Bernhard Willhelm Homme Spring 2006

[travolta]

thanks mulletproof those are really great pics!

 

[sea of stitches]

mulletproof, those pictures are super cute. thanks for posting them!

 

[Lena]

cool photography and thanks for posting mullerproof*.. but the clothes still look silly to me

*hope u know that BW used to sport a mullet right?

 

[Bacchus]

Well, there's something to be said about consistency. Although I can't imagine who would spend any hard earned cash on looking like a thrift clown, there is obviously a large enough market for his hoodies and T's. Hype will get you far in this industry (good or BAD).

 

[kit]

I've just left a message about a docu to be shown on digital channel BBC 4 , at 23.00 hrs , British Summer time TONIGHT , all about the high fashion cult , started by Papa Wemba in Africa . ' The importance of being elegant ' is the title of the docu .

I think that this cult of ' The Sapeurs ' has a bearing on various things that have been said in this thread . B)

 

[helena]

oh dear i don't get BBC4 - too bad.

 

[Lena]

I can't imagine who would spend any hard earned cash on looking like a thrift clown.

exactly..
welcome to tFS Bacchus

 

[MulletProof]

i really liked the circus.

obviously it's not like i want to see a man dressed head-to-toe like a clown, i dont even think bernhard himself wants to see such a horrid thing except in his shows , but the clownish jackets are very nice separately. and the bags .

i just realized i'm seeing this as a women's wear collection. meh.


btw, you're all welcome. lena, i think i saw a pic of him with a mullet not too long ago somewhere in google..

 

[Zazie]

this collection is a bunch of arrogant trash that exploits the image of the poor across the world for Bernard's personal material again and amusement of a bunch of lost rich teenagers.

I think I might be the only person who sides with travolta on this. It is a bit too much to suggest that BW exploits the African poor with this - Africa is severely exploited, but BW isn't the one doing the exploiting! We all know by what sorts, and they are more likely to wear Dior, Vuitton, Gucci, etc. Maybe he is making a sort of statement, the way Balenciaga did incorporating checked Arab Palestinian headwear in one of his most beautiful collections. And beauty is subjective, isn't it?

Personally, I'd prefer designers to take risks, too few of them do it, if you would be honest about this. We are more often than not inundated with "themed" collections in NY, Paris & Milan every season, let's applaud designers who do something different, even if we don't like to wear them.

Would we berate indie movie directors for producing art house fare that nobody sees? Should we only support blockbusters? Look, the money-making crowd-pleasers don't need us, they do just fine on their own. It's the rare, alternative, creative guys that need to know that they need to continue to break rules and that true fashionistas support that.

I hardly put CDG or Galliano in that league, btw. They too churned out the same vaguely subversive but actually commercially successful stuff all the time. Nothing wrong with that, they are just filling another market niche. BW doesn't have to be visionary or relevant, he's doing his own thing. I don't buy or wear BW, but it interests me enough to take another look and makes me think a bit about the prints, proportions and his idea of fashion. What's the point in trying to get him to become another Eley Kishimoto? He's just fine as BW.

 

[travolta]

thank you zazie for this eloquent post

 

[travolta]

i often think of parallels between music and fashion. bh reminds me of noise bands...music that isn't necessarily 'aesthetically' pleasing to the ear, infact it's very discordant. you may ask, who would ever want to listen to this, and dish out cash for it, especially when you could listen to and record the sounds of roaring garbage trucks going by and other types of noise pollution? coming from this point of view, i can see why people feel this way about bh's work, because i still do favor more melodic pleasing sounding music. i have a friend who listens to death heavy metal and bh clothes also would be very fitting to his character, and i would never listen to it unless he turned it on, but i appreciate and can see, a bit, why it moves him so much. the music is so much more compelling because i don't understand it, but someone made it very purely. but isn't that what art and aesthetic make you do? there is never an easy answer....

