what the **** is going on with student media?

Long time, no see! I have been wanting to write something for The Spinoff for a while and now I finally have. I wrote an opinion piece on recent troubles in student media and some suggestions about what could be done. You can find it here.

xx
Lou

apartamento captures charisma

American writer Glenn O'Brien's apartment

English musician Florence Welch's home

Apartamento is a wonderful interior style (and life style) magazine that I would love to write for someday. Above is two short films from a collaboration they did with Nowness. Each film features charismatic interviews and footage taken inside the homes of beautifully spoken and slightly eccentric celebrities.

xx

Lou  

knock out

The final issue of Critic for 2014 is out now and up online! It has been an exciting and engaging year working at Critic and I couldn't thank the team enough for such a dynamic, intelligent and supportive experience. I also want to congratulate them for winning the big awards of "Best Publication" and "Best Design" at the 2014 Aotearoa Student Press Awards. I am also delighted by Lucy Hunter's win for "Best Feature" for her outstanding piece "Why I Hate Psychics." My wonderful friend, Daniel Blackball, won "Best Illustration" too. And it was very lovely to hear that I received the award of "Best Feature Writer." If you're curious about all the results, you can find the press release on the Awards here.

xx
Lou

return to beneath the shadow

Illustration for my last Critic feature "Return to Beneath the Shadow" by Dan Blackball.

1) Return to Beneath the Shadow by myself! Here is my last feature for Critic this year and potentially forever. It reads as a thought diary (uh oh) of my move from New Zealand to China. As always, take a look or not! And, also, if anyone reading this can pay me money to continue to write, you'd most likely be lying or you'd be some kind of magical creature and I'd be incredibly interested.

2) Hikikomori by Kate Stewart One day, overwrought with pressure from his school and family, Haruki shut himself in his shoebox-sized room, severed all contact with the outside world, and did not emerge for nine years. His only human interaction was mediated through the Internet. He spent month after month sleeping all day and slouching in front of a computer at night, devoting the majority of his time to searching the web, playing video games and anime.

3) The Mapuche: The People of the Land and Their Struggle to Retain It by Bella Macdonald Sharing their home with a six billion dollar timber industry, the Mapuche people of Aracaunia are the poorest in Chile. After centuries of land wars and inequality, the Mapuches, meaning “people of the land,” are beginning to break the silence, uniting to fight to get their land back and get the same rights and privileges as non-Mapuches.

xx

Lou

thank you, daniel blackball!

For Critic feature "Climaximum"

For Critic feature "Why I Hate Psychics"

For Critic feature "A House Without Books"

Whenever I went into Critic's office on a Wednesday afternoon I liked to watch Daniel Blackball at work. By the afternoon, with the surmounting pressure of that weekly deadline, Dan would be plunged deep into the creation of an illustration. I would watch him hunched over his keyboard staring at an intricate, minute detail. Often, after a minute of staring, he would press several buttons on the keyboard, click the mouse, and...something would have changed. Most times it was hard to tell what exactly - but I always knew something magical was being created. On Wednesdays I did not disturb Dan.

Five days later, when Monday came around, I would walk into campus, pick up several copies of Critic then head up to Radio One to help out with Critic's weekly show that Dan also ran. It was always a pleasure to see him but I was also excited about something else. Each time I sat down in that small studio and opened Critic for the first time that week, Dan's illustrations would take my breath away. They had depth, style and were intelligent - incredibly intelligent. And every second week, when one of those illustrations was paired with a feature I had written, it was like an artwork had been created just for me.

It's just over a week before I leave for overseas. One of the many things that I am already missing are those Monday morning encounters...and, of course, Dan himself! It's times like this, however, when I am so thankful for the Internet. Online I can find Dan's work and keep up to date with all his new projects. Now, I regularly check Dan's Tumblr and Behance...and marvel at the possibilities of what he might do next.

xx
Lou

the subconscious restaurant

SUBCONSCIOUS RESTAURANT

BEIJING LAUNCH EVENT

AUG  16 (SAT)

@ ZAJIA LAB

START TIME: 20:00

ENTRY: 50RMB

On August 16th is the launch event of White Fungus' experimental music magazine in Beijing. I am not there int time for it but it'll be great fun. Hearing about events like this get me so excited for the move!

xx
Lou

interview: wendy syfret (editorial assistant at vice)

Photos courtesy of Wendy.

