This has got to be the best thing I've encountered in at least six weeks.
Vena Cava's video for their
Viva Vena! diffusion line is a parody of the kind of video lookbooks that many young female designers resort to. I can't embed the thing from Vimeo, so you should go
here to watch it before proceeding...
Aside from being very, very, funny (fashion people are generally devoid of humor, in part because they are incapable of pointing it at themselves. See Alexander Wang's inexplicable exhumation of
Bon Qui Qui for his Spring '13 campaign, making her the butt of the joke instead of oh, I dunno, hundred dollar tee shirts and the people who buy them. But I digress) the cleverest thing about this film is that it makes fun of the genre's tropes while simultaneously fulfilling them.
Lizzy Caplan's rape-gaze and the snarky production details aside, it's still a pretty girl with a flower crown traipsing around in soft-focus sunlight. The clothes themselves are pretty effing cute too, and don't exactly form any tension with the aesthetic the video is mocking.
*
update: I've already purchased a sweater from this collection.
Deconstructing comedy is a very necessary yet super gross, private thing, but I'm interested here because I've been a longtime admirer of Vena Cava. My BFF and I both worked in one of the first stores to carry the line, and we spent hours poring over the clothes, discussing details and construction, and wishing they would go on sale so we could afford them. The designers themselves are two really smart and funny ladies who always seemed too smart and funny for their own good. Their references are interesting and offbeat, but reviews in the fashion press are always mixed, if they are present at all. Viva Vena! is the latest in a string of maneuvers to help keep the brand afloat--they've done collaborations with Via Spiga, GAP, Uniqlo, and still
nearly went under before
finding the financial backing that allows (requires?) them to make a diffusion line on their own terms—which, make no mistake, I am very excited about. I have always loved Vena's clothes; they're cool and feminine without resorting to cheeseball rocker aesthetics or costumey retro nostalgia. which is perhaps exactly what accounts for the brand's instability over the years: a bit too much hedging for the masses, whose female archetypes need to fit neatly an established framework in order to sell. In that light, the film takes on the more cynical tone of resignedly spoon-feeding the market the over processed pabulum it requires:
here, is what you want? Some cute books and records, some innocuously girlish, noncommittal stabs at creativity?
It's a commercial, after all.
I thought the vintage-loving community would have a good laugh with it, but the video landed with mainly a thud and an echo in this corner of the blogosphere. Maybe it's too spot-on for comfort, but relating to it
is what makes it so funny. I'm checking off just about every cliché in here, and that's fine. I collect records, play the ukulele, and have made many hopeful stabs at experimental fiction on a typewriter. I will always spring for the vintage paperback, and not just because they're usually cheaper. I've paid dearly once or twice for copies of books that simply just look better on the shelf than their newer counterparts. Even if the book is for a class and the difference in edition makes for a discrepancy in page numbers, if it's been in print for decades and there's a range of covers to choose from, by god I
can and
shall exercise my consumer power in service of my aesthetic taste.
It's hard not to fall into well-worn platitudes when trying to express yourself visually, especially for people (like me, like you, like many young women who embody these tropes) who are more used to expressing themselves verbally. It's okay if we all like the same stuff, because we're all more complicated and interesting than mere stuff. In fact, at the risk of offending that portion of my readership who is inclined toward feline affection, I'll admit before god and everyone that I probably mutter "fuck cats" under my breath with utter sincerity at least once a week. So let's all chill and have a good chuckle at our own expense.
For real, though. Fuck cats.
