Larry in Burberry is Beside the Weather’s fashion correspondent. He analyzes fashion trends for common wearers of clothes. He dreams of IKEA-inspired Balenciaga bags but still puts his furniture together himself.
Think of Larry in Burberry like Damsel in Dior’s work husband, who she really loves but sometimes gets annoyed with because he goes too all out on the 4th of July. Follow Larry on Insta here.
Brrrr. The weather at Paris Fashion Week was chillier than Parisians early impressions of the Eiffel Tower (they hated it at first), but Chanel, Louis Vuitton, Balmain, Miu Miu and Balenciaga brought enough heat to melt your macarons.
The Fall 2018 shows in Paris took on a distinctly outdoorsy theme on and off the runway, and while models and street style stars may have been frozen, they quickly channeled their inner Elsa and let it go.
Some even went full Blink 182 and took off their pants and jacket. Here are Larry’s favorite street style outerwear.
Mother Nature played lead designer for most of Fashion Month this year, and not everyone was quite as enamored with the street style coats she determined trendy. After North Face was spotted all over NYC at New York Fashion Week, writer Marc Peruzzi wrote an article for Outside Magazine that began:
“Fashion Week has wrapped up in New York. And we don’t care, except that they keep sucking outdoor brands into their pop-culture vomitorium via a trend New York magazine coined “gorpcore.” Which is kind of a brilliant word, actually—a mashup of GORP, an acronym for Good Old Raisins and Peanuts that’s also used as a slur against outdoorsy people, and “core,” short for hardcore, meaning the subset of society who do shit besides go to Fashion Week.”
He went on to get particularly angry that “hypebeastie boys and girls” call North Faces puffers: “A puffy is a jacket; a puffer is a fish. The former is to be accompanied by a knit hat, mittens, and caloric intake to keep you alive. The latter is something urbanites eat when trying to fugu themselves to death.”
Fug u Marc. First off, let’s leave the fashion commentary to real experts like Larry here. You don’t see me writing about how to turn gapers into rippers or what the best deals under $50 are at Moosejaw.
Secondly, you can’t have it both ways. You can’t have movies with outdoorsy-themes like fish sex winning Oscars and then get mad fashionistas are wearing North Face. Let’s come together. Isn’t that why REI is closed on Black Friday? So we can spend time with our families, #OptOutside and bond?
Maybe you should listen to North Face’s slogan and Never Stop Exploring other people’s point of view. You could find common ground with fashionistas. You don’t like being called Good Old Raisins and Peanuts. Fashionistas don’t like eating them (especially during Fashion Week). You broke your rib in Alaskan falling on your avalanche transceiver. Models break their ankles falling on the catwalk. You ski powder. Fashionistas snort it.
And you bring up your broken rib and mention a storm in Jackson Hole in your article but you’re not as hardcore as your gorpcore rant might suggest. I mean, you wear a bike helmet like a beta.
Here’s how it’s done.
Alcatraz Alpha’d.
#Mood
Sticking with the outdoors, there’s one model who’s reached the top of model mountain who’s been conspicuously absent all fashion month, Kendall Jenner. She’s been taking time off on the slopes.
Nice to see Kendall doing some shit besides fashion week huh, Marc?
Staying on the slopes, the Balenciaga show was also shredding the gnar. While the material was on the runway, no one would describe their manmade hill as corduroy.
Marc has passed out. I respect a good troll (see above), so I always enjoy Balenciagia’s small troll jabs in their shows. In the past they’ve partnered with crocs and made bags that looked exactly like Ikea’s totes. This time, they went the prank call route.
Show attendees who called the phone number (plastered on models and the side of the snowboard hill), were directed to an automated hotline that asked 20 “strictly confidential” questions around gender, taste, favorite shape and other market-research-related topics. At the end of the 20 questions, the call ended with: “Thank you for taking the time to answer our questions. All data will be erased now.”
Meh. It was ok. About as inspiring as asking if your fridge is running. I still enjoy the IKEA-bag troll the best.
Ok, it’s après-ski time. The most intriguing part of any fashion week is what Karl Lagerfeld is going to dream up for Chanel’s next set. In the past, he’s staged shows in the mountains, ancient Greece, a digital data center, a Cuban street party, Coco Chanel’s studio and, most recently an actual rocket launch.
This year, he transformed the Grand Palais into an enchanted forest, with leaves, real mossy oaks and 508 poplar wood benches made for his guests.
The show was praised by the fashion set, but the France Nature Environment didn’t think cutting down 100-year-old oaks was a great use of natural resources. Possible Karl didn’t see the forest from the trees?
Something nobody can be mad at…dogs!
Which of course gives Larry another chance to post good hair day photo of Teddy.
And it’s impossible for everyone not to agree on plaid.
It was all over Paris Fashion Week, and it’s been in Larry’s closet since birth. I had fun going through my Facebook archives to find my three favorite plaids of all-time.
The final show of fashion month was Louis Vuitton, and editors and Larry alike were either slap happy or doing the violent “I’m not sleeping, you’re sleeping” head bob that’s gotten Larry a few times in early Monday morning business meetings.
Which is all to say, I may have dozed off during the LV livestream but I did see Songs of Style wearing these LV sneakers, which are just straight hot fire.
They’re only available for women, which reminds me of the time in 3rd grade when a Finish Line employee convinced me to buy the women’s version of Scottie Pippen’s signature basketball shoe because they were sold out of the men’s. That sales savage said they looked similar and no one would know. No one did, but it feels good to finally get that off my chest after 23 years.
As we wrap up fashion month, a reminder fashion should be fun. Olivier Rousteing at Balmain wanted to have fun.
Fashion is fun, Olivier. It’s ok. Check out Commes des Garcon.
And Japanese pop duo twins Ami and Aya Suzuki had double the monogrammed jacket fun.
I had immense pleasure this fashion month recapping everything. Until next time, keep your heels and your standards high. And if you see me in the streets, I’ll probably be wearing this customizable Ralph Lauren crewneck.
If you missed any of Larry’s Fashion Month coverage, read the articles here:
