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

AFFA: The Streetwear Label by Hiroshi Fujiwara & Jun Takahashi You Might Not Know About
"Founded in 1994, AFFA geared itself along the concept of punk-influenced fashion that an adult could wear. In other words, AFFA aimed to make punk fashion — which by nature is abrasive and aggressively counterculture — more palatable to the streetwear crowd by removing the hard edge of the subculture whilst retaining its essence. Much like UNDERCOVER which he founded in 1990, AFFA was clearly informed by Jun Takahashi’s personal fixation on punk music and often featured graphic prints and mixed typography screen-printed over military-influenced garments. Oftentimes, historical and cultural figures such as Karl Marx, Stalin and John Lennon featured prominently in these prints, alluding to the political undertones of punk."

via: Hypebeast

A New Exhibition Will Explore the Work of Martin Margiela During His Hermès Years
"When Jean-Louis Dumas, then CEO of Hermés, appointed the Belgian designer as artistic director in October 1997, Margiela was already known and lauded as one of the most influential and avant-garde designers on the scene. Melding his taste for groundbreaking deconstruction with the timeless luxury long-since associated with Hermès, Margiela spent the next six years breathing life into the one of the most traditional brands in the world. A marked departure from its typical brightly coloured palette and vibrant prints, Margiela's sober, monochrome vision, paired with his innovative tailoring, brought the brand firmly into the present, making it accessible and desirable to the modern woman. Celebrating the work of a true genius, Margiela - The Hermès Years is not to be missed."

via: i-D

Luxury brands missing out by not catering to minorities: Buzz Marketing
"Luxury brands are by no means out of the question for the millennial multicultural consumers, but not under frivolous guises. Only 24 percent of the demographic will purchase luxury items above their budget, even though they are interested in the products. The more targeted a brand’s advertising is to an ethnicity, the more popular it will be with the multicultural millennial. For instance, 72 percent of respondents think highly of a brand that caters directly to their demographic and prefer it."

via: Luxury Daily

A New Hope: Why ComplexCon is the Future
"The failure of the action sports & streetwear industry is that as it matured, it refined the process down to a formula, combing out all the seeds of inspiration. Instead of questioning itself, breaking the rules, listening—and adapting—to the youth, the industry got comfortable and built a fortress around its business—shutting the kids out. Grey tradeshow mornings exemplify this. Against the dull backdrop of elevator dubstep, cool dads stand in front of their booths with coffee and order sheets in hand, small-talking about industry woes and the hot new brand to hate/emulate."

via: The Hundreds

Stella McCartney's First-Ever Menswear Collection Is Finally Here
"Stella McCartney makes clothes that women—a lot of women, based on the breadth of customer that actually buys her clothes and accessories—want to wear. Her stock-in-trade is offering up pieces that strike that right balance between being effortless to wear, but actually additive to one's wardrobe (read: not basic, hardly boring). And there's often a borrowed-from-the-boys influence that makes her girls always seem just a bit cooler than the rest on the fashion block. It wasn't a total surprise, then, when McCartney announced this summer that she was expanding into menswear. After all, the Central St. Martins-educted designer knows the fundamentals of crafting men's clothing, having apprenticed under Savile Row tailor Edward Sexton after college."

via: GQ

What Instagram’s shopping update means for influencers
"The Facebook-owned platform announced last week that it would be rolling out a feature that lets brands tag products in their posts, linking out to a more detailed product page that leads users out of the app (for the first time, outside of an ad or link in bio) and onto a retailer’s website to purchase. The move has been long-anticipated by brands and Instagram users alike, as the social app drives product inspiration: Internal research shows that 60 percent of Instagram users reported having discovered new products and services on the platform."

via: Glossy

Is there space for fakes in fashion?
"Fakery and fashion have an extensive history, but something in today’s zeitgeist suggests there could be change on the horizon. This year has seen a number of luxury brands release their own counterfeit-inspired goods in an attempt to embrace the fakery and shift the existing counterfeit culture. Bootlegging has vastly come to define and dominate fashion over the course of the year."

via: Shift

Meet The Designer Who Got Rihanna To Wear Her One Of A Kind Clothes
"Describing herself as 'the weirdo' — one of the few arty people in her small town — Kucharski learned to sew as a kid, and began making clothes for herself and class mates. After high school she lived in London, and studied fashion and graphic design at the Central Saint Martins affiliate, London College of Fashion. She couldn’t go back to the South, and moved to L.A. to start the line, whose name takes inspiration from Kucharski’s dominant hand, and a childhood obsession with TLC’s Lisa 'Left Eye' Lopez."

via: The Fader

The secret history of mafia-run bootleg fashion
"In 2006, Italian journalist Roberto Saviano released his book Gomorrah: Italy’s Other Mafia, a comprehensive exposé of the inner workings of the Neopolitan mafia crime clan the Camorra. If you haven’t read the book, there’s a good chance you may have seen the film, which was released to critical acclaim in 2008. The Camorra were, and still are to some extent, no small-time operation – their power is both great and vast, affecting various facets of Italian industry, as well as its political structures. While their multi-million euro operation drew in money from a number of different areas, the clan’s fashion exploits were integral to their financial structure. By controlling the factories in the areas surrounding Puglia and Campania – which are often little more than sweatshops, with even dimly lit stairwells being utilised as a workspace, according to Saviano – it allowed the clan to create a burgeoning bootleg empire, alongside a host of more legitimate garments."

via: Dazed

Meet rising menswear talent Kiko Kostadinov
"But Konstadinov is more than a one collaboration trick pony. In a sea of menswear that champions concept over quality, he is a port of unpretentiousness. Essentially he loves clothes and he loves wearing them; and that, he believes, is what fashion should be – particularly for designers. The clothes he designs sit somewhere between high-end menswear and contemporary workwear – something which he says came from time spent working with his father (a decorator) on the building site."

via: Dazed

Jerry Lorenzo Used Religion to Sell Bieber Concert Tees
"The beginnings of Lorenzo’s Fear of God label coalesced at a time when he was refocusing his life and his faith. Launched in 2013, the clothes are heavily influenced by the limited secular references Lorenzo was exposed to as a kid. Rebellious figures like John Bender from The Breakfast Club, Nirvana front man Kurt Cobain, and NBA bad boy Allen Iverson left indelible images in his head."

via: The Cut

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