The Measurements Taken

Hello Designers!

Welcome to East Berlin. There are now just seven of you – I want to congratulate all of you on making it this far. Lenin said “the Party can take the lead only by being always absolutely pure itself.” I encourage you to think of the other designers who have fallen on the wayside these past few weeks…Ok? Ok. Now forget them. Forget them forever. Forget whom? Exactly, designers. Exactly.

This week’s challenge takes us straight to the heart of the industrial immiseration of the proletariat. For the first part, you must negotiate the length of the working day such that you maintain an acceptable rate of exploitation (remembering R = ^S/_V) while ensuring the upkeep of a qualitative use-value with regards to your fashion commodity. The piece must be both work-ready and at the same representative of the Party’s values. You will have the entire length of the working day minus the fixed amount of the value of labor as calculated by the Factory Act of your choosing. I encourage you to take inspiration from the various GDR Denkmäler and Ostalgie-laden tourist shops that remain the sole testament of a once ideologically pure communist paradise.

This week’s judges include Antonio Negri, Slavoj Zizek, Lupe Fiasco, and a special guest appearance from Sputnik, Menswear icon-cum-Australian Cattle Dog. Remember that up to three of you can be sent away this week to Corrective Labour. Alright designers? Let’s get sketching!

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I just feel like Patrizia is a bit lacking in class consciousness. She is falling into humanist revisionism and that’s a tricky place to be in with regards to the Nomenklatura.

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Simona, I’m going to be honest here, those bright red contrast pockets? I know you think it screams Godard, but to me it just screams ACHTUNG. Hold off, comrade.

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I am really going for that Stasi feel with this leather jacket. It’s a bit risky, I know everybody is expecting me to stay in my usually comfort zone, but I am going to show I am not just all about Mao Suits and the cultural revolution. I’m going all out.

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I don't care if they hate my pockets. I am doing this. It's my voice that counts in the end, I'm the designer here.

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Diego is an excellent organizer of labour, but if he doesn’t recognize the difference between superstructural labour relations and true class conflict it’s going to hold him back.

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I’ve always been a fan of Brecht, so this piece is kind of an homage to Mother Courage. It’s a formal gown made out of this wonderful grey rag I found in the dumpster – you can dress it up, you can dress it down. Just hope this v-neck isn’t too revealing on the model.

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Diego, I love the overalls, I love the wrench, but it still feels a bit “1930s gulag”. In other words it feels safe. I was expecting more from you and I think you really need to push yourself and find the voice of the people in the next challenge.

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Simona, those contrast pockets? What were you thinking? My god! This is something I wouldn’t even send someone out in at the 2^nd International. The fit is wrong, the colours are wrong, and so on and so on. The whole thing is just so far from Socialist Realism. It’s just, just –

It’s formalist.

Exactly, that’s what I was going to say. Formalism at its most decadent.

Simona, as Lenin said, "intelligence is not to make no mistakes, but quickly to see how to make them good". We tried to help you with the pockets but you just would not listen. I know you want to showcase you as a designer, but you have to remember that an individual designer has 1 style, the Party has 1ooo styles. An individual designer leaps on trends, but the party dictates the lives of the trendsetters. Your piece is made for this evening and seems dated after the gala; the party's piece is designed for tomorrow, and remains timeless. 

Simona sweetheart, the Party has spoken. It is not granted to us not to send failures home. I’m afraid we’re going to have to say goodbye to you…Well, not goodbye. More like, “you never existed”. Yes. Simona, I feel you have a lot of potential, and a lot of growth to do, and hopefully Corrective Labour will allow you to flourish. We love you Simona, and we all wish you a hearty "you never existed".

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Party Official 1: What? Simona totally didn't deserve that! They ganged up on her. She just had an off-week. She was totally the most stylish designer they had.

Party Official 2: Pffft. If she really was that stylish, she deserved all the more to be sent home.

The Discerning Gentlemanifesto

Thank you all for supporting Discerning Gentiluomo in our first 6 months as the freshest menswear and lifestyle blog in the game. Now that we’ve put our foot in the door, we believe the time is ripe to expound our principles explicitly, and put it in our mouth.

We at the Discerning Gentiluomo believe in the man’s man. We long for the days when a man could sport jaunty a cravat, fritter a mid-morning away rambling through the Arcades of Paris, engage in a lusty afternoon session of canne de combat, swindle an Iroquois of his pelt, cockeye a rival during whist, purchase a railroad share and still come home to a nice glass of brandy and a hearty, home-cooked wife beating.

What has happened to men’s style? It has simply become men’s fashion. We at DG lament the fall of the “dapper” in favour of the “cool”, “trill” or “dope”.  We believe it is time for man to once again step-off from effeminizing influences - especially that of females. For lack of a better term for this burgeoning era of male domination, we have decided to call our ideal a Masculocracy. With the following four we are looking to put the “man” back into “manifesto”. Boys, stay home and play hopscotch.

Article the First – Real Gents Dress Like Luggage.

 If you are a man and do not wear browns, grays, and blacks, if you do not have a cobbler, blacksmith and haberdasher, if you do not stink of leather, if your toilet paper is not made of suede, well, then you are simply, as a drunken ringmaster once called me, a boobie. A realman can camouflage himself in an estate sale and, if necessary, pass himself off as a Louis Vuitton trunk-set to avoid detection by bigger, stronger jocks looking to stretch some long jonathans.

Article the Second – Real Gents Use Straight Razors.

Style starts in the bathroom, Johnny! Do you want to be caught in the wash-closet one day by your girl, hacking away at your hairy upper-lip with a cheap plastic razor like some Croatian transvestite? Or would you rather have her walk into a scene straight from the Five Points, 1860? She’ll see you, a foamy, masculine figure in nothing but overalls and chest-hair, brandishing a sharp blade and whistling a cheerful Irish murder ballad. That is, if she isn’t knocked-out cold by the various pomades, lotions, and flesh preserving formalin solutions that make up the proper gent’s toilette. Sprezzatura? Gesundheit.

Article the Third – Real Gents Smoke.

Now this is a controversial one, we know. And we’ve all heard about the dangers of smoking, the tragedy of so many youth hooked onto this overpriced poison that decimated an entire generation of men and women just because it “looks cool”. But… Don’t your 1950s sex idols, your Sir Alec Guinness’s and your Peter Lorre’s, just seem so naturale when they are hacking a dart? People talk a lot of humbug about peer pressure, but in this case, we believe it really can make a difference. But whatever you do, don’t smoke cheap. If you take up cigars, rolled cigarettes, pipes, hookahs etc. then cancer is like, way less likely to strike, because stylish people can go right to the doctor and explain the whole situation; it may sound judgmental but most doctors will just totally uncancer you if you are cool.

Article the Fourth – Real Gents Believe in Timeless Style Over Trends.

This is the big one. It is so easy for guys to get caught up in the whirligig of specific trends, of completely tangential historical period pieces instead of the timeless, eternal style of the true gent. Why bother with camo hoodies or Js when you could be sporting the outfit in which God sent Adam from the Garden of Eden? I mean of course the navy blazer, the selvage denim, the brown shoes and the “crisp, clean white shirt”. Note that the shirt must be “crisp, clean white” – if it is wrinkly, soiled, or egg-shell, you are already into the mode of historical contingency. Take a look at history’s greatest - how was Napoleon dressed a Waterloo? That’s right: navy blazer, denim jeans, “crisp, clean white shirt”. Wear nothing else, gent.