New York

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Shuhei Endo's Bubbletecture

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I'm completed fascinated with Shuhei Endo and his architectural steel structures. Steel is not a material I typically find appealing - it's modern but cold and uninviting. But somehow, with Shuhei's buildings, the steel almost comes alive and interacts with the environment in a way that's interesting and unexpected.

At times, I find that a lot of modern architecture simply falls into three categories that are not always mutually exclusive:
dull mimicry, minimalist zen-holes and monstrosities.
Very little is surprising, and if it is, it is often unpleasant.

In his Bubbletecture below, Shuhei takes a passionless material that's usually associated with all three aforementioned categories, and molds it into something with a pulse. In case you were wondering, it is a visitor centre built in a valley lying between Hiroshima and Osaka. Do I think it's 'pretty'? Not really. But I am enchanted by how it resembles a bulbous worm that is both obtrusive and oddly harmonious with the nature that surrounds it. The rusted and occasionally moss-covered steel Shuhei worked with lends the building a very natural charm.

How would you like to work in this?

{Click on images for larger versions.}

Venus Calypso Anniversary

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Can't find hair scissors.
Still no eyes.

My godsister doesn't like her face posted on the internet!

Laura Keeble

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Laura Keeble is an artist from London who first came to my attention when she produced that much talked about Damien Hirst skull spoof. She produces plenty of cheeky installation art pieces that comment on consumerism in contemporary culture.

Idol Worship

Idol Worship

Nike (Winged Victory)

Glass Supper

Goods Friday

Goods Friday

Christmas Shopping

Christmas Shopping

Tales Of The Unexpected

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{Click on images for larger versions.}

So, after making that last post about Karen Elson's vintage boutique in Nashville, I started to think about the Karen editorials I love the most, and in particular, her work with Tim Walker who is one of my favourite photographers... perhaps my favourite, though he shares that spot with Eugenio Recuenco. Both of them have an aesthetic that seems virtually ripped out of my mind. Or maybe my mind was ripped out of one of their photographs. Who knows.

Anyway, I digress.

Tim shot Karen, along with Helena Bonham-Carter, Tim Burton, Dev Hynes, Georgia Jagger, Jamie Bell, Sophie Drake, Gareth Pugh, Jamie Campbell Bower, Peter Jensen, Alice Gibb and Aunt Sponge for an editorial titled, "Tales Of The Unexpected" for Vogue UK's December 2008 issue. And really, with that line-up, who could resist? I am not one of those fashion nazis who believe that only models belong in Vogue and that actors/celebrities should stay off its covers and editorial pages. If they can do the job required as effectively as a model, then I am all for a meritocratic system of employment. Helena Bonham-Carter does a stunning job in this. Truly. But if they start giving anyone from The Hills editorial space, I am out of here.

{Continued below...}

This editorial blows my mind. The shot above (referencing Roald Dahl's 'Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator') makes me want to track this issue of Vogue down on Ebay just so I can frame it.

See, Bjork?
This is how you do a swan costume.

Hey, Meghan. That shot was for you.
(Shot, as in photograph, though looking back up,
I can see how you might be mistaken.)

Those who know me are aware that my passion for fairy tales and children's stories knows no bounds. Hell, I love them so much that I've been writing one for the past one and a half years, so perhaps you can see why this whole fashion story is so perfect in my eyes that I felt the need to upload and post the whole thing in all its 26-page glory. The pages, in their rightful order, are below. I also recommend actually reading the article (written by Sophie Dahl herself) if you grew up on Roald Dahl, C.S. Lewis and Enid Blyton like I did. You don't want to miss out on the Angry Pixie and Faraway Tree reference, and the charming vignettes of what it was like to grow up in the Dahl home.

I only regret that the text, in true Vogue fashion, finishes off with 'continued on page 381', and the person who scanned the editorial did not scan page 381 at all. If anyone has a scan of it (or can scan and upload it), I will send you love in some tangible form, I promise.













For the TLDR internet generation, here are some quotes from the story:

There was a magic cupboard in the house we lived in when I was a child, a Charles Voysey house with heart-shaped keyholes, hidden places and tiles the colour of wet grass. The cupboard was under the wide wooden staircase, and if you pushed against the coats and boots and smell of forgotten winters, you ended up in a cool dark space, unseen by prying adult eyes. It was there we went to look for Narnia, released finally from the table, after endless Sunday lunches.

"Can I leave the table?"
"Could you ask nicely?"
"Please may I leave the table?"

"Yes. But don't lock each other in that closet again, or try and sell your sister on the pavement."

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"Imagination is the highest kite one can fly." So said Lauren Bacall, and she was dead right. Without induction to imagination, I would have been done for scholastically. Desperately bad at maths and the sciences, a social pariah in the gymnasium: "Don't pick Sophie, she always drops the ball!" Books and stories were what kept me going. I was lucky enough to grow up in a family of storytellers, who were quite laissez-faire about geometry. Tall stories were the vernacular, the lifeblood of our family. Nothing was mundane, everything was coloured in.

"That is not simply a boring baked potato that you are eating, but a baked potato made to the recipe of the prince of such and such, whose sister I rescued on a bridge in Cairo, as she was being eyed up by a spitting cobra."

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It is something I have struggled with in adulthood, coming from a family that loved passionately or loathed the same, often switching allegiance from one to the other within a mercurial hour. It is a short hand that is difficult for others to understand, one that I try to curb.

I remember my step-father once saying, astonished, to my mother, "I don't understand. How can you hate someone one moment and love them 15 minutes later?"

"Because I can," she said, looking at him like he was mad. "They're just words: just because I mean them in that moment, doesn't mean they're always true."


CREDIT: Scans by Skywire.