Oh my god, another purple dress and gladiator!

And it was taken the same day as the previous one... in the same charity worker ridden street. This girl, however, didn't try to run away from me. I love her look so much! her cloud hair with the spot-on hairband, the beautiful sandals, the gorgeous bag, all perfect.

Picture Postcard: Men Represent

It is great to see so many men submitting their daily looks on w_r. I must admit that I spend far too much of my time at work exploring and commenting across the site. Despite, this time consuming and addictive exercise, I still have time in my busy day to check up on my favourites though and I came across the above image on thesartorialist, it has to be my favourite image for some time. The chap on the right looks very familiar but with this shot we have a whole new element...I wonder what they are talking about....

Purple dress and gladiator sandals

I loved her purple dress and I was determined to take a photo even though she tried to "chooo" me away. She thought I was one of the annoying charity workers in South Molton street and I had to explain that I to plea for the love of scouting... those charity workers can be really pushy and they are making my life difficult, everyone in South Molton Street looks at me funny and try to run away when I approach them now!

The time to represent is now

We declare Men Represent officially open! I've just uploaded my recent outfit shots on w_r and if you've not done so already...do it now! I think as the week goes on I will push my looks further but I thouht I would start the week off pretty safely.

To inspire us all....

I just stumbled across the above video on Kanye's blog and think we could achieve something similar over the coming week...wrinkles will appear, hair will grow and then fall out, weight will be gained and lost...we want you to document it all and share it with us. Happy Posting everyone.

Update - Hard liquor, soft holes has mentioned the Sidney Lo video in the comments section. Watch it and be strangely mesmerised and inspired.

More Tate... and "office" inspired clothing and accessories...

In reality this girl's outfit is not that special, I know that, but she had such a great vibe! Very cool, feminine and modern. Her dress is vintage, from a Charity Shop. I love her hair and her pendant is an office paper clip (a new trend? see below)! Her friend arrived later while and she was equally as cool, but I didn't want to bother them, I thought they might think I was a stalker! A fashion stalker!!

Am I detecting a new trend, clothing and accessories inspired by office equipment?? Here is a close-up of her necklace, and below is that computer keyboard top of the other day...

The welcome death of Indie (both music and style) as we know it

Mixtape Necklace seen on Craftlog

Two events have sparked my desire to write on the subject of indie music and its relationship with style in recent years: firstly reading a Bethan Cole article in 10 Magazine and watching the ineresting Pitchfork documentary - A Classic Under Review, on The Smiths' The Queen Is Dead (one of the very best albums of the 1980s). During the mid 80's whe the band were in their prime, indie referred to a tangible musical genre or atleast a collection of sub-genres, a distinct sensibility, an opposition to mainstream pop. Indie was naive, retro and obsessed with authenticity. Indie kids felt like they were members of a secret cult, a world away from the mainstream of Rick Astley and Stock Aitken and Waterman. In recent years indie (as it is loosely termed today) IS the mainstream and the style is on sale at every high street store imaginable. Look around you and spot how many guys are wearing checked or plaid shirts, skinny jeans and cardigans. With this in mind we should all declare the era od faux indie truly dead and celebrate something new. Music is beginning to break out of the faux indie bubble it has been in throughout the 00's, with the likes of These New Puritans, Vampire Weekend, Maps and Santogold leaving the faux indie bands like the Pigeon Detectives and Joe Lean & the Jung Jang Jong sounding lame and unconvincing. What should certainly be left behind is the faux indie skinny silhouettes for men. Put down the waistcoast and skinny jeans and try something different. Diversity and difference make for an exciting music and fashion scape.

Shiny leggings... Tate Modern

According to Elle Online, matte black leggings are over, it's all about the shiny glossy ones. Her leggings are from H&M.

Review - Sport Vs Fashion

As declared on Thursday I hauled myself out of bed on Saturday morning (even though the weather of London was grey, depressing and wet) all because the excited child in me wanted to get my provisions of an Americano and a Chocolate Twist from Costa and travel down to South Kensington to visit the Fashion Vs Sport exhibition. Now, here is my review:

It frustrates me to say that I left this exhibition feeling a little deflated. Perhaps I was expecting too much in return from my five pound investment...but in these so called recession times one has to look after every penny. This had nothing to do with the size of the exhibition. That was perfectly adequate and they had a number of interesting pieces - namely Aitor Throup's work. For me, it was just a room with a number of somewhat related pieces...possibly second or third cousins of each other...left on standard display with not a great deal of thought about them. The exhibition was divided into four sections, dare, display, play and desire but I challenge anyone to able to distinguish between these four elements once inside this exhibition - there was only one section with a few standout highlights. Unfortunately, these highlights were not fully explored. The element of the exhibition which I was most interested in seeing was the construction design element. This alongside the buyer as collector idea for me, is what makes sportswear so interesting and worth having an exhibition on. Function and high performance are of primary concern in the design of sportswear, with companies investing a considerable amount of time and money into researching performance-enhancing garments and footwear. The flaw of this exhibiton is that how can you really display this idea using a standard mannequin accompanied by a credit card sized note? Enough of my critical ramblings...let's leave it with...I just expected more from the V&A...the recent Couture Exhibition was so well done and this was certainly lacking an element of the imagination and attention to detail which went into that exhibition.

Now onto what I liked...

