System launches new issue featuring cover star
Yohji Yamamoto interviewed by Rick Owens

Yohji Yamamoto photographed by Juergen Teller

Click to here buy online.

Very few designers can be talked about as revolutionaries who changed the course of contemporary fashion. Yohji Yamamoto is one. Fiercely independent, he still cherishes one thing above all else, fifty years after he graduated from fashion school: his absolute freedom. And freedom – fundamental to creativity – is a word we so rarely associate with fashion designers any more. Which is what makes Yohji-san the Master. Fellow designer Rick Owens interviews our cover star in Paris, with photographs by Juergen Teller.

Also in this action-packed 450+ page issue:

Next-gen super-stylist Ibrahim Kamara uses the language of fashion to challenge every stereotype. Kamara’s looks of the season are photographed by Paolo Roversi.

Alexander Fury pens an ode to the most criminally overlooked designer in British fashion history, Antony Price. While Bella Hadid brings classic Price looks back to life, photographed by Sharna Osborne and styled by Vanessa Reid.

Fashion’s new wunderkind, costume designer Tomo Koizumi, in conversation with Hans Ulrich Obrist, on navigating the industry with a helping hand from Marc Jacobs and Katie Grand, and photographed by Juergen Teller.

Young Turks, the record label that could teach luxury fashion houses a thing or two. Our mega-triptych feature includes YT founder Caius Pawson in conversation about the fostering of creative genius. Meanwhile, we reveal The xx’s 10-year anniversary clothing collaboration with Raf Simons, photographed by Willy Vanderperre and styled by Olivier Rizzo. We then ask Peter Saville the question, “What is Merch?”, before presenting a cross-cultural project between dance troup LEV, and YT artists Jamie xx and Koreless, photographed by Harley Weir.

For Francesco Risso, Marni is a platform to explore the outer limits of consciousness. Tim Blanks tracks down the designer during a recent silent retreat, while Ethan James Green takes Marni’s recent collections out for an upstate New York Hallowe’en weekender, styled by Tom Guinness.

Noticing a recurring off-kilter model trend? From Hood by Air to Gucci and Marni, the new normal in casting is defined by Walter Pearce and Rachel Chandler of Midland Agency.

Angelo Flaccavento on how the legacy of Massimo Osti still influences the DNA of Stone Island. Plus a portfolio photographed by Alasdair McLellan and styled by Max Pearmain.

Master milliner Stephen Jones on a lifelong of legendary hats, as told to Tim Blanks and photographed by Juergen Teller.

Reluctant fashion ‘icon’ and cult musician Leslie Winer reconsiders the places and times of her life less ordinary, as told to long-time confidant Jerry Stafford, with photographs by Anton Corbijn.

Pierre Hardy on 20 years of fashioning footwear, with a retrospective portfolio photographed by Erwan Frotin.

After 10 years in business, and still under 30 years of age, Simon Porte Jacquemus takes a moment to reflect on family, fortune, and the future. By Loïc Prigent, photographs by Pierre-Ange Carlotti.

In our latest survey, System asks some of the industry’s biggest names about how they got their Big Break.

An intimate look into the backstage life of designer Erdem Moralıoğlu.

Michael Kors answers his bespoke “Aviator Questionnaire” by Loïc Prigent.

Plus, Garance Doré on escaping fashion week for good, Huang Hung on the queer eye for Chinese guys, and Noah Wunsch on why today’s sneakerheads shop at Sotheby’s, with illustrations by Jean-Philippe Delhomme.

System is available to purchase exclusively at Dover Street Market in London, New York and Los Angeles, and Galeries Lafayette Champs-Élysées in Paris from Friday 22 November.

Click to here buy online.

21/11/19

 

The Derek Blasberg
Questionnaire

By Loïc Prigent



System Magazine – Derek Blasberg photographed by PierGuido Grassano

What was the best thing you learned from Karl Lagerfeld?
A sharp wit is the most stylish thing in the world.

What’s your favourite app for communicating?
I love e-mail and despise talking on the phone.

How many hours did you spend yesterday on your phone?
A little under four.

How many e-mails did you receive yesterday?
I would try and add them up from my various e-mail accounts, but the sum would be too depressing to know.

Who is the last person you text before going to sleep?
Depends where I’m sleeping.

What makes a good fashion party?
Guest list, guest list, guest list.

Which is the best part of the Met Gala?
Leaving.

Which is the best airline in the world?
I love the Eurostar.

Which is the best hotel in the world?
Ritz Paris in the winter and Hotel Cipriani in Venice in the summer.

Which star still leaves you star-struck?
Barack Obama.

What is the first question you’d ask Martin Margiela?
I guess I’d ask, ‘Are you Martin?’

What is the first question you’d ask Valentino?
Where’d you get your plates?

What’s your tip for conducting a good interview with Anna Wintour?
Be on time, and on time is 15 minutes early.

Can you define the new spontaneity we see these days on YouTube?
When YouTube content is good, it has three As: aspiration, authenticity and advice.

Who are your five favourite fashion YouTubers?
Only five? Emma Chamberlain, Colin Furze, James Charles, Rickey Thompson, and Naomi Campbell.

What part of the New York attitude would you bring to the Parisians?
Service with a smile.

 

26/06/2019

 

‘We just wanted to go off the map.’

Jil Sander’s seasonal campaign meant shooting a 16mm road trip across Japan.

Images by Mario Sorrenti
Text by Jorinde Croese

 

 
After 11 collections at Jil Sander, Luke and Lucie Meier have settled in. Since presenting their first resort collection for the label in June 2017, the husband and wife’s unique design symbiosis has helped update Sander’s essence of cosmopolitan cool. Lucie previously worked at Louis Vuitton under Marc Jacobs, Balenciaga under Nicolas Ghesquière, and Dior under Raf Simons; Luke was the design director at Supreme for nearly a decade, after which he founded his own menswear line, OAMC. Together, they have brought grace and purity combined with a street-smart understanding of branding to Jil Sander, thanks to work that feels strikingly contemporary and relevant. The Meiers have publicly commented that several of their collections have been made in response to the gloomy world in which we live, and have featured clothes that offer comfort like luxury blankets (their Fall 2018 runway show even featured a model carrying pillows).

