I wish Boston was hosting a funeral today. Via ie6funeral.com.
So, I’ve had this fascination with Pantone ever since I saw my first swatch book.
I was completely blown away by this very concise set of colors that could universally be identically reproduced by any printer, anywhere in the world, and how infinite the selection felt. This was during my first job out of college, and oh! I wanted to take the samples with me when I left! Then I found out that Pantone commissions or licenses companies to make messenger bags, mugs, and notebooks branded with specific color codes, and I kind of wanted those too.
This is preface to the fact that I needed a USB thumbdrive/memory stick. My class last semester required a massive-gig firewire drive, and I did at one point have this very ugly dun-colored thumbdrive, but it’s definitely vanished. probably in large part because it was this purely utilitarian thing that I never really loved. Anyway, I need a new one for my class this semester, and I wanted to play by the rules I set for myself as part of my new year’s resolution: to not own anything that I do not know is beautiful.
My first stop was the british girl gadget guide, shinyshiny.tv, and I dug through their posts tagged thumbdrive. The first to pique my interest was called “four eyes“; awkwardly sized, but totally geektastic, and likely hard to lose.
Adorable, right? But unfortunately, not available for purchase. And I looked around.
Then, I learned from shinyshiny that Pantone makes branded thumbdrives. Research told me the price was good (I grabbed the 4G). AND—here’s the kicker—they’ll engrave it with two lines for free! I like that upping of the odds that if it were misplaced, it would have a good chance of returning to me. I had my name and website inscribed on it; I’m not hard to get in touch with via this site. It just arrived today. Wanna see?
Look! It comes in an adorable silver case!!
And hello Helvetica!!
Of course I got it in 716C—one of my signature colors. I’m a super-happy girl tonight.
I bought something else that I love recently—something that I’ve lusted after for the past three years; I’ll be posting part 3b as soon as it arrives.
A “playful paint program” that you can play with, at http://positdesign.com/media/paintplay/
I utterly love Werner Herzog. There’s really just no two ways around it.
I’m also pretty certain that this is the first book I ever read the whole text of out loud to my mother, which she claims happened when I was 2.
via coilhouse magazine.
It’s Fashion Week! So, inspired by galadarling, I wanted to highlight some of my own fictional style icons.
5. The Hitchcock Blonde; Vertigo, Marnie, The Birds, etc.
The bubble-gum New Look aesthetic has been an inspiration to me for years and years. I’ve been absorbing it through Gina Lollbrigida, Sophia Loren, Catherine Deneuve, old screwball comedies, and vintage/consignment store raids. Wasp-waists and fuller skirts suit my body shape. It’s sort of hilarious to me that, since Mad Men, all of the things I love and have had to hunt down are now enjoying this amazing renaissance in retail stores. Don’t think I’m not stocking up.
Other “Hitchcock blondes” include: Mrs. Campbell in Buona Sera, Mrs. Campbell, Lisa Helena Fellini in Come September, Betty Draper in Mad Men, Geneviève Emery in Les Parapluies de Cherbourg.
This project was interrupted by the tragic death of Lee Alexander McQueen. He’s one of the most important fashion figures in my lifetime. He was BFF to my most perfect muse & inspiration, Isabella Blow. She discovered* him at fashion college, bought his entire senior thesis. Her eye and aesthetic brought many of the great designers of the last few decades to prominence; she described herself as the fashion industry’s “truffle swine.” Issie killed herself two years ago, by drinking weedkiller. It was her sixth suicide attempt. After she died, there were only two style icons left alive: Sophia Loren and Lauren Bacall.
Issie said “my style icon is anyone who makes a bloody effort.”
McQueen said “I really don’t think that you need a beautiful face” to be stylish.
left: Alexander McQueen and Isabella Blow in 1997, shot by David LaChapelle for Vanity Fair.
right: Issie&Lee; she’s in her signature look: hat by Treacy, clothes by McQueen.
Isabella Blow embodied Wallace Simpson’s maxim that “I’m nothing to look at, so the only thing I can do is dress better than anyone else.” Shortly after Blow’s death, a blogger named Plumcake wrote: “she decided to follow Oscar Wilde’s commandment: if she could not BE a work of art, then at least she would wear them. Thus created was the woman Lady Gaga wishes she could be.” Blow hid inside clothes and accessories that screamed “look at me,” epitomized by outlandish signature hats that hid great swaths of her face. When she asked Philip Treacy to design her wedding veil, she specified that it resemble a medieval helmet. McQueen understood this more than anyone else; he thought of himself as an armorer; of his hard-edged tailoring, he explained: “I try to protect people.” This is perhaps why he identified so strongly, and developed close friendships, with such classic jolie laides as Blow and Sarah Jessica Parker, why he regularly sent models of color and models with physical disabilities down his runways, and why his designs often cruelly distended more conventionally “beautiful” female forms.
