By Govindini Murty. In honor of Fashion Month, I thought it would be fun to introduce Libertas readers to one of my favorite fashion/street-photography sites, The Sartorialist. Founded in 2005 by Scott Schuman, The Sartorialist is one of the most visually-inspiring sites out there. Schuman has been doing an exceptional job recently covering the New York, London, Milan, and Paris fashion shows. I’ve included a favorite look he captured from the Gucci show here, and other striking shows he’s covered include the Marc Jacobs show and the Altuzarra show in New York. Back in January Schuman also covered the men’s collections in Florence (where Luca Rubinacci epitomized the Italian style) and Milan, where the most elegant presentation was the Bottega Veneta show.

Of course, Schuman covers a lot more than runway shows – his main talent is as a street-style photographer – but we’ll get to that in a moment.

The 2011 Gucci Fall/Winter collection, shot by Scott Schuman of The Sartorialist.

Jason and I often speak about the importance of feeding the visual sense. As filmmakers and creative people, it’s extremely important to think about the image as much as about words, dialogue, and ideological meaning. That is why we here at Libertas make the effort to provide you with a site that is as appealing to look at as it is thought-provoking to read.

I found out about The Sartorialist about a year and a half ago from an article in British Vogue. Scott Schuman started the site in 2005 by posting photos he had taken of the quirky and chic people he encountered on the streets of Manhattan. The Sartorialist attracted more and more admirers, including many fashion industry professionals who turned to the site to see what was happening on the street-level in fashion. Within just a few years Schuman has become a fashion force to be reckoned with. The Sartorialist now receives more than two million unique visitors a month and Schuman’s photos are on the inspiration boards of major fashion houses around the world. Schuman has also been named one of Time Magazine’s Top 100 Design Influencers and he has been profiled in numerous fashion magazines and newspapers (read an LA Times profile here and an article in The London Times). In 2009 Schuman also published  a terrific book of his street-style photography. Continue reading »

American Vogue: the jaunty, optimistic military chic.

[Editor's note: In keeping with our promise to cover all things pop culture, LFM Co-Editor Govindini Murty will be contributing occasional pieces on fashion and style as part of our exploration of modes of creativity that inspire filmmakers.]

By Govindini Murty. This week on LFM we are celebrating fashion and how it influences cinema and the arts.  I will be reviewing several fashion-related films this week and will also be discussing related issues of style and creativity and how they feed the cinematic sense of filmmakers.  As an independent filmmaker and creative free spirit myself, I love fashion because I see it as a form of art – wearable art.  And just like cinema, fashion is an important indicator of cultural moods and shifting popular tastes.

I find it fascinating that this spring/summer all the fashion magazines are featuring a strong ‘military chic’ trend.  American Vogue, Paris Vogue, Elle UK, and Women’s Wear Daily have all recently featured photo spreads with military-inspired fashions.  American Vogue photographs the new military chic in a classic, all-American style with cheerful, clean-scrubbed models striding about in a jaunty manner.  Paris Vogue, in the decadent style it has made famous, photographs the military chic fashions on a sexy, sultry model posing languidly in the middle of the desert.  British Elle, in a photo spread shot by one of my favorite fashion bloggers, Garance Dore, takes military chic to the streets and makes it flirty, youthful, and accessible.

Perhaps the most famous designer though to embrace military chic and take it to stratospheric heights of desirability is Christophe Decarnin of Balmain, who has single-handedly turned around that venerable design house’s fortunes by creating a whole new aesthetic built on structured military jackets with exaggerated shoulders, braiding, and epaulettes paired with skin-tight leather pants or distressed jeans and shredded t-shirts – all in neutral tones of khaki, black, or steel grey.  Decarnin’s shredded military-green t-shirts alone run upwards of $1500, while his elaborate, structured military jackets run into the ten of thousands of dollars.  Nonetheless, chic women from Paris to London to New York are snapping up his military-inspired clothes, and influential fashion editors like Emmanuelle Alt of Paris Vogue wear his clothes almost exclusively in public.

The sultry, sexy approach to military chic from Paris Vogue.

Khaki, epaulettes, military jackets, camouflage, dog tags.  What does it all mean?

Is this new military chic a sign of a resurgent traditionalism, a yearning for order and authority after years of Bacchic hippie excess?  Is it a cultural indicator of a new desire for sternness, discipline, and austerity – or is it just that the structured uniform-like outfits look great on women and give them an androgynous appeal that fashion, in its ongoing decadent sampling, loves right now?

In a famously liberal industry that is vehemently anti-war and puts peace signs on everything – and I mean everything (side note: does anyone actually buy this stuff?) – isn’t it ironic that the fashion industry would now be promoting the garb of the men and women who fight wars, thereby implicitly celebrating them and what they do?

Christophe Decarnin's rocker-meets-military chic designs for Balmain.

