Does it again, man I wish I was better at Japanese/had the money to subscribe to this magazine. Their editorials always blow me out with colours, shapes & clothes. I best keep my Japanese up, whether I'm graduating in it or not. I spotted this editorial when flicking around the web after being massively pissed off with facebook. Apparently there's a limit to how many messages you can send - but because of the new chat system, where your threads appear in a wee chat box (allowing you to spam away unheeded), I never received the warning. But I'm still receiving the punishment, NO MORE MESSAGES. Unbelievably irritating. I even joined Google+ in a fit of rage and filled out the introduction in a weird way.
Anyway, here is the wonderful editorial, Perfection in Couture Kate Moss by Mert Alas & Marcus Piggott for Vogue Japan May 2011.
This is an unashamedly lazy post - today I went on a really really long walk all around acton, taking photos for an over ambitious and slightly obsessive guide-book for a friend who's going to be house-sitting for me. Then I came back and did yoga to make myself feel like I actually had done exercise and not just walking. So my energy for writing loads about something interesting is all used up - soz.
Instead of writing something interesting for y'all to read, I'm just going to regurgitate images I love from various street style blogs, my favourites being The Streethearts, Hanneli Mustaparta& Facehunter.
Hanneli's offerings are usually of super glossy, mad beautiful models off duty, and I love looking at all the wonderful after-show outfits teamed with on-show make up & hair. I've saved these two images mostly because of the women's attitudes, they're both so different but both so imposing.
I love this lady with her cute little hood, I wish I could wear hoods. The cut of the coat doesn't look like it would lend itself to this sweet little fur-lined cap hood, but it does, mad cute. Maaad cute. I saved the other girl because she looks pretty sick. BAD ASS sick. I wish I had the proportions to wear buttoned up shirts, whenever I do I don't look androgynous, I just look like a man.
Facehunter's blog I love for the diversity, there are so many different styles, places and people featured, I feel well traveled just for reading. I love the play with hemlines in both of these girls' outfits. A mid-length dress over a long skirt and some mad crazy cutaway maxi, both fit. The girl in pink and black reminds me of a Mondrian image (cheeky bit of art knowledge there), all cut out and blocked with squares of colour. fittttt. I wish she didn't have that bit of dead animal tail on her bag though.
My favourite by far, even just for the name, is The Streethearts blog, they photograph mad cool people that I want to be, and focus on providing a diverse spread across all ages, fashion capitals and styles. Dooope. This old guy stole my heart with his amazing coat and even more amazing date. They both look so cool, I can only hope to be so fly when I'm going grey. The guy steals the show though, that red coat is MAD cool, and needs nothing more than hisself and that mustache.
Sorry it's been so lazy - tomorrow's post will be waaay better I'm sure.
As some of you know, I've been mad stressed the last few weeks about whether or not I'd get into the History of Art course at Cambridge to finish Part II of my degree. Today I found out I have! I'm mad excited and so happy. I can't wait to start - already bugging out on amazon over which book/quarter of a book to buy with the £12 left of my overdraft.
In other news, now that I've given up on ever figuring out what my password was for my old twitter account, or which email address I used to set it up (don't even remember that), I've started a new one to keep track of various blogs. On my brand new twitter feed I read about this dope new site Tattly, which sells design conscious temporary tattoos. While I'm more than happy with the average ebay fodder of butterflies and roses, these tats are so cute, and pretty funny.
My favourites are the 'You're Late' watch (remember when kids used to draw unbelievably shit rolex watches on their wrists in biro???) and the skintone 'tattone' square.
CUTE! I'm going to buy this and you betcha I'm going to run around asking, "hey you want to know what time it is???"
When I want to be edgy(er - that is a classic 80's design in the watch tat), I'll wear this skin-tone faux pantone tatt. I used to buy those useless postcards from paperchase of just block colour - I thought I was so cool, until I realised they looked awful on my wall, and the gloss took away from the idea of tone. Silly postcards.
Click the images for higher resolution, and check out http://tatt.ly/ for more dope designs.
I remember back in the day when Dragon's Den was still good and they didn't have the nice soft spoken guy or the crap Australian guy on it. When it was still good and me and the fam would sit down and watch it together. I remember this one time little yearning-for-cool-magazines-me was hypnotised by this guy who came on presenting his idea for the magazine Wonderland. He got rawwwwly shot down, but still produced the dope publication off his own back/different investors.
