Apr

28

Park, life

Filed Under This Just In | 3 Comments 

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Maintaining a blog is a lot of work. Being consistent is vital. Being relevant is even better.

Although I noticed my writing develop, and my ideas take shape, for the time being there is too much on my plate to be consistent and relevant.

I’m determined to keep on with my writing. It’s the posting I can’t guarantee.

So for now, I’m making my exit, with the intention to return occasionally. Hopefully, remaining relevant; with luck, insightful.

Cue the music.

IMAGE | Blur| To the End | 1994

Apr

7

As Green as it Gets: Five Helpful Tips for the Home and Garden

Filed Under Told You So | 2 Comments 

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Years ago I came up with a few drafts for an upstart tween magazine to see if eco-writing (ecology writing) was my thing, or at least I thing I can do. The magazine never materialized, and neither did my enviro pieces. Since it is a spring, I was hoping I could inject a little life to at least the following article where it probably could do good online, than dormant in an archived folder.

Being green doesn’t have to be difficult. In fact, it can be really fun, creative and inexpensive, on top of being extremely rewarding. It can be done, anywhere and anytime, with items commonly found in the home.

Natural or organic household products are biodegradable, sustainable and won’t harm the environment. Why? Because they are things that are already found in nature. For example, food scraps and wood shavings are items that can return to land safely. The soil gets a vitamin boost from the scraps and the shavings help control the moisture. The soil becomes regenerated and ready for new life–like trees and fruit-bearing plants. How do you know if something is safe to return to the earth? If the product came from the ground, chances are, it probably doesn’t mind going back into it. Read more

Apr

1

The Cool Cat in the Hat

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I know I would look entirely ridiculous attempting to pull off the above look, but I am coveting the “cutaway cap” shown on the Nina Ricci runway for Fall 2009.

Really. I am. No April Foolin’ here.

IMAGE | Nina Ricci | photographer unknown | Fashionologie | 5 March 2009

Mar

26

Sign of the Time, and the ReadyMade, and maybe the Your Prom too.

Filed Under Inside Out | 2 Comments 

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The recession has already killed a number of mags. Some were short-lived start-ups, others, so far, had been mainstays in the publishing biz. Titles I thought were unfaltering, suffering an unjust demise. Entirely tragic.

To make myself feel a bit better about the whole thing, I’ve adopted the adage, “It’s not the length of life, but the quality of life lived.” Still. It’s the very quality of these mags ending which has me going from shock to depression and back again; stages one and six of the Seven Stages of Magazine Grief.

To wallow a little more in my writer’s gloom, I seem to seek places where I can further confront my denial–stage two–by visiting mag blogs, pour over publishing industry feeds and websites, or by simply walking among Magazines at Chapters, where no one is safe from my stage five anger.

I see a young man in the Entertainment section flip through Photolife. He carefully replaces the magazine when he hasn’t found what he’s looking for, and picks up Flaunt to thumb through next. I decide I respect this man’s choices of editorial fare and figure him to be a magophile. I gather all my mag-loving courage and embark. You see that? Pointing to Arena. April is the last issue. Then no more. Twenty years later and no more. You should buy that issue because it’s the last one. I think I am too. I’m going to start a little museum of sorts of every magazine’s last issue. How about you? Do you think the last issue is good?

I kid you not. I do do this. Read more

Mar

23

Action Causes more Trouble than Thought

Filed Under This Just In | 1 Comment 

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Jenny Holzer twitters! Can you believe it? Now if only Twitter had an option where you can manipulate the feed font to look and act like an LED! It would be Jenny Holzer’s longest–ongoing–exhibition to date!

IMAGE | Luis Colan | Jenny Holzer, 2008, 7 curved double sided LED signs. Cheim & Read, NYC | from flickr.com | 28 March 2008

Mar

18

Bow Knows

Filed Under Vogue Rogue | 1 Comment 

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The Cat-astrophe M·A·C-Hello-Kitty post (and this will be the last of my meanderings on this theme) has got me thinking about bows lurking in all kinds of places. On hats and cats; Minnie and GaGa.

The style blogs are agog with the hair-raising (well, more hair-placing) accessory ever since Leighton Meester’s character, Blair Waldorf, from television series Gossip Girls has been donning them, episode after episode.

I confess, I’ve never watched the series, but judging from the pictures available of Meester’s looks online, it appears the bow-band (consider that trademarked!) offers a sense of class, (in every sense of the word) to two variations of the same haughty attitude: I have money and I’m flaunting it with my overpaid for appropriated wardrobe part bubby part Bergdorf, or I’m better than all these private school uniform clad students who are like the speed bumps of life. Argh!

