Lifestyle
Planeta and Wavey, two designers tapping into the shared language of L.A. and Mexico City
This story is part of Image’s September Image Makers issue, celebrating some of the most daring and innovative artists working in fashion today.
Eric Solis describes his photos as “cyberghetto,” “flow 2000s,” “raver chic.” Models wearing cargos layered with neon mesh shorts, stand among the rims at a car lot, using a purse inspired by one. Remixed plaid jorts. A durag with a blinged-out butterfly bikini top. Club kid platforms accessorized with ripped black tights. The concept: Moda sin fronteras. Solis, an L.A. native who now lives in Mexico City, where much of his family is from, wanted the photos to tell a story about the connection between two brands — L.A.-based Planeta and Mexico City-based Wavey — and in a larger sense, to “blur the lines between how people perceive what fashion is, or how it should look, in both the contexts of L.A. and Mexico.”
For Solis — a multi-hyphenate who works as an architect, event producer, photographer, art director and creative consultant, among other things — this project was an opportunity to capture the conversation he sees happening between Mexico City and L.A. in terms of fashion and style, in a way that felt expansive and not necessarily confined by gender or culture. The models themselves are young people who are mostly from Mexico City (or live there) spanning queer, trans and Indigenous communities that Solis met through fashion shows. The entire team — from the stylist Tuzza to the hair artist Ozmar Báez — was an intentional part of the conversation he was trying to create through the clothes and photos, he says.
Solis was thinking about the dichotomy of the two communities in L.A. and Mexico City, and at least in terms of style, how they were taking from each other and presenting it in new ways. He wanted to take what he was seeing and present it so that it wasn’t L.A. style, wasn’t Mexico City style, but was a hybrid of both.
Genesis wears Planeta neon mesh top and hunting pants, Wavey snakeskin bikini top.
The shoot acted as a catalyst for a pop-up called “No Hablamos Inglés” that Solis is curating on Sept. 21 at Planeta’s DTLA store. He is bringing the work of more than 20 emerging Mexican designers — spotlighting a scene of alternative, young, queer artists who are morphing how we think about Mexican style — including Palida Studios, Tlacuache Muerto and Resurrected. The name is important; for Solis it stands for cultural pride and community: “Sometimes, Mexicans on the Mexico side feel like they should learn English to better their lives or to be better in business, but this is almost like a saying of defiance. It’s almost rebellious: ‘No Hablamos Inglés.’”
This project is also Solis’ contribution to an ongoing conversation artists have been sparking between L.A. and Mexico for years, chief among them artist and curator Anita Herrera. From the beginning, Herrera has infused her practice with the mission of finding the connection and disconnections between L.A. and Mexico. Her ongoing series, “Diaspora Dialogues,” has consistently used fashion as a medium to explore these topics — as has much of Herrera’s work; she went to fashion school and started her career in the fashion industry.
Israel wears Wavey zig-zag top, bejeweled beanie, acid cargo pants, chrome fanny pack, Planeta neon mesh shorts, Tuzza custom reflector earring.
Solis met Herrera through helping with “Diaspora Dialogues” and met the founders of Planeta at one of Herrera’s exhibitions in Mexico City, “A Través de la Moda,” where she displayed personal pieces from her closet that drew from images and symbols that Mexican Americans hold dear — La Virgen de Guadalupe, the Aztec calendar — “as an exploration of history, myths and novelties between L.A. and Mexico City,” Herrera says. Planeta, founded by designers Hoza Rodriguez and Richard Resendez, has an IYKYK cult-like kind of status among the fashion people, artists and club kids who wear it. Their work is best recognized by the magic they do with upcycling — flannel shirts layered on top of baggy denim become a new genre entirely, something from the future. When they went to Mexico City for the exhibition and were able to see the city through the eyes of Solis and Herrera (Rodriguez and Herrera have been friends since 2009, when they were both starting their careers in the fashion industry), something clicked. “Everything’s unisex,” Rodriguez says of the style he observed in Mexico. “And I learned that they are not influenced by us, we are influenced by them.”
