The New York Photo League - Black and White New York The New York Photo League is an organization I had heard of in the past, but honestly knew little about. However, when I heard of the exhibit showcasing their work that opened at the Jewish Museum in New York City earlier in November (and will be showing until March 25th, 2012), I was intrigued, so I did some research. History The origin, history, and demise of the NYPL is a story that’s almost as captivating as the portraits and street photography of New York City that their many prominent members captured over the course of the league’s existence. Active from 1936 to 1951, the League began as a collection of amateur and professional photographers who formed like Voltron around a range of common social and creative causes. Most of the league’s members were Jewish, as well as socialist sympathizers, whose artistic goals were to document and expose the lives and struggles of the American worker and urban New York. Amazingly it was a Berlin-based communist faction, the Workers International Relief, that helped establish the, then named, Worker’s Camera League in NYC. Differences in ideologies and interests led to a split, with the original group becoming the now famous NYPL. The list of members and prominent supporters that ran in the circles of the NYPL over its 15 year history is unreal. Richard Avedon, Ansel Adams, Arthur Leipzig, Aaron Siskind, Bernice Abbott, and countless others. NYPL cameras were there for the Depression, the New Deal, WWII, and the Cold War, resulting in some of the most extensive urban documentary photography of the 20th century. Their demise was fairly swift however. By 1947, the “Red Scare” witch hunt for American communists led to the NYPL being blacklisted and named among groups disloyal to the United States. Despite fierce denial of the accusations, by 1951 the membership had declined and the group disbanded in October of that year. Documentary Film Arthur Leipzig ideal laundry, 1946 The two little kids standing on both sides of the display glass almost seem like reflections of each other. That big open shop window acts like a platform displaying the conditions that faced so many children in urban New York at the time. chalk games, 1950 The chalk drawings on the street seem Basquiat or Picasso-esque in nature. Everything about the composition and the chemistry gives it a painterly feel. Morris Engel harlem merchant, 1937 The merchant’s head looks like just another item in line in the shop’s display. Harold Corsini playing football in the streets of harlem, 1939 This is probably my favorite photo of any I’ve seen from the League. Take a wide angle lens, shoot overhead at a bird’s eye view, set the camera at a canted angle, and this is what you get. The long shadows cast make it seem like the subjects are running up and down the composition. Marvin Newman a child ties on a mask to celebrate the october festival on south side, 1951 Everyone in this shot is stunting on 100% with unique facial expressions. My favorite is the girl on the right. She looks like she could have been cast for an Odd Future album cover. Ruth Orkin boy jumping into hudson river, 1948 The way the diving boy occupies the negative space is remarkable. This photograph is so engaging, top to bottom, left to right. All over the composition, there’s something interesting to occupy your eyes. Check out the girl in the bottom left corner.
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The New York Photo League - Black and White New York

The New York Photo League is an organization I had heard of in the past, but honestly knew little about. However, when I heard of the exhibit showcasing their work that opened at the Jewish Museum in New York City earlier in November (and will be showing until March 25th, 2012), I was intrigued, so I did some research.

History

The origin, history, and demise of the NYPL is a story that’s almost as captivating as the portraits and street photography of New York City that their many prominent members captured over the course of the league’s existence. Active from 1936 to 1951, the League began as a collection of amateur and professional photographers who formed like Voltron around a range of common social and creative causes. Most of the league’s members were Jewish, as well as socialist sympathizers, whose artistic goals were to document and expose the lives and struggles of the American worker and urban New York. Amazingly it was a Berlin-based communist faction, the Workers International Relief, that helped establish the, then named, Worker’s Camera League in NYC. Differences in ideologies and interests led to a split, with the original group becoming the now famous NYPL.

The list of members and prominent supporters that ran in the circles of the NYPL over its 15 year history is unreal. Richard Avedon, Ansel Adams, Arthur Leipzig, Aaron Siskind, Bernice Abbott, and countless others. NYPL cameras were there for the Depression, the New Deal, WWII, and the Cold War, resulting in some of the most extensive urban documentary photography of the 20th century.

Their demise was fairly swift however. By 1947, the “Red Scare” witch hunt for American communists led to the NYPL being blacklisted and named among groups disloyal to the United States. Despite fierce denial of the accusations, by 1951 the membership had declined and the group disbanded in October of that year.

