Here is a recent custom commission of the Rolex Jacket, featured here and here. (Originally commissioned by Rolex for an advertisement.)
This one has a real shearling fur collar and is a functional portrait collar cut, rather than the extreme (great looking, but very constricting for actual wear) off-the-shoulder cut of the editorial model in the advert.
Hey! I actually watched the Oscars this year- almost from the beginning. (No Red Carpet Stuff- just the Oscars.)
So I will join the peanut gallery with my very brief- but not brief enough- take on the clothes!
Zoe Saldana is incredibly gorgeous and the top 2/3rds of her gown was too, until it hit that third tier, it looked like she was getting swallowed up into a black hole- very distracting. I kept waiting for some scary CGI to take place.
Carey Mulligan - Absolutely best outfit for a young “starlet”. That term is weird, but it does express things better here than “young actress”. Expressing effusive individuality, style and taste all at once, a little elegant punky and very fun with those and wonderfully anachronistic (and insanely incredible) 1800’s earrings. BRAVO.
Best Dressed REGARDLESS: Kate Winslet and Helen Mirren, Here are two women who know how to wear the clothes, rather than the other way around.
Kate’s silver two-piece sheath was so simple it shocked me - after the embarrassment of riches, it was simply breathtaking.
Helen Mirren’s cobwebby dress also suited her perfectly, an edgy confectionary - & kind of Tim Burton-y in a non-CGI way (Have they worked together yet?), and GOD her hair is beautiful! (I have been going grey since I was 23 and it has yet to commit properly!)
Other:
I was fascinated with Jennifer Lopez’s dress, the texture and shape, I couldn’t have cared less about her hips- or who wore it, it was about the dress here. The DRESS WAS AWSOME
I did not like the Amanda Seyfried version of the bubble wrap, it threatened to swallow her whole. Way, way too much dress for her.
Sigourney Weaver’s red dress was the best of the reds- the color was incredible and the shape did not detract or distract from the woman.
A friend of mine just bought this to my attention:
This designer (who I have never heard of and who appears to have some design background) "created" these nice leather leggings:
This subject has come up repeatedly over the past few months as I have been informally helping a friend navigate their way thought the complex and confusing morass of getting a website designed & made.
Having lived through (an ongoing process btw) a ton of trial and error scenarios, massive amounts of research and even taking a basic (pretty darn hardcore, to me!) html class, since my site first went up. A dear friend, asked me what to look for in a designer & what was important in a site, and what to look out for.
I hoped to help him avoid some of the pitfalls.
He went through the seeking a designer process - nightmarish in itself, especially when you are a creative person talking a different language to an often purely technical person who thinks they are a "designer". This was very difficult as my friend is a highly creative person, but seriously clueless when it comes to anything, and I mean anything technical. Basic explanation of SEO, html, code, analytics, etc - he sorta gets it but....
However, one thing that he got, and got immediately was the fact that the site had to be searchable and indexed on Google. It is his business after all.
He falls in love with an incredibly visual designers work. It's Flash of course, I tell him no flash, or only a little. The designer explains it's fairly a new "searchable" Flash. And sends along tons of documentation and very detailed explanations of how it works. I look into it, my friend looks into it and lo! sure enough it is a searchable form of flash. We check out other sites using this and they do come up in search. Tons of questions to designer (and more research on our end) mostly regarding HOW searchable. Repeatedly the answer is it's searchable AND deep linkable. WOW!
He goes with this designer, it's an information heavy site, He's writing his text with key words, search text etc, etc. Everytime he's on the phone with the designer search and accessibility comes up at least 3 times, every e-mail it's re-iterated. OVER AND OVER & OVER AGAIN.
After 3-4 months, of a ton of work on the "designers" end (obviously,the guy worked hard) for my friend (hair pulling and something akin giving birth), as well some loss of respect on my part, because I do not like repeating myself, ad nauseam, because of a serious intransigence on the part of my friend against organization, writing things down, looking them up or even making the effort to try and think out and extrapolate from what he has already learned. So I feel a bit abused for my efforts on this count, but it's over now. Thank God.
