The View

Perched at the top of The Marriot Hotel, the View Restaurant & Lounge is New York City's only revolving rooftop restaurant. It is one of the most beautiful views I have ever seen. Since I was about 10 years old I have had this fascination with NYC and its larger than life everything!! Standing at the top of the Empire State Building is amazing but always wished there was a way of seeing the whole of NY without having to go in a helicopter! The View Restaurant lets you do just that whilst also sitting having dinner and being able to see The City in every direction. New York is famous for its Skyscrapers and from The View you are able to see every single one! They even give you a napkin with the picture shown above so you don’t miss one building!

Obama's People

The New York Times has approached Israeli-born photographer Nadav Kander to document President Obama’s entire cabinet in recognition of the inauguration, anticipation ran high. Kander’s keen-eye for subtle beauty and bold colours seemed the perfect match for the weighty responsibility of documenting the leaders of the free world. The shots don’t disappoint. ‘I wanted them to be uplifting, but, I also wanted them to have a historical context in thirty, forty years, which is when I’m hoping they’ll be most interesting’ Nadav told us. ‘I was really trying to make accurate portraits of these people; accurate and uplifting portraits. What’s been most interesting for me is how differently people view them, that’s what it’s really about, making people react in some way.

Bridal window display

As I walked passed this bridal dress salon in New York their window display really caught my attention. It is elegant and is kept very simple but this works as a very effective idea. The beautiful wedding gowns towering over the miniature grooms just enhances the message to every woman walking passed how much more important the bride and her dress is on her wedding day than anything else. Even the groom!

REISS 1971 partners with Dazeddigital.com

1971 Reiss is a new capsule collection from high-end, high street boutique Reiss. The 1971 Reiss collection is neither retro nor revivalist. It brings a modern, chic, sexy, fashion forward evolution of the brand into denim. The year marks when the company was founded but also captures the ethos and spirit of a time when music and fashion started to make heady connections, and musicians began to establish themselves as bona fide style icons. This is reflected in their jean styles, with names such as 'Goldrush', and 'Patti'.

Dazed has teamed up with Reiss to launch a t-shirt design competition that will be the perfect counterpart to its 1971 jeans. We're looking for illustrators and designers who can interpret the brief “1971” in the most original way possible – the eventual winners will see their designs transformed into a limited edition 1971 Reiss t-shirt.

The winners were Sarah Barton and Antigone Pieri and the designs shown below.

New York Film Festival

The HBO Bryant Park Summer Film Festival is a New York summer tradition. I have never experienced anything like it. All films begin at dusk (usually between 8 pm and 9 pm), but the lawn opens at 5 pm. I have never seen so many people rush into the middle of the park to get a good spot for their blankets to go down on. (And I was one of them!) The atmosphere is unbelievable. You are surrounded by New Yorkers all eating picnick and chatting with their friends. The night I went they were playing an old school black and white movie called How Green Is Your Valley. For me it was more about the experience than the movie that was being played. There is nothing better than lying in a park looking up at the stars whilst being surrounded by skyscrapers of the City! 

Inglorious Basterds

I know I am late blogging about this one..I did see it over a month ago now! Honestly came out of the cinema thinking…WOW!! Quentin Tarantino what a legend. I don’t think I have ever seen in movie in which every emotion goes through me at some part of the film. I laughed, I cried, I screamed etc.

A quick summary of the film: In Nazi-occupied France during World War II, a group of Jewish-American soldiers known as "The Basterds" are chosen specifically to spread fear throughout the Third Reich by scalping and brutally killing Nazis. The Basterds soon cross paths with a French-Jewish teenage girl who runs a movie theater in Paris which is targeted by the soldiers.

A lot of Jewish people I know were not that thrilled by it, but to be fair it was most of the older generation I heard this from. I think they went expecting a tradition holocaust film. In my opinion don’t go and see a Tarantino film and expect traditional and realistic.

I saw an interview with him where he said that this was his own fairytale version of how Hitler was killed. Whilst watching it (I don’t know if this is because im Jewish) some part of me wished that it were a true story!!

Absolute genius! From the acting to the angles and the graphics and the humour! 

