BEAUTY: Clothing--Mithridate

Mithridate, the label founded by Chinese designer Demon Zhang, continues to mine creative inspiration from her home country. For this vibrant SS '25 collection at London Fashion Week, she looked at the heritage clothing from the Yunnan, her home province. She employed the beautiful patterns, colors, and embellishments of several different ethnic groups (hats from the Kucong and pom-poms from the Hani) that all bear some resemblance to the native dress of nearby Myanmar, Bhutan, and Nepal.

https://mithridate.com/

BEAUTYY: Clothing--Simone Rocha

For her SS '25 collection at London Fashion Week, Simone Rocha looked to legendary choreographers Pina Bausch and Michael Clark as inspiration for a runway full of dancers in their off-time, getting ready for a show or just coming off stage. This was a co-ed collection and the women sported lots of tulle but so did the men! And as a reference to Bausch's piece "Nelken (Carnations)" in which dancers perform on a stage blooming with 8,000 carnations, Rocha embellishes tops and jackets with embroidered or jeweled carnations. The entire affair feels calculatedly romantic, but the appearance on a tee shirt of a grotesque reimagining of Edouard Manet's "Olympia" by artist Genieve Figgis intriguingly skews the sense of the collection to something slightly darker...

https://simonerocha.com

BEAUTY: Clothing--Qasimi

It's London Fashion Week! The September schedule is a nice bridge between the January-February and June-July shows. So let's take a look...

Khalid Al Qasimi, an Emerati royal, founded his fashion house in 2008, and the brand quickly gained prominence in the fashion world. But after his death of a drug overdoes in 2019, his twin sister, Hoor Al Qasimi took over the house, and has done a great job of keeping the vision of the brand alive.

Hoor continues Khalid's language of the Middle East with garments that are loose and breezy to combat the heat. These looks for her Spring-Summer 2025 collection approach a more casual, streetwear sense than in the past, and she has included some interesting prints. But the last look featuring wearable art jewelry is a bit of a surprise for the brand. I like it.

https://www.qasimi.com/

BEAUTY: Clothing--Nuba

The talent incubator Fashion East has been a fantastic force in the fashion world. Founded by Lulu Kennedy MBE, Fashion East has nurtured the likes of Kim Jones, Craig Green, Simone Rocha, Martine Rose, Wales Bonner, Charles Jeffrey Loverboy, Per Gotesson, J.W. Anderson, all of whom can be found featured on this blog! The organization takes on three designers at a time, and allows them to show three collections before rotating out to a different cast of designers.

Among the current crop is a new brand, Nuba, helmed by Jebi Labembika and Cameron Williams. Their Spring-Summer '25 collection shown at London Fashion Week is called "Smoke" and is based on Afro-Caribbean cultures but to my eyes, it looks as if they are simply enjoying working with their medium. Much like an abstract painter can create a work that explores and celebrates the element of paint, just letting it do what it is going to do on the canvas, the Nuba duo seem to be reveling in how fabric drapes and how pieces join to create shapes. Geometry alternates with flowing folds, creating a beautiful statement that is both contemporary and classical.

I can't find a dedicated site for their brand, but it looks like Ssense is an on-line stockist.
https://www.ssense.com/en-us/men/designers/nuba/clothing

BEAUTY: Clothing--Olly Shinder

The talent incubator Fashion East has been a fantastic force in the fashion world. Founded by Lulu Kennedy MBE, Fashion East has nurtured the likes of Kim Jones, Craig Green, Simone Rocha, Martine Rose, Wales Bonner, Charles Jeffrey Loverboy, Per Gotesson, J.W. Anderson, all of whom can be found featured on this blog! The organization takes on three designers at a time, and allows them to show three collections before rotating out to a different cast of designers.

