The Berlin art collective Bless showed its Spring line in a warehouse in the northern part of Paris Sunday night. How’s this for a presentation idea: the show was a soccer match! The models split into two teams and really went at it for about 15 minutes. I was in the front row and had a good laugh when the models kicked the ball to my shins.

Soccer match!

The clothes were incredibly real. I get the sense that they were based on how the friends of these artists already dress, and that the models could have wandered right onto the street after the show, sans problème. Not a single fashion-victim look in there.  

Speaking of the street, I’m looking forward to the Colette party tonight, which celebrates its new exhibition, “From the Street to the Night,” a collection of photos by street and nightlife photographers, many of them bloggers. It’s so smart of Colette to do this; it’s hard to talk fashion these days without discussing looks we’ve seen and liked on blogs like The Sartorialist.  

For those who aren’t familiar with Scott Shuman of The Sartorialist, he began his blog a couple years ago, shooting pictures of stylish New Yorkers, and now he’s now exploded and has made shooting the streets his full-time business, working for style.com, GQ, and Lucky magazine.  He’ll be part of the Colette show, and I hope to meet him tonight. In fact, I already have something I want to discuss with him. One of the funniest lines about Chicago fashion in recent memory came from a caption he wrote this summer, when he shot Sweden streets for style.com. He said something along the lines of: “I had to go to Sweden to finally shoot a cool girl from Chicago.”  

Of course, it’s funny because it’s Chicago and not some truly dismal fashion city.  (I won’t name names.) It plays into the Second City stereotype. We have great fashion in Chicago, and I’m sure Scott knows that. If not, I’m prepared to give my pitch and convince him to shoot in town. I always see great style when I go north on Rush, up by Ikram and Barney’s, and also around Wicker Park.

Where else should I tell him to go?

Photography: Elisabeth Fourmont