Kidnapping ideas 3: The Oh Comely Art Edition

First of all I feel like I need to apologize for the lack of updates lately. We’ve all been pretty busy and blogging sort of drew the shortest straw. We’ll off course try to update every week, but we might not always make it. That said, I was waiting to make a new kidnapping ideas post, because I had bought many new magazines. But again, due to too little hours in a day, I still haven’t read all of them. What I’ll do is make a bunch of shorter posts about 1 magazine in particular every time. This time it will be issue five of Oh Comely. It had so many great things again, but there were two art things that I thought were really cool!

Birds in Hats

Alice Tam was interviewed by Oh Comely about her website Birds in Hats, which is exactly what it sounds like: she draws birds in hats and they are awesome! She doesn’t go for the obvious combinations and really gives the birds a personality. One of my personal favorites is the Flamingo in a Fascinator, but she drew so many that you can pick a favorite for yourself!

Flamingo in a Fascinator

Robin in a Christmas Top Hat

England Revisited

This article/interview was about an art project by Simon English called England Revisited. In 1971 he visited 75 points across England picked carefully by writing the word ENGLAND on a map of the country. He met interesting people, found relatively unknown country spots and left notes on every mark. But 40 years later, he found himself wanting to revisited the places he had been. He took pictures, trying the find the original places he went to the first time around, which really makes you think about change. It’s interesting to see how much or how little some things change in such a big amount of time. All the pictures and video’s from his trip can be found on his website and you won’t regret taking a look. If I ever make an art work I want it to be something big and impressive like this. 

Point 16 in 1971

Point 16 in 2010

Point 33 in 1971

Point 33 in 2010

Travelling Notebooks

Besides the above art, Oh Comely also tried to make a work of their own by handing out 35 notebooks to strangers and asking them to write in them, pass them on to others and sending them back when they are full. Only two notebooks came back, which was really disappointing. I thought the idea was so great and if they want to try it again, we’ll participate and make sure the notebook will be sent on.

Comiques

In non-oh Comely related artwork: I also found a cool comic that I want to share! It’s a comic made by Anne Emond, who is a writer, illustrator and drawer of comics from Brooklyn. Her comics are mostly about herself and other people looking ridiculous, but to me they are mostly very recognizable, funny and awesome!

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!

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.  

Kidnapping Ideas 2: The Emma Edition

Soon I Will Be Invincible

Ok, I know I’ve tweeted about this already, but I just can’t not mention it. I’ve read Soon I Will Be Invincible by Austin Grossman and it was great! I bought the book because I had read The Magicians by Lev Grossman (they’re brothers) which I loved and counting on the writing gene to run in the family, I gave it a try. Soon I will be Invincible is a book about a world where superheroes and super villains are a ‘common’ thing. It’s a sort deconstruction of the superhero/comic genre, written in witty prose and funny remarks. The book is well written and just so much fun to read. I listened to The Sound of Young America Podcast with Austin Grossman (I know, I’m such a geek) and he made a really cool point about how he could explore different things in his ‘comic-novel’ that he wouldn’t be able to do with a real comic book. In a novel you get to spend so much more time in the main characters head, so you can explore the things that are taken for granted in comics, like why they wear the costumes they wear, what it feels like to have a body that is half made of metal and what the difficulties are of wearing a really heavy velvet cape. It’s really interesting to see how they deal with all these crazy things, which adds a more human aspect to the godlike feeling most superheroes/-villains usually have.

Before this, I hadn’t read a book in a while, because I was going through an insatiable craving for magazines. I rediscovered the fun of buying and reading them not too long ago and it took up most of my free time. My interest in magazines has wavered a bit, which is a good thing, because now it won’t get to the point where I have to eat dry bread because I can’t afford a simple slice of cheese. I would love to write a superhero story one day. I love the epicness of the battles, the drama of being different and the great love stories. It’s a shame I can’t even draw a simple stickfigure, but otherwise I would’ve definitely gone into the comic business.

Emma Forrest

This month’s British Elle contained an article from Emma Forrest (I love her name!) about how it feels to leave your twenties. Emma herself was 15 when her first article was published and 16 when she got a column in the Sunday Times. In the article she writes about what it was like to grow up in the limelight and how much better she felt after turning 25. It ended with an anecdote about herself and her friend Kat Dennings (which you might know from the movie Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist) attending an Oscar-seasoned party where Emma ran into an old ex-boyfriend.

