and the constant soothing sound of waves at night.

SUNDAY, AUGUST 10

From the pool to the velvet rope…

I am constantly asked to design something to wear over a swimsuit. Usually I come up with some type of robe: an easy tie-in-front, easy-to-put-on-easy-to-take-off type of covering. Sometimes I’ll make a variant of a wrap-dress. Once I made a towel/halter terry-robe combo. It really depends on the client.

Recently I had a client (I love LA) who insisted I design something she could wear straight from the pool to a night out. This sounds strange, but makes sense in Los Angeles. You are at a hotel, by the pool, you run into an old friend/new acquaintance who is casting a new Nancy Drew-esque mini-series, which takes place in LA and stars five women who are smart, sexy, single and excellent crime-fighters. You hit it off and get invited to a party at some other place than the pool by which you are currently lounging. The party invitation is fleeting; there is no time to go home and change. Your career moves at the speed of your wardrobe, so you need some sort of over-dress you can just throw on and go.

Evidently, this type of fashion situation happens every day in LA. After it was explained to me, it all made sense. I immediately thought octopus! Only the cuttlefish is more able to adapt to the whims of a visual environment, with a skin that is one large living display surface. When the eye becomes the skin, you are in Los Angeles. An octopus is almost as talented as a cuttlefish, and is clearly more elegant, strong, and mythic. For her wrap, only an octopus would do.

Under the octopus dress she has on a strapless bikini top and a low-profile (nothing that would stick out or cause bumps) bikini bottom. The shoes were her choice (yes, I would have done something slightly different… more gold, less tan, but her choice also works…)

You can’t see it, but I also designed a mini-clutch with the same fabric, gold octopus clasp, and bright pink/fuchsia silk interior. It’s in her left hand, hidden behind her body.

MONDAY, AUGUST 11

Swimwear Design Truism

What makes my job easy?
Basically I decorate legs.

A bout du souffle

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 13

Running into the Interstitial Space

Late one night after the party, we re-enacted scenes from our favorite movies. Everyone got into a performative mood. We started filming, making little movies of our “scenes.”

Here’s me doing the end of Breathless. Luckily we were on the beach, so the fall at the end didn’t hurt too badly.

SUNDAY, AUGUST 17

Working rope

I went to a party in LA.

I’ve done a little costume work in my time, so I still have a few friends in television and movies, even though I don’t officially live there anymore. A friend showed me the new swimwear for the 90210 remake. We had a good time tracing the references. I’m no longer in show business, so now when I work in LA, it is to create custom swimwear for people who spend more time poolside than anywhere else. Lounging by the pool is more than just relaxation in LA, it is a way to conduct business, dream up partnerships, learn bad news, build trust, expose uncertainties, and in general, re-pane the fragile glass house of fame.

As for LA fashion, this summer the look was white-hot trainers with white canvas or leather high-tops all around: from the men who worked the valet to the women who worked the sidewalks wearing white caps twisted to the side, from the men wearing matching white summer suits in the dark and ridiculous VIP sections of summer dance clubs to the women wearing vintage Thierry Mugler dresses while driving immaculate 1981 white Cadillac convertibles down Melrose Avenue, a white high-top matched every outfit.

The swimsuits were white as well, white with gold fasteners. I had several clients request miniature gold lions as fasteners, although I still believe my octopus clasp was the best of the bunch (and I’m sure someone, somewhere is working to beat it). Black and gold was also hot this summer. I actually liked the black better. I still think the best is full color (such as my octopus print), but if you are going achromatic, why not noir?

So white with gold or black with gold dominated the imagination of the poolside set—basically, anything that looked like it was stolen from the wardrobe of a Dynasty-era adult film.

Speaking of the octopus clasp, I was at a hotel pool with the same friend for whom I made the octopus dress. Let’s call her Tako. It was a long hot day in the sun; I no longer have the stamina for such endurance lounging.

The day was uneventful at first, the closest thing to a highlight was that we saw Scott Schuman shooting for GQ, but we didn’t acknowledge one another. I didn’t want to get caught on the Sartorialist site and have my identity revealed to every bikini- crazed beachhead that reads the Internet. It’s nice to at least have some partial anonymity, especially when you deal in luxury items with price tags that make even the jaded blush.

Tako ran into her contact working on the girl-detectives show. It made me realize that this was the reason we were at this particular pool in the first place. As a happy group, we had several rounds of drinks. We ordered French 75s (cognac, champagne, and lemon juice).

We went with the girl-detectives guy to a house in the hills for a party. This was all normal enough, except that a vodka company sponsored the party. I hadn’t seen a private party with a vodka sponsor before. At corporate events it makes sense, but at a private party this felt new.

We live in a very mediated age, but is it really worth the time and effort of a vodka company to set up shop at a small private party? I kept wondering what the back-deal was; was there a product placement deal in the works for the detective show? I spoke to the vodka folks (not the servers, who were models, but the guy in the back who kept “arranging” everything). He denied any deal in the works, but he looked at me squarely and asked, “Why? Do you think they are talking to other spirits companies about a placement deal?” And then more aggressively, “Whom else are they talking to?” He then flipped open his phone and started pounding the keys with his little stubby fingers.

I felt bad for causing trouble. After a while, the no-deal deal started to make sense. It was a part of a viral sneak attack, and a pretty good one at that.

Let me explain: not everyone at the party was famous, and eventually the non-famous guests would get up the courage to snap a picture of or pose for a picture with a famous person, usually using a camera phone. Non-famous people cannot help but to try to capture the strange crossover reality of our mediated existence by photographing themselves with a media illusion such as a big star. The easiest place to corner a celebrity for a picture is at the bar. After snapping a photo, he or she would almost always immediately start tinkering with his or her phone, and I’m sure the results were then instantly blogged and facebooked around the globe. These photos usually had a non-famous person, a famous person, and the bar in the background. Celebrities are trained to put down their drink for a photo, or to hide it behind the other person’s back, but there is no escaping an elaborate bar in the background. So from the spirits company’s point of view, placing the product in these images makes a lot of sense. It was viral, celebrity-endorsed, and word-of-mouth all in one gesture. It was genius.

The vodka company had gone all out. There was an ice sculpture carved to look like an arching whale’s tail. The sculpture had a groove carved into it so the drink could be poured down the tail and “cooled” as it flowed. A little section at the bottom, carved like Ahab’s Pequod, held the martini glass or tumbler to catch the drink. At one point, a drunken C-lister ran right up to the ice-sculpture and put her face directly on the end of the boat, hoping a drink would flow directly into her mouth. It is a trick she learned in college, she explained. Needless to say, after that, I did not partake of the whale’s tail.

Tako was well on her way to convincing one of the writers to re-write a certain section of the pilot. Her literary abilities are beyond that of most, even professional writers. This catches people off guard, as they expect someone so model-beautiful to either read nothing at all or, at best, flip through the pictures of Variety and Vogue.

I was cornered by the wife of the show’s producer. It turns out someone at the party knew I was a couture swimwear designer. Once it was leaked how much my suits cost, the producer’s wife had to have one. The dance of the potential client began.

I knew I was in trouble when she asked to show me a pair of shoes that, as she put it, only I could appreciate. Looking around at the party, she was probably right—with the exception of Tako, would anyone else really know that those particular shoes had been designed by Roger Vivier for Belle du Jour? They were a nice pair in mint condition. I was impressed.

When I looked up from the shoes, Mrs. Producer pulled the clasp at the back of her neck and let her Bob Mackie gown fall to the floor. I was shocked—not that she had disrobed, but that she still wore Bob Mackie. I know this sounds cold, but being a couture swimwear designer carries with it certain burdens, one of which is dealing with clients who cannot separate the mythic glamour and sensuality of your garments from the reality of you as person. I am interested in making people look fantastic; I am not interested in becoming a client’s lover. Women in Los Angeles can never get this straight. They throw themselves at me in the same way women in NY used to throw themselves at Frédéric Fekkai: shamelessly, brazenly, and theatrically. It is the stuff of gossip columns.

One nice thing about working with the wealthy is the quality of their undergarments. Mrs. Producer stood there in bespoke La Perla that must have cost the equivalent of a 2009 Honda Prius. It was her little way of letting me know she would commission

a swimsuit well worth making. I was in a pickle. At this point, to refuse Mrs. Producer would be the coffin nail in a chance to make a truly superb piece of swimwear, and yet to give in to her seduction would lead to trouble from Mr. Producer, from other clients expecting the same treatment, and from myself—lost self- respect is a hard button to sew back on the blouse of life. I smiled beautifully to Mrs. Producer and reached into my pocket, pulling out my phone. I called Tako and asked her to send in my special assistant since Mrs. Producer wanted to get measured. With my other hand I slowly pulled out a tailor’s measuring tape. Mrs. Producer started to smile.

Tako, of course, knew exactly what kind of trouble I was facing. She tracked down the most attractive waiter she could find from the bar and sent him in with two martinis. I took the drinks from him, gave one to Mrs. Producer, set the other one down, and then walked back to the waiter.

His name tag said “Happy 2 Help.” I removed it, gave him a long hard look, placed 200 dollars in his right hand then slowly handed him my measuring tape. I then turned back to Mrs. Producer and said, “Please meet my special assistant. He will take your measurements with, I trust, the most exquisite care.” The waiter knelt before Mrs. Producer and started to measure her.He was a bit haphazard, but at least he was measuring something. Mrs. Producer closed her eyes, and I quietly walked out of the room.

Back at the party I found my costume and prop friends from my old days in Hollywood. Jake had a lariat with him that he had just sourced for a western sequence in a sci-fi show. I took it in my hands. Having grown up on horseback, I held it in a way that explained my background; one cannot fake familiarity with a working rope. Mr. Producer walked over and started giving me a hard time about it, asking if I was some kind of cowboy. He was pretty drunk, so the conversation took a while. He also spoke in a way that demanded your full attention. I would have walked away immediately, but I knew Tako wanted to work on his show, and

I didn’t want to do anything to make him too mad. I explained a little about my youth, and that, yes, I did work cattle as a matter of course growing up the way I did, but that now I am a designer and haven’t been on a ranch in a long time.

Mrs. Producer walked over about then. She was flushed and slightly dazed. Mr. Producer looked up with a sense of immediate recognition and asked her what had happened to her. She explained that she had just been “fitted” for one of my bikinis, and then she laughed a little laugh to herself. It was a very uncomfortable scene. Mr. Producer was stumped, but angry. He knew his wife had likely cheated on him, but since he had been talking to me the whole time, he couldn’t figure out exactly what had happened. He blamed me however, that much was clear. He pointed at me with a sweaty fat finger and then swaggered over to the side of the house near the pool and shouted in a slurred and angry bark, “If you’re such a cowboy, then rope this!”

At this point, he flung open a gate and sent a gorgeous German Shepard charging for me. The dog was a trained attack dog of the highest pedigree. If I had been attacked on the ranch by, say, a coyote or a wolf, I would have simply shot the animal. Here, however, I had no gun, just the rope. Roping cattle happens from horseback, and usually with the cowboy chasing the cattle, not the other way around. It is a much different thing to rope an animal that is running towards you than it is to rope a steer from the rear. I didn’t have much time to react. This dog was beautiful, and I didn’t want to hurt it. Also, I didn’t want any of the other guests to get hurt. I laid the rope to my side and then whipped it up again in a single arching, looping motion. I made two turns of the loop above my head and then whipped it around a third time much faster in a single tight circle. I threw the rope hard and fast over the neck and right foreleg of the dog. I pulled back tight and cinched the loop snug across the animal’s chest just as the dog leaped to attack. I heaved to my right as hard as I could and swung the dog tumbling across the slate stone deck and into the pool. The animal crashed with a huge splash into the water and started swimming, unharmed, toward the edge. I handed the lariat to the producer on my way out the door.

Tako was waiting for me at the car. “You just can’t help it but play the cowboy, can you?” she asked. I did not respond, but instead slid into the driver’s seat of my pristine, silver 1973 BMW 3.0 csi and turned over the engine.

“Can I take you home?”
“That depends. Did you bring your rope?”

We both laughed and drove down off the hillside.

FRIDAY, AUGUST 29

High Stakes

Standing with a casual lean, one hip slightly higher than the other, Tako laughed through her oversized dark glasses while she held up an enormous raw steak. In her beach bag was a pile of groceries and two bottles of wine. The plan was to cook together on the high seas. We took the short walk from my back garden to the dock and loaded everything into the boat.

