today i went out for lunch (yes, i'm still on holiday; luxuries such as leisurely lunches in sun-drenched squares are unheard of when at home in london), and i wore a long white peasant skirt, navy and white striped top, and gold sandals. it was a bit nautical, a bit 'je vais en vacances a nice cet été'; that is, it was lovely and not at all london.
that's all well and good when one is tripping around the tuscan countryside, but what is one to wear when one returns to battling the crowds in brick lane and beyond? well, i have the answer.
it's these: they're fabulous, they'll go with anything, and as well all know, the wedge boot is the dark horse of the comfortable footwear stakes. and possibly the best thing of all, they'll only cost you 20 quid at primark. is that not the most fabulous thing you've heard today? the first delivery sold out in one day (one day!) so you better hot foot it over to marble arch as soon as you can to get your hands on a pair of these beauties.
paris fashion week has the potentially unenviable position in the line-up, tailing along at the end, situating itself during the time in which moods are going to be fractious, and tempers short - three weeks of statement heels, permanent champagne fatigue and four hours of sleep a night will do that to you. luckily, it's also the week that is most likely to inspire and amaze, ie it's worth the wait (and the inches).
case in point: gareth pugh. his collection is eagerly awaited every season, and his video presentation yesterday was a sight for sore, fashion-week-weary, eyes.
the video, running at 11 minutes long (half the length of an episode of Coronation Street, at the designer's particular behest), was directed by ruth hogben, working with pugh's iconic dichotomies of black/white and positive/negative, and captured his trademark wanderings between two- and three-dimensionality.
the reference are many and varied - you can see fifties, sixties, seventies, minimalism, androgyny, sci-fi and japanese samurais - and the collection treads a line between futuristic and historic that, though improbable, is seamless and divine. and while it could be said that these trends are nothing if not well-worn, they've been executed in a way that feels entirely fresh and unseen.
tim blanks has commented that perhaps such cinematic presentations are the way forward - and given pugh's offering, we're inclined to agree; it's definitely worth the treadmill-related injury supermodel stalwart kristen mcnenamy sustained during filming.
following tours with editors and biffy clyro, four piece manchester band, airship, seem destined for lift off. at just twenty years of age, their soaring rifts and galvanizing, charged choruses are more invigorating than a red bull on the rocks. we recommend you head to your local disco outlet and dance like you did, when you were sixteen, and defied all decorum. we caught up with lead singer, eliott williams, and with the brevity of a long breath, asked him the most poignant and philosophical questions we could think of.
poxymash: what inspired the name, nasa or the navy? eliott: neither. it came from a childrens pop up dictionary.
p: anything you wish you could sing about, but can't, because it would be frowned upon!? e: i don't think i wouldn't sing about certain subjects because it might be frowned upon. it defies the point of lyric writing. if you feel you have something to say on a subject, then say it.
p: what song do you wish you had written? e: i am the walrus by the beatles. it's so experimental sonically and lyrically witty. it's perfect in every way.
p: what makes airship, airborne? e: mundane existence and the condition of the human mind. we make music as a form of escapism.
p: when the people ask, what shall you say your sound is? e: introverted/extroverted pop music.
p: and lastly, what should the poxymash people do? e: enjoy your life. do what you want.
this morning, when I hit that hazy, dazed part of semi-sleep where your mind throws its most insane offerings at you, i had a most disturbing daydream. i’m sure you’ve experienced it many times before- while you are still asleep enough for any thought that happens to pop into your mind to be played out like a movie filmed in old school technicolour, directed by somebody under the influence of hallucinogens, with a soundtrack by minimalist german techno-heads. or maybe that’s my specific brand. whatever you’re dream-genre, while you’re half awake and half asleep the average human brain dwells in one messed up place. (my brain’s finest moment to date saw me marry jack black, have babies that came out as tarantulas with eyelashes, then feed them on a diet of cream eggs from a velvet tray- I kid you not.) anyway. i digress. this morning, I had a good ‘un. now, as we have all learnt from lord-of-the-dream-scorcese, you always start in the middle of a dream. (if you didn’t get that reference, get your lazy arse to the cinema and soak up some contemporary culture- then tell me, dream or reality?! even the memory of that final shot makes me want to bite my nails and pull out my hair and generally act like I suffer from crack-induced ocd’s. Now that’s good cinema!) so. i started in the middle of a party. with glitterati. i didn’t even know who they were, but i knew they were glitter-worthy. they exuded hollywood. if such a thing is possible: they looked like they would own black bog roll, put it that way. we were laughing and talking, and generally having a jolly good time, when one of them sidled up to me and started tapping round my eyeballs with two of their fingers…. just casually tapping away. then he stretched out my eyelid, had a good peek in, and said “21. She needs a hit”. and before I knew it, he’d produced a needle from his back pocket, and was pumping my face full of botox. just like that.
