Random thought Nº 1

I now understand that when my environment changes, my way of understanding life moves slowly towards the things I find the most basic for my inspiration: the sky, silence, memory, touch.

Chronos in the crux

I felt this great wave of intimacy caused by Raf Simons’ latest collection. I guess it was some sort of magic influence over the fact of being young. Youth is a part of “reality” in which we encounter the fact of mortality; (a topic which makes all of us uncertain about who we are and why are we in this world for), at the same time, youth makes us feel immortal and infinite (at least for a couple of decades.) I have always found fascinating how people hold on to their youth and how most individuals avoid losing every sign of it. I love what youth means universally and what a symbol of freedom it is to humankind.

Raf Simons has always been for me a very good medium of destroying the boundaries of genre and age between individuals. His proposals of men are so basic in concept nevertheless so intricate in representation. A Raf Simons’ man evolves constantly, representing his surroundings through small symbolic statements. In this collection I found youth being the core of every single look. I found that this time it was not about men whatsoever. It was definitely about boys, about sensibility and vulnerability.

I have always found the Peter Pan syndrome a form of tagging and rejecting the actual mindset of society. People want to be young, youth makes people free. Youth is immortality, and inside the human ego and also in human nature, we all want to be remembered, we all want to be part of history, just frozen in a timeline. Maybe because of all things metaphysical, it might possibly be the only certain thing we can hold on to for making our life “worth living”. The representation of youth threw stereotypes is off course the least we can see in this collection. The different phases of youth shown in this presentation are the most unexpected and fundamental things about it: freedom, surprise and discovery. Yes. I can assure you those are the symbols I perceive in every velvety coat and every pair of the -ugliest-but-coolest sneakers I saw through all F/W 2012.

It meant the world to me relating this collection to a lot of things I believe so dearly. It made me feel by somehow unique. Nevertheless, when I realized that I am not the only one in a world moving constantly and that we all want now to be forever, I got this wave of comfort and pure peace of mind. Being alive represents an infinity of things we are not even aware of. Since every day we are passersby, in the street, in someone’s life, in a dream, in a minute; I guess we can live to the “fullest” when we communicate and reconsider our views of life. Youth is forever when discovery is constant and when our hearts stop by every fact we encounter and by every mystery we unfurl.

At least for this lifetime, let us all be boys.

All runway photos: vogue.it

All b/w montages use photos by Hedi Slimane

Photo 10 (top to bottom) by Hedi Slimane

Let there be light

Usually, when I am feeling truly inspired by life, I get struck by something very unexpected, something important; something that confirms the position of being with my eyes open wide, in front of everything. That was the feeling that crashed with my heart the second I got invited inside the universe of Valentino’s haute couture collection for this joyous spring.

Pier Paolo Piccioli declared:  "Fashion needs culture or it becomes empty." I agreed. Not exactly with the content of the quote but with the beauty of giving things a meaning, that truly is enhancing. The way one makes something and his or her explanation makes it relevant and rather meaningful. I love how communication is somehow a match that easily breaks a big fire, and this fire is the interpretation of the audience. I somehow see the audience as a crowd of puppets, especially when one’s got power behind a name or behind a story (influence). Nevertheless, leaving all puppets apart, I couldn’t love a bit more an audience which is composed of rebels. Those that say the truth, those that don’t go with the flow, those that have a vision, those that make part of the dialogue with no fear of  opportunity of originating some change. I believe that if the creator is alone in this dialogue, things are left just passion-less. I believe in disputes and in discovery, and this is what this collection instantly brought to my mind.

Not making deep emphasis on the obvious, the craftsmanship of this presentation was beyond life. All the filigree and the embroidery were truly a shadow of the context for this collection. Valentino’s passionate duo Pier Paolo Piccioli and Maria Grazia Chiuri based the collection on the age of Enlightenment, especially on Rousseau and the devotion to wisdom through change. This made me meditate about no matter how much technology or big cosmopolitan cities exist, human beings will always follow the path of nature just through intuition, emulating all the cycles and expressions that it experiences. I am talking specifically about the way the age of Enlightenment is a reflection of the season of spring, remembering how all decadence surrenders to a period of light, to a period of renaissance, to a period of raw features and mind blowing reproductions.

 It is simply amazing how beauty can be found in every step we take and how intricate everything in life and reality is. I love how one is always able to have a universal perspective of life and realize how everything is just in the right place, even behind all chaos, even with all of our nightmares.

This just brings me once again to what I never get tired of saying. Perfection always involves mistakes and failures. Perfection cannot be absolute and complete. Perfection is the capacity of things to evolve, to transform.

Isn’t it just the best to find inside something apparently so pristine, luxurious and perfect; the most raw and basic things of life?

All runway photos: vogue.it

"El Amor está antes que usted. Ámelo"

Photo by Hedi Slimane

Doodle by me

A red moon

Sometimes wandering around a good old repertoire of memories will make us rejoice and fulfill those maximum states in which we once were. I can assure to any other member of the human species that one of the most divine things one is able to do is to remember. Nevertheless, I am that kind of individual that believes that reality goes way beyond itself, recognizing and flourishing into imagination and dreams much deeper than the usual. I would say that's because of  my faithful believe in the abstract and the oneiric, and also because, I do tend to fall deeply for anything that I can think of, making it, well… part of my reality. Unfortunately that doesn't happen in all subjects in my life (noticing nothing is absolute or total, for the "x" time in my life), but certainly it does for those topics I seem to be most infatuated by: love, sex, fear...

Giving a totally global and unwarily vain introductory paragraph to this post may not concern nor you and neither me. Ironically, everything in that set of words is in its right place, and I am so terribly joyous it is.

