Have some words:
"Last night I wept because the process by which I have become a woman was painful. I wept because I was no longer a child with a child's blind faith. I wept because my eye's were opened to reality... I wept because I could not believe anymore and I love to believe. I can still love passionately without believing. That means I love humanely. I wept because that from now on I will weep less. I wept because I have lost my pain and am not yet accustomed to its absence." - Anais Nin
“If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude. Don’t complain.” - Maya Angelou
My loves! It’s been such a long time, and I apologize profusely. Lady Tilly has found herself in a new (day) job, which has been taking up a good chunk of head space. I’ve been missing you kittens muchly though, and am hoping to get back into regular posting soon/now since I do have oodles of ideas and all of that delightful jazz.
In case you didn’t know, wandering NYC is one of my favorite hobbies, and I always have a camera around so I can snap pictures of interesting and surprising things as I go. What’s interesting is when you see some similar anomalies popping up at around the same time. We’re used to seeing it in fashion, accessories, and home design sorts of areas; but recently I noticed a little bit of a trend in the way we decorate our city. It’s really small, and maybe it’s been there all along, but for some reason I suddenly noticed this sort of “faux city” vibe as I like to call it.
It really rings true to the city and the people in it, in the personas we create for ourselves. In the way we are, the way we want to be seen, and the clash between the two
Some time ago I was walking along bopping along to my headphones when I saw this sight: I did a little double take and laughed when I noticed the fake brick and windows pressed up against the real brick building. It has this delightfully cartoon-y sort of look to it, all the lines perfectly straight and even, yet it’s perfection is not enough to escape the inevitable graffiti.
This one I saw right after the first, and I stood there for a minute scratching my head. I may’ve even pulled out my glasses to attempt a better look. Something just looks a little off. It looks like someone intentionally painted it to look old and run down – the opposite of the previous. It’s those two perfect windows that have me perplexed. I’m probably missing something obvious which someone will point out to me and I’ll feel very, very silly.
This one caught my eye while I scurried between interviews. I’m amused by the effort of attempting to cover up the scaffolding or whatever you want to call the black screen covering up the actual building, with a print of a similar sort of building….which is subsequently, err, kind of falling down.
This one would allow you to claim to have a great view of the city’s immaculate skyline even though you’re just looking at the side of a somewhat low building (in comparison to the supposed skyscraper scene). I do love the gardens implied on top of the skyscrapers, too. That would be lovely, wouldn’t it (granted, I’m sure there are some that do…)
Interesting, wouldn’t you say?
And this next one is similar but different.
I almost walked right past this one. Out of the corner of my eye it looked just like regular, run of the mill graffiti type situation. But, I looked a little closer and was delighted to see a depiction of a lovely farm-y country-side (Italy maybe?). On the side of a building, behind gates, next to trash cans.
The dreams of the places we wish we could be tucked to the side.
Not too long ago, April in fact, I was perusing through Wallpaper magazine when I stumbled upon an article about architect Bart Prince. It made me a little giddy inside, with all of those gorgeous organic undulating wavy-esque organic type curves. So, dorkily, I snapped pics with my phone with the intent to look more up on Mr. Prince later. Months later I still hadn’t done it, until I saw jewelry designer Anthony Roussel’s work on Design-Milk the other day and jettisoned over his site to check out more :
First, I was all holy crap, that’s gorgeous. And then I realized something about his work looked familiar, and the gears started turning.
I smell some inspiration, don’t you? And by reading more about Mr. Roussel’s work, you’ll notice that he has a “passion for modern architecture”. Personally, I love his work. It’s gorgeous. And it’s a great way to be able to wear that beautiful architectural vibe of Mr. Prince when you can’t afford to live there, especially tweaked to fit on the human body.
Love them both!
