Slimane and Berlin #1

Hedi Slimane, Designer of Dior Homme from 2001 through 2007, was a huge fan and took much inspiration from youth culture in Berlin and London, while he was designing collections in Paris. Slimane's style was a kind of addiction for his Dior Homme customers, and a source of trend direction for designers of high and low, male and female fashion.

Der Stil #1 - Pleated Trousers

"A house is a machine for living in." - Le Corbusier. Along with other postmodern designers, Le Corbusier attempted to create harmony of form and function, and dismiss "frivolous ornament."

Final Project Thesis - May 2007

The research for my 2007 final project began in March of that year. During the summer of '06/'07 I read American Psycho (1991) by Bret Easton Ellis and Affluenza (2007) by Oliver James. These books had very current cultural themes of consumer addiction, celebrity obsession, and the general excesses of western 20th/21st Century lifestyle. Further useful reading was Thorstein Veblen's The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899) and Karl Marx's Capital, Critique of Political Economy (1867). These authors had lived through and critiqued economic boom and bust, and seen consumer frivolity and tragedy, their critiques gave an idea of what was to come...

My conclusion is more or less pointing toward a 'return to self', though it is left a little open ended. My ideal conclusion would have been: "A global recession will financially ruin The U.S.A and Europe, an uprising will be experienced by the ideologically repressed, some more outrageous celebrities will take there own lives, and thus fashion will embrace a radically new set of ideals based on a new set of foundations" 

My views on where the industry was going were far more radical than I cared to write down. I think I had shocked my tutors enough by writing about major changes in the way we saw consumerism, many took this as an attack on the fashion industry and therefor themselves, but far from it, i thought it a new beginning!

'The last supper 2007' Mood board: March 2007 

Final Project Portfolio November 2007

December 25 2006 - January 1 2007, Time Magazine's 'Person of the Year' is 'You'. This was a major tipping point for media, politics, commerce... It was a revolution of popular culture. It was also a starting off point for my final project.

Youtube.com which uploaded it's first video 'me at the zoo' on April 23, 2005 and 'grew rapidly' in July of 2006. For me Youtube was the beginning of a new public awareness of how popular media is made and received - by anyone for anyone - it was a paradigm shift.

The world was teetering on an explosion of collective consciousness, revolution, uprising, freedom, but what did this all mean for fashion?