Claimed! Miss Sixty Adrian Boots

I love buying things out of season. Nothing makes me happier for the upcoming weather than picking up something warm in the cold months and cold in the warm ones. Well ok, there is one other thing that is as wonderful: the fact that the particular item is usually over 50% off its original price!

So, you can only imagine my sheer, unadulterated joy when I picked up these babies at a sample sale a few weeks ago:



I have long been in need of a pair of big, black boots. These Miss Sixty Adrian boots are simply amazing, and everything I was coveting. The leather is the softest stuff I have ever encountered, and they are super tall and super comfy. My wallet would have been hurting something awful picking them up at their retail price, but I managed to snatch these up for a song.



My particular favorite part about these boots is the detailing around the ankle. I love the straps, buckles, but especially the charm that hangs from one of the shoes. It is such a cute and sweet little detail, and even makes a chiming click when I walk about. I actually have become rather inspired with the idea charms on boots: perhaps I will decorate the entire pair with little gold and silver charms along the straps. You will then hear me coming from a mile away.



I can barely wait until the weather cools down so I can start stomping around in these beauts. I am a summer child, but there's nothing like a good pair of boots to help heal that hurt round end of the season.

Get Some Girl Talk

Photo by Christos

Girl Talk is the stage name of Pittsburgh DJ Greg Gillis. Girl Talk is also some of the funnest, fly-est dance music mash-up stuff out right now, in my humble opinion. Squeezing rap, alternative, seventies rock and everything in between into the songs he mixes, Girl Talk fuses subcultural music together like a sculptor spins clay. The result is music that is both sentimentally identifiable and new to the ear, audially beautiful and mentally intriguing. Music that brings mixing to a whole new level: Mix 2.0. It's also amusing as hell to hear some of the stuff he puts together.

I think in a way, Girl Talk's music sums up our generation. With the availability of style, culture and genre blown open by the interactive environment, barriers have broken down between subcultures in a way that has never been experienced before. Parents and children can enjoy the same music, there's less need or reason to identify with a specific culture for acceptance - whether hip-hop, alt-rock, reggaeton or klesmer - if it's cool, it's cool. 'nuff said.

Girl Talk's new album, "Feed The Animals," is out now - and the best part is that YOU can pick the price.


"Feed the Animals" by Girl Talk

Download it here. And don't forget to drop a few bucks in the hat, kiddos. Support the music you love.

Flikr Fan: anneso_cachemireet soie

Anne-Solange, is a french writer and journalist. Since discovering her on wardrobe_remix, I have been completely smitten with her photostream. Not only is her sense of style completely wonderful, but her photographs are excellently shot.

Solange's style is a mix of elegant and playful, full of lovely muted hues and delightful details. Just looking at her photos makes me long to visit to France, where I have come to believe that sunlight is lemon-colored, and everyone dresses amazing all the time.












See her entire photostream here.

Once Upon A Time...

Collection of Fairy tale inspired fashion sets by Jillian

Fairy tales are the myths of our society, stories that have become as integral to our culture as our history and morals. The first stories we learn as children are often our culture's fairy tales, often the same stories that our parents heard when they were young.

I've always been fascinated with fairy tales; how they came to be and how they have evolved through time. The characters themselves as archetypes: are you a vulnerable Riding Hood, or a curious Aurora? An overworked Cinderella, or a hunted Snow White? A boyish Peter Pan, or a devilish Captain Hook?

You get the idea.

Here are some links on fairy tales that are particularly intriguing...

"The Fairy Tale Life" by Jillian: A great article about fashion and fairy tales.

"The Science of Fairy Tales" by Chris Gorski: An amusing article on the real-life science behind our oldest tales.

"Folklore, Myth and Legend": A wonderful resource of folk and fairy tale archives available online.

"HiveSlides: Fairy Tale Fashion": A collection of styles that are fairytale-inspired.

Mag-Tear 1

Are you a mag-tearer? Do you dismantle your magazines to pull out your favorite images? Or does the idea of marring that Vogue bring you to tears?

I am a little of both - in the past, I have torn my mags asunder (a huge binder in my office filled to the brim is the result of these massacres), but lately I just can't bring myself to do it - the bibliophile in me simply shudders at the prospect.

Fortunately, the powers of the internet once again save the day! No longer must I damage my fav mags to snatch up those images I adore. There are now entire communities dedicated to this endeavor! It's like I've died and gone to mag-tear heaven!

Here are some of the recent favs I've come across...


Kate Moss For Vogue Paris
This Kate Moss cover is seventies-errific!


Sasha Pivovarova in Vogue Russia August 2007
Ph: Migeul Riveriego
A new application of makeup: the human palette.


