Pilgrimage

Somehow I never connected the fabulous InAisce to the (makes-me-feel-a-little-uncomfortable) Sruli Recht. It makes perfect sense now, but that connection was not established in my grey matter until I received an invite to the Sruli Recht A/W 12 presentation in Paris, and noticed tiny print at the bottom that InAisce will also be presented at the same art gallery, at the same time. The world makes sense again. Except for the fact that I'll likely miss every InAisce show that I'm invited to. Sigh.

Anyway, this is a teaser photo of InAisce's A/W 12 collection, as posted on Facebook this morning. Looks like Jona is pressing on into the land of accessories, whilst attempting to make his models walk across the ocean. Perhaps that backpack is also a floating device...

Song for the Mute, et al.

Today's post took a little bit of a journey to get to. First, I stopped by NOTCOUTURE, as I do, and clicked on a thumbnail for a post from Italian online mag We Are Selecters. This led me to peer around their site a bit, which led me to an entry on the fantastic third collection from Australian menswear label Song for the Mute, which comes from the duo of graphic designer Melvin Tanaya and Parisian-born designer Lyna Ty. I somehow didn't notice that there was a video for the A/W 11 'Milieu' collection tacked onto the bottom of the WAS post, and I was wondering where the photos for the new collection had come from (as they aren't on the label's website), so I went to the SftM Facebook page to search further. This in turn brought me to one of my more recent favorite blogs, scoute, who had (also) posted the Milieu video, which I will now insert here for the simple fact that it is pretty.

Doesn't that make you want to go to Australia right now? And perhaps have one of those huge wetsuit zippers to spice up your regular ol' black sweater? Anyway, I apparently haven't read scoute for a few weeks, as I hadn't seen the post on Sruli Recht. Though I had only written a couple of posts on Sruli (the main one being here), I immediately had the two-fold reaction upon seeing his name of 'Oh!' and '...', as I think a lot of his work is incredible, and yet I still don't know how to feel about his use of particular 'materials'. You'll have to go here to see the video that i-D magazine did with Sruli as I can not embed it here, but I do recommend it for anyone interested in the designing and pattern making process. The video is intended to be a sneak preview of Sruli's upcoming menswear A/W 11 'When Gravity Falls' collection that will be shown at Paris Fashion Week, though all we see is the initial construction of a jacket (featuring half-size dress forms and laser cutting pattern machines) that may or may not be in the collection. Though I will never be in a position to buy a robot to cut out my patterns (and really, I think my tendency to be lazy is more compatible with Julian Roberts' method of pattern cutting), I'm excited to see Sruli's upcoming laser cut collection.

By the way, in case you've made in this far in the post and you want a couple more links to click on, you may be interested to know that, starting tonight at midnight EST (i.e. New York time), complexgeometries will be having a one day (i.e. 24 hour) sale of 40% off their entire store. Just use the code 'onedaysale'. I highly recommend the Wave T for $82.20, or the Wool Stifler for $202.20.

(Photos of Song for the Mute's A/W 11 collection are actually via Dapper Kid, which I found via the SftM Facebook, even though I could've just as easily saved them from WAS. Now I will try to calculate the mileage my fingers just clocked in coming up with this post...)

Sruli Recht

Okay, I'm ready to post, now that the sun has gone down. I had the most glorious day just wandering around outside, stopping to read on a bench for about an hour, and to buy a pair of $35 jeans that fill the void that trying on some $299 Acne jeans left. I forgot how much I loved being outside. Sigh. Anyway, I'm unsure about posting more on this artist, whom I mentioned the other day after discovering him via Pour Porter. Sruli Recht's residential origins are enough to make me intrigued, as he was born in Jerusalem, then later became a citizen of Australia, and now is based in Reykjavik. And one look at his older experimental designs had me instantly floored. However, Mr. Recht also creates things with seal skin, horse skin, 'Minke Dork' (only Google this if you really want to know), Arctic fox fur, sheepskin, and rams' blood. A few such projects are explained/justified by saying that such 'materials' were waste products of the hunting/meat industry, and all of his pieces that are available for sale are 'non-products', meaning that they are not mass produced. However, as I have issues with even 'normal' bovine leather, I don't really care if his art supplies were procured ethically or not.

Having said that, Sruli Recht is an incredible designer. According to Wikipedia, he also worked for three seasons with Alexander McQueen, cutting patterns and constructing catwalk pieces. So he obviously has talent. Nonetheless, though I'm in awe of the animal-friendly pieces pictured here, I wouldn't buy any of his designs. But I will be inspired by them.

In other news, the Alexander McQueen show next week has been cancelled, and will instead be a presentation/memorial with no cameras allowed. Sigh.

No Poetic Device

This week has had nostalgia around every corner. The evening shift has seen me scheduled with the most interesting co-worker of the lab, which has led me to sharing many of my old stories, simply because she hasn't heard them yet. And as we've shared control over the music we work to, I've flipped that long forgotten 'Shuffle' switch on my iPod, reacquainting me with songs and bands that were my soundtrack so long ago. That glorious fog I walked home in the other night brought me back to the wondrous eight months I lived in Vancouver (even though they weren't actually so wondrous). Walking home so late at night after my evening shifts has returned me to my undergrad days, where I couldn't bear to leave my boy's side before 3 AM (thank goodness he is now a man who goes to bed long before then). The early morning walks also bring me back to that long revered last night of summer camp, where all us hoodlums would pull an all nighter, taking part in fairly calm activities such as enjoying the fruits of the labour of the silent aspiring furniture movers, who thoughtfully rearranged the Center's foyer furnishings onto the soccer field (there's a certain chair that I wanted to reposition to someone's stoop this morning to provide a very well-deserving cat a nice place so perch on). Another last night activity involved falling asleep in heaps in a field or on someone's deck. This Blankoat, made of Icelandic wool by the brilliant Sruli Recht (who I will return to very soon), vividly reminds me of one of my sleeping friends. A dream I had this week led me to email another old friend from said summer camp days, whom I haven't spoken to in years. And yet all this nostalgia isn't making me feel old. Perhaps it's the gorgeous spring weather, and the new pair of monochrome extra-high Chucks that keep the old feeling new again. Sigh.