The new independent magazine named At Large was conceived in early August of last year with the clear goal to be not just another lifestyle magazine. The ambitious premier issue is dedicated to the talented artists, writers, photographers, and designers who came to Editor-in-Chief Randall Mesdon and his team, as friends and collaborators, which resulted in photography-driven stories honestly portraying the subjects as they actually are. The debut issue of At Large has no less than four covers —including rising stars Jack O’Connell from Unbroken and Luke Grimes from American Sniper— both shot by Randall himself. Bruce Weber contributes a beautiful original portfolio to the first issue, to go along with photo-collages by Jack Pierson and limited-edition bandanas by Young. A third cover, our favorite, features pro surfer Ben Skinner, photographed here by Ben Weller with styling by Julie Ragolia, with an accompanying candid seaside story within. The fourth cover, with artist/model David Alexander Flinn is shot by Mark Abrahams, styled by Deborah Watson. The long-haired Travis Smith takes center stage in another fashion feature, photographed by Matthew Brookes and dressed by Bill Mullen in the season’s sharpest, cleanest sportswear pieces: completing a very elegant first introduction. [ Continue reading ]
With the release of the imagery for the Ø L Å F cap one of the most promising names in Dutch fashion at this very moment, Olaf Hussein, presents the first sneak peek at the new upcoming Autumn/Winter 2015-2016 collection, which was shot on location in Los Angeles by photographer Violette Esmeralda. While at first the waterproof fabric creates a clean and technical aesthetic, the branded velcro strap shows another side to this headwear piece as a clear sign to become part of the street style in Amsterdam and beyond. With its nuanced bolder look, the Ø L Å F cap has set the tone for what’s to come, which seems to be another ambitious move forward for the Amsterdam-based label. As the cap is created from a waterproof rubber fabric, the Ø L Å F cap, at first sight, stands for the familiar clean aesthetic, but at the same time evokes curiosity how technical innovations continue to become part of the collection, which were first to be found within last year's first full range by the label. As for the cap, as stated by our friend Olaf himself: wear it as you please, as long as it’s on your head. We highly anticipate the actual collection by the hard working Olaf and his team. [ Continue reading ]
At the end of last year the Berlin-based Croatian photographer Katja Kremenić shared some of her latest dairy shots with us and they are, like her earlier work, quite stunning. We first wrote about Katja's work after the release of the highly remarkable series named 'Rip Currents', which was preceded by other beautiful grainy black and white series with similar themes named 'Corse Noir' and 'Bonanza', in which the photographer explores areas with the sea and beach holding a prominent role as the iconic backdrop for the often-times softly portrayed subjects of her images. In these recent diary shots her love for analogue techniques, the beach and female appearances is again very apparent, always maintaining a significant sentiment of soft- and even tenderness in the images she creates. The motivation for all of Katja's work lays in catching certain feelings and an overall atmosphere at the particular moment in time, when she encounters, people, places or even clothes, which she directly aims to communicate to the spectator. Consistently resulting in remarkably appealing images, making us look forward to more beautiful work by the very talented photographer. [ Continue reading ]
Michaël Verheyden is a Belgian designer, based in the city of Genk, birthplace of Martin Margiela for one, in the West of Belgium. The very talented creative mind creates fashion accessories, home accessories and furniture with a distinct elegant robust aesthetic. Verheyden graduated as an industrial designer in 2001 and before starting his own design label, worked together with, among others, another Belgium design master; fashion designer Raf Simons. The highly influential designer coached Verheyden's graduation project and commissioned him to make a series of leather bags for his Spring/Summer 2003 collection. In the same year as working on the pieces for Simons, Verheyden started his own label focusing on leather bags and accessories, which trained his exquisite eye for detail and dealing with all kinds of different materials. [ Continue reading ]
The Amsterdam-based fashion project Black Rabbit fascinates us profoundly. The story behind the project is both romantically intriguing and proof of a relentless love for collecting and exquisite eye for quality. The story starts with one of the founders, Leo Velimir Brancovich, visiting Mongolia about 20 years ago. There he met a teenage boy, who eventually agreed to trade his unusual earth colored trench-coat for the spotless NATO parka Brankovich was wearing. That mysterious coat remained with Leo for the next eighteen years. He was very intrigued by it, but a rectangular label on the inside pocket was the only thing to identify where it had come from. The label bore the initials “БЯ” in cyrillic script and between these two glyphs was placed the roman numeral “III” on a deep red-brown vertical band. In the following years Brancovich started searching for more garments and found six more of these exceptional and mysterious garments. In his quest he also met fellow-collectors, of whom Taro from Tokyo played an important role by introducing him to a lady living in Casablanca and her much larger Series III collection, stored in an 1970‘s brick villa near Avignon. These two collections, of Taro and the lady from Avignon, proved to be the foundations of the Black Rabbit project to reissue these captivating garments. The group’s name - Black Rabbit - is a homage to the mysterious “БЯ” initials - the only feature common to all of the original Series III source garments Brancovich and his partners have so far discovered. [ Continue reading ]
The impressive exhibition named BLUEPRINT, which opened on the 24th of January in the New York City-based Storefront for Art and Architecture, asks individuals from the world of art and architecture to embark on a trip of self-reflection to identify a place of origination for their work in the literal and metaphorical form of a blueprint. The fascinating curation of 50 pieces, dating from 1961 to 2013, are presented as traces willing to bring clarity to work, practice and the context in which they were created, selected by photographer Sebastiaan Bremer and Florian Idenburg & Jing Liu of design office SO-IL. With the installation which was created for the exhibition by SO-IL, BLUEPRINT leaves the gallery in a totally new organic form, totally open, but at the same time closed and fixed. Wrapped in time and in space, the Acconci-Holl façade opens its doors permanently to the works that –while present in the show by reference– are outside the gallery walls. The space looses its literal operational transparency to become a white, translucent icon of its curatorial aspirations. Rendering everything on either side as a world of shadows, the installation denies the spatial properties and the implications of the processional exit of the platonic cave towards a world of truth. [ Continue reading ]
We have written about the beautiful CITIx60 Art Print Project by Hong Kong-based publisher viction:nary when it was released last November, and they now present another great project in the form of an inspirational book totally resolving around the Chinese character. Considered one of the most intricate writing systems in use, it holds a presence of typographic beauty comprehensible beyond language barriers. Thanks to the growing popularity of Asian cultures, graphic innovations of these centuries-old characters have begun to shine through in the world of modern design, demonstrating excellent skills at crafting ideas and visualizing abstract concepts within complicated forms. The publication by viction:ary gathers works from Japan, Korea, Taiwan, China, Hong Kong and beyond, creating an incredible curation of the most interesting contemporary examples. Stylistically categorized chapters of logo designs and applications offer a close cultural insight into the art of strokes and structure of characters. It then expands the focus to identities, posters, packaging, advertisements and set design. [ Continue reading ]