Posts Tagged ‘fashion’
Now you don’t; now you see it…
Though your correspondent is certain that it’s no problem for any of you, Dear Readers, it’s a sad fact that the craft of exploratory romantic communication– flirting– is, for many, fraught with the risk of misunderstanding, as it all-too-often-unsuccessfully tries to avoid the Scylla and Charibdys of misbehavior and missed opportunity.
Well, benighted bar-goers need fret no more: Dutch designers Studio Roosegaarde, in collaboration with V2_Lab and fashion designer Anouk Wipprecht, have come to the rescue with a line of dresses that telegraph a girl’s interest– or lack thereof. Co.Design reports:
So say you meet some guy who sends your heart aflutter. The dress responds to your elevated pulse by growing transparent around the (already plenty skimpy) plunging neckline. Conversely, if he’s such a snooze that you’re about two seconds away from flat-lining, the dress stays opaque, sending an instant “no, thanks!”
The line, “Intimacy 2.0,” is a series of sensor-enabled cocktail dresses that expose more (indeed, ultimately rather a lot of) skin the more excited the wearer becomes; a combination of embedded sensors and conductive “smart foils” (that become see-through conducting electricity) do the trick… as demonstrated in this– suitable for the club, if NSFW– video:
Readers may have a friend who would be interested to know that the dresses are, in fact, on sale.
As we ponder the impact of static electricity, we might recall that it was on this date in 1811 that a very different take on courtship emerged: a first novel entitled Sense and Sensibility was published. At the time, only a handful of folks knew the identity of its creator– who was presented to the reading public on the novel’s title page as “a Lady.” But as the author’s work caught on, she began to publish under her real name– Jane Austen– and later got credit for her inaugural effort.
Title page from the first edition (source)
You wear it well…
Photographer Ari Versluis and profiler Ellie Uyttenbroek have worked together since the mid-90s. First in Rotterdam, then in other cities across Europe, they invite pedestrians into their studio for posed portraits, which are then displayed in clusters. As Wim van Sinderen, Senior Curator of the Museum of Photography at The Hague observes,
They call their series Exactitudes: a contraction of exact and attitude. By registering their subjects in an identical framework, with similar poses and a strictly observed dress code, Versluis and Uyttenbroek provide an almost scientific, anthropological record of people’s attempts to distinguish themselves from others by assuming a group identity. The apparent contradiction between individuality and uniformity is, however, taken to such extremes in their arresting objective-looking photographic viewpoint and stylistic analysis that the artistic aspect clearly dominates the purely documentary element.
See many more “tribal group portraits” at Exactitudes. [TotH to EWW]
For more trend-spotting fun, readers can visit Bill Cunningham’s weekly photo round-up in the New York Times (a series that began when Versluis and Uyttenbroek were children). And for an extra-special treat, see the documentary Bill Cunningham’s New York.
As we check ourselves in the mirror before going out, we might send witty birthday wishes to Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde; the novelist, essayist, playwright, poet, and master of the bon mot was born on this date in 1854.
The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.
(…more of Wilde’s wisdom at Wikiquote)
The Future of Journalism? A stitch in time…
Emily Roose, a graphic designer at Boston’s Museum of Science, has gone public with her Masters thesis, posting it on her nifty blog, The Sketchy Pixel.
She explains…
For my Masters in Graphic Design thesis project at New England School of Art and Design, I designed and stitched breaking news stories into cross stitch samplers. I juxtaposed content that is extremely fast and ephemeral (breaking news stories) with a very slow and archival medium (cross stitch). I wanted to see how this transference of medium affects the message of these stories and highlights the absurdity of the way stories are reported in the media and the way we consume them…
More handsewn headlines (each of which took about 25 hours to complete) and more on the project itself at “Slow Breaking News.”
[TotH to GMSV]
As we reach for our etui, we might recall that it was on this date in 1886 that the “tuxedo” made it’s debut, at a formal ball at the then-new Tuxedo Park Club, just outside of New York City.
Earlier that year, Tuxedo Park resident James Brown Potter and his wife were vacationing in England, where they were invited to dinner by the Prince of Wales (later Edward VII). Unprepared to dress for such an occasion, Potter asked the Prince for advice, and was sent to the the Prince’s tailor, Henry Poole & Co., where he was fitted with a short black jacket and black tie– not the then-standard white tie and tails.