Normally we would have grilled in the open air on the rear deck, but I was in the process of installing a new earthen tandoor on the deck and the masonry work wasn’t finished. Our only option was to broil the steak in the galley kitchen. Everything was going well: the sun was getting low in the sky, our glasses were filled and refilled, and the other courses were prepared and ready to serve. The last thing to do was to cook the meat.

I placed the steak in the oven set to broil. It bothered me a little not to be cooking over an open flame, but I was excited to try broiling. It seemed like a throwback to a by-gone era, or the exotic option of people who do not enjoy living year-round near the beach. I had visions of a deep amber singe. I walked out of the kitchen to check the progress of the setting sun.

When I returned the steak was on fire. The oven was blazing. Every fire-preparedness drill raced through my mind—I turned to look for the fire extinguisher, while contemplating whether I should smother the fire with flour like a grease fire or douse it with water like a campfire. Tako came charging into the room. She pushed me out of the way with one hand while grabbing a roll of tinfoil and an oven mitt with the other. In a single, decisive, and elegant move she pulled out the flaming steak, smothered it with foil, and placed it neatly on a plate.

All of my solutions (fire extinguisher, flour, and water) would have ruined the steak. She both put out the fire and saved the meal. I was impressed to say the least. The steak wasn’t even badly burned. It was perfectly caramelized and medium-rare.

When I asked her where she learned to think on her feet like that, she explained that before she became an actress, she had gone through medical school. Part of her training was learning how to develop a multi-step strategy while under extreme time pressure. In an emergency, it is never just about the immediate problem, but also about the larger goal (save the patient). She put out the fire, saved the steak, and saved the evening.

As you can imagine, for the rest of the evening I was in very capable hands.

MONDAY, APRIL 06

Night Sailing

I could lie here forever and not even notice the sun coming up. How many days have I been on this boat? It is so much easier to see the stars at night when you are adrift at sea. Inspiration comes from imagination and experience. Here I’m gaining both.

Nothing relaxes like sailing at night. You can’t see it here, but I have a French 75 in one hand and a good book in the other. Wearing my favorite boat shoes always makes me swear like a sailor: courageous rhymes, animated metaphors, and unexpected comparisons.

When was the last time you read by starlight? It is a challenge, but it sets the mood wonderfully.

I have been debating the best course of action for days. I think it cannot be to make more commercial work simply for the sake of selling. My designs have always sold; why chase the ever- retreating horizon of someone else’s market?

Instead, I am taking aim at simply making the best designs I can. Everything else will sort itself out. So what if I am not a household name? Isn’t it better to be loved by a few than liked by all?

Where are the poetics in mass production? Even Andy Warhol got tired of that.

The rocking of the boat makes me think of the time my second assistant tried to tattoo himself while we were sailing. He ended up misspelling his own mother’s name. Distracting waves… all thoughts are drowned by the immensity of the sea.

THURSDAY, MAY 11

Orion revealed

Tako never quits. Keeping up with her is a full time job. I love the sport of love, but occasionally I have to rely on cunning to succeed, since I’m usually too tired or lazy to battle it out any other way. Tako claimed I couldn’t sew for men, so I turned my sewing needle on myself and made a pair of custom briefs. Did it work? Here Tako smiles at me posing in the sand. Later that night we invited friends over for a midnight kite-flying contest. We tied glow sticks on the kites and made our own constellations.

WEDNESDAY, JULY 08

The sun-bleached diaphanous boyfriend shirt

The Serg Riva sun-bleached diaphanous boyfriend shirt. Wear it over your swimsuit or wear it to bed, or wear it for breakfast with a sun hat and nothing else.

The generous neckline reveals the shadows caused by your clavicles and the subtle contours of your neck. Tapered sleeves fit snuggly around your upper arms—no sagging or too-perky short-sleeves making annoying triangles off of your shoulders. The well-loved fabric is sun-bleached on the deck of the Riva yacht and is diaphanous without being too sheer (is there such a thing?). It retains the structure of cotton with the softness of cashmere.

Jabez, Jr.

SATURDAY, AUGUST 08

Jabez, Jr.

After several days at sea, we stopped in port for a party. It was a weekend of sand, sun, old friends, and new acquaintances. One surprise was seeing Jabez, Jr., a childhood friend. He had always been like a younger brother to me, but I hadn’t seen him in a long time.

My father had taught agriculture on a humanitarian mission in Tunisia years ago, and his favorite student had been Jabez Sr., a former star footballer in Tunisia who had played for the national training team before his knee was destroyed. He ultimately went back to school to learn agricultural science. I remember as a child being delighted by the tricks he could do (flipping the ball backwards over his head at a full run, balancing the ball on his forehead while tying his shoes, etc.). His son was also named Jabez, and as kids we called him J.J. for Jabez, Jr. I know this sounds like a glamorous time, but it was actually quite hard for everyone involved. Jabez, Sr. was not wealthy (struggling, actually), and the agricultural needs of his community were severe. My own father was equal parts cowboy and educator, and so although I make him sound a little like an ambassador, he was more like a farmer with a passport struggling to understand a culture different than his own. It did inspire me as a child to think of the world as a global community rather than a series of countries. Jabez, Sr. did have a lot of style, too, even if he didn’t have a lot of money.

When we arrived at the party in a castle in the seaside hills, I was delighted to find out that the host wasn’t the up-and-coming band playing in the yard, but was J.J., who was now evidently a rather successful music producer. Although we weren’t anywhere near Tunisia, I recognized him the second we walked in.

Jabez, Jr. was standing near an antique pool table, not playing pool, but talking to at least three people at once. While everyone else was drinking Grey Goose or champagne, he instead choose to drink tea from an heirloom cup and saucer that he undoubtedly had borrowed from some cabinet he’d found in another room. He handed the cup to the nearly nude model who was approaching him for music-career advice, asked her to hold on to it for a moment, and then tried to sneak over to my side to surprise me. I, of course, had seen him coming, but was pretending I hadn’t, playing it cool so that when he turned to tackle me (acting like the little brother he always was), I ducked out of the way and he ended up tackling an ex-VC banker turned environmentalist who was just drunk enough not to feel the fall. J.J. laughed at the mistake, asked the man if he could get him another drink, then turned to me at last for conversation.

His father had died two years ago, and J.J. had been producing music for the last five years. His dad got to see him get his first song declared gold and had officially accepted his career choice, as long as he “stayed true to himself.”

We couldn’t just sit there and reminisce forever. J.J. found a ball behid the Chippendale and pretty soon we had a full scale soccer match staged in the garden. J.J. and I were on one team playing against the bankers, some guy who owned an airlines, a “fashion exec” and what looked to be actual athletes who appeared from nowhere once the game began. The band was our backfield; they were skinny, but fierce.

My second assistant was a decent mid-field man, I worked the left striker position, and J.J. was on the right. Several statues were destroyed (cheap copies, assured J.J.) and one goal was scored when the keeper wandered off with one of the more attractive wait staff. One of the bankers laid down and took a nap. The airlines guy dribbled off with the ball into another part of the garden. The band started playing while playing their instruments. No broken bones or lost teeth so, all in all, not a bad match.

The night ended with a call from Tako. Nothing was sweeter than the sound of her voice.

FRIDAY, AUGUST 14

Mr. Sourpuss gets to work

After the party we went back to work. Swimwear design isn’t all about playing in the sun or dining in moonlight; there is some work involved. We set up shop back on the boat and got to sketching out the new looks for the southern hemisphere— summer is just around the corner for everyone fashionable south of the equator.

Here’s a shot of me between drawing sessions. I was trying to work out a certain literary reference for a new trunk, but I didn’t want to be too serious about it.

My team was giving me a hard time, calling me Mr. Sourpuss. I’m actually hiding a smile under my frown. Look closely. You can just see it.

SUNDAY, AUGUST 23

We Are Designing Dreams…

“We are not designing swimwear,” I declare to the sleepy-eyed beauties stitching together hand-made gold lamé bikinis on my floating atelier, “we are designing dreams!”

We have been working hard. The whole team is pushing late enough each night to watch the stars visibly rotate in the sky. I am thrilled to be working again, making great pieces and finding new answers to old questions that come drifting to me in the night like the distant echo of a siren’s song; I am seduced by design, that much is certain.

You can only push a team so far before the mood starts to crack. I knew I had to do something if I was going to keep working the team as hard as I was, so I arranged for a little team-building relaxation event.

The girls on the team are die-hard fans of a certain famous fashion designer. I have never let on to the team that he is a friend, but instead called him in secret and arranged for him to send a few things. He sent samples from the last few seasons, including a few dresses from Spring 2009 — as he knew these were my favorites — and I happily hid them on the boat while I got everything ready. As a thank you, I sent a small group of fake resort wear to him that included a pair of swim trunks with his face silk screened on the front with the nose right where the nose ought to be. I also included a ridiculously luxurious swim wrap. In addition I sent two cases of his favorite champagne, just in case he didn’t appreciate the swim trunks, and a very nice vintage Rolex watch with pink gold accents and the numbers rearranged by a jeweler to be in the “wrong” order (my standard thank you gift).

The team had been going crazy for the upcoming season première of their favorite television show so I had the sailing crew secretly experiment with the main rigging to see if the sail could be used as a giant projection surface.

I called friends of friends and eventually managed to get a copy of the season première a full three weeks early. The only unusual part of the deal was that I had to fly out a member of the studio to the yacht who would monitor everything to make sure that no one copied it, as well as take notes on the crowd reaction — which I guess means that my crew is now some sort of focus group? This is standard practice in Hollywood for films, so I’m not surprised that TV does the same thing.

It was adorable seeing the studio guy try to dress “upscale resort” for the party. I knew this was what he was trying to do, because that’s how he answered when I asked him about his outfit. He was actually a nice guy, particularly once he saw how much it meant to the team that they got to see the episode early. By the way, don’t even think of asking me about the show. I signed a stack of Non-Disclosure documents and you won’t get a word out of me.

We have a helicopter landing port on the boat—which sounds like an extravagance, but is actually the only way to keep everyone safe–how else could we get to a hospital if someone got hurt? So in addition to flying in the dresses and food and drinks and studio execs, I used the heliport to bring in friends. First on the list was J.J.. Jabez, Jr. flew in to do the music and brought along with him a new DJ he was promoting. He awkwardly brought his own helicopter, however, which was a real problem because there really isn’t room for two. So we had to push all of the life boats into the water and tow them behind the boat so that his helicopter had somewhere to perch.

I worked the team especially hard in the morning. Getting everyone up early and pushing through with only the slightest lunch break imaginable. I then kept demanding more and more changes, fittings, and drawings.

The team was started to get agitated, but I knew that they were also starting to catch on, because the kitchen crew was working overtime and we had had three extra shipments of “supplies” that morning.

Just before sun down, I sent the two helicopters out for the guests and everyone freaked out when their friends started to arrive. At that point the team knew exactly what was about to happen. I flew in boyfriends and girlfriends of the team, and brought a few extra former models and up-and-coming artists, musicians and literary scholars for those without significant others. Inside his or her closet on the boat, each team member found an individually designed dress or suit and a hand written thank you note for all of their hard work.

Tako surprised me by showing up (she had originally said that she couldn’t make it, but then flew in at the last minute with the TVexec). I was so happy to see her that I slipped and fell on deck running to embrace her.

With the golden light of the sun just sliding into the open mouth of the ocean, J.J. started in on the music as an official call to start the party. We served food and drinks and danced and laughed until I called everyone onto the center of the deck and announced that although the party was fun, we still had some work to do, and that we had some required research still left for the evening.

In the middle of everyone’s groans, the projector flipped on and blasted video up onto the mainsail while the theme song to the season première played over the speaker system. The response was enthusiastic to say the least.

While the show played, Tako and I slipped away to the back. I was so happy to see her. Why do we spend so much time apart?

She had tons of news: she had been kicked off of a medical drama for fighting with the director (my guess is that she made one too many medical corrections on set). She also asked if I’d be willing to hear an idea. She wanted to propose something to me. I wonder what she’s cooked up now?

Reality Check

FRIDAY, AUGUST 28

Reality Check

When Tako said that she wanted to propose something to me, I foolishly thought for a moment that she was talking about marriage. My hopes were crushed when she revealed that her plans were much more focused on immediate concerns. She had left the medical drama and was now out of work. Further, she had been looking to make the move from acting to producing and directing and now felt that she knew exactly what she needed to do. I played a part in her plans, she explained, and she hoped it would be beneficial for me as well.

