white charcoal: 2013

17/07/13- Digital Decay

Using obsolete and deteriorated technology I explore the themes of mortality, decay and humanity’s ever increasing reliance on technology. My videos present sensory overloads which represent the state of modern society, constantly overloaded with imagery, information and products that instantly become out of date and irrelevant.

My work is a response to the dystopia of today and tomorrow.

-Henry Driver

I think it would be interesting to curate an exhibition about how we express emotion through digital means but even now I think, what's next? What's post-digital when the future is closer and closer to now? Anything with a 'futuristic' aesthetic is retro or could quite possibly already be made today- what is post digital? post-future?

16/07/13- Street Style

It's been a while since I've been interested in street style. It was one of the first things that got me looking at blogs and feeling inspired but after a while became a bit depressing when the people being snapped were wearing the same designer pieces and looking like models using a street as their runway. Some of it looked contrived and like the socialites in front of the lens got up and decided to wear whatever they thought would catch a street photographer's eye. Part of the appeal of street style was that it was for everyone. It was democratic and showed stylish grandmas in vintage pearls next to 13 year-old girls in full lolita costumes and it showed a full spectrum of 'style' rather than fashion.

This post isn't really going anywhere but here's some street style that caught my eye recently for being very do-able and inspiring:

I need to knit myself a long dress with a split mmm

Love that fringed vest with all the floaty layers

blue/green plaid, brown shoes and fringed jacket yeeeeah

Love the longer length of the skirt with shoes and socks

Need to wear my coloured socks more!!!

Images via http://streetandstyle.tumblr.com/

13/07/13: TRICOLORE

JACQUEMUS / LA PISCINE from jacquemus on Vimeo.

23/06/13- Solstice

vintage gold drapey top//thrifted plaid skirt//beanie and raincoat found in a cupboard in my house

22/06/13- Tech Luxe 2.0 (Oyster Magazine)

18/06/13- Industry

(completely unrelated picture)

There's been a post sitting in my drafts for a while about the inherent consumption of the fashion industry but I don't quite think it's well researched/coherent enough and I'm not totally confident in it. Basically what i wanted to talk about was the fashion industry and the business of fashion. I think most people, myself included, want to get involved with fashion because of their love of good design and desire to support those creators but there is such a large portion of the fashion industry that has nothing to do with design and quality craftsmanship and more to do with producing fast fashion that can be churned out cheaply in third world countries and sold by the tonne. I find it really hard as a student earning minimal money to avoid chain stores out of necessity but also just out of convenience and priorities. It makes me feel quite conflicted... however I have found that shopping at op shops and markets makes me feel less guilty about my consumption.

At university we are constantly told to think about our careers and to start working at them now. I've been torn for a long time now between art and fashion and I think the main difference between working in either of those industries is that art seems to have more 'dignity'. It's about promoting and nurturing artists and presenting art to everyday people to enrich their lives (I know this is a very optimistic, non-comercial view) whereas the fashion industry has a small portion which I imagine is like that yet the vast majority of fashion industry jobs and the glaringly obvious end goal seems to be to sell sell sell, no matter what and to actively promote consumption through planned obsolescence/bad quality goods/ridiculously quick turnaround of trends/fashion calendar of seasons.

I don't really know how to resolve my love/hate relationship with fashion to be perfectly honest. I would love to say that I'll just save up and only buy good quality designer clothing but I won't. I have higher priorities and would rather a plane ticket than Prada.

I would love to have a job in the fashion industry but the more I learn about marketing and the realities fo the industry, the less I want to be involved in the promotion of greed(?) but I still want to help 'creators'. I may have to try and focus myself more towards the creative side like styling, magazine writing, fashion curating and even academic writing. On reflection I actually quite enjoyed writing my extended essay in grade 12 about the depiction of womens' professional roles in popular media through costuming and I would love to do a PhD thesis on a historical fashion movement and it's connections with society someday. It's thinking about and celebrating fashion that excites me which is hard when business is basically always the end goal.

/end rant

2/06/13- yellow

I saved this to my desktop exactly one year ago and was obsessed with it.

I think it was vintage from 1stdibs.com but has long since been sold.

Still good.

17/05/13- Russian Bride Seeks Revenge

14/4/13- today I want to climb a mountain

The sun is really beautiful today and I feel like a girl scout.

6/4/13- over the rainbow

some socks I got a couple of weeks ago from Rivers + $2 fake nails
(my camera's auto focus isn't working at the moment/sorry about blurriness)

I've been trying to think about colours and their symbology, how they make you feel, especially when you wear them. And because a lot of my clothes aren't particularly 'designed' and are sometimes lacking in form or shape I feel like I have to compensate with colour.

Update: After trying these out over the last week or so I can say that green makes me want to go on a hike, blue makes me want to sleep in them, red makes me kind of nervous/excited an yellow makes me feel bright. This is silly. Whatever.

29/3/13

As I try to get my head together and put some effort into this blog, I've been starting to think about how we think about fashion as a society. Fashion seems to be treated as the frivolous, superficial artform and hardly has any sort of intellectual critique, at least not in the mainstream media. Maybe becasue of the inherent commerciality of fashion as an industry: magazines dare not critique a designer that has paid huge amounts to advertise with them and it seems there are more and more fashion bloggers that are 'sponsored' to wear 'x' label head to toe and yet don't disclose that they are being paid to do so (smidge unethical?). I wanted to see fashion blogs (and write one) that was connected with the original intention of fashion blogging- to be a real person showing real fashion in a personal way and discussing it as a form of expression just as valid as art. In studying art history, it's becoming more and more evident to me how similar art and fashion are in terms of the the way they are influenced and influence. Fashion is essentially one of the most basic, human forms of expression that becomes a part of our body and how we are perceived: it communicates to others about you more easily than a painting of yours on a wall yet people dismiss it so easily.

