"Weekend Reading" is a weekly rundown of our favorite stories from around the web.
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One Last Tour of Colette With Co-Founder Sarah Andelman
"Before closing its doors for the last time on the 20th of December, we spent a final afternoon saying goodbye to our favorite Parisian fashion store, as Sarah reveals what she’ll do on the day the store closes for good."

via: i-D

Jil Sander: Fashion’s First Feminist
"This intense, pretty, exceptionally driven woman, who has worked all her life–she founded her business at age 24 in 1968–is a purist and perfectionist. This is confirmed by the personal vision that underlines “Present Tense”, the exhibition of her life and work at the Museum Angewandten Kunst, where curator Matthias Wagner K has worked with her to make something intensely powerful out of spare simplicity."

via: Vogue

Is Soccer Replacing Skateboarding as Fashion’s Bandwagon of the Moment?
"Yesterday at the Strand bookstore in Manhattan, several dozen fashion editors, buyers, and Bushwick-famous stylish kids gathered in the rare-books room and huddled in the narrow passageways between the stacks. As bemused NYU students looked on, the music came up and a legion of street-cast models emerged for a stroll through the store in stretchy suits, wool warm-ups, and camp shirts made of chopped-up jerseys. Several senior citizens, unfazed by the disturbance, wandered onto the runway and caused a momentary model traffic jam. Though it had all the qualities of an impromptu, guerilla show put on by art students (which is a good thing), it was actually the pre-fall show put on by buzzy French brand Koché. And despite being held during a sleepy December week, it was the perfect finale to one of the year’s most enduring menswear trends: soccer."

via: GQ Style

Virgil Abloh's 'Aggressively Creative' Agenda
"Virgil Abloh is fashion's most talked-about multitasker. The Illinois native has worn so many hats that we can run out of hyphens describing him. Engineer. Architect. DJ. Designer. Ikea collaborator. Watch the Throne art director. Kanye West's creative director. He's done it all. Recently, his line Off-White was ranked as the third hottest brand in fashion by Business of Fashion and Lyst, behind only designer megabrands Balenciaga and Gucci. Not bad for a line that was launched three years ago. We caught up with Abloh to talk about what and who (Puff Daddy!) has inspired him along the way."

via: Paper

2017 Is the Year Fashion Pushed Normcore to the Extreme
"If normcore was a mutiny of the people against the fashion world, 2017, in many ways, felt like the emperor taking back control. This year saw a number of designers around the world exploring fashion in its most mundane and un-extraordinary forms–normcore, but done properly, as if the fashion world saw outsiders taking control of the narrative, and responded by showing them what a mediocre job they were doing. Fashion houses heard a cry for the safety of banality, and decided to show the world just how banal they could be."

via: Highsnobiety

Can Yeezy’s See-Now-Buy-Now Paparazzi Proposition Work for Other Fashion Brands?
"This week, Yeezy chose to roll out Season 6 on his wife Kim Kardashian West. She wore 16 outfits over the span of two days in Calabasas with a clique of paparazzi trailing her every move. She went to the 7/11, she ate some soft serve ice cream, and she popped into a FedEx. Kim tweeted every look—or at least the ones she could find in her phone—and the Internet lit up. Once Yeezy Season 6 fever hit a social media high, the brand went on to release all its products online for pre-order. It was the simplest, most pain-free reveal and rollout Yeezy ever executed."

via: Vogue

The Year in Stuff
"It was a year that felt like a decade: 2017 saw the arrival of a new president (and an at-the-ready resistance movement), the unsealing of long-held silences on abuse and consent, a radically new world order and a terrifying spate of natural and human-made disasters (fire, water, terror). It was also a year full of stuff. Fashion and commerce don’t grind to a halt even in troubling times, and the designers and retailers of the fashion world responded to turmoil as usual. They invented, rebranded, up-marketed and revitalized. It was a year that gawked at stilettos and embraced ugly sneakers; when an advocacy hat was met with an activism hat; when makeup and a glossy magazine offered a new chance at inclusion; when luxury looked to the bargain basement; and when a lion of the industry, a man seemingly out of his own times, left us too soon."

via: The New York Times

Dior Homme's Kris Van Assche Explains Art's Role in Fashion
"Last week, Dior Homme hosted an exclusive event with Paris’s Laffanour Galerie Downtown at leading Miami retailer The Webster to launch its Black Carpet collection as well as a light sculpture installation by Japanese-American artist Isamu Noguchi. We caught up with the designer to find out how he defines “art,” the role it plays in his work and how his collaboration with Noguchi came into fruition."

via: Hypebeast

Fashion in 2017 Was Ruled by Bad Taste, but Why?
"2017 was the year that fashion was ruled by bad taste; by the revolting, outrageous and over the top. We’ve entered a new era of maximalism, where it’s acceptable to wear everything at once, to mix styles, patterns and colors to glorious excess. Gone are the days of sleek and nondescript Alexander Wang and early YEEZY numbers; today it’s more about rainbow-colored Gucci tracksuits and vintage Kappa sportswear. This kaleidoscope of over-the-top looks raises the question: what actually is bad taste, and why do we find it so thrilling?"

via: Highsnobiety

How the Russian Street Style Became the Latest Fashion Rage Globally
"Western chains like Urban Outfitters and Topman have picked up on this contemporary take on 1990s Russian wear, selling T-shirts with Cyrillic slogans. The post-Soviet look also includes graphic T-shirts, football scarves, cropped jeans and sportswear brands, worn together with higher-end items. Largely appropriated from the Russian working class, it also draws on the suburban “gopnik” subculture that appeared 25 years ago at the collapse of the USSR."

via: Hindustan Times

Tags: weekend-reading