Los Angeles brand Enfants Riches Déprimés is currently showcasing their Spring 2024 collection at Maxfield LA, and the event was attended by Marilyn Manson and his wife Lindsay on April 17th. On March 16th, Manson posted photos on his social media wearing the Enfants Riches Déprimés brand, which is French for "Depressed Rich Kids". Enfants Riches Déprimés is a Los Angeles and Paris based luxury fashion brand founded in 2012 by the conceptual artist Henri Alexander Levy, who has created a French punk streetwear line based on the movements of the late 1970s and Japanese Avant-garde movements of the 1980s. One of the core precepts of the brand is high price points, with T-shirts ranging on average from $500 to $1,000, and haute couture jackets priced as high as $95,000. ERD consistently utilizes the business model of artificial scarcity. In this regard, all styles are sold on an extremely exclusive basis, and thus in relatively small quantities. In a 2016 interview with Complex
I grew up with two older sisters, one four years older and the other two years older, and they often experienced things before I did and I relied on that information to make a lot of my decisions growing up. We also had two uncles slightly older than us that I grew up close to and looked up to, and what they told me I also trusted. This was before the internet age, when rumors about various things were in abundance, and if you didn't experience something yourself then you had to rely on other people to tell you, and usually you trusted their experience. Naturally, because of this, I grew up believing a lot of rumors that frankly were just not true.
Below are five examples out of many showing how false rumors influenced me and how this played a major part in me becoming a Marilyn Manson fan.
1. In the early 1980's, when I was around seven years old, my sisters and I slept over my grandparent's house. My two uncles were in high school at the time, so they slept over one of their friend's houses while I got to sleep in their room, which was exciting to me as a kid, because they had cool stuff in their room, with their walls covered in very scantily clothed women in fantasy scenarios, and their huge cassette collection that I liked to look through and wish I had. When I was looking through their cassettes, I came across Alice Cooper, and on the cover there was something that looked like thick blood coming out of his mouth. This scared me and fascinated me at the same time, and when I asked one of my uncles the next day about it, he told me about Alice Cooper, but what he told me was that he was the lead singer in a band that drinks blood! Of course, this horrified my seven year old imagination, and it was a rumor about Alice Cooper that stuck with me for many years that I wish inspired me to become a fan, but unfortunately I was a scaredy-cat growing up and I looked at it with a mixture of fascination that was at the same time forbidden.
2. One day in the mid-1980's I was home watching the news, and I was saw a report that talked about the recent rise in suicide among youth, and this was linked to rock bands like Judas Priest and Iron Maiden. I didn't know who Judas Priest was, but they showed a clip of one of his music videos, and it seemed really hardcore at the time. I remember wanting to listen to Judas Priest and Iron Maiden, but after this report I was too scared to do it, because I thought I might want to kill myself after, so I never ventured along that dangerous path. Fast forward to another day when I was over a cousin's house with my mother. I was upstairs with my cousin in his room, who was a year older than me, while my mother and his mother were downstairs. The reason we went over was because, as my mother informed me, his mother had a special mission for me. It appears that my older cousin liked to listen to rock and roll, particularly heavy metal, and he hung around graveyards with his friends. My secret mission, organized by his mother, was for me to find out as much as possible about his obsession with heavy metal music and what he does in the graveyards. Basically, she was worried for him with the whole satanic panic going on in the media, and it didn't help that the police one day brought him home when he was caught hanging out in a cemetery. I agreed to the mission, but as I talked to him about it over the next few hours, without blowing my cover, I realized their worries were overblown, and the whole thing just felt wrong, because I liked my cousin and didn't want to get him in trouble. When my mother and his mother later took me aside and asked me what I found out, I simply told them to not worry, I downplayed his love for heavy metal, and I told them he did not show any satanic inclinations or do anything wrong.