Documentary Film

Arthur Leipzig

ideal laundry, 1946

  • The two little kids standing on both sides of the display glass almost seem like reflections of each other. That big open shop window acts like a platform displaying the conditions that faced so many children in urban New York at the time.

chalk games, 1950

  • The chalk drawings on the street seem Basquiat or Picasso-esque in nature. Everything about the composition and the chemistry gives it a painterly feel.

Morris Engel

harlem merchant, 1937

  • The merchant’s head looks like just another item in line in the shop’s display.

Harold Corsini

playing football in the streets of harlem, 1939

  • This is probably my favorite photo of any I’ve seen from the League. Take a wide angle lens, shoot overhead at a bird’s eye view, set the camera at a canted angle, and this is what you get. The long shadows cast make it seem like the subjects are running up and down the composition.

Marvin Newman

a child ties on a mask to celebrate the october festival on south side, 1951

  • Everyone in this shot is stunting on 100% with unique facial expressions. My favorite is the girl on the right. She looks like she could have been cast for an Odd Future album cover.

Ruth Orkin

boy jumping into hudson river, 1948

  • The way the diving boy occupies the negative space is remarkable. This photograph is so engaging, top to bottom, left to right. All over the composition, there’s something interesting to occupy your eyes. Check out the girl in the bottom left corner.

B-Rolls and Such

I know I’m falling into pretty liberal territory here with my definition of the word b-roll. But it’s such a classier term than the alternative, photo dump. (Not that I’m below photo dumping. I’ve dumped many a photo in my time.)

I had a lot of extra visuals from my recent shoot with Diana. Mostly they were images of her I captured once I took the camera out of her hands and turned it on her. On top of that, I also had a handful of photoshoot-unrelated images from later on in the day. I was finding it hard to resist sharing some of these photos. So I stopped resisting altogether. And now here we are, looking at my b-rolls and other visuals.

sweater - lacoste; oxford - forever 21; jeans - pacsun; moccasins - minnetonka

sometimes we got the feeling that this car hadn’t moved in over 25 years. which led me to wonder how many homeless people had slept in here at one time.

matt humphrey doesn’t quite look like james dean re-incarnated in this one. but you should see him in other pics or in real life. although sometimes he most resembles james franco playing james dean in that biopic.

FIN

Black Panther Steeze

I’ve spoken on this blog about how big of an influence military attire has had on contemporary fashion, numerous times in the past. Fashion and popular style are both games of re-apportionment, and there’s perhaps no fashion well that gets dipped into more often for the sake of re-purposing than the military world. But what about paramilitary organizations and all the sartorial inspiration that can be found in that realm? The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense were an African-American revolutionary leftist organization that advanced their political ideology and social agendas equipped with guns, berets, and nifty leather jackets. They were an organization with a clean military-inspired aesthetic; an aesthetic that I’ve never seen discussed at length in any sort of sartorial sense.

I’m a big fan of the Black Panthers, perhaps it was my acute attention to the organization as a whole that first made me admire their collective appearance. Politics aside though, one doesn’t have to be a militant afrocentric individual to pick up a few style cues from the Panthers.

to help me with the shoot, i enlisted lovely photographer friend diana liu, who sometimes shoots some cool stuff over at campus street style blog the sardorealist


The (Military-esque) Beret

The beret was a staple of the Black Panther uniform, an integral ingredient to their imposing, militant persona. I did some research on the beret and was surprised to find that the world-famous headpiece didn’t start in the military. The beret (and past variations) actually date back to several thousand years B.C. The beret in police or military use is relatively new within the scope of the garment’s entire history, starting around the 16th or 17th century. Still, the last 500 years plus has been more than enough time to give the beret an entrenched military tradition.

