Links to articles on or by After March

here a link to an interview with Dagmar von Taube for ICONIST and Die Welt about the AFTER MARCH shirts in general.

here an interview with Guya Merkle of Vieri on conflict-free gold and diamonds

here an article I wrote on the Anti-brand Brand, on Balenciaga’s Aldi scarf

here an article the new wrong rights

here on socks for the 1%

here on War Photography, in German only for now, until I find the original English version: Gibt es einen weiblichen Blick auf Krieg? Diese Idee ist absurd. Was wir aus der Ferne verlangen müssen, ist, den Alltag zu sehen

here a few tips on sustainable jewelry (scroll down below the BUY LESS photo to read the English version)

in the TALENTS section of VOGUE ITALIA in April 2019

here in the original Italian

and here, in English translation (links aren’t working yet and photos still not uploaded, a work-in-progress!)

The Berlin brand AFTER MARCH, created by the curator and journalist April von Stauffenberg, supports a more sustainable fashion, one shirt at a time

Some fabrics, such as lycra and nylon, take hundreds of years to dissolve in the environment. The fashion industry, according to a recent United Nations report, is among the most polluting on the planet: only 1% of the clothing produced is recycled. In Berlin, however, a young new brand is fighting against this phenomenon one shirt at a time. It's called After March.

Five reasons to find out more:

– Made by the art curator and journalist April von Stauffenberg, a native of North Carolina, this original brand takes men's shirts – in 100% cotton and made in Europe – from vintage shops, and gives them a new identity, a second life so to speak, with cuts, inserts, knots, and hand-drawn embellishments that make them unique and extremely feminine. The result is a sort of boyfriend shirt deconstructed in a creative and modern way, to be worn with personality, verve, and a sense of humor.

I LOVE DICK (Thank you Chris Kraus for this title). Shop the shirt here

– The brand was founded as an antithesis to fast fashion. An avid consumer of Zara and H&M, April began to convert to slow fashion – and decided to take action – after seeing a film about the impact of the fashion industry called "The True Cost". April's mission? Making the vintage "stylish and cool" through what she calls "boosted" or “special effects” vintage. With the hope that "instead of being the second cause of pollution in the world, fashion will become a pioneer of practices that change the world."

Early Morning Mini-Vacation. Shop the shirt here

– Sustainability is naturally a strong point: all the alternations made by AFTER MARCH are done either by hand, by the designer herself, or by small local tailors in Berlin. Furthermore, all of the transportation, from one end of the city to the other, is by bicycle.

Dr Spock. Shop the shirt here

– Recently the line has been extended to include, blazers, modified and embellished – with vintage knitted sleeve sleeves for example – to become unique pieces. And now the skirts are peeping out too.

– After recent collaborations with the fashion designer Vladimir Karaleev, April has a few creative synergies in the pipeline with different artists (including Douglas Gordon), and with stylists from the Berlin fashion scene.

Peaches and Herbs. Shop the shirt here

All photos © Dominik Schulthess

Sneakers in the Age of Alternative Facts

(published in German in the TAZ, 7.11.2018)

First off let’s get to the paid portion of this article, for shoe companies will love me for saying this:

SHOES ARE IMPORTANT!
Even better:
SHOES ARE PERHAPS THE MOST IMPORTANT DETAILS OF YOUR DAY! You doubt me? You think I exaggerate in the name of earning my keep?

Just look to Istanbul. With all the recent events, namely, a man walking into an embassy to get his divorce papers and ending up in 15 pieces still mysteriously tucked away, the thing that is least mentioned is the fact that “they” might have gotten away with it had they sent around the corner for proper fitting shoes.

It’s not mentioned that often in the news, for it is, after all, a forgotten detail, but I’m here to tell you, if you didn’t already know, that Khashoggi went into the Saudi embassy and his body double walked out wearing Khashoggi’s clothes, but not his shoes. That is, Khashoggi went in wearing formal brogues, his body double went out (the back door, don’t ask me why) wearing the trend-of-the-year SNEAKERS!

Now the funny thing is, that it has been on my mind of late how even the “couture” fashion houses are appropriating each other’s ideas with a speed and fervor that is mind-boggling. Witness the sneaker, the ugly oversized sneaker trend that was ignited by (again!) Demna Gvasalia and has now been copied by every major house out there.

