New Icons: JW Anderson Creates a Bag with an Attitude Problem
An Accessory from the Designer’s Pre-Fall Collection Speaks to the Power of Youthful Angst
Outcast turned social madonna, the septum ring reminds us of that girl everyone thought was weird in high school who somehow now has hundreds of thousands of Instagram followers. Her lunchroom anarchism shared common traits with the raging bull pierced by its benevolent handler. Once viewed as a problem, her delinquent streak now confidently finds its power in the ever-shining spotlight of the digital era. “A diamond in the rough,” her agent would later explain of her most angsty years.From his remarkably off-kilter Pre-Fall 2016 collection, JW Anderson’s Pierce Bag forges a relationship between this standard of outsidership and our current criteria for fashion. The bag, with its endearing accordion shape and punctured front, swaddles its irregular proportions in lush leather and suede in an attempt to protect its raw, misunderstood, unwonted core. It speaks to the fact that outcasts have not just stormed the gates of luxury, they are now comfortably lounging inside. Rising from the ashes as a full embodiment of modern alternativism, one could easily spend days mapping out how the septum ring came to the forefront of contemporary fashion. This arcane fixture of indigenous culture has gone from taboo to trendy while still remaining firmly at the intersection of cryptic and cool.The rest of Anderson’s collection further exemplifies these symbols of the unorthodox. His use of esoteric forms gives insight into how he views fashion: not through historical reference, but through an abstracted sense of utility. Expertly executing this thought process, Anderson places these simulated elements alongside contradicting textures and structures, constructing them into a collection oozing of otherworldly elegance. Classic sweatshirts rounded off with three-dimensional pocketing halt our brain's ability to differentiate between needs and wants. It straddles the line between cashing in and selling out. Fashion, as a practice, is evolutionary, not revolutionary. Don’t sleep on the strange. We all know success happens overnight.
A Guide to the Future and This Season’s Products SSENSE Menswear Report: Fall/Winter 2016 We don’t look at Woodstock ‘99 with the same nostalgia-goggles as the original. 1969 was the summer of love, whereas ‘99 was the summer of mall counterculture: with goths, grunge kids, and metalheads freely colliding. It was the beginning of youth as a type of digital polyamory, where subcultures could intermingle without being part of a tribe. This moment is now reflected in today’s moshed and remixed runway looks. Coexistence is in. 
Riding Through Paris with Perks and Mini The Label’s Co-Founder Misha Hollenbach Leads a High-Speed Bike Tour Through the City and Explains Why Catching Feelings Is Vital to His Creative Process For 16 years, Perks and Mini has been characterized by an effortless flow that belies an astounding hyper-productivity. Co-founder Misha Hollenbach equates the process to yogic breathing, a cycle of inhaling vast stores of imagery and exhaling them back into the public. Fluid, unpredictable, and totally uncompromising, PAM is more an organism than a label, a pan-historical meditation that speaks to both living subcultures and the ancients. 
SSENSE Womenswear Report: Fall/Winter 2016 A Guide to the Future and This Season's Products Launched in 1985, Christian Dior’s Poison was a women’s fragrance that defined an era of power-dressing styles and animalistic luxury. It was an updated take on a classic powder fragrance that matched equally well with boutique and discotheque interiors, emanating a distinct Bonfire of the Vanities vibe. But in 2016, opulence is more of a game than a modus operandi. Signifiers of excess are more impactful when employed coyly and judiciously: a devastatingly sharp jacket, a commanding color, a flash of gold.