February 2012
1 post
7 tags
Adidas Y-3 S/S 2012 Campaign / Collier Schorr
The new Y-3 Spring/Summer 2012 campaign by Collier Schorr takes its cue from the experimental city of Brasilia. Portraits are collaged with xeroxes of archival Brasilia, to suggest a delicate balance between the body and the many ways it is contained. Hmm, let me just express my love for Collier Schorr, and how she takes great portraits of “adolescent men” (translate how you will)...
January 2012
2 posts
2 tags
Acne F/W 2012
I can probably count the number of fashion shows I’ve been to on two hands. I’m not going to pretend I’m some kind of authority; I’ve only been around since 2008, and I readily admit that the clothes side of fashion doesn’t really get me excited (and yes, there are other sides to fashion). In fact, I used to think of fashion week as being a bit of a spoiler that...
12 tags
The Pastel Plague
A pastel trend in editorials has proven itself immortal, like a weed, whose removal seems onerous, if not altogether impossible. I still haven’t decided if I’m simply indifferent, or fond. One thing is for sure: this trend has been exhausted like Coco Rocha on every social network ever invented. There are even tumblrs dedicated to this muted colour scheme that revel in its pallor. It...
December 2011
8 posts
4 tags
Ethos / Justin Wu + Nick Bateman
I wrote the monologue voiceover for Justin Wu’s new video Ethos featuring actor Nick Bateman. I’m very excited and gracious that I got to be a part of this. It’s pretty cool when your words are put into some greater context that gives them meaning, or even an audience. I’ve been doing a lot of writing recently for a score of publications (read: like, two), and with rewrites...
3 tags
Visionaries: Tom Ford
6 tags
Anna Wintour Interview / Vogue Archives
Access to 400,000 pages of fashion history can be yours for $1500, a nominal fee equal to what it would have cost you to buy every issue of Vogue in real life when it came out, in order to look at it in “crisp detail, with all the illustrations and ads” on a screen. Do you live in the 1920s and wonder what shoes you should wear out in the rain? $1500 for the answer. Or free here (just...
7 tags
Alexander Fury Lives Up To His Name
Alexander Fury lived up to his name today, when he took to twitter to rant about one Alexa Chung. I know, this ain’t a news blog, and this type of thing you’d more expect to read on Jezebel, but give me a break, I just had to use that pun. Chung, recent recipient of the British Style Award two years running, is basically one of those fashion floaters who cruises on by, adorned with...
8 tags
Karim Sadli + 032c
Leave it to Beaver (read: 032c) to come up with a creative way to expand on the visual horizons of Italo Zucchelli’s chef d’œuvre that was the CK Collection F/W 2011. I want every piece here, mostly because I know that if I were given the money to afford anything resembling something more high fashion than Zara, I would splurge on these padded nylon-sleeved (at least, I’m...
4 tags
Thomas Lohr + Sleek Magazine / Lowdown
Thomas Lohr puts a new spin on the shaved head. Too many editorials have featured bad haircuts, or Cole Mohr getting his head shaved. There should be a fuck yeah models getting their head shaved tumblr, because there are so many crummy examples that I’m too sloth to find. I swear all of the ideas I put on here that don’t get acted upon could really turn into million dollar ideas....
4 tags
Peel Away the Outer Shell
I’ve been attending a party with children (follow me). It’s my output when I have little input. I’ve been busy working on closing the February issue of Husk (follow us), and a cool project with Justin Wu (follow him). Hopefully more cool stuff to come when I have more time. We’ve got a lot of exciting stuff for this new issue—working with some pretty impressive...
4 tags
Derivative Works of Art
A video mashup (also written as video mash-up) is the combination of multiple sources of video—which usually have no relation with each other—into a derivative work, often lampooning its component sources or another text. Many mashup videos are humorous movie trailer parodies, a later genre of mashups gaining much popularity. To the extent that mashups are ‘transformative’ of original...
November 2011
5 posts
15 tags
New Magazine Rundown / SID / Stage Fashion / The...
Every so often a new magazine finds its way onto the newsstand (either virtual or real) that manages to raise my eyebrows. I would say eyebrow but I don’t want you to think I have some strange unibrow that I go around shopping with. Right out of left field comes SID magazine, which, minus the dubious art direction and iffy choice of fonts, manages to make up what it lacks with its...
8 tags
Runway Report / Calvin Klein
Isn’t it a crying shame that nobody has capitalized on a website where you click a look that you like from a certain collection, say, look 11 from Italo Zucchelli’s Calvin Klein Collection F/W 11, and then all the subsequent editorials in which said look appears in materialize before your eyes? Am I alone here in wanting to see a certain garment in every light, interpretation, and...
