Users are able to almost inhale the succinct information—whether it is an essay or an editorial—at a rapid pace. Throughout the magazine, there are bite-size paragraphs that tackle a number of bubbling points in fashion. In one instance, there is an article about late-stage capitalism and what it means for the creative class (a takeaway quote: “Adapt or die”), a view on authorship versus open source (“Creators don’t need brands anymore”), and the death of the collaboration (“All PR little substance”). As heady as these subjects may be, they are incredibly digestible thanks to their succinctness. “It should have a five-second attention span and you can read the whole thing in 20 minutes,” says Korbjuhn.
One of the most poignant tidbits of information is a photoshopped text message from the dictator Joseph Stalin. (His avatar is a flexing robot arm.) Here, the fictionalized Stalin writes his “Thoughts on Tiktok,” which cites a passage from his 1938 book Dialectical and Historical Materialism. “In a capitalist society, there is an inherent tendency for the attention span of each successive generation to diminish as the experience of an alienation increases. New film and musical forms are pulverizing all content into tinier, more purely sensational fragments.” Stalin’s tiny text message is “read” at 2:28 a.m., another clever detail that taps into our 24/7 need for consumption.
The beauty of Paradigm Trilogy is that these heavy analyses are hidden among beautiful pictures. One of the coolest moments is a Y2K-inspired editorial featuring Issa Lish smoldering in an ERL tank top and a Jean Paul Gaultier miniskirt and also posing in an orange Team Studio bikini and a pair of low-slung Wrangler jeans. While the images are entertaining, Korbjuhn added quotes from writers like Susan Sontag (“It’s beautiful because it’s awful”) and Werner Herzog (“I’m fascinated by Trash TV. The Poet Must Not Avert His Eye”). This is an homage to when critical theorist Slavoj Zizek wrote for Abercrombie & Fitch’s Back to School catalogue from 2003, dotting the hypersexualized images with quotes like “The only successful sexual relationship occurs when fantasies of two partners overlap.” For Korbjuhn, this reference is more important than ever. “It [this Paradigm Trilogy editorial] is an American catalog in an identity crisis,” she says. “It represents the hypocrisy of luxury, which is that luxury wants to appeal to the masses in the version of kitsch. It is high and low.” And even if you don’t quite understand it all? The fashion editorial still paints a pretty picture.
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