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It took me at least 30 seconds of looking at these shoes to realize that the woman wasn’t floating two inches off the ground and what I thought were shadows are actually heels. Even knowing the secret, the effect switches for me like a Necker cube or the spinning dancer.
If you have two pair of small binder clips:
then you also have a pair of emergency cuff links.
I don’t agree with everything on Scott Sternberg’s rules of style list, but a couple of his points are pretty interesting. I’ll spot you this one:
Whenever you start a new project or a new job, don’t tell anyone what you’re working on, because it can change direction a million times and once you start telling the world about it, you get constrained by your own mouth.
but you’ll have to find the others on your own. (via andrea inspired)
Update: A recent study has indicated that people who don’t share their goals are more successful in achieving them.
Researchers report that when dealing with identity goals — that is, the aspirations that define who we are — sharing our intentions doesn’t necessarily motivate achievement. On the contrary, a series of experiments shows that when others take notice of our plans, performance is compromised because we gain “a premature sense of completeness” about the goal.
(thx, sam)
This SLR camera bag that looks like a bowling bag seems like the sort of thing that some of you may “dig”.
Just in time for Friday afternoon, a cedar beer cozy and a collection of beer sweaters. Wash it down with some beer soap.
Nerd Boyfriend breaks down the wardrobes of the fashionably nerdy male, including those of Peter Sellers, Alistair Hennessey (from The Life Aquatic), Buster Bluth, and Sir Edmund Hillary. (via lonelysandwich)
An interesting profile of Kevahn Thorpe, who started shoplifting high fashion items when he was 16 years old and couldn’t manage to stop.
Kevahn, meanwhile, was arrested over and over — always at department stores, he emphasizes, “never in no label stores,” like Prada, where the staff is perhaps more sensitive to the possibility that a young black kid drifting among the merchandise might be an up-and-coming entertainer or a rich private-schooler and not necessarily a thief. And by then, he was dressing for the occasion. As helpful salesclerks retrieved sneakers from the stockroom, he whisked the ones he wanted under a couch and played a kind of shell game with display models and shoeboxes. When he was caught, he pleaded down the petit-larceny charges to disorderly conduct, until a judge finally got fed up and sent him to Rikers Island for the first time, on a ten-day sentence.
Perhaps it’s easy to laugh Kevahn off as just being obsessed with fashion, but he’s also gotten caught stealing iPods and using stolen credit cards.
Rapper/producer 88-Keys is a Lo Head, an obsessive collector and wearer of Ralph Lauren Polo clothing and accessories. He’s been wearing nothing but Polo every single day since 1993. This interview with rapper and Lo Head Rack-Lo functions as a sort of Lo Head manifesto.
A lot of street dudes have paved the way and paid a hefty price for all of you to even be able to rock Lo and all those other name brands as well. Other names like North Face, Benetton, Gucci, Spyder, Gortex, Louis Vutton and the list goes on - Lo-Life’s did it all first. So let me school ya’ll for a second. This Lo movement officially started in 1988. And even before 1988, the movement was in development. Have ya’ll ever heard of Ralphies Kids or USA (United Shoplifters Association), that’s the foundation right there. Those are basically the two crews that Rack-Lo united as Lo-Life’s to form voltron on the Hip Hop world. And a lot of you dudes probably weren’t even born then. So what the fuck are you really saying? So I’m just making it clear that if your going to rep that Lo shit and be apart of a fashion institution there’s a certain way to do it. Word, it rules and laws to this shit. This aint no fly by night shit where u wake up one morning and decide to rock Lo like Kayne West did. That shit there is a fairy tale a lot of heads are living.
Kanye defended his status as a Lo Head in the song Barry Bonds from his Graduation album.
You can now get sweaters made from your dog’s fur or a handbag made from your cat’s fur…or hats, mittens, etc.
