ciel

Amelia’s Magazine | The London Fashion Week Virgin: Estethica Review

by

Illustration by Avril Kelly http://cargocollective.com/avrilkelly

There’s something about coming out of the Tube in an area you’ve never been to before. I realise this is an extremely London-centric point, order but bear with me – when you find yourself spat out onto a brand new street it’s like discovering a different city. But then you look up and see the familiar roundel and you know that yes, it’s still London. It’s interesting how so many of us seem to come to London to experience its variety, only to entrench ourselves in one specific part of the city. Some (who, me?) may even develop a few prejudices about certain other parts of the city too, as if London were some sort of microcosm of the world … Oh actually that last bit’s about right, isn’t it. ‘There is in London all that life can afford,’ Samuel Johnson famously said, and it’s very true. But still, going all the way to Clapham on a Saturday morning? SOUTH London? Really!

But last weekend I went to Clapham for the very first time, because that’s where the Papered Parlour is and I’d been looking forward to their silversmithing class for weeks. I resurfaced from the Tube at Clapham Common, curiously peeking around while the nice man with the coffee cart ground beans from scratch to make my espresso. The Papered Parlour is just up the road, hidden behind a plain door in a side street. Claire and Louise, the workshop’s founders, weren’t there, but my fellow would-be smithers and I were welcomed by Hana and our teacher, Caren Hartley.

Upcycled jewellery by Madi http://www.madiillustration.co.uk

Jewellery upcycling, or recycling of old items, was the theme for last Saturday’s seminar. We each poured out our bags of old, neglected jewellery, hoping Caren would be able to help us make something usable out of it. I’d brought two rings I was hoping to fix, having broken both of them within weeks of each other after having worn them every day for years. I’d also brought some broken brooches my grandma had given me, as well as a few other pieces I weren’t wearing. Having just told the group we could not use heat on any item that wasn’t pure silver or gold, Caren shook her head at my beloved moonstone ring. ‘You can’t heat anything with a gemstone as it will break,’ Caren said. Araldite glue it is, then.

My mother’s old floral pendant also got the brush-off from Caren: ‘That’s pewter, it would melt before you could do anything with it.’ This is the main danger when working with old jewellery, as you haven’t made it yourself and hence you can’t be completely sure about the metal composition. Caren studied the pendant, curved and prone to annoying swinging, concluding: ‘You could flatten it, with the mallet.’ Mallet! I was expecting delicate tools, tiny adjustments and boiling frustration, but it turns out silversmithing includes plenty of hammer action.

Caren Hartley

The next few hours went by in a flash. After my mallet fun I got the little pliers and snippers, changing the broken grandma brooches into pendants. Rough edges were smoothed down with the metal files – silver is quite soft when you’re working with it. Silversmithing is also a surprisingly dirty activity, with the suds from my hands running black as I washed before the cake break. It can be dangerous too – judging by the fact they made us sign some sort of release before letting us use the saw.

Make do and mend by Naomi Law http://www.nimlawdraws.co.uk

Halfway through the day we were introduced to the blowtorch, used not only to join pieces of metal together but also to prepare silver to be worked on. Heating up the metal to reach ‘the cherry red temperature’ loosens the molecules within the silver, Caren explained, meaning you can work on it. My main task with the blowtorch was to mend my ring, a little lady who wraps her legs around your finger. I’d got the ring half price at a craft fair nearly ten years ago, and worn it every day until the poor girl broke her leg about two years ago. High street silversmiths didn’t seem very keen on sorting this for me though, and now that I’ve seen how it’s done I can see why: it’s fiddly.

I put on the leather apron and the protective goggles, ready for the big moment. ‘Now, angle the flame away from me, as I will be holding the leg piece,’ Caren said as I lit the torch, wondering if she gets paid extra if a student maims her. But as the little lady turned cherry under the blue flame, everyone’s digits remained intact and the leg was back where it belonged. Okay, so it sticks out a bit more than it did before, but a little tap of the hammer and Bob’s your uncle.

Caren and Eva by Avril Kelly http://cargocollective.com/avrilkelly

Detail

I left the Papered Parlour with eight new pieces of jewellery, having altered or mended old things I either couldn’t or wouldn’t wear. My hands were aching as I counted up change for another espresso from the cart, about to go back to the familiar side of the river. As I stood on the platform waiting for my train, I absent-mindedly ran my thumb along the lady-ring. She’s back, and I fixed her all by myself.

Result

The Papered Parlour is in Clapham: 7 Prescott Place, London SW4 6BS. For more information about the spring workshop schedule see our listing – there are more silversmithing workshops to come, plus printmaking, sewing, photography, quilting and how to make your own shoes. Also, the Papered Parlour is putting on two mini-festivals at the V&A Museum of Childhood in Bethnal Green this spring: ‘Ethical fashion in the age of austerity’ tonight (3 March) and ‘It’s your write!’ next month (7 April) – for more detail see our listing here.


Illustration by Avril Kelly

There’s something about coming out of the Tube in an area you’ve never been to before. I realise this is an extremely London-centric point, treat but bear with me – when you find yourself spat out onto a brand new street it’s like discovering a different city. But then you look up and see the familiar roundel and you know that yes, buy it’s still London. It’s interesting how so many of us seem to come to London to experience its variety, only to entrench ourselves in one specific part of the city. Some (who, me?) may even develop a few prejudices about certain other parts of the city too, as if London were some sort of microcosm of the world … Oh actually that last bit’s about right, isn’t it. ‘There is in London all that life can afford,’ Samuel Johnson famously said, and it’s very true. But still, going all the way to Clapham on a Saturday morning? SOUTH London? Really!

But last weekend I went to Clapham for the very first time, because that’s where the Papered Parlour is and I’d been looking forward to their silversmithing class for weeks. I resurfaced from the Tube at Clapham Common, curiously peeking around while the nice man with the coffee cart ground beans from scratch to make my espresso. The Papered Parlour is just up the road, hidden behind a plain door in a side street. Claire and Louise, the workshop’s founders, weren’t there, but my fellow would-be smithers and I were welcomed by Hana and our teacher, Caren Hartley.


Upcycled jewellery by Madi

Jewellery upcycling, or recycling of old items, was the theme for last Saturday’s seminar. We each poured out our bags of old, neglected jewellery, hoping Caren would be able to help us make something usable out of it. I’d brought two rings I was hoping to fix, having broken both of them within weeks of each other after having worn them every day for years. I’d also brought some broken brooches my grandma had given me, as well as a few other pieces I weren’t wearing. Having just told the group we could not use heat on any item that wasn’t pure silver or gold, Caren shook her head at my beloved moonstone ring. ‘You can’t heat anything with a gemstone as it will break,’ Caren said. Araldite glue it is, then.

My mother’s old floral pendant also got the brush-off from Caren: ‘That’s pewter, it would melt before you could do anything with it.’ This is the main danger when working with old jewellery, as you haven’t made it yourself and hence you can’t be completely sure about the metal composition. Caren studied the pendant, curved and prone to annoying swinging, concluding: ‘You could flatten it, with the mallet.’ Mallet! I was expecting delicate tools, tiny adjustments and boiling frustration, but it turns out silversmithing includes plenty of hammer action.


Caren Hartley

The next few hours went by in a flash. After my mallet fun I got the little pliers and snippers, changing the broken grandma brooches into pendants. Rough edges were smoothed down with the metal files – silver is quite soft when you’re working with it. Silversmithing is also a surprisingly dirty activity, with the suds from my hands running black as I washed before the cake break. It can be dangerous too – judging by the fact they made us sign some sort of release before letting us use the saw.


The blue flame by Naomi Law

Halfway through the day we were introduced to the blowtorch, used not only to join pieces of metal together but also to prepare silver to be worked on. Heating up the metal to reach ‘the cherry red temperature’ loosens the molecules within the silver, Caren explained, meaning you can work on it. My main task with the blowtorch was to mend my ring, a little lady who wraps her legs around your finger. I’d got the ring half price at a craft fair nearly ten years ago, and worn it every day until the poor girl broke her leg about two years ago. High street silversmiths didn’t seem very keen on sorting this for me though, and now that I’ve seen how it’s done I can see why: it’s fiddly.

I put on the leather apron and the protective goggles, ready for the big moment. ‘Now, angle the flame away from me, as I will be holding the leg piece,’ Caren said as I lit the torch, wondering if she gets paid extra if a student maims her. But as the little lady turned cherry under the blue flame, everyone’s digits remained intact and the leg was back where it belonged. Okay, so it sticks out a bit more than it did before, but a little tap of the hammer and Bob’s your uncle.


Caren and Eva by Avril Kelly

I left the Papered Parlour with eight new pieces of jewellery, having altered or mended old things I either couldn’t or wouldn’t wear. My hands were aching as I counted up change for another espresso from the cart, about to go back to the familiar side of the river. As I stood on the platform waiting for my train, I absent-mindedly ran my thumb along the lady-ring. She’s back, and I fixed her all by myself.


Result

The Papered Parlour is in Clapham: 7 Prescott Place, London SW4 6BS. For more information about the spring workshop schedule see our listing – there are more silversmithing workshops to come, plus printmaking, sewing, photography, quilting and how to make your own shoes. Also, the Papered Parlour is putting on two mini-festivals at the V&A Museum of Childhood in Bethnal Green this spring: ‘Ethical fashion in the age of austerity’ tonight (3 March) and ‘It’s your write!’ next month (7 April) – for more detail see our listing here.

My first experience of London Fashion Week was less in at the deep end with the big kids, click and more of a splash about in the shallow end with armbands on. And actually, I found it a rather favourable place in which to position myself.

My task was to skulk around the Estethica and Ecoluxe show rooms and report back on some of my favourite designs, a task I undertook with gusto. Anyone who reads my personal blog will know that I adore beautiful ethically made clothes. So I jumped/squealed at the chance to meet some of the designers and see the clothes up close. I have been watching the rise and shine of some of the new ethical designers with interest, having been introduced to many of them via Amelia’s book (which of course you have bought, yes? Yes?)

My first hurdle in getting to Estethica involved ‘borrowing’ a friends pass and hoping that no one would look at the name on the badge and question my gender when I beeped in. I was a tad nervous approaching Somerset House, but was buoyed on by ‘West End Girls’ which popped onto shuffle at the most opportune moment for the final bit of the walk. I bloody love it when shuffle gets it right. So it was with a strut that I entered Somerset house aided by the Pet Shop Boys, my trusty Spanx and one too many soya latte’s.

My second hurdle was actually finding the room. Directions typically included: “You’re in entirely the wrong place. You need to turn round, go back downstairs and outside, then enter through one of two doors, left again….” I think I went cross eyed. It was located in a particularly awkward spot, which was a shame as the rooms contained some marvellous work. But the getting lost, trekking up and down stairs and being stomped on by lethal platform wedges was worth it. The quality of some of the designs was inspiring and innovative, easily rivalling their ‘non ethical’ neighbours.

I had kind of hoped that I’d be able to blend in with the crowd, take notes and snap pictures before skulking on, but I quickly realised that this would be nigh on impossible.  I soon found myself confabulating with some of the friendly designers and PR people. I was repeatedly asked if I had a card. I didn’t. Rookie error. Lesson learned for next time.  Stall holders craned to read my badge as I smiled sheepishly and surreptitiously covered it with my scarf. I was nervous so wondered around with a slightly creepy perma-grin, but thankfully most of the participants had heard of Amelia’s Magazine so far from being rebuffed, I had a very warm welcome. PHEW.

Ok- on to the clothes. I met lot of lovely people and saw some beautifully crafted clothes, but here are just a few of my favourites.

The jewellery of Little Glass Clementine caught my eye before I had even entered the room, and like a magpie, I was beckoned in by it. Necklaces are made from a marvellous concoction of found objects; from bird skulls and bottle tops, to bath plugs and plastic toys.  They are totally unique, slightly mad (in the bestest of ways) and utterly covetable. Little Glass Clementine is featured in Amelia’s book. See an extract of the interview here .

Goodone pulled me in next, with their soft jersey bodycon dresses and thick woollen belts that begged to be handled. I loved the combination of figure hugging dresses with drapey, overized pieces too, all made from recycled, end of roll and salvaged materials. Feminine yet bolshy. Ace. Goodone are featured in Amelia’s book, see an extract of the interview here:


Illustration by Natasha Thompson

There is something irresistible to me about Joanna Cave’s delicate filigree jewellery. Inspired by ballet and old Art Nouveau costumes, the pieces are delicate and girly yet dramatic and bold. They are made from recycled sterling silver, ethically sourced pearls and vintage ribbon. Joanna cave jewellery is featured in Amelia’s book, see an extract of the interview here:

Actualy, I was pretty spoiled on the jewellery front. Kumvana Gomani uses old bottles and recycled aluminium to create gorgeous long necklaces and pretty earings.


Illustration by Alison Day

The North Circular, an ethical knitwear company, inhabited the corner of one of the rooms, filling it with an impressive alluring installation involving a huge bundle of sheeps wool and TV’s. Apparently the video was showing a piece called ‘metamorphosis’ with Lily Cole in it, but I managed to miss it. Truthfully, muted colours are not my thing, but the pieces were luxurious to feel and beautifully crafted, using British ethically sourced wool.


Illustration by Alison Haines

I loved this bright Pink Ciel dress. Just the right balance of smart and sexy.  All Ciel fabrics are carefully sourced to be as ethical as possible. Sarah Ratty, the founder of Ciel and chair of the Ethical fashion Forum was warm and friendly, and a long time friend of Amelia’s Magazine. She is featured in Amelia’s book, you can read an extract of her interview here.

Illustration by Avril kelly

I have to say that, despite the fact that the person in the stall seemed too busy to talk, I fell in love with Max Jenny. My favourite pieces were their colourful cape’s, for the following reasons.  They are waterproof; this satisfies my northern fell-walking roots. They are capes; this satisfies my Drama Queen roots. Amazingly their products are made from recycled PET bottles, which satisfies my inner hippie. Tick, tick. tick. MaxJenny is featured in Amelia’s Compedium of Fashion Illustration.


Illustration by Matilde Sazio

Lu Flux’s designs also caught my eye. I have always loved their use of colour and therefore loved this colourful leather rucksack. By working with salvaged, vintage and organic fabrics, that combine pleats, knitting and patchwork, the collection makes something new out of something old. .Lu Flux is featured in Amelia’s Compedium of Fashion Illustration. You can read an extract of their interview here.


Photograph by Damian Ucieda Cortes

Tara St James made use of copper pipe work in her gorgeous, chunky jewellery, and I also loved the blanket capes too. Chic and snuggley. Good for campsites and cocktails, bonus.


Photograph by Lauren Bilanko

And then I was out the door again, navigating Somerset House’s warren like corridors. I presumed I’d be surrounded by long legged, anorexic, bitchy looking women. I did see some ultra skinny, unhealthy looking people, which will always sadden me, but there were also plenty of healthy looking amazingly dressed people there too. In fact, I enjoyed the London Fashion Week street style stuff as much as the main show photo’s (perhaps sacrilegious?). But what really struck me was that people were, well, NICE. And mostly normal. Which I have to say I wasn’t expecting.

Next up, I’ll be reviewing Ecoluxe. You can buy Amelia’s Compendium of Fashion Illustration (featuring the very best in ethical fashion design) RIGHT HERE.

Written by Hannah Bullivant on Thursday March 3rd, 2011 9:57 am

Categories ,4 Equal Sides, ,ACOFI, ,Alison Day, ,Alison Haines, ,Amelia’s Compendium of Fashion Illustration, ,Avril Kelly, ,ciel, ,Ecoluxe, ,estethica, ,esthetica, ,goodone, ,Hannah Bullivant, ,Joanna Cave, ,Kumvana Gomani, ,lfw, ,Lily Cole, ,Little Glass Clementine, ,London Fashion Week, ,Lu Flux, ,Matilde Sazio, ,Max Jenny, ,Maxjenny, ,Natasha Thompson, ,pet shop boys, ,Somerset House, ,Soya Latte, ,Spanks, ,Tara St James, ,The North Circular

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Amelia’s Magazine | The London Fashion Week Virgin: Estethica Review

by

My first experience of London Fashion Week was less in at the deep end with the big kids, and more of a splash about in the shallow end with armbands on. And actually, I found it a rather favourable place in which to position myself.

My task was to skulk around the Estethica and Ecoluxe show rooms and report back on some of my favourite designs, a task I undertook with gusto. Anyone who reads my personal blog will know that I adore beautiful ethically made clothes. So I jumped/squealed at the chance to meet some of the designers and see the clothes up close. I have been watching the rise and shine of some of the new ethical designers with interest, having been introduced to many of them via Amelia’s book (which of course you have bought, yes? Yes?)

My first hurdle in getting to Estethica involved ‘borrowing’ a friends pass and hoping that no one would look at the name on the badge and question my gender when I beeped in. I was a tad nervous approaching Somerset House, but was buoyed on by ‘West End Girls’ which popped onto shuffle at the most opportune moment for the final bit of the walk. I bloody love it when shuffle gets it right. So it was with a strut that I entered Somerset house aided by the Pet Shop Boys, my trusty Spanx and one too many soya latte’s.

My second hurdle was actually finding the room. Directions typically included: “You’re in entirely the wrong place. You need to turn round, go back downstairs and outside, then enter through one of two doors, left again….” I think I went cross eyed. It was located in a particularly awkward spot, which was a shame as the rooms contained some marvellous work. But the getting lost, trekking up and down stairs and being stomped on by lethal platform wedges was worth it. The quality of some of the designs was inspiring and innovative, easily rivalling their ‘non ethical’ neighbours.

I had kind of hoped that I’d be able to blend in with the crowd, take notes and snap pictures before skulking on, but I quickly realised that this would be nigh on impossible.  I soon found myself confabulating with some of the friendly designers and PR people. I was repeatedly asked if I had a card. I didn’t. Rookie error. Lesson learned for next time.  Stall holders craned to read my badge as I smiled sheepishly and surreptitiously covered it with my scarf. I was nervous so wondered around with a slightly creepy perma-grin, but thankfully most of the participants had heard of Amelia’s Magazine so far from being rebuffed, I had a very warm welcome. PHEW.

Ok- on to the clothes. I met lot of lovely people and saw some beautifully crafted clothes, but here are just a few of my favourites.

The jewellery of Little Glass Clementine caught my eye before I had even entered the room, and like a magpie, I was beckoned in by it. Necklaces are made from a marvellous concoction of found objects; from bird skulls and bottle tops, to bath plugs and plastic toys.  They are totally unique, slightly mad (in the bestest of ways) and utterly covetable. Little Glass Clementine is featured in Amelia’s book. See an extract of the interview here .

Goodone pulled me in next, with their soft jersey bodycon dresses and thick woollen belts that begged to be handled. I loved the combination of figure hugging dresses with drapey, overized pieces too, all made from recycled, end of roll and salvaged materials. Feminine yet bolshy. Ace. Goodone are featured in Amelia’s book, see an extract of the interview here:


Illustration by Natasha Thompson

There is something irresistible to me about Joanna Cave’s delicate filigree jewellery. Inspired by ballet and old Art Nouveau costumes, the pieces are delicate and girly yet dramatic and bold. They are made from recycled sterling silver, ethically sourced pearls and vintage ribbon. Joanna cave jewellery is featured in Amelia’s book, see an extract of the interview here:

Actualy, I was pretty spoiled on the jewellery front. Kumvana Gomani uses old bottles and recycled aluminium to create gorgeous long necklaces and pretty earings.


