"Weekend Reading" is a weekly rundown of our favorite stories from around the web.

The Invisible Man
"The daily life of Dries Van Noten is dictated not by trends and orders, but by Antwerp trafic jams, and the seasonal shifts in his garden. 'In calm periods I arrive here at work after the traffic jam, and in busy periods I arrive before the trafic jam,' he says from his studio, which faces the tranquil water of the Willemdok. 'I leave the office after the second traffic jam. And in busy periods Saturday and Sunday are for my work, but in calm periods I stay home and I am quite happy, because calm periods are mostly in the springtime, and that’s the most perfect time to stay in the garden.'"

via: Bon

Miuccia Prada on Art, Sex and Collaboration
"It is early November and silver mist has descended over Milan but the Fondazione Prada – a spirit-lifting, almost metaphysical place – is all the more romantic and beautiful for it. Juxtaposing a sense of Modernism, the raw power of the unfinished and industrial shades of grey with the opulence of its 24-carat-gold leaf covered “haunted house” and the wilfully bizarre Wes Anderson designed Italianate café, Bar Luce, the foundation is as visually arresting and unlike anything else of its kind as the collection of art it contains, the exhibitions staged within its walls and, of course, the fashion that bears the Prada name."

via: Another Mag

The Sportswear Industry's One-Man R&D Unit
"Berlin—February 1st, 2017. I am rushing through the neighborhood of Mitte, slaloming my way through icy mud piles along the streets. Google tells me the sun is setting today at 16:53. I have two more hours of daylight. Just about enough to get a few shots of Errolson Hugh, the Canadian designer behind the Berlin-based performance wear brand Acronym."

via: SSENSE

In Paris, the Two Women Who Are Colette
"In fashion, business is often a family affair. But even by that measure, Colette, the Paris-based concept store, is an exception. For most mothers and daughters, no matter how loving, living next door to each other and working together every day for two decades would be unimaginable. And that’s putting it mildly. But for Sarah Andelman and her mother, Colette Roussaux, that arrangement is the hermetic winning recipe behind Colette, the pioneering Paris boutique that turns 20 this month."

via: The New York Times

Alexander Wang on selling his adidas collab out of a truck
"If fashion was an American teen movie, then Alexander Wang (and his gang) would be the bad kids hanging around the fountain at the mall. The ones you were told to stay the hell away from – and who you’re desperate to be friends with because they know rappers and throw parties recreating Miami strip clubs."

via: Dazed Digital

Where next for the runway?
"It was sometime German philosopher Heidi Klum who memorably once opined, 'In fashion you're either in, or you're out.' Whilst this Sphinx-like proclamation still rings true, it's now harder than ever to know what's, well, in. Is it combined men's and women's shows? Is it not having a show at all? Is it the shoppable runway? Is it rejecting fashion altogether in favor or the trend that refuses to die, normcore? Whatever it is, it has the industry in a deep identity crisis."

via: i-D

Fashion advertising is out of ideas
"Fashion ads tend to be idealess. Labels are selling an image, not the clothing. Image advertising can still be conceptual, but most fashion ads and campaigns are created by fashion photographers. And most fashion photographers don’t have a clue what an ad 'concept' is. To them, a concept is different weird poses, or different weird models, or different weird props, or different weird settings. These are 'executions,' not ideas."

via: Digiday

GmbH: the Berlin fashion label railing against racism
"Designer Serhat Isik hands me a top based on the traditional Pakistani kurta. Made of madras cloth, on the back the phrase 'Randomly chosen' is embroidered in gold thread. Isik explains that, when he and his co-founder Benjamin Alexander Huseby go through airports, they are regularly screened, an ever more common occurrence for people of color since the Trump administration’s travel ban. 'When we ask why we are being searched,' he says, 'airport officers insist that we were randomly chosen.'"

via: The Guardian

The Lighter Side of Rick Owens
"You kind of want the fashion designer Rick Owens to be a monosyllabic, misanthropic recluse. It’s what the embodiment of his clothes should be, if we were going by some unwritten aesthetic script. After all, the fashion Owens presents four times a year, for men and women, on the grand Paris stage, isn’t free and easy. It isn’t simple. It often looks like rags: Precious fabrics, like cashmere, are pilled and laddered, and leather is repeatedly washed to give it the texture and appearance of a prehistoric animal’s skin. There is something monstrous about his gothic garments, with their strange, disturbing proportions attenuated and exaggerated, draped like ectoplasm clinging to thin limbs. When people wear them head to toe, as Owens’s most enthusiastic followers frequently do, they don’t look human. They look other."

via: T Magazine

Kiev's cutting-edge: the designers ignored by Ukrainian fashion week
"Hanging from the snow-covered roof of Lesnoy fleamarket in the Ukrainian capital of Kiev is a fur coat, identical to that seen on the catwalk of trend-setting label Vetements in Paris in January. Suspended alongside it are oversized padded coats, sportswear, bootleg brands and washed-out denim – the sartorial tropes by which the post-Soviet world has come to bewitch the contemporary fashion world."

via: The Guardian

Tags: weekend-reading