Friday, April 10, 2009

painter's palette...


inspired...by a painter's palette that's expressed across interior design, fashion, food, art, and accessories. perhaps it's our gradual and hopeful move into spring or the idea that the time will come to heal even just a little bit some of what we've seen over the last year. there is still so much work to be done but also so much beauty. childlike fun and play are being evoked across brands and market categories as people look for small joys that put smiles on their faces...much like how theater ticket sales rose and people still danced during the great depression...looking for an escape or perhaps just to bring some color, life, and vibrancy to difficult times....

















ALL PHOTOS: Photo credits to be posted shortly. Sifting through archives...

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