Wavey, a Mexico City brand and store founded by Talulah Rodriguez-Anderson in 2018, makes the kind of things you might wear at a rave on the beach. It’s always been dedicated to communicating its clothing as unisex. Rodriguez-Anderson grew up in L.A. and was inspired by her visual experiences and memories on both sides of the border when starting her brand. The brand’s store, in Colonia Juárez, carries this same energy, with its aesthetic drawing from the cargo trailers that go from Mexico City to the States. A Wavey piece borrows from Chicano silhouettes and images, told through a Mexican streetwear lens — the latter of which Rodriguez-Anderson says is “evolving very quickly.”
Jorge, left, wears Wavey MX* T-shirt, Planeta jersey work shirt and Planeta checkered Dickies shorts. Axel wears Wavey mariposa bikini top, Planeta plaid block shorts.
Solis wanted to highlight Planeta and Wavey because they felt like family in his mind — with a shared ethos, a look that felt like it was drawing from similar references. “To me, they’re like siblings, they’re like cousins,” Solis says. “They sort of talk to each other in terms of their style.” This is shown in the styling of one of the models, Jorge, who wears reworked checkered Dickies shorts from Planeta pointing to an early-2000s L.A. skater aesthetic, and a blinged-out shirt with the initials “MX” from Wavey as a nod to Mexico City. “It’s a new aesthetic,” Solis says. “It’s not California, it’s not quite Mexican. But it’s both, it’s something else.”
With the shoot, and with the pop-up, Solis says he wanted to show a “cross-section of Mexican youth, real Mexican youth.” He chose Colonia Juárez for the location, specifically an area that’s home to many auto body shops, because it felt true to where these looks would actually be worn. The environment and the clothes are in communion with each other, Solis says. “I also wanted to shoot it in a location that was authentically Mexican. Whereas I feel like La Condesa, or Roma, it can feel foreign, almost.”
“For me, that shoot, when I look at it, it brings some sort of happiness and some sort of truth of who we are as Latinos, as the LGBTQ community, and as human beings,” says Planeta co-founder Rodriguez, also the founder of L.A. brand Hologram City. “When I see that, it makes me happy to know what we really are: we’re talented, we’re creative, we look like superheroes, we’re the s—.”
Ellie, left, wears Planeta button-up jersey shirt and biker vest, Wavey skirt, Tuzza custom rim bag. Israel, center, wears Wavey zig-zag top, beanie, acid cargo pants, chrome fanny pack, Planeta neon mesh shorts, Tuzza custom earring. Li, right, wears Planeta baby button-up shirt, Wavey purple flame dress, pink & white flame dress, snakeskin top, Tuzza custom reflector earrings.
Even as an architect, Solis has always worked in creative or community realms. He was on the team of designers for the 6th Street Bridge — and curated the art, photography and architecture exhibit “Nuestre Puente,” in collaboration with Estevan Oriol, in celebration of the bridge’s opening. He’s also one of the founders of the DTLA Proud festival. When he moved to Mexico City, he wanted to find a way to blend his obsession with fashion, art and culture, and embed himself into the creative community there as much as possible. Solis frequents Tianguis La Lagunilla once a month, which is where he says he came to really understand Mexico City’s fashion youth culture and meet some of the brands he’s bringing to L.A.
“Moving to Mexico City four years ago and really starting to understand by living here and building community here, [I realized] how our communities are not quite as connected as they could be because of those political, policy barriers that separate communities,” Solis says. “I have a whole circle of friends here in Mexico City that are artists, designers. They have their own brands, very integrated in the creative community here, and many, almost all of my friends who want to expose their brand or expose themselves as artists in the United States, they can’t — because they literally can’t go.” He wants to create connections for these Mexican designers, and allow the people of L.A. to experience their work. As a Mexican and U.S. citizen, Solis feels like he’s able to bridge the two sides — bringing Mexican designers to L.A. through their artistry, even if they’re not able to come here themselves.
The collection of designers that Solis is bringing to his L.A. pop-up this month conjures some key phrases for him: “It’s queer as in f— you.” “Barrio bratz.” “Sin género.” “Mexa-core.” The designers include Ese Chico, known for its irreverent graphic T-shirts and slogan: “Locura sin piedad,” or “madness without piety” — Herrera included it in her “A Través de la Moda” exhibition when she brought it to L.A. earlier this year. Another is Squid, a brand “inspired by nature” that transforms garments through upcycling, airbrush and screen printing into one-of-a-kind works of art. It was crucial for Solis that the pop-up captured this moment in Mexico City’s fashion scene, which he describes as “infinite.”
