Vogue Hommes English Version

—On the subject of the term “conversations” used on the cover of this issue, other related words come to mind. In no particular order, these include: dialogue, confrontation, exchange, collision, transversality, interaction, stimulation, fluidity, open–mindedness, collaboration, emulation and sharing. Over the past fifteen years, Vogue Hommes has taken these words as its premise. By reconciling past and present, youth and maturity, classic and avant–garde, masculinity and femininity, fashion and style, identity and personality, convention and rebellion, here and elsewhere, “normal” and bizarre, essential and superficial. With creativity at heart, always. There are also conversations in the literal sense, and those published in Vogue Hommes have a certain je–ne–saisquoi that the others haven’t. Over and above a glittering line–up — Karl Lagerfeld, Calvin Klein, Brigitte Bardot, Pierre Bergé, Joan Collins, Charles…

—When Alfred Stieglitz met Georgia O’Keeffe, he was a 52–year–old photographer, painter and gallery–owner internationally renowned for his avant–garde spirit. She, on the other hand, was an art teacher in Texas and an unknown 28–year–old. The artistic and physical passion they shared swept them into a tumultuous wave of shared experiences, including a single, unique exhibition of their combined works at the Anderson Galleries in New York in 1924, which was also the year of their marriage. That period also featured an incredible exchange of correspondence comprising 4,500 letters, some of them up to 40 pages long! He wrote in a staccato style, while hers was a more free–flowing language, and it resulted in a verbal joust with copious notes in the margin, back at a time when pen and…

OTHONIEL, ART AND DIOR Elected to the Académie des Beaux–Arts in 2018, Jean–Michel Othoniel will soon be ready to take possession of seat number 5 (left vacant by Eugène Dodeigne): Kim Jones for DIOR HOMME has designed his Académicien’s uniform. There are strict specifications: a black tailcoat and trousers (collectively referred to as an habit vert since codification in 1801), embroidered with green olive branches along the legs, around the cuffs and on the lapels and front of the coat. For Jean–Michel Othoniel’s uniform, the Dior atelier hand–painted the branches directly onto the fabric, which they then embroidered with metal, silk and cotton thread before adding embellishments of glass pearls: the sculptor’s hallmark. This was a first for Dior — it’s not every day you get to dress an Immortal…

LIQUID CONCRETE The top of the bottle — like a block of cement — and the colour give a foretaste of what to expect from this perfume that is full of layers. Sensual tuberose melts into raw extracts of black forest with juniper, gaiac, agar and birch wood as well as oak moss… The bottle itself is crafted by the last French glassblower still plying his trade — the kind of outlandish touch that only a niche perfumery can truly pull off. BLACK TAR, PARFUMERIE PARTICULIÈRE 100 ML, €245 AT NOSE PARIS METAL AND MISCHIEF If mischief had a fragrance, it would be this. Nasomatto (which means “crazy nose” in Italian) has created a perfume that is incredible in every way. The scent itself features very unusual notes of calamus,…

—Creation does not happen in a void. It is not an illumination or a spark given from above. Creation is intuition and feeds from dialogue, debate, process, even just within oneself. Fashion-making is a much more hands-on and confrontational process than fashionable pundits want you to believe. It is a plural act. Sometimes as plural as two. This one is probably not for Diet Prada or all the censors out there decrying the copycats. What these moralists fail to understand, in fact, is that there is copy, and there is copy. Creation needs conversation and confrontation in order to truly flourish, exchanges being either real, with a living being one can actually have an argument or a laugh, or imagined, with an ideal muse or model of sorts, from the…

—After All the Money in the World — which traces events surrounding the kidnapping, by the Mafia in 1973 in Rome, of John Paul Getty III, the grandson of oil magnate John Paul Getty, against a $17 million ransom which the patriarch refused to pay — Ridley Scott is again scratching the underbelly of the rich and famous. This time, his subject is the tragic destiny of Maurizio Gucci, who was shot dead by a hitman in the lobby of his office in Milan, in March 1995. The news shook the Italian public as much as it did the fashion world. The country was proud of the brand, established in Florence in 1921, that had grown from a small shop selling leather goods to a luxury giant acquired three years…