29/02/2012

The Editorial: Fifteen Too Many

The Editorial: Fifteen Too Many

Fashion has always been about gloriously enormous vision (and equally enormous ego), but once-upon-a-time it was a space populated by a cohesive and rarefied coterie of tastemakers and savants: breakout models, prodigy designers, inspired photographers and critics who had spent entire careers carving out distinctive editorial voices and nuanced, well-informed tastes. It has always been a circus, but it was a fascinating one filled with strong, smart voices. But now, fashion’s periphery is a lifestyle, overrun by countless self-proclaimed style mavens, pandering PRs, and countless other hangers-on. Bewildering narcissism abounds. Everyone wants a fifteen-minute piece of the Warholian fame pie, and they’re selling slices for cheap nowadays. Limit one per customer.

These fashion victims and prima donnas and party kids tromp around in improbable outfits sipping Clicquot and feigning fabulousness, less interested in the serious rigor of fashion than in flashiness and fame for its own sake. And while they’re nice enough as a sideshow spectacle, their feelings of entitlement are troubling, if understandable in a culture perpetually entranced by celebrity, no matter its source.

Tweet. Namedrop. Sip champagne. Repeat.


The fashion weeks themselves have multiplied, popping up everywhere from Buenos Aires to Bombay to Bangkok. More platforms for more fifteen minutes. And while it’s certainly a good thing that the world of style shall no longer be lorded over by an oligarchy on the Milan-Paris-New York axis, it is at risk of fracturing irreparably. That style axis at least held the arguments together gracefully and lent the fashion system a solid MO. But the cacophony of voices each self-servingly shrieking for attention is progressively drowning out the overarching narrative that gives fashion its credibility. And ladies and gentleman, without that all-important, well-recited narrative, all we’re left with are showy, impractical clothes: a sparkly runway and legions of wannabe Anna Wintours do not a fashion system make.

In this context, brands under pressure to out-manoeuvre Zara and others have taken the path of least resistance and dished out equity to those hangers on. And their predictable fifteen-minute attention spans have led to the implementation of lightning-quick collection changes that have, in turn, engendered lightning-quick caprices of preference. The mix-and-match zeitgeist veers wildly back and forth without much reason as look-at-me cool hunters and myopic bloggers convince labels that deco and jazz are cool. No, wait, punk. No, wait, fifties. No, wait, Italy. No, wait, military! (Does anyone bother to ask why anymore?… Shut up. Just grin and try to look fabulous.) These weak stylistic trends have led to diluted product lines and way too many garish, even hideous collections that will almost certainly age badly. We can look back at the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s and 1990s with relative certainty about their style evolutions and what they meant in the context of politics and sociology and society. What will posterity look back on and see in this decade? A capricious, schizophrenic mess? Well… I don’t really remember because all the bloggers that told me so aren’t cool anymore…


For fashion’s own sake, it is unfortunate that it has become the platform par excellence for those desperately seeking an easy fifteen minutes. Maybe it’s just easier to fake it here. But there is so much substance behind those doing the real, hard work of envisioning and executing fashion’s advance that a focus on these narcissistic sideshows is to miss the point entirely. Funny thing is, the toilers who really do make it all happen often work in silence. Their work is their reward, fashion truly is their passion (excuse the lame but inevitable alliteration), and when they do achieve fame it’s for exceptional work. Not desperate screams for attention.

In the meantime, if fame is your aim, excellent. Get to work. Really. A half-hour. A day. A week. Maybe even a lifetime of celebrity might just be waiting. But if you’re in it for the fifteen, stop screaming already. We’ve already forgotten you.

Tag Christof – Images by Cecil Beaton

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28/02/2012

Kristina Gill: Celebration

Kristina Gill: Celebration

Sometimes I get carried away at the butcher and buy one of everything that’s in the case. I package it all up, freeze it, and then surprise myself later. This week, I found a small leg of lamb in the freezer. Just perfect to celebrate our wedding anniversary. I picked up some apples, sweet potatoes, kale, and leeks at the market. I baked the lamb with apples, garlic, thyme, and some honey, loosely following a Gordon Ramsey recipe. I thinly sliced the sweet potatoes and arranged them in a casserole with olive oil, salt, and pepper. Then I sauteed the kale with leeks and one chili pepper. And so we celebrated our wedding anniversary this year with vitamins, spice, lots of flavor and rich color.