Illustration by Alison Day

The North Circular, an ethical knitwear company, inhabited the corner of one of the rooms, filling it with an impressive alluring installation involving a huge bundle of sheeps wool and TV’s. Apparently the video was showing a piece called ‘metamorphosis’ with Lily Cole in it, but I managed to miss it. Truthfully, muted colours are not my thing, but the pieces were luxurious to feel and beautifully crafted, using British ethically sourced wool.


Illustration by Alison Haines

I loved this bright Pink Ciel dress. Just the right balance of smart and sexy.  All Ciel fabrics are carefully sourced to be as ethical as possible. Sarah Ratty, the founder of Ciel and chair of the Ethical fashion Forum was warm and friendly, and a long time friend of Amelia’s Magazine. She is featured in Amelia’s book, you can read an extract of her interview here.

Illustration by Avril kelly

I have to say that, despite the fact that the person in the stall seemed too busy to talk, I fell in love with Max Jenny. My favourite pieces were their colourful cape’s, for the following reasons.  They are waterproof; this satisfies my northern fell-walking roots. They are capes; this satisfies my Drama Queen roots. Amazingly their products are made from recycled PET bottles, which satisfies my inner hippie. Tick, tick. tick. MaxJenny is featured in Amelia’s Compedium of Fashion Illustration.


Illustration by Matilde Sazio

Lu Flux’s designs also caught my eye. I have always loved their use of colour and therefore loved this colourful leather rucksack. By working with salvaged, vintage and organic fabrics, that combine pleats, knitting and patchwork, the collection makes something new out of something old. .Lu Flux is featured in Amelia’s Compedium of Fashion Illustration. You can read an extract of their interview here.


Photograph by Damian Ucieda Cortes

Tara St James made use of copper pipe work in her gorgeous, chunky jewellery, and I also loved the blanket capes too. Chic and snuggley. Good for campsites and cocktails, bonus.


Photograph by Lauren Bilanko

And then I was out the door again, navigating Somerset House’s warren like corridors. I presumed I’d be surrounded by long legged, anorexic, bitchy looking women. I did see some ultra skinny, unhealthy looking people, which will always sadden me, but there were also plenty of healthy looking amazingly dressed people there too. In fact, I enjoyed the London Fashion Week street style stuff as much as the main show photo’s (perhaps sacrilegious?). But what really struck me was that people were, well, NICE. And mostly normal. Which I have to say I wasn’t expecting.

Next up, I’ll be reviewing Ecoluxe. You can buy Amelia’s Compendium of Fashion Illustration (featuring the very best in ethical fashion design) RIGHT HERE.

Written by Hannah Bullivant on Thursday March 3rd, 2011 9:57 am

Categories ,4 Equal Sides, ,ACOFI, ,Alison Day, ,Alison Haines, ,Amelia’s Compendium of Fashion Illustration, ,Avril Kelly, ,ciel, ,Ecoluxe, ,estethica, ,esthetica, ,goodone, ,Hannah Bullivant, ,Joanna Cave, ,Kumvana Gomani, ,lfw, ,Lily Cole, ,Little Glass Clementine, ,London Fashion Week, ,Lu Flux, ,Matilde Sazio, ,Max Jenny, ,Maxjenny, ,Natasha Thompson, ,pet shop boys, ,Somerset House, ,Soya Latte, ,Spanks, ,Tara St James, ,The North Circular

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Amelia’s Magazine | January Sales – Ethical Style

by

Monday 5th January

Bird.jpg
An Experiment On A Bird In The Air Pump, ed salve Durrr at The End

Think 80s influenced punk-grunge from this girl trio with smatterings of riot and New York No-Wave. The girlgroup brought kicking and screaming into 2009 with some short film strings to their bow too.

Derek Meins, My Tiger My Timing, The ABC Club, The Molotovs, Old Blue Last, London

Calling himself a ‘famous poet’, Derek Meins’ headline slot should consist of humorous fun songs. Support comes in super-zeitgeist form from My Tiger My Timing with their African indie pop.

Derek Meins, My Tiger My Timing, The ABC Club, The Molotovs, Old Blue Last, London

Calling himself a ‘famous poet’, Derek Meins’ headline slot should consist of humorous fun songs. Support comes in super-zeitgeist form from My Tiger My Timing with their African indie pop.

Tuesday 6th January

Paul Hawkins and Thee Awkward Silences, The Windmill, London

With a name like that surely taking some cues from Billy Childish with their slightly bonkers indie-pop. Definitely worth checking out as they are featured in the current issue of Amelia’s Magazine and on the Last FM compilation. You saw them here first.

paul-hawkins-thee-awkward-silences.jpg

The Broken Family Band, The Luminaire, London

Sorta indie, sorta country, sorta rock from this clever-Trevor Cambridge band who should provide a wittily intelligent, well worn set at this Track and Field ‘Winter Sprinter’.

Wednesday 7th January

Darren Hayman, The Wave Pictures, The Luminaire, London

Another outing for the Track and Field folks who present former Hefner member Darren Hayman performing his off-kilter whisky and heartache numbers with anti-folk support.

darren1.gif

Vile Imbeciles, Windmill, London

With a frontman fresh from Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster, you can be sure that these boys, who set themselves in dark opposition to most modern music, will provide some excellently scary psych-horror.

Thursday 8th January

Hatcham Social, Kasms, Borderline, London

Angular Records favourites with a definite 80s indie sound and no small debt to The Smiths although they are certainly no retro rip-off merchants. More 80s influence from Kasms although in a more goth-pop vein.

hatchamsocialpress_01.jpg

Friday 9th January

Tonight Twee as Fuck hosts an altogether shouty and girlie affair with the launch of the new Shrag album at the Buffalo Bar on Upper Street. Support comes from The Duloks and Betty & The Werewolves and Patrick and Roxanne from Sexy Kids will join us on the decks.

Saturday 10th January
lee%20scratch%20perry.jpg
Lee Scratch Perry holds status as one of the most enduring and original reggae producers of all time. He will be performing at the Jazz Cafe tonight, featuring tracks from his new album, “The Mighty Upsetter” and timeless classics to pull at our nostalgia strings. The Reggae Roast Team will be running things after the live show, providing 4-hours of sound system vibes from EXEL & MOODIE featuring live vocals from RAMON JUDAH & ISHU with horns from TROMOBONE JEROME.

Sunday 11th January

Ukulele Sunday at The Amersham Arms, 388 New Cross Road, SE14

One of 2008′s most popular Christmas present apparently. This teeny-weeny instrument will certainly cure anyone of Sunday-night-itas. Led by the Brockley Ukulele Group a chirpy and unpretentious evening.

After the Christmas season of gluttony and excess spending, information pills let’s turn our thoughts to the more planet and pocket friendly method of making our own accessories – Blue Peter style. With just a little thought and time you can be wearing the most unique pieces that will only cost you the price of glue and a chain perhaps, and who knows, you might discover you have a talent for this sort of thing and create another career avenue for yourself…

US native – but now based in Brussels – Nancy Minsky shows us how to do it. She has rounded up all the old plastic bottles and containers in her house and created her ‘sunburst charm’. Follow her easy instructions and you too can be the proud owner of one!

sunburst%20necklace.jpg

Nancy explains, “ To make my DIY Sunburst charm, the plastic ovals are slipped onto a karabiner to form a contemporary sunburst of colour and shape, creating visual delight and practical use out of what would be put into the recycle bin. I dazzled on New Year’s Eve wearing it hung on a lush lavender satin ribbon but it can also be clipped on a snap bolt and hung as a charm.” (pictured above)

Making Time: Around 15 mins.

Materials:

• Scissors?
• Hole punch
• Assortment of emptied different coloured plastic containers – I used orange, turquoise, white and transparent yogurt, water and kitchen soap containers.
• Blue 2 – 2 ½ inches (5-6.5 cm) karabiner?
• Ribbon or chain

How to Make it:?

1. Using sharp scissors, cut oval shapes out of your plastic containers, ranging in length from about 2 inches to 3 inches (5-7.5 cm)
2. Punch a hole at one end of each oval shape
3. Slip the ovals, in an assorted range of colours and shapes, on the karabiner until it’s full and plump.
4. Attach a ribbon, a snap bolt or a chain through your karabiner and wear as a necklace or hang as a charm.

Et voila, you have your very own sunburst charm!

Nancy’s not alone in her recycling of seemingly useless or done with things into pretty jewellery, Jane Eldershaw is a self proclaimed junk jeweller and uses everything from pencils to clothes pegs to make eye-catching necklaces.

There are lots of sites out there dedicated to this craft, we’ve had a look through and are bringing you the best, weirdest and most wonderful – so you too can be inspired – and see that you can use literally anything to make your own fabulous pieces! Here’s our pick:

Dee and Ricky make brooches and belt buckles from…. Lego! – brilliant. (below left)

lego-typewriter%20jewellery.jpg

These creative kids had (seemingly) thousands of old typewriter keys lying around and thought they would brighten up our outfits by making retro-esque pieces. I really want a letter necklace.(above right)

Now this one borders on creepy but it’s inventive none the less – take your old Barbie dolls of your youth, cut them into pieces and you have, erm, interesting trinkets – earrings made of Barbie’s ears anyone?

barbie%20jewellery.jpg

We told you you could use anything – Caroline Bäckman has made edible jewellery – no, not those sweetie bracelets and necklaces of your youth (although they are brilliant) she has taken it a whole step further, creativity beating practicality hands down in this instance. (pictured below, shrimp necklace on the left, parma ham and haricots on the right.)

food%20necklace.jpg

So now there really is no excuse, look at everything just lying around your house in a new way – as a potential accessory! – and let the new year and new crafty you begin!
So if you’ve decided you’re not a dab hand with the glue and scissors, generic and are not up to the task of making your own jewellery, side effects then embrace the great January tradition of going to the sales! They are especially good this year due to the financial climate, here but rather than heading to the high street, here’s a round up of the best ethically sound but still fabulous bargains out there:

The ethicalsuperstore.com is brilliant as it has gadgets, gizmos and everything in between, you can pick up discounted Katharine Hamnett and People Tree (they have good little bargains on their own site too) pieces and even do your weekly food shop here. It truly does encompass all your ethical needs and has an amazing up to 60% off sale on at the moment.

Oxfam has gone way up in the world since it’s days of merely being a charity shop, it now sells its own brand label, where you can pick your size and everything. It has many 50% off bargains in its sale.

ehical-sale.jpg

Fashion-conscience.com is a brilliant site that houses some of the most contemporary ethically conscious designers around at the moment including Ciel, Noir and Beyond Skin – it even has a section dedicated to the current trends, showing you that you can be on the fashion forefront and environmentally savvy.

In a similar vein, Devidoll also has some really nice clothing, even though there’s an up to 60% off sale, it’s still pricey but if you want to invest in some staple, key yet eco-friendly pieces for your wardrobe, this is the place to go.

Adili.com has a range of prices and styles, my favourite being this (pictured below) Bora Aksu blouse, which is a truly classic investment piece and now half price – bargainous!

bora-aksu.jpg

And if you’re still tempted by those non-ethical labels in the sales – ease your conscience by at least checking if the store of your choice operates an ethical trading policy by asking these ten questions, as suggested by the ethical pests.

Happy shopping!

Written by Jennifer McNulty on Tuesday January 6th, 2009 3:38 pm

Categories ,Beyond Skin, ,Bora Aksu, ,Ciel, ,Devidoll, ,Ethical, ,Fashion, ,Katherine Hamnett, ,Noir, ,Oxfam, ,People Tree

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Amelia’s Magazine | Fashion Listings 16-22 November

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 ghost forest

Angela Palmer’s Ghost Forest

Mediumly-interesting fact: Nelson’s Column stands at 169 feet. The relevance of this morsel? Angela Palmer’s new installation of rainforest tree stumps in Trafalgar Square, purchase pharmacy which would once have stood as tall as the Column but now are rather lower to the ground, unhealthy buy more about more roots than trunks. Palmer’s work is intended to highlight the destruction of the rainforest. Much better than the 4th plinth people. That didn’t quite work did it?

 braun record player dieter rams

Dieter Rams @ The Design Museum

The Design Museum is excellent because it gets down to business: if you can’t sit on it or reasonably hang it on the wall, use it to build bridges or fill a teacup, you won’t find it there. This ethos of substance as well as style echoes the title of the current Dieter Rams exhibition, “Less and More”. He was Head of Design at Braun and every time you see something ergonomic and pleasing to look at on an appliance, like an iPhone for instance, you can see his influence. His ten design principles:

Good design is innovative.
Good design makes a product useful.
Good design is aesthetic.
Good design makes a product understandable.
Good design is unobtrusive.
Good design is honest.
Good design is long-lasting.
Good design is thorough down to the last detail.
Good design is environmentally friendly.
Good design is as little design as possible.

polar-bears-climate-change

C Words: carbon, climate, capital, culture @ Arnolfini Gallery in Bristol

How can I persuade you polar bears are relevant to this event?  Well, polar bears reflect our confused feelings about climate change: yes, they’re cute but they’d also happily rip off your head and eat your brain. Only through constructive debate can we resolve our feelings.

C Words is a two-month build-up to Copenhagen, using a multitude of free events, installations and discussions to generate interest and action on the topics of carbon emissions, our changing climate, capitalist structures and the culture wars. More about active engagement than simply mulling over points, PLATFORM, a group of artist-activists, aims to question how culture will grow up in the context of a low-carbon future.

bob and roberta smith

Bob & Robert Smith @ Beaconsfield

Bob and Roberta Smith, who is actually one person, will be showing their/his works to celebrate and commiserate the end of their/his residency at the roomy “Factory Outlet” space at Beaconsfield in Vauxhall. Smith is known for painting signs and there are references to the previous usage of the space, as a “ragged school” for poor little boys and girls to learn to read, in the use of text.

 cornelia parker

Passing Thoughts and Making Plans @ Jerwood Space

This exhibition at the Jerwood Space takes the tack that seeing the process behind an artwork is interesting in itself. This isn’t always the case – looking at the sketches for a work do sometimes make you grateful for the myriad choices the artist had to make to get it to the end result but it can also be a bit boring. This exhibition focuses (ha!) on artists who use photography as part of their process and escapes boredom by including interesting artists such as Cornelia Parker and Rachel Whiteread, whose work you can imagine hinges on perfect recollection of spaces. I am persuaded about this exhibition, but I will never be persuaded about “alternative versions” of songs at the end of special edition albums.
EJF

Image courtesy of Environmental Justice Foundation

ENVIRONMNENTAL JUSTICE FOUNDATION POP-UP STORE
13-27 NOVEMBER (MON-SAT: 10-7PM, viagra 100mg SUN: 12-6PM)
WHITE GOLD, 1ST FLOOR, KINGLY COURT, W1
FREE ENTRY
Over the coming fortnight the Environmental Justice Foundation charity will be setting up shop in the heart of London’s Carnaby Street to help raise awareness of forced child labour and environmental abuses in cotton production. The EJF pop-up store will be selling a limited edition range of T-shirts designed in collaboration with fashion heavyweights such as Luella, Giles Deacon, Zandra Rhodes, John Rocha, Betty Jackson, Christian Lacroix, Allegra Hicks, Katharine Hamnett, Jenny Packham, Alice Temperley, Richard Nicoll and Ciel. EJF will also be stocking 100 shopper bags designed by Eley Kishimoto which will retail at the bargain price of £10 or come free when you spend over £50 in store. As they sold out like hot potatoes at LFW last month make sure you get there while stock lasts.

ASSEMBLY THRIFT STORE OPENING
19 NOVEMBER
THE WATERMAN’S BUILDING, ASSEMBLY PASSAGE, E1
FREE ENTRY
This week sees the lovely chaps behind the East End Thrift Store open a new shop called Assembly just off Brick Lane. As an expansion of the existing space in Whitechapel, Assembly aims to bring together the most eclectic and unique vintage finds in clothing, accessories, jewellery, quilts, fabrics and even rare books. Situated within a disused factory the shop space has been created to resemble a New York loft which will also be used to host exhibitions and installations and installations by young contemporary artists.

1110-Paul-Smith-banner-1Image courtesy of Paul Smith

PAUL SMITH SAMPLE SALE
19-21 NOVEMBER (THURS/FRI: 9-7PM, SAT: 10-5PM)
PRINCES HOUSE, 37 KINGSWAY, WC2
FREE ENTRY
World renowned for his offbeat and unique designs British fashion legend Sir Paul Smith is holding a three day sample sale later this week. Look out for his trademark striped suits and floral dresses at heavily discounted prices.

article_7

Image courtesy of the Victoria & Albert Museum

CELEBRATE OUR FASCINATION WITH HAIR
FRIDAY 20TH NOVEMBER (6:30-10PM)
V&A MUSEUM: SACKLER CENTRE, CROMWELL ROAD, SW7
FREE ENTRY
If you’re looking to change your image or simply want a new hairdo for the festive season than treat yourself to a makeover courtesy of London College of Fashion students. Head down to the V&A to take part in a fashion illustration workshop and watch an A-list make up demonstration led by LCF’s partner institution the Hong Kong Design Institute. For those who are less keen on having a student get to grips with your locks you can always experiment and try new hairstyles digitally.

sourcing_marketplace5

Image courtesy of Ethical Fashion Forum

GLOBAL SOURCING MARKETPLACE
20-21 NOVEMBER (FRI: 10-7PM, SAT: 10:30-5PM)
CHELSEA COLLEGE OF ART & DESIGN, 16 JOHN ISLIP STREET, SW1
£20 FOR UNLIMITED ACCESS OVER BOTH DAYS
Later this week the Ethical Fashion Forum will be hosting a two-day ethical sourcing marketplace which will bring together an array of brands, retailers, manufacturers and cooperatives working to high ethical standards. This yearly event aims to create opportunities for suppliers with the overall goal being to reduce the environmental impact of the industry, support fair and equitable trade, and reduce poverty. The event gives industry professionals and consumers an opportunity to network with suppliers and gain information about ways to get involved through a series of seminars and talks.

DESIGNER SALES UK SAMPLE SALE
20-22 NOVEMBER (FRI: 11-9PM, SAT: 11-8PM, SUN: 11-5:30PM)
85 BRICKLANE, E1
£2 ENTRY, £1 CONCESSIONS
Brainchild of Elaine Foster-Gandey, the DSUK website was founded 20 years ago and is the first in its kind to sell samples and stock directly from the biggest fashion houses to customers at seriously discounted prices. Currently gearing up for their fourth sample sale of the year later this week, expect to find great value womenswear, menswear, kidswear and accessories. With over 100 different labels to choose from during this three day shopping extravaganza you’re sure to find a bargain.