Phillipe Starck - School Of Design

So last night whilst flicking through the TV channels I came across this programme, School of Design. Phillipe Starck who is on of the best-known contemporary designers in the world has chosen a handful of students to come to Paris with him and create an innovative new product.

I have to say I was cringing at the TV screen at the ideas that these students were coming out with. Phillipe has picked them to attend because of their talent for design. As incredible as Starcks designs are whilst watching him I felt as a teacher he was very uninspiring. His French attitude seem to anger the students and while I could understand his point of view that there designs ideas were awful I kept wanting more from him. It was only the third episode so maybe in a few weeks hopefully my opinion of him will change.

Below is some of Starcks work:

Tavi - The new girl in town

Tavi Gevinson is the new girl on the fashion scene. She describes herself as a "Tiny 13 year old dork that sits inside all day wearing awkward jackets and pretty hats. Scatters black petals on Rei Kawakubo's doorsteps and serenades her in rap. Rather cynical and cute as a drained rat. In a sewer. Farting. And spitting out guts"

This girl is amazing! When I first heard about her I was fascinated. I still cant get over how young this girl is and she has already developed a loyal following with her fashion blog Style Rookie. She was a special guest in the front rows of New York Fashion Week shows, making the rounds from Maria Cornejo to Marc Jacobs and Alexander Wang.

Gevinson recently posted an extract from her batmitzvah speech. "As I said earlier, the Nazarites wore just enough to keep them warm, believing that that was the wish of God. Over this past year I have become increasingly interested in clothing, and have developed a clearer understanding of the idea that clothing can be art... Rei Kawakubo, who many regard as the first conceptual designer and whose clothes can often inspire uncomfortable thoughts or feelings in people, is my favourite designer in the world... Using fashion as self-expression can go beyond wearing a shirt with a slogan, as clothing has the ability to evoke an entire feel, or atmosphere, or emotion, or world." She has also posted a video of her performing a rap about the Comme des Garcons collection for H&M.

Bloggers like Tavi have been referred to as the "frontline of fashion" Her swift rise to fashion fame highlights the role the internet has played in breaking down traditional barriers to entry, with bloggers being cited as influences by high-profile designers including Marc Jacobs.

Nick Knight - Interactive Exhibition

Nick Knight has been creating iconic fashion images for 30 years. His body of work is so inspiring. He has shot the best magazine covers and incredible Dior ad campaigns. His website Showstudio.com has fashions most creative designers to produce amazing fashion imagery. Nick is now bringing Showstudio to the public with an interactive exhibition that ran during London Fashion Week. 

He created a 22ft-high sculpture of Naomi Campell and used 3D camera scanning technology to make a sculpture that looks as precise as a high resolution photograph. 

In an interview with Grazia magazine he was asked what he thought the is the future of fashion photography to which he replied; 'The way people look at fashion is changing. My kids look on the net for fashion. Clothes are designed to be seen in movement, so it makes sense for fashion film to be the next medium. You cant fight it."

Revenge

Revenge from Lernert & Sander on Vimeo.

A series of short videos as part of a 2 hour documentary about revenge for VPRO television. 

The Fashion Book

This highly illustrated coffee-table book celebrates 20th-century fashion in style. It is a virtual cavalcade of the most successful names in the fashion industry and highlights a host of designers, models, illustrators, photographers, milliners, tailors, cosmetics and makeup artists, hairdressers, publishers and editors, and fashion icons, including Armani, Avedon, Cartier, Ferragamo, Gucci, Twiggy, Vreeland, and James Dean, to name a few. Alphabetical entries cite contributions to the industry. The biographical information is kept to a bare minimum, and there is no traditional subject index linking similar entries together, although this is partly accomplished by guides at the end of each entry. The book concludes with a glossary of movements, genres, and technical terms, as well as a directory of museums and galleries.

This is without a doubt the best fashion book ever written.

Rankin Live!

I have always been a fan of Rankin's photography. His work always catches my eye, especially his beauty shots and Portraits!

Rankin will now be inviting people across the UK to participate in his most ambitious project to date; Rankin Live! Using the latest in cutting edge technology he will shoot and instantly print the portraits of 1,000 Brits on site at his museum scale exhibition in August. Incredibly, this process will only take 15 minutes, from the click of the shutter to the hanging.

