StyleZeitgeist Magazine

Eugene here. I am thrilled to announce my book TORN: FASHION AND POSTMODERNISM, in which I examine the state of fashion of the past 25 years. TORN: is published by Zer0 @zero.books , the London house established by the late philosopher Mark Fisher, the author of Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative. For those of you who know me, I could not have asked for a better publisher. Here is the book synopsis: “Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, fashion has undergone a paradoxical shift: it has grown creatively impoverished despite becoming more culturally relevant. Increasingly, the industry’s output feels listless, unexciting, like a pastiche of past styles, not genuine innovation. What caused this? How did fashion design get reduced to logoed merch? Why does spectacle outweigh reality? How did business priorities come to eclipse creativity? Eugene Rabkin offers an unflinching answer. Torn: Fashion and Postmodernism examines how the postmodern turn, with its dismantling of hierarchies and embracing of commerciality, its democratization of taste and reliance on irony and poptimism, has undermined fashion. Across ten incisive chapters, these pages trace the industry’s journey from an era that produced Alexander McQueen’s theatrical genius, Helmut Lang’s modernism, and Martin Margiela’s conceptual rigor to an era dominated by corporations and celebrities. Along the way, Rabkin shows how the image is decoupled from its substance, how commerce has overridden editorial authority, and how fashion’s relationship with the arts has shifted from symbiotic to parasitic.” I want to thank everyone who was involved in the making of this book. I was floored as to the level of support for the book, some of which I will highlight in the coming posts. Most of all I want to thank @tristamadams for commissioning the book, and for believing that I had a book in me, and @alla_anatsko , always my first editor and the keeper of honesty. Link in bio to preorder the book. The book will be out on August 25th, but is now available for preorder on all major bookselling platforms, and I was told that preordering is important. Your support means the world. Thank you.

Art on the Edge with Banks Violette⁠ ⁠ On this episode we host the American artist Banks Violette. While this is not an episode about fashion per se, Violette and StyleZeitgeist have much in common culturally. He has been working for over two decades at the intersection of fine art and youth culture, making compelling work that deals with the dark side of the American society and the counterculture it produces. We talk about growing up in Reagan's America, channeling teenage rage, the New York City of the early 2000s and Violette's – and his compatriots, that included Dash Snow and Dan Colen – problematic relationship with sudden fame, his retreat from the art scene and his return, a collaboration with Hedi Slimane at Dior Homme and Celine, and much more.⁠ ⁠ 1. Banks Violette Celine Store Installation – throne / first and last and always (reasons to be cheerful) ⁠ 2. Banks Violette – no title / (proposal for a future performance)⁠ 3. Banks Violette for Celine / Tristan Horse⁠ ⁠ Use link in bio for early access to this episode via Substack, which also gives you access to our Discord community, and other benefits. We are a reader supported publication. Your subscription supports independent fashion journalism.⁠

We continue enrollment in the StyleZeitgeist Academy course DESIGNING THE UNTHINKABLE: ADVANCED PRACTICES IN UNCERTAINTY, taught by the artist and designer @sruli_recht . This six-class course invites participants to step beyond the conventional, exploring the raw, the uncomfortable, and the transformative in design. Focused on material experimentation, narrative integration, and emotional priming, the sessions are built to push boundaries and provoke new ways of thinking and making. It is open to students in all creative disciplines. No prerequisites are required. The summer semester of this course will be taught from May 31st to July 5th, on Sundays at 9 a.m. London / 10 a.m. Paris / 4 p.m. Shanghai and Hong Kong / 5 p.m. Tokyo / 6 p.m. Sydney and Melbourne to accommodate students from Europe and Asia-Pacific. We will follow up with a fall semester session timed for students from North and South America. Due to the sensitive nature of the course it is open to students 18+ only. Link in bio to find out more about the course and enroll.

Our review of “Costume Art” at the Met Museum “What is clothing without a body? And what is a body without clothing? The relationship between the two is so obviously intertwined that it often goes unexamined. Its essential nature, which is about elevating the human through artifice, was highlighted by the French poet Charles Baudelaire, who posited that fashion is one of the purest expressions of modernity. It is this relationship that lies at the heart of the new show, “Costume Art,” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York… …The somewhat misleading name “Costume Art” and the tying of the garments to the artworks may recall the recent attempt of the Louvre to imitate the Met’s success with its last year’s exhibit Louvre Couture, Art and Fashion: Statement Pieces, accompanied by its own version of the Met Gala. But, as stated above, the real theme of the show is the relationship between clothing and the body. The exhibit, which features nearly 400 artifacts, is broken up into several subgroups that examine the various ways in which we see the human form; nude, diverse in shape, tattooed, aging, and so on. The matching of the garments and the artworks is masterfully done, and the real juice of the exhibit is in the meticulously researched descriptions of the pairings, which highlights the often forgotten fact that amidst the pop and circumstance of the Met Gala, Andrew Bolton leads an excellent team of curators formidable in knowledge and scholarship… …Behind the purely visual spectacle these descriptions demand you to slow down and contemplate the works on display. One just hopes that when the show opens to the museum going masses, the exhibition space will facilitate such contemplation. As a matter of fact, in its density, some artifacts risk losing a bit of their magic; some outfits demand more physical space than they get… …Besides the clamshell dress, there are plenty of other fashion favorites on display, a couple of more McQueen’s ensembles, including the one with carved wood prosthetic boots, a breastless Jean Paul Gaultier dress famously worn by Madonna…” Link in bio to read in full. @metmuseum #metmuseum #costumeart