The intimacy found in their work – perhaps an inevitable side effect of the continual overlap between their business and private lives – naturally feeds into the campaigns they have created with photographer Mario Sorrenti. ‘We got together and started working with him for our first season,’ explains Lucie. ‘We went to his house in Mallorca and did a project there, which was like a first show preview. It was such a pleasure to work with Mario, and a good feeling.’ That project – for Spring/Summer 2018 – became the document of a carefree summer: snapshots of jumping off the rocks at sunset and delicate imprints of dried grass on knees.

Flip through the Japonesque, Jil Sander dream as visualized by the Meiers in System No. 13. Click to buy.

19/06/2019

 

The sanitary solution

The underwear manufacturer tackling third-world ‘period poverty’.

By Dominic McVey
Illustration by Jean-Philippe Delhomme

 
The sanitary solution. A letter from… Kenya, by Dominic McVey. Illustration by Jean-Philippe Delhomme.

   The period panty project started back in 2013, when I invested in Hela, a Sri Lankan clothing manufacturer. It took proper shape in 2016 when we opened factories for Hela Intimates in Kenya and Ethiopia, where we produce underwear for brands like Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger. In all our factories, we practise sustainable manufacturing that reflects our company’s ethos: we provide our employees with meals, accommodation and transport, as well as training that provides transferable skills in machine operation and management, allowing our employees to earn a living wage.

   Yet, despite our efforts, I noticed that women of many different ages were lacking help with one hugely important aspect of their lives: their periods. Still a massive taboo in Sri Lanka, Kenya and Ethiopia, periods are considered impure by many communities resulting in millions of women being excluded from social situations, including work and education. In sub-Saharan Africa, 1 in 10 girls will either miss school or drop out entirely due to their period; according to some estimates, they miss 20% of a given school year. In Kenya, 66% of girls cannot afford to buy sanitary products. A staggering 95% of girls in rural Ghana report missing school during their periods, and worldwide, 113 million adolescent girls are at risk of dropping out due to their period. Some girls are given reusable period pads by NGOs, but underwear is needed to hold these in place, which in some cases, is too expensive. So to deal with their periods, millions of women around the world are forced to use non-absorbent pieces of cloth that are unsanitary, leak and cause them embarrassment and shame.

   I have seen empty chairs in our offices or on our factory floors because a woman did not come in due to her period. I have seen women running across the canteen with blood where they were stood or sat. I have known our toilets to be occupied for hours or the drains to be clogged by the cloth women have used to absorb the flow and then thrown away. I can only imagine the hardship and mental stress a woman must go through due to lack of community support, education or access to the right products.

   So I decided to work on a solution. From the beginning, I was convinced that the answer was not giving sanitary pads to women. Sanitary pads are a modern solution that is actually outdated, a disposable, environmentally unfriendly product developed by an industry that needs to encourage mass consumption. Products are also developed with Western habits and sanitary situations in mind, far removed from what is required in a rural village in Kenya. What was needed was an alternative that would be cheaper, genuinely reusable, and perfectly discreet.

   With assistance from my colleague Buddhi Paranamara at Hela Clothing and with input from Parsons School of Design, we developed a reusable women’s panty that can be used as a normal panty and then during menstrual cycles with a heavy flow, or for fistula or urinary incontinence. The panty uses special technology in the lining that makes it super absorbent yet ultra-thin, and stops any chance of leakage. And as it’s reusable, it’s more environmentally friendly for the planet and more cost-effective for women. We also used our collective experience in garment design and manufacturing to create a panty that, perhaps most importantly, looks just like normal underwear to the eye and touch. Which means women can wash it and hang it out like any other garment, without alerting everyone that they may be on their period. So far, we’ve produced several thousand period panties, of which we have donated a large number to women in refugee camps across Asia and Africa. With our partners, we hope that we can continue helping women across the world, making their lives easier and in the process helping bring an end to period poverty.

In System No. 13. Click to buy.

14/06/2019

 

The dark room

What Brexit means to British photography.

By Shonagh Marshall
Illustration by Jean-Philippe Delhomme

 
The dark room. A letter from… United Kingdom, by Shonagh Marshall. Illustration by Jean-Philippe Delhomme.

   
Since June 2016, when the UK voted to leave the European Union, I have, like so many people, found myself wondering what it means to be British today. So, as a curator of photography, I began to ask other people. Like London-based fashion photographers, Hanna Moon, from South Korea, and Joyce Ng, from Hong Kong, with whom I organized an exhibition, English as a Second Language, at Somerset House in London earlier this year. Together we explored what being British means today and how it could be reflected in contemporary fashion imagery.

   When Hanna and Joyce read the exhibition brief, they found it both slightly farcical and extremely British. Hanna decided to subvert it by ‘invading’ Somerset House and posing her muses, Heejin, from South Korea, and Moffy, from London, in various states of undress to parody traditional British (mainly female) portraiture. Joyce on the other hand looked to the international community working in Somerset House itself for inspiration, casting models from among its members. While the resulting images show how differently they both see the idea of being British, they do reveal a common trait. Living in Britain and so ‘being British’ has allowed them to revel in a degree of self-invention they could never have at home. Indeed, like many of their models, London has let them exist in a whole new way. For them, being British means freedom – the chance to be someone else entirely.

   The liberty felt by Joyce and Hannah and their outsiders’ view of what the country means is similar to many of the new generation of image makers who have come to the fore as increasing numbers of non-British students have arrived in art schools. While these outsiders are creating new identities based on their feelings of living life ‘lost in translation’, homegrown fashion photographers are also looking at the country in different ways, in their search to discover how it can be re-envisaged.

   Rosie Marks, for example, takes the spirit pioneered by Martin Parr, reinterprets it and makes it feel more relevant to now. Her sentimental and tender images comment on British society in a way that can make you reconsider your daily surroundings, picking out the details of the workaday world in photographs that often read as anthropological outings. She brings an empathy and inquisitiveness that leaves you looking for hidden clues; her Instagram feed (@marksrosie) is transformed into a treasure hunt through modern British cultural identity. Where Parr brilliantly captures the occasional, Marks finds poetry in the ordinary, the mundanities of daily life – the usual Friday night down the pub, as opposed to an exclusive day at the races – in a way that seems grounded in just the right way for our moment of national uncertainty.

