Fader

Besides French dudes like Christophe Lemaire, we regularly obsess about the Danes (Henirk Vibsov, Wood Wood) and the Swedes (Acne Jeans, Carin Wester). Carin Rodebjer of Rodebjer happens to be one of our all time human beings/designers and was in town from Sweden a couple of weeks ago for little a work and play. It's Carin's immaculate shirt dresses that first got us hooked—always beautifully constructed with a extra stylee twist thrown in, like the huge pussy bow pieces from her spring 2006 collection featured back in Issue #36. Part of the secret, she confides, is the Italian shirting factory where they are produced. And up at her NYC showroom, she showed us the new custom rope-print shirting she has lined up for fall, as well as some other key pieces, including a double breasted coat dress and a cropped blazer with exposed almost football-esque shoulder pads. What's ultimately most awesome about her clothes is that she has all the best super feminine flourishes (yeah, we're wearing our coat dresses with nothing underneath this fall) without sacrificing any practicality. It's chic with two feet on solid ground. Before we said our goodbyes and Carin went to meet her Swedish friends at a Peter Morén show, she told us her next collection would be all about (wait for it) neat and tidy hippies!!! Like we said, Swedes are the best! more...

Playing hunt-the-peace-sign is our new fashion favorite game, especially since the symbol turned 50 earlier this year (CND forever!). We snapped accessory designer Lizzie Fortunato supporting the cause a couple of weeks ago in a shirt by Sophomore. Although unfortunately we are unable to identify the awesome white tux jacket that she also has on (probably vintage) but the button-studded headband is most definitely one of her own designs. Also the style team actually hasn't bathed since the last hippie post on tie-dye, and half of its members are currently out on the field researching a story on the 50 best places on the planet to buy patchouli oil. Stay tuned. (Click the image to see it full.) more...

See, this is what we miss most about Dipset. We don't even have to explain what's going on here. Coogi cardigans and Swag Splashes. Pure entertainment. Courtesy of SmackTube via Smarten Up Nas.

The word "swagger" comes up in the office a lot, and luckily our style intern Charles has lots of it. On a weekly basis he rolls in wearing the most amazing shoulder padded leather coats, rolled shorts and boots—all styles that could never be pulled off without swagger. To top it all off, dude rolls in all the way from Jersey(!) with these gems. It’s enough to make us pack up and cross the Hudson. Click the picture to see the whole thing. more...

What's happened to supermodels? Like we still watch "Freedom '90" all the time because Linda Evangelista and Christy Turlington drink each other's blood in it. And the last time we saw Linda shopping in Soho she had no make-up on and looked fly as hell. Meanwhile, Agyness fell down at Hugs once and nobody put their beer down. We are down for fashion and music co-mingling but it needs to be highfalutin, inspired by coke mania and involve some sort of Eyes Wide Shut vampire shit or it's just some people sitting in a decent apartment.

We don't often make overtures like this, but we have been on Lacoste creative director Christophe Lemaire's website for the last three hours obsessing over his new S/S 2008 collection, reading his bio, Google image searching, pasting ourselves into photos of him, wishing we could live on a website, thinking about him a lot, and we want to put it out there that we are fortunately in search of a new friend. Lemaire, hit us up. And don't worry dudes, if anyone comes up behind you and wonders why you've been looking at a French fashion site half the day, just tell them that you are listening to Lemaire's flawless audio player which includes wisely chosen jams from Ariel Pink, Arthur Russell, Bo Diddley, J Dilla, The Flamingos and more.

We just received mail from the Northwest and at the bottom of the envelope it said, ‘What does it feel like to be on the thirteenth floor?’ Well, it feels alright, a little stuffy at times, but no evil witch voodoo if you know what we mean. Point being that the Northwest is full of these sort of snarky folk. That’s why when our Seattle On-The-Streeter sent us this image, we weren’t surprised by its beret-wearing record store gentlemen. In fact we kinda liked it, even the John Waters mustache. Thing is, you can’t really hate on this guy’s style because it’s like Kanye’s Hadron Collider, he vortexed the universe to fit his look, ‘cool pins’ and all. more...

Whether he likes it or not, FADER editor Matthew Schnipper is an honorary member of the style team. His classic uniform of button-downs, personally worn-in APCs, plimsolls and famous Slept On specs has had a calming effect on the more schizophrenic stylings on our side of the office (80s/90s meets 70s?) for as long as we can remember. So when an invitation to Thomas Pink's "Personally Pink" made-to-order shirt service came in the mail we figured Matthew was the right man to put the service to the test. Could TP make a shirt fit better than one from the MS collection of carefully sourced-out standard fits? more...

"What I might call her élan, her soul," says Rick Powell, Duke University professor about one of Barkley Hendricks '70s portraits of black Americans. It's a funny mashing of experts talking art and some really old rad personal style that we just cannot replicate in current times. We wrote about Hendricks' first retrospective happening now at Duke's Nasher Museum but have yet been unable to make it to North Carolina to see the exhibit (though we—and you—have until July). This video tour of the exhibit is second best, but we'll take it. Because even if we went right now Hendricks wouldn't be there rocking a sweet neckscarf and he is on YouTube. Win some/lose some.