Catherine McNeil, "Cowboy Cat" Ph: Greg kadel
Numero #90 February 2008
Smolderin looks, slim lines, long dresses and legwarmers: It's like Sophia Loren meets Flashdance.


Olga Sherer in Numero 93
I love how hair becomes an environment in this set. Simply stunning.


Han Hye-Jin, & Eugenia M, “Ethereal Romance” Ph: Will Davidson, Vogue China March 2008
An utterly inspiring color palette, landscape, and costume.

Do you mag-tear or mag-save? If you know any good mag-tear sites, holla!

I dare you not to eat it...

Sweetest Lemon Raspberry Kiss Shea Butter Whipped Cream by Satin Petal Soap

When I was a kid, my mom used to threaten to feed me soap when I said bad words (and as my little brother will attest, she was perfectly serious about holding up her part of the bargain). Of course, had I seen the soaps offered by Satin Petal Soap, I would have been perfectly happy to eat soap to her heart's content!


Dark Chocolate Dipped Strawberry Goat Milk Soap Bon Bon by Satin Petal Soap

Satin Petal Soap offers a delicious array of mouthwatering handmade shea butter soaps, vegetable glycerine soaps, herbal bath salts, shea butter body lotions, shea butter whipped body cream, bath accessories, 100% essential oil aromatherapy soy candles, and so more. With scents named "Chocolate Dipped Strawberry," "Black Cherry Vanilla Cream,"and "Plump Blueberry Lemon Verbena," I think it would take a great deal of physical effort not to sink my teeth into her beautiful aromatic concoctions. It certainly doesn't help that pictures are simply swoon-inspiring.


Sumptuous Orange Vanilla Moisturizing Whipped Soap by Satin Petal Soap


Pink Grapefruit Explosion Soap Bon Bon by Satin Petal Soap


Orange Espresso Latte Whipped Fresh Ground Espresso and Shea Butter Sugar Scrub by Satin Petal Soap

I want to fill my bathroom with all of these lovely soaps, and turn the entire place into a giant sweet-shop. If you need me, I'll be in my pudding bath...

Sum Sum Summer Jams: Muxtape Mix

Search the hymns
Originally uploaded by hello sunrise

One of my fondest memories growing up was receiving mix tapes. First, they were silly mixes from the boys in grade school, that me and my girlfriends would giggle over listening to on our crummy stereos. The tapes were the first real attempt at flirting I ever encountered, and would contain songs interspersed with goofy banter from the group of boys that put them together. Later in high school, mix tapes became much more serious affairs; careful compilations intensely labored over and scrutinized by their creators, and equally scrutinized by their recipients. Due to the difficulty of creation and replication, a mix tape was the most sincere gift of friendship/love you could receive from another person. Whether pouring through lyrics to decode hidden messages, or just rocking out to a fantastic ska comp, a mix tape said unequivocally: you matter.

Sadly, with the dawn of the recordable CD and later, the downloadable song, mix tapes have become virtually nonexistent. However, I was delighted to discover there is a site trying to rekindle the mixtape in the new age: Muxtape.com.



Muxtape allows users to upload and share mixtapes on the web. It's functionality is remarkably simple, and it's look is beautifully minimal and superbly designed. And while it's not nearly of the same caliber as receiving an actual cassette, it's the closest the internet has ever come to it (and let's be honest: if you did receive a mix tape today, would you even have a cassette player to play it?)

I've put together a little mix together for you, dear reader. I hope you like it as much as I like you ;)



The Tracklist:
Lavender Diamond - You Broke My Heart
Nina Simone - See Line Woman
Okkervil River - A Hand To Take Hold Of The Scene
Laura Veirs - Secret Someones
Laura Marling - Night Terror [Explicit]
Le Tigre - After Dark
LCD Soundsystem - Never As Tired As When I'm Waking Up
Kaki King - Can Anyone Who Has Heard This Music Really Be a Bad Person?
Sonic Youth - Hits of Sunshine (for Allen Ginsberg)
Wolf Parade - An Animal In Your Care
Dr. Dog - 12 Find The River
Greg Laswell - Sing, Theresa Says

Court Life vs. Club Land

Lauren of "Marie Antoinette's Gossip Guide" has written a fantastic comparison between 18th century aristocratic culture and the club scene in the 1980's. As an avid fan of both periods, I feel she did a wonderful job assessing the principal overlaps between the two cultures: extreme vanity, excessive spending, and utter abandonment into fantastic hedonism, among others.

Read the whole article here. And then admit to yourself that you'd like to don pink lipstick, a pompadour and rock like a noble until the sun comes up.

