PISS about town 002: The Rory Gilmore of Archive Sales
PISS swears on the life of the lead singer of Blur (not Nico) that this is nothing but the truth about the Ahluwalia archive sale. PLUS: Get Club Are on your radar divas!
Welcome to one of several editions of PISS about town that will be coming all the way from London. It may take forever to get anywhere, but I’ve got a bike, two legs and a supply of goldfish (no good bagels avail) to get me around town to piss about!
This was a Rory Gilmore moment for PISS, the dreaded line feature, the thing that impatient people like me dislike the most: standing around when you should be pissing about and looking at art. Though we may not be going through an identity crisis at the moment, my boyfriend (non-existent) has not just bought me a Birkin Bag, and I don’t come from a fictional twee New England village, this is the most fashion thing I have done in the last year and a half, so enjoy! (Don’t hold your breath for more like this, lol, we want to be at a gallery.)
Also in this pisspatch: gossip about their next show and a review of the shoes people were wearing at the sale rated by how bad it would be to step in dog shit with them!
TONIGHT: STREAM CLUB ARE @POCKET RADIO IF YOU CAN’T MAKE IT TO SE15
Ahluwalia Archive Sale, 42-44 Beak St. from FEB 1-3, 2024
At noon, Priya Ahluwalia burst out from the door of her new offices on Beak Street where the archive sale was going to begin and immediately hugged the first person she was wearing Ahluwalia with Amaarae’s “Sociopathic Dance Queen” blasting in the background. So began our trawl through the regurgitated bowels of the Ahluwalia archive, neatly organized in priced rails and in several ill-placed bargain bins. If only these were the vibes of the clothes!
You may be thinking, why bring Rory Gilmore into this at all? Isn’t she kinda half-baked person who essentially failed to live up to expectations which she herself set? Not a wicked pisser? Well my friends, that is exactly why this Gilmore girl is the perfect metaphor for the contents of this sample sale. Abstractly of course!
I’ll do you a favor and leave our PISSOMETER review here, since we’re all busy and you may just want to go see for yourself! You are welcome :)
Was it worth it? Yeah I guess, why not. Would I go if it wasn’t 15 minutes away on a bike? No. Should you stop in after work? Maybe, if you wanna fight some people for scraps. Go during the day, get in those bargain bins full of shirts that are going for £5 and don’t let the bitches looking at themselves in the mirror bother you! Look out for promo pics of wicked pisser EVA who was shopping for her show opening drinking the bad sponsored drinks lol.
On to the fun part (for me at least!) where I pretend to be Danny DeVito as Ongo Gablogian and put on my invisible reviewing wig:
It is really difficult to sit down and write critically after you’ve had a nice experience somewhere. Everyone was so lovely, Priya was answering questions and letting people know they looked wonderful in her clothes. So rarely do we get to meet the people who are responsible for what we wear these days. And it is a privilege to be able to ask about her process in the studio she and her team work in.
However! I would be regretting it for days if I didn’t bring up the immediately glaring disparity between the quality of Ahluwalia’s ideas and the actual clothes themselves. The gap is wide! It is not cavernous, but it is clear. Having quickly jumped from designing clothes to being a multi-hyphenate creative working on films and other projects like a film under Ridley Scott’s studio (Sweet Lassi is a wonderful photobook she made on a trip to Panipat, a city in India where the west dumps its unwanted fashion leftovers), maybe something got lost along the way, with a sense that not only should she push herself to explore new ways of using materials that already exist, but then transform those materials into a truly contemporary style.
This was not an archive sale in the tradition of the Commes Des Garçons archive sales that happened last May in New York, where iconic pieces from years of collections were sold off to avid fans and connoisseurs who knew what they were getting and why they were paying so much for it. The difference here is, funnily enough, the clothes don’t seem to escape that initial point of interest for Ahluwalia, the western clothes she saw men in Nigeria wearing on the street which were sent from Panipat, this cycle of western discard being repeated in the shapes and styles offered by Ahluwalia. The brand is essentially remixing this excess into the same shapes which we in the global west so flippantly cast off anyway—why not looks to create something that truly stops today’s fashion buyer in their tracks and makes them think about dressing for a new philosophy in life? Something they won’t get bored of.
In conclusion:
Things that we saw that were more interesting, shoe edition: SHIDDED AWN EM!
Chloe Sevigny was right about it in New York and it’s happening here too: There seems to be a lot of stray dookie flying around London since last I was here, so let’s look at what shoes people were wearing to whether the storm, the slip and slide, or whatever else you wanna call the phenomenon caused by urban dog owners who don’t know what way is up. And remember, as Dal Choda once told me about open toed shoes:
“Feet (or actually just toes) freak people out because they look like parts of the body that should be private. Mine are often out and it regularly disgusts people. I love it.”
No slide, total pick up so you might not even see it until you get home. Good luck getting out of these uselessly soled, but interesting shoes!
A recent victim in the flesh: Had to be washed and stuffed with towels, dried and now slightly saggy. They will bounce back, and impracticality is chic!
Great shoe! But I fear for the state of these Ahluwalia trousers this gentleman had on… soggy bottoms are worse than soggy soles. Slide imminent.
These, are atrocious, and I hope they step is a big one so they can be decommissioned. With love.
Two patent leather examples, the closer one appears to be a loafer, and slightly too big for her foot which can always be precarious. The rear example was a three inch boot with rounded toe and a zip up the inside so they will be snug. I’d say that miss loaf is in more danger of slipping and miss boot is likelier to suffer being blah.
This is the PISS shoe of choice, a hand-me-down loafer (stolen from unsuspecting older male family member) with a thick sole and good fit. Safe shoe.
P.S.
We have it on good authority from a wicked pisser who has asked to remain anonymous that the upcoming Ahluwalia show may contain a somewhat boring selection of rainbow tripe knits in an assortment of Crayola colors excluding the extremely bright ones. Julia Fox is rumored to be wearing a custom from them soon. So who knows, it will probably be another tubular creation with a ruched side and tiny straps like the creations we saw today. EEK!
∩
\\
/ )
⊂\_/ ̄ ̄ ̄ /
\_/ ° ͜ʖ ° (
) /⌒\
/ ___/ ⌒\⊃
( /
\\
U