Escape

May 22, 2014

There are times in everyone's life where you just need to escape. Drop everything, don't think twice and run the fuck away. Disappear to a place that is not here nor there and your only commitment is to fully experience every moment you're living in. Jump up and down, get dirty, kick your shoes off to dance in puddles, laugh hysterically at absolutely nothing and find yourself in places you never expected you would ever be. Cry, let loose, get completely exhausted and fall to your knees at the end of it all. You've gone through the twists and turns, ups and downs and are still here, still violent with life boiling inside of you. So runaway when the time calls for it and find yourself on an adventure within a momentary lapse of reality but realize that you can never truly escape for it is not the reality in front of you that you are running from, it never has been.

Photographer & Model: Ashley Garner

Hair/MUA & Assistant : Orestes de la Paz

Sexism in Men's Fashion

May 20, 2014

When the topic of sexism is brought up the first thing that usually comes to everyone's mind is women but when I think of sexism the first thing to come to my mind is men’s' fashion. Now before your feathers get all ruffled let’s take a moment to stop and think this through. Why is it that women can wear pants, skirts, dresses, suits, outlandish hats, any kind of jewelry, heels, combat boots, suspenders, pretty much anything they want but men, oh the poor men, they are limited to a typical menswear uniforms of pants, shorts, suits and shirts. Sure they have vests, ties, socks and hats to mix it up but for the most part they are still miserably limited.

I was having a conversation with my father over dinner one night a few months back about this exact issue and was surprised to hear how vocal my 65 year old conservatively dressed dad was about how he wished that he had as many options as women.

“I would love to be able to walk into a men's department store and have the same options as a woman. Jewelry, shoes, socks, pants or skirts, colors, long waist coats or interesting buttons. We don't need to go back to bell-bottom pants but we can bring things back that still fit in with what our expectations of men's fashion are. I want some variety. It's been the same for hundreds of years. Literally today the way men dress is the same as their fathers dressed and their fathers father dressed. I don't mean young men who follow fads and trends, I mean men who are in their 30's, 40's and so on and have begun to dress like professionals. It's disappointing and I want to see a change.”

This is coming from a man who lives in Greenville, South Carolina and is seeing how most of the country lives outside of major cities like New York, LA or Miami where you will find a wider variety of options for men only because it has become more acceptable for men to dress in more creative ways. Outside of these cities it's not that the options are necessarily unavailable but that the mind-set of the people is very different. For most people in the United States they would have a fair amount of anxiety if they saw a man wearing a skirt just like in the 1930's there would be high levels of anxiety and complete disdain when seeing women wear pants.

It seems to me that not much has changed except that the sexism has switched sides. Sure when you look at the menswear collections every now and then you’ll come across a skirt or kilt but these are far and few moments unlike the women’s-wear collections that are overflowing with pantsuits and menswear inspired pieces. I find it especially interesting that the only reason people wouldn't have tinges of shock when seeing a man in a skirt or dress is if they 1) were homosexual or gender bending in some way, shape or form or 2) came from a culture that it is common to find men in long robes and dresses. Today women don't have to be any sort of sexual orientation or come from any culture to wear whatever they so choose. It's their right as human beings to wear whatever they want and that was the whole point of feminism (obviously not soley based on clothing but you get my point).

Women spent years in oppression and fighting to overcome that but it seems to me that there is still some sartorial psychological oppression happening in the Western culture for men. I'm just waiting for the day when men all over the country parade down the street's in skirts, dresses or whatever it is THEY want because they have the right without being categorized to a sexual or cultural label.

What do you think? Is there sexism in men's fashion today?

Frieze Week Re-cap

May 16, 2014

It has officially been a week since the beginning of art fair madness sparked last Thursday in New York by the arrival of Frieze Art Fair on Randall's Island Park. By that I obviously mean it has officially been a week since I have been non-stop running around to fair after fair, opening after opening, party after party and am now back to normal levels of manageable stress. Now that's not to say I didn't have a good time because trust me, I had an amazing time and I would never trade it for anything but if you've ever been to a series of art fairs jammed packed in several days then you probably know what I'm talking about when I say that my body was just physically drained after day four.

I now come to you refreshed, re-energized and completely re-inspired by all of the incredible, powerful, kind of weird, sometimes bad, but always bad ass art that I saw over those four days. Starting off of course with the most talked about art opening recently, Kara Walker's monumental installation "A Sublety" in the Domino Sugar Factory. If you're in New York you HAVE to go see this and it's 100% free open until July 6th.

From here I will leave you with a series of photo's from a variety of fairs, openings and events.

I hope your weekend is filled with the beautiful, the ugly and the always challenging.

Art Mur above | Robert Mapplethorpe below

Kara Walker being photographed by Toni Smailagic