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9 years ago
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Talk about 'art for progress!' Label Pyer Moss has left a strong impression at their New York Fashion Week debut on September 10, with what many believe to be one of the most "powerful" showcases ever.
Photo Credit: Pyer Moss
The much buzzed-about menswear label has recently branched out into womenswear. Last week's NYFW was Pyer Moss's way of introducing this new foray for the label to the world. Instead of presenting themselves with frills and fantasy, they've allowed current events to penetrate their work, bringing the 'Black Lives Matter' movement to the forefront.
And from the overwhelming response online, it seems as though the politically-charged gamble has worked!
After the jump, find out more about this challenging and nerve-striking event.
Pyer Moss used their platform to address racism and police brutality head on, incorporating thought-provoking symbols on fashion pieces, including blood splattered sneakers and gun-holster accessories. There was also a 15-minute video presented to the audience before the showcase, featuring various horrific deaths of unarmed men and women who died at the hands of the police.
Police brutality and institutional racism are hot-button topics that founder and creative director Kerby Jean-Raymond, 28, wants people to be more aware of. Personally, the designer has experienced 12 gruesome stop-and-frisk encounters with New York law enforcement between the ages of 12 and 18.
Founder/Creative Director Kerby Jean-Raymond. Photo [...]
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9 years ago
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The title of Morgan Matthews’ narrative film debut, A Brilliant Young Mind, immediately evokes Ron Howard’s A Beautiful Mind, and both films have in common a protagonist who is an exceptionally bright mathematician with mental challenges. Unlike John Forbes Nash, though, who suffered from schizophrenia, A Brilliant Young Mind’s Nathan Ellis is merely on the autism spectrum. And unlike Nash, he’s a fictional character, though the film is based on Matthews’ 2006 documentary Brilliant Young Minds, about British teens competing in the International Mathematics Olympiad.
Matthews, who has made several documentaries, does a solid job with his first fictional feature; the film is nicely paced and well-acted, with a lovely soundtrack and striking visuals. James Graham’s script is both sensitive and witty, including enough real math to be authentic without making the story incomprehensible to civilians.
Diagnosed with Asperger’s, nine-year-old Nathan (Edward Baker-Close) is told that he is unique by his dad, who explains, "You have special powers like a wizard and we’re just muggles.” One of Nathan’s “powers” is synesthesia, wherein he experiences one sense (sound) as another (color); he’s often distracted by lights and patterns. He's also a math wiz. His mom Julie (Sally Hawkins) tries but cannot connect with Nathan the way his dad does. When the latter dies in a car accident, Nathan sinks further into himself, until he meets Martin Humphreys (the excellent Rafe Spall), a r[...]
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9 years ago
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It’s been a great summer for music. Taylor Swift is on tour, both the Cobain and the NWA documentary hit theaters, someone finally told off Miley Cyrus and One Direction is going on hiatus. Joy. Although summer isn't officially over until mid-September, the steady drop in temperature and fading light make it feel like it is almost fall. Before the leaves start to brown and fall, let's look back at the season and all the great releases that came with it:
1. “Run Away With Me” by Carly Rae Jepsen
Carly Rae Jepsen has gone from that one girl who sang that one sort of creepy song that everyone loved a couple summer ago to a legit pop artist. 2012’s one-hit-wonder has triumphantly returned with possibly one of the best pop albums of the summer. Maybe even of the year. Her new record, E•MO•TION, which was released last month, has already surpassed the popularity of “Call Me Maybe” and her sophomore album, Kiss. It’s no 1989, but it’s shockingly close.
2. “Leave A Trace” by Chvrches
In a recent interview with the Guardian, Martin Doherty of Chvrches told the publication that the band "could have sold 200,000 more albums” if they had “put Lauren [Mayberry] on the cover of every magazine." However, Chvrches didn’t want to be "that band with the pretty frontwoman" and chose to sell themselves as their full outfit. The issue of female representation has been brought up repeatedly this summer, starting perhaps with Sophy Ziss and Mariel Loveland’s Pixable article that animate[...]
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9 years ago
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Zeitgeist-identifier and design icon Marc Jacobs perfectly captures the spirit of New York City as the hub of the fashion world in an ultra-specific, ALL CAPS party invitation. Promoting the release of the book Gloss, Marc's glitter-soaked party will happen sometime during New York Fashion Week, (between September 10 and September 17) at fabled 1980-90s nightclub Tunnel.
This glamorous fête is separate from the September 10 book signing event at Bookmarc that looks to be open to the public.
The fabulousity of the strict "dress to kill" party guideline, expertly delineated in the invitation, seems to be even more exciting than the party itself. So much so that it's been getting lots of attention online thanks to Yahoo! Style, who first posted the colorful dress code.
As we await hungrily for images from the event, you won't believe what sort of look requirements Marc lays out for select guests after the jump!
