Looking for the First Post subject, I feared my perverse introvert perfectionism might never allow me to launch this project after all… Then a cluster of bees on a white jacket collar caught my eye… Bees recently featured in my Marina Tsvetaeva translation/installation and my first titled #EyeWitnessCollage was called “The Extinction of Bees Conspiracy Theories”. Whoever you are, I thought, you had me at bzzz…

David C. Wigley is a Canadian designer behind the Worth label. His spring/summer 2015 collection focused on the triumphs and tribulations of an endangered species: the bees! Albert Einstein once said: “If the bee disappeared off the face of the earth, humanity would only have four years left to live.” I’d say… even less, if our ability-capacity to imagine goes the way of the gone bee. Fashion is a fair frontline in the battle for our inspired survival.

While that Einstein quote was the only thing genius (per se) about the collection, it looked decidedly fun & fully functional which is always a welcome combo in menswear. That honeycomb sports jacket? Yes, please. The floral prints were vivid enough to trigger a botany lesson recall test. Stamen and pistil! (I did well in school). Now, generally I don’t care for skulls in design: wearing the actual one with my brain in it is ominous enough. Yet in Wigley’s flourish-or-perish context it didn’t appear gratuitous. Check out more backstage! Any designer with “post-graduate study in costume studies and the history of fashion” is an inevitable friend of mine. I’m tuning in on February 26^th for Worth by David C. Wigley Fall/Winter 2015-16 runway presentation at TOM* (Toronto’s Menswear Week). P.S. I really need that “shop” button on your site to work, Mr. Wigley!