Dior Homme SS 09 Image courtesy of frillr.com

TI received this email from a reader this morning concerning the last Dior Homme show. I loved the honesty of the viewpoint and I'd like to invite more readers to share their perspective here. This is what TI member RB had to say:

Snapped as a styling note: Angelina: Elite rocks boy gear as girl gear

This week's been as mad and hectic like it were Fashion Week...including Memorial Day when Mike Schwartz ...shall we say manipulated the variables so that I ended up styling this lovely lass of an Elite newcomer for one of his shoots. Angelina is mostly wearing stuff out my closet, including a vintage Dior Homme jacket and sweatshirt and a pair of Hood By Air shorts. The shoes I assure you are not mine however. Though Shayne tells me there is a flock of new downtown boys...pumping it in pumps. God bless!

Red's Tyler Riggs is very coveted for the Milan/Paris Shows FW08

At the women shows I look at the models. At the men's shows, I come with a magnifying glass seriously trained on the clothes. The clock's counting down to the FW08 men's presentations in Milan and Paris and this very specialized market-that of high end designer menswear - is in a very transitional place right this minute. Time was you knew what you would be getting well in advance when it came to "The Shows" . And what entertainment these shows would provide, Tom Ford's flagrant Gucci vs Miuccia Prada's highminded men's line. Raf Simons's art gallery perfect wauldrobe vs Galliano's flamboyant bucaneers. And then the piece de resistance. Hedi Slimane's rock inflected couture level work at Dior Homme. What clear identities they had then.
So what are the shows with the best advance billing right this minute? After being eclipsed by the perverse streamlining at Dior, the Prada suit has a lot of lost ground to cover. Oddly enough Ralph Lauren's return to Milan this season has high expectations building for the glimpse of some kind of spectacle, if not in terms of the looks which are sure to be conservative, then in terms of the show's production values. The revamp of Ferre, as previously mentioned on TI has the label whores (like us) drumming the thumbs in suspense.

LA Models Austin: The Epitome Of the LA ideal PS Austin is NOT The Saint

Back in NY TI barely pays attention to the comings and the goings of male models. Betty Sze at the day job has that beat covered, but Thursday night, on the way back from the big Motorola extravanganza, I heard the most telling tale of the strange variations you get on male models. My chaperone for the night (for I am not allowed to roam LA unsupervised) is also an eagle-eyed young model scout specializing in the male market. For obvious reasons, there is a constant influx of beautiful kids into this city . He described the story of driving down this very strip of Sunset when he spotted this face on a young man that was straight out of a Pre-Raphaelite canvas. Car lurches to a stop. He goes up to the Pre-Raphaelite saint stuck in the form of a LA rocker/panhandler. The radiant beauty is huddled on the sidewalk with another friend, so unwashed, their clothes almost seem to slow-drip an oily black substance and you can almost see the flies spinning around their heads like a halo of sorts. They have a small dog. Its ribs are showing.
"Hello," says the scout. "I think you really should model.
" Do you have a buck so my dog could get some food," said The Saint.
"You think HE can be a model?" demands the Saint's grimy companion.
"Yes I do," says the scout. "I don't have a dollar on me right now but funny enough I'm on my way to the pet store so if you stay here I can bring back some food for your dog."

Chiffre Rouge A0 Series: Dior Homme

Of all the very good products Hedi Slimane left behind at Dior Homme, our favorite will always be the Chiffre Rouge A0 watch line. It is inspiring us to be completists and get them all, before its too late. The one's with the quarter scatter of diamonds are especially hot, no? Betting the house that 10 years from now these rigorously thought out, "sportif" yet refined timepieces will rank as modern classics. Ranking...hmmm now there's an idea.

Some of Marc Atlan's Greatest Hits

From I-phones to limited edition Nikes, why has design become this much of a market force? Is it that we're experiencing an on-going visual evolution of contemporary culture in the same way we are under-going a technological revolution? I'm not trying to write a master's thesis. (Part of the discipline of The Imagist for me is to learn to be...succinct). I'm just trying to figure out how the hell the whole world got to be so design sensitive. When did American product packaging start to overwhelm its content? To personalize the issue a little bit... I was out out to dinner last night with a pal from an ad agency, when the subject turned to Fabien Baron and his powerhouse agency Baron and Baron. Its not a company anymore it seems.Its a brand in itself, if you'll pardon that dirty word..."brand".
Baron you know from the firm's traditional image management of magazines : Paris Vogue, the 90's Harper's Bazaar- which obviously I've been looking at a LOT- Interview magazine, Arena Homme +, as well as fashion ads -most notably Calvin Klein. We gossiped a little bit about the influence Le Baron and Karl Templer now had over the direction of Calvin, down to the models, in which that team seems not to be as personally invested in. Certainly not the way Calvin the man invested in Kate Moss and Brooke Shields and now no girl or boy for Calvin is allowed to be a bigger story than the clothes.