It's OK for intellectual feminists to like fashion

May 15th 2013

Blogger adventure: Jonathan Daniel Pryce of 100 Beards

Back in January, I interviewed Jonathan Daniel Pryce, one of my favourite menswear bloggers and the creative and photographic force behind the 100 Beards, 100 Days project and book. Danielle Meder, a blogger as talented at illustration as she is at introducing people, had introduced us last summer. In person, Jonathan is just as charming, thoughtful and stylish as his bearded man photos.

Your current blog is called Another Garçon, the previous one was Les Garçons de Glasgow – why the French influence? Can we see these titles as a tribute to Rei Kawakubo?

The first blog, Les Garçons de Glasgow (LGDG), was started in 2009 when I lived in Glasgow. The idea for the name had so many influences, one of which being my appreciation of what Rei Kawakubo did with Comme des Garçons (CDG). The most commercially successful CDG pop-up store in the world was in Glasgow so it was also a small nod to that.

I came up with the Les Garçons de Glasgow name when planning a trip to Paris. I had France on the brain and it just popped in my head – I think it has a real ring to it. When I started my menswear blog I needed a connecting name and so Another Garçon (AG) was born.

You started blogging in Glasgow and kept going when you moved to London. Do you think the change of city changed the way you blog?

When blogging from Glasgow I was still travelling a lot – attending fashion week in London and Paris every season, and making trips across Europe. My approach, although Glasgow-centric, wasn’t too narrow. I moved to Paris before London and considering it now, I think a change in blogging culture evolved my blogging style more than a change of city. When I started blogging in 2007, the blogosphere was an entirely different place. It’s amazing to consider how much changes in six years.

Your 100 Beards project, now a book, was hosted on Tumblr, whereas your blog is on Blogger. Why the platform difference?

When starting the 100 Beard project, I wanted a format that was simple, easily understandable and the best place to host one photo per day. As photos are hosted on Tumblr directly (I use Photobucket with my blogger blogs) it made my life easier but but it was also more translatable for the user, who is accustomed to viewing images on Tumblr.

Did you set out to make a book out of the 100 Beards projects or was it a nice side effect of the project, and if so how did it happen?

My original ambition was to do an exhibition in London. I’ve shown my work across the United Kingdom (Glasgow, Edinburgh, Newcastle, Belfast to name a few) and Paris but never in London so I though it would make a nice end to 2012. About 30 days into the project the hits on 100 beards was doubling that of Les Garçons de Glasgow and Another Garçon. The press attention was also huge including GQ, Glamour, Grazia, WGSN so I thought a book may be a nice way to encapsulate the project as a whole. I’m very proud to say that the first edition sold out in just three weeks.

Whereas Les Garçons de Glasgow mixed women and men street style photography, Another Garçon has a strong men focus – why the evolution?

My personal interest lies in menswear, both in design and on the street. When developing Les Garcons de Glasgow it was the next, natural step. Now that we (me and my blogging partner and friend of LGDG, Daniel) have moved to London, Les Garçons de Glasgow has lost some of it’s relevancy, and we are no longer working on that blog I’m actually in the process of updating AG with a format and name change as I type! It’s been running for about 18 months now so it’s time for a change.*

Aside from your blogging work, you work as a social media consultant – how does the blog fit in your professional life?

Blogging is a great way to showcase what I can do for clients. All my clients are in the lifestyle or fashion sector, so AG is very relevant to what is possible for a brand. My academic and professional background is in marketing so over the years I’ve worked on some excellent campaigns for some wonderful companies. Since moving to London and winning my award last June I’ve had a huge amount of interest in my photography and that’s what most of my clients are asking for now.

How do you want your blog to evolve?

Photography is really my focus for the next year. I’m developing my editorial work, which is very exciting, meaning that the blog should feature a lot more fashion stories. I’d like to resolve all the different blogs I run, so they can all be seen in one place. I have Another Garçon, 100 Beards and whatever my next blogging project will be, so it’d be good for my readers to see my work all together.

Do you have any project to take over from 100 Beards?

