Los Angeles

Pathway leading to the Hollywood Bowl (CC)

From high above, LA’s illusion of glamor holds, with rows and rows of cars reflecting the sun, resembling crystals. On the ground, poorer areas surround pockets of wealth. In one neighbourhood, Jewish and Middle Eastern stores stood side by side, a model for peaceful coexistence. Then again, good food can rise above anything, even ethnic conflicts. Commuting in LA was no walk in the park. It must be a good city to commit crimes in since a freeway is never far away for a quick getaway.

Maybe the West Coast has many startups because it takes a genius to navigate its  freeway network. GPS was a life saver because you typically had to switch freeways at least three times to get from point A to B. You couldn’t walk anywhere even if you wanted to since some sidewalks abruptly ended in freeways. Of course if it’s a hot day, you could always keep going and cool off with the wind from the cars whizzing by.

Once you  arrive at some famous spots, you’d find it overrun with tacky souvenir shops. If all you can afford to bring home is a tie-dye “I Love LA” shirt, it really says “I love LA but it doesn’t love me back”. Universal Studios was worth a one-time visit to catch a glimpse of where the magic is made. Hollywood must save their creative talents for blockbusters because the lines for the rides and shows were often cheesy.  Since amusement parks make a lot of their money selling overpriced food, the storylines only existed to maintain the pretence the rides are for fun. Really their violent jerks are designed to induce vomiting so you have to eat again.

Living up to stereotypes, the one about Mexican gardeners was largely true. Sad to consider the highest some of them may go is up the palm trees they have to trim. Overall, the most beautiful sight was the beaches. The waves crashing ashore, the surfers dotting the horizon and the turquoise waters. Perhaps our enthrallment with open waters is homesickness, recalling man’s humble origins as creatures of the sea.

Hello, goodbye

We demonize runaway consumption because it’s the need for new and more at its most obvious. But this greed pervades all aspects of life. We all always seeking new people, experiences, etc. It’s good to expand our horizons but pursuing novelty can get addictive because like taking a drug, something we never tried before is always glorious the first, second and perhaps third time. The process of getting something new feels good because during that time, the object of your desire works hard to seduce you.  After we have it for a while, we often start to enjoy it less and less, to the point we have to go after something else to feel happy again and the cycle repeats.

The mistake is believing that once you get something good, you can idly bask in the pleasure. No, it’s a continuous give and take. You have to notice how the leafs catch the light down your favourite trail. You have to notice the shy notes of a good drink tiptoeing down your tongue. That’s how you keep special moments feeling special. We are told to appreciate what we have because nothing lasts forever. That makes it seem sources of joy, from people to hobbies, disappear on their own but in many cases, we put in little effort and pushed them away.

It’s exciting to move from flower to flower, getting close enough to smell their different scents. But sometimes it’s worth choosing one to stick around, to water it, shield it from the sun and watch it grow.

Jingle, jangle, jumple

Jumple

The shows of local acts tend to be more intimate because they aren’t able to fill stadiums yet, pricing you out to a seat three rows from the back. I discovered JUMPLE randomly, whose members’ outsize personalities match their upbeat East European folk music. Eugene Lantsman, the leader singer is smooth at drawing in crowds and pumping them up, who would be bouncing off the walls if they had even half of his energy. I caught JUMPLE at Lily Lounge, one of the different venues they play at. Since its owner and the band is Russian, a lot of people with the same background turned up.

While you can left out of the loop, the upside to one group dominating is countrymen let their guard down in front of each other so they pull back the curtain on some aspects of their culture. True it’s not hard to come by musicians bearing their souls through acoustic numbers but it’s not everyday some guy belts out Russian folk songs. A Lily employee took the stage when JUMPLE went on break and though the lyrics flew over my head, I felt his passion as if my heartstrings were stretched over the guitar.

I saw some of the audience singing along, whose participation JUMPLE further encourages when they perform by giving a couple of people tambourines. Though they didn’t always shake it on beat, the tambourine’s jingle and jangle is a playful nod at the band name. What was an issue was the drums being too loud. Its sound bounced through the bar with the deadliness of ricocheting bullets but to get annoyed is to forget the point of the band. That is, to have light-hearted fun and not to take everything too seriously. Most people were in great spirits, even if a few might have been dancing because they were too drunk to stand straight.

