Vivre sa vie

One of my favorite scenes of all time.

Critical Fashion

If you have any time and are at all interested in consumer ethics, "critical fashion", or the history of the Urban Outfitters/Anthropologie/Free People chains, then I would highly recommend reading through this article. It's seven years old but still extremely relevant.

The article is about Richard Hayne, the founder and president of Urban Outfitters + associated chains (all of which opened in or around Philadelphia). Perhaps you have heard allegations about the working conditions at UO, sweatshop labor, or its blatant ripping off of independent designers. The article seeks to point out the contrast between the stores' aesthetics and the consumers that their products are marketed towards (young, hip, liberal people) with the man at the top, apparently a square who has also been known to be a staunch supporter of "Paleolithic right-wing Republican [former] Senator Rick Santorum." Santorum has made comments equating homosexuality with incest, pedophilia, and bestiality. When Hayne was asked his opinion on the subject, he responded:

"I'm not going to comment on it. I have my own opinion, but I am not going to share it. Our job as a business is not to promote a political agenda. That's not what we do. There are all kinds of political views held by my employees. Some would be horrified to learn that we contributed to Santorum's campaign, and others would be fine with it. We openly discuss and joke about our political differences."

I can agree with him here to some extent that it is not necessary for a business to promote some political agenda, whatever the agenda may be. However, when the products promote sexism and racism then politics becomes necessarily involved. I know it is completely unrealistic to even begin to believe that consumers are making a conscious political statement through where and how they shop. Only a very small percentage of people are conscious of or even care about/would take the time to research where the products come from. I'm not saying that you should swear off buying from big brand stores (afterall, who wants to buy used underwear?) or that you should eat whole organic foods and buy a hybrid car, but I do think it is important to consider all the options out there, because these options are so much more readily available now than they were even just a few years ago.

Also, please check out these wunderbar blogs, which brought this very issue to my attention and have also inspired me to write more "meaty" posts.

à l'allure garçonnière
Fashion for Writers
threadbared

Huggies® Jeans Diapers Hit the Streets!

hahaha this is awful.

Here today, gone tomorrow, so don't get attached to things.

Hal Ashby - Harold and Maude (1971)
screenshots from here

Hair Hair

Watching Wristcutters: A Love Story and then wishing I could be reborn as Shannyn Sossamon makes me want to get a haircut again. But then I think about the possibilities of long hair and accept the fact that I will be that chic old Asian lady with short purple hair one day, so I think the time for long hair is now..

At the Vélodrome

Moncler Gamme Bleu Spring/Summer 2011 Runway from LAT Videos on Vimeo.

An interesting presentation of an interesting collection inspired by cycling, presented at the velodrome in Italy. I don't really know how to critique men's fashion as I can never see any boy that I know wearing anything from the runways, but sometimes I can see myself in the clothes? Something I keep seeing more of on the runway is the leggings under shorts thing. I think Asian men are really the only ones who have any chance at pulling this look off, but even then..

Source: Style from Tokyo

outfit post no.1

hat: gift from Grandma
tank top: Tsumori Chisato, thrifted in NY
skirt worn as top: JMS, shop in Shimokitazawa
yellow skirt: Breeches, vintage borrowed from Mama
shoes: Vivienne Westwood x Melissa

I have no intention of turning this into a fashion blog or making these outfit posts a regular thing, but this is what I wore yesterday. For the past few months, I've been trying lots of different things in an attempt to introduce more creativity into my life. Currently, I am trying to find inspiration from my childhood by reading all of Roald Dahl's books and dressing colorfully. I am always at a loss for what to wear in the summer. So I like to keep it interesting by wearing skirts as tops or dresses, tops as skirts, scarves as tops, underwear as outerwear, shoes as.. hats.. I dunno.

In other news, my dear baby sister has graduated from high school! Here are the Ea/Ly girls in all their glory...
& just look at all those shiny badges, oooh..

GOOD LORD (as Allison K. would say)

Oh stop it, Susie Bubble..................

Samantha Brooke

Graduate Fashion Week at Central Saint Martins makes me cream myself a little bit, especially the knit bits. In case you wanted to know. Gaaah why didn't I go with fibers/textile design? Oh right, I haven't a shred of talent. But I do love it ever sooo much. I meant to post awhile ago that I finished my first pair of knitted shorts. I'm helping my sister with a photo shoot soon so maybe we'll kill two birds with one stone and I'll model the shorts then and show them off to all you loyal readers. In the meantime, I think I may just watch The Science of Sleep again and do some mindless knitting. It will never get old, but I really do need a new knitting movie.. BECKY?!