That’s the question on everyone’s lips! I have no idea just now but I’m waiting for inspiration to hit. Right now, I’ve gone beyond 100 days and am continuing to photograph some beards on the blog. It’s hard to quit the habit! The new work will be featured in the second edition of the 100 Beards book, along with many more unseen photos, which can be preordered at 100beards.bigcartel.com.

* This interview was conducted back in January. Since then, Another Garçon has become Garçonjon.com.

All photos are from Jonathan’s Tumblr, 100 Beards, 100 Days

Posted at 8:31pm and tagged with: blogger adventure, photography, beard, artists on tumblr,.

May 6th 2013

16 notes

Keira Knightley’s dress in Last Night

To celebrate Keira Knightley’s wedding, l decided to revisit her style in Last Night, one of my favourite films featuring her.

Focused on love and desire, on marriage and temptation, Last Night raises the question of what is worse: physical or emotional cheating?

Knightley is married to Sam Worthington, her university sweetheart. Over the course of a night apart, she reconnects with her French ex Guillaume Canet while Worthington doesn’t fight his attraction for Eva Mendes much.

Although she starts the movie in a simple black trousers-oversize jumper-on white vest combo before moving on to casual track pants, the attire Hollywood thinks all freelance magazine writers wear, the real wardrobe star is Knightley’s navy blue dress worn on her date night with Canet.

Considering that three quarters of the movie play out in this dress, costume designer Ann Roth must have spent quite a bit of time sourcing or designing it.

The dress is first introduced in a classic Hollywood getting ready scene, one that’s not too different from the makeover trope, considering Knightley’s move from casual to evening style.

Adjusting her bra, putting on a touch of Touche Eclat, Knightley’s character doesn’t just don a dress; she abandons the self-confidence and physical comfort she displays with her husband. She’s both excited and uneasy with the idea of meeting up with her ex and this pivotal scene suggests they might have unfinished business.

In an interview with Interview magazine, director Massy Tadjedin describes the dress choices as “participatory”. Knightley’s is as different from Mendes’ as their respective body shapes and character personalities.

A while back, ELLE UK published a feature about the perception of women based on their curves. It opposed Mendes’ and Knightley’s chest sizes as Hollywood examples of the other woman and the wife, as an evidence of how women are stereotyped based on their silhouettes.

The dresses mirror these prejudices. Knightley’s falls below the knees, with a ribbon belt and a small décolleté whereas Mendes wears a wrap dress. Tadjedin explains that

You know if you’ve ever worn a wrap dress, you sort of have to be conscious of when it’s opening when you’re walking, when the cleavage is getting too low, when the belt needs to be tightened—you’re always engaged with it. And also for a lot of women, like me, it requires a slip under it, and if you’re worried about too much of the space between your legs being evident, if the sun hits it at the wrong angle…

Knightley’s dress isn’t just a clothing choice, it’s an argument on her character’s hypocrisy.

For Tadjedin, Mendes is the character who really owns up to her morals whereas Knightley, despite an earlier fit of jealousy at her husband and a demure dress, stops short of sleeping with another man but doesn’t consider any of their emotional connection cheating.

Posted at 10:33am and tagged with: Classy film, dress, keira knightley, cinema,.

April 25th 2013

Is maje trying to bridge the Paris-province fashion gap?

Growing up in Nevers, a city with a population of 43,000, 260 kilometres away from Paris, Fashion Carrousel and I often resented the Paris-province fashion divide.

It wasn’t just that fashion shows took place in Paris but that, from reading magazines, we felt that the best stores and all the cool fashion-related events were in the capital.

Brands have picked up on this general provincial fashion frustration. They are trying to cancel out the Paris province inequality thanks to a smart us of their website.

Today, French womenswear brand maje invited its entire database to an evening of shopping and pampering, in association with L’Oréal Professionnel and essie, in six of its Paris stores.

“Maje doesn’t forget any of its customers” promises the brand. For clients not living in the capital or unable to attend the event, it is offering a bright yellow passport cover, luggage tag and essie nail polish to the first 150 people who make a purchase on its digital commerce website.

The two offers aren’t quite equivalent, especially in terms of reach. However, I welcome the initiative and hope it will lead to an ongoing use of the digital space by maje so that no matter where you live, you can benefit from its commercial initiatives.