Jorge Líos of Palida Studios — a brand with a style Líos describes as a balance of elegance and deterioration — is a native of Nezahualcoyotl, an area about an hour outside of Mexico City. The spirit of Mexico City’s street-level fashion scene is a mix of “vulgar, atrevido y chido,” he says. “Como que la gente justo está desmitificando esta idea de que lo que debes de usar solamente son marcas gabachas y ya está volteando a ver marcas Mexicanas. Sobre todo, la escena está construyendo o reafirmando la identidad de ser Mexicano.” (That is, people are demystifying the idea that you should only use foreign brands and are turning to Mexican brands. The Mexico City scene is building up and reaffirming Mexican identity.) Since he was a kid, it was Líos’ dream to travel to L.A. or New York. He loves hip-hop and was inspired by the music culture in both cities. The fact that he is now traveling to L.A. through his designs and that they’re reaching a new audience that might be moved by them? “Es una locura.”
The list of L.A.’s sister cities includes Salvador, Brazil; Busan, South Korea; Berlin; and, of course, Mexico City. For Solis, it’s more than just a connection or conversation: there are familial ties. “The shared passion through fashion is something that really connects us and really unites us,” he says. “I’ve begun to see how fashion can actually build an identity that is of neither place, but is of both places.”
Production Eric Solis
Models Axel, Ellie, Genesis, Israel, Jorge, Li
Makeup Beauty Dealers
Hair Ozmar Báez
Production assist Dennis Caasi
A screenshot from George Mélière’s Gugusse et l’Automate. The pioneering French filmmaker’s 1897 short, which likely features the first known depiction of a robot on film, was thought lost until it was found among a box of old reels that had belonged to a family in Michigan and restored by the Library of Congress.
The Frisbee Collection/Library of Congress
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The Frisbee Collection/Library of Congress
The Library of Congress has found and restored a long-lost silent film by Georges Méliès.
The famed 19th century French filmmaker is best known for his groundbreaking 1902 science fiction adventure masterpiece Le Voyage dans la Lune (A Trip to the Moon).
The 45-second-long, one-reel short Gugusse et l’Automate – Gugusse and the Automaton – was made nearly 130 years ago. But the subject matter still feels timely. The film, which can be viewed on the Library of Congress’ website, depicts a child-sized robot clown who grows to the size of an adult and then attacks a human clown with a stick. The human then decimates the machine with a hammer.
In an Instagram post, Library of Congress moving image curator Jason Evans Groth said the film represents, “probably the first instance of a robot ever captured in a moving image.” (The word “robot” didn’t appear until 1921, when Czech dramatist Karel Čapek coined it in his science fiction play R.U.R..)
“Today, many of us are worried about AI and robots,” said archivist and filmmaker Rick Prelinger, in an email to NPR. “Well, people were thinking about robots in 1897. Very little is new.”
A long journey
Groth said the film arrived in a box last September from a donor in Michigan, Bill McFarland. “Bill’s great grandfather, William Frisbee, was a person who loved technology,” Groth said. “And in the late 19th century, must have bought a projector and a bunch of films and decided to drive them around in his buggy to share them with folks in Pennsylvania, Ohio, New York.”
McFarland didn’t know what was on the 10 rusty reels he dropped off at the Library of Congress’ National Audio-Visual Conservation Center in Culpeper, Va. A Library article about the discovery describes the battered, pre-World War I artifacts as having been, “shuttled around from basements to barns to garages,” and that they, “could no longer be safely run through a projector,” owing to their delicate condition. “The nitrate film stock had crumbled to bits on some; other strips were stuck together,” the article said. It was a lab technician in Michigan who suggested McFarland contact the Library of Congress.
“The moment we set our eyes on this box of film, we knew it was something special,” said George Willeman, who heads up the Library’s nitrate film vault, in the article.
Willeman’s team carefully inspected the trove of footage, which also contained another well-known Méliès film, Nouvelles Luttes extravagantes (The Fat and Lean Wrestling Match) and parts of The Burning Stable, an early Thomas Edison work. With the help of an external expert, they identified the reel as having been created by Méliès because it features a star painted on a pedestal in the center of the screen – the logo for Méliès Star Film Company.
