Vintage bikini top, pants, sunglasses, and bracelet, vintage necklaces from Citizen Vintage, Duy jacket

PHOTOS BY RICHMOND LAM

STYLIST: OLIVIA WHITTICK

Concept: Raf Katigbak
Photo Assistant: Adam Biehler
Hair and Makeup: Alexandra Apple
Models: Beaver, Cary, Dane, Daouda, Dave, Idil, Inès at Montage, Micheala, Sadjo, Salina, Sam, Sophie
Shot at Studio Made of Stills

Vintage jacket from Citizen Vintage, American Apparel shirt, Naked & Famous jeans

Vintage overalls from Citizen Vintage, American Apparel top

Vintage shirt and hat from Citizen Vintage, American Apparel jeans, vintage belt

Yard666sale shirt, vintage jeans and bracelets

Vintage jacket from Citizen Vintage, American Apparel jeans and backpack, vintage bracelets and ring

Vintage vest, shirt and gloves, American Apparel pants, vintage bracelet from Citizen Vintage; vintage jacket and bracelet from Citizen Vintage, American Apparel pants, vintage rings, glove, and earrings

Vintage shirt, Naked & Famous jeans, Penfield bandana; WeSC shirt, American Apparel shorts, Penfield hat, vintage watch and bracelet

Vintage shirt and shorts

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Photos by Terry Richardson
Stylist: Annette Lamothe-Ramos
Photo Assistants: Rafael Rios and David Swanson
Special thanks to Milk Studios

The 2000s saw fashion and style surreptitiously removed from the overmoisturized hands of high-end designers and busybody critics. It was snatched from them in the dead of night by forward-thinking bloggers, affordable boutique brands, and most importantly, rappers. 

There is one man who, since the early 90s, has been a harbinger of the sort of unapologetically authentic style that is worn by anyone under 40 today. That man is Snoop Dogg—or rather, more specifically, was Snoop Dogg. Last year he renamed himself Snoop Lion following a trip to Jamaica where he recorded Reincarnated, a reggae- and Rastafarianism-influenced album that features very little rapping. It will be released in mid-April alongside a corresponding documentary about his journey to find Jah. 

One of the first rappers to truly shock the public based on his lifestyle alone, Snoop was thrust into the cultural consciousness in the early 90s with the one-two punch of Dr. Dre’s The Chronic and Doggystyle. These albums served as a blueprint for more than a decade of hardcore, explicit hip-hop made by artists who lived the lives they were rapping about—gangbangers and miscreants from the hood who had no problem dealing, shooting, fucking, smoking, drinking, and all sorts of other activities that freaked out parents everywhere.

Snoop’s various looks followed suit, running along a larger continuum of style that has evolved into a glorious mishmash of skinny jeans, flat-billed baseball hats, oversize sweaters, preppy layering, limited-edition sneakers, flannels, vintage curiosities, weird screenprints, and whatever else makes its wearer look good without pretense. There are no rules anymore, and thank fucking God that’s the case because everything was getting predictable and boring. 

With this in mind, we thought it only proper to revisit Snoop’s looks from years past for this American-themed Fashion Issue and interview him about them. He was even gracious enough to allow us to pull the real artifacts from his wardrobe archive. Suffice it to say that watching him slip on his purple pimp coat for the first time in years and adjust it while he glared into the mirror would definitely be something I’d check off my bucket list if I thought keeping one of those things wasn’t utterly gross and depressing. 

A busy man without much time to spare, Snoop is a supreme multitasker, so, appropriately, we conducted this interview while a manicurist touched up his French tips.

VICE: I was worried you might not be into this idea—a fashion shoot revolving around your looks from the past—because you have reinvented yourself as Snoop Lion. But you seemed totally at ease with fully immersing yourself in the concept; even your demeanor seemed to change according to each style.
Snoop Lion: I mean, they never left, you understand? I always incorporate a little bit of anything and everything. I always go back to yesterday, and it’s good to be able to find yourself completely in that moment, in that era, with that mind state, and be able to capture that.

You’ve defined a lot of fashion just by being who you are, by wearing clothing you like and feel comfortable in. But we pulled some pretty specific clothing for the shoot, like the Crip suit. Where did that come from? Was it your idea? 
The first time I saw that suit was on Coolio and a bunch of guys called the 40 Thevz—they were a rap group that were backing him up. He had the suit on and I liked it, so he turned me onto the guy who was making them—Perry White—and I started wearing them. Before you knew it, they became a part of my look because it was so symbolic of who I was and what I represented. It was the first statement of me being in the fashion world, to show that I did have style and understood what style was along with being gangster and West Coast.

Were you following any particular designers back then?
I was, like, more about what made me look fresh, you understand? If certain designers, like for example if Tommy Hilfiger had a tight shirt, I would get a Tommy Hilfiger shirt with some Capezio shoes or maybe some Girbaud pants or some Guess overalls. Whatever fashion I was on was whatever my money could afford, and at the same time whatever made me look good. It wasn’t dictated by a fashion designer or maker, it was more about the style, and certain makers had different styles that fit me that I would take and make mine.

But you have remained loyal to certain brands over the years. Specifically, Polo and Adidas come to mind. What is it about these companies that has kept you coming back for more over the years? 
They stay true to what they do, and they appeal to me because they won’t change. They make it the way that they make it; they stick to the script, and that’s who I am. I like to wear clothes and things that represent the same things that I represent, and those two brands, Polo and Adidas, stay true to the streets. They stay true to their look, and they make gear that fits a real player.

People have been wearing football jerseys forever, but I think you may have been the first rapper, and really the first musician or notable person, to consistently wear hockey jerseys in a fashionable way. Where’d this look come from? Are you a big NHL fan? 
You know what it was? I had a stylist at the time called Toi Crawford. She brought the hockey jerseys because I liked the African-American hoodies people were wearing back then—the ones from black colleges. Then she said, “You should try this hockey jersey.” It had an Indian on it or something. And another had, like, a leaf, a chronic leaf. I liked that one. Then there was the black-and-yellow one for the Pittsburgh Penguins. There were so many things about them that were fly to me. I liked the way they looked, and they were big, and I was like, “Ain’t nobody wearing these. This is me, this is my look.” It was just something that felt good to me. 

Around the same time, you were wearing a lot of flannels, and now everyone wears them all the time. I don’t think that was the case in the early and mid-90s. For instance, Terry Richardson and flannels are like peanut butter and jelly at this point. Do you feel partially responsible for that trend? 
We called them Pendletons. They made it like it was a fashion statement, but that was the only thing we could afford back then in the West. We would go down to the surfer’s store and get like ten, maybe 15 of them at a nice little price, you understand? It was warm and representative of who we were and what we craved. It was like our dress code.

They were utilitarian and functional while also fashionable, which is why I think people were so surprised when you started dressing like a pimp. But again, it was what you were living at the time so people shouldn’t have been so shocked. In contrast to your previous style, it was very flamboyant. 
It was flamboyant and outlandish. One thing about that look is that it represented you, your girls, the car that you drove, and this is in the pimp world. It represented the pimp. If his color scheme was green and yellow, he had on green and yellow, his car was green and yellow, his apartment was green and yellow, the girls wore green and yellow, and everything was about that particular color scheme. They matched all the way from the top to the bottom. It was about flair, glamour, glitz, and all of that comes out of the era I grew up in. I was infatuated after seeing it from afar. Most of my uncles dibbled and dabbled in pimping, and my wife’s father was one of the biggest pimps around. It was fascinating for me to see that look and say that I was in that world and to wear that fashion for the eyes of the world. It was a beautiful feeling because I know what that fashion means; it’s a real fashion statement. Even when I’m getting getting my nails done, that’s real player. The average guy can’t see himself getting a French-tip manicure, but I’m not the average guy.

How long have you been getting French tips? 
It’s about being spooned and groomed, dipped and whipped, suited and booted, gooted and looted, scuttered and buttered.

Where did you get the purple fur coat that you were wearing in the shoot? Was it custom-made? I’ve never seen anything like it. 
[laughs] That’s out of the pimp files. I’ve got so many different animal furs: beavers, chinchillas, lambs, horses…

Horses?
Yeah, I got horses, too. I got everything, man. Everything. You understand? When I was in the pimp world, I’d be shopping all over the world and we would always try to find things nobody had, because when you go to a player’s ball you get some of the flyest pimps in the world, and they show up with some of the grandest outfits you can imagine. So you try to upstage. One year I remember I had a big black-and-gold sombrero with diamonds and rhinestones on it, and I had it tied around my head. All my girls dressed like they were Mexican girls, and it was just awesome. When I was there I was the real el jefe. 

So did you have stylists and other people sourcing all of this clothing? How did you find these off-the-wall items? 
I had different stylers, and I’d seen different things. I liked that sombrero because I’d seen a lot of the players wear the nice hats. But no one wore one like that. I’d seen Bishop Don “Magic” Juan wear one before, and his was like Louis Vuitton. That’s a fly style right there: When you’ve got a nice suit on and you wearing that sombrero, you gotta understand me, that’s some real fashion.

I take it that you were buying more jewelry around that time than you do now? 
Yeah. I still have some of that, but most of them are a thing of the past. They went with the times.

Your next evolution in style was, for lack of a better term, your “business look.” It was around this time that you were appointed creative chairman of EMI’s Priority Records. I imagine this was the impetus for the new duds? 
It was about transforming myself from an artist to a boss, and then trying to be more effective on the business side and not just creating but understanding that, creatively, I am the boss because I’m creating everything people want to buy and see—so why not be in control? It’s the fact of me having to fire people and having more control over what I do and say. I had to have a look to match that. You have to look the part to play the part. No one would take me seriously if I came in with a jogging suit on. They would think I was going to jog. So I was going to put a business suit on so they would know I was going to do business. One thing about the business that I do is it’s about fun. Once we get past the fun, it becomes a great business venture because if it’s fun we’re going to love doing it, we’re going to do it all the time. 

And that brings us up to your recent trip to Jamaica and new reggae-influenced album, which has resulted in yet another look for you, but it seems that this one is more spiritual in nature. I imagine embracing Rastafarianism has changed the way you shop. Where are you getting your clothes these days, specifically the white linen smock-type suits you’ve been sporting?  
I got a store that I shop in, you understand me? Rastafari, sugah! I don’t want to give that location out because I don’t want to have too many people looking like me. You know, before I know it I’ll see you doing the interview looking just like me. [laughs]

No, I don’t think that would be possible. I couldn’t pull it off. But it is an enviable look: You’ve got comfort, class, and a stately presence all rolled into one. 

That’s what we seek; we seek to be comfortable and relaxed but also to be sharper, because at the same time we like to look good, we want to look good. One thing about the West is that we always try to look good. We try to outdo our friends to get a girl. The one thing about the ladies out here is that they like a man to be dressed up sharp and be serious about what he do. It gave me some insight on fashion at an early age, when we got to where we started to want to have girlfriends and be impressive—trying to get a job, to do things in the world, to try to bring yourself to another level, to step up. 

Your hairstyle has drastically changed throughout your career alongside your various looks. I feel that hair is so make-it-or-break-it—so many public figures have tried to change their hairdos, and a lot of the time it ends up being a totally embarrassing disaster. But you’ve never had a misstep in that regard. What does the way a man styles his hair say about him?  
It’s your strip. That’s what it’s all about. Most definitely, that’s been my style since day one; my hair has always been my main focus. I always make sure it looks right, and that I’ve got a new style, something that fits me that’s different. Even when I wore it in pigtails, or permed my hair like Shirley Temple, whatever it was, it was always something that was on the edge. It was like, “Wow, it looks nice.” But it was always different, so even now that I’m locking up, this is me being me. My hair has always told the story, and this is my journey at the moment. 

Reincarnated is playing in select theaters beginning March 15, with a DVD release to follow on April 16. The album will be released in April.

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It's New York Fashion Week, and Le1f just released one of the most fashionably sexy and fun mixtapes that we can think of. His latest shit is called Fly Zone, and it will make you rub your butt on people and get rubbed on by other people's butts, which is the goal of life. 