now one thing is for sure- i can pin point the exact mental origin of this dream, the conception of my bonkers dream baby if you like. the previous day i had been interested to find a snippet of an interview with rachel weiss, in which she boldly suggested that botox for actors is the artistic equivalent to steroids for sportsmen, and thus should quite simply be disallowed. although I wasn’t utterly convinced that ms weiss’ argument didn’t have a pitfall or two, it certainly got me thinking that maybe she had a point. an actor’s face, and more specifically their ability to convey feelings or emotions with their wee fizogs, must be a key tool to their trade. eliminate the ability to move your facial muscles, and surely you’ve shot your self in the foot (or injected your self in the socket to be more precise).
although writing this makes me feel octogenarian, it seems that ‘in this day and age’, ritually paralysing your facial muscles is fast becoming the lifestyle choice du jour. when botox first surfaced as a drug available to the masses, many moons ago, the public tended to react in varying degrees of moral outrage- oh! the vanity of it all, the incredulous search for eternal youth, how disgustingly looks oriented we are becoming as a culture! but time appears to have warped our collective perceptions, until we have finally arrived at a stage where botox tends to be treated like chocolate, or cigarettes, or spanx- not for everyone, but a little bit of what you fancy, yada yada yada…
every celebrity interview inevitably covers the taut and even botox ground- the question is predictably, casually wheeled out: would you? wouldn’t you? are you morally opposed, yet aware of the implications on your career? never say never? this one seems to be the non-committal favourite: essentially, what they are more than likely to be stipulating here is that they’ve already had it and are bloody thrilled that you haven’t noticed yet. strangest of all are the celebrities shouting about the toxic fillers their pumping in to their pretty little faces- surely the whole point of botox is to FOOL people into thinking that you are naturally this youthful and expressionless? or that your facial muscles malfunctioned in a terrible accident, thus hindering you with the curse of eternal youth? instead, botox is worn like a badge of metaphoric D-list honour, paraded in to heat magazine, in the vain hope it’ll get a pat on the back and a smile- something they are no longer capable of with out fish-hook mechanisms.
when all is said and done, it’s not the moral argument that really gets me going (although the 16year old stars of glee having botox in their jaw lines for ‘definition’ certainly raises some scary questions about image fixation), but moreover the very idea that in any other circumstance, or in any other part of the body, paralysis is an awful, undesirable thing. yet, because botox ticks the vanity box, the youth box, the employability box… we’re all throwing ourselves at it like it’s chocolate covered, naked johnny depp in a syringe. we’re queuing up to ritually, and occasionally periodically (for the massively wealthy among us) disable our faces. so as you may have guessed, I will not be first in line… this face is staying as active and free-moving as a footballer’s fidelity.
‘anti’ anything tends to conjure up images of affronted adolescents rebelling against something, anything, and everything. an excuse to squander glorious misguided energies.
the inaugural anti design festival(18th – 26th of September), which was set up by neville brody, in response to the ‘pretty and commercial’ london design festival, smacked of this somewhat. it was a nine day festival, featuring performances, workshops, installations, film, transmedia and publishing, in east london’s redchurch area.
the rather lengthy and windy manifesto written by neville, could equally be a blurb for an armageddon movie using words like ‘ anarchy, crash, burn, enemy, generic cultural hypnosis, control is invisibly visible’. and we are still just discussing design?
the anti design festival intended to be anti -success, and anti- function. to mark the end of success culture. to embrace failure and disappointment. for the ideas to be unfinished and imprecise. for nothing to be polished. and while all this seems like such a freeing, limitless sentiment, it was all a bit too contradictory to be taken in earnest.
the festival was anti- establishment, yet many of the contributors and sponsors were very much establishment, it ran an open programme, but was also curated, and it was anti success, and yet looking to be successful?
i spent much of my time so confused by the celebrated anarchy, that i missed the art. in short i am anti-anti design so that leaves me with just design right? phew. maybe now we can get back to discussing the actual art rather than fear the apocalypse!
facebook is really becoming a source of mystification to me. constant layout changes, directives to reach out to people i have no impetus to contact and updates on the number of new friends i and my friends have made (2 and 5639 respectively) notwithstanding, this once benign social networking site has become a vessel for the flotsam, jetsam and general detritus of society, the resident evil brain-eating zombie to our michelle rodriguez, the achilles' heel of online communities; put simply, it is a domain for stupid people.
ok. hyperbole aside, i use facebook. it's useful. i use it in the implementation of poxymash world domination (coming soon to a newsstand near you), and to keep in touch with my friends (484 at current count; subject to decrease due to aforementioned megalomaniac constant-updating tendencies). but i hate - i really hate - that 'like it' page that seems inexorably linked to facebook via people's allegiances to various inconsequential rhetorical statements.
let's have a little look at some examples of the things people say they are fans of, shall we?