Because this blog is part of the VICE Blogging Network, I get emails every now and then with descriptions of future VICE magazine themes, party invites and general call-outs. Usually these emails come from Wendy, who is the editorial assistant at VICE. I sent Wendy some questions to get to know her and what her job involves. 

-

Can you describe what your current role as editorial assistant at VICE involves?

I was actually bumped up to editorial coordinator last year so my job involves a few facets. I manage the website, monitor traffic, commission and edit pieces, write them myself, and generally oversee the day-to-day editorial things. Our editor is also our creative director and is a pretty busy dude, so often he'll give the direction and I'll work out how to put it in place—how to cover certain topics better, grow contributors, or cover an event.

How did you come to working at VICE?

When I finished uni I freelanced and traveled for a while, then came to VICE as a 22-year-old for a three month internship. I think timing wise I was lucky because it was at a point where a lot of things were changing and roles were growing. My biggest piece of advice for interns is take on as much work as you can physically handle, don't say no to anything. Firstly people like you, but my whole goal was to make sure that when i finished up people would be used to my help and wouldn't want to go back to things without me.

Saying that I did take off travelling for six months when my time was up. I got an email in Mexico asking me to come help them out when I was home and the rest was history. Oh another piece of advice, if you have an office that's big on lunches—always go if invited. I love the interns that come to lunch.

What opportunities has working for publications like VICE given you?

It has given me access to people and stories I would have struggled to get otherwise: be it interviewing scientists, cult members, or photographers I look up to. A lot of the stuff I end up writing about is unique. When I was in uni I probably wouldn't have guessed I'd have written so many stories about aliens and weird animal news.

What other projects are you currently involved with?

I run a site called Good Good Girl that's all female curated content. I try to see it as a 21st century feminist meeting place. P.S. we're always looking for new contributors!

How do you separate your own ethical values with some of the more questionable (or ethically ambiguous) content that you come across?

I don't. A lot of people assume VICE is a loose moral environment but it's not. The magazine is very liberal, but so am I. Most of the stuff we cover about drug laws, or police brutality etc reflect my own opinions. I'd never write or publish something I don't believe is ethical. I constantly get pitches that would get a lot of attention but I feel are sexist, or offensive in some way and I always pass. I don't care if something gets a million clicks, if I think the message is damaging I don't want it. Although to be clear, that doesn't mean I won't run different opinions to mine—I don't care who you vote for, but I care if you're mean spirited or vile.

As an insider, do you have a position on the print media versus digital debate?

I think the digital revolution is the most exciting thing since the printing press, it democratised the media and meant that young people can write for any publication they like and stand next to their peers without having to move overseas or make other sacrifices. It pains me that print is declining but it will never die, no matter what they say all writers still get a huge rush from being published in a print publication. Sometimes I also think that the competition means people need to be better and more innovative to survive, which is always a plus.

What do you see yourself (ideally) doing in ten years? Why this?

Oh man, ideally my site would finally be making money to pay my rent and contributors. But perhaps editing and managing my own small team somewhere.

Could you list three cool things for visitors to do in Melbourne?

Check out the Heide gallery and see if someone can give you a little bit of history about the site and Sunday Reed, one of my personal heroes.

There is too much food to mention, but I'm lazy and live in Northcote so I'd say get a pizza at Pizza Meine Liebe and duck next door for a drink at Joe's Shoe Store—best pizza and bar in town if you ask me.

