Gainsborough Silks: candidate for Best Dressed Company Award. Updated March 2019.

Best Dressed Company AwardLeave a comment

Best Dressed Company Award is a conceit for ranking which clothing and design companies are the most moral.  Brunello Cucinelli comes out top and companies like H&M come out bottom.  This read was an exciting discovery (http://www.anothermag.com/fashion-beauty/9944/inside-the-factory-producing-silk-for-fashion-royalty).  Gainsborough Silks is a contender for top spot! To be top, a company must conform to Max Scheler’s…

The anarchist who loves a pope

TheoryLeave a comment

Readers of V&R know that the anarchist Agamben, the Jesuit Przywara, and the “fashionable” pope Benedict are important touchstones for thinking about the moral and political significance of fashion.   Taking up Plato’s skepticism towards fashion, Agamben believes that fashion is one cause of the crisis in Western democracy. We are in thrall to the…

YSL: Establishment

CoolLeave a comment

This article contains wonderful images of YSL clothes and drawings, as well as the beautiful museums being built to house his archive (http://www.vogue.co.uk/gallery/suzy-menkes-pierre-berge-ysl-should-fashion-legacies-be-controlled). The article is misnamed somewhat: Suzy Menkes only arguing that the museums need to offer the context in which YSL’s creativity flourished.  This might be right but I imagine there are arguments…

Supreme x Huizinga

Business plans, TheoryLeave a comment

Reselling Supreme can make you a millionaire by retirement age (https://www.wealthsimple.com/en-ca/magazine/data-supreme).  Reselling is a curious phenomenon trading on the concept of fandom.  Here is Margaret Thatcher’s beloved Aquascutum very cleverly recombined: Fandom is veneration of a person or brand and in this case linked to refinement in a direct way.  Supreme has made itself a…