[stop being so sexy, your distracting me!]
[phone rings, picks up "hello" other peson "wats up" me "the sky get a life"]
[text me after whatever your doing ok? (sure) 3 hours later. whats up (nm, sitting) i taught you were gonna text me after your done with everything? (i did? i said that? :o) nice................i hate people like that :|]
why? honestly, why? why can people not punctuate correctly? why do they have to pepper their writing with emoticons? why can't they spell? and most importantly, why do they feel the need to spread their stupidity to others? i don't want to know that you like kissing someone when you've been waiting to kiss them for ages. i am wholly separate from your interest in pulling the wings off flies and sticking them on the sides of public transport vehicles. i don't think 'walls' necessitates a reference on a website dedicated to things that people like (oh, the irony).
i mean, i like walls as much as the next person, they're ideal for poster-hanging afficionados, and there's nothing like them for the prevention of what i like to call roof-drop (self-explanatory), but are people really getting to the stage where they're sitting in front of their computer, mouth slightly open, picking bits of ceiling out of their hair, thinking to themselves 'whatzz someting else dat i liike? oh yeh i no!!!! walls! zomg :) ~~'.
of course, one could argue that i'm no better, spending minutes at a time writing a caustic diatribe about people simply because they like things that i think are stupid, and are prone to lapses of slovenly expression. but i don't care; it makes me feel better. i like this.
i am constantly being maligned by some of my girlfriends for having a preference for boys with skinny legs. it's true: i do like skinny legs, and i don't believe i should have to justify my choice, just as i don't force them to explain the psychology behind their obsession with men whose have legs like tree trunks and a posture that bows under the weight of their shoulder muscles.
so, with this in mind, here's some fashion. skinny legs, messy hair, tattoos and poor upper body strength, just the way i like it. all whinging and incomprehension to be added below, please.
i heard people talk at length about this nine minute video long before I ever saw it, and by the time i did a search on youtube it had been pulled due to its "inappropriate" contents. i don't believe this is a music video about hatred for red-haired people. i believe that mia has made an interesting and controversial statement about the reality of racial discrimination, both in our past and present. by replacing jews or african americans with red heads, it just highlights how very ridiculous this discrimination ever was! yes, it's shocking, but if you replace those red-headed fellows in the clip with any racial minority, it's still a reflection on reality. it's making people think and talk, and that can't be a bad thing.
watch it for yourself and let us know what you think.
i'm in tuscany on holidays at the moment, and after a fairly good run weather-wise, today has been plagued by rain. not one to look on the gloomy side of life (a holiday is a holiday after all), i got up late and decamped straight to the couch (after a hearty breakfast of leftover pizza - it is italy, after all), settling down to watch chicago, for no real reason other than it was the only thing available.
i'd forgotten what a diverting movie is was, if for nothing more than the divine twenties fashion. during one scene, catherine zeta-jones sports a fabulous fur-trimmed side-fastened coat with a chocolate slip and long beaded necklace. i'm not sure about the rest of the ensemble, satin slips being the unflattering things they are, but i think i could be all about the fur-trimmed coat this winter, and this one from primark just landed in my inbox. it's a total steal at £49 - and it's cashmere (go-to fabric for girls who are partial to swathing themselves in feather-light and gorgeously warm knits).
i'm even considering buying some dark brown leather buttons and creating a kind of asymmetrical draped side fastening, as an homage to la zeta. provided it's not too cold to get to the button queen in marylebone that is - winter is such a deal breaker.
it was with great excitement that we learnt that laura gravestock’s jewellery has been nominated as one of the ten finalists for the ec one unsigned competition. ec one is a gorgeous, original independent jewellery shop, with two galleries based in exmouth market in clerkenwell and notting hill, london, and it is the very place that any up and coming jewellery designer wants to get their work displayed at.
having worked in the fashion industry for many years, laura finally thought it time to indulge in her accessories fixation, by creating her own range of versatile, affordable jewellery. working with silver, gold, platinum and precious stones, laura's work is inspired by memories of light playing on the intricate latticework, that surrounded her while growing up amongst the diverse architecture and cultures of the middle east and rural spain. in particular we are fans of her ‘written collection’ where you can personally design your own irreverent statement, making for the ideal cheeky christmas gift!
her pieces, while opulent, in particular the majestic collection, retain a certain simplicity, which is why they make for such charming pieces. to vote for laura gravestock’s jewellery in the ec one unsigned competition, please visit [www.econe.co.uk/blog/2010/09/unsigned-top-ten-laura-gravestock/]
inspired by the barn burning ways of american folk, john blek and the rats are the perfect preventive to winter blues, with their carousing anthems of downright discord and hodownhollerin’. their songs feel like bright morning light, on a bruised heart, finding comfort in a stranger’s bed. this fresh irish folk outfit are our band of the week and to truly appreciate their revelry, we recommend you catch them live. you will raise your glass to the ceiling. you will want to take them home. and having spoken with aisling and john, of john blek and the rats , we attempted to do just that…
poxymash: what has been your experience of rodents such that you would name your band after them?
