After winning the i-D Styling and Maria Luisa awards at 2007’s International Talent Support (a.k.a. ITS) – an annual event in Trieste supporting young fashion designers and photographers – a shell-shocked Justin Smith threw himself into celebrations. Smith, born in 1978, is the millinery world’s new rising star. His MA show at London’s Royal College of Art was extremely well received. ‘The concept for my show was based all around the performative hat’, he says. ‘I started with the models, found out what they performed with and worked back from there. For example, the burlesque fan dancer wore the fans on her head as part of the hat, and took them off and performed on the catwalk with them. So the main themes were the performative hat inspired by circus, performance and an East End Victorian funeral’. His graduate collection is bound to take your breath away. So how did this ambitious and hardworking milliner go from training as a chef to hairdressing to millinery? ‘It has been an organic process on following my creativity’, he explains. ‘The story is too long for a better explanation!’ While Justin labours in his studio on private commissions and collaborates with designers for fashion week, he continues to be a hairdresser three days a week. But with such obvioustalent, he’ll be far too busy making hats to hold down the part-time job for long.
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Also by KAREN LEONG
‘I overdosed on art, psycho-analytic theory and philosophy, and that clogged up my creativity’, says London-based Gordon Cheung of his artistic state in 2001 after graduating from the Royal College of Art. A six-week residency in Pakistan in 2003 changed all that. ‘The combination of being away, seeing some amazingly kitsch decorated trucks, and meeting some very interesting artists, had a huge impact on me’, he says. Read more
Elizabeth McGrath’s art is like something out of An American Werewolf in London or a Tim Burton production. Part-gothic, part-whimsical, Elizabeth draws inspiration from roadside attractions, decaying cities, nature, fashion, architecture, interior design, churches of all kinds, movies, good magazines, folklore, music, literature and poetry. Read more
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Says New York-based illustrator Yuko Shimizu on the work of artist Marilyn Minter: ‘I was extremely lucky to be able to study fine arts with Marilyn Minter as my professor before she became too busy and stopped teaching the course. She was brutally honest about students work, which sometimes made me cry but made me grow like nobody else did. I owe her a lot’. Read more
There’s not much one can say about an artist who has recorded more than 400 albums — even if you manage to listen to a large portion them, there’s a good chance you’ve missed something. Good thing, as far as I know, R. Stevie Moore is the only person who has released that many records (Daniel Johnston may come close), many of which were cassette-only or printed in limited numbers. Virtually unknown for decades, the obsessive music geekdom that has reached a fever pitch as this generation of fans has allowed Moore to keep his relentless flow of Zappa-esque weirdness, power-chord pop, tongue-in-cheek ballads, satirical new wave, and whatever else we’ve most certainly missed, gushing out into the universe.
Sculptor Richard Stipl creates disturbing, gothic, vaguely religious tableaus using hyper-realistic, resin casted figures that quite often are engaged in some bizarre behavior, covered in blood, leaking gore, or otherwise frozen in some horrific pose. A friend of mine said, ‘If you’re going to develop that level of skill, why would you use it to make such ugly things?’ I kind of like gross things, though, so it doesn’t bother me. Read more
My town is one of foghorns at five am, the smell of salty air and the sound of seagulls, Peets coffee, steep hills and die hard fans and loyalists. For those of us who have been here in San Francisco for some time now, we know all the secret gems of this small city — from Clarion Alley, to Army Street, from Irving to Broadway. Read more
Oh man, what I wouldn’t give to be able to sing like Neil Finn. His voice rasps with all the sincerity and integrity of a thousand heartfelt melodies. Heck, I’d probably trade my prized collection of Archie comics for just the chorus on this song. Driving Me Mad? You betcha(dupa). This man is a treasure. Bow low indeed.
The fashion brand Jack Spade created a new concept in winter fashion: the moustache gloves. Available in red, blue, grey and yellow, they are recommended for putting right below your nose. Enjoy! Read more
Esopus only hits newsstands twice a year, but take a peek inside and you’ll understand why. Read more
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Karen Caldicott’s clay head models
British born, New York-based model maker Karen Caldicott has been making clay heads for all major US publications over the last decade. Read more
Trip out with Sparrow Vs Sparrow’s retro illustrations, I love their aesthetic, color use and sense of humor. Read more
Alex Passapera’s dizzying pen and ink drawings are cascades of images melting into one another, often looking like contorting, mutating creatures spewing blood-like ink splatters. Read more
Italian-born, New York City-based photographer Paolo Ventura creates fairy-tale like pictures out of amazingly constructed, miniature dioramas that almost trick the eye into thinking he’s a tilt-shift photographer. Read more
Our celebrity-saturated culture makes many of us irrationally hateful of the faces we see on our TV screens and magazine pages. Good thing there’s Celebrity PunchOut to let off some of that steam.
Wolfmother. Rock n roll. Mystical lyrics. Heavy riffs. They have a new album out, Cosmic Egg, and we have five copies to giveaway, along with their debut album. To enter, tell us your favorite Wolfmother song and the city you live in. Yo! Two fingered salute. Read more
From afar, Jesus stares serenely at those surrounding you. But up close, Islamic crescents cluster together in abstract patterns. Created by fashion label, the-affair, this tee is printed on beautifully soft American Apparel in a limited edition of 200. Purchase now. Read more
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