So anyhow, Site goes up, site is gorgeous. Two months later, 2 hits on actual site. Friend wants to punch a wall (In lieu of designer) and so do I. Site is DEAD IN WATER and UNSEARCHABLE. Other Gaia Framework sites we see on web are infinitesimally searchable and indexed on google, JUST EXACTLY AS DESIGNER INSISTED THIS ONE WOULD BE. WHERE IN ALL THIS DID DESIGNER NOT HEAR, READ AND UNDERSTAND THE CLIENTS UTMOST NEED?
THIS IS NOT GOOD DESIGN it is a ART PROJECT. The "designer", from a highly regarded IT school (specializing in web "design") was not was taught even the basic premise of GOOD DESIGN! Neither of us feel it was a scam, or intentional on the "so called" designer's part, but a complete F*%k up on "designer's" part. But now my friend has to wait several months for it to be corrected????
Design, must also function. It is not divorced from whatever practicalities and needs brought it into existence. Design is also commerce. A house no one can live in is not a house.
Years ago I knew another fashion "designer", who was asked by a store to design them some special mannequins for display. She was super creative and the perfect flighty airy "designer" type that people get so enthralled with at times. She kept her project under complete wraps, designed and had custom-made several 10' tall, to-scale, articulated mannequins. Surprise! She actually got them to the shop and set up in the window, before it dawned on her...
Design is different from Art. ART is approached consciously as such and is not beholden to function. ART usually becomes becomes commerce after the fact. Art needs no function beyond it's existence. DESIGN serves a FUNCTION and is usually created in Pursuit of that function, whatever it may be. Design embraces and makes use of technology and craftsmanship with an understanding of both aesthetics and use. Design makes the ordinary extraordinary, it can makes the mundane a joy. Design brings ART into the everyday world and is accessible to everyone.
DESIGN bears a burden. Whether that be to make someone look fabulous & feel great through fashion. Or to create a beautiful AND FUNCTIONAL web page, that people will SEE.
I suspect this feeling will continue for quite some time, and it will guarantee I will never, ever again eat a hamburger that I have not made myself, from meat the butcher has ground from one cut, right in front of me, where I can see it.
(I may relax this rule should I ever move to Argentina, where food is treated with a great deal more respect. but here...)
I know this is not a New Years subject, but well.... how about drinking pickle juice as a hangover cure? No? I didn't think so...
Thankfully we don't eat anywhere remotely like what I suspect is considered the average American diet, so this will not be a change so much as an even more conscious avoidance...
I am worried for my cats, who we affectionately call "can"-ivores since they basically refuse to eat anything that does not come out of a can- seriously, you know they ingest far, far more "meat" than we ever would.
What is bizarre, and what Danny comment on immediately is the nowhere in the article does it even mention or consider the toxicity of Ammonia, yet the FDA has approved the injection of ammonia as a treatment of the "PINK SLIME" that is added to the so called "meat" that is used in schools for hamburgers and the like to feed CHILDREN?
Approved it to the point that they considered the "beef product" exempt from INSPECTIONS? Ammonia at such High levels that it could be smelt in FROZEN chunks of the stuff? AND YET NOT LISTED AS AN INGREDIENT?
WTF? Why don't we get the CPSIA on their ass? While they are on their way to regulating small domestic manufactures of children's products out of business because of phalate and lead dangers, (dangers overwhelmingly found found in products made oh, in China? As if they stand a chance in Hell of actually regulating anything that comes from China?) CPSIA should instead take on AMMONIA LEVELS in FOOD that kids (and adults) are being FED.
The chances of ingesting an ammonia-tainted hamburger, (or many) is obviously far more likely, than eating say, a metal button from any country, at any age. Pink Slime just won't choke you.
Happy New Year & Enjoy your Fish and Tofu....uhhhh....wait a minute....