We got Le1f on the phone for a quick chat to see what he's been up to for NYFW. Here's what he had to say:

@WolfieVibes

Ruffeo Hearts Lil’ Snotty is what you get when you mix avant-garde silhouettes, streetwear swagger, and Japanese kawaii culture. Started by Brooklyn-based weirdo designers R. Mackswell Sherman and Sarah Jones back in 2005, the brand sits at the epicenter of a new movement in fashion that strives for ethical production and challenges notions of gender, while making it all look fun and futuristic. Their androgynous garments fit in eccentric ways—some T-shirts are dress-length, while some hoodies have an antifit-style like something out of a sci-fi movie. And the clothes are covered in geometric shapes and their own band of characters’ faces, all in vibrant Day-glo coloring.

The pair, who come from the small town of Olympia, Washington, wanted to create a line that brought together functionality and wearable art, while also practicing transparent business practices and local production. Neither of them graduated college and are self-taught when it comes to sewing and design. The first piece Sarah ever sewed was a unicorn costume for one of Mackswell’s experimental theater performances. Back in Washington, Mackswell was a rapper, known as Nameless, who performed multipersonality, feminist speed rap. He also practiced puppetry and had a love for film, which lead him to create multimedia shows. The first piece Sarah and Mackswell worked on together was for a story based on a love affair between a Hoover vacuum and a unicorn, who ends up giving birth to a Shop-Vac that gets kidnapped by Chuck E. Cheese.

In the mid 2000s, Mackswell and Sarah were active in protesting for workers' rights and fair-trade manufacturing, so when they were fed up with the lack of results, they decided to produce ethically made clothing themselves. What they came up with was RHLS, a line of well-tailored “streetwear” created to fill the void left between the experimental side of fashion and the stuff people are actually wearing on the street.

The emoticon designs that are endemic to the brand, and can be seen in Le1f’s music video for “Wut,” were born a couple of summers ago out of Mackswell’s screenplay about parallel dimensions and the Planet Z of Funness. The characters, such as Empathetic Eyes and Bitch Face, and their respective ponytail and cowboy hat tops, create a mix and match, choose-your-own-adventure type of fashion.

In order to expand their brand, Mackswell and Sarah moved to New York City, where they opened MOVES—a concept store dedicated to brands with transparent business practices—linked up with rappers like Le1f, and started sponsoring a bunch of other artists. I visited MOVES, which looks more like a funhouse that a boutique, in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, to talk shop with the up-and-coming designers.

VICE: You have come a long way from making unicorn costumes in Washington. What was your plan for RHLS?
Sarah: We tried to make functional, interesting clothes that you could be active in, but weren’t cheesy. I don’t think we ever intended to start a clothing line. We just kind of started, and it kind of grew. We were in Olympia and then in Seattle, we had no concept of what it was to start a clothing line.

RHLS is often considered a streetwear brand; I haven’t heard you describe it as that, do you guys consider RHLS streetwear?
Mackswell: I am this feminist MC and I am very interested in street culture and hip-hop, but I am kind of against commercial hip-hop. I think in a sense, we were trying to create a style we wanted—but I wouldn’t call it “streetwear.”

So who are you trying to reach with your clothes?
Sarah: We are trying to promote a universal subculture, an aesthetic that is for everyone and no one. It is extremely inclusive by not targeting anybody.

Mackswell: We are outsiders to everything. No one really thinks we are cool. We don’t have a demographic, we aren’t fucking hip. Our audience ranges from cute old ladies to a lot of professional women in their 30s and a lot of thugged-out dudes.

So what else are you guys doing through RHLS?
Sarah: We have always put on events, which is one reason we have a store. We have a clothing line, we host shows, we do lectures, we sponsor artists, and we give workshops. For us, only producing clothes is not satisfying.

You guys sponsor some amazing artists, including Le1f. How do you guys pick musicians to get behind?
Sarah: We like to collaborate with people who inspire us and we think are doing cool stuff.

Mackswell: We have some of the most amazing bands in the world. It is so nice to be a part of a thriving community in Brooklyn, who are wearing our clothes in music videos and on tour constantly. Prince Rama just toured wearing our entire Spring ’13 collection with Animal Collective. And Guardian Alien, the new band on Thrill Jockey. And Le1f is just the homie. Honestly, I feel like they sponsor us.

What is it like sponsoring LE1f, an openly gay rapper, when the fashion in the hip-hop scene can be pretty homophobic?
Mackswell: I feel like that is not even true, I feel like that is just record-industry bullshit. All the guys I know who hang out and smoke blunts in my hallway don’t seem to have a problem with homosexuality.

What can we expect from Moves and RHLS in the future?
Mackswell: MOVES is actually short for movement, so we would like to inspire other small design firms or different manufacturing communities to bring it back locally.  We would like to spearhead a movement for ethically made anything and kind of take away the stigma of the crafty, rough-around-the-edges look. It’s not really about us, we just make hot shit.

To learn more about RHLS, visit their website.

To purchase clothes, visit their online store.

If you're in the Brooklyn area, stop by the MOVES Concept Store at 419 Graham Avenue in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

@EricaEuse

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This week, our annual Fashion Issue hit the stands and we couldn't be prouder. The cover features Snoop Lion shot by Terry Richardson and shoots by Richard Kern, Olivia Bee, Ben Ritter, and many more. The whole thing is awesome and you should definitely pick up a copy to hold in your own sticky hands.

Last night, to celebrate, we threw ourselves a party at Goldbar in the Lower East Side. The always lovable ATL Twins hosted the party for us and Juelz Santana, everyones favorite member of Dipset, came and performed some songs. There were some very sexy and stylish people in attendance. Just look for yourself in the gallery above. If you see yourself in there, I want you to know that I think you're hot and we should hang out. If you don't see yourself, then you missed out and you're ugly and you have no style! See you next year, you beautiful bitches.

All photos by Alan Yuch.

This guy here is our buddy Tyler. And that white stuff on his tongue is partially chewed, acid-dosed Altoids mints.

This is him a little while later, waiting for a cab to take us to a fashion show that was happening as part of New York Fashion Week. At this point, Tyler told me that he was beginning to feel a "floaty floatiness" and had "upward swooshing" in his fingertips. 

His trip began to kick in properly when he saw this building from the cab. Apparently it was "all swirly, with swirls swirling into the other swirls."

The trip intensified when it was time for me to pay for our taxi, and it became apparent that our driver was unfamiliar with the concept of cabs.

As I was trying to pay him, he smiled at me and said "it's free" before attempting to hand me a white business card with what appeared to be braille on it. When I insisted on paying, he just kept smiling and pointing toward my phone while saying, "No, no, no."

This is the kind of bizarre exchange that only seems to happen when you're too high to deal with it. Tyler was looking around nervously. When he saw the Matrix business card he started to cackle, before asking the cab driver, "What's happening? Am I tripping?"

Eventually, the cab driver let me give him $15, and we headed to the show. It was held on this pier.

Outside the venue, there were a billion people rushing around. Mostly street-style photographers. You may already know this, but being in a crowd is pretty much the last thing you want to do when you're on acid. Followed pretty closely by having your photo taken. Tyler looked as though he was beginning to panic. "Fucking street-fashion photographers... They're everywhere... It's like a street-style nightmare." He said, before rushing us inside. 

Once inside, we had to collect our press passes, which was an intense process even for me, and I was sober. There was some kind of issue with our names being on the press list (in that they weren't), so I had to spend about 15 minutes trying to argue our way in. Whenever I looked over at Tyler, he was staring at the ground with a very somber expression on his face. Afterward, he told me, "It was horrible in there. There were so many people, and they were all wearing leather. There was so, so much leather, and they were all pushing against me in it. Horrible."

Because we were there as press, I told Tyler he had to interview any important fashion people we came across. The first one of those we saw was Nicola Formichetti, creative director of Mugler and stylist to Lady Gaga. Although Tyler begged to not interview anyone because he was scared he wouldn't be able to do it, he turned out to be a natural and was able to snag us this EXCLUSIVE interview:

VICE: So... are you... excited for the show?
Nicola: Yes.

OK. Thank you. Bye. 

As we made our way down the long corridor that led to the runway, Tyler said to me, "I know this is a stereotypical thing to say, but I feel like I'm in some kind of Zoolander kidnapping scenario." I guess acid alters your perception of what is and isn't "a stereotypical thing to say."

Inside the show, it was really crowded. People were running and pushing and shouting. There was a disproportionately high number of Italians, and they were all air-kissing in a very aggressive manor. As you can see, Tyler was really enjoying it. 

We didn't have assigned seats. They expected us to stand at the back like a couple of pathetic and disgusting nobodies, so we just ran past the ticket checkers when they weren't looking and sat in an empty spot. Tyler seemed to relax slightly and said to me, "Please don't make me get up and walk around any more people. I'm really comfortable here."

So we relaxed and waited for the show to start. 

When the show started, the lights went dark for a second, and then the large neon lighting rig that hung above our heads raised up a couple of feet. Tyler, through hysterical laughter, whispered, "That must have cost them so much money... I feel like the theme of Fashion Week is 'anticipation, but for no reason.' "

On the way in, Tyler had told me that he predicted the music would be "something intense, with a lot of thumping." When I asked him if he was psyched that he'd correctly called the music, a visibly shaken Tyler responded, "The thumping... It's even more intense than I anticipated."

Whenever I looked over, Tyler would be fixated on the back of the woman in front of him, rather than the clothes. When I asked him about this, he explained to me, "There are people touching me in all directions. And the woman next to me keeps taking selfies on her phone. It's really pissing me off, so I need to concentrate on that woman's back. It's the only way I can stop myself from getting angry with everyone. I don't wanna hit anyone."

"Plus, the way her hair meets her jacket. It's very... just, wow."

Then something across the runway from us caught his attention. He began to giggle to himself. "Those stupid-ass hats," he said, pointing. "They're very... British?" I'm not sure what that means, but my feelings RE: the hats are summed up pretty tidily by the facial expression on the guy just to the right of them. 

And then the show was over. I asked Tyler what he thought of the two or three looks that he'd actually been able to draw his attention to, and all he said was "so many straps, so much leather."

Then Tyler ran into Olivier Zahm, editor of purple and personification of the phrase "ew, gross." 

I told him he should try and interview him, but he said, "I can't do this anymore. And I don't think his jacket was real leather. It felt like pleather. He felt like pleather, too. I didn't like it. Can we get out of here?"

Sick of the crowds, we slipped through a gap in a curtain and ended up in some kind of backstage area, where Tyler used this Porta Potty, which was completely pitch black inside. 

He was inside for so long that I started to worry he was having a freakout. But when he came out, he told me, "It was so nice to be in there. I just needed to get away from everything for a minute. So many people were touching me. I don't like being touched in general, but on acid? Fuck!"

Outside, the crowd of street photographers sent Tyler back into panic mode.

"Someone should do a street-style blog, where the street-style photographers only take photos of other street-style photographers. Actually, that probably exists already. Maybe someone could do a street-style blog, where the posts are all posts from the street-style blog where the street-style guy is taking pictures of street-style guys. Wait, what were we talking about again?"

I wanted to let Tyler calm down a little, so we retreated to a pop-up "fashion lounge" that Target had set up across the street. (Seriously, that is an actual thing that actually exists.)

Inside, Tyler mixed the two types of complimentary coffee that were on offer, took a sip, and declared them to be "Wow... just... tremendous."

When I asked him to summarize his Fashion Week experience, he told me, "It was anticlimactic... But to me, that was climactic—how anticlimactic it was. Yaknow? And there was leather everywhere."

Occupy Wall Street... On Acid!

The Westminster Dog Show... On Acid!

Druids... On Acid!

The 20th century is often referred to as the American Century, and that’s not just because the US bombed and invaded whomever it felt like, whenever it wanted. From the glamour of old-time Hollywood to Jackie O to Britney Spears’s schoolgirl slutdom, American fashion and trends were admired all over the world and changed the way people dressed from Poland to Japan.