Intrigued by the dual natures going on here: it feels both incredibly organic and space-y out of this world-ish at the same time. It’s really stunning to see all those vibrant colors dripping and bleeding and mixing into one another in this collaborative piece between Lucy McRae and Mandy Smith. It’s a more sophisticated and certainly more beautiful version of my childhood antics of drawing on folded up coffee filters with magic markers and then dipping them into water so that the colors would bleed and spread; of swabbing watercolors onto paper, dipping the paper this way and that so the colors bump and cascade into one another. This seems – dare I say – almost wearable. I’d love it as some neat-o drippy asymmetrical in a nice way neckpiece.
The quest usually starts out as simply enough; it’s that everyday adventure called Time to Get Dressed. I grab an item of clothing – in today’s case, that large swatch of pink and dark dark blue swirled fabric – with the attempt to wear it simply. Sometimes it works – I tie that piece of fabric into a shirt, throw on a pair of jeans, grab a cardigan and go(!)… and sometimes it doesn’t. I start to fiddle. I add a little bit of this, a little bit of that; I find something else (*ahem* lovely DKNY skirt I practically forgot I owned) that’s similar but different, toss it on, and soon enough find myself in Let’s Experiment Land (!!!!). And then, whoa boy, you never quite know what I’ll end up in. I surely didn’t quite expect all of this to work, but somehow it does (at least in Tilly-land). It’s the common colors, I believe that help tie it together (the pink and dark blue that’s almost purple that shows up in the skirt. The pink, red, and variations on taupe-y gold-ishness in the bag that make nods at the skirt. The fact that they’re all kind of loopy, discombobulated, fuzzy sorts of patterns).
And there’s the humorous fact that my nails match, too. I didn’t plan that at all. It actually may be my new favorite nail polish technique: The one nail different look. I got the idea from some guy I saw on the subway holding onto the pole, and also a book I think, with his thumbnail (and only his thumbnail) painted red. And I was intrigued. So, I tried it out first on my toes and, pleased enough with that result, moved onto my fingernails. I really rather like it, because you can do it with classy sorts of colors (or not) and it adds just a touch of offbeatness to the look.
So, yes, my lovely reader people.. go forth and experiment with the stuff in your closet. It’s fun, I promise.
I’m loving this bag, the 2Unfold by hardgraft. Its exquisitely made, not fussy, AND (how I *love* this part) it can be worn/used multiple different ways(!):
Being able to use something multiple different way is sort of like the holy grail for me. The excellent craftmanship combined with the multiple usage factor makes it feel possible worth the hundreds of dollar price tag. Maybe.
I’d pass out with glee if it were in (can you guess?)…… RED! A perfect wear everywhere shade of red (with the chesnut strap, still).
It’s funny sometimes how you have to see something a bunch of times before you really start to notice. Lately, it’s been miniature little figurines… and more interesting the different ways they “interact” with their supplied surroundings.
To make up for my pokyness, you’re going to get a lot of nice, big pictures…. Because I know you cats and kittens like that.
First off is Matthew Carden’s “Small World” series, which you may have noticed careening around the blogosphere some months ago:
Carden and his wife teemed up and took these adorable shots of figurines interacting with life-sized food. It makes me think of things like the mice in Cinderella, and how they live as small creatures in a big world and how they adapt to those surroundings. These are more whimsical than that, but hopefully you sort of know what I mean… They’re living in “our” world.
Then there’s Kendal Murray, whose work I first saw on Inside Out:
I love how in her work, the characters create their own little worlds out of objects from our own. While they feel so alive, you can almost imagine they live in secret. Little creatures that come to life only when we’re not looking, or when we open things specifically to look. I also have to say, I love the compacts because they remind me of (old school early 90’s) Polly Pocket. (look in the mirrors to see what you can’t see from the front).
They also kind of make me think about how we (or at least I) attach meanings/stories onto objects. You know? When you can’t throw an old shirt away because you wore it the first time you and so-and-so kissed? Or all of the conversations you remember having with your grandma while she sipped from her favorite teacup? Stuff like that…. Yeah?