Recently the magazine featured this cool, crazy, sccccurrry spread full of amazing styling, lovely deep-dark shadows and not-unnattractive boys.
Enjoy!
Kevin Mackintosh for Wonderland, featuring Sid Ellisdon, Taras Koltun and O'Shea Robertson all styled by Way Perry. (Such cool names too.)
and sometimes when i'm perving over editorials i lick the models i want to lick in real life.
by the way - that's a total joke, i don't do that. I like hoarding magazines too much. Its just my sense of humour has taken a turn for the worse and I thought it would be funny to type that and now I've typed too much to use the backspace button.
Whatevs.
Stussy x Fred Perry, how odd you might say, how british, how americana, how are they merging?
I don't entirely know, but I like these photos, the location looks like it could either be a rutty english pub or some kind of underground american bar. And the models are fit.
HOT UGH HOT.
Also, don't forget to look at the Japan post - http://theshinybaz.blogspot.com/2011/03/japan.html
Donate some money, just cos its not popping up on bbc news as often doesn't mean its all fixed, like my sweet old granny thought.
Last winter I bummed this pair of fishnet tights that I chopped up and cut holes into, and fell head over heels in love with the 90's grunge aesthetic. With all this autumn winter 10/11 business rolling about I'm feeling more and more that I need to work out my winter wardrobe. Especially since I'll be selling a bunch of my old clothes off to fund the cold season's crop of new purchases. Today, well, actually, now, I'm sitting in starbucks writing this with my nylon magazine peeping from my bag. You all know I hate hipsters, I'm a massive hypocrite. So, I've decided that this winter my summer hipster-musings have to be binned.
Kim's already semi-shunned me for my betrayal, and so I need to fully commit to getting out of my rut. After seeing Telva's Michael Kor's spread (shot by one of my fav fashion photographers at the moment, Ruben Vega) I felt inspired to go back to grunge. If that bastion of american sportswear lux can grunge it up, I definitely can.
Vega's shoot with Tosca for Telva (try saying that fast, doesn't work) is pretty darn awesome. At first it can come off a little bland, but the longer you look at the garments, the more you're sucked into Vega's world. How did he get those pieces so.. angry? I'm not sure that's the right word, but there's an edge to the clothes that you don't usually see in Kors. An A-Line skirt and high necked white jumper shouldn't be that fierce, but here, I'm bumming it. I'd never wear it, but that's not the point.
Now I'm not usually one to follow men's fashion. Firstly, there's not much point in it for me, as I'm not really the demographic the menswear lines are aimed at, and secondly, because it's so boring compared to women's wear. However, after I put my prejudices to one side and decided to check out the catwalk photos for some of the men's R-T-W shows I found myself absorbed by the sharp shoulders, careful tailoring and intensely beautiful models interesting fabric choices found in many of the Autumn/Winter menswear lines for this year. So, on the back of this new and exciting obsession, I decided to take a look at some of the cool kids bringing menswear into the limelight.
The Fayed and Goncalves brothers make up the team behind Bespoken Clothiers, a brand that brings Italian and British fabrics together in classic Americana styles with an east end mod twist.
I just re-read that sentence, and there's a lot of themes and ideas bouncing there. Let me try to re-phrase it in a less poncy and more grammatically correct way...
The brothers source all their fabrics from British and Italian textile mills, in this way keeping the quality of their fabrics standardised and (from the way the pieces move in the video lookbook) of a very high standard. With three out of the 5 men behind the brand receiving tutelage from the world renowned Turnbull & Asser of Jermyn Street, the classic sharp London suits are easily spotted, but the freshness of the designs, teamed with the New York edge (coming from the Goncalves brothers) gives the autumn and winter collection a mod edge. These guys bring the best parts of modern trends into a brand that focuses on quality tailoring and beautiful textiles. The photos from their lookbook made me cry sharp-fitted tears of beautifully-cut joy.
The brand describe themselves as part Saville Row, part Rock and Roll. I want me some of that mixture. Anybody that knows me, knows I'm a sucker for a really really good suit. It makes me so angry when I see men in suits that don't fit them. Why would you do that to yourself? Pay all that money, go to all that effort, just to look absolutely shite. So brands like bespoken make my days, weeks and months. Their philosophy states that, just as in old England, where bespoke tailoring meant your garment was "spoken for", aka, made to fit and labeled with the owner's name accordingly, Bespoken don't make garments that won't look good. They have taken the delicate process of suit making and modernised it to fit today's trends.