Working at i-D (I coordinate that as part of VICE) it's probably not surprising that I'm pretty clothes obsessed, and Alice Euphemia stocks all my friends and favourites so check them out. Oh and if you have any money left Monk House also rules.

critic cover - issue six (2014)

On the back of the previous post, here is the photo that was used for this week's Critic. The image is by my two fantastic friends Alex Lovell-Smith and Daniel Blackball.

xx
Lou

a room filled with windows

Sarah Ley-Hamilton is a lovely friend of mine who is constantly thinking and constantly doing. In her Twitter (@Sarahleyh) description Sarah describes herself as, "Working, tumblring and drinking coffee around Dunedin. Suffers from wanderlust and burgeoning startup addiction". But, after I stumbled across a piece Sarah wrote about print versus digital media, I think she should should add writing to her description. The short, charming piece is posted below for your enjoyment!

--

A house without books is like a room without windows.

- Heinrich Mann

Unless you have been hiding under a rock for the past ten years you will have realised that there have been significant changes in the world around us. You will have heard people banging on about the "digital age", or "the frontier", or "the revolution". You will have also heard that if you want to move forward in any capacity, whether it be in a business sense or a personal sense, you have got to "think digital" and embrace change and new technology because - well - it’s the future.

Recently, I happened across a blog by a young, up-and-coming business entrepreneur. In one post he discussed the fall of print media and advertising and how having technology such as Apple’s iPad or Kindle destroys the hopes of anyone trying to reach their target market through the print medium. At the bottom of the post I noticed a poll which consisted of the following:

Will you ever permanently give up print?

• Heck No - I love the feel of dead trees on my finger tips
• Yes absolutely - I want a Mag+ with AR Yesterday!
• Yeah-Nah - I’m a fence sitter

I answered "Heck No"…. But I can’t help think the author had completely missed the idea behind print as a medium. I don’t choose to buy magazines solely for the purpose of destroying native trees, I buy them because when I read a magazine I form a relationship with it - a relationship that goes something like this…

A few times a week I leave the protective warmth of my high-rise office walls to venture downstairs to the newsagent on the ground floor. In the newsagent, I buy an energy drink, sometimes a chocolate bar, and I peruse the floor to ceiling display of magazines. Like a prospective relationship - I check them out. I pick them up. I flick through them. I smell them. I then chat with the owners of the shop about how my day has been and debate the pros and cons of the magazines I am trying decide between. If I’m lucky the owners will have just got a copy of my favourite magazine in, or they may have a new one that will be just my cup of tea. Just like a first date, however, I only get the opportunity to take the magazine at face value - I only get a glimpse of what it has to offer. If - and when - I decide which magazine I’ll take home with me, I pay for it, exit the shop and trudge back up to my office as the despair of sitting in front of a computer screen for the rest day drifts over me like a cloud.

In the elevator to my office the magazine and I have our second date. It's more intimate than the first as it's just us. The excitement of getting to know each other better is overwhelming. I become flushed and a little out of breath as the elevator doors open and I’m forced to jam my magazine into my handbag and negotiate pleasantries with whoever has reached the office door at the same time as me.

It's not until I get home that the real relationship begins - the next few hours (months, in real relationship time) are pure bliss. I read the magazine from front to back, top to bottom - inhaling the scent of ink on paper, feeling the smooth paper under my touch, enjoying the noise every page turn makes. I devour it; every detail is scrutinized, every advertisement analysed and all inadequacies, that the magazine may have, are identified. Once I have done this, I will do it all over again. Something might interrupt me - the clock striking 11 pm, or the jug finishing boiling, or dinner is ready - and the magazine gets put down in its place of honour beside my bed.

In this place beside my bed the magazine stays, for a week or so, for me to freely check back through and make sure I haven’t missed anything. Then it is put on my artfully arranged pile of previous purchases (relationships) as a record of the good times we’ve shared. It's not a graveyard of trees, empty and lifeless; it's a library of lessons, of good memories and of cherished moments - a history of then and an inkling of what is to come.

As the months pass, I have more brief but intimate encounters with printed materials. I can always feel safe and secure in the knowledge that should I need to use a recipe, reflect on a poignant article, glimpse at a beautiful photograph or illustration, my magazines will be there waiting for me, patiently - always giving, always supportive and always offering moments to escape and remember better or more exciting times. Sometimes, I lend them to friends and family who I think will benefit from the pearls of wisdom among the pages. Sometimes, they lay there quietly for years until the right opportunity arises.