And then there’s Thomas Doyle’s work, which I saw on booooooom, and immediately swooned over. It’s what got me thinking: Miniatures! I’ve been seeing those around!. Here are a few pics from the booooooom’s lovely piece, because once I poured through Doyle’s site I realized I loved them all and wouldn’t be able to decide what to use. So GO check them out in more detail if you like these:
I love how whole and complete and contained these little worlds are. How they look like moments from real life frozen in time behind glass. The amount on detail is stunning, and you’ve got to love the darkness in a sort of craft that could tend to be of the “soft and fluffy” variety ( sweet and sunshine-y dollhouses, y’know). But real life is beautiful but it’s also a little offbeat, and I like how these have a surreal realism to them..
They look like how you feel when you stumble upstairs to finish collecting the last of your belongings from your old apartment and you find that a place that holds so many memories suddenly and very, very quickly turned to rubble:
And you stand there, flabbergasted and horrified, trying to remember to breathe… because you have the sneaking suspicion that that’s exactly what’s happened to pretty much your whole damned life. And the feeling is ineffable, because while it’s terrifying to have that happen, there’s also this kind of beauty to it; to the process of knocking things down and rebuilding. And in that moment where you’ve got all this whirling through your head, it’s like being frozen in time in that glass bell jar. A jarring moment you always remember.
Because it makes you wonder, if maybe – just maybe – we’re all just little miniatures. If our universe is just a marble in someone’s hand, clinking around with all the other marbles.
Will never, ever fit into these fascinating, gorgeous Gucci Men’s boots. Not that I could afford them, anyway. I can’t deny, though, my heart’s a little broken. Why is it that I’ve mostly been admiring men’s shoes lately, especially when my dear little feet have nary a chance of fitting into them? Prancing around the city in heels just doesn’t usually work for me. It’s odd because while these shoes are so pristine and shiny….they sort of remind me of the oily stickers I coveted in my childhood sticker collection phase.
Of those creepy, yet oddly beautiful opalescent effect of nasty oil in puddles
(via)
Of the city’s grunge.. colors layered upon one another with dirt and grime and the rust of age.
Yes, these shoes would fit in quite nicely here among the duality of grunge and glitz of the city.
I’m liking this brooch by Tatty Devine for the Tate museum store.
It reminds me of a short story I wrote in my senior year of high school called Lint about a young girl, Lynn, who’s feeling lost and alone and useless since her father passed away. She spends her time watching the world pass by from the anonymity of her apartment window feeling like a speck of lint floating aimlessly in the air, bothersome to anyplace she lands. After a series of events she finds her self face to face with a young woman who she’s noticed whilst sitting at her window. The woman, Arianna, who Lynn finds out is an artist living in a colorfully vibrant home, shows the young girl kindness and friendship. Arianna eventually takes Lynn back to her studio where upon she reveals that she’s been painting the young girl, sitting at her window up above. Lynn is incredibly touched seeing herself in this new light, and though the painting is unfinished she can see the beauty it could become. She starts to see herself that way, too – as an unfinished painting – and doesn’t feel quite so lost.
Perhaps the story is a little cheesy (?), if so, forgive my 17 year old self; but it’s around the time I started thinking of the “self” as a possibly a piece of art, and subsequently life (as the top of my page states). I think it’s nice to think of it that way. Everything just a piece of the puzzle, a swab of paint on the canvas. Individually, they recall the hurt and the joy, the peaceful moments and the tense, the love and the loss…but together, when you step back and look at them all splattered there, it has this sort of beauty, the pieces of your life. When you step back from being “inside” the picture, the moment, you can see this better… see that even a tough time is just a fraction of the whole, that sometimes you can build something wonderful atop that toughness, the chaos. And it allows you to feel a little calm from within the storm.
And that’s why I like this brooch. Because we should always think of ourselves as works in progress. There’s always someplace to go.
