2

Insta II

12.30.2013


















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1

Lines and Shadows

12.28.2013



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Vintage pretty much everything, Elizabeth & James heels

Always loved the drama of a long, mysterious piece of outerwear. Found this particular gem on Etsy.

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2

Dries '10, Still Perfect 4 Years Later

12.26.2013
















1 Word: Goals.
I remember seeing the livestream of this show when I was in high school, and it still rolls around in my mind every time I get dressed in the morning. For me, it's the effortless balance of military-inspired menswear tied in with fifties and sixties feminine silhouettes. The prints are barely kitschy, they don't cross the line into some kind of joke, and they compliment pretty much any skin tone. Now, I do feel it's a little disappointing that he didn't show the collection on any models of color; it's just gotta be said. But in the end, the clothes were still outstanding and pretty much timeless.

It's the little details that get me: the shoddily belted waists, the bags tucked under arms, half-tucked sweaters and the small, billowing glimpses of layers. Everything is practical and everything is thought out in a way that makes the entire ensemble seem to breathe. 

Now I really want a pair of elbow-length gloves too...

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1

Bless This Mess

12.23.2013

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-Bedside ephemera-
+ When I went away to college, my dad insisted I get this oldschool lookin' black and chrome buckle trunk. I love this thing, it functions as my bedside storage for unseasonal clothes and tabletop
+ I collect these hand shaped porcelain ashtrays from Occupied Japan. They were popular in the 20's-40's and I can't help but find them eerily charming
+ Friends leave their Bic lighters here all the time, so of course I've accumulated something of a handful of a collection. I use 'em for my incense and candles
+ There are also two antique perfume bottles, the black one keeps my By Boe x De Lune bangles

- On the opposite side of the trunk, I use a milk crate from Queensborough farms to elevate a few things. I'm from Queens, so I gotta represent somehow.
- The opposite side has more crystal orb/mystical stuff; I tend to burn a bunch of incense and those prayer candles from Mexico for luck
-  A brass deer head with encircling antlers holds my bangles and bracelets
- Pretty much stuffed this space to the gills, but knowing me, it'll only get more complicated 

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2

Beady Little

12.18.2013

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Vintage jacket, shirt, scarf, belt and boots (some via Nifty Thrifty), BDG jeans, Giles & Brother Archer choker, De Lune x By Boe eye pendant necklace, Drawn & Quartered name plate necklace

What's not to like about a vintage Escada shirt with a bunch of beads printed on it?
Yeah, nuttin'.

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2

Playdate

12.16.2013

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Vintage dress, bag and boots, Express tights, Mango coat and turtleneck, Karen London Stand Back Ring

That's it, finals are over, time to have some fun.
This is my last winter break ever. Ever, ever, ever, ever in the history of ever- by this time next year, I'll be doing some kind of job-career-y-type thing, and I'm scared out of my wits for when I have to get all of that sorted out, But for now, I plan on having some adventures, making some silly things and all the while, reflecting on it all and envisioning where I want all of this to take me.

So why not revert back to being a kid?
Speaking of, I'm pretty sure this was once a kid's dress. It's clearly home made; I bought it at No Relation, a local East Village rag house-sourced vintage store that tends to have some decently priced vintage stuff, and boy do they got a lot of it. The boots 'n bag were Etsy finds. One of these days I'll have to give a break-down of my whole online strategy, because I just gotta share some of the weird stuff I come across sometimes...

I shot these at the almost-always-empty playground off avenue C near my apartment. I love shooting in there, pretty much nobody bothers me with my tripod and the light is insane when you get in there at the right time of day. You can also get a delightful glimpse of the Con Edison power plant in the background (didja see my instagram from today? Them smoke stacks are nuts, right?), which gives it this weird apocalyptic grandeur. Once I get my funds in order, I'll be shooting more film over the break; in fact, I'm thinking of turning our bathroom into a dark room for some pin hole camera projects. After looking into the work of Barbara Ess, I've been itching to make some odd, lucid scrappy photos, so expect some nonsense to start falling out of my head and onto a post or three.

