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The Refinery 29 blog
Pipeline has a little feature on Maria Schneider's style in Michelangelo Antonioni's 1975 film
The Passenger. A couple things about this.
No.1: I am nowhere near what my mom used to call a "fashion plate" (as in "You don't have to be a fashion plate," which she would say every time my brother and I were over-stuffing our plastic suitcases for two weeks at Camp Orkila, anticipating the unknown bevy we would be attempting to impress). Clothing wise, I pretty much stick to basic stuff like Levi's, Filson, Brooks Brothers, and the wide array of useful items cast off by the armed forces of the United States of America. But I think
Refinery 29 is an interesting business. My understanding is that they essentially curate a collection for their online store by picking and choosing products they want to sell from a network of affiliated designers and brick-and-mortar shops. When someone places an order, the affiliate fulfills it, so their overhead must be very low. They drive people to the site by tightly refining their aesthetic so you want to check there first (I mean, if you are inclined), and also by producing magazine-like content, such as street fashion, party pictures, music reviews—and now this blog, Pipeline. It's kind of similar to
The New York Times'
T blog, but more street-level. There's a lot to skip over, but it's worth skimming through every once in awhile.
No.2: The Passenger is a dope movie. It's on DVD now so you can get it from Netflix or wherever you like. Once you've seen them once, most of Antonioni's movies can be added to the aforementioned collection of visually stunning movies that can be watched with the sound off—but
The Passenger is one I could watch again and again if the mood strikes. The fashion and design is amazing—Maria Schneider's style is very current, but I also really dig Jack Nicholson's clothes, the Land Rover he drives across North Africa, the way Gaudi's and other interesting architecture appears so prominently throughout the film. Plus, it's a road movie. Who doesn't like a road movie?
Pipeline also has a great video clip in its post.
Get more info on
The Passenger from
Sony Pictures Classics.
With all the attention given to The Sartorialist, Face Hunter, et al, it's easy to forget the granddaddy of all street fashion photographers, Bill Cunningham, of The New York Times. Every Sunday in the style section he features a bunch of photographs that illustrate a particular theme or trend, and on nytimes.com he has a bunch of On The Street audio slideshows, like this one from when it was really hot out a couple weeks ago, or this one about the arrival of Spring in the city, or this weekend's entry on sagging and belts. There's also this audio slideshow about Bill Cunningham by the Times fashion critic Cathy Horyn.
Cunningham has a more spontaneous approach than his younger counterparts, which puts fashion in more of a real-life context—it reminds you that these people are walking around looking great and/or interesting while doing the everyday stuff they do.
I remember my old boss Stephen Gan saying that Bill Cunningham's apartment is completely filled to the brim with photographs, and that he actually sleeps on top of his filing cabinets because there's not enough room for a bed. I don't know if that's true but I like to think so.
