Filler Inspiration Post

Due to a serious lack of inspiration I won’t be making a real writy post this week. But to still do something this week I decided to post some pictures of awesome things I came across.

First up! Chet Baker Sings.
My boyfriend and two of my friends have been having a jazz/blues fase and it turned me onto Chet Baker. He’s a jazz trumpeter and made this one album called Chet Baker Sings, which is just such a sweet, but cool album. And Chet Baker used to be quite attractive!

Just like most people on the internet, I’ve been looking at the runway pictures of fashion week and there were really cool designs! I’m already on the lookout for a really long wintercoat like the ones at Theyskens Theory. They make you look really cool and careless and I really hope the trend will carry to high street fashion stores. Otherwise I’ll just have to make one myself. That is how much I want it.

I’ve also been in love with Mary Katrantzou’s Autumn/Winter 2011-12 collection. The prints and shapes are amazing. I usually don’t go for really bold prints, but the material she uses and the style just make it work so well.

More fashion related info, I watched My Fair Lady for the first time last week and it was really good. I’m a big sucker for musicals anyways, but it had a great story and really nice outfits. Although I was a bit disappointed by the dress she wore to the gala, but I think my expectations were just a bit too high.

I’ve also watched the entire first season and what is already available of the second season of The Vampire Diaries. I thought it was going to be terrible, and to be honest the first episodes were (Who ever came up with that writing in my diary voice over monologue should be fired) but after that it got really good. It’s less violent and sexy than True Blood, but it’s funnier, has shocking stories and pretty decent characters. And also hot guys!

All the cast pictures look a bit ridicolous, but the show is really good!

The last thing I found through a somewhat old post on the Pamflet Magazine Blog. It’s a Australian Magazine called Frankie and the look reminds me a lot of Oh Comely. I haven’t read it yet, but there is one store in Amsterdam that sells it. I’ll be going there on Wednesday and I’ll let you know if it is as awesome as it looks.

There’s quite a busy week coming up. Lotte and I are going to the Monki Party for their new spring/summer collection on Wednesday, to the Swanmarket on Sunday and I also want to go to Museumnacht on Saturday (It’s a night where all the museums in town are open and host special exhibitions and stuff). So lot’s to do and hopefully more to tell that week!

Young Masters @ Auction

This weekend I went to the Young Masters @ auction at Roodkapje organized by Ongekend. The art auction was organized for relatively unknown artists that were given a place to show off what they can do. It was my very first auction and I was pretty excited! It’s a fast paced, highly competitive business, but only when people are willing to spent some real money off course. The bids on the first couple of artworks went pretty slowly and it sort of seemed like there wasn’t a lot of interest. But soon the bids went up to 600 and 700 euros and money started rolling. The artworks were projected on a screen one by one, when all of a sudden there was a really creepy sound welling up from another room, a low, dark, drone like sound. No one seemed to notice or pay attention to it and I sort of started to freak out a bit. I looked around for impending doom or people suddenly freezing, but nothing of the sort seemed to happen. The noise stopped and I decided I was probably crazy. It's always better to just ignore these things.

There were 45 artists showing their work, and it was kind of a shame not all of them got to sell their work, but as the auctioneer said, people were being very ‘Dutch’ in their bids, which meant most were looking for cheap buys. I was a tiny bit disappointed by this ‘dream small’ mentality of the country I live in, but it was still a really cool concept and lots of people got to show their work. Besides watching the auction, I took some pictures and even found out where the creepy, doomy noise came from!

The Auctioneers

Thijs van Gasteren had brought three installations which all looked very intricate and also reminded me a bit of scary alien sentinels. They were really cool to just stare at and try to figure out what they did and how he made them work.

Nano Microscoop

Personal Computer

I also liked Nurzehra Ulukaya ceramic work, especially the Deer and an artwork called Abeyance, which hung from the ceiling right above the audience.

Untitled (Deer)

Abeyance

Erik Overmeire en Dennis de Bel made two artworks which have their basis in one art discipline that gets translated to another. The one called One Frame is an image which they used as the ‘source’ for a soundfragment, which got printed onto only 4 cd’s. Very arty indeed! Their other work worked the other way around. They used sound to generate the image and made it into a lightobject. The work was put in a half-lit room, which really showed how pretty it was.

One Second

One Frame

Sigrún Gudmundsdóttir, an Icelandic artist who now lives in Rotterdam had brought an installation called Two a Day, which really catered to my organized mind. She also brought a ‘statue’ called By the Dozen, which was a woman covered in empty medicine strips. She looked like a futuristic shiny woman, which is off course a good thing!

Two a Day

By the Dozen (in the back)

Rotganzen, an art collective from Rotterdam, brought a huge fluorescent lollypop with the word hexamethylphosphoramide on it (it’s a mildly toxic liquid). It comes from a series called Gangredine Consumptus.

