Vogue Hommes English Version Fall - Winter 2016 -2017

Jegor Venned —This issue’s cover boy, Jegor Venned has a distinct air of Richard Gere about him, around the time of American Gigolo. He stands well over six feet tall, has almond–shaped brown eyes and a body that might well have been sculpted. We noticed him at a Berluti show: a magical mix of classicism, perfection and exoticism. With good reason. Jegor hails from the Faroe Islands, eighteen islets scattered in the North Atlantic between Norway and Iceland. “I live in a village of 1,000 inhabitants,” he explains. “It rains 300 days a year, the climate knows no mercy, with all four seasons in twenty–four hours. But the landscapes are breathtaking. Pyramid mountains everywhere, prairies in the north, fjords cut into the coastline, and monumental waterfalls. It reminds me of…

—“Provocative thought–stimulating materials”, the slogan launched by the founders of the Tokyo–based photo magazine Provokein 1968, was far more than the theoretical or aesthetic bravado of a group of young intellectuals and artists keen to get themselves noticed. Something was amiss in the Japan of the time, caught, as it was, between the post–apocalypse domination of the American victor, the empty throne left by the fallen emperor and the all–embracing technological revolution that would make the country world leader in the photographic, hi–fi and video game equipment of the future. The photographers Yutaka Takanashi and Takuma Nakahira, the art critic Koji Taki, and the writer Takahiko Okada, soon to be joined by Daidõ Moriyama, steered a collision course into Japanese elegance — the façade of a fractured country. Rather like…

Gold. Family. Bricks & Mortar. Fashion itself, attuned as it is to events in the wider world, is no exception to this impulse. In these days when we are surrounded by destruction and mayhem, disorientated and mesmerised by the consequent sense of loss and rebirth, Vogue Hommes has decided to hold up the notion of “classic”, the style safe haven par excellence, to scrutiny. Hardly is the word on the page than a silhouette springs to mind: clear–cut, potent, generally understated, universally applicable — and all too often, tediously predictable. This issue aims to take that somewhat bland notion to its extremes, blur its contours, subvert its aesthetic codes, and multiply its possibilities a hundredfold, going so far as to reinvent tradition through bold combinations, jumbling periods, and redefining the…

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—Valentino advocates the truly waterproof waterproof in glazed vinyl. Every move you make sounds like skin on skin. —Gucci and Alessandro Michele have decreed that all of yesterday’s heresies are today’s new cool, including wearing your favourite Snoopy teeshirt — the one you sleep in — out to dinner. —Hermès Véronique Nichanian continues to poke subtle fun by pairing her super–luxe daywear looks with left–field accessories, like this bag, waiting to tear you apart. —Dior and Kris Van Assche are still exploring their dream of youth. The upshot is some formal streetgear — a cap–wearing banker’s son or post–bourgeois artist just about wraps it up. It does it for us. —Raf Simons has wheeled the silhouette of Bobby Briggs, the high–school jock in Twin Peaks, back into the spotlight, but…

VOGUE HOMMES Who was the first man whose look impressed you? LUCAS OSSENDRIJVER David Bowie in the “Ashes to Ashes” video. I must have been ten, and I was struck by the weird costumes, the acid, solarised footage on the beach — like a lunar landscape. Bowie in a white shirt and black trousers was so mysterious. It was my first inkling of the impact fashion could have on the punch of an image. I also remember him in “Let’s dance,” with his peroxide hair and cream outfit. He is my all–time inspiration. VH When did you realise that you wanted to become a fashion designer? LO I’ve always liked creating things with my hands. I hesitated between architecture and fashion, but once I had enrolled at the Arnhem Academy…