So as some of you are probably aware we’ve been running two labels, an online store and a blog from the beginning. We showed TWO WEEKS in a showroom in Paris back in October and it’s now stocked in several concept stores and high end boutiques internationally. TWO WEEKS was always Remade’s more avant garde older sister. The label is getting lots of call-ins at the moment with the plastica and dip dyed hair-pieces getting the most attention.
We’ve decided to take a sabbatical for AW12 so we won’t be showing anything on this label in Feb. We need to catch up with ourselves and give our main line the attention we need to become a proper global brand. Everything has grown really quickly, really organically and in order to give everything the chance it deserves we needed to re-focus for this season, do everything properly and give ourselves time to grow both as designers and business people.
I wanted to shoot a Lookbook out of our standard bleak warehouse settings and yellow just seemed like a good colour to bring the bright to the collection. The collection was inspired by luxe-sports future-mermaids and we use dip-dyed hair, white leather, opalite and hematite pyramids, swarovski crystal orbs, mesh, liquid jersey, lycra and mesh. In case you were wondering what SS12 Looked like, here it is…
French stylist, editor and photographer Carlyne Serf De Dudzeele is fast becoming a favorite. Not only did she style the Queen of Hip-hop shoot in the current issue of V Magazine, she also styled the shoot on my last post on Japanese Vogue.
Kath and Sora are in China at the moment. They keep asking me what I’d like them to bring me back. They’ve got me a surprise. I hate surprises. I’m hoping for a bit of airport mag swag though cause this is what I have to look forward to….Check out the HOOPS!
Been rubbish at writing this blog recently which is made even more blaringly obvious by the fact that I chose to do a big new years countdown on the post below. My all time contemporary favorite Givenchy’s just released their Lookbook for Pre Fall AW12 and there’s more elements of wow than I have time to write about. To be honest I wasn’t totally sold on their SS12. I felt it veered a little too minimalist. Yep, get the whole surfers and mermaids, sea theme but I love Givenchy for the shiny, sharp digital prints layered back with super slick tailoring and a nod to the streets. I may have to kill someone for those boots and that dog sweater.
If you’re suffering from post-Christmas blues, as we are, then check out this cluster of colour and chaos that we found whilst searching for inspiration. Known as Ms Fitz, this gem has brightened up our computer screens no end. We managed to steal some time from her busy schedule to step into her rainbow world.
Us Bitchy girls love your style, it’s so different, how would you describe it?
I’d describe my current style as chaotic and neo-tribal.
You’ve got your fingers in all pies from blogging, designing and styling, is there anything else you do?
I express myself creatively and most honestly creative people can work in many mediums. I like to think of myself more as an artist who sometimes works through the medium of style, than a stylist. One thing that I am exploring more is my performance – I have always been a dancer and performer, I’ve been a back up dancer for Peaches, Rye Rye, toured with the Gossip and now I’m working on my EP with producer Chew Fu.
Is there anything else you’d like to do?
In another life I’d be a dog walker, or a chocolate chef! Puppies and chocolate are my favourite things!
Describe a life in the day of Ms Fitz…
Well, it depends on the gig. Some days I’m in my studio filling orders for my jewellery, other times I shoot videos and edit them for my performance art, other days I’m in the studio recording tracks, some days I’m up at 7am to get sourcing for for a shoot the next day….its always changing! But the one thing I do every day is walk my dog, Gulliver. He’s awesome.
You style for a wide variety of clients from Australia’s Next Top Model to magazines such as Oyster and Marie Claire, what do you find most challenging?
For me, styling is a challenge because it goes against pretty much every philosophy I have about personal style. I don’t believe that you need to buy designer clothing or to follow trends in order to have great style or be a valuable, attractive human being. Unfortunately, it is a stylists job to tell you the opposite…so I’m a pretty shitty stylist! ha!
I’m a believer that you should just wear what ever you want, express yourself. Break the rules, be a misfit! Wear all your favourite old hats at once! Wear the same stinky pair of boots that you cut the toes off of for a year straight! There’s no such thing as a mismatched print! Fashion is a very powerful tool to confront ideas of sexuality, gender, consumerism and identity, use it!
If you don’t already, would you ever style a celebrity?