First look at the @metcostumeinstitute exhibit Costume Art in its newly opened galleries dedicated to exhibiting fashion. Full review coming soon.

This edition of the newsletter is free. Link in bio to read in full. Consider becoming a paid subscriber to support our work. “Tonight the fashion world will be tuning into the vulgar display of celebrity power, also known as the Met Gala. The people will be watching, and make no mistake, the gaudy spectacle of the upper crust of celebrity and business elite, is made for the people. Like all American museums, the Met is underfunded. In a country that has not quite grasped that art is a cornerstone of civilization, public cultural funds are scarce, and are a constant target of Republican politicians, who prefer to spend our tax dollars on advanced weaponry. And so the museums must go to the wealthy. Enter the Met Gala, the frantic spectacle that bestows a veneer of cultural glamour for which the rich and famous are more than happy to shell out $100,000. As it’s been for the past twenty years, Anna Wintour will be presiding over the fund-raising carnival. The Met Costume Institute exhibition, “Costume Art,” is sponsored by Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez. The vulgarians are no longer at the gate; they now man the gate, having conquered it with that ultimate American weapon, money. In fashion industry lore, The Costume Institute at the Met was a musty backwater before the kooky magic of a former Vogue editor and consummate fairy tale-teller Diana Vreeland made it glamorous, after which the even more magical and newly-former Vogue editor Anna Wintour has taken over. But between Vreeland and Wintour there was another co-chair in charge of corralling the rich and their money into the service of fashion at the Met Museum. Her name was Pat Buckley, and she did an excellent job of fund-raising for the Costume Institute from 1988 to 1995. A heavyweight in the New York socialite circle, she was also the wife of William F. Buckley Jr., the preeminent conservative idealogue, a god-fearing homophobe, and an allegedly reformed anti-Semite and racist who once supported segregation, and whose magazine National Review provided an alibi of intellectual respectability to indefensible conservative views, which we are now forced to live with on the daily basis…”

DESIGNING THE UNTHINKABLE: ADVANCED PRACTICES IN UNCERTAINTY is a new StyleZeitgeist Academy course taught by @sruli_recht If you did not get to join our IG LIVE that dives into the course, you can rewatch it here. This six-class course invites participants to step beyond the conventional, exploring the raw, the uncomfortable, and the transformative in design. Focused on material experimentation, narrative integration, and emotional priming, the sessions are built to push boundaries and provoke new ways of thinking and making. The course is open to everyone who wants to build on their creative practice, no matter what it is. No prerequisites are required. You will gain both practical and theoretical skills. For the Summer 2026 semester, the course is taught once a week to accommodate European / Asia-Pacific students (a Fall 2026 semester will follow in a time zone accommodating students in North and South America) Schedule: May 31st, 2026 – July 5th, 2026. Sunday 9 a.m. – 12 p.m. GMT (London Time) Link in bio to learn more and enroll.

PETIT OBJECT a: MK 1 ��Ballistic Bijoux Buttplug �A diamond-plated munition fetish, the concrete and symbolic libidinization of lack, contradiction, and the unattainable object of desire.� The French psychoanalyst Jacque Lacan postulated that what drives our urge to consume is not the desire for things themselves, but a desire for desire itself, what he called “Objet Petit a.” The artist/designer @sruli_recht interprets it thus, “Primarily, it is the illusion of capitalism - the circuit of desire that convinces us that possession will complete us. Each purchase disappoints, resets the system, and drives us again. We learn it is not possession we crave but the craving itself: not to have, but to want.” Recht combined these notions in this artwork, presented at his last year’s solo museum exhibition, LAIR. The object is a diamond encrusted butt plug, which is also a functioning hand grenade. The diamonds are the ur-symbol of consumption, and the butt plug embodies our libidinal desires; together they form an object of terminal decadence, the pursuit of unattainable pleasure, reflected in the idea that you can only use the object once, since removing it sets off the grenade, delivering you to your final destination in a stylish if untimely manner. You can learn the thinking and methods behind designing artworks like these in our StyleZeitgeist Academy course DESIGNING THE UNTHINKABLE: ADVANCED PRACTICES IN UNCERTAINTY, taught by Sruli Recht. This six-week immersive masterclass aims to expand your creative capacities. There are no prerequisites, and it will benefit anyone in any creative field who aims to advance their practices by breaking down preconceived and often self-imposed boundaries. Due to the sensitive nature of the class, it is open to students 18+ only. Link in bio to learn more about the course and sign up. Artwork Notes: PETIT OBJECT a: MK 1 is dedicated to the philosopher @peter_rollins and @eugenerabkin Artwork Price: Eur 3.2 m Made in collaboration with Caraxy Diamonds Photo @marinothorlacius

