Purple Fashion

[helena]

Yes its available in Europe - although I have only ever seen it in Borders Books or artsy mag shops.

 

[Deleted member 7575]

I-D is my favorite in part because it is so fashion focused with perhaps a slight nod to happenings in music hidden away as well as it's inclusion of a lot of menswear in editorials and articles. Their stylists are aslo the most imaginative to me.

I found Purple Fashion to be a bore and could never bring myself to flip through a whole issu.e

 

[cerfas]

French Vogue is wonderful--I agree completely. And even French Marie Claire has some really great fashion editorials, they have a great sense of balance and put together looks that are reasonably good for a magazine that I would have expected to be boring, generic.
It is the earlier Purple issues that interest me, I agree completely that it has gone downhill. I have not bought a single recent issue, barely care to look.
Funny, MoM, I found the early issues to be very playful. I will scan some pictures when I get the chance.
You're welcome Lena, Johnny.
Not only is CRASH a great magazine, their online archives are just incredible. Anyone who has not seen it--check it out, www.crash.fr

 

[cigaretiquette]

Crash is one of the best pure underground style magazines
I-D is the worst by far.
Purple has nice editorials tho

 

[faust]

Crash is one of the best pure underground style magazines
I-D is the worst by far.
Purple has nice editorials tho

What are you finding is wrong with i-D?

 

[Lena]

A magazine is real good but its more like an edited 'book' than 'a real fashion mag' no? I have the Margiela and the V&R issues, maybe more? not sure...

From the 'indie' press, Self Service and maybe Citizen K are the best
as for Crash, not sure if i have seen this, i've been falling out of magazine infatuation for some seasons now..

finally, i havent seen Purple in a long time, but if one visits Paris they can drop by the Purple Institute cafe&boutique, near Gare De l'Est i think, they have a sweet small cafe and a rack of clothes there, quite cozy and sweet (thats if you find it open) .

 

[metal-on-metal]

A magazine is real good but its more like an edited 'book' than 'a real fashion mag' no? I have the Margiela and the V&R issues, maybe more? not sure...

That's very true. Not a magazine in the true sense, though certainly an interesting and clever reading experience.

 

[Scott]

To concur,I think the best issues of Purple are the older ones. They've lost a bit of that spark to me these days. The best thing about Purple was indeed the stories....the photography,the styling,the make-up artists....not to mention the kind of designers they featured in these stories. There was also this sort of "realism" that I appreciated about it. But like one said,it's been a bit repetitve lately.

 

[cerfas]

I didn't mean to say "great" so many times. I got two hours of sleep last night.

Fashion magazines are usually disappointing to me...I see it more as finding a couple things here and there that I like rather than loving the comprehensive vision of one publication in particular. Another magazine used to be pretty good but I havent seen in it in a while...don't have much access to fancy print media around here.

Purple Institute also has shows...A while back Noriko Tujiko played there.

 

[Scott]

As for A....well coming from somebody who's bought it since Dirk Van Saene curated the first....I'm not as taken by the latest issues under the new title. A-D were all amazing to me...didn't even bother with V&R's exhibition catalogue issue. But Margiela and Yohji were a bit disappointing to me.

 

[cerfas]

In defense of poetry:
This is in support of finding unnoticed moments breathtakingly beautiful
This is in support of being playful, but not necessarily loud
This is in support of experimentation
This is in support of trying, and sometimes failing
This is in support of fashion not just as polished product, but as art form, product, expression of a life's history
etc

 

[Scott]

Lena,I must say that you and I are alike in that sense. The only mag's I got in the last month's have been the Yohji A and a copy of Kodex that Ninette sent me(which she writes for).

Yeah,the Institute also serves as a platform for young designers to show during FW too. I still admire Elein very much as from the magazine,her genuine support for young,independent talent.

 

[cerfas]

(Pretension is revolting. But everyone participates in it to some extent, and I see it in a lot of independent fashion media. If you are opinionated at all, you are likely to be a bit pretentious, because you already feel that certain things are better than others--that there is a right or a wrong way--that there are "fashion rules" and so forth. I think labelling something else as pretentious is a question of whether or not you feel you understand it, and whether or not you feel it excludes you somehow.)