Interestingly enough, if you look at the beret, you find that it’s a garment that has become a salient part of countless cultures, lifestyles, and sub-sects. The piece is easily identifiable with military and police use, intellectuals, artists, beatniks, film directors, and even Rastafarians. Thousands of years of existence has bore enough deviation for the garment to develop differently for different sects. It may surprise you to know that the headdress worn by Rastas is just as much a beret as those worn by the U.S. Army. What intrigued me most was the fact that the type of berets sported by Black Panther personnel was much more akin to the civilian type than it was to that of any military.

unidentified panther with co-founder huey p. newton; sporting a colt .45 and a shotgun, respectively

Here’s the most intriguing part of this discovery though: despite the fact that the Black Panthers wore civilian berets, they still donned them in the manner of military personnel. If you Google any photos of American soldiers wearing berets, you’ll always see the lip (the loose side) of the beret falling to the right. I learned that this is done by most military (excluding some in Europe) to free the shoulder that bears the rifle on most soldiers. Check out the which direction the berets fall in the previous photo and which arm the firearms are on. Pretty cool if you ask me. A friend and I recently had a discussion concerning the “proper” way to wear a beret. It’d be interesting to learn why different cultures associated with berets wore them the way they did.

beret - thrift; jacket - thrift; shirt, tie - old navy; chinos, boots - urban outfitters

The Utility Jacket

The Panthers wore several different kinds of leather jackets. Mine is made of cotton and was thrifted. Mine is also a utility jacket, as were the jackets sported by many members of the organization. The utility garment is a silhouette that has been making the rounds through official military attire and workwear for decades now, usually characterized by two vertically aligned pockets on each side of the garment (at least as far as jackets are concerned). Utility pieces were made for just that, utility. So it would make sense that they have their origins in workwear and military attire, where pragmatic, efficient clothing is most desirable.

I’ve tried hard to figure out the former life of my utility jacket. It’s fairly easy to rule out as military attire, the fit and weight wouldn’t make sense. Perhaps it was some sort of workwear piece, it does have the characteristic blue of classic American workwear. Probably the biggest reason I love it is because of the cut; it can effectively be worn as a blazer because of its construction, material, and light weight.

It’s cool that the Black Panthers seemed to find a middle ground between the classic military silhouette and workwear silhouette normally reserved for utility garments. Or maybe the Panthers were just doing their own thing. After all, their jackets were made of leather, material found in utilities no where else.

One more thing. Keep in mind that the Black Panthers were on the all-black tip long before Rick Owens, Alexander Wang, Jay-Z, SpaceGhostPurrp, or anyone else. That’s also kind of cool.

My Disposable Summer

I find it amazing how much of experimental filmmaking was born as a result of the particular equipment, or rather lack of equipment, being used to create works. The nature of resources available for creating film has such a keen ability to dictate the kind of art created, resulting in numerous film movements and philosophies whose key traits and characteristics are significantly based around the kind of tools being used for creation.

Photography is the same way, where the aesthetic produced by different materials start to become artistic statements in of themselves. The kids over at Street Etiquette dropped some progressive fashion photography not too long ago (via Cleon Grey, of Aveder Outfit fame), shooting a post with disposable cameras on the motorcycle jacket, along with heavyweights Ali of A Noble Savage, Ouiji of The Brooklyn Circus, and Kadeem of KJohn La Soul.

I recently had a chance to have my own fun with disposables as well, over the summer. Without access to my typical camera equipment, I was forced to improvise new ways to document my summer. It was amazing, living in a resort town where 75% of the people in the area at any given time were tourists. Seemingly rows upon rows of semi-vacant, identical $35-a-night motels were juxtaposed with beautiful mountains and creeks. I did my best to capture what I saw around me.

With disposable cameras, you often don’t know what you’re getting. The settings are out of your control, and the results are often as unpredictable as Johnny Weir’s wardrobe. But things really start to get interesting when you start getting liberal with digital editing of your disposable images.

I got in a pretty experimental mood when I was editing these images, trying different approaches that would have likely never occurred to me had I not been editing disposables. Even fully conscious of how much the medium was dictating the way I approached the editing process, I was still unable to go about it in any other way.

The results were great though. I’m really happy with the way things turned out. In the age of super DSLRs and 5Ds that can shoot entire feature-length films and street style blog presentations at the same time, analog photography is oft quickly forgotten. It’s nice to know that there are certain things technological advancement can’t quite replace, the raw aesthetic of a particular medium.

TheCreativeRoutine is Playing Music with Jeff the Violinist

I recently had what is at once one of the strangest and most exciting experiences I’ve had in recent memory. My good friend, and sometimes creative partner, Taylor Raboin and I were recently in downtown Nashville, tentatively talking through and planning an upcoming project we’re working on.

