PITCH. BOOK. DONE.

party time.

happy new year kids.

PITCH BOOK = HELL

i thought this would only take me a couple of days but i keep finding more and more things to add (not having internet at home doesn't help either). i have to submit this by tomorrow morning otherwise the book won't arrive in time = FAIL.

coffeeeeeee...

LANVIN MEN SS10

MASTABA

Christo and Jeanne-Claude

THE MASTABA

Project for The United Arab Emirates

The Mastaba will be a work of art made of approximately 410,000 horizontally stacked oil barrels. The grandeur and vastness of the land will be reflected in the dimensions of the Mastaba, which will be:

• 150 meters (492 feet) high

• 225 meters (738 feet) deep

• 300 meters (984 feet) wide

This project has been ongoing since initial sketches in 1977. I'm always a bit worried when I read things like this because considering the UAE only gained independence in 1971 it seems like a mad rush to solidify its identity.

I remember first seeing 'The Gates' in Central Park when I visited New York a few years ago and that was pretty phenomenal. RIP Jeanne-Claude.

oskar.

grooming  ::  sung hee park

special thanks to mathias @ nisch // more of this to follow

I LOVE TECHNOLOGY

only when it works though. the 'screen share' option on skype is amazing and comes in handy when doing an edit and not all your team is in the same place...

FINAL MAJOR PROJECT :: TUTORIAL 2 // PARALYSIS

as much as Leila frustrates me sometimes with her arson of generalized advice (ie. you should test // get together with friends and discuss ideas // research your concept) she does occasionally offer gold nuggets of constructive critique however acid-coated they appear at first.

the major project is coming along nicely but i'm being held back by too much attention to surface detail; in her words my work has been "paralyzed by aesthetics". i've got enough to deal with theoretically but i'm finding it hard to integrate it visually into my project which is actually quite a general problem for me i think. i need to wrestle with the subject i'm trying to portray instead of just re-affirming it. i'm too afraid of making mistakes and for this project (and my work) to carry any weight i've just got to step outside my comfort zone and find a way of basically injecting some life into my pictures. by not being so precious with them.

to be honest it wasn't something i wanted to hear but i needed to hear it.

watch this space.

brian shimansky @ m&p // styling :: raphael hirsch // hair&makeup :: sung hee park

SEBASTIAN

sebastian sauve @ premier // styling :: raphael hirsch // hair&makeup :: sung hee park

DISSERTATION :: TUTORIAL 2

all that was said really was that i've got to keep my focus on representation and fashion imagery rather than keeping it too abstract and venturing too far into economics. instead of discussing representation as a singular topic within a separate section it should be integrated into all the others in the literature review so when it comes to discussing my case studies the images and their analyses make much more sense. as for the dissertation as a whole the angle is steadily fixing itself as 'a western dissection of an outward-looking chinese identity formed within China, being sold to the west - the identity itself having been affected by western ideologies'

also i shouldn't discuss GQ China as that would be a separate dissertation topic covering the representation of chinese men within China. too introsepective and obviously i don't have enough knowledge of chinese history and culture to be able to properly explore that topic...

OSKAR IN LONDON

DUANE NASIS...

...needs to be up in three hours. introduction to literature review draft abandoned. goodnight.

updated at 05:58

TEST :: BRIAN & SEBASTIAN

hair/makeup :: sung hee park

THIS MADE ME SAD

THE DECADENCE OF DACADE-ISM

by Glenn O'Brien

(from 10 MEN no.20, winter/spring 10)

"...And where are we now, in this nameless decade? What is the zero-zero look? There is no dominant fashion direction but a competing spectrum of retro looks. We now choose which past decade we want to live in...It's as if the 20th century's whole life is flashing in front of its eyes.

What is the future of fashion in this next century?

The futuristic future has been out of fashion since 1982, when director Ridley Scott imagined a failed future, a postmodern future dominated by the ruins of progressive modernist ambitions. And when the twin towers fell in 2001, it was a devastating symbol of the failure of monolithic futurism. The towers were about hubris and the assumption that the future would always be bigger and brighter. The towers were ugly, arrogant and unrealistic and, as conspiracy theorists will tell you, these buildings that stood for only 30 years were completely obsolete. But now, after decades of pessimistic or at least cynical postmodernism, at this moment of hesitant transition, we seem to have a nostalgia for futurism. Cynicism isn't working any more. We want to look back at the time when the future was bright and progressive..."

this article really struck a chord with me. not least because caffeine and solitude tend to make me emotionally hypersensitive and i'd had a considerable amount of both by the time i came across this.

growing up where i did in such a transitory environment in all senses of the word - cultural, political, historical, physical - our generation wasn't really made aware of or at least feel involved with any form of history that wasn't just on a superficial level. it was as if we had spent 16 years in a waiting room with nothing but a few back-issues of Vogue/Hello/TV Guide and maybe a few Disney films and the latest Hollywood historical/war epics (all on VHS) to inform us of a world and a future that lay outside of our bubble.

(note: a world and a future that lay in the west)

so the past wasn't something that we could particularly grasp conceptually, or at least those of us diaspora that never returned regularly to our homelands. all we knew was a weird kind of present/future that was never fixed, or that was unfolding right before our eyes. our outlook was bright, it was modernist and it was extremely progressive, but like the twin towers after 30 years is now seemingly obsolete. postmodernism was an exciting enough actuality but as i think about how it has run its course coupled with the obsolescence of my former 'futurist modernism' outlook it leaves me with nothing left to grasp idealistically.

