Colors

I picked up a couple of old copies of Benetton's Colors magazine . I got the Shopping for the Body issue you see above and also the War issue. I haven't posted any scans from the War issue yet because, to be honest, I have been shy of opening it. Justin looked at it when I first brought it home and and his reaction has frightened me a little bit. I will get up the courage soon though, especially if there's interest because neither of these issues are in the Colors archive. Please find below a few of my favorite bits from issue No. 18:

Can you read this one if you click on it? It seems if you strap the flesh of a potato to your knee it will swell....I hope I'm helping some nerd get out of gym class!

It makes your poop not smell. I'm not naming names, but I know someone who would like to get their hands on some of this. *ahem*

I want to say "only in America!" but I actually would expect this to come from Japan or China, and also I wouldn't have thought it to be from 1996. It seems so 'now', with all that antibacterial crap and general germaphobia these days.

The pink lipstick is actually a vibrator, the tiny bottle is skunk scent for hunters in the US, and  "email diamant" is a toothpaste that tints gums pink. Before there was Vice magazine, there was Colors!

Organic tampons from 1996 in the center, finger tape on the top left to relieve joint ache in fingers (ouch! looks painful), Pepee is supposedly used by pornstars in Japan to make their genitals glisten on camera, and the cotton pads in the blue box are supposed to enlarge breasts.

There were so many more things I could post pictures of that were great: the twig toothbrush, leaves for deodorant, black dirt toothpaste....plus ear cleaning tools and an electric tongue! On the cover is "Night Flower" a pubic wig from Japan. I should post the copy to that one, it's so good! 

London ephemera

So I just came back from a trip to London of the short, hectic and super-fun variety. I lived there for almost 2 and a half years up until this time last year. So it was with a bit of a heavy heart that I came home on Monday. I miss it a bit over there. Strangely, visiting felt as if time had stood still this year. J & I visited friends, ran around town, reminisced, and basically were sleeply and awake at all the wrong times.

Here are some of the bits of paper I brought back with me:


These first ones are all from Tate Modern....



Postcard from a Gillian Wearing photograph from the series (see previous link) Signs that say what you want them to say and not signs that say what someone else wants you to say



Dan Flavin 'Monumment' for V. Tatlin
I think the image results page on Google is the best link for him!



The back of the flyer for Doris Salcedo's piece for the Turbine Hall Shibboleth. I have some photos that I'll post of this piece later this week. In looking up a link for Salcedo, I found this from the Istanbul Biennial. Wow!




These two are the packaging from a Louise Bourgeois tea towel. Apparently I have now started a home furnishing art collection. (Post on The Thing is still outstanding!) I'm sad to report we did not see the show though....also sadly missed the V&A Couture show that everyone is raving about. I was only there for a weekend people!



Note to self: Look up Meredith Frampton's work....



Who can resist a proper Dracula? Really just brought it home to reference good films to look for on Netflix....



My lovely Selvedge magazine, that is just too pricey in the US (maybe I'll get a subscription!)

more prada love

Just a short one for today....I hope to post my Round Up over the weekend, and then more new, less internetty, things for a while. I'm burned out!

Miuccia Prada wrote a (very) short piece in Wired in June of 2003 about the space around the body. Prada did a raincoat that changed from transparent to opaque when it gets wet:



Somehow this tech-y piece feels nice. Sweet.

deconstruction

From Design Boom I saw this awesome chair by Peter Andersson and rediscovered my old favorite the David Report. I just resubscribed to the RSS feed, so hopefully more fun with the David Report!

My favorite shot:




Of course, Mr. Andersson has some great other products too:


Stackables


It's an ear plug earring, duh


I want hangers like this please.....


Beautiful tables.....

Also I think he's involved with this lovely project called 20ltd. but I can't find his work on the site anywhere....I love limited edition shit.

!!

hair hair

This article inspired me to look at hair.











Two great sites for more:

• Hairstyle History
• Gotham Patterns: Hair

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!

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:

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.

love at first site

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

Small but sweet

All kinds of ways to lace your shoes

map of manhattan

The other thing I did this long weekend was clean out my desk....I found this lovely old map of Manhattan and I couldn't resist posting a bit of it. On Sunday, we walked all along the Hudson River Walk. You can see the piers on this section of the map, but of course the lovely greenspace isn't on this ol' map.


The bridges here look so wide....I like how the ferry lines are even represented.


The green wavy gorgeousness of Central Park nestled into a perfect grid.


Sometimes I don't even recognize New York.

Masai Barefoot Technology

They call it "physiological footwear". MBTs, as they are known, were invented by Swiss engineer Karl Müller. He found improvement in his back paiin after walking barefoot in the rice paddies of Korea and set out to develop shoes that mimicked walking on soft substances (like the East African savannah).

