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

Why Does Fashion Suddenly Care about Activism?
"Not only do fashion shows offer a preview of the silhouettes, prints and fabrics that will eventually trickle down into our future wardrobes, they hold a mirror up to the society around us and act as a cultural time capsule."

via: HighSnobiety

Patagonia and The North Face: saving the world – one puffer jacket at a time
"On the night of his 30th birthday, after a few drinks, Dean Karnazes decided that he would celebrate by running all the way from San Francisco down the coast to the town of Half Moon Bay, a distance of 30 miles. So began a career as an endurance runner. He has run 50 marathons in 50 consecutive days in all 50 states, and taken part in such extreme competitions as a marathon to the South Pole and a 135-mile race through Death Valley, one of the hottest places on Earth. Karnazes once ran 350 miles in 81 hours and 44 minutes, without stopping to sleep. His account of his feats of distance running, Ultramarathon Man, is a bestseller. Karnazes’s superhuman exertions are sponsored by The North Face, the company that make the kit he wears in his coaching videos."

via: The Guardian

Almost Every Week Is Fashion Week Somewhere in the World
"You can see the light at the end of the tunnel. Paris Fashion Week is almost at an end. After four weeks (that’s including New York, London and Milan) and hundreds of shows, the women’s ready-to-wear collection carousel is finally over. Hah. Dream on."

via: The New York Times

‘It is quite petrifying’: designer JW Anderson on his first exhibition
"Jonathan Anderson is a busy man. The 32-year-old fashion designer from Magherafelt, Northern Ireland, puts out 12 collections a year as both head of his own label, JW Anderson, and creative director of the Spanish luxury brand, Loewe. He is constantly jumping on and off the Eurostar, splitting his week between London and Paris, where each label is respectively based. So when the Hepworth Wakefield gallery in Yorkshire asked him to curate an exhibition, he probably, for the sake of his schedule, should have politely declined. But as someone who collects himself, and who is passionate about modern British art (specifically, Barbara Hepworth) the collaboration seemed like a natural fit."

via: The Guardian

HAIDER ACKERMANN: “I USED TO BE QUITE DARK”
"'My creativity used to come from a dark place… When you are young, you are very tormented and very insecure. I never did analyze, I never went to see a shrink and deal with any of that. I should have, but I never did. I’m not all about analyzing. I don't like to dig into things. You don't want to sound like the artist that just goes through pain to be able to produce, but I used to be quite dark — trust me. I used to be quite dark.'"

via: The Talks

DOLCE & GABBANA’S RUNWAY EXPERIMENT
"Several weeks ago, the Italian designers Stefano Gabbana and Domenico Dolce had an idea that was either brilliant or really terrible. Why not put on a fashion show using amateur models instead of professionals? They wanted to use mothers and daughters, fathers and babies, friends and boyfriends, people of all ages and sizes. “It’s not just a fashion show, it’s generations!” Gabbana told me in Milan last Sunday, an hour before the experiment hit the runway."

via: The New Yorker

Chanel’s show is everything that’s wrong with luxury fashion right now
"When I saw Instagram story of Chanel’s rocket being launched into space, many decades after the real rocket was launched into the real space, my first reaction was visceral. I was literally sick in my stomach."

via: Medium

New Adidas CEO Plans Fast-Fashion Focus to Catch Up to Nike
"Adidas AG’s new chief executive officer is doubling down on surging sales of casual sneaker lines like Stan Smith and Tubular to transform the German sportswear maker into a fast-fashion business and gain ground on larger rival Nike Inc."

via: Bloomberg

WHAT RESPONSIBILITY DO MODELS HAVE WHEN FACED WITH CULTURAL APPROPRIATION ON THE JOB?
"For a business that is theoretically predicated on the talents of forward-thinking creatives, the fashion industry sure does spend a lot of time apologizing for cultural insensitivity. It's so common for a designer to do something like, for example, style the hair of white models in Bantu knots or cornrows — or both, if they're especially ambitious in their shortsightedness — that a clear, well-tread PR strategy for dealing with the ensuing online backlash has emerged: Appropriate someone else's culture, intentionally or not, issue an apology via social media to 'anyone who may have been offended,' rinse and repeat."

via: Fashionista

‘We did it first’: Re/Done’s founder on the birth of the Vetements effect
"Repurposed fashion is officially booming. Reworking fashion has decidedly become more prevalent since Vetements started turning heads. Today, even Urban Outfitters is on the bandwagon — it launched ReWork, a line made of reused and recycled materials, last year."

via: Glossy

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