Manish Arora SS2012

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Mag Swag – American Elle October 2011

One of the best things about travelling is the airport shiny mag swag. We always pick up American Elle, Numero, Officiale, French and Italian Vogue and throw in a few randomers for good measure. We’re doing quite a lot of travelling at the moment between Ireland this week, France last week and China, HK and Australia for pretty much all of October – distinct possibility that we’ll be paying bag surplus.

I’ve always been a fan of American Elle and their glossy editorials. This month features a 90’s isnpired beach editorial. Not sure if this is farewell Summer or pre-resort – I still maintain seasons are pretty irrevelvant considering fashion week timing and the opportunity to purchase some designers straight off the catwalk. Our label TWO WEEKS is being shown in Paris for SS12 at the moment however we’re only sampling Remade SS12 as the retailers we’re working with on this label prefer us to work much closer to season.

The shoot below features Victoria’s Secret models Adriana Lima, Chanel Iman, Doutzen Kroes with Miranda Kerr Gracing the cover. Shot by Alexei Hei and styled by Elle’s creative director Joe Zee, the shoot features some of our fave designers including Missoni, Givenchy and vintage Chanel. Cool, poppy, sexy, sporty, gold an’ juicy –  we want it all.

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Fur Coat No Knickers except there’s no Fur Coat.

….but there’s some shorts so that makes it all ok. Fit bitch Vicki Blow’s bum crack challenging our underbutt concept – and just when we thought it’s position was safe. Featured in Front magazine(nake girls and Alt Girl and stuff about skateboards) on her naughty list(I don’t think she’s the kind of girl to have a nice list though) – our styles are in the high brow Upset God and Pull a Moonie section. Have no idea how they got there either.

Sorry bout that God but here’s a nice bum for you. According to popular culture you created it so that should make up for it…..

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Weekend Warmup – SBTRKT Featuring Roses Gabor

Heard this track at the start of the festival season, straight into the playlist. Produced by the masked one SBTRKT, featuring one of our favorites Roses(headdress fan and drinker of tea) and also, we find out, art directed by our neighbor Tim Brown who’s also good at fixing locks.

The album artwork(above) grabbed my attention from the get go – it was all over East London billboards this Summer – so the video develops nicely on this theme. We also like dancing(taboo where we go out) – it’s natural, it’s what we wanted to do when we heard this track.

I really need to blog something about fashion week but I’m fashioned out of my brain at the moment – we start designing AW12 today.

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TSO Photography – The Mountain

We do a three day shoot and we think we’re killed. This was filmed between the 4th and the 11th of April this year on El Teide, Spain’s Highest Mountain. There was a lot of high altitude hiking involved(not just in heels like real mountains and stuff) and less than 10 hours sleep for the whole week(nothing to do with whisky or music).

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Bioluminescence by Mila Nesterova at the Book Club

I recently had the pleasure of test shooting with Mila Nestrova a Hackney Wick based photographer just graduated from the London College of Fashion Masters Photography Course.

She uses the truly fascinating medium of light painting, a technique that I’ve been interested in since Rachel Freire introduced me to the work of Aurora Crowley. The technique is quite straight forward – all the images are shot on a long exposure and the daubs and splatters you see are created by literally painting with light. Static garment details are higlighted with UV light with movement and energy created by the graffiti-like swirls of all kinds of light from lazers to simple torches.

Designers used in the below shoot include club-kid favorites Pam Hogg, Kokon To Zai, Bernhard Wilhelm, Andrew Logan, Craig Lawrence, Jeremy Scott and Manish Aurora. The effect achieved by using club lighting in a fashion shoot lends a whole other neon lit dimension we only usually get to see in basement bars and clubs of the afterhours.

The exhibition runs from the 22nd of September to the 23rd of October at The Book Club Leonard Street.

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Current acts of random inspiration.

As a fashion designer it’s proving increasingly difficult to write this blog. Come second week of September we start planning AW2012(oh shit just realised that’s next week). We just finished shooting TWO WEEKS SS12 yesterday and we’re pretty damn happy although we’re a month behind. As it stands I gotta hold onto a lot of the things I’d love to write about on the blog because they’re precious so you’ll really only ever see little slivers of the bigger picture here.

Sometimes it’s interesting to just sit back and look at images and really not let external factors draw you to anything. When you’re not actually looking for inspiration for something in particular it’s amazing what you can discover about yourself. My wardrobe is a sea of black with one little section that’s full of sequings, col, vintage versace. Anyway, at the moment my brain is just liking things like this…..Next week it could just be a big black square but that very much depends on what I get up to this weekend.

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Palladium presents Tokyo Rising by Pharrell Williams

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Saturday Boy Candy – Ash Stymest

Let’s face it, who needs a girl crush when you got a boy crush. So over looking at pictures of teenage girls on various blogs with their knees cut and knickers in the air. Bruises are still ok tho. Boy-candy in the form of Ash Stymest from Select….

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Congrats to Us Design – Wiley “Numbers in Action”

Credit where credit is due. Was due a long time ago before any nominations. Shot by our studio neighbors Us Design Wiley’s “Numbers in Action” video has been nominated for a MOBO. Possibly one of the most original videos we’ve seen this year. Well done guys, fingers crossed for you.

Below are some of the story boards, behind the scenes shots and the video itself.

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