New York Knights: Dick, Trick, Slick Fantasia

Typically, the only thing I loathe more than fashion is fashion photography — so daring, so risque, so overindulgently pretentious that it makes my teeth ache.

Still, even I have to give when it comes to designer David Mason’s Slick It Up line — an eye-opening fetish-meets-concrete swagger collection colliding the street, the club, the bedroom, and the sex dungeon together in one vinyl cutaway supernova.

It’s the photography — managing to be hot, cartoonish, self-lampooning, candy-colored, cheeky, edgy, and geeky all at once without collapsing under its own weight — that really puts this line gleefully over-the-top. Everything about the Sleeping Beauty by way of The Road Warrior tableau at left is pitch-perfect: Prince Charming remixed as a burr-cut urban black knight in body armor, the Disney-worthy matte background, the emerald forest of imposing thorns, and the looming shadow of the dragon. Bridging the wide gap between Cruising and Dragon’s Lair is no mere feat, and that means even an ice-hearted label-hater like me has a melting point.