photo: maria robledo
More improv fashion via Maria Robledo: Fishs Eddy‘s fab spoon dress. We imagine it CLANKING rather than tinkling like Bjork’s bell dress, and revised it in our heads to be made with thin coin silver spoons…wouldn’t THAT be something….? read more…
photo: antonia LoPresti
Last Fourth of July, Antonia LoPresti sent us an email about the emergency improv she came up with for her daughter Sofia:
After an impromptu dip in the Washington square park fountain, Sofia’s skirt was soaked. A hunt to find a children’s shop yielded no luck SO I took my cardigan sweater out of my bag, buttoned it up and wrapped it around her as a skirt.
It does have a curiously chic Rick Owens-ish look to it. Just for the hell of it, we did a google search to see if we could find any fashionistas who’d tried such daring. It seems that wearing cardigans backwards is as far as things go… read more…
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Maria Robledo sent us a link to Under the Sun, Roy Arden’s brilliant visual blog, which we are fans of but hadn’t looked at in some time; there’s ALWAYS something compelling there. This time, we found a picture of women wearing wondrous head dresses made of wrapped fabric. ‘We need to be able to do that’ we thought, and looked up how to make fab hats with a piece of fabric. Here are two short, curiously charming how-to’s to set you on the path (with the women, above, as further inspiration for improvising…a LONG swath of striped fabric folded lengthwise and warpped overlappingly). read more…
At Anonymous Works we found this photo of a man happily covered in flowers and leaves. We wonder what the story is behind that image made in 1918. What a way to dress for spring: head-to-toe in flowers and leaves….!!
And as with the Tutu Project, there’s something even more amazing about it being a guy gamely dressed this way.
Related posts: ‘the tutu project’ explores identity, change and love
boat shoes…
fab hairdo with balloons, via myeongbeom kim
hair as apparel, identity, art (man ray)
spring is coming (really)!
?: photographer unknown
Spotted at Accidental Mysteries, a boy (or is she a girl?) wearing stunningly chic, rigged glasses that seem to be more for look than practicality: there appears to be no glass. Who cares? For sure they give him a new virtual lens to look through and a unique identifying style. (We had a friend that used to wear lensless glasses for that very reason; they would change his ‘head’, shift his identity and offered a buffer from the world.)
We wish we knew the back story.
Related posts: curiously chic duct tape safety glasses
‘pastry paris’: paris through pastry-colored glasses
party favor/catalyst: random pairs of glasses
strategy: instant consult via cell phone camera
the perfect glass (thin, cheap, well-designed)
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Ouno recently compiled quotes by fashion designer Vivienne Westwood that SO totally fly-in-the-face of the usual fashionista view, we were knocked out: it is fashion-as-liberation, self-expression and NON-consumption. Our favorite Westwood quotes:
“Wear a towel instead of a coat, it’s very chic. Or your husband’s boxer shorts with a belt, or something from your grandmother. It’s all about do-it-yourself at the moment.” —Vivienne Westwood at the New Economics Forum in November 2011.
“There’s this idea that somehow you’ve got to keep changing things, and as often as possible. Maybe if people just decided not to buy anything for a while, they’d get a chance to think about what they wanted; what they really liked….” read more…
yves klein
We’ve always loved Yves Klein‘s shirt printed with hand prints, foot prints and question marks: a mysteriously chic, primal cosmic design that makes us want to get some plain white shirts and paint whatever comes to mind. It would be like wearing a flag of a personal country.
Mondoblogo reminded us of it.
Related posts: photo of the day: ‘leap into the void’
what helps you see things differently?
