The poet Jean Cocteau once said, “Style is a simple way of saying complicated things”, and as I watch contractors unscrew the tents on 62nd street I feel like there is something very complicated going on. The pendulum of design that swings between function and luxury often creates a chasm between those who need and those want.
That is why these Diane Von Furstenberg hospital gowns being produced for the Cleveland Clinic are so interesting to me.
A high end fashion designer takes a job to design the least attractive, least properly functioning clothing imaginable. Finding a challenge in recreating the banal and plebeian (see Last Train Home) is often worth more than the flash in the bottle because it’s more universal, it transcends.
The shoe company Palladium (a Brand I’ve been sporting for a minute) recently dropped a doc called Detroit Lives, in which Johnny Knoxville, yeah that Johnny Knoxville, tours a city on the brink of collapse, and imagines it as an emblem of the resilient American spirit that it embodies. The doc brings home the idea that art can galvanize and uplift, that beauty in the face of demolition, destruction and despondence can create perseverance. ’nuff respect to both!
-Vic Reznik