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0

Edwardian Street Style: The Work of Edward Linley Sambourne

12.15.2013












Are you kidding me with these?
Do I even need to regurgitate all the reasons as to why these are amazing?

❦ ❧❦ ❧❦ ❧❦ ❧❦ ❧❦ ❧❦ ❧❦ ❧❦ ❧❦ ❧❦ ❧❦ ❧❦ ❧❦ ❧❦ ❧❦ ❧❦ ❧❦ ❧❦ ❧❦ ❧❦ ❧❦ ❧❦ ❧❦ ❧❦ ❧

These have been in circulation and written about since last year, but I had to explain and explore myself. Edward Linley Sambourne was the chief cartoonist for Punch, a weekly British magazine of satire from the 1880's, but as an artist of true voracious caliber, he started to turn his attention to photography in the mid-1890's. Sambourne was clearly bewitched by women, his early cyanotypes were borderline-erotic portraits of ladies in various states of undress, and this should come as no surprise given the outrageous social customs of Edwardian England which made everyone nuts and sexually repressed (here is an exhaustive overview of examples of etiquette). But what's great about those portraits, and what would prove to be amazing about all of his portraits, is that great, painstaking attention to detail of clothing is almost always present. And because Sambourne was a cartoonist, he often took portraits of women and men in ridiculous poses so that he could reference them for drawings (see here).

In the last ten years of his life, Sambourne decided to leave the portrait studio and start working outside. These photos were taken between 1906-1908, and they span between family vacations, London, Edinburgh, Amsterdam and Paris. Most of us folk of the future have absolutely zero capacity to understand what an undertaking medium and large-format photography is, or what it even meant to take a Daguerrotype or cyanotype- especially since our use of film has become more of a thing of nostalgia and craft. Let me tell you what this whole enterprise involved: what Sambourne had to do was take this view camera, which was essentially a larger-than-hand box with bellows and a lens, set the damn thing up in the street with the ambient light and then shoot the photos while the camera was concealed by a bit of cloth or something. Your grandparents probably have a similar camera around their house somewhere, go ask. Oh, and from the looks of the women in these photos, this guy managed to do all this shit discreetly, although there are some photos of some women walking in the same location wearing the same thing, so he might have asked some women to just model for him and look mad casual, a practice, evidently, that continues today. 

Some of the women are a little out of focus due to, y'know, walking, but most of them are quite clear and lovely, captured during an entire stride with details of their dresses and skirts moving.

Dave Walker has chronicled a good chunk of Sambourne's work, and he points out why the photographer manages to get these amazing portraits of women in the street at a time when photography was nowhere near as prevalent as it is now, especially during a time when being discreet and orderly was of the upmost importance:
"...the concept of privacy with regard to photographs taken in the street was underdeveloped in Sambourne’s time. It’s probably true that as an upper middle class man he thought that his right to pursue his art outweighed any violation of his subjects’ privacy. " (via)
Insanely remarkable and fascinating to say the least.

Indeed, what makes these photographs remarkable to me is that they are able to capture the everyday from a period whence portraiture involved meticulous placement and staging. These are (mostly upper-middle class) women wearing what they donned everyday or on holiday. Look at the insane amount of layers and lengths, look at the frills and laces. It's astounding to see such mind-blowing attention to detail walking casually down a street when it's so rare to see anything dubbed as "casual" from the Edwardian era. I love the portrait of the woman in the white dress holding a book, you can see a small street dog scrounging for a scrap of food or something in the background- amazing!

I adore this man and his work, I love these women and their glorious getups, and I want to drown in the exceptional glory that is street style before street style. Eat your heart out, street bloggers.

POSTSCRIPT STUFF:

halle-friggin'-lujah I'm almost done with finals (one day to go and they're OVER!!).
With that said, I really need to knuckle down and start posting more often, so starting this week, I'll be trying to post every day, or at least every two days with something of interest: a shoot, some studio visits here and there, or y'know, one of my narcissistic personal style posts that I love to shoot but can't get over with how self-centered the whole phenomenon can be.
Anyways, hope I don't bore y'all. I'm off to work on my last paper and then procrastinate actual writing by concocting future post ideas❦ ❧

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