Kristina Gill

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28/02/2012

Christien Meindertsma Knows Sustainability

Christien Meindertsma Knows Sustainability

Although sustainability has become quite a catchy word when speaking about design, it seems rather difficult to understand what it should actually mean. As the undiscussed master Dieter Rams said already in 1987 “Good design conserves resources and minimizes physical and visual pollution throughout the lifecycle of the product,” it is rather difficult to accept the expression ‘sustainable design’ as a 21st century neologism.

Fortunately not all designers apply sustainability as a marketing etiquette. Christien Meindertsma takes the fact for granted, as an obvious quality of every designed product. Since her first projects Christien has put particular accent on the importance of understanding the whole industrial process, from the recovery of raw material to distribution and the final cost of the product.

One of Christien’s most acclaimed projects is the book “PIG 05049” that catalogues 185 worldwide products which contained various parts of a single dutch pig. The book can be taken as a manifesto of Christien’s work as she always tries to make visible the link between traditional local production and contemporary industrial design; the relationship often considered taboo in design culture. As Christien declares “I’d like to make transparent the product that also makes sense. It’s kind of a documentary way of designing, and that’s become my working method”.

Taking this path isn’t as simple as it seems, though. Selling locally produced objects often doesn’t walk hand in hand with the capitalist market. In order to avoid that the work of designers like Christien becomes just a utopian dream, while we as consumers should become more aware and finally stop falling off our feet hearing the word ‘sustainability’.


Rujana Rebernjak – Images courtesy of Christien Meindertsma

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27/02/2012

Deconstructing The Thing

Deconstructing The Thing

The Thing Quarterly is, in the words of the founders, a periodical in the form of an object. The object is typically functional and designed by celebrities and people otherwise notable in their line of work. Contributors in the past have included writer Jonathan Lethem, media artist Anne Walsh, and experimental geographer Trevor Paglen. They make things like military mugs, blank books with shoelaces sewn into them, and flags embedded with instructions on how to fold a flag.

It’s called art, and it’s brilliant.

It works like this: You pay them money ($65 an issue, or $200 a year), and at the dawn of each season you’ll receive a Dominos-shaped cardboard box with the contributors name stamped boldly in Helvetica. It’s clean and would look nice on top of a coffee table. It’s also minimal, as much as an offshoot of the absurd humor of Marcel Duchamp as it is with the craft aesthetic of something like Ready-Made, a crafty monthly rag that tells its readers how to build their own living spaces without having to go to Ikea. But where Ready-Made tells you how to build things, The Thing has celebrities build things, and you pay money to have their objects sent to you. The thing is, you don’t know what they’re going to put in the box until it arrives. One publication described what they do as part MacGuffin, and part… something else. The MacGuffin is the only part I can remember now that I’m thinking it over.

But it’s what’s inside that counts, right?


It depends on who’s putting what inside, and why. The most recent issue is an original Dave Eggers short story printed on a shower curtain. From the perspective of a shower curtain, too. If you’re a die-hard shower curtain fan, you can’t live without it. But James Franco’s tribute to Brad Renfro is downright ridiculous, arriving complete with lipstick, mirror, and a photo book of Franco getting “Brad” carved into his shoulder. If you want a piece of glass that has the words (written by Franco himself) “Brad Forever” smeared on glass in front of a neatly-tucked pocket photo of Renfro, Issue 14 is for you. It’s tacky, vain, and wildly pretentious even for a project where pretentious and indulgence are entry requirements.

But The Thing is heady like that. The people who produce it, visual artists Jonn Herschend and Will Rogan, promote the project as a surprise of sorts, something fun, like finding an object you weren’t looking for in the leftover bin at the local thrift store. Maybe a wolf t-shirt, maybe a set of hand-made wine glasses with a message inscribed on the bottom, maybe a Brad Renfro knife or something. Brad forever.

Wait, that knife exists and costs $650? These guys are full of surprises!

