ch-ch-charley harper

charley harper kicked the bucket (awhile ago), which is incredibly sad as he was a wonderful illustration artist. flat, simplistic renderings of animal life with textural twists and sometimes devious layout at most other times they are just serene and inviting. todd oldham is putting out a compilation book of all of harper's illustrations and i need it.

good-ness

e·the·re·al·i·ty:
–adjective

1.	light, airy, or tenuous: an ethereal world created through the poetic imagination.

2.	extremely delicate or refined: ethereal beauty.

3.	heavenly or celestial: gone to his ethereal home.

4.	of or pertaining to the upper regions of space.

thank everything on this earth and beyond for alber elbaz et co. (s/s 2008 lanvin ads feat. olga sherer shot by sir meisel)

willkommen and bienvenue!

ref29 you rule my brain. i'm stilll catching up on my internet news and refinery29 fashion interviews were on my list of things to read last night. and they did not disappoint! chitchattin' about the hinterland's newest babies kaviar gauche and the newest crop of artist edition tee's pay close attention to brendan donnelly's too cool mummies n' daddies near the bottom. now back to thirsty thursday. jeah.

so creessy

pre-info: just this year designers have shown pre-fall runway looks. this is new. new new. and entirely retail, not vision/design, driven. you see, in real life time, january-early march and late june-early august are death for the retail world; it's those times referred to as 'winter' and 'summer'. generally, no high-end or directional lines set in stores in those months so buyers rely on late or replenishment shipments of already owned goods to carry them through to the big fashion seasons of fall and spring, but now with the release of pre-fall retailers have 'fresh' goods to bolster their profits in the summer death months. this can also be construed as an optimistic look for the next years economy with designers betting on people wanting to buy medium weight coats and pre-fall-y luxury goods in july. fyi: there is no pre-spring because resort exists, but it generally is not a big enough draw to be carried in stores outside of the 3 b's: bloomingdales, bergdorf, and barney's. so far only a handful of designers have shown pre-fall looks, most showing 12-24 looks posed in look-book/resort style and true to their purpose they are more conservative and would be appealing to a bigger selection of potential shoppers. however, chanel showed as well, and it's as if karl lagerfeld said 'homie dont play that' . chanel showed 64 (sixty four!) separate looks, menswear included and is said to be influenced by amy winehouse. some of the looks seem to be influenced, at least a little, by marc by marc jacobs circa 2003, but that is just me, you can compare yourself. he said she said aside, 64 looks is a ridiculous amount of clothing to produce, even just as samples for a runway show, especially when chanel already shows full 60+ look shows for fall and spring with resort clocking in with over 40 looks. so creesy.

white magik

i recently was informed that VBSTV (viceland tv) was/is owned by mtv. kind of a bummer but bills are bills. vice's fashion however is on the upward climb. no gratuitous nudity in this particular feature, but it's enough to make me want to get off my ass and go seek out the actual magazine so i can possess the prettypretty images of spooky babes with tight threads. photo by stacey mark from vice web spread

more on t.koh and the gold leggings

ok, if that below didn't make sense deal with it. however if you really got to the end and wondered what the fuck i was talking about with terrence koh and the balenciaga leggings i'll enlighten you. koh was interviewed in the fall/winter edition of purple (which is so good you should buy/steal/own/re-read it) and over the course of the interview he possibly gives maruizio cattelan ecstasy, has them both dress up in slick leather and chiffon s+m women's underwear that his boyfriend made for the interview, sings yellow submarine, declares he will stop reading at age 35 because he loves it too much, tells how sometimes he takes tranquillizers and goes to the museum of natural history just to look at all the animals, and notes that some of this art is made just so he can buy expensive clothes, like the balenciaga leggings which he plans to wear while he rides his bike. now, that may sound really shallow and coarse, but 1. he delineates shortly there-after that money, like everything else is a thing and the value of an object is null because the happiness that obtained object gives you is the most important thing in the equation. and 2. if someone really wants to give you tens of thousands of dollars for something you made with the intention of selling for clothes that is just smart business practice. he notes that he makes more expensive art for buying more expensive clothes as well as more personal art for change and impact on life.
and 3. he sounds like the best party friend anyone could ask for.