65 modern art books online…for free!
the brilliant past: poster dress with a ginsberg poem
Two cheap and ubiquitous materials seem to inspire endless improvisations and creativity: shipping pallets (our pallet posts are some of our most popular)…and duct tape. We are smitten with the colorful duct tape jewelry Michele Howarth makes and sells on her Etsy store Quiet Mischief and Company. She also thought has a pdf tutorial for sale so you can see how she does it, and use her plan as a jumping off point for your own brilliant creations.
via Neatorama
Related posts: curiously chic duct tape safety glasses
zebra duct tape!!
duct tape and phone book dress
duct tape: potato chip bag pants
duct tape repair of bear-ravaged plane
photo: arthur brower/the new york times
Recently, we read that The New York Times has started an ongoing Tumblr project to post their photo archive; it’s called the Lively Morgue and it’s pretty swell. We found this treasure right away: a little bit of 60′s fashion brilliance: a dress that can become a poster. Here’s the description:
March 4, 1968: “Don’t call them paper dresses,” began a report about a line of disposable dresses that could be reimagined as posters. The one seen here features Cape Kennedy. Another? An Allen Ginsberg poem.
An Allen Ginsberg poem???? We HAD to see THAT dress with a Ginsberg Poem and found it here (it was designed by British fashion designer Harry Gordon): read more…
We love this guy dressed in a suit, tie shoes and hat, skateboarding his way…where?!!!!
What a chic way to travel (if you can manage it)…as liberating as our favorite “leap” pictures: read more…
(Video link here.) …makes us wonder what it would be like if we all wore the occasional L.E.D-laced outfit…to become…moving light sculptures…
via Kottke
Related posts: string lights as everyday indoor lighting
light reflective bike decals for safety and fun
practice flying (via the uganda skateboard union)
skateistan: skateboarding as antidote (to war, poverty, sadness…)
joy ride: practice makes wondrous perfection
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A brilliant idea from the past. What balance you would need to have to navigate on water…
…as in life.
via Black and WTF
Related posts: wearing clothes backwards
fab hairdo with balloons, via myeongbeom kim
hair as apparel, identity, art (man ray)
vision break: a dress that makes music…
what a plastic bag can become…
The other day, we stumbled on Dargelos, an online store with stylish, thoughtfully-designed products for bicycle riders (some are great for NON bikers as well). We originally went to the site to check out their Lighting Vest, a hand-netted safety vest made from a specially-developed reflective 3M material that will make you highly visible to motorists (i.e. safe.) It is lightweight, can fit in your pocket and layer over just about anything you want to wear. It’s so great looking, we could imagine wearing it just for the hell of it.
While on Dargelos’ site, we discovered many other cool things… read more…
Over at Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories, we found a how-to for a swell group Halloween costume: a traveling exhibition of modern art… Here, Mark Rothko, Piet Mondrian, and Jackson Pollock are represented because…
“… the best choices are iconic artists whose distinctive styles may be recognizable even in third-rate attempts (like ours) to mimic their styles.”
The only tweak we’d make to the concept is to wear some sort of face mask, which is much of the pleasure of Halloween: being anonymous…or someone/something other than yourself.
They suggest other alternatives to making a copy of a painting on a piece of canvas. Our favorite: “Have everyone dress up with a blank canvas and carry colored ink squirt guns.”
COLORED INK SQUIRT GUNS?!!!
Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories has a trove of Halloween d-i-y costume, decor, and fun, including bat wings made from broken umbrellas…
Related posts: happy halloween!!!!! (2010)
happy halloween!!! (2009)
halloween inspiration: cardboard box as the empire state building
This photo entitled simply “Curious Photo” (from the George Eastman House collection), reminded us of the many possibilities for wearing clothes backwards. We remembered a chic woman we knew that used to wear ordinary cardigans backwards, turning them into a something ELSE…
…then we thought: Ohhh, THAT’S what we can try with an Issy Miyake shirt out made out of unbelievable fabric that doesn’t seem to work as a button-down anymore. We put in on backwards, and voila: a strangely beautiful drape to the collar now worn in front.
Wearing clothes backwards can be something to try before getting rid of a piece of clothing that no longer seems to fit. It’s a reason we love Rick Owen’s clothes; sweaters are meant to be worn backwards, frontwards, upside down…a strange liberation.
We went on the hunt for some images. Our favorite: read more…