john: the name really comes from my obsession with a french artist called blekle rat, rather than my love of furry vermin. he claimed that he used the rat in his name as it is such an evocative creature and is capable of inciting hysteria in people. that made a lot of sense to me and correlates really well with what we aim to do with our music. we don't look to instill fear in our audiences, but we do want them to wake up and realise what it's like to have a really good time!
p: if john blek and the rats could have invented any object/creation, what would it have been and why?
aisling: I would've loved to have invented something that made me a lot of money fast, like a synthesizer in the 80s.
j: well i suppose language is a pretty essential invention. it's something that really releases us and allows us to express ourselves. it can also help us find clarity and sense in some of the mundane aspects of what we do. i think I realised all this recently when I heard the poetry of anismojgani. the language he uses and the way in which he delivers it astounds me; highly emotive and rife with reality. he has made me love language more than anyone in the last few years. well worth checking out his poems "shake the dust" and "here am I".
p: if art is essentially a form of escapism, what do you wish to escape from?
a: i like to escape from my head and situations, but whiskey tends to work more effectively than music! some songs just remind me of the people they’re about. performing them can sometimes bring you back to the place you were when you wrote it.
j: i think i'm done escaping for a while. art, music in particular has become what i do, day in, day out. life is pretty amazing at the moment and i really hope it continues for as long as possible. who would ever want to escape an existence where when you wake you get to live your life, write about it, document this on recordings and express it all to an audience? there have obviously been times when music allowed me to escape everything that was going on around me, but there have also been times when you want to escape the music. the thought process that goes into writing a song or lyric can often lead you down somewhere you shouldn't be going for the sake of your own mental health! but for now, life is good. i am happily trapped and unwilling to escape.
p: what is your favourite lyric of all time?
a: i’m terrible for remembering lyrics! the ones I love tend to get mixed up with all the rest but there’s one that has become a sort of life motto for me “i can’t believe life’s so complex, when i just wanna sit here and watch you undress.” this is love, pj harvey.
j: i don't really know do i have one favourite. "one night of loving don't make up for six nights of pain" by willy nelson is pretty good.i like lyrics that can tell a story like tom waits' ‘closing time’, in its entirety is pretty amazing. also most of the words that come from conoroberst’s mouth tend to inflict a heavy dose of clarity and reality on any listener.
p: what sets john blek and the rats apart from other bands?
a: we embrace our weaknesses and instead of being nervous about getting things wrong, we concentrate on getting the energy right. it’s so nice to see new people dancing and foot-stomping to a song they haven’t heard before!
j: we're all about energy and less about being the most articulate musicians in the world. the words are important to us and effecting people with our music is a massive part of what we do. many bands try to say that they want to have an impact on their listeners, we do it. people don't stand or sit still at our shows, there are no spectators. we will sweat, we will shout and we have and will bleed for an audience. we are a very hard working troupe of people. we're aware of what's involved. there is no complacency and no naivety.
p: what's next on the cards for john blek and the rats?
j: new recordings, maybe a single or another ep to be released at christmas, relocation to london for a few months, a uk tour in October and an irish tour at christmas. lots of really good times.
p: this is your soap box, what would you like to say to your fans!?
a: see you at gigs and thanks for all the footstomping!
just to remind some of us that there is a world that exists outside of London, this weekend the manchester art gallery played host to the premiere of rafael lozano-hemmer’s latest creativity, recorder. as the title of this exhibition suggests, lozano-hemmer uses public participation and records their interactions, resulting in live visual artworks.
mexican-canadian rafael made a name for himself in britain with his under scan project which was held at the tate modern from 2005 to 2008. this large-scale public display involved video portraits of anonymous people being projected onto the ground at trafalgar square. the portraits were then covered in an overlooking white light so that the passersby would then see only the shadows.
the scientist turned artist, who lets his love of technology beckon through his work, has now turned his attention to the capabilities, faults and dangers from the use of digital media on a modern society. the element of ‘crowd sourcing’ gives a playful and open sense to the atmosphere, however there is a more predatory nature at work. he uses technology that is employed by governments and corporations to profile, control and predict the behaviours in the name of efficiency and safety. this, his central theme of surveillance, formulates an exhibit that focuses on the effects of digital media on the masses.
lozano-hemmer is emphasising the importance of technology in our current day and age. a time where google have snapped you mowing your lawn on camera. where banks have built virtual economies, and social networks encourage you to never see any of your friends past a screen. therefore the main approach of recorder is by the misuse of technology, creating experiences of connection and confusion through repetition, performance and irony.