My relationship with print media will not be torn apart no matter what digital or technological advances occur in the near or distant future. It is a relationship that will last as long as I do.

win a copy of the 13th edition of white fungus magazine

Tao Wells White Fungus 13 Page and Blackmores Nelson

The generous team behind White Fungus magazine have provided me with a copy of the 13th edition of their magazine to give away on my blog! To win this copy, email me (eloise@thedot.co.nz) your best mushroom story (one or two sentences) by 9th of November 2013.

xx
Lou

interview: ron hanson (editor and co-founder of white fungus magazine)

White Fungus Issue 13

In Praise of Bats by Tessa Laird spread - White Fungus 13

Flying High Six Indonesian Artists by Nicholas Trezzi

For stocklists of White Fungus in New Zealand click here.

White Fungus magazine began nine years ago in Wellington as a photocopied publication delivering political messages. Nine years on, brothers Ron and Mark Hanson are still creating their magazine and have recently released its 13th edition. Zane Pocock and I chatted with Ron Hanson over Skype to understand what White Fungus is all about and how the team maintained enthusiasm and drive for a project that only now is on the verge of an international launch.


--

Where are you?

We’re in the Critic office in Dunedin. Where are you?

No way! Wow! I’m in Taichung in Taiwan. I went to university in Dunedin. I didn’t work for Critic but I had a band who was written about in the magazine.

What made you want to show your magazine, White Fungus, at Dunedin's Zine Fest?

We were invited to, but for me, I was born in Dunedin, I spent my early childhood there and I went to university there. I have a connection to this city. I like Dunedin - it’s got its own space - it does its own thing. I went to high school in Wellington [and in comparison] I felt like Dunedin was a place where you could do your own thing - it wasn’t caught up in the trends - everyone in Wellington was so much more concerned about being cool.

One of the best periods of my life was in Dunedin. That time was a chance to dream. I used to go for walks every night and [think about things].

What about your life now?

Life now is pretty exciting! There’s more pressure than I had back in those days - we’ve been making our magazine White Fungus for nine years but it’s just starting to come together now.

Last year in March was the turning point for us. Our magazine featured in an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and in that same month there was an article about White Fungus in the experimental music magazine the Wire. Since then everything has been on a roll. Almost every day there’s some good or exciting news for us! We’re really enjoying ourselves because we’re feeling in control.

How did you maintain enthusiasm for this project for nine years?

We were broke, you know? Before we started we spent four years in Taiwan teaching English. We then had a bit of money to get the magazine going. We also spent years back in New Zealand on the unemployment benefit , we got some grants, we lived with our parents for quite a while. Oh - my mum is calling me! I don’t Skype that often! Ahh bad timing, I just declined her. [Everyone guiltily laughs]... Anyway, during that time all we had was our magazine. We invested everything into it.

But it’s really coming together now - we’ve been picking up distributors all over the place - distribution is a huge challenge for an independent project. My brother Mark still teaches full time and I teach about thirteen hours a week.

Do you live a double life in that respect?

It is a double life - we work hard. Most of our friends live in Taipei so here, in Taichung, we work during the week. Only in the weekends do we go up to Taipei to have some fun and network and so forth. But it’s starting to look like we could turn this into a real business now.

If you turn it into a real business will you stay in Taiwan? What’s the allure of being in Taiwan?

There’s a number of reasons. Originally it was because we could make money teaching English here but Taiwan also has really good funding for the arts.

Can you apply for that funding as Kiwis?

We haven’t yet but we’re about to. We’ve done a lot of projects with Taiwanese artists and we can always get funding. We were just in San Francisco and we got funding to fly some San Francisco artists over here. Last year we got funding to fly an artist from Taiwan to New Zealand. Recently we’ve been introduced to someone high up in the Taiwanese government who has suggested we could get funding here. 