3. I went to a pretty affluent Middle School, and the music I grew up on was mainly the popular music of the 1980's that my sisters listened to. Even my two uncles were mainly into Prince, Madonna and the Beastie Boys. Two of my closest friends in school, however, were into heavy metal, and they were my only connection to that musical genre. They introduced me to ACDC, and one day they even bought tickets to one of their concerts and invited me. That night I went to a record store and bought an ACDC cassette and listened to it, and I liked it, but I was raised to believe that rock music was evil, so I had to be careful with it. As I was listening to the album in my room, my mother walked in and asked me what I was listening to. When I showed her the ACDC cassette, she told me I wasn't allowed to listen to it, because that type of music is demonic and dangerous. Personally, I didn't see anything wrong with it, but it made me question my judgments, so I put it aside. Because I knew my mother would never allow me to go to an ACDC concert, I had to skip that invitation, to my later regret, because I became more of an ACDC fan later in life and never got to see them in concert.
4. These same two friends one day came to school excited because they scored tickets to a Guns and Roses concert at the peak of their career when Appetite for Destruction came out. I didn't know much about Guns and Roses, yet I was again invited to come. Knowing how my mom would probably never allow it, I declined. Then one day soon after I heard on the radio a review of a Guns and Roses concert in another city, and they described it as a crazy scene with a lot of drunk people, forcing everyone to have to walk on vomit and piss throughout the stadium. When I heard this, I was actually glad I declined going to the concert. I later learned this review was made by someone who exaggerated their experience because they wanted to discourage young people from attending these types of concerts, nonetheless when my friends returned from the concert and showed up in school with their Guns and Roses shirts, I asked them if they had to walk all over vomit and piss, cause that's what I heard happens at Guns and Roses concerts. They informed me that it was just a fun concert and never saw vomit or piss anywhere. After this I became more interested in watching Guns and Roses on MTV, where I saw them a lot. When I realized false rumors prevented me from seeing Guns and Roses at the peak of their career, I was very disappointed, because I never did end up seeing them either. Nevertheless, I did become somewhat of a Guns and Roses fan after, which led me to also like Jane's Addiction and Nirvana, but I always still had a sense of unfounded danger about rock bands instilled in me, so I still kept a certain distance from them as well.
5. When Silence of the Lambs was first released in theaters, I wanted to see it based on the trailer I saw on television. One night my sisters went to go see it with their friends, and when they came home I asked them how it was. The first thing they told me was that I should not see it, because it is the most disgusting thing they ever saw and it was scary as hell and I would hate it. My imagination conjured the worst possible images, so I was too scared to see it. In fact, I never got around to seeing it until my early 20's, and when I did I realized how wrong my sisters were, because I didn't find it that scary at all, and the movie was great. In fact, my sisters did this with a lot of movies growing up that they saw first. It was because of their weird perception of things, especially horror movies, that I never saw Nightmare on Elm Street for many years, and other popular horror movies of the 1980's, though horror did always scare me and fascinate me at the same time. They even frightened me away from certain sex comedies of the 80's that I later grew to love. One night my sisters even rented Pink Floyd's The Wall and watched it in our basement with about a dozen of their friends, but they kicked me out because they thought it would be too scary for me. The images they created about these movies stuck with me for years until I watched them all for myself and became a big fan of them. One of the worst was when I was in high school and they came home after watching Pulp Fiction, and they talked about how horrible it was and how disgusting this one scene was when they blew someones brains all over a car. This review prevented me from seeing Pulp Fiction till I was in college and became friends with an older guy who wrote a movie review for Pulp Fiction in a newspaper and he explained to me how it was one of the greatest movies of recent years, which I didn't understand until I saw it for myself and I loved it.
These are just a few of many examples of how false rumors influenced me and bound me. Being raised with so many false rumors that others painted for you, who experienced things very differently from how I would later come to experience them, made me realize to never trust a rumor, nor even an opinion, unless I fully evaluated it for myself, and when I realized this is what I needed to do, it opened up a door of refreshing freedom that allowed me to discover a hidden part of my soul.
