Saturday 16 February 2008

_1460 Opening Night







_So Tuesday 12th saw the opening of my first solo photographic show. And it was an amazing, if very drunken night. Great turn out - over 100 people came through the front doors that night, and the drink kept pouring. The Exhibition has currently been open for a week, and will be open until February 27th.

If you're about,
Go check it.

_L.F.W Gift





This is one of the best 'fashion gifts' I've ever recieved (other than my stuffed gold Westwood Teddy Bear). Designed by Gareth Pugh for Moet & Chandon, it is an incredible handmade corsage, made from black and pink rubber. I was given it on the Moet Fashion week double decker bus, and once I sobered up the next morning, I was a very, very happy boy.

_StreetStyle



_At this point im trying to catch up on my blogs, and I'm nearly there.

This is my mate Matthew outside the Gareth Pugh show on Wednesday. Wearing a pretty damn good outfit - Jacket: Gareth Pugh Archive. Top: Lotta Scaletix. Jeans: Dior. Shoes: Gareth Pugh. And you cant quite make it out on the photo, but those are £900, new season Gareth Pugh socks, covered entirely in Swarovski Crystals. Love it.

_AntiValentines



_Well, less anti, more pro flying solo.

Check out my Valentines gift to myself - the bottom of these rings. Large, wood and silver, Antique and of some form of African origin. Spitalfileds Antique market on a Thursday, check it out, some great deals to be had.

_Space Odyssey






_Watching this the other night, I just had to pull out my camera - what an incredible closing scene. That module, in that room - Perfect. And pure Genius.

_Things that make you go mmm



_Colour coded clothes and vintage sofas in great colurs sat on warm concrete floors: Thift Warehouse, Haitian District, Miami, September 2007

_Wonderland






_'Dungaree Dolls'. Photography Ben Weller. Fashion Editor Anthony Unwin: Great little shoot from the new issue, really clean and simple, great use of new seasons and vintage, great choice of model (very Drew Barrymore) oh, and really, really great hair to go with it all - it just really gives the whole look an edge.

_Home Improvement





_Just a few more really nice interiors - colour coded book stacks - Ingeniuos. Oversized vases in the Kitchen - Lovely. Carrie Bradshaws NYC apartment - The dream.

_Must go see...



_Simon Lee Gallery on Berkeley Street.

Sorry, just a personal memo.
But go see it aswell.

_Ray Petri: Buffalo Style






Buffalo is one of the most influential styles in fashion; the founders were essentially Ray, photographers Jamie Morgan, Cameron McVey and Mark Lebon, and Mitzi Lorens. And later on includes Nick Kamen (of Levi ad fame) and his brother Barry, as well as Neneh Cherry and Naomi Campbell and. Ray Petri was the vision leader of the gang. Petri brought street fashion into the mainstream when before it was just all about power dressing. Ray turned his back on designer clothes. He pioneered the DIY post-punk styling. Ray believed that you can re-create all of these looks from thrift shop clothes and stuff that you've borrowed from your grandparents. Petri's look took bits and pieces of Britain's post-punk '80s: East Indians, blacks, punk whites, rude boys, mods, ragamuffin Jamaicans, New Romantics and boxers, and tossed them into an exotic whole. His revolutionary ideas spawned a generation of designers.

The Buffalo phenomena infiltrated pretty much everything, from ad campaigns to style magazines, all the way from the street to high fashion.

Photographer Jamie Morgan in one of his interviews on Showstudio said “What Buffalo did was to try to create its own agenda outside the fashion system. We were interested in the images and the attitude. Yes, we loved the style and the fashion but that was just part of it. We would use an Armani jacket because we liked the cut, not because of the label. What Buffalo helped to create was a force outside the establishment.”

Who would forget the image of Nick Kamen in a leather skirt, boys in Doc Martens and their underpants, ring-scarred black boxers in nursery-pink bobble hats, Armani suit jackets, boxing gear, and flags wrapped as sarongs, headlines ripped out and pinned to lapels. It was fashion with an attitude.

Ray Petri pioneered an aesthetic that brought the natural style of men of African descent to the forefront of fashion, adding sensuous androgyny with hardcore urban survival edgy-ness. Petri brought black models into the limelight, discovering Naomi Campbell at 14 and Neneh Cherry before her first recording. In fact using black models and models of other races was something pioneered by Ray, “no one had done it before.” “It was about the face, as they would say, 'Start with the face and the rest falls into place” said Mitzi Lorenz one of the founder of Buffalo.

