"Weekend Reading" is a weekly rundown of our favorite stories from around the web.
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A Swan Song for the Philophiles
"'Hedi’s wind is blowing,' Tina Lundin said as dust swirled around Place Dauphine, a square on the western tip of Île de la Cité in Paris' first arrondissement. It was late afternoon, Friday’s gorgeous light fading into the sky, marking not only the end of the day, but the end of an era. Just a few hours later, designer Hedi Slimane would debut his first collection as creative director of the LVMH-owned fashion house Celine, which, for the past 10 years, had been occupied by designer Phoebe Philo, known as well by real women for making a great-fitting pair of trousers as she was by fashion insiders for creating agenda-setting designs that inspired the rest of the industry."

via: Business of Fashion

Sisters Explores How a Family Snapshot Became One of Commes des Garçons Most Iconic Campaigns
"Back in 1976, photographer Jim Britt took a series of snapshots of his two daughters at the family home in Los Angeles. One resulting image, which would later be named as ’Sisters’, captured 12-year-old Jody and 11-year-old ‘Mimi’ Melendy in what can only be described as an ecstatic fit of braces-baring laughter. The siblings unique bond had been documented since birth by their father, but little did anyone know the immense impact and trajectory that the super-smiley image would take. Fast-forward to 1988 and a Comme des Garçons representative came across the image in a back issue of People magazine, where it had been featured as part of a feature on Jim’s work. Immediately the brand asked to license it for their AW88 campaign. The rest is, you could say, ground-breaking fashion history. The image — un-staged, brimming with pre-teen spirit and a natural hyper-communicative joy — was everything fashion advertising had not been until this point. ‘Sisters’ has gone on to influence the next generation of photographers and image-makers, but until now little was known about Jim, Jody and Melendy’s story."

via: It's Nice That

Givenchy’s Secret Weapon Is Hitting Her Stride
"Arriving at the Givenchy Spring-Summer 2019 show, held inside the commanding Palais de Justice, guests followed a single beam of retina-imprinting light through the long expanse between the entrance (where a laser light Givenchy sign the length of ten Cadillac Fleetwoods was hung) and the show space. The whole thing had a beam-me-up quality, presumably teeing up some element of the show to come (the digital frontier? space, the final frontier? poltergeist?). Turns out it was just a very cool navigational tool. In reality, the show space, from the floors to the makeshift walls, was covered with a few football fields’ worth of what looked like humble drop cloths. We shouldn’t have been surprised: Going against expectations is becoming a calling card of Clare Waight Keller’s."

via: GQ

48 Hours With the Couple Bringing a New Sense of Cool to Jil Sander
"What’s the proof of a happy marriage? For Luke and Lucie Meier, the husband-and-wife design duo at the helm of the Jil Sander brand, it’s that they still want to have coffee together before it’s time to go to work. This week, just one day before their spring 2019 fashion show, the pair left their Milan apartment and crossed the street to the elegantly antique Marchesi pastry shop (founding date: 1824) for a caffè macchiato each, and a fresh grapefruit juice for Lucie. 'This is how we start every day,' says Luke."

via: The New York Times

Robert Maplethorpe's Work Still Has the Power to Cause a Censorship Scandal
"In 1983, six years before the artist and photographer Robert Mapplethorpe died at 42, due to complications from HIV/AIDS, the New York Times’ art critic wondered: 'Is Mapplethorpe only out to shock?' His frankly homoerotic work was 'undeniably and intentionally distasteful,' wrote Andy Grundberg, now a professor of arts and design at George Washington University. 'The norms of polite nudity are transgressed; religious, racial and sexual taboos are flouted; a kind of chic, narcissistic exhibitionism is flaunted.”

via: Quartz

Gucci, Louis Vuitton Rated "Genius" Digital Luxury Brands
"Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Michael Kors, Ralph Lauren, Jimmy Choo, Kate Spade, Hugo Boss, Burberry, Fendi and Prada, respectively, made the top 10 rankings of a new Gartner L2 report measuring the digital performance of luxury fashion brands. The 'Digital IQ Index: Fashion Global 2018' report analyzed 77 luxury fashion brands across website and e-commerce channels, digital marketing, social media and mobile in the U.S., U.K., France and Germany. Brands were rated as Genius, Gifted, Average, Challenged or Feeble. Gucci and Louis Vuitton both received the Genius label.”

via: Retail Dive

A Rolex with a Fascinating NASA Past
"I am a watch collector. There, I’ve said it. While I’ve always thought that 'collecting' of any sort was the province of geeky children (yes, I collected stamps for about nine months as an eight-year-old) or adults with too much time on their hands, I have now become one of these people, the ones with a safe, an insurance policy and a favorite dealer. Watches relax me. Thinking about watches relaxes me. Sometimes, on a long plane ride, I’ll look at a photo of a watch on my phone while wearing another watch on my wrist. Is that sick? Feel free to judge me.”

via: The Wall Street Journal

Kering's Bigger, Bolder Plan for Alexander McQueen
"At Kering, Gucci is the cash cow, Saint Laurent the dependable earner and Balenciaga the rising star. Then there’s Alexander McQueen, which has the name recognition, but has spun its wheels, financially, since the designer’s death in 2010. That's about to change. Kering has big ambitions for the brand, including an expanded product range and a realigned network of stores (including the first McQueen boutique in India). McQueen is a powerful brand; a Met showcase of the designer's work in 2011 was at the time one of the museum's 10 most popular exhibits ever. The industry has had success (and failure) driving new momentum at middling performers: Kering did it with Balenciaga; LVMH did it with Celine, for which it has even bigger plans. Burton’s McQueen show may offer clues as to how Kering will repeat the same magic.”

via: Business of Fashion

Dries Van Noten on Designing One of His Best Collections Ever
"Everything about Dries Van Noten, whose most recent show is being hailed around Paris one of the highlights of the Spring 2019 season, and a highlight in the designer’s 32-year career, is fresh. The colors—greens as vivid as flowers just before they bud, pinks as pink as its floral namesake, blues as true as nature—feel crisp, deep, alive. 'It’s the same approach,' Van Noten said of putting together the collection, in an interview at his Paris atelier last week. 'But we said: we want everything fresh. And we want fresh in color.' And when it came to those crisp and simple shapes, of clean white and orange work coats cinched with mountaineering cords: 'I love something extremely simple which works very strongly.'”

via: Garage

How Thom Browne Became Lionel Messi’s Tailor of Choice
"Thom Browne’s biggest fashion show of the season wasn’t at Paris Fashion Week. It was yesterday outside Wembley Stadium in London on a short, impromptu, parking lot runway. That’s where F.C. Barcelona strode into the arena for their Champions League match against Tottenham, decked out head-to-toe in Browne’s signature grey suits, white oxford cloth button-downs, and black pebble grain wingtips. Barça forward Lionel Messi, arguably the most famous footballer in the world, couldn’t even wait till the match to ’Gram his brand new kit for his 98.8 million followers. F.C. Barcelona’s several-hundred-million-strong fanatics are used to seeing the team in Nike sweatsuits, but for the next three years, for every away Champions League and La Liga match, they’ll be repping tailoring from one of high fashion’s most visionary creative minds. It’s time for the non-fashion-speaking world to meet Thom Browne. (Neymar Jr., for his part, left this show review in Messi’s comments: 'Nunca te vi tan guapo,'—I’ve never seen you so handsome.)”

via: GQ Style

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