She explained that Serg Riva Designs needed a facelift, and that (while my work was better than ever) my media presence was still stuck in the golden age of couture swimwear that reached only the most financially gifted via word of mouth and hand-lettered invitations. What I needed, she explained, was a way to reach a broader audience. What I needed, she went on, was a Reality TV show.

I was the most interesting character she knew, she explained, and this said a lot considering she works in Hollywood.

I hated the idea of having the atelier invaded by a television crew, but loved the idea of seeing Tako more than just a few times a month. I let my mind run away and started to imagine the show as a glamorous rendition of my creative life. I would go on living as I had before the cameras started rolling, the only difference would be just a little more art direction and slightly better lighting. All the boring moments could be edited away, and what remained would be like a spread in Elle Decor or Architectural Digest, just on video.

Somewhere in the back of my mind I knew the idea was a potential nightmare, but I didn’t care.

Against all sound judgment, I agreed to do the show. What have I gotten myself into?

Comment ça va?

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 02

Contempt

Like a glass cloche placed over a cake to keep it moist once taken out of the oven, Brigitte Bardot’s hair in Jean-Luc Godard’s 1963 film, Contempt, sits atop her head protecting her beauty and drawing us in with it’s tempting curves and shaggy flip. I’ve always loved the structure of her hair design in this film, but I’ve always had a problem with the color: it is simply too blonde. She was a natural brunette, and I wish she had been styled that way.

We were hard at work planning a teaser campaign for the swimwear line, and I had the idea to re-create scenes from Godard’s Contempt, but instead of a bottle-blonde Bardot, we would use an unknown brunette we would somehow find on the web. We stopped what we had been scripting (a terrible idea that was more or less an uninspired rip-off of A-ha’s Take on Me music video) and started preparing the new concept.

It didn’t take much searching to find our model. There are so many great faces on the internet. Three days later, our model was booked and we were on set shooting. She was a complete amateur, but acted like a total professional. She never faked her way through anything: if she didn’t understand something she simply asked, and if she had an idea that could help makes things go more smoothly, she spoke up. It was great working with her.

For the script, I took Contempt as a starting point, then threw away everything but the hair and wrote a completely new story. It grew into a 22-minute film.

The plot is simple: an intelligent woman is deep at work on a literary project when she stumbles upon some research left by her late great-uncle in the family library. The research seems to be some type of cure for a rare form of cancer. Right before she can bring the discovery to the Swiss Institute of Medical Research, the family mansion is burglarized and the research is stolen. She follows a trail of clues to a villa overlooking the sea and goes undercover as an aspiring bikini model to track down the research and recover the cure. Along the way, she falls in love with the son of the thief, and must reconcile her heart and her mind. Is there any way out for our hero? We’ll never know.

The scene we were shooting was similar in set-up to the “roll around on the rug” scene from Contempt, but instead of shag carpet, we were in a park on the grass, and instead of being nude, our actress was in a strapless wrap dress that unwrapped as she rolled around to reveal her Serg Riva swimwear underneath. It was quite a scene, and very technically difficult to get the dress to unwrap in just the right way as not to appear too burlesque.

Everything was going just fine and we were all wrapped and watching the footage back at the atelier and when I realized that a dog had visited our set without us knowing it and had deposited a particular piece of set-dressing that I had not intended to have placed in that specific scene. I couldn’t have our star rolling around in that and was furious. How had we missed this on set? We were all so focused on the dress and the hair and the unwrapping reveal of the swimsuit that we totally over looked the grass and the present from our dear dog friend.

We had to re-shoot the scene—this time with no dog droppings— in the middle of the night with rented lights. I woke everyone up and dragged the entire team out to the grassy lawn. Our star was a good sport about it and, to be honest, looked even better with her hair slightly crushed in the way that only bed-head can achieve. The harsh shadows of the lights added an extra feeling of subterfuge to the shoot. I was so happy with the end result that I didn’t even flinch when the sprinklers came on and soaked everyone right after we cut from shooting the final take. Tired, soaking wet, and filled with excited screams, the crew squealed their way out of the park and ran back to the prep area. Our star stayed a little longer dancing in the sprinklers, and Tako walked out in a white silk evening gown and slipped her hand around my shoulder. She had been filming this whole time too, it seems, and was happy with the final shot.

Serg Riva

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 21

Late at Night Awake and Alert…

It’s easy to think you have it all figured out when things are going well. Whenever I start feeling this way the pleasure lasts just a few hours before something slips into my consciousness and starts quietly ringing like a little bell.

Sometimes it is a creative worry such as when I know a design isn’t working, perhaps because it feels too old or says the wrong thing.

Other times it’s a financial worry. Running a studio means that you are responsible for the lives and paychecks of dozens of people.

It is not just your own ego on the line, but other people’s dreams of one day owning a house, sending their kids to college, buying a vacation home on the shore, or at least securing several really nice pairs of shoes and a vintage convertible.

I worry about finance. Not just because I want to be successful, but also because other people are depending on me.

When did I become so grown-up?

Dinner fight

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 30

Needle and Thread

We are an atelier; we make everything by hand. There are no sewing machines in the workplace. We stitch each seam tighter than a surgeon suturing skin. We lock each pull-through with the strength of the thread pulling against itself, not against the fabric. Our knots would silence a sailor (if he saw them under a microscope) and our hems are optical illusions of perfection— suddenly the fabric just… stops—no one knows exactly how. Leave no footprints; reveal no trace.

With only a few square inches in the average bikini, we are not talking about yards and yards of forgiveness. We are specialists who work on miniature masterpieces.

I only mention this because it makes what I’m about to say seem a little more believable.

Dinner began in the way it always does: some enormous house or estate with guests deciding in advance with whom they will and won’t discuss future alliances. Each person in the room arrives wanting something from someone else and attempts in their own subtle way to steer the conversation accordingly. I usually sit this little dance out, but I must confess, this particular night I was playing the game, too.

I needed a new typeface for Serg Riva Designs. I’m not ashamed to admit it when I need some help. I can call out your inseam from across the room even if you are wearing a trench coat over a muumuu, but I am a candle under water when it comes to designing type. It simply takes so much work.

My solution was to invite (secretly, of course) three of the finest type designers to the party hoping that they might get into something of a friendly battle over the idea of fixing up the Serg Riva nameplate. Unfortunately, the battle was neither friendly nor little, and it cost me dearly.

At one point, one of the designers was hanging from the chandelier, trying to use it to swing across the room and kick another typeface designer in the teeth. He missed, slipped, and fell through the table, taking out what was left of the salad course and ruining a Louis XVI chair in the process. The chair was old, but the salad was divine (heirloom tomatoes flown in from France and sardines caught that morning from my favorite place along the Italian Riviera). The second designer responded with a punch, and the third jumped into the fray calling both a word

I did not know but assume was Swiss-German slang for “weak- minded.”

Two of my servers were former high school wrestlers before they became models/waiters, and they were kind enough to put down their trays and subdue the typeface designers, who at this point were locked into some kind of three-way embrace that involved hands shoved in each other’s faces, arms twisted behind each other’s backs and all six of their legs squirming like a calamari right before frying.

The trouble started when the honored hostess, who of course was not really hosting but was merely there to be honored, asked one of the typeface designers about his work. She evidently made the mistake of using the word “font” instead of “typeface” and the trouble escalated from there.

Just for the record, a font is a particular size and style of a typeface, such as Courier Bold 18 pt. With the advent of computers, the term font has morphed to replace the word “typeface” as the name of the type, instead of a particular size and weight variant of that style of type. So, on display screens, you no longer hear questions of which typeface to use, but questions of which “font.” It is a small distinction, but to dedicated designers of type, it is a significant one—a type of careless insult to the history of their craft. Average computer users are blameless, as “font” is listed in the menus of most consumer programs from Word to InDesign. The hostess got caught in the middle. At one point her dress was torn. Personally, I am fine with the careless use of font to mean typeface. Then again, I’m not a type designer.

Like everyone else, I was at a loss for what to do. I walked over to one of the smaller tables and, like a magician or vaudevillian performer, jerked the tablecloth out from under the place settings with a single flourish, pinning it to the wall with two crab forks. I took a lipstick tube from the purse of the woman standing nearest to me and I traced two simple shapes on the tablecloth. I then cut along the shapes and pulled a sewing needle out of my billfold and whipstitched together the seams. I walked over to the hostess and handed her the tablecloth. She pulled it over her head and slid her arms through the armholes and gasped at the near- perfection of the fit.

I had copied her dress in less than two minutes and had the whole room clapping and laughing.

“Serg! I had no idea you could do anything but thongs!” was a common response.

I turned to the three fighting type designers and explained that I could do a lot of things with Serg Riva Designs, if only I had the right typeface.

Needless to say, I’m expecting their competing rough drafts for a new Serg Riva signature typeface in the next few days. I’ll keep you posted on the results.

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 11

Overcoat

Waking while the night persists, with the sound of waves on either side of me, the stars old and drifting, the moon hot but cut by the Earth’s shadow, and my body warm against the cold of the sea, I am pulled to thoughts of fashion and how I might create something transformative. No amount of description is enough. I must not describe, but instead must transform. Without transformation, we have only text, not poetics. We have illustration, not art. We have memory with no poignancy.

I design swimwear. This is my curse. If designers are at odds with the cultural hierarchy (opera, painting, sculpture, dance, theatre, and literature firmly at the top, and cinema, fashion, architecture, and graphic design somewhere further down), as a swimwear designer, I am near the bottom.

A plain nude figure is not sexualized, but is instead anatomical. Pose the figure in a certain way and it gains the hint of a narrative. Partially drape the figure, and it suddenly reeks of sex. Desire is always in a state of partially revealing itself. If completely revealed, it disappears. It can only cast the shadow of it’s own making. A hint of a second intent.

All fashion exploits this tension. Swimwear, however, is mistrusted most, as it is so close to the final reveal as to threaten the elimination of the narrative and to send us back to the anatomy with no trace of the poetry. We desire literature. We crave story.

I have to work twice as hard to find a way towards narrativity. The story of your own internal world is the one I’m trying to represent. The story of your body is already told; I must instead use the body as a landscape to reveal your intent, your thoughts, your desires, and your mind.

When I start a collection, I do not start by thinking of a woman, but instead I start by thinking of a gesture, a motion seen by accident that reveals that she is thinking of something that begins to unlock her inner story. Sometimes it is how she places her hand around a cup or how she slowly slides her fingers into the pocket of her coat. Other times, it is how she shifts her weight from one leg to the other, causing a cascade of angles all the way up through her shoulders and neck. Mostly, however, it is how she covers or uncovers her eyes. Pulling her hair to the side, looking up when you would expect she’d look down, glancing sideways with a long pull across her own face—a woman will reveal her inward thoughts by how she reveals her own vision. Do not look to her hips or chest for clues. Whatever signals emanate from those regions are decoys at best. Instead, watch how she chooses to reveal her own gaze. The gesture, if you catch it, will be brief.

Everyone thinks being a designer is easy, that my decisions are a capricious yawn and I turn with fickle pleasure to declare this color or that silhouette to be the most desirable for a particular season.

Wall street goes up and down for specific reasons even if the results seem random or superstitious. The reasons are more complicated and fragile, however, when it comes to what to wear, as we are not concealing our desires, but draping them across our bodies.

Early encounters with social derision keep our senses on high alert when it comes to apparel. We know that someone is always around the corner ready to point out when we fail to get it right. Fashion is an aggregate wisdom: the group learns by churning upon itself. Mistakes are mutated into innovation. Dead ideas are pruned away, but never forgotten for long. New ideas take shape. New desires find their voice. The crowd rolls over the old and recycles the new.

Fashion cannot exist without a crowd. But it also cannot exist without instigators. Designers are both members of the crowd and mischievous outsiders who disrupt and disturb the old in order to perpetuate the new.

We claim our clothes keep us warm, protect us from nature, give us comfort, and keep us dry. We are even willing to admit that some clothes make us feel good through their intrinsic materials: soft cashmere, warm wool, ligneous yet diaphanous linen. Yet, with the exception of the mountaineer sleeping in a cave of ice, we are not comforted by materials. Rather, we are comforted by ideas.

It is the idea of sensuality and the idea of beauty that drives the orrery of fashion, but we are cautious to admit taking pleasure in these ideas. We deny the sexuality of an overcoat in order to keep the power of its mystery intact.

(End part I)

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 15

Dream vs. Reality TV

Against all good judgment, I agreed to do a Reality TV show. We are finally starting to see some of the footage.

