All pleasure, no pressure
If you build it, they will come. At least that was the idea.
In a rather incestuous turn of events, I’ve been asked to write about my own project called GG. It began as a print initiative that a friend and I wanted to start, but in the end felt too impulsive, without real legs to stand on. Fast-forward to nine months later (this thing is literally my baby), it became something else instead — a website that I hope to grow with friends, acquaintances and folks who share the same values as us. Everyone is pretty much welcome.
I continued without the person I began this with (though he fully supports it), and I suppose I wanted to see it through because of selfish reasons. One, vanity — something to call my own before I hit 25 (self-publishing, how millennial of me). Two, I loved the idea of setting up a community. Three, I wanted to act on my personal frustrations. Starting GG was a way to deal with my anxieties towards the #industrie. I couldn’t hear the word “peg” without hearing fingernails slide down a chalkboard, and regularly eye-rolled at the agenda-setting powers that be. Hate juice: I drank it. Hype, though an effective tool, was overused and felt tired. Nothing felt genuine and I grew conscious of an environment filled with people either excessively marketing themselves, or people who were selling themselves short — everyone wanted to be cool and hip and nonchalant in a bid to be or stay relevant; I know that’s how the world works now but I still don’t wanna buy into it. Obviously, I’ve got some authority issues and a bit of fire in my belly and maybe I need to see a therapist for that — but it also got counterproductive. If you complain about things but don’t do anything about it, you’re no better. So here we are.
The real work was making sure I treated the project as I would any job and not as a hobby. I tried setting realistic deadlines (failing many times) and goals. Approached and got in touch with people who might be interested to contribute. Assimilated the spirit and energy of things that I thought were O.G. GG. X-Girl, Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore, M/M Paris. The original Temptation Island movie. The ‘90s in general. I go back to these core cultural cues whenever I’m struggling to find a singular voice. The idea for the look of the site, wonderfully interpreted by filmmaker and designer Jan Pineda, came up as I hastily pulled random old books from a shelf at Merci in Paris. I took a picture of each cover I liked and sent it to him, and instantly he got it. It’s this synergy that I keep being grateful for, because that’s the only way we got to this point. For all my complaints about the absurdity of this city, finding like-minded individuals was exactly the kind of stimulus I needed to breed this thing.
Formally, GG is an independent, multi-platform project and rooted in fashion, art and culture focused on content execution — the first execution being the website. Though GG itself doesn’t really mean anything, it’s the perfect name for what we’re trying to do. It was an offshoot of a term my friend and stylist Melvin Mojica likes to use — “good time good time” — and it just stuck. I love that you can assign a lot of things to it, disregarding semantics — galunggong, gaga, gigil, etc. Though I would say now that there is a deliberation to GG, because I want to be able to stand by anything that goes in it. GG is purposely derivative, and is about embracing tackiness and spontaneity; it’s letting ketchup drip on your Dries shirt (true story). It’s worrying less if your branding is on point, having real-life fun and being sincere. It’s chilling the hell out. It’s anti-high fashion (how novel!). It’s embracing all sorts of art, design and photography styles. Turning the spotlight on underrated talent. It’s giggling at irony and giving it a high five. Slowly GG will also extend to objects, things that you probably don’t need but wanna have anyway, because why not. With proper funding, I hope to also print it at some point.
As a person extremely mindful of the timing of things, I constantly worry if I got this right. What if it’s not digestible enough? What if this just gets lost in the ether among a pile of other Internet things? What if no one cares?? Guess I’m about to find out. #GG4U
Life in plastic, it’s fantastic
Sheer was everywhere, from the delicate slips at Celine to the zipped-up column dresses at Hood by Air. There were, however, even more pronounced interpretations of this trend. Perhaps internalizing the world we live in now — a see-through generation of over-transparency, artificial proximity and being bombarded with daily updates of each others’ lives — some designers have turned to plastic. Literally. It’s also no surprise that it’s coming from some of the youngest, most buzzed-about creative directors.
In New York, Eckhaus Latta strung ringlets together to shape dresses and skirts. In London, MM6 turned to capes and makeshift bell sleeves, while Christopher Kane had a go with tinted, scallop-hemmed skirts and shirts. And in Paris, at Jonathan Anderson’s Loewe, he did it all ways: jackets, trousers, bags, and even a plastic heel — you name it, he did it. Virgil Abloh’s Off-White employed it in coats at the final walk, then had a graffiti artist deface them with spray paint in the end. And at Vetements, Demna Gvasalia and his crew took a nostalgic turn with grandma-friendly floral-printed tablecloths transformed into aprons and dresses.
If there’s anything we learned from fashion month, it’s that anything can be base material even if it’s not a traditional fabric. We’re clearly into that.
