Andrew Bolton hails from Blackburn, Lancashire, not far from where I grew up. He is responsible for the upcoming exhibition on fashion and the Church at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. It promises to be quite the event. Here is an excellent profile of Bolton and some of his motivations: https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2018/apr/29/divine-inspiration-how-high-church-led-to-high-fashion. It’s…
Hermes nearly tops V&R’s Best Dressed Company Award. This articles explains the ethos of the company nicely: http://www.dazeddigital.com/fashion/article/39885/1/in-fashions-hype-driven-era-hermes-shanghai-veronique-nichanian-fast-forward. Impressive.
This is an extremely interesting article and a bit different from what one typically finds in the fashion pages (https://www.businessoffashion.com/articles/bof-exclusive/antwerp-academy-student-suicide-calls-teaching-methods-into-question?utm_source=Subscribers&utm_campaign=45e5bef93e-antwerp-academy-student-suicide-calls-teaching-met&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_d2191372b3-45e5bef93e-417297929). It’s prompted by the sad case of a suicide at the highly prestigious fashion school in Antwerp, Belgium. What is says about Belgian university culture is spot on, as I know from my years…
Here is a good read: https://aeon.co/essays/why-does-philosophy-hold-clothes-in-such-low-regard. It’s nice to see philosophical accounts of fashion and this one goes some way to correcting — as does V&R! — the oft-repeated claim that fashion and commerce is about hedonism (https://www.frontporchrepublic.com/2018/04/why-anti-liberalism-fails/). Both articles are well worth reading but the first stands as an important corrective of the second.…
In 3 years, the 1981 Granada TV adaptation of Evelyn Waugh’s classic novel, Brideshead Revisited, will be forty years old. It’s hard to believe that TV from forty years ago can look so fresh and remain psychologically so acute. In Indianapolis recently, I picked up the dvd set of the 25th Anniversary edition and…
We’ll see a lot more articles like this one in the next months and years (https://fashionista.com/2018/04/what-is-blockchain-explained-ethical-fashion-supply-chain). The article explains what blockchain is, how it relates to cryptocurrencies, and adds the interesting detail that the technology could generate ethical markets: the idea is that those interested in ethically sourced clothes — producing and buying —…
My latest on the Scottish theorists, most of whom appear in V&R. What Was the Scottish Enlightenment?
I do hope to post but will be in England these next two weeks and not doing much original writing. I am milling over a book on Andy Warhol and the Scottish Enlightenment: let me know in the comments whether you think this is a good idea. In May, I hope to give readers…
A detailed and charming article about an unlikely fashion icon: http://www.afr.com/afr-special/prince-charles-how-fashion-can-be-sustainable-20180201-h0rv1l Certainly an important recommendation here about mending and living for many, many years in the same items of clothing.
Over the years egalitarianism has flattened out university traditions and dress. One exception remains the universities of Portugal where students routinely wander about in fantastic cloaks, often sporting the badge of their faculty. There are also fashions in ideas and I talk about one such in my most recent post at Law and Liberty:…