Vic Reeves
TV comedian Vic Reeve’s art work mixes the surreal and the mundane in an amusing way,
the exhibition features a new series of paintings that focus on aviation.
Mews of Mayfair, 10-11 Lancashire Court, New Bond Street, Mayfair W1S 1EY
2nd April – 29th April 2009
Weekdays 10am – 6pm
Let the beat – and one more of ICA`s awesome musical nights – control you. This time is Micachu and The Shapes performing their delicious electro pop.
7:30pm. £8.50.
Micachu and The Shapes
Wednesday 29th
Better and more creative than band names only venue names, right? This one is called Last Days of Decadence and is welcoming the very ladylike sound of My Toys Like Me.
8pm. £6.
My Toys Like Me
Thursday 30th
That`s a night we were all waiting for! Straight from St Albans comes Friendly Fires, three lovely boys who came up with one of the most catchy and totally danceable things from last year. I just can`t stop listening to “Jump in The Pool”. Support comes from Boy Crisis and they will all be at the HMV Forum.
7pm. £12.50.
Presenting their fourth album entitled “Kingdom of Rust”, Doves will be stepping up Brixton Academy`s stage on Saturday. Don`t pass out the opportunity to check this historical band out and their new stuff for this year.
7pm. £20.
Doves
Sunday 3rd
Some easy and boyish vibes can`t never hurt so pray for a better weather to come and plan your Sunday to enjoy the Sheffield`s boys from Skeletons at Barfly.
7pm. £5. Skeletons
Here at Amelia’s we go barmy for all things yarn! As an avid knitter, pharmacy I am always trawling the abyss of the net seeking out the underground realms of knitting blogs for zany new projects to get my needles stuck into. As always the world of the web came up trumps with a whole myriad of bizarre knitting creations in every form, literally!
I unearthered some utterly peculiar specimens ranging from the humble beer bottle, knitted paint brush scarves and for the particularly neurotic a knitted gas mask!
So if your sitting at home idly tonight, scouting for something remotely stimulating on the box but are only confronted with re runs of Top Gear or Britain’s Got Talent while slowly self deprecating. I urge you to pick up your knitting needles from the darkest realms of that cupboard and indulge in a little light relief!
If your bored of your locks, why not try a chemical free make over with this knitted wig pattern!
One size fits all!
FINISHED MEASUREMENTS
8 inches wide at widest point when flat (unstretched)
11 inches long when flat
MATERIALS
[ MC] Red Heart Kids [100% acrylic; 5oz.]; color: Pink, shade 2734
1 pair US #8/5mm needles? 1 set of 5 US #8/5mm double-pointed needles OR? 2 US #8/5mm circular needles (any length)? 4 stitch markers, 2 each of 2 different colors? Tapestry needle
STITCH PATTERNS
[Knitty’s list of standard abbreviations can be found here]
2 X 2 rib?Row 1 [RS]: K3, [p2, k2] to last st, k1.?Row 2 [WS]: P3, [k2, p2] to last st, p1.
GAUGE
28 sts/22 rows = 4 inches in 2×2 rib (unstretched)
DIRECTIONS
Using straight needles or one set of circulars, cast on 96 sts.
Work in 2 x 2 rib until the piece is as long as the distance between the bottom of your chin, and your eyebrow (about 6.5″), ending with a WS row.
NOTE: The extra stitches along the edge of the work will balance the width of the first and last ribs. Later on, when the bangs are added, these stitches will become parts of purl ribs.
If more length in the main body of the wig is desired, work more rows at this point.?Next row [RS]: work as before, but slip the first and last stitch.
Bangs?With RS facing and using backward loop cast on, loosely CO 32 sts. The backward loop cast on allows for plenty of stretch.?Div sts onto DPNs or circulars and join to work in the round with the RS of the wig facing out, being careful not to twist stitches. The first stitch will be a p; follow rib pattern after that. ?Work in 2×2 rib for 10 rows.?NOTE: The extra stitches that were at the beginning and end of the work up to this point become parts of purl ribs where the bangs join – see diagram A below for example.
Our thriving knitting communities out there are spreading the knittivism ethos so get your needles out! Here is a pick of the crème de crème of the best knitting blogs to get your creative juices flowing. Subversive cross stitching is an online blog championing our quintessential past time of cross stitching, however this is not the kind to boast to your grandma about, her idealized perception of you may be impaired afterwards. Then there is Etsy who supply a whole backlog of kitsch patterns, check out this adorable toilet paper creation (I know that’s two concepts I never envisaged I would utlise in one sentence) Just make sure you put this fella far enough away from your actual paper! My favourite however has to be Stitch Witch, who supply a whole forum of zany ideas for projects from an Elvis Wig for those rock and roll moments, to a knitted womb, very eclectic!
In addition to Etsy there is a whole backlog of smaller blogs that are also raising the flag in innovative textiles. So many infact it’s hard to have left all stones unturned. I throw this one out to you, the faithful reader for more investigative work! Over and out.
Written by Melodie Ash on Monday April 27th, 2009 4:50 pm
The third annual Fashioning the Future Awards took place last Thursday, where guests from the world of fashion, business and sustainable living came together to celebrate international sustainable fashion talent. Supported by the United Nations, the awards promote students who produce fashion with conscience.
The setting for this glamorous occasion – the East Wintergarden, part of the Canary Wharf complex – seemed a little unusual in the wake of the current financial crisis, and it’s not the first destination I’d think of if I wanted to host a conscious do. But, I was to learn, that Canary Wharf are committed to environmental issues. The Canary Wharf Group is, in fact, one of the country’s top ‘green’ companies.
Inside the venue, a load of wooden cogs had been dotted around the room, on which frozen models posed for the duration of the evening. Large zoetropes descended from the ceiling, requiring manmade kinetic power to operate that involved guests turning winches in order for them to animate. Drinks flowed and there was no obvious stage or focal point, creating a strange but enjoyable atmosphere that allowed guests to freely mingle amongst the spools and lights.
Circular tubes also hung from the celing, a little lower than average height, in which guests could stand, head fully immersed inside, and listen to interviews with the shortlisted nominees while looking a little silly. It all made for good fun and took the sometimes stifling atmosphere of these kind of events quickly away.
The ceremony itself was delayed in the hope that the members of the celebrity judging panel who could make it (Erin O’Connor and Lucy Siegle had already pulled out for unspecified reasons) would eventually show up. It was repeatedly announced that Jo Wood and BFC chairman Harold Tillman were, together, stuck in traffic. Eventually the producers of the awards gave up and the show commenced, glamourously hosted by fashion protagonist Caryn Franklin. The lights dimmed and Caryn took her place in the centre of the room under one of the zoetropes. Guests were invited to sit, anywhere, or stand to view the ceremony.
Unique Balance Sara Emilie Terp Hansen scooped the coveted prize for Unique Balance with her intriguing and aesthetically brilliant collection made from cork. The judges said Sara Emilie had ‘found an opportunity to utilise an unexpected material in a fashion context, allowing nature to dictate design.’ It was quite the striking collection and Sara, one of the only recipients to collect her award in person, looked heartwarmingly shocked to receive the award.
Unique Materials and Processes
The second award, for Unique Materials and Processes, was due to be presented by the aforementioned Jo Wood. Guests still hoped she would leg it in last minute and snatch the mic, but still no joy. Massive props must go to Alex McIntosh from the Centre for Sustainable Fashion who took to the stage (metaphorically speaking as there wasn’t one, of course) and presented also absent Evelyn Lebis‘ wearable light collection with the award.
Unique Enterprise
Australian Alice Payne scooped the Enterprise award for her conceptual approach to business. ‘Think Lifecycle’ is a sort of social media platform for big companies, allowing them to harness environmental sustainability across the entire business. No, I didn’t completely understand it either, but I did like her spider diagrams.
Unique Design LCF graduate Lara Torres picked up the award for Unique Design. Professor Frances Corner OBE, head of the LCF, said ‘ironically the design category was the hardest to judge; it’s very hard not to fixate on the idea that the winning entry has to be a perfectly realised garment’. In fact, it wasn’t – Lara’s entry examined the role of the fashion designer in modern society and the relationship we have with the clothing we wear.
The Body Shop One to Watch Award
The final award, presented by Ann Massal, International Brand Director of The Body Shop, went to Ashley Brock, who had flown all the way from the USA for the occasion. Eek. It was a sort of all-encompassing award for the prize student who hadn’t been acknowledged in the other categories. Ashley’s collection showed how ‘seemingly obsolete garments can be re-purposed’.
Erin O’ Connor realxing in the shower and Jo Wood stuck in traffic by Antonia Parker
And so the awards were wrapped up with a brief catwalk show where models stood up from their spools, sashayed around the room and then formed an imposing group under the centre spotlight. Still no sign of Jo Wood or Harold Tillman. It was a marvellous ceremony – genuinely unique – and a celebration of wearable sustainable fashion. I did wonder if it was entirely appropriate that these two were sitting in a car somewhere when they were supposed to be part of an environmentally-aware event (why they didn’t just get out of their bloody cars and get on the bloody tube is beyond me) but infact it didn’t matter; it made the evening entirely about the fashion, the winners, and the real message.
Written by Matt Bramford on Wednesday November 16th, 2011 10:07 am
14 Bacon Street, erectile E1 6LF, page 11th-18th December
The pop-up shop does what it says on the tin, buy appears in a different location for a limited time, so you have to be quick to get in and see what’s inside. But make the effort as you can find a plethora of goodies from new designers and artists, hand picked from exotic locations all around the world. The store also supports the East End charity Kids Company, so you’ll be doing your bit to help as you shop.
Enjoy an evening of late-night shopping on London’s trendiest street, as well as rumageing through all that vintage, there will be refreshments on hand and special Christmas gifts available only on this night.
The Bizarre Bazaar
Sunday 21st December
Monday 8th December Joan as Policewoman, Thekla, capsule Bristol
Ex-Antony and the Johnsons collaborator touring in support of her new album. Expect mesmerising vocals and heart-rending tunes.
Boss Hog, Luminaire, London
Jon Spencer (as in Blues Explosion) and his wife Cristina Martinez front this long-standing blues-rock outfit.
Tuesday 9th December
Kong, Buffalo Bar, London
Art-noise, cool as Manchester band, heavy on the guitars.
The Miserable Rich, Wedgewood Rooms, Portsmouth
Folky, orchestrated Brighton group, with links to Lightspeed Champion.
Sixtoes, Big Chill House, London
Cinematic, spooky blues-folk with a melancholy Eastern European edge.
Wednesday 10th December
Little Death, Club Fandango @ 229, London
Cool, cosmopolitan London band playing psychadelic tinged noise-pop.
Land of Talk, Water Rats, London
Canadian indie-rock.
Thursday 11th December
Good Books, Proud Galleries, London
Danceable indie-electro.
Mike Bones, Old Blue Last, London
One man and his guitar.
Friday 12th December
Rose Elinor Dougall, Barfly, Cardiff
Pretty girl music from this ex-Pipette. Still very pop but less of the sixties girl group rip-offs.
Free Fridays: Brute Chorus, La Shark, Josh Weller, 93 Feet East, London
Bonkers hair (Josh Weller) and outfits (La Shark) will abound at this FREE night featuring up-and-coming bands including Brute Chorus who will presumably play new single ‘She Was Always Cool’.
Saturday 13th December
Herman Dune, The Deaf Institute, Manchester
Perennial Parisian folksters on tour to promote new album ‘Next Year in Zion’.
Glissando, Holy Trinity Church, Leeds
Dreamy and ethereal. Should be lovely in a church.
Stereolab, Black Box, Belfast
Long-standing lounge/electronic post-rock with female French singer.
Getting up at 6am on a cold Saturday morning may be unthinkable to some -but for myself and fellow fashion enthusiasts, information pills the Angels Vintage and Costume clothing sale was more than enough motivation for the long, look early trek over to Wembley….or so we thought. The queue turned out to be VERY long… a 3 to 4 hour wait we were told. Despite our earlier determination, it was too long for us and we gracefully admitted defeat, leaving behind a growing queue of seriously hardcore shoppers.
One of those hardcore shoppers was ameliasmagazine.com’s very own Music Editor, Prudence Ivey, here’s her take on it, “Leaving the house at 6.30am, we were in the queue by about 7.15am and, although in the first 500, we were nowhere near the front. Some people – vintage shop buyers – had been there since Friday afternoon. There was a really friendly atmosphere, you could tell these people were true vintage fiends, as there was not a scruffbag in sight, it was all red lipstick and glamourous outfits despite the ungodly hour.
When we were allowed in, after just over an hour of wating, there was virtual silence and heads down as people rifled through the cardboard boxes packed with clothes on the floor. A cloud of dust filled the room after about 10 minutes, most of the clothes were in a bit of a state and everything I ended up with turned the water black when I put it in to hand-wash, not to mention my black snot… A quick sort through, try on and swapping session with my friend, along with some excellent packing meant that I left with 18 items of pretty decent, some of them really excellent, vintage finds for a measly £20. One of my favourite shopping trips EVER.” (above and below is Prudence modeling her two of her wonderful buys)
So now I wish I had stayed in the queue – but my day was not wasted, I found a far more inviting alternative, which boasted the benefits of being a. inside and b. no queue! It was the first London edition of New York magazine BUST‘s Christmas Craftacular.
Set in the St. Aloysius Social Hall in Euston, a mixed group of cool crafty kids, cute guys and even grannies filled the aptly dated-yet-cozy bar, and the Shellac Sisters played classic retro tunes on their wind-up gramophone, which added to the kitsch atmosphere. Having taken off in New York over the last 4 years, the Craftacular event has now come to British shores and brings together craft sellers, knitting circles, badge making stations and of course, lots of cake!
Tatty Divine turned into doctors for the day and set up their very own ‘craft clinic’ offering advice and tips to craft novices or lovers.
An ArtYarn Guerilla Graffiti Knitting Crew even set up a training camp, where boys sat happily next to their teachers, learning how to knit one, pearl one and Random Monkey Designs offered lessons in cross stitch.
With a packed out venue and buzzing crowd, it’s likely that (and we hope) the Craftacular event will become a regular date in the British calendar.
Monday Dec 8th
It seems most exhibition spaces in this area begin like this, drugs in someone’s flat. Every day this week at 79a Brick Lane, viagra 100mg there will be an exhibition of seven separate artists (one for each day) alongside a selected feature film, including the likes of Saturday Night Fever, North by Northwest, and The Truman Show. It starts at eight and ends when the film does. For a more detailed itinerary, check here. Admission is free.
Tuesday Dec 9th A Family in Disguise, by Yu Jinyoung has been extended at Union on Teesdale Street and is worth a look, if not only for the fact that entering the exhibition is a surreal experience in itself. Not a curator to be seen, and with a camera that links the room to their gallery in Ewer Street, you are alone in a haunting room with this disparate family of forlorn faces. Ring the buzzer and take a look.
Wednesday Dec 10th
Indian Highway is the new exhibition starting today at the Serpentine, describing itself as a snapshot of the vibrant generations artists working across the country today, well-established artists shown besides lesser known practitioners. Using a array of medias they are threaded together with a common engagement with the social and political, examining complex issues in contemporary India such as environmentalism, religious sectarianism, globalisation, gender, sexuality and class. It runs until Feb 22nd.
Thursday Dec 11th
Hermetic Seel is a new exhibition by Shane Bradford opening on Wednesday at the Vegas Gallery. It might just be satisfying to see fourteen historical art encyclopedias subjected to Bradford’s “post-Pollock” dipping technique.
Friday Dec 12th
Here’s what one of our writers said of Omnifuss’ last exhibition: In the heart of Dalston, down the end of a small alley road was a large garage with a little door. Through this door, a group of 24 artists showcased their work. Sculpture, music, performance and photography took place in the old car workshop that was far away from the usual pristine white walls of gallery spaces and created a rustic, and inspiring location for this exhibition. With flame heaters to warm those tootsies, and the symphonious sound of a violinist haunting the open rooms, I found myself immersed in the eclectic furniture and art… Downstairs is their new exhibit, an exploration of domesticity in its rawest states through sound, sculpture, video and installation, and by the sounds of it is worth a visit.
Saturday Dec 13th Awopbopaloobop. Artists listen to music, everyone listens to music. Lyrics are etched into our minds whether we want them there or not, and we can’t help but allow them to inform our everyday. Awopbopaloobop (I just like saying that word) is an exhibition at http://www.transitiongallery.co.uk/index.html, asking a host of artists to produce based on a favourite song lyric. This exhibition is coming to an end, (21st of Dec), so go and see it if you haven’t already. The space itself is worth the trip, and it’s fun to walk around a gallery with a song-sheet in your hands!
Brian Aldiss’ short story, drug “Super-Toys Last All Summer Long”, this to which the exhibition “Super-Toys” makes reference, abortion tells the story of a mother and her android son in the overcrowded world of the future who, however hard they try, cannot find a way to love each other. It makes love seem like a human malfunction, a flaw which can never be imitated. But moreover it captures the feeling of dismay when two people who know that they should love each other realise they can’t – that they fundamentally don’t know how. The android boy, who questions whether or not he is real, seems more humane than his human mother; who sends him to be repaired for the flaw from which she herself suffers. Love cannot be programmed; but is a lover not someone who says all those things that you want to hear, like an automated machine?
So with high expectations of an exhibition dealing with the strange interaction between humans and machine, fantasy and reality, love and compromise; what I found was initially disappointing. The notions the story had alluded to, the emotions and the complexity of them, were not to be found. Machine ducks floating in a pond, a room of human shaped stuffed objects lying mundanely on the floor; flashing machines dancing in a square box; all interesting to look at, but lacking explanation. The most interesting part of the exhibition was the nightmarish, garish and lurid room that followed, full of toys ripped apart: toys with two head, toys mutilated and deformed by visitors, and all in the name of art. With shelves and window ledges packed already, I was invited to create my own monster from a pile of rejected toys. There was something sinister about being instructed to rip the head off a teddy bear; glue Barbie legs where paws should be; and to work at a designated workstation. Despite the visual pleasure and hands on aspect of super-toys, it seemed to be an exhibition full of concept without real content. But maybe that’s what it allows you to do; to explore you own memories of love, childhood, playfulness and ultimately rejection; and realise that everyone else feels the same way too.
Anne Collier Dispersion is a patchy affair. Curated by the director of the Chisenhale gallery Polly Staple, hospital it features seven artists working from different locations, view tied together under the banner of an examination of the ‘circulation of images in contemporary society….in our accelerated image economy’. This seems a fairly sound starting point, although a bit nebulous and too wide in the sense of the number of artists that could be described as grappling with these issues.
Recycling and colliding of images is examined most clearly in Anne Collier’s photographs. Iconic posters, complete with creases, walk the line between multiple realities; but unlike other work in the show, the centre of power lies not in some theoretical hinterland but in the jarring sensation between seeing the photograph of the image and the image itself. Again this is hardly a new idea but it is well executed. The twin set of images a box of photos of the sea provides a further layer of tension between the natural and man-made.
Anne Collier
Seth Price
Most of the the other works are films. Seth Price’s ‘Digital Video Effect:Editions‘ (2006) , juxtaposing high and low cultural references (such as those barriers still exist), feels like an early 90′s MTV insert in its scope and complexity. Mark Leckey, now with the epithet ‘Turner Prize Winner’, is due to give a one off lecture/live performance ‘Mark Leckey in the Long Tail‘ in January tackling the similar ground, hopefully to better effect.
A better example of the film work on display is Hito Steyerl’s fascinating ‘Lovely Andrea’ (2007). This is an engaging documentary-esque look at a Japanese bondage artist, cut with scenes fom Wonder Woman cartoons and ‘backstage’ footage of the creation or recreation of scenes, calling the whole film’s authenticity into question. This could have led to a horribly self reflexive pile of mush but is actually a taut and gripping set of mixed narratives.
Henrik Olesen’s computer printed images mounted on blackboards, ‘some gay-lesbian artists and/or artists relevant to homosocial culture V,VI.VII’(2007), a collection reappropriated around queer history, touched on interesting ideas; a collection of female portraits by female artists from Renaissance onwards, for example. But the sum of its parts felt lazy and, like the rest of the show, he veers into hectoring or frustrating silence instead of fostering conversation between the work and viewer.
This is a problem, but one the ICA can absorb better than other cultural centres. The institution was founded as an ‘adult playground’ and this remit naturally involves risky and challenging work, which sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t. Dispersion is a perfect encapsulation of this.
The disjointed art punk of San Fransisco’s Deerhoof is pretty brilliant on record but I’d heard it was even better live and so couldn’t wait to see them at ULU on their only UK date this year. Their music is disarmingly simple sounding, online loved by music aficionados and 10 year old girls alike – my kid sister loves Panda Panda Panda and Milkman almost as much as any Girls Aloud single. Perhaps I should have sent her along to review the show. It would have been easier for her to convince the people on the door that she was called Prudence Ivey (the name I was under on the list) than a scruffy and definitely male reviewer. They thought I was a street-crazy.
Achieving such wide-ranging popularity is an impressive feat considering that, sick underneath that childlike simplicity, their songs consist of complex structures alongside fragments of dissonant guitar thrash/twang and improvisation. However, seeing Deerhoof is no overblown, intellectual chore. They manage to be simultaneously clever, loud and cartoonishly entertaining and enlivened ULU with a set that encompassed a lot of new album material alongside some stuff to keep the old school fans happy.
The crowd were particularly receptive to old favourite Milkman, along with the Yo La Tengo-in-a-parallel-universe sounds of new album Offend Maggie – a title that always gives me the mental image of an outraged, pre-dementia Margaret Thatcher. There were clipped drums ahoy, along with Deerhoof’s twinkling wire to fuzz guitar textures. Satomi’s vocals, all coy and Japanese, were accentuated by goofy hand gestures – a fitting accompaniment to her surreal and playful subject matter. The whole band were really tight and surprisingly enthusiastic after fourteen years playing together. I can’t wait to see them again.
For anyone wanting to brush up on their climate science, drugs I thoroughly recommend this charming animation by Leo Murray.
The friendly and clear narration takes you steadily through the various chemical processes that are happening on our planet in it’s present climatic state. Without being overly ominous, the film warns how these processes, unchanged for millions of years, are being disturbed by man-made CO2 emissions and may be heading towards a tipping point where we will be plummeted into a place of no return. This definitely ‘isn’t about polar bears anymore!’
I found it really helpful for clarifying some terminology, the science bits- told in a simple way- are up- to- date, and it projects a statement of encouragement, not one of doom. The prospects are scary but we’re lucky to be the generation who could prevent them from happening.
To vote for Wake Up Freak Out then Get a Grip in the Aniboom Awards 2008 click here.
For anyone wanting to brush up on their climate science, buy information pills I thoroughly recommend this snappy animation by Leo Murray.
The friendly and clear narration takes you steadily through the various chemical processes that are happening on our planet in it’s present climatic state. Without being overly ominous, the film warns how these processes, unchanged for millions of years, are being disturbed by man-made CO2 emissions and may be heading towards a tipping point where we will be plummeted into a place of no return.
I found it really helpful for clarifying some terminology, the science bits- told in a simple way- are up- to- date, and it projects a statement of encouragement, not one of doom. The prospects are scary but we’re lucky to be the generation who could prevent them from happening.
To vote for Wake Up Freak Out in Aniboom Awards 2008. No Equal clothing are a company who don’t pander to press agendas and celebrities, sick instead they are refreshingly focused on working with new and exciting design talent and helping charities.
They also know how to throw a party – and it was good cause central. In the first room of The Russian Club Studios was a display of logoed t-shirts and hoodies, website like this made in collaboration with three emerging illustrators– Yann Le Bec, Thibaud Herem and Jean Jullien.
10% of the sales – not just profit – of this No Equal apparel are being donated to three charities, which No Equal Clothing are supporting, Kidsco, Addaction and XLP. To mix up the mediums and give some background to the collaborations, there was also a video installation showing the three artists at work.
In the second room, as part of their desire to champion new designers, No Equal clothing held a silent auction (of which all profits go to Kidsco, Addaction and XLP) for the London College of Fashion. Seven of LCF’s undergraduate students working for the college’s Centre for Sustainable Fashion created collections that were environmentally and ethically conscious and these were being sold.
The auction is also a possible reason for the eclectic mixture of guests. East London kids hung out with men in suits (in separate groups obviously) in the sparse concrete venue created an unusual atmosphere, you could have been in an underground club, art gallery or exclusive couture shop.
The students collections were varied and interesting, Michela Carraro (pictured below) used hemp based fabrics sourced from small family run businesses to create a romantic chiffon-esque collection, while Manon Flener created deconstructed / reconstructed garments made of pieces of fabric pieced together with studs. She says her motivation for the collection was to reduce waste in fashion; each piece can be put together in a different way to make many garments.
Supporting the Fashioning the Future programme at LCF, which encourages designers to think about the environmental imapct of their work, No Equal clothing are actively championing eco-friendly designers of the future and with their own clothing label, bucking the greedy fashion trend by giving a percentage of profits to charity. Good work all round.
Last week the Earth team at Amelia’s Magazine went along to the Friends House in Euston to listen to a report made by the Public Interest Research Centre (PIRC). The issue was climate change and the information it uncovered was alarming.
As a self-confessed newbie to these sorts of events I must admit to harboring uneasiness about feeling out of place in a room full of swampys. But my silly preconceptions were immediately flattened.
Lead by a panel of speakers expert in their field, story the atmosphere at the Friends House was alive with people from all manner of backgrounds but united in the opinion that climate change is a matter of urgency.
Chairing the debate was Christian Hunt who kicked off by asking the audience a few questions. 99% raised their hand when asked whether they would describe themselves as environmentalists. Roughly 70% would say they had some knowledge of climate change while roughly 20% would say they had lots of knowledge on the subject. 99% of us responded yes we did like his t-shirt that read ‘don’t give up.’
The first to speak from the panel was Kevin Anderson from the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research. He started with a clear message: the question of climate change is a humanitarian one. While the U.K. and E.U’s definition of a dangerous climate change as 2°C per annum may be an adequate threshold for us in the western world, it is not nearly small enough to safeguard the rest of the world.
It is the southern hemisphere, containing the world’s poorest, that is targeted the most by global warming in it’s present state, with people dying on a daily basis. Therefore it is an ethical decision about how much we care about the world’s weakest as to how and when we go about dealing with the climate.
He went on to say that the entire climate change debate needs an urgent rethink when taking into account the latest emissions data. The planet is heating up at an even faster rate than we thought, and our government seems to be denying this is happening by following the miscalculated advice from the Stern Report and not pumping in nearly dosh needed to implement a strategy that will radically cut back our emissions.
But Kevin Anderson pointed out there may be a silver lining to retrieve from the present economical situation. History has shown us that larger emission reductions occur when there is economic turmoil. I guess this has something to with cut backs in industry forced by a plummeting economy. When the Soviet Union collapsed, for example, there was a record drop of 5% per annum.
Tim Helweg-Larson, the director of Public Interest Research Centre bounded onto the platform next. So this is where it gets rather technical but don’t worry, Tim’s clear and straightforward delivery meant that even my mind didn’t drift into thinking about what I might eat for tea.
He showed us a series of images showing the levels of sea ice in the arctic in 1979 and in 2007 and I was taken back to those pretty pictures in my school science lab…Predictably the more recent images contained a much larger surface area of dark gloominess.
These dark regions absorb more heat. This additional heat penetrates 1500km inland across a plain of perma-frost. This stuff is harmless if left untouched but once melted, its carbon content-which is twice the amount of the entire global atmosphere-is released into the air. Yep that means even more bad stuff is added to the high intensity of CO2 that started this whole malarkey.
The knock-on effect going on in the arctic-known as the triple melt- is steadily destroying the climatic state of the entire planet. Soon we will reach the point where we will no longer be within the realm of temperatures that enable things to grow and humanity to survive (known as the middle climate). If this isn’t scary enough this tipping point is likely to peak sooner than we thought; as early as 2011 to 2015.
George Momboit was next to speak. Hello. His exuberance for the cause was exciting…ooh la…did you know he has been shot at, shipwrecked and pronounced clinically dead? Well he was very much alive that evening as I listened – intently- to his practical, if ambitious, advice to the government to stop fannying about and introduce a ‘crash program of total energy replacement.’
He whizzed through a series of steps geared to cut our emissions by 20% by 2012 and more thereafter. But those wild curls, brisk demeanor and air of academic brilliance were just a little distracting. Without getting too carried away I managed to jot down the key points of this radical plan:
1. To train up a green army of builders that is equipped to build more energy efficient homes
2.A mass subsidy program to re insulate homes
3.Replacement of power plants
4.Re engineering of roads to cater better for cycles and coaches
5. To Cap number of landing spots for airports so that by 2030 the maximum number of flights is 5% of current levels.
6.Agriculture should be devoted to the most efficient carbon saving schemes
7.He summed up with the statement that lowering demand for fossil fuels should happen simultaneously with lowering their supply and we need to dramatically cut oil and gas exploitations.
Pretty rousing stuff…
Solar energy pioneer, Jeremy Leggett gave us a more buisnessy slant on what can be done for climate change especially in this current state of economic upheaval and an encroaching energy crunch (the I.E.A. predicts 5 years time). With people becoming increasingly disheartened by the government’s spending priorities, now’s the time to duck in and make a collective effort to re-engineer capitalism. He enforced the notion that money needs to go into building a carbon army of workers that would create 10 thousand new jobs and…cost a measly half a billion squid
Caroline Lucas, MEP for South East England and Leader of the Green Party, disheartened by the inertia of our government, shocked us all by urging ‘a massive campaign of civil disobedience.’ This prompted uproar amongst the audience and I must say it felt pretty inspiring .She went on to talk about Climate Rush, an activist group who take their inspiration from the Suffragette movement. Like the women who were denied the vote, their rush on parliament really is a demand for life itself. They also dress-up in fancy Edwardian petticoats, which sounds fun. But their theatricality is not without sincerity, direction and a passion to change the injustices that climate change is causing on humanity. Caroline Lucas’ speech stirred an energetic drive to ‘do something’ in me. She reminded us of the words of Emily Pankhurst ‘to be a militant is to be a privilege’ and something hit home. We are very lucky to not be totally powerless in this situation, as so many people across the world are, and it is possible to make our government listen to us, albeit with a bit of hard work. To find about the next climate rush action click here.
So I’ve dipped my toe into the murky sludge of our current climate. All the facts and figures might not have filtered through into this article but I hope if, like me, you previously thought this issue was for only for really clever people and maybe just a little put off by dreadlocks, you’ve realized that this is something we should all be aware of whether we want to listen to it or not, including our government.
As I left the Climate Safety talk to cycle home, I felt almost grateful for never bothering to learn to drive as perhaps in a small way it might make up for that stomach-sinking feeling of how terribly selfish I had been for only vaguely paying attention to news of melting popsicles and greenhouses.
The truth is I felt safe in the view that the really scary things won’t happen for a very long time, well after I’m buried in the ground and used for compost. Well I was wrong, it’s not our grandkid’s grandkid that’s going to feel the full force of climate change-it’s us.
We’ve searched online for hours to find these wonderful gift ideas for Christmas this year! Including solar powered fairy lights, advice recycled wrapping paper, rx sew-it-yourself dresses, fairtrade teddies and handmade jewellery.
JEWELLERY
Kate Slater First up on our list, and featured in Issue 10 of Amelia’s Magazine, we have wonderfully talented illustrator Kate Slater. She is one of many artists currently selling her work on etsy in the form of these gorgeous little accessories that she has made. Kate‘s illustrations come alive through the use of collage, mixed papers and wire for relief work. Furtive Pheasant Brooch Kate’s collaged pheasant has been remade into this lovely brooch. The original illustration has been printed onto durable shrink plastic and bejeweled with green diamantes. We love the idea of being able to wear Kate’s illustrations! Buy the Furtive Pheasant Brooch here
Butterfly Dress Kit Gossypium is a great place to buy gifts from! All the clothes on their site are high quality, fairtrade and made from biodegradable materials. They’re one of the great sites working with the idea of a zero-impact on the environment, and we’ve love this Butterfly Dress Kit. It is a sew-it-yourself organic cotton kit that comes with a lovely printed fabric and easy instructions to create one of three garments. You can make a blouse, a dress or a smock with or without pockets, and have the option of long or short sleeves; with nine different styles to choose from you are in total control of how your finished product looks! Buy the Butterfly Dress Kit here.
Solar Helicopter This little toy is perfect as a desk ornament, and is loads of fun for kids and grown ups! Working with as little light as from a desk lamp, the solar cells demonstrate how efficient modern eco technology is. Buy the Solar Helicopter here.
Outdoor Solar Powered Christmas Fairy Lights These all-year-round lights are a great way to bring some green sparkle to your home! They’re waterproof and come with 8 different settings including flashing, continuous light patterns! The lights only come on when it’s dark (so about 3:30pm…) and the solar panel uses high grade Kyocera Solar cells that store enough energy to run for 10 hours, even on winter days! These lights are a bargain too at only £19.99! Buy your Solar Powered Fairy Lights here.
These 100% recycled wrapping papers are by Lisa Jones and come in many different styles! They are modernist and brightly coloured using vegetable inks. Get some Recycled Wrapping Paper here.
Cardboard Cutting Table This 100% Icelandic made brilliant cardboard table can be used as a meeting table, a cutting table (it comes with a laminated white surface top), a dinner table and a baby changing table! It’s portable and folds away to save space! (and comes with a handy 18% discount for design students!). Buy the Cardboard Table here.
KIDS
‘Woodsy The Owl’ Bib This adorable bib is by etsy seller ‘cocoandmilkweed‘, consisting of Evan and Lila Maleah- a husband and wife team intent on creating lovely products for little and big people! Woodsy has been handmade in a dark brown eco-felt that has been made from 100% recycled plastic bottles, and sewn onto a soft cotton woodgrain fabric. the entire bib has been backed with organic cotton flannel and lined with organic cotton and bamboo for extra absorption! All this detail has added to its appeal, and it even has a snap closure to make sure its little wearer isn’t able to yank it off! Buy a ‘Woodsy The Owl’ bib here.
Dala Horse Stocking The Christmas tradition of stocking has been brought into the 21st century by Erin ‘sewsewsuckurtoe‘ by using the folk art inspired Dala Horse. It is constructed out of eco-felt which is made from recycled plastic bottles and lined in cotton to make it strong enought to hold as many things as possible! Buy a Dala Horse Stocking here.
Witness are a group, based in New York, that use video and online technologies to expose human rights violations all over the world. By making videos of victim’s personal stories, they direct attention to injustice and promote public engagement and policy change.
Sam’s first up on the video (below), telling us that the images of a school teacher in East Burma hiding out in a forest with her children is one of the images that shows us we need to go further with our actions to help those whose human rights have been severely violated.
A video producer, trainer and human rights advocate, Sam’s videos have been screened at the US Congress, UK Houses of Parliament, The UN and in film festivals worldwide.
The group are also launching an online channel for these videos called The Hub. This is a new multi-lingual online portal dedicated to human rights media and action. It provides the opportunity for individuals, organizations, networks and groups around the world to bring their human rights stories and campaigns to global attention.
To find out more about Witness (www.witness.org) click here.
The non-existent morality faeries that do not sit either side of my head were in a fluster last Thursday. I took them down to a police auction in Bethnal Green, salve and for the entirety of my pedal there, they could not be resolved: surely there is something fundamentally wrong with capitalising on the lost and stolen goods of hapless victims, or worse still, liquidated assets, urgh! But then again, stolen … and retrieved; lost … and found. Where else would these items, long since departed from owners, go? I have nothing to say about liquidated assets, but apparently that’s next time – this week was reserved to lost and stolen goods only, courtesy of the metropolitan police; thanks.
Once we arrived, debates were dispelled and there was nothing to fluster about – it did not seem in the least bit seedy. This fortnightly event, put on by Frank G. Bowen Ltd Auctioneers and Valuers, two men both of whom are very friendly, one of whom looks like Santa Clause, takes place in an old air raid shelter, making for a strangely intimate and cosy affair. Potential bidders arrive early to browse, an advisable precaution seeing as nothing can be returned once purchased. I felt like the passer-by who steps into a regulars-only pub, my obvious excitement an instant give-away; but I tried my best to look like this was routine, and nestled myself in amongst the clutter on Lot 135, 1 wooden kitchen-table chair. Pensive brow in place, I concentrated on my catalogue sheet, my mind now settling to the bewildering list before me …
An initial glance reveals nothing of a surprise: bicycles, phones, cameras, and mp3 players; but it’s not long before you start to wonder … who steals a kitchen chair? A cupboard? An oak mirror overmantle (Lot 379)? The clothing list is the strangest of all: Lot 4: A pair of Ladies sandals, size 40; Lot 58: (non-specific) Ladies Clothing as bagged. One Lot contained a pair of jeans, a jacket, and a pair of trainers – all stolen from a single owner? How did that happen?
Against all inclinations, we ended up describing the place and the experience as a gem. Don’t go expecting to find vintage treasures, but there are amenities at a good price (surely I need a quad bike). And a few pointers: don’t let the excitement of bidding make you go for things for no other rational reason than the pleasure of raising your hand; careful of the man who will out-bid everyone for bikes; and don’t take a lunch break in the middle, thus missing that one item you’d circled in red that you were willing to spend forty quid on, and ended up going for under twenty, pah.
Don’t miss this excellent event tonight:
Cheshire Street Christmas Shopping
Friday 12th December
This Friday, case pop down to Cheshire Street as the whole street will be open to 10pm, cost so you can get your quirky Christmas gifts till late(ish) into the night and enjoy wine and nibbles while you do it. The shops will be offering exclusive discounts also, including 20% off on the night at I Dream of Wires. Amazing.
Frock Me! Vintage Fashion Fair
Sunday 14th December
Frock Me! vintage fashion should not be confused with the questionable television show of the same name hosted by a certain over-exposed designer and TV presenter. It is in fact a fabulous vintage fashion fair, and this Sunday, in the swanky surroundings of the Chelsea Town Hall you can pop down and pick up a genuine vintage garment.
They even have their own tea-room. What more could you want?
Open: 11am – 5.30pm
Admission: £4 (students £2 with ID)
Nearest Tube: Sloane Square / South Kensington
Written by Jennifer McNulty on Thursday December 11th, 2008 11:55 am
West Side Story became ‘East Side Story‘ in this glorious romp through American youth culture with a British twist, taking inspiration from the 1961 film and Saul Bass‘s iconic graphics. Any collection inspired by Saul Bass’s iconic graphics gets my vote.
I settled into my perfect standing spot, sandwiched between a guy wielding an iPad (give over) as if it were a shield and a speaker belting out Gee, Officer Krupkee. The entrance to the catwalk had been daubed in Richard Woods‘s signature woodprint, and just inside I noticed a huge sign saying ‘SMILES PLEASE’ with a cheeky felt-tip drawing of a grin. Well, it would have been rude not to, and so I grinned as wide as I could as the first model appeared.
The masculinity of the Jets and gang dress codes were first explored – cropped denim jackets and oversized bomber jackets featured enlarged JET BOY motifs on the reverse. Models were styled with slick quiffs and huge smiles – oh, hang on, the sign was for them! What a brilliant idea. It took all my strength not to start weeping as each handsome devil appeared, grinning and genuinely enjoying themselves.
From the streets to the gym; up next came polos, cardigans and shorts in Richard Woods‘ aforementioned print. Dreamy colours – mint green, lilac and Shark blue were indebted on the press release to the Ndebele tribe and West Side Story cinematographer Daniel L Fapp.
No SIBLING collection would be complete without chunky knits and a hint of leopard print, and die hard fans weren’t disappointed on either count. Cardigans and cropped jackets in blue peppered the sportswear, as did a thick, black mesh knit at the beginning of the show.
The most dramatic pieces combined scoobie strings (yes, like the bracelets) with American track and field sportswear shapes to create show-stopping tops and shorts in white, neon greens and acid pink.
A knit emblazoned with a ’5′ emblem in stars closed this fifth anniversary show, SIBLING‘s best yet IMHO.
Written by Matt Bramford on Wednesday June 26th, 2013 9:37 am
“We are consumers, capsule addicted. We need to ask ourselves – this t-shirt, this where did it come from? A devastated place with devastated people?” – Bia Saldanha, health 28 July 2011??
Through Bia’s hesitant English – impressively peppered with the vocabulary of her respective fields – there was a message, a mantra, that seemed to resonate from her core with every sentence she spoke. The message? That as people, as a united force of humanity, we must end the selfishness, stop the excuses and start acting on the fact that our Earth cannot bear the brunt of our reckless lifestyle choices much longer. ??I was sitting at the far back of the still, woody space of The Hub, King’s Cross, looking on at Bia, eco journalist Lucy Siegle and novelist Ed Siegle’s discussion unraveling.
If there’s one thing I learnt on that warm Thursday evening, it’s that when a lady like Bia Saldanha gives out such a message from across the room, you sit up straight, strain your ears and listen. Living in the heart of the Amazon rainforest for 20 years definitely grants you a credible opinion on our Earth’s complex ecosystem and how it can be saved. And it only takes a minute or two of hearing Bia speak on the subject to get a sense of just how special she really is. A Brazilian woman who’s dedicated her years to both supporting the indigenous rubber farmers of Amazonia and aiding the battle against deforestation, Bia traded in a life running a stylish clothing boutique in Rio de Janeiro to live in the rainforest with her family and help the Seringueiros (the native rubber tappers) overcome their defeat by mainstream industrial production.
But why should we care? Why should we listen? We all know of the damage upon the rainforest through mass deforestation and, for example, that Brazil lost nearly 150,000 square kilometers of forest—an area larger than Greece – between 2000 and 2006 alone. But the basis of why we should think again before discarding these past few lines as just another statistic lies in the words of Lucy Siegle; that we are in “the last chance saloon” when it comes to saving the rainforest. And, to further quote the fabulous Bia,
“You can’t imagine how strong, powerful and important the rainforest is if you haven’t been there”.
With a background in the fashion industry, Bia began her pioneering work after a trip into the Amazon to search for new materials for her clothing line. She described how she found the indigenous rubber tappers storing their goods in traditional waterproof sacks. She then relayed her excitement of noticing how the sack material looked remarkably like leather when it was, in fact, cotton canvas covered in the extracted rubber from the trees. Bia took the idea for wild rubber “leather” handbags and had hundreds made, all of which completely sold out in the 1992 UN Earth Summit in Brazil. And so her crusade against the mass producers began. ?
The Amazon is, in fact, the only place in the world where rubber trees grow in the wild. When ecological and fair-trade brand Veja began their essential collaboration with Bia in 2007, they were already buying wild rubber from the rubber tappers. Veja are a French brand known for their ultra-cool sneakers and luxe accessories, whose products are sourced and produced solely in Brazil. They now work with Bia and use her independent, direct means of extracting wild rubber to produce their bags and footwear.
In what can only be seen as a triumph in the fight for sustainable fashion, Bia Saldanha has also worked with Hermès, using her ‘vegan leather’ made of wild rubber to collaborate on an accessories collection for the luxury French fashion house.
Despite the dedication and ground-breaking work that’s been recognized the world over, however, Bia hasn’t received the support she justly deserves. In the discussion, she spelt out the level of sheer power and influence that Brazil’s central bank has over what is and isn’t permitted to function in the country. After struggling against many financial disagreements, Bia even faced being shut down completely, despite the continuous funding to unsustainable companies and projects, including the vast amount of cattle ranches that make up 60-70% of deforestation in the Amazon today.?
“I’ve now devoted 16 years to this,” said Bia. “It’s more than a business; it’s a cult.”
It’s not that she aims to trade with the giant companies, however. “There’s not enough wild rubber to supply the big companies. We don’t want to trade with anyone in particular but we do want to ask those companies, where does your rubber come from? These companies are just looking for marketing, they don’t care.”
Ed Siegle, author of new book Invisibles which is partially set in Brazil, contributed stating “With a lot of these issues, we’re all aware of them but we don’t do anything about it.” Lucy intervened – “That’s because we don’t know what the options are.”
To me, Lucy Siegle made an invaluable contribution to the event. She spoke of writing her latest book ‘To Die For” (Harper Collins; 2010) which she described as “engaging with the producer’s story”, and how she felt about the “contrast between her and the mainstream industry”, recounting fashion as a “vacuum that we know nothing about”. “We are now so distant from the producer,” she said “that the degradation of the consumer, the producer and the place is now inevitable.”
Photographs courtesy of Veja
She went onto ask the frustrating question, something I’d never put my mind to, of “Who are these people telling us what to wear? Telling us to buy this fast, discount fashion?” She feels that we are “told to shop for the economy”. Her answer to this has been to find a few brands that she can “rely on”.
The discussion moved on to the debate of ‘design and production – which should come first?’. Lucy Siegle, naturally, spoke in favour of production, upholding it as the healthier method in place of paper designs being sent across the world for the fastest and cheapest production possible. She believes instead that we need to be taking inspiration from the methods of Bia, who at the outset went into the forest – to the source – in search of materials, from which she then created her designs. This, she says, is a solution.
Photographs courtesy of Veja
Bia declares that her long-standing mission is to “protect the rainforest through economic alternatives”. And I say we need more ground-breaking fashion entrepreneurs like her. In the constant clash between nature and human demands, the more Bias we have in the world today, the brighter our future will be.
And with this mantra that seemed to beam from Bia’s every sentence; she most certainly wasn’t aiming it at the big logger companies or sweat shops or factories, definitely not. It’s US she meant. All of us. It’s you who sits right there wearing clothes that you really know nothing about. Someone’s hands, somewhere in the world, grew that cotton and dyed that fabric and stitched that pocket and, thus far, to you in your life it has made no difference. We’re all perpetrators and I’m most certainly one too. But after last Thursday, I’ll definitely be doing two things – reading Lucy Siegle’s book “To Die For” and taking a long, hard look at me and my wardrobe. And may I suggest you do the same.
Written by Georgia Takacs on Friday August 5th, 2011 4:44 pm
For fans of the drug-n-whisky soaked darker side of life this intimate venue should be the perfect place to catch the full intensity of this bad boy duo’s melancholic rumblings.
15-piece Californian band/orchestra/whatever headline with their sunny but diverse indie pop. Plus cool electro pop from We Have Band.
Tuesday 20th January
Sometimes gigs from old favourites can be a risky business, often liable to disappoint when your heroes have become sad old has-beens. With any luck these late 70s punk stalwarts were too cool to age badly and this should be a great gig.
She’s in Issue 10 so she must be pretty good but don’t just take our (and every other music journalist in England’s) word for it. Check out her fun dance pop live.
Once the founder of 80s punk metallers Squirrel Bait, David Grubbs now plays grungy post-rock as a solo concern.
Saturday 24th January
James Yuill, The Macbeth, London
Think Jose Gonzalez without the advert but with plenty of electronic sounds to accompany the quiet and introspective acoustic numbers.
Of Montreal, Digital, Brighton
Much loved indie pop, spreading a little happiness whilst supporting Franz Ferdinand on their latest tour.
Sunday 25th January
Le Corps Mince de Francoise, Library, Lancaster
Daft Finnish pop in the same vein as CSS, Chicks on Speed and others of that ilk. Crazy make up and fun party girls = a great end to the weekend.
Rows of fish heads preserved in salt – even in the quirky world of Tatty Devine, viagra 60mg that’s an unexpected sight. They peer out from a long black board mounted on the gallery wall like hunting trophies. Next to them, buy cast copies of ripe oranges burrow into blocks of dark red velvet, rx as if victims of a bloody fruit massacre.
This is the first solo show of sculptor Amaia Allende, which opened on Thursday at the Tatty Devine boutique and gallery space in Brick Lane, east London. Allende claims to tackle the “subject of belonging” by assembling similar everyday items into tidy rows. It looks suspiciously like she has emptied her kitchen bin around the shop.
By the front door, some sort of green pear-like fruits line up on a narrow shelf. Poking out of the top are long strands of polyester blond hair, which make them look like a family of Mrs Pear Heads. So they belong together, you see, while at the same time having individual personalities (because of the hair).
Tatty Devine is famous for its unique jewellery and edgy art exhibitions, including “Jane Amongst the Birds”, a competition for the best foreign bird or budgie (complete with Tatty Devine trophy) held in September last year. So when it comes to belonging, it seems that Allende and her sombre line-up of fish heads and old fruit, have found an appropriate home.
The most glamorous way of recycling clothes is buying vintage. Last week atelier-mayer.com was launched by luxury fashion PR, viagra orderCarmen Haid, about it and fashion journalist, Alice Kodell, and it is a literal vintage heaven. It’s not the place to go if your vintage needs are met by Beyond Retro but if you want a designer dress to suit your decadent palette, you’ll love it.
In the 1930′s Carmen Haid’s grandmother, Klaudia Mayer ran a haute couture atelier in Vienna, selling exquisite clothes sourced from all over the world and it is this that atelier-mayer.com recreates as an online boutique.
The launch truly indicated the splendour of the site, as we entered Marks Club – gentlemen’s club extraordinaire – in Mayfair, we were greeted with roaring fireplaces, country estate décor and the elegant melodies of the violinists could be heard wafting down the staircase.
Photograph by Tilly Pearman
Such a grand setting was fitting for the designer and couture gowns on show, a taste of what can be bought on the site. As well as on rails, the clothes were worn by models and the violinists, to show off the true beauty of them.
Photographs by Tilly Pearman
The site not only allows you to browse through the clothes online, the style me section acts as your very own personal shopper, taking into account your size and preferences and finding appropriate pieces and accessories for you.
Atelier-mayer.com is also a great source for brushing up on your fashion knowledge, it has biographies of designers and fashion houses, guides to buying vintage and the style minute section contains a collection of fashion videos, including a fabulous Audrey Hepburn montage and an interview with key sartorial players including Coco Chanel, which is in her native French but we (Prudence Ivey – bilingual Music Editor) has done a handy translation of the key questions for you:
Could you give me a definition of elegance?
Coco: It’s difficult, you ask a difficult question, what is elegance? It’s many things. I will say something which I repeat all the time that for me is obvious but which many people don’t understand: that you can never be elegant enough.
Many of the dresses you designed last year have been copied or imitated in practically every country in the world. The Chanel style has descended to the street. Are you happy about this?
Coco: I am delighted. That was my goal. I don’t believe in defending fashion. You can’t have fashion if you are against imitation. There is no fashion if no-one sees it. Not me but many of the couturiers have an insane fear of imitation but you can’t be successful without it. For me success is the copy. You can’t be successful without that and imitation.
Wise words Coco.
Written by Jennifer McNulty on Tuesday January 20th, 2009 4:44 pm
On the Saturday morning of fashion week I cycled toSomerset House. It was such a sunny, cool morning that I couldn’t help myself. Despite sitting outside the main courtyard for a breather for nearly thirty minutes, I still arrived at theSister by Sibling salon show sweatier than the Editor-in-chief of French Closer. I couldn’t help it. I don’t know what’s wrong with me at the moment, I just can’t stop bloody sweating. I’m just saying.
Anyway, the queue for this hotly anticipated show was enormous and as I stood dabbing my brow I wondered how we were all going to fit inside the tiny Portico Rooms. I managed to find a so-so spot to stand in as the photographers began blocking the entrance. The room was already full, a good percentage of guests modelling this season’s marvellous leopard print numbers. Last minute guests, including my favourite woman (Dame) Suzy Menkes barged in as the show was about to start.
There’s nothing like a bit of dayglo and some X-Ray Spex at a million decibels to wake you up on a Saturday morning. This collection, wonderfully titled ‘Warriors in Woolworths‘, had all the aspects we’ve come to love and expect from Sibling; I was in no doubt when the first model popped from behind the screen that I was going to love everything I was about to see.
Said first model appeared in a white sweater with Sister paint logo daubed across the front and a white ruffle tutu skirt. This was accessorised with the only item you can accessorise a white ruffle tutu skirt with: a full-on lace face mask.
Next came a crocheted top and skirt, complete with ruffles and cap, shortly followed by a pair of white ruffled knickers – but all this white wasn’t fooling me. I knew there’d be some colour pretty soon, and before I could say ‘oh sure’ the colour came coming. Flashes of hot pink, baby pink, yellow and dayglo green appeared on floor length straight-up-and-down no nonsense dresses with matching cardigans.
Crew neck, short-sleeved jumpers and baggy cardigans reminded me of those my grandmother used to wear, expect hers weren’t in illuminous green or embellished with glitter to form reverse skulls. I don’t remember them like that, at least. I much prefer these. A polo-neck dress in green leopard print was a particular favourite, as was a black number with vibrant but delicate flowers splashed all across it.
Punk never looked so fresh.
Written by Matt Bramford on Friday September 21st, 2012 2:31 pm
The Many Sides Fashion Illustration By Toni Morris.
You come from a corporate background – why did you decide to branch out and set up The Many Sides and what were you able to bring to the process from your former career?
I set up the business because I found I was no longer excited by what was on offer on the high street – I wanted to bring more unique, well made clothes to people that were also frustrated by the high street as well as the ‘slap on a monogram’ ethos which we see from established labels. As such it was kind of a labour of love! Basically I wanted to connect creative designers with women who wanted to express themselves through creative fashion!
I think from my former career I am able to bring a level of professionalism and attention to detail which is important. It also helps to be able to structure a deal which is important when thinking about different ways you can do business.
I like the thinking behind your name, can you explain a bit more about what The Many Sides means to you? The Many Sides references the many sides of a woman. I found as a corporate professional I would have a persona at work and then lots of different other sides for all the other roles I play and the many interests I have. I wanted to develop a brand that resonated with a similar kind of woman. A woman that has many sides and many interests – one of which desires creative self expression and uses fashion as a vehicle to do that.
Where are your designers from and how do you discover them and bring them on board?
My designers come from a variety of countries from South Korea, Denmark, Greece and the UK among others. I discover them through various means, trade shows, desk based research, instagram…. and now designers get in touch with me too as they like what I am doing and want to be featured on a platform that is selective and well curated. I won’t sell anything I don’t like or where the quality is sub par. I always look for a story behind the designers inspiration that cohesively carries through to their aesthetic. Though each collection may vary, there needs to be something distinctive and ‘signature’ about the designers concept.
Please could you introduce us to a few of your designers…. and let us know a bit about why you have chosen them.
The designers are an eclectic bunch – each with their own distinctive style. A few of the designers we stock are:
Chichia – Her designs are influenced by African print and in particular she uses the local Khanga fabric to make the clothes. She makes the clothes using local labour in Tanzania to give back to her homeland. I really like the colour and the unique use of cut outs as well as the representation of the culture via the fabrics used.
Yohan Kim – Our South Korean designer. He has a rock and roll, gothic style. He uses a lot of leather, studs and heavy detailing, embellishment and embroidery. I really love the intricacy of the pieces. The pictures online don’t do the items enough justice! The pieces are very handcrafted and deeply worked – for example one of the leather skirts is texturised on one side and has studs on the other side. No regular leather skirt!
Alice’s Pig – Our London based designer who is influenced by Alice in Wonderland and girly vintage tea party looks. Lots of 50′s style dresses and feminine cuts. I love this designer as the pieces are very wearable but have a subtle twist that still makes the items unique. The kimono trousers and tuxedo jacket are a case in point – they are both staple pieces but not boring and each have a little something extra to make them memorable.
What have been the biggest difficulties and triumphs in setting up your own business?
The biggest difficulty is in bridging the gap between online and offline. I am currently looking at ways to make the clothes more accessible offline as its still important to some customers be able to touch and feel the clothes. The main thing I am proud of has been in getting so much positive feedback from customers, bloggers and designers. People in the industry as well as the customer seem to really like the clothes and more importantly are willing to spend their hard earned money buying them – its so rewarding when someone genuinely loves a purchase.
Can you tell us more about your spring edit selection and what informed your choices?
It is a mixture of clothes good for the current weather – florals and light weight fabrics. However as the weather in England is so changeable there are also some jackets on there too. Having said that all of the clothes can be worn any time of year – I don’t approve of the fast fashion movement and want to slow things down by always having clothing on there for all occasions and all weather.
I also included some colourful accessories including some contemporary jewellery pieces that would go well with day time spring/summer looks to reflect the new season and hopefully the beginning of sunshine! Looking ahead we also have a great new swimwear designer that does very unique designs to flatter every shape which also comes in made to measure sizes.
What next for the Many Sides?
As I mentioned I want to explore different ways to bring the clothes to customers in a more direct way. This is something I am looking at right now. I also want to carry on delighting customers with the unique product offering which I intend to keep growing with time. Essentially, I hope to grow the business through word of mouth – that’s the dream!
Check out Rita Sheth‘s unique selection of clothing and accessories for yourself on The Many Sides. Rita Sheth was a contributor to my 10th anniversary book That Which We Do Not Understand.
Written by Amelia Gregory on Friday April 24th, 2015 5:16 pm
If you try to describe this to someone (which you shouldn’t, this websales don’t give anything away), doctormedications you will sound like you are conjuring from memory a nonsensical and fantastical dream; not something remotely tangible that actually happened in a 25-minute journey through a Shorditch warehouse.
Enter the ride and find yourself wheeled through 15 distinct scenarios with over 70 artists acting out micro-performances. “Designed to mentally and visually astound”, check; “leaving you overwhelmed and exhilarated’, check and check; and finishing the ride “in a totally different emotional state from the one you were in when you embarked on the journey”, most definitely true: utterly elated, mesmerised, and psychologically discombobulated.
The You Me Bum Bum train represents a new branch of experimental live art where the line between performer and audience is not just blurred, but utterly turned on it’s head; interaction is integral to the experience, and how far you take this is up to you. It’s creators Kate Bond and Morgan Lloyd, intend to strip individuals of decision-making, giving passengers the would-be ordinary experience of somebody else’s shoes. You are left with fleeting slices of alternate realities, one moment you might be a drummer, the next a translator (I really don’t want to say much!). It’s real human experience through the prism of the utterly surreal, and it will take you some time to reclaim your grasp on the two, a most marvellous and novel experience.
The venue is essential to the experience, and they describe Cordy House as their dream venue, lending itself to the most ambitious event they’ve held yet.
There isn’t much time to go, and I whole-heartedly recommend it as an unforgettable experience. It runs every Saturday from now until the 20th of December between 7pm and 11pm.
Hip Parisian fahion and electro label, buy Kitsuné, what is ed are fast becoming as well known for their associated music as they are for their fashion. In fact, there is a clear cut three-way divide at Heaven tonight: scenesters, dressed for the fashion blog photographers collide en masse with those who know Kitsuné for the music and are quite unprepared for the additional rooms full of said scenesters, and with the regular Heaven clubbers, used to G-A-Y Camp Attack on Friday nights and probably the most bemused of everyone here.
Within the four rooms there’s a frustrating mix of real djs and acts like Autokratz, whose Pet Shop Boys go big beat set was a joy to behold and left me humming ‘Stay The Same’ for the rest of the night. Hearts Revolution, Punks Jump Up and Kitsuné house band Digitalism all turned out in force to impress and did so, although at times the acts felt a little repetitive. Alas, alongside these quality acts, we also got a number of vanity djs, including various models and boutique owners, which all blurred into the same set as the night progressed and seemed to play to rooms full of people aiming to get to the bar and move on.
It transpired that the ‘Don’t Panic’ room was the place to be. Inspired by K-Tron, blasting bass heavy No-Wave, they held me and the room in near divine rapture. The highlight of the night however, was Matthew Stone who dragged us back to 1985 via The KLF, his effortlessly sublime musical compass taking us on a seemingly random adventure, fitting perfectly with the tone of the night. There were some true high points tonight, but Kitsuné are probably best enjoyed via one of their compilations than live, based on tonight’s evidence.
Global Day of Action
6th December 2008
This will be the Saturday midway through the next round of UN Climate Talks and our best chance to influence the decisions of delegates ahead of the critical UN talks in 2009 at which a post-Kyoto treaty agreement will be decided.
LONDON
Climate Bike Ride 2008
Assemble 10.30 am Lincolns Inn Fields for a mass bike ride around Central London joining up with the National Climate March at Grosvenor Square (see next listing for National Climate March info)
The three stops on the route are:
-Outside Greenergy, 198 High Holborn – for an agrofuels protest organised by Biofuelswatch
-Outside E.On 100 Pall Mall – for a speaker on NO NEW COAL
-Outside the Department of Transport – for a speaker on sustainable transport
Everyone welcome; decorate your bikes, bring whistles, bring music!
Want to help out for this action? Contact Jeremy Hill on 07816 839883 or jeremy.hill1@btopenworld.com
National Climate March and Global Day of Action on Climate
The march starts at 12noon at Grosvenor Square and will move via Carlos Place and Mount Street to Berkley Square and Berkley street to Picacadily, Picadilly Circus, Lower Regent street, Pall Mall and Cockspur street to Trafalgar Square and Whitehall to Parliament Square.
We will bring the UK issues of Aviation, New coal and Biofuels to the streets of London, along with a call for more investment in renewable energy, more energy efficiency and more green jobs.
Speakers will include Nick Clegg (leader Liberal Democrat Party), Caroline Lucas (leader, Green party), Michael Meacher (ex-Environment Minister) and George Monbiot (Honorary President, Campaign against Climate Change).
Contact: 020 7833 9311 www.campaigncc.org
There will also be an After-Party in the Synergy Centre from 5.00 pm till late.
The March on Parliament has four main themes –
1) NO to a 3rd runway at Heathrow and the runaway expansion in aviation expansion.
2) NO new coal – no new coal-fired power stations as planned at eg Kingsnorth in Kent
3) NO to the expansion of agrofuels – with negative impacts on forests, the climate and world food supply.
4) YES to a renewable energy revolution and green jobs – a “Green new Deal”
Come with your own banners, costumes on one of these themes and join up with others pushing that theme……
The March on Parliament for the Climate marks the Saturday midway through the UN Climate Talks in Poznan, Poland and we make our demands on the UK government in solidarity with the world’s poorest and most vulnerable communities that will suffer worst and most immediately from climate change caused overwhelmingly by the rich long-industrialised countries.
We need the government to act now on climate, to stop building coal-fired power stations and new runways – and to begin the renewable energy revolution. We need a tidal wave of people outside parliament to make them act to stop climate catastrophe now! Be part of that tidal wave, be there! Next year may be too late.
BUST is a magazine devoted to the female. Providing an unapologetic view of life in the female lane, they break down stereotypes! Based in the US and established in 1993, the magazine addresses a variety of different issues within pop sulture, including music, fashion, art & crafts and news.
Editor-in-Chief, Debbie Stoller, decided to call the magazine BUST, because it was “aggressive and sexy and funny… It was a title that could belong to a men’s porn magazine.”
For Women With Something To Get Off Their Chests! Click here for the Christmas Craftacular’s Facebook Page
Jumble Fever Under the bridge on Beck Road, E8 Saturday 6th December
Midday-4pm, Entry £1
A fabulous jumble sale with a boogie twist! There will be a great deal to see and do and buy.. See you there!
ETSY
An online shopping bazaar; Etsy is a cross between eBay and Amazon with a humble handmade twist. Launched in June 2005 by Robert Kalin, for sale Chris Maguire and Haim Schoppik, the site has grown to be incredibly popular, with tens of thousands of people selling their handmade goods (90% of whom are women!).
As Christmas draws nearer and greener, we have chosen our favorite handmade things to inspire your presents list. www.etsy.com
“The Kelsey”; a pleated clutch in paisley mocha
This handmade clutch is one of many adorable bags created by GraceyBags; get in touch through etsy.com to custom order a clutch and choose from a rainbow of fabrics.
Featured is ‘The Kelsey’ in a paisley mocha print on the outside in greens, blues, pinks, yellows and browns. The inside has been sewn from a silky brown fabric and the bag closes with a small magnet.
Recycled Journal – handbound Find a lovely selection of hand bound recycled books by Rhonda; bookbinder and book artist.
This particularly wonderful journal is made with a variety of recycled scrap papers ranging from large envelopes, posters, junk mail, blank paper, lined and graph paper, covers from old sketch books, old maps, discarded photocopies, misprints from the computer printer to paper bags.
Perfect as an art journal, the book is covered with an old map of the world, the one pictured above showing the islands of Guatemala, Nicaragua and Costa Rica.
There are 256 pages (when you count both sides of each sheet). The pages are handbound using green and brown linen threads, visible on the spine in 4 rows of chain stitches.
The book size is approximately 4″ x 4¼” and 1″ thick (or 10.5cm x 11cm x 2.5cm).
This adorable cotton tote is the perfect carry-all for any occasion. BellaBlu Designs signature French Bulldog silhouette has been cut from Heather Bailey‘s ‘Sway in Brown’ Pop Garden print and appliquéd to this cotton canvas bag. It is 100% 10 oz. cotton, measures 15 x 13 x 3 inches and can be customized with most other dog breeds.
We’ve also had a browse round treefort.myshopify.com, for some gift ideas for those of you with little ones in your life!
Dreamlets Dolls These cute little creatures would make an adorable gift this season, and as a product that gives 1% back to Artworks, Bridges to Understanding, or Poncho, they’re doing a lot more than making a loved one happy! The dolls come in a variety of shapes and colours, each with their own quirky personality. You are also able to choose which organization will benefit from your gift by registering your doll online.
Nikki McClure’s Mama & Baby Things Treefort also sell many of Nikki Mcclure‘s prints, books, cards, and calendars. Nikki McClure creates complex, yet natural designs by cutting away from a single piece of black construction paper with an x-acto knife. Her works are printed on 100% Recycled, 100% Post-Consumer Waste, Processed Chlorine Free paper that was manufactured with electricity that is offset with Green-e® certified renewable energy. Her work is printed by a small family-owned press in Portland, Oregon, US- and uses soy-based inks.
Kids On Roof “House” is made of Eco friendly-100% recycled cardboard and is 100% biodegradable. These houses are the perfect gift for creative children, as they’re meant to be decorated and personalised! (see below for examples from treefort) Kidsonroof donates 5% of its profits to specific Unicef projects; €24,000 has now been collected for the Unicef project for building better, small-scale housing for HIV/Aids inflicted orphans in Russia.
Beyond Retro Christmas Party!
This evening Beyond Retro is throwing it’s annual seasonal gathering – in both it’s shops, viagra buy the original Cheshire St warehouse and new sibling store in Soho – from 6pm – 8pm, there’ll be lots of exclusive goodies for you to browse through and they’ll even throw in some mulled wine and mince pies. Good times.
Made In Clerkenwell
This evening and all weekend, the Clerkenwell Green Association open their studios for Made in Clerkenwell, an event that showcases the work of over 70 designers they support through providing them with studio space, mentoring and business advice to help them create their work.
The fruits of their labors are exhibited and available for purchase, so you can hunt out that unique Christmas gift and buy all kinds of original and creative wares – ranging from fashion designs to jewellery, accessories, textiles and even ceramics.
What makes this shopping experience so different is that you can mingle with and chat to the designers and find out about their craft, inspirations, working method, becoming a designer, anything you want to know! So pop down, get a great gift and support new designers.
Open 6pm to 8pm, Thursday 27th November 2008 and
12pm to 6pm on Friday 28th, Saturday 29th and Sunday 30th November 2008.
£2.50 entrance – free to the under 16s.
It’s no secret that Brooklyn’s the place to be for smart indie pop these days, view but look a little closer to home and you might be surprised. Take tonight’s superb support acts, advice for example. First up is Pens, erectile a cute lo-fi local trio who, despite playing to only a handful of people, put on a wonderfully frantic and ramshackle performance – think Karen O‘s kid sisters gleefully bashing at snare, guitar and synths.
Fellow Londoners Chew Lips are up next and are nothing short of a revelation. The threesome cater in captivatingly melancholy electronic music and boast a bona fide icon-in-waiting in singer Tigs; she prowls and creeps around the venue, all black bob and wide eyes, unleashing powerful vocals and jumping on the bar to serenade us, while the boys whip up a glitchy synth and bass storm in the background. ‘Solo’ is the band’s set-closer and an undeniable highlight – scuzzy and danceable yet strangely sad, it will be one of your anthems of 2009, no question.
This bunch are hard to follow, but Telepathe just about manage it. Dave Sitek-produced debut ‘Dance Mother’ is on the way in January, and recreating its majesty live is clearly still a tricky undertaking for the Brooklyn duo. They do their best, unleashing a stream of cluttered soundscapes, layered harmonies and clipped rhythms, and while the effect is hypnotic at times, barely a word is uttered between songs – resulting in a distinct lack of atmosphere. This could of course be due, in part, to the fact that they are playing to a room full of typically disinterested Shoreditch types. Whatever the reason the performance falls a little flat, until final effort ‘Chromes On It’ that is, its spine-tingling beats waking the crowd from its stupor and climaxing with speakers shaking and half the band hanging from the ceiling as the hysterical throng down the front excitedly punch the air. It’s just enough to convince us that we’re not quite prepared to give up on Telepathe as a live proposition yet. More like this please.
Nuclear: Art and Radioactivity discount -4.064941&sspn=16.764146, visit this site 39.418945&ie=UTF8&ll=51.524712,-0.079694&spn=0.008598,0.019248&z=16&g=E1+6PG&iwloc=addr”target=”_blank”>Nicholls and Clarke Building, 3-10 Shoreditch High Street, Spitalfields, London E1.
‘Half-life’ Chris Oakley, 2008
High-definition video, 15 minutes
The Nicholls and Clarke Building hosts an exhibition that explores the changing perceptions of nuclear power. In our rapidly deteriorating climate, the effects of nuclear development from the past have come to haunt us. ‘The Nightwatchman,’ by Simon Hollington and Kypros Kyprianou, captures this disturbing predicament.
As we entered the installation there was something immediately unsettling about it. A board-meeting table situated in the centre of a large dilapidated storeroom indicated recent activity, and as we crept further through the exhibition space there was more evidence of some night watchmen. But they are no where to be found…
Together with the film ‘Half-life’ by Chris Oakley, there was a sense of being caught in a crossfire of two different eras: the naïvely optimistic 80′s and the knowledgeable cynicism of the present day.
The film showed a series of paradoxical images of nature vs. technology, and through it we were reminded of how our idea of what is progressive has been turned on it’s head.
If you’d like to have something of yours across the chests of music aficionados throughout the country, viagra you might like to apply for this. 100% music, cheap 100% recycled paper (well done), sildenafil Bearded Magazine is preparing for the re-launch of the printed magazine on January 29th, and they’re throwing in a t-shirt as well.
When it came to deciding what should go on the front of said t-shirt, they mumbled gibberish into their beards and drew blanks, and so they’ve put the task out to you the reader to help them out. In fact, they might be so filled with indecision that there could be four winners, so better chances for you! Have a look at the criteria and send in a design soon, you have until the 15th of December.
The Wellcome Collection’s new temporary exhibition is entitled ‘War and Medicine’ and focuses on the individual human consequences of war rather than the overall statistics of death and destruction that impersonalise and almost glorify military combat and which we are most often presented with. Soldiers are heroes when they die for their country but uncomfortable representatives of horror when they return wounded and disfigured.
Installation artist David Cotterrell‘s film, sales specially commissioned for the exhibition, salve attempts to rectify this. Covering three walls of a darkened room, more about the film shows wounded soldiers, with varying degrees of injury, being loaded onto a flight back to England from Helmand Province in Afghanistan. The only soundtrack is the constant hum of the plane’s engine, an eerie backdrop to the calm, efficient activity taking place on screen. There is an unsettling disjunction between our inclusion in the scene through the way it is presented to us and the alienness of the sight before our eyes. This slightly dreamlike atmosphere helps separate the artwork from the realms of documentary photography and helps us understand the confusion of this homeward flight, which we are told in the information outside, is often only partially remembered by the soldiers.
What is most striking about this piece is the individual humanity behind the uniforms of the men and women depicted. On the left are the walking wounded with a variety of arm slings and facial injuries being tended to by medical staff and waiting patiently for their journey to begin, on the right, more distressingly, a person is carried in on a stretcher, connected to breathing apparatus. It is heartbreaking to realise that although most of these people will probably survive, and so not register in the public consciousness, they will have been scarred for life both physically and emotionally. I began to see them as people beyond whatever my personal attitudes to their profession and the war they are fighting in was.
A harrowing counterpart to this work is Cotterrell’s written diary, where he describes with civilian horror, the daily minutiae of life amongst the medical staff in Camp Bastion. The exhibition’s mission statement is to explore the dichotomies in a society that is simultaneously developing ever more sophisticated means of destroying life and protecting it. The stalemate futility of this situation is given a human face by Cotterrell’s work.
David Cotterrell is featured in issue 10 of the magazine, out shortly.
Hurrying through the lights and sounds of Soho, stuff the words ‘bloody hell it’s cold’ rattled my skull. I was heading to see the Canadian singer and illustrator Chad VanGaalen, this known for rarely leaving his basement. In this weather, who would blame him?
Once inside Borderline I was able to thaw out and to take in the cosy surroundings. Kindly folk in chequered shirts patiently waited as they sipped Guinness. But there was something odd about this fresh-faced crowd. Moustaches, I realised. There were loads of them.
It’s Mo-vember, apparently. The time of year for all socially conscious gentlemen to grow out their fluff to raise money for testicular cancer. ‘That’s nice,’ I thought.
This playful and boyish act of sincerity seemed fitting for the night in store as there’s something of the fourteen-year-old boy about Chad VanGaalen. Deceptively awkward and immediately charming, he’ll break your heart.
Together with a hairy-faced accordionist he delivered a homemade and reflective sound. It was as if we had wandered into his basement, and he seemed a little surprised to see us there.
His hesitancy on stage draws you nearer, and his tight and masterful song-writing capabilities took a hold of my senses like a sedative.
That uneasy fluidity reminded me of Beach House and the unexpectedly punchier tunes provided an excitable energy that twanged some of those moustaches.
Listening to Chad is like putting on a pair of earmuffs and skate boarding down smooth suburban streets.
There’s a yearning to be free and limitless but it only slightly ventures out of the comfortable. A girl behind me whispered excitedly ‘It’s the kind of music I’d ride my bike to.’
It is difficult for any set at the Borderline to not feel intimate and Chad VanGaalen’s was by no means revolutionary.
But the evening was all together thoughtful and enchanting, and as I braved the bitter London streets once more, the words of Electric City wrapped me up like a duvet.
At 8am on Friday 28th November on a wet and grizzly morning, stuff the Greenwash Guerillas and a band of allies rallied together outside the E-On Head Office at 100 Pall Mall. We were there to protest against the planned government-approved scheme to build 7 new coal fired power stations. E-on will be responsible for the first of these havoc wreaking death chambers (no hyperbole here) at Kingsnorth, Kent. This power station alone will emit between 6 and 8 million tones of CO2 every year. If all 7 are built, treatment their collective emissions would be approximately 50 million tones of CO2 a year. This would make the Climate Change Committee’s proposal to cut back on CO2 emissions an average of 2% per annum so that by 2050 we’ll have an 80% reduction well… impossible.
Browsing through E-on’s website, it might be easy to be fooled into thinking they are an environmentally conscientious company promoting ‘clean, green energy that never runs out.’ But it doesn’t take long to realize that their wind farms and claims of boosting local employment are cleverly marketed to cast a rosy sheen over more profitable projects that use coal.
Coal is the grimiest of fossil fuels. It’s carbon-intensity is higher than oil and double that of natural gas. Yet, as the driving force behind the industrial revolution, it has been the primary source of power for the electricity generation. Gathered outside the E-on head office, we are no longer in the 19th century but in the 21st century and in the midst of a climatic crisis. With sea ice disappearing at a never-before-seen rapidity now is the time to use new greener sources of power, not to revert to the practices of the past.
So why is the government supporting what seems a disastrously archaic project?
The government’s answer is that by increasing the cost of carbon, power stations will be forced to use a process of carbon capture and storage (CCS) whereby the harmful carbon dioxide produced by coal is extracted from the air and buried underground.
However, a presentation made by the House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee concluded that this reasoning is implausible. Voicing research from the U.K. Energy Research Centre and Climate Change Capital, it showed that using a process of CCS would in fact be the least cost effective option for power stations. The research they gathered predicted that CCS will cost power companies like E-On 70-100 or 90-155 Euros per ton of CO2, while the government estimates that the price of carbon between 2013 and 2020 will be less at approximately 39 Euros per ton.
It’s fair to say that it is extremely unlikely that power companies will go for the more expensive option, especially when the margin is as large as it is. In short, the government’s criteria for approving E- On’s power station at Kingsnorth is worryingly unsatisfactory.
If our government is failing to alleviate the catastrophic predicament of climate change that is costing lives then it is up to us as citizens to take action against the construction of Kingsnorth and others like it. For more information on what you can do please click here and please go to the national climate march on Saturday 6th December, bring your mates and make it fun. This is a serious issue and we need to get the message across but optimism is always the best the way of creating change, in my view anyway. Klimax is a network for climate activists that started in 2007 by environmentalists who wanted a platform for people with more radical ideas about direct actions. Well known in Sweden for their campaigns against private motorism and the meat industry, viagra sale the group has spread to a number of Swedish cities, cialis 40mg and in Gothenburg they consist of 20 active members.
Members of Klimax initially wanted to protest on the 13th October, which is the actual date of the anniversary, but after finding out there were no meetings that day, postponed to the 12th November. This allowed them the much needed time to plan their action in detail; the first few weeks consisted of a few hours of planning and as the time drew nearer members were working five hours a day to make sure everything was finished. Among writing speeches, making banners and establishing contact with the media, they had to prepare their costumes!
Our contact at Klimax said “We do not always dress up for events but we believe that it is a good way to spice up an action! We sometimes dress up as penguins or polar bears because they are the two types of animal that are severely affected by Climate Change; it is also fun and looks nice!”
Their aims with the action was threefold; firstly to pay tribute to the work done by the suffragettes- strong women fighting for women’s right to vote, secondly to make the politicians aware that there was strong opposition to the building of another tunnel under the river in Gothenburg; Miahabo Berkelder from Klimax in Gothenberg says that the group believe this to be an awful way to spend a large amount of money, just so that more cars can be on the road; asking ‘What if the money was invested in buses instead? New roads simply lead to more traffic and that is a disaster for our climate.’
The third reason for the protest was to make sure that politicians knew that climate change isn’t just a moral topic, it is a political topic.
On the day, members were shocked to see the six activists storm the meeting,
but after the action Klimax joked that if they had been politicians sitting there during long and boring meetings, they would have been happy with the distraction!
They certainly created a buzz, and definitely caught the attention of the council! After a short while the six were asked to leave the building and did so with little fuss.
In reaction to the protest, a woman from the Swedish environmental party said Klimax had a valid point, but a man from the conservative party was more concerned about security, wondering what would have happened if terrorists had stormed the meeting instead!
The plans for the tunnel are still up in the air. The initial decision to build the tunnel was made solely by Göran Johansson, the chairman of the Municipal Council. Because this wasn’t a democratic way of deciding, the case has been reported to the county administrative court.
According to Miahabo, there are a lot of plans in Klimax’s future; new actions will take place during the spring and there will be a new regular event called Climate Café- where anyone can attend to share coffee and discuss climate change, sometimes including an expert on the subject to answer any questions.
The next big event for Klimax is on the Global Day of Action, taking place in cities all over the world on the 6th of December. At the same time as the leaders of the world will be discussing the climate problems, demonstrations will be arranged all over the world including London and of course Gothenberg. Klimax have come together with several other groups to arrange a huge demonstration, Miahabo says that Klimax are organising a “Climate Clash” which is a wide spread Klimax phenomenon; they will walk out in the middle of a busy road and block the traffic; a perfect and simple way to make people aware of the climate problems.
Anyone who is interested in joining Klimax is welcome- it is a flat organization with no board of directors, anyone who wants to be a member is simply one.
For more information about Climate Rush, please visit: www.climaterush.co.uk Monday 1st Dec
The Ashni Art Gallery specialises in Indian Art that is both contemporary and of the past. They will be exhibiting the best of their collection from now until the 19th of December.
Tuesday 2nd Dec
Live in Bristol? Feeling somewhat alarmed by the continued transformation of the city centre to all things consumerist (with 120 new shops having just opened)? Slipping between the gap of reality and fantasy, andSomewhere Here are hijacking advertisement space to provide shoppers with a brief respite during the fall of capitalism. Nine artists take nine advertising hoardings (billboards) until the 3rd of December only. Catch them before they are swallowed by Advertisement Beast.
Wednesday 3rd Dec
Opening today at the ICA: Dispersion; an exploration by seven artists of the appropriation and circulation of images in contemporary society. They examine money, desire, and power in our accelerated image economy. It runs until Feb 1st.
Thursday 4th Dec
First Thursdays of the month is here! But aren’t galleries open most Thursdays anyway? It would be silly tell you a single thing to go and see, 100 galleries will be opening their doors until 9pm, so there will plenty to satiate your creative appetites, but if you perhaps feel so inspired that you are driven to the pencil yourself, The Princess Studios will be hosting free life-drawing drop-in sessions throughout the evening.
Friday 5th Dec
Vauxhall’s best kept secret-art-laboratory, Beaconsfield, curates Late at Tate this Friday, adapting Tate Britain’s Duveen Galleries and transitory places to create a terminal space, with an array of arrival and departure points, in which only the surreal applies …
Satuday 6th Dec
Colin McKenzie senses that art ought to be more like a day at Woodstock, or at least what he imagines Woodstock to be like: electric, dynamic, smooth, and mind-expanding. At the Red Gate Gallery. McKenzie strives against order and sense, aiming to manoeuvre without restriction.
Monday 1st December
The Lady: A Tribute to Sandy Denny, page Royal Festival Hall, treat London
An evening of songs from the back catalogue of one of the most influential female folk singers, approved Sandy Denny. Various artists including Marc Almond, P.P. Arnold and Johnny Flynn will be performing songs from her Fairport Convention days as well as her solo career. Should be a really interesting night in light of the current trend for new female folkies and a timely tribute to one of the godmothers of the genre.
A lovely gentle way to start the week with this folky-country duo who will hopefully be celebrating the first day of December with a performance of their Christmas single, released next week.
In the UK for one night only, this much-loved San Francisco band’s staccato, rough-round-the-edges punk pop is even better live.
Ten Kens, The Duchess, York
Anyone who has a blurry picture of people snogging on their record sleeve is a good bet for a messy live show and these Canadian grungers are reportedly no exception. Should be good in this small venue too.
New album produced by Will Oldham, harpist on Anthony and the Johnsons first album and with Andrew W.K. providing bass on her new record, this transsexual musician’s musical pedigree is assured.
Wednesday 3rd December
Kitty, Daisy and Lewis single launch, Madame JoJos, London
Snappily dressed, hearse-driving siblings playing rockabilly at their single launch party.
Liam Finn, Night and Day, Manchester
Introspective folk.
The Wave Pictures, Club Fandango, St Aloysius Social Club, London
Thursday 4th December
Vivian Girls, The Social, Nottingham
Uber-hyped Brooklyn girl group bring their shoe-gaze tinged grunge-pop to the UK. Time to see if they live up to their recorded promise as a live act.
Really bummed about breaking up with some girl called Emma, he headed into the woods alone and wrote an album about it. He must be feeling a bit better as he’s spreading the heartache on a UK tour.
Lovely duets from surprisingly compatible artists.
Pretty Taxing is a fashion collection with a twist, stuff as the end product is not clothes but car tax discs. Unusual – yes, sick but we all know how important accessorising is…
It would seem like a bad idea if such creatively interesting designers hadn’t contributed to the cause. They include Emma Bell, who has twice shown at London Fashion Week, David David and Pam Hogg. Along with artists Natasha Law and Stuart Semple, they have all created unique collectable pieces of fashion memorabilia.
You can pick up these discs of fashion-random-brilliance at Matches or at the pop-up shop KIN in Kingly Court, Carnaby Street. Abiding the law has never looked so good.
Today I was sent to Coventry, abortion quite literally. Together with 30 other Climate Camp activists dressed as Santa we descended on E.On, health the energy company responsible for the proposed new coal fired power station to be built at Kingsnorth.
This action followed a 48 hour action that happened over last Friday and Saturday – and E.On were not expecting our return. In fact, buy they were probably kicking themselves that the special fencing that they had put in place late last week was now lying dismantled on the floor next to their headquarters.
As a result our merry busload hopped off easily and headed straight for the main entrance of E.On’s offices.
Why? Despite spending a lot of time and energy letting the public know that they are one of the biggest investors in renewable energy in the UK (they’ll point out the big array of solar panels on one of their buildings and the lobby features a looped tape about wind farms) they are also pitching to build the first new coal fired power station to be built in the UK in 30 years, which will alone defeat all our CO2 emissions goals. So why spend so unwisely?
Whilst some merry santas climbed atop the revolving door and superglued their hands to the various entrances, another bunch of santas headed off into the building to see if they could speak to head honcho Paul Golby and let the employees know a bit more about the facts behind new coal.
Bearing banners that said Stop Coal and E.On F.Off they set off down the corridors singing some specially adapted carol songs.
Two intrepid santas managed to enter a boardroom meeting, surprising the attendees with some gifts of lumps of coal – for as you know santa gives bad children coal instead of gifts and E.On has been very bad this year. They were ejected from the property, but soon raced back in again…
We managed to disrupt operations for four hours, stopping employees and visitors as they came to work and giving interviews to the BBC and ITV, and live on the radio. Our action was spoken about on the World at One on Radio 4, which you can listen to here. We are talked about at approximately 8 minutes and 20 seconds into the programme.
The police were surprisingly even handed, although some employees were clearly fuming, especially the head of security (woops) One indoor santa even managed to locate a cup of tea and a newspaper to read.
At one point we were able to reenter the building, with the santas forming a conga line for the cameras. We delivered papers written by leading NGOs describing why there is no need for coal power, and generally had a merry old time. All employees and visitors were rerouted through back entrances, so I think it is fair to say that we were fairly disruptive…
Eventually we decided that once unstuck it was best that we leave, but the police had other ideas, and as we walked off down the road they tried to contain us, managing to trap four of our number and arrest them.
The rest of us ran off down the street to find our getaway vehicles, parked up in a local pub car park. Our drivers had thoughtfully bought us lunch in the pub, but shortly after we had gulped it down we were asked to leave because the police presence was putting off other customers. The police followed us as we left to pick up the other santas at Warwick university student union, and thereafter ensued the slowest police chase ever, with us managing to lose them after taking a wrong turn.
The purpose of this action was to embarrass E.On and raise awareness of what they up to in a light hearted and humourous way – I think that as a bunch of merry santas we did this exceptionally well. We hope that E.On will take heed and stop greenwashing their plans. It’s simple, don’t build Kingsnorth. Spend your money increasing investment in your (meagre) renewable energy supplies. If you would like to help us stop companies like E.On destroying our world check out what Climate Camp is up to next. More articles on this action can be read on Indymedia here and here.
We’re having a bit of a Grace Jones moment here at Amelia’s HQ. Obviously we’ve always known she was AMAZING but her majestic new single ‘Williams’ Blood’ goes to prove that she’s still totally got it. In fact, buy it’s been on repeat for about the past week and we’ve all been waving our arms in the air singing “I’ve got the Williams’ blood in me”. There’s an infectious gospel refrain running through this song that really brings out Jones’ strident message. Strongly autobiographical, link ‘Williams’ Blood’ tells the story of her parents’ life together in small-town domesticity and her musician grandfather – he of the Williams blood – philandering his way around the world, an insight into the Grace Jones spirit of rebellion.
There’s a cry for freedom and for breaking away from the strictures and constraints of her background, which you can’t help but feel has been successful for this overtly sexual, bonkers wardrobed, gay icon, hence the joyful bursts of the chorus. It also seems almost subversive for a female singer to talk about the influence of a male ancestor on their lives but Jones has never been one to play by the rules. In fact, as one of our writers proved, she’s perhaps the only woman with such immense stature you could prove your respect for by mooning. But that’s another story…
‘Williams’ Blood’ is released next Monday 8th December on Wall of Sound.
“The film was an experiment”, abortion says Jonas Cuaron, settling down across from me on a sofa at the Renoir this Saturday. I’ve come for the release of his debut film, Año Uña – year of nails – and the place is abuzz with excitement; I’m especially enamoured by the snippets of Mexican-tilted Spanish I hear that always make me nostalgic (Luisa with no ‘o’, can you guess?), “Ai que deliciosa!” someone behind me exclaims at the sight of a quesadilla in the first few minutes of the film; maravillosa indeed.
“I wanted to make a film”, he continues, “using a format that would be hard to watch”. Hard to watch? A legitimate concern when it dawns on you that you’re in for a feature-length film composed entirely of still-frame photographs. But the merit of any film boils down to one thing, a good story – and the impossible romance between American girl and Mexican boy in the throes of puberty, subsumes this hard-to-watch format and makes it altogether accessible. Plot aside for a moment though, the genesis of the film deserves as much attention, so I asked Jonas how the whole thing came about.
JC: For the film I took photographs of my everyday life for a year. I wanted to break the way in which film is normally done. Normally people write a screenplay first, and then out of the screenplay they do the image, but here I wanted to do it backwards. I took the photographs and then we made an installation where we put them all up in a room, and made a story from that.
Were there other possible narratives, did you find it hard to pick which story to tell?
Well I always knew that it had to be a story of this girl from the US and this boy from Mexico. They were the ones I photographed the most that year, and so I knew they were going to be the main characters and it grew organically from there. But sometimes I think, with all those photographs I could make a different movie, draw something completely different from the same images.
What was exciting about working in that format?
Well I wanted to play with the boundaries between reality and fiction. I wanted to have images that were real, but to show, how with text, or with a narrative over those images, you can have a completely different meaning. All the images in the movie are real, but none of that happened, I wanted to play with that boundary.
So there was no interchange between reality and fiction? There must’ve been!
Well I mean, in the events there was. Like my Grandpa really did get sick and he had cancer, but for instance, the main characters, Diego and Molly, they are my brother and my girlfriend, so I hope that wasn’t real (chuckles).
How did your brother feel about in falling in love with your girlfriend, was that awkward?
Well the narrative was so fictional, so far away from reality that both him and Eireann saw it as an acting job; they never thought of it as real. All the character’s names are real aside from Eireann, which I changed to Molly because I wanted to help Diego and Molly not feel awkward, and I knew that Diego was gonna be saying really dirty things about her character, so I thought it would be easier for him if she was called Molly and not Eireann.
Throughout the film, Molly seems to be perpetually trying to capture something real from Mexico in a photograph, and failing. Is that Ironic? Seeing as you’re playing with a moment captured and how it can mean lots of things.
With Molly, a lot of what I wanted to play with was the idea of the tourist, being a foreigner in another country, so even though she’s the one seeing, she’s the observer with the camera, in the case of a tourist like Molly, people are also observing her. So with her character I played a lot with the subconscious of being in a new place.
You grew up partially in Mexico and partially in the US, so is that something you link closely too?
For me, that part of the narrative – the interchange between two cultures – it really fascinates me; so when I realised that Diego and Molly would be my main characters, I was happy because the relationship between both cultures is an important one for me. I know what it is to be new in a different place, and I understand the boundaries between the two languages, and a lot of this is seen in the character of Molly. Many of those pictures were taken during Eireann’s first visit to Mexico, and it was at the time when Bush had just been elected. For her it was really hard to be in Mexico because everyone was judging her for what Bush was doing, so I wanted to play with the idea, that I also feel from being a Mexican in the US, that people see you as a nationality and not who you are.
What is the main theme of the film for you?
When I first started making a film with photographs, I realised that the main theme would be the passage of time and the impermanence of things. You can’t do anything about photography and not talk about the passage of time, and particularly in a film – film is always dependent on the idea of time and still-photography doesn’t have time in a way, and so for me, the whole film is an exploration of how nothing lasts forever.
Would you use the format again?
I think it’s a very interesting format to explore, but for me, I’ve done everything I would want to do with that format. It’s been a very important learning experience for me. At the end of the day, the important thing is having a good story.
Muchisimas Gracias Jonas. How do you like London?
It’s cold.
Last night, adiposity to coincide with World AIDS Day, clinicvinspired.com, a youth volunteer organisation website, hosted a charity fashion show to raise money for the children’s HIV Charity, Body & Soul.
This fashion show was the last stage in a creative process, which started off with four volunteer design teams, based in four parts of the country, who gave their time to find new and exciting designers. The creative workshops were set up by Junky Styling in London, Traid, who nurtured the Bristol designers, the Ethical Fashion Forum in Nottingham and Kesh(pictured above), who worked with the Manchester based designers.
Said designers had to then compete against each other to create the best outfit from recycled clothes, e.g.: the clothes given to charity shops – and it was at this fashion show where the winner would be decided by designer Ben de Lisi.
TV presenter Miquita Oliver hosted the event and the celebrity quota was filled by Rolling Stone daughter, Leah Wood (pictured above), who modeled on the catwalk and Radio 1 DJ Edith Bowman, who provided some post-show tunes.
Even bigger names (not in attendance) but supporting the charity include actress Kate Winslet and Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who donated a suit and a shirt respectively, to be remade into something fabulous. Designer Zandra Rhodes is also a big supporter of this recycling fashion cause saying, “It is appalling how much we waste in society these days, but it seems we are entering a new era of resourcefulness. This is really exciting – and the best part of it is young people are leading the new trend.”
Taking place in Central Saint Martins aptly named Innovation Centre; the venue was small and intimate, which perfectly captured the tone of the event. Unlike most fashion shows, this one had a very human element when a representative from the Body & Soul charity got on stage to talk about her experience living with HIV. She spoke about having to live a double life, having to hide her illness from the world due to the level of prejudice that still exists towards the disease. Money raised from this event will go towards generating awareness about HIV.
As we sat by the catwalk, video screens showed the designers in their workshops making the clothes that would soon appear in front of us. What these guys did with discarded shirts and dresses was pretty impressive, it wasn’t about following trends but making creative, innovative and pretty pieces, and there was a lot of that evident on the catwalk.
Ben de Lisi was there to judge the entries, with only a matter of minutes to decide who the winner would be, he was asked how he would do it and said, “I shoot straight from the hip, I know exactly what I want.”
Who he wanted was designer Anne-Marie Fleming, from the Junky Styling stable. She seemed to me to be a safe choice as although her design was good, it was not the best seen on the catwalk by a long way.
This event worked so well to promote two causes, the importance of recycling (not always being a slave to trends) and reducing the level of our prejudice about supposedly taboo subjects.
All the clothes can be viewed at vinspired.com/fashion and will be auctioned on eBay from today, so you can get your hands on a uniquely designed piece and give some cash to a very good cause.
If you’re planning on going to any of these events, viagra buy or have something you want to write an article about for the Earth Blog, more about email us: earth@ameliasmagazine.com!
Eco-Design Christmas Fair 2008 website +152+Brick+Lane,+London+E1+6RU&sll=51.521668,-0.071497&sspn=0.007423,0.019011&g=152+Brick+Lane,+London+E1+6RU&ie=UTF8&ll=51.522349,-0.072269&spn=0.007423,0.019011&z=16&iwloc=A”target=”_blank”>The Boiler House, The Old Truman Brewery, 152 Brick Lane, London E1 6RU
Saturday 13th December 2008 12pm-7pm
Sunday 14th December 2008 11am-7pm
entry £2 or £1
A great event at which you will be able to see and buy some wonderful eco-design products (including organic clothing, furniture, jewellery, books and alternative technology) directly from the makers.
Exhibitors include Amira Fairtrade Fashion Clothing, Green Oil UK Ltd (Green bicycle chain lubricant & maintenance products) , Lizzie Lee Lighting and Po-zu Ecological footwear, amongst others! For a full list and for more information about the event please visit www.ecodesignfair.co.uk
Contact Louise Kamara: info@ecodesignfair.co.uk or 07956 916 079
Make Christmas as ethical as you can this year with another Fairtrade fair at Westminister Hall. Fair Trade Fair is an annual event that has been going on for 20 years; the first of which was organised in 1987 by Benny Dembitzer and opened by Bob Geldof.
Fairtrade events are incredibly important as they play a major role in empowering developing country producers, promoting sustainability and reducing world poverty.
The fairtrade movement encourages the payment of a fair price and the improvement of environmental standards; products range from handicrafts, coffee, tea and sugar to wine, flowers and cotton. http://www.fairtradefair.org/ftf/index.htm http://www.myspace.com/FairTradeFair
Here’s a scary thought: there’s only 21 days left for Christmas shopping… so leave the high street and take advantage as London’s coolest shopping districts throw late night events…
Bermondsey Street – nearest tube: London Bridge Thursday 4th December
From 6.30pm to 9.30pm, drugs pop down to this fashion-forward little street, viagra sale where not only will you get 10% off in all the shops but the Fashion and Textile Museum is also open late, stomach with guest appearances by some of the designers featured in the museum. Shopping and culture: the perfect way to spend an evening.
Cabbages and Frocks Christmas Fair – nearest tube: Kentish Town Sunday 7th December
Want designer goodies at bargain prices? This is the place to go. The weekly market pulls out all the stops this Sunday for its annual Christmas Fair, with all the sellers offering special yule-time discounts and the chance for you to get a genuine designer garment into your wardrobe – or give someone the best gift ever – get down there now….well, on Sunday.
Columbia Road – nearest tube: Old Street Every Wednesday in December
Situated in the heart of the east-end, you can browse in over 50 boutiques and shops, which are all open until 9pm and listen to live music to get you in that Christmas spirit while you browse for gifts.
As the title suggests, this shopping experience takes place within three roads – Old Street, Great Eastern Street and Shoreditch High Street – the shops taking part are offering special discounts on their wares, free gift wrap and the chance to pick up a brilliant present for the fashion-conscious people in your life. More details below:
Up a spiraled staircase and into a dim-lit attic, physician where all manner of curious objects in shadowy corners invite inspection, pilule I am offered gin and set my eyes and hands to formidable forceps, viagra ominous looking diagrams, and glass jars with organs bulging at the edges. The place is The Old Operating Theatre in London Bridge, where road names like ‘crucifix lane’ set a befitting tone for The Butchers Shop, a new monthly writing workshop/theatrical experience hosted by Badidea Magazine.
Badidea is brainchild of Daniel Stacey and Jack Roberts who have, against all advice, launched a magazine “based on ideals”, as opposed to the “lip-licking, cash-hungry intentions that drive any sane publishing adventure”. At Amelia’s we know a thing or two about such endeavours. The introduction/mission statement to their anthology is suffused with the enthusiasm and honesty that comes when a group of people create their own platform to do and say what they want, which in the case of Badidea, is to create a space for the “curious and the optimistic – for thinkers”.
Short stories submitted by guests are dissected, chopped up, and improved through an intensive process of live editing and debate – so says the description. It all sounded a bit painful, and whilst I was not brave enough to submit a story of my own, I took myself along to lurk at the back and see how cruel they would be. Wearing blood splattered aprons, they placed selected stories on the operating table and begun. But what unfolded was surprisingly comfortable and un-threatening: participatory idea-shooting involving toy guns, illustrations, role-play (only if you volunteered), and for anyone who has a genuine interest in creative writing, some very sound advice, delivered on a sign held by a man in a blue and white bathing costume. I did at times feel a little like I was back in a lecture room, there’s a quality and tone to the chesty laughs of the over-educated that seemed to ricochet around the room, but that’s writers for you.
An installation by Dutch designer/artist Thomas Voorn can be seen from today in b Store, this London. Thomas creates works of graffiti, viagra but not in the traditional paint or stencil way – he uses clothes to convey his ideas. For this exhibition he has created a poem using the names of designers featured at b Store.
We wanted to find out a bit more about his sartorial take on graffiti, so here’s a little insight into his thinking:
Why did you decide to use clothes as your chosen medium?
Clothes are most of the time my starting point, I design them or use them;
I take away their meaning or I give them meaning.
I play professionally with the language of clothes, verbal and non-verbal
communication. We say so much with what we wear.
Where do you get the clothes you use?
Depends on the Garment Graffiti I make. For my own work I usually buy clothes at different shops, wear them and then use them for a Garment Graffiti. I’m hypersensitive for colour and colour-combinations, always looking to find fresh combinations of materials, prints and colours.
For my commissioned Garment Graffiti’s I use clothes of designers/shops or
I select them in a variety of colour-combinations that I find contemporary at that time.
Once an installation is finished, do you re-use the clothes for the
next one?
Sometimes, and sometimes not. I can spot a Garment-Graffiti-Finder
wearing one of my shirts from a distance!
Why did you choose b Store as a venue to display your work?
I really appreciate their fashion sense.
triumph inspiration awards – hair and makeup – lfw2010 – jenny robins This is me pretending to be a fashion blogger – Hi!
Please check out Amelia’s write up of the show which has ace photos of the outfits, here although I’m not sure if I agree with her division of them. Or if your here for catwalk kicks primarily, online feel free to scroll to the bottom of this article, discount where you can see my ace catwalk sketches.
They could tell I was pretending I think; when I arrived at the Triumph Inspiration Awards it was the same time all the waitresses were arriving and they just assumed I was one of them, signed me in and gave me a pass, I very nearly spent the night offering canapés. It’s a fair cop, certainly a role I’m more used to performing. But I’m glad I didn’t because the backstage access organised for bloggers meant I got the opportunity to do some drawing backstage at an epic fashion event. Check out some of these anthropological gems:
As I entered the area set up in the huge industrial space that had been set up for the show (in the decor they chose to accent this rather than disguise it – which worked very well) I heard someone shout “If you’re chicken fillets have been checked you have to go back into hair and makeup! Thank you!” Priceless. Being a model must be a proper weird job.
Some models eating (yes, they do).
It all took me right back to many hours spent needing to be not too far from a toilet in Laos and Thailand in cheap hotels watching Fashion TV for hours on end. I love Fashion TV! (must be said in Scandinavian accent) I managed to speak to and draw 3 of the designers, my interviewing skills were not exactly up there, I asked Isabella Newell if she had anything she would like me to say about her work; “not really”…
She let me draw her though, and told me about her outfit, an honest to goodness Burberry Jacket, and the rest by designers I have not heard of but who are probably very impressive. I was relieved when I asked Austria’s Isolde Mayer where her scalf was from and found it was in the sale at H&M. Her design was one of Amelia’s favourites I think, very elegant and strong.
I was also fortuitous in speaking to the winner (before we knew he was the winner) Nikolay Bojilov who was really nice and encouraging. I made his nose too big from the pressure. His outfit is really beautiful, it’s conceptual and still wearable. Should have seen it coming. Although I have to say I was rooting for Japan’s super cute bird and flowers design (it wasn’t really done justice on the catwalk, but I did a sketch from the actual garment hanging up backstage – beautiful) or Norway’s cheeky two piece covered in metallic circles and fans with what looked like a retro swimming cap accompaniment.
A bit of background: Triumph make loads of underwear and stuff, for the last 3 years they’ve been doing these inspiration awards, looking for exciting stuff from international students in the underwear vein. It’s pretty amazing, they put on all these heats in the different countries to find the winner and bring it all together in the final show. The theme this year is Shape Sensation, since according to the spiel, a major role of underwear is “perfecting” one’s shape. When they invent a pair of shaping long johns that can elongate my legs by 10 inches, I will be first in line, needless to say, it’s a comedy nicety.
But the theme ties in with Triumph’s new line of body shaping wear that is designed to be sexier than your average stomach panel tights or distressing beige girdle. There were 6 models posing in these at the reception and they did look nice. So the theme is a bit of a dual personality. On the one hand Shape Sensation – optimising your figure for the office Christmas party, on the other Shape Sensation – high concept fashion design using bold experimental shapes that distort the figure, like Isabella Newell’s (Great Britain) jutting structural design and Manuel Marte’s (Germany) entry which gives the wearer and insect like dowager hump. Neither of which you’d particularly want to wear under clothing, but that’s obviously not the point. They are exciting and beautiful catwalk designs. It’s for the show, the spectacle, the exploding paint balloons (France’s Sofie Insam’s entry).
I confess I couldn’t quite believe it when I realised the carrying a Sydney Opera House on your back design by Tovah Cottle was actually the entry from Australia! What was the brief at that national heat? Represent a cliché of your nationality? Did it narrowly beat corks swinging from hat and Kylie’s face designs? I’m sorry, it’s a stunning design, but really?
Now, forgive me actual fashion fans, but I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that it’s not particularly unusual for design competitions to be all about the innovation and crazy cutting edge stuff in the initial stages, but to make sure some actually vaguely commercial wearable stuff gets through so that when it comes to the awarding of the prize including the production deal they are able to pick something that walks the happy line in the middle.
There were some spectacular designs on the catwalk last night, here’s my five second impression drawings I did of them as they came out. They are pretty ace eh? I mention again, for actual photos of the actual outfits please check out Amelia’s write up here.
I also did a not particularly great drawing of Adam Garcia, which I am including only because Amelia doesn’t know who he is. He is a tap dancer. I super love the TV show Got to Dance he was the judge on so I’m pre-disposed to approve, he was a bit misogynistic in his comments tho, probably wasn’t really sure what he was doing presenting an fashion award and wanted to make sure everyone knew he definitely wasn’t gay. Who cares? Also. I hate tap. Why spend so much time doing something that is really difficult but looks really easy?
Written by jenny robins on Friday September 17th, 2010 5:12 pm
©Thomas Voorn
©Thomas Voorn
This is me pretending to be a fashion blogger – Hi!