if you like miami so much maybe you should marry it

art basel is going on right now and i'll admit, i've been lazy and the only thing i've read the past week were the instructions on big brain academy, but i've caught up somewhat. fyi: art basel is a week long gallery show in miami's new museum of contemporary art, but like miami itself, it's pretty beat and no one in their right mind would voluntarily go there unless they really like tanning and hair gel. new york times wrote a kind of sad article on it, depicting how the gajillion artists involved display in booths not unlike those in a craft fair and comment that
"the art is heavily scripted, raucously colorful and monstrously proportioned. Parties and people-watching crowd the field of vision"...."Statement-making works are otherwise scarce. A few halfhearted gibes at the market, like the fake A.T.M. by Elmgreen and Dragset, are quickly absorbed into the briskly commercial atmosphere. Merlin Carpenter’s slapdash text painting “Die Collector Scum” sold the first day." it gives the vibe, also, that the only people buying are art-nouveau-riche, but i think the comment on merlin carpenter half ass painting i just put down shows that pretty well.
on one hand the artists who's work is selling are making out like bandits since the majority of attendants are better versed in spotting the richard prince for vuitton nurse outfits than any of the nurse paintings, even if they had a lit up sign and a free martini bar affixed on top of them. on the other, for the artists that aren't doing so well, the excess of the whole debacle glosses their work into the booth next to theirs and next to theirs making it unidentifiable and really just wasting their time. i mean, i'm not saying everyone who professes to be an arrrteeesteeee should really put effort forth and pursue that (i think you can follow and conjure my references), but even i am not so cruel to put a young, possibly naive, person into a situation where someone could easily throw candy colored liquor up on or crash into their work all while potentially destroying their ideas of their works worth and giving them a harsh introduction to the art world. over-all the whole situation feels like some bizarre real life pretending to be real life reality show in a microcosm where-in the known winners win despite their flaws and no matter how good your work is you are presently a nobody and nobody cares about nobody. however, the whole deal being in miami (have i let you know i have nothing but contempt for miami? because i do. i hate it. big time) should set off red-flags in anyone trying to be serious about anything. though, deerhoof and iggypop played and terrence koh was there so now he can buy a spare pair of balenciaga gold leggings or maybe the new latex robot outfits for spring 08? j/k i love t.koh

the train wreck that is project run-gay rant

so i gave instant message commentary on last nights episode of project runway (which only served to infuriate me) where the contestants had to take 'out' trends and make them faaaaaaabuuuulloouuussssss. such trends as: overalls, leggings, neon, poodle skirts, and 70s flare. all of which the contestants were embarrassedly sporting. the winning outfits were facemilies of 20$ rags i saw two days ago at a suburban forever 21. the losing outfits more closely resembled to couches off of a bad telemundo version of Dynasty.
everything was all set in sleeves and straight grain shifts. the techniques are remedial and the concepts are tired, but i can't fully hate on the cast because they are so pitiful; they got excited to work with horse face herself on a line for steve and barrys. not exactly a career move to catapault you into the fashion stratosphere.
the show is nothing but bad news; you go on under the guise of showing your *~taLeNtS!>!~* to the WORLD on the TEE-VEE, but really you come off as a slyly-edited caricature of yourself and are better known by the fights you are in or the flops you send down on your elderly models every week. you earn nicknames such as: big gay party monster, smurfette, or tiny cut-rate paris hilton with hideously out-moded scene mullet and brain dead fall out boy lovin' alterna girl side-kick, or that-imbalanced-bitch.
the only lucky ones are the people who are eliminated right off the bat because you won't be recognized on the street as that guy who can't sew a slip dress or make a button down shirt or continually wears s&m inspired hats or got drunk that one time and fell off a subway platform; losing allows you to still have a chance at defining yourself by your talents and not by editor approved sound-bites.

weirdo rippers

listen up: keyboardy, scratchy, down-beat, ambient sounds with some surprise dancey bits. no age- weirdo rippers. good titles and good jams. too bad i've missed them playing both times they have been near me. bummer.

mina mine

do you need to relax? do you want to feel inferior about your design prowess, but some how not be bothered that much by it because what you are looking at is so enjoyable? do you like fluffy embroidered cats? then i have the bizz for you.
mina perhonen is a japanese designer who melds incredible textiles with the spare-functionality of skandi and japanese design. each piece is hand crafted, from beginning to end; the fabrics are first illustrated, then woven, then cut and sewn by members of the atelier. the website focuses more on letting the viewer enjoy the clean simplicity in the dense fabrics rather than constantly reminding them to consume their product. tune on tune in tune out. mina-perhonen.jp