A pioneering filmmaker
Méliès was one of the great pioneers of cinema. The scene in which a rocket lands playfully in the eye of Méliès’ anthropomorphic moon in Le Voyage dans la Lune is one of the most famous moments in cinematic history. And he helped to popularize such special effects as multiple exposures and time-lapse photography.
This moment from George Méliès’ Le Voyage dans la Lune (A Trip to the Moon) is considered to be one of the most famous in cinematic history.
George Méliès/Public Domain
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George Méliès/Public Domain
Presumed lost until the Library of Congress’s discovery, Gugusse et L’Automate loomed large in the imaginations of science fiction and early cinema buffs for more than a century. In their 1977 book Things to Come: An Illustrated History of the Science Fiction Film, authors Douglas Menville and R. Reginald described Gugusse as possibly being, “the first true SF [science fiction] film.”
“While it may seem that no more discoveries remain to be made, that’s not the case,” said Prelinger of the work’s reappearance. “Here’s a genuine discovery from the early days of film that no one anticipated.”
Joshua Jackson
I Got the Eye of the Tiger!!!
Published
BACKGRID
Joshua Jackson may have picked up a thing or two from “Karate Kid: Legends” … we got video of him going H.A.M. in a boxing gym with a trainer.
Watch the video … the 47-year-old actor ditched his shirt for the workout, really working up a sweat as he bobbed and weaved in the ring while throwing in some pretty impressive jabs!
He later goes to work solo on a speed bag like an old pro.
Joshua has publicly said that starring in “Karate Kid: Legends” in the role of a former boxer was a dream for him, but there’s no word on whether he’s training for another role or just really fell in love with boxing.
Either way … you’re looking great, Joshua!
Tracy Morgan, left, and Daniel Radcliffe star in The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins.
Scott Gries/NBC
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Scott Gries/NBC
Tracy Morgan, as a presence, as a persona, bends the rules of comedy spacetime around him.
Consider: He’s constitutionally incapable of tossing off a joke or an aside, because he never simply delivers a line when he can declaim it instead. He can’t help but occupy the center of any given scene he’s in — his abiding, essential weirdness inevitably pulls focus. Perhaps most mystifying to comedy nerds is the way he can take a breath in the middle of a punchline and still, somehow, land it.
That? Should be impossible. Comedy depends on, is entirely a function of, timing; jokes are delicate constructs of rhythms that take time and practice to beat into shape for maximum efficiency. But never mind that. Give this guy a non-sequitur, the nonner the better, and he’ll shout that sucker at the top of his fool lungs, and absolutely kill, every time.
Well. Not every time, and not everywhere. Because Tracy Morgan is a puzzle piece so oddly shaped he won’t fit into just any world. In fact, the only way he works is if you take the time and effort to assiduously build the entire puzzle around him.
Thankfully, the makers of his new series, The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins, understand that very specific assignment. They’ve built the show around Morgan’s signature profile and paired him with an hugely unlikely comedy partner (Daniel Radcliffe).
The co-creators/co-showrunners are Robert Carlock, who was one of the showrunners on 30 Rock and co-created The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, and Sam Means, who also worked on Girls5eva with Carlock and has written for 30 Rock and Kimmy Schmidt.
These guys know exactly what Morgan can do, even if 30 Rock relegated him to function as a kind of comedy bomb-thrower. He’d enter a scene, lob a few loud, puzzling, hilarious references that would blow up the situation onscreen, and promptly peace out through the smoke and ash left in his wake.
That can’t happen on Reggie Dinkins, as Tracy is the center of both the show, and the show-within-the-show. He plays a former NFL star disgraced by a gambling scandal who’s determined to redeem himself in the public eye. He brings in an Oscar-winning documentarian Arthur Tobin (Radcliffe) to make a movie about him and his current life.
Tobin, however, is determined to create an authentic portrait of a fallen hero, and keeps goading Dinkins to express remorse — or anything at all besides canned, feel-good platitudes. He embeds himself in Dinkins’ palatial New Jersey mansion, alongside Dinkins’ fiancée Brina (Precious Way), teenage son Carmelo (Jalyn Hall) and his former teammate Rusty (Bobby Moynihan), who lives in the basement.
