2012年4月30日星期一

Pick Up a Prada Print

>> You may not like prints.  You may not even like colours.  You may be a die hard monochromatic edge-head.  But go on,Monster Beats Studio Lebron Jame, indulge your imagination and try and pick a Prada print for you to leap into a possible world where a print could accompany you.  Or if you're like me, perhaps you want to take one of everything and have odd shoe and multiple bags day (I think carrying three tops knotted together isn't overdoing it, right?)  I'm a bit late in the posting game but I could not help but put up these Prada goodies, arranged in the sort of visual merchandising set-up that renders me helpless to their printed evils.  They are going on sale mid-May as part of their new 'Print Collection' and the key story is the "OMG, they're under £500!",Breaking News, which sadly doesn't make a dent of a difference on my acquiring them.  Still, I guess there are some of you that can revel in the OMG of it all...

For me,Beats By Dr.Dre Solo, I'll just play "Pick a print" in my head and be done with it. 

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2012年4月29日星期日

Cheap Date

This is all going to look like one confusing heft of an image post.  From Cheap Monday's S/S 12 show at Stockholm where supposedly the references to the 60s/70s, I seem to have dug up a plethora of things that don't correlate with what the designers intended.  Can I help it however that the combination primary brights,Replica Radar Sunglasses, giant rivets, wipe-clean surfaces and pared down shapes in the collection that invite you to play conjures up the following for me...  

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(Bon Magazine Summer 2011, Shirley Manson giving some lip,coach wallets outlet, Tim Gutt for Dazed & Confused 2007, Cathy Dennis looking VIVID)

"This time we look back upon a time when our parents were young and a new generation was turning the older generations' concepts and ideas on its head. We celebrate and focus on a period when groundbreaking new ideas were perceived with a deadpan seriousness and where the irony of today was unheard of."

Cheap Monday's creative director Ann Sofie-Back and Orjan Andersson asserted that it was about their parents growing up at the end of the 60s to early 70s but as the show was soundtracked by a chart attack courtesy of J. Lo's On the Floor and surely a 21st century classic, Rebecca Black's Friday Song and some somewhat 90s vibes kept on coming at me, the whole thing was a little bit of a decade confusion.  My own image recollections above don't help in clarifying matters.  

Still, I don't necessarily need to nail down a Cheap Monday collection's decade origins.  A whole rabble of kids at the show were pumped, fed by bright hues, purist shapes and an ironic love of chart hits.  Cheap Monday have been trying to get the balance of concept and accessibility spot on for the past few seasons, which always throws up provoking pieces that for the price sets a BARGAIN alarm off in my head.  They seem to be able to really play around with their ready to wear line leaving their business mainstay, the skinny jeans to just tick along nicely.  A/W 11-12 already sees nihilistic PU pieces going into store.  For S/S 12,coach shoulder bags, shirts with acrylic pockets, rivet covered sweatshirts and two-tone lace-up shoes (no guesses where they were lifted from) will probably find themselves being hunted down.  

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2012年4月28日星期六

Sturdy Acrobatics

I have quite a few A/W 10-11 shoe fests to delve into so much so that I may have to temporarily hang up this banner and call the blog "Bubble sees Shoes" for a bit but not to worry as I'm most confident that by and large, the majority of you aren't irked off by shoe fests.

Let's get practical first shall we?  Nicole Brundage's secondary line Acrobats of God showed me some mighty fine tricks with lengths of elastic in the debut collection last season and once again, for A/W 10-11, Brundage has our feet firmly encased in yards of elastic which is actually all the better to stretch over and accommodate any wooly socks or chunky tights (at one point last winter, I wore two pairs of tights AND socks all together to keep the legs warm...).    The premise is still that of practicality and so the sole gets a very grippy lug sole (similar to the zig zag ones that Camilla Skovgaard has taken to) which are all the better for slippery surfaces.  See, a sign that I may not be completely away with the fairies and that yes, we must WALK in these damn shoes.  

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The light unpolished wood of last season's heels gets a ash-grey finish that also looks fit for trudging in and around wet surfaces.  Oh dear lord... I think this may be my mother talking.  Please make this incessant practical-point talking cease!

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The elastic also gets a whole lot chunkier and thicker so that the foot is more covered up.  If feet ever did mysteriously gain weight, this of course wouldn't be a problem with these shoes... incidentally, is it merely a myth that feet don't get fat... I've definitely noticed toes fluctuating in sizes... this could of course be my overactive brain. 

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I kind of wouldn't mind if this boot was entirely made out of elastic from the heel up...

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I kind of expect there to be seat belt clasps somewhere in this shoe where the elastic seems to veer off into the little folds that you see in safety straps... 

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Elastic may be allowing feet to get acrobatic but safety first...and no whites...,Coach Backpack!  Beware of broken pavements!  And don't sit too closely to the windows on buses!  (Can you tell I'm missing my mother a little bit?)

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Black Swan Detour

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What sort of a fashion blogger would I be if I didn't post about Black Swan whose film stills may be competing with Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette in the most-proliferated-in-the-fashion-blogosphere rankings?  Actually I was about to give it a miss altogether because a) it would have been difficult to review the film from the perspective of a film critic when so many do it so much better and b) it would have been a repetitive task to dissect the film's fashion credentials after the film has been out in the States for a good few months now.  I wanted to make one singular point of how much I loved London-based design studio La Boca's graphics for the adverts of the film except The Guardian did a far more competent piece on it.   

Thankfully the forces in film marketing moved about in a way that put Black Swan-themed ballet classes at Frame studio in Shoreditch with kit provided by Bloch, MAC cosmetics make-overs to give you either a White/Black Swan smoky eye and a screening of Black Swan at The Aubin Cinema in one afternoon/night bonanza yesterday to sway me to write about something that doesn't go along the lines of "Oooh... RODARTE tutu!".  It well and truly gave cause for a rare but genuine pat on the PR back.

