Color Me Trendy is a coloring book for adult, teen, and tween aficionados of style. The book contains 50 illustrations along with 10 empowering poems scattered throughout. You can express your creativity on paper and take that inspiration and apply it to your own wardrobe. For budding fashionistas, this is a great way to share and bond because coloring never goes out of style.

SPONSOR

What’s that? A high-fashion watch with both an artistic statement and a beautiful design? That’s what you get with Memento Mori, an exclusive watch designed by recent ECAL graduate Fiona Krüger. Drawing inspiration from the macabre art of the 17th century, the watch has a glass surface that highlights the intricate details of the clock work. Each piece is assembled and decorated by hand.

Why should we live if we must die? It is one of the questions Danish artist Nikoline Liv Andersen puts us in this exhibition. With a plethora of bodies, thick fabrics, flowers and fruits, life’s transience is reflected upon, man in defense against death and the body in decomposition.

Take a look at the cutest, most delicious custom jewelry created by Candiware. Her limited-edition pieces blend mouth-watering desserts into beautiful designs that not only look delicious, but also smell good. Yes, she has incorporated scent into some of her pieces, meaning not only can you wear delicious looking vanilla frosted cupcake earrings, but they are also scented with vanilla. With Christmas in the not too distant future, these could make a unique gift idea.

Natalia Nazimek (NTHLEE) is Polish illustrator, living and studying in the UK. She started out learning with graphic software at home through trial and error and now she work on various art projects for international brands, magazines and advertising agencies.

SPONSOR

The artist known as Suyo, who is also the creator of the DreamPushers network, now has his designs available through the new Suyo Clothing Company. Think street art meets fashion meets controversy with an Australian twist. In his own words: ‘I don’t care whether you love or hate my art, as long as it is one or the other’.

Artist Julie Paterson from Cloth Fabric was so inspired by the rhyming couplets of Keats, Shakespeare and Winnie the Pooh that she decided to immortalise their words in her new hand-painted range of silk scarves. Gives a whole new meaning to being rapt.

Lydra bags are made in the exact opposite of a sweat shop. Take Fiorina; one of the artisans that creates these beautiful bags made from recycled and sustainable fabrics. She is 81 years old, she volunteers at the op shop down the road and she is a skilled stitcher, having spent her life working as a seamstress. Fiorina is a ninja with a Bernina and she loves putting her skills to good use.

JC Superstar! Jeffrey Campbell is my shoe designer of choice. JC designs new classics (like ‘Benched’, a killer revamped and deconstructed oxford shoe) and remixes old ones – my chunky, pyramid-studded JC ankle engineer boots are my go-to shoe for daily wear.

Straight outta LA, they call themselves ‘the footwear choice of fashion nomads,’ which says it all. Solestruck serves up your Jeffrey Campbells piping hot.

SPONSOR

Inspired by fashion and the history of painting, Amanda Clyne’s work examines the image as a mirror of our desires. Amidst today’s cultural fascination with beauty and persona, her paintings critique our digital obsession and question the consequences for human intimacy.

Cropping a mass media image into a portrait, Clyne re-prints the image on to a surface to which the ink does not adhere, photographing the print as the fluid image morphs and dissolves over time. She then composes a new image from fragments of these photographs. She paints these final images into large-scale paintings, the shifting, slivered fragments offering yet denying the viewer resolution of a now elusive form.

If I had to choose one label to wear for the rest of my life, it would be Sass & Bide. Take at look at their latest collection, Boogie and the History Maker, on the runway at London Fashion Week and you’ll see what I mean.

Pink and orange silks, tribal references, luxe leather and metal belts, draped scarfing, and a to-die-for canary yellow and white necklace made up some of the most beautiful looks on display that week.

What I love best about Sarah-Jane Clark and Heidi Middleton is that no matter how amazing their styling, is or how beautiful their models are, they always manage to upstage everyone when they appear on the runway to close their show. I remember being at one of their sample sales back in the day in a grungy airplane-hanger style warehouse when they pulled up in a car out front. It was like Madonna had arrived.

There were bargains to be snatched up left, right and center, yet dozens of girls were running out onto the street, mobbing Sarah and Heidi for their autographs. While I took the suddenly sparse sale as an opportunity to get closer to the exclusive stock, I was amazed at how in just a few years the designers had gravitated to fashion-god like status. But after seeing these latest shots of the girls in London, it’s not hard to see why. They are, and always will be, the ultimate poster girls for Sass & Bide.

This recent photo series by Joshua Scott combines gang sign stacking with cutting edge jewelry brands, nOir and Bijules. Who needs brass knuckles when you’ve got this much swag on your fists. Stack signs and represent your set with metal and mesh.

Showcase Gallery officially opened in Darlinghurst this month, providing one a new avenue in Australia that supports creative professionals wanting to develop their artistic profile.

The Launch Exhibition features personal pieces by internationally regarded photographers Mark Mawson, Chuck Bradley and Nicholas Alan Cope, designers Bianca Chang and Terry Chisholm, and art directors Paul Meates and Jed DePyper. From the illustrations of Three Drunk Monkeys art director Jed DePyper to Chuck Bradley’s preference for beautifully lit photography, visitors will see an interesting departure from what these professionals are commercially recognised for.

SPONSOR

Danish kids fashion brand, New Generals, found themselves forced to invent a new word — ethicool — to illustrate their approach to kids fashion. In the world of New Generals, organic and ‘ethicool’ need not be beige and boring and cool fashion need not be rigid and cold.

Laura Wesson is a British illustrator. In 2008, she graduated from the University of Westminster, London, with a degree in Illustration and now lives and works in Australia where her love for all things fashion fuels and inspires her designs.

Ducked and Covered is a must-see: the Survival Guide to the Post Apocalypse is an instructional public information film designed to assist Australians after a nuclear war. Produced by the Australian Board of Civil Defence during the early 1980s, this dusty film was found within a university film archive.

Barcelona label Kinkiking have launched their new collection, Kinkiking Industries, which consists of four t-shirts representing imaginary businesses. The team behind the label take their visual inspiration from comics, music, design and graffiti.

SPONSOR

In this surreal fashion film by Suzie Zabrowska, actress Veronica Tharma travels through London wearing the beautiful designs of Silja Manninen.

I started the Vaughn de Heart brand, which is sold through the Lost At E Minor online store, two years ago. This is a video to celebrate and tell more of the story. The music is by Lemolo.

6dollarshirts creates unique t-shirts with artistically complex designs which sell for just six dollars each. In-house graphic designer Jeff T. Owens contributes everything from psychedelic art and mash-ups, such as The Inseminator and Weird Owl, to internet meme characters.