The current crop of talent at Fashion East includes young designer Olly Shinder (previously here) who showed his SS '25 collection--his last under the Fashion East wing--at London Fashion Week. Shinder is inspired by his interaction with the underground gay fetish world. He told Vogue UK that his fascination lies in uniforms, and this collection, while still letting the fetish world peek out, was definitely more centered on the idea of a uniform being a vehicle to remove any traces of individuality for membership in a tribe or corps.

https://olly-shinder.com/

BEAUTY: Collage--Waldemar Strempler

Loving these recent collage creations from German artist Waldemar Strempler. The use of antique paper, vintage books, and bits of worn ephemera adds a fantastic texture.

https://stremplerart.tumblr.com/

WINNER!

And the clear winner from last night is Kamala Harris. Her opponent only displayed his typical childish petulance and rambling incoherence.

Since I am a California resident, I have had the pleasure of voting for Kamala Harris several times already--in primaries and elections for both State Attorney General and State Senator--and I will have great pleasure voting for her again.

https://kamalaharris.com/

"To Line"

Here is a delightful video from Atelier RZLBD, a boutique art and architecture practice based in Toronto founded by Reza Aliabadi, about the concept of a line. A line can be drawn, a line can be made of objects, a line can be a crease, an interruption, a line can be shadow, a line be the destruction of something and the creation of something else.

"A drawing is simply a line going for a walk."
--Paul Klee

Over a charrette, Atelier RZLBD pursued an open series exploring the act of drawing an analogue line. We present 64 lines, each created to push the boundaries of how we understand line.

As computer aided drawing takes over the art and architecture disciplines, traditional methods of design, sketching, and drafting have become a lost art. A digital line is defined merely by a start and end coordinate, existing in an infinite realm with no character or imperfection. Lacking any sense of scale, a computer can generate a line of any length instantly. To some, this is an ideal – a sense of perfection, mathematical precision, efficiency, and reliability. However, the complex interaction between humans, tools, intentions, motivations, expressions, purposes, cultural customs, cognitive routines, techniques, and materials cannot be forgotten.

A drawn line is not merely one-dimensional. By the touch of a human hand, each line is drawn through the intimate interaction of a tool onto a medium; we are bound by the limits of these materials. The medium has a distinct size, coloration, and consistency, while the tool has a specific thickness, function, and agility. Uniting two contrasting materials creates texture, intricacy, detail, and uncertainty. How you draw a line determines the outcome. The expression of the line reflects the lived experiences of its creator and the material itself, making every drawn line unique with its own personality.

A line is more than precision and efficiency – it carries time, space, weight, and spirit. A line is the first act of creation. A line is a verb: a performance, a process rather than a result. And last but not least, a line has a soul, like the one who draws it. _ RZLBD

http://www.rzlbd.com/

Currently watching...

..."English Teacher" on FX.

I love Brian Jordan Alvarez. I have since his early days of creating content for his Youtube channel. I thought his webseries "30s" was utterly brilliant, along, of course with his series "The Gay and Wondrous Life of Caleb Gallo." He is a wildly talented actor and his instincts for writing comedy and drama are pitch perfect. (And I would be remiss if I did not mention his dancing, previously here.)

So when it was announced that his new project which he created and wrote would be premiering on FX, I was very excited. If anyone deserves success, it is Brian Jordan Alvarez.

And the first two episodes of "English Teacher" that just debuted delivered everything Brian Jordan Alvarez can do. He stars as Evan Marquez, an out gay high school teacher in Austin, Texas navigating not only his students who are, like most young people now, both too savvy and too clueless at the same time, but his fellow teachers. It has the makings of a classic sitcom that one would be forgiven for passing by but in Alvarez's hands, it becomes a fly-on-the wall study of life that is neither aiming to show how stupid or silly the players are (I have a dislike for shows that revel in potshots at characters we are supposed to laugh AT and not with) nor how angsty and torn their lives are. It already reminds me so much of his past work, and I am so glad to see his longtime collaborator Stephanie Koenig playing his friend and fellow teacher, Gwen Sanders (she wrote episode two, the hilarious "Powderpuff"!). The comedy is subtle, effective, and brilliantly connected to a meaningful sense of humanity and truthfulness.

