Sunday 3 May 2009

Che Camille Fashion Show


It's hard not to be impressed by Camille. That it took a New Yorker to do what she's doing is telling. In return for a commission on sales, Camille provides space, equipment and marketing for a select group chosen from the creatives flooding out of Scotland's art schools and colleges. Fashion's the main business but she also associates with various artists in most mediums. 


Her latest venue, many floors above Argyll Arcade, doesn't have any signage and the lift is erratic. So when we turned up for a fashion show on Saturday it wasn't just the anticipation that had set my heart pounding. Still, no pain, no gain.........


Over the years I've noticed a few things about fashion.....


For example, at any one time the most unfashionable thing you can possibly think of, is, simultaneously, the most fashionable.


Also, fashion too often lacks any sense of humour, finding it as hard to laugh at itself as others find it easy. 
No such problems for The Niallist seen performing here. His tongue was planted firmly in his cheek, and I'd wager, by the end of the night he was hoping it'd be planted in a few other cheeks too.


One of the designers 'Rabii' makes made to measure denim. The emblem's a small embroidered silhouette of himself in his trademark cap. Recently he secured a rather spectacular order to make jeans for the Man Utd team. Just before the show he told me he'd been, not surprisingly, a bit nervous at the prospect of measuring Ronaldo and Co. But when the time came, bizarrely, the soccer stars were just as awestruck.... "No way, you're the actual guy on the jeans!"


Walking home after the show I spotted a young chap in some incredible get up. As they say on Project Runway, "Very fashion forward".
In the years after Communism, via telly and travel, we got to see what the ordinary people in those countries actually looked like. Isolation had left them ten years behind the times with a unique take on western styles. Into the mid 1990s men sported perm topped mullets and patterned jumpers that even M&S, by then, would have been ashamed of.
Well, that was 'the look' that walked past me, and I've coined it..... "Sarajevo Chic". 
If you think that's a bit tasteless, well, to quote Julian Macdonald.... and you must read this in a camp haughty Welsh accent, "This is fashion, and fashion has no mercy".





Floor 6
Argyll Chambers
Glasgow
G2 8BD
0141 221 9620
(It's first on the left as you walk in off Buchanan Street)

somewhere in cyberspace

4 comments:

  1. The Hackwegian6 May 2009 at 19:37

    Here in East London Sarajevo chic is everywhere. What you should really fear is the young lady I saw on Brick Lane at the weekend. She was sporting what can only be described as the Su Pollard look. Oh the youth of today...

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  2. My god, where will it all end?.... Timmy Mallett.... Black Lace..... these young people don't understand what they're messing with. Swine flu will be like a walk in the park!

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  3. YOu should've seen the bunch I was looking at in Broadway Street Market East London (trendy) at the weekend. I was confused and alarmed and left wondering why disgusting stonewashed denim and cheapo 80s tatty boots were everywhere in a "we should know better but we dont care cos we are fashion victims in the truest sense of the word" kind of way. But now i know through your blog that it was "Sarajevo Chic". Thanks Wine Splodge!

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  4. Glad to be of service Gus and if there's anything else you find alarming and confusing about the modern world just let me know!

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