A few words of advice: what you wear down there (keep going, you dirty-minds, I mean the ground) is pretty darn important. The wrong decision can turn the perfect crime (for as we know 15 pieces will fit into any grab bag) into a worldwide unfathomable mess.

(Disclaimer: it’s my own speculation that if he wasn’t wearing his shoes, he certainly wasn’t wearing his underwear. No body double would feel obliged to do that, for sure. I will probably never be paid to write about underwear, so I feel pretty secure in making this assertion).



In Purse-suit of Happiness

(published in DIE DAME, translated into German, April 12, 2018)

Recently I was waiting in the doctor’s office, impatiently watching my daughter build her 8th Lego skyscraper. I began to open emails I’d otherwise delete. These usually begin with a credible subject header such as: “282 items just for you, April!” 

Seriously? For moi? In a turbo capitalist’s wet dream, well, yes…

Boredom can help you break out of unhealthy patterns. So I opened this email, eager to see what some algorithm had picked out just for me. Boom. There it was. That thing known as a Kelly. 

There was little hesitation. I had to have it. What? A purse that costs more than a 1984 Porsche? Yes. Though I must say, I never wanted one before, but now? A bargain? Let’s do the math: It cost more than a used Porsche but less than a new Hermes. The question is: Is my prefrontal cortex fully awake and wanting to reward the savvy shopper or fully paralyzed by the outright lie that I just don’t want this bag but I NEED THIS BAG. I straddled the dilemma. I’m a big believer in meditation, after all. I observed my desire for handbag salvation, took a deep breath and went back to watching the kid erect model buildings that would have made Bruno Taut drip with envy.

I had been intrigued for years that so many were dying to have one of these bags. Some people make pilgrimages to Mecca, others put their  names on waiting lists at Hermes for, what, 3 years? I had read about the phenomenon in one of those paperbacks you’d never admit to reading. It was written by the kind of mom I’d never be, but I was doing research at the time on the kind of mom I needed to know for my own novel. The Pirañas of Park Avenue, or at least that’s the way I am remembering the title now. Flesh-eating fish. Ja. That’s it. Those Upper-Eastside Manhattan moms with whom I share not a wot of likely concerns. Or did I? I’ve always thought of myself as a friendly grass-grazing type, not a carnivorous predator, but maybe I was delusional. (After all, I am a fan of Superfoods.)

As for bags, in general, for me, it’s practicality that dictates. I have a bad back, frozen shoulders, a neck like Frankenstein. So when I carry a bag, if at all, it’s going to be one of those recyclable jute bags I can shove in my pocket. For spontaneous shopping sprees, you see, to be filled at any given moment with broccoli and coconut milk on sale. 

But that other women make bodily sacrifices to look fashionable intrigued me. Maybe these are bags for ladies with drivers. What are they carrying anyway? Megaphones? The keys to the house, the office, the swimming pool shed? And, what? A few coins for ice cream? (Coins, notoriously, will damage the interior of your bag, beware.)

Googling the mentality of this species is hilarious. You’ll find x-number of articles on the top ten things successful women carry, 14 essential things allsuccessful women carry, 50 (!) mysterious things successful women carry in their bags. Fifty? Besides bandaids and valium, and, ok, yes, tampons, I’m having a hard time imagining this.

Recently, I had started noticing Instagram stars carrying big bags. Men carrying lady bags! Look it up. Seriously. Italians, of course, you shake your head and wonder at my wonder, and the occasional Asian blogger star. BryanBoy carries a Chanel Boy (and a Hermes Birkin, what else?) and the stylist street-star Graziano di Cintio carries a different oversized clutch every day! When I contacted him over Instagram to ask him when he started doing this, he said he couldn’t remember. Sometime in the 1990s, he thinks, and he had a laugh that I considered his bags “big.”

