when cool girls get together

saw a little snippet or what is it, blurb? i don't know, this little piece of video on Swedish design firm/collective FRONT on the discovery channel randomly. they are just a bunch of really hip girls, making really cool shit. this is fuel for life. and so Scandinavian, isn't it? look at how cool they are, drop-crotch/harem pants and all. some stuff that comes out of Scandinavia is so cool that it just boggles my mind. how can you guys be so cool all the time? how do you manage being so consistently hip? that's a lot of pressure. i just want to go to a strip mall in jersey!

their website, designfront, has a pretty comprehensive archive of everything they've ever done together.



this piece is called Mooi Blow Away Vase. "The digitalized version of a Royal delft vase has been given new parameters for the material and is there after exposed of simulated wind." I''m not sure whether the vase was or will be fabricated in this new wind-swept look but i sure hope they do. I've really loved blue and white porcelain/china for some time now, willow patterns and all. I don't know if it has anything to do with toile de jouy, mostly found on teapots and such items. but they china always reminds me of it and vice versa. i just love a good pastoral theme! i've been collecting toile festooned things for some time now, like ribbons and swatches and wall-paper samples. they serve no real purpose, i just like to look at them from time to time.

most recently, i was goofily delighted to find such prints on jeremy scott's s/s '09 collection. instead of the more conventional provincial scenes laden with milk maids and rustic yet handsome looking shepards, his patterns depict eerie trolls on swings. kinda fun.




i don't know if i would ever wear toile embellished clothing though. i've recently discovered that there is a fine line between things that are just really beautiful and things that should be worn. nevertheless i like his take on it- it's a little too obvious sometimes but he is definately an interesting postmodern designer who likes to play with kitschy references...

moving on... this piece is from a collection called Design By... "Objects where a part of the design has been determinated by external factors and series of events which have affected the design process at random." there are a whole lot more than just these four, like Design by Sunlight, Scanner, and Explosion, but these were my favorite.



the first black table is called Design by Mechanics. from what i gather the table learns to walk on its own, or at least the legs are jointed in a way that allows the table to move by itself. it reminds me of michel gondry's segment in Tokyo, called "Interior Design", where i think the girl slowly becomes a wooden chair. i haven't seen it yet but have been reading up on it a lot.



check out the trailer. the second piece is called Design by Motion. that's pretty obvi, the vase is falling down. but it is beautiful nonetheless. the site states that traditionally in movies, "vases are doomed to break" so it's a part of the vase's function. pretty coooooool. the third one with the lamp is pretty hilarious. it's called Design by Gravity. it serves its purpose when you are there and falls asleep when you are not. haha. the final one, Design by Pressure is just a bunch of really delicate branches morphed into the shape of a coffeetable with high pressure. the shadows on the floor are pretty...

this one is called Design by Animals. "Wallpaper, hooks, lamps and other everyday objects designed by rats, dogs, snakes and beetles. We asked animals to help us. "Sure, we'll help you out" they answered. "Make something nice" we told them. And so they did." haha, aren't they whimsical? be my best friend! you need an asian!



I'll start with the second piece, the coat hangers. snakes would squeeze pieces of clay and voila! coat hangers! cute. the red table has insect paths created by various insects, like ant trails or something. the lamp is a "mould made by a rabbit hole". the "wallpaper" was done by rats. it reminds me of Elana Herzog's work that i first got a chance to see at the Museum of Art and Design show Radical Lace and Subversive Knitting. doesn't it look similar? except herzog is the rat and she can get really obsessive.



the cool girls at work on Sketch Furniture:



the finished product:



FRONT has basically found a way to make free hand sketches of furniture in the air come to life. check out the video below. your brain is going to explode!



i know this post wasn't very much about fashion, but i've been thinking, if you don't like this kind of stuff, probably you are a loser of some sort and don't understand good fashion anyways. haha, just joking, actually not really at all. i love them and i bet they're really good shoppers as well!

moremoremore

balenciaga prefall '09

givenchy prefall '09

alexander wang prefall '09

fur sleeves, fur mittens, fur leg warmers... fur fur fur

FUR!

