I CULTIVATE

Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Tuesday, August 10, 2010

THIS IS WHAT I MEAN

CHRISTOPHER RAEBURN

Gorgeous clothes, all re-appropriated.

For someone looking to create, but not to create waste,

this is super awesome.

This may be 5 months after the fact, but after having spent a while immersed in The Extreme Ice Survey for I CULTIVATE, then starting research for A/W 11 at work, this image of Chanel’s A/W show from March seemed particularly relevant to a much larger conversation: using fashion as an eco-political platform.

Does anyone really think that just because Karl (God bless him) used faux-fur in his show and plopped a 265 ton iceberg imported from Sweden onto the runway that anything beyond creating a jaw-dropping aesthetic occurred here?

What I’m really trying to say is… if you’re as much as an effing genius as Karl, and have enough connections to get an effing iceberg from Sweden into the Grand Palais,

you’re capable of much more of an eco-statement than faux-fur.

Simple Inequality:

Importing models + Importing fabrics + Importing 265 ton iceberg + Importing 35 ice sculptors > Faux-fur

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

THE BIG THAW

-all photos taken in Iceland and Alaska-

Visit

http://www.extremeicesurvey.org/

to view the gallery

and learn more about

the big thaw.

ABOVE MAGAZINE II

Monday, July 12, 2010

ABOVE MAGAZINE

A PRINTED MATTER

As the bureau-high stack of magazines in my room can attest, there's nothing a designer loves more than magazines. Magazines about fashion, journals about design, books about photography, reviews on art, zines of the underground, booklets on shows, printed matter, printed matter, printed matter. It's hoarding and it's obsessing and its ripping out pages. It's plastering shit to your walls to create your own mural of aesthetics, it's aligning them nicely along a coffee table, it's racing to the stands to pick up your best friend's review. Flipping through the pages and sniffing the ink.

That being said. It's still a bureau-high stack of paper at the end of the day, and though I may never give up the greatest pleasures of collecting my favorite issues and picking up what I believe to be works of fantastic graphic design, it now seems imperative that I find other alternatives for the monthly subscriptions that end up in the trash after a week or so of sitting on my desk.

Enter Above. I found it while killing time before a concert and I fell in love first with the cover, then the font, then the content. I had been looking for media centered on sustainability for a while, and it killed me that this magazine was right here right when I couldn't take it with me. The idea of lugging it around while trying to dance and drink didn't appeal so I quickly flipped through it and made a mental note to track it down online later.

Much to my delight the website lived up to it's sustainable preaching and offered the entire issue online as a gorgeous glossy flip through. It's still a tormenting internal conflict of mine to think about the end of the printed newspaper or magazine and the dawn of a new era of online reading. It simmers down to the personal conflict of my never-ending desire to create with the knowledge that I'm in essence creating more waste. So I find a moment of ease when I discover a magazine that is somewhat in that limbo with me. Still in print for purchase, but also online for free.