   Another British photographer Sam Rock recently went on a cross-country fashion shoot for i-D magazine, which aimed to capture ‘the beauty and diversity of Britain today’. Travelling from Dover to Liverpool, the two closest points in mainland Britain to continental Europe, he shot portraits of real people, wearing high fashion or their own clothes, during one of the hottest summers on record in the UK. The result is also a celebration of the quotidian, and an inadvertent political manifesto. It is a quiet chronicle of what happens when an inchoate sense of nostalgia bangs into the reality of a national identity in a state of absolute flux.

   All these photographers’ obliquely narrative approaches – from Joyce and Hannah’s outsider views to Rosie and Sam’s sneak peeks from the inside – push you beyond the clothes and leave you asking questions about the ‘plot details’ of model, clothing and location. Like clues that coalesce into a new narrative, these are stories that tell of ordinary Britain using real people, rather than untenable depictions of beauty with airbrushed models. And that is perhaps the paradox of these new British fashion photographers now: by reflecting back a sense of life being lived, they are giving us fashion not as fantasy, but a dose of reality. And in a country where make-believe seems to have infected the body politic, their down-to-earth vision is perhaps exactly what we need. By showing us the normal in the middle of the uncertainty and possible chaos of Brexit, they are offering us new visions not only of who we are today but who we can still become tomorrow.

In System No. 13. Click to buy.

14/06/2019

 

Fashion weak

Surviving the shows with a broken foot.

By Robin Givhan
Illustration by Jean-Philippe Delhomme

 
Fashion weak. A letter from... The front row, by Robin Givhan. Illustration by Jean-Philippe Delhomme.

   
I broke my foot in January 2019. I was skipping using an extra-thick, weighted rope to increase the challenge. I was going fast and feeling invincible when I missed a step and landed on the rope. My foot twisted as I came down and it was quite the spectacular break. Surgery. Pins. A giant orthopaedic boot. Crutches. And then came fashion month.

   I spent 10 days in New York hobbling about in my boot and leaning on a crutch. I spent another week in Paris wearing sneakers and Birkenstocks and praying that no one trampled on my stubbornly swollen, sometimes throbbing foot as we were herded in and out of shows. I also learned several things about my colleagues, the fashion industry, human nature, Uber and taxi drivers.

   I would not have been able to cover the collections had it not been for the kindness of the people in this industry. How I was given a seat – sorta, kinda – backstage at Tomo Koizumi’s wonderful New York debut because the actual show space was down a daunting flight of steps. Or how at Tory Burch, I had a special pass that allowed my Uber driver to pull up directly in front of the entrance at Pier 17 instead of the main drop-off point. He was so concerned he was doing something wrong by proceeding past the barricades that I had to encourage him onwards: “Embrace your privilege!”

   Snow, sleet and hail – all on one God-awful day – tested my resolve. It began when I mustered my determination and called an Uber for the four-block trip for my morning appointment at Diane von Furstenberg’s offices. I apologized for the short ride and Mr. Uber, shrugged and said, “No problem. Obviously, you can’t walk!”

   At DVF, the designer talked me through the collection while voicing concern for my foot. She asked if I had a car and driver. Uh, no. I assured her that Uber would suffice. She was unconvinced. She announced that her driver would take me to my next appointment. No, Diane. Diane. Diane! Which is how I came to arrive at the Gabriela Hearst show in the back of Diane von Furstenberg’s Bentley. Professional ethics would have me reimburse her for that ride; I have no idea how. So I offer transparency and a thank you. And yes, it was much nicer than an Uber.

   When the shows ended, I took the train from New York back to Washington. At Union Station, I rolled my suitcase to the taxi line while balancing on my boot and my crutch. I climbed into a cab and before giving the driver my destination, apologized for the short trip. The driver yelled at me for wasting his time after he’d been waiting in the line of cabs and hoping for a trip across town. New York fashion week didn’t reduce me to tears; a DC cabbie did.

   In Paris, my injured foot was healed enough for Marni sneakers and Rick Owens Birkenstocks. It’s a good fashion moment to have a broken foot. No one needed to know that my footwear choices were based on medical necessity.

   On the runway, Thom Browne showcased chunky wingtips. Dior was a world of pointy toed, monk-strap flats. Chloé was full of low-heeled boots. Chanel offered comfy shearling snow boots. I was on trend. And instead of visiting my usual shopping haunts like L’Éclaireur, I discovered Tabio, a deluxe sock shop near Place Saint-Sulpice. I needed fancy socks to go with my Birkenstocks.

   While I found the fashion community kind and accommodating, the infrastructure of fashion shows is brutal. In New York, despite the Americans with Disabilities Act, runway presentations are not organized with the disabled in mind – not even the temporarily disabled. Paris is even worse. What if you were older? What if you didn’t spend hours cranking up your heart rate at the gym? Elevators are not readily accessible; several venues didn’t even have them. Spaces are deliberately darkened, making negotiating uneven floors treacherous. What if there was an emergency? This last round of shows and my broken foot reminded me that inclusivity is about more than just the models on the runway and the executives in the boardroom.

   I only succeeded because people went out of their way to help. I felt welcome because I was known, but I was left wondering, how would a newbie in a wheelchair or with a cane fare?

In System No. 13. Click to buy.

14/06/2019

 

‘Nothing is
left to chance.’

The story – and back story – of an encounter between tailored clothing, long-lost elegance, and young French men of North African descent.

Photographs by Karim Sadli
Styling by Joe McKenna
Words by Farid Chenoune

 

 
Certain fashion shoots come loaded with an unexpected and sometimes clandestine back story, a sort of prehistory.
Karim Sadli’s photographs, presented over the preceding pages, for example, discreetly tell the story of an encounter, between intricately tailored clothing and young French men of North African descent from the Parisian region. Crudely put, teenagers brought up on streetwear. But that back story itself is based upon another story, one that came to Sadli when he watched a documentary about the demonstration of around 30,000 Algerians in central Paris in 1961. It took place at the height of the anti-colonial war in their homeland and by the time the march was over, somewhere between 30 and 100 Algerians – to this day no one knows exactly how many – had been killed by the French authorities, and many of their bodies dumped into the Seine. ‘My grandfather was there,’ says Sadli. In photographs of the events, many of those Algerians, who often lived in shanty towns just outside Paris, are seen dressed up in their Sunday best, however worn and tattered it might have been. These smart clothes and suits become visual markers of a dignity that they had always been denied by the French state. ‘I found their story so touching,’ says Sadli. ‘That’s where the idea for the shoot came from.’

