Hedi Slimane’s “American Youth” Portrays Pleasure, Pain and Rise of Counterculture

Sit back, close your eyes, lose yourself for a few minutes and reminisce. Think back to your youth. Was it free-spirited and careless, or ridden with tumult and anguish? For many, youth is a distant memory, but when deliberated, it conjures a heady rush of emotions.

Designer Hedi Slimane, purveyor of skinny menswear and dark photography, has curated a collection of eleven films that portray youth and the rise of counterculture from the 1950s onward. The pleasure and pain of adolescence in society is portrayed in “American Youth”. Hand-picked by the designer and produced with French film company MK2, each cinematic masterpiece takes viewers through history. Tersely raw at times, the films tackle emotions, philosophies and dreams. From a glimpse into the 1950s conformist mindset in Nicholas Ray’s “Rebel Without a Cause” to 1969’s Townshend-tinged social and political ideology that ran rampant on Yasger’s farm in Michael Wadleigh’s “Woodstock”, viewers are able to re-live or visualize adolescence from the past.

Below, a full list of the films in the “American Youth” collection, and year each was produced:

“Rebel Without a Cause” – 1955

“Who’s That Knocking at My Door” – 1969

“Woodstock” – 1969

“Zabriskie Point” – 1970

“Permanent Vacation” – 1980

“Rumble Fish” – 1983

“Mala Noche” – 1985

“Boys Don’t Cry” – 1999

“Last Days” – 2005

“Mysterious Skin” – 2005

“Wassup Rockers” – 2005

The limited-edition box set will be available this November, and features many of Hedi Slimane’s photographs. Anxiously anticipating the emotional flight each film is bound to take (and re-take) me on, I am also fervently looking forward to the fashions that will be on display in each. Fashion has always contributed to each era’s milieu, and Slimane is proof that film is an influential force in creative minds.