Written by Rachael Oku on Monday November 16th, 2009 4:24 pm

Categories ,Alice Temperley, ,Allegra Hicks, ,Assembly, ,Betty Jackson, ,Christian Lacroix, ,ciel, ,Designer Sales UK, ,East End Thrift Store, ,Eley Kishimoto, ,Environmental Justice Foundation, ,Ethical Fashion Forum, ,Giles Deacon, ,Global Sourcing Marketplace, ,Hong Kong Design Institute, ,Jenny Packham, ,John Rocha, ,Katharine Hamnett, ,Kingly Court, ,London College of Fashion, ,Luella, ,Paul Smith, ,Richard Nicoll, ,va, ,Zandra Rhodes

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Amelia’s Magazine | Fashion Listings 23-29 November

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Ghost Forest in Trafalgar Square is a well-timed art-installation taking place ahead of the UN conference on Climate Change from December 7 to 18, visit web involving 11, diagnosis 000 delegates from 192 countries. Ten tree stumps selected from seven indigenous species all with delightful exotic names are represented – Denya, Dahuma, Danta, Hyedua, Mahogany, Wawa and three varieties of Celtis – and have been placed at the feet of the National gallery, right at the very centre of Western Industrialization. They are all with a rich and varied ecology and all with equally diverse uses by man; the Celtis Adolfi-Friderici is evergreen, but many of its leaves do fall during the dry season. It grows up to 100 feet tall and is of abundant forest availability. It is hard not to be moved by the contrasting sight of those stumps laid to rest on white concrete blocks close to the 196 feet-tall Nelson’s Column.

Londoners know Trafalgar Square as a rather uninspiring and barren site inhabited by a swarm of pigeons and tourists. The place is now invaded with what appears to be sculptures for posh interiors. Or is it a vast graveyard of searing beauty? The Celtis is used for interior joinery, plywood, and furniture components back in its country of origin, Ghana. In Europe, it is mostly used in the coffin industry. At Trafalgar Square, it all looks like an odd burial site. Now Ghana’s trees have the good fortune of benefiting from the Voluntary Partnership Agreement. Artist Angela Palmer says: “Having lost 90% of its primary rainforest over the past 50 years, Ghana now exercises strict regulations in sustainable and responsible forestry. Last year it became the first country in Africa to enter the VPA (Voluntary Partnership Agreement) with the European Union in an effort to outlaw illegal logging.”

Celtis and its friends do not end their epic journey in London; having traveled all the way from the tropics, they will travel to Copenhagen to remind UN employees that the removal of the world’s ‘lungs’ through continued deforestation needs to be dealt with without delay, no matter what Obama says.

Angela Palmer is an artist with convictions: “Many thinkers maintain that all art is political; politics touches all aspects of our lives. Life is about politics. And art is about communication, often transmitting unpalatable truths.” Breathing In, currently at the Welcome museum from the 20th of October to the 22nd of November 2009, is another one of Palmer’s projects currently in the capital. In April 2007 Palmer travelled to Linfen in Shanxi Province, China, home to the most polluted air on Earth, and then to Cape Grim on the northwest tip of Tasmania where there’s the purest air and water on Earth. The exhibition is a straightforward display of the results of her journey to capture the physical properties of climate change. The evidence is undeniable- the previously white outfits worn for a day now blackened by the unhealthy Linfen air, the dark face cleanser pads and air pump filters…the facts are brutal. There is an uneasy juxtaposition between the pristine green luscious Tasmanian rainforest and the cloudy, polluted, dusty and overpopulated Chinese streets. Angela Palmer’s art is good medicine for anyone still wondering what all the fuss is about Climate Change. You leave the building wanting to help a worthy cause.
Ghost Forest in Trafalgar Square is a well-timed art-installation taking place ahead of the UN conference on Climate Change from December 7 to 18, page involving 11,000 delegates from 192 countries. Ten tree stumps selected from seven indigenous species all with delightful exotic names are represented – Denya, Dahuma, Danta, Hyedua, Mahogany, Wawa and three varieties of Celtis – and have been placed at the feet of the National gallery, right at the very centre of Western Industrialization. They are all with a rich and varied ecology and all with equally diverse uses by man; the Celtis Adolfi-Friderici is evergreen, but many of its leaves do fall during the dry season. It grows up to 100 feet tall and is of abundant forest availability.

Ghost forest 2

It is hard not to be moved by the contrasting sight of those stumps laid to rest on white concrete blocks close to the 196 feet-tall Nelson’s Column. Londoners know Trafalgar Square as a rather uninspiring and barren site inhabited by a swarm of pigeons and tourists. The place is now invaded with what appears to be sculptures for posh interiors. Or is it a vast graveyard of searing beauty? The Celtis is used for interior joinery, plywood, and furniture components back in its country of origin, Ghana. In Europe, it is mostly used in the coffin industry. At Trafalgar Square, it all looks like an odd burial site. Now Ghana’s trees have the good fortune of benefiting from the Voluntary Partnership Agreement. Artist Angela Palmer says: “Having lost 90% of its primary rainforest over the past 50 years, Ghana now exercises strict regulations in sustainable and responsible forestry. Last year it became the first country in Africa to enter the VPA (Voluntary Partnership Agreement) with the European Union in an effort to outlaw illegal logging.”

Ghost forest 1

Celtis and its friends do not end their epic journey in London; having traveled all the way from the tropics, they will travel to Copenhagen to remind UN employees that the removal of the world’s ‘lungs’ through continued deforestation needs to be dealt with without delay, no matter what Obama says.

Ghost forest 3

Angela Palmer is an artist with convictions: “Many thinkers maintain that all art is political; politics touches all aspects of our lives. Life is about politics. And art is about communication, often transmitting unpalatable truths.” Breathing In, currently at the Welcome museum from the 20th of October to the 22nd of November 2009, is another one of Palmer’s projects currently in the capital. In April 2007 Palmer travelled to Linfen in Shanxi Province, China, home to the most polluted air on Earth, and then to Cape Grim on the northwest tip of Tasmania where there’s the purest air and water on Earth.

Ghost forest 4

The exhibition is a straightforward display of the results of her journey to capture the physical properties of climate change. The evidence is undeniable- the previously white outfits worn for a day now blackened by the unhealthy Linfen air, the dark face cleanser pads and air pump filters…the facts are brutal. There is an uneasy juxtaposition between the pristine green luscious Tasmanian rainforest and the cloudy, polluted, dusty and overpopulated Chinese streets. Angela Palmer’s art is good medicine for anyone still wondering what all the fuss is about Climate Change. You leave the building wanting to help a worthy cause.
Ghost Forest in Trafalgar Square is a well-timed art-installation taking place ahead of the UN conference on Climate Change from December 7 to 18, approved involving 11, salve 000 delegates from 192 countries. Ten tree stumps selected from seven indigenous species all with delightful exotic names are represented – Denya, Dahuma, Danta, Hyedua, Mahogany, Wawa and three varieties of Celtis – and have been placed at the feet of the National gallery, right at the very centre of Western Industrialization. They are all with a rich and varied ecology and all with equally diverse uses by man; the Celtis Adolfi-Friderici is evergreen, but many of its leaves do fall during the dry season. It grows up to 100 feet tall and is of abundant forest availability.

Ghost forest 2

It is hard not to be moved by the contrasting sight of those stumps laid to rest on white concrete blocks close to the 196 feet-tall Nelson’s Column. Londoners know Trafalgar Square as a rather uninspiring and barren site inhabited by a swarm of pigeons and tourists. The place is now invaded with what appears to be sculptures for posh interiors. Or is it a vast graveyard of searing beauty? The Celtis is used for interior joinery, plywood, and furniture components back in its country of origin, Ghana. In Europe, it is mostly used in the coffin industry. At Trafalgar Square, it all looks like an odd burial site. Now Ghana’s trees have the good fortune of benefiting from the Voluntary Partnership Agreement. Artist Angela Palmer says: “Having lost 90% of its primary rainforest over the past 50 years, Ghana now exercises strict regulations in sustainable and responsible forestry. Last year it became the first country in Africa to enter the VPA (Voluntary Partnership Agreement) with the European Union in an effort to outlaw illegal logging.”

Ghost forest 1

Celtis and its friends do not end their epic journey in London; having traveled all the way from the tropics, they will travel to Copenhagen to remind UN employees that the removal of the world’s ‘lungs’ through continued deforestation needs to be dealt with without delay, no matter what Obama says.

Ghost forest 3

Angela Palmer is an artist with convictions: “Many thinkers maintain that all art is political; politics touches all aspects of our lives. Life is about politics. And art is about communication, often transmitting unpalatable truths.” Breathing In, currently at the Welcome museum from the 20th of October to the 22nd of November 2009, is another one of Palmer’s projects currently in the capital. In April 2007 Palmer travelled to Linfen in Shanxi Province, China, home to the most polluted air on Earth, and then to Cape Grim on the northwest tip of Tasmania where there’s the purest air and water on Earth.

Ghost forest 4

The exhibition is a straightforward display of the results of her journey to capture the physical properties of climate change. The evidence is undeniable- the previously white outfits worn for a day now blackened by the unhealthy Linfen air, the dark face cleanser pads and air pump filters…the facts are brutal. There is an uneasy juxtaposition between the pristine green luscious Tasmanian rainforest and the cloudy, polluted, dusty and overpopulated Chinese streets. Angela Palmer’s art is good medicine for anyone still wondering what all the fuss is about Climate Change. You leave the building wanting to help a worthy cause.
Ghost Forest in Trafalgar Square is a well-timed art-installation taking place ahead of the UN conference on Climate Change from December 7 to 18, information pills involving 11, stuff 000 delegates from 192 countries. Ten tree stumps selected from seven indigenous species all with delightful exotic names are represented – Denya, click Dahuma, Danta, Hyedua, Mahogany, Wawa and three varieties of Celtis – and have been placed at the feet of the National gallery, right at the very centre of Western Industrialization. They are all with a rich and varied ecology and all with equally diverse uses by man; the Celtis Adolfi-Friderici is evergreen, but many of its leaves do fall during the dry season. It grows up to 100 feet tall and is of abundant forest availability.

Ghost forest 2

It is hard not to be moved by the contrasting sight of those stumps laid to rest on white concrete blocks close to the 196 feet-tall Nelson’s Column. Londoners know Trafalgar Square as a rather uninspiring and barren site inhabited by a swarm of pigeons and tourists. The place is now invaded with what appears to be sculptures for posh interiors. Or is it a vast graveyard of searing beauty? The Celtis is used for interior joinery, plywood, and furniture components back in its country of origin, Ghana. In Europe, it is mostly used in the coffin industry. At Trafalgar Square, it all looks like an odd burial site. Now Ghana’s trees have the good fortune of benefiting from the Voluntary Partnership Agreement. Artist Angela Palmer says: “Having lost 90% of its primary rainforest over the past 50 years, Ghana now exercises strict regulations in sustainable and responsible forestry. Last year it became the first country in Africa to enter the VPA (Voluntary Partnership Agreement) with the European Union in an effort to outlaw illegal logging.”

Ghost forest 1

Celtis and its friends do not end their epic journey in London; having traveled all the way from the tropics, they will travel to Copenhagen to remind UN employees that the removal of the world’s ‘lungs’ through continued deforestation needs to be dealt with without delay.

Ghost forest 3

Angela Palmer is an artist with convictions: “Many thinkers maintain that all art is political; politics touches all aspects of our lives. Life is about politics. And art is about communication, often transmitting unpalatable truths.” Breathing In, currently at the Welcome museum from the 20th of October to the 22nd of November 2009, is another one of Palmer’s projects currently in the capital. In April 2007 Palmer travelled to Linfen in Shanxi Province, China, home to the most polluted air on Earth, and then to Cape Grim on the northwest tip of Tasmania where there’s the purest air and water on Earth.

Ghost forest 4

The exhibition is a straightforward display of the results of her journey to capture the physical properties of climate change. The evidence is undeniable- the previously white outfits worn for a day now blackened by the unhealthy Linfen air, the dark face cleanser pads and air pump filters…the facts are brutal. There is an uneasy juxtaposition between the pristine green luscious Tasmanian rainforest and the cloudy, polluted, dusty and overpopulated Chinese streets. Angela Palmer’s art is good medicine for anyone still wondering what all the fuss is about Climate Change. You leave the building wanting to help a worthy cause.

Last week was Community Week in Leeds, information pills meaning all week Leeds University Union hosted various events on their campus aimed at students and ways in which we can make a positive difference in our local community.

Kicking off rather appropriately with ‘Talking Rubbish’ on Monday, prescription wheelie bins were hot on the agenda due to the bin strike in Leeds which has amazingly reached its 12th week now because of rows over unfair pay. The vast amount of recyclable waste which had not been collected since the beginning of September when the strike began was finally shifted this week, unhealthy and residents can expect letters from Leeds City Council informing them of the changes to be made in their area.

james

Image courtesy of James Maxfield

On Wednesday it was ‘Safe in the knowledge’, a day aimed at teaching ways we can prevent burglary in the LS6 area. For example did you know that, according to the union’s ‘Knowledge’ campaign, in 2008 almost 52% of student homes burgled were due to open doors or windows? So first step: Shut your windows, lock your doors! It is pretty easy to pop out or even just upstairs and forget to lock the front door. Most of the burglary stories I’ve heard happened to people who were in the house at the time, for instance last year someone wandered into my friend’s house in the middle of the day, pinched their underwear and left a ‘surprise’ in the middle of the carpet. The Knowledge website offers practical advice on preventing burglary and making your student home a more secure place.

 Reszie_Knowledge_1

Images courtesy of Leeds University Union

Thursday was concerned with volunteering. The Union runs a great volunteering service which supports students who want to give a little back locally and abroad. For instance why not become a Carbon Ambassador? Sounds pretty impressive and you receive FREE training in energy efficiency practices, and what’s more you can then share your new skills by giving talks in your area and teach others ways they can cut carbon emissions.

unionbuilding

Image courtesy of Leeds University Union

The week finished off on Friday with Representation, which gave you the chance to chat about anything community related that may be worrying you, such as poor street lighting, recycling, suspicious take-aways, anything. Community Week may be over but Leeds students can still get down to the Union at any time. Go meet the student representatives and find out how you can get involved in local campaigns and make your neighbourhood just a little bit lovelier.

PLAS1

Following their super successful appearance at Barfly last week I made my way to a west London location to meet the plastiscine girls. On the way I’m trying desperately to remember my French from school to impress them. On a trip to Paris with my friend Ruth, malady there was no way we would have got by without my “C” grade, I’m sure I can think of something amazingly French to say. I arrive and briefly they are all there, hugs and an ipod charger are exchanged and then drummer Ana and bass player Louise are whisked off back to Paris. I’m sure they are going to have to get used to this whisking about business. So, I was on a very bizarrely patterned couch (see photo above) with lead singer Katty and guitarist Marine. I thought I’d open with my French skills…

Bonjour
K: Bonjour

Cava?
K: Cava merci, Vous parlez francais?

Non, that’s my limit
K: That’s good enough!

(Really?! That’s all that I could have come up with?! I should have revised more.)

You guys played Barfly last night, how do you find London crowds?
K: We really enjoyed the crowd yesterday because it was very busy, so we were really happy! We had a lot of friends in the crowd so they were dancing and jumping! It’s always good to have people reacting when you say something. In Paris people are so quiet, just at the back with their arms crossed and watching. They are interested but they just don’t move. So it’s good to be here and have the crowd reacting.

There seemed to be a lot of French folks in the audience, That must have been nice?K:
K: Yeah, I was really surprised! When I asked, “Who is French tonight?” there were quite a lot of people shouting!

barfly

So, How did your story begin?
K: Marine and I met in high school when we were 15 or 16. We started the band because we watched lots of bands like The Strokes and The White Stripes. We loved them, they had so much energy onstage, they were young and we thought we want to do the same thing. So we started the band and a few months after we were already doing some gigs in bars in Paris. We actually learnt our instruments on stage because we just wanted to play! We didn’t care if we could play, all we wanted was to play and get on stage and get into it!

So, you began by doing covers?
K: When we started we did a few covers, but we were very interested in doing our own songs. We did some covers from The Strokes and other bands for a while then we started doing our own songs, thats what really interested us more rather than covers.

A lot of your influences are English so do you guys find it more natural to write in English?
Both: Defiantly
K: Because all the songs we listen to are in English it is very natural to write in English, but sometimes we do write in French. We get direction from people saying we should say things this way because it’s a better way to say it in English. But yes, its natural because the music we like is English and American, we were never really into French bands

I read that French radio stations have restrictions on what they play (a percentage of French radio has to be French songs)
K: Yeah, so its quite difficult for us to be on the radio in France because we may be French but we sing in English. We are not in the same category as big international bands like the Arctic Monkeys, But then we don’t sing in French so we don’t fit into that category either, so its quite difficult to be on the radio.

PLAS2

You worked on your album with top producer Butch Walker what was this like?
M: We went to Malibu to record the album and it was amazing, it was really beautiful and we were in the this big house all together and in the morning we would go to record together or go swimming. Everyday we got to work together! It was interesting because it was the first time we were working with someone American. When we are French we don’t know if we would get along or have the right words to express, so we had a really long talk with him and he said what he likes and we said what we like. Butch is really passionate about music.

He’s worked with a wide range of people from Katy Perry to Weezer and now you guys

K: Yeah, he has done a lot of very big pop stars and he also works with acts because he really likes them, he’s done a lot of indie bands like Hot Hot Heat.
M: He was very honest, he said I do some stuff for money I do some stuff for passion and you are a passion for me.
K: He told us that from the first time he saw us playing on stage at Coachella he fell in love with us.

PlasB

So what acts are you into right now?
M: Lots of stuff, lots of English acts, I love the Jamie T album, I think it’s amazing. I like Metronomy, Katty loves Florence and the Machine. Also I love Eagles of Death Metal, we went to see them in Paris. We like lots of old and new stuff.

“Bitch” was on “Gossip Girl”, this must have been a massive deal for you?
K: I think we didn’t really realize when we did it! It was such a big thing to do! When we saw it on the internet were like “that’s weird!”. We watch the programme, we know the characters and the story so when we arrived we wanted to know what was happening! We were playing on stage at a ball so we couldn’t hear what the actors were saying! It was nice because all the actors came to us to say “hello” and Leighton Meester who plays Blake came up with our album and she wanted us to sign it!

How did this come about because it’s as if the song was written for “Gossip Girl”?
M: No, its on the album so they heard it on the album it was picked out because it worked really well. We recorded it back in February.

You have a great relationship with Nylon can you tell us a little more about this?
K: Marvin Scott Jarrett ,the editor in chief at Nylon, he is so passionate about music and he always puts a lot of bands in the magazine. I think he wanted to launch a label and so he did it with Nylon, Nylon records. We are the first band signed because he really liked us and I think he thought we were a good image for the magazine. He knew of us because in Paris fashion week we were on the cover of a magazine, from this he got in touch with our label, at the time which was Virgin, us we came to NYC to play at a party for the magazine. Then when we came back again he had the idea for the label and wanted to sign us.

So you spend a lot of time here and in NYC, would you ever relocate?
K: We would love to live in New York! We all love it there! I think people are amazing with us there! Sometimes here when people see four girls on stage in a rock band it is weird for them, like there is something fake, something wrong with it, but in NYC they are just like “That’s cool, its just four girls rocking” and they don’t care.