I would love love love to have a pair of these shoes, but they are so so ugly. If you read the bit on their site about how they work, it's amazing! But look:





And seriously, those are the best I can come up with on the site. I'm sure you can go on there and say, "oh these ones are better than what she picked" but then you will look at what you picked and realize that they are ugly too.

MBT: You could do better than this!! Hire a good designer! I want some awesome shoes that look good AND feel good. (Can you tell I'm taking a footwear seminar right now?)

EDITED to add: Okay, I found some mildly acceptable ones on Zappos, but still not great:

Slow and steady wins the race

from press info

Mary Ping did this great project called Slow and Steady Wins the Race in 2004 that attempted to address the question "How come experimental ideas only exist in the high-priced avant-gardian realm?". Ping promises this collection will be full of high ideas and low cost materials so that the clothes are fiscally accessible. But she limits her production to only 100 pieces of each style. Which seems to me to work against her platform of accessibility. She says, "Slow and Steady Wins the Race intends to slowly open the cap on a more democratic dissemination, promotion and appreciation of clothing." Not gonna happen with such a limited prodution I think. But maybe I am too focused on the physical appreciation of the garments and am not paying enough attention to the ideas.


I think the Men's Issue (No. 9) is the best. It's a perfect little capsule collection (well, maybe if there was a pair of trousers in there). The issue seems to collect the best from the previous issues (except no designer underwear from No. 7!!) and presents them in a cohesive group targeted to a particular audience. It makes me think Ping would do a really great mens collection, not an easy thing in my opinion.

Only the first 9 issues have images of the work. Numbers 10-12 are "coming soon". Ah well, I think maybe soon has come and gone. I would love to see how No. 12 Evening came out.....how did she combine this area of fashion with her mission for the line?


No. 3 Bags got the most press, and I'd bet, sold the best. I also think this issue is important in light of all the talk about copyright issues in the fashion world (also see here and here). Ping's work with these bags highlights why this legislation would be detrimental to fashion work. Ping is working on conceptual ideas that are presented in the form of bags that are part of the design language. If this legislation passed, Ping would have no way to produce work that embodies the ideas she is trying to communicate. There are much better and more thorough writers on this topic in the links above. Or maybe I will devote a whole post to this issue at some point....

Back to SASWTR, I know Ping presented this in diary format for a reason, but I love how these collections feel like exercises. It also seems to me a worthwhile way for Ping to develop her ideas for her mainline, and, more importantly, that she still considers the pieces worth selling and worth wearing. Even more, I wish I had heard about the work when I could have bought some!

Red

A really lovely post about color & dye on Coutorture. I feel like I often just skim through this site (too much "what's hot!" stuff usually), but when there's something good.....

This post was written by Entwinements and she mention a couple of good books: Colors: The Story of Dyes and Pigments and Prehistoric Textiles. First off, Prehistoric Textiles looks amazing! She has also turned me on to the Dyers List which looks like it will be a fabulous resource. And finally, I found her own blog, Entwinements, where you can see her beautiful Shibori work, one of which is the picture here. I also discovered her name is Karen K. Brito.

Swap Meat

I participated in Coudal's Swap Meat this summer (you can too until 8/31!). I sent the above out in May (top, color-changing hanky from this project and bottom, 2001 book which I don't have online anymore....jeez neither of these scans do my work any justice) and today I received these in return:



Both pieces are thrift store finds from Kim G. at Pulp-It. The first piece is several layers of board cut out in progressively smaller shapes. The second is a hand tooled photo album/scrapbook. She wrote a lovely little story about the scrapbook:

I like to imagine that Sam tooled this piece for the photos of his & Rosa's wedding and then she dumped him before the ceremony.

When I first got the package all I could think about was I wonder who got my pieces! But now I suspect that there is a Kim I. out there with my book and a fading handkerchief. I will def. be googling around to see if I can find it....

Cloth

Much like every other person who sews, I have loads of cloth. But I also have a special stash that I have saved since I was a little girl. Most of it the pieces are too small to make anything with, but I hang on to it just the same. Above is a sampling.

Top left: a sleeve pattern piece that my mother cut out in order to make a smock top for herself, but never actually made. I loved this fabric when I was little and it's one of the first pieces of fabric I ever coveted. When I inherited my mother's notion and sewing tools I took these few scraps too. Turns out she started to sew the top, but the bobbin thread kept snarling and so she put it away, I assume to sort out later. I took out the big snarly threads myself many years later.

Top right: a piece of my parents old comforter. I had the comforter myself for many years after my parents divorced, but eventually it was worn out. So I took off the top piece you see here and kept it to make something out of. I made a sweet unstructured jacket during my MA when I was thinking about our emotional attachments to clothes. I'll try to post a picture of the jacket itself one of these days.