Next step: segmenting the database so that subscribers only receive invitations to events that are geographically-relevant - ensuring they don’t suffer from needless fashion event envy.

Posted at 7:35pm and tagged with: Best practice, email marketing, MAJE, france,.

April 19th 2013

3 notes

23 Rules which have inspired my style

Stripes: Neutral colours.
Men’s shirt: Only comes from the menswear department.
Tweed jacket over jeans, smoking jacket over a printed t-shirt, leather jacket over everything else.
Skirts: Never below the knee. Never mid-calf.
Trousers: Ankle-length is the perfect length.
White dresses: Always with colour pop shoes, never black or white ones.
Tights: Unless you’re a grandmother or a Duchess, never wear skin-colour ones (Ines de la Fressange).
Cleavage and legs are mutually exclusive, even if you have very little of both.
Only wear heels you can walk in.
Never buy something you struggle to put on in the store changing room (my mum).
To lengthen the leg, straps must always be under the malleolus (my sister).
Loose top, skinny bottom.
“When accessorising always take off the last thing you put on” (Coco Chanel).
The high-street/high-end mix only works if you can afford high end.
If something looks amazing on Olivia Palermo/Diane Kruger/mocktress of the moment, it doesn’t mean it will look good on you.
If something looks bad on Olivia Palermo/Diane Kruger/mocktress of the moment, it means it will look bad on you.
Navy blue is more refined than black (my sister).
Don’t wear it if you’re scared to stain it/crease it/tear it.
Being cold isn’t elegant.
If it seems like a good idea in store because you don’t own anything similar, it means it isn’t.
Stick to a few trusted brands. It makes throwing outfits together that much easier.
There is no such thing as too much underwear.
Scarves dress an entire outfit up or down.

All pictures by Tommy Ton, sourced from a variety of sites.

Posted at 8:13pm and tagged with: list, first person,.

April 17th 2013

17 notes

US Vogue cover or cinema poster?

Carey Mulligan is covering the May issue of US Vogue looking suitably 1920s for someone about to impersonate The Great Gatsby’s Daisy Buchanan on the big screen.

Mixing a real-life actress with the character she plays is nothing new for Anna Wintour, oft credited with starting the film star as cover girl trend.

From Gwyneth Paltrow as Pepper Pots to Rooney Mara as Lisbeth Salander, the Vogue covers seem to be dictated by the actress with the biggest film out, and Wintour is never scared to spell out in the styling and titles where the inspiration came from.

Posted at 9:01pm and tagged with: us vogue, cinema, Anna Wintour,.

April 13th 2013

WWAHD: What would Audrey Hepburn do?

4 notes

Audrey Hepburn is covering Vanity Fair this month, a few months after she covered Tatler. She’s also been the face of GAP and Galaxy. That’s a lot more covers and campaigns than many actresses alive get.

Hepburn was an amazing actress, a dedicated humanitarian and, as a person who went from nearly starving during World War II to the heights of Hollywood, an inspirational tale of where hard work and resilience can lead.

“Sometimes I ask myself, “How would Audrey Hepburn handle this?”” (Henceforth to be shortened to The Question), Natalie Massenet admitted to Hester Lacey (Financial Times) when asked, ”Who was or still is your mentor?” for The Inventory’s question last May.

Who hasn’t asked The Question? When faced with a difficult situation or wondering how to improve our selves, we often look to people we admire, questioning how they would handle things.

The Question has given birth to a juicy business exemplified by Pamela Keogh’s book What Would Audrey Do?: Timeless Lessons for Living with Grace & Style, a part biography, part rule book suggesting following Hepburn’s attitude can better your own life. The Question even has its own Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest profiles that offer Hepburn’s “best quotes, photos, fashion tips and everything else you need to know to live a fabulous life”. They are part of a marketing campaign by an author writing a teen book on Hepburn. Who cares whether Hepburn would actually have been a social media user (Keogh suggests not)?

When do you stop asking The Question? If Massenet “the founder of Net-A-Porter, the hugely successful luxury fashion retail website”, with style credentials equal to Hepburn’s and a vision and achievements spanning technology and fashion, is any indication, never.