M: Also, I think that in NYC everybody is doing something interesting. We were only there for a few months we already made such good friends and there’s so much going on and so much different music. I think it would be good for the band living in NYC for a bit for inspiration.

K: You walk in the street and you just feel good there, I don’t know what it is. Its such a big city but you still feel safe.

PlasC

I follow u guys on twitter and I noticed you had a meeting with Topshop today, You guys are obviously into your fashion, Who are your style icons?

K: Yeah we got it all myspace/facebook/twitter there a blog that marines writes on.
M: Yeah we like fashion because we are girls. I love david bowie from the ziggy stardust period
K: I love Debbie Harry, she’s got it all the music the style, she’s amazing

The same thing could be said about these girls, they have the style, they have the music, they also seem to have it all. I glance and notice the smudge of a stamp on my hand from the entry last night, this reminds me that I have not even bothered to wash for our meeting today never mind attempting to dress nicely. I don’t think there is much point in trying around these girls though. They are naturally chic (I think it’s a French thing) with a playful grunge twist. I’m in love with them for the fact that they just decided to pick up interments to be onstage; from viewing them at The Barfly they all seem to be perfectly at home this platform. These beauties armed with the energy and attitude they bring to their performances, their catchy rock/pop tracks and their effortless style is a winning combination for these pop/grunge goddesses to begin a French revolution.
 

header_cottonImage courtesy of Environmental Justice Foundation.

ENVIRONMNENTAL JUSTICE FOUNDATION POP-UP STORE
13-27 NOVEMBER (MON-SAT: 10-7PM, sick SUN: 12-6PM)
WHITE GOLD, recipe 1ST FLOOR, dosage KINGLY COURT, W1
FREE ENTRY
Over the coming fortnight the Environmental Justice Foundation charity will be setting up shop in the heart of London’s Carnaby Street to help raise awareness of forced child labour and environmental abuses in cotton production. The EJF pop-up store will be selling a limited edition range of T-shirts designed in collaboration with fashion heavyweights such as Luella, Giles Deacon, Betty Jackson, Christian Lacroix, Alice Temperley, Richard Nicoll and Ciel. EJF will also be stocking 100 shopper bags designed by Eley Kishimoto which will retail at the bargain price of £10 or come free when you spend over £50 in store. As they sold out like hot potatoes at LFW last month make sure you get there while stock lasts.

rokit neon green cropImage courtesy of Rokit Vintage Clothing.

ROKIT ROCKING CHRISTMAS
26 NOVEMBER (6-9PM)
ROKIT, 42 SHELTON STREET, COVENT GARDEN, WC2
FREE ENTRY
If you’re looking to get into the festive spirit this week then head down to Covent Garden for this glamorous in-store event where in-house stylists will be on hand to help you choose something unique and original for all those impending Christmas parties! With drinks, cakes and live rockabilly rock’n’roll with Ronnie King and the Hustlers what more could you ask for? With an added incentive of 15% discount on offer you’d be made not to pop in for a mince pie.

otb_logo_bannerImage courtesy of the Old Truman Brewery.

ALL I WANT FOR XMAS
26 NOVEMBER – 20 DECEMBER (THURS: 5-9PM, FRI: 12-6PM, SAT/SUN: 10-6PM)
T1 SPACE, F BLOCK, OLD TRUMAN BREWERY, 15 HANBURY STREET, E1
FREE ENTRY
Launching this Thursday the Old Truman Brewery has come up with the perfect antidote to pre-Christmas blues with a one-stop shopping event that aims to inject the fun back into the much dreaded Christmas shop. Featuring a wide variety of exclusive goods on sale from independent retailers in the form of gift markets, exhibitions, designer sales, independent shops and even a pop-up emporium you’re sure to find something for everyone. With the brightest creative talent from the worlds of design, art, fashion and home ware it’s time to start checking off your Christmas list and see who’s been naughty and who’s been nice!

ada zanditon sample saleImage courtesy of Ada Zandinton.

ADA ZANDITON SAMPLE SALE
26-27 NOVEMBER (THURS: 6:30-9:30PM, FRI: 11-7PM)
DIGITARIA, 60 BERWICK STREET, SOHO, W1
FREE ENTRY
A firm favourite among the British ethical designers, Ada Zanditon is to host her first sample sale later this week. Hosted by Ada herself in conjunction with Notion magazine there will be exclusive music videos from Bishi and a fashion supplement giveaway. If you’d like to get your hands on pieces from Ada’s AW09 range at heavily discounted prices (up to 70%) make sure you put this date in your diary, just don’t forget to RSVP.

twist baby twistImage courtesy of Fashion & Textile Museum.

TWIST BABY TWIST
27-28 NOVEMBER (7:30-10:30PM)
FASHION & TEXTILE MUSEUM, 83 BERMONDSEY STREET, SE1
£15 (INCLUDING FOALE & TUFFIN EXHIBITION ENTRY AND SHOW)
This weekend the Fashion & Textile Museum will be hosting two evenings of swinging sixties entertainment to celebrate their current exhibition Foale and Tuffin: Made in England. Celebrating everything great about this iconic decade in British culture there will be a host of live music and dancing from the likes of Remi Nicole, Theoretical Girl, The Equations and BeBe & Paulo on Friday and Eliza Doolittle, The Bang Bang Club and Henry Johnson on Saturday. If that wasn’t enough you’ll also find film displays, fashion shows, 1960s themed make-overs, DJs, a mysterious David Bailey photo booth plus many more activities to keep you entertained.

OXFAM_MAKE_DO_AND_MENDImage courtesy of Oxfam.

OXFAM MAKE DO AND MEND FASHION SHOW
28 NOVEMBER (FROM 2PM WITH CATWALK SHOW AT 6:30PM)
ST. MARY’S CHURCH, WYNDHAM PLACE, MARYLEBONE, W1
£5 ENTRY
This one-off “Make Do and Mend” event takes its name from the WW2 propaganda campaigns when clothing rationing was introduced. In current times where every penny counts Oxfam are encouraging consumers to step away from the “throwaway” fashion and embrace the quality and individual style their stores have to offer. To bring home this message Oxfam are hosting a very special event which will see a host of market stalls sell everything from accessories to wedding dresses, as well as an exhibition on the history of 2nd hand fashion, a swap shop and a special customisation corner. If all of this wasn’t enough to whet your appetite there will also be food and drink on offer, live music and DJs and the piece de resistance; a special Oxfam fashion show.

Written by Rachael Oku on Monday November 23rd, 2009 10:16 am

Categories ,Ada Zanditon, ,Alice Temperley, ,All I want for Xmas, ,BeBe & Paulo, ,Betty Jackson, ,Bishi, ,Christian Lacroix, ,ciel, ,David Bailey, ,Digitaria, ,Eley Kishimoto, ,Eliza Doolittle, ,Environmental Justice Foundation, ,Fashion & Textile Museum, ,Foale and Tuffin, ,Giles Deacon, ,Henry Johnson, ,Kingly Court, ,Luella, ,Make Do and Mend, ,Notion, ,Old Truman Brewery, ,oxfam, ,Remi Nicole, ,Richard Nicoll, ,Rokit, ,Ronnie King and the Hustlers, ,The Bang Bang Club, ,The Equations, ,Theoretical Girl, ,Twist Baby Twist

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Amelia’s Magazine | Fashion Listings 23-29 November – Part 23

by

Ghost Forest in Trafalgar Square is a well-timed art-installation taking place ahead of the UN conference on Climate Change from December 7 to 18, visit web involving 11, diagnosis 000 delegates from 192 countries. Ten tree stumps selected from seven indigenous species all with delightful exotic names are represented – Denya, Dahuma, Danta, Hyedua, Mahogany, Wawa and three varieties of Celtis – and have been placed at the feet of the National gallery, right at the very centre of Western Industrialization. They are all with a rich and varied ecology and all with equally diverse uses by man; the Celtis Adolfi-Friderici is evergreen, but many of its leaves do fall during the dry season. It grows up to 100 feet tall and is of abundant forest availability. It is hard not to be moved by the contrasting sight of those stumps laid to rest on white concrete blocks close to the 196 feet-tall Nelson’s Column.

Londoners know Trafalgar Square as a rather uninspiring and barren site inhabited by a swarm of pigeons and tourists. The place is now invaded with what appears to be sculptures for posh interiors. Or is it a vast graveyard of searing beauty? The Celtis is used for interior joinery, plywood, and furniture components back in its country of origin, Ghana. In Europe, it is mostly used in the coffin industry. At Trafalgar Square, it all looks like an odd burial site. Now Ghana’s trees have the good fortune of benefiting from the Voluntary Partnership Agreement. Artist Angela Palmer says: “Having lost 90% of its primary rainforest over the past 50 years, Ghana now exercises strict regulations in sustainable and responsible forestry. Last year it became the first country in Africa to enter the VPA (Voluntary Partnership Agreement) with the European Union in an effort to outlaw illegal logging.”

Celtis and its friends do not end their epic journey in London; having traveled all the way from the tropics, they will travel to Copenhagen to remind UN employees that the removal of the world’s ‘lungs’ through continued deforestation needs to be dealt with without delay, no matter what Obama says.

Angela Palmer is an artist with convictions: “Many thinkers maintain that all art is political; politics touches all aspects of our lives. Life is about politics. And art is about communication, often transmitting unpalatable truths.” Breathing In, currently at the Welcome museum from the 20th of October to the 22nd of November 2009, is another one of Palmer’s projects currently in the capital. In April 2007 Palmer travelled to Linfen in Shanxi Province, China, home to the most polluted air on Earth, and then to Cape Grim on the northwest tip of Tasmania where there’s the purest air and water on Earth. The exhibition is a straightforward display of the results of her journey to capture the physical properties of climate change. The evidence is undeniable- the previously white outfits worn for a day now blackened by the unhealthy Linfen air, the dark face cleanser pads and air pump filters…the facts are brutal. There is an uneasy juxtaposition between the pristine green luscious Tasmanian rainforest and the cloudy, polluted, dusty and overpopulated Chinese streets. Angela Palmer’s art is good medicine for anyone still wondering what all the fuss is about Climate Change. You leave the building wanting to help a worthy cause.
Ghost Forest in Trafalgar Square is a well-timed art-installation taking place ahead of the UN conference on Climate Change from December 7 to 18, page involving 11,000 delegates from 192 countries. Ten tree stumps selected from seven indigenous species all with delightful exotic names are represented – Denya, Dahuma, Danta, Hyedua, Mahogany, Wawa and three varieties of Celtis – and have been placed at the feet of the National gallery, right at the very centre of Western Industrialization. They are all with a rich and varied ecology and all with equally diverse uses by man; the Celtis Adolfi-Friderici is evergreen, but many of its leaves do fall during the dry season. It grows up to 100 feet tall and is of abundant forest availability.

Ghost forest 2

It is hard not to be moved by the contrasting sight of those stumps laid to rest on white concrete blocks close to the 196 feet-tall Nelson’s Column. Londoners know Trafalgar Square as a rather uninspiring and barren site inhabited by a swarm of pigeons and tourists. The place is now invaded with what appears to be sculptures for posh interiors. Or is it a vast graveyard of searing beauty? The Celtis is used for interior joinery, plywood, and furniture components back in its country of origin, Ghana. In Europe, it is mostly used in the coffin industry. At Trafalgar Square, it all looks like an odd burial site. Now Ghana’s trees have the good fortune of benefiting from the Voluntary Partnership Agreement. Artist Angela Palmer says: “Having lost 90% of its primary rainforest over the past 50 years, Ghana now exercises strict regulations in sustainable and responsible forestry. Last year it became the first country in Africa to enter the VPA (Voluntary Partnership Agreement) with the European Union in an effort to outlaw illegal logging.”

Ghost forest 1

Celtis and its friends do not end their epic journey in London; having traveled all the way from the tropics, they will travel to Copenhagen to remind UN employees that the removal of the world’s ‘lungs’ through continued deforestation needs to be dealt with without delay, no matter what Obama says.

Ghost forest 3

Angela Palmer is an artist with convictions: “Many thinkers maintain that all art is political; politics touches all aspects of our lives. Life is about politics. And art is about communication, often transmitting unpalatable truths.” Breathing In, currently at the Welcome museum from the 20th of October to the 22nd of November 2009, is another one of Palmer’s projects currently in the capital. In April 2007 Palmer travelled to Linfen in Shanxi Province, China, home to the most polluted air on Earth, and then to Cape Grim on the northwest tip of Tasmania where there’s the purest air and water on Earth.

Ghost forest 4

The exhibition is a straightforward display of the results of her journey to capture the physical properties of climate change. The evidence is undeniable- the previously white outfits worn for a day now blackened by the unhealthy Linfen air, the dark face cleanser pads and air pump filters…the facts are brutal. There is an uneasy juxtaposition between the pristine green luscious Tasmanian rainforest and the cloudy, polluted, dusty and overpopulated Chinese streets. Angela Palmer’s art is good medicine for anyone still wondering what all the fuss is about Climate Change. You leave the building wanting to help a worthy cause.
Ghost Forest in Trafalgar Square is a well-timed art-installation taking place ahead of the UN conference on Climate Change from December 7 to 18, approved involving 11, salve 000 delegates from 192 countries. Ten tree stumps selected from seven indigenous species all with delightful exotic names are represented – Denya, Dahuma, Danta, Hyedua, Mahogany, Wawa and three varieties of Celtis – and have been placed at the feet of the National gallery, right at the very centre of Western Industrialization. They are all with a rich and varied ecology and all with equally diverse uses by man; the Celtis Adolfi-Friderici is evergreen, but many of its leaves do fall during the dry season. It grows up to 100 feet tall and is of abundant forest availability.

Ghost forest 2

It is hard not to be moved by the contrasting sight of those stumps laid to rest on white concrete blocks close to the 196 feet-tall Nelson’s Column. Londoners know Trafalgar Square as a rather uninspiring and barren site inhabited by a swarm of pigeons and tourists. The place is now invaded with what appears to be sculptures for posh interiors. Or is it a vast graveyard of searing beauty? The Celtis is used for interior joinery, plywood, and furniture components back in its country of origin, Ghana. In Europe, it is mostly used in the coffin industry. At Trafalgar Square, it all looks like an odd burial site. Now Ghana’s trees have the good fortune of benefiting from the Voluntary Partnership Agreement. Artist Angela Palmer says: “Having lost 90% of its primary rainforest over the past 50 years, Ghana now exercises strict regulations in sustainable and responsible forestry. Last year it became the first country in Africa to enter the VPA (Voluntary Partnership Agreement) with the European Union in an effort to outlaw illegal logging.”

Ghost forest 1

Celtis and its friends do not end their epic journey in London; having traveled all the way from the tropics, they will travel to Copenhagen to remind UN employees that the removal of the world’s ‘lungs’ through continued deforestation needs to be dealt with without delay, no matter what Obama says.

Ghost forest 3

Angela Palmer is an artist with convictions: “Many thinkers maintain that all art is political; politics touches all aspects of our lives. Life is about politics. And art is about communication, often transmitting unpalatable truths.” Breathing In, currently at the Welcome museum from the 20th of October to the 22nd of November 2009, is another one of Palmer’s projects currently in the capital. In April 2007 Palmer travelled to Linfen in Shanxi Province, China, home to the most polluted air on Earth, and then to Cape Grim on the northwest tip of Tasmania where there’s the purest air and water on Earth.

Ghost forest 4

The exhibition is a straightforward display of the results of her journey to capture the physical properties of climate change. The evidence is undeniable- the previously white outfits worn for a day now blackened by the unhealthy Linfen air, the dark face cleanser pads and air pump filters…the facts are brutal. There is an uneasy juxtaposition between the pristine green luscious Tasmanian rainforest and the cloudy, polluted, dusty and overpopulated Chinese streets. Angela Palmer’s art is good medicine for anyone still wondering what all the fuss is about Climate Change. You leave the building wanting to help a worthy cause.
Ghost Forest in Trafalgar Square is a well-timed art-installation taking place ahead of the UN conference on Climate Change from December 7 to 18, information pills involving 11, stuff 000 delegates from 192 countries. Ten tree stumps selected from seven indigenous species all with delightful exotic names are represented – Denya, click Dahuma, Danta, Hyedua, Mahogany, Wawa and three varieties of Celtis – and have been placed at the feet of the National gallery, right at the very centre of Western Industrialization. They are all with a rich and varied ecology and all with equally diverse uses by man; the Celtis Adolfi-Friderici is evergreen, but many of its leaves do fall during the dry season. It grows up to 100 feet tall and is of abundant forest availability.

Ghost forest 2

It is hard not to be moved by the contrasting sight of those stumps laid to rest on white concrete blocks close to the 196 feet-tall Nelson’s Column. Londoners know Trafalgar Square as a rather uninspiring and barren site inhabited by a swarm of pigeons and tourists. The place is now invaded with what appears to be sculptures for posh interiors. Or is it a vast graveyard of searing beauty? The Celtis is used for interior joinery, plywood, and furniture components back in its country of origin, Ghana. In Europe, it is mostly used in the coffin industry. At Trafalgar Square, it all looks like an odd burial site. Now Ghana’s trees have the good fortune of benefiting from the Voluntary Partnership Agreement. Artist Angela Palmer says: “Having lost 90% of its primary rainforest over the past 50 years, Ghana now exercises strict regulations in sustainable and responsible forestry. Last year it became the first country in Africa to enter the VPA (Voluntary Partnership Agreement) with the European Union in an effort to outlaw illegal logging.”

Ghost forest 1

Celtis and its friends do not end their epic journey in London; having traveled all the way from the tropics, they will travel to Copenhagen to remind UN employees that the removal of the world’s ‘lungs’ through continued deforestation needs to be dealt with without delay.

Ghost forest 3

Angela Palmer is an artist with convictions: “Many thinkers maintain that all art is political; politics touches all aspects of our lives. Life is about politics. And art is about communication, often transmitting unpalatable truths.” Breathing In, currently at the Welcome museum from the 20th of October to the 22nd of November 2009, is another one of Palmer’s projects currently in the capital. In April 2007 Palmer travelled to Linfen in Shanxi Province, China, home to the most polluted air on Earth, and then to Cape Grim on the northwest tip of Tasmania where there’s the purest air and water on Earth.

Ghost forest 4

The exhibition is a straightforward display of the results of her journey to capture the physical properties of climate change. The evidence is undeniable- the previously white outfits worn for a day now blackened by the unhealthy Linfen air, the dark face cleanser pads and air pump filters…the facts are brutal. There is an uneasy juxtaposition between the pristine green luscious Tasmanian rainforest and the cloudy, polluted, dusty and overpopulated Chinese streets. Angela Palmer’s art is good medicine for anyone still wondering what all the fuss is about Climate Change. You leave the building wanting to help a worthy cause.

Last week was Community Week in Leeds, information pills meaning all week Leeds University Union hosted various events on their campus aimed at students and ways in which we can make a positive difference in our local community.

