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!