Predictions

Victorian Fairy Portrait
Originally uploaded by ex.libris

Over the past week, I find myself continually returning to read this collection of "Predictions of the year 2000" from the Ladies Home Journal of 1900. These predictions, written in that turn-of-the-century style that I could just eat up with a spoon, are as insightful as they are entertaining to read 100 years after they were written. Some are quite remarkably on the money, such as:

Prediction #7: There will be air-ships, but they will not successfully compete with surface cars and water vessels for passenger or freight traffic.

Prediction #18: Telephones Around the World. Wireless telephone and telegraph circuits will span the world. A husband in the middle of the Atlantic will be able to converse with his wife sitting in her boudoir in Chicago.

Prediction #25: Fast-flying refrigerators on land and sea will bring delicious fruits from the tropics and southern temperate zone within a few days.

While others show as just how much farther we have to go...

Prediction #13: Strawberries as Large as Apples will be eaten by our great-great-grandchildren for their Christmas dinners a hundred years hence. Raspberries and blackberries will be as large.

Prediction #17: A university education will be free to every man and woman...Poor students will be given free board, free clothing and free books if ambitious and actually unable to meet their school and college expenses...In vacation time poor children will be taken on trips to various parts of the world. Etiquette and housekeeping will be important studies in the public schools.

Read the whole set of predictions here

Channeling: "Darjeeling Limited"

I am an enormous fan of Wes Anderson. There is so much aesthetic care put into his movies, and his characters are unhindered by the petty problems in life, on great journeys of the self.

"Darjeeling Limited" is a story of three brothers who haven't spoken in a year, who meet in India to rediscover themselves. Along the way they encounter poisonous snakes, lost trains, sweet lemons, deadly tigers, fickle matriarchs, beautiful stewardesses, a funeral, and several fist fights - just to name a few. The movie teaches us that enlightenment is often thrust upon us when we least want it, in ways we least expect. It is a beautiful, funny, colorful movie: both aesthetically as well as emotionally.













The style of Darjeeling Limited is a gorgeous mix of color and form: almost a western formality meets Asian embellishment. Below are a few ideas on how you can integrate a hint of Darjeeling into your everyday style:



Idea 1: "The Prim & Proper Traveler"
Wes Anderson uses lovely blocks of color in his movies, and objects meticulously well crafted. Deck yourself out in clean, beautiful, monochromatic pieces, and don't be afraid of mixing lots of color.


Idea 2: "The Seasoned Tourist"
Take a sleek outfit, and pile on the fun, exotic elements. Simple main pieces can handle a lot of patterned accessories, so long as the tones are generally in the same family. The more different the patterns are from one another, the better.


Idea 3: "Meet My Guru"
Bold graphic elements carefully matched can create an effect that is both captivating and engaging. It's tricky not making this look too chaotic, so balance out bold pieces against each other to level the playing field. Then sit back, sip your tea, and tell all about that year you spent in an ashram in Badrinath.

Ann Carrington: Turning the Everyday into the Extraordinary

A spare button, a coconut husk, an old shoe. Everyday detritus, that moves around us like an invisible ocean: the neglected remainders of our lives.

Along comes Ann Carrington, an English sculptor with a sublime gift for discovering the potential among these common objects. Collecting them in massive amounts, she repurposes them into crowns, horses, crocodiles. And along the way, infuses the world with a bit of magic.

"Crown Jewels" Pearl buttons on canvas

"Wildebeest" Bone handled knives

"English Rose" Safety pins, needles, on canvas

"Raj Rug" Shoe uppers on Canvas

"Stubbs 2" Cigarettes on wood, framed in oak

See the rest of her collection here.

There Be Hair, Both Here and There, In the Shape of...A Bear?

Let me tell you a little bit about Nagi Noda. Nagi is a Japanese designer, and dominating nominee for "Person I Would Most Care to be When I Grow Up." An art director who became known for her cutting-edge work in print design, Noda was soon drafted by the big boys, specifically, Nike and the famed Laforet. More recently, Noda has moved into video, where she has proceeded to sweep awards with her music videos and commercials.

Nagi Noda's work is simply stunning: based deeply in surrealism, she makes whimsical works that are as beautiful as they are mind-bending; whether it's costume bags or poodle aerobics or carnivorous flower bunnies. She is also so prolific with these new ideas it is liable to make ones head spin. I could fill this blog for a month with her awesome projects and achievements. But I'm here to talk about my favorite project of hers, HAIR, and the wondrous things Nagi Noda has done with it...




