This apparel company is ON IT. They've shipped a matching mask with each of their tops. This photo was taken in Be’er Sheva, Israel, but I believe that "LOOK" is an American brand. A quick search reveals that match-matchy masks are a popular 2020 fashion trend.
photo by Bruria Efune, used with permission Read the rest
Goodwill Hunting is a fascinating data-driven exploration of trends at the thriftstore chain's online shop. It is quite exhaustive, breaking down regional trends, brands, prices and much else besides in a panoply of gorgeous interactive charts. Given that Goodwill deletes sold items and doesn't provide an API, it's an amazing work of data journalism.
Read the restBasically, after finding that data of old listings aren't available on the Goodwill website, I went rogue. I set up a script on my computer to crawl through sale item pages on the Goodwill website item id by item id and checked the page name and description to see if it was a women's top. This was a slow process, but I wasn't interested in overwhelming the Goodwill website, and, again, there is no real pressing need for statistics on Goodwill sales.
Romanian Cobbler Grigore Lup noticed that people weren't following the rules of social distancing at his local market, so he decided to make long-nosed shoes as a response. His Euro size 75 shoes are specifically designed to keep people apart, "If two people wearing these shoes were facing each other, there would be almost one-and-a-half metres between them."
Lup, who said he adapted the long footwear from a model he made for actors, said he had so far received five orders for social distancing shoes.
It takes him two days to make a pair, which requires almost one square metre of leather. They cost 500 lei ($115) a pair.
Now 55, Lup first started making shoes when he was 16, learning from a cobbler who at 93 today still makes traditional ethnic Hungarian footwear.
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image via Incaltaminte din piele
(RED)
Thanks, Mark! Read the rest
Covid-19 takes no prisoners, and North Safari Sapporo in Japan’s northernmost prefecture is no exception. Scott Wilson reported for SoraNews 24 that mandatory shutdowns have forced the animal park to get creative, so the zoo started a crowd funding campaign offering incentives such as earrings made from skin shed by their snakes and feathers dropped by their parrots, coasters gnawed by beaver, and for 70,000 yen ($639) a pair of distressed jeans that have been ripped, chewed and mauled by the park’s lions.
North Safari took a cue from Yagiyama Zoological Park, who in 2016 put their lions, tigers and bears to work in partnership with a local retail chain to create ZOO Jeans: Read the rest
Experimental fashion designer Anouk Wipprecht—most famous for her Robotic Spider Dress from a few years ago—has now created the Proximity Dress to help with physical distancing during the pandemic. The 3D-printed electromechanical dress poofs out when triggered by proximity and thermal sensors detecting someone getting too close to the wearer. From 3D Printing Media Network:
Read the restEach dress extends itself using a robotic 3D printed hip mechanism, built into the dress, and a resin 3D printed transparent collar with integrated sensors. The dress also works as a perfect application case study for 3D printing. The hip mechanisms that are holding the servos to the mechanic hip parts are 3D printed using SLS (Selective Laser Sintering) nylon PA-11 to endure more stresses. The 3D printed transparent collar, which has a more aesthetic use, is 3D printed using an Objet Connex 500 multimaterial polyjet 3D printer and the VeroClear material from Stratasys.
“I haven’t made dresses for myself in a long time,” Anouk posted, “and I got a bit fed up with people in public not considering the current distancing suggestions, so this one I’m keeping…”
To celebrate Pride, Levis decided to make and sell denim chaps. They cost $98 and come in small, medium or large in stonewashed blue.
Read the restNo ordinary Pride collection. This year, we've banded together with artists and activists around the world to create space for one single message to prevail: USE YOUR VOICE!
100% of net proceeds from Levi’s® Pride 2020 collection go to OutRight Action International A classic Levi’s® silhouette, reimagined as a pair of unapologetically bold chaps Made with Water
A Boston-area police department issued a request to locals to remember to wear pants when picking up their mail, but the posting appears to have someone in particular in mind.
"You know who you are," Taneytown police wrote on Facebook. "This is your last warning."
Want to avoid being seen by person-recognizing camera systems? Wear a shirt printed with a complex, confusing image that looks like a mangled JPG of a crowd scene.
The bright adversarial pattern, which a human viewer can darn-near see from space, renders the wearer invisible to the software looking at him. ... Code does not "think" in terms of facial features, the way a human does, but it does look for and classify features in its own way. To foil it, the "cloaks" need to interfere with most or all of those priors. Simply obscuring some of them is not enough. Facial recognition systems used in China, for example, have been trained to identify people who are wearing medical masks while trying to prevent the spread of COVID-19 or other illnesses.
And of course, to make the task even more challenging, different object detection frameworks all use different mechanisms to detect people, Goldstein explained. "We have different cloaks that are designed for different kinds of detectors, and they transfer across detectors, and so a cloak designed for one detector might also work on another detector," he said.
See also Adversarial Fashion. Read the rest
This is the creation of avant-garde fashion designer Arnold Putra, claimed to be made with an ethically-sourced human child spine and alligator tongue leather. Unfortunately, it's been memory holed since Twitter found it. Fortunately, the memory holers always forget about the Bing Cache.