Kicking off rather appropriately with ‘Talking Rubbish’ on Monday, prescription wheelie bins were hot on the agenda due to the bin strike in Leeds which has amazingly reached its 12th week now because of rows over unfair pay. The vast amount of recyclable waste which had not been collected since the beginning of September when the strike began was finally shifted this week, unhealthy and residents can expect letters from Leeds City Council informing them of the changes to be made in their area.

james

Image courtesy of James Maxfield

On Wednesday it was ‘Safe in the knowledge’, a day aimed at teaching ways we can prevent burglary in the LS6 area. For example did you know that, according to the union’s ‘Knowledge’ campaign, in 2008 almost 52% of student homes burgled were due to open doors or windows? So first step: Shut your windows, lock your doors! It is pretty easy to pop out or even just upstairs and forget to lock the front door. Most of the burglary stories I’ve heard happened to people who were in the house at the time, for instance last year someone wandered into my friend’s house in the middle of the day, pinched their underwear and left a ‘surprise’ in the middle of the carpet. The Knowledge website offers practical advice on preventing burglary and making your student home a more secure place.

 Reszie_Knowledge_1

Images courtesy of Leeds University Union

Thursday was concerned with volunteering. The Union runs a great volunteering service which supports students who want to give a little back locally and abroad. For instance why not become a Carbon Ambassador? Sounds pretty impressive and you receive FREE training in energy efficiency practices, and what’s more you can then share your new skills by giving talks in your area and teach others ways they can cut carbon emissions.

unionbuilding

Image courtesy of Leeds University Union

The week finished off on Friday with Representation, which gave you the chance to chat about anything community related that may be worrying you, such as poor street lighting, recycling, suspicious take-aways, anything. Community Week may be over but Leeds students can still get down to the Union at any time. Go meet the student representatives and find out how you can get involved in local campaigns and make your neighbourhood just a little bit lovelier.

PLAS1

Following their super successful appearance at Barfly last week I made my way to a west London location to meet the plastiscine girls. On the way I’m trying desperately to remember my French from school to impress them. On a trip to Paris with my friend Ruth, malady there was no way we would have got by without my “C” grade, I’m sure I can think of something amazingly French to say. I arrive and briefly they are all there, hugs and an ipod charger are exchanged and then drummer Ana and bass player Louise are whisked off back to Paris. I’m sure they are going to have to get used to this whisking about business. So, I was on a very bizarrely patterned couch (see photo above) with lead singer Katty and guitarist Marine. I thought I’d open with my French skills…

Bonjour
K: Bonjour

Cava?
K: Cava merci, Vous parlez francais?

Non, that’s my limit
K: That’s good enough!

(Really?! That’s all that I could have come up with?! I should have revised more.)

You guys played Barfly last night, how do you find London crowds?
K: We really enjoyed the crowd yesterday because it was very busy, so we were really happy! We had a lot of friends in the crowd so they were dancing and jumping! It’s always good to have people reacting when you say something. In Paris people are so quiet, just at the back with their arms crossed and watching. They are interested but they just don’t move. So it’s good to be here and have the crowd reacting.

There seemed to be a lot of French folks in the audience, That must have been nice?K:
K: Yeah, I was really surprised! When I asked, “Who is French tonight?” there were quite a lot of people shouting!

barfly

So, How did your story begin?
K: Marine and I met in high school when we were 15 or 16. We started the band because we watched lots of bands like The Strokes and The White Stripes. We loved them, they had so much energy onstage, they were young and we thought we want to do the same thing. So we started the band and a few months after we were already doing some gigs in bars in Paris. We actually learnt our instruments on stage because we just wanted to play! We didn’t care if we could play, all we wanted was to play and get on stage and get into it!

So, you began by doing covers?
K: When we started we did a few covers, but we were very interested in doing our own songs. We did some covers from The Strokes and other bands for a while then we started doing our own songs, thats what really interested us more rather than covers.

A lot of your influences are English so do you guys find it more natural to write in English?
Both: Defiantly
K: Because all the songs we listen to are in English it is very natural to write in English, but sometimes we do write in French. We get direction from people saying we should say things this way because it’s a better way to say it in English. But yes, its natural because the music we like is English and American, we were never really into French bands

I read that French radio stations have restrictions on what they play (a percentage of French radio has to be French songs)
K: Yeah, so its quite difficult for us to be on the radio in France because we may be French but we sing in English. We are not in the same category as big international bands like the Arctic Monkeys, But then we don’t sing in French so we don’t fit into that category either, so its quite difficult to be on the radio.

PLAS2

You worked on your album with top producer Butch Walker what was this like?
M: We went to Malibu to record the album and it was amazing, it was really beautiful and we were in the this big house all together and in the morning we would go to record together or go swimming. Everyday we got to work together! It was interesting because it was the first time we were working with someone American. When we are French we don’t know if we would get along or have the right words to express, so we had a really long talk with him and he said what he likes and we said what we like. Butch is really passionate about music.

He’s worked with a wide range of people from Katy Perry to Weezer and now you guys

K: Yeah, he has done a lot of very big pop stars and he also works with acts because he really likes them, he’s done a lot of indie bands like Hot Hot Heat.
M: He was very honest, he said I do some stuff for money I do some stuff for passion and you are a passion for me.
K: He told us that from the first time he saw us playing on stage at Coachella he fell in love with us.

PlasB

So what acts are you into right now?
M: Lots of stuff, lots of English acts, I love the Jamie T album, I think it’s amazing. I like Metronomy, Katty loves Florence and the Machine. Also I love Eagles of Death Metal, we went to see them in Paris. We like lots of old and new stuff.

“Bitch” was on “Gossip Girl”, this must have been a massive deal for you?
K: I think we didn’t really realize when we did it! It was such a big thing to do! When we saw it on the internet were like “that’s weird!”. We watch the programme, we know the characters and the story so when we arrived we wanted to know what was happening! We were playing on stage at a ball so we couldn’t hear what the actors were saying! It was nice because all the actors came to us to say “hello” and Leighton Meester who plays Blake came up with our album and she wanted us to sign it!

How did this come about because it’s as if the song was written for “Gossip Girl”?
M: No, its on the album so they heard it on the album it was picked out because it worked really well. We recorded it back in February.

You have a great relationship with Nylon can you tell us a little more about this?
K: Marvin Scott Jarrett ,the editor in chief at Nylon, he is so passionate about music and he always puts a lot of bands in the magazine. I think he wanted to launch a label and so he did it with Nylon, Nylon records. We are the first band signed because he really liked us and I think he thought we were a good image for the magazine. He knew of us because in Paris fashion week we were on the cover of a magazine, from this he got in touch with our label, at the time which was Virgin, us we came to NYC to play at a party for the magazine. Then when we came back again he had the idea for the label and wanted to sign us.

So you spend a lot of time here and in NYC, would you ever relocate?
K: We would love to live in New York! We all love it there! I think people are amazing with us there! Sometimes here when people see four girls on stage in a rock band it is weird for them, like there is something fake, something wrong with it, but in NYC they are just like “That’s cool, its just four girls rocking” and they don’t care.

M: Also, I think that in NYC everybody is doing something interesting. We were only there for a few months we already made such good friends and there’s so much going on and so much different music. I think it would be good for the band living in NYC for a bit for inspiration.

K: You walk in the street and you just feel good there, I don’t know what it is. Its such a big city but you still feel safe.

PlasC

I follow u guys on twitter and I noticed you had a meeting with Topshop today, You guys are obviously into your fashion, Who are your style icons?

K: Yeah we got it all myspace/facebook/twitter there a blog that marines writes on.
M: Yeah we like fashion because we are girls. I love david bowie from the ziggy stardust period
K: I love Debbie Harry, she’s got it all the music the style, she’s amazing

The same thing could be said about these girls, they have the style, they have the music, they also seem to have it all. I glance and notice the smudge of a stamp on my hand from the entry last night, this reminds me that I have not even bothered to wash for our meeting today never mind attempting to dress nicely. I don’t think there is much point in trying around these girls though. They are naturally chic (I think it’s a French thing) with a playful grunge twist. I’m in love with them for the fact that they just decided to pick up interments to be onstage; from viewing them at The Barfly they all seem to be perfectly at home this platform. These beauties armed with the energy and attitude they bring to their performances, their catchy rock/pop tracks and their effortless style is a winning combination for these pop/grunge goddesses to begin a French revolution.
 

header_cottonImage courtesy of Environmental Justice Foundation.

ENVIRONMNENTAL JUSTICE FOUNDATION POP-UP STORE
13-27 NOVEMBER (MON-SAT: 10-7PM, sick SUN: 12-6PM)
WHITE GOLD, recipe 1ST FLOOR, dosage KINGLY COURT, W1
FREE ENTRY
Over the coming fortnight the Environmental Justice Foundation charity will be setting up shop in the heart of London’s Carnaby Street to help raise awareness of forced child labour and environmental abuses in cotton production. The EJF pop-up store will be selling a limited edition range of T-shirts designed in collaboration with fashion heavyweights such as Luella, Giles Deacon, Betty Jackson, Christian Lacroix, Alice Temperley, Richard Nicoll and Ciel. EJF will also be stocking 100 shopper bags designed by Eley Kishimoto which will retail at the bargain price of £10 or come free when you spend over £50 in store. As they sold out like hot potatoes at LFW last month make sure you get there while stock lasts.

rokit neon green cropImage courtesy of Rokit Vintage Clothing.

ROKIT ROCKING CHRISTMAS
26 NOVEMBER (6-9PM)
ROKIT, 42 SHELTON STREET, COVENT GARDEN, WC2
FREE ENTRY
If you’re looking to get into the festive spirit this week then head down to Covent Garden for this glamorous in-store event where in-house stylists will be on hand to help you choose something unique and original for all those impending Christmas parties! With drinks, cakes and live rockabilly rock’n’roll with Ronnie King and the Hustlers what more could you ask for? With an added incentive of 15% discount on offer you’d be made not to pop in for a mince pie.

otb_logo_bannerImage courtesy of the Old Truman Brewery.

ALL I WANT FOR XMAS
26 NOVEMBER – 20 DECEMBER (THURS: 5-9PM, FRI: 12-6PM, SAT/SUN: 10-6PM)
T1 SPACE, F BLOCK, OLD TRUMAN BREWERY, 15 HANBURY STREET, E1
FREE ENTRY
Launching this Thursday the Old Truman Brewery has come up with the perfect antidote to pre-Christmas blues with a one-stop shopping event that aims to inject the fun back into the much dreaded Christmas shop. Featuring a wide variety of exclusive goods on sale from independent retailers in the form of gift markets, exhibitions, designer sales, independent shops and even a pop-up emporium you’re sure to find something for everyone. With the brightest creative talent from the worlds of design, art, fashion and home ware it’s time to start checking off your Christmas list and see who’s been naughty and who’s been nice!

ada zanditon sample saleImage courtesy of Ada Zandinton.

ADA ZANDITON SAMPLE SALE
26-27 NOVEMBER (THURS: 6:30-9:30PM, FRI: 11-7PM)
DIGITARIA, 60 BERWICK STREET, SOHO, W1
FREE ENTRY
A firm favourite among the British ethical designers, Ada Zanditon is to host her first sample sale later this week. Hosted by Ada herself in conjunction with Notion magazine there will be exclusive music videos from Bishi and a fashion supplement giveaway. If you’d like to get your hands on pieces from Ada’s AW09 range at heavily discounted prices (up to 70%) make sure you put this date in your diary, just don’t forget to RSVP.

twist baby twistImage courtesy of Fashion & Textile Museum.

TWIST BABY TWIST
27-28 NOVEMBER (7:30-10:30PM)
FASHION & TEXTILE MUSEUM, 83 BERMONDSEY STREET, SE1
£15 (INCLUDING FOALE & TUFFIN EXHIBITION ENTRY AND SHOW)
This weekend the Fashion & Textile Museum will be hosting two evenings of swinging sixties entertainment to celebrate their current exhibition Foale and Tuffin: Made in England. Celebrating everything great about this iconic decade in British culture there will be a host of live music and dancing from the likes of Remi Nicole, Theoretical Girl, The Equations and BeBe & Paulo on Friday and Eliza Doolittle, The Bang Bang Club and Henry Johnson on Saturday. If that wasn’t enough you’ll also find film displays, fashion shows, 1960s themed make-overs, DJs, a mysterious David Bailey photo booth plus many more activities to keep you entertained.

OXFAM_MAKE_DO_AND_MENDImage courtesy of Oxfam.

OXFAM MAKE DO AND MEND FASHION SHOW
28 NOVEMBER (FROM 2PM WITH CATWALK SHOW AT 6:30PM)
ST. MARY’S CHURCH, WYNDHAM PLACE, MARYLEBONE, W1
£5 ENTRY
This one-off “Make Do and Mend” event takes its name from the WW2 propaganda campaigns when clothing rationing was introduced. In current times where every penny counts Oxfam are encouraging consumers to step away from the “throwaway” fashion and embrace the quality and individual style their stores have to offer. To bring home this message Oxfam are hosting a very special event which will see a host of market stalls sell everything from accessories to wedding dresses, as well as an exhibition on the history of 2nd hand fashion, a swap shop and a special customisation corner. If all of this wasn’t enough to whet your appetite there will also be food and drink on offer, live music and DJs and the piece de resistance; a special Oxfam fashion show.

Written by Rachael Oku on Monday November 23rd, 2009 10:16 am

Categories ,Ada Zanditon, ,Alice Temperley, ,All I want for Xmas, ,BeBe & Paulo, ,Betty Jackson, ,Bishi, ,Christian Lacroix, ,ciel, ,David Bailey, ,Digitaria, ,Eley Kishimoto, ,Eliza Doolittle, ,Environmental Justice Foundation, ,Fashion & Textile Museum, ,Foale and Tuffin, ,Giles Deacon, ,Henry Johnson, ,Kingly Court, ,Luella, ,Make Do and Mend, ,Notion, ,Old Truman Brewery, ,oxfam, ,Remi Nicole, ,Richard Nicoll, ,Rokit, ,Ronnie King and the Hustlers, ,The Bang Bang Club, ,The Equations, ,Theoretical Girl, ,Twist Baby Twist

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Amelia’s Magazine | Claudia Ligari and Eleanor Amoroso: London Fashion Week A/W 2013 Presentation Review

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I was invited to do live illustrations at the Lewis and Leigh PR event on Friday, for the designers Claudia Ligari and Eleanor Amoroso.

claudia ligari hood - lfw - aw13 - jenny robins - amelias magazine

In typical fashion week style it was chaos up to the last minute as the venue, Beach Blanket Babylon in Shoreditch, had been double booked and the show ended up in what was essentially a storage room. Even so, they did a good enough job of dressing it to make it look intentionally basic, and I think the raw whiteness of it suited the work. Once I had set up my paints I watched Eleanor Amoroso set to work with hair straighteners on the long sinuous tassels that hang from her macramé pieces.

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It was a shame not to see Eleanor Amoroso‘s garments on models, as the long free flowing cords are clearly made to be seen in movement. Instead I have tried to capture that shape and movement in my illustrations.

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eleanor amoroso - lfw - aw13 - jenny robins - amelias magazine

Both the designers worked on a big and small scale, with Eleanor Amoroso presenting full length and more minimal versions (which would work well as accessories) of her intricately knotted black and white pieces. She has somewhat downscaled from more epic pieces previously featured on Amelia’s Magazine, probably for sensible commercial reasons.

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Claudia Ligari’s collection

claudia ligari wearing herself - lfw - aw13 - jenny robins - amelias magazine

Claudia Ligari, on the other hand, showed a strong sensitivity for the power of simple shapes in both her garments and her jewellery collection. The strength of the lines in her work were the opposite of her physical presence, as I drew her (‘wearing herself’), she was constantly in motion, catching the light on the leather panels of her dress. She also showed her work in the exhibition at Fashion Scout.

claudia ligari - lfw - aw13 - jenny robins - amelias magazine
In general I preferred Claudia Ligari‘s more complex garments over the austere leather pieces. But then I’m not usually a fan of clean as an aesthetic on it’s own: the camel coat illustrated was getting a lot of love. I’d be interested to see the two designers’ work worn together actually, as I think the intricacy of the macramé thread work against the stark panels of leather could work well.

claudia ligari camel - lfw - aw13 - jenny robins - amelias magazine
I’m a big fan of spending an evening this way. Not only did I get to draw all night, whilst drinking free drinks and meeting interesting people, but I now have ready to go illustrations for this article, saving me time to do other London Fashion Week journalism. Hooray.

eleanor amoroso and interesting people - lfw - aw13 - jenny robins - amelias magazine
Beth Buxton on the left, some interesting looking fashion people, and Eleanor Amoroso holding her portrait.

Written by Jenny Robins on Tuesday February 19th, 2013 9:05 pm

Categories ,A/W 2013, ,Beach Blanket Babylon, ,Beth Buxton, ,claudia ligari, ,Eleanor Amoroso, ,fashion, ,illustration, ,Lewis and Leigh PR, ,live illustration, ,london, ,London Fashion Week, ,Macrame, ,review

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Amelia’s Magazine | Fashion and Ethics – A timely discussion

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Ciel_AW09Page6[7]

Ciel (photography by Ben@bengold.co.uk)

The V&A have a knack for putting on stylish events for the stylishly minded and the “Fashion and…” lecture series was no exception. Taking off in conjunction with London College of Fashion, one that attracted Amelia’s Magazine’s was the “Fashion and Ethics” forum.  The forum brought to our attention the extreme passion many people have for making a difference within the third world for garment workers. The guest speakers; designer Sarah Ratty of Ciel, Christian Kemp-Griffin from clothing range Edun and Matilda Lee from the Ecologist represented different areas of the industry. Posing the question “is green still the new black?” the talk raised awareness of what is being done and what still needs to be done for a fairer trading world.

Ciel_AW09Page3[9]

Ciel (photography by Ben@bengold.co.uk)

Essentially the forum broached the difficult subject of responsibility. Now that we as a shopping public know about the ‘behind the scenes’ of clothing retail, should we change our shopping habits? The popularity of the talk highlights the extent to which we are aware of these issues. With ‘cheap-fashion-fix’ culture taking over, consumers are buying more and more cheap clothing, instead of investing in more expensive pieces as our grandparents’ generation did. However, the human price is far from cheap, poorly paid labour, stark working conditions and unfair treatment are all linked in order for the shops to turn out cheaper and cheaper clothing yet still make a profit. The profit is coming from the worker.

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Ciel Wool (photography by Ben@bengold.co.uk)

Two of the in-house speakers, Sarah Ratty and Christian Kemp-Griffin, were there to represent design houses that refuse to compromise on worker rights. Sarah Ratty of Ciel designs clothing alongside Peruvian farmers whose lifestyle would otherwise have died out. Creating luxurious pieces from alpaca wool, Ratty’s designs help keep the coloured alpaca stock alive as they are suffering from the popularity of their white alpaca brothers. The farmers who raise the stock are also ‘kept alive’ by Ratty’s industry as she provides them with working conditions which can allow them to continue with a way of life that has lasted for years. Ratty is a business woman and a designer, but one who wants to make a difference.

