STAPLED ON THE INSIDE.
SETH SHAPIRO. A FASHION EVENT FOR FASHION WEEK. FALL/WINTER COLLECTION.
THIS A 1994 BERNADETTE CORPORATION PRODUCT
AND IT IS VERY, VERY RARE!
As we understand it, this is Seth Shapiro's earliest handmade fashion collection look book manifesto. Produced in 1994 for a collection that reached stores in 1995 and projecting itself as far forward (even then) to the year 2000, when Shapiro left the US and just... traveled.
Bernadette Corporation formed in a nightclub in 1994. This was Bernadette Van-Huy, Sonny Pak and Thuy Pham and then others, including Seth Shapiro and Antek Walzcak, who contributes material to the book you are looking at. Bernadette Corporation's own fashion shows did not start until 1995 making this Seth Shapiro look book one of the earliest things they ever made (probably).
It is completely, utterly, fantastic and amazing and important and cool and the single sided pages are stapled together at the page edges and then folded, which is weirdly brilliant and does make it the only book we have seen that is stapled on the inside.
Shapiro was also REALLY GOOD at fashion design. His American Manufacturing label is now almost as influential as it is obscure (and the more obscure, the more influential).
And these mid-nineties illustrations are scanned and dropped, we imagine, into QuarkXPress with a little bit of Illustrator or even MacPaint. This zine is all about FASHION and STAPLES and WORD PROCESSING software throwbacks.
The year 2000 was quite a thing conceptually, in the years running up to it. Like it felt like the future to Prince in 1982 and the same again for Pulp in 1995 and then, in 1998, Mark Borthwick released his book of Margiela 1998 collections happily titled 2000-1. It's confusing like a pre-millennium bug!
In the actual year 2000, Seth Shapiro made a collection book entitled Ultimate Departure and promptly departed the NYC fashion scene.
You could try emailing. Pretty sure the Voice/Fax number will be out of service.
We have one copy of this first Seth Shapiro / Bernadette Corporation book. That may be one more copy than anyone else in the world has... we have no idea. We certainly can't find another one. It's museum-worthy for sure.