I stumbled upon this photo over on Poppytalk earlier this afternoon and immediately swooned. If you’re a regular reader you may have a noticed a slight occasional fixation upon staircases. It might stem from my childhood in one-floor Florida where I never lived anywhere with stairs, and I’d watch all those tv shows or movies where ladies would dash up the stairs and slowly swoosh down in pretty dresses to a dramatic effect. And I always, always wanted to do that. Fights with my parents would be soooo much more dramatic if I could storm angrily up the stairs, like DJ Tanner of Full House (or any other show or movie with teenagers of the era). I fancied having guests show up and me calling down the stairs “just a moment!” and then I’d arrive at the top of the stairs in my pretty dress and swoosh my way on down. It seemed so grand in the movies.
Oh, childhood.
And then, I grew up and I moved up north for college where most places had stairs and then to NYC where EVERYPLACE has stairs. Turns out, not always so much fun (six floor walk-ups, *groan*). I think lovely staircases would make the many trips up and down a wee bit more enjoyable. Don’t you think? And Mr. Horst Gläsker did an absolutely lovely job of that in his Holsteiner stairs in Wuppertal. There are 112 steps dressed up in acrylic paint if you would believe it!
Personally, in my imagination those steps lead up to…
We could stage some elaborate Busby Berkeley-esque old school musical routine up them and into this gorgeous square. It would be swell and colorific, don’t you think? I’m fairly certain they don’t, in fact, lead here; but, with the magic of film we sure could make it look that way, right?! Right. Just imagine how gorgeous it would be to have a bird’s eye view to a slew of dancers atop….
Granted, it’s called “Crime Scene Paderborn”, and you can indeed see the body outlines from above… but it’s cheerfully macabre, pixelistic, typographically interesting (i have no idea what the letters stand for or spell) and overall quite thoroughly fabulous in my humble opinion. In regards to both the stairs and this square, I think part of what attracts me so, is the juxtaposition of that madcap crazy color with the otherwise sedate and oldschool style and color scheme of the rest of its surroundings. It so defiantly stands out, and yet manages to look “right”. It’s a surprising and delightful twist.
Now, have a listen to Seu Jorge’s awesome Portuguese acoustic rendition of Bowie’s Life on Mar’s:
Would you believe that these are mug shots?
Kind of hard to believe, eh? These early mug shots from Sydney, Australia certainly have flair and must have been taken by a cop with a penchant for photography.
via A Time to Get
In case you didn’t already know, I happen to love (love, love) the show So You Think You Can Dance. As someone who used to dance for hours pretty much everyday, it’s practically a requirement. Dance is one of my passions, and a passion that is in part fuel for one of my other great loves which is clothing and therefore fashion/costume design (which I have a degree in).You see, I sort of like to live (in theory) as though we are always dancing, and your clothes should move with you and add to your “character”. Like in acting, costumes play a huge role in defining characters/mood/etc in a piece of dance. Sometimes the costume doesn’t just define the character but becomes a part of the dance, a metaphor, too, such as in a particular piece danced by Jeanine Mason and Kayla Radomski and choreographed by Mia Michaels in the So You Think You Can Dance finale on Wednesday evening.
The piece was meant to chronicle the transformative process the contestants of the show go through – that we all go through while making our way through our lives: working hard, shedding our layers, making our way to our “true selves”. The girls start stage left and make their way to the right, beginning in a frothy dress of many layers that they shed one by one like weight off their back until they’re free.
While there were many (many, many) wonderful dances of the show (and out there in the world), I was immediately transfixed, admittedly, by the costumes in this piece. I loved the big colorful frothy dress and they way all of its colored layers moved, and was delighted with every single incarnation of the costume as it’s layers were removed. Each worked and moved so well together. Bashfully, I admit that while the dance was beautiful I spent in inordinate amount of time watching the the dress. I’m a nerd like that, in case you haven’t been able to tell by how many times I had to watch the video to get decent screen captures. (since I can’t find it on youtube watch it here)
I guess I just relate really well to the metaphor of the dance, and the literal interpretation of shedding layers of clothes as shedding the layers of oneself. I’m reminded of my younger years when I was always, always dressed eccentrically in a cacophony of bright colors. I wanted to be sure that I stood out. I had too. I would feel too naked and anonymous and “not me” if I were out in jeans and a tank top. It felt wrong. And slowly, slowly over the years I’ve become ok with myself enough that, while I still rock my sometimes eccentric style, I am actually able to go out in jeans and a tank top or incredibly simple anonymous dress. I’m ok with being simpler, now. And somehow, I’ve found, people can still see “me” (which I can’t lie, I was a little surprised about).