I work with subversive performers and I like that- I’ve just styled the new Peaches and Cazwell video, I work with Narcissister, the Chicks on Speed, I work with electro producer Chew Fu and have made custom pieces for the Semi Precious Weapons. But “celebrity” in the modern sense of the word? Um, probably not.. But believe me, I have never been approached by a celebrity to do their red carpet. Can you imagine? hahaha! I’d probably send them out in something likethis,which is the closest I’ve got to dressing a ‘celebrity’ ,and we turned it into a mockery of modern pop culture
We are big fans of your jewellery, what inspires your collection?
I’m inspired by chaos and tribalism. I love the traditional knotting techniques and mixing it with gaudy gold street style hardware.
What’s your favourite piece from your latest collection?
The nose to ear chains (I wear them when ever I party) and the hoodoo voodoo earrings. They make any outfit look spunky..
Are there any other stylists you admire?
hmmm I don’t read fashion magazines so I’m not really in tune with who else is doing what.. But I know there are many out there that are better than I am, in the sense that they are real “stylists”, like, they know exactly what collections were on the runway last week in Paris (duh) and all that stuff. I work more from my gut, luckily it’s usually pretty ahead of the game.
Who’s your favourite designer?
I love Rei Kawakubo for her subversiveness and John Galliano for his flamboyance. I also support upcoming designers like Brad Callahan, Genvieve Clifford, Asher Levine, Zana Bayne and Discount.
You’re originally from Australia, what made you decide to move to NYC?
Unfortunately there is only so much you can do in Oz, and although the talent surpasses the international standards in many ways, it’s hard to be taken seriously as an international brand from all the way down under. But I miss the beach and I miss my family.
Would you ever come to London?
FUCK YEAH! I love London! I love the fashion, I love the people, it’s the bombdiggity!! I have a European passport so I might be over sooner than you’d think. My mother is English and her side of the family is from Leicester, I spent some time in England growing up.
What can we expect from your next collection?
Something fab, glam and a little bit grimey.
All images are taken from Ms Fitz website and blog
To mark the launch of the styles we developed with cult rock n roll shoe label Underground we decided to shoot a series of animated GIFs. Starring two of our favorite BITCHY girls, model Lauren Smith(who you’ll recognise from our online store) and stylist Laura Chatterton we were inspired by the general idea of hanging around, something which a lot of London is doing at present due to the shortage of jobs – that and also just looking hot in a bleak winter landscape.
We work with local boy Alex de Mora for all our website photography so this time we took things out of the studio and called in the help of illustrator Izabella Wilkon the GIFS.
We kept things pretty simple with very gentle movement to lend a creepy quality to the images which seemed fitting for a brand known for creepers. We also like to challenge standard Christmas homepages since I pretty much banned all those Christmas cliche words like glitter, sparkle, twinkle, glitz, jingle from the studio – when I say pretty much I mean if anyone utters them they’ll be silenced. That doesn’t mean I dislike Chrismas though, Mariah Carey’s “All I want for Christmas” is my favorite Christmas song ever and I spent all day Saturday trawling Dalston to find really atrocious decorations for my hideous white disco tree.
Other intersting facts about the shoot
-I really wanted to make a hideous jacket out of fake fur(the kind that gatecrasher kids make leg-warmers out of) that I’m now rather in love with. We cut the pattern for the fake fur jacket on the day and stapled it together.
-Laura’s lips are pink glitter(obviously I didn’t use this word when discussing the look as it wouldn’t really work if I was silenced)
-The girls almost froze but that’s the price you have to pay sometimes when you’re really good looking.
-it’s really hard to find good walls in East London that haven’t been tagged. You just can’t really use a tagged wall in a shoot without looking like a really naff Urban brand.
-Izabella is also called Dawid Gainsbour Wolf, Bellla Azi(note the 3 ls) and also Zuzanna Koppala depending on what e-mail account she’s using. I had to e-mail her to ask her what her actual name is despite having known her since the summer.
-if u’d like to see both models in person you can spot them on the odd night working in the Haggerston too, they’re very very professional bar girls.
Officially my favorite shoot of the year. This one’s stuck to our studio wall. I don’t know what happened to the girl with the jet black hair and the all black uniform but somewhere along the way this year I surprised myself and became colourful but not in a refined colour-block way. The socks in this shoot are from Tabio and are on my christmas list in a few colours. As far as I’m concerned they’re the ONLY socks to be seen in for SS12.
…..I thought I’d show you may fave performance so far. I actually blogged this last year some time but loads of people I know have never seen it so since we’ve a lot more readers now here goes.