 

[travolta]

i often think of parallels between music and fashion. bh reminds me of noise bands...music that isn't necessarily 'aesthetically' pleasing to the ear, infact it's very discordant. you may ask, who would ever want to listen to this, and dish out cash for it, especially when you could listen to and record the sounds of roaring garbage trucks going by and other types of noise pollution? coming from this point of view, i can see why people feel this way about bh's work, because i still do favor more melodic pleasing sounding music. i have a friend who listens to death heavy metal and bh clothes also would be very fitting to his character, and i would never listen to it unless he turned it on, but i appreciate and can see, a bit, why it moves him so much. the music is so much more compelling because i don't understand it, but someone made it very purely. but isn't that what art and aesthetic make you do? there is never an easy answer....

btw. i tried to listen to john cage, who is hailed as a revolutionary, and it was difficult to listen to. behavioral scientists don't know why we we respond to certain types of music, or why others respond to types that no one else seems to like. that's what is fascinating.

 

[Zazie]

Actually, if you ever attend a live noise gig, you'd find that it really carries you away to another realm, without the residual headaches of drugs. At home, that's another thing. A good friend loves BW too, but it's usually too expensive, so he should think about that. I like to have a "live" experience with BW's clothes, looking up the construction, the print details, how they fall on the body, etc. I'm one of those who loathe to spend a lot of money on clothes and bags in general, except for the rare pieces that I know would haunt me for years if I let them pass.

 

[AlexN]

btw. i tried to listen to john cage, who is hailed as a revolutionary, and it was difficult to listen to. behavioral scientists don't know why we we respond to certain types of music, or why others respond to types that no one else seems to like. that's what is fascinating.

Absolutely. Creative "genius" in music certainly does not automatically equal enjoyable or meaningful listening.

 

[travolta]

bh = bw... somehow i think he is called bernard hilhelm ...

 

[travolta]

repost ..shucks

 

[travolta]

Actually, if you ever attend a live noise gig, you'd find that it really carries you away to another realm, without the residual headaches of drugs. At home, that's another thing. A good friend loves BW too, but it's usually too expensive, so he should think about that. I like to have a "live" experience with BW's clothes, looking up the construction, the print details, how they fall on the body, etc. I'm one of those who loathe to spend a lot of money on clothes and bags in general, except for the rare pieces that I know would haunt me for years if I let them pass.

i have attended a noise gig awhile back...have you ever heard of the art collective Fort Thunder? they were pretty compelling musicians and performance artists out of providence RI. unfortunately the warehouse has since been bulldozed to the ground. anyways, i think bw might sound similar to them... perhaps more light hearted and disarmingly quirky, maybe with a catchy melody running in the background throughout...

i also loathe to spend money on clothes and bags, unless as you said, the pieces which you know you'd be better with than without. that's why i think bw's clothing is very refreshing and the oppisete from pretentious from my standpoint. i think pretentious clothing equals something unfunctional and let me tell ya there are many more designers who make things you wouldn't survive a day wearing, but hey different strokes for different folks. im guilty of wearing stilettos heels

Absolutely. Creative "genius" in music certainly does not automatically equal enjoyable or meaningful listening.

you're right meaningful things are often times not easily digestible. when i think of meaningful i think of emotion where pain and enjoyment are often one in the same. i've become accustomed to the practice of automatically trying to see the oppisete side when i find myself recoiling from an object or an experience -- a stab at objectivity. often times you realize your reaction should be placed somewhere in the middle as opposed to somewhere in the furthest region of your mind. this can be applied to john cage, who's concepts are very interesting to me, but i have not been able to listen to him properly without distractions. and this can be related back to bw, as i find the gritty spareness of cage's music translatable to bw's clothing. for instance cage's recordings of dead air are similar to the space in which bw's creations occupy fashion: it ceases to become a 'garment' or a 'fashion piece' but it truely is as others have said, a bunch of prints and shapes encircling the body. and in many ways this is way i see it as pretty pure, and in a way it's a liberation from the common aesthetic style. just as yohji and rei introduced clothing with new proportions, bw makes me think of liberating fashion from clothing and class, btw. this last comment was inspired by a conversation i had w/ birdofparadise, and it left a little hole in me. i've tried the best i could to fill it with some of my own thoughts...and hopefully it makes some sense.

 

[dirty lilly]

i agree !!!!! Henrik's clothes are so cool....my friend has "a henrik" and it fits fabulous! gorgeous! his prints are destroying my health!

 

[kus]

martin webb in tokyo on bern w. show staged by construction workers
workers tokyo expressway 30 meters underground

from a shadedviewonfashion.com