While globalization and labor outsourcing mean that today most of the world’s clothes are manufactured in third-world sweatshops, the garments were likely either designed or heavily influenced by Americans. Foreign fashion designers both love and hate the US’s global influence on style, so for this American-themed Fashion Issue we thought it would be interesting to ask our international offices to get in touch with their countries’ most influential designers and fashion icons to see what they thought of the country’s fashion sense. Not surprisingly, opinions were mixed.

Laura Vargalui 
Model and stylist

Nothing influenced Romanian fashion and behavior like the American dream from movies and TV shows. We ended up believing it could be real for us, too. Unfortunately, all you have behind this concept is a movie ideal that can’t work in real life. The shows that influenced us the most were Dynasty and Dallas. When I think of American fashion, I think of the whole cowboy look: the hat, denim jackets, and jeans. The latter were the most influential on our day-to-day lives. We all wanted jeans after we saw them on TV. And you couldn’t really buy them in stores during the Communist regime, but my dad was a sailor and brought back 20 to 50 pairs after every trip. If you were caught selling them, you risked going to prison. 

Simon Porte Jacquemus
Designer and CEO of Jacquemus

Calvin Klein is the only American brand I like. I like the very minimalist aspect to his stuff—you know, a girl all dressed in gray, with a center-parted haircut, wearing low-heeled shoes in front of a white wall. Growing up, I thought all the American stuff sucked. The US has never attracted me or ever made me dream. Not even American movies. Today, I can be amazed by a Victoria’s Secret fashion show. I enjoy it because, basically, there’s nothing funnier than that—though it has nothing to do with what I’m actually doing with my work.

Ann-Sofie Back
Designer and founder of her own label

I think American fashion has changed a lot in the past five or six years, thanks to all these new, cool Asian-American designers who have popped up recently. I would never have considered showing up to New York Fashion Week if it weren’t for them.

Did you know there are Swedish brands, like Gant and Lexington, that market themselves with an American-dream vibe? I think that’s funny. I love America. I once did a collection inspired by 80s American horror movies and the archetypes you always encounter in those films: the horny teenager, the virgin, the redneck idiot, and so on. That collection also has jewelry made out of chewing gum, checkered shirts, dungarees, and dreamcatcher accessories.

Dudu Bertholini
Co-owner of NEON and designer for CORI

I think that the greatest legacy of the US in fashion was to create casual, practical, commercial clothing. The US’s gift to the world was [Roy] Halston, who made minimalist work, sold millions, and is very important to contemporary fashion. What Ralph Lauren and Calvin Klein do now follows from that. 

After World War II, Americans were seen as the biggest trendsetters on the planet. The entire world wanted to be American. This attitude is dissipating in the 21st century, but we absorbed a lot of it—in Brazil, for instance, with streetwear and hip-hop. It’s a good thing this is dissolving now, because the USA, which has always been synonymous with innovation, has also become synonymous with bullshit.

Sara Sachs
Designer for Moonspoon Saloon

Disclaimer: Some of you might remember this article from a few years back when we still lived at Viceland. Unfortunately, when we moved to VICE.com it disappeared, so now we've dug it up. Enjoy.

For the last few years, prisoners in Romania have been able to dress however they want as long as they maintain minimum standards of decency. This got our Romanian counterparts wondering: What do chicks wear when they're surrounded by the awfulness and heartbreak of prison life? VICE Romania decided to pay a visit to the country's only women's prison, Târgșor, to check out the fashions behind bars.

There's a horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach when I reach the iron gates. What I discover inside feels like a weird combination of a hospital and a monastery. There's a church in the courtyard complete with flowers and a graveyard-like silence. But inside it smells like sweat and the noise is infernal. The bunk beds look almost cozy, like a student hostel. The only thing that makes the place resemble a prison are the bars on the cell doors, but even those have canteen curtains, through which you can hear the women bitching.

Here, an iPod and some earphones mean escape. Unlike in the movies, there are no obvious group leaders, and the officers told me friendships between prisoners rarely occur, but when they do, they’re really tight and exclusive. There are a few lesbian couples, but having some protection is their main motive. Scandals and fights break out easily. The girls are assigned different detention regimes, in different wings of the building, depending on how nasty the shit they’ve done is. The women serving the hardest punishments only get to feel the outside air once a day. The others can learn tailoring or reading and writing, and can pass time watching movies, reading in the library or at the hair salon, where one of their fellow inmates provides the styling, eyebrow plucking, and manicures.

The 660 prisoners live in 8- or 16-bed cells. Because of the lack of space, they’re allowed to keep a limited amount of clothing in their room. The rest are deposited in a storage room, from which the prisoners can take a new outfit when they take the other one to the laundry. Detergent is available for sale at the prison’s shop, where they also sell bad makeup.

One of the prison officers guided us through the cells and gave us a few tips on who the good girls were. We chose 8 to photograph, their sentences ranging between 1 and 20 years for murder, theft, deception, and drugs trafficking. We brought a pile of clothes, but also asked the prisoners to wear some of their own stuff and style their own looks.

FLORENTINA, 22, CONVICTED FOR THEFT

Vintage top, Adidas skirt, vintage jewelry

Flori has had a talent for theft ever since she was under the age of criminal responsibility. At the time of our visit, she had served 16 months of her current sentence.

“I like to dress funky. I love white and pink and comfortable, casual clothes. I go to the salon, get my hair dyed and straightened, have it cut into claws, and the ends thinned. Cut-up jeans are my favorite. Obviously I don't cut them up myself, I buy them like that.”

SIMONA, 27, CONVICTED FOR ECSTASY TRAFFICKING

Adidas dress, Levi’s jeans, Puma shoes, Patch watch from Ollie Gang Shop

Simona was studying accounting, and, as a hobby, she’d sell pills to her friends. She was the final link in a much bigger network of dealers when the whole setup got busted. She initially got 13 years, but the sentence was later reduced to 5. Music is her only escape, so we sent her a few CDs in the mail. She says she'll never return to clubs, as she wants to stay clean and start a new life from scratch.

“I used to wear sneakers, baggy pants, and shawls at parties, but I couldn’t keep up that style in prison. I still dress casually in sports pants and T-shirts. Here, when you look good, they tell you you look bad, to denigrate you. There are a lot of envious bad vibes, but I tell the other girls I don’t care.”

GABI, 32, CONVICTED FOR COCAINE TRAFFICKING

Vintage tank top, Only leggings from Outwear, Outwear earrings

Gabi graduated in management at Bucharest's ASE—Economic Studies Academy. In her first year at the prison she tried every narcotic she could. Quitting was hard, but she's clean now. She’s been here for almost two years, with another 6 to serve for being caught with 100 grams of blow. We shot Gabi in the love room, where the girls are allowed to meet their significant others, or VICE, in Gabi’s case.

“My style depends on the situation. I’m afro-punk now, but some days I go for casual or combined styles. You have to be decent here, but it’s still good you can be yourself. I still miss the freedom of wearing whatever I liked. I often borrow clothes from Simona, and my sister buys me whatever she’s buying for herself. My roommate Moriko does my hair almost every day. I don’t like kitsch and sequins, but that's popular here. Trends here vary between dollybird mixed with gypsy and extreme bad taste.”

CORINA, 24, CONVICTED FOR COMPLICITY IN FRAUD

Only dress from Outwear, vintage headdress

We wanted to shoot Corina in the church. The prison guards were into it, but the priest wasn't, so we shot her under the steeple. Her fellow inmates were screaming “prostitute!” through the bars on their windows.

“The prisoner cutting hair in the prison salon is awful. Two of my roommates went to see her. If she'd put a bowl on their heads it would’ve turned out better. My sister-in-law, Angie, does my hair. We’re inseparable. We've hung a piece of rope by the window in our room so we can dry our clothes. If we dry them in the courtyard they'll be stolen.”

IOANA, 18, CONVICTED FOR COMPLICITY IN THEFT

Adidas dress, Levi’s jeans, vintage shoes, Patch watch from Ollie Gang Shop; vintage top, vintage jeans, Puma shoes; Levi’s vest, vintage leggings, and shoes, vintage earrings, Outwear necklace, Only belt from Outwear; Levi’s T-shirt, Adidas leggings, and shoes

Ioana used to be a huge hip-hop fan, but ever since she’s been in prison she's had to listen to whatever the other prisoners are into.

“I choose my jewelry according to the way I dress. The big trend here is mixing sporty and elegant feminine stuff. All the girls dress like that. I like round, golden earrings, lots of crystals, and big pieces that match. I dress the same way in prison as I would at home, but since I’m here there's no one to dress for."

CLAUDIA, 34, CONVICTED FOR HEROIN TRAFFICKING

Levi’s vest, vintage leggings, and shoes, Levi's cap, vintage earrings, Outwear necklace, Only belt from Outwear; Levi’s T-shirt, Adidas leggings and shoes.

Claudia ended up at Târgșor a year ago after she was caught in an incriminating video that showed her husband selling heroin. Her sentence runs for another six years.

“I’d rarely dressed in a skirt before, but when I did, I got dolled up: I’d put on earrings, two rings, a necklace. I love gold, but I’m only allowed to wear silver here. I only wear shorts and tanks inside the prison and I just wear a bra around my room. Of course, there’s a lot of envy. No one visits the ugly girls. Fights can break out over the smallest thing. The last happened because a girl came into a room and stepped on the carpet with her shoes on.”

ȚUȚU, 36, CONVICTED FOR MURDER

Carhartt tank top, vintage jeans and accessories

Țuțu’s real name is Sorina, but this is how people address her. She's 5 years into a 20-year sentence for murder. She tells us she’s 28, her skirt size is “mini,” and her blouse size is “pink.” She kept mumbling “Jesus,” was very emotional, and asked us to turn around so she could change. Something about the red top seemed to make her feel hot and she started showing us some really sensual moves with the ironing board.

“I like red a lot. A nice red, glittery miniskirt with matching tank, then I'll walk around as if I'm on a catwalk. I even do that in our cell. In the past, I used to be a stripper. I don’t like yellow, but I do like leggings. My man has to be clean, elegant, and wear perfume for me, and I don’t want him hanging around in bars after 6 at night. He has to ask me if he wants to go out.”

ANGIE, 31, CONVICTED FOR DECEPTION

Puma tank top, Levi’s jeans, Vans belt from Ollie Gang Shop

Angie is Corina’s sister-in-law. She was an Olympic swimmer for 11 years, and even has 4 bronze medals. She misses exercise because unfortunately the prison’s gym closed down after some “apes” broke the treadmill. She married and left for Greece where she found work as a wedding photographer. Had three kids, but now her mother takes care of them. When they come to visit, they play on the slide in the photo.

“I miss my kids and peace most. It’s a jungle here. But I miss sneakers, too. Not wearing them, but buying them. When I go to court or on visiting days I like to wear really high heels, leggings, and a dress. I like Dior, Nike, and Puma too. I don’t wear makeup. The makeup the prison shop sells is shit. You can get some from home if it's hidden it in the fruit your visitors are allowed to bring. You learn that the first month here. As long as you're not smuggling drugs they're not that bothered."

Photos by Vlad Brateanu

Styling by the prisoners and Dana Anghel

Thanks to my job, I've been going to various fashion weeks for a few years now. Usually, when friends find out I'm going, they start begging for invites and guest-list spots for parties and free goodie bags (or something—I've pretty much stopped listening). This is because everyone is an idiot, and you have been lied to about Fashion Week. Fashion Week sucks balls. 

Here's what happens at Fashion Week:

As you approach Lincoln Center (where the main NYFW events takes place), a terrifying, dark desperation hangs in the air. Dozens of photographers wait outside the door, hungrily looking from person to person, hoping to see either a celebrity or someone with a bloggable outfit that they can photograph.

Though there are close to 100 different photographers there, they're not shooting for anyone you've ever heard of. They all "work" for "online magazines" that have ".blogspot.com" in their URLs. You will see the above scene (a woman, who is probably a fashion student, being mobbed because she's wearing a "funky hat") play out multiple times. 