His playful plundering of historical, cultural, mythic, childhood, and folkloric iconography exemplified fashion as intentional and performative art, and as dress-up. Which brings us to the next icon on my list. If Blow was a fictional character, she would headline this look.
4. Silken Floss
Specifically, Silken Floss as played by Scarlet Johanssen in 2008’s The Spirit. I’ve never read the Eisner comics, so I can’t comment on her print incarnation. When we first meet her, she’s dressed like a French beatnik: black beret, pencil skirt, Clark Kent glasses. Later, she is a vicious nurse (in black!); she is a coquettish geisha; she is in full Nazi military regalia. We never see her independent of incarnations defined exclusively by costume; we never see her as a whole character. Each costume is a facet of Silken Floss, unlike traditional comic strip heroes and villains who choose a single costume by which to define their entire selves.
The Silken Floss aesthetic is both canvas and chameleon; self subsumed entirely to style. I think I’ve only captured it once: my friend Emmet decided to celebrate his birthday with a “Martyr’s Ball”: guests were instructed to come dressed as a person whose death (or persecution) furthered—or was precipitated by alligiance to—an artistic, political, or religious cause. I went as Mary Queen of Scots, who was executed by her cousin Elizabeth for both political and religious reasons. I wore a gold tiara, enormous gold crucifix, red leather top, and a knee-length tulle crinoline under a plaid pleated kilt. I also drew gooey dark red lipgloss across my throat to evoke her beheading.
But I try to bring wearable interpretations of it into my wardrobe through accessories: from 3/4-inch “rhinestone” stud earrings to a thick bangle decoupaged with frames from an Asian comic book, a bronze necklace dangling a giant octopus, or even as outlandish as a pair of pink lucite kitten-heeled sandals that someone once dubbed “Hello Kitty stripper shoes.” I love how I feel in these crazy accessories; I love mixing them with more staid and conventional looks. When I was much younger, I would actually play dress-up in my entry-level admin assistant job: Audrey Hepburn one day, West Side Story the next, His Girl Friday the following; practicing personae within the strictures of business casual. I think approaching clothing as costuming is a crucially essential step for every young woman to develop a genuine identity.
Other “Silkens” include: If Lady Gaga were fictional (and there is an argument to be made that she is a character sprung from the mind of Stephanie Germanotta), she would be listed here. Brandy Alexander in Invisible Monsters, Esmé Squalor in A Series of Unfortunate Events. Here’s a great sample Esmé getup, in full: “The dress was made of layers upon layers of shiny cloth, in different shades of yellow, orange, and red, all cut in fierce triangular shapes so that each layer seemed to cut into the next, and rising from the shoulders of the dress were enormous piles of black lace, sticking into the air in strange curves. …there was something sewn to the bottom of the dress that made it make a crackling noise as she walked, so that the wicked girlfriend sounded as much like a fire as she looked like one.”
I’m taking Valentine’s Day off. Be sure to come back Monday for the final installment!
* “Rivers are discovered. Artists aren’t.” —Molly Crabapple
It’s Fashion Week! So, inspired by galadarling, I wanted to highlight some of my own fictional style icons.
3. Jane Lane, Daria.
I don’t recommend that we take fashion tips from Jane, although she beat Williamsburg to “pantsless” hipsterdom by a decade. Style tips, though— definitely. Her cropped bob is so current and classic, and has been for nearly a century! Jane basically has one passion in the entire world, and everything else comes second. She dresses for doing what she loves: she’s a painter and sculptor, and needs comfortable clothes she can move freely in, that protect her skin and feet, that are inexpensive enough to replace that she doesn’t have to worry about ruining, and that make her feel good. Thus her “uniform” of black t-shirt, black leggings, layering top, shorts, and Docs.