Fate would have it that we would spot a certain, peculiar fellow walking around downtown with a wooden staff that resembled the one Moses most have used to part the Red Sea, along with a backpack that looked large and sturdy enough to carry supplies for half a season of Man v. Wild.

Naturally we struck up conversation with him, not breaking pace as we walked alongside to wherever he was headed. I noticed a violin case in his collection of supplies, and before anyone really knew what was happening, he was sitting in front of a mood-setting sea green wall playing his bright red violin, as I snapped glorious images to the amazement of pedestrian on-lookers. Sometimes you instantly realize that you’re documenting content unlike anything you normally do or will likely do in the future. Everything just clicked. It was beautiful. Jeffrey serenaded us with some of the most surreal bluegrass and mountain music my ears had ever witnessed, as music and conversation wove into one another.

upon meeting jeff; with taylor

Jeff is one of those individuals you don’t really believe is real unless you meet him yourself. He’s a musical vagabond, a fellow who wonders from state to state playing music with local friends in between doing seasonal farming at marijuana farms in both Wisconsin and California. Yes, he’s been to 44 states. And yes he’s homeless. But he’s told me he prefers the term home-free. He owns virtually no possessions aside from the ones he carries on his person at all times. Yet despite his untraditional lifestyle, he seems to be one of the most stable individuals I’ve ever met. I used to joke all the time when I was a kid that I wanted to be homeless when I grew up. Yet the more he spoke to Taylor and I, the more I started to wonder if he’d figured out something the rest of us hadn’t.

jeff serenading an entire block

After playing beautiful music for the entertainment of an entire city block, we took the only logical next step: cabbing with Jeff back to campus to find more buffoonery to engage in. Although there is no photo documentation of the rest of the day’s event’s, you can only imagine the number of eyes that stared when we strolled into one of the dining halls alongside our new wooden staff toting, mountain man friend. Two days later we invited Jeff back to campus for another proper jam session, this time playing alongside a cellist friend of ours in the music school.

Enter Alex Krew

master cello commander, alex krew

Alex is trained in classical cello; Jeff does mainly bluegrass and folksy music. Seeing the two of them jam together was an otherworldly musical fusion that probably shouldn’t have been legal. Much like a few days prior, every so often different spectators would pit stop at our musical jam fusion to pay their respects to the brilliance that was taking place before their eyes. There was even an important looking photographer who worked for a still unknown publication that stopped for like 15 minutes to spectate and take photos in a very important looking way.

Alex and Jeff joining forces was a meeting of the minds; it truly was a musical event. They seamlessly rotated between playing different classical and non-classical pieces, all while talking music, and exchanging notes.

The next day Jeff was gone. Off to North Carolina to play a gig I believe. Where he is now, I don’t know. Perhaps he’s upped his state counter to 45 by this time. What an interesting individual. I wonder how often he has experiences like this, and how many friends and musical compatriots he has all over the country. It’s amazing to see someone who literally seized his own destiny and did as he saw fit. He dropped out of school, against everyone’s advice, moved to New York City, then proceeded to get a gig smoking and harvesting weed for a living, while playing music all over the country and seeing more states than you could recite from memory.

Just another example that there’s no one pathway to anything. If you’re passionate and confident, the only thing keeping you from seeing if you can fulfill your dreams is you. Of course, no one is guaranteed success. But how crippling is life if you’re not willing to take the risk?

New Glasses One of the first posts I ever made on this site, over a year ago, was a feature on avant-garde eyewear designer Warby Parker. This was shortly after GQ first featured them on their site, back before their brand was as well known as it is now. I spoke about how I planned to cop a pair or two from Warby Parker, once I was in the market for a new pair of glasses. Well after my former frames met an untimely demise this summer, I waltzed over to WP’s website and began the process of ordering new glasses. For those who don’t know, Warby Parker has a very peculiar way of selling their wares. You can find a detailed description on their website. But essentially, Warby Parker cuts out the middle man, unlike most (or maybe all other) eyewear retailers. The result is originally designed frames at a fraction of the cost of traditional glasses. To top it off, they allow you to ship home up to five frames for free to try on. As if all of that wasn’t great enough, for every pair you buy, they donate a pair to somebody in need. After I went through the entire try home process, I eventually settled on the Begley Greystone and the Begley Whiskey Tortoise. On my online Warby Parker account, it says that I have donated two pairs of glasses to date. WP is like the TOMS of eyewear. You know, if TOMS actually made products that were worth buying in of themselves.
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New Glasses

One of the first posts I ever made on this site, over a year ago, was a feature on avant-garde eyewear designer Warby Parker. This was shortly after GQ first featured them on their site, back before their brand was as well known as it is now. I spoke about how I planned to cop a pair or two from Warby Parker, once I was in the market for a new pair of glasses. Well after my former frames met an untimely demise this summer, I waltzed over to WP’s website and began the process of ordering new glasses.

