Let's run this one back

Am I a hack or just leaning into my talents?

Look at me back with another substack post?! I’m quite proud, you know, never you mind that I’m here to talk about a rehash of an older idea.

Also, never mind that the last post was dedicated to yet another rehash of another idea… wait a minute, am I the equivalent of a long-running, formerly beloved TV series just churning out the same plot lines with a slightly different angle???

Well, if I am meant to be like a beloved sitcom turned into a hack farce, then so be it, because by George, I’ve done it again!

And by “it” I mean I’ve made another Y2K retro futuristic fashion catalog! But this time it’s for teen boys, so see it’s different. It’s fresh!

To be fair to me, when I made the original zine, I knew I wasn’t quite done with it.

I didn’t expect to go in this direction (drawing boys) though, because quite frankly I never wanna draw men or their fashion (sorry boys). I figured any follow-up to this zine would be more of an examination of different retro-futuristic fashions, such as the 60s and 80s, etc. I’m not sure when or why it clicked to take this path, but I decided the next companion zine would be men’s fashion, and so here we are.

For the previous zine, I pulled heavily from Delia’s catalogs as the main source of posing and layout, but for this zine, I mostly looked to American Eagle catalogs, which definitely felt more traditional compared to Delia’s. I like that the two zines feel different, but I really wanted them to feel like they still belonged to the same brand. I really wanted to push the playful elements from Delia’s and marry them with the more text-heavy catalogs of American Eagle. I also tried to keep the same color story as the Women’s Catalog. Very bright, very bold, very electric.

I did run into a curious issue working on the looks for these, which is a lot of high-fashion men’s looks feel retro-futuristic already. The silhouettes, the shapes, the cut. I was struggling to figure out a way to have the futurism read without it feeling as though I just looked up a Wisdom Kaye video and extrapolated from there (I didn’t, I swear). Because of that, I started pushing the looks into more things that incorporate tech. More mech suits, more buttons (beep boop buttons, not a fastener on clothing buttons), more metal elements. Basically, I started looking at the costume designs of sci-fi movies vs fashion history for inspiration. Funny how that works.

Anyway, that is basically all I have to say about this. Maybe next time we speak, I’ll have something new and definitely NOT a redo to share.

Actually, I just thought about this, and my next personal project is spinning the block on something else… just call me Hollywood, the way all I make is remakes, chile.

Yours until I free myself from the shackles of reboot culture,

Momo