At least it seems like the contributors are having quite the time. Who wouldn’t want to, like Starlee Kine did in Issue 10 (sold out), write a short story about an onion on a cutting board designed for cutting onions? Or silk-screen a post-it-note on a functional shade says, “If this shade is down I’m begging your forgiveness on bended knee with tears streaming down my face,” like Miranda July did in the inaugural issue? This, too, is sold out, though I can’t imagine those words having the same kick the second time the shade is drawn.

But like Duchamp’s urinals, it’s the idea of The Thing is more important than what’s inside the box. And the objects sometimes are surprising, at least in the degree of incompetence they assume of their subscribers. But hey, it’s not like you’re forced to buy into this thing. I mean, if you’re the type of person who thinks it’s cool to spend $65 on a Dave Eggers shower curtain, I’m certainly not going to stop you.

Lane Koivu – Images courtesy of The Thing & Lenny Gonzalez

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24/02/2012

Matter Magazine

Matter Magazine

Almost two years have passed since Enrico Grigoletti interviewed Mr. Olu Michael Odukoya for The Blogazine. Once more the enlightened founder of Kilimanjaro – the critically-acclaimed cult magazine which has been established for eight years, winning a D&AD award in 2006 – is again back to us to draw our attention to his brand new magazine: a modern bi-annual journal titled Matter. Dedicated to a readership interested in the way that new technology affects culture, lifestyle, fashion, and the arts. Matter is a publication targeted to stylish and contemporary men and designed to be read by women as well. The reader of Matter is a flexible person able to understand the potentials and the possibilities offered by the new frontiers of technology; usually a man who lives the present, constantly looking towards the future of an ever-changing and increasingly sophisticated world.

Sharing the same curatorial and design values of its sister publication Kilimanjaro, Matter is the first editorial experimentation that covers different issues concerning style and conceptual art, analyzing them through the lens of modern technology. As said by the project’s mastermind Olu Michael Odukoya “Matter’s content is fairly even split between the creative disciplines, with technology being the unifying thread.”

The cover of the first issue of Matter is dedicated to the English Trip-Hop musician, producer and actor Tricky. Interviews featuring digital media artists such as Aaron Koblin and Pierre Huyghe enrich this first number of the magazine along with a discussion with the art critic Matthew Collings about art on the Internet and a photo portfolio of the conceptual artist Lawrence Weiner by Ari Marcopoulos.

Monica Lombardi – Images courtesy of Matter Magazine

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24/02/2012

Guest Interview n° 36: Christine Onorati

Guest Interview n° 36: Christine Onorati

Independent bookstores are few and far between these days, with online retailers like eBay and Amazon selling canonized works directly to your doorstep for a fraction of the price. So what makes them tick, and how do they manage to stick around? We sat down with Christine Onorati, the founder of WORD, the immensely popular and influential cultural epicenter in Greenpoint, to find out why. We discussed the increasingly diverse role independent retailers have to play in an era when your favorite magazine, op-ed, or piece of literature is just a click away.

WORD opened in March of 2007. How did it begin?

I had a bookstore before in Long Island. I closed it and I moved here. It was a little bit smaller used book store called the BOUNDRY bookshop. But the real reason is because we live here. We love it here. My husband and I moved to the neighborhood in 2006, and we moved the store here in 2007. It didn’t come out of nowhere. We had a store, but we just wanted to move it to Brooklyn, where people actually like bookstores. [Laughs]

WORD is nearly as much of a venue as it is a bookshop, and hosts a variety of events atypical for a bookstore. You don’t have all that many traditional readings. How do you go about booking events?
[We] brainstorm what we think will be a good event. Our philosophy is that there are so many events happening at any given time in New York City that we always try to make them be a little special. Maybe it’s a conversation, maybe it’s a party, maybe it’s the author being interviewed by somebody interesting. We try to stay away from straightforward, single authors standing on stage and reading fiction.

How do you manage to stay viable with online retailers, such as Amazon, that offer books at a fraction of the price? 

That’s a good thought―that we do stay viable. [Laughs] It’s hard. We always say we don’t look at Amazon as our competition because we can’t compete with Amazon. They sell books cheaper than what we buy them for. I hate bashing Amazon too much, but they don’t care about books. They use books to get people onto their website to buy other things. Because they sell them as loss leaders, they don’t have any interest in the world of books, so if people are just looking at price, it’s very hard. Books are sold everywhere, and people can get books very easily in many different places. It’s not enough to just have a place where you put books on the shelf―you really have to be a place where you want people to feel a part of it, more of a community of people who like the same stuff.