Now available for sale on CafePress in men’s and women’s sizes:
The mayor gave Sully the key to the city for landing the airplane safely into the Hudson River but surely he deserves more…like a job in the Obama administration as the Secretary of Transportation (no offense to Mr. LaHood).
Here are a pair of articles from 2002 on street fashion photographer Bill Cunningham, who currently plys his trade for the NY Times. (I love Cunningham’s On the Street dispatches.) The first is Bill on Bill, where the photographer recalls how he got interested in fashion and photography.
As a kid, I photographed people at ski resorts — you know, when you got on the snow train and went up to New Hampshire. And I did parties. I worked as a stock boy at Bonwit Teller in Boston, where my family lived, and there was a very interesting woman, an executive, at Bonwit’s. She was sensitive and aware, and she said, “I see you outside at lunchtime watching people.” And I said, “Oh, yeah, that’s my hobby.” She said, “If you think what they’re wearing is wrong, why don’t you redo them in your mind’s eye.” That was really the first professional direction I received.
The second article is a collection of recollections of Cunningham from some of the people he has photographed.
He taught me how to tell a story with pictures and that it didn’t always involve the best image. I’d say to him, “But isn’t this a better photo?” And he’d say, “Yes, child, but this photo tells the story better.” For him, it wasn’t about the aesthetics of photography. It was about storytelling.
Both articles mention that Cunningham got his first street photography into the Times when he shot a photo of the famously reclusive Greta Garbo walking on Fifth Avenue. I couldn’t find Cunningham’s Garbo photo anywhere online so I tracked down the Times article and found only this poor scan:
Here’s another shot Cunningham made that same day which didn’t end up in the paper (Garbo’s got her hand over her face). Interestingly, street photos of Garbo were not particularly rare. Here are a selection from the 1980s, including several that feature Garbo in similar clothing. Many of them were taken by creepy paparazzo Ted Leyson, who stalked Garbo for more than 10 years in NYC. Leyson took what is believed to be the last photo of Garbo before she died in 1990.
In these tight times, more women are scaling back their pubic topiary activities and opting for a more natural look.
The number of pinstripes on a Yankees jersey varies with the size of the player…the bigger the man, the more pinstripes on the jersey. With the Yankees’ recent signing of CC Sabathia, a rather large gentleman, ESPN’s Paul Lukas wonders: will Sabathia have the most Yankee pinstripes in history?
You’re embarking on a new field of study here, so we have to make up our own rules and standards as we go,” he said. “For example, depending on how a jersey is tailored, the number of pinstripes at the top and at the bottom aren’t necessarily the same. Also, the space between the pinstripes has changed a bit over the years, and the pinstripes themselves are thinner today than in the old days.
(thx, djacobs)
Some sketches from various fashion designers of what Michelle Obama should wear for her husband’s inauguration festivities. These are fascinating to look at. (thx, david)
From an article about a collection of businesses located near Riker’s Island, this tidbit: the inmates refer to the prison-issued orange sneakers as Air Giulianis. Also:
The food truck man, Mr. Samolis, said he often gives free food to inmates who are released from Rikers with no money.
“They get released at 6 in the morning with nothing but a $2 MetroCard the jail gives them,” he said. “So I’ll give them a coffee and an egg sandwich, on credit. I know they’re never going to pay it back, but I feel bad for them.”
(thx, jake)
Vogue Paris has an editorial in the November 2008 issue which features a 20-year-old model photographed as if she were 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, and 60 years old. The hands betray her true age in the 40, 50, and 60 shots but the 10-year-old photo is a little bit of brilliance…just the right angle and lighting. (via the year in pictures)
I don’t know if you’ll enjoy reading a NY Times profile of the Olsen Twins, but I was oddly fascinated.