Set for a September 1 launch, the book "Gloss" pays tribute to the glamorous photographer Chris Von Wangenheim, who's life was cut short in 1981. Known for juxtaposing the evil and grotesque with the beauty and glitz of the disco era, the Fashion Week release party dress code looks to be staying true to the overall energy of that time period.
Photo Credit: Instagram/Mao PR
The insanely "strict" and specific AF look requirement is as follows:
STRICT DRESS TO KILL CODE WILL BE ENFORCED: FUR COATS OVER LINGERIE, LIP GLOSS, JERRY HALL SIDE-SWEPT HAI[...]
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9 years ago
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NURTUREArt's group show Sextant looks to our sense of reality and place as constructed from memory, history, and objects. While a serious subject, some works are able to retain playfulness, an example being Igor Ruf's video work The Cave (2015). The artist as actor recites the same lines over and over as he moves and dances around a cave space. Subtitles indicate that he is saying he has bananas and a guitar, among other basic necessities, and he doesn't need much else. We see Ruf repeating names and asserting his identity, and it's unbelievable in its goofiness. He touches on the ability objects have in shaping our memories and how those moments cumulatively form the perception we wish to have for ourselves, and for others to have of us, and he maintains a lightheartedness throughout.
Calum Craik has two pieces in the show that also examine, as he writes in an artist's statement, "a hazy memory, actual events, and experience." He is more interested in pop culture, however, as he feels that "everyday objects act as vehicles to question and imagine...documents, photographs, and raw materials act as a mechanism to reconsider truths, events, or invent new possibilities." This certainly rings true in Lesiure (2013). A space blanket, shiny and geological-looking, is situated across a small image of a California pool that lays flat on the floor. Above this image hangs a small bowling ball resembling the earth. This creates a shadow on the lower left corner of the p[...]
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9 years ago
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The latest feature from Brazilian filmmaker Anna Muylaert may take place in São Paulo, but its story could be transplanted to any country with a functioning class system. While class differences and tensions are at the heart of The Second Mother (Que Horas Ela Volta?), the film also tackles complicated family dynamics; the result is a multi-layered drama that is as entertaining as it is perceptive.
Val (Regina Casé) is the longtime housekeeper for an upper-class family consisting of laid-back Dr. Carlos (Lourenço Mutarelli), his driven, successful wife Bárbara (Karine Teles) and their teenage son Fabhino (Michel Joelsas), who Val has virtually raised from childhood. Casé is a physically and emotionally expressive actor and her character is a warm, forceful presence, whether interacting with the family or with other workers in the home, especially younger housemaid Edna. Val’s constantly in motion, serving or cleaning up after the family, comically miming her feelings to Edna or muttering to herself as she goes about her duties. She has an intensely affectionate relationship with Fabhino, a coddled kid she caresses and croons to like a baby; he clearly enjoys the attention. In one scene, Val eavesdrops as his parents question him about marijuana they found, then she helps him hide it; the two are totally in cahoots.
Val hasn’t seen her own daughter Jéssica (Camila Márdila) in 10 years, as the girl has been living up north with relatives while her mother works in São [...]
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9 years ago
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As the summer season steadily winds down, and we start looking towards dressing for colder weather, let's look at items that women can wear all season long.
But let's not forget that many of us tend to wear the same clothes all season long, on account of frigid temperatures in many places of work.
(After all, we can't ignore talk about unfairly regulated, "sexist" air-conditioners.)
Meaning, that while it may be hot outside, it's ice-cold in many offices, movie theaters, shopping venues and more, so the need to stash a sweater in our totes is vital to summer survival.
However, this trend story is not about office politics, or sweater layering, it's about what we can wear anytime and anywhere that's always on trend (and will still look fierce under a sweater or with opaque tights).
Here are your three, tried-and-true fashion items (plus a bonus item) below:
The Wrap Dress
Photo Credit: DVF
Pity we don't have a nationally-designated holiday, celebrating Diane of Fürstenberg, the famed designed who introduced the valued fashion staple in 1974.
You can wear a wrap dress anytime of the year. With sleeves pushed up just so, enjoy walking around in breathable fabric, made with seasonless silk jersey.
A Printed Scarf And A Gold Bracelet
Photo Credit: Mariano Vivanco/Vogue Brazil
These are essential and effortlessly chic accessories that always work winter, spring, summer and fall. Use gold bracelets to dress up or down a style, and incorporate a s[...]
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9 years ago
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Even in a field of distinctive and cutting-edge animated films, Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet is unusual. Directed by Roger Allers (The Lion King), the long-gestating passion project of producer Salma Hayek features the work of eight international independent animators, in addition to Allers’ crew. Though constructed as a children’s tale, the film contains sophisticated animated segments inspired by chapters from Lebanese poet Gibran's much-quoted guide to philosophical and spiritual enlightenment. The framing story’s simplistic narrative and overly broad humor, presented in traditional (if not actually hand-drawn) animation style, is somewhat at odds with its dark political overtones, adding to the disconnect. Despite its flaws, however, The Prophet -- buoyed by a diversity of splendid animation -- becomes surprisingly poignant by its conclusion.