Sorry for the posting pokyness, loves. Been shedding some (metaphorical) layers. I’m working, however, on getting back on the posting train. ;)
What would your rug say if it could speak?:
These positive/negative rugs designed by Björn Dahlström for Kasthall bring to mind the famous Oscar Wilde quote; “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.” Granted, you can’t always help how you feel. Regardless, these are really interesting, and it would be a fun challenge to design the room around them. I would love if they came in other colors…. the white and navy is nice, but liable to get lots of footprints on them – though for mr. negative rug it would sort of reinforce the theme.
There’s something about this dishware that strikes me as brilliant.
Artist Paola Navone was given white porcelain “seconds” from the famous Tuscan crockery factory of Richard Ginori which she subsequently gave new life with her free form swatches of color. Merci Gallery has turned them into one-of-a-kind pieces for an exhibition, after which the pieces will be sold.
I’ve always thought there was some unique sort of beauty about the surfaces (paper, napkins, etc) that artists/designers/etc. use to test out colors. You can still get a sense of colors incorporated into a final piece, but there’s also a hint of the thought processes behind those choices and the sometimes perhaps interesting in the nature and style in which some one just sort of throws the color down.
It’s really interesting to see that free nature of color swatching tossed onto formal dishware. Pieces that when they do have designs on them, are usually on the formal and well-thought-out side of design. This is somehow the equivalent of wearing both high and low priced clothes at the same time, of that one slightly “off” thing that makes an outfit interesting. There’s something mildly audacious about it… Like a grown-up version of the coloring on the walls that got you in trouble as a kid.
more on designboom
If you’re a gal who has historically had really long hair, and have since chopped it (all) off you may, over time, realize you (sometimes somewhat desperately) miss the feeling of hair cascading down your shoulders and/or back. I know I do, at least now that it’s been three years since The Great Chop. While I do, and have, enjoyed the ease and simplicity my pixie ‘do has afforded me, I have found myself recently craving my hair. It’s mildly pathetic at times. And so, I’m working on growing it some, and we’ll see how my patience holds through all of the ensuing awkward phases that will accompany the growing (*ahem* the mid-lengths ((I’ve always wished that I could have magical hair like one of the dolls I had as a child where you could pull her arm one way and her hair would magically grow (!) and wind it the other way and it would shorten. Talk about setting up a girl for unrealistic expectations, sigh))).
Anyway, I stumbled upon some interesting jewelry and hair-wraps that, while shown on long haired ladies, may give us pixies a temporary quasi fix for those moments where we’re craving an interesting hair fix.
First up are intriguing offerings from the talented Jules Kim of BiJules:
The “Hairrings” are earrings with dangling pieces of human hair (in a variety of colors that are both natural and fun). I think these are pretty interesting, but I can be a bit of a klutz/space cadet at times (tripping over my own two feet, knocking over drinks, laughing the candles at a restaurant out, etc) so this worries me a little bit. I could see myself getting them stuck in the subway doors or something. Never fear, though, Bijules does have other options that don’t carry the risk of ripping a hole in your ear.
Jules also offers up the “hairwrap”, in which the hair is attached to a loop that wraps around your ear and the“weave lariat”, in which the hair is attached to lariats that loops around your (sun)glasses with an aided dash of chain.
(see and purchase at her aforementioned website or on 80’s purple and Pixie Market
In a less literal sense are some lovely pieces from Laura Kranitz:
Laura does a number of pieces that use chain and feathers of varying lengths and colors and some that just use chain (available at 80’s purple). While feathers are perhaps nearing the end of their course, I do really like the idea of that dangly, swooshy, sweeping feel of hair but in other materials.