The Long Hard Road Out of Hell, Marilyn Manson's autobiography, was released on February 14, 1998, which was the day before my birthday. I was engaged at this time to my future wife, and the day after my birthday, due to some misunderstandings instigated by false rumors, she broke up with me. We were both in the same college, even in the same dormitory, so it was a really difficult time, but we ended up getting back together within a few weeks, though it was hard for me to get over the fact that I had been so heavily demonized by the woman I loved. A few days later we were in a certain mall with a few of my friends, and we walked past a Hot Topic store, which I had never gone into before. Inside there was a huge display advertising only one book, and that was Marilyn Manson's newly-released The Long Hard Road Out of Hell. Being a bibliophile who was into strange things, I walked over to the display and was absolutely fascinated by the cover alone. It sent a tiny shiver up my spine, because it gave off an aura of danger coupled with fascination, that conjured many memories around the false rumors growing up surrounding things like this. I asked one of my friends who was more into pop culture than me who this Marilyn Manson was. He simply replied that he's some rock star he saw once on MTV that basically looks like a demon, calls himself the Antichrist, and has these crazy controversial concerts. Being in the college bubble and not watching any television and hardly listening to the radio left me completely ignorant of the rise of Marilyn Manson until his autobiography was released. Then I opened the cover to the description on the leaf, and as soon as I read "Marilyn Manson has more than 450 scars, not counting emotional ones," I was sold and I had to have the book. Because we were in a hurry, I didn't buy it that day, but the next day my fiance and I were in another mall, and when I walked by a bookstore, I told her I had to have that Marilyn Manson book. It was something I needed to read. I found the book among the bestsellers, bought it, and went back to my dorm and read the whole thing within 24 hours. Since then I became I big Marilyn Manson fan, even though I had never heard one of his songs or seen one of his videos.
There are many reasons I became a Marilyn Manson fan just by reading his autobiography, but certainly one of them had to do with those five rumors I grew up with listed above and many more that I didn't mention. One of the things it did was help me dispel many false rumors I grew up with, as it conjured up those memories for me and freed me from being bound to them, and he became for me a personification of someone around whom false rumors spread even more than all the other rock stars and bands and movies before him that were forbidden to me in one way or another. Having just days before been falsely accused myself is one way I also was inspired by the book and found it encouraging.
Below are five examples out of many showing how false rumors influenced me and how this played a major part in me becoming a Marilyn Manson fan.
1. In the early 1980's, when I was around seven years old, my sisters and I slept over my grandparent's house. My two uncles were in high school at the time, so they slept over one of their friend's houses while I got to sleep in their room, which was exciting to me as a kid, because they had cool stuff in their room, with their walls covered in very scantily clothed women in fantasy scenarios, and their huge cassette collection that I liked to look through and wish I had. When I was looking through their cassettes, I came across Alice Cooper, and on the cover there was something that looked like thick blood coming out of his mouth. This scared me and fascinated me at the same time, and when I asked one of my uncles the next day about it, he told me about Alice Cooper, but what he told me was that he was the lead singer in a band that drinks blood! Of course, this horrified my seven year old imagination, and it was a rumor about Alice Cooper that stuck with me for many years that I wish inspired me to become a fan, but unfortunately I was a scaredy-cat growing up and I looked at it with a mixture of fascination that was at the same time forbidden.
2. One day in the mid-1980's I was home watching the news, and I was saw a report that talked about the recent rise in suicide among youth, and this was linked to rock bands like Judas Priest and Iron Maiden. I didn't know who Judas Priest was, but they showed a clip of one of his music videos, and it seemed really hardcore at the time. I remember wanting to listen to Judas Priest and Iron Maiden, but after this report I was too scared to do it, because I thought I might want to kill myself after, so I never ventured along that dangerous path. Fast forward to another day when I was over a cousin's house with my mother. I was upstairs with my cousin in his room, who was a year older than me, while my mother and his mother were downstairs. The reason we went over was because, as my mother informed me, his mother had a special mission for me. It appears that my older cousin liked to listen to rock and roll, particularly heavy metal, and he hung around graveyards with his friends. My secret mission, organized by his mother, was for me to find out as much as possible about his obsession with heavy metal music and what he does in the graveyards. Basically, she was worried for him with the whole satanic panic going on in the media, and it didn't help that the police one day brought him home when he was caught hanging out in a cemetery. I agreed to the mission, but as I talked to him about it over the next few hours, without blowing my cover, I realized their worries were overblown, and the whole thing just felt wrong, because I liked my cousin and didn't want to get him in trouble. When my mother and his mother later took me aside and asked me what I found out, I simply told them to not worry, I downplayed his love for heavy metal, and I told them he did not show any satanic inclinations or do anything wrong.