Ultimately one comes to realize that in fashion, as in the best films, the politics/ideology/morality lie on the surface as a sort of window dressing to cover up what is essentially an amoral art form.  Fashion, like the cinema, is ultimately about beauty, sensuality, and emotion.  Whereas the cinema is art that moves and tells a story, fashion is the art one wears to venture out into the world and live one’s own story.  Or even if one can’t literally buy and wear high fashion, one can still look at it and admire how it is photographed, styled, and staged – and thus feed one’s visual sense.  This is something we need to constantly do as filmmakers (since cinema is, after all, primarily about the image): we must feed our visual sense.

Thus, the new military fashion can be seen in multiple ways: as a resurgence of patriotism and traditional values, or as an arch commentary or co-opting of these values for subversive ends, or as a fetishizing of the force and authority (and even violence) that is traditionally associated with the military (and that the decadent fashion world secretly loves) – or simply as the amused aesthete’s appreciation of all these forms for the sake of the play itself.

Whatever the motivation, as long as we show respect for the real men and women in uniform who risk their lives to defend our freedoms, the new military chic is just fine with me.

Posted on June 29th, 2010 at 1:30am.

Western fashion as cultural imperialism?

By Govindini Murty.  Sex and the City 2 continues to generate controversy for its critical depiction of how women are treated in the Muslim countries of the Middle East.  Claudia Puig at USA Today is still fulminating about the film, while Manohla Dargis at the New York Times addresses the hypocritical nature of the critical establishment’s outrage.  Here on LFM, my own positive review of Sex and the City 2 incited a number of female readers to write in.  One of our liberal feminist readers – the self-styled “Feminazi” – attacked my review and called me a “reactionary” for praising the film, claiming that lingering patriarchy in the West and social pressure to look attractive somehow are so morally compromising to us that we have no right to critique the treatment of women in the Middle East.  On the other end of the political spectrum, a Muslim female reader named Hala accused me of “flaming intolerance” toward Muslims, and stated that women in the Middle East are “strong, smart, and well-treated” and that our vaunted women’s rights in the West, such as the right to drive cars, are not so great anyway.  I engaged in a dialogue with both of them and found it interesting that when it came to the issue of Islam and its treatment of women, that both liberal feminists and traditional Muslim women would have the same viewpoint: that the West has no right to claim that its women enjoy any superior freedom to the women of the Middle East because women are supposedly treated in a sexist manner in the West.  I found it striking that I would be defending the West’s advocacy of equal rights for women against both a liberal feminist and a Muslim traditionalist.

Finally, LFM reader Melissa commented that, while she liked Sex and the City 2, she thought it was “somewhat offensive” to have a scene where the Muslim women remove their burqas to show the Western designer fashions they are wearing underneath to Sex and the City heroines Carrie, Samantha, Miranda and Charlotte.  Melissa was concerned that this scene made light of Muslim women’s oppression by showing them as being able to wear Western clothes, albeit under their black robes.  I responded to Melissa that this scene depicts an actual reality in the Middle East.  Muslim women, especially those who are affluent, do indeed wear colorful, stylish Western clothes under their dour black robes.  Though they generally can’t wear these clothes openly in public, they can wear them privately at parties and special events.  It is one of their private joys; even if they are restricted in what they can show the outside world, they can enjoy wearing exquisite, colorful clothes underneath.

Harem pants, turbans, Halston, and Manolo Blahniks: the meeting of West and Middle-East.

Call me idealistic, but I believe that American and European fashion is a unique vehicle for bringing Western democratic values into Middle Eastern women’s lives.  Western fashion is not just an ambassador for Western style – it is an ambassador for Western freedom.  After all, the freedom to look as you wish, to dress as you wish, to cover up or not cover up as you wish, affects how you think and move and behave.  The more freedom we have in how we are able to present ourselves to the world, the more joy we have in interacting with that world.  Therefore, it is entirely appropriate for Sex and the City 2, in its brave depiction of the culture clash between the West and the Middle East, to show the Western women Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte, and Miranda as having the freedom to wear a joyful, colorful synthesis of American and Muslim fashions in public (see Carrie in a purple turban and Samantha in gold lame harem pants in the picture above) – and to depict the Muslim women they encounter as tentatively expressing their desire for freedom too by wearing the latest Paris and New York fashions – but being forced to cover them up with black burqas.  This is not cultural insensitivity – this is reality. Continue reading »

The new Libertas Film Magazine (LFM) is almost here!  LFM is a new on-line film magazine focusing on the idea of freedom as expressed in movies and popular culture.

LFM celebrates the democratizing of film. Talented, free-thinking artists from America and around the world are currently using digital technology to make films that celebrate freedom and the individual.  LFM will feature the best of these independent and foreign films – and occasionally even Hollywood films – that promote the ideas and values vital to the future of democratic civilization.

Stayed tuned for the launch of LFM on May 19th, 2010! The independent film world will never be the same. LFM is the new voice for freedom in movies and popular culture. Join us each day … and free your mind.