In fact, Massenet’s career makes her the perfect subject for The Question. “What would Natalie Massenet do?” many professionals wonder. I most certainly do, alongside its sister questions focused on Hillary Clinton, Madeleine Albright, Anna Wintour, Christine Lagarde, Coco Chanel, Sheryl Sandberg, my friend Stacy, some of the very impressive women I have the chance to work with, C.J. Cregg and Scarlett O’Hara. They’re fictional? Does it matter? The Question is purely theoretical. We build an answer based on the skewed understanding of a character, of her public achievements and image. This is not really about how she would handle it, it’s more about how she would appear to handle it.

Raising The Question to people I am close to has taught me that answering it is hazardous at best. On more than one occasion, when discussing a particular situation, I realised they didn’t have an answer any more than I did and that their way wouldn’t necessarily work for me. Not that it’s stopped me.

The Question is more about working out an answer by trying to glimpse alternatives through another personality, about getting advice, even if it’s fictional, and about being comforted in one’s position. I have multiple versions of The Question because each person can bring the answer I need most, which can often be translated as the answer which comforts me in my way.

Depending on my Monday morning mood, I can look up to Anna Wintour, famous for getting up at 5am to play tennis or to Audrey Hepburn, who according to Keogh, stopped exercising. And it doesn’t matter that picking the role model most practical for me at this time defeats the purpose of choosing a role model in the first place.

In the Vanity Fair feature on Hepburn, her son’s new book on her time in Rome is anecdotal. What the media have picked up on is that she “never thought she was beautiful”.

That’s the thing about The Question. We like looking up to these people for inspiration, but we also like knowing that role models have the same doubts and feeling as us, that they’re human. Because if despite all these doubts, they achieved what they achieved, why wouldn’t we manage to?

Posted at 11:35am and tagged with: net-a-porter, feminism, career,.

April 6th 2013

Why brands should think beyond the iPhone

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My Little Paris, a lifestyle website dedicated to everything Paris, is having a sample sale of apparel from womenswear fashion brand Des Petits Hauts today. Only on its iPhone app. The sale was advertised on Facebook and half of the comments published so far are from annoyed, iPhone-less followers.

iPhone-only apps are a branding black hole. Once upon a time, the photo-based social networks Instagram and Pinterest were reserved for Apple users. Then as their user numbers grew, they adapted and introduced apps for Android.

It’s not just that the iPhone was the most developed of any smartphones, but rather having your product on Apple, which many confused with aligning with Apple values, made you one of the cool kids. Availability for iPhone users isn’t just about serving the customer, it’s about the perception the customer has of the brand.

Companies like tagging on Apple’s reputation for disruptive innovation and on its authority in cool design. They also like the female-dominated, city-living, degree-owning, country-hopping, HBO-watching, Woody Allen-loving, high-earning iPhone user, who is bang in their demographic, real or ideal.

Brands seem to be picking up though. Last October, Apple and Google announced equal numbers of apps were available for iPhones and Android phones, at 700,000.

In the US, Android currently owes 51.7 percent of the smartphone market (down two points since the beginning of the year). Shouldn’t that market share be enough for Chanel, Style.com and Diane von Furstenberg (despite her partnership with Google on Project Glass) to factor the development of an Android app into their budgets?

A survey by the Reynolds Journalism Institute last August showed that the Android market is dominated by the under 34’s, the very millennials who shop and get their information on their smartphones. It’s time fashion brands and publications caught up with their customers.

Disclosure: I’m an Android user (obviously).

Posted at 4:36pm and tagged with: Chanel, marketing, smartphone, technology,.

March 29th 2013

8 notes

Shouldn’t newsstand covers be the most interesting ones?

A piece by The Luxe Chronicles celebrating the April subscribers’ issue of Spanish Harper’s Bazaar reminded me of one of my pet peeves with magazine publishing: how interesting subscriber covers are, compared with newsstand ones.

Having two different covers is good business for publications. It allows publishers to keep double the number of advertisers happy by featuring at least double the number of outfits. It gives subscribers, the only guaranteed monthly readers, an additional reason to sign up (in case the discounted prices and fancy presents weren’t enough).