Once inside, you join some kind of line, which you will be in for a very long time. And it's not like some relaxed Space Mountain line, either. Fashion people are fucking INTENSE. There are different line heirachies, which leads to a lot of shoving and shouting (especially if you're in the plebe's line, like I always am).

Obv most stereotypes about groups of people are untrue (J.K.), but everything you've ever heard about fashion people is correct. Zoolander is pretty much a documentary.

At one show, I was stuck in a line behind two girls who had a 13-minute debate (I timed it) about whether to eat their free sample of a yogurt-covered pretzel (they decided to not eat the pretzel, but take a three-mile run the next morning anyways, phew!).

Also, this is an actual conversation I overheard in another line:

Girl: You should have a theme party!
Boy: Eugh, I would love to, but I can't really do parties. 
Girl: Why not?
Boy: It's just that I have too many friends. I couldn't invite everyone, it would be impossible. And I hate excluding people.
Girl: That sucks.
Boy: Yeah, it really bums me out. 

Eugh.

There's something a little upsetting about being around fashion people, too. Does the thought of this kid staying up all night hot-gluing feathers to his shoes make anyone else wanna cry?

Also, Mercedes sponsored the main event space, so this car was positioned at the entrance. Which made me think of some car-crash pictures I saw on Reddit a few days ago (don't click that link if you ever want to relax in a car ever again, btw), so I spent a lot of my time at Fashion Week thinking about being trapped inside that car as it burned and having panic attacks. 

Anyway, Fascinating Fashion Week fact: Over 100 percent of shows at NYFW used that one Grimes song as the soundtrack. 

I had no idea it took so much equipment to play a Grimes song, though. Who knew DJing was so complicated!

If you're lucky, the event you're at will have free drinks. Usually made by a mixologist who has been hired to mask the taste of whatever, recently-launched-and-destined-to-fail booze brand is sponsoring the event.

Also, that is the tallest man in America. I'm not sure why he was at Fashion Week. Maybe he'd been hired to add some excitement to the crowd? At the show where I saw him, he was hanging with a high-fashion dwarf, a guy with hundreds of facial piercings and a furry. It was like being at a casting for a P!nk music video. 

Some shows also have food, and it is always really, really tiny. I don't know why it's always so small. I could make some kind of joke about fashion people not eating, but IDK, I get the feeling it's something more sinister than that. 

One of the big myths that is perpetuated about Fashion Week is that there are famous people at these things. There will be a group of people sitting in the front row who are surrounded by angry PRs trying to push back the throngs of photographers snapping at them. And, often, I have made the mistake of thinking it might be someone exciting. But inevitably, once you catch a glimpse of them, it'll be someone like these guys. Who, without googling, I can tell you are definitely a European DJ, an ex-model, and a blogger. 

I guess the amount of photographers and made-up publications that exist in the fashion world have created an environment where everybody is famous. 

The only actual famous person I've seen this fashion week has been Jenna from 30 Rock. I sat behind her, and she smelled inhumanly good. You know how, like, the human brain can't comprehend the shape of the universe because it's too complex? Or how there's those colors that we know exist, but nobody can see them because the human brain can't handle it? That's the only way I can explain how good Jenna from 30 Rock smelled.

And then it's time for the clothes!

I'm not sure if I have words to describe how anticlimactic the actual runway shows are. I think this is something people don't really think about before going. Have you ever watched someone walk one direction and then another in clothes before? It's pretty boring. Seriously, go try it now. Go outside and watch some people walk past you in the street. 

There's a reason that we have stuff like movie theaters and amusement parks rather than people-watcher stadium seating set up on sidewalks: watching people walking around fucking SUCKS. Maaaaybe if you got to go to one of those ultrawacky shows that idiots make fun of on the internet afterward it would be interesting. But look at these clothes. Who gives a shit about these clothes? You could go to, like, Banana Republic and see stuff that looks exactly like this. 

And the women they put the clothes on are TERRIFYING. You're not stupid. I'm sure you know that the entire industry relies on making people feel shitty about themselves so that they'll buy the clothing to make themselves feel better. But the industry standard of beauty has gotten so far removed from what a human being actually looks like, that the only way they can cast these girls is to go to Eastern Europe and look for teenagers who have become developmentally advanced from inhaling Chernobyl fallout. 

I'd imagine models are similar to those pedigree dogs that have been crossbred too much; they look adorable, but they're gonna run into all kinds of breathing difficulties and stuff later in life. 

Also, I'm pretty sure the only purpose of these shows is to make the people who attend them feel important. In the age of the internet, these shows have no other reason to exist. They're live streamed, and the photos are all instantly uploaded.

For instance, if you click here you can see style.com's photo of the above look. If anyone actually gave a shit about what the models were wearing, they would stay home and look at pictures online instead of straining to see it over rows of heads. 

The other type of event people have at Fashion Week is a "presentation." Where, instead of walking down a runway, the models stand on one side of the room while everyone takes pictures. (I'm not sure if the model in the middle got the memo RE: "posing.") 

And when I say everyone takes pictures, I mean EVERYONE. I have no idea where these pictures are going, or why they're so important, but people get VERY angry if you get in the way of their shot. 

Though fashion people like to talk a lot about experimentation and innovation and stuff, the shows all play by a pretty standard set of rules. The only variatons, generally, are which Grimes song is playing and what kind of space the show is being held in.

However, occasionally someone will try to "make fetch happen," and reinvent what a fashion show can be. And it is always, without exception, fucking HILARIOUS.  Like this show, where the models were brought out on dollies. Watching the models attempt to hide the terror in their faces while holding on for dear life was one of the best things I've ever seen. 

Or this one, where there was a fucking INTERPRATIVE FASHION DANCE. It was incredible. The two models came out and then danced, like, right in the faces of the audience (luckily not in mine, I would've lost it) before stripping each other, then getting dressed in one another's clothes. It was amazing. 

Another myth about these events is that you get good freebies. You don't. It's mainly USB sticks and elaborately packaged bottled water and completely useless cosmetic products (hi there, "curl enhancer"!). Nobody gives away anything good for free. They're usually new products that the manufacturers are paying to get into the hands of the "early trend adapters"—but it's 2013. Any kind of good product already exists. New shit sucks.

Once the day of shows is over, there will be some kind of party. Which means there will be some kind of guest-list situation. Which means you'll have to deal with a fashion PR person.

There's is nothing more demoralizing than talking to someone in fashion PR. I find PR people in general difficult to deal with, as their entire job is to be disingenuous. No matter how crappy the product they're promoting is, they have to stay in character 24/7 as someone who doesn't think it's a piece of shit. It makes me nervous. Like when someone comes up to you at an amusement park dressed as a pirate or whatever and starts talking to you in character. I just have no idea how I'm supposed to react to them. They don't have souls. They're Death Eaters in fancy gowns. I have never been more aware of my own mortality than when conversing with a fashion PR person.

And, for people whose entire job is "checking if a person's name is on a list," they're incredibly serious. They all have headsets and iPads like some kind of shitty reboot of the Charlie's Angels franchise. 

I'm not talking specifically about the woman in this photo, btw. I didn't deal with her, I'm sure she's lovely. 

This is what an exclusive Fashion Week soiree looks like inside. There'll usually be a couple of famous people who are being paid to be there and will sit in a separate area at the back, waiting for the hour or so that they're being paid to be there to finish so they can leave.

The rest of the crowd is made up of fashion students and friends of the PR girls who are running it. The favorite activity at these parties is to stand around looking one another up and down. Everyone seems to hate everyone else. Occasionally someone will dance, and 100 photographers will run over and start snappng pictures, but the moment will be short-lived.

The drinks are free, yes. But wouldn't you rather just pay for a drink instead of having to fight your way through a sea of fashion bloggers for ten minutes each time you want a refill? 

And that is it. That is Fashion Week. The end. 

More fashion week crap:

New York Fashion Week... On Acid!

Meeting the Geniuses at London Fashion Week

Islamabad Fashion Week

@JLCT

Photo by Jamie Taete for the VICE NYFW Photo Blog.

There were a lot of powerful scenes in Quentin Tarantino’s “crap masterpiece” Django Unchained. But the film’s most haunting moment for me was when the freed-slave-turned-bounty-hunter title character was hanging upside down, butt-ass naked, with his genitals threatened by a red-hot blade wielded by a viciously racist white slaver. Even though Django ultimately escaped castration, the scene was a reminder of the literal and metaphorical emasculation of black men that has gone on, at both the systemic and individual levels, in America since before the states got their independence from England.

Black masculinity isn’t just a topic for discussion among historians and other academics. Recent developments, like the rise of gangster rap, which contributed to the thugification of the black male in modern media, and the country’s first black president who asserts his manhood through his intellect, have altered the paths by which black males can and do express themselves. As oppressive laws have been torn down, and the blatant racism like that of the villains in Django fades into the past, the battle for what it means to be a black man has turned inward. A new dialogue is developing within in the black community about how we should assert and reaffirm our manhood now that we have the freedom to do so. Last week, as I spent my days hustling from show to show at New York Fashion Week, I could see that the dialogue about this issue was happening as much on the runways as it was among black public intellectuals like Byron Hurt and Touré.

Me and Shayne Oliver backstage at Hood By Air's Boychild FW13 show. (He was in pretty good spirits until I put my arm around him...)

Two Saturdays ago, I watched the Hood By Air runway show, during which several black men, including rap phenom A$AP Rocky, strut in garments that would probably evoke a “faggot” or two if they were worn in the wrong neighborhood. Hood By Air was founded in 2006 by Minnesota-born and Caribbean-raised gay and black designer, Shayne Oliver;  it began as a small-run T-shirt line worn by Shayne and his friends in the GHE20GOTH1K scene of Downtown Manhattan and Brooklyn and grew into a brand that bridges the gap between the blunt bravado of streetwear and the experimentalism of avant-garde fashion. After the show, Shayne enlightened me on the contemptuous mix of machismo and androgyny in his designs. “I’ve been in situations where I had on pom-poms and thigh-high boots,” he told me, “but I wore it right and received props from boys who were like, ‘That fag is swagged out.’”

For Hood By Air to have an artist like Rocky—who’s rap persona is all about old-school concepts of manhood—walking in a fashion show designed by a gay man with painted nails was kind of a revelation. And Shayne thinks of this as only the beginning of a trend that will allow black men to dress in ways formerly dismissed as “gay.”

“When my friends and I started doing this—nobody else was in that zone,” he said. “But now that vibe has had a trickle-down effect to people who don’t even know who we are. They don’t know where it’s coming from, they are just feeling the essence of it. “

Even though there has been progress recently in terms of the way black men can dress, it’s hard to miss the opposition to this new movement. Case in point, VICE columnist Michael Knight recently got into a heated debate with members of the Five Percent Nation of Gods and Earths for calling out Lord Jamar, a Five Percenter and founding member of rap group Brand Nubian, for making homophobic statements about Kanye West wearing a kilt. The washed-up rapper had made a dis track titled “Lift Up Your Skirt” and pretty much blamed ‘Ye for the emasculation of young black men. 

I share concern for the emasculation of black men in our country today. But I don't see it happening in instances of creative men stepping outside of the box and expressing themselves through fashion—to me, those are defiant acts of freedom. Instead, I see emasculation through the outlandish prison rates of black men in America or oppressive policies like stop-and-frisk that target young black men and turn them into statistics.

The perspective of assholes like Lord Jamar is especially deplorable because not only does it equate black manhood with what you wear, but it also equates clothing with sexual preferences. According to guys like him, you’re a “faggot” unless you dress exactly like them, and “real” black men never suck dick, or deviate an inch from tired heterosexual stereotypes.

I’ve dealt with that kind of nonsense from my fellow brothers in my own life. I nearly got a beat down in the mid-2000s for wearing a pair of nut-hugging Nudie jeans (this was when Nudies were still cool) when I went to pick up a fine-ass red-bone chick from one of the worst hoods in Cleveland, Ohio. Those brothers were practically running down the street after my mom's car screaming shit about my pants. I spent the whole date hoping that they wouldn’t be there when I went back to drop her off and luckily they weren’t. If they had been, I probably would’ve had to buy another pair of jeans on my way home.

