The Independent delivers a fairly personal article with designer, Rick Owens. While it goes further into his personal life further in, I’m more taken with the discussion of his life-size wax sculptures. “Rick Owens is face to face with a life-size wax sculpture of himself, staring out of shredded wadding and packed in a wooden crate in a corner of his London store. It’s an oddly unnerving sight, as the cult Californian designer is first to admit: brown-eyed and eerily close in appearance to the man himself, the look of it is made no less disturbing by the fact that it is severed from the waist down – it has no legs… Owens objects for less obvious reasons: ‘It’s not nearly disgusting enough..’

One of the more annoying questions we get asked is ‘do you think magazines will die?’ It’s not that the question in itself is annoying, it’s the assumption that our answer will be yes. While websites are all well and good, there’s no replacement for the tangible.

The Independent has a great feature on music fanzines, a niche sector of magazines which is still going strong. The article hones in on  music zines, focusing on everything from punk zines of the 70’s to Woofah, a grime and reggae zine which is being produced today. One quote which we thought was interesting was John Eden’s, founder of Woofah, thoughts on why fanzines are undergoing a resurgence in popularity.

“There’s a real move back to the physical right now,” he tells me. “People are fed up with MySpace and want to have something they can hold in their hands. There’s a whole generation that have grown up reading information on the net, and they see fanzines as something different and exciting.”

Read the full feature here.

Now we’ve all seen the full Comme des Garçons for H&M collection, we can now read Rei Kawakubo tell us herself why she did this collection. The Independent has an article chronicling the collection and has a couple of quotes from Kawakubo herself. When asked why she’d do this collaboration she answered, “I was interested in selling Comme des Garçons in a new place where it has never been sold before and to people who may never have heard of it. Usually, Comme des Garçons only sells in places where people who understand it go”.

Read the rest of the article over at the Independent.

London’s The Independent delivers a great write up on the conceptual side of fashion and the argument for wearable garments with focus on Aitor’s Group. "Aitor Throup’s work is distinct, communicating a conceptual approach to design while still creating accessible garments. ‘My work is primarily based on exploring new structural solutions to clothe the human body,’ explains Throup, whose uncompromising approach to design and presentation has attracted the attention of influential names in fashion: Stone Island, the Victoria & Albert Museum, Topman, and the football brand Umbro are all eager to be associated with him."

Read the full story at The Independent.