Bottom left: the first fabric I ever made. I found a random haiku generator online, ran some of my journal entries through it, loved the haikus so I laid them out in a great font called Cholla and printed them onto heat transfer paper to put on this crappy beige broadcloth. I made quite a few early fabrics this way and I have several scraps from my favorites (one I made a great book cover out of!).

Bottom right: an old sheet from the house I grew up in. I recently took this home from my dad because all of the rest of the set finally disappeared. I made a one piece sort of poncho dress out of it. I guess I should put up a pic of that one too.

Japanese Illustrations

When I was working in London one of the pattern cutters I worked with brought in some of her textbooks from when she was in school in Japan. Of course, I couldn't read any of the instructions, but the books were surprisingly informative. They were also full of some interesting fashion illustrations. Unfortunately I never got any name or author info about the books, but here are a few scans from my photocopies:






I love the girl in the tie, and of course the tiny-headed women, they are so 80s French! The girls with the tiny heads and giant arms frighten me a bit, but somehow they have a certain goodness to them (perhaps that jolie-laide Susie Bubble was talking about yesterday?) Lovely, no?

vvork

I love the work on vvork. The site is a bit of a mystery to me, I've emailed mail@vvork.com and I clicked on the links in the links sidebar and looked around, but I'm still not exactly sure who does all the work to find all this magical stuff. But it's really varied and really really great. Some of my favorites:


Shoes by Galogaza


Construction wallpaper by Antoine & Manuel


Abandoned suitcase sculptures by Piek!


Picture People by Kristofer Paetau (all kinds of cool photo projects & you can sign up for a mailing list)


Digital Cocks by Matthias Herrmann

Iqons faves

Every now and then I have time to tool around Iqons, the fashion industry's answer to MySpace, and I always find someone or something new and interesting. Unfortunately, even when I invite someone into my (ill-named) Entourage I still don't feel like I really get a chance to "meet" them....maybe the guestbook feature is just not used enough yet on Iqons. Or maybe I'd better just start using it myself!


Emma McCorquodale


Stacey Tester
(okay, not the best picture.....but I kind of like it!)


Carla Fernandez
(also here)


Tekla Knaust
(also here)


Lindipoo! Lindipoo has almost no info on her page but I find her so compelling! Maybe because she invited me into her "Entourage" first...maybe it's also here name: oh Lindipoo!


Wendy & Jim
(also here)


Eley Kishimoto
(also here)

Patina Power

Marriage Shirt (just a few weeks in)

A great post about Designed Deterioration on designer Khoi Vinh's site Subtraction. Very excellent comments as well that mention Wabi Sabi (and a recommended book about it), Isaac Asimov, and Nazis....

Hi + Low

An new addiction: Hi + Low by art director Abby Clawson Low. First, let me say I love her categories! Simple and useful where my labels feel messy and I'm still not sure how helpful they will ever be to me.

Some of my favorite posts so far:


ART


DESIGN


HI


LOW


NEW


OLD

link round up

so. many.

When I started writing online, I thought I would post something everyday that inspired me, or was relevant to my interests (that I would normally just bookmark and never look at again). But I'm finding that there are dozens of sites and links and posts every week that I want to remember and I can't do justice to. There's no time to properly write about them all. I think every Friday will have to be a link round up of all the other pages I'd like to write more about but have just run out of time. Because there will be a whole new crop next week....



Máquina desempolvadora
Adriana Salazar interviewed by Régine Debatty (lovelovelove)

...a girl who creates delicate and elegant (but slightly ludicrous) machines that smoke, tie shoes, pull thread through the hole of a needle, relentlessly measure walls, switch the light on and off, on and off, on and off, dust walls, cry while another one dries its tears....

I am a rabid convert to Style Bubble!






• Acne (here)
• Sruli Recht (here)
• Nova Magazine
• Couture Lab (here)
• I'm not sure I agree with her definititon of label-ista (I would say it's someone who cares only for labels because of their cache not because of any meaning a label carries)
• This one reminds me of my own wardrobe documentation for my MA research
• I love the way she talks about this jacket & memory


I've been reading PSFK a lot lately too. They post a lot, and while it's not always stuff interesting to me, when it's good it's very good!
• The WHY (my personal favorite...)
• Objects that age (my personal fave....no really!)
• Why looks matter
• Kate Betts on how fashion trickles up
• Smart Fabric




Just pretty from Kako Ueda via Phantasmaphile



The beauty of scale

Coroflot

A perfect ending to my thesis posts, I think, a link to a new profile of my work in Coroflot Magazine. You'll have to click the download button on the lower right of this page to access Issue Two, I'm afraid. Coroflot is a great job search site that has grown from a tiny ID group to expand across all design areas in the last few years. The magazine is supposed to be bi-monthly but this is only the second issue....I hope it takes off, it's a lovely idea. And the art director Andrea Paustenbaugh seems capable of great work.

