WGSN

An interesting tidbit via PSFK. It talks about how WGSN is a crutch for designers that ultimately makes them less creative. I had a free subscription as a student and was encouraged to use it, but I found it quite clunky and uninteresting (although in light of this article I'd be interested to take a look at it again). Anyway, read the comments. They are the most interesting part!

china

I've been working with a team in China lately and at the same time I seem to have been collecting a few China themed links:

• Master patternmaker Chao (via)

• Actually there's a great series of posts about Chinese manufacturing on Bunnie's blog

• And there's a series called An indie designer goes to Hong Kong on Fashion Incubator

• Foot Talk writes about the luxury market in China

• Reviews of Deluxe: How Luxury Lost it's Luster

(I wish I had a good image to put with this post, but everything I found seemed not right. ah well....)

Round-up 7

• ku:nel magazine
• family trees
(via)


• Westwood on consumer culture
(via)


• I wish I had gone to this.



• soap shaped like baby hands
• beautiful, exploding porcelain sculptures
• seriously awesome interviews with old people hating on young people and with young people bitching about old people!
(via)


• I used to believe that MPH was a word
• how creativity is killing culture
(via)

Prada

Some pics of the Prada spring show took my breath away a few weeks ago, and I've been meaning to post some of my Prada favorites ever since. These are across several seasons, and a few scans from my old mags.


S/S 2008


S/S 2008 Beautiful shoes in this collection


2008 Resort


S/S 2006 I love the slouchy grey stockings


S/S 2006 The bathing suit I want to wear!


A/W 2001 Beautiful coats from this collection

You can track one of Miuccia's favoritte elements throughout her collections, the thick black line:


A/W 2005 Headband


S/S 2006 Straps


A/W 2007 Ankles


S/S 2008 Neck

The first collection I remember really falling in love with was from the 90s (I think), and was sort of 70s polyester uniform looking. Remember? I can't find images of any of it anywhere! I did find a clipping in one of my sketchbooks from not too long ago of some things I love:

Biorhythm

When I was growing up, my dad and I sometimes went on road trips. To visit family mostly, which meant going to or through New Jersey. And there was one rest stop we would always brake for. This rest stop had a machine that read your Biorhythms! You would put in a quarter or 50 cents, enter your information, and you would get a printout like the one above. The science of Biorhythms actually goes back to the turn of the 20th century, and was of great interest to Freud while he was developing his psychoanalytic concepts. The back of the card explained how to read your Bio-chart. I wish I could find a snapshot of the machine itself. When it was calculationg your Bio-chart it made this great bleepy calculate-y noise. Sometime in my late teens, maybe when we were visiting colleges, the machine was no longer at our regular pit stop. I found this Biorhythm while I was cleaning out my closet to bring out the winter clothes....

There's a beautiful book explaining Biorhythms here:



Or you can get your own Biorythm readout by downloading a program for your PC (note: it's Windows only so I haven't tried it and I can't vouch for it's worth or if it even works at all). You can also try entering your data on this one for a quick readout.

Jack Spade's fashion show

Kottke explains:

Jack Spade held an impromptu fashion show in Bryant Park outside the giant tent where Fashion Week was happening, enlisting passersby to carry Jack Spade bags up and back on the sidewalk.

See it here. Brilliant!

The saddest objects

A Mental Floss post mentioned the book Owl at Home, by Arnold Lobel who:

sets out to brew a pot of “tear-water tea”–and, naturally, in order to do so he must imagine and then dwell upon the saddest objects possible

This reminded me of a game Justin & I sometimes play with his brother Cory, called the "Sad Game". It started out one night before Thanksgiving when we were all driving up to a cabin in the mountains for a long weekend with family and, as we were zooming down the highway, we all caught a glimpse of a man sitting alone in a fast food restaurant. Justin said he bet the man was divorced, and I followed he probably wasn't allowed to spend time with his kids unsupervised. Cory quietly added that he was also an only child whose adoptive parents had passed away in a car accident. When he was a teenager, Justin finished. And so the "Sad Game" was born. Sad theories grow and grow until the listeners can't bear it anymore and beg for the game to end. I don't think any of have even read Owl at Home.