I don’t know if you know about Taiwan’s political situation but Taiwan isn’t recognised as a country because of the One China policy. When the KMT moved to Taiwan and Mao took over the mainland there were two governments of China. Eventually the West shifted allegiance to Mao and Taiwan got the cold shoulder even though it was becoming a democracy. Because Taiwan doesn’t have all that representation it puts a lot of money into the arts because it wants to get its name out there as much as possible. Taiwan is like New Zealand - it’s an underdog - it’s politically isolated but there are some really great artists here. We’ve spent so much time here now we feel at home. The magazine’s name White Fungus even comes from a can of white fungus that we discovered in a supermarket here.

Don’t you use the image from a scan of that white fungus can for your magazine cover?

Yeah! Every cover of the magazine is the same.

Is that your own artistic project?

Yeah - it’s funny because I was talking to Aaron Hawkins on Radio 1 and he asked me if there’s any resistance to us now that our magazine is getting bigger. I didn’t really say this at the time but I’d like to think that as we become a more established magazine one of the things that we’re most proud of is that we've never had a cover star on our magazine. I think that’s a radical idea. Magazines often have one person on the cover and that organises a very individualistic star system - to not have a cover star I think we’re challenging that star system. The further we can get into that system and even the commercial system while not changing our own style I think that’s really going to create a stir and challenge these other magazines. Some people seem to equate success with being mainstream but I still think we’re fairly underground.

When White Fungus was starting out, how did you establish connections in order to constantly have content to fill your magazine?

That’s a good question. In the first issue we didn’t feature any artists, instead we wrote about the bypass being built in Wellington. It was really a political propaganda piece.

It was against Kerry Prendergast wasn’t it?

That’s right! We’d just come back from Taiwan and we were working on a music project but we were really struggling to find a studio. Then all these artists were kicked out of their studios because of the bypass - including famous artists like the Flight of the Conchords guys. All these people were getting kicked out of their studios and the mayor was still going around saying that “We’re the creative capital” and bragging about Wellington which was kind of embarrassing, too. The mainstream media didn’t want to cover this story. I wrote an article for one of Wellington's community newspapers and they edited the hell out of it so by the time it was published it was totally different to what I had written. In the end we decided to write about what is it they’re destroying to build this motorway. We wanted to make a publication about the history of this area - about Cuba Street. Because we wrote about issues that people cared about, our publication instantly got traction. After that we followed the responses. At first some of the artists we wrote about we had met through art galleries. But at the beginning we had no contacts except the people we’d gotten drunk with at the pub. It involves trial and error and not being afraid to be rejected or not get any response at all.

Do you have any bad or good rejection stories?

Not so much! You get ignored more than you get rejected. One time a bookstore sent back a copy of the magazine with its business card which said "No. We do not want this." I won’t name the store because it’s now stocking us. There’s no point in cutting off your nose to spite your face!

Generally we’d be ignored and underestimated. In the past, people would see our photocopied magazine and never see that it could grow into something. People only see something for what it is - they very rarely see a vehicle or a person and see the potential for what he or she or the project could become. Every time we made a new issue people would be shocked. But a lot of people preferred it when our magazine was simply a photocopied work because it was less threatening I guess. But we were ambitious. We wanted to cause a stir and eventually live off what we did.

Very few people have the courage to cold call but if you do that you will have some successes. But I’ve always felt like when we didn’t get a success or a response, that was for the better anyway. They’re not the sort of people we want to talk to. You’ve got to be open otherwise you go backwards.

What barriers have you faced over time?

Despite the obvious money barriers, the biggest barrier we encountered was a kind of defeatism. People would tell us "You can’t do a magazine" like it was an established fact. Do you know that magazine Pavement? Back in the ‘90s Pavement was huge but it went broke and closed down. There was a magazine called Staple which closed down and then there was a magazine called Loop which turned into a record label and the magazine closed down... This made everyone think hat we couldn’t do a magazine in New Zealand because New Zealand is too small. Also, New Zealanders are often suspicious of ambitious people. It was a hard road - there was very little comprehension or enthusiasm. But when things do start going well people can turn on you even harder because they don’t want to be proven wrong. But we were operating on a whole different model and we weren’t just dealing with New Zealand - if we were only making a magazine for New Zealand it would be a lot harder. 