7 tags
Mary Kate & Ashley Olsen / Designer Masterclass
Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen did a Designer Masterclass for Net-a-Porter.com where they go through all fifteen pieces of their collection The Row. In true Olsen style, they can hardly contain their excitement. Giddily laughing and shrieking like the two über-famous twins that they are, they talk about biker girl pants that are stretchy (read: comfortable) and a cape (which is, apparently, key for a...
9 tags
Alexander Beck + Alessandro Dal Buoni / Hero...
Alexander Beck shines in this editorial and video by Alessandro Dal Buoni for the new issue of Hero magazine. Since it’s inception in 2009, Hero has managed to hold its own. I’ll be honest, I was wary as to whether or not a magazine completely dedicated to models—and male models at that—would be able to survive more than two issues. A magazine “all about the guys that are...
2 tags
Objectivism + Ayn Rand
October 2011
3 posts
Tavi on CBS News
So don’t know how many of you have been following Rookie Mag since its début, but apparently Tavi is into TV spots and stuff these days. The shitty part is that since she is still “finding herself” and can’t really give straight answers this interview completely sucks. It doesn’t really help at all that the interviewers are the stereotypical mom and dad that you...
3 tags
Miu Miu / Bruce Weber + Hailee Steinfeld
You may remember her as the outspoken cowgirl from that No Country For Old Men sequel. However, Hailee Steinfeld stars in this Bruce Weber biopic that’s more of a drawn out behind-the-scenes video for one of The Selby’s shoots. She frolicks with the clothes, and then, spoiler alert, waves goodbye as she eloquently exits with an armful of expensive Miu Miu product. It’s like the...
Front Row At Kanye West
Ironic that Kanye’s debut collection was staged at a middle school—Lycée Henri IV in Paris. While it garnered many tisk tisks and face palms, it was at least a spectacle. It’s already got its own fashion spot thread; it crashed the Now Fashion website, and apparently halted YFrog for a good 20 minutes. This, not to mention the “star-studded” front row, which was full of...
September 2011
7 posts
Husk Vol. II No. III / New Contexts
I may be completely bias, but I am going to try objectivity. Having finally finished HUSK’s F/W 12 issue feels a bit like Lady Gaga’s rebirth: really repulsive in principle with probably too much sweat involved. On the contrary, and completely unlike Gaga’s afterbirth, we hope you’ll be as impressed as we were when we saw the final cellophane-wrapped, high gloss cover on...
3 tags
Bully Magazine
A: Say we invited you to make a magazine today, who would you work with almost ten years later? BW: I don’t know, I wouldn’t work with people to do things. I would just collect things from the internet. It’s there. It’s out there you just have to find it, you know. There have been so many magazines, so much information that I don’t know who needs these magazines. Just put it online and that’s it....
6 tags
Quotes by Karl
My tentative plan was to extract all of the apposite quotes and endearing images from Lagerfeld: Confidential, but I became so engrossed with Karl’s trips to Monaco to walk around like a fossil and make funny jokes about an old lady who finds a bellybutton in between her titties that I sort of fell off the motivation train halfway through the film only to later regret it. But here are the...
A Grand Dilemma
Let’s crunch some numbers. Out of 432 pages of LOVE’s A/W 2011 issue, 169 pages are advertisements. That leaves 263 pages of actual content, which can be divvied up into editorial, advertorial, or actual “writing”. That means 39% of LOVE (not including advertorials, of which there are two) constitutes advertising. For those of you who do not know what an advertorial is,...
11 tags
New York
Is it possible to be in love with somebody you’ve never even met? Okay, maybe it’s not a person, and maybe it’s extremely over-idolized to the point of inanity. Similarly to people who feel like they’ve been born in the wrong body, I feel like I have a geological identity crisis. The irony is that some of you will be reading this from my purported future home. New York is...
4 tags
MARC BY MARC JACOBS
With NYFW everywhere you look, it’s getting a little sickening. Personally, I think it’s quite hilarious that tumblr has “tagged on” to the marketability of fashion week, and decided to, excuse the pun, “tag” along for the ride. Whatever, tumblr. You’re such a hip platform. So basically, everybody has been super into technical sportswear or whatever,...
The Proposal
Trey,
I should sleep or work at the moment, as I have absolutely to prepare my applications for the London universities. Buuut, I cannot at the moment as I am allways thinking about magazines and how we could collaborate.