Antoni and Alison

I used to ride by Anoni & Alison's shop on the bus on my way to university each day. They are doing some beautiful scarves right now:

Temporary tattoo

Really lovely idea.....from Yu Chiao Wang. Seen here too.

Catch-up round-up (6)

I haven't done a round up in a while, so here's a long one (full of old stuff too). I swear I am still just catching up on stuff! I have a backlog of things I have scanned to show you too....next week!

VIA Boing-Boing:


• The Imaginary Foundation




• How little kids feel




• Sock exchange!

• Nike develops a Native American sneaker

• A man's Life Countdown clock

• Dr. Whippy is a machine that proffers soft scoop ice cream according to the perceived unhappiness level of the customer. See also here. Sweet!



VIA Coutorture

• Musings on shopping

• Mary Ping wins more fans to Slow and Steady Wins the Race



VIA The Fashion Informer:


• I love Isabel Toledo, here's an interview




• In this interview Francisco Costa mentions the book Hutterites of Montana by Laura Wilson. The photography & the clothing are both so lovely!



VIA PSFK:


• ooh, another one I really really love: streets without traffic signs! I was thinking about this in regards to speed limits when I was in Colorado driving my sister-in-law's car witha broken spedometer.

• The Thought Project. I'm not posting any pictures with this link because it will not do the project justice. I loved reading through this site, absolutely entrancing (pardon my enthusiasm, but go look!)

• hmmmm.....Solar powered jacket

• The Center for Cosmic Wonder




VIA Kottke:


•This reminds me of the Komar & Melamid paintings




• Oscar the cat. What do you think?

• Arts reporting. Ha! Who cares?



VIA Make:

• I like this project: The Exquisite Box

• These workshops sound interesting....




AND from everybody else:

• Girls on Cheap Paper





• To fulfill my ephemera quotient






• Ping Mag never disappoints! I want these.




• I like the Tree Dress (above).





• I like this idea by The Rage even if the shoes aren't quite my style.

• I always like laundry talk

• Ew?

• Hanna Werning does lovely work. I first saw her prints for Eastpak back packs

• Aitor Throup's menswear

• After the shoelace, the necktie

love at first site

Oh! Joy just posted some pics of Mina Perhonen's FW07/08 collections and I'm totally smitten (with everything!):

Feeling lucky?

A nice article on luck, one of my favorite topics.

P.S. not the best picture, but I totally want to make a balaclava. Maybe this one:

Did you see this?

It was here recently, with this info:

Takkiainen...is designed to help the wearer to get in contact with others. Since we brush against each other every day as we move around in the city, we can use our clothes as a medium for meeting people and communicating with them. The jacket is made out of Velcro strips of different widths that have been sewn together side by side to form alternating hook and pile stripes.

And from there I clicked to the designers sweet website:
www.com-pa-ny.com
And then I saw all of their other awesome work, my favorites:


Dance shoes


Beard wear

My first shoe!

I really have been busy....okay, you can see some glue and it's not really even a flattering shoe, but last week:

I! made! my! first! shoe!

(yes, last week. Work is busy!)

Small but sweet

All kinds of ways to lace your shoes

Living in a mall

Secret apartment in a mall in Providence RI.
CNN gives the mainstream view.
Kind of the total opposite of Monday's post.

Jolie laide?

Sydney, a design production associate for Blueprint magazine posted on the mag's blog about a brilliant portrait she had commissioned. She says in part:

Throughout history, portraiture has typically aimed to make the sitter look his or her best (if not drastically, unrecognizably better). But I'm tired of the same old 'smile and look pretty' shtick. It's time to get ugly.

She hired Reverend Aitor, a Toronto-based artist and member of art collective Misanthrope Specialty Co. whose "Unflattering Portraits" series is just that. In the best way of course. You can see all of them here.

Simple ideas

I love projects that are based on a simple idea, like this one by Steve Lambert:



Ronald's Crisis
[via]