I’d like to challenge the sense of defeatism in New Zealand. I want young people to know that just because no one seems to get what they’re doing, they should continue to do it anyway. If you’re determined you can make it happen but it does take sacrifices.  People ask me if they can be involved with White Fungus and as soon as I give them some work to do they suddenly say they’re busy. There’s this sense of a consumer culture - of instant gratification. This idea of sacrifice and hard work has been lost. For us, we’ve had a lot of hard years and we may have paid a very heavy price for it at times but in the end that’s the price you pay for doing what you want to do in life.

What goals or dreams are you working towards?

First of all - to live off our magazine - that’s the ultimate goal. We’re in the middle of a business deal which might make that possible but I can’t say anything more. You’re the first people I’ve told about this! We’ve picked up distributors all over the world but there’s interest in us really launching White Fungus as an international magazine. Our ultimate goal is to stimulate a whole wave of counter culture.

Counter what culture?

We want to counter more than mainstream culture but consumer culture as well - the culture where you buy your identity rather than discover it or create it yourself. With White Fungus we want to get away from that niche specialisation - we want to create a different response and bring different kinds of people together. We want to create an active reader - the reader has to play an active role in decoding our magazine’s content and creating meaning from it. I’d like to think that White Fungus doesn’t have fans but instead the people who read it are all people who I’d like to meet and who I do meet over time! I watch a big rock or pop band perform to 50,000 people and I think - those bands don’t want to meet all these people after the gig! We’re doing things on a smaller scale but even as things get bigger we’d like to think that we’re cultivating readers who we do want to meet. This is totally different to the consumer model. We want to create a counter culture to that passive, over specialised culture which creates these detached individuals who have little connection to other people.

Are you hoping to expand outside of the magazine as well?

We’ve been doing this more and more over the years. Last year we did all sorts of different projects. We brought an artist to New Zealand. We also had an exhibition / project of our own work shown at the Adam Art Gallery in Wellington, accompanying exhibitions by the Wellington Media Collective and Martha Rosler. We made poster works and a big broadsheet publication called "The Consumers of the Future". The title comes from a quote by John Key on Campbell Live before he was first elected: "Our children are important...they're the consumers of the future." 

We’ve deejayed at a club in Taipei to over 400 people. We’re holding an event in Berlin in February at this really cool place that does sound art. We have a New Zealand artist called Zahra Killeen-Chance coming over here in January. We run about seven or eight events a year now and that’s a big part of how we promote the magazine. Also, Taiwan has just signed a Free Trade deal with New Zealand too so it looks like there will be the opportunity to do a lot of cultural exchanges between the two places. We really consider ourselves as artists who happen to make a magazine.

How do you view White Fungus in relation to the huge corporation that is Vice?

There are some similarities - there’s a certain irreverence that we both share. But I have a complicated view of Vice. They’re more immediate - but we’re trying to create something that’s lasting. Vice is innovating within that commercial model but ultimately they’re still creating a disposable product. There are certain things our magazine won’t do - we won’t go gloss, we won’t publish advertisements we don’t like. But because we’ve stuck with this mentality for so long I don’t think people would want us to become like the other products - we’d lose our edge.

I read that a lot of contributors are friends or have become friends of yours - how do you work with friends?

At the beginning, our contributors were all old friends. One contributor I went to journalism school with, another has become the Chief Bureau Editor of the Beijing Office of the Financial Times - which is a success in a different way. None of my old friends are working on the magazine now, but we’ve become friends with most of our current contributors. I feel confident that they give us their best because they’re working for a unique platform - this is their chance to reach an interesting audience and because of that they’re motivated! With a lot of our contributors we really discuss the content in depth - there’s much more of a dialogue. We’re not really hierarchical but at the end of the day Mark and I make the final decisions.

toilet paper for your bedside table

If you're interested in aesthetics and the breaking of conceptual boundaries (which also involves collaborations with pop culture) TOILETPAPER magazine will fulfill all your needs. The above images and concepts are by Maurizio Cattelan and Pierpaolo Ferrari who founded the magazine in 2010. These images and more can be found on their website (which is in one of my top website experiences alongside the Comme des Garcons' site...) or in their magazine.

