September 16, 2006

{ Chicks on Speed - It's a Project }

You probably have heard the music, you may have seen the videos. What I hope you have not seen is the clothing line. For Chicks On Speed, “clothing line” is not the female equivalent of Pharrel’s Billionaire Something venture(bad idea. And I am not the only one to think it that way), nor it is similar to the small collection clearly designed not by her but by professionists and sold online by Gwen Stephani (interesting: her CDs sell for 10$ and her clothes can be priced for more than 300$?), and does not even resembles the collaboration with corporation with worldwide distribution H&M, as Madonna (more about this later, yes?).

No, their “clothing line” definitely deserve brackets since it is not a “line” at all: aside for the usual tour t-shirts, they make clothes meaning they saw everything themselves and the copies produced are probably less than 10. And until here everything would be cool. Unless you were actually to look at the clothes produced.
Ever seen the video for Wordy Rappinghood? Or for We Don’t Play Guitars? Chicks on Speed appears like that in my worst nightmares, like the Erinyes coming to punish me for constantly leaving my sister under the snow in my dreams when I was a toddler.
And they are wearing their “clothes”.

If you have not seen either videos (lucky you!), I will just mention there is a lot of fluo ribbon, glow in the dark stuff, mixed with fake newspaper print. And put together like not even hurricane Katrina could do… They do not look like clothes at all: truly scary as a whole. And yet… C.O.S. are convinced to be doing high fashion: one of their singles was indeed titled Fashion Rules, and if seeing these “clothes” on video was not enough for a lifetime, they actually went on and sold an entire line online (from their own site).
And honestly, for me this is has become the proof that you can be totaly talentless even if you study art in Munich.

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The “clothes line” attempt lasted a while and it luckily seems to be over now. It was pretty obvious they were saving on materials, since most garments had the same newspaper print on it, as if they bought this roll of fabric they were trying to use up in any possible way. And despite this, the prices were pretty damn high! The only two pieces left for sale are currently tagged at 150 euros for a mini skirt and 100 for a sleeveless top (no, actually a “urban camo dimensional dress”…). What they did with the rest is a mistery: that ugly dress really got sold out? And what about the crazily priced “coat”? (Two new accessories, a bag and a “helmet” are more reasonably priced, but not less ugly)

Despite the bad turnout, these three girls are not yet about to give up. Sadly. This year they presented their new marvel It’s a project by Chicks on Speed, which should be an art edition of sort, but in reailty is an expensive piece of junk. Even retailers do not really know how to identify the nature of this…thing, for lack of a better word.

100 euros (but already half price on Amazon) for a pretentious book (each page is a handwriting gibrish of sort, the content quite too thin to be called a book) put into a simple cloth bag, a poster, CD with live tracks, “unisex shift dress” (so many men I can imagine wearing this…) and a pattern for overalls which the band originally intended as a paper dress basically another piece of DIY shit…

What about consider yourself already very lucky since your music is being sold and you are given the chance to tour the world? Making clothes is not mandatory in the music world, you know?? Especially if you are just not able to make them…

P.S. I have not even mentioned pop divas making their own clothes. Not worth the time. But for Madonna one word must be spent: does she really need the extra 5 millions (totally arbitrary guess here) to accept to put her name on the H&M Madonna & Crew line? Get this: H&M official annoucement itself states clearly Madame will only wear high design clothes (by one of the golden French designers) during the tour these clothes are meant for. And this is no surprise really: she is too filthy rich to wear cheap H&M!
Therefore these clothes will only be worn by her staff of dancers, press agents and what not. And this operation resembles an old regal habit: the leftovers being thrown to the dogs, this time by the superb queen of pop..

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By Tacita | Film & TV

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