because i made this:
and saw this:
and this:
my day (was colorful)
reviewed by me for you: new york look book
it's been a while, but here comes another installment of …reviewed by me, for you! more to come in the coming days and weeks. i've got a backlog!
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new york look book: a gallery of street fashion by amy larocca & jake chessum:
not sure how i came across this new tome, i pretty sure i stumbled across it on amazon.com. good old amazon most likely recommended it to me based upon my other purchases (isn't that nice? i'm always lurking around over there...i'm OBSESSED with books).
tis an offshoot of new york magazine's look book street fashion feature, the archives of which can also be found right here. i've been checking in with said archives regularly the past couple of years, and i was delighted to see that they had been compiled into an actual, factual book. the internet is more than fine and dandy, but there's something temporary, ethereal, and changeable about it, just as it's nature, whereas a book is a tangible record. me likey.
i believe that this street fashion photo book is better than many i have seen. why? well, here's the theory i'm positing:
-the white backgrounds give the portraits a clean feel, undistracted by cluttered backgrounds (i like these sorts of street portraits both ways, actually (sometimes the background gives a mood, or sets the scene or says a lot about the individual)), but here it works, and it sets the new york magazine look book photos apart from the pack as a result. one could argue that the white backgrounds let the clothes (and the people wearing them) do the talking.
-the book has short interviews with the individuals, which give a deeper look into their style and their life on the whole. why they wear what they wear, what their clothes say about who they are. i've said it about a million times before: clothing is more than just shaped pieces of fabric we use to cover our bodies...it is a form of symbolism which defines who we are and how we want to be perceived by the world at large. the words add something to the photographs...they make the person more real, and their portrait that much more rich.
-it's about new york. a portrait of the people of new york is a portrait of new york as a whole. 'nuff said. (damn i miss that place! good thing i'll be visiting in two weeks, starting nov. 7th!)
-the people pictured in the book are diverse: it's not all ridiculously rich, young, skinny people clothed in the latest designer threads or all coked-up hipsters. it's young, old, rich, poor, all colors, all styles, all everything. again, a reflection of NYC as a whole. LOVE it.
-the back has a shopping guide, broken up into sections by NYC neighborhood. nice!
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here's a small peek at some of the pages and the terrific portraits. check out the quote on the middle one.
favorites...and stuff.
(more here at the ye olde flickr favorites page)
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the reason for my recent busy-ness of late can now be revealed: i was helping to build content for TWINE, a new knowledge-sharing/social-networking-website that utilizes the technology associated the semantic web (making the web "smarter," by connecting and making associations between bits of information/data).
we announced the product and launched the closed beta this past friday! it's the same company my husband pete works for; he's been working on the foundations of the project for several years now. so nice to see it finally happening, and it's nice to know i could do something to help! sign up for the closed beta at twine.com, learn more here, and stay tuned...i'll probably tell you more about the site and how you can use it at a later date.
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in the midst of all that hard work, i did take some time to dream of, obsess over, and indulge in more fashion-y, and just plain enjoying-the-good-life everyday things, such like:
-all manner of boots: i am glad boot-weather is inching back in, as i can wear all my new and vintage boots! yay! however, i may eat those words when the cold weather inevitably drags on ad nauseam here in SF next summer...
-pomegranate seeds. pomegranates are back in season again, and they especially delicious in vanilla yogurt in the morning! now, where are the blood oranges?
-homemade limoncello, made by my dear friend jessica. she made some and brought it to the party we had the weekend before last, and we just polished off the remnants in the mid-week that just commenced. absolutely scrumptious, jess! we drank it out of our little french shot glasses, making the experience that much more lovely, of course.
-i am all over the jeu de paumes book series...they are, in short, little jewel like books filled with delicious eye candy from a small japanese press that are filled with inspirational photographs of the interiors of european apartments, artists' studios, shoppes, kitchens, childrens rooms, and more. quirky, colorful, playful, novel goodness. i snapped up stockholm's kitchens @ SF's kinokuniya yesterday, and i am actually pondering riding my bike back up to japantown later this afternoon for a few other books from the series. i'd especially love to get this one.