NUMBER ONE HUNDRED & FORTY SEVEN.
July06
Portland, ME. May 2011
NUMBER ONE HUNDRED & FORTY SIX.
July06
Buena Vista, CO. May 2011
NUMBER ONE HUNDRED & FORTY TWO.
June14
Staying with fashion, Swedes Our Legacy have released a bumper crop of button downs as part of their summer collection. Bra häftigt!
NUMBER ONE HUNDRED & FORTY ONE.
June14
I’ve been in New York for the better part of a month now, so figured it was high time I started sharing some of the gems I’ve discovered in this AMAZING city.
First up, a huge highlight was visiting the Alexander McQueen Savage Beauty installation at the Metropolitan Museum. The retrospective of McQueen’s short but hugely influential career is nothing short of spectacular, giving a real insight into McQueen’s creative process and the themes which resonate throughout his collections; life or death, lightness or darkness, predator and prey, man versus machine.
I went into this exhibition largely unaware of McQueen’s contribution to fashion over the last decade, but left immensely impacted by this artist who managed to consistently blend the macabre and the saccharine into something ether-worldly and, ultimately, shockingly beautiful. As Andrew Bolton, curator of the exhibition, refers to it, the idea of the sublime was fundamental to McQueen’s work.
I was particularly drawn to McQueen’s unique method of incorporating natural materials into his designs. The concept of the natural world asserting it’s power over humanity’s echoes throughout the breadth of his collections, especially prevalent in his final, posthumous, show which predicts a future in which “the ice cap would melt … the waters would rise and … life on earth would have to evolve in order to live beneath the sea once more or perish. Humanity [would] go back to the place from whence it came.”
Personally, I was enamored by McQueen’s use of feathers (an aesthetic which continued to crop up), and in his SS07 collection his use of fresh flowers to create dresses that, as they withered, resonate in much the same way the Dutch masters’ still lifes do. There is a visceral quality to pieces like these.
McQueen managed to consistently theme his season’s contributions around a narrative. For me, the stand out dress of the exhibition hails from McQueen’s SS03 collection Irene, where “the collection told the story of a shipwreck at sea and the subsequent landfall in the Amazon, and it was peopled with pirates, conquistadors, and Amazonian Indians.” The dress itself, simply known as ‘Oyster’ is best described by Sarah Burton, McQueen’s Creative Director: he wanted it to seem “almost like she drowned—and the top part of the dress is all fine boning and tulle, and the chiffon is all frayed and disheveled on the top. The skirt is made out of hundreds and hundreds of circles of organza. Then, with a pen, what Lee did was he drew organic lines. And then all these circles were cut, joined together, and then applied in these lines along the skirt. So you created this organic, oyster-like effect.” It apparently took a team of three people, working exclusively on this dress, several months to complete. Worth it? Undoubtedly.
I love that Alexander McQueen was never afraid to push the boundaries - whether with regard to a silhouette or his choice of raw materials, his career is marked by creativity and courage. The exhibition was an eye-opening experience, and if you’re in New York you should definitely make the effort to immerse yourself in McQueen’s world.
NUMBER ONE HUNDRED & THIRTY TWO.
March14
Sydney based designer James Kape is going places, namely The Big Apple. In the hopes of landing a junior position at a reputable agency, he’s created these pretty great portfolios - they’re hand-crafted by an artisan book binder using brown box cover and a strip of yellow buckram on the binding. The cover title was letterpressed and the interior pages were printed digitally. Running with that typically Australian sense of informality, Jame’s casual ‘designer most days’ title belies his obvious talent. It doesn’t hurt that he has a particularly nice body of work to present (this kid hasn’t even graduated yet?! FML.)
NUMBER ONE HUNDRED & TWENTY NINE.
January21
Got anonymous beef with someone, but don’t want to look like those assholes who write in their 450 words to the smh Heckler column? Enter the cathartic youdontdeserve.com, a site devoted to letting you send your negative vibes off into the netherweb… Of course if you’re not feeling pissed at somebody specific, a browse through everyone else’s pet peeves can be almost as soothing, or at least pretty funny.
NUMBER ONE HUNDRED & TWENTY SEVEN.
January03
Of course this post could qualify as jumping on board that bandwagon of ‘best of lists’ that occupy blogs the blogosphere over as we ring in the new year, but hey, who ever said I was above bandwagons?
That said, I have to say that there have been a number of amazing albums that dropped this year; from some exceptional debuts to solid sophomore releases (or if you’re Sufjan Stevens, two new releases to count towards a body of work which already rivals that of the prolific Ryan Adams).
So without further ado, here’s my list of the best new albums that have played soundtrack to the year that was twenty ten.
NUMBER ONE HUNDRED & TWENTY SEVEN.
December14
Hey everyone!
Here at the New Exhibition studio we’ve really been getting into the Christmas spirit this week - our tree is up, decorated and lit, and the whole place smells so Christmas-y!
I’ve been on the hunt for some holiday themed tunes today and thought it would be fun to share them - you can download the entire mixtape, Throw Another Log On The Old Yulefire, here.
The track list is as follows:
It’s Christmas - Coconut Records
Noel - sleepyhands
White Winter Hymnal - Fleet Foxes
Deilig Er Jorden - Kings of Convenience
Covered In Snow - William Fitzsimmons
Lo, How a Rose E’re Blooming - Feist
Blue Christmas - First Aid Kit
Christmas In The Room - Sufjan Stevens
It’s Christmas So We’ll Stop - Frightened Rabbit
Winter Winds - Mumford & Sons
Got Something For You - Best Coast & Wavves
Baby Please Come Home - The Raveonettes
Jingle Bell Rock - Arcade Fire
Hope you enjoy, and Merry Christmas!
x
NUMBER ONE HUNDRED & TWENTY SIX.
December07
So, until today I only knew of one Annie Novak. She’s marrying my friend Benjamin, in Maine this coming April and I’m pretty excited about the whole thing. But that said, this post isn’t about that Annie Novak. She’ll be Annie Krebs in a few months anyhow. Nope, the Annie Novak I discovered today is a different woman all together.
See, this Annie’s the urban farmer behind Eagle Street Rooftop Farm in Brooklyn NYC. Ya know, that place that has over thirty varieties of veggies, a working compost system, chickens, rabbits and bee hives all just chillin’ on a roof that looks out across the East River to the Manhattan Skyline. No biggie. As Annie puts it, the farm is a culmination of ‘bravery, curiosity, innovation and hard work’, and if you ask me, is bringing new meaning to urban environmental living.
Found via The Selby
NUMBER ONE HUNDRED & TWENTY FIVE.
November25
I just had my first listen through to Avey Tare (AKA David Portner from Animal Collective)’s new LP Down There. Tare’s first official solo full length carries you through a murky world of sound that is both honest and otherworldly. As his myspace puts it: Wait for sundown and turn it up loud. Take a ride on Tare’s haunted boat and let yourself be guided through deep sloshy rhythms, waterlogged bass, and moonlit breaks in the canopy that reveal a crisp crystalline pop buzz.
Overflowing with musical ideas and sound scapes, Down There is in many senses a furthering of the musical architecture laid down by Merryweather Post Pavillion - but here Tare has stretched his experimental dance music musings to new watery depths. Each song is pieced together by floating field recordings that sound as if they’ve been put through every type of phaser pedal known to mankind - further adding to the shimmering, submerged atmosphere of Tare’s sonic universe. And on that note don’t resist. Let your ears go for a dip.
The video above is the first single Lucky 1, hand drawn and animated by Abby Portner, Tare’s sister.