i found the opening very intriguing as i delved into the world of the watcher. i was left feeling almost naked, aware that my every move was basically being monitored. seven microphones were set up to provide a piece that records a message, then plays back to the incoming messages. this idea of scrambling thought really left me bewildered as i lost my message amongst the others poured into a system. seminal pieces such as the ‘pulse room’ were possibly the most inspiring. lozano-hemmer uses a large pitch black room to then suspend hundreds of symmetrical light bulbs. from there he takes recorded pulse rates of the audience to create a flashing heartbeat around the room. each glowing bulb represents a person’s pulse and the overall result is one that portrays the heartbeat of a city, to mesmerising effect.
this celebration of digital connectivity is part of the manchester weekender commencing on the 1st – 3rd october. it either shows us that we are involuntarily dependent on technology or gives us a stark warning about the surveillance society we currently live in.
[photo: antimodular research]
fred paginton]
[for more on cctv culture, see morgan hewitt’s watching them watching us at poxymash.com]
A rather hefty pat on the back is in order for to the Blair media machine. You are doing your jobs quite excellently. I sincerely hope the big wigs have given you at least a bottle of bubbly, although a week in media detox, mainlining horse sedative is probably a more befitting antidote for all the work you must have put in over the last few months.
I mean, we’d almost forgotten that Old Tony had even existed, almost forgotten that HE thought Gordon was a knob too, almost forgotten borderline lezzer life coach Carole Caplin, almost forgotten his scandalous up-chucking kiddie winks. Tony of the past was not without scandal- both politically and personally. To be fair to the man, I’d probably be in a right state too if I’d asked God what to do about Iraq and he told me, ‘get on in there and bugger it up old chap’. Confusing signals from one so preoccupied with peace and love and stuff. (Clearly this is a very VERY tender subject, one I am not even going to attempt to tackle sensibly- on a religious or political level. No, no, I am quite content to stick to unsavoury witticisms instead. So there- go read the Independent’s blog or something if you’re after serious political journalism [nb. this statement is wholly endorsed by the poxymash editorial team]).
Personally, I’d mentally pigeonholed Tony in to an eternity spent in Sardinia, saying nothing but the word education, nodding his head like he had a medical condition and trying to dodge Cherie’s protruding teeth (those things are a health hazard to anyone in the immediate area).
Alas, I have now had to shift the paradigm. And what a whopping great shift it’s been too. Gone are the days when Mr Blair was predictably dressed in a full buttoned up suit, so eager to please that acceptance and understanding seemed to seep from his very pores. His nose would inevitably be found several feet up George Bush’s behind, his heart in New Labour, and spare time spent sexing up dossiers.
But new age Blair- I may call this new persona Mr T, fool! – is dressed in, brace yourselves, an unbuttoned shirt (gasp! how casually trendy you are Mr T), the smell of alcohol seeping from his very pores (the result of a heavy night drinking two whole glasses of wine and possibly a cheeky scotch. Someone book this man in to the Priory immediately and introduce him to Amy Winehouse’s magic hands man.) His nose is found several feet up the media’s behind, his heart in, well, nobody’s sure really… he’s as politically confused as the rest of the country, and his spare time spent sexing up Cherie apparently. Devouring her to be precise.
The media has gone mad for new Tony, and you can understand why. He’s doing the David Cameron media courtship dance- the I’m such a normal guy slide, a shimmy to the political right, side step round inconvenient truths and finish in a fashionably uncompromising position (drink problem, spliff smoking, either will do). Even the title, ‘A Journey’ sounds like it should belong on the cover of an autobiography by an ex Big Brother contestant, or someone ravaged by abuse/eating disorders/any other form of unjust hardship in childhood.
In fact, I think he should get in touch with Sapphire, author of the now infamous “abuse AND eating problems AND general hardship in childhood” novel entitled Push, and do a swap. More apt in both directions methinks.
I’m beginning to wonder whether anyone’s actually read the thing. I know it’s the fastest selling autobiography since records began (in 1998 for your information, so not such a ginormous feat, but congrats nonetheless Tony, I mean, you’re not exactly the most rivetingly interesting person I could think of so… snaps for your effort.) but we’ve had so many graphic details relayed time and time again, I’m wondering whether anyone actually NEEDS to read it anymore. Switching on prime time TV is like having the Sparks notes to Mr T’s biog. And everyone knows, if you’ve got the Sparks notes, there’s no effing way you’re actually reading the book... although it ranks higher on my list than, say, a Katie Price ‘novel’ (why are people not marketing that tat at teens? or animals? or perhaps people in need of recyclable paper?).
