Monday, March 30, 2009

yummy...seconds...


check! check! mate... if jan taminiau was serving up structured tiers of delicious tissued concontions, i would greedly ask for seconds! at least there is always another fashion season around the corner, another heady collection coming to inspire and spellbound me. taminiau is über-talented. i don't know how else to describe him. he interweaves fabrics in a meticulous and fluid way - mixing classical & innovative construction techniques - undoubtedly a reflection of his time spent training under greats like olivier theyskens and hubert barrere in paris (corsetiere to Dior, YSL, etc.). 

taminiau presents twice a year at paris fashion week and has featured installations at colette's in Paris.  taminiau's dutch hertiage mixes with cultures and influences from around the world both modern & antique. he recently launched his pret-a-porter line passe-partout SS09 and showed his couture collection check! check! mate. (see above). 

taminiau continuously seeks to bring forth the character of the wearer. he likes to leave behind what he calls the "fast-paced and fickle," modern world in order to return to something that is, in today's world, "almost a nostalgic source: security, respect for craftsmanship, and awareness of the importance of transience."

taminiau inspires with his blending of old and new, easy and tough. art inspires art no matter what it's form...whether it's your own finger painting with a child or music that helps you get up in the morning and go straight back into that 9-5 gig. taminiau inspires me to dream and sew again and write and to imagine a new image, a new thought, a new idea blending what has come before and never been done. he puts it best when he says, "i am continually translating the asymmetrical mirror of life." 

how lovely to do the same in our own lives. redefine what beauty and art and love and the best of ourselves is. what would our best look like?

jan taminiau 2008 collection below




ALL PHOTOS: Jan Taminiau

Thursday, March 26, 2009

great things come in little packages....









brand design strategy...
packaging design...is my day job right now. So I guess it makes sense that I'd smile at the tongue-in-cheek commentary art, as I'd call it, done by The Flow Market. I want to redesign our office space...or at least my area of it in colored plexiglass and white lacquer desks (a girl can dream)...and a shelf full of these little puppies. I'd pick and choose which ones I'd featured based on what I'd like to say. A wink of the eye - packaging simplified...contents amplified...

A whole 'nother way of looking at it...


ALL PHOTOS: The Flow Market 

Monday, March 23, 2009

ashes & snow...


intimate conversations...between the natural world and human world are captured through the expressive beauty of gregory colbert's photographs. ashes & snow is a traveling exhibit of colbert's photography taken around the world in remote and exotic locals. through colbert's magnificent eye, wild animals in intelligence & grace shift and meld into human contact. colbert's stunning work has even been transformed from metaphor to literature in a book that chronicles 365 letters from a fictional character to his wife...where in the end, you understand the beginning...
colbert also takes on artful alchemy in his codex project which binds his photography between ancient parchment paper and vintage book covers centuries old. breath-taking & atypical, colbert's photographs remind us of what we already know...that from which we are born, we will one day return...our intimate impact on the natural world around us has ripple effects. "the love that consists in this: that two solitudes protect and border and greet each other..." - Rainer Maria Rilke
 

ALL PHOTOS by: Gregory Colbert

Sunday, March 22, 2009

silly, young heart...

i don't believe in ever growing up...at least not completely...so remember that little girl... the whimsical and stylish character dancing in polka dot rainboots and heart-shaped sunglasses even though the sun was shinning....who fearlessly mixed colors and ran barefoot through the grass only to set up tea parties for princes and kings an hour later. three lovely illustrators are bringing back playtime with vivaciously charming characters who are anything but wallflowers...
emma magenta (great name, right?) creates child-like illustrations that remind you of the best of your creative spirit, unbound by lines and rules...i love the "maybe dancing will help" plate...i feel like that sometimes at work...maybe dancing will help?!  ;)

emma has a line of home accessories like decals, kitchen towels, & plates. she's also written charming books like "a gorgeous sense of hope" and "the peril of magnificent love..."


while kat macleod's lovely girls spend hours playing dress up...wondering what they're going to be when they grow up...playful possibility in each brush stroke and scribble... 
kat's created a lovely home accessories like decals (above) and pillow cases (at bottom). she's lent her stylish eye to musician's CD covers and Bloom's skincare packaging.  her luscious book "the cocktail" came out last year and she's recently illustrated "like i give a frock" (below)...

and then there's chère fifi...the one and only. all dressed up with everywhere to go. A girl's wonderland of rykiel and lanvin in watercolor hues...with prints to hang on walls, certified and ready for day-dreaming....
fifi, the stylish lapin* that she is...has collaborated with le sportsac on darling lunch bags and travel sacs that make one smile...

*French for rabbit

emma & kat can be found stylish & carefree over at third drawer down, a lovely little artist's palette in its own right. and fifi, she has a site all her own...

ALL PHOTOS: emma magenta & kat macleod and fifi ;)

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

through the looking glass...



heidi merrick...reflects visions of who we're meant to be by redefining feminine and modern style. Her clothes are made with sumptuous fabrics that navigate shoulders and hips -creating grace in all the right places. From linen to silk, lined and precious...influences seem to appear from the past in entirely new ways...20's & 30's glamour girls who just threw something on that happens to be lithe n' luscious...the 40's collegiate princess who's pursuing both style & intellect...the cool, carefree bohemian traveler who looks gorgeous no matter what,  no matter when, no matter where...

Merrick's shapes and silhouettes have somehow brought the past forward in modern versions of a muse who is at once delicate and graceful, strong and adventurous. I feel in some small way that I'm already that girl wearing her clothes, as if I've always been and always want to be soft, graceful, agile, and lovely....all at once.


You can find Heidi's heavenly creations at her store in Los Angeles or online.

ALL PHOTOS: Heidi Merrick - Fall '08 and  Spring '09 Collections.