Oren Lavie "Her Morning Elegance"

I know I know I know I've been posting lots of videos as of late, but this one is really all together too good to omit in the name of post diversity. Stop motion has always fascinated me, but this music video has taken it to a new place - a captivating conversation between dimension. Surfaces become negative space, horizontal teases our brains into vertical. Like the floating of a great love among the clouds, this is the kind of video that you wish someone would make about you.

Oren Lavie "Her Morning Elegance"

If you fall as madly in love with this as I have, you will without a moment's hesitation love Michel Gondry. (If you've seen The Science of Sleep or Eternal Sunshine, you might know Michel better than you think.) 

The Sweet Smell of Old Dreams (and Pretty Soaps)

For a few short months during high school, I was desperate to go to school for Package Design. My dream was quickly replaced with my forever and always obsession with Public Relations. Still, I can't help but swoon when I stumble upon a beautiful packaging job. 

My newest crush is on Lollia, an absolutely gorgeous Beauty Goods and Handcrafts brand that sells with Anthropologie. I cannot stop obsessing with how beautiful their wine bottle bubble baths and quaint little perfumes are. (Not to mention, they all smell absolutely otherworldly.)

Sweet Bobby Zimmerman at His Most Charming

This is the most delightfully endearing video I've ever seen of my dear Bob Dylan. The world would be a much different place without him.

LED Sheep Art (Yes, you read that correctly)

I almost can't believe that this is real. But I'm so happy that it is. 

Les Hommes: Menswear Fall 2009

Men's fashion doesn't normally catch my serious interest because, all jokes aside, I'm captivated by skirts and shawls because I can dream of prancing around them. But, I'd hate to leave out the other half of the fashion world. Just as in the women's collections, menswear was dominated by black, especially paired with other dark neutrals. The range of styles was wide, with utilitarian zippers and heavy boots at Helmut Lang, to elegant vests and eggplant trousers at Robert Geller. Despite the diversity, the seriousness on all of the mens runways is consistent. Not foreboding, but certainly serious. Some of my favorites, below. 

Helmut Lang

Dunhill

Robert Geller

Viktor & Rolf

Facts

I've been working on a series of short memoirs and snippets of stories - you can find my earlier memoir piece here. Sometimes weeks go by and I'm wordless, and sometimes words pour from me like thick water. Last night was one of those times. 

--- --- ---

"I'm a fact collector," he said. "I understand," she said. 

Earlier that day, when the clouds had slipped between grey and white and sky, he pulled the last blank index card from the box. He wrote on it, "I've collected a life of facts. This is the last." Folding down the top left corner in case he needed to find it again, he filed it in the back of the drawer with the others, and closed the door. 

He would not need to find the fact again. 

One year later, when again the clouds had slipped between grey and white and sky, the wind was interrupted with smoke; dark, as though the earth had finally caught the shadow of itself. Pieces of facts danced over the flames -- flying from the empty skeleton of a house that was.  

Handfuls of words fell into ash that knew everything and meant nothing and could never be found again.

Infatuated: Miu Miu, Fall 2009 RTW

I don't have anything terribly insightful to say, other than I love Miu Miu's use of print this season. Very youthful - a splash of indie rock, a pinch of 50s housewife neckline and a boheme aftertaste. Love love love!

Totally Gratuitous and Probably a Little Unnecessary

But I just want to run around this whole city and scream: 

"I'M GOING TO SPEND THE FALL SEMESTER IN LONDON AND I WANT THE WORLD TO KNOW!!!"

The past two weeks have been some of the best of my life. The end. 

Madi Diaz

My friend Corey introduced me to Madi Diaz a few days ago, and ever since I've been spinning into a comfortable music tizzy. Madi Diaz (which is actually Madi Diaz and her pal Kyle Ryan) recently released an otherworldly EP, Ten Gun Salute. I've been listening to the first track on the record, "Let's Go" over and over and over again. The song writing is brilliant; the toy piano, perfection. The first song on the video below, "Love You Know," is on the EP, as gorgeous as ever. 

Madi and Kyle write with a kind of wisdom that settles nicely into itself. It seems they have the musical hearts of a seasoned phonograph singing beautifully in a soft corner - the kind of music you want to have in your ears on a still day in a big city. Without hesitation I'm filing Madi Diaz into my folder of favorite singer/songwriter ladies alongside Neko Case and Rachael Yamagata. I have a feeling she'll be around a long while.  

Visit the Madi Diaz site here to listen to some more tunes and buy Ten Gun Salute.

 

Pretty Little Things

As of late, I've taken to falling in love with boutique-y sweet and simple accessories - finding baubles and bows that no one else will have. I'm quite certain that there's something to be said for finding accessories that give you a sense a self - molding fashion into style. Because where's the fun in wearing clothes just because you have to? And, because I'm feeling terribly giving today, I'll share some favorite finds. 

Handle & Spout: I'm addicted. I absolutely cannot believe how beautiful these pieces are. I have a crush on every single whimsical little headband.

Allyjoy: Ally's jewelry is gorgeous. I love that she has maintained the hand-made look in her work, giving each piece a sense of personality and likeness. Most of her pieces include antique and hard to find materials, making them absolutely one of a kind. Fantastic. (You can follow Ally on on Twitter too! twitter.com/allyjoyetsy)

 

This is my favorite of all her pieces - perfectly in season with Pantone's declaration of their 2009 color: Mimosa. Wouldn't it be adorable with a simple strapless white sun dress and a cute pair of mimosa brunch pumps? Yes please! 

