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Every Fashion Week brings a wondrous display of originality and true creativity, but so often it can feel like we’ve seen all this shit before. How many times have designers told Style.com or GQ in an interview that they looked to dads, military uniforms, varsity sports apparel, the ’20s, punk, the “rock ‘n roll spirit of the ’60s,” “the Baroque uniform of Versailles Paris,” the streamlined geometry of Mies Van Der Rohe’s, blahahrghalrahg? Definitely, like, a hundred kajillion times.
It’s enough to make you think we’ve seriously run out of sources of inspiration. But we haven’t! I've got some totally oRiGiNaL wellsprings from which to create the groundbreaking fashion collections of the future that will change the landscape more than a shoppable tech start-up ever could! Take that! Take that!
Rachel Seville is a writer living in New York who believes in miracles. Read her blog, Pizza Rulez, here and follow her on Twitter here.
2.exploitation
3.rivers
Rivers
What if a certain Parisian designer was all, “I was super inspired about how you can’t step in the same river twice” and designed a cool black drapey thang whose fabric changes every time you wear it so it never fits right ever again? And then Ssense buys a million of them and they SELL OUT because we are all SLAVES to the ephemeral!
4.joanrivers
Joan Rivers
Speaking of rivers: Joan Rivers is a geyser of fashion inspiration that will gush as soon as we tap that. (Ooooh, let that marinate.) “I was inspired by the culture of celebrity that drives a person to speak in such a horrifyingly grinding voice, while manipulating their face in a repeated, but futile attempt to recapture youth—assuming youth is even a concept,” a designer who we all pretend to like might say. “This means strapless gowns for men made of sequins that are pulled beyond taut, giving the body a lion’s face look.”
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Jack-O-Lanterns
Can a garment at once leer and dance to the beat of a single candle burning inside it? Why has this question never occurred to any designer in the history of fashion?
6.donna
Girls Named Donna
You know, girls named Donna are always such a drag. Always like, “Can I have my milk on the side?” and you’re all, “There’s no milk because this is pasta?” And Donna’s all, “Can you just put it on the side in a little glass?” So this collection goes out to all the ladies named Donna. Coats ride up, sweaters are made of real itchy wool and the showstopper is a 100% cashmere literal wet blanket.
7.4train
The Terrible Daily Commute On The Lexington Avenue Downtown Express Train
While you guys are still in bed, waiting for the cool siren call of fashion to awake you at 10:30 AM like “iiiiit’s time to influuuuuence,” the unfashionablez are on a grinding 30-minute all-flat rollercoaster of horrors where everyone bumps into each other so hard they bruise and all they say is, “Oh SORRY, I forgot you were HUMAN” and some girl named CANDACE is reading US Weekly and audibly groaning at this story about Jen Aniston’s long-delayed Neil Diamond Impersonator Sacrifice Ceremony. I mean, wedding. A designer ought to cover all the clothing with splashes of spilled coffee and with a kind of never-ending turtleneck and permanent gloves, making you feel suffocated and imprisoned.
8.picturesatanexhibition
"Pictures At An Exhibition"
Modest Mussorgsky’s suite is a ten movement tribute to his artist pal Viktor Hartmann, which conjures the experience of touring a room filled with some of his best paintings. It is one of the prime time examples of ekphrasis (an artistic description of another work of art), which means it would be THE COOLEST if a designer made a collection inspired by “Pictures of Exhibition” because it would be META and we all love that word or concept or thing or whatever it says in the Urban Outfitters coffee table book you get all your ideas from.
9.MFA
Some Dude’s Totally Beat Creative Writing MFA Thesis
“The sand tickled her like a hand tickling a body / and I told her I would love her / no matter / w / h / a / t / because who is / anybody.” I’d wear that shit.
10.averill
W. Averell Harriman
William Averell Harriman spent the twentieth century prancing around behind the scenes of the world stage like “Lemme fix this.” The Stock Market? “Lemme fix this.” The Cold War? “Lemme fix this.” Horses? “Lemme fix this.” A few brainy women’s sour marriages? “Lemme fix this.” Plus, his mouth looks like the most sophisticated caveman took a chisel to a rock smoothed by the natural winds of Ireland and created the world’s first ever straight line. Lean geometry and easy clean-up must inspire a collection of RED SCARE BIBS! Because you’ll be eating lobster any old time you please, you luxurious son of a railroad tycoon bitch!
11.yosemite
Yosemite Sam
WHAT IN TARNATION ARE DESIGNERS DOING NOT MAKING LUSTROUS LONG RED BEARDS AND BIG OLE HATS FOR YOU HANDSOME DEVILS?
12.firstgf
The Lonely, Depraved Cackle of the First Woman Who Broke Your Heart
Yeah, Gareth Pugh and Hedi Slimane took some cues from witches, but the woman they conjured wasn’t even truly evil. You know who was? The girl who broke up with you via email in eighth grade, then called your home phone and heard you maybe crying and CACKLED. You remember that cackle: hollow, beastly, the corrupt cry of a wolf who defanged another wolf and wore its new fangs as extra fangs for DOUBLE FANGS. What that means sartorially is a bunch of men’s sweaters with six-foot-long sleeves that billow like deranged windsocks, but always leave you feeling freeeeezing.
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Paula Deen
“For this collection, I wanted the garments to embody the brutal, screeching insensitivity of a true nimrod. So, there are a lot of pants. And also wigs.”
14.art
Art
Designers have long looked to artists for inspiration, but they’re always so...specific. For S/S 14, for example, Calvin Klein looked to Guggenheim-anointed artist James Turrell while Raf went for Pop, Calder and Gagosian. What about just, like, ART? You know, like paintings, and how people do them with brushes. “I found this one guy who just makes drawings with pencils and like that’s the final product,” a designer might reveal to Style.com, “which inspired this collection of pencil skirts for men.” FORGET KILTS, it’s time for y’all to get sleek.
15.coned
These Con-Ed Folks Who Won’t Get Off MY CASE
OK, I have just sort of forgotten to pay my Con-Ed bill for a few months because writing a check sounded boring. But isn’t electricity a natural right, like the right to air or the right to say to your friend, “Hey man, not to be a little bitch or anything, but I sort of love this Demi Lovato song”? I want a collection about natural rights and how CERTAIN PEOPLE infringe upon them with CHECKS and “final turn-off notices” as if I were some twig that bows to the threat of breeze. The human spirit conquers all in the end, which is a triumphal series of jackets that you can wrap up into hats because jackets and hats are superlative.
16.fashiontrope
All the Lame Fashion Inspiration Tropes
If a designer just punked out and made a collection of garments each inspired by the lamezilla sources we see recycled over and over—"The DIY spirit of punk,” "The high theatre of tsarist Russia,” “The minimalist sensibilities of early twentieth century architecture,” “The east-meets-west dynamic of history’s first power couple, Antony and Cleopatra,” etc. I would lollerblade and buy EVERYTHING so I could just lollerblade all day long.
17.designersstealing
Designers Stealing from Other Designers
“I was really interested in how designers coopt ideas, forms and designs from other designers. In some cases just taking patterns, prints and designs wholesale and selling them at a different price point in a shudder-inducing lack of originality and respect.” NOW THAT WOULD BE COOL.