Video: Anguish

Contributing Editor, a web-only men's magazine that features editorials and other exclusively commissioned content, now posts (it's in blog format) videos of up and coming models.

Meet David.

Eddie Klint in GQ Style Russia

I think it takes a certain look, and even a different type of personality, to pull off pastel pink and still manage to appear brooding and pensive. I think Eddie Klint has that quality - the same reason why I wrote about him before, alongside one of my poems.

From GQ Style Russia 04 Spring 2009
Photographed by Yu-Tsai

Surround him with roses, and he still appears masculine.

This jacket is harder to carry than it looks.

There is something poignant about this picture. Soft, but sharp as a thorn.

This would be my ideal Sunday garb, down to every single piece.

There is something cinematic about Eddie Klint.

He can bring out a plot from any of these scenes.

More from Vogue Icons 2008, Beijing

Mila Jovovich poses with a fan



Another fan, with Mila and Lou Dillon



Sarah Rutson, fashion director of Lane Crawford



Yes, Mila Jovovich sings



Slide presentation for Kate Moss







A blurry shot of Oliver Stone



A granddaughter of Deng Xiaoping



Candy Pratts Price of style.com



Roland Mouret presents an award



So does Phillip Lim



Anna Bayle, a supermodel in the 80s, speaks about Yves Saint Laurent and her experience at his atelier. She blogs about her heyday here



Chinese supermodel Du Juan



And of course, Maggie Cheung

Among all of them, it was Ana Bayle who talked the most sense when she described the energy and spirit that "Monsieur Laurent" put into designing, into visualizing and clothing his ideal woman.

See Hidetoshi Nakata, Lou Dillon, Kate Moss, and Olivier Theyskens in a previous post

What it feels like for a boy

Wonderful lapel and collar, shoulders. I wonder if menswear resubsumes interpretations from womenswear. It would be a pity if it didn't.

Time and again designers voyage into explorations of the androgynous, paring away details or exaggerating. Do these become more daring and provocative as society becomes more open?

Or as certain individuals cast their influence?

Below is a scene from the movie The Cement Garden, where the adolescent Charlotte Gainsbourg mentions the lines sampled by Madonna to introduce her song "What It Feels Like for a Girl":



Girls can wear jeans and cut their hair short, wear shirts and boots because it's okay to be a boy. But for a boy to look like a girl is degrading, because you think that being a girl is degrading. But secretly, you'd love to know what it is like, wouldn't you? What it feels like for a girl?



Certainly, not all men harbor these secrets. But it is also true that the pressure to conform among the male species can be overbearing.

What does it mean to break loose from these boundaries to cross the border?

Cole Mohr in a Marc by Marc Jacobs 2008 Fall/Winter campaign. He also does the men's collection for the season.



Marc Jacobs wearing a tartan kilt during the Marc by Marc Jacobs 2009 Spring/Summer show and in Interview Magazine's June/July 2008 issue, as Andy Warhol.



A woman said in one of the online fashion forums that she would never wear a certain Marc by Marc Jacobs dress after seeing Cole Mohr in it.

Call it insecurity or revulsion, but while some find this form of expression in bad taste, others take it as rebellion with an edge.



What did the original Andy Warhol and David Bowie mean for their generation?



What do the images they left mean to us, who live in a time when decadence almost always means merely luxury and money?





Given these impressions, how then should we take Thom Browne's new 2009 Spring/Summer show with its skirt-like shorts, sari-flap pants, and frippery that look like grass-skirts?





Play: poking at men's egos, dropping their pants, and inflating their suits with tutus.

Apparently, we are only left with irony.



Even so, Browne's signature bending of form and structure has actually widened the range of masculine expression. Off-runway of course, and without the ballerina props that no matter what I say can't hide intended humor.

How can you repress a smile when the world has been turned upside down even without the help of heels, mascara, and quilted purses?



Photos from Face Hunter, dans-paris (now Garance Dore), and men.style.com


Expect to find Charlotte Gainsbourg again on these pages.

Eddie Klint + Transit

Transit

It was after supper
when our family rode the tram
back to the city—to the streets
and the lights and to sleep.
I was at the window seat
pressing my head against the glass
as I usually did to look outside.





I saw you leaning against your window
your seat facing us
on your side of the tram.
You were gazing outside
the lights zooming past your eyes
stilled as if by the speed of the wind
and the blankness of uninterrupted light.
Then you looked at me
like a gaping hole





as if you understood
that after supper
walking out of the tavern
with music trailing our stride
under lamplights
I felt as empty as the streets.







And I wondered how much of it you saw
but you turned back to your window
and stared through the darkness.



The streetlamps stood still.



************

I wrote "Transit" years back. The gaze of Eddie Klint reminds me of that encounter, the way his eyes look at you, but look through and past you.

Intense but at the same time aloof, masculine yet boyish. I am certain this mystery about him is what drew Miuccia Prada to place him as the face of the label's shows and campaigns in the past seasons.

Images picked up from The Fashion Spot

Vogue Icons 2008, Beijing

It's below freezing here in Beijing, but I just had one of my most memorable nights. Here is a preview of what you'll be seeing soon on The Philippine Star.



Japanese soccer player Hidetoshi Nakata



Nina Ricci artistic director Olivier Theyskens



French actress and fashion muse Lou Dillon, daughter of Jane Birkin



Supermodel Sasha Pivovarova



After everything that all the other celebrities are known for, Kate Moss is just Kate Moss.

With Maggie Cheung, the only one in the event deserving of the title icon.