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- [Insert Fashion Here] | #1, 2020 | Menswear Month👟✨
[Insert Fashion Here] | #1, 2020 | Menswear Month👟✨
Aaand we're back. :)
Modupe Oloruntoba
January 09, 2020
Happy 2020! Who else is like "how do we not all have flying cars yet?!"
You may have noticed that today's newsletter looks a little brand new — I moved to Mailchimp! I don't know if I'll stay, but as much as I loved Tinyletter, I didn't love how it struggled with embedded media. Mailchimp might not be the solution I need, and if that turns out to be the case, I'll look for a happy medium. [If Medium started offering a newsletter service, I'd be saved. And sold.]
Right then, let's get into it.
 | If you only look through one AW20 men's runway gallery, make it Wales Bonner. I know, it's sacrilege to say such things in a season that included Chalayan, but bear with me. Grace Wales Bonner is documenting something important: The immigrant's role in shaping perspectives on identity — what it means, and how we hold on to it. Read Tim Blanks' review and interview here (you'll need a BoF profile, but not a professional account). |
 | You know who does a really thoughtful show review? LOVE magazine. I didn't read their reviews before following @Pam_Boy (follow! He's a fashion encyclopedia). From this menswear season: |
 | Love them or hate them, Street style galleries are still a thing! |
 | Li Edelkoort talked to the Guardian about what the next decade could look like (thanks for sharing this Christine!). It's an interesting read, covering flight-shaming, romantic dresses, and the future of libraries! She also predicts the rise of animism — an affection for objects that moves people to treat their things like their pets... Just read it. |
 | I tried my hand at TiKToK! Here's my first attempt. 😬 I have a few fashion themed ones planned for the next month or two; I'm determined to do at least 2 of them no matter how long they take me! If you are on TiK ToK please send help, I have no idea what I'm doing. |
Menswear month
Womenswear's challenge is also its joy: The volume of options, which is also a volume of competition for designers and retailers and customers who suffer from decision paralysis as a result. There's so much you can buy as a customer, just like there's so much you can do as a designer (if you work in a part of the industry where creative agency is actually a thing). Menswear's challenge is a mirror image of that — how to create a volume of options, or even just avoid repeating oneself season after season, with an incredibly limited set of socially acceptable tools at your disposal.
I'm continually surprised at how interesting I find menswear, and I think it's because even when innovation stalls or the traditional is intentionally revisited, expression is evolving. Even when and where menswear is being made the same way, it's not being worn the same way, and design is gradually responding to that. A suit is a suit, but collections as far ranging as Kim Jones' Dior debut and last season's Ephymol dared men to try them in new ways. [Highly doubt these new takes will show up at Zara but it's a step forward.]
[Jil Sander AW20 - BoF]
I wrote a video voice over a few months ago for a car parts franchise (through a retainer client who didn't have any fashion assignments for me at the time). The brief was a monologue about the past, present, and future of cars. I talked about how innovation depends on imagination because without it, the past is all you have. All you can reference. You have nothing to help you change what's in front of you if you can't imagine something else. It made me really think about creativity and newness. I guess menswear fascinates me for the same reason all creativity does: The human mind pushing past all it has ever been fed. Making not just new things, but new ways to make things, use things, wear things, see things, experience things and even new ways to be.
Client loved the voice over script, by the way. On the first draft. They also used my audio demo for the final version. Just saying. Hire me. [More confident self-promo coming at you all 2020, sorry not sorry.]
And that's it for the first one!
Cliché as it may sound, I'm excited for the new year. I realised over the festive season that, banging Christmas music aside, it often brings me more joy than Christmas. I reflect more and I dream more. The past couple of years are the exception.
Maybe it has to do with being a Jan baby? I don't know. I am actually planning my year, something I have not had the hope or focus to do for quite a while, and it feels good. Let me know what you're thinking/feeling re: new year and/or fashion, as well as how you like the new platform (did this show up okay on your phone? 😬) and I'll see you soon for another fashion month marathon, done a little differently this time.