Yes, that’s really womenswear that you see. Eva & Bernard’s AW10/11 “Easy Tailoring” collection (via coûte). It’s no secret that I want every scrap of this collection. But I’d probably have to fight Michaela for it, which would probably be a losing proposition.

(image via @saulpims via Vonelle)

“The road to hell is paved with good intentions” is probably one of the best adages that one should remember when navigating adulthood. In the past almost three months during which you haven’t heard from me (or Michaela) I’ve managed to find and transition into an awesome new job and had my heart stomped on by an engineer boot-wearing, criminally long-legged, mixed signal-sending dude who I used to think was really awesome.  And in the world outside, probably none of this amounts to a hill of frijoles, but on the inside over here I’ve realized that new (and pretty demanding) employment as an immigration paralegal combined with the vagaries of trying to develop something with a really handsome, but deeply damaged working musician is a recipe for disaster that gets in the way of fashion, music, art appreciation, writing, quality food, homemaking, and all the other things that get me through the workweek (and the night). This, of course, also means knitting, which is kind of counterintuitive because all of the above combined to create a situation in which a lot of the time that I wasn’t working my pulchritudinous backside off (really, I’ve somehow lost a dress size) was still spent doing stuff with Michaela, or alone, which usually means knitting. Instead, there were lots of tears and sci-fi and too many trips to Financier and Sephora.

So I’ve pulled back a little over the past few days, and am regrouping, finding myself back here, finding myself knitting my first hat EVER (with four ends of Jaggerspun Zephyr laceweight, natch), and thinking about morphing the aggressive black metal Setesdal project that I hadn’t yet started into a dolman-sleeve sweaterdress featuring a mixed colorwork portrait of Isabella Blow. How’s that for a change of direction?

But if you asked me one really fucking awesome thing that’s happened recently, I’d have to say the Saturday that Michaela and I spent with our friend Nicholas wherein we had an extended visit to Rick Owens and Atelier and I fell further in love with criminally unaffordable menswear knits and leather. (And, alas, had some pretty moony moments thinking about wrapping up the aforementioned long-legged so-and-so in said leather.) I’d also have to say that night I went to see Recoil and stood about 25 feet away from Alan Wilder and was lamely and profoundly moved by the experience. Or this (we love these bitches). Or the night I fixed the toilet flusher with a twistie. Or any of the evenings during which Michaela perfected the clafoutis. Who knew that amateur plumbing and a really ugly cherry custard thing from Limousin could define a summer? Because it kind of did.

So, yeah. I guess I’m back. Which feels kind of quietly awesome.

Ignore the mandals, it’s all about the knits…except that one black rag with the asymmetrical zipper that’s too heavy for the fiber that’s trying to support it. Burberry, fuck yeah. See the show at Coûte: Pt 1, Pt 2.

Styled by Dazed’s fashion director Robbie Spencer and photographed by Richard Burbridge, this editorial is a virtual keyboard mash of button-pushing in terms of themes, styling and all-out Weimar weirdness. Fashionisto (view the whole ball of wax there) summed it up simply as “disturbing,” but I’m not sure that it is, given that Spencer’s savvy styling is a direct reference to German artist Otto Dix, who is a longtime fave of the ladies of Yarneteria.

The lead editorial photo features JW Anderson’s clever mesh-covered aran, one of a suite of smart sweaters in the Irish designer’s AW10 collection, which delivers punk militaria and unexpected textures from a distinctly Celtic perspective. View the haunting collection presentation at the link above.

The stylistic decision to use Úna Burke’s lushly fetishistic leather body cast is another surprise. Burke’s own explanation of her collection gets to the heart of the matter:

This is a conceptual collection of wearable art pieces, depicting a series of eight human gestures associated with the cause, the physical and psychological effect and the healing stages of human trauma. Sculptural forms are created around the shape of the contorted female body. A number of pieces are reminiscent of prosthetics and medical braces. This signifies the potential for healing within the boundaries of something which inhibits the body.

The call and response of the Dazed editorial with Otto Dix’s Der Krieg (1924) and later portraits of grotesquely disfigured veterans in Weimar slums and society is palpable. Dix’s etchings, aquatints and paintings offer an unflinching view at the abject horror of WWI and the underbelly of Berlin nightlife before the Third Reich. Paar im Café (Café Couple, 1921) is one of my favorites that shows the juxtoposition of WWI’s primitive medical legacy with the artistic fervor and social pageantry of the Weimar Republic. This watercolor as well as all of Der Krieg and many portraits are on exhibit at the Neue Galerie through August 30, and we recommend that you visit, providing geographical feasibility.

And of course, we can’t close this without a musical reference. Here’s Ultravox’s “Vienna,” which features all of the above imagery, plus Midge Ure:

It’s a little atypical to look at editorials and realise that a shoot has captured the vision that you have for your own line, but that’s a little (a lot?) of what happened when I saw this editorial styled by John Tan and shot by Ryan Michael Kelly for Sportwear International. That it features Red’s Brad Bowers is doubly neat, because he’s the corporate fantasy model for this year’s designs. The hair. Seriously. See the whole ball of wax at Fashionisto.