Become hypnotised by the TOILETPAPER magazine and website experience...then consider ordering their bi-annual magazine here.

xx
Lou

white fungus update

White Fungus at Kadist Art Foundation in San Francisco

Samin Son White Fungus 13 Parade Dairy Island Bay

Today Zane and I interviewed the editor of the fantastic, counter culture magazine called ‘White Fungus’. The editor, Ron Hanson, is based in Taiwan (where he was when we interviewed him) but grew up in New Zealand. The interview will be up on this blog soon. When I meet this kind of person I freak out a bit and can't quite believe such cool people exist. Still buzzin'.

xx
Lou

frank and iggy are your oysters

Last night I got an email from Zac Bayly who is the current editor at Australia's oldest independent fashion title Oyster Magazine and also in the VBN which I'm a part of. Oyster is about to release Oyster #103: The Hang Out In Real Life Issue and Zac is pretty excited about the new double covers featuring Frank Ocean and Iggy Azalea shot by Nabil. The photos are lovely (as are their subjects) and it's always surreal getting a personal email from someone you admire tremendously (working at or for Oyster would be a dream for me). 

For links to the covers on the Oyster website, click here.

For a teaser of the new issue, click here.

xx

Lou 

clippings #3

xx

Lou

clippings #2

Just arrived back from Auckland and I am so burnt but at least I have a short film award under my belt (and for a 'sustainability' themed competition too!). I am back in Auckland next week but will post a photo diary of my short trip tomorrow! Meanwhile enjoy more clippings from my vintage magazines.

xx
Lou

clippings # 1

I have just discovered a huge stash of old Vogues from the 80s. It's a lot of holiday fun looking at the advertising and things of interest then compared to now. I mean these magazines have cigarette ads, body oil ads, no airbrushing, and far more normal looking models. However there is also almost no celebrities and the articles are much more different. I am going to load up little clippings from these magazines over the next few days. So many of the 80s outfits now people wouldn't be caught dead wearing but there are details and colours and photos that I just can't ignore!
xx
Lou

the beginnings of street style blogging

Aps recently blogged about one of her favourite street style blogs, Helsinki (from Finland). As a weird coincidence I came across an early 80s magazine collection at my grandparent's home. One of the articles I cut out was about Sweden street style! Now of course there would have been no street blogs back then (30 years ago!) but it had the same fundamental ideas-fashion of the people. Above are a few parts of the article I photographed (no scanner) in all my excitment! I especially love the layering of the second to last woman and the young girl with her partner (?) looks like someone that I'd like to know!

xx

Lou

the gentle woman and inez van lamsweerde

Our fabulous friend, Charli D., once introduced me to a magazine called 'The Gentlewoman' which of course has a focus on women. It's neat. Its title is a sister to the magazine 'Fantastic Man'. I believe it's a little bit hard to come by but once sited, one should give it a try. The biannual Gentlewoman is more text based but its photo editorials are just as beautiful as any. From reading through it I think it has a more realistic and intelligent point of view on international women and fashion and style. It has a kind of genuine air that I hope will constantly remain between its covers.

In the feature that Charli lent me the central focus was the brilliant fashion photographer Inez van Lamsweerde. Her name is impossible to remember and her photos are just as impossible to forget. All the big fashion houses want her for her eye for almost an alternative sex appeal or fantastical sex. You'll understand what I mean if you visit her website. She is always working with her partner Vinoodh Matadin which is kind of special. I wonder if it gets tense ever? The above photos weren't in the magazine, they're just examples of Lamsweerde's work. Seriously, she's one of the current queens of fashion photography. Kapow.

xx
Lou