What We’re Devouring: 08.11.16
RAF IS IN AT CALVIN
[Vogue]
Raf Simons has been laying low since announcing his departure from Christian Dior Couture in October, 2015. His run as artistic director of Dior’s women’s wear was calm and successful, and he pushed the romantic brand in more modern, edgy directions (New York Times Style Magazine did a beautiful piece on his journey to Dior). Many expected him to rejoin the world of women’s couture fashion, but instead: ready-to-wear men’s, as the chief creative officer at Calvin Klein. This marks a change for both designer and house. Since the days of Mr. Klein himself, men’s and women’s wear at Calvin Klein have had different creative heads, meaning that they’re handing over an almost unprecedented level of creative control. For Simons, a trend-setting, genre-defying icon, it’s a new challenge: dressing the masses.
BLINKIST — OLYMPICS EDITION
[Blinkist Magazine]
You can read a thousand different articles about how the Olympics actual apply to your life, or you could read the few that Blinkist, the magazine dedicated to making you smarter quickly via non-fiction book reviews and info extraction, has pulled out. Their entire August edition is on the Olympics, but you can check out a few of their “deep dives,” book lists, excerpts, and quotes online. Worth a look: a lost piece of history regarding the first female Olympian, Cynisca of Sparta, who founded and hosted her own all-women Olympic games; the unstoppable grit of Derek Redmond; and a booklist of different approaches to health and wellness. Basically, the answers that you’re looking for when you’re sitting on your couch, wondering what you can do to be more like Katie Ledecky.
INSIDE THE NEW TEEN VOGUE
[Business of Fashion]
If we asked a room of adults what they thought teens wanted, we doubt many would answer “magazines.” But the three new, young editors in charge of Teen Vogue are out to change that. Teen Vogue has embraced controversial topics outside of fashion, they’ve embraced social media publishing (250-word essays now go on Instagram), and they’re pushing video. Their best-selling publications have featured conversations between Amandla Stenberg and Gloria Steinem, coverage of #BlackLivesMatter, and photo essays by women. It’s not a schtick, they insist, and their dedication to delivering progressive, authentic discourse in the risky medium of print proves that. And their rebranding has payed off. Teen Vogue might be a magazine subscription worth having, teenager or not.
HOW SILICON VALLEY HELPS SPREAD THE SAME STERILE AESTHETIC ACROSS THE WORLD
[The Verge]
The Verge dubs the spaces in our lives impacted by our use of technology “AirSpace,” places that fit a shared, dominant sense of aesthetic order (literally, via Airbnb, Foursquare, and Instagram). A select group of people can slip between these AirSpaces from Santiago to Tokyo, never leaving a comfortable state of sameness — in fact, they are coming to demand it. Companies are responding to their directive by trying to make everywhere feel like “home.” This creates “a harmonization of taste,” or, in a harsher phrase, “aesthetic homogeneity.” Chayka and Hertzberg, who created fabulous illustrations of the AirSpace, admit that the current interior design fad of minimalism and Eames chairs might be a meme, but the story of how it spread into coffee shops and living rooms across the world is a story of tech globalization worth reading. Consider: Do you move within the AirSpace, or outside of it?
WHY THE PANTSUIT?
[The Atlantic]
As we know in our industry, symbols, colors, and shapes are as important in communicating a brand or story as words, and in politics there is one image that has become dominant: the pantsuit. Women in politics, from all parties and positions, have been rocking the pantsuit since it was legal to wear pants in congress at all (1993! How about that?). But what does the pantsuit mean? For the modern female politician, and certainly for Hillary Clinton, they’ve became a kind of deflective power, a sartorial way of saying, Don’t go there. Clinton stands just a little a part in that she’s incorporated the pantsuit into her brand as a both a symbol and a non-symbol, meaningful in its pointed meaninglessness, in its nothingness, and this is, for her, the pantsuit’s ultimate power.
GUCCI MANE, REBORN
[The New Yorker]
Gucci Mane is an Atlanta rapper of the Old School, with a pioneering slurred, idiosyncratic intonation and a prolific recording track that made him legend amongst his peers (Fetty Wap lists Gucci Mane as his favorite rapper, while Kanye and Drake made appearances on his newest album). He’s been in and out of prison since his debut and has long used his run ins with the law as a source of inspiration, but the Guwop that emerged this time around was a little different. He’s sober, he’s lost weight and gained a love of fashion, and while his album still sounds like the Gucci Mane that lived wild, large, and violent, his exploits have morphed into myth and memory. This could just be the evolution of Gucci, as he strikes the delicate balance of new and old, but it could also be a sign of the evolution of a dominant music genre.
OBAMA, THE AGING ATHLETE
[The Undefeated]
There are a lot of ways to frame someone’s term as president. President as Commander in Chief, President as diplomat, President as policy builder, President as athlete. Obama’s love of basketball has long been a part of his personal and political identity, especially as America’s first black presidential candidate for a major party. The article tracks everything from personal stories about beating the president on the court, to analysis of his golfing stance, to an investigation into the professional necessity of sport in a President’s high-stress life. The best story comes at the end: A young staffer once accidentally elbowed the President in the face and was mortified, especially when he later received a three-panel photograph of the incident, signed with a note from the President himself.
OF THEE I READ
[The New York Times]
We leave you in the midst of Olympic fever with, well, a reading list, curated by the reporters and editors of the New York Times National Desk. They were each asked to recommend a book that explained or captured their region of America. These books are surely a great way to get your inner patriot on, but just the summaries themselves are a worthwhile read; some are informative, some are beautiful, with evocative descriptions of the “sweet and muddy growl of grunge rock” in Seattle, and some are cheating and actually recommend several books. Either way, the list offers a way to get more familiar with the spaces between “Sea to shining sea,” and we could all use a little end-of-summer reading.
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