Clearly, my comfort zone lies with visual culture. There are many other areas of aesthetic experience which are a part of the overall concept of “art into life” but are generally woefully neglected on this blog. I am no music critic, so I am generally reluctant to go there except when music edges into the realm of performance art. But today’s news of the passing of the inimitable Davy Jones seems to demand a moment of reflection on boy bands and teen idols.
I’m not sure why I feel quite so apologetic about the possibility of writing about the dresses on the red carpet at the Academy Awards. For someone interested in fashion and aesthetics, there is no question that it is an exciting event. And I was, predictably, at a party with a slew of girls last night watching the evening unfold on E!. But there are two problems. For starters, it wasn’t that exciting. I’ve been trying to figure out all day why it felt like such a let-down (except for the moment when Sascha Baron Cohen poured Kim Jong Il’s ashes all over Ryan Seacrest … that was truly funny … most of all when the security team swooped in like lightening and whisked Sascha Baron Cohen away). Second, writing about it seems too obvious. Everyone is writing about it and who needs to hear 50 opinions on the same 8 dresses?
I think much of the issue, in both cases, is that the dresses just weren’t that interesting. Many were lovely, to be sure. Sadly, none was really outrageous in that oh-my-god-did-she-look-in-the-mirror-before-she-went-out? kind of way. As one of my companions noted last night, long slit like cut outs on your triceps ultimately just look trashy no matter how you dress them up. Yes, Jenny from the block is beautiful and looked stunning and sexy, but if you ask me, at the end of the day the dress seemed a little trampy.
All of this 50 degree weather in Boston in the middle of February has me thinking that spring is right around the corner. I know — when March dumps 20″ of snow on us I’m going to be in for a big surprise — but in the meantime, the mood is definitely “getting ready for spring”. In that spirit, here are some of the looks for spring that I would buy if money were no object. I love that statement — if money were no object — since it makes whatever follows almost completely irrelevant. Since, after all, money is almost always the object. But it is hard in the world of fashion to have a whole lot of fun without the suspension of disbelief where price tags are concerned, so I like to run with the fantasy anyway. These are decidedly not my “favorite looks for spring” of these-were-the-most-beautiful-things-to-come-down-the-runway variety, but more of the hell-yeah-I-could-see-wearing-that(-if-money-were-no-object)-and-I-haven’t-already-talked-about-it-in-another-post variety — ok, adding also the caveat not-if-I-were-realistic-about-my-figure, but it is truly impossible to have any fun with fashion if one is realistic about one’s figure, so I will gladly toss that right out the window.
I am always intrigued by photographs that explore the changes in a person’s face over time. It is a fascinating way of questioning what constitutes identity. If you ask me, it can also be wildly unsettling — or, at the very least, completely mesmerizing. It’s not a new project — think Rembrandt’s self portraits or, in more recent history, Chuck Close — but I do find it particularly engaging as a photographic project.
The photographer Betina La Plante somewhat accidentally stumbled into a project about identity over time.
Every once in a while an idea comes along which is so clever that it seems absolutely obvious — even though it is being expressed for the first time.
I love graffiti — or more broadly, street art (actually, it is both more broadly and more narrowly, since the word art contains the idea that the art maker intends to engage with a viewer through his work, and therefore wants it to be good, or pretty, or expressive, or whatever it may be, but does not include someone randomly scrawling a mess in black paint in the side of a building to no end except destruction). But admittedly, there are a number of issues raised by street art which make it a contentious and problematic medium. If a building (wall, bridge, train track) is nondescript, run-down, urban squalor, or in some way in need of energy and beauty, graffiti may look like a positive addition to the structure. If the building is, instead, a recently completed structure, constructed to the tune of vast amounts of money by a talented architect who invested a lot of time and thought into its appearance, the same graffiti may be seen as destructive defacement. However, such a distinction suggests that one can objectively distinguish which structures belong in each of the two categories. That little problem aside, if we accept that, at its best, graffiti breaths new life and energy to derelict structures and spaces, Russian artist Nikita Nomerz’s work can be seen as its literal realization — concept made form in entirely literal terms. It is surprising that no one has done this before. After all, the urge to anthropomorphize seems like an almost irresistible human imperative. But, as far as I know, Nomerz is the first. Check out these photos of some of the work … it’s absolute trip.