Mischa Barton, from The O.C. (the other Josh Schwartz calorie-wise programming), tried to revive the headband earlier, in an exclusive collection developed with accessories designer Stacey Lapidus. Although the selected bands remain for sale online, the press has been more critical towards the actresses new turn in career, and front-row attendance at fashion shows, than the line itself that I’m hard-pressed to know if the collaboration has been successful. Read more

Mar

13

Who? Me? You Must be Miss-kitten.

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Years ago (2004 to be exact) I thought Hello Kitty deserved a little re-branding. Her ageless youth was not to be tampered with, but rather her name.

Many of her longtime admirers had grown up and along with the famed cartoon. Didn’t she deserve a more age-appropriate moniker than Hello Kitty?

Hello Miss K is sublime and playful all at once. It’s more than a name, but a reference too; now that the old gal is familiar in pop culture.

Also, its current.

Starting and signing off e-mails, IMs, Twitters and more, with an initial is the norm. In the future, conversation and communication may be entirely reduced to single letters, which stand in for words and larger thoughts.

At this point, it’s not about Hello Kitty conforming. It’s about her keeping up. Remaining relevant is subject to a face-lift, now and then.

IMAGE | ANS | Hello Miss K | 2004 | Illustrator and a lot of patience NB | A really thorough article on “texting as communication” can be found at WhoKnew.org, under Is text messaging evolving language?

Mar

9

A Cat-astrophe in the Faking

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I told myself many times I would not blog about M·A·C Cosmetics’ partnership with Sanrio’s Hello Kitty. The line already garnered a ton of attention from media and retail outlets. Also, the collection will most likely be sold out at the time of this post. So, who needs a review on the kawaii Kitty Kat from me?

However, against my own position, here I am. The reason for my little rebellion? The makeup giant’s campaign took on a whole new level of ridiculousness that has gotten under my skin instead of on top of it.

Again, somehow M·A·C successfully imposed their idea of “made up” into another version of their famed androgyny. (This might be an easy transformation to accomplish with previous M·A·C spokespeople like RuPaul, Pamela Anderson, Boy George, and Shirley Manson, but how the art department managed to get their little hands on Hello Kitty–a cartoon no less!–and un-kitty-ify her can only be the work of M·A·C magic!) I’ve always been a bit torn by this cosmetic wizardry, only because I feel it celebrates the other, more than the self, which is what I feel make up should do. (Bring out the best; not bring out the rest.)

In all fairness however, what started out as M·A·C’s polemic and representation of men in makeup, and incredibly stylized women, now nearly seems to be the norm. That is, in embracing one’s own fantasy, outwardly and visually, people have become more like one another, and have also learned, they are like one another. So I will give M·A·C credit on being the revolutionary foundation (not concealer!) in at least how manipulating our appearances externally, society in general, to an extent, has come to accept one another’s actual being, now.

Then explain how such a forward-thinking company managed to approve a recycled concept for their cinematic short promoting the Hello Kitty line? My reaction is not unlike the models’ facial expression screen-captured in the above image. WTF? (As in, What the Feline?) Read more

Mar

4

I Castellane a Spell on You

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My fascination with colourful enamel bauble is not new. However, my interest in seeing the way enamel jewelry is made today, is. Luckily I have two illustrious resources, behind the career of one particular artist, to consult.

Victoire de Castellane was with Chanel for 14 years before moving onto her current post as Creative Director of Fine Jewelry at Dior. From a lineage of aristocrats, Victoire was exposed to many people and places at a young age, when she first discovered her love of jewelry–her grandmother’s, Sylvia Hennessy, pieces–and melted her catechism medallions to create charms. By 11-years old, Victoire was sending her designs to be made at ateliers.

I wouldn’t be surprised if one of the ateliers used, at least while at Chanel, was the famous Desrues; now, part of Karl Lagerfeld’s Chanel “satellites.” Established in 1929, Georges Desrues transformed the company into a highly-specialized outfit for costume jewelry and buttons for fashion designers, by way of introducing metalsmithing techniques such as “engraving, polishing, and gilding.” In the past, Desrues’s clients include, Lanvin, YSL and Dior. However, the majority of the work done now appears to be predominantly for Chanel. Read more

Feb

27

Read ’Em and Weep

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Insanely amazing show, Between the Covers, Women’s Magazines and their Readers, at The Women’s Library, London, UK. The exhibit ends 1 April 2009. A fantastic review of the show by Kathryn Hughes, over at the Guardian.

Ack! Who wants to go? I’ve never been to the UK! I think I’ll fall apart if I miss this. Where to stay? How to go? Feedback, please, please, please!

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