Read the complete story in System No. 13 on how Karim Sadli and Joe McKenna carefully style their way through to manifest a community’s memory. Click to buy.

11/06/2019

 

Camera roll

By Haider Ackermann




 

In System No. 13. Click to buy.

06/06/2019

 

‘It’s history,
place and identity
transformed
into clothing.’

Grace Wales Bonner is tailoring the future of fashion from her own personal heritage.

By Hans Ulrich Obrist
Photographs by Jalan and Jibril Durimel

 

 
Grace Wales Bonner is steadily earning a place in contemporary fashion design’s canon – and the reason is simple: she designs extremely wearable clothes, to which she adds a rich creative exploration of her own Caribbean and British identity, spanning age, gender and ethnicity. The natural convergence of these aspects creates a dynamic that has made her work feel so relevant to today. Since founding her label Wales Bonner in 2014, initially to produce only menswear, she has consistently expressed her personal vision of black male identity, history and culture through an academic, sensitive and poetic lens. And while her rise on the global fashion scene has been rapid – she graduated from Central Saint Martins in 2014, won ‘Emerging Menswear Designer’ at the British Fashion Awards in 2015, and received the LVMH Young Designer Prize in 2016 – she has never allowed that to compromise the technical quality of her precise tailoring.

Wales Bonner is now entering a more considered, nuanced and confident phase of her career, her language now naturally moving beyond the conventional fashion settings of a collection, a show or a campaign. For System, she set out on another visual exploration and collaboration: with twin brothers and photographers Jalan and Jibril Durimel, she travelled to Guadeloupe, shooting a story that represents an emblematic expression of her continuous questioning of identity, place, history, ethnicity and magic.

Indulge in the Wales Bonner vision through the full interview and photographs in System No. 13. Click to buy.

03/06/2019

 

‘I’ve always
been afraid
of real life.’

Christian Lacroix’s designs looked like the fashion you would imagine if you had only ever imagined it.

By Tim Blanks
Photographs by Roe Ethridge
Styling by Katie Grand

 

 
Genius is no guarantee in fashion. You can change the world, but that world eventually, inevitably demands payback. The fashion industry is, after all, a commercial enterprise. So while Christian Lacroix helped define the 1990s, fashion’s golden decade, his business never turned a profit. It’s a demoralising thought that the inspirational ebullience of his work should now be so overshadowed by financial failure. Perhaps it’s simply too soon for posterity to give him his due, to gild him with the reputation his genius demands – but it’s not too soon for me.

I was a country boy, and season after season, Lacroix’s shows were my hot-pink-drenched passport to a higher plane. The gourmet spread he laid on backstage was only the start. Lift-off took place with the visual and aural froth of the set and the soundtrack. Then we soared into the stratosphere on clouds of colour, wings of sumptuous fabric, flying carpets of rococo pattern. Christian Lacroix’s designs looked like the fashion you would imagine if you had only ever imagined it. Pure fantasy. And then he’d bring everything back to earth with libertine severity, a jolt of tailored black, a hint of inquisition. He teased. He’d be all tweedy, Ralph Lauren-y backstage, and you wondered where the fantasia came from. I had some idea, but then I spent several hours talking with Lacroix at the Hotel Amour in Montmartre earlier this year and realized that, even after all this time, I’d actually had none.

You can’t put a price on the brilliance of a mind. Get a copy of System No. 13 to learn about the man before, during, and after he became the brand. Click to buy.

29/05/2019

 

What can
print do
that digital
cannot?

The state of magazines by the industry’s editors.

Portfolio by Juergen Teller

 

 
What is the future of print? System surveyed over 40 of our friends in the industry to hear about their professional two cents on this subject involving tradition, relevance, and sustainability.

Despite the responses scattered throughout the spectrum, there was one thing that they all seemed to agree upon: ‘print’ is more than just a tangible product. It is a noun, adjective, and a verb that embodies a massive industry consisting of editors, writers, photographers, advertisers, readers, designers, influencers, and more. It’s a membership with a list that seems to grow every day, much like the number of independent print magazines that continue to pop up across the globe.

Out of all the responses, no two are the same. Check out the full story in System No. 13 to read about the question of the future of print in relation to digital kisses, (unofficial) pecking orders, alcoholic drinks, and much, much more.
Click to buy.

Future of Print

‘Digital content is like beer, Coke and sparkling wine, which you drink on everyday occasions or at cocktails with a big crowd. You can have these parties often. But when you sit down for a formal and exclusive dinner with a select group of people, you want a glass of fine wine that you savour slowly. And that glass of fine wine is the print magazine.’
Angelica Cheung, editor-in-chief, Vogue China

‘I am astounded by how many print magazines there are…. To be honest, I don’t really understand it…photos look better and text is easy to read on a lit screen. Why do we chop down trees and use toxic inks to create something disposable? Sorry, colourful printing on glossy paper does not make a keepsake.’
Cecilia Dean, founder, Visionaire

‘I like to use a fashion analogy: digital is ready-to-wear; print is couture.’
Nina Garcia, editor in chief, ELLE US

‘The best magazines live on coffee tables and are statements of identity when you come into someone’s home; they are held by fans walking down the street, the magazine or its tote bag, symbols of identity and belonging.’
Jefferson Hack, founder, Dazed, AnOther and NOWNESS

‘True artists have no medium, they have a point of view, and they reflect that in their work.’
Drew Elliott, editor in chief, PAPER

‘I used to think that there were stories for magazines and stories for the Internet. Magazines ran articles that were considered and researched and painstakingly put together. The Internet was a place for funny lists and rankings, but mostly pornography.’
Nick Haramis, editor in chief, INTERVIEW

‘The magazine is one of the greatest human inventions ever. Good ones are simply irresistible. They make life more interesting and fun. My phone is trying to convince me it can do that, too, but it can’t really. It’s too busy distracting me, never letting me quite get that feeling of total absorption outside of time that very few things can. A magazine can.’
Jay Fielden, editor in chief, Esquire

‘I think both print and digital can be great in their own way, but if I had to compare them, it would be like comparing a real kiss with a virtual one. We all know which one is better.’
Chris Vidal Tenomaa, editor in chief and creative director, SSAW

‘People are so tired of being bombarded with information that they take digital detoxes as if online content is a poison and they need to be purified.’
Marie-Amelie Sauve, creative director, Mastermind

‘The beauty of print is also in the fact that once something is published, it cannot be edited or modified so everything has to be perfect. Furthermore, knowledge is positioning itself as the new form of ‘cultural currency’, allowing people to be associated to something they desire.’
Arby Li, editor in chief, HYPEBEAST

‘I think any media that plays the game of ‘you give me this, I’ll give you that’ will be dead in the mid-term.’
Nacho Alegre, founder, Apartamento

24/05/2019

 

‘Think of it as the birth of modern fashion.’

