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FORGETLESSNESS

Apologies to Ilan and the legion at LEGION for cutting-in-line here. Serves 'em right for trusting me with the password to this joint.

I was going to post this over at the Guild's research archive. I briefly entertained the notion of shoving into the DENHAM blog, or the KDU or RIOTTT. But something about this particular rant seems like it belonged here in L.A.

When I was growing up in the States in the 70's there was one men's magazine dedicated to fashion. It was G.Q. There were other rags that included fashion angles (notably Esquire and to some extent the culture and music titles like Interview and Rolling Stone). I think back on it now. Crazy. Today you can drop into an AM/PM on nearly every block in Tokyo, scan the magrack and you'll see dozens of titles focused on men's fashion. But American in the 70's was very different. Guys were mostly embarrassed to be caught thinking about clothes. Even now it helps if there's a picture of a pinup on the cover and the promise that gadgetry will be reviewed with equal weight and column-inches as garments.

I'll assume the point is made. G.Q. was the single source for information back then. This is very very hard to imagine by today's standards, obviously.

When I was in art school I earned extra bread by working in the school's design-library. The place wasn't actually open because of construction activity, so I spent my time alone with the books and magazines. I'm not proud of it, but I took advantage of the lax vibe and boosted a couple of magazines for my private library. Shame on me.

One of these was the first issue of G.Q. of the 70's decade. It was also the magazine's 100th issue. Imagine this; menswear editors and stylists are standing at the brink of a new decade. An important new decade for menswear, where the counter-culture and free expression had be pre-approved before the journey had begun (check out Thomas Frank's The Conquest of Cool for more). Well, these folks dedicated their first 70's issue to imagining what was to come. Tomorrow Today. That's the issue I confiscated and which I've held onto ever since.


Now it's over twenty years since I acquired the issue and almost 40 years since it was published. But I thought of it again recently after participating in a fashion seminar with Otto von Busch. Otto twisted my melon a little unexpectedly with what he had to say. I can't do his ideas justice here, but one element was that the season-based cyclical character of the fashion system stems from there being essentialy too much energy in the system (an all powerful life-giving sun, a bountiful planet, excesses of energy, creativity, etc). And, in order to keep things flushing through at a healthy rate we have figured out ways to destroy and dispose of the excess. We can't help but make the new (we gotta do something with all this creative energy) so we regularly need to flush the old. We destroy fashion through the destructive act of the SALE for instance. To make this all work, we've figured out ways to CREATE FORGETTING. The creation of forgetting is fundamental to our process. Without it the whole system would need to change.

We've built an entire industry and balanced it teetering on the mostly invisible and pretty ridiculous concept of FORCED FORGETTING. Amazing.

I think of how bright and well informed folks are today. Especially younger folks who've developed an acumen relative to gathering and valuing information. So much more information available so much faster and richer today. And still, the cycle of forgetting continues unchecked. Maybe it even moves quicker... -If we didn't "quickforget" why would we need a "quickstrike" from Nike?

Despite how smart we're all getting, looking back now at this G.Q. I marvel at how much we've forgotten.

Among other things the issue offers a forecast on which young desigers will be shaping the next era of menswear. If I ever knew any of these characters, I'd forgotten every single one with the sole exception of a young Ralph Lauren, age 29. Well, I guess I remember Peter Max who did the issue's cover too.

But the rest...  -never heard of 'em. Their images suffer a little or benefit a little from the prevailing style of the day. That is to say they look 70's-lame or 70's-dope depending on your perspective. And some have doper style than others. But I'd never heard of them. Any of them. I might have first assumed I was looking at Halston, Ellis or Rabanne, but I wasn't.





One way to forget less is to make, sell, acquire and wear clothes that last. Quality is hard to forget. Quality materials, quality trim, quality make and quality design. It doesn't matter that we don't remember these guys. If what they made was worthwhile and I ever trip over it during my frequent dives into vintage, than its quality will be the thing that matters.

Now more than ever seems like the time for quality. Maybe it can contribute to a partial cure for the endless forgetting. As I scan through the products and labels Legion invests in I'm inspired by this notion that the next era (our era) can usher in contemporary sources of near timeless quality. We won't mind if our names are forgotten or we look a bit dumb in old photographs as long as the stuff we exchanged was substantial. As long the quality is FORGETLESS.

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A.F.F.A.

AFFA

First: I’m not qualified to speak about AFFA. I don’t know that much about it.

Second: The muddled impression I can offer is definitely not sanctioned by AFFA’s creators.

–But, I was moved literally to tears by a mere sketch of the endeavor so fuck-it, I guess I’m willing to be the unauthorized guy getting it wrong in print. Apologies to the core group more expert on the subject if my account diminishes the thing in anyway.

For a short time I had the privilege of lending the crew at Visvim a helping hand. Nothing of any fundamental importance, but they let me tag along on some projects here and there. I was occasionally in Tokyo for the purpose.

Once during a Visvim VIP (Friends & Family) collection-launch in a rented space down the boulevard from Cow Books Hiroki Nakamura indicated that Hiroshi Fujiwara had a project I might be interested in seeing. I’ll confess I get a little nervous around people of genuine stature and I had been sorta star struck the very few times prior when I had interacted with Fujiwara. Sorry for that. I’m just that uncool.


I joined Hiroshi at his coffee table where he explained that he had just received a galley-proof of a new hardback book he and Jun Takahashi were producing to compliment a special series of garments they had created under the series label, A.F.F.A. This was to be presented at Dover Street Market.

Anarchy Forever, Forever Anarchy.

I had no idea what he was talking about at first but assumed if I paid attention and kept up my concentration I would be able to decode what was taking place in real time.

Since it was a galley proof, Hiroshi flipped the pages for me himself. It took me way too many page-flips to put it together. My self-consciousness slowed down my analytical skills maybe.