Even though Tako is my most trusted companion, I still never know what will make it into an episode and what will get cut. She tells both my true story and a fictional version of it at the same time.

For instance, I told her about a dream I had where I was murdered. We had been watching night after night of Film Noir classics, like Double Indemnity and Criss-Cross, so I told her my own dark, noir dream. The cameras were rolling and she got the whole story on tape, right down to the flat, fake, film-noir voice I used to tell the story.

But then when I saw the episode, instead of showing me sitting there telling everyone about it, she attempted to re-create the dream. She cut together pieces of my life that she’d already filmed and lined them up to match my story. Next, whenever I mentioned something that was in the dream, but didn’t happen in real life, she sent her crew out and filmed it as a “re-creation” using the members of her crew and sometimes complete strangers as actors to fill in the gaps.

The result is something like a reconstructed dream. As the person who had the dream, the experience is unsettling. But I’m proud of Tako; I think she did a great job.

Posted here is the first peek at the Serg Riva Reality TV show. It 63

is the dream sequence I just described. Tako and I still haven’t decided what to call the show. I want to name it “Interstitial Orrery” whereas she is voting for “The Urge to Serg.”

http://vimeo.com/7084585

Here is the transcript from the video:

V.O. AT NIGHT, a dream.

 V.O.
 I keep having the same dream: the one where
 I’m murdered. It’s a stylish death, cinematic,
 melodramatic, black and white. I’m on a boat.
 I get a phone call. I go to the stable to
 check on my horses. One is missing. Instead, I
 see a white horse running. The dream
 flashes to a masked woman. Is she a competitor?
 An ally? Is she the murderer?
 I can just see someone behind the tinted
 glass of a chauffeured car. Who is he? I’m
 running. Stumbling. Was I shot in the back?
 Autumn trees collect like ghosts in the
 moonlight.

V.O. CON’T

 Lines form grids and cubes, like circuits of
 data. I can see a pattern. It’s a woman. A
 dancer. Her body bends and I can almost see her
 face.
 The man in the limo is signaling to me. Is it a
 trap?
 Back in Paris, I see the masked woman and
 someone else. I can’t hear what they are
 saying. I think they are plotting to take over
 my company, steal my designs and atelier, but I
 can’t be sure.

V.O. CON’T

Suddenly the dream shifts to color. There’s
Tako, the love of my life, taking pictures of
me. Then, without reason, she takes off.
The horse returns. The trees slap my face
Running again. What will happen?
They say that if you die in your dream you die
in real life, the shock being too much for your
body to withstand. I must not die. Rain hits
me like the breath of God, washing me,
cleansing me. I can hear birdsong and my own
heartbeat. Tako calls, tells me she loves me.
I’m back on the boat. Everything is fine.
A young urban couple is talking about me. I
can’t hear what they are saying, but it is
about me, about the atelier. Everyone is asking
about the label. Strangers on trains discuss me
like the weather.
A childhood friend appears and gives a little
toast to me. He is proud of some accomplishment
I’ve done. What was my saving grace?
Chased again: more trees. Running again:
abstract signals.
The dancer returns, but is moving away from me.
I see her partner. He turns her expertly. Is
it the man from the limo and the masked woman?
They seem too graceful to be conspirators
The dancers must be something else. Some sort
of visitation of inspiration. They are
beautiful together; I am lost in their line and
form.
I’m being followed. Paparazzi? Reality TV? Some
guy with a camera.
I’m in the subway and I see a poster for a
competitor’s spring line. It’s the masked
woman, but this time she’s unmasked…The moon
pulls me in. The running equine spirit is
relentless. Back on the beach, someone smiles,
I hear the gun shot.
Stumbling one last time.
C’est vraiment dégueulasse…

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 16

Style Ballast

Standing taller than her, looking down her forehead while holding her close, her face becomes a landscape. I can see the lovely shape of her eyebrows, and the delicate rise of her upper eyelids, the fanned elongation of her eyelashes, the peak of her nose, and the flowering of her lips that fades to the valley of her neck just past the curve of her chin. In love with Tako more than ever, I hold her close and keep staring. She looks up, and I melt.

To watch a woman walk is to evaluate the placement of potential drape. How much swings, and where are the points off which to hang the cavalcade? When she stops walking, how will it settle? When she stands, with one hip slightly higher than the other, the interstitial space should feel expressly manifest as a static form as well as ripe with the potential for the polymorphism of movement.

As King Lear said, “Ripeness is all.”

Speeding at night towards an unmoving deer that has been stunned by your headlights, you can sense this ripeness for movement. The deer will jump, but which way?

Ballast in a boat provides stability but can decrease your speed. There is a perfect weight for optimal speed and maneuverability. Ballast in taste is a light-weight affair, but it needs to be there. How much baggage do you bring with you to ensure your judgment is meaningful, and how much baggage is just too much extra weight, slowing you down and causing you to make long wide turns? With no ballast at all, you just skip across the top, but can easily flip and sink.

Why does anyone care about clothes? There is no larger meaning to apparel, but there are limitless smaller ones.

Back on the street, watching a figure walk towards you, you attempt to calculate the length of her stride and the off-set tilting of her hips so that a traveling ellipse could be created in space that wobbles to the side as it tracks the peaks of her hips, pivoting on a disembodied sacrum that moves forward with each step and slides slightly to each side when it pivots. It see-saws like the profile view of a canoe traveling over rolling waves of river water; you can sense a virtual representation of this particular woman’s style ballast. She carries it in her hips. She dips it side to side while moving it forward. Tracing the path of this virtual flow would yield a graceful wake of movement, like when you drag a gentle finger zigzagging through the icing on a cake.

I cut clothes in my mind. Is this unreasonable? I doubt I’ll ever stop thinking about drape, about the interstitial space, or about the tracking of someone’s style ballast.

Watching from afar, I often imagine the slight adjustments I might make to someone’s shirt or trousers. Often it is a small change, such as raising the shoulder break, or more usually a shoulder strap, by just one or two centimeters. Sometimes it is a larger change, but for that I have to imagine something of his or her frame, such as the line of the clavicles, so that my hopes for an alteration are based on something essential about that particular body. But mostly, alterations are just after-thoughts, easy things to do in your mind when you glance over in someone’s direction but don’t wish to have a conversation. A harder thing is to design from scratch. Everything else is wordplay.

Calling out after her as she walks down the hall, not because you have anything more to say, but only for the reason that if you call with just the right tone in your voice, she will half-turn back towards you while continuing to walk forward. This elongated twist, this sloping S-curve that not only rocks forward and back, but also right to left, is the essence of all sculpture—she is moving in space but connected back to you. She’s coming and going, locked in yet leaving, a part of the current moment yet already moving toward something else. The transition of the figure is the teleos of drape.

Where were we when we first realized that we were on the edge of no longer being very young? Then that edge extended, and kept broadening, and then started to slip away in an asymptotic gloaming? Youth is everlasting only as a constant glimmering fade.

Near the surface of the water, the trout flashes its silver body and shakes free the hook. In the boat, we reel in the line, and re-bait the hook.

Is there any more compelling argument for the existence of poetics than the natural body of a woman? What is more beautiful? What is more elegant or more hypnotic? To watch the woman you love look over at you and smile is to draw an invisible chord between the ends of the arc that starts in her mind and ends somewhere deep within your chest at a location that is near your perceived center of gravity somewhere between your gut and your heart.

How high should the armhole ride on a woman’s blouse? If it is too high, it can bind and cause difficult pulling across the front panels. If it is too low, the entire torso lacks any will to exist. The answer seems to be to place the armhole as high as you can without looking like you are trying too hard to get it there. The armhole should feel unforced, but also superior: just a little higher than normal and just a little bit better placed, only in a way that calls attention to itself. The woman will simply look better and no one knows why. Her arms are just a little more elegantly connected than expected due to the subtle placement of the armhole.

When is it best to show your neck and when is it best to hide it? The elongated neck of a woman is the twisting tree trunk of beauty. It rises from her bosom and extends to her eyes before being carried by her hair to the atmosphere. If her hair is down, the neck curves around in the shadows, if her hair is up, it is both brave and vulnerable. An exposed neck should be worn fearlessly—delicately, elegantly, but fearlessly.

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 16

Mona Lisa

I broke a tooth on the guardrail of the yacht last night while fighting for footing against the waves. We were tossed across the peaking valleys and slid deep into the yawning wells that seemed, from the bottom, very much like the mouth of the whale that ate Jonah.

We all survived and nothing was lost that couldn’t be replaced. A quick roll with Poseidon does wonders for one’s humility.

A few items were soaked. Some rather nice wine was broken in the unsecured cellar, and as I mentioned, my tooth was knocked out. Today I phoned my cosmetic dentist and he assures me there will be no lasting lacuna in my smile. Until then, I am a pirate with a Stonehenge smile and a two-day beard.

I am seriously considering getting a gold front, maybe with a little “SR” stamped in diamonds. I would be like an aquatic couturier version of Slick Rick the Ruler.

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 05

The Best Swimwear for Women

As a designer, I am constantly asked about the best swimwear for women. Here are my best five suggestions for hitting the beach:

1) Buy a robe. This is not to cover up your body, but to reveal it. I don’t care if you are a soccer mom, a 19 year-old supermodel, or the fittest, most beautiful cougar in Saint-Tropez; the key to gorgeous beachwear is all in the reveal. So pick up a fantastic robe and think of it as the curtain that opens before the show. Your leg will appear and disappear under the robe like a rhythmic, seductive siren’s call. Remember that narrative creates a fantasy, fantasy activates the imagination, and imagination is the key to all fashion. Don’t have a robe? Then wear a men’s dress shirt. Steal, swipe, or borrow one from a man you know and you’re ready to go. Do not roll up the sleeves. Instead, push them up. The resulting shoved-up sleeve is sexier and more sophisticated. Just shove and go. Try a blue shirt, as if you have just had a romantic liaison with a very wealthy banker who is also trim, thoughtful, and a patron of the arts. The look works best if the shirt was previously ironed but is now wrinkled. There should be a crease down the sleeves, a sharp collar and placket, wrinkles on the tail, and possibly a lipstick stain depending on how dramatic you want to make it. Unbutton it a little more than you normally would. You’re wearing a swimsuit underneath, so what’s the harm? Enjoy the walk from your cabana to the shore, from your car to the bar, or from your carpool to the kiddie pool. Summer is fun and you should enjoy yourself.

2) Pick your feature. Are you showing off your uptown or your downtown? Is your best feature your firm arms or your fantastic feet? Pick something and feature it. Get a pedicure, buy some sunglasses, wear a necklace. Whatever it is, feature your feature and make it the star.

3) Get a grip, or at least better clasps. A swimsuit is essentially several clasps held together with the smallest amount of fabric. If you don’t want to spend serious money for a swimsuit with gorgeous, beautiful clasps, buy something inexpensive and swap out the claps with a vintage find or something from the bead store. Just remember, some clasps heat up more than others. Choose wisely.

4) Buy a hat. The right beach hat keeps your face out of the sun and provides a sense of mystery. Who is that gorgeous women in the mysterious hat? She reminds me of a movie I wish I’d seen…

5) Walk like you mean it. The most appealing person on the beach is never the person with the fittest body, but the person with the happy, confident, playful, creative, encouraging, intelligent, humorous, and intriguing personality. You can see this in her walk, in the way she fearlessly tells a joke, yawns at pretension, drinks her water, reads her book, or responds to a phone call. Also, you can see it on the smiling bewitched faces of friends and children near her. Relaxed gestures unfold from her body like the long poetic exhale of a piece of scandalous literature. Sounds like you, non?

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 13

The Mathematics of Doubt

What is it like to design couture swimwear?

http://vimeo.com/9810230

In between the insults and praise, I block out the distractions and find a hole to climb in where text becomes design and the body becomes text. There is no palimpsest here, no scars, or nurtured sorrows; there is no history or back story or baggage or old wounds—just solutions, apparitions, harmonics, evocations, rhymes, rhythms, and the mathematics of doubt.

We take a chance and succeed! or we take a chance and fail. Either way, we are in a rumble with numericus. The numbers will tumble and align or disperse. We will catch the slope or miss it, and we’ll only know once it’s done.

Yesterday afternoon, I read an old detective novel by Jack Spicer, a famous poet who normally wrote poems, but just this once attempted literary pulp. I liked the idea of the novel much more than the novel itself. Does anyone ever say this about my swimwear? Does anyone like the idea of buying a Serg Riva suit more than the actual suit? They must! Everyone who buys one must love the idea more than the thing itself. The idea is what enables a garment to transform the wearer. Without the idea, even the best garment goes flat. Transformation requires both the garment and the wearer. The idea of me is the silent “e” at the end of a word that changes the meaning and the resonance. The idea turns the plan into a plane.