Mary-Kate’s contribution to the enterprise is a collector’s knowledge. She has been buying vintage Lanvin and Givenchy, among other classic labels of the mid-20th century, for a number of years. (Unlike Ashley, Mary-Kate continues to act, having played, with a perfect semblance of haze and obfuscation, a born-again Christian drug dealer on the third season of “Weeds.” This year she appeared opposite Ben Kingsley in the film “The Wackness.”) Ashley is the more entrepreneurial, the one who will tell you how much she admires Steve Jobs and Bill Gates.
Noted Processing practitioner Robert Hodgin had one of his designs lifted from Flickr and it found its way onto a $235 Paul Smith t-shirt.
I put the shirt on and it fit fine. I couldn’t stop smiling. The whole thing was so damned surreal. Here I am in a Paul Smith changing room trying on a shirt that features a design element stolen from my Flickr site!
“It fits perfectly,” I told the salesman. “It’s like I made it myself,” I joked and smiled at Lance.
“You did make it yourself,” the man replied, oblivious to the inside joke but wanting to play along.
Lance asked the salesman if he knew anything about the print on the shirt. He said something about hobos and the passing of knowledge or something. I was too distracted to pay attention. I said I will take it and he led us to the cashier. $235 later, I was walking out of the store with my very own personalized Paul Smith shirt.
David Friedman of the excellent Ironic Sans blog took some photos of a Kentucky denim factory that distresses jeans for high-end designers.
I used to scoff at paying a premium for jeans that come with holes in them already. Then I saw just how much work goes into distressing jeans, and I realized that these people are artists. You can’t just have any loose threads, you have to have the right loose threads. They can’t just be faded. They have to be the right color. A lot of work goes into making these jeans look just right.
Several photo series of fashion models transforming into different outfits. It’s amazing how different they can look with changes in makeup, hair, and clothes.
Fashion designer Michael Kors based his 2008 fall collection in part on Mad Men. The maturity of dress on the show is part of what attracted him:
Aren’t we ready for that again? For some maturity? I have to tell you, I am sick and tired of hair down to there and crotch-high hemlines. It’s so obvious. For Fall I was really trying to bring back buttoned-up sexy — think Grace Kelly. So cool, so poised. She never reveals a thing and you can’t take your eyes off of her. I mean, watch “Rear Window.” That’s smart sexy; it’s interesting sexy. And it’s grown-up sexy. You want a tip on looking hot? Wear reading glasses and a fitted dress. Simple.
He’s right about Grace Kelly. I watched Rear Window recently and she’s something else in it.
Molly Young of n+1 takes in some shows at New York Fashion Week.
You can tell who is destined for the tents by their appearance. It’s not that fashion people dress the same or even splashily, but rather that every one of them possesses an uncanny sartorial self-awareness. You get the sense that they have arrived at their outfits and hairstyles after painstaking analysis of personal flaws and assets cross-indexed with current trends.
(via 3qd)
Video on how to bull your shoes (bull = put a really nice polish on them).
1000 circles! From the same series: checkmate in four moves. (via acl)
Two t-shirts for those afflicted with seasonal affective disorder: s.a.d. t-shirt 01 and s.a.d. t-shirt 02. Both shirts feature inks that reveal hidden elements when worn in the sun or warm weather. (Psst, Hypercolor shirts are back and, yes, I’m a bit OMGWMCC about it. What, it’s not possible to buy your childhood back?) (Psst, oh my God, where’s my credit card?)
Update: For whatever reason, the site featuring those tshirts has been taken down. today and tomorrow grabbed some of the pics though.
Nice profile of fashion designer Marc Jacobs, creative head of Louis Vuitton, in the New Yorker this week. Jacobs used to be a chunky unfashionable pasty-white kind of guy but has recently started dressing the part and now looks like he could model for one of LV’s magazine ads.
Jacobs walked outside to the back garden, to take in the evening amid the boxwood. “I like the fact that people are sort of commenting on my appearance,” he said. “I work on these things! So to have them recognized, even if sometimes I don’t like the way they’re recognized, I like that they are, and I feel good that I can admit that, instead of being ashamed.” He paused. “I’m going to get a ‘shameless’ tattoo next,” he said, the Eiffel Tower sparkling behind him in the night sky. “That’s what I think everyone should aspire to in life: being shameless.”