Advertising Today

More than a means of moving merchandise, advertising has been increasingly recognized not only as an art form all of its own, but also as a defining element of popular culture. Advertising Today provides a thematic overview of the evolution of advertising around the world over the past thirty years, charting influences from the political and social upheavals of the 1960s to the influence of the Internet in the 1990s. Each chapter includes an interview with a key figure in advertising – including Italy's Oliviero Toscani of the controversial Benetton campaigns, American comedian and American-Express spokesperson Jerry Seinfeld, and British adman John Hegarty of Bartle Boyle Hegarty, creator of the world-famous Levi's ads. In analysing specific advertisements, the book simultaneously acts as a history of sorts of global pop culture and a record of the social, cultural, and geo-political temperature-changes that affect our image-saturated environment. Included are over 500 advertisements originally seen in a wide range of media: print, television, billboards, the Internet, and even the very recent, so-called 'guerrilla' advertising – in which practically anything (pieces of fruit, sand dunes on a beach, sidewalks) can act as a surface for promoting a product. 

Vitamin Water Design Competition

I have always loved the packaging and campaigns for Vitamin Water. Now they will be crowdsourcing its next flavour through the launch of their Flavourcreator app on Facebook, marking the first time that fans of Vitaminwater can collaborate to create the next flavour. 

Vitaminwater enthusiasts will have the opportunity to name the flavour, write the bottle copy and design the label via a contest with the winner or winning team receiving a $5,000 prize from Vitaminwater.

Richard Avedon 1923–2004

I recently visited the Richard Avedon exhibition at the International Centre of Photography Museum in NYC.

The exhibition is the most comprehensive exploration to date of Avedon's fashion photography during his long career at Harper's Bazaar, Vogue, The New Yorker, and beyond. Working closely with The Richard Avedon Foundation, ICP curator Carol Squiers and guest curator Vince Aletti present new scholarship on the evolution and extraordinary, ongoing impact of his work. The exhibition features 175 works by Richard Avedon, spanning his entire career, and includes vintage and edition prints, contact sheets, and original magazines.

Richard Avedon  revolutionized fashion photography starting in the post-World War II era and redefined the role of the fashion photographer. Anticipating many of the cultural cross-fertilizations that have occurred between high art, commercial art, fashion, advertising, and pop culture in the last twenty years, he created spirited, imaginative photographs that showed fashion and the modern woman in a new light. He shook up the chilly, static formulas of the fashion photograph and by 1950 was the most imitated American editorial photographer. Injecting a forthright, American energy into a business that had been dominated by Europeans, Avedon's stylistic innovations continue to influence photographers around the world.

The September Issue

The September Issue follows Editor-in-Chief Anna Wintour and her editorial team in the assembly and shaping of 2007's edition of the title issue of Vogue magazine -- the largest issue of the year, the holy writ and testament for the upcoming year in fashion.

Director R.J. Cutler and his crew spent eight months roaming the halls of the Conde Nast publication and accompanying Wintour to meetings, fashion shows and glamorous events with designers and stars. We also ride along in the back of her chauffeured car on the way to the office and see her at home interacting with her daughter, Bee Shaffer — who, amusingly, says she wants nothing to do with this business, despite being as thin and stylish as her mother.

Although that kind of intimate access provides a glimpse at some quiet moments and juicy showdowns, it never really allows us to understand what inspires this enormously influential figure. Wintour is quickly decisive but seems to operate on the whim of her preferences in dictating what's in style and what isn't; if that process is maddening for us during a brief time, imagine what it must be like to work for her every day.

What we do come away with is an appreciation for clothing and photography as art forms and the kind of work and emotion that go into each issue, especially the September issue, the largest each year for its fall fashion features. 

Maria Blaisse

Many artists are inspired by movement, but none more so than the amazing 80’s sculptor, Maria Blaisse. An iconicand revolutionary artist, Maria created intricate, spherical foam forms that sculptured the body creating unique shapes. Fashion, nature and art merge together in Maria’s world to form exaggerated proportions, bold shapes and directional images.

The shoot below references her work using the new fall/winter 2009/10 collections such as the featured Surrealist inspired Dolce & Gabbana dress.