I don’t think I’ll be dipping in to Tony’s pièce de resistance. It just whiffs a bit too much of desperation. the general public have been too easily shocked this time round in my humble opinion. All Tony and team have done is reveal a marginally more human gooey centre behind all that political machinery. Back to Sardinia with you I say- come back when you’re an alcohol riddled sex addict with a pasta belly and mafia connections. Then I’ll buy your autobiography.
with winter rapidly approaching, i'd basically resigned myself to necessarily bidding farewell to sheer summer separates. however, rather than relegate my summer staples (read maxi dress and racer back singlets) to the back of the wardrobe until the sun decides to shine on london town once more, i've decided to run with the acne ss11 crowd, and layer them up. obviously the notion is still a bit pre-season, but i think i can icicle-proof the look by adding my khaki coat and go-to beige snood.
this may indicate a dogged tendency towards seasonal-denial, but i don't think i'll ever change. i guess you can take the girl out of sydney, but you can't take the sydney out of the girl.
hopefully a champagne brunch at esthetica will lighten the mood a little. looking forward to seeing what eco friendly gems have been whipped up for the occasion.
and a little champagne wouldnt go astray either, actually, now that i think about it.
with their breathless electro pop formations and their charming cover of passion pits ‘sleepy head’, manchester trio , run toto run, have done the insuperable and become poxymash’s band of the week! having just released their debut album ‘youth shouldn't be that way’ run toto run are tipped for the upper echelons of the music biz with their sweet and sleepy mix of samplers and keyboards, all lovingly licked by racheals elusive singing. poxymash caught up with rachael and mike and this is what they had to say.
pm: what has been your most surreal moment yet?
rachael: i was browsing in topshop and our track starting playing on the instore radio and someone was singing along with it. that was weird. but awesome.
mike: sitting on a studio floor at 5am filming the last video, having worn make-up for 13 hours and being awake for nearly 24 hours
pm: a perfect day for the band, what would that entail?
rachael: we love touring. I think we'd love to have a stint of waking up in a different country everyday, having a look round and then heading off to the venue. thus far everything we've done has been in the UK.
pm: how do your fans express their love for you?
mike: a young guy in southampton drew rachael some fan-art which looked like a mammoth scrotum.
rachael: we have a couple of older alcoholic male fans. one came to a gig in manchester, spilt half his tea down his front, got shamefully wasted and danced like a loon at the front, creating a massive gap at the front as everyone took five steps back. he then mouthed through the whole thing at me that he loved me. the feeling wasn't mutual.
pm: what has been your greatest challenge as a band?
mike: breaking away from our initial folk incarnation.
rachael: yeah I'm with mike. finding a sound that was our own when matt joined and taking it in a new direction. it started to be music that we'd want to listen to ourselves and the really hard part was putting in the months and months of work it took to get it right.
good dating etiquette is like a minefield. in my little fantasy world, nobody dates. you skip the whole circus of strategic compliments, strategic texting, strategic sex… there would be a distinct lack of strategy. in its place would be a caveman-esque pattern of behaviour. ‘me like you, you like me’. excellent. shortly followed by ‘me want relationship’ or ‘me want casual dalliance’. delete as appropriate and hope you both choose the same, then full speed onwards to the good stuff! gone would be the nail biting wait for the next message, the guesswork over when is an appropriate time to meet- are we at coffee-date stage? are we at dinner-date stage? are we at skip dinner, full speed on to the booty call-date stage? and if you do acquiesce to the call of the booty, does this make you a slut? or just a forward-thinking promoter of healthy promiscuity? i actually had a conversation this week in which anything other than full on open-relationship type promiscuity was condemned as fusty and old fashioned- made me feel like a bit of a prude for believing in occasional monogamy, if only for special occasions.
technology has only made the whole finicky fandango more complex - for example, when (if ever) is it acceptable to make your relationship ‘facebook official? some schools of thought will tell you that no relationship is really solid until this hurdle is well and truly jumped. others will tell you facebook is nothing more than a social ego stroke and that your relationship status means absolutely nada. personally, i’ve been ‘married’ to my lovely friend for a good 2 years now, and we’re blissfully happy. largely due to the eradication of relationship status worries. and her fabulous décolletage.
awkward physicality also really gets my goat. i’m cynically unromantic at the best of times, but when you’re trying to work out how ‘couple-y’ to be with someone new… it’s excruciating - i’m sorry, you want to hold my hand?! uh, no. hand-holding is for cute octogenarians. or your long term, much loved boyfriend. for the dude you’ve been on a couple of coffee dates with, hand holding is way too personal. but then according to the bible of charlotte, so are casual embraces in the cinema, hair touching, lip brushing, and worst of all, the little nose kisses some weirdos think are cute. no it’s not. it’s my nose, and right now, you’re not granted permission to salivate on it. for the more romantically inclined among us, these are probably the best bits. well, good for you- i’ll pass on my leftovers and you can all go cuddle in parks.