Subscriber covers are more daring and creative than newsstand ones in terms of styling and pose. They don’t need to make sure the model/star is recognisable, faces the reader and looks straight into his eyes.They don’t need to shout the entire content on the cover, resulting in a product feeling more high-end.

As buyers, are we really so susceptible that if one cover model didn’t look at us, we’d purchase the next magazine? I believe the opposite would be true.

I stopped subscribing to fashion magazines because of their mediocrity and sameness. The similarity of covers on display at the newsstands month in, month out merely reinforces me in those feelings. Covers I’ve seen countless times before promise me articles and interviews I’ve already read and which I’m not willing to fork out £5 for anymore.

But, although the content is the same, the subscriber covers promise a new angle, and that’s worth £5.

Cases in point below, with the subscribers covers left and the newsstand ones right.

ELLE UK, September 2011
ELLE UK, September 2010
Harper’s Bazaar Spain, April 2013
Harper’s Bazaar US, March 2012
Marie Claire US, June 2012

Posted at 11:36am and tagged with: magazine, ELLE, harper's bazaar, blogosphere,.

March 15th 2013

2 notes

Harper’s Bazaar and My-Wardrobe are giving you a chance to win a new wardrobe. Or are they?

To celebrate its collaboration with Carmen Borgonovo, Harper’s Bazaar (UK) contributing editor and My-wardrobe.com fashion director, the magazine has teamed up with the luxury etailer to offer readers a chance to win £1,500 to spend online.

A lovely idea, however it’s unlikely to allow you to buy the full new season wardrobe advertised in the Bazaar email. How many items featured in the publication or sold by My-Wardrobe can you actually purchase for that amount? And considering the average price of the items selected in the Bazaar editorials, isn’t the initiative a tad derogatory?

Posted at 6:49pm and tagged with: magazine, email marketing,.

Harper’s Bazaar and My-Wardrobe are giving you a chance to win a new wardrobe. Or are they?
To celebrate its collaboration with Carmen Borgonovo, Harper’s Bazaar (UK) contributing editor and My-wardrobe.com fashion director, the magazine has teamed up with the luxury etailer to offer readers a chance to win £1,500 to spend online.
A lovely idea, however it’s unlikely to allow you to buy the full new season wardrobe advertised in the Bazaar email. How many items featured in the publication or sold by My-Wardrobe can you actually purchase for that amount? And considering the average price of the items selected in the Bazaar editorials, isn’t the initiative a tad derogatory?

February 2nd 2013

2 notes

Happy Chandeleur?

La Chandeleur, 40 days after Christmas, is one of those Catholic celebrations which sexist undertones have been forgotten in the name of good food and togetherness.

Not to be confused with Shrove Tuesday, the beginning of Lent, la Chandeleur commemorates the presentation of Jesus to the Temple, 40 days after his birth, an event described by Luke (1:26) as “Mary’s obedience to the law of God in presenting the Child Jesus in the Temple.”

Forty days is a recurrent time frame in the Bible, and this one is rooted in Jewish tradition. After giving birth to a boy, women couldnt “come into the sanctuary” for 40 days (80 if they’d had a girl), after which they had to go to a temple to be purified.

There likely were practical reasons to this time frame, including the fact that 2000 years ago, without modern medicine, women probably needed 40 days to recover from giving birth.

As for what the Virgin Mary, who’d just given birth to the Son of God, needed purifying for, I’ll leave you to judge.

Fra Angelico, La Présentation de Jésus au Temple (c. 1440)
Présentation au Temple (12th century)
Hans Holbein the Elder, Presentation of Christ at the Temple (1500–01)
Stained glass window at St. Michael’s Cathedral (Toronto), Infant Jesus at the Temple
James Tissot, The Presentation of Jesus in the Temple (La présentation de Jésus au Temple)
Vittore Carpaccio, Presentation of Jesus in the Temple (1510)
Andrea Celesti, Presentation of Jesus at the Temple (1710)
Denis Calvaert, Presentation of Jesus in Temple (1614)
Nicolas Pisano, Presentation in the Temple
Painting from the Menologion of Basil II (c. 1000)

Posted at 6:44pm.