NYFW ON CANAL:
MIDDLEMAN
September 6th - September 8th, 2019
7 days a week, 11am–7pm
Thursday late night, 11am–9pm
321 Canal Street, New York City
In collaboration with Wallplay and Vibes Studios, Middleman Store, Silver League, and Horror Vacuo will be presenting a special New York Fashion Week pop-up, in which the trio of stores will open up their archive of over 800 curated grails, runway one-offs, and personal favorites from Raf Simons, Jean Paul Gaultier, Undercover, Kapital, Yohji Yamamoto, and more.
Though the trio’s high-profile clientele, which includes Lil Uzi Vert, Travis Scott, and Playboi Carti, have established them as the go-to stores for fashion forward celebrities, their highly curated web-stores typically boast fewer than fifty items available for purchase at any given time. Newly listed grail pieces and rarities unlikely to ever be seen again are often snatched up within minutes of their release online. The opportunity for any and all lovers of fashion to peruse and shop the stores’ complete collections makes this event a must-stop, as the chance is only presented once or twice a year.
Their collections span decades and trends, emphasizing disruptive designers who reoriented the status quo of fashion, both visually and culturally. The curation stretches back to the formative outputs of ‘80s icons like Vivienne Westwood, Jean Paul Gaultier, and Stephen Sprouse, and leads up to the status-quo rattlers of the 2000s, such as Raf Simons and Jun Takahashi. Many of these designers emerged into high fashion through unconventional outlets — often lacking a traditional education in fashion — and brought with them visuals wholly foreign to the scene. They pulled influence from taboo subcultures whom by means of survival existed only in dimly lit clubs and abandoned warehouses, thus thrusting entire epochs of maligned people into the brightest of spotlights. Visually, the end result of this curation is an aesthetic that feels both familiar and foreign. It’s aspirational, with garments that look like they would have hung off the shoulders of the past’s most iconic celebrities — Bowie, Warhol, Cobain, Madonna — and in regards to some pieces, quite literally did.
Middleman, ran by Kyle Muhlfriedel and Clif Shayne, has a large and dedicated following revolving around their weekly drops, which consist of eight items released every Friday after being previewed on their Instagram during the week. The pair take a keen interest in showcasing designers whose work has not been revitalized by the archival clothing community, such as Kansai Yamamoto, and in turn hope to propel renewed appreciation for their influential designs.
Horror Vacuo is a retail consignment store in Los Angeles for men’s past season and archive wares. They’ve distinguished themselves from other LA-based consignment stores with their dedication to curating unique and hard-to-attain pieces. Their discerning process is based around each article’s historical significance and its contribution to contemporary men’s fashion.
Outside of its retail endeavors, Horror Vacuo aims to aid the current upsurge in interest for men’s fashion by creating a common-space to explore and expand one’s interests.
Silver League is a single-man operation ran by Fernando Rangel that posts daily, instashoppable pieces on their Instagram. He focuses on the new century’s wave of Japanese designers, including Jun Takahashi, Takahiro Miyashita, and Nobuhiko Kitamura.
For more information contact oncanal@wallplay.com
@middleman #oncanal