Eugene here. TORN: FASHION AND POSTMODERNISM is my new book of cultural criticism examining the state of fashion over the past twenty-five years. It will be out on August 24th, but you can preorder it now, which is apparently important (I’m new to this). I sent an advanced manuscript to some people I admire in order to receive their feedback. Here is what W. David Marx, author of Blank Space, Status & Culture, and Ametora wrote. “Rabkin provides a detailed and fascinating sourcebook of recent historical moments to excavate the ideological roots of our current aesthetic moment and explain why the fashion business went all in on the ‘rapid creation of empty signifiers.’” – W. David Marx Thank you @wdavidmarx for your endorsement. Link in bio to learn more about the book and to preorder in the US / CANADA / UK / EU / AUS.

EXPAND YOUR THINKING We continue enrollment in the StyleZeitgeist Academy course DESIGNING THE UNTHINKABLE: ADVANCED PRACTICES IN UNCERTAINTY, taught by the artist and designer @sruli_recht . This six-class course invites participants to step beyond the conventional, exploring the raw, the uncomfortable, and the transformative in design. Focused on material experimentation, narrative integration, and emotional priming, the sessions are built to push boundaries and provoke new ways of thinking and making. It is open to students in all creative disciplines. No prerequisites are required. Join us this Sunday 8:30 a.m. NYC / 1:30 p.m. London / 2:30 p.m. Paris / 8:30 p.m. Hong Kong / 9:30 p.m. Tokyo / 10:30 p.m. Sydney for an IG live info session between Sruli Recht and Eugene Rabkin to find out more about the course. We will go over the course idea and structure and this will be your chance to ask questions. The summer semester of this course will be taught from May 31st to July 5th, on Sundays at 9 a.m. London / 10 a.m. Paris / 4 p.m. Shanghai and Hong Kong / 5 p.m. Tokyo / 6 p.m. Sydney and Melbourne to accommodate students from Europe and Asia-Pacific. We will follow up with a fall semester session timed for students from North and South America. Due to the sensitive nature of the course it is open to students 18+ only. Link in bio to find out more about the course and enroll.

Hello again. TORN: FASHION AND POSTMODERNISM is my new book of cultural criticism examining the state of fashion over the past twenty-five years. It will be out on August 24th, but you can preorder it now. I sent an advanced manuscript to some people I admire in order to receive their feedback. Here is what Dr Valerie Steele, director of the Then Museum at FIT, and the editor of Fashion Theory: The Journal of Dress, Body & Culture wrote. “You may not agree with everything Eugene Rabkin writes, but his book – I’m tempted to call it his fashion ‘manifesto’ – is always interesting and good for thinking about fashion.” – Valerie Steele Thank you @valerie_steele_fashion for your endorsement. And, indeed, my hope is that the book sparks a much needed conversation about the state of contemporary fashion, whether you agree with my analysis or not. Link in bio to learn more about the book and to preorder in the US / CANADA / UK / EU / AUS My publisher said that preorders matter, even from large platforms, because more stores will order the book. But also feel free to inquire at your favorite bookshop.

Hello, all, it’s Eugene. TORN: FASHION AND POSTMODERNISM is my new book of cultural criticism examining the state of fashion over the past twenty-five years. You can preorder it now. I sent an advanced manuscript to some people I admire in order to receive their feedback. This is what the fashion journalist and critic Angelo Flaccavento wrote about the book. “Eugene Rabkin relentlessly and sharply dismantles the mask of postmodernism as an intellectual coverup for all that is wrong in fashion today. His merciless stance shows instead a deep love and profound appreciation for the power of invention.” – Angelo Flaccavento Thank you @poeticallypunk for your endorsement. Link in bio to learn more about the book and to preorder in the US / CANADA / UK / EU / AUS My publisher said that preorders matter, even from large platforms, because more stores will order the book. But also feel free to inquire at your favorite bookshop. I hope the book sparks a much needed conversation about the state of contemporary fashion.