Two other artists I loved in this issue with me are Mihoko Ouchi and Wouter Widdershoven, both industrial designers, Ouchi in NYC and Widdershoven in Eindhoven, NL.


Ouchi's Knit Lamp


Widdershoven's Daniël table

Actually, I do have a few thoughts about posting my thesis. I'll post those tomorrow and then I will move on to others' work!

an aside....

before I finish up my thesis posting, I just want to point you to my guest post over at the shopping blog Rare Bird Finds. My post is all items from some of my favorite web stores (I could have done way more that 5!)....back to deep thoughts tomorrow!

I like the juxtaposition of these two artists

Nostalgic Technology
by Svetlana Boym
Her website was a little difficult for me to navigate and make sense of at first, but as I poked around I became more and more enamored with the way Boym approaches technology/machines.

******



Volksboutique
We make Money Not Art presents an interview with Christine Hill. While Hill's aesthetic is lovely, I enjoy more her writing and turn of mind.

P.S. I don't even know why I use these tags. I hope they turn out more helpful than they feel right now. hmm.

Fashion-Incubator

Anyone who works in clothing design or garment construction or fashion, should check out Fashion-Incubator. The site is run by Kathleen Fasanella with help from some loyal friends from the industry. The website is a treasure trove of wisdom and information as well as a laugh and an occasional bite. There are often great discussions in the comments as well, for F-I's readers are a smart set. Of course, the book that Fasanella wrote is the real source of information if you are looking to start your own business. I haven't bought it, only read a few excerpts, which I doubt would please Fasanella, but if I do go out on my own someday, it's at the top of my list to read. I love to be hands-on in the making process and it's a primary motivator for me in terms of starting a business. One of the hardest things working for a big corporate manufacturer as a designer is that I am so far from the making process.

Anyway, back to Fashion-Incubator, here a few of my favorite bits & features:

A simple post about washing clothes with interesting comments to boot. I'm surprised there wasn't more talk about the damage a dryer can do. I really found this one interesting because my MA collection at CSM was made of some fabrics that changed with water. I did a lot of washing machine experiments last spring! When I came back to the US this year I realized the hard way that American washing machines are much more powerful than UK ones. :(

Fasanella has two regular features that I love: Archives, links to articles from the same time last year and the year before, and News from You, links sent in from readers. Both are always full of interesting tidbits.

The site also haas a decidedly sustainable slant with excellent articles about eco habits to develop and organic cotton.

My all-time favorite post relates to my own interests (of course) about invisible components of our clothes. Kathleen was responding to a project called Carnivale of Couture by the Sewing Divas about Ritual Cloth. Fasanella wrote about a purse, backpack, and a couple of jackets that reveal as much in the pictures as they do in her words.

P.S. Pleating!!

Emotion—why did I title it this?

Last week I mentioned this article about the divide between science and art. And how "I'd like to write a bit more about this one...." so I'm trying to be inspired to write a bit about some pages I think are related. ahem:

Basically the Boing Boing post reviews an article in the Guardian that talks about the division between science and the humanities and whether there is a "third culture" that bridges this divide. They review a website, two books, and a writer. Natalie Angier's comment "Science is rather a state of mind" reminded me of this article I wrote about before. But it makes me look at that article from Business week in a different way. Nussbaum talks about "Design Thinking" (his caps, not mine), in a way that makes me wonder what is 'humanities thinking'? Is there such a thing? Or is it the same as "design thinking" and those are the two sides being talked about in the Guardian article? Maybe "design thinking" is the third culture referred to in the article? Sorry for all the quote marks....

Boing Boing also recently linked to a Douglas Adams lecture titled "Is there an artificial god?" that made my head spin (in a nice way) similar to the article above. It feels like such a lovely way to consider ideas about god and consciousness and humanity. Sadly, perhaps, it makes me want to totally live in my head and stop making things. Funny how doing a lot of in-depth reading can put me off of physical objects....it's almost like there iis a real divide between intellectual thought and physical action (hey.....) that happens so very naturally that its unstoppable. Good thing I have studio space this month or I could feel myself heading into a downward spiral of creation (or is that anti-creation?)

Moving on....a nice pair of articles that I really enjoyed finding together:

From Boing Boing, "Love, Internet Style" Clay Shirky's keynote speech from the Supernova conference in San Francisco that posits love as a predictor of technological success.

Usman Haque's own keynote speech titled "I Hate Technology" reported on We Make Money Not Art (aside: one of my very favorite blogs). Truth be told the LOVE/HATE theme doesn't exactly work because the speech was for the We Love Technology day on July 12 in Huddersfield, GB.

Gilbert Austin, Chironomia (1806), plate 9.

Finally, and totally unrelated to anything about (so much for my circular mind melt) is an article from Cabinet Magazine about gestures lost through time

“By the end of the nineteenth century, the gestures of the Western bourgeoisie were irretrievably lost”