And I have an idea. I know, that you havent seen husk so far and don’t know my work so far, but only know the blog that is offline now. And I have to tell you that...
August 2011
6 posts
2 tags
Poses / Yolanda Dominguez
Watch real women mimic high fashion model poses in real life. Watch how people react to the indestructible superciliousness that is haute pose. “I tried to express what many women feel about women’s magazines and the image of women in the media – absurd, artificial, a hanger to wear dresses and bags, only concerned about being skinny, beautiful,” explained Dominguez in an...
6 tags
David Bailey
After the impertinent dropping of bombs on his childhood home during WWII, English photographer David Bailey had to relocate to a new home. “In the winter”, he recalled, the family “would take bread-and-jam sandwiches and go to the cinema every night because in those days it was cheaper to go to the cinema than to put on the gas fire. I’ll bet I saw seven or eight movies a...
1 tag
Sergey Bratkov
Sergey Bratkov, born in the Ukraine, took controversial photos of youth, army girls, secretaries, and souvenirs. He’s participated in more exhibitions than there are Disney films. He’s still alive. He’s to be considered in the Soviet and post-Soviet context. Judging by his photos, he’s probably a scary person in real life. But hey, aren’t most artists? Didn’t...
6 tags
Kenji Onglao
Taking scenes out of a life that you wish you could be living, Kenji Onglao photographs summers. It’s the best season in most parts of the world, and usually the one where most people “do” things that are more creative, due to the fact that they weren’t forced into it. It’s probably a style well-suited to Vice or Baby Baby Baby, or those other publications I...
3 tags
Nuns Give More Fucks Than Me
There is now a major lack of space for filing complaints without qualms with advertisers or potential employers peering in. Facebook, Twitter—nowhere is safe anymore to publish an opinion without suffering the peanut gallery backlash. Let’s just be clear that complaining isn’t valid unless somebody hears it, so don’t give me that “write in a diary” bullshit. Look what...
5 tags
Less Than Zero
There is hardly any case where the movie is better than its paper counterpart, but in this case, I’d beg to differ. Although still impressive that Bret Easton Ellis wrote the book Less Than Zero when he was 23 and still in college, it doesn’t take away from the fact that it sucks. Only when translated to the screen with the likes of Robert Downey Jr. does it gain artistic merit....
July 2011
5 posts
12 tags
Dylan Coulter
Dylan Coulter recently had the opportunity to document a once prevalent way of life (read: ranching) that is quickly fading from the American landscape (read: the states nobody visits). Fortunately, this cowboy culture lives on in the white supremacist, tea party supporting Texans like Michele Bachmann. Fortunately, for real this time, you can mostly escape all politics if you take a trip to the...
3 tags
Boys of Fashion Week S/S 2012 / Justin Wu
Doing a video roundup this week. Mostly because I’m in Lagos and my time is being monopolized by drinking stuff and lying in places. It’s a tough life. We’re renting this vacation apartment, and by we I mean my parents, because, let’s be serious. I cannot afford this. But before I head to the beach to do probably nothing, I just thought I’d show you Justin Wu’s...
5 tags
Supernice
On the way to Barcelona, I opened the door to head out to the airport when, at my feet, was a small box addressed to me. Naturally, I couldn’t leave on my trip before opening my mail and satiating all curiosity. To my surprise, my friend Nils Dunkel sent me a copy of his first ever book, Supernice. It’s a visual collection of imagery from the voyage treader. He made pit stops in Venice...
3 tags
Wednesday, March 12, 1980
A year to the day before I was born, this is what Andy Warhol did: I bought a hundred Popisms from Harcourt Brace. Gerard called up for two copies of the book. We still need an idea for the next cover of Interview. I gave Brigid the tape of Diana Vreeland and Sharon Hammond, but I forgot that for about ten minutes Sharon and I were talking about Brigid on it. I had told Brigid about Diana...
3 tags
Blade Runner Curse
A large part of my job as an editor is emailing cool stuff I find to the other editor. This usually comprises of letters received from J.K. Rowling, articles on the seven deadly sins, and other inspiration that designers pay to discover at the bottom of some snake charmer’s basket in a popularly-chic-foreign-sounding place. Well, all that and a bag of chips can be found on wikipedia. So...
June 2011
6 posts
9 tags
Estelle Hanania
Estelle Hanania is something wonderful out of Paris. I met up with her recently and she’s currently en route to South Africa to shoot a commissioned project. Her minimalist shots have maximal effect. It’s her fascination with objects and shapes that make her portraits so much more absorbing. Estelle won Festival de Hyères in 2006, and has worked with Maison Martin Margiela, Nike, Urban...