Each time I sit down to design a new swimsuit (though I am lost at first), I start to find a way. When it feels like I am getting to a new place unseen by others, there is always something unquiet going on in my head, a little surprise that gets stuck and repeats itself until the form of the repetition replaces the original meaning of the thought. The little surprise could be almost anything: a gesture, a phrase, a color, a scent, a joke, a transgression, a stammer, a typo, a perfectly natural adaptation. Whatever it is, once it begins to loop, the pattern of the loop presents its own vocabulary. Looking at a finished design, I sometimes think, “My vocabulary did this. I just listened.”

Right now, the loop repeating while I’m working is the comedy of the fig leaf. I wish I could describe it more completely, but you can only catch the laughter if you can somehow recreate the loop of it yourself, and then you can watch the shadows emerge like the increasing errors in a re-photocopied image. The comedy of the fig leaf is a language poet’s dream. As for design, I’m starting to think that I create nothing else.

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 16

Prêt-à-Porter

This spring I’m opening a pop-up shop in San Francisco. Why San Francisco? Why not Capri, Nice, Cinque Terre or at least somewhere a little warmer? The reason is personal. Tako has family in San Francisco, so it seemed like a nice way to get away while still working.

For the shop, I’m creating a few pieces that give the appearance of being prêt-à-porter. Don’t worry, I’ll never sell straight off- the-rack, I’ll always create couture or nothing at all, as long as I can help it. But I loved the tawdry aura that the illusion of prêt- à-porter brings to a custom piece, so I’ve made a few pieces that look as if they were made for mass consumption. It is a delightful feeling.

I’ve even included little “on sale” tags, which cracks me up because, of course, couture is never on sale and there are certainly no price tags.

The first look just came upstairs from sample room. I threw it on a mannequin and snapped a picture. What do you think? Very Julia-Roberts-wins-Oscar-and-wears-vintage-Valentino meets Duchamp’s Wedge of Chastity meets white icing on a chocolate cake meets old-fashioned men’s athletic supporter.

Now to work on the wrap…

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 20

Every Action

Living on a boat is glamorous, sure, but it is also like living in a floating sewer. All of the pipes and vents need cleaning or the circulatory system becomes a hothouse for a smell that should only exist on military submarines. As a consequence, we are dry docked and getting a full cleaning. Maybe this type of work could be done in the water, but I also wanted to make sure that everything was working after the storm. We were off by a small percentage from our normal navigation, and I want to confirm that nothing critical was damaged. Plus, I like the feeling of having a completely tuned boat. While the ship is out of the water, however, I feel disquieted. It’s as if I’m crossing into an unnatural world; ships should be in water, not up on stilts in a warehouse.

While homeless (which isn’t really true—I also have a beachfront house that doubles as a second studio), I’m taking the chance to go shopping for the holidays and to remember what it’s like to be adrift.

There was a time when I didn’t ever go home. Does this make sense? While I was interning, not yet working for myself, I would go from the studio to the club, to the shoot, to the performance, to the political action, to the breakfast meeting, to the client retreat, to the sample-maker, to the fitting, to the party, to the hospital, to the conference, to the airport, to the hotel, to the taxi, to the chateau, to the carriage, to the party, to the fitting, to the notions shop, to the cobbler, to the lace-maker, to the goldsmith, to the photo shoot, to the digital lab, to the print shop, to the ice cream store, to the boutique, to the bus stop (for a photo shoot), to the train station, to the luggage lost and found, to the pet store, to the client’s brownstone, to the hotel, to the concert, to the coffee shop, to the bookstore, to the makeup counter, to the trim-tailor, to the crash-pad, to the tree house, to the back bar, to the early morning sunrise shoot, to the sanitarium, to the thrift store, to the prop house, to the garden supply shop, to the hardware store, to the paint shop, to the fabric supplier, to the place that sold wooden propellers from WWII planes like the one used in Blow-up, to the museum for the opening, to the dinner party, to the silent auction, to the hair salon, to the after party, to the lingerie shop, to the take-out diner, to the watch-maker, to the overnight shipping depot, to the accessories maker, to the team that made custom boxes, to the engraver, to the graphic designers, to different graphic designers, to the falafel shop, and back to the studio where I had just a few minutes to get ready to do it all over again.

One month I saw my apartment exactly three times, each visit for only a few hours, but I never felt more connected to the dream of design. The pulse of the city was not an abstraction, but was a result of my every action.

Walking around again today, I heard in my footsteps the echo of that drumbeat. Am I making the city move again or am I just in the way? I don’t care about anyone else’s answer—I feel like I am making a difference, and right now, that’s all that counts.

MONDAY, DECEMBER 21

Two of me

Sometimes I feel like there are two of me: one commands to jump ahead, and the other that holds me back. When I see something that holds my attention, that causes a little piercing in my memory, I want to strike out in a new direction and create a new thought with this new punctum as my seedling. Other times, new thoughts are a distraction, like so much extra noise in a room otherwise quiet and perfect for reading. I am both me and the idea of me. As a brand, I am both a call and a response. When chasing my own tail, I have only the changing shadows of night and day to keep me renewed.

It’s nearly Christmas. Tako is a terrific shopper, but also a terrifically elusive target. She always gets me the perfect gift, and I am always less than satisfied with what I find for her. I am a professional—this should be easy, but it is harder than it seems when it really counts.

The pop-up shop is coming along. I found a nice space in the right place and just about have all of the permits and permissions done. Of course, this is more of an architectural advertisement than an actual shop, even if it feels like one. Imaginary retail is a carnival of mirrors. I’m getting more comfortable as the ringmaster.

I’ve been looking at the history of illustration. It is a complete and separate story that parallels traditional art history, shares a few names, but exists wholly on its own. J.C. Leyendecker is a God among illustrators, but doesn’t get even a paragraph in the annals of fine art painting. Where will I be remembered as an aquatic couturier? Will I be a curious side note? Fashion has no memory. Art cannot even pronounce the word fashion, even though it is just as fickle with its trends. I have only today, this season, this idea, this showroom, this fitting, this cut, this drape, this wrap, this moment to get it right. Every attempt always comes down to this.

So do I jump? Do I hold myself back?

Tonight I can hear the symphony of my ideas ringing as clearly as church bells. So yes, I jump.

MONDAY, DECEMBER 28

Conversational Ghost

Caught between the shadow of sleep and the light of wakefulness, I dreamt the sound of a ringing phone and sat up in bed to answer it. Upon waking, I realized the phone call was a phantom; nothing had woken me except my own mind. Tako lay next to me, blue in the moonlight and peacefully at rest. I went back to bed and took up the dream again. It was a call from a beautiful blue-grey cat with elongated, elegant limbs, short hair, and great posture. The cat could speak, and he immediately began to discuss an important development. He explained that he works at Yale’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, “technically employed as a mouser,” but also serving in his spare time as a general researcher. While crawling around the stacks, he had made a discovery in the archives, something that would cause great literary and cultural excitement in both academia and popular culture. Just as he was about to explain the details of his newest find to me, his speech turned from English to French to the standard vocabulary of a cat: meows, purrs, hisses and wails. I woke again, unfulfilled in my hopes to hear the news of his great discovery.

Agitated, I headed downstairs to the workroom. I flipped on the light to my drawing desk and started to sketch the Beinecke Library cat as I had seen him in my dream: confident, mischievous, luxurious, and refined.

The curve of his tail and the side of his body created a shape that at first was hard to see. It was a curving slice of negative space, a non-space that was created by everything around it, but consisted of nothing; it was defined by its boundaries, not by itself. The shape was long, curved, and ingenious. I placed a second sheet of drawing paper on top of the first one and re-drew the negative space, this time leaving off the rest of the image that had previously constituted the cat. I stared at the shape for a few minutes. I had seen it before, but I was not sure where. I closed my eyes and traced the shape in space. If a falling object had created it, then the bends and curves would have resulted from the object intersecting with a second shape and then gliding along its surface. I concentrated on this imaginary second surface. I felt like I could see it. I took out my pencil and sketched along the paper as I imagined the curved shapes in my mind. I know this sounds like some type of higher mathematics, or scientific visualization, but this type of surface bending is

just like draping for pattern-making, and at this point, I feel like I could bend a piece of fabric around a woman from across the room in my sleep. Sloping curves are my first language. Drape is my primary utterance. When I opened my eyes, I had drawn something that seemed to be the path a single tear would take if it fell from a woman’s eye and ran down her cheek, only to drop into the well created by the hollow of her clavicles.

I took out a third sheet of paper and drew a woman’s face, neck and shoulder correctly sized for the tear-path. The image didn’t line up. I tried again, this time tilting the woman’s head ever so slightly. It was a perfect match. Like an archeologist recreating the face of a long dead ancestor by molding muscles onto a found skull, I had drawn a woman from the negative space between cat’s body and tail. The imaginary cat had brought me to a discovery.

But why was the woman crying? Was it a tear of joy or weeping sorrow? What more can I discover? Is there another secret in the design?

I moved the shape lower along her imagined body. The same pathway created a gorgeous curve just interior to the hip. Could this be a new cut line for swimwear? An alternative to the low- rise and the French cut? I drew the rest of the standing woman’s figure and sketched a suit on top of it. The new cut line was bold, but was it based on pathos, empathy, or simply exploratory discovery?

I went back to bed, promising myself that I’d try out the new cut on an actual suit in the morning.

TUESDAY, JANUARY 05

New Year’s Eve

What started out as a simple New Year’s Eve party ended up out of control, on the streets, and in the gossip columns. My second assistant was jailed, the new interns were asked to do truly unthinkable tasks on their first day in the atelier, and Tako ended up running down the avenue in a vintage Dior gown originally worn in Godard’s À Bout de Souffle temporarily on loan (but now clearly missing) from the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Here’s what really happened, in case you later see bits of this on the news or some website, or read about it in WWD or Hello. Not that I need to set the record straight, it’s just that I’d rather tell the story in my own words.

Tako and I wanted a simple party, with only close friends and truly interesting conversationalists. I was planning on eight pairs of matched guests (couples chosen for their wit, style, and recent adventures) along with another set of sixteen wild cards (non couples who were exciting and decidedly less predictable) for a total of 32 guests plus Tako, myself, the immediate team from the atelier, the ever present cameramen and grips, and only one or two last minute add-ons.

Tako loved the mix the instant she saw the guest list. It was well- organized and held great potential for achieving the right balance for the evening: raw humor, blistering intelligence, luminous beauty, inscrutable sub-cultures, broad pop-appeal, and fantastic food.

Everything was great, and seemed like a good idea until the guest list found the will to grow on its own and become a monster we could not control.

After two changes of venue, and several backdoor city permits, we were on track to create a truly spectacular destination party.

The first guest arrived in a sequined gown with a feather mask and a live crocodile. The next guest wore a bespoke suit, but no shirt. I recognized the third guest from a magazine party I attended last year, but couldn’t remember her name. The doors kept flapping open and the guests started arrived in waves rather than one or two at a time.

Inside the central ballroom the main floor had been divided into three levels, like a terraced garden, so that guests could maneuver and position themselves to get the best angle at which to view the stage, the entranceway, the exits, and each other.

In between the levels, the various tables and banquets were arranged like little islands. In fact, they looked so much like little islands, that we got the idea to pour sand on the floor and pump water around the tables in little flowing rivers to make the experience feel as if you had landed on your own private resort on your own tiny private island. When we actually installed it, however, we eliminated the flowing water. It was a mess and distracted rather than added to the overall feel. Instead, we brought in more sand and then accented the walkways with ridiculously thick nautical rope (like the kind you’d use to moor a cruise liner) and pink spot-lights. The right pink color looks great on the sand, warms the skin tone of all races, and adds to the illusion of an evening in a tropical paradise.

Towards the back of the ballroom, we ramped up the private island theme to create a central stage area that evoked great opera stages of the past (La Scala, etc), the baroque hotels and grand estates of Germany (which are much more overdone and over the top than the private ones left in France), and the kitsch of a beach-town evening summer theatre performance.

I wanted very much to put on a sexy, updated version of the opera Einstein on the Beach, but we couldn’t get the rights pushed through in such a short period of time. Plus, in retrospect, would it really have gone over as well as I had hoped? Did people really want to see an opera for New Year’s Eve (even with an update by me?), and could I really land the type of top quality voices I would have needed to make the evening seem grand, rather than merely diverting? I scrapped the idea of the opera (saved it for later is a better way to put it…) and got back to work with the décor.