For those who don’t know, Warby Parker has a very peculiar way of selling their wares. You can find a detailed description on their website. But essentially, Warby Parker cuts out the middle man, unlike most (or maybe all other) eyewear retailers. The result is originally designed frames at a fraction of the cost of traditional glasses. To top it off, they allow you to ship home up to five frames for free to try on. As if all of that wasn’t great enough, for every pair you buy, they donate a pair to somebody in need.

After I went through the entire try home process, I eventually settled on the Begley Greystone and the Begley Whiskey Tortoise. On my online Warby Parker account, it says that I have donated two pairs of glasses to date. WP is like the TOMS of eyewear. You know, if TOMS actually made products that were worth buying in of themselves.

The (Prep) Uniform

There is nothing more authentic in style than a uniform truly born of one’s self. We often talk about in fashion how clothing is an outer reflection of an inner state of being. Well a uniform is the reflection of one whose personal style philosophy has been honed to a tee. It’s a formula, composed of all of the fashion tropes they hold most dear. Jacques-Yves Cousteau. Janelle Monae. Karl Lagerfeld. Ouigi Theodore. These are all individuals we look at who have/had a style signature. These are all people whose fashion has become ubiquitous with the word uniform.

Every style genre has a prototypical uniform. Prep. Skater. Urban. And within each genre are countless of individuals who have made said uniform their own. Perhaps the most beautiful part of a uniform is how readily it declares to the world who you are and what you value in life. Unsurprisingly, uniforms don’t really manifest themselves until later in life - when personal experimentation with style isn’t as common and most individuals have already pinned down the aesthetic they want. Michael Bastian recently spoke on this with Park & Bond.

“Hopefully by the time you’re in your mid-to-late twenties you’ve settled on something.”

I agree that most individuals my age that are interested in fashion have yet to find a consistent uniform, at least not one as precise as Alexander’s. I was so intrigued and impressed by his wardrobe that I worked with Alex to piece together a week long outfit profile. Alex’s uniform is classic ivy/prep, with unique Alex-isms - an affinity for sunglasses and Brooks Brothers.

Monday

shirt - brooks brothers; shorts - j. crew; shoes - g.h. bass; aviators - burburry with camp sea-gull croakies; watch - vintage pulsar; belt - vineyard vines; briefcase - solo brown

People actually sticking pennies in their penny loafers is something you don’t really see often. American prep school students in the 1950’s, looking to make a statement, started the tradition of sticking pennies in loafers. It’s the kind of “go-to-hell” irreverence that’s classic prep.

Tuesday

shirt - brooks brothers; shorts - patagonia; shoes - peale and co.; aviators - prada; belt - ermenegildo zegna

Wednesday

shirt - brooks brothers; shorts - vineyard vines; belt - vineyard vines

Thursday

shirts - brooks brothers; shorts - vineyard vines; belt - vineyard vines

Friday

shirt - ralph lauren; shorts - brooks brothers; shoes - brooks brothers;  belt - vineyard vines

It was swell working with Alex. By no means am I a prep, but I am a huge fan of prep/ivy fashion. It’s had a larger influence on my sense of style than any other style genre. Cuffed pants, no socks in the warmer months, tailored fit. All of the little things I’ve picked up from “prepdom.” My uniform is not nearly as concise as Alexander’s. I’m too in love with experimentation. But it’ll be exciting to see where I go next. And I look forward to the day where I’ve finally settled into my own.