Jane Lane by _chrisbean featuring Old Navy t shirts
Jane Lane by _chrisbean featuring Old Navy t shirts
Confession: I basically wanted to be Jane when I was growing up. I more correctly identified with Daria, but admired her bestie. I was an artistic kid, too, and had yet to develop at that point Jane’s don’t-give-a-care attitude. Plus, um, I had a crush on her brother Trent. And Trent Reznor. And every boy in my school who looked remotely like Trent Reznor. Or played guitar. (Sad, I know.)
I do really think that everyone needs to cultivate a “screw you, I’m awesome!” section of their wardrobe. This isn’t just about what you’re comfy curling up on the couch in; it’s about what you’re comfortable in your own skin in. I know that there are things in your closet that make you feel gorgeous with zero effort: a color, a fabric, a cut of skirt. Make that an element of your “uniform.” Think about what you love doing more than anything else, what makes you utterly fearless and spectacular, and how you feel and dress when you’re doing it: that’s your inner Jane Lane. If you’re truly lucky, you get to wear your Jane wardrobe every day.
Other “Janes” include: Watts in Some Kind of Wonderful, Jordan Baker in The Great Gatsby.
Be sure to come back tomorrow for a character who is certainly not a plain-jane, and a tribute to a fashion genius.
It’s Fashion Week! So, inspired by galadarling, I wanted to highlight some of my own fictional style icons.
2. Laura Hunt, Laura.
Laura was not a golddigger. She couldn’t help it if she was relentlessly pursued by wealthy men. Romance was an afterthought. She’d earned her own way. And it wasn’t as though she could trust anyone to give her a hand up to the top. She just wanted to head up her own advertising firm, run business meetings and corporate empires, keep condescending men on their toes, and look good doing it. In 1944. If she used her charms to get her way—well, she was charming. And then she was dead. Or was she—?
Laura’s style is proto-American classic, pre-New Look, and—like the film itself—set the template for what Film Noir would be all about. The labels above—Chanel, Burbury—were chosen to reflect the infancy of the American fashion industry midcentury. Laura’s style is tailored, polished, simple, professional and undeniably feminine.
When I was trying to learn how to dress like a grown-up immediately after college, movies like Laura—set in an era when women were trying to figure out how to dress and behave in the workplace—and stars like Kate Hepburn, Gene Tierney, Lauren Bacall, and Myrna Loy taught me how. It’s where I learned pencil skirts. And tweed pants. And non-90s-sweater-set cardigans. And fabulous shoes.
Other “Lauras” include: Nora Charles in The Thin Man, Irene Cassini in GATTACA, Amy Archer in The Hudsucker Proxy, Rachael in Blade Runner.
Be sure to come back tomorrow for an angsty 90s antifashionista!
It’s Fashion Week! So, inspired by galadarling, I wanted to highlight some of my own fictional style icons.
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Rory Gilmore, Gilmore Girls.
Rory’s style is polished without being preppy, ladylike without being prissy, livable without being sloppy, and completely adorable. Through seven seasons of the show, we see her develop under the guidance of her free-spirited mother and old-school grandmother, and walk the fine balance between their lives and influences.
Rory Gilmore by _chrisbean featuring Marc by Marc Jacobs shoesRory’s remarkable sense of style remains consistent with her character, and takes her gracefully from private school to college to deb balls to rock shows, from big job interviews to couch-movie-marathons.
Rory taught me how to mix from high and low; how to dress pieces up or down; the power of jeans with a blazer; and how to light layer well. It’s comfortable, timeless, and simple. She builds from fabulous basics, and can rock a great little peplum jacket like no one’s business.
Other “Rorys” include: Jean Seberg in Bonjour Tristesse, Veronica in Veronica Mars, half the cast of Gossip Girl, Amélie Poulain from Amélie, Shosanna Dreyfus in Inglourious Basterds, and Lee in Secretary.
Be sure to come back tomorrow for a nineteen-forties femme fatale!
This semester I’m studying Processing, a Java-ish programming language developed by and for visual artists. I churned out a couple of sketches last week, but this is my first interactive piece in the language. I’m really having fun in code; I’m learning; I’m absorbing the algorithms by osmosis, and just really, really happy with the class. When the professor described our assignments as like creative writing exercises, and the language as like another pen in the artist’s toolkit, I knew beyond a doubt I was in the right place.
So here’s a little something-something I’m proud of.
So, we are not really football fans fan, though I’m wearing my giant bronze fleur-de-lis earrings today, and my boyfriend is making jambalaya.
However, I would be totally excited about the Superbowl if the screenplay went more like these:
The second one and the last one are my favorites.
via BlackBook.
