It's like like like

I'LL LET YOU JOIN THE DOTS

I often notice how so many people -especially from my generation - say 'like'.
If you stop and listen to a conversation you will actually feel yourself going crazy hearing
"it's like a it's like b it's like c it's like d it's like e".

I'm interested in something that is, like, what we know, but, like, not exactly.
Here's my absolute favourite video:

KM: body? legend? ghost?

KM represents an interesting dialogue between the material and the immaterial. She is the 'ideal' - a corporeal canvas. As a model she is also used to promote and display garments and other material objects. Yet the legend surrounding her celebrity strikes me as something akin to mythology. Her presence is no longer contained to a single body. She is shy and avoids interviews, leading some to fill in the blanks. She is often used to represent the ethereal and immaterial.

'look at us but do not touch'

An issue here is that women are often cast under these representations - hence the prevalence and popularity of 'it' girls, beauty icons and so forth. These representations are not entirely developed - they are not exactly a person - they are not always given a voice - they are mostly prevalent as an image - they are deliberately incomplete. The 'other' is often cast in this way. It is perhaps the main reason I struggle with reading the mainstream fashion press or hearing designers talk muses (ie, every video on style.com). It seems shallow, misleading, deceptive.

Charles Dana Gibson was seemingly aware of how limited constructions/archetypes are, his drawing above parodies his own work on the first American beauty ideal. What interests me here is that all fashion images are a) constructed and b)representative in some way. Sometimes these representations take on a non-material form or 'type', which seems to live within societal consciousness.

There is something unreal about fame - the famous are not entirely known or unknown to us. They are often crafted as material representations of something elusive and unobtainable. That something spurns obsession and desire among some, as mystery intrigues. As Karl Lagerfeld said "I don't want to be a reality in people's lives. I want to be like an apparition."

I might try the pepper's ghost method for displaying my work... will try that out soon.

Daniel Carlston - Acne Paper Invite

I've been building up a list of inspirations/influences for the folio and the presentation. I've used cardboard and paper for some of my samples, the use of paper here to represent the jacket (and shirt) is interesting.

Peggy Noland

Via A Shaded View on Fashion

Constructing the immaterial

I created this mask to test mesh over taped wire (as used in my 'no sew' experimental

toile). Mesh has been great to experiment with. Next I will be hanging beads and pom poms from mesh. The puppet below has been hanging around my house since I was a kid. It gave me the idea to hang the jacket from strings like a puppet. It also reminds me of an 'ectoplasm' - gangly necked, material, monster that I am here using to represent the unknown.

Many more interesting pics that I will add later. I had to edit parts out of photos and

so on....

Inspired by these ectoplasms - In these shots they have been created by cloth and dolls faces?




Ectoplasm is shapeless, it is "informe," a kind of primordial paste—and to show itself as this, it annexes semiotic markers that designate intermediate spirit worlds. When looking at these fluid, inchoate forms, sometimes imprinted with a face, it is worth recalling that the word larva, used in English for the early stage of a caterpillar, meant "ghost" or "specter" in Latin, but is also used by Horace to designate a mask, such as might frighten an observer, while the verb larvo meant "to bewitch" or "enchant." Ectoplasmic masks are indeed larval: they promise the emergence of forms, but don't deliver them.

-Issue 12 of cabinet magazine, via stinkoblotto

and...Another interesting and bizarre resource with great images

finally, this funny gif I found sums up my project (minus the cheesy text):

Wax Seals for Folio

^I've been trawling bizarre wedding invite sites for these. Those and websites called things
like 'pagandreamz'! Like the white seals pictured above and organic shapes they make...

I'm not aiming to actually recreate ye-olde design, more a fusion of different styles:
Going to investigate these seals in Degraves street later today... thought they might look nice
numbering my folios ie 1,2,3 in different bright colours. My folio is a series of handwritten,
burgundy, A5 moleskine journals.




^faux-seal?chewing gum on the ground? .....................^smileys 4eva :-)))))

This feed is a good resource for these seals ss many are not credited... Really like the minimal
layouts with seals or the ways that seals are used on modern stationary (ie sanrio stationary?)
to create a jarring effect...

Mac nerds really need to settle down.

Modern Tailoring

I lied...one last post!

One last post: this video is by Umbro and details how the utilised tailoring techniques to create

the english soccer uniform. Thought some of you might find it interesting. Watch it here...