I can't wait to watch every week and see where he will take us. "English Teacher" airs Monday nights on FX.

Congratulations, Brian!

https://www.fxnetworks.com/shows/english-teacher

"Superman" by Wunderhorse

Wunderhorse, fronted by musician/actor Jacob Slater (he played Paul Cook in "Pistol," the biopic of the Sex Pistols directed by Danny Boyle, previously here), have released a new album and this moving track, "Superman" is among the many highlights.

I feel like I'm drifting
Out of this office
Up through the ceiling
Over the buildings
I spread my arms
Just like an eagle
I am an eagle
A beautiful bird

My friends and my family
They'd never believe me
They think that they know me
They don't know me at all
I wish I could show them
The power inside me
I wish I could show them
The things I can do
And how I save the world

I'm over the clouds now
Passing the airplanes
Fire all around me
Rеaching maximum speed

Superman

https://wunderhorseband.com/

BEAUTY: Painting--Michael Angel

Australian-American artist Michael Angel creates some wonderful abstract works, but its his pieces which blend portraiture and figurative work with abstraction, reflecting how the paint moves, that attract me.

Top to bottom: Everything In Its Right Place; Family Tree; High and Dry; The Look Back; Man In Chair; Off Sunset; On The Hill; Portrait; They Held Hands; untitled; untitled

https://michaelangel.net/

"There is no answer. That is the beauty of it."

“Since you must have love as a human being, what will you do? There is no time. You can't say, ''Well, I can't have it. I can live without love because I have lived without love for two million years, and I will live another two million years without love'' - that means perpetual sorrow for the next two million years. So what can you do? You understand my question now? Sorrow cannot be put away or be resolved through time, nor can love be invited through time. And time is: ten days ahead, or the next minute, or the next second. What will you do? Will you jump in the lake? Unless you find love, you are already in the lake. And you have to find it, as you have to find food. This is a much more demanding, much more strenuous thing that demands intense vitality.

So what will you do? If you say, please tell me what to do, then you are missing the bus entirely. But you have to see the importance, the immensity, the urgency of that question - not tomorrow, not the next day or the next hour, but see it now while you are sitting. And to see that, you must have energy. So just see immediately - the catalyst that makes the liquid into solid or vaporizes it immediately does not take place if you allow time, even a second. All our existence, all our books, all our hope is tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow. This admittance of time is the greatest sorrow.

So the issue is with you, not with the speaker from whom you are expecting to get the answer. There is no answer. That is the beauty of it. You can sit cross-legged, breathe rightly, or stand on your head for the next ten thousand years. Unless you have put this question to yourself - not superficially, not verbally, not intellectually, but with your whole being - you will live with it for two million years - those two million years may be only tomorrow. So problems and time are intimately related - do you see it now?”
--Krishnamurti, in Rajghat, India from his Fifth Public Talk, 1964

https://jkrishnamurti.org/

HAPPY LABOR DAY 2024!

Happy Labor Day, readers in the United States! This is a holiday that recognizes and honors the American labor movement of the late 19th century and the contributions that workers have made to the strength, prosperity, laws, and well-being of the country.

I believe in the power of labor and work. I believe in the dignity of labor and work. I believe in the power of unions to protect workers from abuse by companies and corporations, and I am a proud union member. Now more than ever in this current political climate, I believe all of these things. I believe in the sense of fairness toward which the human spirit strives. Happy Labor Day!

Standing together with co-workers in a union makes a tangible difference you can feel every day. Here are just a few benefits:

• Workers in labor unions make 18% more in wages than our nonunion counterparts.
• We are more likely to have health care benefits. More than nine out of 10 union members have access to employer-provided health insurance, compared to 68% of nonunion workers, according to the Department of Labor.
• We work in safer workplaces. One study found job sites that were unionized have lost-time claims at a 31% lower rate than non-unionized sites.
• We have more job security—even and especially in moments of economic crisis.

Countries where most workers are in a union are among the happiest and healthiest on Earth.

Life is better in a union.

https://aflcio.org/laborday