Genie in a Bottle

Photographer Joshua Scott was hired to do the product shots for Marc Jacob's new Lola perfume.  Instead, he was inspired to, as he said, "attempt to photograph the product without actually photographing the product but rather the ideas and emotions that combine to create the product."

According to Scott, since all perfume shots are just shots of liquid in a bottle, he wanted to do something different.  Pretty clever way to capture the intangible effect of a scent!

Listening To: Discovery

A new spin on a classic crush song...




Discovery's "I Want You Back"

And fyi, the entire album is sooo good.  It's the project of Vampire Weekend's keyboarder and producer Rostam Batmanglij and Ra Ra Riot singer Wes Miles, also featuring Dirty Projector's Angel Deradoorian.  Stellar cast, right?

Listen to the songs here (or on iTunes)

Valentine's 2k10: Part IV

 

 

  

 

 

images from 1: unknown, 2: the selby, 3: unknown, 4: Miles Fisher's blog

Valentine's 2k10: Part III

 

Part III: Be My Valentine?

Above, the tiniest Valentines come in the tiniest boxes.  What isn't cuter in miniature?  Get a custom tiny letter from LeafCutter Designs.  via Design*Sponge

If you're too behind schedule to send out homemade Valentine's now, you can send this online Valentine's postcard from Kate Spade (I'm telling you, she's a genius).

Click the jump for more Valentines

Trends I Love, V. 2

#1:  Old-school barbershops for men.

I don't know why, since I'm not a man, but I really love the idea of old-fashioned barbershops for men.  I've mentioned this before, but I have an unexplained nostalgia for an era I didn't live through when routine daily activities were glorified.  Like shaving.  Here, a barbershop in London called Murdock that is along the lines of Freeman's (below) in New York. 

And for me, this begs a question.  I would say the female equivalent to getting a shave at a barbershop is getting a manicure-- it could easily be done at home, but it's nice to have someone else do it for you.  So why aren't there classy manicure joints like there are men's barbershops?  They're all tacky!  Even the new trend in nail salons is the ultra-girly look (not feminine, girly, there's a difference) where everything is pink and sparkly.  Ick.

This reminds me of the J. Crew Men's store vs Women's store issue... to me the men's version is just so much cooler.  Why can no one get a grip on what classic, old-fashioned (but updated) femininity looks like? 


Trend I Love #2:  Anything apothecary-looking. 

Here, Portland General Store's REALLY well-packaged skincare products.  Love the brown glass and please someone tell me, who designed their awesome labels??

In addition to cool packaging, the recipes for these products actually came from an old apothecary's book listing the ingredients of all their products.





Would make a good Valentine's gift for a guy, no?  Although I guess it's a little late now... birthday?  (And actually, I will say from experience that their shipping is not exactly prompt, so order ahead when you want it!)

"I'll breakfast in bed and then get straight up into the tweeds."

 

Doesn't this bedroom look like the perfect spot to stay snugged in for some coffee and a scone while you read the newspaper??  Everything about it says "linger a while"...

Rumpled and casual but elegant bedding, sun streaming in the window, that sconce you can pull around to aid the morning light, and you've got that charming old phone there just in case anyone needs to reach you.

Also l-o-v-e: the gallery wall behind the bed, the wood ceiling, the striped indigo pillows and striped sheet peeking out amongst an otherwise white (but textured) bed scheme.


(Title quote from Gosford Park)

Valentine's 2k10: Part II

Part II: The Food Edition

 

LOVED this cute idea from Eating is Art-- she decortated this box and filled it with things she loved about her husband and things he loves.  (Recipes included in the link too.)

  

For the non-sweet-toothers*, a cheese and fruit plate with calimyra figs.  Did you know they look like hearts when cut length-ways? 

J'adorable.

Click the jump for more edible treats...

Fool's Gold

Would you have guessed this is an oil painting??  Carly Waito's hyper-realistic paintings of metals and gems had me at hello.

Interesting that when so much contemporary art is focused on getting away from illusionistic, representative traditional approaches to painting and shocking the viewer with the new and the "is it art?", that something purely representational can appear so incredibly fresh.

Really, at it's most basic, this painting (with a very clever spin) has many highly traditional attributes: it is an effort at depicting something realistically, and it depicts something beautiful and even worshipped, much as art from the 15th-19th centuries illustrated religious scenes, beautiful landscapes, and wealthy patrons.

via Pixels & Arrows

Listening to: Jonsi

"Go Do" by Jonsi, a side project by Sigur Ros frontman Jonsi Birgisson




Not only is the music hauntingly beautiful in a celestial and atmospheric way (think Bon Iver but with more instruments and the pace and anthemic drive of Coldplay's Viva la Vida, plus more hope and less melancholy), the video itself is a work of art.

The editing is actually unreal, notice how the cuts and the visuals parallel the music.

disovered via the really awesome music blog Sunset in the Rearview


Update: So fyi, I went to download the album after watching this video and discovered it's not being released until March 10, but there's another preview track available on his website.  It's equally intriguing and magical.

Downsizing (the good kind) >> Trends I Love, V. 1

Karl Lagerfeld's Off the Record, his personal collection of photos he took from 1986-1994.