I was reading something for my tutorial on thursday by Louis Althusser about subjects being created by and existing within their own ideologies so i guess what i'm saying is that as my own ideologies are apparently succumbing to obsolescence i myself am too. and the part that really gets me is that it's not even my fault but because of how poorly equipped i was in 'the waiting room'.

the future has just been made that much more cloudy for me. i know i'm letting this one guy's opinion get to me too much but it's made me so aware of my own need to change and to evolve if i want to continue doing what i'm doing and survive.

(photo :: Duane Michals / The Illuminated Man)

DUANE!!!

FASHION ST 20091201

TEST :: ORNELLA

ornella @ elite // styling :: raphael hirsch // hair&makeup :: sung hee park

BOYS & BAGS :: CHRIS & TIBOR AW09

FMP RESEARCH :: LUKE SMALLEY

a small selection of work from american photographer Luke Smalley who died earlier this year:

i like how oddly disconnected a lot of his work feels. could be very relevant to the direction of my final major project although it deals a lot more with a very american masculinity.

DISSERTATION :: TUTORIAL

so after my tutorial with Itai we decided rather than to focus on the cultural exchange between Europe and China, I should probably look more to that between China and the US, particularly during the Nixon administration in the 70's. much more material to work with in terms of representation (see above...thanks Andy!) and links between the two superpowers are so established I won't have to spend so much of my time trying to dig up evidence.

working title has to be re-worked. direction of research has to be tweaked.

nothing is worth more than this day.

- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

FINAL MAJOR PROJECT :: TUTORIAL

wasn't as bad as i thought but chastised heavily for not having moved along much since presentations. definitely focusing on menswear and still going to address issues of race and representation but not try to be so literal and gimmicky about it.

i told Leila i honestly felt my work was very detached and deadpan (kind of like me..) which she agreed with but then said i could probably make a feature of that in the series. it would work say to express a suppression of cultural identity in that style, but also to bring the menswear element into it by repackaging that conflict with the problems/struggles of british masculinity. not so gimmicky anymore but relies quite heavily on styling...

must start testing.

CARAVAGGIO :: 000237

DIFFRACTION

i'm feeling totally unprepared for my tutorial tomorrow.

numero 18 // chad pitman :: nicola formichetti

DOWN THE LINE

DAULMONSTER

still reeling.

R.I.P.

HAPPY SUNDAY

TEST :: ASTRID

hair/makeup :: sunanda mesquita

THE FITTING :: RAF SIMONS SS10

we burned to the ground

left a view to admire

with buildings inside, church of white

we burned to the ground

left a grave to admire

hills reach the sky, reach the church of white.

SIREN

We ask for long life, but 'tis deep life, or grand moments that signify.

Let the measure of time be spiritual, not mechanical.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

R.I.P. DAUL KIM

TEST :: SYLVIE

lights blew up in my face :: natural light to the rescue :: the lovely lovely sylvie crabbe

hair/makeup :: sunanda mesquita

EVENING STANDARD 17/11/09

came across this article in the Evening Standard last night (hooray for free newspapers). some useful highlights:

"..in economic terms China is probably the most important phenomenon of not only our but also our children's generation."

"China's GDP has increased by about $3 trillion in just seven years. By the end of next year...it will have comfortably overtaken Japan to be the world's second-largest economy."

"...the credit crunch, forcing the beginning of a new, more sensible US consumer, has obliged China to deal with the consequences of reduced exports. In its place there is a new phenomenon: welcome to the age of the Chinese consumer."

i like this idea of the chinese consumer. obviously Condé Nast will have timed GQ China's launch perfectly, considering the emergence of what market researchers refer to as the 'Little Emperors' - large numbers of young, affluent male consumers...a result from the country's birth control policies in the 70's (an interesting subject in itself actually).

times they are a-changing.

THE BEAT OF 1980'S

Andreas Sjodin & Kris Van Assche for inaugural GQ China :: shaping up to be quite the international publication! hopefully this will be consistent

source :: gq.com.cn and 很大很大 at TFS

IT'S FINALLY HERE

FIRST ISSUE :: GQ CHINA

lauched last month :: Condé Nast's fourth publication in China...much more promising than the inaugural Vogue China in my opinion in terms of Chinese identity - the cover features several leading Chinese figureheads (ie. Zhang Yimou, Andy Lau etc)

the main fashion story features up-and-coming chinese male model Daniel Liu (currently all over Uniqlo) and although it's promoting that whole new york high fashion consumer lifestyle it's given a slightly less eurocentric bias given the context with the cover. the 'chinese-ness' becomes primary in that setting while it would be interpreted much differently i think if they had put Richard Branson/Donald Trump/Alan Sugar/Brad Pitt etc on the cover...

ADDIDAS SLVR

more on this HERE

image © The Daily Recommendation @ Fantastic Man

INTERNALIZED COLONIAL FANTASY

Han Jin & Daul Kim by Oh Joong Seok for Vogue Korea Jan '09

POST-APOCALYPSE :: GARETH PUGH SS10

TEST :: RIVER

i actually shot a story with river a few weeks ago but in the process of archiving last month's shoots i found these first test shots :: river is from spain and signed with m and p models in London

hair/makeup :: sung hee park