Of the big bags and so-called IT bags, never ever in my life have I wanted a Chloe Paddington. Until I began researching this article, didn’t even know what one looked like. The Paddington was one of those must-have bags in the 1990s, largely because of its professed waiting list. Having trouble imagining it? You too are not an IT bagger? Picture the Hermes Kelly put through the washing machine with an oversized lock and enough straps to hold it down to your saddle. Something for the cityslicker who might lasso a large bull on any given street corner — if she could move fast enough, that is. How, tell me, is she going to catch a bull (or the cowboy) with that freaking ball and chain around her shoulder. Imagine actually wanting to carry a bag with a big heavy useless lock on it? 

Which leads me to conclude: Are IT bags for masochists? The lock doesn’t lock anything. It’s just for looks. It looks secure. Which leads me further: Are handbags a sign of insecurity? A sign of fear? Carrying bandaids, after all, presumes that you will get hurt. Carrying a hair brush assumes that your hair will get messy. Carrying a toothbrush is of course in case you eat garlic and have a date with a vampire later on. (Vampires, as we all know, are great lookers, they dress well, and they have castles. Believe me, you do not want to fuck up your date with a vampire!) What else fits in your handbag? Your hand gun, of course. You see? Handbags are for people who leave the house in fear!

Thinking a little harder, I have repressed the fact that I carried a Marc Jacobs Stam for a while. It was so heavy! It was Jacobs, after all, who famously made it his mission to have girls spend more than a month’s rent on one of his bags. (And he meant rent in Manhattan!) And that’s just it, this thing about IT bags: They are constructed to be unattainable, illusive. In the late 1990s, there was that turn in the fashion industry, when couture houses (exotic fish) began to be swallowed up by conglomerates (whales) and their shareholders.  No one wants to invest in a sinking ship! IT bags to the rescue. . Just look at all the ads in the front of fashion mags today: models holding bags, bags, bags in the most awkward ways. Bags, it turns out, are lifeboats. And they are pitched to us minions as safety nets (investments). Lesson no 1 of the handbook Capitalism for Children: So long as we continue to believe so, it’s true!

As the doctor finally calls out STAUFFENBERG, I’m furiously typing my Amex number into my phone. Done. (After all, I, too, must do my part to save the whales.) Princess Grace Kelly, the namesake of my new (old) bag, by the way, carried only two Kelly bags her whole life long. Classic, hers were dark brown and navy. What a spartan! Victoria Beckham, by contrast, is said to own 100s of Hermes bags. If you life goal is to enter the Imelda Marcos hall of fame, I guess that’s ok. 

But the Kelly was first used as a demure  instrument of hiding. The newlywed Princess of Monaco was first pictured in the yellow press carrying her Hermes “sac de ville” — or so it was called back then— in order to hide her emerging pregnancy.

I’m not hiding anything now except my shame, the guilt I feel in having made the plunge. I’m begging for redemption. The only designer I know to ever take the piss out of the whole IT bag phenomena was Raf Simon who in 2011 designed a sardonic anti-IT bag for Jil Sander, calling it the Market Bag. It was made out of orange plastic and I am dying to have one. 

Raf Simon's Market Bag for Jil Sander

We can trace the IT bag craze, though, back to Venice in the 1940s. Roberta di Camerino bags were so beloved that many companies plagiarized them shamelessly. It was Camerino’s trellis logo of interlocking R’s that preceded the GG pattern of Gucci, and even up to today, her signature velvet trompe l’oeil patterns certainly have had a heavy influence on Prada’s most recent line.

Prada 2016, if I remember correctly

Roberta di Camerino bag from the 1960s

Sci-fi William Gibson hit it on the head: “We’re moving toward a world where all the consumers under a certain age will probably tend to identify more with their consumer status or with the products they consume then they would with ... any sort of antiquated notion of nationality.”

Right-o.

And I now belong to the HERMES nation.

END

Dress Like You Are Already Famous (sorry kids, work in progress fixin’ up this website! pictures not uploaded yet)

Balenciaga, I wuv you. But can you please stop using POLYESTER?!

 

Every day, you wake up and search for meaning. From the B12-Omega300-Collagen muesli you shovel down your gullet to the charcoal detox toothpaste. (Detox? Yes, because though we won’t admit it, we still eat marshmallows.) Even the clothes you will put on your back – all of it has meaning. All of it is a reflection of the choices you make. (It’s Descartes! It’s not who you are, but who you think you are.)