And WORD curbs to their tastes a little bit more.

Yeah, and it takes a while to build that relationship. We’ve been here for five years and we’ve been doing a pretty good job. We want to be a place where the neighborhood wants to come and feel comfortable. We never judge people. We’re happy to order anything. That’s the difference―people want to come here and be part of something. They want to really be part of it. And we want to make people feel very included in the store, as opposed to just ordering something online.

In addition to a successful bookstore, WORD has over the years become a popular community center for people with common interests and desires, literary and otherwise. Was this always your intention?

Like I said, you can buy books anywhere, so I really feel like if a neighborhood can’t support a bookstore it really can’t exist. I don’t really look too much for people from a million different towns to come and support us. It ultimately has to be a Greenpoint store. This is where we are, and I think we’ve found a place where people like us. I think we have to be a reflection of the community. The customers are a part of the store, they can come here and ask for anything they need, get their gifts here. I never want to be a kind of book store that makes people feel like they’re not cool enough to shop here.

What are your plans for the future?

To keep doing what we’re doing. I have no idea what the future of bookstores will be. It’s really bleak. All I know is that we are growing slowly every year, people like buying books here. I don’t really see a future where people are going to stop wanting books, but some people say that’s the case, and if that’s the case, I guess we won’t be around forever. I just don’t ever see books dying here. People like books too much to give them up.

Lane Koivu – Images courtesy of Christine Onorati

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23/02/2012

4 Questions To – Andrea Pompilio

4 Questions To – Andrea Pompilio

We met Andrea Pompilio, the forward-looking fashion designer who – after having worked for Prada, YSL and Calvin Klein – founded his new independent line called “A”. We asked four well-chosen questions to this one of the most creative talents of the Italian fashion panorama, who is able to mix traditional textiles, style and tailoring along with “crazy” colours and shapes.

With an open and friendly chat, we entered the vibrant world of Pompilio, which came forward first during the designer’s childhood: “When I was very very young my grandmother had a couple of boutiques in Pesaro and I used to spend most of my time there, playing among clothes and fabrics with my cousins. I loved that, and since I was 8 years old it was clear for me that I wanted to be a fashion designer”.

Interview Monica Lombardi – Video Renzo O. Angelillo

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22/02/2012

The Editorial: Nine to Five. No Way.

The Editorial: Nine to Five. No Way.

Like every twentysomething hammering away at a chance for success, I’m stretched tight tight tight like spandex over a bulging body. I wake up early, shove something down that only distantly resembles food, hop on my bicycle (exercise and transport!), and get straight to the hive. I work across three countries in four languages at what feels like millions of jobs with billions of roles. Coffee breaks are for extra meetings and evening pints are for networking. And there are events to be seen at and podcasts to keep up with and blogs and magazines that simply must be read and messages, texts, tweets, and that oh-so-endless flow of email. I’ll get around to answering that… tomorrow? Meh. Maybe next week.

Like the 1980 Dolly Parton movie, 9 to 5 is a quaint and distant anachronism; a relic from a prehistoric time of olive green typewriters and polyester suits and indoor smoking. Sing it with me (because you know you know the song): ”Working nine to five. What a way to make a living! Barely get-ting by. It’s all taking and no giving…” Oh, if only you knew, Dolly. You guys had it good.


And for those of us insane enough to work in the context of “creativity” in the traditional sense –and most of you, dear readers, do exactly that– that oh-so-stifling routine seems just a tad… unjust? Counterintuitive? There is no more surefire way to stifle and generally make something less-enjoyable than by turning it into regimented work. There are cranky clients and heavy workloads and difficult coworkers. Money? Not so much. Even parties are work. Tedious work. And did I tweet today? Is my portfolio up-to-date? And all that email! Maybe next week.

But I’m supposed to be a creative, damnit! In pre-adult responsibility days, I could glue and draw and destroy and build and paint and cut and photograph and write at will. Now, if I’m lucky I have the wherewithal to read a book before bed, I can usually make it through a chapter before falling asleep on top of it. So, when in the hell can I create? Certainly not the next time those dear, dear clients asks for something “really creative.”