This has all been buzzing around in my mind for a while now but came to a head when I met curator Alison Kubler at the Gregory Crewdson exhibition at IMA and I of course gushed about how she inspired me to get into art history. She gave me some advice, told me to try and get into fashion and that there will eventually be a huge demand for curators who can talk about art and fashion on the same level, so here goes nothing.

I'll finish with some quotes and links that put what I'm thinking into words much more eloquently than I could:

"...much of the fashion content published is dominated by celebrity and consumer driven stories that bank off the entertainment value of fashion while doing little to enlighten readers about its intricacies and creative nature."-- Gisela Aguilar for http://www.fashionprojects.org/

Amazing fashion writer for Bullett Magazine, Fiona Duncan

Another Magazine's "An Intellectual Fashion"

And some blogs/bloggers I'm really into at the moment:

THE DOPPLEGANGER

Leslie Ashton Bloomfield particularly the "Webcam Blogging Manifesto" and she did have a blog that I was going to link but it's disappeared?! it's jellybones.net/blog (maybe hosting issues idk)

26/3/13

21/3/13- I'm a big girl

off to uni. (it took me ages to take this because I kept falling over)

I've been trying to plan a post for about a week now but it will be more of a rant/analytical/writing thing so I want to make sure it's coherent before I post it... l8r sk8r

12/3/13- CLAVICLE p.2

Satisfied my geometric/industrial/céline jewellery craving:

Obviously inspired by Love Aesthetics: the tag said it was an 'Oschin 15mm brass socket' and it is a surprisingly comfy fit, also looks kind of cool on a necklace. The girl at the hardware gave me the weirdest look when I said I was looking for 'brassy/goldy plumbing bits.' #thestruggleisreal but worth it for about $2.50

from Creative Treasures in Wynnum which is a really cool 'everything' shop with vintage clothes, jewellery, books, records and new, handmade market type items. It reminds me of a snake's skeleton or fish scales or even barbed wire. I've never seen anything like it before and it sits really high like a choker. ($12)

Ok I know this is hardly a DIY post but this is how I tried to recreate the Céline style choker:

-bought gold wire necklace from bead shop ($4.50) and wooden bead ($0.60)

-didn't check to see if bead would actually fit on the wire (it didn't)

-drilled a slightly bigger hole in the bead

-sanded bead and painted black (and gave it a coat of clear nail polish, I don't know if this is essential but I was worried about it coming off my on my skin)

-combined the ingredients in a large mixing bowl and voila

9/3/13- fringed

// asos

I never thought I'd buy a fringed bag but this one ~spoke to me~. It's perfect for uni and has a detachable longer strap which is handy.

8/3/13- CLAVICLE

Lately I've started thinking about jewellery. I don't like most jewellery, especially the cheap stuff that all looks the same and and is often covered in rhinestones or neon. I like the idea of using jewellery as frame, after all an accessory is, 'a thing that can be added to something else in order to make it more useful, versatile or attractive.' I like jewellery that frames my body well and creates a sense of symmetry and balance- i.e. this:

I love how the shorter necklace sits perfectly at the dinty-inny-bit (what's it called?) between my collar bones and the longer necklace comes down right where my collarbones are visible and it makes me feel like it 'fits me'? (p.s. would now be a good time to plug my instagram?)

Here are some styles that I'm obsessed with that fit with my search for simple, modern and geometric jewellery:

I love the height of these chokers, that the ball/circle sits so perfectly on the neck (especially in the first picture).

For a long time I've been following Love Aesthetics, a very clean, simple and minimalist blog and I was inspired by Ivania's ability to combine select designer pieces, thrifted and vintage finds and her own homemade DIY projects. So I thought I'd give this DIY thing a go and try and re-create the minimalist jewellery look, on a budget. Stay tuned, in a few days I should have done some experimenting and have a DIY post up.

Images via style.com, Brook&Lyn and Love Aesthetics.

12/2/13- TRA$H (Spring Breakers)

Just for starters, I understand this film hasn't even come out yet and I haven't seen it but here's my hopes and dreams for Spring Breakers:

I am incredibly excited for this film. I love that Harmony Korine is doing something that seems really different aesthetically to everything he's done before but he's stuck to it so strongly. The neon, drunken, teenage, hip hop, bikini, disney star world combined with Korine's dark style will (hopefully, I don't want to get ahead of myself) be exciting to watch... there is also James Franco with cornrows. I think there's a resurgence of interest in looking at pop culture artistically, in a non-ironic way. Even personally, I've gotten over the cringey disdain I used to have for pop music and even popular things in general. (Yes, I listen to Justin Beiber on occasion, I LOVE a bit of Rihanna and I have been into Supré at least twice this month.) There's no shame in liking what everyone else likes if you genuinely like it too. I think I'm getting off track a bit, but my point is, I am drooling over the trashy/gangster/skrillex vibes in Spring Breakers because it's so now. How many films made now reflect such a present time with such unashamed passion for being so pop and fake? When we look back on past decades we remember the popular culture at that time and I wonder if this will be what our popular culture looks like to people looking back in the future...

Some quotes I found interesting/inspiring from the press conference:

"This movie purposely is about surfaces. I find beauty in surfaces. I don't think surface is a bad thing. I wanted to make a movie that seemed like it was candy, like you could touch it. Like it was lit with skittles. It was about a poetry of surfaces." Harmony Korine

James Franco described the characters as "gangsters and mystics"and makes an interesting point about the mysticism of materiality.

Korine calls the process as making "A story from the outside in."

You can watch the full 45 minute press conference here (I can't believe I hadn't seen it earlier)