Talking about fashion, or at least how I like to call  it when I feel so insecure due people's comprehension: the-art-form-you-just-don't-get or moving-fabric-made-sculpture-that-is-being-underrated-or-not-analyzed-because-of-"symbols"-and-the-stupid-human-nature. I am so thrilled to announce to those that are sensitive to fall in love with everything that surrounds your brains, the new Miu Miu spring/summer for 2012: equally fantastic as everything that made it possible or in other words: it's inspirational foundation. Which goes from Igor Stravinsky's Rite of Spring (which I have to say I am totally in love with in every way possible, considering it to be one of the most amazing, free and liberating pieces of music I've found as of lately) to the most outrageous Texan/western motifs (which I have considered in most occasions insensitive or just plain tacky), not to mention the obvious dark and witchy tones, which those who know me can clearly conclude are for sure of my appreciation.

I would say I am not surprised that I am shocked, since I never expect anything from a show crafted by Miuccia Prada, genius soul who I personally admire, completely sure that for the "right reasons" (we can be certain that this won't be the last the occasion that the word Prada is mentioned in this blog, since I dearly feel the need for more people to admire her for the "right reasons" or at least to just have a laugh at my views of a very well-known name of art, or for others off course, plain bullshit. Yes. That would be beyond lovely as well, since I love to devour other's point of view even if it doesn't match mine in any way.).

Back with our dearest collection, I feel that this time the feeling was different. I can notice an unusual vibe in this proposal. Not for the mismatched garments or the independent manner of this collection comparing it to the rest of the season. And not only Paris but... everywhere. Seems like maybe, this collection was a little “out of place” or perhaps, my eye has just changed, or maybe... Just maybe, my sensibility is noticing new "things".

That leaves me thinking, ¿Aren't we all dependent on what we imagine to be able to observe something? Anything? In other paradoxical words, aren't we depending constantly on a reproductive foundation to be able to produce? Now that I type my very certain set of inquiries, I can tell myself that it wasn't much about the collection itself, being this a special moment for all my experience as an observer, I can assure that. Noticing that as this kind of thing can happen with my most beloved fixations, it has also happened here for once. It wasn't about reality at all, but about what I imagined, and by saying this I am not questioning the excellence of the collection itself at all.

Reflecting one's opinion/vision over something one loves so dearly is grand when you get to a conclusion you get to hold on, getting to be so sensible and common. Maybe at the end of the day, human nature or whatever that even means isn't that much of stupid as I stated before, since the abundance of visions is what makes the universe in a little way so rich and constantly exciting. Maybe we haven't got to the point in which everything is in its right place, and maybe, I think, it will never have to be that way.

I guess the magnificence of the divine is always hidden behind those things that are less expected. Let us be thrilled by details. 

All runway photos: vogue.it

Inconsistencias

Si para la soledad estamos perplejos,
hemos de considerar una partida constante
y un duelo de miradas que se forje distante
ante los cuerpos desnudos, parejos.

Si en las preguntas nos ilustramos pacientes
y en las calles nos derrumbamos ante extraños
es cuestión de esperar un salto del minutero
que sucumba los placeres vacuos, esperados.

He de partir ahora, hacia lo que me ha de restar
he de partir en este instante, en juegos fornicar
en el barro de las murallas y en el trigal desnudo
que me lleve hacia mi propio olvido
que me absorba, fatuo, liviano y hervido,
en silenciosos absolutos y fieles lamentos
en caídas constantes y lunares alientos.

Photo by Hedi Slimane

Bloom

I had been reluctant to explore Stella McCartney's proposal. Not for her being a super renowned person. Because first, I believe in everyone's talent, and secondly because, ironically, I am so deadly ignorant that after being hooked by her majestic clothes, I found out that she is the daughter of ex-Beatle Paul McCartney. (Maybe that is what I get for missing a good listen to their repertoire through all my life).

For resort 2012, McCartney blew us away with a fusion of symmetry, Hawaii, sartorial and mismatch, considering of course that a good print will always catch my eye. I love how a collision of things I personally adore came together in this resort presentation, for example I have always been crazy about those tourist-Hawaiian-out-of-place-even-a-little-tacky prints, and I have always seen them usually attached to men's wardrobe. So through this relation, the collection also touches another topic in such a soft manner that I adore, which is the ambiguity between masculine and feminine, but at the same time making that so naturally that the collection stands by itself as simple, direct, fresh and fragile.

Stella McCartney's resort 2012 made me get to a deadly conclusion that will definitely make me cherish every detail more: I am extremely attracted by an extravagant shock, when fashion's the matter. This certainly has to stop, since I am not letting all beauty in simplicity and in plain styles captivate me. Actually I believe that in all artforms, not only me, but everyone I know is really demanding for cherishing a piece. We tend to avoid surprise, we tend to avoid detail, we tend to avoid structure and we tend to avoid analysis. I guess this is a message for all of us to return to the raw origin of communication, where everything's so surprising as the first time we got to see it and experience it.

I am so glad to cherish Stella's proposal now, because she has let me observe closely at every little thing, way beyond an ostrich feather Dior haute couture hat or a neon embroided Alexander McQueen gown. At the end of the day inspiration and passion can be found in a white t-shirt or in lace and leather; as well as in Vivaldi's Four Seasons or in The Smiths' The Queen is Dead, etc. I think that from now on, I am going to be 200% more open minded to every soul's proposal. Because as Stella has already melted my brains, I think there wasn't any reason at all to be reluctant about her in the first place.

I love how disturbingly beautiful is to be surprised. 

All runway photos: vogue.it