Dover Street Market

The culture of fashion: Agnès B



Agnès b in the first Rue du Jour store in 1976

French Girl Style – it’s the aesthetic that just won’t stop giving. And with the Paris Olympics mere hours away, you’d better buckle up, as it’s about to become even more omnipresent. The reason French Girl Style aka garconne style resonates is its timelessness, its realness, and its rooted-in-utility-ness. Oh, and something else really important – culture.

And who better to illustrate this point than Agnès B? (more…)



Maureen Doherty, a good egg



Maureen Doherty Egg

“I’m not trying to make anything new. There’s so much pressure in fashion to every six months have this newness. When I opened Egg, I wanted it to be like a chair: well that’s OK for 10 years. It’s not for six months; it’s 10 years. I like the fact that it can be an heirloom.”
Egg founder, Maureen Doherty, Hole & Corner (more…)



The culture of fashion: the 90s heritage obsession continues



Raf Simons Fantastic Man cover

More on the 90s vintage story I wrote about in June.

Friday saw 26 pieces of vintage collectables land at Dover Street Market New York from the archive of stylist David Casavant. Curating pieces from the last 20 years by designers including Prada, Helmut Lang, and Raf Simons, highlights include a Raf Simons AW00 bomber jacket (example below) loaned to Rihanna for an event, a piece that Casavant acquired after seeing it on the cover of Fantastic Man (above). (more…)



Streetwear retail grows up



Aime Leon Dore London cafe

Something interesting is happening in the world of streetwear. It’s fixing up, shedding its scrappy roots and going all out for growth. Latest development? In the space of a few weeks, two of its most culty brands have opened retail stores that cement their influence and ambition for mass expansion.

On June 17th, Hypebeast unveiled an impressive new seven-storey HQ-slash-store-slash-event-space in NYC’s Chinatown. Two weeks earlier, Aimé Leon Dore (above and below) opened its London store in the heart of Soho, a two-storey retail destination incorporating a marble-floored café and a VIP private lounge. A sneaker’s throw from Supreme and Stussy, Aimé Leon Dore is a far more refined proposition than these rough and ready rivals. Its branding is more preppie-adjacent than skater kid, yet it speaks to the same youthful demographic. (more…)