The ARNOLD PUTRA alligator tongue and human spine bag has been ethically sourced and crafted in a multiple panel construction. With an emphasis on protruding scar stitching lacing the outer construction of the bag, each wearer is encouraged to sculpt a form of his/her own sentiment. The unique silhouette is complimented by the human spine handle and raw edge finishes. Technical in design and construction, this one off bag is an ideal statement piece.
Each piece of Arnold Putra is meticulously hand crafted in their atelier upon order, limited in availability and may take up to 14 days to arrive during busy periods.
FEATURES: - Limited to 1/1 - Alligator tongue and human spine bag with a unique pattern construction - Natural finish - Protruding scar stitching finishes - Large main compartment - Raw edge finishes - Limited in availability
COMPOSITION: - Shell: 100% Alligator tongue- Shell: 100% Human spine handle
If you're thinking of DIYing it, it turns out that ethically-sourced human child spines are not on Amazon, sadly, so you might have to wait three or more days to get the materials together.
(throws horror writing career out of window)
I got nothing on this reality. https://t.co/7IE25yx0GR
— Cassandra Khaw (@casskhaw) March 24, 2020
Read the restI messaged them on WhatsApp...
French conglomerate LVMH -- owner of Louis Vuitton, Givenchy, and Christian Dior, and other luxury brands -- is converting its perfume production lines to crank out hand sanitizer. And no, they won't be selling high ticket hand sanitizer bottles in their boutiques.
"These gels will be delivered free of charge to the health authorities," the company announced. "LVMH will continue to honour this commitment for as long as necessary, in connection with the French health authorities."
(BBC)
In 1982, Jeff Spicoli brought checkerboard Vans beyond the SoCal surf-skate culture and onto the big screen in one of my all-time favorite films, Fast Times at Ridgemont High. (The story goes that Sean Penn had bought shortly before filming began and convinced director Amy Heckerling to let him wear them in the movie.) To celebrate the movie's release, Steve Van Doren, son of the Vans founder Paul Van Doren, made a limited run of special Fast Times slip-ons made to give away at the premiere. Those special pairs have become a holy grail of shoe collectors and now Vans has reissued them. Awesome. Totally awesome. From Vans:
Borrowing details from the original Classic Slip-On and offering modernized comfort with upgraded Ortholite® sockliners, Anaheim Factory Classic Slip-On 98 DX also includes throwback details like the iconic Vans checkerboard print, higher glossed foxing tape, printed sidewalls, and sturdy canvas and textile uppers to complete the look.
Designer Harikrishnan's inflatable latex trousers suggest "anatomically impossible" proportions. They're so weird, silly, and so delightful. Read the rest
The Fashion Institute of Technology has apologized for a "clearly racist" show where a black model was asked to wear giant red lips and black plastic ears. The model refused, but white colleages were photographed on the catwalk wearing the bizarre prostheses. The college's president is not sure if there was an explicitly racial comment being made, but is looking into it, reports the BBC:
"Currently," its president Joyce F Brown said in a statement, "it does not appear that the original intent of the design, the use of accessories or the creative direction of the show was to make a statement about race.
"However, it is now glaringly obvious that has been the outcome. For that, we apologise - to those who participated in the show, to students, and to anybody who has been offended by what they saw."
Amy Lefevre, the model who declined, talked to the New York Post and shared a test shot (above) taken before the show in which she wore the accessories.
“I stood there almost ready to break down, telling the staff that I felt incredibly uncomfortable with having to wear these pieces and that they were clearly racist,” Amy Lefevre, 25, told The Post.
“I was told that it was fine to feel uncomfortable for only 45 seconds.”
The designer, Junkai Huang, is reportedly "from China" and unaware of the racial connotations of the mask. Richard Thornn, the producer of the show, is reported to have "screamed" at a student who objected before the show and has more explaining to do. Read the rest
RompHim, the rompers-for-men company that achieved viral success a couple of years back, is going out of business. CNN reports that the initial focus on marketing to straight bros limited their appeal from the outset. Remaining stock is 75% off if you want one. Read the rest
The Museum of London will soon publicly display Charles I's execution vest for the first time. The doomed king wore the silk garment to the chopping block after his defeat in the English Civil War of the 17th century; 30 January is the 371st anniversary of his death at the Banqueting House on Whitehall.
The stains are said to be vomit, not blood. Read the rest
My jaw literally fell open when I first saw a clip of Fredrik Tjærandsen BA presentation for Central Saint Martins, the London art college. The Norwegian fashion designer and visual artist's graduate collection featured inflatable latex balloons around models' arms, legs, and torsos. Some of the pieces transformed into somewhat more conventional latex dresses as models floated down the runway.
Fittingly, the out-of-this-world collection was accompanied by Mica Levi's gorgeous and haunting soundtrack to Jonathan Glazer's 2014 sci-fi horror film, Under the Skin.
In this episode of Trenton & Heath, master cobbler Heath Potter resurrects a totally thrashed pair of Ferragamo loafers. You may think that 26 minutes is a long time to watch someone restore a pair of shoes, but just allow yourself to be enveloped by the artisinality of it all. The time will fly by and perhaps, like me, you will leave the experience deeply regretting having donated that pair of beat-up wingtips in the back of your closet. Read the rest
