Hyperkult

Photo credit: Style Rookie

You’ve no doubt heard of Tavi, the 13-year-old wunderkind who belongs to a new garde of fashion writers: teen bloggers. She is as ubiquitous a front row staple as Anna Wintour; she counts the Mulleavy sisters as friends; she is a Pop magazine cover model. She’s a girl, not yet a woman, and let’s not forget that.

A self-professed “Style Rookie,” Tavi maintains a blog of the same name, but if we’re to believe her acutely fashion-literate entries, she’s nothing of the sort. That is, unless the Tavi phenomenon is an elaborate ruse in the same vein as J.T. Leroy. My impressions of Tavi are scattered, but I will cop to occasionally reading her blog and being curious about who this boffo, Rei Kawakubo-loving young lady is.

My issue is less with the wide-eyed aesthete herself than the world that has shepherded her transformation from anon to internet superstar. I wonder under what circumstances, for what purpose such a budding icon is constructed, and by many, revered. What is Tavi’s writing—which seesaws between hyper-mature and rambling tween-speak—teaching us? Have we accepted her as a legitimate expert (Bazaar has), or an avatar of the kind of 13-year-old us adult fashion lovers wish we were at her age—hell, even now?

I am both fascinated and unnerved by the rising Cult of Tavi. The fashion industry routinely turns out star designers, models and false gods, then carelessly discards of them when they are deemed unnecessary. How true Heidi Klum’s tagline rings. It’s admittedly youth and image obsessed (I’ll save the curious sexualization of teen models for another time), and Tavi-idolatry exaggerates these qualities. What this means for a young woman undergoing puberty alongside peers like Aggy and Hamish Bowles is concerning.

Just ask Tim Blanks, whose furrowed brow in Part One of Loic Prigent’s Habillees (several minutes in) says it all:

Wave to the future.

Photo credit: Kitsune Noir

I recently resurrected my long-dormant Netflix account, only to be greeted by a queue that stretches 78 films long—88 if you count the 10 titles languishing in the purgatory otherwise known as “Saved DVDs.” The unruly list starts with Jean-Luc Godard’s A Woman is a Woman and ends with Louis Malle’s Au Revoir Les Enfants, but honestly, what I really want to (re-)rent next is The Pelican Brief.

While I contemplate inviting Julia Roberts’ timorous Darby Shaw into my living room, in the interim I’ve been occupying myself with a series of designer documentaries—a mailbox march of red enveloped arrivals inspired by the impending release of The September Issue. (From what a trusted film journalist friend tells me, it lives up to even steely-eyed Anna Wintour’s measure of excellence.)

My first excursion into the world of couture on screen was Marc Jacobs & Louis Vuitton, director Loïc Prigent’s 2007 film about, arguably, fashion’s most influential designer. Once rebuked—and fired—for his notorious “grunge” collection for Perry Ellis, Jacobs is now an industry darling, evidenced by his elite editorial and celebrity following. The sartorial vanguard’s often unconventional vision has filtered into the wardrobes of mainstream America, with suburbanites waiting with bated breath for the H&M collaboration that may never come. Look to your local designer knockoff kiosk to find rainbow-colored, Eye Love-inspired PVC handbags still selling strong, years after Jessica Simpson paraded her pet “Louis” around on Newlyweds—much to the horror of genuine Murakami aficionados.

Visually striking, but devoid of true depth, I found myself making the most tangential—and maybe inappropriate—of associations while watching the movie. Paul Thomas Anderson, speaking about a 70s porn documentary about John Holmes that informed Boogie Nights, described the Julia St. Vincent-helmed picture as more “love letter” than objective slice of life filmmaking. Then again, I’m not sure how precisely cinematic a documentary about an adult star is meant to be. Nevertheless, the same might be said of Marc Jacobs & Louis Vuitton, which engages insomuch as it invites viewers into the charmeuse-strewn workroom where Vuitton collections are born, all the while portraying its creator sympathetically. But beyond this hallowed space, where Jacobs compulsively snacks on protein bars while giving the “yay” or “nay” to fabric flower adornments, there was a marked absence of meaningful insight into Jacobs himself.

I was searching for neither a scathing exposé of Jacobs’ drug-addled years, nor lascivious confessionals from ex-lovers, but a genuine inquiry into the Mythos of Jacobs. What we are given instead is, at best, a half-realized portrait of the slim couturier, and a digitally rendered purple fairy flitting about to symbolize “inspiration.” But alas, had Marc Jacobs & Louis Vuitton been a less benign movie, you probably wouldn’t be able to purchase it at Marc by Marc Jacobs stores internationally, as is now the case. Look for it somewhere between the mushroom key chains and coffee table photography books.

That said, it still gets points for featuring one of my favorite Vuitton collections to date. It’s pretty, fun, and often inspirational, even if it sometimes comes off like a less thoughtful creative patchwork than the LV Tribute Bag at the center of the Vuitton Spring/Summer 2007 showcase.

Official website of Marc Jacobs & Louis Vuitton