so much for a skirt thought

Простая черная юбка-карандаш с завышенной талией - девочки должны одеваться женственно и не носить брюки. Стиль унисекс - это западная пропаганда, нацеленная на смешение полов и разрушение института семьи.
Translation: a simple black pencil skirt with high waist – girls must dress in a feminine style and not wear any trousers. Style ‘unisex’ is a propaganda from the west aimed at blending genders and destroying family values.
This is what I have just come across while browsing through lookatme.ru – a Russian site about news, culture, fashion, events and so on. There’s a small article about what people buy and what it says about their personality, so it was Karina Kino’s turn to comment on her recent buys. She’s an installation artist working mainly with graffiti-style colourful cartoonish drawings and paintings. Very naturally I’m baffled by her comment on a black skirt. I’m not too sure where to put it, whether it is narrow-minded, sexist, racist or just simply Russian thought. So much to prepare for a trip to Russia which is coming up in the end of May!

Yet aren’t we forgetting something here, my dear miss Kino? That we both come from a country where building roads, for example, was considered to be the upmost feminine profession…our proud trews-wearing ancestors can confirm.

Ok ok, personally my origins hail back from ‘gorod nevest’ (city of the brides), where most, if not all, femmes of my family tree were textile industry professionals. So may be I should just shut up.

Hyper bloom!?

Here’s one basic truth I want to share with everyone…be warned, it has absolutely nothing to do with fashion!
I’ve never been known for having a green thumb, so I basically avoid bringing anything green and living to my place. But lately I’ve been seduced by all the wonderful and lush spring greenery that I wanted to bring some within the comfort of my home (which is seeing some restructuring at the moment). So today I went shopping for an indoor plant! ‘How banal!’ some might say, and how worthy is it to post on a ‘fashion’ blog? Well, I was going through endless racks of greeny stuff, feeling every leaf for texture, grabbing every pot I liked, holding it up in the air and admiring from multiple angles and mumbling some awkward thought to myself – that’s exactly the clothing shopping procedure I may go through. The morale: I’m a complete green-leafed dumbass, and I was very lucky to have my mom with me to steer me clear away from green-pea plant or gooseberry bush as I had no idea they were what they were. Eventually I've chosen for these two fellas and really hope they will last.

Just browsing! It’s Sunday.

Complex Geometries dress
Complex Geometries top

Office boots

Fifth Avenue Shoe Repair dress

No editions leather vest

All Saints shopper

Some little bits and bobs to add to the previous post. Ah!

Products from Zara Home

inspired!

The spring clean is becoming more and more evident with all that I plan to do in my little apartment. I’ve been browsing through the images on desiretoinspire.blogspot.com for almost the whole day. My verdict – inspired! Thank you very much, guys!
I never liked interiors that are too well made up with coordinated colours and made-to-measure furniture. I prefer to collect, and sometimes it becomes almost like dragging all sorts of weird stuff in – the downside of collecting, of course. So that’s how I end up with six different chairs standing around my table! I couldn’t decide which style I wanted, so I’ve got a bit of everything – an old school chair, an architect’s chair, Scandinavian teak chair, a cardboard stool with book print (loved it at first sight when I came across a photo of a room with a white table and six of those standing around it…I’ve got only one to add up to my chair identity crisis) and a vintage armchair covered in black skaï.

This image makes me feel that I’m not alone in this world! I also love the raw piece of wood against the design aspect of every chosen stool.

So I’m getting rid of the carpet and painting the shabby wooden floors white to have as much light as possible, the staircase will get treated too. I do have much more stuff, less space and literally no light compared to this image, but I want the effect.

So basically white+wood is what makes me cosy. It's a very multi-faced formula if you see all the wonderful results.



But I’ve been contemplating on a splash of colour lately – definitely a paradigm shift for my habitat, as I’ve never used colour in my surroundings before, but I’m tempted by an acid yellow or Yves Klein blue touch. I guess I’ll just get myself a small pot of paint and play around with it. A placard? A thrifted kitchen table? Who knows.


As for the everlasting couch dilemma, I’ve taken a crucial decision to get rid of the Scandinavian vintage sofa, and make my double bed into a loungey couch. Back to white this time.