Art Appropriation: Book Autopsies

I've been thinking more about where our understanding of Art is headed. As mass media integrates rapidly with fine arts, we are forced to allow the skewing of what's left of the dividing lines between what we've been raised to categorize. Recently, society has stumbled upon some major projects that have guided our conscious melding of textbook silos and artistic paradigms: The Post Secret project has spanned the gap of private and public art; Shepard Fairey's propaganda-influenced shopping bags for Neiman Marcus have taken a new look at the role Art plays in our human consumerism. Art, in its traditional sense, has begun to appropriate areas of our lives that are traditionally held separately from what we've come to understand as Art. 

Brian Dettmer's "Book Autopsies" have moved this idea from a contextual sense, into a quite literal artistic appropriation of a non-arty medium - books, in the most tactile, three dimensional sense of the form. Carved like a block of marble to reveal an institutional knowledge organized in an entirely new schema of intellectual understanding, Dettmer's "Book Autopsies" are like nothing I've ever seen before - an allegory for our new sense of cross-pollinated understanding of the world around us. 

"Werewolf" Cocorosie

NYC in the Springtime: A Retrospective II (This is where fashion lives.)

My hotel was less than a block away from Bryant Park. And my trip to New York was less than a month too late. Fashion week had come and gone. 

Still, there's a spirit of beauty that grows in the trees of Bryant Park, growing tall over the empty spots where the tents sat. Even the pigeons walk proud - heads up, shoulders back, wings wishing for sequins and silks. I wonder about the initials carved into the weathered chairs and scribed into the wet cement. Whose painted eyes have read them, whose heeled shoes have grazed them?

The clothes we wear were born here. Every sweater, every skirt, every pair of perfectly fitted trousers - it's the art we live our lives in. 

NYC in the Springtime: A Retrospective

I spent my spring break in New York City. And I fell in love. 

I'm desperately enamored of New York. The city consumes every piece of me, and I every bit of it. Like a new crush turned old love, I cannot get the city out of my head. It seeps from my veins and spills from my eyes. I've spent time in New York before, but never like this -- without tourist agenda or sight seeing to-do. My brilliant and beautiful friend Laura and I wandered the city together, feeling entirely at home. Safe, comfortable, more happy that I've ever known.  

My heart lives in New York City already, soon my body will too.  

A Feat of Graphic Design Prowess

Tonight, my PRSSA Agency client, Mike Lombardo, and I decided to make a poster for his upcoming show at TT the Bear's in Cambridge. Earlier today, his bassist Ellen made a funny little semi-serious poster in MS Paint. 

Mike and I don't joke. Our craft is refined, our talent revered. We create wholly serious, exquisitely beautiful art with ideas that are entirely our own. Like this:

I have two conclusions: 1. I should have gone into graphic design, and 2. You should go to Mike's show. 

Francophilia

In celebration of Paris fashion week (and my college student ill ability to afford Paris on a whim), I decided it was time to invest in a little nostalgia, and dig through my photo albums. These are a from a family vacation a few years ago, but they're helping to remedy my New England cabin fever. (For now anyway...)

Infatuated: Jil Sander Coat

I always have and forever will respect the Jil Sander label. Raf Simons has again shown us a beautiful collection that is classically Sander. I rarely find Jil Sander to align with my personal style, but I absolutely cannot get enough of this coat. Everything about it is perfect. The silhouette is graceful without losing the strength of shape - the splash of red at the collar is edgy, but softened with the curve of the cut. Essentially, I am infatuated.  

This is Charley

Some Thoughts on Fall 2009 Ready to Wear

Much to my dismay, school and work and this fickle little life have kept me from slipping into my biannual, obsession induced, Fashion Week la la land. I'm catching up, but I'm still working out my big "this is what's coming up" fashion mantra for this season. In the meantime, here are some things that have struck me - the new, the beautiful, the breathtaking...

I absolutely cannot get enough of Abaete. French brazilian designer Laura Poretzky has crafted the absolutely perfect blend of girly details with just-masculine-enough structure. Black seems to be one of colors a la moment this season, (Black is the new black?), and Poretzky has found a way to keep it from seeming too foreboding.

The RTW collections also seem to be drawing from a kind of urban street-wear-of-the-metropolis: Narrow pants, strong jackets, emphasis on the shoulders, utilitarian details, and a weighty shoe. An interesting and unexpected change for some of the fashion elite. (Read: the normally feminine, albeit never frou-frou, Proenza Schouler.) It's hard to know the root of this budding trend, but it seems fitting in this volatile economic climate. These clothes aren't for the weary, but the strong willed. Our appearance will be tough, our skin tougher.

Proenza Schouler:

Boy by Band of Outsiders:

This creamy grey silhouette with black sandals is perfection, Derek Lam:

And with a tiny bit of traditional British frill, Mulberry:

As I continue to absorb the stories from the tents, I'm certain I'll ending writing a bit more about what's to come for Fall. (I haven't even touched the couture shows yet!) But for now, happy fashion smashion.