apparel

bike chain jewelry lesson

Sally Schneider

Vicki Beth Lynn has an eye for jewelry. She’s bought and sold lots of it over the years, especially the work of interesting designers from past and present. She knows dealers and jewelry-makers in Paris and London, and sells regularly to television shows and movies. (She also runs a multi-media production company but that is another story…)

Vicki and I were walking around Manhattan the other day when she stopped and pointed to a huge brass chain lying on the street, securing a bike to a post. “Look, Sal.” she said,”Wouldn’t that make a great necklace?”

And I looked and saw something I’d never have noticed before (but do now, thanks to Vicki): possibilities for jewelry in all sorts of everyday things, even in the street. Translate the look of that bike chain to a wearable version (real bike chains are HEAVY), and you’d have a dramatic and startling necklace…

…there are teachers all around us, sharing what they know…

01.19.10 | comments (1) | in apparel, hard, inspiration, outside, people, sightings |

pamela’s brilliant d-i-y wrist warmers

Pamela Hovland

Designer and contributor-of-brilliant-ideas Pamela Hovland recently improvised wonderful wrist-warmers out of an old pair of wool socks. Here’s how this inspired bit of repurposing came about, in her own words and photos:

“I often wear wrist warmers while I’m working away at my computer as my hands are cold from the fall to the spring. I first saw them in northern Sweden; someone was selling hand-knit versions at an artisan’s market in a remote village. I remember that I didn’t know what they were; I was simply attracted to the colors and patterns. Once I figured it out, however, I bought a pair knit from beautiful charcoal grey and burnt orange wool and ended up wearing them nearly every day last winter.

A few months ago I washed some beautiful (and expensive) wool socks in the washing machine by mistake, and as a result, they shrunk. As I couldn’t bear to throw them out, it occurred to me that perhaps I could repurpose them somehow. read more…

01.18.10 | comments (3) | in apparel, cheap + great, copy this!, how-to, reclaim, soft |

everyday objects con’t: junya watanabe’s zipper and snap improvs

After reading yesterday’s post ‘the safety pin (and other everyday object) improvisations’, Lydia Wills sent me photos from fashion designer Junya Watanabe’s 2005 collection, where he used zippers and snaps in the most beautiful way: layers of gold zippers become something totally other. Look closely and you’ll see that, aside from the gold plating, these are essentially standard-issue 8-or-so-inch zippers with their fabric siding in a gorgeous color – lots of them – stitched snugly side-by-side and overlapping. One of the most dazzling permutations of this playing-about with zippers is this sensational collar… read more…

10.22.09 | comments | in apparel, copy this!, identity, materials |

the safety pin (and other everyday objects) as improvisation

Initech Guy/Flickr

Every great invention, from the Murphy bed to the bicycle, started as an improvisation: an elegant solution to something someone needed or just plain wanted. But an improvisation never stops there. The improvised invention gets improvised upon, and that improvisation gets improvised upon, and so on, and so on. Viewing the everyday objects around us as improvisations makes for endless inspiration.

Take the safety pin, the ultimate emergency tool that holds up hems without thread and makes possible all manner of instant repairs. read more…

10.21.09 | comments (3) | in apparel, reimagine, repurpose, tools |

guest post on vivianna torun and ‘seeing what happens’

After reading Anni Albers ‘Common Object’ Jewelry, Lydia Wills wrote an inspiring email that is a perfect, if inadvertent, post for ‘the improvised life’. It’s like a bedtime story for grown-ups (with an amazing ending in bold.)

“The lesson of Anni Albers’ jewelry is her ability to look at everyday objects and see just how they can be re-imagined on the body, how their shape and curve and sheen will look when worn. A simple object, not only seen in a new way, but taken a step farther. It’s only improvisation when it goes from the mind’s eye , passing through your hands, and out into the world.

This is exactly the lesson of my favorite jewelry designer, the truly great Vivianna Torun Bulow-Hube, who was born in Sweden and went on to design for Georg Jensen. She set out early to make “anti-jewelry,” that is, jewelry you don’t store in the family vault until the fancy night arrives, and then snap shut in the vault. She worked with materials that lived and breathed out in the open–rocks, stones, pebbles, silver and saw how they could be shaped to fit the human form.