The Modern State of Street Style New York Fashion Week begins today. In anticipation of this fall’s fashion week, GQ published an article yesterday in which they try to anticipate the style innovations we’ll be seeing on the streets this week. Of course, the entire article is a satire. Illustrations of seemingly unaware individuals casually talking on the phone or walking to the coffee shop in their ankle bandannas and ties that double as pocket squares. It’s a rather fed-up and frustrated look at the current state of street style menswear. GQ is apparently well tired with what they’re seeing. Just last month they published a similar piece with similar sentiments. “Street style is no longer organic. Nowadays people flood the streets outside fashion week shows waiting to get photographed.” honestly, gq keeps taking shots at ankle bandannas, but i don’t think they’re impossible to pull off. just not very easy. In all reality, exactly how true is that statement? It’s doubtless that people lurk outside fashion shows “casually” eying Tommy Ton, inviting a photograph. But is it true to say that street style is no longer organic? Was it ever so? When Bill Cunningham first started photographing New York’s most stylish in the 1970s, there really was no such thing as street style. But it didn’t take long for Cunningham to become known as the “street style photographer,” and it didn’t take long before people started dressing for him. Even Anna Wintour admits to it. Fast forward to 2005. Scott Schumann, inspired by Cunningham, starts a blog called The Sartorialist that looks to do what Cunningham had been doing for decades. The only difference is that the goal is photographing everyday people. With the increased accessibility of the internet came the increased popularity of blogging, and soon after Schumann helps spawn countless new blogs started by would be street photographers. bill cunningham, in the same blue jacket and bike he’s owned for the last 40 years This was the “mini-revolution” GQ was talking about. That span of three or so years where street style actually felt organic. Actually was organic. But alas. With accessibility comes over-saturation. With over-saturation comes redundancy. With redundancy comes people trying to hard. And with people trying to hard comes GQ publishing articles venting about their frustrations. It’s sad really. It’s sad to think that street style is, in theory, about capturing people in their natural habitat. About portraying some sort of unplanned, sincere moment. If that’s the case, how did it come to this? The answer is that it didn’t come to this. This is the way it’s always been. Aside from those few years after Bill Cunningham first started capturing people on the street, and the few years of glorious sincerity that we seem to be on the tail end of, street style is always been fairly contrived and fairly exclusive. It’s sad to say it. But the most sad part of it all is that it’s true. So don’t ask how it came to this. You’d only be lying to yourself. *Note: Despite their frustrations with the state of street style menswear, GQ has by no means pledged to do anything to help solve the problem of over-saturation in the game. As a matter of fact, earlier today they published their first collection of shots from NYFW. There are presumed to be no shots of outrageously dressed individuals.
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The Modern State of Street Style

New York Fashion Week begins today. In anticipation of this fall’s fashion week, GQ published an article yesterday in which they try to anticipate the style innovations we’ll be seeing on the streets this week. Of course, the entire article is a satire. Illustrations of seemingly unaware individuals casually talking on the phone or walking to the coffee shop in their ankle bandannas and ties that double as pocket squares. It’s a rather fed-up and frustrated look at the current state of street style menswear. GQ is apparently well tired with what they’re seeing. Just last month they published a similar piece with similar sentiments. “Street style is no longer organic. Nowadays people flood the streets outside fashion week shows waiting to get photographed.”

honestly, gq keeps taking shots at ankle bandannas, but i don’t think they’re impossible to pull off. just not very easy.

In all reality, exactly how true is that statement? It’s doubtless that people lurk outside fashion shows “casually” eying Tommy Ton, inviting a photograph. But is it true to say that street style is no longer organic? Was it ever so? When Bill Cunningham first started photographing New York’s most stylish in the 1970s, there really was no such thing as street style. But it didn’t take long for Cunningham to become known as the “street style photographer,” and it didn’t take long before people started dressing for him. Even Anna Wintour admits to it.

Fast forward to 2005. Scott Schumann, inspired by Cunningham, starts a blog called The Sartorialist that looks to do what Cunningham had been doing for decades. The only difference is that the goal is photographing everyday people. With the increased accessibility of the internet came the increased popularity of blogging, and soon after Schumann helps spawn countless new blogs started by would be street photographers.

bill cunningham, in the same blue jacket and bike he’s owned for the last 40 years

This was the “mini-revolution” GQ was talking about. That span of three or so years where street style actually felt organic. Actually was organic. But alas. With accessibility comes over-saturation. With over-saturation comes redundancy. With redundancy comes people trying to hard. And with people trying to hard comes GQ publishing articles venting about their frustrations.

It’s sad really. It’s sad to think that street style is, in theory, about capturing people in their natural habitat. About portraying some sort of unplanned, sincere moment. If that’s the case, how did it come to this?