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Sarah Ratty of Ciel (photography by Ben@bengold.co.uk)

Similarly, Edun, represented by Christian Kemp-Griffen, are another company whose main purpose is to aid garment workers and promote fair trade. Famously fathered by Bono and his wife Ali Hewson, the label seeks to aid sub-Saharan African countries through trade. Believing that promoting trade will put an end to the need for world aid, Edun encourages garment manufacture in countries such as Uganda. The old maxim, “Give a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he’ll eat forever” certainly seems to be of utmost relevance here.

edun-grazing-elk-tee

Edun

With rousing forum interchanges following the initial “speeches”, the passion of the audience for ethical fashion was evident. Debating the relative benefits of organic cotton over its abundant water usage, the speakers had to admit that they could not do everything; for success within this field, it is necessary to pick and choose a path to follow. These designers are following the path of creating admirable working conditions and promoting trade to poor countries.

The talk centred around the future of the industry, pondering the invention of intelligent and GM fabrics. While GM fabrics had a distinct “no” from both Sarah Ratty and Matilda Lee, the use of intelligent fabrics was deemed interesting for the future of fashion. Inevitably, the debate overran the allotted time slot, and our London College of Fashion host had to silence those still attempting to pose questions.

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Edun

Following the success of the night, I will leave you with my main thoughts on the proceedings. In a world in which fair trade food is widely appreciated and endorsed, isn’t it time for fair trade fashion to follow suit?

Written by Becky Cope on Thursday November 5th, 2009 11:58 am

Categories ,Ali Hewson, ,Bono, ,Christian Kemp-Griffin, ,ciel, ,Edun, ,Ethical Fashion Forum, ,fairtrade, ,Fashion and… lecture series, ,London College of Fashion, ,Matilda Lee, ,Sarah Ratty, ,the ecologist, ,va, ,War on Want

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Amelia’s Magazine | Fashion at Forty Winks – relax with fashion

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This weeks listings; arts, website like this training, information pills films and festivals. Make sure you check out C words at some point, where Platform are putting on 50 events in the run-up to COP 15.

EL1
Illustration by Andrea Kearney

The Alternative Food Shopping Tour!
Tuesday 27 October 2009

An event to accompany C Words: Carbon, Climate, Capital, Culture – an exhibition by artist-activist group PLATFORM and their collaborators. Join James from action hero on a guided tour around Bristol’s alternative food shopping. Where to buy, what to choose, and how the hell it got there!

Time: 10.15am
Venue: Arnolfini 6 Narrow Quay, Bristol BS1 4QA

Embedded! Arts, Energy and Climate Change
Wednesday 28th October 2009

Another event in the programme C Words: Carbon, Climate, Capital, Culture. This day conference is aimed at arts and cultural organisations facing up to the challenge of moving towards low impact and carbon neutral operations. Looking at the investment structure of the arts into funding into climate change as well as discussions into a radical reduction in dependency on carbon and on fossil fuel based economics

11.30am – 4.30pm
£20 / £10 concs
Website: http://www.arnolfini.org.uk/whatson/event

3rd Native Spirit Festival
Friday 30th October 2009?

EL2

The 3rd Native Spirit Festival will be held in London, it is held to promote the Cultures of Indigenous people. The annual season will include films, talks and performances. All proceedings made at the festival will go towards educational resources for schools in indigenous communities.
Venue: London, Amnesty International Human Rights Action Centre
Website: http://www.nativespiritfestival.com/

Healing the wound: the struggle for truth and justice in Mexico
Friday 30th October 2009 ?

Film screening of 12.511 Rosendo Radilla case: An open wound from Mexico’s Dirty War. Q&A follows the film showing with human rights defender Tita Radilla to discuss the struggle in Mexico over the past decades.

Venue: Frontline Club, 13 Norfolk Place, London W2 1QJ
Time: 7pm
Website: http://www.peacebrigades.org.uk/

CAAT National Gathering 2009
Saturday 31st October 2009 ?

Join Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) supporters from around the country for a day of speakers, discussion and inspiration!
There will be an array of workshops on topics from arms fairs to corporate mercenaries to challenging the arms industry’s jobs argument. The event will have opportunities to hone your skills in making the most of the media.
With an election looming and BAE Systems taking advantage of the recession to claim it invests ‘more and more in UK manufacturing’, this year’s event will provide the facts, skills and passion you need to challenge government support for the arms trade and tackle the arms industry’s spin.

Time: 10.15am – 5pm
Venue: Toynbee Studios, London, E1 6AB
Website: www.caat.org.uk/events/nationalgathering/

Training for Gaza Freedom March
Saturday 31st October 2009

Seeds for Change are putting on training for those interested in taking part in the Gaza Freedom march. There is a central London venue, crash-pad accommodation available on Fri and Sat evenings.

Website: http://www.gazafreedommarch.org/

Croydon Eco Veggie Fayre
Sunday 1st Nov 2009

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The Croydon Eco Veggie Fayre is a superb day out for the whole family and is the perfect introduction into an eco friendly veggie friendly Fair Trade way of life. Over 50 stalls now allocated, to browse, buy and

Venue: Fairfield Halls, Park Lane, Croydon, Surrey CR9 1DG
Admission £3 for adults, £1 for Kids under 14
Website: http://croydon.ecoveggiefayre.co.uk/
fortywinks2

Designers are always looking for the perfect location to showcase their collection, viagra 40mg so when what German Vogue describes as ‘the most beautiful small hotel in the world’ opened its doors to the fashion crowd during London Fashion Week, shop designers were fighting to get in.

fortywinks6

40 winks is the boutique hotel and home of London interior designer David Carter. Recently he has been opening up his gorgeous abode for a series of Bedtime Story soirees- guests relax in their vintage pyjamas, whilst sipping on some champagne and listening to bedtime stories red by professional actors. The success of these nights and the hotel’s increasing popularity amongst the fashion crowd led David to launch the London Fashion Week ‘pop-up’ showroom.

fortywinks5

Visiting the event felt a million miles from Somerset house– the soft lighting and intimate atmosphere ,divine furnishings and artwork, cocktails served in vintage crockery and sweet treats from Vintage Patisserie all added to the ambience.

forthywinks

Designers spread their wares thoughout the rooms, as models sported some of the more show-stopping pieces. My favourites were the red, metal dress by Alexandra Kaegler, as well as the tweed skirts and jackets by Timothy Foxx, jazzed up with printed linings.

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Katherine Wardropper‘s sculptural fabric creations made true statement pieces of jewellery. The talents of Lisa Gibson, Ruti Danan and Atelier Annick were also on show- all names to watch!

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fortywinks8

If you missed 40 Winks over fashion week, don’t worry! Fashion is back for the exclusive new event ‘TART’, brought to you by vintage guru Naomi Thompson, pin-up queen Fleur de Guerre and the dandyesque David Carter. In the fabulous 40 Winks setting, you’ll be able to slip into a vintage gown from Vogue favourites Vintage Secret, have your hair and make-up done by Lipstick and Curls, and make-up artist to the stars, Bella Cruikshank, whilst sipping on some bubbly and nibbling on cakes and chocolates from Vintage Patisserie.

tart-1 copy

Naomi and Fleur will be on hand to transform you into your inner starlet. Inspired by your new look? Update your wardrobe with some of the cool creations from young designers including Minna, milliner Katherine Elizabeth, and eco couture jewellery from Seraglia.

theda_bara_brooch

All a little too taxing? Relax with a massage from the well-trained hands of Xhilarate. What better way to spend a Saturday afternoon?! The dates are 14th November and 12th December; if this isn’t the perfect present to give your mum/sister/best friend, or indeed to ask for yourself, I don’t know what is!

All Photographs except the “Tart” Image and Seraglia were taken by Paula Harrowing

Written by Katie Antoniou on Monday October 26th, 2009 5:05 pm

Categories ,”TART”, ,Alexandra Kaegler, ,Atelier Annick, ,Bella Cruickshank, ,David Carter, ,Forty Winks, ,German Vogue, ,Katherine Wardopper, ,Lipstick and Curls, ,Lisa Gibson, ,London Fashion Week, ,Ruti Danan, ,Timothy Foxx, ,Vintage Patisserie, ,Vintage Secret, ,vogue

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Amelia’s Magazine | 10 eco designers to watch out for in SS10: Part Two

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Bear

© Becky Barnicoat

Becky Barnicoat works as the commissioning editor on the Guardian Weekend magazine, more about but is also a cartoonist and currently works on a new comic about a musical bear – you can see a couple of sketches from it on her blog.

She’s always drawn, approved and when she was at school I did a whole English project (the title was ‘My future career’) in comic book form. She got a D- and a detention for it. One could say that was kind of the theme of things – most authority figures think cartoons are for babies. “I wish I could have shown them Maus so they could see how wrong they were, link but I didn’t know it existed back then” Becky says.

Everyone is here zine

© Becky Barnicoat

She started the blog Come in, Everyone is here already a couple of years ago and since then has started drawing for various people – including Le Cool magazine, Harry Hill and Five Dials. She was on the panel at the Salem Brownstone event at Comica this year, and last year drew the ‘Bowie and Bowie’ comic strip for Comica PoCom – which was on the wall in the ICA.

She is an enterprising gal as she also sporadically self-publishes a zine called Everyone Is Here Already.

Valerie Pezeron: What is the inspiration behind your work? Did you use visual references doing your faces?

CIMG1395Photograph Becky Barnicoat© Valerie Pezeron

Becky Barnicoat: Actually, that particular page all came from my head. It’s probably what I have always done from when I was a kid sitting in lessons, just drawing faces and caricatures of my teachers, that was quite a big thing. One of them was quite a nice woman, but she had an odd-looking face and I drew an awful caricature of her. She found my notebook and she looked really hurt, that was awful!

CIMG1392Photograph Becky Barnicoat© Valerie Pezeron

VP: Was it the lady who sent you to detention?
BB: She wasn’t one of the bad teachers but one of the good ones. It’s just that she looked a little bit like a guinea pig. But I won’t say anymore because she might read this! So this what I have always done; I just did “Faces” from my head, I find it really fun. I love the possibility of how ugly something could be but I don’t find that disgusting: I love weird faces so much and sometimes I see people on the street and their faces are just bizarre. The odder the shape the better it is.

VP: I agree with you there are so many different characters out there, especially where you live, in Stoke Newington.
BB: Oh yes! I cycle to work and I see many faces I want to draw! The other day I was cycling through Newington green and I saw this woman crossing the road and she had so much of something on her face that her skin was almost reddy-orange. And I was thinking “My, she’s put a bit too much foundation on, it looks extraordinary” and I thought maybe the poor woman has some terrible skin condition. And she would be a wonderful drawing but not in a way that would be mocking her. I love it when people look unusual.

Profile© Becky Barnicoat

VP: So would it be fair to say it is people that draw you to being creative? It’s not about the blandness of objects…

BB: That’s probably true; I’m not very good with objects. Landscapes? Not so much. It’s never been my thing, which is actually now a problem. I can get my pen going on a person or an animal but I have to put them somewhere and perspective is tricky.

VP: Don’t downplay your abilities!BB: (Laughter) So this is one side of what I am interested in. These were people who were on the Internet, and I drew them in on style…

VP: Glad you bring that up. I have noticed you don’t have one particular style.

BB: No, Definitely not!

VP: Is it on purpose or did you try to develop one or you don’t care that much?

BB: Good question as I think about it a lot. I definitely don’t try not to have one style. I just can’t imagine myself committing to just one style; I’d really miss too much the other style.

VP: So do you apply one style to one specific subject?

BB: Yeah, I suppose that is it, but it’s not that conscious. It just happens. I think of an idea and it’s immediately obvious to me what style should be for that.

VP: I see, very interestingly, you use all kinds of medium, inks, pen and washes, watercolour…

BB: It’s not premeditated when I use, and I love to use pen and ink. And I use this medium mostly.

monster© Becky Barnicoat

VP: Tell us about the fanzine. When did you start it?

BB: That was a project a comic book artist friend of mine called Tom and I started. Just like me, he has a full-time job. We both want to be comic book artists and we decided we should do a comic book. A friend of mine who used to work in a bookshop called Persephone proposed we do a comic book evening; it will be in two months, you both work on the comic book and then we can sell it in the shop with drinks and music and we invite people along. They were ALL of our friends, there weren’t any strangers there at all!

VP: How many people?

BB: It was quite full actually…all of my family, friends of friends! I had about 50 copies of my magazine and they all sold! But another project came up at the same time and I had to really rush it!

VP: So this is issue 1 and issue 2 is planned for later? When did you do this one?

BB: That was earlier this year, sort of June / July.

VP: How often would you see yourself doing this fanzine?

BB: I’d like to do them much more often than I do but with my full time job, it’s not really that straightforward. Wake up every morning at 6.30 am, draw for an hour and then go work full-time at the office. I’d like to do it much more often. What Tom and me are going to do in the next couple of weeks is a 12-hour comic and whatever comes out of that will probably be issue 2. It will be much messier, scruffier and perhaps not make much sense!

Invite© Becky Barnicoat

VP: So I’m really interested to know about your journey? Did you go to university and study journalism?

BB: I didn’t, no, not for journalism. I went to an all-girls school in Barnes and then to Wimbledon Art College for foundation. It’s not that exciting, I was shocked at how crap it is. Everyone said “this is one of the best art schools” but it was awful! I stayed and I just about scraped a pass. Some of the people who I thought were the best there got fails because they just didn’t care. They were vicious about your actual work: “This is fine”, looking at someone’s beautiful drawings “but where is your reflective notebook and diary…sorry but that is part of your course requirements. If you don’t have those then we can’t pass you. Some of the students were part of that course in the 1st place because they are dyslexics, they didn’t want to write, and that’s why they are artists! It’s just insane. Wimbledon wanted everyone to be totally institutionalised, do their 9 to 5… The people whose work was the least inspiring but came in every day got the best grades. They were the stars of the year- the work was not great but they got lads of it!

VP: Woody Allen said a big part of success is showing up. It’s one of my favorite quotes and I think about it often.

BB: It’s so true! There were these brilliant dysfunctional characters with amazing imaginations and absolutely raw talent…you should allow them to thrive and allowing people work in the way that they naturally do because that is going to produce the best work. I hated doing the foundation. I really liked the idea of going to art school and part of me regrets it now; I don’t regret the choice I made because I had a brilliant time going to Leeds reading English Literature. Before that, I had a lot of pressure from everybody; I went to an all-girls private school all through my secondary school and all they were interested in was academia. They didn’t care about you wanting to be an artist; they just thought that was pathetic, they hated me. I’d say I want to be a cartoonist when I am older, and they’d go “Come again?” I always wanted to be a cartoonist since I was about 5. And then I ended up doing English, what was I thinking!

VP: I think it actually ties in, as it’s very close. I call what I do visual journalism or… cartoonist?

BB: Oh, but you’re not allowed to say cartoonist! We are visual communicators or sequential artists.

Camera© Becky Barnicoat

VP: So you knew that young! I remember doing my 1st graphic novel at 7.

BB: But in France, they have a much stronger culture of comics.

VP: That is true if you come from the right background. My family did not have a clue and I had to come here to explore all that was possible…

BB: I feel exactly the same. I did not even know people did comic books until I was maybe in my 2nd and 3rd year at university. I was in Cornwall on a holiday with my family and I was getting the train back to London. We went into Waterstones as I wanted to buy a book for the train. I noticed this really colorful cartoon and I picked up this book and it was Daniel Clowes “20th Century Eight Ball”. I thought grown-ups didn’t do cartoons, I had nor idea! Some of his pictures are so grotesque and disgusting; then I realised some of them were just about people chatting over coffee and having existential conversations.

VP: It’s very close to what you do, isn’t it? It’s definitely inspired you?

BB: Oh yeah, oh god, completely! I picked up this thing and it was a revelation! I recall thinking I can’t believe this thing is real; I can’t wait to read it. I was laughing so much while reading it on my way back on the train. Then I read this comic strip called “Art School Confidential”. You have to read it if you did not have a good time at art college. It’s so fun, it’s just the best, it’s perfect, and it’s exactly my experience of Art College! And then I realised other people were like me, they wanted to be a cartoonist and everyone at art school told them they were fools. You have to read it, it’s very good, it’s a collection of a lot his fanzines. It’s a satirical expose of his time at art school with a lot of people who are very pretentious. It seems amazing now that I didn’t know that he existed. I always associated comics with either superheroes, for boys or the dirty and sexy stuff like Vizz. Part of me wishes I could really love Vizz but I am put off every time I read it. “Yeah, right, woman with massive boobs naked in some joke…” it’s really basic toilet humour!

VP: We need more women graphic novelists!

BB: I agree. From those books, I discovered a whole world of cartoonists in America. It’s massive over there!

Cook© Becky Barnicoat

VP: What do you think of the UK comic book industry?

BB: I don’t think it even exists. There is not even a publisher that has an interest in it, really. Jonathan Cape do a few but they mainly bring American ones over. They just publish so very few British people. I don’t feel there is anyone really looking for it. So everyone over here is getting obsessed with Daniel Clowes, Charles Burnes and Chris Ware. They’re just about discovering people that, if you don’t know who they are, you must be living in Britain.

VP: Have you had a look at what’s going on in Europe?

BB: I did take a look. I went over to Portugal, in Lisbon to write a feature on the arts scene there for the Guardian. I met up with a load of comic book artists and illustrators such as Andre Lemos,  Joao-Maio Pinto, Filipe Abranches.  It was fantastic! They had that wonderful European attitude: “We grew up with comic books, it’s part of our culture”. I said I only discovered “Strip Burger” when I was 21. They said “Strip Burger, we knew about that when we were only 2!”

CIMG1387Becky’s office at home © Becky Barnicoat

VP: That’s true with French people too. When you went to Comica festival, did you feel that something was about to take off? I know Paul Gravett feels very religiously that it is happening!

BB: Ah, Paul! Paul is incredible and without him, it would be…he is basically the comic book scene now. It all kind of stems from him, it is fantastic to have him there like this uncle who advises all those artists who didn’t’ think they could do this. He is the catalyst. Since I have discovered that, I’ve realised there is this world of people who want to do this, who love it, who know about all these artists. And they’re really frustrated in this country because it’s not really understood. People are quite illiterate, I think, regarding comics. But I have met loads of people now through Comica and other things. I just discovered this guy called Dash Shaw; his first book is about a thousand pages, called “Bottomless Belly Button”, Fantagraphics. He did this living in a tiny bedroom; he said he was so poor. I asked him how he made it as a comic book artist, how he paid his rent. He said, “ When I left college, I went and rented a tiny, tiny room for $200 a month and I worked part-time as a life model and I drew every second of every day. And he said it took him years, he must have drawn over a thousand pages of comics until anything happened. And he presented a manuscript to a big editor at a comics’ fair; they took him on and published it immediately. It’s a fairytale.

VP: Well, it is. You have to have some kind of break otherwise…

BB: Otherwise you are plugging away in the bedroom!

Tune-in next week for Part 2 of the interview!
Bear

© Becky Barnicoat

Becky Barnicoat works as the commissioning editor on the Guardian Weekend magazine, sildenafil but is also a cartoonist and currently works on a new comic about a musical bear – you can see a couple of sketches from it on her blog.