With all this I’m hoping to make my place a little less gloomy as it has become during the short winter days. And for anyone who’s looking for some inspiration, surely check desiretoinspire. Everything from living room down to lovely kitchen ideas are up on that blog.

Holey!

On a lazy Sunday I’m wearing loads of holey textures…there’s a micro-piquet dress, there’s a perforation on my men’s style shoes, edgy pixelated earring. Yes, I could be selling pirate videos on a market sometime in the 90’s Russia, dressed like this. No, I’m just minding a spring-clean on eBay. The link is coming soon.

master at work

Antwerp, Cologne, a hotel room exploding with clothes, Boessert/Schorn’s unique piece from a/w 10 collection, missed trains, white wine, and amazing photography from Christoph Voy. Now we just all need to wait until the August issue of Spex!


This is the least of what I found in Antwerp – master at work, I say.

Iloa magic!

Here’s just a quick one to share before I set off to Antwerp. Some of you’ve probably seen this before, but I just love to post beautiful images. These are from Iloa's autumn/winter 09 and spring/summer 09 – a finish label created by Anu Salonen. There’s always something of witchcraft in her work – this time it’s about contrasts, obscurity and subtle humour. Can I paint my face in the kitty manner, Anu? Please!

Christian Wijnants stocksale

Tomorrow is the shooting for Spex magazine. I haven’t put myself in front of the camera for a very long time…since ‘Decomposition’, it seems, not counting the self-portraits featured on this blog, of course. Plus I have ambitiously stated that I wear size 36…that is, yes, in oversized COS size system…frankly, did not specify. Note to thyself – need to eat less cheesecakes.

once again about the Devils

1:0 for Brussels, with a happy new little link. These fellas are way more glitzy than the images of my BXL love, but nevertheless, worth a read!
The Devil must have a Delvaux bag.

Happy Easter Monday!

Last Easter Sebastian bit the ears off my chocolate bunny. The resulting gore is this image:

This Easter I haven’t got a chocolate bunny.

Brussels love

Some random snapshots of even more random settings taken on a sunny Saturday afternoon. Oh how I love you - Brussles!

a a A

Just wanted to share a link that i came across while looking for Anu Tuominen images. It's a blog previously unknown to me, but I'm glad to discover the sourse of the most exquisite photography: a a A. Enjoy!

a delicate chain reaction

I’m weaving something intricate here. A tiny little chain that is crocheted out of a single sewing thread in rosy pink. It’s meant to hold a plastic horse-shoe and a tiny figurine. I didn’t see how time-consuming this process will get, and moreover I planned several rows of this chain to mimic all the current chain embellishment. A delicate pun as a lament for bling-bling.

Anu Tuominen

Today I am literally feeding my soul off the Anu Tuominen’s work. There are images which amazed me just as much as Chris Larson’s Deep North which I wrote about earlier. Wherever I go I see them like a glare of the sun. Yesterday I passed by the Bozar shop and got myself another beauty fix – a catalogue of Anu Tuominen’s work in a retrospective. I did hesitate a lot between this one and her ‘Thinkables’ book, but I will just end up buying it next week because I can’t have enough. Get ready for a lick of pistachio ice-cream as art!
I love the straightforwardness of her artistic language and the neatness of every detail. She contemplates on colour a lot, regrouping and reclassifying it every time in different poetic meanings. But I especially admire her site-specific installation and this snapshot of ‘For Hibernation’ is the best example.

She plays with clothes a lot, but here the symbolic becomes humorous. And many who might question whether humorous art is art will collate with the similar rhetoric of whether handcraft is an acceptable artistic medium.

I shall not debate on this matter, for I am fascinated with handcraft and the way the ordinary leisure becomes extraordinary form of beauty. The handcraft that for centuries has been condescendingly looked upon is one of the most unique media, as it binds the life of the creator with the life of the creation, and the creator’s life becomes in itself the creation.

This is how Anu Tuominen’s art can be understood – just as a spoon can be understood. Her work is a tool for understanding condensed out of an ordinary object.