For a list of their upcoming shows, check out their Facebook page.

Necking

Proenza Schouler Resort 2012, Proenza Schouler Spring/Summer 2011

Accessories are often the last items people put on but as book covers, some merely contain the contents and others say a thousand words about them. Proenza Schouler’s accessories, like patterns from a kaleidoscope, are examples of the paradox it takes twice the careful planning to come off random. For Resort 2012, Alex & Lee, Bay Area artisans, contrasted no frills hardware like cords and bronze clasps with precious stones like Brazilian stalactite. The earthy elements grounds it in folk art where jewels alone would be conspicuous consumption.

Even though the designers had access to everything off a Thomas Pynchon laundry list, their picks conjure a backstory they retraced the steps of a tribesman to use what their foraging would yield. Cords to copper holds everything together, championing the ethos make do with what you have. But since what Alex & Lee have are a lot of technical skills, their macramé knotting to tight wrapping  makes improvised materials look well thought out. The interplay of practical and pretty objects says I’m not afraid to get my hands dirty but I can still look good doing it.

Talent is timeless

Delvaux - Brillant MM

There are two types of art that stand out. There’s art that forges a new style to closely capture new prevailing moods. Then there’s art that transcends time because it reflects some aspect of nature - seeing it every day and everywhere, it forms our tastes. Fashion does trendy, timeless and everything in between. The problem is, while many artists from other genres set their own pace, designers are expected to churn out two full collections and a couple of smaller ones to bridge the gap every year. 

This Octomom fertility gives customers something new to buy every season. However since hundreds of pieces overwhelms the senses, our memories turn into reverse prisms and all the vibrant colors that flows through ends up converging together, into whiteness, nothingness. Instead, designers should reissue standout pieces and roll out new work when the inspiration hits. Varying their release dates, new clothes don’t all compete for attention at once. Maybe labels count on the sensory overload from summer/winter cycles though to give everyone cross eyes so they can’t read some of the jaw-dropping prices. 

Though there are still some heritage brands who focus on a range of classics, even they, like Delvaux, have started doing fashion shows and seasonal collections. Though some brands are monetizing their fashion shows by accepting orders for pieces as they appear, most model parades are still about playing up the image of the brand so aspirational buyers get high profit margin perfumes and key chains for a piece of the action. They fund the creative ventures. But fashion shows, even ones that garner a lot of converge, get lost. Many labels haven’t realized that when a platform is crowded, you don’t try harder to stand out, you move to another platform to stand relatively alone.

To branch out, labels could try interactive campaigns like the Art of Trench to retrospectives like Savage Beauty. Fashion has to realize that with function first items, we judge their usefulness so newer is better because microprocessors get faster, resolutions get crisper, etc. For form first items, we judge their effect on us. Since it’s less about the object and more about how our senses react to it, we don’t evolve that fast, even if the methods and materials to achieve visions sometimes do. So the great pieces that are great today remain great tomorrow.

Great leap forward

Guo Pei - Fall/Winter 2010/2011

China is known for clothes you wear one day, then salvage the scraps to keep your pet warm the next. So a Beijing couturier who regularly goes overbudget to chase her flights of fancy? Refreshing. Guo Pei makes the giant leap forward from proletarian drab garb to dresses  with elaborate beading and embroidery. Pei’s porcelain dress take its folds from origami and its proportions out of a house of mirrors.  From over-to-top to over everyone’s tops, the high heels of mid-sixteenth century Europe inspired Pei’s shoes. They make you thirty inches taller so others, having to look so far up, can’t make out your grimace. From footbinding to stilts, trying to make the few women in China easier to pursue?

Soaring heights also describe the new generation of Chinese artists who strive to one up their genre’s previous bests and China gives them the resources to pull it. Off. Migrant workers erected architectural wonders. Strict discipline synchronized thousands of performers. Cheaper craftsmen free money to put more details in clothes. While Chinese art is running ahead, people to appreciate it hasn’t caught up.