 

[Johnny]

Cerfas, I wasn't attacking poetry as such, I'm in no position to (or to want to) do that. What you write in your defence is interesting and valid. What I was getting at is the self conscious attempt to be unexpectedly beautiful. I find this approach quite common in "high end" fashion mags, but to me it is simply banal, not necessarily poetic. I am just plain bored when I look at these stories. I think that fashion photography has to have some connection with the clothes, otherwise it's just photography. Sometimes I find no connection with the clothes and in fact find that either the clothes cannot be seen, or, conversely, are really just consicuously obstructive and in that way tokenistic. It's a fine line between shoots like that which work and which don't, and it's ultimately very subjective. I like very much the photos of the kids running accross fields in their big Yohji cotton shirts in the Yohji A mag, but I'm not really sure why. It just evokes some kind of feeling in you. Maybe it was because it seemed quite spontaneous and unpretentious.

 

[Johnny]

(Pretension is revolting. I think labelling something else as pretentious is a question of whether or not you feel you understand it, and whether or not you feel it excludes you somehow.)

(If the latter is right then is anything really pretentious or is it just too clever for people to understand? When I think of something as pretentious I think of it as "pretending" (or more accurately its' author pretneding) to be something that it's not - that it has a kind of artifice to hide soemthing that's lacking. I think that people can properly see this in art or anything really - it's the lack of some kind of essential validity. I accept that that is very difficult to define, but it is something that you can take an informed view on rather than it being something that is just beyond your comprehension.)

 

[cerfas]

Oh don't worry Johnny, I didn't feel attacked at all! I just wanted to say a few positive things in light of all the negative reactions towards Purple as being pretentious, self consciously poetic, etc.
Thank you for writing this response--it's really eloquent, and I see your point very clearly. It really does fall into a style which became/was overdone. I suppose my love for Purple comes from living in the Midwest and never having seen anything like it before. Yeah, it can be banal. And yes, sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't, to enlighten. Although I'd prefer a Balance, perhaps it's my personal taste to lean towards banality rather than towards hyper-stylized(wellnot just stylized, because everything can be a "style" but you know what I mean) a la Terry Richardson (who interestingly enough contributed a lot to Purple...never saw any of that stuff)

 

[cerfas]

Yes indeed, I just think that the word "pretentious" is tossed around often in a negative way to degrade things that aren't easily accessible. I don't accuse anyone here of misusing it, and you understand very well what it means by your description. I only wanted to bring to light the other possibility. hehe we are getting into a heavily philosophical debate. Yeah you can break everything down to a point where it is no longer meaningful..I wasn't trying to suggest that, only wanted to distinguish between an educated use of the word (like yours) and an unconstructive one.

 

[faust]

(Pretension is revolting. But everyone participates in it to some extent, and I see it in a lot of independent fashion media. If you are opinionated at all, you are likely to be a bit pretentious, because you already feel that certain things are better than others--that there is a right or a wrong way--that there are "fashion rules" and so forth. I think labelling something else as pretentious is a question of whether or not you feel you understand it, and whether or not you feel it excludes you somehow.)

Hmm, to me pretension was always about trying to present something for what it's not. To say that others don't understand is the first defense of the pouseur (I am not attacking you here by any means, just musing on what i think pretension is). So, like Johnny says, when I see a person's face on a picture and the only indication that the person is wearing clothes are the credits next to the picture, I think "pretension". When I see a bunch of naked girls and Terry Richardson running around the woods with his c*ck out (and the last issue of Purple Fashion I looked at was chuck full of such imagery), I think "pretension".

 

[faust]

(If the latter is right then is anything really pretentious or is it just too clever for people to understand? When I think of something as pretentious I think of it as "pretending" (or more accurately its' author pretneding) to be something that it's not - that it has a kind of artifice to hide soemthing that's lacking. I think that people can properly see this in art or anything really - it's the lack of some kind of essential validity. I accept that that is very difficult to define, but it is something that you can take an informed view on rather than it being something that is just beyond your comprehension.)

Quality Robert Pirsig book, Johnny, I know it's on your bookshelf

 

[Scott]

Thank heavens for that cerfas You want to talk pretentsion,Terry would definitely be up there.

But yes,Johnny's description of the term,is how I always referred to. But people will argue till the end of time who or what is deemed pretentious.