They kind of freak me out, but I kind of totally want a pair or three…
Last weekend, I went up to New Hampshire to coach my mom on her new iMac.
The highlight of the trip was spending time with Maddie, a/k/a Trouble, a/k/a the cutest-tongued fluffiest puppy in the entire world.
Note her little-lamb legs! Also, that her face looks like a Muppet!
I had been warned that Maddie pees when she is excited to see you. She only apparently does this for my uncle and her “siblings”: my brother, sister, and now me. She was apparently super-duper excited to see me.
Maddie is about 87 x more rambunction than our old dog, Nikki. At one point, she came into the den chomping on something thin and white: “What does she have in her mouth?” I asked no one in particular; “What are you eating?” I asked Maddie.
My dad said, “oh, that’s just one of her rawhide chews.”
“No,” I replied, slightly confused, squinting, moving closer to the pup. “It has writing on it.”
“Oh, my god, she ate my Harvard ID!”
“Did you leave your purse on the floor?” my dad asked. “You can NEVER leave ANYTHING on the floor around here. That’s why I put your shoes in the closet.” Now he tells me. That little Trouble had actually picked my pockets: she’d somehow dug into a zippered compartment to fish out that bit of plastic.
I’m there, too. It’s what my whole master’s degree and thesis project are about. Utterly LOVE this image.
Steve exceeded all expectations. Love that, too.
via Gizmodo.
- gray and yellow—as neutrals, and especially in combination. Gray nail polish.
- web typography, escaping from the “safe.”
- the realization that my books are clutter, and with getting rid of several thousand of them.
- acquiring only things I truly love; getting rid of everything I don’t love. Declaring a War on Clutter.
- the color orange. It makes me smile.
- cleaning, filing, dusting, organizing.
- exercise; specifically crunches, and doing many of them.
- lady gaga; her wardrobe and feminism and fearless self-promotion.
- making more things from scratch in the kitchen, from ingredients closer to the ground.
- mastering html5.
- moisturizing.
I’ve been, well—I hate to used the word “blessed” because I don’t necessarily believe in a big sky-deity doling out blessings, and I don’t want to say “lucky enough to,” because I hope there’s something in me attracting wonderful people, but—I know and love and respect and am known, loved, and respected by some pretty phenomenal people. And I feel blessed every day that they are in my life. I’d like to introduce two of them. They are both masters of self-branding with no boundaries between their personal passions and their day jobs that inspire and complement their goals; what you see is what you get is who they are. I truly admire and am inspired by them.
Emily Cavalier.
I’ve known Emily since we were 15. She’s a true BFF; the only person from my hometown that I’ve never fallen out of touch with. She’s the very first person who ever called me a poet. She’s been my gateway to knowing wonderful people and having incredible life-changing experiences and finding confidence in myself in ways that I can’t even approach the ability to articulate. In other words, she is simply, passionately, flat-out amazing. She says “yes” to life in ways that would scare most people. Nowadays, Emily is a social media superstar who makes 6-figure deals before breakfast. She’s building her own Brooklyn-based empire tweet-by-blog post, and is truly a living embodiment of the power-potential of personal connection and unbounded enthusiasm.
You can find Emily all over the web: her personal blog is emilycavalier.com; she records day-to-day moments of joy at her tumblog, wompwomp.tumblr.com; and her passion-project is the neverending love-letter to NYC, mouthoftheborder.com. She also tweets as EmilysPearl.
Star St. Germain.
Star is one of those people who seems to have 80 hours in each day. Or else robotic doubles. She’s phenomenally great at pretty much everything that it’s possible to be good at. She’s the kind of friend that you can call and say, “hey! I’m in your city,” and have plans with the same night. If she wasn’t so sweet, you might be jealous. Star’s a web developer, graphic designer, illustrator, jewelry and clothing designer, photographer, filmmaker, animator, brilliant poet, composer, cellist, singer, model, blogger, podcaster, and entrepreneur, just to name a few. A master of all and dilettantish about nothing. She’s the kind of person you want to be when you grow up. And she’s only… 26?
You can dive into Star’s gorgeous, immersive world at thisisstar.com, and follow thisisstar on twitter.
These two lovely and talented rockstars are just the tip of the iceberg—check out more fantastic folks in my linkslist under the heading “talented friends.”
So I understand that “Keep Calm and Carry On” is more or less over.