The life and times of serial avant-gardist Rudi Gernreich.

By Tim Blanks
Photographs by Robi Rodriguez
Styling by Karen Langley

 

 
There was a time when Rudi Gernreich was the most famous designer in the world. When he launched the monokini, his topless bathing suit, in 1964, even the Vatican weighed in with an opinion. ‘An enemy of the church,’ railed Pope Paul VI. But that particular cause célèbre wasn’t the only one over a three-decade career in which Gernreich literally reshaped women’s fashion with his elevation of knitwear, transformation of swimwear, and, more than anything, invention of the ‘no-bra’ bra, without which it would be hard to imagine contemporary womenswear. Then there were minis and cut-outs and thongs and pre-Calvin briefs and boxers for women, a whole repertoire of liberated body-consciousness years and years before it occurred to anyone else. Rudi could even lay claim to the first fashion video, when his clothes were the focus of Basic Black, a seven-minute short created with his iconic muse Peggy Moffitt and her photographer husband William Claxton in 1967.

Gernreich wasn’t a prophet without honour. Awards came often in the 1950s and 1960s. The monokini was tucked away in a 1965 time capsule between the Bible and the Pill, definitive of its era. In 1967, Gernreich made the cover of Time, one of just a handful of designers to receive that accolade in the magazine’s 96-year history (others include Schiaparelli, Dior and Armani).

Being able to conceive of his relevance 150 years later could actually be construed as a major compliment to his enduring modernity.

After all, there was, is and will be no one like him.

Celebrate the continuation of the legacy and permanence of the avant-garde icon with System No. 13. Click to buy.

21/05/2019

 

‘Collaboration
is one plus one
equals three.’

Fraser Cooke on the rise of the ‘x factor’.

By William Alderwick
Portrait by Fumiko Imano

 

 
Collaboration is a driving force in fashion and culture today. The headlines telling us two brands are coming together, each multiplied by the other to drop limited-edition product, are now a regular fashion fixture. At their best, these cross-pollinating creative encounters bring new techniques, visions and design languages to a familiar product. The most iconic define a moment and open up new possibilities both aesthetically and culturally.

Over the past 15 years, as collaborations between artists and designers and larger brands have moved from the edges of the fashion world to become one of its defining dynamics, Fraser Cooke has overseen Nike’s groundbreaking – and commercially successful – partnerships with designers including Virgil Abloh, Riccardo Tisci, Jun Takahashi, Rei Kawakubo, and Chitose Abe of Sacai.

To better understand the dynamics of collaboration, System caught up with Cooke – or to give him his full title, Nike’s Global Senior Director of Influencer Marketing and Collaborations – in Paris, where he was to launch the brand’s Women’s World Cup Collection, the kits to be worn by 14 countries at this summer’s event being held in France. He discussed the defining encounters that have shaped his own career, one that parallels streetwear’s rise to fashion royalty, and curated a portfolio of the most culturally influential collaborations of the past 25 years.

Read the full, collaborative discussion with Fraser Cooke in System No. 13. Click to buy.

20/05/2019

 

‘I feel we’re missing a little bit of “fashion”.’

With so much focus today on the diminishing size of Marc Jacobs’ business, System asks the (almost taboo) question: does it actually matter if the clothes sell? Does that make them better or worse than other clothes? Or is it simply one measure of success, one of many, to which untoward attention has been paid of late?

By Alexander Fury
Portfolio by Juergen Teller

 

 
I first met the designer Marc Jacobs in real life in summer 2018, at a dinner Miuccia Prada held to celebrate her first cruise fashion show in New York. Actually, that’s a lie. I really first met Marc Jacobs thanks to Katie Grand, when I worked for her at Love magazine. In October 2012, I bumped into her as she was coming out of Hedi Slimane’s debut womenswear show for Saint Laurent. She introduced me to a small, slender man dressed all in black. ‘This is Alex, he works at the magazine,’ she said. ‘And this is Marc, he works at Louis Vuitton.’ As then, he did.

Of course, I felt like I knew Marc Jacobs; everybody kind of does. He has transcended the narrow confines of the fashion industry – a task few have managed – to reach a level of universal fame, as designer avatar, archetype, and Simpsons character (in 2007, albeit for Harper’s Bazaar rather than the TV show). You could argue that it was Louis Vuitton, where, from 1997 to 2013, Marc Jacobs was artistic director, that launched the designer into the mainstream. But, equally, it could be said that it was Jacobs – the first person to design clothes bearing a Louis Vuitton label – who transformed Vuitton from a successful, but staid luggage company into the world’s most valuable luxury-goods brand, now worth, according to Forbes magazine, an estimated $33.6 billion.

Read the full interview and take a special look into the artwork, vape smoke, and pet-shaped cookies that decorate the home of Marc Jacobs in System No. 13. Click to buy.

18/05/2019

 

‘Followers are like very close friends to me.’

The Chinese social-media stars keeping Western fashion alive, post by post.

By Huang Hung
Additional reporting by Blake Abbie
Portfolio by Juergen Teller

 

 
It was 2014. Céline was showing its Fall/Winter collection in Beijing. In the front row, next to the editors of Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar and Elle, was a man with skinny, high-chiselled cheekbones and hair, streaked with silver and held tightly in a ponytail. He wore a white Comme des Garçons men’s shirt with black ankle-length skirt pants by a local Chinese designer called Bai Peng. I know because he had bought them in my store, Brand New China, in Beijing. I thought no Chinese men would actually wear them in public, simply because no one was that fashion forward. I was wrong, Wang Yi was.

At the time, Wang was editor in chief of all fashion-related content on sina.com, a company with revenues of $2.11 billion in 2018, which owns Weibo, China’s Twitter-like microblogging platform that today has over 460 million active users. He was in charge of content on five Sina channels: Woman and Fashion, Art, Health, Education and Lifestyle; in other words, he was the guy who could bring millions of eyeballs to any fashion event. A year before the Céline show, he had combined the Woman and Fashion channels into one, and made Sina and its billions of daily pageviews the most important platform for luxury fashion brands in China.

