Vice Style

Charity shop rummaging is really never that fruitful. But sometimes, amongst the piles of disgusting Primark playsuits and Monsoon skirts, you’ll come across a gem such as a book called Worst Fashions: What We Shouldn’t Have Worn… But Did. At first I thought all the 70s retro was ugly as hell, but then I noticed that author Catherine Horwood's list of fashion trends she thinks are absolutely stupid—published in 2004—reads like a pretty accurate guide to the Dalston wardrobe of 2007-2010. Or Beyond Retro’s complete stock inventory as written by your grandma.

When we tracked her down to ask how come she had such a vision, she said, "I have a background in fashion history and I was a child of the 1960s, so it wasn't difficult. While it was written tongue-in-cheek, it also involved a lot of research into fabric developments in particular and I think that's valuable research for anyone interested in fashion trends. Many of these 'innovations' have hit the dust now and might be forgotten if it wasn't for this book."

Right. These days, Catherine is well-known for writing about gardening, but maybe she should write a follow-up to this book so everyone will know what to keep in their closets, because just about everything she wrote about came back in the next couple of years. Since she is unlikely to do just that, we asked if there’s anything missing in the book we should know about: "I do regret not including the boys' fashion for wearing trousers so low slung they look as though they've pooped themselves." There you go.

Below are some of Catherine’s fashion trends which you apparently you shouldn't have worn, but almost certainly did at some point in the last half-decade.

Remember when that old friend of yours asked your opinion on the Arab spring and you said Hussein Chalayan’s SS12 collection wasn’t too strong but Nasir Mazhar’s stuff was looking good? That was mortifyingly embarrassing, huh? And, by the way, made you sound borderline racist, because Turkish people are not Arabs.

Anyway, the best method of clawing back any shred of respect from a situation like that, while also demonstrating that you really do have an interest in geopolitical issues as well as pretty clothes, is to become an advocate for Japanese designer Ryohei Kawanishi. He collages together socio-political-inspired images, employs layered fabrics to signify layers of meaning, and tangles fabric to represent the way issues are inextricably intertwined to produce wearable reportage on whatever’s bothering him in the world. Sure, this sounds pretentious, but it's also sort of genius-level insane, and anyway, expensive clothes, by definition, sort of always are. You'll probably remember his graduate collection as, “That ridiculously insane show with the bummed-out looking Hasidic Jew, junkyard fabric, the huge UN flag, and all the Twitter and Facebook logos.”

Hey guys, wanna learn about make-up? Thought so! No, but seriously, this isn’t going to be me painting Drake’s face onto my face or any boring YouTube bull. Together we’re going to conquer the have-me lip, the have-me eye, and loads of other important but essentially have-me things. Please don’t ask me what primer I use or where I have my eyelashes tinted, because I don’t do that or care. What I do care about is how hot and skanky lip-liner is. I also care about Tajazzle, but that’s not appropriate for week one.

Do ya’ll pine for tweendom? I totally do. Last week, I was at my parent’s house and I found this little red plastic handbag I had when I was 12, all sparkly and everything. I was all like, "Oh shit, this bag’s never seen a condom wrapper or a cigarette lighter in its life”, and I looked in the inside pocket and there weren’t even any tobacco grains in there. Cute! Instead, everything was saturated with sticky fruit scented lip-gloss, glooping all round the inside like beauty queen spit globs. It made me feel really nostalgic, in a baker-boy-cap-and-matching-knee-socks kind of way. I think it’s time to admit I kind of miss make-up that smells and tastes like a candy tampon. So for week one, let's bring sexy back, in the way only a 12-year-old virgin can. Delicious.

Many of you will already be familiar with the concept of dressing up young children in designer clothing as the most popular past time of washed up celebrities. However, it is becoming a favorite hobby among obscenely rich people everywhere and is now the basis of a thriving global market. Steadily rising numbers of millionaire moms from Brazil to Kazakhstan are feeling the need to create miniature versions of themselves in Burberry Baby and Gucci Kids in what looks like an effort to preemptively groom their kids into becoming totally materialistic assholes.

