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

The Cult of the Line: It’s Not About the Merch
"Today, the queue is partly a resellers’ market: energetic young entrepreneurs snapping up wares in multiples, then flipping them at soaring markups on eBay or selling them for pocket change to finance their own buys. On this day, the spirit of commerce was lively on Lafayette Street, with vans lining the far side of the block, the trunks popped to display boxes and bags packed with limited-edition inventory from Nike, Supreme and other vendors — a lure for passers-by."

via: The New York Times

How Raf Simons Captured the Calvin Klein Empire
"The Belgian designer has long been a darling of the fashion world, so it’s no surprise that his latest act, a creative reboot of an $8.4 billion American fashion house, has the industry swooning. In the designer’s first major interview since his New York debut, he describes his approach."

via: Vanity Fair

Why Demna Gvasalia Is the First Designer to Truly Understand Internet Culture
"It’s too soon to tell where history will place Demna Gvasalia. Maybe he’ll be remembered as one of the greats, but even if he doesn’t he can take comfort from the fact that nobody in fashion is in tune with the ethos of our era like he is."

via: Highsnobiety

School of Christian Dior
"So how could Christian Dior, back in 1957, before his sudden and untimely disappearance at age 52, have imagined that his work – so personal, so tied up with artistic friends from his early years, so deeply and viscerally attached to his mother and her turn-of-the-century style – would generate a troop of six followers?"

via: British Vogue

Hedi Slimane's 'Secret Society'
"For the August 2017 issue of Italian Vogue, Hedi Slimane has contributed an expansive photographic portfolio dedicated to the subject he has been researching for a decade: Los Angeles. Since moving there in 2007 the Parisian photographer and sometime creative director has become deeply embedded in the city's creative subcultures. Here, in an email exchange with Italian Vogue editor-at-large Luke Leitch, Slimane sketches the context for his work. He discusses his beginnings as a photographer, and the threads of androgyny, music and indie otherness that run through his canon. He introduces the "secret society" of LA musicians, artists, skaters and surfers that feature in a special portfolio and explains how the city came to inflect his vision, both as a photographer and during his tenure at Yves Saint Laurent."

via: Business of Fashion

Escalating Sweatshop Protests Keep Nike Sweating
"It may seem like a flashback to the 1990s, when Nike became the poster child for corporate irresponsibility and was regularly targeted by anti-sweatshop activists. Over the next decade and a half, the company made serious efforts to reform its practices, adopting one of the business world’s first codes of conduct and winning praise from labor activists. But in recent months Nike has lost much of that goodwill, amid similar allegations, and is sparking new protests led by a new generation of activists."

via: Fast Company

Catching Up With the 2017 CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund Finalists
*"The 10 finalists in this year’s CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund were just announced last week, but they’ve already hit the ground running. On Wednesday, the competition kicked off with mini-presentations from each designer (or team of designers, in Vaquera’s case), who dressed models in key looks from their collections and answered questions from the panel of judges, including CFDA president Steven Kolb, Vogue’s Nicole Phelps, Eva Chen, and Diane von Furstenberg. Intimidating? Just a little.

We chatted with each designer after they wrapped to discuss what they’re hoping to learn from the CVFF, what you need to know about their young brands, and who they follow on Instagram (it’s surprisingly revealing!). Meet the designers behind all 10 labels below, and continue to check back as we follow their progress."*

via: Vogue

The Persistent Fantasy of the Fashion Magazine Job
"In most depictions of magazine work, there is an emphasis on perks and freebies, editors’ clothing allowances, and an overflowing editorial fashion closet. There is less emphasis on the independent wealth and breeding of some in the magazine world, although Cat Marnell, in her magazine and addiction memoir (also a memoir about magazine addiction), How to Murder Your Life, admits that her parents paid her rent when she was only making $26,000 as a writer at Lucky."

via: Racked

The Selling Power of Gucci's Relentless Gucciness
"The number of pieces Michele has shown in his relatively short tenure at the Italian house can be misleading in that, despite the breadth of each collection, Michele's Gucciverse has yet to waver far from the very specific, maximalist aesthetic he has pioneered. The season-to-season similarities are either admirably consistent or mind-numbingly boring, depending on who you ask. If you do ask, you may find many in the industry wondering aloud how long Gucci can remain on top without offering something that feels actually new."

via: Fashionista

How to Get a Place at Italy’s Best Fashion School
"When you think about Italian fashion you’d probably go straight to Milan – home of Prada, Versace and Valentino. But what about Florence? Sure, there’s Pitti, but the birthplace of Renaissance and Gucci gets less credit than it deserves for being a hub of creative talent. Polimoda – the fashion school blending heritage, research, and creativity – is also part of its history. Since 1986, its provided experience-based teaching to whole generations of aspiring designers, stylists, art directors and other industry insiders – it’s ranked by Business of Fashion as the number one fashion school in Italy (ninth globally). Danilo Venturi, now dean of the school, was one such student himself – so who better to ask what it takes to make it in the fashion industry, and how Polimoda prepares its students to do so?"

via: Dazed & Confused

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