Very loosely based on its source and set in a vaguely Middle Eastern land, the narrative involves a rambunctious little girl whose mother (voiced by Hayek) cleans the rooms of a poet (Liam Neeson), imprisoned for seven years due to his inflammatory writing. One day he is told that he will be released to return to his own country, but the authorities -- autocratic bad guys (Alfred Molina, Frank Langella) -- aren’t exactly truthful. While young children might not understand the film’s themes of censorship, artistic freedom and tyrannical political regimes, older kids will probably be put off by the story’s naive presentation[...]
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9 years ago
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The AFP crew was inspired and motivated for the road trip up to the great city of Montreal. By the time the Greenpoint (Haven) rooftop event was in the books, it was late Sunday afternoon and Friday morning gave us just enough time to rest up for the 3 day festival. We mapped out the car ride and the artist performance schedule. Our Day 1 (Friday) plan was to arrive at Parc Jean-Drapeau by 3:30pm to see Run the Jewels. After a couple of snags we arrived a little later, but we did make it on time to see one of our more anticipated performances- The Kills.
Sadly, the band had some technical issues on stage, but despite their frustrations they rocked on and ended with a killer rendition of No Wow. Thirsty from the ride, we found ourselves guzzling Molson's at a rather rapid pace as we strolled over to see Chet Faker on an adjacent stage. He quickly went into his popular hits like Gold and 1998 with the electric soul vibe that we have been digging. It was obvious that many festival goers were excited to see the Australian perform, and he didn't disappoint.
As we made our way to the main stages (Riviere and Montagne), some of the original sculptures and art installations caught our attention. By the way, Osheaga is not just a music festival, but also an arts festival (heavy on the music). Some of the work was highly creative (images below) and seriously involved. The participating artists for 2015 were Station 16 Gallery, animators from the NFB, graduates of UQÀM’s D[...]
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9 years ago
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PropertyOfZack began as a “blog with daily coverage and commentary of the underground music scene.” It was founded in late 2009 by Zack Zarrillo and Emily Coch and in the past several years has grown to be a staple in the diet of many music fans. The site’s "Tours You Should Know About" and "Albums Out This Week" posts kept readers apprised on what was on the horizon and it’s podcasts “Off The Record” and “Simpler Sound” spurred discussion within the community. POZ was a place to turn to for not only news, but dialogue, insight and the occasional blink joke. But all good things must come to an end.
Earlier this week, in a post entitled “RIPOZ”, Zarrillo announced that the website would be ending. Thomas Nassiff of Bad Timing Records/Absolute Punk spoke further on the sudden departure of the beloved website in a post entitled “Blogging’s Dead. We Got Jobs.” Kind of self-explanatory. Long story short is by the end of the week there will be no more POZ.
After that there will be a hole in many a morning route and something missing from most Twitter feeds. There will no longer be a point in the day where you habitually check POZ for updates. Zarrillo’s voice and the voices of the rest of the POZ writer will surely arise elsewhere and continue conversations on other platforms, but until then the music community will be a little quieter.
In the meantime, what do we read? Here are some ideas:
The Runout
The Runout was founded in 2014 by Bryne Yancey, former editor for P[...]
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9 years ago
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This week, while we are trying to figure out how to somehow incorporate bodysuits into our late-Summer wardrobe, or how to convert a shirtdress into a layering piece, Paper Magazine has issued a fantastic round-up of 15 fashion stars-to-come that you need to know about right now .
These designers are fresh out of design school, probably excited to hit the ground running this September when the official 2015 international Fashion Week season returns after Summer hiatus.
Here's a sneak peak at FOUR of the designers featured in the round-up that are going to be household names by the time the 2016 Fashion Week season cycles in.
You're welcome.
1) Jon Max Goh, Parsons The New School for Design
Photo: Hiu Zhi Wei
Talented design, who also has a great singing voice, creates gender fluid ready-to-wear that doesn't conform to mainstream norms. “I’m interested in asking why and how we design the way we do—and answering these questions by designing in a way we don’t,” Goh tells Style.com.
2) Samantha MacDonald, Savannah College of Art and Design
Photo: Samantha MacDonald
This designer-to-watch will not be as easy to find on future high-fashion runway but she will certainly influence popular style as in-coming Assistant Fashion Designer at Macy's starting this Fall.
3) Elizabeth Hilfiger, Rhode Island School of Design
Photo: Elizabeth Hilfiger
Tommy's middle daughter might prove to be a chip off the old block, effortlessly creating preppy fast fashion like h[...]
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