The central stage area was instead modeled to be the richest, wealthiest, grandest personal estate from another century that had been scooped up like Dorothy’s house in The Wizard of Oz and dropped directly into an island paradise, shattering some walls, freeing new passageways, and planting a spiral staircase that unwound straight to the beach with sand spilling onto the polished marble and hardwood floors and sea birds mixing with plaster putty and decorative festoons along the walls and long hallways.

Dancers perpetually re-enacted Greek myths (Sylvia, water gods, etc.) while a big band played out arrangements of the absolutely most up-to-date dance and hip hop music. The music was arranged by J.J., and was not scored as background music, but rather was raw with the pleasure of live instruments driving home the familiar and yet strange shadow versions of current hits mixed with a few songs that were clearly new compositions that he had added to the mix. An orchestra can be more searing and rough and dance-worthy than one would at first imagine—eliminate the sappy legato, add copious timpani and marching snare and you can shake the doors off of a 64 Impala. More than one music producer took note, much to J.J.’s delight and chagrin, as he clearly was hoping to have saved the sound for himself. I am certain he will launch a CD, mixtape, new video, or dance crew soon, however, so don’t worry too much about J.J., he always stays ahead of the curve.

The dance concluded with Poseidon rising up out of the sea, pulled on a chariot made from a pearlescent conch shell (imitation, and six feet high) drawn by actual horses! This had been a nightmare backstage, as holding horses at the ready while orchestrated dance music shakes the walls is exactly as difficult as it sounds. As the dancers took their final pose, a large flash filled the stage, the dancers, horses, and props all left, and a projection of their final position replaced the live dancers as static décor for the rest of the evening.

It was a nice trick and it seemed to sum up how the year is remembered: time passes, we retain a few glimpses in our mind of favorite images and a few impressions, and then everything continues forward.

What happened next is exactly what you’d expect. The illusion of Arcadia intoxicated the guests until they were misbehaving like the followers of Dionysus. My second assistant organized a wrestling tournament, ripping off his shirt and attacking a rather famous photographer. The two wrestled admirably, until their efforts were mistaken for an actual fight and the photographer’s assistants joined the fray. Cutters, seamstresses and pattern boys from my own atelier jumped in and it looked for a moment like a scene from a saloon in a wild west docudrama, until my second assistant landed a rather smoothly placed right cross and knocked the photographer’s grip on his back. The melee pushed out into the street and eventually dozens were arrested. I must say, however, that their mug shots were undoubtedly the best looking and most highly styled of the last decade. The editorial talent in the booking office that night would have run $85,000 a half hour, at least.

Tako and I escaped without incident and later posted bail on some, but not all, of the party-goers. You have to draw the line somewhere.

FRIDAY, JANUARY 01

Menswear Consequent

Shaking the shadows out of my hair, I stepped into the atelier early this morning and didn’t come out until nine at night. My first action was to sweep my desk clean. It had become a barnacled humpback of mementos, bad ideas, half-drawn sketches, wistful clippings, partially-crossed out to-do lists, empty promises, last year’s ideas, coffee-ringed notepads, and every other type of misguided thought heavy with the microscopic dust of the old. Now is not the time for mildew and yearning, now is the time for the new.

It was thrilling to see my bare desk again—a blank piece of ancient driftwood—waxed, sanded and planed flat enough for detailed drawing, but warped enough to always set you on edge. Never too comfortable with a completely even surface, I can rest easy on this desk; its hollows and hillsides hold my pencil and cradle my forearms as I stretch across it to draw.

I draw two ways. The first is on paper like everyone else, except that I don’t technically use a pencil. Instead I use a Caran d’Ache “lead holder” which looks like a mechanical pencil, but doesn’t click in the same way, and holds a thick fat tube of graphite. The second way I draw is on the body: pinning, cutting, and whip- stitching fabric on a dress-form (or even on the client herself) composing a new shape or new secret volume right there in the moment. It takes a nimble hand to stitch while the garment is still being worn—careful fingers and fast thinking won’t make up for a pricked client if I miss. Like a surgeon, every stitch counts when working this way. It is my favorite way to compose a cover-up or beach-wrap that could double as a dress. I think it is thrilling for the client too, as they can see the volume take shape in front of their eyes, on their own body, rather than through the abstraction of a pattern or a fit model.

I spent the day carving up paper with new ideas and pinning muslin to the sounds of my own spinning thoughts. When I was done, I was soaking with sweat. I had forgotten to turn down the heat and the atelier climbed in temperature as the day turned to night. I took off my shirt to cool off and just stood there for a minute looking at the shirt in my hand, turning it over and thinking about its simple, yet iconic architecture—then I got an idea. I pinned my shirt inside out on the dress form, and studied the yoke and shoulders and collar. I could construct a woman’s garment from the pieces of my shirt that would be retain the vocabulary of menswear, without any of the utility. Does this make sense? I could capture the utterance, but eliminate the language. I grabbed my shears and picked out the stitching, pinning and whip-stitching the pieces that held the most clearly designed “nouns” of menswear: the cuffs, the collar, the yoke, and the placket.

Three hours later I had a new design. It was a skeleton, a ghost. It was the burnt rubber left on the road after a drag race, it was the tracks in the snow left by a rabbit, hunted by a fox. It was the echo of a consequent, without the antecedent.

I’ll post a photo of the finished design soon, I want to see it on an actual body before I share it with the world. Until then, here is a shot of me in the heat of the moment.

FRIDAY, JANUARY 08

Sandscape

In my dreams I am returning to the same swimsuit, unable to fix certain problems of drape and contour. The body changes as I stitch, the shape morphs into another form, and my ability to be precise becomes as elusive as the Elysian fields. My fingers turn to butter and I cannot hold my needle and thread. The model grows enormous and then shrinks beneath my touch only to return again to normal size. I am searching for the solution and attempting to see an answer, but the shape and structure drift. When I grip the fabric it turns to sand.

Anxiety dreams come every night. The only cure is to get back in the Atelier and get to work. My mind clearly wants to work; it invents problems where there are none.

The dream returns. In the distant sand I can see a figure. It is feminine, walking with each foot exactly in line with the last so that the hips swing like the rolling waves of the sea. The figure is carrying something—a long rope. She drags the rope this way and that, making some sort of arrangement in the sand. She gets closer but becomes more blurry and indistinct. I cannot see her clearly, but I am sure she is a messenger.

I take off my glasses to get a better view. I cannot see at all. Blowing sand is everywhere.

Alone now in the desert, looking down on myself, there’s a message in the sand. The rope carried by the figure spells out something poetic, short, but certain. I can barely read it. I start tracing the letters one at a time.

T-A-K-O

TUESDAY, JANUARY 12

Racecar

I learned to sew as a child.

I had no video game console at home, so to entertain myself, I read books, drew pictures, or traveled to old-fashioned arcades where coin-operated games were still set up in a type of electronic topiary maze. Once there, I would wander the labyrinth until I found a favorite and then waste whatever quarters I had on a few minutes of play.

Getting to the arcade was difficult, so I rarely went. I had a few friends with consoles, but visits to their homes were infrequent and I felt like a bad guest or an awkward opportunist to insist upon playing every time I came over. Excited about the idea of games, if not the games themselves, I found other ways to play what I imaged the games to be. I would draw out worlds on long horizontal scrolls and rotate them using empty paper towel rolls to simulate side-scrolling games like Defender. I would attempt to create physical versions of the games by dropping rubber balls from the top of the bleachers to simulate classics like Centipede or Breakout.

The best simulation, however, involved my mother’s sewing machine. I would draw maps of various racecourses (usually turning my home town into a Le Mans route) and then load one of the drawings into the sewing machine like a very stiff piece of fabric. The sewing machine looked like a car to me: it had a gas peddle, a gearshift, and running lights. I would load the map into the machine, slam down the pressure foot, kick the gearshift into place, and then stomp on the gas. I was able to pull the paper through with gently guiding fingers to negotiate every curve

and turn in the road. Difficult corners could be manipulated by stopping the progress with the needle still in the down position, lifting the foot, rotating the paper, engaging the foot again, and then roaring down the road. I could parallel park using the reverse gear, and I simulated jumps by lifting the foot and pulling the paper to a new position and then re-engaging. My results were mapped by the dotted line of the stitching thread. I could see instantly if I ran off of the track or was soft or fat around a corner. With only a little practice, I found I could pull any curve imaginable. I was creating the arching loops that would become the foundation of my initial understanding of sewing. When our clothes would rip, I would mend them. I was always on the machine racing anyways, so why not try an “off-road” game and race the machine across a field of denim or corduroy?

Mending became sewing, and sewing became design. I would return cans for change and then bicycle to the used clothing store to buy essential equipment (old dress shirts, prom dresses, belts with decent buckles) and then use them as the raw materials for my collections.

No one wore what I created, the designs were too sexualized, or strange, or in poor taste, but I did not lose hope. There would one day be a place for my work, even if I hadn’t yet found it.

SUNDAY, JANUARY 17

Tan-too?

I’ve gotten to the point where I don’t book my own clients. My second assistant used to do it, but he’s proven too valuable as a cutter to pull him off patterns, so instead the new intern books the calls.

She is certainly smart enough and seemingly well qualified– Princeton English major, previous internship at Carolina Herrera, father was an Olympic hurdler, mother was an opera singer, sister works at the UN, brother is in some famous downtown band–but she is a little too kind. The clients tend to push her around a bit and cause her endless headaches with scheduling conflicts and special requests.

We never refuse a client request. We are clearly in the service of our clients, but there is a gentle way to guide a client that can actually make the experience feel even more exclusive; no one respects a pushover, and everyone loves a velvet rope—just as long as they are standing on the correct side. So the trick is to be just firm enough to illustrate the presence of the velvet rope, but then to yield at the right moment to ensure the client feels an undeniable rush of inclusion and select status. If all of this sounds calculated, it is. I am certain my clients wouldn’t want it any other way—they are buying swimwear fastened together with diamonds nearly the size of coconuts, with hand-carved clasps that are mini- Michelangelos and straps that do not adjust because the suits were cut for only them and have no need to fit to any other body. My clients expect a certain amount of ritual to be performed during the preparation of a new commissioned piece. Much like a tea ceremony, the actual final act of consumption is only part of the experience.

This is all to say that I never know who is coming in each morning. Sometimes the client is an old friend and I’ll get a phone call in advance, but usually it is a surprise.

Today the client was new, unexpected and started off as a total disaster.

She wanted a way to let everyone know that she’d arrived in society and had the means to afford a bespoke Serg Riva suit. Most of my clients do not care to advertise that they work with me — those in the know simply already know. To the trained eye, my suits are identifiable across the room. Not even Kamali can match it. (She is wonderful, but like most designers today she no longer runs a couture shop. Instead, she does a high-low mix, sometimes Browns, sometimes Walmart).

I wasn’t sure how to respond to the client’s request that my suit advertise its own making in any way other than through the quality of its design. The client insisted that some type of signature print, or logo, or label would make the whole thing much better. I was in a pickle. Logo blasting is not really my style. How could I take this idea and go all the way? A logo is déclassé, but if something is knowingly brazen enough, it becomes genius.

I had my goldsmith forge the letters to my name one at a time into thin, perfect block letters. I then constructed a rather plain looking white bikini, made of solar-translucent fabric (the kind that the sun can pass through to avoid any tan lines). I then stitched the letters into place behind the fabric, so that they were unseen from the outside, but served as a solar block against the skin.

At first she was disappointed. All she could see was a rather basic, but beautifully made plain white bikini. Then I explained that after wearing the suit all day, her body would be tan, but the letters of my name would be written across her posterior as a type of suntan tattoo (tanttoo?). She jumped with happiness — she loved the idea! It gave her great satisfaction to imagine showing the tanttoo to friends to prove her naughtiness while demonstrating her wealth. Did I give the client what she wanted? I think so. Every day is different at a couture atelier.

SUNDAY, JANUARY 21

Never Odd or Even

I have a trained crow, which somehow learned to talk. Most people know that parrots can speak, and that mockingbirds can emulate the sounds cascading from almost anything, but few people know that a crow can learn words as easily as a bleach- bottle blonde can ignore his or her own dark eyebrows.

The birds of the sea tend to be only a certain type of bird, interested in surviving the vastness of the ocean, and less concerned with discourse or the arts.