Potter brought the ensemble back to Tuxedo Park, where he showed it to Pierre Lorillard IV, the scion of a wealthy tobacco family, who had just opened the Tuxedo Park Club– and whose passion was designing clothes. Lorillard revised the design to include the crepe lapels, covered buttons, and other now-standard details, and unveiled his creation at the Autumn Ball.
The prospect of liberation from tails proved irresistible– and the “tuxedo” steadily replaced traditional “evening wear” as the American formal standard. (Edward continued to wear “black tie,” so the fashion caught on in England too– as the “dinner jacket”– but remained a less formal option…)
Lorillard (in his jacket, but with a white tie) source
Faux Logo…
Luis Gispert was photographing car interiors when he stumbled upon a kitschy white Cadillac Escalade, its seats upholstered in fake material from Takashi Murakami’s 2009 collaboration with Louis Vuitton. While the owner showed off his pimped-out ride, the wheels turned in Gispert’s head. “I figured there had to be so many cars with counterfeit interiors”…
This inspired a two-year “obsessive quest” to document a subculture of people crafting custom designs from counterfeit materials. Gispert attended car shows across the country and captured interiors bedazzled with logos, from a Burberry-upholstered BMW to a Gucci-themed Mercedes. Honing in on the culture itself brought Gispert to more-intimate spaces, like the home of a Florida-based drug dealer, whose bedroom was decorated with Versace’s signature Greek Key motif. Gispert’s photographic journey is the subject of an upcoming solo exhibition, Decepcion, at the Mary Boone Gallery in New York [open now]…
He spent a year capturing cars before turning his lens on the owners themselves—many of whom had closets filled with backpacks, sneakers, and jackets custom-made from fake designer materials. Gispert’s project evolved to incorporate portraits of men and women modeling counterfeit fashion, such as a DJ clad in a pleather MCM jumpsuit…
Designer customization was born in the early 1980s, when a haberdasher named Dapper Dan began selling one-of-a-kind Louis Vuitton boots and $8,000 custom Gucci jackets out of his boutique in Harlem. “He was likely cutting up actual Gucci bags and using the materials to make jackets and luxury car interiors,” said Gispert. Dapper Dan’s clientele consisted of drug dealers—until LL Cool J and Mike Tyson took the street trend mainstream…
Unlike Canal Street vendors, Gispert’s subjects aren’t trying to pass off their creations as authentic. “These people are appropriating the material, the actual logos and fabrics, but they’re not trying to mimic high fashion,” he explained. One photograph from the series features a woman wearing a Louis Vuitton dress that Gispert described as “some kind of nightgown, flamenco hybrid.” It looks nothing like Louis Vuitton couture, yet it’s splattered with the designer’s cult logo. “In a way these people are hijacking signs of wealth, bastardizing logos and turning them into something completely unique.”
Read the entire tale at The Daily Beast, and see a selection of Gispert’s arresting photos on his site.
As we reckon with the collision of High and Low, we might wish a fashionable Happy Birthday to Coco Chanel’s greatest rival, Elsa Schiaparelli; she was born in Rome on this date in 1890. Schiaparelli, who collaborated with artists including Salvador Dali, Jean Cocteau, and Alberto Giacometti to dress socialites (like Daisy Fellowes) and celebrities (like Mae West) was frequently dismissed by Chanel as “that Italian artist who makes clothes.” While Schiaparelli is not as well remembered as Chanel, Schiaparelli made lasting contributions to fashion: she created wraparound dresses decades before Diane von Furstenberg and crumpled up rayon 50 years before Issey Miyake’s pleats and crinkles; she created the first evening-dress with a jacket and the first clothes with visible zippers. But her most fundamental contribution to couture was surely the sense of fun– of playfulness and “anything goes”– that she shared with her Dadaist and Surrealist friends.
American Idle: the centerpiece of the couch potato’s crib…
Winner, August 2010
The bleachers, the front row, the hearth-pew: the couch is the multi-functional center of family rooms the world around. And so it’s no surprise that so many of us develop warm, deep relationships with our divans.
And by the same token, it should come as no surprise that… well, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
The Worldwide Ugliest Couch Contest selects sofas each month, then an annual winner.
The Ugliest Couch in the World for 2010
Decorating tips galore at Worldwide Ugliest Couch Contest.
As we select our seats, we might wish a fashionable birthday to haute couture designer, television host (Eurotrash), and costumier (Besson’s The Fifth Element, Almodóvar’s Kika, Jeunet’s The City of Lost Children)– the bad boy (well, a bad boy) of fashion, John-Paul Gaultier. He was born on this date in 1952.
Gaultier at the close of a Paris runway show (source)
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