After living through experiences like that, where what I wore made my fellow brothers think I was gay or not “black” enough to relate with them, it makes me proud to see guys like Rocky pushing the boundaries of style and still demanding and receiving the respect they deserve as black men. Their actions are opening the door for young guys to think outside of the box and explore new ways of expressing themselves. Hopefully this movement can lead to a day when people realize that being a strong black man (or any man, for that matter) has nothing to do with what you wear or who you fuck, but whether or not you have the will power to stay true to yourself. If that means wearing a dress or swallowing a cock, then so be it. You’re still a man and a brother to me. 

Check out more fashion from Wilbert:

All Dressed Up with Nowhere to Go at New York Fashion Week

May Streetwear Keep You Forever Young

A$AP Rocky and Jeremy Scott Schooled Me on How to Be a Pretty Motherfucker

Photo by Kevin Shea Adams

Music and fashion go together like pedophiles and children. It’s always been an uneasy, somewhat forced relationship that results from perversion and mental illness. Johnny Marr is one of the few musicians who got it right. We interviewed him about being in the Smiths and about whether or not Morrissey could beat him at arm wrestling. 

@WolfieVibes

For more Johnny Marr, check out his video interview with Noisey.

Check out more music stuff from Kelly:

Joan Crawford Can Really Belt It Out

We Interviewed Le1f About Basic-Ass Bitches

My Very Own Sad-Ass Mix

Photo by Steve Robertson

Hip-hop and punk were born at about the same time (the late 70s), in the same place (New York City), with the same rebellious and aggressive spirit; however, their fashion aesthetics have always clashed. Although there have been some instances of style cross-pollination—Public Enemy rocking Minor Threat gear, Lil Jon cloaking himself in Bad Brains apparel—rap stars have traditionally liked things loose-fitting, expensive, and flashy, while punks go for tight, ripped, and dirty. 

Somewhere along the line that all changed, and today’s MCs look like first wavers at CBGB: The skater degenerates of Odd Future call themselves punks and wear skinny jeans, while the goth-influenced Harlem-based A$AP Mob are regularly seen in Ramones-esque biker jackets. The bigger stars are following the trend too: Lil Wayne went crust punk for a 2011 feature in Interview magazine, and Wiz Khalifa has been known to don a colored frohawk. 

R&B kids are also going punk. Heartthrob Miguel sports a slicked-back pompadour reminiscent of Joe Strummer, and Chris Brown has appeared on the red carpet in a punk battle jacket. Surprisingly, his painted and studded jacket, which features the Exploited, Cro-Mags, and D.R.I. logos (and was first worn by Rihanna), didn’t come from a couture shop for the stars—it originated in the living room of Noel Austin, a 40-year-old from Seattle who owns DNA Fashion Designs. 

Noel doesn’t even know how Breezy got ahold of his jacket. “I haven’t always been the most sane or sober person,” he said. “I’ll see stuff on the street I don’t even remember making.”

Back in the day, Noel refused to sell his gear to anyone. “I’d say, ‘Fuck off, make your own.’” But he finally caved in when he needed rent money. Now he makes jackets for celebrities for $6,000 a pop when he’s not creating gratis pieces for Poison Idea and D.R.I. “I want to sell all my shit to A-list douchebags,” he said. And Noel says that like punks, rappers and R&B artists want the authentic stuff. “They want to look rugged, like they smell of whiskey and cigarettes.”

Australian illustrator James Jirat Patradoon, who created the inverse of Chris Brown’s punk gear by putting together a battle jacket covered in R&B artists’ names, offered some insight: “There’s such a pan-subcultural thing going on; it’s easier to shift from one look to another.” After all, you can now buy bondage belts at Target and H&M.

While it’s clear from their music that some rappers actually get the punk thing, others are clearly posing. “If I saw a bunch of guys in leather jackets with mohawks, I’d think they were a boy band,” James said. “Maybe the new way to rebel is to wear a three-piece suit everywhere you go.”

Want more fashion?

Snoop Through the Ages

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Johnny Marr Takes Music and Fashion Seriously

Gamen, Pilen, and Henry from the Road Devils gang sitting on Gamen's 1951 Hudson. Photo courtesy of Sten Berglind.

Raggare are modern-day greasers who are as important to Sweden’s national identity as meatballs, ABBA, and blue-eyed blonds. This is despite the fact that the raggare subculture is all about the appropriation of American cars, rock ’n’ roll, and tough-guy leather jackets. And it’s become so commonplace in Sweden that nobody looks twice when greasy-haired small-towners cruise by blasting oldies while waving the Confederate flag from their classic hot rods (or shitty Volvos if they can’t afford the real thing) on their way to the biggest American car show in the world: the annual Power Big Meet in Västerås. 

Raggare first came on the scene in the 1950s, as Swedish teenagers took inspiration from the American films and music flooding postwar Europe thanks to the Marshall Plan. Sweden had remained neutral in the war, so its industrial infrastructure was left unscathed and its export economy boomed. Suddenly, even working-class youths could afford cars, copies of Elvis Presley’s Jailhouse Rock, and tickets to Rebel Without a Cause. The US became synonymous with hope, dreams, and modernity. 

Still, this was the 50s, and Sweden was very conservative. The raggare—who were swimming naked, having sex, fighting, and drinking—quickly became a favorite scandalous subject of the tabloids. Naturally, the subculture spread as rebellious youth across Sweden and the rest of the Nordic nations began to fetishize the rough-and-tumble American youth immortalized in the movies of the time. For greasers in the US, having an American car obviously wasn’t that big of a deal. If you managed to get your hands on one in Sweden, however, you were the owner of one of the coolest clubs in town: a living room on wheels equipped with a stereo, a make-out couch, a moonshine-filled trunk, and a dance floor wherever you parked. 

Curious to find out more about the origins of these Americana-celebrating Swedes, I tracked down one of the last living members of one of the four original Stockholm raggare gangs: Sven-Erik “Svempa” Bergendahl. Svempa still spends his days pimping out his rides, only the American cars have been replaced with massive, gaudy Scania show trucks, for which he’s won more than 200 prizes at exhibitions all over the world.

Svempa, now 74 years old, in his garage in Stockholm.

VICE: How did the Swedish raggare movement begin?
Svempa Bergendahl: Gamen [an infamous early-day raggare] started the gang Road Devils in the northern part of Stockholm. To counter that, some buddies and I from the motorcycle club KFUM got into hot rods and renamed our gang Road Stars. I must have been 17 or 18 at the time. I had a Ford Thunderbird that I got for $900. Today, they cost more than $60,000. Can you believe it? Gamen and those guys hung out in the city center at a place called Cupido, while our hangout was in Bollmora, in the south. Then there were two other gangs in southern Stockholm: Car Angels in Farstanäset and Teddy Boys in Södermalm. Later, copycats started appearing in small towns, but they didn’t have real cars. They drove Volvos or Opels. We called them blöjraggare [diaper raggare].

Where did the name raggare come from?
In Swedish, ragga means “to pick up girls,” and all we did was cruise around and pick up girls. These days, people date online, but back then you had to go to clubs or do what we did: pick up girls in need of a ride. It really worked. They all wanted to drive around in nice cars. I was never that much into the ladies, but they still seemed to like me. For me, it was all about the beautiful American cars and my love for hot rods. I worked as a mechanic at a garage, and because I couldn’t afford a spanking-new Yankee [slang for “American car”], I bought old ones, fixed them up as best as I could with new hubcaps and paint, and then traded them for better cars. I must have gone through 25 old Yankees.

What was raggare life like back in the day? 
In Bollmora, there was a lady called Raggarmorsan [the raggare mom] who ran a café and let us hang out. When she was evicted from Bollmora and had to move the café to a fancier suburb in the north, we all followed, but the neighbors did not want us “raggare scum” around so there was a lot of commotion. At Raggarmorsan’s, you could buy a coffee and cinnamon bun or a Coca-Cola for about a dime, then we’d drive to various cafés around Stockholm. None of them allowed alcohol, and if they saw that your Coke was spiked—which gave it a slightly lighter color—they’d kick you out. 

Some of the lads brewed their own moonshine. I didn’t drink, though. We’d drive around all night, make out with girls, and listen to 7-inches from the car stereo or the Radio Luxembourg station, which was the only channel that didn’t play boring religious music. I usually wouldn’t get home till 4 AM. I tried to stay out of the house as much as possible because my dad was an alcoholic, and my mom was very poor and had to work several shifts as a cleaner to make ends meet. Sometimes I’d get home and only a small piece of sausage would be in the fridge. I was skinny, but some of the other guys were very handsome and popular with the girls. We’d take time fixing up our cars and spend hours in front of the mirror before driving out.

Svempa, behind the wheel, with his Road Stars gang in his 1953 Pontiac Cabriolet. Photo courtesy of Sven Aberg/Scanpix.

What sort of innovations to fashion did raggare bring to Sweden?
Looking good was very important, of course. I was one of the first in Stockholm to wear jeans. I had a pair of Wrangler Blue Bells that I’d bought in Hammarbyhamnen [the harbor in southern Stockholm] from a ship worker who had just returned from the States. My gosh, how jealous everyone was! They were in awe. This was before Lee and all those brands came to Sweden. I was so fucking proud, and the girls were ecstatic! I also wore one of those varsity jackets that you could turn inside out. We’d wear leather boots with buckles on the side and vests with the club name painted on the back. Only a few of us could afford leather jackets. That’s why we’d wear vests or jean jackets, but jeans didn’t appear until later. Then we’d put foxtails, called raggarsvansar [raggare tails], on our car antennae, and comb our hair back with Brylcreem so it’d stay in place no matter how fast we drove. Having thick black hair combed into a ducktail was considered really cool.

What were the ladies wearing back then? 
My wife, Monica, wore the highest stilettos in town and was one of the few who could actually walk in them. She worked at a shoe shop so she always wore fresh stuff. Girls didn’t wear that much makeup back then, not like the young girls you see now with eyebrows painted almost up to their hairline. Raggare girls wore eyeliner and mixed zinc paste with colored powder to get that pretty pink shade on their lips. They looked like movie stars with big hair and elegant skirts. Sometimes they wore their hair up in ponytails with cute hair clips on the sides. And hula hoops were really cool back then. There were other subcultures around at the time, jitterbug dancers who we called swingpjattare and mods who played complicated jazz in basements and wore tight pants and pointy shoes. We were all in competition for the girls. 

Was moving to the US a dream for you guys?
Yes. Some of the original raggare eventually moved to the States and did really well, but others were forced to move back. I personally never wanted to move there. I went to the States for the first time in 1989 with Scania and drove almost 4,000 miles in a truck, so I saw a lot of the country. The food was bad, people lived rough, and many of them were as big as houses. I was relieved to go home. However, people tell me that California is really nice. At the time, America had a massive influence on us because it was where Elvis Presley and rock ’n’ roll first appeared; to us, rock music came as liberation.

Raggare hanging out in a Stockholm cafe in the late 50s, early 60s. The cafes didn't serve alcohol and were simply furnished with a few tables, chairs, and a jukebox. Photo courtesy of Sten Perglind.

How did the Confederate flag become appropriated into the raggare culture?
We never used that flag, it came later, but I know that the only connotations applied to it [by the raggare] are the rock ’n’ roll and rebellion that emerged in the southern US.

What was the media’s reaction to raggare? 
We were feared in those days. It was a very different time. Sure, there were the occasional fights and petty crimes, like stealing gas or driving without a license, but compared to what kids get up to today, what we did then was nothing. But in the eyes of the media and police, who were stricter then, we were up to no good. It only took hanging out on Kungsgatan [in central Stockholm] for what the cops considered to be a bit too long for them to smash a baton into the roof of our car. I was often interviewed in the papers, and some parents even scared their kids by saying, “You better be nice or Raggar-Svempa will come and take you away!” What caused the biggest scandal was that a few of the girls got pregnant. Condoms were more or less forbidden in Sweden in the 50s, and this was before the pill, so the girls were reluctant to go all the way. But it’s easy to be peer pressured when you’re young and in love. I met my wife, Monica, at that time. She was 16, and it took months before she let me in her pants. 

