Quickie Bangkok Report: Smocks and Tunics, Richard Prince Louis Vuitton Fakes, Christian Siriano Hair and More

I'm nearing the tail end of my trip to Bangkok, Thailand, and while most of my time has been devoted to matters not related to fashion -- and half the time here you don't even want to wear clothes 'cause it's so freaking hot and humid -- my eyes and ears have been peeled for various style bits here and there. I've definitely gone to enough of Bangkok's astonishingly huge shopping malls and plazas to contemplate writing a kind of shopping guide to the Thai capital. (Should I? Should I not bother? Anyone care to tell me?) And in the midst of scrambling to meetings with film producers, dancing with old friends and eating huge amounts of food with family, I've made a few observations:

1. The smock has taken over. It's like a few smocks and tunic tops settled into the streetscapes of Bangkok and then bred all over the place, because all you see on every female from housewives to teenagers is a variation on the smock or tunic top. It makes sense: Thais are famously modest in their everyday dress, and the smock is loose, comfortable and flattering to a range of body types. Still, it's kind of crazy -- you walk down the aisles of any street market or through the boutiques in the huge shopping malls here and it's like flowy top central. Of course, these flowy tops go from $3-6 each, which beats Forever 21 any day.

2. The Richard Prince Louis Vuitton fakes. I know that the whole anti-counterfeiting "movement" is getting a lot of publicity these days, but designer fakes are still going super-strong in the street markets of Thailand and in fact seems to have flourished since I was last here in 2003. You can find anything if you look hard enough and know how to ask. (Just from a quick survey of various sellers, it seems Louis Vuitton, Chanel and Chloe command the highest prices; less expensive are Gucci and Prada, if that means anything about the demand and interest in certain labels. There also seems to exist a "second tier" of fakes, comprising of Dior, Juicy Couture, and Dolce and Gabbana. And Mulberry fakes, though rarer, seem to be of extremely good quality and compare in price to Louis Vuitton.) Near the street market stalls around Nana Plaza I spotted a trickle of Richard Prince Louis Vuitton fakes, which totally makes sense, seeing as the whole area caters to foreigners, especially those fluent with the absolute latest It bag. I couldn't judge on the quality of the fake itself, having only seen it in magazines, but in all honesty, does it really matter? Richard Prince, after all, is a subversive artist whose idiom prominently deals with appropriations, fakes and copies in a dryly humorous way, and no doubt he knew what he was doing when collaborating with a luxury house whose products are probably the most in-demand in terms of fakes. (I was really amused by reports and complaints that the "real" bags are so "fake" and "hideous" because I'm sure that Prince is an astute enough of an artist to do this -- and astute to know that the desires and appetite of a luxury customer, aspiring or otherwise, are enough to make them the unwitting punchline of their own one-liner joke.) I'm sure at one point that Richard Prince will buy a bunch of fakes, sign or authenticate them in some way and then display them as art. I was thinking about all this as some American woman was fiercely bargaining with a seller to bring down his price of 6000 baht (close to $200 US) -- and how Prince knows half the LV/Prince bags carried in a few months will be fakes and thinking how brilliant the whole project is in an art mindfuck sort of way. But of course, not brilliant enough for me to part with my own money for what are kind of garish bags.

3. Christian Siriano's hair is all over the place. I read somewhere that Project Runway contestant Christian Siriano described his hair as being inspired by Asian lesbians or something nutsy like that, but it's really the schoolboys of Bangkok that have adopted kinder, gentler variations on the asymmetrical, topiary-inspired hairstyle.

4. A strange emergence of military gear in Thai street fashion. As I was visiting various outdoor markets and indoor shopping bazaars, between all the assaultingly bright accessory stalls, women's clothing mini-boutiques and handicraft sellers I would spot an occasional booth dedicated to American military gear -- we're talking camo and leather vests, army pants, weird patriotic t-shirts, assault weapon belts, combat boots, even an occasional (fake?) weapon. It was like an intensely well-curated Army-Navy store but a little more freaky. (Must have been the whole flotilla of machetes I saw in one booth.) The whole thing culminated for me in observing a group of schoolboys hanging out in front of the Tawanna street market. Usually most kids wear their school uniforms when hanging out after a day at school, but here these guys were in all kinds of crazy haircuts and skinny jeans, smoking up a storm and all decked out with some element of military wear right down to combat boots and the occasional Rambo-like bandanna. The whole thing was really fascinating and kind of weird and I haven't quite begun deconstructing it in my head yet.

5. Best fashion moments: I specifically remember two very awesome fashion moments, illustrating two very different poles in terms of the style continuum for me. The first was as I was wandering in Siam Paragon Center, the very large, very fancy shopping center in Bangkok in the city's center. (You can buy a Lamborghini along with your Balenciaga bag at Siam Paragon.) I spotted a very tall, very willowy model type dressed in a perfectly slouchy outfit: drapey, baggy, men's tailored pants in black, with perfectly cut black vest over a white t-shirt, hair scraped back and wearing black Chanel sunglasses. Perfectly minimal, tomboyish, comfortable and yet the details were completely impeccable down to the cuffs in the pants and the sleek sandals. Because I suck at fashion blogging, I was too shy to take a picture, but I snuck one anyway, so you'll have to put up with a view from behind.

My other favorite fashion moment came at the food court at the Kalare Night Bazaar in Chiang Mai, where I spotted an elderly Japanese gent, wearing loose blue and white plaid cotton pants, and a shirt in a different type of blue and white plaid cotton. And his wife was wearing a variation on the same outfit: loose, comfortable cotton clothing in variations of blue and white plaid. It was thoroughly awesome. I only hope to end up with a fellow who will do the same thing with me when we're old and trekking through Asia as part of the liberated AARP set.

Posted by Kat in Shopping
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