i have a fabulous friend who actually loves first dates. she thrives on dating etiquette. best of all, it’s not in a sicky romantic way at al l- for her the thrill is really in the elaborate choreography we all execute in the name of convention. for example, the hours we lovely ladies will spend pre-date pampering, the increasingly flirtatious nature of the text messages, reeling off well-worn witticisms about your crazy but loveable aunt fanny, your date graciously picking up the bill, and the yours-or-mine-or-sexy-abstinence conversation at the end of the night. the circus that i so detest is her weekend playground, and you gotta give the girl snaps for effort - she dates like a pro.
i think to solve my dating problems i’m going to have to come up with some kind of fast track system. a way to tick the necessary boxes with speed and efficiency, and minimum eye-gazing, hand-holding, hair-stroking nonsense. perhaps a questionnaire? something like….
relationship/casual dalliance/weekly booty call? (delete as appropriate)
are you freaked out by this questionnaire?
to be fair, if anyone got as far as the last question without running a mile they’d either have an exceedingly open-minded sense of humour, or be a desperate freak of a man. there’s really only two options- learn to love the game, or be a nun. decisions, decisions.
it's here it's here! the travelling pop-out PUMA truck and its tales of vintage sportwear will be parking up on shoreditch high street tomorrow from 1pm. upon arrival, seating, storage and tv screens will pop-out from the magical rewind forward truck’s framework to form an outside space, with exclusive tracks and remixes too.
poxymash will be heading down to peruse the 70s and 80s trainer collection and would very much like to invite you to do the same. apparently there are also puma archive prizes to be won, so get amongst it!
in our first issue we pleaded with the poxymash people of the world to 'push things forward'. it is therefore fitting that we should honour the new release of producer david sitek's album 'maximum balloon'. having been previously named by nme as the number one most 'forward thinking person in the music industry', sitek has carried his mantle well. while he is perhaps better known as a member of tv on the radio, he has also produced works for such illustrious bands as yeah yeah yeahs, liars, foals, celebration and telepathe. his debut solo album is essentially a synthy pop affair, making for easy listening, with each of the ten tracks featuring a guest vocalist such as little dragon, karen o and theophilus london. sitek will launch the album on september 14th, in barfly, camden.
post script: while we will celebrate his success, we may demand a grovelling apology for producing scarlett johansson's 'anywhere i lay my head' album in 2008. it hurt. bad.
(...cue all the excitement that it obviously entails). it's not as glamorous looking at the collections remotely via my trusty imac, but, on the upside, i'm sitting here in a charming maxi-dress-headscarf-bare-feet emsemble that, realistically, wouldn't cut it runway-side.
i'm currently wading through the first few collections, but i couldn't wait to post this little gem from project runway winner christian siriano:
well... yes. i mean, what is there to say? i like it for its understated qualities, oblique nod towards coy innocence, complete lack of brashness and for not at all having an air of the unsublimely ridiculous. obviously. i'm going to wear mine to tesco, and jam up the ready-meal aisles, causing undue stress to all the lonely bankers. ha!
the first album was a blasting bluesy rasping delight and they’re one of the best live performances we’ve seen all year. so we’re belated but unsurprised to report total enjoyment of jack white’s super group the dead weather’s second studio album sea of cowards.
listen to 'i can't hear you' for blues rock foxiness at its most foxy!
See also the video for ‘will there be enough water’ from the first album. a delicious duet between mosshart and white and their usual pantomime of sexual chemistry.
before I launch in to a verbal attack on the quality of watchable people you are attracting, i would like to state, for the record, that on the whole you can give yourselves a pat on the back for excellent work in retail. it’s invariably a topshop label peeping out from my hemline, and it’s becoming more and more dangerous for me to walk in to your shop as the likelihood of my exact outfit being replicated by a nearby mannequin is far too high on the richter scale of likeliness. i would love to sit here and claim that i am one of those horribly thrifty people that only shop in markets and charity shops and won’t buy anything unless it smells faintly of my great aunt margaret or has a fag burn in the sleeve, but that would just be a big fat lie now wouldn’t it? i am one of those people that likes a neatly folded paper bag, the satisfaction of ripping off the price tag (more so I can forget how much I paid for it than for any real practical reason), and clothes that smell faintly of sweatshops in asia. i like a t-shirt that I’ve clearly paid too much for, will break in six weeks, but has kate moss’s name in the neckline… mmm… coolness by association. that’s the baby for me. therefore, madame top of the shops, you cater to my instant gratification needs excellently. well done you.
alors, you may be wondering at this stage, what the bejeebus are you doing writing me an imaginary letter of complaint then?! if i’m so bloody marvellous?! well, i shall tell you. starting with the positive - i don’t often do this, i am an agreeable soul 90% of the time, so i will try to put a friendly wee slant on this complaint. Just as a token of my gratitude, and because i’m still on a retail high from your rather wonderful suspender tights I’ve just bought (nice work).