On land (as I have been since dry-docking the floating atelier and holing up in my studio), the birds are different. They are no longer just trying to survive, but instead are busy cultivating their own creative lives. Social, musical, and industrious, birds of the land are ever active.

I found my pet crow while trying to sketch a set of five looks for a countess from somewhere old-fashioned who wanted to look new without appearing as if she was trying too hard. In her world, no one appreciates a striver; when you lack for nothing, you start to find other ways to come up short. Ambition, for her, went out the window the second she stopped needing to check the price before purchasing.

She was a great client—calm, patient, and willing to sit through the number of fittings required to nail the difficulties of micro pleated textured silk without yawning or complaining. She had typical bones, a slightly short torso, and marginally irregular shoulders (one just a touch wider than the other). She had taught herself to turn when facing someone so that her shoulder line always appeared straight and symmetrical through the subtle foreshortening. I encouraged her instead to exploit the irregularity as a calling card and trust the long shoulder forward, magnifying its elongation and embracing the louche overtones of its extension.

Grateful to find a way to enjoy her own form rather than try to hide it, she immediately adopted the change. Now, whenever someone takes a photo of her, she always appears in motion: at once alight and at rest. She mastered the new stance instantly, and I admired her willingness to go all the way for a look, right down to calculating her appearance from the point of view of others while still maintaining her individuality as a unique body and original form.

She also had a dreamy, drifting personality that often allowed her to say utterly banal pleasantries one moment and then irrevocably strange conspicuities the next. Odd comments came from nowhere with no warning or warm-up, and then disappeared again within the murmur of polite conversation. So I did not even flinch when she explained to me that on her way in she had seen a crow that could speak.

After fitting her all afternoon, chalking and re-pinning muslin, and sketching out how the whole look would come together, we took a break and went to the open-air esplanade that runs off of the back of the studio. Instead of strolling, she sat. I sat near her and was busy looking across her shoulder line, not to see down her blouse, but to calculate the radian of the circle I would use to cut a particularly tricky single-piece folding wrap jacket (like Cristobal Balenciaga’s no-seam shoulder folds) as a way for her to layer her total look. In my preoccupation, I missed seeing the bird walk up. It waddled over and started squawking.

At first I could not make out what it was saying, but then the words were clearly present. He could say individual words, such as “level,” “racecar,” and “bob” and then would also say longer phrases such as “Never odd or even” and “No lemon, no melon.”

My client looked up at me and said, “How sad. He only speaks in palindromes.”

When I asked her why it was sad (because I thought it was rather remarkable), she explained that after every sentence, no matter how far he goes, he was back to where he had started. She gave a small smile, and then drifted away again to the vagaries of the event she was attending that evening.

The bird followed us back to the edge of the studio and stayed at the window while we worked. Hours later it was still there. Long after the countess left, the bird remained perched near the window.

The next morning, there was no ceremony to it; I simply opened the door and the bird walked into my atelier. It was as if he had been my pet all along, and I had simply not realized it until now.

How luxurious are the feathers of a crow—black and iridescent with the oil stained float of bubbles and shine. I found I could stare at him for hours, his twitching, robotic wildness easing into domesticity only to jump back to the lightening state with the crack of a door or the ring of the phone.

I started to wonder who had taught him to speak only certain phrases and not others. It would either mean only speaking in palindromes yourself, or that the bird had the option to say other words, but chose palindromes for his own personal reasons.

Conversations with him were both lunacy and genius:

Mr. Owl ate my metal worm. I prefer pi.
No lemon, no melon.
Rise to vote, sir.

So many dynamos!
Never odd or even.
A man, a plan, a canal, Panama!

and then, at some point it became madness and I had no choice but to try to communicate rather than to merely listen. I was exasperated by the time I finally asked him why a crow would speak only in palindromes. He responded:

Do geese see God?

FRIDAY, JANUARY 29

Begin Again

Like a dirty joke with no punch line, or a rhyme with no matching pair, a bikini cannot be separated into a top and bottom and then mixed and re-matched with any other separate.

A bikini is a bonded duality: it is always top plus bottom, it is never just a top or just a bottom.

However, it gives me great pleasure to imagine unexpected combinations of top and bottom. The fabric, pattern, texture and style could be varied to create a new thought—a Frankenstein’s monster or admixture that is as clever and shocking as seeing the beginning of one word attached to the end of another.

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 25

Conversation Starters

Asked by a famous magazine to write an article on trends for the coming year in swimwear, I instead took my allotted column inches and wrote this…

The Urge to Serg:
Advice from the World’s Most Famous Aquatic Couturier

by Serg Riva

1) Swimwear is not worn on the body, but born inside the mind. Confidence is your greatest accessory, and wit is your credit card that never expires.

2) Cut the corners off of a folded sheet and it becomes a dress. Tie it with a belt and it becomes fashion. Cut it in half, and it becomes a masterpiece.

3) A compliment, like colored hair, is best when only the right people notice.

4) The best insults sound like compliments to the uninitiated.

5) If caught in a battle of words, to be truly devastating, at just the right moment, simply say nothing.

6) Reading a book is the most intimate form of discourse; you are no longer required to be you, but instead are a newly formed we; great swimwear does the same thing.

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 25

Quick Change

Running along the beach I was not wearing shorts, but instead was wearing rolled up seersucker trousers and an untucked Charvet shirt. The shirt was trim enough that I did not look like a clown, but instead gave the impression of an athletic, roguish croquet player running to meet for a secret tryst on the other side of the sea cliff.

Or so I thought. We can only see ourselves through our own imagination, even when there is a mirror. How else can you explain the outfits some people wear? I am no exception. Sometimes I will attach a fantasy to an outfit I am wearing that doesn’t match the imagination of others. The mismatch can be frightening. In this case, my reality check came in the form of a dog; a gorgeous blue heeler mistook me for either cattle or sheep.

I did not see the dog approach, but I did feel it bite. Keeping perfect pace with my stride, the dog placed its mouth around my ankle and closed its jaw just enough for me to feel pressure but not enough for its teeth to break the skin. I veered into the waves and the dog circled back, but stayed close.

The dog’s owner whistled from farther up the beach and the animal turned and ran away.

Soaked from the splashing, and knee-deep in the surf, my outfit no longer felt impossibly light and optimistic, but instead felt like I was wearing yesterday’s wet blanket. It had transformed from an inspiration into a costume. I started to walk towards the shore and after just a few steps I stopped. My shadow was hunched over with the rolled shoulders of a defeated lump. I am not so easily beaten. I am not such a coward or a push over. If my outfit is no longer working, that doesn’t mean I’m out of luck.

I stripped to my underwear, tossed my clothes into the surf, adjusted my posture, and walked back up the beach—proud, confident, and completely at peace. Sometimes no clothes are better than the wrong ones.

SUNDAY, MARCH 07

Finestra Aperta

I can see a single palm tree from my window. I cannot estimate its age, but it seems old enough to know better.

SUNDAY, MARCH 14

Thought Music

I found a Walkman, not an iPod, or iPhone, but an old-fashioned Walkman from the late 80s. It was a yellow “sports” Walkman, with waterproof seals and dark grey plugs for all of the holes. Inside there was a cassette. Contained on the tape was a composition labeled THOUGHT-MUSIC. No mention of the composer.

It caught me by surprise; what was the Walkman doing on my little section of beach, at the head of the trail right near my back door?

It was wrapped in banana leaves and resting on a little pedestal made from carved coconuts. It was as if some impish cat had caught a mouse and proudly offered it to her owner by leaving the carcass on the doormat—but instead this was a gift for me (I suppose?) possibly to inspire a new mood or a new direction.

I normally listen to the most difficult, unpleasant styles of classical music: the kind of music that feels like mathematics rendered through a rainstorm that occasionally breaks into a melodic phrase of clarity that feels so refreshing that the entire struggle seems worth it. I had studied composition in my youth, and ever since listening to difficult music has remained an indulgence.

This cassette was indeed classical music, but of a different kind. It was a special type of intellectual statement—less about the bombastic tinkering of a shouting poet and more about the clarity of thought that comes from having something to say. Parts of it were dark, but other parts were lighthearted and even funny— when the music seemed to drop away all concerns and pretense and began to display a sense of humor—not silly humor, but more like the droll humor of a great wit—before turning its attention to shapes and thoughts of intense beauty.

The line was melodic, but also structural, without being too pedantic or literal. Sometimes several phrases would play at once—like a thoroughly entertaining cocktail party, where you overhear conversations that lay atop of one another— the resulting tonal lines (sometimes even simultaneously in different keys!) were complimentary and unique, as if to say although we are all having different conversations, we are all at the same party. It reminded me of the type of music I would have liked to have written had I gone on with composition instead of switching to fashion when I found the musical world too remote.

I showed the Walkman to Tako. She just smiled and said “Happy anniversary.” I asked her who the composer was, and she told me to go look in the mirror. The music, she claimed, came from a pile of scores she had found in a box at my mother’s house. She had sent the score to some friends of hers at Julliard, who had cleaned it up a bit (but not too much she promised), recorded it and sent it back as a CD. She had dubbed it to cassette and left it for me to find.

Tako gives the best gifts. She gave me a piece of my old self. Do you see now why I love this woman so?

TUESDAY, MARCH 16

Celebrity Corner

I’m creating more celebrity suits than I’d like. There is something not quite couture about a celebrity assignment; it feels more like an exercise in publicity than a true expression of the sartorial arts. Not that I mind celebrities. They have fascinating stories, unique personalities, and are great for getting reservations at popular restaurants—it’s just that they tend to be more insecure about their own physical armature than a traditional couture client.

Also, in general, they seem more interested in how a piece will photograph than how it looks to the naked eye. The details of couture are hard to see in a tiny digital photo posted on someone’s “best dressed for the beach” list. Sometimes a celebrity client (or their publicist) will push for something that will show up in a photograph, rather than what makes the most sense for the piece itself. This is why logos have grown larger in the camera phone/internet era.

In person, my suits are remarkable for the fact that you can’t actually see any stitches, unless of course I specifically foreground them as visual details. Hidden pick-stitches and locked under-tucks are never going to show up on a camera phone. In the flesh, however, there is something arresting about that fact that with a Serg Riva suit, the fabric just stops. No hem or seam is visible. The result is both seductive and unsettling. It is like seeing a person with perfect skin in full sunlight or a ski run with completely virgin snow; the plentitude is astounding.

All couture is like this. I just happen to do it for swimwear.

TODAY

Artisanal Lace

This much I do remember: Jebez, Jr. and I had gone shopping for costumes for an afternoon tea party where we wanted to dress like people other than ourselves. We were having a great time not taking life too seriously. At one point he grabbed a piece of cardboard off the street and held it to his face like a mask; three people leaned out of a window and waved to us from a party until they were pulled back to the dance floor. I felt a bit like I used to feel in college—like I knew a little something secretive and special about the world and given a chance I would find a way to share it. The shopping proved futile, but we were in such a fine mood that we didn’t want the afternoon to end. Tako joined us and the three of us ended up drinking cà phê sua dá by the bucket in a stuffy shop that sold used books. The iced coffee was strong and invigorating, but also I think tainted with some other toxin, because what happened next was not at all expected.

My hearing wrapped around itself and my vision degraded in long blue smears until it turned into the blurred after burn of flash bulbs popping like rain drops in a puddle. My consciousness failed as I could just discern Tako and J.J. leaning in over me. Their faces filled my vision until I passed out.

I woke up inside of a boat. Not my yacht, but a fishing boat no bigger than a floating coffin, nothing more than a skiff. I tried to piece together what had happened, but found my memory frozen with the shock of self- disapprobation; I do not like to be out of control, even if it is not my fault. My face was against the floor of the boat. My nose was flattened by my own weight. I did not want to get up, but as always, inaction was no recourse; I rolled over and sat up. The boat was floating aimlessly down a river. No one else was in the skiff. I was wearing four thousand dollar shoes, dirty denim trousers and a black fisherman’s sweater. These were not the clothes I remember last wearing. There was a brass key taped to the inside of the boat’s hull but no label attached to the key and no other item in the boat. I did not know if it was dawn or dusk. Floating like Moses in his basket, I knew nothing about my journey. I put the key in my pocket and unlatched the one remaining oar and set the boat towards the bank of the river. I chose the port side bank, if for no other reason than I thought it made for a more cinematic landing, with the low cross light of the sun just hitting my cheek, filling all dimpled hollows and time- worn valleys of my face; etched in golden light, I rowed to the port side shore.

