FASHION Magazine

Scheduling a photo shoot around Courtney Love’s schedule is no easy feat. The music and fashion icon was in the thick of writing her upcoming autobiography, recording her next album and sketching a spring collection for her clothing line, Never The Bride, when FASHION asked her to pose for the Winter 2014 issue. Love’s flurry of activity is all part of an ongoing comeback plan—one that is clearly winning over a number of fashion houses who have named her a major inspiration.

After wrapping up her cover shoot at Canoe Studios, FASHION’s features editor Elio Iannacci was invited to Love’s home in the New York’s West village to talk about her 30-year-plus career and her next batch of projects. Chatting in front of the same fireplace Hedi Slimane photographed Love in front of for Saint Laurent’s current ad campaign, the pair were surrounded by neat piles of books ranging from classic literature, philosophy and chick lit—titles including The Devil Wears Prada and Valley of The Dolls. Here is a sneak peek of our cover story, which hits newsstands nationwide on November 11, 2013.

See punk fashion on the runways »

When the Sex Pistols burst onto the scene in 1976, their spitting anarchist anthems were the antithesis of high fashion. But these days, a studded leather motorcycle jacket is as covet-worthy as a designer bag.

Opening on May 7, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York shines the spotlight on this rebellious movement with its latest Costume Institute exhibition, Punk: Chaos to Couture. In its early days, British punk rock bands like The Clash forced safety pins through leather while Patti Smith, The Ramones and Blondie’s Debbie Harry holed up at New York’s legendary dive bar CBGB in tattered T-shirts and ripped jeans as a protest against the city’s glitzy disco scene.

Designer Vivienne Westwood’s punk roots also run deep—in 1976 she cultivated many of this era’s DIY hallmarks at her London boutique, Seditionaries, which she owned with then-boyfriend, visual artist and Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren. The duo’s endlessly creative takes on rebellion helped shape the unofficial punk uniform, with reappropriated patriotic symbols including Queen Elizabeth II’s face and the Union Jack. The movement’s raw aesthetic gained mainstream appeal in 1977, when British designer Zandra Rhodes used exposed seams, strategic rips and bondage-like accents on her floor-length dresses.

See the photos from Patti Smith at the AGO »

Patti Smith is taking Toronto by storm. Body and soul, too. With a solid-week of press conferences, appearances and sold-out shows in support of her exhibit “Camera Solo” at the Art Gallery of Ontario, the once reluctant high priestess of punk has morphed into a veritable art shaman, worthy of the same worship she attaches to the figures she features in “Camera Solo” through photographs and objects of their belongings, abodes and resting places.

Last night, the 66 year-old singer took to the makeshift stage in the AGO’s Frank Gehry-fied centre court for the first of two back-to-back sold-out performances as part of the museum’s monthly 1^st Thursdays art party program. Along with her daughter, Jesse Paris Smith on piano and guitarist Tony Shanahan, she lit the night with renditions of songs like “Ghost Song,” “Pissing in a River” and “Because the Night” as well reading excerpts from her book Just Kids. The excerpts, which seemed to tie in with the canonizing theme of the exhibit, included tales of Allen Ginsberg and a poem for Robert Mapplethorpe.” He didn’t live to read it, so I’ll read it to you,” she said.

If Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson could have predicted the future, maybe they wouldn’t have become immortalized as Bella and Edward in Twilight. With a little less fame (and drama and scandals), Patti Smith may have cast the couple in her film adaption of her best selling book, Just Kids.

The book, which became a New York Times bestseller after its release in 2010, documents Smith and photographer, Robert Mapplethorpe’s, relationship and struggles as artists in New York. Their relationship ended after seven years of living together, without a scandal—which is more than we can say for Kristen and Robert. Had Mapplethorpe and Smith reached the same levels of fame as the Twilight couple, remaining close friends would have been impossible.

From the mouth of a babe
Carine on Carine: The legendary editor’s best quotes »

In the fashion realm, Carine Roitfeld looms large. Her styling work—for French Vogue, Chanel, Givenchy—is memorable, and her role in the rise of talented designers and photographers like Tom Ford and Mario Sorrenti has been well documented. But her beauty influence has mostly been limited to those who obsessively follow fashion week street-style shots of her, with her smudged-black eyes and unbrushed hair falling over her face. So it’s a pleasant surprise that M.A.C, a company known for thinking well outside the model/pretty celebrity box, has asked the 57-year-old stylist and editor to compose a collection of cosmetics (from $18, maccosmetics.com) and pose for its campaign. “I think it is smart, because to be beautiful is not just about being a classic beauty. There is something subtler but more touching in you that is beautiful too,” says Roitfeld when we meet at the New York flagship bookstore of Rizzoli, the publisher of Irreverent, her glossy scrapbook memoir of last year. Wearing a camouflage Junya Watanabe sweater, YSL pencil skirt and bright green Balenciaga stiletto sandals, with that smoky liner and no lipstick, she’s typically un-“done” and exudes cool, though her warm manner is far from the frosty fashion stereotype.

Nothing like some stellar tuneage to get your long weekend going, and our photo editor Nicole Stafford has put together this week’s selection. Whether you’re feeling Motown or mid-70s rock, this mixtape’s got something for everyone who appreciates a good summer jam.

The post TGIF Mixtape: 26 long weekend-approved jams from TLC, Prince, Fleetwood Mac and more! appeared first on FASHION Magazine.

Fashion Television (RIP) was ahead of its time in several ways, and here is one of them: In 1985, when executive producer Jay Levine launched the program, he imagined it might become a channel for short narrative videos about clothing. Fashion films, now so inescapable a phenomenon, were then just a thought without a name: if music videos could revolutionize the way we consume pop, couldn’t a little cinematography do the same for clothing? The ’70s had seen then-living legends Guy Bourdin and Richard Avedon experiment with the moving image, and as film-recording cameras became less expensive, it seemed likely they’d land in the hands of younger, emerging lensmen. As MTV was to music videos, so might Fashion Television be to this new mode of image-making.

Word: Demotic

Meaning: Of/relating to ordinary, plain-spoken, colloquial language; vernacular.

Usage: “[Smith’s] verses were resolutely demotic, even as she played with the imagery that Rimbaud drew from the Bible and Eliphas Lévi and fairy tales and illustrated geographies, and she deployed this imagery even as she devoted poems to Edie Sedgwick, Marianne Faithfull, and Anita Pallenberg.”

Well, aren’t you in for a treat! Today, we’re exploring the Pierre Hardy bag belonging to bow-tied boy about town and The Room’s creative director, Nicholas Mellamphy. A long-time purveyor of chicness, Mellamphy was the genius behind Yorkville boutique Hazel, and more recently has become one of the key members of the Bay’s new transformation team. You can thank him later for putting the likes of Proenza Schouler, Thakoon, Erdem, Christopher Kane, and Carven together in one room, but in the meantime, let’s snoop!

Let’s explore! »

By Randi Bergman and Jordan Porter

In the world of icons, it truly doesn’t get any better than Patti Smith. We’d confess our undying devotion to the singer’s lyrics, voice, style, heart, poems and just about anything else she is responsible for (and let us tell you, there’s a lot). The recently released book of never-before-seen images, Patti Smith 1969-1976 by Judy Linn, breathes new life into her everlasting stylistic impact by showing her just before she hit the big time. We channeled Smith’s impact in the best way we know how, shopping in the name of!

Shop the guide now! »