One of my favorite adages is “Even a broken clock is right twice a day.” Well Linda Kostowski’s realfakewatches are just that. (Unless you go with the digital version.) The watches are laser-cut from three pieces of leather and manually assembled. They’re fastened with velcro and each one comes with a unique time hand-picked by their “randomizer robot.” Or you can pick the time with a custom order. Super cute. Get ‘em at HERE.
Josefina Lar has some of the hottest pants around. I love this collection. But I’m dreaming of her enorgeous (that’s enormously gorgeous) periwinkle mohair coat or oatmeal sweater on this particularly cold day.
The Swedish born London College of fashion and Preen / Ann Sofie Back alumnus’ sihouettes are to die for. Her fantastical knits are brilliant and dreamy as well.
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Photographer Erwin Olaf has received a lot of attention for his Grief series. These images of women in “grief-striken” moments are definitely striking. But most of all I love his more beautiful, yet uncomfortably “inappropriate” work. It actually makes me squirmy, in an interesting way. The Mind of their Own series of portraits of children and adults with what appears to be Down’s Syndrome is riveting. I also adore the Royal Blood collection and portraits of Slovaks in his ProductPhotography for Borek Sipek. Olaf’s work has been commissioned for big brands from Levi’s to Microsoft, and Nokia, but his personal work, of course, is his best. Some of the nudes in on his site in the Chessmen and Squares series are definitely beyond my comfort zone but I have to stare at them anyway.
See his full body of work HERE. Make sure to view the short films. This is the man I want to direct my biopic.
Solange Azagury-Partridge‘s rings are my current obsession. Her baubles have have dressed up the V&A, the Louvre and the London Design Museum. Her insect and avian-heavy collection rested its wings in New York recently for a show in Chelsea’s Sebastian + Barquet gallery. In addition to her signature rings and cuffs, there was a $2.8 million 18k and white gold chandelier! Some of her most amazing finger candy below. (Love the eye and Libra ones!)
I almost had to peel myself off the floor when I saw the Bergdorf Christmas windows. I swear they have a hidden porthole to my brain. How do they do it all over again year after year?
I don’t particularly like window shopping. Unless it involves acquiring some of Géraldine Gonzales’ crystal paper jellyfish. The l’Ecole Supérieure d’Arts Appliqués Duperré graduate and super sculptress dresses Parisian windows for some of the city’s finest – including Printemps, Sonia Rykiel, Christian Lacroix, Hermes, Baccarat, Van Cleef & Arpels, Guerlain, and Givenchy. I’ve never wanted a paper flamingo so desperately. It scares me how I’ve managed to make even window-shopping cost money.
(Love the ibis and red fish skeletons!)
We’re obviously a society in need of some security. And when things get as bad as they are out there, the basic comforts of a soft sweater, a hot cup of tea, and a dog on your lap can make all the difference.
I like to contextualize things, so I’m gonna say that’s what the current knit-mania is about – giving us a little Linus blanket when everything feels so scary. Take the Masquerade knitting collective that is covering half of Stockholm’s infrastructure in “custom” sweaters… or the crochet-covered bus driving around Mexico City created by the awesomely named collective Knitta Please! Fashion’s pied pipers Commes des Garçons and Colette are even knitting it up. CDG just did a line with couldn’t-be-knittier Arne & Carlos. And, as a friend informed me when he was in Paris doing his show at Colette, knitting team Wool & The Gang was installing a knit “winter chalet” complete with looped fireplace and all.
Well, I have been known to knit a mean muffler. I may have to bust out my number 9′s.
I love this adorable collection by Australian label Orri Henrisson. Helmed by former graphic designer, Henry Ng, the label’s debut collection for Summer of ’09 is titled, “King Of Carrot Flowers”, allegedly referencing Neutral Milk Hotel’s song of the same title. (I had no idea who that band was, but found the song HERE.)
I want every woman’s piece in this line – especially the balloon shorts that I need to find a way to get my hands on. Simple and easy summer dressing. Perfect for a complicated girl like me.
The 98-year tour de force that was the life of Bonnie Cashin left an enormous, oft-overlooked, inspiration-riddled legacy for American fashion designers. One visit to her website delivers to you a landing page that plays an interview where Cashin straight-talks about women’s design needs in her Kate Hepburn-esque chic yet all-business tone.
Born in California in 1908, Cashin was raised by a dressmaker mother and never received any formal design training. After a short stint designing costumes for chorus girls in Los Angeles, her carreer hit its stride when she took as position as costume designer at Twentieth Century Fox in 1943, eventually wardrobing over sixty films including including Laura (1944), Anna and The King of Siam (1946), and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1946). She used Fox’s libraries and leading ladies to develop ideas for “real” clothing and returned to ready-to-wear in 1949.
Her collections were a testament to her unsuppressable joi de vivre and fiercely independent nature. As the late and very great Amy Spindler wrote in her Cashin tribute for The New York Times:
To say that the fashion designer Bonnie Cashin was a colorful character is an understatement. Her clothes alone were so colorful that she used them, in open closets and exposed shelves, as her apartment’s primary decor. That decor blended beautifully with pieces by the designers of the day she considered her peers, people who didn’t make clothes at all — the Eamses, George Nelson and Isamu Noguchi.
Pam Bristow is a twelve-year veteran of the Design, Fashion, and Communications industries. She has developed and executed creative solutions for both domestic and international brands in a diverse range of lifestyle categories. Her custom strategies include Concept Development & Ideation, Creative Direction, Interior and Environmental Design, Communications Strategies, Custom Publishing Projects, Strategic Collaborations, and Special Event Design.
A master “placemaker”, Pam has been creating and curating unforgettable, concept-driven environments and “jewel box” experiences for clients in the fashion, lifestyle, art, retail, and hospitality industries for over a decade.
Pam has a personal affinity for both emerging and established creative talent and has a proven history of success in the delicate marriage of art and commerce. Her area of expertise is in the creation of unique, culturally attuned, and highly tailored communications products that resonate with global tastemakers.
