We R Slaves 4 Balenciaga’s Sk8r Boi Accessories

There’s a segment in recent space-time called the “just-past.” It’s an era of culture located between the wastebasket and the recycling bin—after use and saturation and before the redemption of retro-kitsch, or serious reconsideration. Garden State lives there moodily with the Atkins Diet and Hedi Slimane’s grave and glamorous era at Dior Homme. What improbably neighbors! No matter how tight her elephant skin suit, Jennifer Lopez’s film and music career has some serious real estate in the neighborhood. Traditionally, the just-past is about a generation long, although it’s a matter of great consideration as to whether that time is being reduced by technologies like this blog.

The just-past isn’t just a doghouse, although it does show a collective embarrassment of the way people demand repetition. Is it N*Sync’s fault we listened to “Gone” too many times? Of course not. It touched a chord for a reaso. We will live until the “Ain’t It Funny” remix is back, and then we will die. This week Balenciaga previewed its Spring/Summer 2010 accessories, which seems to quote the inimitable Avril Lavigne, doyenne of the bubblegum-skate set, a group of pretty girls who finally fessed up to being pretty, forgot consumer empowerment and probably got married. The look is come-hither Goth and pop “sk8ter boi.” Nicolas Ghesquiere took standard skateboarding shapes and materials and adapted them to his own luxe-industrial look. Punky studded wallets go garish and elegant in bubble-gum flavors. And the high tops begin at the sole like Vans before blossoming into unexpected materials like wrinkled leather and snakeskin that suggest nothing so much as a little “I’m a Slave 4U” influence working up the seam.