3. I went to a pretty affluent Middle School, and the music I grew up on was mainly the popular music of the 1980's that my sisters listened to. Even my two uncles were mainly into Prince, Madonna and the Beastie Boys. Two of my closest friends in school, however, were into heavy metal, and they were my only connection to that musical genre. They introduced me to ACDC, and one day they even bought tickets to one of their concerts and invited me. That night I went to a record store and bought an ACDC cassette and listened to it, and I liked it, but I was raised to believe that rock music was evil, so I had to be careful with it. As I was listening to the album in my room, my mother walked in and asked me what I was listening to. When I showed her the ACDC cassette, she told me I wasn't allowed to listen to it, because that type of music is demonic and dangerous. Personally, I didn't see anything wrong with it, but it made me question my judgments, so I put it aside. Because I knew my mother would never allow me to go to an ACDC concert, I had to skip that invitation, to my later regret, because I became more of an ACDC fan later in life and never got to see them in concert.
4. These same two friends one day came to school excited because they scored tickets to a Guns and Roses concert at the peak of their career when Appetite for Destruction came out. I didn't know much about Guns and Roses, yet I was again invited to come. Knowing how my mom would probably never allow it, I declined. Then one day soon after I heard on the radio a review of a Guns and Roses concert in another city, and they described it as a crazy scene with a lot of drunk people, forcing everyone to have to walk on vomit and piss throughout the stadium. When I heard this, I was actually glad I declined going to the concert. I later learned this review was made by someone who exaggerated their experience because they wanted to discourage young people from attending these types of concerts, nonetheless when my friends returned from the concert and showed up in school with their Guns and Roses shirts, I asked them if they had to walk all over vomit and piss, cause that's what I heard happens at Guns and Roses concerts. They informed me that it was just a fun concert and never saw vomit or piss anywhere. After this I became more interested in watching Guns and Roses on MTV, where I saw them a lot. When I realized false rumors prevented me from seeing Guns and Roses at the peak of their career, I was very disappointed, because I never did end up seeing them either. Nevertheless, I did become somewhat of a Guns and Roses fan after, which led me to also like Jane's Addiction and Nirvana, but I always still had a sense of unfounded danger about rock bands instilled in me, so I still kept a certain distance from them as well.
5. When Silence of the Lambs was first released in theaters, I wanted to see it based on the trailer I saw on television. One night my sisters went to go see it with their friends, and when they came home I asked them how it was. The first thing they told me was that I should not see it, because it is the most disgusting thing they ever saw and it was scary as hell and I would hate it. My imagination conjured the worst possible images, so I was too scared to see it. In fact, I never got around to seeing it until my early 20's, and when I did I realized how wrong my sisters were, because I didn't find it that scary at all, and the movie was great. In fact, my sisters did this with a lot of movies growing up that they saw first. It was because of their weird perception of things, especially horror movies, that I never saw Nightmare on Elm Street for many years, and other popular horror movies of the 1980's, though horror did always scare me and fascinate me at the same time. They even frightened me away from certain sex comedies of the 80's that I later grew to love. One night my sisters even rented Pink Floyd's The Wall and watched it in our basement with about a dozen of their friends, but they kicked me out because they thought it would be too scary for me. The images they created about these movies stuck with me for years until I watched them all for myself and became a big fan of them. One of the worst was when I was in high school and they came home after watching Pulp Fiction, and they talked about how horrible it was and how disgusting this one scene was when they blew someones brains all over a car. This review prevented me from seeing Pulp Fiction till I was in college and became friends with an older guy who wrote a movie review for Pulp Fiction in a newspaper and he explained to me how it was one of the greatest movies of recent years, which I didn't understand until I saw it for myself and I loved it.
