Sur-really weird ;)

Seeing as our first year theme is Surrealism, I thought I should mention these babies. I remember seeing this on the msn home page a while back and thinking they were one of the craziest things I'd ever seen. So I tried to do a bit of my own research on them, turns out they're pretty mysterious... Basically it's a 'Pod City' in San Zhi, Taiwan. No one really seems to know anything for certain, but it's considered that it was built in the early 80's by the government as a luxurious resort. The project has 17 blocks each with 4 circular pods, the idea apparently being that the buildings could be expanded vertically if demand required it. I guess the idea of the 'pods' was to be extremely modern, futuristic even. But evidently the idea did not take as the 'pods' have been completely abandoned for years. According to 'trusty' sources on the web, the project is said to have been abandoned after several fatal accidents occurred during construction. And even better, it is now reported to be haunted... I wish I could have visited these in their prime, it must have been like stepping into a Sci-Fi movie; I'd even have loved to visit them in their unkempt and delapidated state, I think they look eerily fascinating. Sadly though, wikipedia claims demolition work started on them almost two years ago now, with plans to turn the space into a tourist resort...

Buy Heat Magazine Instead?

I recently read the book 'Fashion Babylon' by Imogen Edwards-Jones for Uni. Needless to say, I wasn't impressed. It was actually the second time I'd read the book, having picked it up a few years ago when it was first realeased. I can remember not loving it; but it was a whole new level of dull this time round. In fairness to the novel, I am an avid bookworm with very set tastes. To be honest though, it just wasn't very good... Here's my charming and not at all critical review of it!

       Reading ‘Fashion Babylon’ by Imogen Edwards-Jones and Anonymous (Edward-Jones’ insider in the fashion industry) was an experience similar to that of drinking a cold cup of coffee; while the coffee will satisfy your caffeine fix, it is lacking in the warmth and pleasure you were expecting.

The novel is an account of six months working as a Fashion Designer, explaining how collections are created and the difficulty in getting them to the catwalk and into stores. While the book does successfully stress the work involved with the arduous job of creating a single show, “nearly five months of hard work and planning is over in eight and a half minutes”, it is also a bland and clichéd report of the industry.

In a society obsessed with gossip, where you can buy ‘Heat’ magazine in every news-stand, Edwards-Jones’ stories are unimaginative and predictable. The novel entices the reader with the promise of unheard stories, but well and truly fails to provide this, merely releasing accounts of magazine editors having big egos, fashionistas taking drugs and, shock horror!, catwalk models having eating disorders. Who would believe such ludicrous tales?

            While the grapevine stories are insipid and most characters are highly stereotypical, Edwards-Jones has managed to include facts and figures about mark-ups and other technicalities that the reader may not have previously been aware of. While these do briefly sustain the reader’s interest, they are so rare that they fail to qualify the novel for merit.

            Edwards-Jones, along with the aid of Anonymous, attempts to provide a comical, yet factual, behind the scenes insight into the fickle business that is the fashion industry. And while she has created a light and mildly entertaining holiday read, the fact that Edwards-Jones herself has no involvement in the fashion industry shines through, leaving the novel weak and filled with simple, surface knowledge.

It's a good thing I'm doing marketing...

In first year at Heriot Watt we all take the same classes, just to give you a bit of a taster of each course. While this is great, it also means I have to sew. And evidently sewing is not where my talents lie! We had two men's shirts and had to create a new garment out of them following the theme of surrealism. While I can think of a million ideas on paper, I'm not the best at knowing how to actually make them. So here's what I came up with in the end. When looking at these bear in mind we didn't get long to make them! The white one is my mock up and the purple stripe is the final garment. And yes, I know they're not very surreal, I was going for subtle surrealism you see... Obviously...  

Krakow & Paper Planes

This summer my friend Suzie and I visited Krakow, Poland. I had absolutely no preconceived notions of what the city would look like as it was a complete mystery to me. The only factors I was certain of were that everything would be very cheap and that the weather would probably be good to us. While the weather let us down drastically, the architecture was a pleasant surprise. It was without a doubt one of the most beautiful cities I have visited in my life, and that was even through lashings of rain! I would strongly recommed a visit to Krakow, in particular Auschwitz and the Salt Mines, the latter being absolutely breath-taking. Here's a few shots of the city of Krakow...

On one of the last days in Krakow we were walking across to Kazimierz, the Jewish district in Krakow, when a small plane flew overhead and released what must have been thousands of sheets of paper into the air. It was such a surreal moment as we had no idea what was going on. As the paper floated to the ground everyone was grabbing for them and racing after them. We managed to get hold of one hoping it would answer to us what on earth was going on. On it was child-like writing, it looked like a short story or something similar, but of course the writing was entirely in Polish so it didn't offer much of an explanation. I've tried researching it but have failed to find any info on it at all. So it shall remain a mystery... it was a pretty cool experience though, and made for a pretty photograph :)...

Fashion Through the Decades

We were recently set a project for CCS (contemporary and contextual studies) to collect pictures of bands with a strong image from the 60s, 80s and present day. I really enjoyed researching the different trends that used to be popular, as well as noticing the recurring themes with fashion today. I found loads of great images and it was pretty funny finding out what some of the bands I listen to actually dressed like back in the day. If a little harder to take them seriously now... We also had to pick an up and coming musican who we thought would influence fashion. I chose Taylor Momsen, while she isn't really my cup of tea, she certainly has a different image from a lot of the other singers/actresses her age and she has strong connections with the 'underwear as outerwear' trend. Here's the pages from my sketchbook...

"they always moved on"

For me, director, producer and writer, John Hughes, was truly one of the greatest things to ever happen to film. You can't help but fall in love with each one of his movies and his fantastically quirky and original characters. I recently found this quote from him about his childhood which I think is really beautiful:

"But then The Beatles came along (and) changed my whole life. And then Bob Dylan's Bringing It All Back Home came out and really changed me. Thursday I was one person, and Friday I was another. My heroes were Dylan, John Lennon and Picasso, because they each moved their particular medium forward, and when they got to the point where they were comfortable, they always moved on."

I think that Hughes' explanation of why Dylan, Lennon and Picasso were his heroes, is the very same reason that John Hughes is one of mine.

Granny Takes a Snow Day

Today Megan Hamilton, Coleen Stevenson and I went on a wee drive to Stow to take photos for our CCS project entitled 'Granny Takes A Trip'. I've seen a few good ideas going about for this subject but we thought we'd take advantage of the snow while it's still around and shoot all our photos in the great outdoors. We found a pretty amazing, picturesque setting for ours complete with a river and a delapidated bridge which made for some really good shots. Coleen modelled as 'Granny' whilst I worked the camera and Megan gave advice, she was also pretty good at carry things for us :)... Here's a few of the best pictures from the day!