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Archive for the ‘Black Milk’ Category

If you’re one of the thousands of Crackmilk addicts out there, then there’s nothing I can tell you here that you don’t already know.

The rest of you, pay attention: the young Aussie label Black Milk, famous for its digital print tights, bodysuits and swimsuits, is rapidly becoming the coolest — and the hottest — fashion label on the planet.

And that’s no exaggeration. Though it’s barely two years old, Black Milk had to shut down its operation briefly in October to cope with a deluge of orders for its fall collection, Killer’s Vanilla.

It has 50,000+ Facebook fans who call themselves sharklets, sharkettes or just plain sharks, and who have their own word to express their primal satisfaction whenever a new BM order arrives in the mail: a guttural “Nom”. Don’t ask me what it means.

The most fervent among them call the addictive label Crackmilk. For those who can’t get their favorite styles, there’s a buy/swap community on Facebook with 3,000 members. And BM sharklets have a unique tradition: as soon as a new order arrives, they’ll post candid photos of the outfit on one of the company’s FB fan pages (seriously, there are thousands of such pics.)

Black Milk is a fashion comet, but it’s moving so fast it’s hard to keep up with it. Two years ago, founder James Lillis was sewing 5 or 6 pieces a day on his kitchen table in Brisbane. Last year, the company grew by 800% and — here’s a classic BM story — its Evil Cheerleader dress (above) sold out in 4 minutes in November.

What’s their secret? The featured item in the photos above and below captures Black Milk‘s appeal perfectly. It’s the Sick Of Men body-con dress, a polyester comic-strip that invites close scrutiny from anyone who sees you in it, but with such an in-your-face message that gropers will know enough to keep their hands off. It’s the kind of thing made for a high school dance floor.

Black Milk pulls its ideas from across the teen zeitgeist — that’s an actual romance comic in the Sick Of Men digital print — and has amassed a huge catalog of statement-making designs (many of them sold out) in a short time.

And, unlike other pop-art merchandising labels like (for instance) Ed Hardy or Hello Kitty, they’re not selling their own logo or signature look to people who like to broadcast their style allegiances. You know it’s a Black Milk piece because it’s just-this-side of kitschy, it’s usually wickedly funny and it feels like it’s 30 seconds ahead of the next fashion trend.

It’s not enough to say Black Milk has its finger on the pulse of young trend-hungry fashionistas. They also have an uncanny knack for identifying imagery and styles (remember last year’s Blood Spatter leggings and Vampire’s Kiss body?) that will instantly create a stir among the sharklets.

Of course, Black Milk‘s meteoric growth has created a few hiccups, mostly related to keeping up with demand. Designer/founder Lillis documented the label’s growing pains recently on his blog:

“We got to the point where stuff was selling so fast that I wasn’t allowed to create any more clothes,” he said. “I would go to the team and say “Hey, how about we make this really cool thing!?” And they would just look at me, show me the list that they were working on (pages, and pages, and pages) and I had to continually back down. I became a designer who wasn’t allowed to design, and a salesman who wasn’t allowed to sell. Which was frustrating. I just started floating around the office while everybody else worked. It was weird, and disheartening.”

After a blistering holiday season, though, Lillis and Black Milk are preparing to roar back with its biggest-ever collection (up to 50 pieces!) in February. Watch for more dresses and skirts in the mix and lots of shredded looks if Lillis gets his hands on a new cutting machine in time.

And while it’s fun to watch this addictive label explode, it’s also instructive to listen to its founder grapple with the conflicted psychology that comes with success.

“Sometimes I wake up a night thinking “How in the world did I get here!?” he writes. “I guess that’s the question you have to ask sometimes – what exactly are you meant to do when your dreams actually come true? It’s all well and good to shoot for the stars, but … what if you actually hit one? Bonk. Ouch.”

Skulls are EVERYwhere in the fashion world this season, and it’s got nothing to do with Hallowe’en, The Walking Dead or even Mugler pinup boy Rick Genest.

It’s the merchandising backwash from the emotional outpouring that followed the death of Alexander McQueen, who in the later stages of his career made the human skull a signature emblem. Sadly, McQueen’s morbidly ironic fashion statement was made tragic by his own fate. It’s also becoming as ubiquitous as the Nike swoosh.

Today, McQueen-esque skulls-and-bones are showing up in graphic design across the fashion spectrum: on scarves and handbags, goth rings and hip-hop bling, belts and caps and jeans and underwear. Some of these products are an opportunistic rip-off, but some of them represent an authentic homage to McQueen and a way of bringing his esoteric passions to the masses.

James Lillis of Black Milk Clothing falls in the latter category: his new collection of leggings, swimsuits and dresses is, in part, a thoughtful and surprisingly tender tribute to McQueen.

It’s also wickedly funny. The collection, called “The Killer’s Vanilla” is Black Milk’s largest release to date, and features a gore-fest of blood-spatter and skeleton prints, laughing skulls and fulsome vampire lips.

Now the bad news. Just one week after its release, The Killer’s Vanilla collection has already been pulled back from BM’s online shop. Not because it’s controversial but, as James wrote in his blog yesterday, to give the BM production team time to catch up with the instant flood of orders from “sharkettes” — Black Milk’s ferociously devoted army of fans.

The collection includes new styles for some of the Aussie label’s catalogue pieces — the outrageous blood-spatter print is back as a short dress — as well as new prints that follow the collection’s gruesome themes.

At the center of Killer’s Vanilla are two new designs that, as James admits, allow him to process his personal response to McQueen’s death. The first is called “Skeleton’s Hugs” (main photo above) and it’s based — get this! — on the bones of anthropologist Grover Krantz and one of his dogs, which were displayed at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington.

That image was then “abstracted and industrialized” to create the “Bone Machine” print (above), which is used in a BM swimsuit and leggings. Here’s what James says about it:

This piece is inspired by the late Mr McQueen. … When McQueen killed himself, I was taken aback. I had several emotions — sad for the man himself, and yet fascinated that someone who had everything to live for had nothing to live for. It’s times like those where I get all existential and, I must confess, I like it. It’s like the facade is ripped apart and true metaphysics and spiritual perception can occur. 

Deep thoughts indeed from a designer who makes pop-art pieces for (mostly) trend-hungry young women.

But there’s nothing morbid about this collection, which is only as deep as you want it to be. Mostly it’s a light-hearted affair, and if you don’t pick that up right away, James has thrown in the playful “Funny Skulls” print to make the point.

And who knows what Alexander McQueen would think of all this? He was fascinated by the design possibilities of the human skeleton, but I suspect he’d be appalled in general at the mass-market merchandising of his iconography. At the same time, I think he’d love the idea of a smiling, hugging skeleton, and he’d be tickled at the thought of legions of callow youngsters decked out in skull-print tights, laughing in the face of death.

Here are some more images from the large Killer’s Vanilla set from Black Milk; click on the photos to see the style names. And be sure to check their website often — you won’t want to miss out when these pieces are once again available.