The Mary Katrantzou for Topshop collaboration was (is — since it has yet to arrive at Topshop New York and Topshop Las Vegas) amazing. By many accounts it is the best designer x fast fashion collaboration to date. But count on London Fashion Week to remind us that there is nothing quite like a designer mainline collection, and for most of us, it will always elude our grasp. As excited as I am to receive my Mary Katrantzou for Topshop pieces in the mail, they pale in comparison to the Fall 2012 show she just put on.
At her best, Katrantzou is able to take over the top conceits and render them subtly exquisite and wearable. When she piles print upon print, I’m in heaven. But the look is certainly not for everyone. This season, she has largely restricted each look to a single color. I don’t think the line loses anything in the process, but perhaps it will gain a broader audience (customer base). Balancing the restraint she shows with her color palates, the silhouettes she uses have become more complex and more sophisticated, and as a result more intricately intertwined with the prints on the fabrics. The subjects of the prints are banal objects, I would say bordering on the absolutely ridiculous, and yet made so beautiful and refined in Katrantzou’s hands that all you see is a breathtaking work of art.
Silver … silver … hmm … oh yeah, Silverware! Check out the spoons on the dress above left. Read the rest of this entry »
Harper’s Bazaar recently delivered its March issue to subscribers and newsstands. The long awaited book marks the first major redesign of the magazine in years. The book is thicker, ad pages have gone up, the stock is heavier, there is more white space on the pages … but to what end? In my opinion, whether intentional or not, the redesign gives Bazaar a yet more high end look than it already had. It seems to me that in additional to being the result of a new publisher making her mark on the magazine (Carol Smith, formerly of Elle, joined the magazine in May, but has suggested that with the redesign, the March issue is in essence her first official issue), it is a reflection of the magazine’s struggle to find its positioning in a rapidly changing business. There were a number logical changes — an increase in ad pages (in which is still behind the competition — Vogue, Elle and InStyle), a more commercial slant, a move away from celebrity stories and towards richer content on the arts, literature, travel, beauty — but at the end of the day, I think the upshot of these changes is to create a magazine that is more sleek, more refined, more exclusive. In other words, Bazaar now feels more clearly aimed at the very rich than perhaps it had in its prior form. (Most of the responses to the redesign I have read comment on the daring of the cover which shows us the back of Gwyneth Paltrow’s head — which doesn’t really identify that that is who we’re looking at for that matter — but I think that move really says it all, says exactly who the magazine thinks it is. It is an editorial image par excellence. It says that this is actually not a celebrity shot but is about the beauty of the photo, the lines of the body, and above all, the clothes.)
This image, from the nymag.com article "Here's the Back of Gwyneth Paltrow's Head on Harper's Bazaar's Redesigned Cover" shows, on the left, the newsstand cover of the March issue of Bazaar and, on the right, the subscriber cover. No contest about which is the more fabulous cover.
Do you remember when wallpaper became “out”? I can’t put my finger on the precise moment, but I know when my husband and I bought our first apartment I was horrified by the fact that there was wallpaper in almost every room and could barely see past it. First thing, long before we even moved in, we had to rip off a century’s worth of wallpaper — countless layers — replaster and paint. And suddenly the apartment looked like home. The difference was night and day.