Born-again bather?

(Aya Kanai in The Selby)

There must be quite a few things a hot bath won't cure, but I don't know many of them. Whenever I'm sad I'm going to die, or so nervous I can't sleep, or in love with somebody I won't be seeing for a week, I slump down just so far and then I say: "I'll go take a hot bath..."

I lay in that tub on the seventeenth floor of this hotel for-women-only, high up over the jazz and push of New York, for near onto an hour, and I felt myself growing pure again. I don't believe in baptism or the waters of Jordan or anything like that, but I guess I feel about a hot bath the way those religious people feel about holy water.

Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

To be honest, I've never had a relaxing bath. I tried once in a tall, cramped bathtub in Japan and then I decided to give it another shot this morning after reading this passage, and probably also because I was feeling a bit hungover. Becky called me later to fill me in on the art of bath-taking. I think she should write a book.

Kabuki

Kestin introduced me to the series about two months ago after our conversation about the "quarter-life crisis." Sometimes I am very melodramatic, but no matter. The first volume was published in 1994, so I'm a bit late on this but it came at the most relevant time. I read the most recent volume, The Alchemy (2009), first. The author described this volume as "specifically designed to be Kabuki’s new life. And it is essentially an instruction manual on creating a NEW life, creating the life of YOUR OWN PERSONAL DREAMS AND INTERESTS that should be practical and applicable to anyone who reads it. It is a recipe and blueprint for creating your own reality, your own career, and your own fresh start. It is a spell for creating your own magic. Taking the baggage of your life and turning it into something positive and useful; turning your garbage into gold."

Okay, reading that back to myself, I feel like Scarlett Johansson in Lost in Translation when Bill Murray finds her Meaning of Life tapes. I admit that there were many instances in this book that were really fortune cookie-ish and completely self-serving and indulgent for the author himself. But, that being said, I agreed with many of his ideas about internal transformation as a form of coping and growing, the necessity of self-reflexivity in order to get to that point, drawing inspiration from your childhood, the importance of creating and keeping your mind active, and just the realization that nothing is stable. I think perhaps even more inspirational than the verbal messages was the form and layout of the graphic novel ("The medium as the message!"). Mack used a lot of different media to illustrate his story and convey his messages. The whole thing kind of just looks like a big collage, although some of the volumes (the ones in which he collaborated with other artists) utilized the traditional graphic novel form. Anyway, I totally dug it and can see it becoming a regular source of inspiration to me. If you get a chance, I would highly recommend you take a look at it.

(click to enlarge)
(you won't regret it!)

Film scans

I found some more film from Japan/Ardmore/Philly/New York that I failed to develop so here is a taste. You can see the rest here and here. And my apologies, there were many that came out blurry.

Baldovino Barani

source: Avant-garde Photography

Best editorial I've seen in awhile. The fashions are nice but the location is much more interesting. Browse through the photos while listening to Olafur Arnalds and the experience will be so perfectly creepy. Also, it looks like I've blogged about Barani before, on another editorial entitled The New Puritans.

A lot of his projects seem to have religious undertones, at least in their titles, but usually I can't make the connection between the photos and the concept that the titles might convey. I find myself feeling this way about most fashion editorials, so it becomes easier to just look at the clothes/styling in order to garner a strictly aesthetic appreciation. But I really wish we could become more concept-driven in our fashion. Stuff like this really cheese me off. If you don't want to click on it, it's an editorial by the same guy called The Missionary, featuring two Western models, one of whom plays the character of the "exotic Other." There is a concept and a story behind the clothes, sure, but the romanticizing of colonialism and the generalization it makes about non-Western/non-Christian people blahblahblahpsychobabble.. I guess what it comes down to is that I am really bored with fashion today, not that my own fashions are particularly inspirational/original.

Exit Through the Gift Shop

I just watched this today with my sister. It's a film by Banksy, the UK graffiti artist who was responsible for this and these:

click to enlarge

source

If you haven't seen it, it's not about Banksy exactly, but more about Thierry Guetta, the guy who provided much of the footage used in the movie of his documentation of street artists for over the past decade probably. I would definitely recommend seeing it. Also, right outside the theatre, I saw this knitted gem
.