When I was little, I spent tons of time at bookstores with my dad.  (I asked my mom recently what I liked to play with when I was little, because I didn't remember having dolls or anything, and she said "you liked to go to bookstores and read." haa).  So I was genuinely sad when small, focused bookstores packed with hand-picked treasures old and new started to die off, and hence, I'm glad they are reemerging (slowly).  Compared to that kind of bookshop, there's nothing magical about exploring a Barnes & Noble-- it's impersonal and sterile.  It's like buying groceries at Walmart vs a farmer's market.

In Williamsburg, High Valley Books is helping to bring back the small bookshop scene with interesting off-the-beaten-path books like these that have long-since been pushed off the shelves of B&N.  With a small selection, you're more likely to find these gems...

A funny little (snobbish, in the fun way) book about "the two kinds of collectors" with chapters like "The Confession of a Collector"

In general, I have to say I love the direction the world is going in as regards mass production (or rather the demise of its popularity).  Everything became SO available (any food any time of year at the grocery, any book on Amazon, etc), and now things are shifting back to local, antique, and handmade.  And stores that focus on curated, carefully selected collections of things. I think I could have a happy life based on farmers markets, old books, and antique textiles, furniture, etc.  Maybe next I'll get into vinyl records?

Kate Spade's Contents, a book of photographs and descriptions of the contents of famous people's handbags.  Love the concept!

So back to the bookstore, it's actually not even really a bookstore, it's better than a bookstore.  It is one guy's personal collection of books about art, fashion, architecture, etc., many of which are out of print or signed, and he has his inventory listed online.

A now rare chronicle of 20th century fashion houses and personalities

You can, by appointment, go to the "store," which is actually more like the front room of his Brooklyn brownstone, stacked floor-to-ceiling with books.  Though there doesn't appear to be an organizational system, you can ask him about any book or author subject, and he'll know exactly where it is.  ...The perfect place to browse on a rainy (or snowy!) day.


PS- these kinds of bookstores are great places to find unique gifts for friends with really specific interests.. I got some great Christmas presents from this one.

Valentines 2k10: Part I

Part I: Loving Love

Despite the dreaded "commercialization" of holidays, I love Valentine's Day.  I do.  I can't help it.  If you look past the Hallmark-y overload, Valentine's is an excuse to creatively express sweet sentiments with abandon-- what's not to love? 

 

Yard Work

Creating a dwelling out of sticks sounds primitive, basic, and even instinctual-- after all, people have been doing it since the beginning of time.  But artist Patrick Dougherty, who was a capenter before becoming interested in art, infuses wonder, whimsy, and delight into his stick structures.

Though Dougherty is classified as an Earth Artist or Land Artist (which seems obvious given his medium and installation sites), to me he actually seems more a part of a decorative arts and architecture trajectory... though not an applicable or practical step forward in architecture, his vision echoes the long history of people taking pride in their dwellings.

To me, he rather seems like the Frank Gehry of primitive architecture.  Gehry looked at buildings made of modern materials and asked why they could be more imaginitive and fluid, while Dougherty essentially did the same thing with the most basic building materials. 

Fem/Masc

 

lace, bows, tights, satin, lipstick, ruffles / trousers, leather, blazers, tweed, military

 

How do women look good in everything from the ultra-feminine to the seriously masculine?  

I don't know, but I love it.

Images from Rodney Smith (1),  Garance Dore (7, 11), Scott Schuman (10), the adorable Lyell (6), This is Glamorous, photographer Tom Palumbo (5), and Jak & Jill(9)

Interiors >> For the Blizzarded...

For those of you blizzarded in today, a few images to warm you up.  Although it's the usual 65 and sunny here in California, it actually sounds fun to me to have a day of blankets, movies, homemade smores, books, hot chocolate, time to catch up on magazines, and baking (because I generally will if I'm inside all day). 

A smore with nutella, peanut butter, and banana and Apt. Therapy's best hot chocolate brands and recipes.

And definitely lots of candles everywhere if the power goes out ... or even if it doesn't.

Images from three favorites: Desire to Inspire, Design*Sponge, and at bottom, This is Glamorous (and it's a Ralph Lauren room).

Poker Face

Francoise Nielly's abstracted portraits ...are... striking. Loud. Almost brash. And somehow also intimate. And beautiful. Which is interesting given that their proximity, as in, how close-up the viewer is brought to the subject, is uncomfortable. The subjects almost always appear suspicious of their viewer. And yet there is a vulnerability to them.  You get the feeling of an undercurrent of tension revolving around the subject's exterior persona vs. interior life.


This is amazing to me: Nielly paints these based on black and white photographs, meaning she has an incredible ability for translating dark and light into unexpected colors and values that our eye will still translate as a 3D form.


Also, she paints in big, simple, uninhibited strokes using a palette knife. Watch the video at bottom to see her process-- it will invoke envy at her ability to look at something and translate it almost instantly, instinctually, into the forms and colors that she does.

Click the jump for the rest of the post...

Listening To: The Avett Brothers

Sweeter Than the Title Lets On...

Just last week, I downloaded the Avett Brothers' album I and Love and You, and then I discovered this song, off their album The Second Gleam, via Hollister Hovey, and I started to think I needed that album too. I think I was behind the times on this band and that the Avett Brothers' earlier albums are potentially even better.

The lyrics and harmonies of this song are so simple and beautiful.

Then I discovered the song "If It's the Beaches," which is off their EP, and now I'm wondering if I need all their albums?

Also, doesn't his voice on "Color Show" sound kind of like the lead singer of Say Anything?