We dropped by the I Heart showroom to pay Jill and Cosmo the cat (showroom moscot and super fluffly Wowch model) a visit last week just in time for the new fall collections from Lonely Hearts, Wowch and PAM. Helene Morris of the label Lonely Hearts gave us an inkling of fall 08 things to come when we spoke to her about the US launch of the line in issue F53 so we were psyched to see the slightly grungy inspiration take shape in moody plaids, bomber jackets with jumbo-sized polka dots and some very intense saturated color dip-dyed shirts. If Cosmo the cat could speak we're sure he would tell us that he is equally excited that Wowch is dipping his animal brethen into a sea of purple and turquoise tie-dye for fall 08 . Of course you can always count on Perks and Mini to get weird, and the new collection looks like a trip down the Nile in a spaceship with nothing but magic mushrooms in your knapsack for nourishment. Our favorites picks for next season after the jump. more...

When we were in high school our math teachers didn't know anything about math because they were really water polo coaches and our english teachers were really german professors but the kids at Newark, New Jersey's Arts High School got real with Parisian art/fashion collective Andrea Crews. AC's art director Maroussia Rebecq taught them to make insane sculpture ensembles out of second hand clothing and this is a (err, crappy ) video of the process, which mostly shows the kids playing musical chairs, spinning into a psychedelic fairy tale of rainbow sucking goblins, and having no sense of adult remorse, which, unfortunately, we have now that we're older.

We get a lot of slack sometimes because we roll around talking about how cool little old ladies are and how we think they may be our best friends (or our style icons.) So this time we're not going to mention them at all, we're just gonna talk about how cool this girl's patent dress boots, lightly patterned rose blouse with gentle frills and loose fitted powder blue slacks are. We're hoping that this little pretty has champagne in that plastic cup because if we could pull it together this much everyday we'd be constantly drunk from celebration as well.

The latest chapter in the Swedes-takeover-NY story went down late last week when Dunderon opened their new store on Howard street. We knew the Swedish were coming (Acne Studio just opened in SoHo a few blocks west), but we didn't know that they would be bringing jams (a live performance by Endless Boogie) or a cluster of stylee folk. Among are favorite adornments of the night were feathers (braided into hair or worn in hats), floor-sweeping embroidered dresses and acid wash skirts.

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If you haven't checked out/purchased/dreamed about and saved money in your piggy bank for designer Christian Joy's debut collection of women's wear then we strongly recommend you do, right now. We were lucky enough to get an invite to her studio a couple of weeks back, and extra specially psyched that our studio visit coincided with a package from the mailman—more precisely a package of spectacular archival Joy pieces created for her BFF Karen O straight off the exhibit floor of a museum in Tokyo. CJ and Karen O have been friends pretty much since the Yeah Yeah Yeahs started out and as well as talking us through the inspiration behind some of the most iconic costumes, she gave us some really great insight into what makes their creative chemistry sparkle.

There are new stylish happenings brewing in Boerum Hill as we discovered last week after a trip to new menswear store And Then Some. Store Owner Alex Eagleton walked us through some of the very first clothes to hit racks including his own line The Same Nice People and gorgeously gigantic tees from designer Daniel Palillo (ladies game for a spot of menswear dress-up take note), a Finnish label we have been patiently waiting to go stateside for quite a minute. Eagleton has commissioned perfumers DS & Durga to make a few custom scents in time for the opening this week (info about tonight's party after the jump), his signature and our favorite, Spanish Fly combines just the right amount of husky musky and with an even measure of macho to hit the summertime manly button right on the nose. more...

Beards and spectacles go together like bees and honey/shoes on feet or whatever. To prove our theory we headed down to the Sol Moscot launch party at Earnest Sewn for a bit of beardo-spotting. As well as a couple of exclusive Sol Moscot/Earnest Sewn glasses, there are plenty of great Moscot shades in the store-within-a-store besides (as modeled by FADERer Mobolaji Dawodu). As we expected, the beardo quotient was particularly high--with everything from immaculately groomed full facial hair from the likes of Waris Ahluwalia to tuftier chins paired quite perfectly with long locks or fuzzy curls.

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Sometimes the runway lacks the creative narrative of designer inspiration, leaving us with just a series of fashion-clad models parading down a white strip. To counter this, designers look to alternative ways of conveying their message, like film. Director Georgie Greville made a conceptual fashion film for the Fall ‘08 Spring and Clifton collection, showcasing the label’s knight-in-shining-armor theme with studded leggings, shimmery vests and heavy knits. Greville uses light and shadows as a symbolic journey through time and space, emphasizing the dreamlike story of the collection. Check it out for yourself here.

We're not mad at the idea of having 200 pairs of sneakers in our closets but really only breaking out the dress shoes. Times change and we get older, so when we saw this presentable gentlemen at the Brooklyn Museum we were stoked on the dad-loafer voodoo he was giving us. In fact, his whole dad looking knitted sweater and slacks combo isn't harshing our mellow either, so we're gonna ride with it like the time our dad's told us they drank too many Harvey Wallbangers and ended up dancing with a curtain. Dads like to party too.

This post was initially supposed to be a pick of all the awesome things we saw at the Archetype Showroom fall preview. But honestly there was just too much awesomeness to squish in to one post. For sanity's sake I've narrowed it down to two of our favorite labels: Fremont and Samantha Pleet. That's Devin and Brittany who split men/womens designing duties on Fremont up top. more...