But over the last several years, wallpaper has been staging a comeback, and there are some pretty incredible choices out there. I am confident there are people with a flair for design who could pull off wallpapering an entire living room in some completely over the top print and have it look unbelievable. I tend towards the more cautious. My feeling is that small spaces offer the perfect opportunity to try outrageous things. Don’t be a wuss. It’s just a matter of finding the perfect wallpaper and just the right little corner to play in. The possibilities are endless (literally, since there are even design your own wallpaper options out there at this point).
If you’re looking for over the top, Flavor Paper (even the name is great, no?) is the place to go. I am loving the blurred photographic print wallpaper. I can’t quite imagine how it would read when actually hung on the wall — hence the small room, you can always change it if you’re not happy as long as you haven’t broken the bank with your initial investment.
Aspen Grove designed by Boone Speed at Flavor Paper
This is going to sound like bitching. And it’s not meant to be – honestly – because it doesn’t really matter in the end. As addicted as I may be to shopping, I desperately need outside controls, so when something gets in the way of my throwing away money, it’s just as well. As seriously as I might take fashion, I know that the world doesn’t rise and fall over one pair of shoes. What aggravates the hell out of me is when large scale businesses can’t figure out how to operate in an organized manner. Certain issues just shouldn’t be that hard.
I have been looking forward to the new Aldo Rise shoe collections arriving at ASOS.com for some time now (see my January 24 post on Affordable Designer Capsule Collections). It has been available through Selfridges, but they don’t ship to the US. The Aldo Rise website states quite clearly that the shoes will be available on ASOS (which does ship to the United States) on February 15. They weren’t. The shoes appeared slowly but surely on the site throughout the course of the day on February 16. In the morning (US time, so later than that in London) four styles were showing up on the site. By afternoon there were more, but if you did a normal search for them, you were likely to find most of them. I found that if I googled “Aldo Rise ASOS Libertine” I could get to the page with the shoes I was looking for but could in no discernible way access from within the ASOS site. Finally, by Thursday night they were all there. As I say, no big deal, but why not just say that some of the shoes will start to be available on ASOS around February 15 — or something — or else actually have all of the shoes up on February 15? This plan has been in the works for some time. It’s not like the two companies couldn’t see it coming. Is it really that hard to get the information right? It cracked me up that as of last night, as February 15 drew to a close, every site affiliated with Aldo Rise still stated that the shoes would be available on ASOS.com February 15. There’s no one in the office there that checks on and corrects these things?
The other really big miss — and this is the one that’s getting in the way of my buying the shoes — is the pricing. The Aldo Rise website lists pricing for all of the shoes in both pounds and dollars — they are priced at either $175/£135 or $155/£125. When I initially saw the dollar pricing a month ago I was surprised, since it is below what has been the exchange rate. As of the 16th, £135 would be roughly $213 and £125 would be $197. But, ha, fooled ya, on ASOS.com the dollar pricing to order these shoes from the United States is $241.72 and $223.81 respectively. So my questions are a) why put the wrong price on the Aldo Rise website (is this going to be the price when the shoes arrive in Aldo stores on March? was it the price given the exchange rate at the time that someone typed up the web page? if either of the aforementioned, could they really not have been clearer about it?)? and b) why is the dollar price on ASOS.com notably higher than that dictated by the exchange rate? Is it to compensate for shipping costs since ASOS provides free shipping to the US? I understand why they would handle it that way, but it seems pretty slimy to me. The inconsistencies are of very little consequence, but why be sloppy?
I was so excited for the shoes in large part as consolation for the fact that I was sure I wasn’t going to succeed in getting the Mary Katrantzou pieces I wanted. And shoes are kind of a nice source of solace anyway when you find yourself in the midst of oh-my-god-it’s-february-and-I’m-still-overeating-from-the-holidays-will-I-ever-fit-into-anything-cute-again. The good news is that the trend for this spring seems to be in really fun and brightly colored shoes, so cute shoes are pretty easy to find. If you can’t afford to go designer, here are some fun alternatives. This is one instance in which I would say, get three really fun pairs of shoes rather than the designer ones — it will cost you less money anyway.