For some reason, the 90s—in the footwear part of my mind—has no room for adidas other than reissues of the Gazelles, Sambas, and Superstars Blur and Oasis fans wore. Actually, though, some of the shoes adidas were making at the time are looking seriously good, all of a sudden, even if way back then I probably thought adidas had lost their minds. I guess part of this had to do with adidas' performance items now being rebranded as adidas Equipment back in 1991 when they replaced the traditional adidas Trefoil with the new simplified adidas logo. I guess the Trefoil's three rugby balls had little place on a basketball boot. B-ball being the sport all sporstwear manufacturers were obsessed with, when Nike owned the NBA's floors, and signing Kobe as a rookie in 1996 certainly put adidas basketball on the map forever.

BSST is a column asking people what they want to beg for, sell, steal or trade.

Dog Show is kind of a "girl's wet dream", explain designers and shop owners Christine Stormberg and Anna Greer. Their studio and store-cum-miscellaneous art space in residential Echo Park, LA, is marked by a gigantic unicorn head on its exterior, alongside a painted Necco Wafers-tinted American flag and the exclamation: GIRLS GIRLS GIRLS. Inside, they hawk custom swimwear and 90s vintage sportswear‚ a 12-foot hair wall displays barrettes and scrunchies, while pieces of pink braided hair wind around their chandelier. Tina and Anna, both formally trained artists, also live in the space and treat it like a morphing installation.

Their current personal styles: Tina's is millennium dark angel and Anna's is the lesbonic plague promote an aesthetic that's gross but beautiful... and weirdly futuristic—think Barbie meets Shrek somewhere in cyberspace. They host salon nights with other artists that do things like spray tan tattooing, fortune telling, and goth life coaching, whatever that means. Their debut presentation, Bikini Weenie Roast, is this Sunday.

Kit sporting some mounted human teeth he picked up at a Philadelphia flea market.

Everyone's forever asking designers about what specifically influenced their current collection, where they drew their inspiration from, or which particular seventeenth dynasty Egyptian prince played a part in the shaping of their new shoe design, and the designers usually play along with it, unless they're completely antisocial bastards. Thing is, photos are generally better than words when it comes to picturing the groundbreakingly mind-blowing stuff that's going to make your bum look sexy next season, so in this new series we'll be in the studios and workspaces of fashion designers, photographers, and art directors. It will be a bit like Cribs, but with less Cristal and bathing R&B monstrosities.    

First up is Kit Neale, the designer responsible for putting guys in allotment-inspired all-over print outfits last fashion week. Kit's studio is in an industrial block near Kingsland High Street in Dalston, home to a ridiculous amount of chicken shops and a store that sells a massively debatable "authentic collection of Moschino, Ralph Lauren, and Versace".

VICE Italy's still life shoot was rendered by 26-year-old Portland-based psychedelic, performance, digital, and installation artist, fractal employer, virtual world builder, and portals into other dimensions-seeker, Brenna Murphy. 

Anders Breivik, the hideously, almost cartoonishly evil Norwegian psychopath who killed 77 people supposedly as a “protest against multiculturalism” but also because he is a twisted, soulless heap of hate, announced during his trial on Monday that he specifically targeted people who looked "left-wing". He even spared Adrian Pracon, a 22-year-old Labour Party activist, because, in Anders’ terrifyingly emotionless words, "This person, Pracon appeared right-wing, that was his appearance. That's the reason I didn't fire any shots at him." Clearly, if this crazed-right-wing-gunman thing becomes a trend, politics aside, it’s going to be much, much safer to dress like a right-winger—I guess that will leave you vulnerable to left-wing gunmen, but, dude, have you seen the guys in Occupy? If they decide to attack you, just threw some gluten or red meat at them and they’ll shrivel up.

This brings up an interesting question: what makes someone look right-wing? In this age of women with the short hair and men who are—you know—how do you judge someone based on appearances? And, more importantly, how do you get the homicidal maniacs who are, even now, wandering the streets, to judge that you should live based on your appearance? Well, like this:

I've been in New York this week for the WAH Nails book launch and London downtown exchange-cum-takeover featuring WAH, Palace, Kesh, Cassette Playa, and Acyde, hosted by Grace Ladoja and Aaron Bondaroff, hence I'm writing about things New York.