Unfortunately Ray Petri died from AIDS in 1989. Fashion may come and go, but style, as Buffalo will show you, lives forever

_Its been too long



_Since I mentioned Chloe, so . . . I recently uncovered a 1992 copy of now defunct American magazine, Sassy, where a 17-year-old Chloe Sevigny was a fashion intern and featured in a one page spread wearing homemade hats and skater socks. How does she make such random crap look so freakin' cool?

Ace.

_New Tracks



_Felt Mountain was the ambient- psychadelic- jazz- james bond record. Black Cherry was the gritty electroclash synth pop record. Supernature was the glam disco record. Seventh Tree is the sleepy surreal fairytale record. I’m sure a lot of fans of “Supernature” will have a difficult time liking because Goldfrapp had taken their music in a completely different direction. I hear a lot of similarities between Kate Bush and Alison vocally on this record. There is also a lot of acoustic guitar and strings while Alison’s lyrics are more stripped down giving the record a warmer and more personal sound. Personally, i cant geto enough, perfect for sleepy cold winter mornings, and even better for sleepy summer mornings - and the cute clownesque look is perfect.

Thursday 14 February 2008

Gareth '08







_'LONDON, February 13, 2008 – Sometime during the genesis of Gareth Pugh's latest collection, The Wizard of Oz bumped into Predator. The result was the kind of showy fashion farrago that has been a London staple since…oh, at least since Stonehenge was built. Coco Rocha marched out in a samurai dress made from zippers, and we were off. The zipper peplum, the zipper panniers, and the huge zipper shoulder pads were exploded components of what might almost have been a Joan Crawford costume, if she'd ever gotten to play the Predator Queen of Outer Space. Those famously exaggerated Crawford shoulders could also be inferred from a hooded gray flannel cape, or in-furred from the huge, shaggy goat-hair "epaulets" on a wrapped coat.

Pugh set out to make his models look like warrior women, emphasizing shoulders throughout with, first, the zips, then the flannel, the goat hair, and finally, polyhedra in leather or PVC. What that all pointed to was the weirdly Hollywood-ish glamour of the collection, recasting familiar items with diva-esque excess, hard edges, and a little wit: a tunic dress made entirely from safety pins, for instance; or a white coat-dress with a bolero back, also trimmed in safety pins; or almost any of the pieces that found creative things to do with all that goat hair. The fact that many of the shapes were surprisingly basic under the decorative add-ons (a quilted wind coat or a voluminous parka made up of polyhedra looked positively commercial) only made it clearer that Pugh is the latest in an illustrious line of British designers for whom the show's the thing. The partisan crowd shrieked with glee. When Pugh played Gary Glitter's chant, "D'you wanna be in my gang?" at the finale, there was no question about it.' - Written by Tim Blanks for Style.com

And all I can add to that review is - I want the following -
Oversized black mink mittens,
Safety Pin jumper
Some kind of goats fur ensemble.
Oh, and the epic shoulder padded cape piece

- Perfect.

Saturday 9 February 2008

_More Gross







_Part of the Horizonville 2005 project - a documented road trip by moped in the Rhone Valley, Valais, Switzerland - such a great project.

Once again, see more of his work at - http://www.kuhikuhi.net

_Wrestling Dream







_Photographer Yann Gross' project documents wrestlers in the countryside of Switzerland, its an ongoing project, started in 2007.

Check out his work at - http://www.kuhikuhi.net

_Giant Gum



_Ace giant gum in Venice - www.simonedecker.com - if anyone manages to get this website to load, and there's anything decent on it, let me know.

_Ant Housing



_German-born photographer Michael Wolf documents the extreme densities of Hong Kong. His series ‘Architecture of Density’ rarely contain images of people, instead letting the extreme scale of the buildings remain as the focus. The images are stunning, though I’m not quite sure how to react. It’s overwhelming to view the scale and enormity of the buildings, and then realize that people live there. The post-modernist in me wants to decry the lack of humanity in the high rises. But these images aren’t hopeless. After all, we created those buildings, right?

_Bit of Fashion






_Its been a while since I blogged some mindless beautiful fashion, so here you go...

Be inspired.

F.Y.I - The bottom image is from the McQueen08 shows - keep posted for more of the amazing images from this show.

_House Desires







_With desire for my own house/apartment getting greater and greater each day, i decided to peruse 'The New York Times Homes & Gardens' section of thier website. And I pulled some particually nice imagery to blog, as an inspiration for those of you who desire the same beautiful home that I do.