What do you think about the kids today who’ve embraced a raggare-ish look? 
In my opinion, the raggare culture ended when the original gangs and our hangouts disappeared in the 70s and we moved on to family life. Sure, there are still people who call themselves raggare and busy themselves with fixing up American cars, but that just makes them car enthusiasts. What makes you a raggare is cruising around to pick up girls, but that’s no longer possible because, nowadays, you can’t hitchhike without risking getting raped or killed. There’s so much violence these days. When we started out, girls stood along the streets looking to get rides, and we’d drive around to parties and listen to Elvis Presley. That sort of thing doesn’t happen anymore.

Do you still hang out with your raggare buds all these years later?
I’m 74 and have worked my whole life and never been sick. Sadly, my friends from the early raggare days have all passed away. My teacher used to say, “Nothing will come of Svempa,” because my grades were too low to land a job at the national phone company or wherever people used to work in those days that I can’t imagine anyone enjoying. Things have turned out amazingly for me, but I’ve had to work extremely hard to get where I am today, and I couldn’t have done it without my wife’s help. She’s good at the business side of things. 

Sounds like you’ve been living the American dream, but in Sweden.
[laughs] There’s a whole culture around Svempa. I’ve met people who’ve tattooed my name on their arm. When I went to China with my show trucks, half the country knew who I was! I have my own fan club, and MTV came to my show-truck garage a few years ago with all sorts of celebrities.

Special thanks to Sten Berglind, author of Raggare.

Want more from our Fashion Issue?

Anarchy in Hip-Hop

The World's American Dream

Do People Really Dress Like Shit in Buffalo?

Photo courtesy of Mohawk Press/WNY Book Arts Center

As if Buffalo, New York didn’t have enough to worry about with its struggling economy and tons of fat people and brutal winters, last year a website called Bundle.com named the city of 260,000 the “least fashionable city in America.” Bundle based this assessment on the percentage of households that bought goods from high-end designer merchants four times in a year—New York City and LA were near the top of the list, while Buffalo was near the bottom, even trailing the terrible-looking trolls who inhabit Jacksonville, Florida and Louisville, Kentucky. Understandably, this pissed off Buffalo’s more stylish residents and business owners, who are sick and tired of hearing about how their hometown is inhabited by nothing but mouth-breathing, obese, Zubaz-wearing, unemployed rubes. To get their take on the matter, I spoke with Erin Habes, a Buffalonian who returned to her hometown in 2005 after a stint as a sales rep for high-end footwear. Shortly after moving back, Erin founded her own clothing store, began producing one of the city’s biggest annual fashion events, and was called “Buffalo’s premiere fashion maven” by Buffalo Spree magazine. So I figured she’d be a good judge of whether or not everyone in Buffalo dresses like a slob.

VICE: How badly do people really dress in Buffalo? Like, do they even know how to put on pants?
Erin Habes: Any city has its fashionable community and then has the average community that wears flannels and PJ bottoms and scrunchies in their hair. I think that there’s a healthy mix of individuals here who know how to dress. When I came back after being in New York City, it was definitely a struggle owning my own store. I like to think that I was really ahead of my time in terms of the fashion products that I had. It’s a completely different environment now; all my friends who have their own stores are doing unbelievably. Buffalo loves supporting its own. 

Were these fashionable Buffalonians angry about the Bundle.com ranking? 
Yeah! We always end up at the bottom of every single list and survey like that. People were pissed off and were using choice words. But they based it off of how many people were purchasing products from high-end, top designers, which is kind of funny considering the economic state that our country is in. 

If you gathered all the Buffalonians together, what fashion advice would you give them?
Dress appropriately for your body type. A lot of times, women and men are very misguided. They’re putting together outfits and they’ve got it going on, but sometimes someone should tell them, “You know, that’s a little too tight, you shouldn’t be showing off too much.” 

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Snoop Through the Ages

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Johnny Marr Takes Music and Fashion Seriously

Last week, we attempted to show you all the madness, weirdness, and ridiculousness that was New York Fashion Week by way of our constantly updated NYFW photo blog. Silly us, we should have known bettter. Clearly, the best way to see just how insane every person at Fashion Week is was to witness it in video, wherein you can see the freaks, geeks, weirdos, nobodys, and moguls, moving and talking just like they do in real life. Thank goodness for our old pal, Lele Saveri, who just sent us his new film "NY Deja Vu," made in association with ALLDAYEVERYDAY, which documents the best and the worst of the week. The video features the likes of Bono, A$AP Rocky, Lindsey Wixson, Anna Wintour, Nicola Formichetti, the ATL Twins, Chloë Sevigny, and Terry Richardson, as well as the people on the street and one wayyyy swagged-out Asian toddler. Do your thing, my man. Check it out below, and let's hope things get even weirder next year. 

Photo by Sylvan Magnus

Remember in the 90s when you’d walk through the mall and see teenage morons hanging outside Foot Locker or whatever wearing JNCOs and stupid earrings, and they’d sometimes have Nike swooshes or Mercedes-Benz logos shaved into their hair? It was the epitome of brand loyalty—a bunch of suckers who were using their heads as walking billboards for free. We’re not sure if Andrew Lardinois, a 33-year-old living in Portland, Oregon, was inspired by his mallrat days or came up with the idea of making extra cash by shaving the logos of local businesses into his hair all by himself. So far, he’s served as a walking commercial for a liquor store, a fashion boutique, and a coffee shop, among other places. I wanted to talk to him about how it feels to invent the “human billboard” look. 

VICE: What was the first design you shaved into your hair?
Andrew Lardinois: One day I was having my legs waxed and saw my sideburns in the mirror. I thought, These look like cowboy boots. All they need are heels etched in one side. I asked my waxer if she could turn my ’burns into boots. I knew she’d love a challenge.

And that turned into, “I should sell my head as a space for advertising”?
I began seeing a barber who specialized in using straight razors from the 1800s. He knew about the designs my waxer friend had done and wanted to try. But sideburns are an itty-bitty canvas, and he wanted a bigger surface: my head. I liked this local beer shop with a rooster logo, so my barber shaved it into my head. He even shaded the rooster with hairs of different lengths. The amount of complexity was unbelievable. Tragically, I could never see it since it was on the back of my head.

Did you just walk into the store with their logo shaved into your hair?
Oh yeah. There were a lot of jaws dropping and people running to get cameras. My hair has been exploited and abused on their Facebook page. Initially, I never asked for anything, but I got a lot of free beers. Businesses started approaching me after a while. I had to work out a pricing guide.

How much does your head cost?
Fifty dollars a week. Some of that goes to my barber. That’s still way less than any of the ad rates in local papers. I’m a walking and talking advertisement, and I’ll promote the store, no matter what. If I’ve chosen to have it on my head, everyone knows it’s worth checking out. 

Do you support yourself with ad sales?
Well, I also work at a Jackson Hewitt tax kiosk inside a Walmart.

Do they make you wear a suit or cover up your hair?
No. One of the awesome and freaky things about the Northwest is that everything’s accepted. I’m not about to wear my 13-inch mohawk in the tax office, but it’s a very progressive Walmart tax office.

Read more from our Fashion Issue:

Snoop Through the Ages

Denim All Day

Disasters Made in Bangladesh

Jack Spade shirt, Vivienne Westwood Man pants; AG Jeans top, J Brand jeans, Pluma cuff

PHOTOS BY RICHARD KERN

STYLIST: IAN BRADLEY

Hair and Makeup: Tayler Treadwell; Photo Assistant: Max Dworkin; Stylist Assistant: Miyako Bellizzi; Models: Christopher Leabu at Request, Tanya Sweet and Aline at Ford; Special Thanks to The Hudson Hotel 

Costello Tagliapietra dress, Gemma Simone earrings and ring, Tous necklace, vintage clutch from Screaming Mimi’s; Vivienne Westwood suit, Jardine shirt, Ralph Lauren Purple Label tie

Ralph Lauren Purple Label shirt, Billy Reid pants, tie, and shoes, Perry Ellis by Duckie Brown jacket, Illesteva sunglasses

Yuasa boxers

Ralph Lauren Purple Label suit and tie, Vivienne Westwood Man shirt; vintage dress from Screaming Mimi’s, Tous earrings

Gemma Simone ring

Osklen shirt, Perry Ellis by Duckie Brown pants; vintage necklace from Screaming Mimi’s, Gemma Simone ring

Tous necklace, vintage slip dress from Screaming Mimi’s

Want more from our Fashion Issue?

Anarchy in Hip-Hop

The World's American Dream

Do People Really Dress Like Shit in Buffalo?

Ale et Ange are not only a brand name you're likely to mispronounce (it's French-style: Ah-lay-Ay-Onj), but also one of the freshest New York boutiques right now. We've been singing their praises for a little while, as this feature shows, and still have tons of respect for the way they mix colorful West African ankara prints with classic designs and crisp tailoring. The store is owned and run by duo Osoré Alé Oyagha and Eloise Ange Simonet, who both grew up with clothing designer moms and learned how to craft a killer button-down without shelling out the cash for fashion school. Smart.

On the tail end of New York Fashion Week, they announced their spring/summer 2013 line as a music video for this batshit track "2 Peas." Watch Osoré bop and rap along to it, inside and near their Rivington Street store, sporting clothes and accessories from the new collection. If Ale et Ange's previous pieces are anything to go by, we predict we'll see Yasiin Bey (the MC formerly known as Mos Def) stepping out in their designs again in no time. And let's be real, not all of us can afford this swag, but that sure as hell won't stop us hitting replay on the video to keep reveling in their greatness.

If you're in New York City, drop into the Ale et Ange store at 40 Rivington Street to check out the new line. Otherwise, click over to their webstore to bag some sweet patterned caps.

Read some more on fashion:

Anarchy in Hip Hop

Raggare Love Hot Rods and Rock 'n' Roll

The A-Zs of New York Fashion Week FW 2013

In the past, we’ve done extensive coverage of New York Fashion Week, posting daily summaries from staff members and friends of all the shows and presentations everyone attended over the week. But this season we grew tired of the hustle and decided to do things in a more compelling way. We realized there was no point in having writers blast designers and get us into trouble by saying mean things about shows they didn’t like or even want to be invited to in the first place for the sake of posting about happenings in fashion. Churning out verbal diarrhea about garment construction and patterns and anticlimactic presentations while suffering from alcohol poisoning and low self-esteem just didn’t seem like a good idea anymore. In order to properly cover these events, we needed to approach the week like we would any other major life decision: we needed to chill the eff out and take time to process all the trauma we had been through like adults. Now that the festivities are over and we’ve safely made it through the holiday weekend alive and caught up on sleep after our 10-day bender, we are proud to share with you “The A-Z's of New York Fashion Week Fall/Winter 2013” according to VICE.

A Is for "Asians"

Now before you get all offended that we’re targeting an entire race, you should know that this is a huge compliment. No matter how good you think you look or dress—you will never look as effortlessly cool as every Asian guy or girl who (unsurprisingly) shows up on all the photo blogs during the week. In fact, photographers will most likely scream at you to move the hell out of the way because your hobo garb and stupid puffy face are massacring their frame of the hot half-Japanese girl standing behind you with the rockabilly bangs and a Hello Kitty umbrella. But it’s not just kids on the streets who are owning the style blogs, designers are also stepping up their game. Take Alexander Wang who, for instance, happens to be one of the most stylish and beautiful boys in the world. We can’t even come up with one bad thing to say about him or his designs. Same goes for Kathleen Kye and Choi Bo Ko from Concept Korea, 10 Crosby, Derek Lam, and Jen Kao who all showed a number of great pieces this past week that we actually wouldn’t need one of our friends to bribe us to wear outside—seriously. Good taste is just in their genes.