These are just a few of many examples of how false rumors influenced me and bound me. Being raised with so many false rumors that others painted for you, who experienced things very differently from how I would later come to experience them, made me realize to never trust a rumor, nor even an opinion, unless I fully evaluated it for myself, and when I realized this is what I needed to do, it opened up a door of refreshing freedom that allowed me to discover a hidden part of my soul.
The Long Hard Road Out of Hell, Marilyn Manson's autobiography, was released on February 14, 1998, which was the day before my birthday. I was engaged at this time to my future wife, and the day after my birthday, due to some misunderstandings instigated by false rumors, she broke up with me. We were both in the same college, even in the same dormitory, so it was a really difficult time, but we ended up getting back together within a few weeks, though it was hard for me to get over the fact that I had been so heavily demonized by the woman I loved. A few days later we were in a certain mall with a few of my friends, and we walked past a Hot Topic store, which I had never gone into before. Inside there was a huge display advertising only one book, and that was Marilyn Manson's newly-released The Long Hard Road Out of Hell. Being a bibliophile who was into strange things, I walked over to the display and was absolutely fascinated by the cover alone. It sent a tiny shiver up my spine, because it gave off an aura of danger coupled with fascination, that conjured many memories around the false rumors growing up surrounding things like this. I asked one of my friends who was more into pop culture than me who this Marilyn Manson was. He simply replied that he's some rock star he saw once on MTV that basically looks like a demon, calls himself the Antichrist, and has these crazy controversial concerts. Being in the college bubble and not watching any television and hardly listening to the radio left me completely ignorant of the rise of Marilyn Manson until his autobiography was released. Then I opened the cover to the description on the leaf, and as soon as I read "Marilyn Manson has more than 450 scars, not counting emotional ones," I was sold and I had to have the book. Because we were in a hurry, I didn't buy it that day, but the next day my fiance and I were in another mall, and when I walked by a bookstore, I told her I had to have that Marilyn Manson book. It was something I needed to read. I found the book among the bestsellers, bought it, and went back to my dorm and read the whole thing within 24 hours. Since then I became I big Marilyn Manson fan, even though I had never heard one of his songs or seen one of his videos.
There are many reasons I became a Marilyn Manson fan just by reading his autobiography, but certainly one of them had to do with those five rumors I grew up with listed above and many more that I didn't mention. One of the things it did was help me dispel many false rumors I grew up with, as it conjured up those memories for me and freed me from being bound to them, and he became for me a personification of someone around whom false rumors spread even more than all the other rock stars and bands and movies before him that were forbidden to me in one way or another. Having just days before been falsely accused myself is one way I also was inspired by the book and found it encouraging.
Since 1998 I began to follow the goings on of Manson very closely and have never stopped and have come across one false rumor after another. New false rumors about Marilyn Manson have not only spread in the past few years, but old ones have also resurfaced. Sometimes Manson has even spread these false rumors himself, either for album promotion or just to gain a media story. This is because it is so easy for him to do, why not have some fun with it and create a narrative about yourself with it. When dealing with Marilyn Manson, I have learned that you are dealing with false rumors, sometimes with people with the same naivete and gullibility that I possessed as a child and teen in the 1980's and 90's. Most people don't know how to navigate around false rumors, and are very gullible to believe them, especially if they come from people they trust or respect or simply like. It seems the information age has not stopped the spread of false rumors, it has simply made it more possible for them to spread through various means and under various guises, whether it be the satanic panic of yesterday or the Me Too movement of today.
The reason I share all this about myself is to inspire everyone to keep in mind how false rumors run rampant in the accusations against Marilyn Manson, even when they come from first-hand accounts and eye-witness testimony, and it takes some discernment to realize if you are being misled or not when you hear or read things. Whatever you come across, make sure to distinguish it from a false rumor if you are going to believe it, that it comes from someone who has fully grasped and understood the situation from which the rumor springs, and that it comes from a sincere place. Even then, leave room for doubt when you realize there is even a hint of rumor in what is being presented.