But take heart! You can find inspirational escapes somehow. In those nooks and crannies of your daily grind, somewhere between the tweets and the tedium, you can rediscover that once-upon-a-time passion. New passion. The best among you even turn the tedium into inspiration.

Diego Giménez’ magical photographs of drivers in their cars on his workaday commute in Argentina are a gorgeous lesson in exactly that. He managed to turn his doldrums into an arrestingly beautiful slice of humanity. Now that’s creativity in the post 9 to 5 world.

Tag Christof – Images courtesy of Diego Gimenez

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22/02/2012

Provisional Space By Roma Publications

Provisional Space By Roma Publications

When William Morris established Kelmscott Press in the 1850s he couldn’t have known what it would cause around the year 2000.

The expression ‘independent publishing’ wasn’t of a common use in the period when one of the most significant revivals in the history of printing was getting a foothold. Morris fought viciously against industrial production of books in order to protect the dignity of the printed letter as conveyor of human thought and knowledge. Looking at it nowadays we might judge Morris a snob, as mass book production led to a significant cultural revolution. Without judging Morris any further, we must agree that his teaching has raised quite a numerous population of illuminated graphic designers in the present. In more than one hundred years of aggressive development, designers have passed through many phases, and as history is always cyclical, here we are again.

Today’s print revival movement is called ‘independent publishing houses’ and the phenomena has reached such a wast output that probably any of you reading this can name at least two. As much as one can appreciate the effort and beauty of making things by hand, not all of these independent publishing houses really manage to produce something that goes beyond a few xeroxed zines.



Actually there are only a few that have started producing mature books, both as physical objects and as type of content. One of those publishing houses is “Roma Publications”, founded by Mark Manders and Roger Willems in 1998 and based in Amsterdam. In almost fifteen years of though work the publishers have produced a huge amount of books neither of which is to be disregarded. The bases of their success certainly lies in the strict collaboration between the artist and the publisher through a ‘content-specific’ method. This is why their editions vary from 2 to 150000 and can take the form of a flyer as well as an exclusive artists’ book.

To celebrate the earned success Roma Publications has gathered its niche of precious authors in an exhibition called ‘Provisional Space’. If you’re around Paris, be sure to pop by Castillo/Corrales until the 7th of April, to see this truly morrisian heritage.


Rujana Rebenjak – Images courtesy of Roma Publications

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21/02/2012

The Art of Learning to Love What You Hate

The Art of Learning to Love What You Hate

Today, Tuesday February 21st noted writer Starlee Kine will tell you how to turn your personal obsessions―be it petty Facebook stalking, Phil Collins, or an unhealthy fascination with dirty laundry―into stories other people can relate to. And if you’re anything like Kine, you may even be able to make a little money off of talking about your weird habits. “How to Capture the Cultural Zeitgeist” takes place today Tuesday, February 21st at The School of Visual Arts and focuses in on the nature of obsession, and how to churn those impulses into (potential) cultural artifacts.

In addition to writing, Starlee is also a radio producer and pop culture critic. When not chronicling her clinical hatred for AMC’s The Walking Dead for New York Magazine‘s Vulture blog, Kine regularly contributes to This American Life and CBC Radio’s WireTap. She is currently working on her first self-help book, titled It IS Your Fault, and along with illustrator Alex Jones created the Post-It Note Reading Series.

Like most ideas, her cultural musings seem born out of anger generated while watching television. As she says in a recent interview with Time Out NY: “The idea started because I’d been writing recaps of The Walking Dead, the TV show with the zombies. I write those recaps because I was really obsessed with hating the show. I would watch it and live-tweet my anger toward it. When the second season started, I wrote to New York Magazine and said, ‘I actually need a place to put all this.’”

The most interesting thing about these hilarious, anti-Walking Dead rants are the amount of comments her posts draw―typically from people who hate what Kine has to say. “I had been warned that if I didn’t like the show, die-hard fans were going to get mad,” she said in the same interview. “I thought I was going to hate their comments. What’s interesting is how important the comments become to you, even if they’re bad.”

Meet Starlee Kine: “How to Capture the Cultural Zeitgeist”, School of Visual Arts, February 21st, 6pm.

Lane Koivu – The image courtesy of Behance Team

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