I found out about the poster and its history over the summer, when a friend was visiting London and wanted sightseeing recommendations. I checked the online giftshop of the The Cabinet War Rooms and Churchill Museum, one of my favorite places in London (the vintage “don’t get VD!” posters make me crack up). And when I was browsing posters, I found my first KCaCO image.
My jaw literally dropped.
The typography was perfect; the design was immaculate.
The purpose it was designed against made my skin crawl.
I lusted.
And, honestly, I still do. Despite the fact that over the course of the past month, in no time flat, it’s a come-and-gone interwebs meme before even penetrating anything. And while the “Get Excited and Make Things” variant is brilliant in its finegrain attention to detail, the “Keep Calm and Carry Pepper Spray” notebook at URBN and the KCaCO doormat in the new CB2 catalog make me cringe.
But I still frantically want a big framed print in my office.
I’m not a big fan of Neil Gaiman quotes, but this one made me smile.
layout by me in Adobe Caslon Pro.
The last time I made a New Year’s resolution was at least a decade ago, and I think I resolved myself against New Year’s resolutions. Kind of like giving up Catholicism for Lent.
Anyway, this year, inspired by unclutterer.com, nubbytwiglet.com, and my paid-off credit cards, and abetted by the Harvard semester leaving me class-free for a whole month, I’m embarking on a huge project to purge my apartment of everything I don’t need, don’t use, don’t love, or am not willling to care for properly.
I’m overwhelmed by “stuff” I’ve accumulated, and a bit jealous of my boyfriend’s incredibly pared-down possessions.
I have two touchpoints:
- Smart consumerism is only buying products that you need or that help you to pursue the remarkable life that you desire. (Erin Doland)
- Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful. (William Morris)
I know both of those sound totally loopy and new-age-y, but they provide really functional and flexible guidelines. This process also isn’t really as drastic as it sounds. And having them written down on business-sized cards in my wallet provides a good touchstone when I’m shopping.
I have eight sort+toss points, ranging from five-minute projects to weeklong or longer:
- my nail polish box
- my makeup and toiletries
- my shoes
- my clothes
- my books
- my desk area and archives
- my clutter
- our kitchenware
I broke out tiny ones that should probably belong to a bigger lump because I need small, attainable action-steps. Some of these will take weeks, and I need to be able to check things off a list if I’m going to progress. Big jobs will be broken into subtasks.
Sort+toss means that I’ll pick one of these areas and attack it until anything I don’t need/love/use is gone, and the things I do need/love/use both have a home and are respectfully served (i.e. buttons replaced, shoes polished, etc.)
Status report: I already went through my nail polish, which meant special ordering a new box to replace the old one that was falling apart; now neither definition of the word “tacky” exists among my nailpolishes. Shoes are organized and I did throw away a lot of ill-fitting and poorly-made and falling-apart pairs, but I still need to set aside an afternoon for leather-care and polishing. Some pairs I do love but that I have not treated lovingly need a trip to a cobbler’s. Attacking my clothes means first purchasing proper “archival” storage for suits and formal dresses, and also buying another dozen or so nice hangers. Books will be a longer process, and involve multiple trips to used bookstores to sell stuff; I have about 40 cubic feet of bookshelves in our front hall, and about half as many books still in stacked packed-up boxes in the bedroom. That won’t do; sort and toss means anything that I can’t store correctly has to go. Whether it’s new shelving or fewer books, something’s gotta give. My desk area is done and immaculately organized; and Cristo tamed our massive kitchen overflow to immaculate necessities as well, spurred on by the influx of gifts from my parents.
Oh, and art supplies! I’ve sorted our joint holdings into four big plastic bins by media type (dry is markers and pencil; hard is sculptural; soft is craft, fabric, ribbons; wet is paints and brushes), I just bought a great steel portfolio case at an 80% post-Christmas discount at A&C, and dragged C. to Utrecht a few weeks ago to hit a sale on print racks: we now have a gorgeous hardwood one corralling all of our giant sketchpads.
Clutter is an ongoing battle, but one that I feel like I can actually win this year, especially with my boy by my side.
I’m slightly obsessed with seeing work-in-progress. I was lucky enough this morning to stumble across a draft of a lasting brilliant piece of design work that transcends into art.
Every designer need reminding that nothing comes from wholecloth, and that every iconic image is the work of actual human hands. Process, process, process. Note that hundreds of sketches preceded this one. Amazing. I love this:
from bestmadeco.com, via swiss-miss.com
