Can fashion still be a subculture — surprising, fresh, unpredictable, a natural reflection of youth culture?
It’s not easy. And what alternative is there to a purely mercantile world flooded with similarly “posed,” similarly “sexy and seductive” images, supposedly with “attitude”? From the glossies to Instagram, from advertising to blogs, this sameness kills the interest in fashion — however innovative a designer’s work might be. This is every magazine’s challenge, but especially for Purple, which thrives on the spirit of experimentation, bricolage, amateurism, irony, and even ideas, and that keeps a distance, deliberately, from what the industry thinks is “professional” or “powerful” at any given moment.
This is why we shot portraits of 112 creative women from outside the mainstream, along with three strong men of character: the YSL icon Thadée Klossowski de Rola, the radical artist Larry Clark, and the talented make-up artist Aaron de Mey. It’s also why we asked for fashion stories from artists like Sandy Kim and Olaf Breuning and from the duo who makes TOILETPAPER.
Maybe to celebrate fashion, one has to be spiritually anti-fashion. It’s been done before; it can happen again. Different doors must be opened: the door to contradiction, the doors to opposition and transgression, and even the risky door to bad taste. In that way, maybe ends can become new beginnings.
— OLIVIER ZAHM
[Table of contents]
Night Pictures
by Olivier Zahm and Stéphane Feugère with a portfolio by Christopher Wool
by Christopher Bollen
by Hans-Ulrich Obrist
by Mehdi Belhaj Kacem
by Karley Sciortino
by John Jefferson Selve
by François Simon
by Sven Schumann
by bob Nickas
by Dike Blair
by Donatien Grau
by Caroline Gaimari
by Simon Liberati
by Olivier Zahm
by Sabine Heller
by Sven Schumann
by Sandy Kim
by Camille Bidault Waddington
by Takashi Homma
by Ola Rindal
by Katja Rahlwes
by Drew Jarrett
by Maxime Ballesteros
by Paul Wetherell
by Giasco Bertoli
by Chikashi Suzuki
by Benjamin Alexander Huseby
by Johan Sandberg
by Michel Compte
by Andreas Larsson
by Benoit Peverelli
by Theo Wenner
by Terry Richardson
by Olivier Zahm
by Patrick Mauriès
by Charles-Edmond Henry
by Giasco Bertoli
by Olivier Zahm
by Max Farago