Hexamethylphosphoramide

What war once was (Pocket edition)

The scary noise I heard apparently came from this big black box made by Daniel Maalman. It’s a soundproof, one-person, completely dark box which gives you a sound experience. The low bassy sounds already frightened me enough, so getting the full experience didn’t seem like a great plan to me, but others told me it was pretty cool and intense.

The Blackbox

When I left to get my coat I was in for one more art-experience. The girls hanging everyone’s coat were from the Gerrit Rietveld Academie concocting a artwork of their own. It was called Coat Check and involved them putting on everyone’s coat and taking a picture of it next to a sign with the person’s name on it. The images were projected and repeated on a screen, but in case you missed them wearing your jacket, they also printed the picture and pinned it to your coat. It was sort of an invasion of privacy, but I thought it was a really fun idea to take something ‘intimate’ and turn it into something public. And it was great that you get a picture of it!

Coat check wearing my coat

As said, I liked the auction and it was a great opportunity for a lot of new artists, but I would love to visit a real auction with really known artists and see how that works. If you know any I could go to, please let me know!

I heart Vancouver

This year for Valentine's day I will not only be extra nice to myself. I will also send lots of telepathic love to a place I love and all the people who live there.

You can buy this as a poster at Lake Jane's Etsy shop

I am absolutely head over heels in love with Vancouver.
There is no place like it. It is nearly perfect. I have been there in Autumn and Summer (I dare you not to fall in love with Vancouver in Summer - it's impossible) and would love to go there in Spring and Winter next year.

This is a picture of me on the Burrard Bridge

Mind you, I am writing this from the viewpoint of a homesick tourist. However, every time I have been to Vancouver I have been extremely tempted to just 'miss my plane' - oops.

This picture was taken by me

The public transport is great and will take you to many of the most amazing hiking trails in the Vancouver area. The lakes are beyond awesome. And if you have always been dreaming of sitting by the lake and swimming in water so clear you can see your feet AND the stones on the bottom, and jump into said lake from a tree.. Vancouver is dream land. Even in the tourist season I have been hiking and swimming and not seeing anyone for hours.
I only went to places I could get to by public transport. Buntzen Lake is gorgeous. Especially if you walk to the 'top' part (about an hour hike), because most people are too lazy to go there and rather stay at the beach right at the start of the trail.

Picture by my lovely ex Erik and post processing by me

Vancouver ofcourse also has huge and beautiful Stanley Park where you can get aquinted with raccoons, huge squirrels, geese and other woodland and water creatures. Inside the city are many places to just sit and enjoy the view. On the benches which have personal messages on them, or the big logs overlooking the sea. I have a weak spot for cities that have pine trees in their streets, between the buildings.

This picture was taken by Wintergonesummer

Vancouver has such sweet and funny graffiti. Just look here for more. I have been on the bus from Coquitlam to Vancouver Downtown And saw the buildings painted with at least 20 declarations of love "I love you, I love you, I love you - I love you all".

This picture was taken by Benny

 


Even though it's advertised in every city guide of Vancouver, don't miss the Granville Market. It's a huge market where you can buy locally farmed food and handmade goods. I bought delicious goat milk soaps from a sweet French guy. I've never been able to find anything that topped those.

Sign inside Granville Market

And this Summer I bought a big box of freshly farmed raspberries and ate them while gazing out of the window at the seagulls on the boardwalk and colourful aquabusses. You can also buy yummy olives, vegan snacks, veggie burgers and pies there.


You should also try to visit the Lonsdale Quay, it has everything the Granville Market has, but is much less crowded.

Found at InsideVancouver.ca

I could go on like this for many more pages. I could easily write a NaNoWriMo sized book about how much I love this city and where you should absolutely go. I haven't even mentioned Gas Town, North Vancouver and Kitsilano yet.


I have been dreaming of moving here (like so so many people from all over the World) for over ten years now. I hope to be able to after I finish school. Maybe in a few years I will write you from Kafka's Coffee and Tea without my rose coloured tourist glasses on and will be able to give a more balanced view of the city.
But dreaming your lover perfect is a fun start of a budding relationship. So I'll keep on dreaming for now..

Unlikely Fashion Icon: Jimmy Olsen

Most people know Jimmy Olsen as that goofy kid from Superman wearing a bowtie. As soon as people stopped wearing fancy bows as neckwear, he was made fun off by the comic community and everyone else who laid eyes on him. It’s time to change that! Bowties are awesome and Jimmy Olsen’s getting back into style.

Let’s dive into the history of bowties. According to Wikipedia it originated among Croatian mercenaries during the Prussian Wars of 17^th century. They used a scarf to hold together the opening of their shirts, which they called a cravat. So not actually a bowtie, but that’s where it all started. Soon it was the fashionable thing to do. Later on it became a real choice. While most people switched to the necktie, some made the definitive decision to make the bow their signature look. After looking like that in public, there was no turning back. Some famous bowtie-wearing men of the olden days are Winston Churchill, Pee-wee Herman and Fred Astaire. Nowadays, wearing neckties is as fancy as we get, but there are still some fashionable figures out there who don’t believe that bowties are for old men and clowns.