She’s always drawn, unhealthy and when she was at school I did a whole English project (the title was ‘My future career’) in comic book form. She got a D- and a detention for it. One could say that was kind of the theme of things – most authority figures think cartoons are for babies. “I wish I could have shown them Maus so they could see how wrong they were, but I didn’t know it existed back then” Becky says.

Everyone is here zine

© Becky Barnicoat

She started the blog Come in, Everyone is here already a couple of years ago and since then has started drawing for various people – including Le Cool magazine, Harry Hill and Five Dials. She was on the panel at the Salem Brownstone event at Comica this year, and last year drew the ‘Bowie and Bowie’ comic strip for Comica PoCom – which was on the wall in the ICA.

She is an enterprising gal as she also sporadically self-publishes a zine called Everyone Is Here Already.

Valerie Pezeron: What is the inspiration behind your work? Did you use visual references doing your faces?

CIMG1395Photograph Becky Barnicoat© Valerie Pezeron

Becky Barnicoat: Actually, that particular page all came from my head. It’s probably what I have always done from when I was a kid sitting in lessons, just drawing faces and caricatures of my teachers, that was quite a big thing. One of them was quite a nice woman, but she had an odd-looking face and I drew an awful caricature of her. She found my notebook and she looked really hurt, that was awful!

CIMG1392Photograph Becky Barnicoat© Valerie Pezeron

VP: Was it the lady who sent you to detention?
BB: She wasn’t one of the bad teachers but one of the good ones. It’s just that she looked a little bit like a guinea pig. But I won’t say anymore because she might read this! So this what I have always done; I just did “Faces” from my head, I find it really fun. I love the possibility of how ugly something could be but I don’t find that disgusting: I love weird faces so much and sometimes I see people on the street and their faces are just bizarre. The odder the shape the better it is.

VP: I agree with you there are so many different characters out there, especially where you live, in Stoke Newington.
BB: Oh yes! I cycle to work and I see many faces I want to draw! The other day I was cycling through Newington green and I saw this woman crossing the road and she had so much of something on her face that her skin was almost reddy-orange. And I was thinking “My, she’s put a bit too much foundation on, it looks extraordinary” and I thought maybe the poor woman has some terrible skin condition. And she would be a wonderful drawing but not in a way that would be mocking her. I love it when people look unusual.

Profile© Becky Barnicoat

VP: So would it be fair to say it is people that draw you to being creative? It’s not about the blandness of objects…

BB: That’s probably true; I’m not very good with objects. Landscapes? Not so much. It’s never been my thing, which is actually now a problem. I can get my pen going on a person or an animal but I have to put them somewhere and perspective is tricky.

VP: Don’t downplay your abilities!BB: (Laughter) So this is one side of what I am interested in. These were people who were on the Internet, and I drew them in on style…

VP: Glad you bring that up. I have noticed you don’t have one particular style.

BB: No, Definitely not!

VP: Is it on purpose or did you try to develop one or you don’t care that much?

BB: Good question as I think about it a lot. I definitely don’t try not to have one style. I just can’t imagine myself committing to just one style; I’d really miss too much the other style.

VP: So do you apply one style to one specific subject?

BB: Yeah, I suppose that is it, but it’s not that conscious. It just happens. I think of an idea and it’s immediately obvious to me what style should be for that.

VP: I see, very interestingly, you use all kinds of medium, inks, pen and washes, watercolour…

BB: It’s not premeditated when I use, and I love to use pen and ink. And I use this medium mostly.

monster© Becky Barnicoat

VP: Tell us about the fanzine. When did you start it?

BB: That was a project a comic book artist friend of mine called Tom and I started. Just like me, he has a full-time job. We both want to be comic book artists and we decided we should do a comic book. A friend of mine who used to work in a bookshop called Persephone proposed we do a comic book evening; it will be in two months, you both work on the comic book and then we can sell it in the shop with drinks and music and we invite people along. They were ALL of our friends, there weren’t any strangers there at all!

VP: How many people?

BB: It was quite full actually…all of my family, friends of friends! I had about 50 copies of my magazine and they all sold! But another project came up at the same time and I had to really rush it!

VP: So this is issue 1 and issue 2 is planned for later? When did you do this one?

BB: That was earlier this year, sort of June / July.

VP: How often would you see yourself doing this fanzine?

BB: I’d like to do them much more often than I do but with my full time job, it’s not really that straightforward. Wake up every morning at 6.30 am, draw for an hour and then go work full-time at the office. I’d like to do it much more often. What Tom and me are going to do in the next couple of weeks is a 12-hour comic and whatever comes out of that will probably be issue 2. It will be much messier, scruffier and perhaps not make much sense!

Invite© Becky Barnicoat

VP: So I’m really interested to know about your journey? Did you go to university and study journalism?

BB: I didn’t, no, not for journalism. I went to an all-girls school in Barnes and then to Wimbledon Art College for foundation. It’s not that exciting, I was shocked at how crap it is. Everyone said “this is one of the best art schools” but it was awful! I stayed and I just about scraped a pass. Some of the people who I thought were the best there got fails because they just didn’t care. They were vicious about your actual work: “This is fine”, looking at someone’s beautiful drawings “but where is your reflective notebook and diary…sorry but that is part of your course requirements. If you don’t have those then we can’t pass you. Some of the students were part of that course in the 1st place because they are dyslexics, they didn’t want to write, and that’s why they are artists! It’s just insane. Wimbledon wanted everyone to be totally institutionalised, do their 9 to 5… The people whose work was the least inspiring but came in every day got the best grades. They were the stars of the year- the work was not great but they got lads of it!

VP: Woody Allen said a big part of success is showing up. It’s one of my favorite quotes and I think about it often.

BB: It’s so true! There were these brilliant dysfunctional characters with amazing imaginations and absolutely raw talent…you should allow them to thrive and allowing people work in the way that they naturally do because that is going to produce the best work. I hated doing the foundation. I really liked the idea of going to art school and part of me regrets it now; I don’t regret the choice I made because I had a brilliant time going to Leeds reading English Literature. Before that, I had a lot of pressure from everybody; I went to an all-girls private school all through my secondary school and all they were interested in was academia. They didn’t care about you wanting to be an artist; they just thought that was pathetic, they hated me. I’d say I want to be a cartoonist when I am older, and they’d go “Come again?” I always wanted to be a cartoonist since I was about 5. And then I ended up doing English, what was I thinking!

VP: I think it actually ties in, as it’s very close. I call what I do visual journalism or… cartoonist?

BB: Oh, but you’re not allowed to say cartoonist! We are visual communicators or sequential artists.

Camera© Becky Barnicoat

VP: So you knew that young! I remember doing my 1st graphic novel at 7.

BB: But in France, they have a much stronger culture of comics.

VP: That is true if you come from the right background. My family did not have a clue and I had to come here to explore all that was possible…

BB: I feel exactly the same. I did not even know people did comic books until I was maybe in my 2nd and 3rd year at university. I was in Cornwall on a holiday with my family and I was getting the train back to London. We went into Waterstones as I wanted to buy a book for the train. I noticed this really colorful cartoon and I picked up this book and it was Daniel Clowes “20th Century Eight Ball”. I thought grown-ups didn’t do cartoons, I had nor idea! Some of his pictures are so grotesque and disgusting; then I realised some of them were just about people chatting over coffee and having existential conversations.

VP: It’s very close to what you do, isn’t it? It’s definitely inspired you?

BB: Oh yeah, oh god, completely! I picked up this thing and it was a revelation! I recall thinking I can’t believe this thing is real; I can’t wait to read it. I was laughing so much while reading it on my way back on the train. Then I read this comic strip called “Art School Confidential”. You have to read it if you did not have a good time at art college. It’s so fun, it’s just the best, it’s perfect, and it’s exactly my experience of Art College! And then I realised other people were like me, they wanted to be a cartoonist and everyone at art school told them they were fools. You have to read it, it’s very good, it’s a collection of a lot his fanzines. It’s a satirical expose of his time at art school with a lot of people who are very pretentious. It seems amazing now that I didn’t know that he existed. I always associated comics with either superheroes, for boys or the dirty and sexy stuff like Vizz. Part of me wishes I could really love Vizz but I am put off every time I read it. “Yeah, right, woman with massive boobs naked in some joke…” it’s really basic toilet humour!

VP: We need more women graphic novelists!

BB: I agree. From those books, I discovered a whole world of cartoonists in America. It’s massive over there!

Cook© Becky Barnicoat

VP: What do you think of the UK comic book industry?

BB: I don’t think it even exists. There is not even a publisher that has an interest in it, really. Jonathan Cape do a few but they mainly bring American ones over. They just publish so very few British people. I don’t feel there is anyone really looking for it. So everyone over here is getting obsessed with Daniel Clowes, Charles Burnes and Chris Ware. They’re just about discovering people that, if you don’t know who they are, you must be living in Britain.

VP: Have you had a look at what’s going on in Europe?

BB: I did take a look. I went over to Portugal, in Lisbon to write a feature on the arts scene there for the Guardian. I met up with a load of comic book artists and illustrators such as Andre Lemos,  Joao-Maio Pinto, Filipe Abranches.  It was fantastic! They had that wonderful European attitude: “We grew up with comic books, it’s part of our culture”. I said I only discovered “Strip Burger” when I was 21. They said “Strip Burger, we knew about that when we were only 2!”

CIMG1387Becky’s office at home © Becky Barnicoat

VP: That’s true with French people too. When you went to Comica festival, did you feel that something was about to take off? I know Paul Gravett feels very religiously that it is happening!

BB: Ah, Paul! Paul is incredible and without him, it would be…he is basically the comic book scene now. It all kind of stems from him, it is fantastic to have him there like this uncle who advises all those artists who didn’t’ think they could do this. He is the catalyst. Since I have discovered that, I’ve realised there is this world of people who want to do this, who love it, who know about all these artists. And they’re really frustrated in this country because it’s not really understood. People are quite illiterate, I think, regarding comics. But I have met loads of people now through Comica and other things. I just discovered this guy called Dash Shaw; his first book is about a thousand pages, called “Bottomless Belly Button”, Fantagraphics. He did this living in a tiny bedroom; he said he was so poor. I asked him how he made it as a comic book artist, how he paid his rent. He said, “ When I left college, I went and rented a tiny, tiny room for $200 a month and I worked part-time as a life model and I drew every second of every day. And he said it took him years, he must have drawn over a thousand pages of comics until anything happened. And he presented a manuscript to a big editor at a comics’ fair; they took him on and published it immediately. It’s a fairytale.

VP: Well, it is. You have to have some kind of break otherwise…

BB: Otherwise you are plugging away in the bedroom!

Tune-in next week for Part 2 of the interview!

Bear

© Becky Barnicoat

Becky Barnicoat works as the commissioning editor on the Guardian Weekend magazine, case but is also a cartoonist and currently works on a new comic about a musical bear – you can see a couple of sketches from it on her blog.

She’s always drawn, viagra sale and when she was at school I did a whole English project (the title was ‘My future career’) in comic book form. She got a D- and a detention for it. One could say that was kind of the theme of things – most authority figures think cartoons are for babies. “I wish I could have shown them Maus so they could see how wrong they were, medical but I didn’t know it existed back then” Becky says.

Everyone is here zine

© Becky Barnicoat

She started the blog Come in, Everyone is here already a couple of years ago and since then has started drawing for various people – including Le Cool magazine, Harry Hill and Five Dials. She was on the panel at the Salem Brownstone event at Comica this year, and last year drew the ‘Bowie and Bowie’ comic strip for Comica PoCom – which was on the wall in the ICA.

She is an enterprising gal as she also sporadically self-publishes a zine called Everyone Is Here Already.

Valerie Pezeron: What is the inspiration behind your work? Did you use visual references doing your faces?

CIMG1395Photograph Becky Barnicoat© Valerie Pezeron

Becky Barnicoat: Actually, that particular page all came from my head. It’s probably what I have always done from when I was a kid sitting in lessons, just drawing faces and caricatures of my teachers, that was quite a big thing. One of them was quite a nice woman, but she had an odd-looking face and I drew an awful caricature of her. She found my notebook and she looked really hurt, that was awful!

CIMG1392Photograph Becky Barnicoat© Valerie Pezeron

VP: Was it the lady who sent you to detention?
BB: She wasn’t one of the bad teachers but one of the good ones. It’s just that she looked a little bit like a guinea pig. But I won’t say anymore because she might read this! So this what I have always done; I just did “Faces” from my head, I find it really fun. I love the possibility of how ugly something could be but I don’t find that disgusting: I love weird faces so much and sometimes I see people on the street and their faces are just bizarre. The odder the shape the better it is.

VP: I agree with you there are so many different characters out there, especially where you live, in Stoke Newington.
BB: Oh yes! I cycle to work and I see many faces I want to draw! The other day I was cycling through Newington green and I saw this woman crossing the road and she had so much of something on her face that her skin was almost reddy-orange. And I was thinking “My, she’s put a bit too much foundation on, it looks extraordinary” and I thought maybe the poor woman has some terrible skin condition. And she would be a wonderful drawing but not in a way that would be mocking her. I love it when people look unusual.

Profile© Becky Barnicoat

VP: So would it be fair to say it is people that draw you to being creative? It’s not about the blandness of objects…

BB: That’s probably true; I’m not very good with objects. Landscapes? Not so much. It’s never been my thing, which is actually now a problem. I can get my pen going on a person or an animal but I have to put them somewhere and perspective is tricky.

VP: Don’t downplay your abilities!BB: (Laughter) So this is one side of what I am interested in. These were people who were on the Internet, and I drew them in on style…

VP: Glad you bring that up. I have noticed you don’t have one particular style.

BB: No, Definitely not!

VP: Is it on purpose or did you try to develop one or you don’t care that much?

BB: Good question as I think about it a lot. I definitely don’t try not to have one style. I just can’t imagine myself committing to just one style; I’d really miss too much the other style.

VP: So do you apply one style to one specific subject?

BB: Yeah, I suppose that is it, but it’s not that conscious. It just happens. I think of an idea and it’s immediately obvious to me what style should be for that.

VP: I see, very interestingly, you use all kinds of medium, inks, pen and washes, watercolour…

BB: It’s not premeditated when I use, and I love to use pen and ink. And I use this medium mostly.

monster© Becky Barnicoat

VP: Tell us about the fanzine. When did you start it?

BB: That was a project a comic book artist friend of mine called Tom and I started. Just like me, he has a full-time job. We both want to be comic book artists and we decided we should do a comic book. A friend of mine who used to work in a bookshop called Persephone proposed we do a comic book evening; it will be in two months, you both work on the comic book and then we can sell it in the shop with drinks and music and we invite people along. They were ALL of our friends, there weren’t any strangers there at all!

VP: How many people?

BB: It was quite full actually…all of my family, friends of friends! I had about 50 copies of my magazine and they all sold! But another project came up at the same time and I had to really rush it!

VP: So this is issue 1 and issue 2 is planned for later? When did you do this one?

BB: That was earlier this year, sort of June / July.

VP: How often would you see yourself doing this fanzine?

BB: I’d like to do them much more often than I do but with my full time job, it’s not really that straightforward. Wake up every morning at 6.30 am, draw for an hour and then go work full-time at the office. I’d like to do it much more often. What Tom and me are going to do in the next couple of weeks is a 12-hour comic and whatever comes out of that will probably be issue 2. It will be much messier, scruffier and perhaps not make much sense!

Invite© Becky Barnicoat

VP: So I’m really interested to know about your journey? Did you go to university and study journalism?

BB: I didn’t, no, not for journalism. I went to an all-girls school in Barnes and then to Wimbledon Art College for foundation. It’s not that exciting, I was shocked at how crap it is. Everyone said “this is one of the best art schools” but it was awful! I stayed and I just about scraped a pass. Some of the people who I thought were the best there got fails because they just didn’t care. They were vicious about your actual work: “This is fine”, looking at someone’s beautiful drawings “but where is your reflective notebook and diary…sorry but that is part of your course requirements. If you don’t have those then we can’t pass you. Some of the students were part of that course in the 1st place because they are dyslexics, they didn’t want to write, and that’s why they are artists! It’s just insane. Wimbledon wanted everyone to be totally institutionalised, do their 9 to 5… The people whose work was the least inspiring but came in every day got the best grades. They were the stars of the year- the work was not great but they got lads of it!

VP: Woody Allen said a big part of success is showing up. It’s one of my favorite quotes and I think about it often.

BB: It’s so true! There were these brilliant dysfunctional characters with amazing imaginations and absolutely raw talent…you should allow them to thrive and allowing people work in the way that they naturally do because that is going to produce the best work. I hated doing the foundation. I really liked the idea of going to art school and part of me regrets it now; I don’t regret the choice I made because I had a brilliant time going to Leeds reading English Literature. Before that, I had a lot of pressure from everybody; I went to an all-girls private school all through my secondary school and all they were interested in was academia. They didn’t care about you wanting to be an artist; they just thought that was pathetic, they hated me. I’d say I want to be a cartoonist when I am older, and they’d go “Come again?” I always wanted to be a cartoonist since I was about 5. And then I ended up doing English, what was I thinking!

VP: I think it actually ties in, as it’s very close. I call what I do visual journalism or… cartoonist?

BB: Oh, but you’re not allowed to say cartoonist! We are visual communicators or sequential artists.

Camera© Becky Barnicoat

VP: So you knew that young! I remember doing my 1st graphic novel at 7.

BB: But in France, they have a much stronger culture of comics.

VP: That is true if you come from the right background. My family did not have a clue and I had to come here to explore all that was possible…

BB: I feel exactly the same. I did not even know people did comic books until I was maybe in my 2nd and 3rd year at university. I was in Cornwall on a holiday with my family and I was getting the train back to London. We went into Waterstones as I wanted to buy a book for the train. I noticed this really colorful cartoon and I picked up this book and it was Daniel Clowes “20th Century Eight Ball”. I thought grown-ups didn’t do cartoons, I had nor idea! Some of his pictures are so grotesque and disgusting; then I realised some of them were just about people chatting over coffee and having existential conversations.

VP: It’s very close to what you do, isn’t it? It’s definitely inspired you?

BB: Oh yeah, oh god, completely! I picked up this thing and it was a revelation! I recall thinking I can’t believe this thing is real; I can’t wait to read it. I was laughing so much while reading it on my way back on the train. Then I read this comic strip called “Art School Confidential”. You have to read it if you did not have a good time at art college. It’s so fun, it’s just the best, it’s perfect, and it’s exactly my experience of Art College! And then I realised other people were like me, they wanted to be a cartoonist and everyone at art school told them they were fools. You have to read it, it’s very good, it’s a collection of a lot his fanzines. It’s a satirical expose of his time at art school with a lot of people who are very pretentious. It seems amazing now that I didn’t know that he existed. I always associated comics with either superheroes, for boys or the dirty and sexy stuff like Vizz. Part of me wishes I could really love Vizz but I am put off every time I read it. “Yeah, right, woman with massive boobs naked in some joke…” it’s really basic toilet humour!

VP: We need more women graphic novelists!

