not so handy

Ok. Specific vagary: nothing drives me up the wall more than a shitty illustration with a overtly flourished signature. Perhaps its a cornball still life where in the fabric is rendered to look like cardboard instead of, you know, fabric. Maybe it's a depiction of light reflection off a glass' rim that is conveyed with a five point christmas tree STAR. Then to cap it all off, right in the cornor, carefully exacted, is a fucking Ben Franklin 2.0 insignia.Seriously, if your signature is the only thing someone can remember about your work, you might need to work a little harder on your rendering skills. This goes for that calender of animal illustrations that I thought was done by children with disabilities, but was really executed by art-lovin' adults. What happened to the good ol days of the self-deprecating artist? Now everyone is pushing their crappy chalk pastel drawings on innocent bystanders and trying to tell the internet while working on their reality show clip reel. Not every child, or adult, is the next Plato, Homer, or Da Vinci. Not everyone is gifted and talented if they did possess above average (or average) intelligence they would have powers of comparison and see that, really, that shit kind of blows and if you tell me how awesome it is one more time I will likely snap.

fashion week fall/winter 08 part 1

so, youll be impressed, im programming cheats into my TI-83 plus calculator for a test tomorrow, scarfing Aloo Matar, chugging a corona, and snarking all over this weekends fashion shows. oh and watching that millionaire matchmaker show on bravo! Multi tasking to the extreme. Firstly, oh my god this millionare dude is BORING. TO FUCKING DEATH! i mean i know his matchmaker date is a vapid surgically enhanced drone but still! robots have a limit on awkward conversation. oh. thats my girl, draining her booze to make the date less hellish. ok on to the fashion: so BCBG, nicole miller, baby phat, erin fetherston, among others showed over the weekend. and get ready women ages 14-140: shit is gonna suck. medieval flappers nonsense and other grasping at straw trends. erin fetherston grew up a little from coquette into gamine, which is appreciated, but everything else so far is eh bordering on lame**. jezebel comments aptly and comically on the shows so far. whats more exciting is patrick robinson is grand poo-bah of the Gap and shit is lookin tight! please see above photo and this article for patrick's achievements thus far and plans for the american brand.

**alexandre herchcovich is so rad it gets it own post

100th post! all about the inadequacies of this batch of couture shows!

how riveting you say! well get over it, this shit is rubbin' me raw. so, only about 30 women in the world purchase couture, most being from european/middle eastern origin. thus, generally, couture shows are made without profit in mind. if someone wants to commission a $40,000 dress from galliano that's cool, but couture shows most often exist to put the art and whimsy back into fashion. the pure, base, sensual desire for expressing any idea you can think of; shooting for the stars, if you will. it is not practical and it is oft not even wearable without help getting dressed from a friend or two. which is why, this year's offerings were a let down. they were either unimaginative or referentially dated or even both. most veered more towards being, gasp, RTW than couture. yes, chanel showed models in flats ( quelle shoque!) and had them loping out of a giant stone chanel jacket, but the clothes looked more like they belonged on the set of gossip girl than on a museum pedestal. also, i have a problem with models in flats, why make the owners of some of the world's most unique and beautiful collection of genes look like normal women schlepping around? maybe it's to be blase about luxury, but really, those girls just look like the awkward teens they really are, which is disconcerting as i want my RTW models to be inaccessible and the clothes to be irreverently accessible and, therefore, my couture models to look like they are from an entirely different planet with clothes that are made of daydreams, dirty alleyways, and rainbow ponies! mass pictures below, form your own opinions, but mine are:
yawn chanel & lacroix (only because they look dated and done)
chanel:












lacroix:












tiiight: givenchy, dior, and galliano (he dressed coco rocha as a MERMAID! a MERMAID! how perfect is that!?)

givenchy:


dior & coco rocha as galliano's mermaid: