Since I sold my soul to the menswear devil, I frequent a lot of menswear and general style blogs. I view a lot of “lookbooks” and a lot of them look the damn same. Even when they’re trying to be ironic or thinking “out of the box.” But a couple months back someone posted a video of a skateboarder wearing a menswear line, Man About Town, positing to the men of facebook whether or not it resonated with them. Frankly, I didn’t care if it did or didn’t. I loved it. May have been due to my growing up with skateboarders, having crushes on them, wearing Airwalks and trying to master an Ollie on my big brother’s retired deck. But there’s something about the skate rat dressed like a member of the Rat Pack, doing a dance of beautiful street tricks that made me swoon.
Well, today I came across the women’s fashion equivalent. A beautifully shot and soundtracked video lookbook for an Australian line of womenswear, Lover, featuring Amber Scott, Senior Artist with The Australian Ballet. It seemed like the perfect companion piece to demonstrate the potential the fashion industry has to keep pushing the envelope and show their product in a living, breathing way.
Man About Town: Autumn/Winter 2010 starring Kilian Martin
Lover: A Dance for OneYes, it has been quite some time since my last post. 2010 was a very busy year and 2011 is looking to be even busier. I won’t call it a resolution, for that will likely set me up for failure… but I hope to gather inspiration to post more frequently. So here goes…
I was fortunate enough to visit Toronto the first week of February for a photo shoot. Now, admittedly, February may not be the most popular time to travel to Ontario, Canada. But we made it through the snow storms and the city is truly beautiful, even covered in snow. Helping to keep warm were the incredible light fixtures I found in restaurants, bars, and the many interior design shops just walking distance from my downtown hotel. Here are some of the highlights.
Trend spotting: Astronaut art.
Jeremy Geddes. AMAZING paintings I only wish I could see in person.
Vincent Fournier. Beautiful photography project entitled “Space Project,” fittingly.
Joby Hickey & Victor Ash. Street art.
Cory McAbee’s The American Astronaut. I was drawn in by the movie poster… but the trailer is something else! A little bit La Jetée, a splash of 1984, and a hint of Metropolis. A press quote reads, “Imagine a long Laurel & Hardy skit directed by Salvador Dali” – Entertainment Weekly. It apparently came out in 2001 and cleaned up on the festival circuit. Don’t know how I could have missed this one in my film studies during art school. I mean, a space-western/musical? Yes, please. Definitely going to have to rent it. I’ll let you know if it’s out of this world.
The phenomenal Bay Area talent, Elliot Randall (no, NOT the guy from Steeley Dan) came to re:mused before the holidays to do the artwork for his new album with his band The Deadmen. We’ve been working together since the first EP he put out, but collaborating this time around proved things do keep getting better with time.
First off, Elliot Randall & The Deadmen have truly hit their stride with “Caffeine & Gasoline.” Elliot co-produced the album with David Simon-Baker (ALO, Mother Hips, Jackie Greene… and just happens to be one of my favorite people), creating an alt-country/americana rock record to be reckoned with. The album officially releases on February 9, 2010. You can watch some behind the scenes footage here:
The album artwork was a blast to create, drawing inspiration from the warm, gritty, southern sound the band creates. Special thanks to photographer David Arnspiger of Traumantic Studios for letting me play with his photographs!
The band is currently touring up and down the west coast in support of the album. Check out the dates here and preview the music on their myspace page or at amazon.com (my favorite track so far: “Judgement Day”).
I’ve been noticing a trend in the wonderful world of the design blog as of late… Science and math collage design??!!??! Diagramatic info graphics overlayed on large retro-style colored shapes overlayed onto photos from space masked out of heads from vintage advertisements. Visual overload?? Perhaps. But I’m on board. It even made an appearance while guest critquing a graphic design class at California College of the Arts, when a student created an epic 6-disc compilation cd package design for the music genre “Spacerock.” If I can get my hands on some photos of it, I’ll post as well. The student knocked it out of the park. (Pardon the baseball reference, I must still be under the influence of my previous post.)
A few examples from Michael Paukner, Mark Weaver, and Laura Mujico (click on any image to enlarge).
Living a short walk from the San Francisco Giants’ ballpark for over a year has made me loosen my grip on my loathing of baseball. You still couldn’t pay me to watch a whole game on television, but put me in a bleacher seat with a hot dog and a cold beer and some good friends and I can feign entertainment. I might even enjoy it a little.
Today things changed though, when I came across these vintage Japanese baseball cards from the collection of John Gall, art director for Vintage and Anchor Books, via ajourneyroundmyskull. I thought to myself, “Now this could actually make me like baseball.”