(images from style)

more prefall

marni prefall '09.

burberry prefall '09. i really don't care about burberry at all, not in any way, but look at those pants!

miu miu prefall '09. i feel like you only have a ten to fifteen year time period to appropriately wear miu miu. the clock is ticking.

no cool photoshop things. my trial period has expired. oh no! now my miu miu period will expire! more to come...

(images from style)

head-butt

i heard on cnn that that guy from 24 head-butted one of the proenza schouler designer. that's really strange. and even stranger on cnn. but at least they make pretty clothes. i've actually never been compelled to buy something proenza though i've tried on a couple of things. i always find that with smaller but well known brands like these, stores never carry what i really want from their collections. in my opinion they always carry the watered down stuff that's easy to wear for everyone but no one really wants that much. the prefall '09 collection is pretty much awesome. these are some of my favorites. especially that cobalt blue leather jacket with gold skirt. i find prefall is always way more accessible from an outfitting point of view. sometimes collections are too concerned with theme and overall presentation. which i love. but also i just really love seperates that i can wear.

(images from style)

my own

these pretties are my ld tuttles. enjoy. excuse my wolfboy toenails.

natalia brilli

found this natalia brilli necklace at reborn which i first read about at childhoodflames. i've been a fan of hers for a while now but alas, i don't own any of her pieces. my mother, however, does. so at least i know that one day if i am very very good to her she will pass it on down to me. though my constant fear is that by the time she is ready to give up her goods she will somehow favor my brother's future wife (her new daughter-in-law) and give all of her hermes and other such items to her. this is a real, legitimate fear. you don't know korean mothers. especially korean mother-in-laws. i can either try really hard from now on to be on my mom's good side or just pray to jesus that i will find my own korean mother-in-law with this gift-giving habit. but the latter is truly a gamble, cuz i could also just end up making kimchi every winter and spring. what to do...

anyways, this is a beaufitulll necklace. leather, chains, "slim feather inserts".... mmm i like the sound of slim feather inserts... she's usually known for leather embossing. she seriously leather embosses everything. it's like all of her jewelry/accessories start out as real, normal jewelry but then oh! let's put a coat of leather on it! which gives it a "i'm emerging from leather" look. even beads, her beads look like they were dipped in liquid leather... but i love this piece. it's called raven. and is $2917109480934809. wow!

(images from reborn)

ld tuttle: the gallerina's shoe of choice

ld tuttle is probably my favorite maker of shoes, and i am a loyal, loyal follower/buyer/worshipper. i first discovered them, actually, through one of my bosses when i was working at an art gallery in chelsea a while back. she always had the best shoes on and at first i just thought she was a really good shopper or something. good for you! i noticed her shoes were always so sculptural and contemporary (like the true gallerina that she is) and didn't have all the fuss and gross-ness that comes with some other designer brand shoes. haha, what i mean to say is that her shoes were never screaming "im a designer shoe" and i could never really pinpoint where i had seen them before. they were so original. after weeks of eavesdropping i found out that she got her shoes from her sister, who designs ld tuttle! i know its just a shoe but i cannot stop praising ld tuttle. there are so many elements and references involved and they're all in tune with what we're interested in right now. they're not girly, like oooh im wearing heals kind of girly, they've got direction and a sense of dignity to them. futuristic but really functional and experimental without pretense. so many designers interpret that ancient-warrior vibe through various renditions of the gladiator sandal, but i think ld tuttle does it with a little more edge. just a tad bit more of the primitive and a whole lot more craftsmanship. you know cuz when you hold them, you're like 'mm that feels like a good shoe...' i think they look like prehistoric cyborgs. and the heals are always so sculptural and unique. like a leebul sculpture:



they've got a really contemporary edge, something i feel a lot of other designers ignore. a lot of shoes these days are really beautiful and take art and sculpture into consideration. but only because that's the thing to do nowadays.

I'll post pictures of my own ever expanding collection soon. ld tuttle has a slideshow of past collections and they are def worth checking out. they also did a collabo with VPL recently and also urban outfitters called colonial madness. the VPL shoe i found on creatures of comfort are so... beautiful....



(images all from google and creatures of comfort)