on the left, it is an art installation in the past from an unknown artist.
on the right, it is the spring ’12 louis vuitton window display.

both the window display and the installation are great.

on the left, we have past tees from junk food.
on the right, we have the summer ’10 ut all stars by uniqlo.

i am pretty sure that’s not a co-incident. but uniqlo never claimed to be original. indeed, their mission statement is ‘to continuously provide fashionable, high quality, basic casual wear at the lowest prices in the market – casual wear that anybody can wear whenever and wherever.’ if you are in their way, then good luck to you.

do you know: uniqlo is short for unique clothing warehouse, and it was supposed to be uni.clo. when they commissioned their hong kong agent to register the name for hong kong and the greater china area, he made the mistake. however, when it was reported to tadashi yanai san, he thought the ‘q’ instead of the ‘c’ more unique, more lively, and more ‘cute’. and he renamed all stores to uniqlo.

on the left, it was raf simons for jil sander fall ’09.
on the right, it is giles deacon spring ’10.

and fall ’09 is right before spring ’10, meaning raf is before giles.

on the left, we have the classic birkin bag by hermes.
on the right, we have the brand new peekapoo bag by fendi for spring 09.

the birkin is an iconic bag with a history. but, it’s not the most user friendly bag to carry around – you can barely put it though your shoulder, and that closure is not form-follow-function to say the least. (how many times have you seen the bag wide open with 1 strap on the shoulder with the other falling off?) well, one thing for sure – the waiting list is more than 2 years.

now, why would fendi referencing such a thing? they don’t need to be on the coattails of hermes long history, heritage, nor their projection of quality (leave that to the chinese, like me). and it’s not even a great functioning bag. is that any truth to the karl lagerfeld retiring rumor then?

on the left, we have a hermes bag dated before 2003.
on the right we have a comme des garçons louis vuitton crossover bag from 2008.

of course, we don’t dare to say our beloved rei kawakubo was copying (oh my god!). but for someone who is widely and blindedly admired for her originality, this simply shouldn’t have happened. it was a lazy design in her high standard. the collaboration was disappointing in not realizing its earth-shaking potential. it was a business-as-usual project, and that is just unusual for comme des garçons.