Get a copy of System No. 13 to read the full piece about the power and influence Chinese social media holds in Western fashion and its international impact. Click to buy.

16/05/2019

 

System launches new issue
with three Chinese social-media cover stars, a 66-page exclusive Saint Laurent supplement, and a limited-edition ‘Saint Laurent Rive Droite’ cover issue.

Angelababy, Fan Chengcheng, Ni Ni, photographed by Juergen Teller

System 13 celebrates the heady rise of Chinese social-media with cover stars AngelababyFan Chengcheng and Ni Ni, signifying the seismic changes we’re experiencing in society, economics, technology and fashion. Juergen Teller accompanied each of the three stars while they were on official brand ambassador duty at Dior, Givenchy and Gucci’s shows in February. Story by Hung Huang and Blake Abbie.

Also in this issue:

Marc Jacobs’ unabashed love letter to fashion. The designer in conversation with Alexander Fury and an intimate portfolio at Jacobs’ New York home, photographed by Juergen Teller.
 
The emotional tale of fashion’s golden-age designer Christian Lacroix, as told to Tim Blanks, featuring Lacroix archive pieces from 1987-2009 photographed by Roe Ethridge and styled by Katie Grand.
 
What can print do that digital cannot? A deep-thoughts survey on the state of magazines featuring 50 of the industry’s leading editors.
 
An oral history examining the life and times of fashion’s serial avant-gardist Rudi Gernreich by Tim Blanks, including recollections by Tom FordMarc Jacobs, Issey MiyakePierre CardinEd Ruscha, Rick Owens and Barbara Bain, and with archive and new Gernreich designs photographed by Robi Rodriguez and styled by Karen Langley
 
Anthony Vaccarello in conversation with Carine Bizet about taking the sacred house of Saint Laurent ‘Rive Droite’.
 
From Shawn Stussy’s Tommy Boy staff jackets to Virgil Abloh’s ‘The Ten’, Nike’s collab king Fraser Cooke explores the most culturally influential collaborations of the past 25 years.
 
Grace Wales Bonner speaks with Hans Ulrich Obrist about the history, identity and place that inform her rapidly-rising brand, and travels to Guadeloupe with photographers Durimel.
 
An encounter between tailored clothing, long-lost elegance, and young French men of North African descent, photographed by Karim Sadli and styled by Joe McKenna.
 
An intimate photographic look into the life and camera roll of designer Haider Ackermann
 
Derek Blasberg answers filmmaker Loïc Prigent’s bespoke questionnaire.
 
Robin Givhan on surviving fashion month with a broken foot; Dominic McVey on his sustainable solution to the period poverty problem; and Shonagh Marshall on what Brexit means to British photography.

… plus Saint Laurent Rive Droite

An exclusive 66-page Juergen Teller portfolio showcasing creative director Anthony Vaccarello’s soon-to-be-available collaborations product range for the forthcoming Saint Laurent Rive Droite store in Paris.

… and finally

Issue 13 of System includes a limited-edition Saint Laurent Rive Droite cover featuring Anthony Vaccarello photographed by Juergen Teller.
 
System is available to purchase exclusively at Dover Street Market in London, and the System Bookstore in Galeries Lafayette Champs-Élysées Paris on 14 May. Then from quality press vendors and newsstands internationally from 16 May.

10/05/19

 

‘Readers loved the ads as much as the editorial’

Back in the 1970s, Nicole Wisniak bankrolled her magazine Egoïste with pages of native advertising avant l’heure – advertorials taken to the level of art.

Interview by Thomas Lenthal

 

 
Hiding in plain sight in each issue of Nicole Wisniak’s Egoïste magazine, in among the striking black-and-white imagery on its large unbound pages, is an innovation that is even more modern today than it was 40 years ago. When Wisniak was thinking of ways to finance her magazine, she decided that, rather than filling it with fashion and luxury brands’ latest advertising campaigns, she would instead create the advertising for them, using photographers she chose to shoot ‘advertising’ imagery that would appear in the magazine. It was native advertising avant l’heure.

Her idea of specially produced, single-use advertising proved attractive to both brands and photographers. Houses like Hermès, Chanel and Cartier signed up for ‘campaigns’ shot by photographers including Helmut Newton, Guy Bourdin and Paolo Roversi, who could bring their visions to advertising freed of its usual commercial strictures.

For System, Wisniak selected some of her favourite advertorial images from down the years, and sat down to discuss the birth of Egoïste, panther and camel wrangling, and trying to persuade Mick Jagger to leave the house.

In System No. 12. Click to buy.

24/01/2019

 

‘It’s a fantasized reality, but a reality nonetheless.’

Designer Julien Dossena and art director Marc Ascoli discuss their ‘reanimation’ of Paco Rabanne.

Interview by Marta Represa
Photographs by Sharna Osborne
Styling by Francesca Burns

 

 
For over 30 years Paco Rabanne meant pizzazz. It meant sexy. It meant creativity. But by 2013, when French designer Julien Dossena arrived at the house, Paco Rabanne needed bringing back to life. His reanimation strategy – surprising to some – was not to attempt to out-Paco Paco or go wild with the archives, but rather to return to the heart of the house’s mission with the question: what can Paco Rabanne bring to modern femininity? Dossena has set about quietly rebuilding the brand from the ground up, repositioning it, without removing its soul, trademark touches and poised panache.

Alongside Dossena throughout the process has been legendary art director Marc Ascoli, bringing the expertise and experience amassed over a long career creating some of fashion’s most unforgettable images for the likes of Yohji Yamamoto, Jil Sander and Martine Sitbon. Julien and Marc sat down with System to discuss how the Paco Rabanne woman is always evolving, Françoise Hardy’s 25-kilogramme dresses, and how fashion is as much about observing as making.
 
In System No. 12. Click to buy.

21/01/2019

 

‘Italian fashion is torn between nostalgia and progress.’

Angelo Flaccavento, Italy’s most authoritative (and opinionated) voice in fashion journalism, gets vocal.

