By 1994, Lower Manhattan was no longer the tip of an island slumping towards bankruptcy, as it was in the mid-70s, nor the plutocratic theme park it will later grow up to be. It was, instead, a uniquely diverse melting pot of identities, from the intensifying blur of Bowery and its pre-renovation lofts, to the Cantonese-speaking mom-and-pop shops around Mott Street, to the insistent corporate force of Wall Street.
“BC had no patience with the idea that artists could drop out of the capitalist system, punk-style, or resist it from some imagined outside position like 60s hippies,” Jason Farago wrote inin 2013. “They called on young creative types to give up their fantasies of artistic autonomy, band together, and commit to working inside economic networks.” These are ethics best summarised by one of the many BC mantras: “Dress for work every day, keep regular business hours, and learn proper phone manners.
That said, though fashion may have been a different space then, its operational mechanisms were pretty similar to what they are today. Over the course of its three-year run, BC presented seasonal runway shows, regularly placed editorials in magazines fromto i-D itself, and even purchased ad pages in those magazines and many more. To put it simply, BC’s public face was orchestrated as if by a major house’s PR.
Take Vetements, for example, the semi-anonymous collective whose presentations of garments salvaged from the annals of cultural obsolescence can be read as a high-end mirroring BC’s thrifting practice.
“I’m actually quite intrigued by Gvasalia’s work at Balenciaga,” ponders Ugelvig. “The Kering logo T-shirt, the WFF T-shirt following immediately after, the revival of the 80s business silhouette, past logos… it’s pretty clever, stylish, historical, and sometimes dark.