So to the first part of the evening's festivities when we all had to regress to a time when we were five years old and had to do compulsory ballet classes even though posture and demeanour clearly indicated that some people were not fit to dance.  Oh, right just me then.  Even if ballet wasn't on your primary school agenda, getting changed into leotards and tights is reminiscent of any group PE experiences.  Except this time round, there were choruses of "Oh my hips look huge in these...".

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Tara from the PR company Robinson Pfeffer, primary instigator of all these shenanigans had the fiddly job of sewing all the elastics to the shoes, a task that I vaguely recall my mother doing whilst cursing "Why is it that you have to learn ballet again?".

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Hah... no such luck of seeing a picture of me attempting to prop my leg up onto the ballet barre.  Instead you get poor postured me faking it in a Bloch black leotard and pink tights before the class commenced...

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The instructor was I think, the only one who got the full Black Swan eye make-up treatment as apparently it takes about an hour to get just spot on.  We were put to our non-balletic paces set to the soundtrack of the film, going over all the basics - the positions of the arms and feet, pliés, temps levé, jeté - all serving to point out how unflexible my body is.  At least there wasn't a hard-faced French lady telling me I had spirit but no ability.  What's worse than having no ability?  Possesion of an abundance of pointless spirit...

I believe that Frame will be running more formal Black Swan-inspired barre classes from the 5th February onwards every Saturday for a month which involves barre work, floor barre as well as a simple dance routine loosely based on the Black Swan's dance if you wish to delve into the dance element a bit more. 

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I won't make it at the barre or beyond but I'm free to have a balletic element going on in my outfit so yesterday it was all about pale frothy latte/pink colours as well as touches of grey, a colour combination that incidentally costume designer Amy Westcott uses extremely well in the film where Natalie Portman's character is practising or warming up.  The Rodarte costumes for the final performance scenes were of course fantastical but the tight sheer shrugs, layering of bodies/camisoles, knits and wrapover skirts seemed to me, equally potent too (I do look forward to the Mulleavy's future film work though now they've shored up their proper accreditation on films).  Luckily Hong Kong label Plotz were on hand to steer me towards this decorative take on warm-up gear with their ways of elevating and manipulating fine cotton jersey with this cream dress with knotted detailing and leggings that start as cream tights and end as grey jersey leggings with padded kneecaps...

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Thanks to the lovely Shini of Park and Cube for taking the far superior pics that follow (until we get to film stills of course...) and for letting me play around with her fancy DSLR that I don't understand at all...

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Knee cap protection for potential bruising, a problem which frequently afflicts me...

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On to MAC's part to play in the night.  I was in a 'Why-the-hell-not?' sort of mood and though I normally object to this amount of eye makeup and false eyelashes because it plays all sorts of havoc with my contact lenses, for one night only I played the role of 'Girl who is excited about MAKE-UP!'. 

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I'm not quite sure the role suits me especially as I look like your typical evil stepmother character in a generic Korean soap opera.  Maybe I'll go for it in future years when I may or may not manifest as that character...

Oh and here's Steve and I are sitting in a comfy couch at the Aubin Cinema, in the basement of Aubin and Wills on Redchurch Street.  I hadn't ventured into the cinema before because all things Jack Wills/Aubin and Wills-related makes me angry about the antiques indoor market in Angel's Camden Passage that suddenly got turned into a Jack Wills store one day.  I went in looking for silver trinkets and found an English Abercrombie & Fitch surrounding me.  I have to say though that the screening room is a delight - all velvet chairs and couches, cushions, blankets and foot rests with just the smattering of Aubin and Wills branding... then again the screen is a collab with Soho House group so I'd expect self-indulgent cushtiness all round...

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On to the film itself.  How to review it without using an excess of superlatives.  However much I resisted getting swept away by it, in the end, I was indeed swept away by it.  This was in a way, a Darren Aronofsky film that felt far more elevated than say The Wrestler (supposedly a companion film to Black Swan in their exploration of athletes/artists who strive for perfection) but that could just be my bias towards the subject at hand.  In fact, I suppose there's no way of escaping my personal bias towards female characters who internalise their struggles, piling pressure on themselves as well as bending to pressure from others and trying to perfect an artform in a meticulous and studied way.  On a far less extreme level, characters like Nina exist in all artforms and vocations and I ended up recalling instances seen at my old girl's school that echoed touches of the corps de ballet in a dance company that is financially unstable as well as ridden with competitive spirit. 

Beyond the personal plight of Nina which I found engaging was Aronofsky's methods of communicating all of that internalised paranoia.  I completely agreed with Peter Bradshaw's comments of the film being the best portrayal of female breakdown since Roman Polanski's Repulsion.  In a way, Black Swan might even better Repulsion in that respect as certain hammy elements seen in Polanski's film are negated due to Aronofsky's choice of camera angles and movement.  I thought the use of Tchaikovsky's score was particularly effective when specific composed-for-the-film soundtrack would not have worked in certain scenes.  I'm also glad that the soundtrack composer Clint Mansell did step up and say that the score's strength is in Tchaikovsky (it was disqualified from Oscar nomination for the reason that pre-existing music was used). 

It goes without saying that the cast did good.  Very good.  Nominations and accolades will tell you that Natalie Portman is deservedly the star of the film but I also think that the rest of the cast supports Nina's spiralling downfall and flirtations with her inner Black Swan VERY well indeed - company director, bitchy ballerina, not-so-bitchy but sexy n' free ballerina, aging prima ballerina and frightful stage mother - all of those stereotypes could have been spectacularly stereotypical but manages to break free to make the film all the more absorbing. 

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