By Jonathan Wingfield
Photographs by Johnny Dufort
Styling by Lotta Volkova

 

 
‘Paris Fashion Week which closed yesterday lasted for too long and provided little pleasure.’
(The Business of Fashion, October 3, 2018)
 
Angelo Flaccavento tells it like it is. The Sicilian journalist has been writing about fashion for almost 20 years, and if you’ve never come across his show reviews and industry reporting – principally for Italian daily business newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore and digital platform The Business of Fashion – then you’re missing a treat. Or escaping torture, depending on whether you find yourself on the receiving end of his no-nonsense, hit-’em-where-it-hurts prose. Because in today’s era of native content, puff-pieces and general editorial fluffiness, Flaccavento serves up eye-watering missives that are as startling honest and unvarnished as they are likely to reveal fashion’s inconvenient truths.

In particular, it’s Flaccavento’s evaluation of Italian fashion – past, present and future – that distinguishes him as a vital resource for the industry. Fashion in Italy is unquestionably at a crossroads right now. Even Italy’s proud history of craftsmanship and formal tailoring, exemplified by the ‘Made in Italy’ seal of approval, all seem desperately at odds with the global rise of streetwear and sneakers. With all this swimming through our minds, System has spent the past couple of seasons in the company of Angelo Flaccavento. Meanwhile, stylist Lotta Volkova and photographer Johnny Dufort took to the streets of Milan to shoot a photographic survey of Italian fashion from A(rmani) to Z(anotti).
 
Read the conversation in System No. 12. Click to buy.

16/01/2019

 

‘We’re an underground American brand being mainstream.’

Long before there was ‘diversity’, ‘community’ or ‘non-binary’, there was Telfar Clemens.

Interview by Hans Ulrich Obrist
Photographs by Roe Ethridge
Styling by Avena Gallagher
Creative Direction by Babak Radboy

 

 
Back in 2005, long before ‘diversity’, ‘community’ or ‘non-binary’ were buzzwords and three years before the United States had elected its first black president, a young man named Telfar Clemens founded a label to make non-racial, non-gendered fashion. For over a decade, he produced his original, unique and groundbreaking clothing of repurposed classics and twisted basics, and for over a decade, much of the fashion press – System included – simply ignored him. In 2017, Telfar won the Vogue/CFDA Fashion Fund and they (we) had to take notice. Today, after years of running his own show at his own pace, the rest of the world has caught up with Telfar Clemens and his ‘horizontal, democratic, universal’ fashion.

Because Telfar really is its own thing, a label that effortlessly crosses the borders between art and fashion, while creating both. It is the vision of a designer who believes in collaboration, in working together with a constant group of creative friends and acquaintances, people like designer Shayne Oliver, artists Ryan Trecartin and Lizzie Fitch, and, perhaps most importantly, Babak Radboy, now the label’s creative director.

Their latest initiative, the Telfar World Tour is fashion presentation as concert, a touring show featuring the clothes on muses, singers and models. Held off-season and sometimes off the fashion grid, the concerts are symbols of the brand’s attempts to reach new audiences and live up to its slogan: ‘It’s not for you – it’s for everyone.’

This summer, the Serpentine Gallery’s Artistic Director Hans Ulrich Obrist sat down with Telfar Clemens and Babak Radboy in New York to discuss where it all began, how the brand manages to operate both inside and outside the system, and why the Telfar brand really isn’t inclusive.
Read the full piece in System No. 12, with a 48-page story shot by Roe Ethridge, styled by Avena Gallagher and art directed by Babak Radboy. Click to buy.

14/01/2019

 

‘The newness had to come from within Dior.’

Kim Jones on taking Dior Men back to the future.

Interview by Farid Chenoune
Photographs by Juergen Teller

 

 
Kim Jones’ elegant and romantic debut collection for Dior Men was a vibrant statement of intent. By smartly exploring the idiosyncrasies of the house’s founder and using the couture savoir-faire that he put in place, it took Dior menswear back to the future, while adding just the right dose of Jones’s street-casual sparkle to make it defiantly of the now. By the end of the show, Dior Homme had been transfigured into Dior Men.

To understand more clearly how Kim Jones is building his new vision of now, System asked writer and menswear authority Farid Chenoune to visit the designer in his Paris atelier. Then, to re-examine the cultural and professional background that helped mould his view of fashion, Jones reconnected with Michael Kopelman, who as the founder of pioneering clothing importer Gimme Five is not only a British streetwear legend, but also the man who gave the Dior designer his first job nearly 20 years ago. Finally, Jones and his Dior ‘family’ flew with photographer Juergen Teller to Granville on the Normandy coast to spend an end-of-summer day roaming around Christian Dior’s childhood home. It was a welcome moment of calm for Jones, before his return to what he openly describes as ‘the difficult second collection’ – the next stage of his quest to make menswear modern couture.

Discover the world of Kim Jones, Granville and Dior Men in the latest issue of System. Click to buy.

10/01/2019

 

72 hours in André Balazs’ Chateau Marmont

Featuring Kenneth Anger

Photographed and filmed by Floria Sigismondi

 
A film by Floria Sigismondi, accompanying System Magazine Issue 12's special print supplement, brought to life by Gucci.

Gucci means a lot of things to a lot of different people.

That’s the point. After all, few mainstream fashion houses would knowingly associate themselves with an array of people, places and cultural influences as mind-bogglingly diverse as Albert Einstein, Agnès Varda, Antonio Lopez, Antica Spezieria di Santa Maria della Scala, Antoinette Poisson, and A$AP Rocky reading Jane Austen. And that’s just the ‘A’s.

Throw Gucci at it, and it sticks. It’s diversity as a metaphor for our times.

In May, after Gucci’s creative director Alessandro Michele had presented the house’s Cruise 2019 collection in the south of France, System was left thinking just one thing. Or rather, one person. From the show venue
(a necropolis in Arles), the looming fog, the dancing flames and the vistas of tombs, to the pan-cultural cast of young, beautiful things, each seemingly plucked from the scenes of some psychedelic avant-garde short film… the entire event screamed Kenneth Anger.

Kenneth Anger: the godfather of American experimental cinema; the author of the salacious and gossip-ridden Hollywood Babylon (which the New York Times once called ‘a delicious box of poisoned bonbons’); the keen occultist and black magician obsessed with the writings of Aleister Crowley; the Hollywood child actor who spent his 20s hobnobbing across Europe with the likes of Cocteau, Truffaut, Godard, Anaïs Nin and John Paul Getty II; the sometime friend, confidant and nemesis of rock’n’roll royalty such as Marianne Faithfull, Jimmy Page and the Rolling Stones (‘Sympathy for the Devil’, it’s often been claimed, was inspired by him); the artist whose kaleidoscopic works grace the walls of galleries the world over, inspiring contemporary darlings Doug Aitken, Matthew Barney and Alex Israel; the influential filmmaker who, in his seminal 1964 short Scorpio Rising, accompanied the dialogue-free collage of fast-paced, jump- cut imagery with a pop-music soundtrack, decades before it became a hugely profitable marketing device called MTV; and the creative renegade who has influenced the aesthetics of David Lynch, Gus Van Sant, Martin Scorsese and Harmony Korine.

