Wanted: New heroes

I purposely keep myself naïve and away from earthly information because it’s the only way to avoid a jaded attitude. Everything I do is internally subconscious because you can’t rationalize spirituality,” scribbled Kurt Cobain on page 115 of Journals. Published in 2002, this collection of the late Nirvana frontman’s private thoughts reveals a dichotomous, almost schizophrenic personality.

Underneath the Chip Kidd-designed dust jacket, on a cover printed to look like a Mead spiral notebook, is “If you read, you’ll judge.” The handwritten paragraph on the intro page is even more cryptic: “Don’t read my diary when I’m gone. When you wake up this morning, please read my diary. Look through my things, and figure me out.”

I have to admit it was a bit creepy going through a dead grunge legend’s diary entries, but I had to do it: Smells Like Teen Spirit was one of the first CDs I bought when I was in grade school, a time when Clinton was president and the planet still spun on its proper financial axis. As we seem to be in 1994 at the moment, I picked up Journals secretly hoping to rediscover a role model, as Kurt Cobain apparently was — and is — to so many young music lovers. While I did stumble upon an enormously talented musician, I’m not too sure if I could call him a hero. After all, he shot himself.    

Anglomania

As the old saw goes, the simplest questions are always the hardest to answer. “Who are my heroes?” is at the top of this heap. It has become trite to cite one’s parents as personal heroes; the same goes with Mariah Carey’s “the hero lies in you” crap.

In my late teens, I started kinda looking up to a host of Brits for inspiration. There was Jamie Oliver, who proved that you could be a slob in the kitchen and still make great meals. When it came to expressions of wit and intellectual suaveness, there was Simon Pegg, then in the hilarious UK series Spaced, and the cast of the BBC’s brilliant Coupling.

Style-wise, I wanted Vivienne Westwood and Paul Smith to act as my grandparents when Prince Albert and Queen Victoria were too busy — in my imagination, at least — to do so. (Seeing The Young Victoria recently, with Emily Blunt in the title role, reignited my Anglophilia; Alison Weir’s books on the British monarchy and Showtime’s The Tudors do not help either.) I also went through a serious Rolling Stones phase before my current David Bowie monomania. The Skins kids were the last people I semi-idolized; that was in 2008.

French Fuss-Fest

Bored and a bit rudderless, I found myself skipping across the imaginary pond to France to see whom I could make a fuss of. I found Jean Touitou, creative director of the 22-year-old cult label A.P.C., who said, “It’s plain to see that everyone wants to be so exceptional. I work more with an eraser.” Veronique Branquinho’s classic-gone-skewed menswear line likewise caught my attention. When she stated in a recent issue of Another Man magazine that she had admired French singer Jacques Dutronc for being “highly unconventional — not a classic ‘type’” I had to Google him. (He’s married to the equally unconventional chanteuse Françoise Hardy and has a son, jazz guitarist Thomas Dutronc, whose 2007 album “Comme Un Manouche Sans Guitare” brings a super giant grin to my face.)

As far as thin Gallic people are concerned, I am fascinated by Charlotte Gainsbourg and Lou Doillon. Daughters of Jane Birkin, the half-French, half-English half-sisters are, as Vogue’s Sarah Mower states, “indie-arty aristocracy” and have the “elusiveness of unicorns.” Meanwhile, film actors Gaspard Ulliel (Paris, Je T’aime) and Louis Garrel (The Dreamers) have that subtle cultural superiority that their look-at-me Hollywood peers sorely lack.

Genius Files

Since I am still in the process of forming my taste — and searching for people I can finally call my heroes — I decided to document my aesthetic evolution by putting together genius files, an idea I stole from American designer Anna Sui. Leafing through magazines, I tear pages of images and articles that I keep going back to for some reason and store them in a three-ring binder for easy reference.

So far, I can’t stop staring at a June/July 2006 Tokion editorial called “Young Americans.” Shot by Luke Smalley, it features male and female models in Native American headresses and horned baseball helmets mixed with a wicker Walter van Beirendonck cardigan and a stars-and-stripes Bernhard Willhelm jacket, among others. Of course, these are the magazines I could afford to rip apart; most of the ones I truly love are too precious to be pillaged.

As the world’s heroes and icons kick the bucket one after the other, I find my pop cultural lens refocusing and looking for new figures to single out. On my watchlist are Rad Hourani, a Canadian designer who crafts haute-goth unisex garments; Marije Vogelzang, a Dutch “eating designer” and book author; and Swiss-born, London-based intellectual Alain de Botton. (I considered including Michael Cera but I grew tired of him playing himself in all his roles.) I’m not prone to weird, volcanic fandom but if I chance upon a true iconoclast, I just might go nuts and give in.

* * *

Follow me: ginobambino.tumblr.com