"Weekend Reading" is a weekly rundown of our favorite stories from around the web.
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Cartier Kings
"Although they may seem frivolous to outsiders, Cartier glasses are a status symbol in the city, and for over 30 years, they’ve remained a staple of Detroit fashion and culture. With a retail price that’s since jumped to $2,650 and up for the most popular frames, they’ve also become deeply associated with crime. They’re referred to as Carties, Cardis, ’Ye’s, or Sticks. For a while, the most fashionable designs were the Woods, made with Bubinga lumber, and Wire Frames, with lenses fixed in a thin gold rim. But today, at the top of Detroit’s Cartier eyewear hierarchy are the “All White Buffies,” immortalized by local rapper Rich Ken on a song of the same name. The whiter the Buffs, the more coveted the frames, and D. Mills, as he was known to his friends, wore a pair the night he died that were as white as ivory."

via: Racked

How Top Industry Publications Choose Their 'Sneaker of the Year'
"Complex is an authority on sneakers, but in today's drop-obsessed retail landscape, it is not the only media outlet that keeps a close eye on the booming sneaker market. Footwear News, Hypebeast and HighSnobiety, based in Los Angeles, Hong Kong and Berlin, respectively (each company also has an outpost in New York), each chooses its own sneaker of the year. In 2017, the big winner across the board was the Off-White x Air Jordan 1 from Virgil Abloh's "The Ten" collection for Nike, but when it comes to each publication's selection process, how do their deliberations differ?"

via: Fashionista

How Luxury Went Millennial
"The world is changing, and it is terrifying. The corporate suits working in the beauty industry are terrified. The fabric softener barons and sitcom writers can barely sleep at night. The oil industry tycoons are out on the streets, in cold December nights, begging for scraps. The way our generation crafts identity has changed; the way our culture unspools has changed; the status signifiers have changed. Luxury fashion is about all of that, so luxury fashion, we should assume, is going to change too. What will the millennial luxury fashion industry look like? In an effort to be spared from the butchery, the heritage brands, historic houses, and big brand conglomerates have spent 2017 pivoting to young, digital, woke, authentic, and engaged. Those five buzz words might as well make up the points of a pentagram of 'The Stereotypical Millennial as Imagined by the Middle-Aged Marketer.'"

via: i-D

John Galliano On Going Back To His Roots
"John Galliano briefly boards the number 12 to Oxford Circus, and a passenger’s jaw literally drops. With his otherworldly air, the elusive Maison Maison Margiela designer is the last person you’d expect to see at an Elephant and Castle bus stop on a rainy afternoon."

via: British Vogue

David LaChapelle gives us a tour of his Interview legacy
"Through his tenure at Interview as a contributing photographer, and in his shoots for other magazines and music videos, LaChapelle has defined a high-gloss, colorfully elaborate approach to photography that has been blatantly copied and idolized by photographers who followed. A naked Tupac covered strategically with a piece of silk fabric. Gaga covered strategically in pink bubbles. Hillary Clinton crying maniacally. Whomever the subject, all have emerged the other side of his lens ameliorated, saturated versions of themselves. Then, about 10 years ago, LaChapelle disappeared from the industry altogether, telling the Guardian, 'I never wanted to shoot another pop star as long as I lived.'"

via: Interview Magazine

Terry Richardson Under Investigation by NYPD After Models Accuse Him of Sex Assault
" Photographer Terry Richardson is the focus of a new investigation by the NYPD's Special Victims Squad, the Daily News has learned. Multiple women confirmed Tuesday that investigators from the elite unit have reached out in recent weeks, asking for sit-down meetings regarding the lurid lensman. The development follows a Dec. 15 cover story in The News detailing new allegations of sexual assault against the 52-year-old former fashion industry star who's shot everyone from Beyoncé and Miley Cyrus to President Obama."

via: The New York Daily News

Fashion Brands Are Tooling up to Create Custom Clothing in Minutes
"The Polo Custom shop dominates the lower ground floor of the new Polo Ralph Lauren store on Regent Street in London. If you want to embroider personalized patches or monogrammed blazers, a few taps on a tablet is all that’s required. Similarly, at the Tommy Hilfiger store down the street, shoppers can pick any item in stock and have it customized in store while they wait. At Burberry, meanwhile, you can monogram a scarf; at Gucci it’s possible to appliqué designs on jackets; and Louis Vuitton lets its customers initial luggage under its Mon Monogram program. According to Deloitte research, one in three consumers surveyed were interested in personalized products, with 71 per cent of those prepared to pay a premium for such embellishments. Moreover, focusing on the fashion sector, 15 per cent of those asked are prepared to pay a substantial markup – more than 40 per cent over the asking price – for such items."

via: Wired

How Jordan Brand Is Stepping Out of Michael Jordan’s Shadow
"But within the larger context of how the sneaker industry has operated since the founding of Jordan Brand and the power the brand amassed by the 1990s, it was nothing short of a coup. Before Kanye West went to adidas, there were lineups outside sneaker stores and wild releases, but they were almost exclusively for Jordans. As of 2017 that was no longer the case. Jordan Brand lost that number two spot, and if they were going to get it back something had to change. The answer is pretty simple: Make everything new again."

via: Highsnobiety

Vietnam’s Chance to Become a Leader in Sustainable Fashion Manufacturing
"From Tan Chau “royal silk”, used to weave traditional ao dai dresses, to bamboo fibres fashioned into lacquer housewares and more recently T-shirts and linens, to hill-tribe fabrics spun into blankets, cushions and bags by indigenous groups in its mountainous north, Vietnam has a rich history of textile craftsmanship...Earlier this year, hundreds of residents of Hai Duong, an industrial city near the capital, Hanoi, staged a five-month-long protest at the Pacific Crystal Textiles mill, a joint venture between Hong Kong-based apparel makers Pacific Textiles and Crystal Group. The residents complained of foul smells and accused the factory, which counts Japanese clothing giant Uniqlo among its clients, of polluting local waters with effluent discharges. They demanded that the firm adopt more environmentally friendly standards."

via: The South China Morning Post

Martine Rose Reflects on 10 Years of Creating Tribe-Inspired Wardrobes
"From the moment Martine Rose launched her eponymous line in 2007 she has ignored well-trodden paths, defied expectation, and cultivated her own way within the fashion industry. Over ten years Martine has subverted and reimagined male archetypes, from bankers to bus drivers, mountaineers to couriers and ravers. Volume, proportion, and fabrication are used in dynamic ways to blur the line between the familiar and the unconventional. She playfully probes the former functionality or past popularity of certain aesthetic tribes."

via: i-D

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