The answer is that it didn’t come to this. This is the way it’s always been. Aside from those few years after Bill Cunningham first started capturing people on the street, and the few years of glorious sincerity that we seem to be on the tail end of, street style is always been fairly contrived and fairly exclusive.

It’s sad to say it. But the most sad part of it all is that it’s true.

So don’t ask how it came to this. You’d only be lying to yourself.

*Note: Despite their frustrations with the state of street style menswear, GQ has by no means pledged to do anything to help solve the problem of over-saturation in the game. As a matter of fact, earlier today they published their first collection of shots from NYFW. There are presumed to be no shots of outrageously dressed individuals.

The Summer Fedora

Fedoras have been around since the late 1800’s. They are believed to have been popularized by the Victorien Sardou play Fédora. French stage and early film actress Sarah Bernhardt, who played the title character Princess Fédora Romanoff in the 1882 production, wore a soft felt hat while on stage. Her hat of choice soon became the prevailing women’s fashion item, and the fedora was thus popularized.

I don’t know how surprised you are to read that, but I was awfully surprised to learn that the fedora started off as an item in womens’ wear. Almost all of the 20th century association with the fedora is in men’s fashion. As history shows, by the early 20th century, the fedora was worn predominantly by men. Prohibition-era figures like Al Capone, and actors like Gene Kelly and Humphrey Bogart helped spread the fedora’s popularity to the masses. Amazingly by the 1970’s, the fedora was dead. Michael Jackson, with his white and black fedoras, helped bring it back to life in the 1980’s. Now it’s been re-apportioned by today’s summer children and the hippest and liveliest kids on the street.

I’m always fascinated by the cyclical pattern fashion often has. If you really think about it, the fedora of yesteryear is close to gone for good. Almost all the fedoras you see today are made of straw, because almost all association with the hat today revolves around summer.

Although it is cool to see the hat morph from an exclusively female obsession, to a menswear staple, to a unisex item that is embraced by all. The fedora is a near-essential item that can be well utilized in anyone’s closet.

Although summer is winding down, depending on where you live, there is a good month to two of really warm weather ahead. At the very least you have a few weeks left to wear your hat while you embrace the new-found history you carry on your head.

All things considered though, I do wish there were more traditional felt fedoras on the streets.

The Painter’s Khaki

There are few clothing items currently in existence that shout summer more than khaki shorts. As far as classics go, they’re as classic as it gets. Everyone owns a pair. But does everyone own a pair that’s been splattered with paint? The question is rhetorical, and the answer is clearly no. But I’m beginning to think that perhaps nothing screams timeless style meets youthful modernity louder than a pair of paint-splattered khakis.

The cool thing about paint-splattered khakis is the uniqueness of each garment. It’s really an opportunity to infuse your own personality into the clothing, to truly make it your own. Pre-made paint-splattered khakis that are worth buying are hard to come by. But that’s okay. Because splattering them yourself is half the fun. There’s a certain joy that comes from reminding yourself that at the end of the day clothes are just clothes, and they exist for your amusement. After all, it’s the carefree irreverence of past painters that first inspired regular people to splatter their own garments with paint.

jackson pollock was notorious for the paint-covered items in his closet. after all, paint splattering isn’t limited to khakis.

pollock dripping paint on the canvas, and himself

And of course who can forgot Basquiat? As I’ve highlighted before, Jean-Michel was known to paint in his thousand dollar Armani suits. The brilliance of it was the fact that he bought stylish and expensive suits, then proceeded to get paint all over them, showing just how not serious everything was to him in the long run. It’s just part of the effortlessly cool persona he exuded.

basquiat and cat, presumably also covered in paint.

Then there’s Andy Warhol who apparently wore a pair of Ferragamo brogues quite often during the mid-1980s. Needless to say, by the time he died they were dotted with paint. It still continues to wow me how fashion has such an amazing skill for re-apportioning trends and aesthetics from different areas of life and adopting it as stylish. It’s one of the best things about fashion. When you don paint-splattered khakis (or jeans or shoes), you’re making a statement. You’re in a way embodying the same nonchalant and carefree, creative energy that past painters and artists embodied. You’re channeling that same attitude. Because ultimately, you’re just having fun.

andy warhol’s brogues