I don’t feel any nostalgia. It’s not that I want to come back, or to come full circle, or anything like that. To me, it is simply the most interesting building in Europe right now. | | | | Alpine Basin, Texas. Vogue 1968.
(Franco Rubartelli/Condé Nast Collection/Getty Images) | | | | |  | “I don’t feel any nostalgia. It’s not that I want to come back, or to come full circle, or anything like that. To me, it is simply the most interesting building in Europe right now.”
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| | rantnrave:// KARL LAGERFELD always includes something of the current moment at CHANEL. It's usually interwoven with the legacy of the company, melded with the now-classic codes of tweed, suiting, and a tradition of craftsmanship that reaches back to 1910, when the house was founded by GABRIELLE CHANEL. For the pre-fall 2018 MÉTIERS D'ART show, Lagerfeld's inspiration came from a romantic view of his hometown of HAMBURG and the notion of ports of call, seafaring, and trade. But it was shipping containers that made the most pointed statement for fashion in 2017. Lagerfeld cited intermodal freight containers as part of the collection's inspiration. The large, standardized steel boxes are more relevant than ever given current interest in commoditization and the global routes of goods that bring seasonless food, fashion, and well—almost everything—to one's door. Shipping moves the world. At Chanel, Lagerfeld said it was the geometry of the containers that fascinated, and the stacked lines and colors of freight cargo did seem to appear in woven textiles and knits. Signature handbags were made into mini shipping containers, swinging off models' grasps adorned with double-C's. The shipping container as readymade luxury object speaks volumes about our ultra-commodified, global world of commerce. That is fashion at its best—when design worn on the body tells the story of past and present with a driving momentum toward the future—toward change. Lagerfeld described Hamburg as a "gateway to the world... but you have to go through it." He's at the top of his game, and it's hard to imagine a contemporary Chanel without Karl. There's a wonderful profile on the designer, "The Last Emperor," from the NEW YORKER's 1994 fashion issue. The man has exhibited a voracious intake of arts and culture for decades. Oh, and if you haven't seen it already, the five-part series SIGNE CHANEL is a wonderful look at the making of an haute couture collection, done the Chanel way... In brief: HBO's new documentary "Agnelli" tells the story of the late GIANNI AGNELLI: head of FIAT, man about town, renowned business leader, and arbiter of style. It airs Dec. 18... PANTONE picks purple... BOLT THREADS released a limited run of knit hats in a synthetic spider silk and wool blend... Getting teens to rate your 'fit.
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 | Chicago Reader |
| Is the revolution in clothing design a sign of a bigger revolt to come? | | |
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 | GQ |
| By making customers buy a $760 shoes-and-sweats bundle, Kanye is acting like his own reseller. | | |
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 | The New York Times |
| As for the clothes - all 89 looks - they were a nod to place and history: rooted in the sights and sailors of the Hamburg port, with a particular nod to the Swinging '60s, when The Beatles called the city home. | | |
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 | WWD |
| Karl Lagerfeld won a standing ovation for his Métiers d’Art collection at the spectacular new concert hall in his hometown of Hamburg, Germany. | | |
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| The New York Times |
| Having passed through extreme tailoring into athleisure and then aristocratic street wear, men's clothing is in tatters. Or at least, there is a movement toward a very specific kind of distress, which is one of the styles currently advocated at Reign. It was there in a slouchy Kurt Cobain sweatshirt by R13 ($375). | | |
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 | Quartz |
| Since 2015, Laman has been bringing traditional Afghani designs to a new generation of shoppers. | | |
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 | The Cut |
| Online, it is possible to glimpse one version of what completely female-centric fashion looks like. | | |
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 | Vogue |
| Off-White’s Virgil Abloh interviews his friends Josh Goot and Christine Centenera about their new e-tail concept, Wardrobe.NYC. | | |
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 | The Business of Fashion |
| The partners will support global and emerging brands with capital and marketing support. | | |
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 | Die, Workwear! |
| There's a great quote about minimalism in a 2010 issue of Afterzine. In it, Peter Saville - the graphic designer behind Joy Division's Unknown Pleasures cover art, along with other iconic images - frames minimalism as a reaction to modern times. "These are all responses to the overcrowded visual environment that we exist in," he said. | | |
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 | SSENSE |
| The proliferation of social media and high-quality phone cameras has caused something of an internal reckoning within skateboarding. Any skater can now record and share footage with as big a platform as that of major magazines, and the result has been a paradigm shift within the culture. | | |
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| The Business of Fashion |
| Armed with $50 million, industry veterans Damien Dernoncourt and Sagra Maceira de Rosen's new holding company has taken a stake in niche French beauty brand Talika and plans to announce a jewellery investment in 2018. | | |
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 | Trench |
| "I look at it like I'm continuing Duchamp and Basquiat's legacies, and they would be proud." | | |
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 | Paper |
| Whatever 21's spring '18 lookbook is an early aughts throwback. | | |
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 | Glossy |
| During a period when physical retail is on the decline as consumers turn to e-commerce, sample sales have managed to remain relatively unscathed. The ability for a sample sale to continue to draw mobs of shoppers is particularly notable, given the rise of flash sale sites like Gilt, Rue La La and HauteLook, which offer deals on luxury items in a similar manner to a brick-and-mortar sample sale. | | |
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| The Cut |
| Lines went down the block. | | |
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 | AnOther |
| Fracas, the couturier’s perfume inspired by ladies’ undergarments and beloved by the late Isabella Blow, celebrates 70 influential years. | | |
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 | The Outline |
| Multi-level marketing companies like LipSense blur the lines between sales and pyramid schemes. | | |
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 | Public Radio International |
| We know that fast fashion is polluting the Earth, clogging landfills and underpaying workers. What can consumers do to make better choices? | | |
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 | Quartzy |
| Determined by a cabal of color experts, Pantone’s Color of the Year program is as much a trends prediction as it is a self-fulfilling prophecy. | | |
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 | YouTube |
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