It all seemed to reside within the spirits of that Gucci collection.

A collection that also included a range of garments featuring the words ‘Chateau Marmont, Hollywood.’ emblazoned beneath a satirical emblem of Pan, the lecherous half-man, half-goat Greek god, chaser of nymphs, symbol of lust and sexuality, and companion of Dionysus the God of wine. Chateau Marmont, the hotel where Hollywood’s scandal, glamour and misbehaviour has always come to life – Anger’s Hollywood Babylon under one roof. Which led us the heady plan that now fills the following pages: Kenneth Anger himself, wearing Gucci’s Cruise 2019 collection, in the legendary hotel. Alessandro Michele was immediately enthusiastic (‘For me, Kenneth Anger is more than a myth’). Photographer and filmmaker Floria Sigismondi described it as a killer collaboration. And André Balazs, the Chateau Marmont’s owner, offered us the proverbial keys to the castle.

Which left one small task. Tracking down and persuading Kenneth Anger – now 91 years of age; a man with the word LUCIFER tattooed across his chest, and a prickly reputation for placing evil hexes on adversaries, including members of the press – to participate.

We needn’t have worried. Mr. Anger is unfalteringly polite, charming and in rude health – with a day-to-day existence that one can only summarize as ‘avant-garde’. It was the idea of ‘mythologizing bohemia’ – something that today both Gucci and the Chateau Marmont have played more than a hand in – that we also wanted to bring to life in the following pages. Because in an increasingly corporate, homogenized world, Kenneth Anger is perhaps the last true bohemian.

Consider him a new member of Gucci’s ‘A list’.

08/12/2018

 

‘BodyMap was a movement.’

Stevie Stewart and David Holah’s 10-year BodyMap adventure is an unlikely story of 1980s London, style as performance, hedonistic times, the inevitable comedown, and a fashion legacy that’s never felt so modern.

By Tim Blanks
Photographs and video by Oliver Hadlee Pearch
Styling by Vanessa Reid

 
Stevie Stewart and David Holah’s 10-year BodyMap adventure is an unlikely story of 1980s London, style as performance, hedonistic times, the inevitable comedown, and a fashion legacy that’s never felt so modern.

Everyone knows that Katharine Hamnett was wearing her ‘58% DON’T WANT PERSHING’ T-shirt when she met Margaret Thatcher at 10 Downing Street in 1984. No one knows that BodyMap’s David Holah met the PM at a similar event sporting a fuzzy racoon hand puppet on one hand; an unfazed Thatcher shook the designer’s other hand.

The BodyMap saga is full of similarly vivid, playful, anarchic details that posterity has consigned to a cultish twilight. That’s not right. In the 1980s, the rise and fall of David Holah and Stevie Stewart defined the way the world saw British fashion: the Brightest Young Things, brought down by Big Bad Business. But if the form of the saga was a cliché, the content was anything but. More than three decades on, BodyMap still has the capacity to dazzle – and touch. That’s because, at its heart, it was a love story, so intense was the connection that Holah and Stewart shared. They still do.

Get a copy of System No. 12 to dive into the world of BodyMap with with a 35+ pages portfolio of rarely seen archive pieces photographed by Oliver Hadlee Pearch and styled by Vanessa Reid, with an in-depth conversation between Tim Blanks, Stevie Stewart and David Holah. Click to buy.

26/11/2018

 

System launches issue 12 with Kim Jones

Kim Jones photographed by Juergen Teller

Click here to buy online.

System 12, the magazine’s biggest issue yet, celebrates the one invaluable thing that Dior Men cover star Kim Jones was taught by his first boss Michael Kopelman: the importance of ‘family’. With photographs by Juergen Teller of Kim’s tribe including Yoon Ahn, Matthew Williams and Stephen Jones at Christian Dior’s childhood home in Normandy.

Also in this issue:

Telfar Clemens’ family of artists, filmmakers and creative spirits come together in an iconic all-new American story photographed by Roe Ethridge, with creative direction by Babak Radboy.

The rarely seen archive of legendary 1980s brand BodyMap is photographed by Oliver Hadlee Pearch and styled by Vanessa Reid, while Tim Blanks talks with founders Stevie Stewart and David Holah about why the brand is now more relevant than ever.

An in-depth conversation with fashion critic Angelo Flaccavento about Italian fashion – past, present and future – accompanied by a 35-page portfolio photographed by Johnny Dufort and styled by Lotta Volkova.

Behind the scenes with artist-slash-designer Anna Blessmann, whose brand A_Plan_Application focuses on the clothes, ‘and nothing else’.

Julien Dossena and Marc Ascoli dissect the contemporary spirit of the Paco Rabanne woman, with photographs by Sharna Osborne, styled by Francesca Burns.

Nicole Wisniak in conversation about bankrolling her magazine Egoïste back in the 1970s with pages of native advertising avant l’heure – advertorials taken to the level of art.

An intimate look into the backstage life of designer Christopher Kane.

Alexa Chung answers the ‘Fashion Hysteria Questionnaire’ by filmmaker Loïc Prigent.

Adish’s Amit Luzon on designing towards peace by bringing together Israeli and Palestinian craftspeople; Johann König on creating an accidental iconic fashion piece in his efforts to keep the European dream alive; and Hung Huang on the true story behind famous actress Fan Bingbing’s mysterious disappearance.

 

… plus ‘72 hours at André Balazs’ Chateau Marmont’

96-page supplement celebrating America’s original experimental filmmaker and perhaps the world’s last true bohemian, Kenneth Anger. Photographed wearing the Gucci Cruise 2019 collection, in the legendary LA hotel, by Floria Sigismondi.

System is available to purchase exclusively at Dover Street Market in London and The Broken Arm in Paris on 19 November. Then from quality press vendors and newsstands internationally from 20 November.

Click here to buy online.

19/11/18