PLASTIK 11

chic shack shock!

I was in my hotel room in Paris during Fashion Week, when I saw a footage of Lady Gaga opening the Thierry Muglar show on CNN, fittingly cinched somewhere between Seif Al-Islam Gaddafi’s notorious speech and the recent developments on the Libyan frontier. I stood transfixed in front of the TV screen for three minutes, but I didn’t know what news struck me to the core the most. Somewhere in between Gaga and “Gadda” –the former parading her claws on the runway, while the latter self-righteously flaunting his to the whole world – it suddenly hit me that fashion and politics are even more correlated than you could ever imagine. In the past 24 hours, John Galliano’s anti Semitic proclamations had made it to “breaking news,” and so did Christophe Decarnin’s disappearance at his show for Balmain after allegedly checking himself in to a mental institution. Needless to say, Galliano was dismissed from Dior, and Decarnin from Balmain. It was a “chic” shock  – sans the grotesque and bloody package of your average news story - but still has all the ingredients that make it eligible to infiltrate your home and shake your very well being.

The fact that such stories warrants that amount of exposure during prime time at a powerful news agency, in the midst of all the turmoil around the world, shows that the word “fashion” is only sugarcoating for a political scheme. The big fashion corporations are playing a game of Monopoly; they are ruthlessly taking acquisition of everything on the board, and they are willing to bend the rules in their conquest. No one cares about the butler in the hotel, or the poor worker on the railroads. They can even take hold of your name. Because fashion as we know it is no longer regarded as a form of fine art; it is a business that has its roots deeply planted in the political mud. Only the pure, creative minds can lift it up. There has been a major shift in the system over the past couple of months alone, yet someday they will hold the system together. But until that day comes, we will have our shares of “chic” shocks.

peter marino

Feature

Emerging from Andy Warhol’s circle of trust in the 70s, peter marino put his stamp on the world’s most coveted retail spaces, including the newly opened Chanel store in Beirut’s central district. The starchitect talks to Plastik about his love for renaissance sculptures and his ideal escape on a motorbike.

rabih kayrouz

Feature

Rabih Kayrouz recently opened a new boutique in the Beirut port area. Plastik sat down with the celebrated fashion designer and asked him about the location, his earliest fashion memories, the ins and outs of his latest collection, his fantasy of being an “aesthetic dictator,” and much, much more.