Don’t be scared off by the guy in the pirate shirt.

I love doing random image searches on the googles, because you find the greatest websites. For instance, The Vintage Shirt Company. They supply shirts, collars, kilt socks, sock garters, etc etc for costume dramas. Everything you ever wanted under one roof. You can order all sorts of stuff online. They also have these really cheap black polyester ties with the winning description, “For the inevitable funeral scene.” Geniuses.

Here are some of my favorites:

Autumn Red

owl pendant from APC

sweater from J Crew

dahlia

This is the day.

Thanks to Swedish blog fine little day, who posted this great picture from the book Chic Clicks, Commerce and Creativity in Contemporary Fashion Photography. I will quite possibly die without these shoes (and socks).

You can’t beat a free face cloth. Or can you?

Did you know that people sell their old magazines on Ebay? So odd. I just found that out while I was looking for a picture of my favorite Japanese fashion magazine Spring. Every month it comes with a free gift. Last time I picked one up it came with a free hair scrunchy. This month it came with two small face cloths that say FRAPBOIS on them. Kind of French for touch wood? Beat wood? I hope it’s the former because giving out small towels with the latter printed on them is a bit odd.

Apparently, this was last month’s gift. A plastic bag designed by Martin Margiela. Oh well, I guess I should have picked up last months issue, now I just get the face cloths that say beat wood on them.

Comrags

I was a bit disappointed in the Comrags spring/summer collection, but I’m happy to see that they’re back on track for fall/winter. Here are some of my favorites:

I like the men’s belts. Seems fresh.

Breaking up is hard to do.

I’ve been neglectful, I know this. I am a terrible lover. But sometimes I have other things on my mind. Like peacock feathers. I’m in love with them. I plan to wear them with everything come October. I’m sorry gingham. Love is fickle.

Mrs. Appleyard would not approve.

Have I been living in a cave? When did all this “free hugs” nonsense start? In the last week I’ve seen three separate groups of teenage girls with free hugs signs. Yesterday there was a group of them accosting people in front of the art gallery. They had that sort of rabid intensity that being the only virgin in your school can give you. They were a modern version of those girls in the movie Picnic at Hanging Rock, so full of inappropriate feelings and prone to fits of hysteria.

The only people accepting the free hugs from this randy lot were older men who, I’m guessing, were totally into saving the world through inappropriate touching.

My signature piece is the quotation mark.

There’s kind of nothing worse than someone with a signature piece. A look, an accessory, a colour that he or she always wears and is invariably defined by. Like Tom Wolfe (below) “He’s the guy who always wears the white suit” you tell friends when “He wrote The Bonfire of the Vanities” brings blank stares. Or Poppy King, the self proclaimed “Lipstick Queen” who always wears red lipstick. If you like red lipstick (which I do) then go ahead and wear it but for God’s sake don’t make it your “thing” even if you are the lipstick queen.

Having a “thing” is not the same as having character or being a character. It does not make you quirky, eccentric or charming. It’s a bit like being the girl who collects everything elephants, or the teenager who proclaims herself weird. It is a sad cry for personality, and as you’ll note below, it does not age well.

Get Crafty

I saw this picture of M.I.A. (with whom I’ve been a bit obsessed lately) and I thought that this summer should be all about the watermelon shirt. So, I did some research and I came across this page on how to make a watermelon dress: www.dharmatrading.com. Not quite the same, but I’m sure one of your craftier friends can figure out the changes needed. Fun for the whole family!

Loving your neighborhood to death

There is a good little video over on the NY Times website about the community of Bushwick, 30 years after the New York City black out and the mass looting and fires that happened in that neighborhood. It also takes a look at Bushwick today and the gentrification that’s creeping into this low income community.

Last time I was in New York I had to go to a studio visit in Bushwick and everybody in Manhattan was like, “Why do you want to go to Bushwick? There’s nothing there.” And Sure enough I came out of the subway to old crumbling brick buildings, empty lots surrounded by sheet metal and barbed wire, toughs hanging out at the corner and I thought, this is the real New York, this is like Welcome Back Cotter, this is Barney Miller. I loved it.

After my meeting I went to get a coffee at a new coffee place in an otherwise deserted block, and waiting in line I got talking to a guy who’s a reporter from the New York Times doing a story about Bushwick as the hot new neighborhood. And I’m thinking it’s already over. I’m here, you’re here and this is the beginning of the end for this neighborhood.

What do you do, when rents are so high that you move to these otherwise ignored neighborhoods, and just by moving there you become part of it’s downfall? By trying to take advantage of cheap real estate you make it unaffordable for the people who live there in the first place?

This is not just a New York problem. It’s an everywhere problem. Sometimes even in smaller towns. As artists, musicians, designers etc we usually try to distance ourselves from the whole gentrification issue. We always play victim. It’s always someone else who’s gentrifying, but we are part of the problem. We are the first gentrifiers.