Recorded in her bedroom, belted out willy nilly, girl’s got skillz. Sometimes simplicity can be mind blowing and I like to complicate things.
Went to the launch of issue two a couple of weeks back. The biannual publication focusses on the interaction between fashion and art, something of particular interest to me. The mag is eloquently written, delicately laid out, visually rich and printed on good quality paper. In an industry forecasting the demise of print publication there’s still a lot of us out there who relish turning the leaves of a beautiful mag. As one of them I’ve nothing but good things to say about USED.
Available from a focussed selection of stockists including Artwords, Broadway Market and Rivington Street, Magma in Soho and WH Smith in Harrods and Selfridges – you can find the full list here.
Yeah blogging a lot of videos at the moment but we keep seeing so many good ones and my fashion brain is otherwise engaged with boring stuff like accountancy, forecasting and gross profit margins etc etc. We’ve got our eyes very much locked on this harlem lady – all kinda raw, just the way we like it.
This chick’s performing with Annie Mac at Koko on Saturday.
Barbie’s always been cool. There was a bit of a Pepsi/Coke war going on in the 80’s between Barbie and her arch nemesis Cyndi. Cyndi was always a bit fatter and her feet were kinda numpty. She also had a really big head so Barbie won in my book. I think Barbie was more expensive too which made her more desirable. She’s never been more desirable since Bleach gave her a make-over for the party season. I bet Cyndi’s decked out in a Dorothy Perkins shift dress with a bodywave.
We start today with news of VH1’s biopic of girlband TLC. Barely a week goes by that we don’t listen to at least one of their songs if not a whole album. The channel will air a film made for television with the release date yet to be announced. With band members Tionne Watkins and Rozanda Thomas as executive producers the film will no doubt be a very true refection of their personal dramas which included bankruptcy, arson, Left-eye’s turbulent relationship with NFL boyfriend Andre Rison and ultimately her death in a car crash.
Obviously the wardrobe will pay a key role in their story – Can’t wait!
This evening sees our favorite stylist Miss Jacqueline White debut her Dazzle collection at our favorite event space 18 Hewitt Street, headquarters of our favorite mail-out Protein. Her collection is also shot by our favorite(ok one of them) photographer Diego Indraccolo who we’ve also worked with on our own shoots.
I talked through her ideas for the collection with Jacqueline quite some time ago so it’s great to see all her work come to fruition. The collection is based on Norman Wilkinsons dazzle painting technique which was used to camouflage ships by distorting the the silhouette, dead clevs no? Apart from the camo references Dazzle pretty much sums up Jacqueline’s personality so it’s a quite fitting name for her collection. Jack’s also recruited a little army of local creative girls from the music and fashion worlds to model the collection. Bitchy Girls will be at the event supporting this eve. Here’s our favorite shots from the lookbook:
Bumped into little pink lady Alis yesterday whilst shooting in Bethnal Green – the following is one of her most recent recent projects.
Our “getting out of the studio and going to things more” plans didn’t manage to get us as far as this event so we’ll have to make do with writing about it instead. Unfortunately the London show was only on for two days before it set off on it’s world tour.
Using the New Era 59Fifty as a blank canvas, creatives worldwide were invited to put their mark on the cap, customising it without restriction. With a final award of a 10K bursary to further their careers, 10 entries from each of the eight countries involved were selected to go on the travelling exhibition.
Ten finalists were selected from the UK including East London Photographer Alis Pelleschi, who’s had work published in Vice, Super Super, Nylon and i-D. Her creation summed up in her own words – “Disney Princess, Bradford, Pink Mania, Bradford Bulls, Taurus, fake gold, tacky pink gem phone cases, cyber warrior expolsion”. Nuff said. If you want the full strawberry scoop and a look at the other entries check it out on the New Era Introducing website.
I’ve been a fan of 3D nail-art since visiting Tokyo a couple of years back. It’s kind of like icing a cake only it’s your nails. I’ve never actually iced a cake but I’ve made Disco Biscuits so that’s probably close enough.
Whilst in Guangzhou in southern China we found a little nail shop opposite our hotel and so in the spirt of “now or never” I went with know and got some 3D smilies and bows which are all hand crafted in acrylic by the manicurist.
The girl who did my nails had neon tips which were pretty cool and her friend who taught me how to count to 10 in Chinese had the little blingers below. I’ve since forgotten how to count to ten in Chinese.
Right beside our hotel we had Guangzhou’s answer to Emporio Armani – Amor Nini. Dead posh.