B Is for "Boot Camp"

Boot-camp fashion was a huge trend this season with several designers incorporating military prints, colors, and their own takes on the traditional olive drab into their collections. There were furry camouflage jackets at Michael Kors, leather sweatpants at Rachel Comey and Charlotte Ronson, structured-leather, army-green trench coats at Calvin Klein, Realtree camo at Patrik Ervell, and even tailored jackets and cargo pants at Prabal Gurung. While it might not be out of character for one of the aforementioned designers to be heard shouting “You had best square your ass away and start shitting me Tiffany cufflinks, or I will fuck you up!” Full Metal Jacket-style, but judging by their interpretations of the military trend, it’s probably best they stick to fashion and leave the safety of our country to someone who can actually run and shoot a gun and doesn’t have to worry about breaking heels or being able to breathe.  

C Is for "Cockblockers" and "Capacity"

The letter C gets two words because they’re both tied to the same category: fashion PR lies. Cockblockers are all the press agents who handle invites to shows but don’t necessarily do PR for brands on a regular basis. Whatever connections you have with the designer don't mean a thing if someone at a PR agency is actually old enough to have seen your publication some 10-odd years ago when you used to dress heroin addicts and illegal immigrants in clothing and try to pass it off as fashion. If you request a spot at an event, you’re going to get some bullshit excuse about them being at capacity or whatever even though they’re showing at the Park Avenue Armory, which is the biggest goddamn venue at NYFW. If Tom Sachs can run his “Space Program” in the same building, I assure you that my tiny ass can fit in there, too. Fuckers!

D Is for "Diets" Because Everyone Was on One

There are a number of unfortunate souls who suffered through juice cleanses, starvation, and amphetamine binges until everything inside them turned to shit and leaked out of their butts—all in the name of fashion. Generally they were the people who were the most obnoxious at shows, fighting with showroom staffers over seating, blacking out, and puking behind planters at late-night parties. Throughout the week we hated on these retards and their friendly backhanded diet tips and weird chia seeds they tried to force on us during small talk as we waited in lines for shows. But now that we look back on things, we actually should be thanking them for all the free snacks we were able to ingest as a result of their body issues. We ate every type of cookie and drank most of the beer at Milk Studios. Stole nearly a case of coconut water at Industria. [Editor’s note: Nix the chocolate-flavored water next season. It sucks!] Ate a million french fries at the Wildfox Couture presentation at Capitale, and to top it all off, we got to stand right in front of the kitchen doors at Prabal Gurung for Target without having to push anyone out of the way. It was like we were VIPs, the first to put every tiny taco and baby rum and coke in our mouths before anyone else in the room. So hats off to the skinny bitches of NYFW—you guys really missed out on some good stuff.

E Is for "Exposed Ankles"

We love the cropped-pants look that fashion guys have been jumpin’ on lately. Thom Browne kind of sparked the movement, and it’s fresh. It gives dudes an opportunity to show off their shoes and their socks. But in the wintertime, in the middle of a fucking blizzard named NEMO, that shit isn’t fresh—it’s retarded. You can’t be trudging through the doo-doo-brown snow of New York City, like men were this fashion week, with your ankles exposed to the elements. Even the schizo bums who talk to themselves and shit in plastic bags have enough sense to bundle up when it’s cold outside. They do it in the summer too, but that's beside the point.

F Is for "Famous People"

Being famous at Fashion Week is tight. You get to sit front row, cut all the lines, go to all the best parties, get free clothing from the most sought-after designers, and hang out with other famous people. If you’re extra lucky, sometimes you even get to design your own clothing line and start out right at the top; then the best magazines kiss your ass and say they love your designs, which are actually pretty basic. Privileges like these are a few of the reasons why we don’t take celebrity-run lines seriously, but we decided to suck up our pride and try to do something no one would ever expect: say one nice thing about each of them. Bono’s fashion house Edun surprisingly put on a good show this season because, thankfully, he has nothing to do with any of their designs. Victoria Beckham used a pleasant shade of yellow as well as some head-swallowing beanies in both collections, even though we don’t think she should be allowed to have two fashion lines. Katie Holmes made a nice oversized plaid jacket for Holmes & Yang that hopefully is the only item in the collection she can be held accountable for. And lastly, the Olsen twins, those two adorable tiny sweet girls, made some furry slippers that we would not be mad at if they were on our feet. Congrats, you guys accomplished something!

G Is for "Grills"

Grills are slowly but surely becoming a staple during fashion week. Random kids on the street, the ATL Twins, and even designers like Hood By Air all flashed their sets this season or incorporated them into their shows to the amusement of white people everywhere. At HBA, word got out pretty early that A$AP Rocky, the most stylish grill-sporting rapper these days, was walking in the designer’s show, so naturally everyone lost their shit and wouldn’t shut up about it for days. All the hype was well worth it though as the presentation was a 40-minute long mindfuck with thugged-out identical twins, a hyperactive smoke machine, and hoodies with blond weave—all set to drum and bass music mixed with the type of demonic sounds you’d hear on a bad acid trip... but in a good way? Aside from Rocky’s mouth full of gold, there was also an appearance from a small strange creature by the name of Boychild who convulsed down the runway like a zombie wearing what through the smoke and lasers appeared to be LED grills that flashed uncontrollably. WTF is right—but it was great to see a local designer excite a bunch of stuffy old rich fashion geeks by making ghetto style something to be desired.

H is for "Hangovers"

The severity of a hangover can tell you a lot about the night before. While you often wake up with a really bad one because you had the worst night of your life, normally it’s due to the fact that you did something that was ridiculously fun. This fashion week there was no shortage of parties to attend or hangovers to suffer—so many that we 100 percent definitely wouldn’t be alive writing this right now if we actually tried to brave them all. There are a lot we have no recollection of for bad reasons (i.e., they were lame), but there are a few good ones that we can remember, but barely...  We think the VFiles party the first night of shows was good—Le1f DJed, they had free piña coladas, and everyone in the room was dressed like a teenager on Tumblr. ØDD's pre–fashion show after-party at Le Baron was probably worth the pain—it was Chinese New Year and even though it was packed and everyone was crammed up against walls, we vaguely recall copping feels on some babes trying to “get to the bathroom.” The purple magazine party was probably full of cool French people and as impossible to get into as it is every season; we know it was good because they always are. But as usual our party was by far the best of all—Juelz Santana performed, the ATL Twins hosted, half of the office didn’t show up to work the next day, AND we got a mention in “Page Six.” Boom! The New York Post never lies.

I is for "Idiots Who Post Indecipherable Photos of Fashion Shows on Instagram"

NEWSFLASH: Instagram recently saw its most embarrassing week in post-history when suddenly everyone in New York City became a “photographer” and began posting photos of the most bizarre and unflattering things no one would ever care about or want to see ever. Instagrammers posted image after image of indecipherable photos with the hashtag #NYFW. Sources who have viewed the subpar posts whose subjects were even further masked by shitty photo filters like Hudson and Valencia have had several guesses as to what the nature of these horrendous pictures could be. Some say these grainy blurs of light are models midstrut during one of the many runway shows during New York Fashion Week. Others say they are mirror “selfies” that are so poorly shot due to the intense hand shaking of the photographers who might have been grappling with alcohol withdrawal or cocaine jitters while trying to take a successful image of their clothing. However, the most shocking of these reports comes from an exclusive inside source who claims these images are all just a series of  “dick pics.” More on the overwhelming evidence leading to this conclusion after the break…

J is for "Jewel Tones"

To be a successful trend forecaster or blogger who reviews shows for the masses, you have to get creative with your lingo and be able to verbally sell a garment or idea to someone who normally might not give a shit about what you’re writing. Calling colors by their literal terms is uninteresting: writing that a dress is “mustard” is vile, “maroon” as a word is so overdone, and nobody really knows how to spell "fuchsia" without googling it (I'm gong to start pronouncing it "fuck-sia"). But  a “jewel tone”? Now that sounds way more luxurious and whoever began using that phrase first in correlation with fashion is a freaking genius. Nobody gives a rat’s ass about a show that featured a “blue dress.” Screw that! That sounds like something for poor people! But if you tell them about a show that featured a jewel-toned sapphire dress, chicks are going to be clawing at their computer screens and frantically clicking “Read More.” Take the designs from this past season for instance. Think about their literal colors, now think about them in terms of emeralds, rubies, and amethyst jewel tones. Your flowery use of the English language just scored your bloggin’ ass a seat at a bunch of shows next season.

K is for "Air Kissing"

What is it with French and Italian people always wanting to air kiss you on the face? No matter if you’re a complete stranger or not, they want to get your oily sweaty cheek pressed up against their cakey makeuped face, and they want you to pretend to be happy about it—and twice, once on each side! God forbid you even try to get off by only kissing one cheek, they won’t let you go. They make you do the other side or they give you some offended look like you just called their mother a whore or smacked them in the face. They even force their customs onto people they don’t even genuinely like—it’s such an invasion of personal space. Listen, it’s cute and all that you wanna get up in my face and act like we’re besties even though we just met, but this is AMERICA. A limp-dick handshake will do, we work in fashion—we’re just going to all turn around and talk shit on each other in a second anyway, so let’s not put too much effort into this.

L is for "Lying Your Way into Everything"

Lying is the most important skill to possess during fashion week. It’s an art that everyone must master if you ever dream of seeing top shows or attending cool parties you would never ever normally be invited to. While a lot of press agents and door guys are actually rude SOBs, if you say “please” and “thank you” with strong enough conviction, you can crack the surface of the cold shell that protects what is left of their barely beating hearts. Once you’ve been identified in their eyes as a charming helpless invitee who is not trying to give them a hard time or be a bitch about them not being able to find your name on their guest list (because they never wanted you there / you didn’t RSVP), they’ll usually warm up to you enough and let you in. But you have to truly believe your own story before you go off spouting a bunch of horse shit and stumbling over your own words about you losing your phone in a cab or your email crashed, etc. As highly trained professional liars, press people can tell when you’re full of it. You need to practice your monologue to beat them at their own game.

M is for "Music at Shows"

Fashion shows are unbelievably boring. You wait in insane lines for 45 minutes just to listen to a DJ hit shuffle on their iTunes for three minutes while a bunch of human mannequins walk around looking confused on a stage. What the hell are we supposed to write about that? Why couldn’t we just watch that crap on our computer in the morning? All of these questions and more came to mind after a lot of the shows we saw this year. Which is why we commend the designers who actually took a more interesting approach by hiring musical acts to set the tone for their collections. Rachel Comey, who designs classically pretty women’s apparel, suddenly became someone we give a shit about when we were treated to a live performance by Blonde Redhead during her show. We were engaged, we fanned out; sure we also stared at Kazu Makino for a bit and thought about how good she looks for having a horse stomp all over her face, but still, we paid attention to the clothing and were happy to be there. Chloë Sevigny, who is already cool as hell, somehow became even cooler by staging her Opening Ceremony show in the really cool St. Mark’s Church. She even had cool bands I.U.D., Bleached, Lissy Trullie, Light Asylum, and even cooler, the coolest woman on Earth, Kim Gordon, perform. We even got down with some Opera during Fashion Week thanks to Tara Subkoff not boring the hell out of us with a very nice operatic performance at her Imitation of Christ presentation.

N is for "Never Wear Those Hats"

There were a lot of great hats on the runway this season, from the peculiar-brimmed baseball caps of Patrik Ervell to the tall wide-brim fedoras of Robert Geller. But off the runway, people had some awful headgear. Everyone was either wearing those neo-colored skullies that look like condoms with a reservoir tip or those played-out baseball caps that try to cleverly mock high fashion. We get it, you saw Rocky get props for wearing the Comme Des Fuck Down hat last year and you thought you’d one-up him with a Kenzo-baiting “Bimbo” hat. Well, we’re sorry, but that shit is played. Take your own advice and calm down. We do, however, want to give a shout-out to pricks who wore hats with curse words on them. We saw a lot of offensive guys and gals with flat-brimmed snap backs that had the word “pussy” embroidered on them—pussy being something we can always get behind in fashion and anywhere else.