I desperately wanted to see the work of Aitor Throup in the flesh. I have slightly obsessed over his site and the images I've seen online but have never actually seen his well crafted work up close. Aitor Throup’s 2006 MA collection, “When Football Hooligans Become Hindu Gods”, is a three-dimensional comic that communicates the story of redemption and transcendence told through fabric structures that are based on a platform of football casual. It was the highlight of the exhibition by some way.

For the reasons behind this collection it is easiest to let the man himself explain - “The more technical fabrics provide a sense of British culture, but more specifically of the C.P. Company and Stone Island – led ‘CASUAL’ or ‘FOOTBALL HOOLIGAN’ sub-culture, specifically of the late 80s and the 90s (On which the over-all aesthetic of the collection is based). My work is generally very structured and technical (in terms of construction), to the extent of being sculptural. Using traditional wools, such as Harris Tweed, not only creates yet another unexpected contrast against the structural aspects of the pieces, it also facilitates the moulding and distortion of the fabric by using traditional (tailoring) heat application techniques.”

For his first collaborative project with Stone Island, Aitor Throup has created not only a special edition concept piece, but he has helped generate a new generic approach to garment construction. Based on his own on-going questioning of conventional garment design and manufacture techniques, Throup has defined a construction process that defies conventional pattern making and sewing methods and it is well worth seeing this up close. I just wished that they explored this further within the exhibition. Throughout the exhibition there are hints of ideas but they are never fully realised or explored which is a crying shame.

Aside from Throup, the exhibition has made me want this Visvim pea coat. I've always liked the pea-coat style, but they can be too wide and too heavy - especially if they get wet which is often the case living in London! Like the shoes and boots that they have done so well in recent years, the Visvim version cuts down on the weight, improves the performance with Gore-treatment and tweaks the style. I especially like the contrast taping on the interior (apologies that you can't see this detail in the above image).

I will leave you with one of the strangest things I saw. A Channel Fishing Rod. Mindbloggling priced at around thirty thousand pounds, the curious initiative was apparently Lagerfeld’s personal tribute to Coco Chanel and her love of the relaxing sport. The kit includes a Chanel rod and a set of meticulously tied, monochrome Chanel flies, (complete with the famous “double C” logo on the gossamer wings) presented in a rather fetching, quilted black leather box. Who buys things like this?

Update: call to arms

A little more padding, a little less mystery:

Men Represent came about because there still seems to be a huge gulf between women's fashion blogs and men's. Despite the recent increase in the number of menswear blogs we are still outnumbered and seemingly outgunned compared to womenwear blogs.

So what are we trying to achieve? In short: unity, innovation and awareness.

Unity - it is one of our main goals to get one and all talking to each other much more than we currently do! Comment, links and support. No man - and no blog- is an island. Hopefully this project will introduce you to and get you talking to other men's fashion bloggers. Unity is strength, after all.

Innovation - Men's fashion is often considered to be the safer and less innovative sibling compared to women's and I'm sure that people think the same of the bloggers. This is obviously not true! What we want to do is to show people that we are at least as exciting and intrepid as women's fashion bloggers, if not more so!

Awareness - the problem, as well as the benefit, of the internet is that it's just so huge. What we aim to do is to promote men's fashion blogs- there's little point in writing amazing prose if no one knows about you.

So what have we asked people to do I hear you cry!

Week one:
This is a fairly easy one, and it's all about awareness and unity. Contributors should post at least one outfit a day for a week starting 11th August to wardrobe_remix.

You may remember that we posted about wardrobe_remix back in April but for those of you that aren't familiar with it, basically it's a community on flickr where people post photos of the outfit they've worn that day.

At the end of the week we've asked the contributors to analyse their week's worth of style diary and blog about or send us across your musings.

If you're interested in taking part (and we haven't emailed you already) then send us an email and we'll send you the full details/instructions. Come on, get involved!

Keep an eye out for the contibutors on w_r next week!

Smartening Up

A scene we have all become so familiar with might be changing

"An invesigation into the average man's attitude to his clothes would fill a substantial treatise and still not be able to get the bottom of the riddle of why the so-called stronger sex is so happy to dress in ways that suggest weakness."

When the rain is beating down on the window and the wind whistles and haunts the streets outside there is little better than curling up with a nice cup of strong tea (with a suggestion of sugar) and a new magazine. I was fortunate enough to pick up the new issue of 10 Man earlier today which made up for the poor weather. As always the magazine is packed full of interesting articles and inspiring editorials. The above quote is from an article by Colin McDowell which explores the phenomena of how the average man has often refused to grow up, insisting on hanging onto to the cute little boy their mums never wanted to see grow up..but in recent times things are improving. McDowell questions whether the everyday scenes of sagging jeans, insanitary trainers and semi-exposed bums which have made up the very fabric of our streets for so long are now evolving into something smarter. Just like women's fashion, men's clothes go in cycles and it is now time for men to embrace formality. The new mood of formality is certainly their on the runway and designer presentation, seen in designers as diverse as Pilati's vision for YSL, Tom Ford, Raf Simons, Thom Browne and Junya Watanabe. Dressing formally in a perfectly laundered shirt, tie and well cut suit can enable a man to fulfil his birthright (whatever that might be)... certainly not something one can achieve in flip flops and 3/4 length shorts.