Our Baltimore garage poster is, of course, a cheeky poster. Professor Kass lays great stress on the Ten Commandments as the foundation of a community. Does the poster mean that the Second Amendment protects this community established by the commandments? And, if so, is it arguing that the Second Amendment is a crucial clarification of…
*Special note: This post is a highly modified version of an essay I wrote in response to Leon Kass’s work on the Ten Commandments. Professor Kass was being honoured by the Fr. Ernest Fortin Foundation and I was asked to deliver a response essay to Kass’s reflections. Leon Kass is a leading American intellectual, author…
A first-rate piece on the costume design of Christian Lacroix for Balanchine’s ballet A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream: http://www.vogue.co.uk/article/suzy-menkes-swarovski-maison-hallette-balanchine-christian-lacroix-fashion-was-an-accident# I discuss Huizinga’s thesis that civilisation develops in and through play at V&R Chapter 6. From this article, it seems Lacroix is well aware of this himself.
Surprisingly, the shoe above dates to 1938 and was made by Salvatore Ferragamo. It is featured in an excellent article about the use designers make of the archives in Italian fashion houses (http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/03/20/fashions-attics). This very much matches Scheler’s estate as a model for business practice: tradition and creativity linked. Please see V&R Chapter 5 for…
Here is the audio file from my speaking about the ethics of fashion on Sirius XM Radio a couple of weeks back. Doing radio is hard, so hopefully it makes sense! Just click and the programme actually kicks in at a minute and a half. You first hear me around the 11th minute mark. http://www.justloveblog.org/audio/2017/Just%20Love%202.15.17.mp3…
Sir Alexander Arnold Constantine Issigonis designed my first car, the Morris Minor 1000. He also designed that most iconic of cars, the Mini. Here is a beautiful short film about a stylish young man reengaging with the genius of Sir Alec: http://petrolicious.com/coming-of-age
A media darling, Sophia Amoruso, developed her $85 million business Nasty Gal from originally selling vintage finds on eBay. The brand expanded quickly and also failed utterly. The spectacular rise and fall of the fashion company has become something of a case study in the business world. The details of what went wrong are…
The corset is making a comeback. Some worry there are political implications, that corsets objectify by pushing the female body to “perverse proportions” (https://www.wsj.com/articles/waist-management-test-driving-springs-corset-trend-1488471042). How to assess the morality of “perverse proportions”? In a previous post, I noted Adam Smith’s aesthetic objections to the corset (http://www.ethicsoffashion.com/adam-smith-on-corsets/). Recalling that for Smith beauty and morality…
Dance and fashion has many famous associations though Coco Chanel’s collaboration with the Russian Ballet is surely the most well-known. Dior has a dance advert for its new perfume Poison (https://www.businessoffashion.com/articles/intelligence/fashions-dalliance-with-dance?utm_source=Subscribers&utm_campaign=16fa1fd8f8-&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_d2191372b3-16fa1fd8f8-417297929). The dance is contemporary but draws upon the most primordial patterns of civilisation. Huizinga (see my discussion of his ideas V&R Chapter…
Trans-humanism is both very new and very, very old. Whether the promise of wearing a chip that will immediately report the start of cancer cells in your body or an AI “doctor” diagnosing you from data your handheld collects when you jolt with a pang of sciatica, Trans-humanism recalls the very origin of clothes, the…