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- MODA MEDIA LIST | JUNE 2024
MODA MEDIA LIST | JUNE 2024
Quick education on 90's fashion icons and deep sexy house music.
Look Authority Studio
June 17, 2024
Ciao, Moda Muses! Gemini season powered in like a sexy storm, troubling waters with creative action and intention. And we are latching on to the spirit of “doing the thing” by presenting our monthly offering: Moda Media List.
The Moda Media List is a monthly assortment of fashion media aimed to educate and inspire while encouraging curiosity. Engage with the works, or skip ahead and download our Sartorial Soundtrack. Please share if you do either of the two.
Content Sections
AUDIO INSIGHTS: i-DENTITY by ID MAGAZINE
June is the mid-life crisis month of any year, and it is also Pride Month. Pride month is now a routine victim of Rainbow Capitalism although it was established as a public requiem in remembrance of the Stonewall Uprisings. This episode of i-Dentity is a quick yet deep dive into the history and impact of Ballroom culture. From colloquialisms like “Slay” to fashion infusions like the Met Gala’s Notes on Camp theme or Leiomy Maldonado’s feature in Area’s 2021 Ready to Wear collection, ballroom culture has infiltrated the fabrics of pop culture. (Whether we embrace the community or not.)
INDEPENDENT STUDY: CHAMPAGNE SUPERNOVAS
We love the 90’s — fashion’s most provocative and visionary decade. Pop culture journalist Maureen Callahan, through insights of prime witness scenesters, chronicles the moments from the early 90’s when anti-fashion designers and waif-like models brought the streets of London and New York to the runway, ushering the alternative into the mainstream. (Available for purchase here.)
DESIGNER MINI DIVE: ALEXANDER MCQUEEN, KING OF SUBVERSION
Alexander Lee McQueen is one of the most celebrated fashion designers of our generation, marked by his directional designs that married artistry and technical ability. He began working as a tailor apprentice on Savile Row in London, earnestly cutting his way into the prestigious Central Saint Martins College where he learned how to be a fashion designer.
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When a perpetually broke fashion stylist Isabella Blow inquired about purchasing his graduate collection, “Jack the Ripper Stalks His Victims” in full, the talented designer from the projects of London quickly told the sardonic fashion editor, “It’ll be 300, take it or leave it, love.”
His first post-graduation collection, “Taxi Driver,” introduced his now famous “bumster”- a disruptive attempt at elongating the torso. Then, a penniless McQueen tried to avoid paying a coat check at a London nightclub by stashing the collection behind a shady dumpster, and the entire collection was whisked away in the night, gone for eternity.
“You've got to know the rules to break them. That's what I'm here for, to demolish the rules but to keep the tradition.”
McQueen, a master of tailor and tradition, learned how to construct softness during his tumultuous tenure as creative director of Givenchy, he consistently explored polarities through his work (man vs nature with “The Birds” and man vs machine with his Spring 1999 show featuring Shalom Harlow), and he dutifully presented dramatic runway shows blending performance art and theater. He was a complete showman in every way imaginable.
“I know I’m provocative. You don’t have to like it, but you have to acknowledge it."
The career of Alexander McQueen was celebrated in the exhibition, Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty, first held at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art in the summer of 2011, where it attracted over 600,000 visitors over three months.
Learn more about the curious icon by watching the lo-fi documentary McQueen and I on YouTube.
SARTORIAL SOUNDTRACK: DEEP + HANDS-ON
COMING SOON
Look Authority Studio is hosting a sewing workshop at Soho House with one of Chicago’s best tailors. If you are interested in receiving an invitation to this intimate workshop, sign up here.
Next month’s media list is all about Helmut Lang.
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Brought to you by Sal, the founder of Look Authority Studio
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