Punk VS Punkindness, Vivienne Westwood VS Simon Cracker
Photography: Riccardo Slavik (@riccardo.slavik)
Fashion: Filippo Leone Maria Biraghi (@buffalo_stance)
Mua: Giada Rusmini (@giadarusminimua)
Muse: Valentyn @theclawmodels
ALL CLOTHES AND ACCESSORIES FROM FILIPPO LEONE MARIA BIRAGHI’S ARCHIVE (@deadcoutureicons_archive)
SPECIAL THANKS TO: Maximilian Linz (@maximilianlinz), Simone Botte (@simone.botte)
BTW: We Believe In Ruins because we want to glamorize and celebrate imperfections and decay, we celebrate destruction and deconstruction in garments but we don’t condone in any way or form senseless violence and willful destruction.
KNUCKLEDUSTER ( throughout) : Custom made by Vanni Pesciallo
MINI KILT: World’s End (2009) WORK GRAFFITI BOOTS: Simon Cracker PENIS NECKLACE: Vivienne Westwood (Pagan V SS 90)
”The best thing about fashion is clothes, when you find garments that give you emotions, speak the same language as you, that you really want to wear, that have thoughts behind them, that have a value and not just a price. Of course the more you know the less you fall into today’s marketing traps, which don’t have anything to do with ‘fashion’ as I consider it.”
Filippo Leone Maria Biraghi ( see interview at the bottom)
Under the visible fashions which disappear and reappear on the trivial surface of contemplated pseudo-cyclical time, the grand style of the age is always located in what is oriented by the obvious and secret necessity of revolution.
Guy Debord 1967 Society of the Spectacle
RS: This shoot has been in the works for months, I’ve known Filippo Leone Maria Biraghi for decades, we’ve worked together at IED Moda Milano and we had an online magazine called Flamboyant back when practically nobody else was doing it, I’m really happy we finally managed to work on a project that fused his personal archive and his work with upcoming fashion star Simon Cracker. It’s at the core of the Rejects credo to refuse the hype of contemporary fashion and embrace and feature archive pieces, vintage finds, and upcycled clothes.
In this tradition we ‘upcycled’ what used to be The Flamboyant Questionnaire and had Filippo answer these timeless and all-important questions:
DESCRIBE YOURSELF IN 5 WORDS
Unreliable, knowledgeable, punkind, amazing uncle, dada (not dadaist because the whole thing was about killing every -ist in art)
YOU WIN 80 FANTA-MEGA MILLIONS OF EURO AT THE LOTTERY. WHAT IS THE FIRST THING YOU DO?
Create my own Foundation and live happily with millions of clothes, books and stray dogs
WHICH SONG DO YOU SING IN THE SHOWER?
‘Dedicato’ written by Ivano Fossati and sung by Loredana Bertè
WHAT DO YOU READ ON THE LOO?
Medicine leaflets
THE BEST AND THE WORST THING IN FASHION?
Going straight to the point, the best thing about fashion is clothes, when you find garments that give you emotions, speak the same language as you, that you really want to wear, that have thoughts behind them, that have a value and not just a price. Of course the more you know the less you fall into today’s marketing traps, which don’t have anything to do with ‘fashion’ as I consider it. And this leads me to the worst: fashion is a business that always relied on creativity. Today creativity is almost unnecessary in this field. This is strongly linked to the general ignorance on this topic and the bad perception that people have of fashion now. Fashion is a powerful idiom that speaks about the spirit of times, and present times are crap and so it’s fashion.
ART OR BUSINESS?
Money does not buy happiness, poorness does not buy anything, but it’s pointless to say that every choice that I ever made has been dictated by ‘art’. It’s the reason why I am still (and probably forever) broken.
FISH OR MEAT?
Both, as long as it’s not vegetables (totally un-PC)
YOUR GOOD INTENTIONS?
Try to be less cynical and getting my hands dirty again
AND THE BAD ONES?
Not quitting smoking
THE BOOK, THE MOVIE AND THE SONG THAT CHANGED YOUR LIFE
‘Take it like a man’ by Boy George with Spencer Bright
‘The piano’ by Jane Campion
‘Everything starts with an E’ by E Zee Possee
YOUR ALL-TIME ICONS?
I am a fan by nature, but in order not to go for the usual davidbowieannapiaggiraypetrijudyblameisabellablowandywarholboygeorgeviviennewestwoodmalcolmmclarenmarcelduchampjordanreikawakubomartinmargielamadonnajamiereid…, I will go for my 8 years old unconscious punk niece Nina.
IF I SAY ‘REJECTS’, WHAT COMES INTO YOUR MIND?
Rejects is the most poetical thing I can think of. In a way I always considered myself a sort of reject and naturally attracted to the leftovers, the misfits, the ‘NO’ and those chosen last in team games. Rejects are an endless source of creation: shit has always been the best fertilizer ever and we have plenty of examples, from flowers to punk. Today we are completely stuck with ‘nostalgia’, romanticizing it. To me is pointless to bring back something that already existed and it was already good: we should all take inspiration from what was discarded in the first place in order to find ‘new’ solutions.
REJECTS 