BB: I agree. From those books, I discovered a whole world of cartoonists in America. It’s massive over there!

Cook© Becky Barnicoat

VP: What do you think of the UK comic book industry?

BB: I don’t think it even exists. There is not even a publisher that has an interest in it, really. Jonathan Cape do a few but they mainly bring American ones over. They just publish so very few British people. I don’t feel there is anyone really looking for it. So everyone over here is getting obsessed with Daniel Clowes, Charles Burnes and Chris Ware. They’re just about discovering people that, if you don’t know who they are, you must be living in Britain.

VP: Have you had a look at what’s going on in Europe?

BB: I did take a look. I went over to Portugal, in Lisbon to write a feature on the arts scene there for the Guardian. I met up with a load of comic book artists and illustrators such as Andre Lemos,  Joao-Maio Pinto, Filipe Abranches.  It was fantastic! They had that wonderful European attitude: “We grew up with comic books, it’s part of our culture”. I said I only discovered “Strip Burger” when I was 21. They said “Strip Burger, we knew about that when we were only 2!”

CIMG1387Becky’s office at home © Becky Barnicoat

VP: That’s true with French people too. When you went to Comica festival, did you feel that something was about to take off? I know Paul Gravett feels very religiously that it is happening!

BB: Ah, Paul! Paul is incredible and without him, it would be…he is basically the comic book scene now. It all kind of stems from him, it is fantastic to have him there like this uncle who advises all those artists who didn’t’ think they could do this. He is the catalyst. Since I have discovered that, I’ve realised there is this world of people who want to do this, who love it, who know about all these artists. And they’re really frustrated in this country because it’s not really understood. People are quite illiterate, I think, regarding comics. But I have met loads of people now through Comica and other things. I just discovered this guy called Dash Shaw; his first book is about a thousand pages, called “Bottomless Belly Button”, Fantagraphics. He did this living in a tiny bedroom; he said he was so poor. I asked him how he made it as a comic book artist, how he paid his rent. He said, “ When I left college, I went and rented a tiny, tiny room for $200 a month and I worked part-time as a life model and I drew every second of every day. And he said it took him years, he must have drawn over a thousand pages of comics until anything happened. And he presented a manuscript to a big editor at a comics’ fair; they took him on and published it immediately. It’s a fairytale.

VP: Well, it is. You have to have some kind of break otherwise…

BB: Otherwise you are plugging away in the bedroom!

Tune-in next week for Part 2 of the interview!

Bear

© Becky Barnicoat

Becky Barnicoat works as the commissioning editor on the Guardian Weekend magazine, cheapest but is also a cartoonist and currently works on a new comic about a musical bear – you can see a couple of sketches from it on her blog.

She’s always drawn, pill and when she was at school I did a whole English project (the title was ‘My future career’) in comic book form. She got a D- and a detention for it. One could say that was kind of the theme of things – most authority figures think cartoons are for babies. “I wish I could have shown them Maus so they could see how wrong they were, but I didn’t know it existed back then” Becky says.

Everyone is here zine© Becky Barnicoat

She started the blog Come in, Everyone is here already a couple of years ago and since then has started drawing for various people – including Le Cool magazine, Harry Hill and Five Dials. She was on the panel at the Salem Brownstone event at Comica this year, and last year drew the ‘Bowie and Bowie’ comic strip for Comica PoCom – which was on the wall in the ICA.

She is an enterprising gal as she also sporadically self-publishes a zine called Everyone Is Here Already.

Valerie Pezeron: What is the inspiration behind your work? Did you use visual references doing your faces?

CIMG1395Photograph Becky Barnicoat© Valerie Pezeron

Becky Barnicoat: Actually, that particular page all came from my head. It’s probably what I have always done from when I was a kid sitting in lessons, just drawing faces and caricatures of my teachers, that was quite a big thing. One of them was quite a nice woman, but she had an odd-looking face and I drew an awful caricature of her. She found my notebook and she looked really hurt, that was awful!

CIMG1392Photograph Becky Barnicoat© Valerie Pezeron

VP: Was it the lady who sent you to detention?
BB: She wasn’t one of the bad teachers but one of the good ones. It’s just that she looked a little bit like a guinea pig. But I won’t say anymore because she might read this! So this what I have always done; I just did “Faces” from my head, I find it really fun. I love the possibility of how ugly something could be but I don’t find that disgusting: I love weird faces so much and sometimes I see people on the street and their faces are just bizarre. The odder the shape the better it is.

VP: I agree with you there are so many different characters out there, especially where you live, in Stoke Newington.
BB: Oh yes! I cycle to work and I see many faces I want to draw! The other day I was cycling through Newington green and I saw this woman crossing the road and she had so much of something on her face that her skin was almost reddy-orange. And I was thinking “My, she’s put a bit too much foundation on, it looks extraordinary” and I thought maybe the poor woman has some terrible skin condition. And she would be a wonderful drawing but not in a way that would be mocking her. I love it when people look unusual.

Profile© Becky Barnicoat

VP: So would it be fair to say it is people that draw you to being creative? It’s not about the blandness of objects…

BB: That’s probably true; I’m not very good with objects. Landscapes? Not so much. It’s never been my thing, which is actually now a problem. I can get my pen going on a person or an animal but I have to put them somewhere and perspective is tricky.

VP: Don’t downplay your abilities!BB: (Laughter) So this is one side of what I am interested in. These were people who were on the Internet, and I drew them in on style…

VP: Glad you bring that up. I have noticed you don’t have one particular style.

BB: No, Definitely not!

VP: Is it on purpose or did you try to develop one or you don’t care that much?

BB: Good question as I think about it a lot. I definitely don’t try not to have one style. I just can’t imagine myself committing to just one style; I’d really miss too much the other style.

VP: So do you apply one style to one specific subject?

BB: Yeah, I suppose that is it, but it’s not that conscious. It just happens. I think of an idea and it’s immediately obvious to me what style should be for that.

VP: I see, very interestingly, you use all kinds of medium, inks, pen and washes, watercolour…

BB: It’s not premeditated when I use, and I love to use pen and ink. And I use this medium mostly.

monster© Becky Barnicoat

VP: Tell us about the fanzine. When did you start it?

BB: That was a project a comic book artist friend of mine called Tom and I started. Just like me, he has a full-time job. We both want to be comic book artists and we decided we should do a comic book. A friend of mine who used to work in a bookshop called Persephone proposed we do a comic book evening; it will be in two months, you both work on the comic book and then we can sell it in the shop with drinks and music and we invite people along. They were ALL of our friends, there weren’t any strangers there at all!

VP: How many people?

BB: It was quite full actually…all of my family, friends of friends! I had about 50 copies of my magazine and they all sold! But another project came up at the same time and I had to really rush it!

VP: So this is issue 1 and issue 2 is planned for later? When did you do this one?

BB: That was earlier this year, sort of June / July.

VP: How often would you see yourself doing this fanzine?

BB: I’d like to do them much more often than I do but with my full time job, it’s not really that straightforward. Wake up every morning at 6.30 am, draw for an hour and then go work full-time at the office. I’d like to do it much more often. What Tom and me are going to do in the next couple of weeks is a 12-hour comic and whatever comes out of that will probably be issue 2. It will be much messier, scruffier and perhaps not make much sense!

Invite© Becky Barnicoat

VP: So I’m really interested to know about your journey? Did you go to university and study journalism?

BB: I didn’t, no, not for journalism. I went to an all-girls school in Barnes and then to Wimbledon Art College for foundation. It’s not that exciting, I was shocked at how crap it is. Everyone said “this is one of the best art schools” but it was awful! I stayed and I just about scraped a pass. Some of the people who I thought were the best there got fails because they just didn’t care. They were vicious about your actual work: “This is fine”, looking at someone’s beautiful drawings “but where is your reflective notebook and diary…sorry but that is part of your course requirements. If you don’t have those then we can’t pass you. Some of the students were part of that course in the 1st place because they are dyslexics, they didn’t want to write, and that’s why they are artists! It’s just insane. Wimbledon wanted everyone to be totally institutionalised, do their 9 to 5… The people whose work was the least inspiring but came in every day got the best grades. They were the stars of the year- the work was not great but they got lads of it!

VP: Woody Allen said a big part of success is showing up. It’s one of my favorite quotes and I think about it often.

BB: It’s so true! There were these brilliant dysfunctional characters with amazing imaginations and absolutely raw talent…you should allow them to thrive and allowing people work in the way that they naturally do because that is going to produce the best work. I hated doing the foundation. I really liked the idea of going to art school and part of me regrets it now; I don’t regret the choice I made because I had a brilliant time going to Leeds reading English Literature. Before that, I had a lot of pressure from everybody; I went to an all-girls private school all through my secondary school and all they were interested in was academia. They didn’t care about you wanting to be an artist; they just thought that was pathetic, they hated me. I’d say I want to be a cartoonist when I am older, and they’d go “Come again?” I always wanted to be a cartoonist since I was about 5. And then I ended up doing English, what was I thinking!

VP: I think it actually ties in, as it’s very close. I call what I do visual journalism or… cartoonist?

BB: Oh, but you’re not allowed to say cartoonist! We are visual communicators or sequential artists.

Camera© Becky Barnicoat

VP: So you knew that young! I remember doing my 1st graphic novel at 7.

BB: But in France, they have a much stronger culture of comics.

VP: That is true if you come from the right background. My family did not have a clue and I had to come here to explore all that was possible…

BB: I feel exactly the same. I did not even know people did comic books until I was maybe in my 2nd and 3rd year at university. I was in Cornwall on a holiday with my family and I was getting the train back to London. We went into Waterstones as I wanted to buy a book for the train. I noticed this really colorful cartoon and I picked up this book and it was Daniel Clowes “20th Century Eight Ball”. I thought grown-ups didn’t do cartoons, I had nor idea! Some of his pictures are so grotesque and disgusting; then I realised some of them were just about people chatting over coffee and having existential conversations.

VP: It’s very close to what you do, isn’t it? It’s definitely inspired you?

BB: Oh yeah, oh god, completely! I picked up this thing and it was a revelation! I recall thinking I can’t believe this thing is real; I can’t wait to read it. I was laughing so much while reading it on my way back on the train. Then I read this comic strip called “Art School Confidential”. You have to read it if you did not have a good time at art college. It’s so fun, it’s just the best, it’s perfect, and it’s exactly my experience of Art College! And then I realised other people were like me, they wanted to be a cartoonist and everyone at art school told them they were fools. You have to read it, it’s very good, it’s a collection of a lot his fanzines. It’s a satirical expose of his time at art school with a lot of people who are very pretentious. It seems amazing now that I didn’t know that he existed. I always associated comics with either superheroes, for boys or the dirty and sexy stuff like Vizz. Part of me wishes I could really love Vizz but I am put off every time I read it. “Yeah, right, woman with massive boobs naked in some joke…” it’s really basic toilet humour!

VP: We need more women graphic novelists!

BB: I agree. From those books, I discovered a whole world of cartoonists in America. It’s massive over there!

Cook© Becky Barnicoat

VP: What do you think of the UK comic book industry?

BB: I don’t think it even exists. There is not even a publisher that has an interest in it, really. Jonathan Cape do a few but they mainly bring American ones over. They just publish so very few British people. I don’t feel there is anyone really looking for it. So everyone over here is getting obsessed with Daniel Clowes, Charles Burnes and Chris Ware. They’re just about discovering people that, if you don’t know who they are, you must be living in Britain.

VP: Have you had a look at what’s going on in Europe?

BB: I did take a look. I went over to Portugal, in Lisbon to write a feature on the arts scene there for the Guardian. I met up with a load of comic book artists and illustrators such as Andre Lemos,  Joao-Maio Pinto, Filipe Abranches.  It was fantastic! They had that wonderful European attitude: “We grew up with comic books, it’s part of our culture”. I said I only discovered “Strip Burger” when I was 21. They said “Strip Burger, we knew about that when we were only 2!”

CIMG1387Becky’s office at home © Becky Barnicoat

VP: That’s true with French people too. When you went to Comica festival, did you feel that something was about to take off? I know Paul Gravett feels very religiously that it is happening!

BB: Ah, Paul! Paul is incredible and without him, it would be…he is basically the comic book scene now. It all kind of stems from him, it is fantastic to have him there like this uncle who advises all those artists who didn’t’ think they could do this. He is the catalyst. Since I have discovered that, I’ve realised there is this world of people who want to do this, who love it, who know about all these artists. And they’re really frustrated in this country because it’s not really understood. People are quite illiterate, I think, regarding comics. But I have met loads of people now through Comica and other things. I just discovered this guy called Dash Shaw; his first book is about a thousand pages, called “Bottomless Belly Button”, Fantagraphics. He did this living in a tiny bedroom; he said he was so poor. I asked him how he made it as a comic book artist, how he paid his rent. He said, “ When I left college, I went and rented a tiny, tiny room for $200 a month and I worked part-time as a life model and I drew every second of every day. And he said it took him years, he must have drawn over a thousand pages of comics until anything happened. And he presented a manuscript to a big editor at a comics’ fair; they took him on and published it immediately. It’s a fairytale.

VP: Well, it is. You have to have some kind of break otherwise…

BB: Otherwise you are plugging away in the bedroom!

Tune-in next week for Part 2 of the interview!
Amelia’s magazine did the rounds at the SS10 press days and whilst we were enthralled by so many beautiful brands we’ve thought long and hard about criteria for our summary and there was really only one thing for it– a comprehensive round up of the best environmentally friendly and fair-trade brands we’re predicting great things for in 2010… Brace yourselves guys, illness you’ve got exactly 21 days until we expect the magic to begin!

01Image courtesy of Fin

Fin
An exciting brand that is completely new to Amelia’s magazine is that of Fin, help a Scandinavian company based in Norway. Renowned for their use of organic fabrics such as wild silk, bamboo, cotton and baby alpaca, for SS10 Fin are introducing another sustainable material into their collection; milk. Yes I kid you not, milk as in the white liquid more commonly found accompanying your cornflakes at breakfast time! As the environmentally aware chaps they are Fin use a unique and I’m guessing somewhat secret method to produce super light and soft fabrics from surplus milk.

19Image courtesy of Fin

Taking inspiration for their SS10 collection from the flowing movement of parachutes, this is reflected through the spontaneous use of draping and pleating techniques creating a voluminous silhouette. Interestingly their colour palette is based on the contents of a woman’s make-up bag, and references skin tone powders, pale blusher, smoky eyeshadows and coral lipstick.

38Image courtesy of Fin

Towing the line with typical Scandinavian minimalism, Fin have given this a modern twist for their new collection resulting in a look which is both effortless and edgy, which every woman will know is a hard combination to pull off.

PB121963Image courtesy of Rachael Oku

Beyond Skin
A brand who have consistently been growing from strength to strength is that of vegan shoe label Beyond Skin. Founded way back in 2001 all shoes are handmade in Spain using the most expensive and quality eco-friendly faux leathers and textiles sourced from Europe. Featuring the trademark silhouettes that we’ve all come to know and love, SS10 sees the injection of satins, quirky floral prints and chic faux patents bringing all the favourites bang up to date.

PB121967Image courtesy of Rachael Oku

A brand new capsule range, Beyond Skin Sole is a collection of trans-seasonal pumps which are handmade in India in a very-soon-to-be IFAT certified factory. Made from fairly traded natural latex soles and lining they’re covered with organic cotton. With a whole host of styles and colourways to choose from we’re expecting these to be the new ‘it ballet pumps’ of 2010.

PB121964Image courtesy of Rachael Oku

Now stocked in the Anthropologie flagship store in London’s Regent Street, vegan footwear has never been so easily accessible.

Ciel_LittleStarPrint5501Image courtesy of Ciel

Ciel
For all those unfamiliar with Ciel (you won’t be any more), it’s the new label from Sarah Ratty the designer who brought us Conscious Earthwear. Both an ethical and environmentally friendly brand, all garments are created using 100% Azo free dyes, re-cycled fabrics and fabrics certified by ‘Oekotex’ and ‘Confidence in Textiles’.

CielBooth3Image courtesy of Ciel

Of her brand Sarah says: “I design clothes for hip, stylish and fashionable people who don’t want to sacrifice style for content”. With this in mind the SS10 collection features lots of organic linen, eco jersey and hand knitted garments, and even sees Ciel sampling Liberty prints to great effect.

BhodiLeafTee_EJF_CielSS2010Image courtesy of Ciel depicting their collaborative T-shirt for the Ethical Justice Foundation

Most recently Ciel have teamed up with Sketch to design uniforms for the staff within their funky new pop-up café at the Royal Academy, which coincides with the new show Earth: Art of a Changing World. For the duration of the exhibition (3 Dec–31 Jan) waitresses will be wearing Sarah Ratty’s signature chunky fringed ski sweater dresses.

PB061601Image courtesy of Bryce Aime

Bryce Aime
Having launched his self named label back in 2006 Bryce Aime’s main inspiration is taken from the arts, architecture and philosophy, with his signature designs reflecting an intriguing mix of form, function and finish, providing an ongoing foundation for each collection.

PB061608Image courtesy of Bryce Aime

Bucking the main floral trend seen on the catwalks for SS10 Bryce has instead channelled 50’s Parisian chic by combining classic tailoring with futuristic body con structure. With all fabrics sourced from Italy and France production is carried out locally in London helping to reduce shipping distances and keep the brands carbon footprint as low as possible.

PB061603Image courtesy of Bryce Aime

To top off the successful year, Bryce Aime has recently opened his first London boutique on Walton Street in upmarket Chelsea, designed by David Bentheim.

jumpsuit 2Image courtesy of Elena Garcia

Elena Garcia
Last but by no means least, another great designer that we discovered at the press days was Elena Garcia, whose SS10 collection is her fourth to date. Inspired by blockbuster films The English Patient and Lawrence of Arabia, Elena has developed a theme of multi-functionality, playing with semicircular shapes and ribbon ties to maximum effect. Of her collection Elena says: “I love the romantic feel of these films and the earth tones in the landscape.”

Nick_Fallon_2037Image courtesy of Elena Garcia

What really stands out about Elena’s collection is its accessibility as each garments is only available in one standard size and can be adjusted to the wearer’s measurements by using the ribbons and shell buttons sewn to each item.
As ever Elena’s range is 100% produced and developed within the UK and London specifically, where she works with local textile and manufacturing units.

Nick_Fallon_2204Image courtesy of Elena Garcia

Most garments within this luxurious collection feature Elena’s trademark felting, which is painstakingly done by hand. Other features include satin cutwork and stitch resist, a technique in which the fabric is stitched, pleated and then dyed. “This time I had fun with gathers, exploring different ways of defining the silhouette without constricting the body.”

Written by Rachael Oku on Thursday December 10th, 2009 6:44 pm

Categories ,Anthropologie, ,Beyond Skin, ,Beyond Skin Sole, ,Bryce Aime, ,ciel, ,Confidence in Textiles, ,David Bentheim, ,Elena Garcia, ,Ethical Justice Foundation, ,Fin, ,IFAT, ,Lawrence of Arabia, ,liberty, ,Oekotex, ,Royal Academy, ,Sarah Ratty, ,Sketch, ,The English Patient

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