When she was broke in the 50s in France, she used to go to the beach and look for stones and pebbles that she could work into her simple silver wires and hand-hammered necklaces. read more…

09.22.09 | comments (1) | in apparel, identity, materials, paths + processes, people, resources books + zines |

more anni albers common-object jewelry

Albers Foundation

During World War II, when materials were in short supply, textile artist Anni Albers improvised charming, inventive jewelry using simple components usually found in hardware and stationary stores, and five-and-dimes. This dramatic necklace uses inexpensive window chain sold on giant wheels at hardware stores and steel bobbi pins. Seeing her necklace, suddenly these objects become BEAUTIFUL and full of unexpected possibilities; our notions of jewelry change. read more…

09.17.09 | comments | in apparel, art, hard, identity, inspiration, materials, people, repurpose |

d-i-y anni albers necklace

annie-albers-washer-necklace

I recently stumbled on a useful “how-to” of a necklace designed in the 1940′s by Anni Albers, the great textile designer and weaver who was a member of the Bauhaus, and a founder of Black Mountain College. The necklace, made from metal washers, laced together with grosgrain ribbon, is an example of ordinary elements combined into something unique and beautiful. It is a model that offers many possibilities in jewelry-making and other kinds of ornamentation. read more…

08.02.09 | comments | in apparel, how-to |

beth ditto is a big relief

Robert Maxwell

I expected the recent N.Y. Times Magazine’s Women’s Fashion issue to have little of interest for me. I’ve become too practical to care about fabulous bags that are too heavy to carry all day, and clothes that defy my curvy, aging body. But I flipped through it anyway while I waited for water to boil for tea and was stunned by the image on the last page of Beth Ditto, lead singer of post-punk band Gossip. Her forthright voluptuousness and her words – “Ditto has just one rule ‘Absoutely no shame’” – made me google her and wonder how I’d missed such a force. read more…

02.22.09 | comments | in apparel, art, inspiration, people, principles |

big black bag

black-tote1

Really big bags are essential for all sorts of projects, like hauling food home from the farmers market, or a brick or two or a piece of pipe from a construction site, or [rocks] from out of town. I’ve had a variety of bags over the years, some which are still with me, though pretty down at heals (including really dirty looking – despite washing – classic white canvas satchels. Lately, I’ve been looking for a big black bag to add a little style to the huge bag category. Here’s a bargain, designed by Andy at Reference Library and sold through Kiosk. $60 and handsome. There are some nice testimonials on his site, including a guy who hauled home 4 gallons of paint.

01.29.09 | comments | in apparel, road warrior, stores, tools |

rethinking business cards

biz-vard-second-hand

Shouldn’t a business card reflect/echo/transmit a sense of the business or person it’s representing?

If you’re in thinking of (re)designing your card, check out the outside-the-box business card that [Re]Encoded.com compiled. They are FUN and make your expectations shift instantly. read more…

01.23.09 | comments | in apparel, identity, media, strategies, why not?, working |

sylvie corbelin’s lost/found jewelry

ring-persian-turquoise3

From her small shop in the vast Clignancourt flea market in Paris, Silvie Corbelin sells extraordinary jewelry that she has created from the damaged, odd or incomplete bits of antique jewelry she scouts: an ancient Persian turquoise fashioned into an deco-ish gold ring with tiny rubies; a classical cameo entwined in a gold serpent; a “space voyage” ring: a chunk of meteorite and a diamond set in rough-hewn gold (all can be found in her websites virtual book). “I love to give unloved elements new life”, she told me the day a friend took me to see her work. Corbelin’s thoughts on jewelry making (and life) are as compelling as the pieces themselves.

apparel

bike chain jewelry lesson

pamela’s brilliant d-i-y wrist warmers

everyday objects con’t: junya watanabe’s zipper and snap improvs

the safety pin (and other everyday objects) as improvisation

guest post on vivianna torun and ‘seeing what happens’

more anni albers common-object jewelry

d-i-y anni albers necklace

beth ditto is a big relief

big black bag

rethinking business cards

sylvie corbelin’s lost/found jewelry

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