Private Collection: Teen Angst Journals
LIfe before blogging with five years of journals, dug up and explored.

What I (w)could buy, if I won
Real estate, art auctions and gadget drool, using "The Secret" method of winning.

Looking Back
Late 90s into the early 00s, lookbooks worth speaking about.

Tipping Point: Alexander Wang
Will 2010 be the year that the designer secures his standing within fashion's elite?

The Family, Richard Avedon.
The uncompromising austerity of the plain white background leaves no room to hide.

Invitations Only, Fashion Shows
Search and Destroy brings you these show invites from the early 2000s

Netflix Instants: Sad Blog's Picks
Watching without a disc has become increasingly easier, and better. Watch these now.

Fashionable Anagram: Balmain
The creative chaos of a sole visionary is stolen and transformed into a global fashion brand.

I picked up these little gems at a bookshop on Melrose this afternoon. The Cocktail Party, a play by T.S. Eliot from 1950 was praised by the New York Post back then, “The Cocktail Party is an authentic modern masterpiece, one of the two or three finest plays of the post-war English speaking stage. It is not only beautifully written but extraordinarily effective dramatically. This is the stage as its illustrious best,” reads the cover flap. The cover is beautifully, and simply designed and the play itself takes place in a London drawing room throughout, with the exception of Act two.

The other book entitled, Four Days, documents the days before and after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The photographic essay includes commentary and documentation including telegrams and eyewitness testimonies. A steal at $1.

Kate Moss on the right, taken in 1993

Kate Moss with her CK Barbie doll. Nov.1996

What ever happened to this little piece of Kate Moss memorabilia? In searching through the Life Magazine photo archives, it appears as though Calvin Klein also designed for Barbie, using Kate Moss as the spokesmodel. I can see why the then fresh faced girl would have been chosen to represent the brand, but a Barbie? It would be interesting to see what kind of face is hiding behind that shiny, polyester mane and denim pagegirl cap.

I went to the Pasadena Rose Bowl Flea Market last month and got these items. I know the first one is from 1924, not sure about the photograph. 40s, 50s?

And so it begins…

For three days in the April of 1996, the belongings of the late Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis where put on display for interested bidders to see. A total of 1195 lots in all were put up for auction including her jewelry, art collection, furniture, private letters and memoirs, clothing and even her green BMW. If you weren’t lucky enough to snag a piece of Jackie O, the nearly 600 page Sotheby’s catalogue was a nice enough gift. Filled with images and commentary about Jackie’s life and her belongings, the catalogue is something to be treasured. I found one in a used bookshop on the Upper East Side in Manhattan and was initially drawn to its connection to someone’s things. It isn’t her life at all but in some ways it’s all most people ever knew about Jackie. Her dress, her pearls, her art and the china they ate off of when they came for a dinner at her house.

Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum.

I received an e-mail recently from an Austrian artist friend, Kasper Kovitz. He’s been spending some time in Spain and was sending his hellos from Bilbao, where that not-so-good collection is displayed inside the Frank Gehry Guggenheim. He was thinking of the city’s expansion since that molded metal masterpiece of architectural invention was completed. He was telling me that the urban planning of the town was right up there with cities of the Persian Gulf like Abu Dhabi and Dubai. “It’s an interesting city, between beautiful and gritty and obviously very successful at reinventing itself through signature buildings,” he explained. It’s interesting how significant architectural feats can unite and alter a city and at the same time separate it from its own cultural history and still be widely acceptable. It feels like we’re living in a time where new architecture has no connection to a culture or time period. The most extreme visions, ie. Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim in Bilbao, of the future are planted and rooted into a city richer and older than any Los Angeles intersection could ever imagine. Somehow the building is allowed to grow and while it may never blend aesthetically, it does find a way to become accepted by the people who live and work around it, even if they hate it at first. I can only imagine what people will think about our culture hundreds of years from now. Were we the culture that simply experimented and tinkered with history, turning cities upside-down, essentially making anything and everything acceptable?

This afternoon I bought my $5 lottery ticket for Friday night’s Mega Millions drawing. My four hand-scribbled and one quick-pick option ticket was handed to the cashier at the corner gas station. I was given my print out and as always a “good luck” from the cashier followed. I’ve been playing twice a week now for the past few weeks, watching the unclaimed jackpot slowly rise after each drawing from around $100m to now $224m. I have only won $7 since my first $5 bet back when I was hoping to win a cash buyout of $70m. With Friday night’s buyout option, this dream win would be $138m. That amount of money is enough to inspire people. If not for the very idea of winning, much less possessing $138m, people wouldn’t play. I think in some ways we imagine that we’re going to be that guy one day. The one driving the Lamborghini, living in that mansion by the sea. But in reality it’s truly unimaginable, no matter how hard we try and wrap our minds around it. What happens to those who achieve the unimaginable. An award as grand as the lottery, the highest on record being $390m. An amount so large, from an amount so little, $1. Not even an investment. A value less than a gallon of milk or a loaf of bread multiplying $390m times. What happens to the man who goes from having nothing to suddenly having it all? In once instance, it was a man who already had it all and was given more and then lost everything.

Chair designed by Ross Lovegrove

What’s in a chair? Its design or the design of a human being? You can’t change or redesign the human form. Outside of facial plastic surgery and weight reduction the simple framework and function of what it means to be human cannot be altered by Karim Rashid or Philippe Starck. Designers create objects derived from us and out of those designs, will sometimes create new forms of human function. Design derivative design is nothing new of course, but recently some of the best designs, award-winning, famed designer designs are dependent upon a previously designed object that was also beautifully designed.

The anti-website; it’s seemingly banal exterior betrays a somewhat more considered execution. In 1999, the film ‘Requiem for a dream’ broke new ground, not only in cinema, but also online. The site for the film ironically pioneered the use of flash 4.0 to create a purposefully confusing navigation system to misdirect the user through their content. The effect is very convincing, and subtly conveys a another level of social commentary which complements the film’s content. In more recent years, there have been websites from belgian fashion house Maison Martin Margiela, dutch design agency Kessels Kramer, and Paris based design team M/M that have furthered the deconstructivist style in web design.