green hands

 This is what I've been so busy working on for the last few months. In early March, I sent in my submission for the Redress Ecochic Design Awards and was chosen to be one of the 12 semi-finalists! I was ecstatic and got to work right away. We had just over a month to create from scratch two eco-friendly outfits: one from upcycled fabrics and the other using a zerowaste technique. That's my inspiration board at the top; my theme was 'Memory & Forgetting'. And then you have my sketch ideas for the two outfits and the proposed pattern for the zerowaste garment which is that greyish double skirted dress.

 

We just finished the semi-final judging a few weeks ago and we're still waiting on the results so very eagerly. In addition, we did a workshop at the K11 Art Mall to show people how to make upcycled scarves to generate some PR interest. But most importantly, to get people to vote for us for the People's Choice Award! Click here to check out my stuff and to VOTE FOR ME! It's open worldwide and you just need an email or Facebook account.

Ra

Current hat tip: Dress like an Egyptian god.

∞

MFA

'There’s nothing sillier than an M.F.A. What does it mean? Did you learn anything? No. To be a master you have to learn languages and you have to have these things. Nobody gets them. I don’t think the art form is so complicated that you need a college course in order to read it. I really don’t. Art and fashion are the last two bastions where the product itself is what attracts attention; it really doesn’t much matter who made it. There’s this legitimization of something with an M.F.A. But Gaultier draws a shoe, they look at it, they put the shoe in production, it comes out, and it works. Nobody had to know anything about the person. Art is the same thing, something is built and shown, and it enters the culture. I like schools, I like people to go to school, but the purpose of the Academy is to give answers. If they don’t have an answer, they give a solution. The purpose of art is to ask questions. They’re antithetical.' —Lawrence Weiner

>

I've been thinking about going back to school...
But it wouldn't be for another two years or so.

fashion

'You don’t need fashion designers when you are young. Have faith in your own bad taste. Buy the cheapest thing in your local thrift shop - the clothes that are freshly out of style with even the hippest people a few years older than you. Get on the fashion nerves of your peers, not your parents - that is the key to fashion leadership. Ill-fitting is always stylish. But be more creative - wear your clothes inside out, backward, upside down. Throw bleach in a load of colored laundry. Follow the exact opposite of the dry cleaning instructions inside the clothes that cost the most in your thrift shop. Don’t wear jewelry - stick Band-Aids on your wrists or make a necklace out of them. Wear Scotch tape on the side of your face like a bad face-lift attempt. Mismatch your shoes. Best yet, do as Mink Stole used to do: go to the thrift store the day after Halloween, when the children’s trick-or-treat costumes are on sale, buy one, and wear it as your uniform of defiance.'

Role Models by John Waters
Via.

white

Paper Margiela jeans and heels.

varsity

"This jacket fucking reeks of sex. This is the jacket that that fucking guy wears, that one guy who always seems to get everything he wants for nothing. That one guy who all the women fawn over, fondle, and caress, while you stare at your stupid fucking hoodie. This is a jacket for the master of the indolent, the modern renaissance man, the kind of man who knows what kind of fucking drink he wants at the bar, and doesn’t ever get shorted by the bartender. This is the kind of jacket that girls want to wrap around their shoulders during the walk to the cab. The kind of jacket they try to put on over their dresses the morning after. The kind of fucking jacket that every man who wants to be somebody should own."

1. Temple of Jawnz. 2. Ashley Smith in Jalouse #133. 3. Alexis Krauss. 4. Temple of Jawnz.
Quote via Willy Cheesesteak.

cozy

Shit I want from Maryam Nassir Zadeh.
In other words, shit I may eventually make for myself in shittier quality.
1, 2. Bokin shirt. 3. Jeremy Laing dress. 4. Bown patched pants. Really nice Rachel Comey shoes too. 5. Golden Goose faded bordeaux sweatshirt. So nice, but $444 is a bit steep. Seriously, $400 for a (really nice) faded sweatshirt? 6. Cosmic Wonder pants.

img heavy #7

1. My boss's beautiful lovable muffin Jake, I like calling him Li'l Jakey Morgendorffer. 2. Markus is elegant, especially in the shadows. 3. I went to Menchies, it was delicious, this the hipster dykey outfit I wore for the occasion. 4, 5. Really awesome vintage Moschino via Hapsical.

WASP

I know it's lame to reblog Jak & Jil photos, as if everyone hasn't seen them already, but I couldn't resist with this one.
Thom Browne's women S/S 2011 is like WASP drag, it's awesome.