6 tags
The Stupids
This gem of a film resurfaced recently when I was telling bad jokes. The Stupids — a film about Stanley Stupid, a daft gentleman who wants to discover who keeps taking away his trash and ultimately uncovers a real conspiracy by accident — is really not worth watching. You’ll be disappointed, believe me. However, if that twelve year old sense of humour is stirring inside you, or if...
9 tags
Jeff Wall
I’m currently reading Bret Easton Ellis’ Less Than Zero. It’s very arid in the way of notable events. It’s as if Helen Keller described every mundane detail of her day in the present tense. I’m a bit disillusioned. I’ve also bookmarked hundreds of interviews that I haven’t yet bothered to read, for complete lack of motivation. For example, Tom Ford by...
7 tags
Wanderlust / Columbine Goldsmith + Dossier Journal
Went on a quick trip to Amsterdam, Brussels, and Bruges, only to be stuck here in Brussels because the Amsterdam train is late on arrival. So I’m sitting on the train with no complaints, because I got upgraded to first class which means free internet and a free dinner, with a possibility of free champagne. The only downside is my slightly similar train version of aeronausiphobia, and eating...
5 tags
Guinevere Van Seenus + Steven Klein / Interview
Guinevere van Seen-it-all flaunts her proud airstrip for Steven Klein in a rottweiler haunt as a coolly, unaffected autobot. Although it’s a lot more aesthetically reassuring compared to the Kristen McMenamy editorial in the new 032c, which is frankly disgusting, her landing strip has no business parading around an automobile graveyard complete with wild, rabies-laden rottweilers…...
10 tags
Acne Paper No. 12
The reason I love Acne so much is for their noncommittal, anecdotal and seemingly perfunctory press releases. They are written more like “found” prose that has been peeled off of a steam roller’s wheel. They reaffirm their stance with every published piece they circulate. It’s the ultimate roundtable reflection that is really worth taking the time to read. For Acne Paper...
May 2011
8 posts
7 tags
EY! Brazil & Fanzine 137
As much as I’m elated to see Timothy Kelleher on the new cover of Fanzine 137, I’m equally as disillusioned by the new issue of EY! Magateen, which positions its all-seeing eye on the most regurgitated of all model cesspools: Brazil. What more do we need than another publication exalting the salty armpits of buff airheads? Made In Brazil did it first and did it well. Save your €40 and...
4 tags
Flowerbomb Refillable
My friend was telling me about this guy last night, who shall remain nameless because I’m currently in pursuit of an interview, who recently retired. He was a chemist who traveled the world in search of new scent molecules to create fragrances for a large fragrance company. He would fly over the canopy of a rainforest in a dirigible to capture the scent with a technology he also invented...
2 tags
Dust Magazine
Since we all apparently live to see another day, I thought I should probably blog about something. Dust magazine is pushing fashion in one direction that hasn’t yet been fully explored. They’ve already found their niche in a large market teeming with oversexed and undernourished visual information, and they’ve managed to carve it out with an eclectic selection of content that you...
6 tags
Arielle Dombasle
In the Vincent Darré insert of the Chloë Sevigny issue of Purple No. 14, Arielle Dombasle wrote an introduction as a premise to the content. It was, however, a well-executed piece of text that fit shockingly well with the rest of the imagery. Naturally, I googled the authour, only to find out she was a model cum actress cum model cum singer cum director. Her name is Arielle Dombasle, and she had...
8 tags
V #71 / The Gaga Issue
This post is a day late because I literally had to cool off yesterday after having seen this everywhere. “Yay! An extra V cover that celebrates the vibrant culture of Asia through a white New Yorker.” I read this in a forum and it was practically words stolen straight from my mouth. First of all, this is just highly disconcerting having an over-saturation of a three-headed mother monster sticking...
4 tags
Sara Naim
What’s in a Naim? According to Dazed Digital, Sara Naim’s work explores the interconnectivity between objects and people or something. How terminally fatal somebody had to describe her work in prose! How seemingly decrepit a task to expand 1000 words that were all there to begin with! I’m only writing here by default and none of these words have anything to do with the sexually...
6 tags
Look At All The Fucks I Give
I commend anybody who can produce bona fide blog material on a daily basis without any monetary motivation or self-reflecting brouhaha. It’s fucking exhaustive. Hence, I’ve brought together what I was supposed to be studying with what I actually feel like doing. Enter Fragonard, a French painter in the XVIII century who was known for his paintings of eroticism and state of undress....