‘As I talked to him, I processed that some things do not change at all as you get older. Heartbreak now was just like the heartbreak I’s felt when I was 19, then 25; and now I was 30 and it was the same heart, the same ache. Really, my heart felt like vinyl that  had been scratched so it would always jump in that song. Kat sensed the awful, quivering moment when I was about to lose it. She marched me to the bathroom under the pretext of needing to tell me something, and before we made it past the swing door I was crying. She handed me a stiff drink. She dug a false eyelash from my cleavage when it skied there on my tears. But I couldn’t stop. ‘I’m just too old for this,’ I wailed. Then someone walked in and the evening took a strange and beautiful turn. ‘You don’t remember?’Kat asked the next morning.

‘Oh my god…’

‘Yes. And then Demi Moore hugged you.’ Neither of us had ever met her before or since. ‘She clutched you to her bosom and stroked your hair.’

‘Oh God, Kat! She did!’

‘And she kept saying, “Everything’s going to be fine, everything is going to be fine.”

And it is.

I was having a bad day while I read this, and for some reason this anecdote was so reassuring that I felt better in an instant. I’d wish we all had a Demi Moore walking around to give us a hug when we feel bad!

Her latest book is a memoir called It’s Your Voice in My Head and if it contains more of these reassuring stories, I’ll definitely love it.

Get back in your book

The last ‘idea’ I want to share with you are some really pretty pictures I found on But, Honestly, a blog by Emma Fourie (I guess I have a theme, with these Emma’s). She posted some pictures from Lissy Elle which are really impressive. I started browsing her Flickr Page and found a collection of pictures called ‘Get back in your book’. They are about ‘a collection of characters who strive to stay in the real world’. I’m a sucker for anything literary so I couldn’t help but like them! Be sure to look around on her page, there is a lot more to see.

Alice in Wonderland

Harry Potter

Wendy - Peter Pan

Beauty and the Beast

The concept reminded me of the first issue of Afterzine, where six style bloggers where asked to create a look based on their favorite book, character or cover. I thought it was fun how most of them picked a book by Haruki Murakami, I guess he’s just a very fashionable writer. If you don’t own Afterzine yet, I really urge you to buy it. It’s filled with amazing pictures, illustrations and stories. If only I could write for them! But if you do already own it, a little bird recently told me a second issue will appear around spring this year… Can’t wait! 

Life in Technicolor

I love watching television shows. The story is neverending and you get more and more acquainted with the characters every week. One of the first shows I really started following was off course Friends, but after that I really fell in love with Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It was a show with a girl who could kick ass, lots of magic and scary monsters, everything a young girl loves. It made me have great dreams of becoming something supernatural and leading a life full of danger and excitement. After that I worked my way through other shows like Battlestar Galactica, Chuck, Gilmore Girls, The O.C. and everything else that seemed a bit interesting. I just finished watching all of the available episodes of Modern Family which means I’m looking for a new series to watch again. I’m trying Torchwood and just saw the first episode of the American version of Being Human. I’m not raving about anything just yet, but you never know what’s on the horizon. When thinking about new shows, I run through a list in my head about what shows I liked and why I liked them. This way I remembered watching Pushing Daisies and Wonderfalls, both made by Bryan Fuller. The shows had great stories and sadly ended way to soon. Pushing Daisies, his best known series, is about a piemaker named Ned (played by the charming Lee Pace) who kills and revives people with his touch. The show had next to this great story, such wonderful imagery and the best voiceover. It had bright colours, awesome fashion worn by Anna Friel and even singing by Kristin Chenoweth (who you might know from Glee). Wikipedia describes the show as a forensic fairy tale, which is the best description I’ve ever heard. I’ll need to write a forensic fairy tale one day!

Wonderfalls was less colourful, but funnier. The show is about a Jaye, a girl who just got her degree in philosophy, works at Wonder Falls Gift Emporium next to Niagara Falls and lives in a trailer. Then one day a wax lion from the store starts talking to her, which turns her world upside down. It’s great to see how the talking figurines start to take over her life and make her do all these good deeds. I really felt like Jaye at the time, also studying philopsohy and having no clue what I wanted to do with my life. Unfortunately, the show was cancelled after only four episodes. They did finish the entire first season, which leaves us with a total of 13 episodes, but you do notice the series wasn’t meant to end there.

Bryan Fuller is currently working on several projects, but nothing will be done in the near future. Which means no new show for me! But there is still one show he made, that I haven’t seen yet. The series Dead Like Me is about a girl who died and now has to work as a grim reaper. It always sounded really cool, but I was never that interested. All this talking about Bryan Fuller’s shows did make me a bit excited about it, so I think I’ve found my next show! If you have any other suggestions or just want to talk about shows you like, leave a comment!