Daumier

'"All the designers I have met up to this point have been very nice, although upon being introduced to Karl Lagerfeld, he looks me up and down and dismisses me with the not super-kind, ‘What can you write that hasn’t been written already?’

He’s absolutely right. I have no idea. I can but try. The only thing I can come up with at that moment is that Lagerfeld’s powdered white ponytail has dusted the shoulders of his suit with what looks like dandruff but isn’t. Also, not yet having undergone his alarming weight loss, and seated on a tiny velvet chair, with his large doughy rump dominating the miniature piece of furniture like a loose, flabby, ass-flavoured muffin from its pan, he resembles a Daumier caricature of some corpulent, inhumane oligarch drawn sitting on a commode, stuffing his greedy throat with the corpses of dead children, while from his other end he shits out huge, malodorous piles of tainted money. How’s that for new and groundbreaking, Mr. L?"

— David Rakoff writes, in his few-years-old and brilliant essay book Don’t Get Too Comfortable, about the one time he was sent by some magazine (Vogue, most likely; no big deal) to cover the couture shows. I presume he was not invited back.'

Via SNP.
Gargantua. Honoré Daumier, lithograph, 1832.

ornament

"Contrary to popular belief, clothes are not practical and dress is not necessary. Thomas Carlyle’s Professor Teufelsdröckh told us in the mid-nineteenth century that ‘The first purpose of clothes was not warmth or decency, but ornament… among wild people we find tattooing and painting even prior to clothes’...‘human history is not the history of flesh and bone and blood, but a mere chronicle of costumes’.

Opening next month at The Barbican in London is Future Beauty, a major survey of avant-garde Japanese fashion from the last 30 years, curated by fashion historian and Kyoto Costume Institute Director, Akiko Fukai. Organised around four themes – blackness and shadows; flatness and form; tradition and innovation; street style and popular culture – the exhibition will explore the unique sensibilities of Japanese fashion since the early 1980s when Issey Miyake, Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garçons and Yohji Yamamoto proposed a radically new fashion aesthetic."

1. Isabella Blow in Hiroaki Ohya. Spring/Summer 2000. Photograph by Mika Ninagawa.
2. Rei Kawakubo/ Comme des Garçons. 1995, 1983.

Via.

sleigh

Sleigh Bell's new video for "Infinity Guitars". So hot. I need to get white Keds again, and also school girl plaid.

venus in furs

Shearling Panel sweater from Montreal designer Audrey Cantwell.
Listening to Nicki Minaj on "Monster".

shin

Dress by SHIN.

Jester Style

Such adventurous and fun style. Model, Tati, at Url Pickens.

Url Pickens

Beautiful models at the Url Pickens show a few weeks ago. Look at those hands.

Girl Talk.

The higher the heels, the closer to God.

Funky Town

I want to dress like this, on and off stage.

Right now, I'm in Marseille, in my hostel you have to be buzzed in. I think its a bad part of town. Alors, its a great hostel and the cheapest place I could find in this beautiful and buzzing city. If you are ever in town, try to stay at Vertigo. Friendly staff and great decor.

Warm

Forget Snuggie, that polyester for sale on tv bullshit, save up 300 dollazzz and get yourself a brand-name, fancy Blankoat. Its Grim Ripper gone glam and Canadian. Obviously, Grim is all trendy and doesn't like that sweatshop business, so this is made in Iceland with Icelandic wool.

Get yours.

Wear White On Thursday

As an extra-curricular activity this Christmas, I remade two outdated and abandoned wedding dress into one fabulous show-stopper for the modern bride, and all this for charity too! The charity is called Windfall, they are a clothing bank providing new basics to needy people in Toronto, and if you have ever experienced a -30c Toronto winter, you know this service is much needed. So, to support, wear white this this Thursday and donate to Windfall charity. 13 other dresses redesigned by other students will be auctioned off, with the proceeds to Windfall charity.
The creations are on display at Bayview Village in the East Court until midday February 1st. For more information, visit http://www.ww4w.ca/.

Before-Autumn

I think pre-fall is a bad idea, how can a designer be expected to pump out 4 collections a year, with that time crunch, it is nearly impossible to make something one can really feel proud of. For me, fashion is art, some designers use the medium of cloth to make create their masterpiece. And because of this logic, I think it is unfair and counter-productive to produce 2 full collections every year, and pre-fall and resort just add more clutter along the designing journey. With that being said, Alexander McQueen did manage to show a fabulous pre-fall collection this month, it was inspired by the wardrobe of a 19th century woman.

WWD.com