Clickbait clothes

Dirt is a daily email about entertainment.

Terry Nguyen, Dirt's senior staff writer, helms our dispatch, a running recap of the latest digital culture news. This week: "mature" clothes at NYFW, MSCHF's silly red boots, and Rihanna. 

New York Fashion Week is winding down, and the concluding verdict from Harper’s Bazaar’s Rachel Tashjian is that the reign of “clickbait clothing” has waned. Designers like Eckhaus Latta, Proenza Schouler, and Fforme are making real clothes again, showcasing designs that are functional, forward-thinking, and sophisticated. “We’re tired of all this fantasy and Instagram clothes,” said Lazaro Hernandez of Proenza Schouler. 

These pieces are best admired in close proximity to the wearer. They are mature clothes for “the erstwhile avant-garde, adulting,” writes NYT fashion critic Vanessa Friedman. Mature doesn’t imply boring. It’s a sensibility of the self-possessed. There is no need for showmanship; the body is the superior vehicle for well-made clothes. No screen can capture the heft of a wool coat or the soft scrunch of a pair of trousers.

For years, designers (and the fashion world writ large) were consumed by social media’s trend engine—first Instagram, now TikTok. Labels erred towards conceptual gimmicks to bring attention to a season’s collection. Ideas and designs were praised for their viral, made-for-Instagram potential. Craftsmanship, beauty, and creativity became secondary to a label’s reputation. And while certain statement pieces (see: Miu Miu’s miniskirt, Diesel’s belt skirt, micro purses) are undeniably and enviously fun, they often are highly unwearable and unflattering on anyone who isn’t a walking mannequin. 

We should rejoice in the real, while bearing in mind that Pop Art-like provocations won’t vanish anytime soon. Just this past week, the internet was titillated by MSCHF’s clownish, big red boots. Perhaps it’s a winking commentary on the great weirding of footwear or, as I’ve darkly interpreted it, a prophetic look at how climate disaster will shape sneaker culture.

IN OTHER (FASHION) NEWS: 

• The Panera baguette bag ($40, sold out) is reportedly the most in-demand item at NYFW. 

• Telfar releases a new Pill-shaped bag in three sizes, the largest of which can also fit a sandwich.

• JuJu Smith-Schuster (sorry again to the Eagles fans) wears Thom Browne for his SuperBowl walk-on outfit. The man knows he is fitted up: “This shit not for everybody.” Indeed. 

• Rihanna pays tribute to the late fashion critic André Leon Talley, wearing an Alaia jacket with a silhouette that recalls Talley’s iconic red sleeping bag coat.

PLAYBACK

Snippets of streaming news — and what we’re streaming.

• An estimated 208 million people tuned in to watch Rihanna’s Superbowl. I truly believe that Rihanna is America’s last true diva (something I think Talley has said): She is unrivaled in attitude, face, and voice, and her music is the undisputed soundtrack of the 2000s and 2010s. But with the success of Fenty, she seems to have relinquished her diva crown: The billion-dollar business comes first.

  • I have yet to recover from her performance at the 2012 Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show. What an era. And for further RiRi reading: a vintage Doreen St. Felix piece on Rihanna’s prosperity gospel.

• Disney considers licensing some of its films and TV series to other streamers to earn more cash from its content library. (Bloomberg)

• Spotify has a new investor. ValueAct Capital has a history of urging companies to raise prices for their products. (Bloomberg)

• 🔥 I endorse GQ’s recommendation to stream Fire of Love, the documentary on two French volcanologists, for Valentine’s Day. I’ll be watching Titanic in theaters.

MIXTAPE

Good links from the Dirtyverse.

• Pistachio passion. (Eater) 

• Ted Chiang likens ChatGPT and other large language models to “lossy text-compression algorithms”: The technology tries to shrink all the knowledge on the web into something akin to a compressed zip file that can belong to a single company, like Google or Bing, and deployed as a search engine. (New Yorker) 

  • “Think of ChatGPT as a blurry jpeg of all the text on the Web. It retains much of the information on the Web, in the same way that a jpeg retains much of the information of a higher-resolution image, but, if you’re looking for an exact sequence of bits, you won’t find it; all you will ever get is an approximation.”

• How ChatGPT can be “broken” by some strange Reddit usernames. (Vice)

• The best Chelsea gallery shows to tour in February, curated by friend of the Dirty-verse David Cho. I’d also recommend Lisson’s Future Shock group show, ft. Cory Arcangel, Tony Conrad, and many others.

• A critical look at The Line, a dystopian vanity project in the Saudi Arabian desert. (The Baffler)

• 🎉 Our friends at Arkive, a decentralized museum collectively curated by members, launch Atrium, its revamped membership platform. 

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