I found this New York magazine profile of fashion photographer Juergen Teller pretty fascinating. For one thing, none of Teller’s photos are retouched.
But perhaps most rare for fashion photography, Teller’s pictures are absolutely never retouched. “I’m interested in the person I photograph,” he says. “The world is so beautiful as it is, there’s so much going on which is sort of interesting. It’s just so crazy, so why do I have to put some retouching on it? It’s just pointless to me.”
And then there’s this anecdote. After a bad encounter with a subject who didn’t like how old she looked in Teller’s photographs, he went to see his friend Charlotte Rampling.
Despondent, Teller called his friend Rampling, who offered to cook him dinner. They talked about how it feels to be photographed, and how it feels to age. “I just thought, Fuck this, I’m going to photograph myself,” he says. And then there the two of them were, in the Louis XV suite of the Hotel de Crillon, with Teller way too fat to fit into any of the Marc Jacobs samples save one terribly shiny pair of silver shorts.
“I thought, Fuck,” Teller says, “I don’t even fucking fit into these clothes. I’m really fucking stuck now.”
So he pulled on the shorts in the bathroom. “I came out and I had my socks on and I had these shorts on and no top, and I just said, ‘Ta-da!’ And she said, ‘Oh my God. What are we going to do?’ And I said, ‘Well, I don’t know. But really, honestly’-and I could hardly bring it out of my mouth-I said, ‘I just want to kiss you and fondle your breasts.’ And she didn’t say a word. She just leaned back in her armchair and went into her handbag and got a cigarillo out and lit it and the air was thick and I was mortified. And then she sort of dragged on her cigarette and said, ‘Okay. Let’s start. I’ll tell you when to stop.’”
Here are some of the images that resulted from that shoot (NSFW).
A collection of photos of custom and counterfeit Louis Vuitton products. Big omission: David LaChapelle’s photo of an LV’d Lil’ Kim. (via quips)
James Danziger notes that the issue of Vogue Italia following the acclaimed issue featuring only black models has zero black models in it.
How absolutely great, but now the August issue is out — themed around a faux funeral photo tribute to Yves Saint Laurent — and there’s apparently not one black model to be found. This is especially ironic given the fact that Yves Saint Laurent was one of the first major designers to regularly feature black models in his runway shows. You would have thought they could have found room to at least fit Naomi Campbell in somewhere. Wouldn’t she look chic in widow’s weeds? This kind of tokenism ultimately seems a step backwards to me.
A pair of Levi’s from the 1890s are up on eBay.
This old pair of LEVI’S were found in a mine in the Rand Mining District, on the Mojave Desert,. California. They are covered in candlewax from the candle’s the miner was using to light the tunnel he was working in. They were found with and old paper bag with the name of a mercantile store which operated between 1895 and 1898 in the town or Randsburg. Their was also a gunny sack with the initials A.P.K. and Randsburg marked on it. A.P.K. is through to be Adam P. Kuffel who was a partner in the mercantile store.
These pants have the cloth label vice the leather label. The label (pictured) indicates that they are size W34 x L33, They are copper riveted with the rivets marked L.S. & Co. S.F. They are buckle back (pictured) with suspender buttons. Buttons are silver in color and are all marked LEVI STRAUSS & CO. S.F.CAL. Tthe pants were made with just one back pocket on the right hand side.
With 2 days to go, the current high bid stands at $7300. (via reference library)
Update: Another seller is contemplating listing another old pair of pants.
The jeans were uncovered in an old miners cabin here in montana and have been dated between 1890 and 1901 by the rivets on the jeans. There was gold in the watch pocket of the blue jeans and has been saved in a vial, do you think we should include it in the auction? there is also the miners diaries and a couple of shaker boxes too.
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