The wealth of China’s nouveau riche is still new enough they prefer designer names to show they could afford something everyone knows is expensive. However to support homegrown talent isn’t to care how much their wares cost but to recognize how much they’re truly worth. Eventually the Chinese will also grow out of their inferiority complex to realize their countrymen is capable of top notch craftsmanship too. Then Pei stands to receive more than lukewarm applause at the end of her fashion shows.

Prints, please

Cerruti - Spring/Summer 2011

High-tech digital printing has allowed fashion designers to go from creating art out of fabric to pasting art on it. While some prints interact with the angles and curves of the body, many others are standalone pieces that simply need to hang off something to keep it upright. However, the body is not a blank canvas. It’s a canvas that already comes with work whoever using it has to factor in. Yes wearing snazzy graphics help show off your personality and taste. However, if one cares to support the art of fashion, then it’s less about looking good however which way and more about achieving a knockout look while celebrating the uniqueness of the field.

In fashion, the relationship between fabric and body reigns supreme. As dresses from Cerruti expertly demonstrate, prints excel when they play up and down our features. Prints could also narrow a vision that has already been built up by pleats, shoulder pads or other tricks of the trade. Without prints, Lee McQueen’s otherworldly creatures from his Plato’s Atlantis collection would have had shape but no skin, revealing where they’re from but not what they are. The use of prints, as the star of the show or as the stage concepts and craftsmanship perform on, reflects the two expectations art at large has to find the sweet spot between: “Does it look good?” and “Is that enough”?

Light loving

Pablo - tube light, Claudio Saccon - Roma table light

Shopping around for table lamps, I encountered many with stacked gourds. So you could break off their tops to use as anal beads in the heat of passion? The Claudio Sacoon lamp caught my eye. A shard of glass carrying a glow, it symbolizes what a home is, a cosy hideaway from the sometimes cold world. However, it wasn’t as striking in person so either I saw a variation on the theme or as online dating has shown many, pictures lie. I eventually settled on Pablo’s tube lamps for their sky blue to cheer up my headboard and for their clean lines. They even come with dimmers so I could set the mood from canteen lunch to candlelight dinner. I’m thankful that while inventors freed us from the fickleness of fire, some artists recaptured what we lost in liveliness with lightbulbs through designs that cradle them.

Halloween

(CC)

For Halloween, I dressed up as a flower while the wind bended trees to remind me I was one season behind my life cycle. I got the organza ruffle top long ago but since tight squeezes would have curshed its popup storybook of a chest, I opted to be a ninja over a court jester. As for the capri, whether I responded to its colors or to the tropial getaway I had one more outfit for, was one plane ticket away from, I got them despite the fact their legswere tree trunks. Though the tialor was thorough, refitting it three times to get them snug, she let the threads twist and turn as would unreeled tape. The blue cardgian I’ve incorporated into so many outfits, its fibers would have unravelled had my sweating not fused them together. The wind tried to dislodge my flowers all night or the whoosh whossh come from me stumbling around cause I drank too much?

Deconstructing distressed

MTWTFSS Weekday - Fall/Winter 2010/11

Spurning signs of conspicuous consumption, distressed looks are increasingly preferred to spanking new getups. The less out of place an item would be at an archaeological dig, the more character it has. The allure of both ruins and modern architecture explain the trend of ripped jeans, shredded t-shirts and so on. The new shows how far we’ve come and the old reveals where we’ve been. Many labels have cashed in on the aesthetic, pulling apart and tearing up their wares to sell at prices that inflict the same on your wallet.

While fashion is about dress up and make-believe, destruction is sometimes beautiful because it appears in a context that lends it meaning. For clothes, tears and rips recall the time you caught your shirt jumping over a fence, dropped cigarette ash on it, etc. They look cool because they recall your accident, your history or someone else’s that has been passed on to you. When you wear a shirt with a rip in the armpit in the same spot as thousands of other people, you outsource a job that’s second nature for us: screwing shit up. MTWTFSS’s shirt is an example of distressed I do like, as it doesn’t pretend to have a story - its unraveling threads brag about holding a perfect pattern and doing double duty catching prey for spiders, nothing more to it.