Every page featured a gorgeously lit full-bleed photograph of a laydown of a garment from the Westwood/McLaren SEX & Seditionaries collections. Page after page after page. Specimen after specimen.

Once he sensed that I was starting to get the conept Hiroshi explained that both he and Jun had been avid collectors of used Westwood/McLaren designs. Both he and Jun had traveled from Tokyo to London to acquire items and had either paid for them or traded the work of Japanese designers in exchange. –And both he and Jun had begun this practice way back when they were in their teens. They had clearly been Otaku on the subject because this was a very very thick book.


Now I understood. These images were of used/worn/distressed/loved/personal artifacts from a small army of mostly anonymous British traders over the years who had met either Hiroshi or Jun and whose grip on their own gear had been loosened by the charm and trading skills of the then very young Japanese aficionados…. And by their willingness to invest. (When I later shared the story with Simon Armitage he laughed and told me he was one of those traders back in the day. A much more reliable source than Damien fell victim to).


It was at that point the pure passion of the thing began to rumble off the pages through the airspace above the coffee table and softly pummel my lower stomach. The image (boyish, romantic and doubtlessly factually inaccurate on my part) of Westwood and McLaren crafting these designs decades ago… -The thought of the raw force and culture-changing impact their efforts constituted imprinting itself on the minds of two Japanese teenagers before the Internet, before mobile phones, before the fucking fax-machine. These and a host of other thoughts filled my head so fast that they began to jam down into my neck and shoulders. I was standing there trying to remain calm while my entire body was filling up with thoughts swimming in a strange brew of sentiment. Did this lead to me? Was I at that point-in-time standing on that location talking to this man because of the work of Westwood and McLaren?


I think I said, “they remind me of images of the Shroud of Turin,”. Yeah, except there’s only one shroud. Multiply an oddly similar blend of divinity, mystery, boro-filth, tactility, texture, urgency, naivety and beauty by hundreds of lushly printed pages of punk-shrouds and guess what happens?

What happens is that you end up fighting back the tears.

Then I think I said; “do either Westwood or McLaren know you are doing this?”. Hiroshi said; “I don’t think so, I hope they wouldn’t mind,”.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and assert that they probably know by now since this all occurred three years ago. And I’m going to assert that they wouldn’t (shouldn’t) mind. Not a goddamn bit. On the contrary, this project and these photographs represented explosive testimony as to the unforcastable achievement of their early efforts. This testimony educated me immediately and directly. In a flash, by the last page-flip, I understood. I could see the whole dramatic and socio-historic arc in which we now work.

An astral mist swirling tighter and tighter until it entered the hearts and informed the impulses of Westwood and McLaren launching back out of them like a Big Bang. Sending out thousands of new trajectories among which we are still navigating today.

Seeing these pictures of these clothes in this galley proof made me feel absolutely as if I was part of it. Not a big or important part, but a small gravel-chip propelled by Westwood and McLaren’s orginal sin following the dead straight path ordained by that kind of inertia. Never before having realized to what I owed the originating momentum. Never before seeing the whole thing in quite that way.

Part of Hiroshi’s retrospective fascination is that he had not known Jun during the time they were both collecting. Their natural bond was fortified further by the discovery that they had both shared such a specific (and exotic) mutual interest simultaneously but without conspiracy, pretense or plot. That simple fact contains the DNA of the same sensations I was having.  A simple eureka of; ITS ALL CONNECTED.

EPILOGUE
A year later I met Malcolm McLaren. He was manning his own stand at Bread & Butter Berlin. I did the lame thing and introduced myself as a fan. He was representing a project in kidswear whereby he was using highly pixilated graphics to create allover prints for Italian textiles. We talked briefly about this. I didn’t ask him if he had heard of the AFFA project.

Then something very fucked-up happened. Hiroshi appeared together with Hiroki. There in Berlin. At the show. They thought I might be around and were swinging by to say “hi”. I told them about McLaren’s attendance and they went over to his booth to rap with him. It was explained to him that Hiroshi was a famous DJ, but I don’t think they brought up the AFFA thing with him.

THERE OUGHT TO BE AN EXHIBIT
I have no influence with anybody who could make this happen, but there really should be an exhibit of this project somewhere in the West. In my mind’s eye I can see it clearly.

The MoMu, The V&A, F.I.T, here in the Netherlands.,… -Somewhere. Hiroshi & Jun’s beautiful archive photos blown-up giant. Maybe 180% of actual size. Shot with the love that each issue of WeAr magazine receives. Mounted on high-grade transparency chromes and backlit. Big dark rooms full of them. Standing like monoliths from Kubrik’s 2001, glowing like the truth. –On the floor the actual garments used for the photos lying in shallow glass boxes, pin-spot-lit like a tiffany window. The real things. The artifacts. The relics. The proof. Big rooms full of them like the opposite of a graveyard. A birthyard for our still current obsession.

All I saw were the pages, one-by-one as Hiroshi flipped them forward for me. And I can tell you that nobody who gives even the slightest shit about the work we do could make it ten yards into an exhibition like that without having their melon permanently twisted and fountains of catharsis well up in their eyes. –Or, said another way, you all would be weeping like a bunch of school-girls at the first sight of it. Trust me.

NOTE:
According to Wikepedia AFFA is a four-letter acronym which can stand for:

>  Angels Forever, Forever Angels, a slogan of the Hells Angels
>  Avengers Forever, Forever Avengers Motorcycle Club
>  Association of Football Federations of Azerbaijan
> Agriculture, Fisheries, and Forestry - Australia
>  Australian Film Fighting Academy

There is no mention of SEX, Seditionaries, Westwood, McLaren, Jun or Hiroshi.

More diatribes this way.

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