"Weekend Reading" is a weekly rundown of our favorite stories from around the web.
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Christophe Lemaire Thinks Trend-Driven Fashion Is a Disaster
"Christophe Lemaire makes elegantly utilitarian clothing with striking silhouettes and a singular color palette for his Paris-based brand Lemaire. In keeping with the minimalist aesthetic, Chistophe rarely does interviews. But for the fall issue of GQ Style, we were able to get the designer to talk Joy Division, going trend-less, and the inimitable style of old dudes on the streets of Paris. Read the exclusive interview below, and don’t miss our conversations with fellow Paris Fashion Week all-stars Virgil Abloh, Olivier Rousteing, and Jeanne Damas."

via: GQ Style

Lucie and Luke Meier Say the New Jil Sander Will Be Soulful, Relevant, and Absolutely Not Disposable
"Lucie and Luke Meier’s Jil Sander show is surely one of the most anticipated debuts of the Spring 2018 season. The label has experienced countless twists and turns since its founder left in 2000, including but not limited to the two times Sander herself made brief returns in 2003 and 2013. Bringing back stability, forging a believable yet fresh perspective, achieving a healthy bottom line—this is what will be required of the Meiers. Let’s say that they have their plates quite full."

via: Vogue

How Alexander Wang Used Social Media to Win in Fashion
"Luxury fashion has undergone one of the most significant structural disruptions in recent memory. In a time where heritage houses are striving for innovation to stay relevant, Alexander Wang, whose eponymous imprint dates just over 12 years, embraced youth culture, social media and brand lifestyle from the get-go. The designer reveals how his nonconformist ethos has bolstered the company’s success in today’s wavering consumer climate."

via: Highsnobiety

To Break Our Fast-fashion Addiction, Greenpeace Says We Have to embrace “True Materialism”
"Clothes are cheaper and more disposable to shoppers than ever, and the environment is suffering for it. Between 2000 and 2014, global clothing production doubled, according to McKinsey, while the average amount consumers spent per item, and how long they kept it, both declined. Producing this much clothing uses up huge amounts of natural resources and pumps toxic chemicals into the soil and rivers. The clothes themselves, increasingly made of polyester, are putting dangerous amounts of microfibers in the oceans, and too often wind up in landfills after little wear."

via: Quartz

Pyer Moss's Kerby Jean-Raymond Pens Open Letter to the Fashion Industry About Racism
"In September of 2015, I did the unthinkable; I used my second-ever runway show to bring awareness to the Black Lives Matter movement. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do professionally. It was lonely. I had such a hard time paying for and getting people to sit and watch my runway show the season before, so you would think the last thing I’d do is jeopardize the show’s attendance by making industry professionals uncomfortable. But I did. I got a lot of backlash after that, death threats and certain publications even banned me from coverage. One editor came up to me at a bar and said he had informed his team to stay away from me because I was toxic. Let’s call him 'Joe'."

via: Teen Vogue

The Reddit Page Where Streetwear Brands Are Born
"There is absolutely no good reason the words “yo pierre, you wanna come out here?” should be here pinned on the page for Reddit’s Streetwear Startup subforum. Clicking on the words leads you nowhere, and the phrase—first heard on the Jamie Foxx Show and more recently popularized by hip-hop producer Pierre Bourne—doesn’t have anything to do with the page’s function: convening an unusually friendly online community to help burgeoning streetwear designers launch their brands. But it turns out that “yo pierre” is a perfect symbol for a genre of clothing that thrives on coded imagery—ranging from Coca-Cola to Dragon Ball Z—to signal to other people you’re hip, you’re in the know, and yes, you would like to come out here."

via: GQ

A Decade in Digital: Tommy Ton Wants to Branch Out Beyond Fashion
"Tommy Ton is surprisingly soft-spoken. This, after all, is the man who basically created a genre of street style peacocks, headed up by the likes of Anna Dello Russo and Giovanna Battaglia — surely someone drawn to that kind of drama must enjoy a bit of the spotlight himself? It turns out that, as with many street style photographers, that is not the case. In fact, Ton partially got into street style as a way to be more social while working with the buying team at Canada's Holt Renfrew."

via: Fashionista

Why a Fashion Label’s Success Now Rests on Identity, Not Innovation
"Despite its disregard for traditional ways of fashion, streetwear’s relevance is undeniable, and its impact has been felt by everyone, including designers such as Karl Lagerfeld, who recently collaborated with California-based shoe label, Vans, for a capsule collection. This high- fashion streetwear partnership was closely preceded by another much anticipated collaboration between Louis Vuitton and Supreme. Within a few years, brands such as Public School, Off-White, and Palace have built themselves up from complete anonymity to global fashion stardom. The phenomenal success of these brands is mirrored by the likes of Gosha Rubchinskiy and Vetements, whose much talked about post-Soviet-era aesthetic has drawn their own band of devotees. Their rejection of Western fashion norms, and their reluctance to follow the conventional fashion calendar that often encompasses up to 12 shows a year, have only further fuelled their popularity. So how – and why – has this happened? Not long ago, what defined a brand’s success was how well it could keep up with the pace of the industry and reinvent mainstream trends."

via: South China Morning Post

Reinventing Givenchy
"One day in July, not long after Clare Waight Keller had begun work as the first female artistic director of Givenchy—succeeding its longtime designer, Riccardo Tisci, and helping further reset the gender imbalance that has long existed at the top of famous French fashion brands—she was sitting at a long table in the vast white design studio of the brand’s headquarters on Avenue George V."

via: The New York Times

A Tribute to Gary Warnett, One of Our Culture’s Most Prolific Minds
"Writer and cultural scholar Gary Warnett passed away in his hometown of Bedford, England, yesterday, due to complications from pneumonia. He was 39 years old. To many of his peers, Gary was the reference: a generation’s historian, documentarian and critic. Very few could express the bridging of cultures—music, art and fashion—better than him. As a writer, words were his tool. Forums, blogs, social media, magazines, SMS and face-to-face conversation were his platforms to critique and praise a culture that desperately needed his voice."

via: Highsnobiety

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