Band of Outsiders to stream men’s show Sunday from Chateau Marmont
Band of Outsiders is set to live-stream its spring 2014 menswear collection -- modeled entirely by musician Devendra Banhart -- from room 29 at the Chateau Marmont on Sunday, the label announced Thursday.
In an exercise of typical Sternbergian quirk, the announcement was accompanied by a page-long list laying out “the rules of the room,” and specific details of the presentation. They read, in part:
“4. The Event will begin when The Musician receives a wake up call at 9am Pacific Standard Time; it will end when he has been photographed in all looks from The Collection.
5. The Musician cannot leave The Room during the course of The Event.
6. The secondary purpose of The Room, as expressed most succinctly by The Musician, is to capture the glamour and banality that is a musician in a hotel room while on tour.
7. To that end, The Musician will be required to convey just this, through a series of directives, obstructions, and songs, built around the following framework:
a. Stage 1: Disorientation
b. Stage 2: Nostalgia
c. Stage 3: Vanity
d. Stage 4: Hunger
e. Stage 5: Inspiration
f. Stage 6: Longing
g. Stage 7: Rejuvenation
h. Stage 8: Boredom
i. Stage 9: Meltdown
j. Stage 10: Socialization
8. The Staff will transmit these directives and miscellaneous messages through The Room’s telephone, the Hotel Staff, and type written notes stuck inside of tiny little envelopes.”
According to the announcement, the events in the room will be webcast live all day at Vice.com, NowFashion.com and BandofOutsiders.com, with additional behind-the-scenes imagery and video expected to pop up on the brand’s Instagram (@thisisbandofoutsiders) and Vine (@bandofoutsiders) feeds throughout the day.
It’s not the first time Band of Outsiders’ founder and creative director has tapped famous folks to model his collections; past seasons’ Polaroid-shot campaigns have featured the likes of Marisa Tomei, Sarah Silverman, Josh Brolin, Ed Ruscha and Frank Ocean.
Nor is it the first time Sternberg has opted for a humorous and non-traditional approach to showcasing his men’s collections, having staged an attention-grabbing self-proclaimed “longest show ever” in a Parisian storefront during the European menswear shows last summer, followed by a Manhattan-wide scavenger hunt between two male models during New York Fashion Week in February of this year.
The daylong webcast showcasing Band’s spring 2014 collection is scheduled to begin at 9 a.m. PDT on Sunday, which puts it in the middle of Milan’s slate of spring-summer menswear shows scheduled for Saturday-Tuesday.
But, thanks to Band’s use of Devendra Banhart and Internet bandwidth, the men’s editors in Europe can kind of be in two places at once.
Quirky like a fox.
ALSO:
Profile: Band of Outsiders’ Scott Sternberg
NYFW fall 2013: Band of Outsiders women’s collection
Frank Ocean, L.A. Times building featured in Band of Outsiders’ ad campaign
*[Updated 6/20/2013 2:39 p.m.: An earlier draft of this post was accompanied by an archival Los Angeles Times photo of musician Devendra Banhart. It has since been replaced with an updated photograph.]
