Montana’s Legacy,Dior Blood-Stained Shirt and Fassbinder’s Effortless Cool
Pure Curation Chaos is Back
This fashion month has made me realize that by now, my relationship with fashion can be summed up as this: I have things I care about and things I don’t. Therefore, you mustn't expect me to comment on the new McQueen. I won't. Typically, I keep my fashion adoration to myself, but from a very young age, there were two designers I loved: Alexander McQueen and the enigmatic Claude Montana. Following his untimely death, I feel it’s fitting to briefly discuss his pioneer work.
Audacious star of France’s ready-to-wear renaissance, Claude Montana earned himself the couture throne at Lanvin in 1989. Eight years later, he vanished in a haze of drugs and bankruptcy, following the suicide of his American wife and muse. I will not go into Montana’s controversial real-life character, as Dana Thomas explains in her recent Substack newsletter, but hey, his work was everything fashion isn’t today. It had distinct aesthetics and an underlying narrative; most importantly, it came from his soul.
So why fashion isn’t like that today?
This week’s fashion findings follow, as usual.
The tour de force that was Claude Montana’s runway shows.
The Flame Glass Sweatshirt by Who Decides War.
The Dior Homme ‘blood-stained’ shirt.
The effortless bad-boy-meets-style-icon looks of film iconoclast Rainer Werner Fassbinder.
Vautrait’s Fall / Winter 2023 campaign document by Dudi Hasson.
Liria Pristine’s knitwear gems for Joséphine in Napoleon, the film.
Xiao Wen Ju photographed by Zhong Lin for Marie Claire China, March 2024 with superb styling by Austin Feng.
All of Aenrmous’s emotion-evoking masks.
Reading list:
Over the Influence: Why Social Media is Toxic for Women and Girls by Kara Alaimo
The Vision Machine by Paul Virilio
The Never-Ending Doom Spiral is Back by Ryan Broderick for the Garbage Day newsletter
Great, the opposite of chaotic. Impressionistic is where it's at.