The most famous one for me is Jimmy Olsen, which is why I picked him as the style icon. He accomplished the adorkable look and turned himself into a style icon for many men who weren’t as tough and muscular as Superman. The geeky guy became a dapper hottie. Although not every ‘reïncarnation’ of Jimmy Olsen has sported the neckwear (they changed his look in the ‘70’s), to most it is still his iconic image.

Looking over a list of bow tie wearers on Wikipedia I’m extremely surprised James Bond isn’t on it. Although he also wears other sorts of neckwear, he still is the most dashing when wearing a big black bowtie. It gives him more charm and style than the British accent and his suave words together.

Other contemporary wearers are fashion designers Alber Elbaz from Lanvin and Karl Lagerfeld. I was so excited to see that the Lanvin loves H&M collaboration included his signature bowtie! Steve Jobs had a bowtie fase in the 80’s and Matt Groening has a tendency to give a lot of his characters awesome neckwear as well. 

 

But there have been two recent characters who’ve really brought it back into style: Doctor Who and Chuck Bass. I mentioned Doctor Who in an earlier post, where he said the following about his appearance:

Doctor: Trust me?

Kazran: Okay...

Doctor: Oi. Eyes on the tie. Look at me. I wear it and I don't care. Trust me?

Kazran: ...Yes.

Doctor: That's why it's cool.

— Doctor Who: A Christmas Carol

Why wear a bowtie? Because they're cool! After the start of the new Doctor Who season, a leading fashion retailer exclaimed that they prompted the sales of bowties! Good news! Not only did he bring back the bowtie, he also made the fez fashionable and will work his magic on the Stetson next season.

Another contemporary dandy is off course Chuck Bass from Gossip Girl. He wears bowties for many occasions and has really brought them back to popular culture. Take a gander on Lookbook and you’ll see lots of boys creating outfits with a bow in the center. But it’s not just men wearing them anymore. Even girls are getting in on the action, and I’m not talking playmates.  Alexa Chung, Rihanna, Diane Kruger, so what’s not to like! Famous people are wearing them, so should you!

I ran into bowties in a second-hand clothing store in Antwerpen. They had this big square bowl filled with colorful bowties. I especially liked the thick velvet kind, so I bought three of them. After that I started to wear them with as many different outfits as possible, but the reactions of most people weren’t as enthusiastic as I thought it would be. They would say, ‘how quaint’ or ‘My, what a big bow you have on’. Even though my new style didn’t catch on as I thought it would, I still think wearing bowties is the best way to look dashing. Next stop: suspenders and a Stetson!

The Mood Board



Found on The Selby



"A vision board (or an inspiration board, or a dream sheet, or mood board, or any combination you like!) is a space you create where you pin up pictures, words, trinkets & anything else you find inspiring. Some people use them to remind them of the things they want to achieve, while others use them to aid them in creative projects or to help them keep looking forward."
- Gala Darling

When my ex boyfriend moved out last week, I was left with a very empty living room. He took the Siamese Dreams girls from Belle and Sebastian, Mogwai and his creepy leather framed head with him, and the walls were just plain and boring again.

We also used to have a big memory board in our living room. Full of pictures of us together, him being a total nerd and tweaking his computer insides in his underwear, pictures of Canada and notes people wrote us. When he left, I emptied the board. I put everything in a box and the board in a corner.

Found on The Selby

I can't remember there ever being a time when I had a space all to myself and didn't cover the walls and door in pictures, cut-outs, notes and posters. But I wanted to refrain myself from making my walls look like an inspired hippy monster from kindergarten was let loose in my room again..

Picture by Rebecca

 

Picture by Kathryn



So I decided to put all the small things I wanted to have near me on my inspiration board/ mood board. My walls now look kind of normal. I only have a few of my pictures, pretty posters and two glittery reindeer on my wall - oh, and a huge Canadian flag that I bought more than ten years ago and which has been patiently waiting in a box since.

This picture was taken by LoveLaBoheme

  

I like my mood board. I like that I can change it easily according to my mood or goals, I like that it keeps the rest of my walls tidy and I love that every single thing on that board makes me extremely happy.

This is Sofia Coppola's mood board. It was featured in Vogue

There are so many reasons to keep a moodboard close to the place where you sleep, or work. You can use it for whatever reason you'd like. I use it to keep my eyes on the prize (Vancouver! because that's where I am moving to after I finish school) - with lots of pictures of how gorgeous it is and how happy I was there. But also little things to keep me motivated. Tiny notes people wrote me, one of those tiny cards with a fortune I loved from a Yogi Tea bag, polaroids, my old passport, a note from Santa on an envelope I received from Canada. 

This is my mood board - A lot of pictures from Vancouver and Toronto, old postcards, Benton Fraser and a super campy  GWAR sticker

If you make your own, keep in mind why you are creating one. It could be just to give your house just a nice personal touch, it could be to inspire you to make amazing things, or it could be a wonderful tool to keep your priorities and goals clear.