Due to busy schedules on both ends, the collaboration between Our Current Obsessions and the very talented Ramon Haindl was realized only two days before the opening on Friday the 5th of September. On that grey Wednesday we got in the car at the end the of morning in Utrecht and drove to Ramon’s hometown Frankfurt, with the GERTRUD & GEORGE Overnighter which just had arrived a day earlier in the trunk, filling in the only shared gap in our agendas to get together. Ramon had been working early and long hours in Stuttgart the days before, and arrived back in Frankfurt only a few moments before we got there, which didn’t temper his or our enthusiasm to make it happen, no matter what was needed. The piece created by Ramon exemplifies his unpolished collage/mixed media approach in his free work, which we particularly love and special features his young dog Vila. The key inspiration for the piece lays in Ramon’s observation of a sharp parallel between the dog’s fur and the grain of the Buffalo leather used by GERTRUD & GEORGE, which he caught beautifully in this collage of analogue and digital photography plus handwritten text. [ Continue reading ]
Cycling is a very significant part of the Dutch culture and it has been for many decades. However, an affordable, contemporary Dutch bicycle disappeared from our streets a while ago. The explanation is reasonably simple; a bicycle is a labour intensive product, and for this reason, almost all bicycle manufactures, and with them a lot of other fields of production, moved their production to low-cost labor countries, mostly in South-East Asia. This impressive graduation project by Design Academy Eindhoven alumni Bob Schiller, which he named Epo, aims to revive the local industry and bring production back to the Netherlands. We are very impressed by his design and attached ambition, which also gained him a nomination for the Keep an Eye grant which will be awarded to one graduated student on the 18th of October. [ Continue reading ]
Editor's Index is an ever-expanding independent studio project with a focus on artisanal aprons, started in 2010 by the very talented Kimmy Eliot Fung, who at the very start only possessed primitive seamstress skills. Hobbled from a few school classes and her mother's excellent but fluctuating influence. The first apron Kimmy created was as a nameless endeavor for a printmaker, which eventually was used and loved for four years, marking the quality of the products from the beginning. Later approaches for aprons were received in a similar fashion: working friends, and even Kimmy herself, looking for something useful, aesthetically appealing and industrious. Working in wonderful places with beautiful interiors and carefully crafted details asks for something paralleling this grace and actually keeping clean and functional: the clear focus of Editor's Index, which Kimmy has slowly been expanding since. [ Continue reading ]
'Faculty Department' is a beautiful personal photography project and visual journey by the talented Justin Chung, focussing on the lives, spaces and stories of talented and noteworthy individuals worldwide. Chung’s interest in photographing creative people came alive when he moved to New York City to pursue a career in commercial fashion photography and portraiture in 2011. Chung found that while he was inspired by the work these creatives were producing, what he felt most connected to was their process: how the smallest intricacies in their daily lives contributed to making them the most effective, most happy, and most real. It is these intimate details Chung hopes to capture in the pages of 'Faculty Department'. [ Continue reading ]
Eleven-time world champion surfer Kelly Slater has just released the name and first imagery of his new, and highly promising looking, ready-to-wear brand named Outerknown. The name Outerknown references the furthest reaches of our knowledge today. It challenges the people behind the brand to build better, more sustainable products. It asks to lift the lid on the supply chain bringing the consumer along on our journey to transparency. Slater has put together a world-class team that includes co-founder John Moore as Creative Director overseeing product and marketing. Moore has collaborated with Slater in the past, and was recently named as one of GQ’s best new menswear designers of the year for 2014. [ Continue reading ]
Chamber is an exciting new boutique of limited edition design, objects and art, which opens today in the Chelsea neighborhood of New York City. The space’s unique concept and retail experience is the vision of Argentinian-born Founder Juan Garcia Mosqueda. Critically acclaimed architectural practice MOS has designed the interior of the space. Taking the Renaissance-era Cabinet of Curiosities as its inspiration, Chamber will be a twenty-first century reliquary for unusual objects and a platform for design experimentation. Every two years, Garcia Mosqueda will choose a different designer or creative to curate the shop’s entire program, bringing their unique viewpoint to Chamber through specially commissioned works, and rare and vintage items. For the inaugural curatorial period, he has selected designers Studio Job, who are working closely with a dynamic group of established and emerging designers and artists to create Chamber Collection #1. [ Continue reading ]
Although there had been earlier clues towards it, last Friday one of our favorite artists of the moment, Ashkan Honarvar, announced that the collage works which have been released under the pseudonym Who Killed Mickey for the last three years were also the product of his fascinating mind and that the project now has ended. The idea for Who Killed Mickey, which progressively grew over the period of the last years, came up in order for Honarvar to have an output where he could use all his leftover scraps from his regular work, but also to create collages just for the fun of it. These prerequisites translated into some of Honarvar's most bold work, using familiar images from the fashion industry and pop culture combined with pornography and anatomical images, without a clear overall concept to be observed, but with his incredible signature aesthetic written all over it. [ Continue reading ]
