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In an interview with ABC news on Friday, March 12, Tom Ford remarked that he’d “basically done fashion, and was interested in challenging himself in new ways.” Whether you believe that creativity in any art form never dies, but only dies within the individual, or that Mr. Ford was destined for greater glory, is perhaps a matter of personal choice. What is striking is the different path taken by Hedi Slimane, who resigned from Yves Saint Laurent in 1999, rather than spend one more day working for Ford.
In a dichotomy of circumstance, Slimane is now 9 months into his second contract with Dior Homme, and is clearly on a role. Having completely remade the label, he’s also got his finger so surely on the pulse of Generations Y and I, the latter having never known a world without Internet. On Wednesday, March 10, a Dior Homme party to celebrate the opening of the New York City boutique drew an awesome list of intelligentsia and young artists. The party began at 9 p.m. in the raw space fashioned as a stage-set designed by Hedi Slimane at 545 West 22nd St. Sonic Youth, fronted by Kim Gordon, took the stage a few hours into the party causing a frenzy among the crowd. The performance was accompanied by hypnotic light sets, also designed by Slimane, flooding the dark, smoky room with systematic bursts of red and white.
Among the guests was Ryan McGinley, a 26 year old photographer noted for his fresh portrayal of gay friends and lovers, a group that forms part of New York¹s Lower East Side youth culture, and FischerSpooner, featuring Casey Spooner, the up and coming musician. Among the other people present: David Blaine, Sophie Dahl, Steven Klein, Vincent Gallo, Hope Atherton, Terry Richardson, Jamie Johnson, Missy Rayder, Bernard Picasso and Almine Rech, David Byrne, Thaddaeus Ropac, David Byrne, Tiffany Dubin, Philip-Lorca di Corcia, Daryl Hannah, Alana Heiss, Cecilia Dean, Jay Jopling, Vito Schnabel, Vikram Chatwal, Sante D¹Orazio, Amanda Hearst, Amanda Lepore, Anderson Cooper, Craig McDean, Matt Damhave, Fabian Basabe, Kim Gordon, Thurston Moore, Daniel Romualdez, David Sims, Danny Baker, Jr., Jeffrey Deitch, Leo Villareal, David Armstrong, Yvonne Force, Matthew Marks, Conrad de Kwiatkowski, Delphine Arnault, Benjamin Cho, Bay Garnett, Moses Berkson, Andres Serrano, Helena Christensen, and Sophia Lamar.
-Timothy Hagy
Timothy is lookonline’s new corresponding editor from Paris. He can be reached at hagy@noos.fr
