Brian Lantelme Photography

Brian Lantelme photo's take us back to a time of real REALNESS like no other and they also make me realize that us boys and "girls" :) living right now have to really really push and cultivate our creativity and keep things original, even though there are many who would argue usually in a very psuedo intellectual way that one cannot be original anymore...blase, blase. But anyway I feel we are fortunate to live in an age where everything is so accessible,(I'm strictly speaking in terms of fashion right now). If we want to know what the kids in Paris, or Copehagen or Cape Town are wearing all we have to do is go to a fashion blog, a myspace etc, and more fashion publications the world over are being published and distributed. Yet with this acessibility and exchange that many including myself find interesting and captivating, windows into styles and trends that one might not ever have acess to, comes the downside that now every tom, dick, harry and joe can jock your look, your style and your cultural influence

which isn't cute. AT ALL.

I recently read in a magazine (and I like this publication so I don't want to put them on blast) a style profile of a girl, a white girl, they had chosen because she was soo "Cool" looking, Anyway this girls outfit consisted of mostly High-end designer items and yet when asked what the inspiration behind her look was she replied "I'd like to look like a girl from the ghetto's of London"

Girls I wanted to reach through that magazine and beat that girls nose in with her silver spoon. This magazine with (and i'm about to break out the ebonics) " NEH ONE DAMN MODEL OF COLOR" in its page's has the nerve to actually publish what this tarty brat's outlook on style is.

Now someone could easily say " Well what if it was a girl of color and she had said she wanted to look like say, Paris Hilton or an upper east side girl etc... I think we are all " REAL" enough to not try and argue that...seeing as how western standards of beauty are based on Eurocentricism etc.

But besides the snotty girl, were all here because we know Fashion, We know personal style, We know mainstream commericial, We know High-end and We know underground-cult

To Achieve what you want and present who you are, your fashion and your style to the world despite race, ethnicity or class in hopes of achieving sucess, fame and notoriety is WONDERFUL and despite how "Politically correct" " Post-Policitically correct" you want to think the world is, its still a victory for girls of color to achieve sucess in the world of Fashion.

You here people using the term " Ghetto Fabulous" but I find this word exploitive and vulgar. The lower class Jews before the Holocaust in europe lived in Ghetto's and theres nothing Fabulous about that. Even in the American sense theres nothing Fab about the "Trap"...ahem "Trapped", get my drift?

The Mix of High and Low culture is nothing new and the best looks are usually achievied by this mix and yet I'd like to re-think it. Instead of it being High and Low perhaps it should be High and Hood, because Hood doesn't seem to carry the same connotations as Ghetto, Hood comes from the people and perhaps we could eliminate the seperation and just make it
" High-end Hood". These photo's harken back to the nitty gritty, before you could copy cat and have more to do with Identity I feel than fashion(considering most are nude or half naked lol).

But thats my point, I want someone to see the way I dress and see my identity, not that I'm "Fashionable" or god help me and anyone who would utter the word "Trendy"

Whatever the Terminology Girls

Keep it Fresh, keep it Cult and keep it Street. Because even if you could buy a whole floor of Barney's, and fill your closet with Margiela it would still be the kids scavenging the thrift shops, making the music that we dance to, deconstructing, reworking, accessorizing with the unlikely, these are the people working a look likely to appear on runways the following season

get it!?
merry x mas
michael








Brian Lantelme