These hair styles are so amazing. I long for a world where we all sculpt our hair into the animal we feel most inclined to that day. Feeling freaky? French braid a ferret. A bit bland? Bouffant a toucan. Full of pity? Plait a kitty.




















See the rest of the ferocious styles here.

Roots Picnic

This weekend, me and Boyfriend Kaboom headed down to my old stomping grounds in Philadelphia for the Roots Picnic. Philadelphia was the first city I ever lived in on my own, and I think that in a sense there will always be a part of me that is a Philly girl. Philadelphia has this lifestyle that is unique to anywhere i have been, a result of awesome people, a close-knit community and lots of trees (it's also the only city you'll see kids hanging out on horses). More than anything, the thing I miss most is Philly's sense of style: a independence and trust in personal wardrobe free of any constraint but whim. While at the show, I couldn't resist snapping a few shots of some of the fantastic individuals who caught my eye.


Ayana M. Case is a stylist and publicist from New York, who knows how to do some glorious things with a wrap dress.


It was a scorching day, but Mia looked cool and pretty in a polka-dot dress and Alphonse Mucha-inspired parasol (that I fought the urge to snatch!)


Tomia & Jordan played under the hose to stay cool, and their bohemian outfits were lovely, even drenched!


Sarah chilled in an ensemble as easy in the heat as it was on the eye. Touches of colorful luminescence in the bag and shoes are my favorite part.

Somehow, I even managed to get a shot of Boyfriend Kaboom making a somewhat tolerable face:

Site-Luv: BookByItsCover.com

Fact: I am an utter bibliophile.

Fact: I have an obsession with book design: it remains one of my favorite design formats. I have a long-standing dream of becoming a book cover designer.

Fact: I utterly love the site Bookbyitscover.com



BookByItsCover is a site dedicated to beautiful books. Run by Julia Rothman, an incredibly talented illustrator and pattern designer from Brooklyn, NY, BBIC not only features gorgeous graphic books, but displays photography of their inner pages, allowing the reader to get as close a personal experience as one can with the a book, save for having one in your lap. Not only is the content superb, but the site's design utilizes a divinely simple and unique format that lends itself to the "bookish" style of the subject matter, along with easy-breezy content navigation. The photography Julia takes to present each book resonates her love of the form.

Whether you are a seeking inspiration, or simply looking for something to stick on your coffee table, Bookbyitscover.com satisfies that deep need in many of us for bound beauty.

Jared Nickerson

Jared Nickerson has some of the hottest vector work I've seen in a long time.











More here.

Bravo Bar Codes

Design is all about reinventing, and thinking about things in a unique way. Which is why I am head-over-heels for these bar codes from Japan - why just slap a bar code on something, when you could create a unique graphic object. Bravo!



See more here.

All about BLU

I am totally in love with the work of BLU right now. Blu is an Italian artist, who works mostly in murals and urban landscapes. His work is characterized by larger than life figures that tease the eye with perspective and size. The things he can do with white paint is amazing.

All Photos Property of BLU



This short film by Blu is amazing. An animation painted on public walls in Buenos Aires and in Baden, BLU's work surpasses simple grafitti, and turns the cityscape itself into a giant morphing canvas. The entire effect is breathtaking.



BLU's most recent project has been a larger-than-life mural on the exterior of the Tate London, aptly entitled "Headquarters."



Here are some close-ups:






BLU's site: here
BLU's blog: here

(Thanks to Pat for the link to the film)

Weekend Buys

Had a really nice weekend - went and saw Sex in the City with Gala, Gilda and friends, followed up by a rather awesome roof party hosted by my pal Brian. Saturday and Sunday I stayed mainly in the house, apart from a brief excursion with Boyfriend Kaboom to Barnes and Noble where I picked up some awesome goodies.



I snatched up the Martin Millar's new book "Lonely Werewolf Girl" (which I am super excited to read even though I hate the cover), a new leather-bound edition of the complete works of the Brothers Grimm, a pack of Moleskine cahier books, and a set of lovely glittery notecards.

I am most excited by the collection of Grimm's tales. I already had a copy of these, but I took one look at this book and knew I needed to replace it immediately.



The book is wrapped in forest green leather, and embossed in silver and gold. The pages are gold leafed and it has a ribbon bookmark.





The end pages are covered with gorgeous forest scenes (even Haiku liked them). I am so in love with this book - I can't imagine a more perfect way to house such wonderful stories.



Haiku is such a ham.

Flickr Fan: fab34

Fab34 lives in Taipei, Taiwan, and I can't get enough of his work: candid shots that are fun, beautiful and sweetly personal. I look at them and feel like i'm viewing the memories of some rad person...













Flickr Page here.
Flickr River here.