Ah, music to my ears.
Anybody else really want to be that sofa?
I went a trawling to find more info on the brand and cold-season collection and found an interview with some of the brothers on LimitedHype...
"I guess you can say this is a goal. If you think about it, our generation has been accustomed to having things whenever & wherever we want, down to the stylish clothes we sport. And now with some of the mass brands that have popped up in recent years, they could be purchased with very little expense. Due to that, some people have been willing to overlook the quality & craftsmanship.
But I do think more and more people are now taking notice of things that have more of a handcrafted story – whether its bikes, or lo-fi records to clothing. It feels like people are searching for something authentic, something they could appreciate. I don’t believe we’ll ever be for the “masses”, for now we’ll take it one customer at a time."
Goncalves makes a good point, our generation have begun to overlook quality and individuality in favour of immediate trend-hopping. With "disposable clothing" from chain stores such as Primark and Matalan, people look less for quality wardrobe staples and more for immediate trend-hitting items. We have our culture of mass-consumerism to blame as much as we do chain-stores on the high street profiting from our indulgence. Hopefully, more brands like Bespoken can edge into the market and push forward the appeal of really damn good clothing.
Now we just need a womenswear line from them... How's about it boys?
So many times I've seen a photograph and thought damn, I wish I was that cool.
That happened just now with the Jamie Bochert spread for Vogue UK's September Issue. Since I'm still locked away in France, heavily sedated this evening (my back's gone iffy again), I've been trawling the editorials blogs, wishing I was back in London with my Elle Collections magazine and a cup of Earl Grey. French tea is crap.
Hedi Slimane did a spread with Bochert channeling the 70's rock goddesses look. A fabulously disheveled and luxurious look, like, "yeah, this chiffon shirt is dry clean only, and I'm stanking from my mad cool night out last night, but I don't give a damn. I can afford a new one once I've stained the pits and collar on this £300 bad boy."
Or perhaps that's my over active imagination putting words into Jamie's mouth. Anyhow, she looks fine, and Slimane's still a frigging genius with black & white on a black background.
The day before yesterday I had a lovely day with Anna (who has her own super cool blog, with an even superer cooler name - fynf.blogspot.com) at Somerset House, to have a spy around their exhibit celebrating the first fabulous twenty years of Maison Martin Margiela and the house's massive influence over modern fashion.
The LOVELY Anna in a TERRIBLE photo, sneaking through the exhibit
Walking around the exhibit, which was laid out in an undone-minimalist way, I felt seriously uneducated about the house and fashion in general, but after an hour of cautious peeking around curtains, corners and into boxes, I came out feeling pretty cultured and far more educated about a brand I previously only knew as "that bad-ass dude that made the blonde hair coat".
To get in, follow the Tabi Boot footprints
It was £5 for entry, but I'd say it's definitely worth it. Walking around, every inch of the space used matches the aesthetic that you see Margiela's shows, so even if you are, like me, a bit of a avant-garde fashion newbie, just gawking about the exhibit allows you to gain a better understanding of the brand's identity.
The exhibit opened with a massive screen showing a series of MMM's catwalk shows, with enormous 12ft models strutting their anonymous stuff towards us. The drama of the screen teamed with the sculptural jackets forming a type of front row to the show really set the scene for the rest of the exhibit.
The two coats that made Anna near enough fall over. I don't blame her.
All in all, I'd definitely recommend this exhibit to EVERYONE. Even if you're not a fan of the brand, the exhibit explains Margiela's concepts and ideas in such a way that you can't help feeling a deeper respect and understanding for the garments created by the house when you leave.
ME: I like lots of things but its shit to list that here. Read my blog, you'll get me eventually. I don't even know why this part of the blog exists, just cos its a template, and I dont know how to get rid of it. Might as well fill it with something
I don't update this blog as much as I should, apologies. I'm a 20 year old student living in London/Cambridge depending on the dates. I've just finished a difficult two years studying Japanese, and while I loved my culture/essay subjects, the grammar got to me, and I'm starting my final two years in History of Art in October! VERY exciting. This blog is both a diary for me and a collection of things within art, fashion and music that I find interesting.