On the day that you wake up knowing you will enter the vast stage of meaning in the art fair known as Art Basel, you will be a little overwhelmed. You will be accosted by meaning all day long.  +/- 4000 artists bombarding you with their own personal meaning in life. The greatest meaning you’ll find, however, won’t be on the walls (painting) or on the floor to trip over (sculpture). It’s the walking displays, the walking-talking VIPs and not-so VIPS of Art Basel that are actually what makes Basel Basel. You will spend the greater part of your day with your jaw open, catching flies, aghast at the parade of personal style.

What to wear when in competition with 95,000 other art stalkers? Asymmetric, high-low, mismatching loafers, how much ruffle is too much ruffle?  Ask the hedgehog: he knows many things:

As Isaiah Berlin once said, "a fox knows many things, but a hedgehog one important thing."

This is not advice column (i.e., just wear Balenciaga, basta, boom: a no-brainer), but rather a reflection on the thoughts you will tango with. My only advice is this: Dress like you are already famous.

 

Balenciaga/Vetements combo, the two unruly children of Demna Gvasalia

You could go easy and go monochrome, but you’re hardly be able to compete with the intelligence of a Robert Ryman even if your t-shirt has been ripped by a Japanese-Parisian designer in all the right places, this is going to be a difficult game. 

Try borrowing one big enough to wear off the shoulder and tell people your canvas goes beyond the canvas. Or as a skimpy dress? Necklaces, in the fashun world, have been long relegated to the realm of statements. Wear a white one. Plastic. Trust me. Proclaim your non-objectivity. Your refusal to participate in the game of Suprematism or Color Field painting. And then screw it all: just wear a pair of sporty white tube socks with something really really fancy.

Suddenly with the advent of a pussy-grabbing president, feminism has become hot again. How to dress like a feminist without wearing an unseasonably warm pink wool hat? Barbara Bloom gives us a clue. Mirrors and doubling: always keep them guessing.

the work of Barbara Bloom

How does this translate? The partner look, double trouble, of course. Preferably not your lover, just a friend. Get them to wear exactly what you are wearing and instantly you’ll be an instastar. The more nonsensical the outfit the better: Tahiti 08 t-shirt, Off-White jeansthat are not off-white, and cheeky Anya Hindmarch “wink” sneakers. Go forth and be identical!

Another thought altogether: take whatever it is that you want to wear and graffiti it with whatever it is you want to say. Say, you want to say something, like, “Peanut Butter,” or “I am Jungle.” Say it loud, in ALL CAPS, in washaway marker. If anyone asks what it is, tell them you ran into Bethan Huws and her clever sandwich boards in the bathroom.

the work of Bethan Huws

Where’s the game changer? This year, it’s Chinese. Both Wang Shang and Guan Xiao have made sculptures that are so weird. In Wang’s case, it’s about rocks. Not just any rocks. And no, not rock studs, you Valentino addicts. Scholars rocks. That sounds like an oxymoron but it’s an actual thing in China, these rocks that are so special they’re declared special. (Sounds very Duchampian and it is!). 

Wang Shang

Whereas Guan Xiao makes objects that speak of the unspeakable language they speak. It’s all very heady and this is where you’re outfit is simply not going to compete at all. This stinky polyester dollar print pussy blouse over some deconstructed jeans and a baseball cap (freier wahl!) and lots and lots of faux pearls. No matter how hard you try, the Battlestar Galaxia is lost here. You will never look as good as Mick Jagger. Ever. End game.

Balenciaga, I wuv you. But can you please stop using POLYESTER?!

Alert: the mega-collectors are easy to spot in the VIP crowd. They are always in celebrity disguise. Like an American mom and pop visiting their daughter for the first time in Europe: matching track suits and plastic visors.
 

how to spot a 'real' collector

Now, just imagine this outfit with Kelly's visor, thanks to The Corner, Berlin:

how to spot a 'real' collector

 Jacquemus skirt, Saint Laurent jacket, Vetements boots

Hot. Like I said, Dress like you are already famous. And not just Andy’s 15 minutes of fame. But now that track suits are all the rage, and they range from 1000s of dollars upwards, beware: there are mega-collector imposters out there who are quite simply fashion snobs.