If you’re thinking this means Reggie Dinkins is a show satirizing the recent rise of toothless, self-flattering documentaries about athletes and performers produced in collaboration with their subjects, you’re half-right. The show feints at that tension with some clever bits over the course of the season, but it’s never allowed to develop into a central, overarching conflict, because the show’s more interested in the affinity between Dinkins and Tobin.
Tobin, it turns out, is dealing with his own public disgrace — his emotional breakdown on the set of a blockbuster movie he was directing has gone viral — and the show becomes about exploring what these two damaged men can learn from each other.
On paper, sure: It’s an oil-and-water mixture: Dinkins (loud, rich, American, Black) and Tobin (uptight, pretentious, British, practically translucent). Morgan’s in his element, and if you’re not already aware of what a funny performer Radcliffe can be, check him out on the late lamented Miracle Workers.
Whenever these two characters are firing fusillades of jokes at each other, the series sings. But, especially in the early going, the showrunners seem determined to put Morgan and Radcliffe together in quieter, more heartfelt scenes that don’t quite work. It’s too reductive to presume this is because Morgan is a comedian and Radcliffe is an actor, but it’s hard to deny that they’re coming at those moments from radically different places, and seem to be directing their energies past each other in ways that never quite manage to connect.
Precious Way as Brina.
Scott Gries/NBC
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Scott Gries/NBC
It’s one reason the show flounders out of the gate, as typical pilot problems pile up — every secondary character gets introduced in a hurry and assigned a defining characteristic: Brina (the influencer), Rusty (the loser), Carmelo (the TV teen). It takes a bit too long for even the great Erika Alexander, who plays Dinkins’ ex-wife and current manager Monica, to get something to play besides the uber-competent, work-addicted businesswoman.
But then, there are the jokes. My god, these jokes.
Reggie Dinkins, like 30 Rock and Kimmy Schmidt before it, is a joke machine, firing off bit after bit after bit. But where those shows were only too happy to exist as high-key joke-engines first, and character comedies second, Dinkins is operating in a slightly lower register. It’s deliberately pitched to feel a bit more grounded, a bit less frenetic. (To be fair: Every show in the history of the medium can be categorized as more grounded and less frenetic than 30 Rock and Kimmy Schmidt — but Reggie Dinkins expressly shares those series’ comedic approach, if not their specific joke density.)
While the hit rate of Reggie Dinkins‘ jokes never achieves 30 Rock status, rest assured that in episodes coming later in the season it comfortably hovers at Kimmy Schmidt level. Which is to say: Two or three times an episode, you will encounter a joke that is so perfect, so pure, so diamond-hard that you will wonder how it has taken human civilization until 2026 Common Era to discover it.
And that’s the key — they feel discovered. The jokes I’m talking about don’t seem painstakingly wrought, though of course they were. No, they feel like they have always been there, beneath the earth, biding their time, just waiting to be found. (Here, you no doubt will be expecting me to provide some examples. Well, I’m not gonna. It’s not a critic’s job to spoil jokes this good by busting them out in some lousy review. Just watch the damn show to experience them as you’re meant to; you’ll know which ones I’m talking about.)
Now, let’s you and I talk about Bobby Moynihan.
As Rusty, Dinkins’ devoted ex-teammate who lives in the basement, Moynihan could have easily contented himself to play Pathetic Guy™ and leave it at that. Instead, he invests Rusty with such depths of earnest, deeply felt, improbably sunny emotions that he solidifies his position as show MVP with every word, every gesture, every expression. The guy can shuffle into the far background of a shot eating cereal and get a laugh, which is to say: He can be literally out-of-focus and still steal focus.
Which is why it doesn’t matter, in the end, that the locus of Reggie Dinkins‘ comedic energy isn’t found precisely where the show’s premise (Tracy Morgan! Daniel Radcliffe! Imagine the chemistry!) would have you believe it to be. This is a very, very funny — frequently hilarious — series that prizes well-written, well-timed, well-delivered jokes, and that knows how to use its actors to serve them up in the best way possible. And once it shakes off a few early stumbles and gets out of its own way, it does that better than any show on television.
This piece also appeared in NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour newsletter. Sign up for the newsletter so you don’t miss the next one, plus get weekly recommendations about what’s making us happy.
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