i used to revel in the people watching available in topshop. almost better than your impeccably styled mannequins were the real, live, walking specimens floating about your shop in their size 6 whimsical chiffon numbers. most provided me with a source of inspiration- they had the guts to wear what I wouldn’t have even tentatively fingered on the rail, but seeing it paraded with panache about the floors of topshop spurred me on to dizzying fashion heights I never thought possible. to be honest, others were just pure comedy value - there is a line, dearest shop, that i’m sure you are ever-aware of while churning out your many and varied lines, that just cannot be crossed by the mere mortal. certain pieces were made for people who contain more genes from the ‘baby foal’ pool than the human one - legs up to their neck, hair down to their ankles, eyes bigger than the average human face. however, occasionally a few brave souls try to carry off what they are clearly genetically incapable of. and so the fun begins…
it was much to my disappointment, therefore, that on a recent trip to your flagship store, that i encountered none of the above. the mind boggles, really it does, at how you have managed such a hideous, startling turnaround. from being the mecca for london hipsters everywhere, or at least the mecca of quasi-fashion-victims everywhere, topshop has become a veritable playground for those most despicable ‘young ladies’ coming under the category of ‘under 16 and out with daddy’s credit card’.
these sloany ponies graze on a diet of legging, jegging, breton and back-comb. they look like electrified french onion sellers in nappies (due to the unfortunate habit of wearing their leggings as far down on their hips as possible, thus leaving their crotch hanging somewhere round their knees in the most uncouth manner). they are brace-faced, tiny squirts of the fashion world and, frankly, i would be more inspired watching multiplying amoeba. at least they show some initiative. they stand in the queue shuffling their uggs and pushing up their fringes (as if they weren’t quaffed enough), and dragging their hair over from a parting that starts somewhere halfway down their neck. frankly, i felt that i had past the stage in life where i would have to stand in topshop listening to outpourings on daddy’s maximum budget for prom. really.
so, topshop, i leave it in your hands. there really is, in my opinion, nothing else for it but a mass culling. you could entice them to the shop with a miley cyrus tshirt signing or something. then shoot them all on sight, and send them off to be made in to glue. or something more legal, depending on your preference.
hands up who of you has a group of friends who have a tendency to fall out, refriend, sleep with each other, not sleep with each other, steal each others' clothes, boyfriends and hearts, all the while air-kissing like they have nary a care in the world. yes, me too.
so you all know the nightmare of, say, having a party, and knowing that there are going to be myriad tensions constantly bubbling under the surface, waiting to spew forth like lava from an icelandic volcano we can't spell the name of, and that certain people need to be kept apart with a metaphorical barricade that would put the great wall of china to shame (sometimes egos can be seen from space too).
so spare a thought, and a moment of sympathy, for the publicists who are, at this very moment, trying to put together the various fashion week placements, with undercurrents so complicated they make israel-palestine look like spot goes to the zoo: front row, second row, backrow; editors, buyers, bloggers; mingers, clingers and blingers (thank you ben elton, you utter genius) - it's a tactical nightmare.
just as a final aside, i'd never noticed before, but i adore the fact that good old w.s doesn't split the infinitive in hamlet's famous soliloquy. all is right in the world.
sometimes the best things comes from the simplest beginnings - like paper and pen. it's true of our 5-a-day-good-intentions shopping lists, and it's true of hope gangloff's work. this new york artist caught our attention when we saw one of the floral graphic pieces she created as a commission for wayne designer wayne lee's s/s 11 collection (see below). not content to rest on her laurels (excuse the flora-related pun), her drawings will also form the basis of a tattoo body art collaboration with Temptu.
everyone knows: men are fantastic, but men of style are even better. tommy ton has turned his lens to the fashionistos (oh my god, i can't say that, my italian father would kill me) - fashionisti - that are the cherry-on-top, coffee on our tiramisu (sorry - dad again), creme de la creme of the fashion dessert cart.
this young photographer, hailing from miami, has caught our eye via garrett faber's dazed digital interview. he's described as "walk[ing] the line between tortured victim and party animal," which we find intriguing indeed. his work has strong overtones of cultic practice, an almost other-worldliness, that is at once alienating and captivating.
they're fabulous, they'll go with anything, and as well all know, the wedge boot is the dark horse of the comfortable footwear stakes. and possibly the best thing of all, they'll only cost you 20 quid at primark. is that not the most fabulous thing you've heard today? the first delivery sold out in one day (one day!) so you better hot foot it over to marble arch as soon as you can to get your hands on a pair of these beauties.
with winter rapidly approaching, i'd basically resigned myself to necessarily bidding farewell to sheer summer separates. however, rather than relegate my summer staples (read maxi dress and racer back singlets) to the back of the wardrobe until the sun decides to shine on london town once more, i've decided to run with the acne ss11 crowd, and layer them up. obviously the notion is still a bit pre-season, but i think i can icicle-proof the look by adding my khaki coat and go-to beige snood.