Running aground, I had to hop out of the boat to keep it from turning downstream. The maneuver soaked my shoes and pant legs up to the knee. I pulled the skiff ashore, as I felt some need to secure it for future use if my more or less fortuitous landing spot proved an unfortunate draw. All rivers occupy low ground, so I had to hike upwards a bit to get a sense of where I was.

Waiting for me at the top of the embankment was the vast, thrilling, chasm of nothingness: no idea, no plan, no guide, no reference, only the openness of opportunity. The bank gave way to land, which gave way to a road, which led to a wood, which I followed like a detective musicologist chasing the sound of a clarinet’s melody in the middle of a rising jazz cacophony. My feet slapped forward with my curiosity alternating between wonder and disorientation like the clapping hands of an enthusiastic listener who can’t quite follow the beat.

The road led to a grand country estate. I felt an uncanny certainty that the key in my pocket would open the front door, and of course, it did.

Inside, the estate was lit only with candles and large fireplaces burning what smelled like a combination of cedar and scots pine. I had seen neither of these trees on my walk to the estate, and wondered if the wood had been brought in just for the wonderful smell. There was a long table set with marzipan and cut fruit that had clearly been arranged within the last few hours. Down the hall I heard music and I followed it not knowing what I would find.

The hall gave way to a grand ballroom. Inside people were dancing and drinking and swinging in each other’s arms. A man ran up to me and clasped me on either shoulder and exclaimed how happy he was that I had made it back. Women were wearing gowns cut across their bodies to both conceal and reveal their inner architecture. Several were wearing pieces that included artisanal lace and embroidery—hallmarks of truly expensive couture. The chamber music drifted through the bodies of people dancing, so that it was louder in the gaps and muffled across the shifting masses of people turning and whirling through the open room.

Enlivened by the presence of other people, my senses domed around me forming the fuzz of a personal ecosphere. I was moving through the crowd while still completely in my own world. Glimpsing from across the heads of dancers, I spied Tako turning and leaving the room. My heart leaped and I followed quickly to find her. Did she see me? Where was she going?

Each hallway ended in another room, which led to another hall or chamber. Although large from the outside, the estate proved enormous when you were in the thick of it. When I caught up to Tako, she was moving quickly, but not running. She took my hand and led me first through the library and then abruptly through a steaming copper kitchen. Out the other side, we crossed a music room, replete with a harpsichord, celesta, and piano (was it only keyboard instruments?) until we arrived at a side entrance to the estate. J.J. pulled around in a matte grey 1962 Jaguar convertible with a right-hand drive. Tako and I climbed in and J.J. wheeled the car around the driveway, nearly clipping a stone statue of Venus. We were about to leave the estate behind when I realized the car wasn’t made of metal, but instead was carved from a single block of ice. It started to crumble and fall apart and the road itself began to loosen and suddenly the three of us were neck deep in a river of mud.

The river cleansed itself as more water rushed forward and the whole party from the estate was now floating around us with chairs, serving platters, masked patrons, chefs, band members, women in cocktail dresses still swilling their drinks, men in tuxedos playing cards while floating on their backs, dogs with diamond collars and eager young lovers kissing on couches, which were floating half-submerged and collecting frogs and sticks and debris from the river in the cushions; lampshades floated past tables floating past silver trays of salmon canapés; river animals crawled up on chairs and ate straight from the plates; Tako held me close as we watched the deluge churn; J.J. picked up a violin and started playing the birdsongs one would expect in these woods; I saw items from my youth tucked inside little gift bags floating past and treasured designs I had created but forgotten amid the muck and the mud; a photographer from my first collection sailed by on a Louis XVI chair and snapped our picture with a Polaroid, he reached over to give it to me but then took it back at the last second, saying it was a keepsake; snakes slithered past with jewels in their mouths; a woman in courtly dress found a salamander lodged in her décolletage; Tako held onto my side as we floated on, she leaned her mouth close to my ear and whispered in a way that made all other sound disappear, “Après nous?”

Note from the editor

James Buckhouse

Serg Riva is the highest-paid swimwear designer in the world, yet he is hardly a household name. Only the super-rich can afford his services, and only the most dedicated followers of fashion can spot his work out in the wild. If you see a Serg Riva design on an internet auction site, it is likely a fake—but if you see one up for sale at Sotheby’s, by all means break out your paddle.

Born on horseback into the agricultural lower-middle-class of rural Oregon, Serg Riva began life as Stuart Kenton. He showed no particular interest in becoming a designer as a child, and there was nothing much in his youth to suggest he would apply his artistic talents to fashion, but he was, even at a young age, unmistakably chic.

At eighteen, about to leave home for college, he looked like a cinematic version of the most beautiful ice fisherman in Alaska, or the best dressed prisoner in jail. With no money for clothes, he transformed thrift store castaways into sartorial treasures: first by mending, then by tailoring, but mainly through attitude and confidence. What began as a necessity became a vocabulary used to enact a dialogue between the garment and the body.

Built like a lumberjack, nimble like a dancer, handsome as a thief, and tailored like a prince, cars would slow as he walked and heads would turn with curiosity, envy, or desire.

Stuart Kenton enrolled at Brown University. Although he had never set foot in a racing shell, his elegant athleticism and affinity for the water landed him a full scholarship for rowing after he successfully pulled the fastest time during a chance walk- on audition for the freshman eight.

His long limbs, farm-bred work ethic and natural boat savvy made the outcome seem inevitable: compared to the labor of agriculture, rowing was a walk in the park.

A rapid learner, Stuart absorbed his new surroundings to initiate a personal makeover that resulted in a name change, a commitment to prosperity, and an unrelenting love of academia. Although obviously gifted, he was also a mess. He was best when talking about a concept, and worst when actually trying to do anything about it. He was a million ideas at once: all of them promising, none of them practical, each of them a secret disappointment waiting to happen. Then one day everything clicked—Stuart Kenton found fashion.

Starting in his second year, he cross-enrolled in the apparel program at the Rhode Island School of Design. I was also cross- enrolled at Brown and RISD and met him one morning between the buildings, hanging upside-down off of the fire escape photographing a girl wearing a flayed skirt made from hundreds of individual measuring tapes: he was trying to codify the effects of wind on drape. The model, although game, looked exhausted. I enjoyed how she continued to smile for each photograph, even though Stuart was squarely focused on a region framed by her clavicles and knees. To him, this was research, not editorial.

Within two years of graduating, he established himself as one of the brightest stars in apparel design. He officially changed his name to Serg Riva, which was a backwards nod to famous designer Madame Grés, who started life as Germaine Emilie Krebs, before she changed her name to Alix Barton and then finally to Madame Grés (who’s name itself was a backwards nod to her husband Serge Czerefkov). Serg Riva loved her micro- pleating, her Hollywood-meets-Paris fashion sense, and her constant code of self invention. He took her double-backwards first name as his own, and then chose Riva as his last name, inspired by the classic Rivarama racing yacht. His name is not a misspelling of “Serge,” but rather a personal commitment to re-invention.

He chose swimwear as his dedicated métier because no one else took it seriously. He reasoned that he could either become just another name in a long line of women’s wear designers, or he could become the first and greatest designer of couture swimwear. He chose to become an aquatic couturier and the Serg Riva atelier was born.

Serg Riva evolved from merely servicing the wealthiest clients of couture to providing them with an operatic escape. Similar to the way a choreographer makes a ballet upon a prima ballerina, a Serg Riva suit is not crafted from a pre-existing idea to fit a particular client’s body, but is instead imagined and created on the woman herself; the woman becomes the vehicle for expression. His commitment to designing for one woman at a time was the key to building the most luxurious swimwear atelier on the planet.

This text represents the complete writings of Serg Riva. Every time this print-on-demand book is delivered, it contains the most recent text he cares to ship. If Serg writes more on his blog, gives a noteworthy interview, or sends a particularly interesting letter or tweet, it will be added into the master file and the next time someone buys the book, she or he will get a different book than the one you are holding in your hand. If you are worried that you may not have the very most up-to-date version of the book, it is highly recommend that you simply purchase it again—you can never be too careful. This may cause some confusion down the road for tracking editions and other sorts of bibliographic details, but it is a necessary development for this type of work, and relates perfectly to the ever-changing nature of fashion.

Serg approached me about editing his blog and collected writings during a particularly busy period for him (between his Military Glam and 20s-Preppy-Pyjamas periods). As a consequence, I didn’t receive much guidance other than to include everything I could find and then take out anything that was particularly dull or unnecessarily mean-spirited.

I have done my best to correct the spelling errors and typos found in the original blog postings (not that Serg had many) and to occasionally trim an odd loose end from a run-away sentence. For the most part, I did not change the meaning of the text more than one could reasonably expect from an enthusiastic editor. So please rest assured that the words (for the most part) are his. If something seems out of step with the Serg Riva you know and love, then please blame me, not Serg. Although to be honest, I didn’t change much.

This book includes additional text not found on the Serg Riva blog, including diary entries, personal correspondences, inter- office memos, emails, postcards, and a few dictated phone calls and conversations. Transcripts from the Reality TV series Serg Riva: the Urge to Serg… are included where appropriate.

The images in the book are from Serg’s personal life and professional work. Many are lifted straight from his blog, but others have been pulled either from his vast personal collection of photos, drawings, videos, and prints, or from the working files of his atelier.

As a side note, Serg Riva keeps meticulous inspiration boards of the text and images that inspire each period of his creative work. These boards, for the most part, remain in the atelier and have not made their way into this book. Pending future demand, it would be a worthwhile endeavor to reproduce these inspiration boards to shed brighter light on the origins of Serg’s design genius. For now, however, we remain in the dark.

Initially hesitant, I at first refused when Serg asked if I would edit his book. Serg Riva knew I was a painter, not a writer, but for some reason he wanted me instead of a professional editor. “Other people,” he explained, “would care too much about their own professional reputations and personal agendas—but you have no claim to text.”

“Plus,” he added, “I need someone unafraid to call my bluff, so I don’t accidently come across as an insufferable jerk.”

James Buckhouse
Editor, All Fashion is Fiction.

AFTERWARD

James Buckhouse is Serg Riva

By Richard Rinehart

Serg Riva is a fictional persona and art project of Bay Area artist James Buckhouse in which Riva authors a blog chronicling his privileged yet insecure life as an haute couture swimwear designer. You can enjoy Riva at the level of a witty send-up of the contemporary fashion world, but there is more going on here. Riva belongs to a long line of artistic noms de plume from Marcel Duchamp’s alter ego Rrose Sélavy to the 1990’s Internet art persona Mouchette. Mouchette demonstrated the initial stages of constructing authorship and identity amid the endless masquerade ball of the Internet, and Buckhouse takes us further by unpacking social and psychological elements of that construct. Riva does not represent or communicate a subject; rather he constitutes the process of subject-making. Riva is thus unusually sympathetic and open-ended, offering multiple readings. I suggest two, in briefest outline, below.

Riva’s blog is part of the discourse around social class, specifically the sub-thread of that discourse known as “taste culture.” Taste culture suggests that class is a dynamic and mutually-negotiated social territory as well as an economic condition. Buckhouse artfully employs this approach to construct an aspirational class identity in which Riva’s charming vacillations are the social climber’s equivalent of a nervous dog’s wagging tail. Specifically Riva explores how identity is constructed in the slippery class environment of the 21st century where high and low culture continue their decades-long slow-motion collision, perhaps best exemplified by the couture fashion reality TV show (one storyline on Riva’s blog recounts his participation in a reality TV show about his atelier).

Riva’s blog presents snapshots of himself, his fashions, and his high-culture cohorts—images composed in the eye of a camera but then drawn rather than photographed. He presents the expected depictions, down to drawing the lens-flare of the camera, while undermining those expectations. This dissonance creates a vacuum as in a dream where you are watching auteurs and celebrities at a crowded glamorous party when you suddenly realize that everyone else there is a life-size cardboard cutout; you are the only one in the room, and it is you who are on view. Riva invokes Lacan’s “mirror stage,” a state of unfulfilled longing, incompleteness, and of allowing one’s self to be shaped by the gaze of others.

Riva’s blog is anything but heavy-handed polemics and you can read it, as apparently many do, as fashion advice and as alternating catty, romantic, and wry commentary. The author(s) clearly enjoys and has fun with the material and, at the very least, he can show you how to wear your boyfriend’s shirt to greatest effect.

Richard Rinehart
Digital Media Director & Adjunct Curator
UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive

First published in BAM/PFA Art Notes, 2010.