O Is for "Old People Style"
Since there is nothing new to create because everything has already been created, a lot of designers draw inspiration for their collections from past decades, over and over and over again, and then sell it for insanely high prices and make money off of other people's ideas. This fall/winter season you once again can expect to see a lot of things you’ve already seen before but this time they’re items you tried to cop from Grandmom and Pop Pop’s closet. It’s not necessarily a bad thing that the designs aren’t entirely original, since according to photos you’ve seen of your grandparents they used to be cool and and look fine as hell. It’s great that designers like Tommy Hilfiger, Rag & Bone, N. Hoolywood, Michael Kors, and Trina Turk are taking a page out of their book by making updated versions of their wardrobe so you get all the good things about old peoples clothing without the freaky smells that comes with them. If you can stop eating long enough to afford anything from these collections, you’ll make your grandparents happy, and maybe they’ll quit asking “why you no dress nice?” in broken English every goddamn time they see you.

P Is for "Promotional Items"
Every year, there will be some kind of item that is an official sponsor of fashion week, and you will be able to get an unlimited supply of it for free everywhere you go. And every year, without exception, the item is some kind of bullshit that nobody wants, no matter how free it is. I think they do it just to fuck with people. This year, it was Fiber One bars, which were in bins around the venues and in goodie bags and being thrust into your hands by promo girls. It must cost them so much money, and I have no idea why they do it. I guess to get their products into the hands of the fashion press in the hopes that they’ll include them in their coverage? So. Fiber One bars taste exactly halfway between a granola bar I found down the back of a seat in a rented minivan one time and a copy of the Bible. I'd say that everyone at fashion week has been having really regular bowel movements because of all these Fiber One bars, but as we previously explained, nobody eats shit at fashion week. 

Q Is for "Questions We’d Like You to Answer"
Since no one seems to know anything about the way things are run during fashion week, we figured our best way of getting answers to our burning questions below would be to include them in our post. Things we’d really like to know:

1) What jerk is responsible for scheduling all of the good shows during the week in the same time slots on opposite sides of town?

2) Does anyone actually make any money off of these dramatic shows and awkward presentations?

3) How would you feel if all designers decided to skip out on traditional shows and just went digital so the only way you could view their designs was through a computer screen or a TV?

4) What mastermind is the brains behind the epic stoner-dorm-room Highland presentation we spent an entire hour at last week?

5)  Who do you think was the most slammin’ model babe this fashion week?

6) And most important of all: Was Leonardo DiCaprio REALLY seen at Milk Studios/who was he with/who was he there to see/is he still hot enough to be considered bone worthy? Pics or it didn’t happen. Google isn’t telling us anything.

R is for "Reading Press Releases"
I recently found out that press releases for fashion shows are written by an external company that just does that. Sometimes, when I'm not feeling too good about my life, I think about the people whose job it is to write them. And how often they must cry tears of regret for majoring in creative writing. And the mental process they must go through to be able to look at a fucking T-shirt, and write something like this (which is taken from an actual press release) about it:

"Carlotta's designing is always political in direction and focused on true social matters. This collection is based on the fight against racism, particularly on the deportation of Africans to America before the 1865 civil war. As Carlotta states as boldly as her powerful designs: ‘I protest against racism! This is my message, this is my fashion.’"

And then I don't feel too bad about things anymore. Keep on fighting the good fight, person who's name is CARLOTTA.

S is for "Science"
Several designers this year found some form of inspiration in the sciences for their collections. Jeremy Scott’s monster-themed pieces were a cross between the trippy party-kid style in Gregg Araki’s Nowhere, Where the Wild Things Are, and The Fifth Element. Lindsay Degen created a tribute to her geneticist parents called “Doctor’s Degen” by knitting sweaters featuring their faces and through her epic use of brightly colored appliqué on leggings in odd shapes that resemble the kind of crap you’d normally find growing inside a petri dish. Asher Levine inserted some insane futuristic Bluetooth technology watchamacallits into his garments to ensure their wearers don’t lose track off their personal belongings, Most impressive was a ridiculous Batmanesque jacket that contained the same tracker-app capabilities. Adi, Gabi, and Ange at ThreeAsFour made all of their models look like extraterrestrials... again. Even though we enjoyed the spacey atmosphere of the shows at this year's NYFW, we're still waiting for a designer to debut his kid's collection by having a tiny baby alien with razor-sharp teeth explode out of a model's chest during a show. What's NYFW if it isn't entertaining?

T is for "Take My Picture"
Watching the attention whores in clown costumes who stand outside of shows begging to have their pictures taken is one of the most soul-crushing aspects of fashion week. We’re all for a more egalitarian fashion scene where people from different backgrounds can take part in the culture of clothes, but this whole fashion-photo-blog shit has gone too far in giving obnoxious weirdos a reason to live. Fashion is a big enough joke as it is, it doesn't need a bunch of self-serious dudes in Pope-inspired capes made of Saran wrap to take it into sideshow territory. If you wanna wear oddball shit and have people take your picture, join the Coney Island freak show—at least that's a real job. As opposed your current gig, which is basically being a professional at ruining otherwise nice things that sane people enjoy.   

U Is for "Ultraviolet"
For those of you who've forgotten what you learned in elementary school science class, fluorescent lights emit high levels of UV radiation. Even though disposing of these lights can be totally hazardous (does fashion REALLY need another excuse to be wasteful?), they crept up in the backdrops for a bunch of different shows including Rodarte, ØDD, Ohne Titel, and Milly—who, along with Nanette Lepore, also had some trippy technicolor fabrics. In other news, purple was definitely having a moment, from the makeup at Jason Wu to the violet, geometric dresses at Lisa Perry and the plum Common Projects sneakers at Robert Geller. With all of the bright colors and and abstract shapes, we can’t help but wonder if there is some direct relationship between the fashion industry and the recent resurgence of MDMA on the streets as everyone's new drug of choice this season. Coke is SO passé.

V Is for "Vine"
If you have an iPhone and haven’t downloaded Vine yet, do yourself a solid and get on that as soon as you finish reading this. Vine is free, it works like Instagram for video (minus the horrendous filters), and is a SUPREMELY better way to view fashion in real time. Another great feature is that you don't have to record all six seconds of video at once either. You hold your finger on the screen to record, so you can capture all the nuances of your favorite model strutting half naked down the runway, or capture the collection in succession during a show's finale. Brilliant. OH, and the app's technically NC-17, so obviously we also like it for NSFW purposes like making your own porno.

W  Is for "Wheat Timberlands"
Traditionally, nubuck Timberlands are the footwear of choice for the gangster-ass clan of MCs straight from Shaolin, construction workers, and overweight white dudes who hunt pheasants. But this fashion week, sartorial culture appropriators adopted the honey-colored boots with a force that hasn't been seen since white folks stole rock ‘n' roll. Standing in line for shows at Milk was like being in a cypher in the early '90s. We're all for reinterpreting culture and mixing it up and making it something new, but we're not sure Timbs go well with avant-garde ninja dresses. But then again, Rocky just rocked a dress and some Timbs on 106th and Park, so what the hell do we know.

X is for "XIV" or "the 14th: The Last Most Depressing Day of Fashion Week"
Fashion week is always kind of a bummer, but this year was especially shitty considering the festivities bled into Valentine’s Day. Even if you had plans with your significant other, you were probably too tired from dealing with dicks, assholes, and pussies all week at NYFW to play with real dicks, assholes, and pussies on Valentine's Day. But we weren't the only ones who were stressed out—Marc Jacobs had a really rough week. The blizzard delayed the arrival of important fashion editors and journalists from attending his Marc by Marc show earlier in the week. Then the traditional Monday timeslot for Marc Jacobs ended up being pushed to Thursday due to missing show samples. Since Thursday was the beginning of London Fashion Week, another large number of people he really wanted to show his collection off to had already skipped town. Awws! Sorry, buddy, your collections were really really great—we kinda feel bad for you. But also not that bad ‘cause we still, like all the other alternative publications, didn’t get invited. We sympathize because we can identify with the young punk “I don’t give a fuck”  version of you. Why you acting so fancy these days that the kind of guys and girls you started designing for can’t come chill? This is the biggest bummer of NYFW that breaks the cool kids’ hearts every single fashion week.

Y is "Young People Wearing Fur"
Fur wasn’t seen that much on the runway this NYFW, and designer Patrik Ervell even told us that he thought that real fur was “gross.” But, it seems to be coming back in a major way on the street. Guys and girls alike were rocking coats made of the hair and skin of dead animals all over Fashion Week. Some had floor-length coats they undoubtedly pulled from their grandmothers' closets, while others were rocking shearling pelts and cropped jackets with fur lining and hoods. Hopefully this trend will build up enough steam that PETA will start bukkaking assholes with paint again. That would make the next NYFW so much more interesting.

Z is for "Zero Fucks Given"
We love making fun of the freaks and weirdos who play dress up on the streets and the designers who push boundaries with their shows during fashion week. But at the end of the day, we have to give the oddballs props for being themselves and not giving a flying fuck if people hate on it or not. It takes balls for someone with balls to wear a dress or someone with a vag to cut all their hair off and dress like 50 Cent. As long as you’re doing that because that’s who you are and it’s not some scheme to get famous on a fashion blog, then we are a 100 percent behind it. The world would be a much shittier, dismal place if it weren’t for weirdos like Oliver Shayne, Chromat, Jeremy Scott, and Phillipe Blond making things sexy, fun, and fierce while the rest of us hump the bed alone on a Saturday night after drinking a six pack of Coors and eating a burrito. Someone has to be creative and make a difference, so please keep doing just that.

Follow Contributors to This Massive Article on Twitter:

@ABunny

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And check out some of our favorite pieces from New York Fashion Week FW2013:

New York Fashion Week... On Acid!

Black Man in a Dress

VICE's New York Fashion Week Photo Blog

Illustration by Michael Shaeffer

I was hanging out in a business-class lounge at JFK airport, waiting for my flight, when I saw two women enter, one American, one Italian. Try to tell me which is which: 

The first was tall and slender, wearing a fitted puffy jacket, tight jeans, aviator sunglasses, and a pair of high-heeled boots that could have been featured on the front page of Gilt that very day. She looked relaxed, classy, and very rich, like she was about to go to the plastic surgeon’s office for a tune-up.

The second woman was wearing Uggs and gray sweatpants with the word pink scrawled across the back. A mismatched sweatshirt completed the look, topped off by a sloppy bun that looked more like a pile of garbage than a hairstyle. In other words, the American. Revelation, America: Other nationalities make fun of our seeming inability to dress like full-grown adults on airplanes. It’s no secret that, by and large, we look like shit.

“I think every American female I have ever seen on a flight has been wearing Victoria’s Secret yoga pants,” said Naoise, a rather fashionable Irish national. “Yoga pants, a baggy college sweatshirt, and Minnetonka moccasins. This is a thing my friends and I genuinely talk about. Americans on planes dress like they’re going to bed or were recently bereaved.”

In the days when air travel was new and exciting, flying through the sky on an awe-inspiring work of engineering was a special occasion for which people were inclined to look their best. Now flying, for many people, is just the least inconvenient means of conveyance. The TSA doesn’t help matters either, with its insistence we remove our shoes and all of our accessories and skulk through metal detectors while holding our pants up like criminals. It makes people want to dress “comfy,” which is just making this problem worse. 

Somewhere along the line, Americans decided that they would rather be comfortable than glamorous. “I think a lot of people take flying as a chance to let themselves go, even if they are taking a one- or two-hour flight,” said Amira, a young lady who’s spent time in both the Middle East and the Midwest. Thus the international stereotype that Americans are slobs who stumble off planes with enormous body pillows, Crocs, and cargo shorts, not caring at all how other people think they look. No wonder everyone hates the United States. If we’re going to keep bombing everyone, the least we can do is not wear pajama jeans in public.

Check out more from our Fashion Issue:

Johnny Marr Takes Music and Fashion Seriously

The World's American Dream

Denim All Day