McQ Alexander McQueen for Target

A Porcelain Perspective:
Please have a seat.
Now read on.
The rumors are true. The gossip is confirmed. Alexander McQueen will be collaborating with super-smart Target Stores to design a version of his collection McQ entitled: McQ Alexander McQueen for Target. Believe it, because I said it. (Oh and also WWD, aka: the Fashion Bible.)
The new endeavor for Target, called Designer Collaborations, will launch in March with the edgy McQueen’s collection crowning its introduction. Not down with the McQueen info? He’s only the guy who was once chief designer at Givenchy, is Creative Director for Gucci, and was named GQ’s 2007 Men’s Wear Designer of the Year. Big whoop. (I kid, Mr. McQueen. And I love you.)
The buzz around this trend continues as retailers find new and inventive ways to battle the economic toilet that we’re currently swirling into. By merging impeccable designers with affordable prices—everyone wins. As the days go on, I find myself growing sprouts of respect for retailers, who not long ago were lacking credibility. Stores like H&M have been sailing through these economic woes with ease, as they continue to partner with designs like COMME des GARCONS, due to hit the floors on November 13. To add perspective, H&M has been one of the retailers continuing to hit sales plans, and often they are selling $20,000-$30,000 over plan on weekends. Not many Michigan Avenue doors can boast such hotness.
So, it is no surprise that in current times, the game is changing. Fashion is becoming more and more accessible to everyone and anyone. H&M outfits a range of clientele these days. The shoppers range from clueless teenage girls with Mommy’s Visa, to Michelle Obama and Jennifer Hudson. Case in point: no one has to sit on the sidelines anymore. Retailers who develop quick innovation and a forward-thinking outlook will succeed in today’s landscape. As our economy continues to swirl, the fashion world continues to evolve.
I’m just waiting to see who’s going down the drain.
-Ryan Beshel

Yes We Can and Yes, I can

Last night I went to grant park in Chicago determined to get into the Obama Rally-- I could not as hard as I tried get a ticket. Tens of thousands of people came from all over the city-- familiar faces and beautiful strangers.

I made it past the first check point by begging one of the guards, made it through the second check point by borrowing someone ticket, I made it through the third check point by paying off the guard with a tip and the final check point + metal detector I made it though on the kindness of fellow stranger. I could not get through the final gate without being the guest of someone with an official ticket. So I waited at the check point and asked countless people if they could get me through. A really beautiful husband and wife couple happened to have an extra guest pass and brought me in. While in line we swapped incredible stories about door-to-door campaigning in Indiana.

I have never campaigned before and never participated in politics before-- I must say that the experience was absolutely incredible. I had the door slammed on on, people angry that we would approach them about politics, and on the rare occasion an open ear or willing heart.

One of the most inspiring quotes from wives in Indiana " I am going to cancel my husbands vote"

If www.cancelmyhusbandsvote.com does not exist-- IT SHOULD. This is one of the most inspiring shows of freedom and liberty I have seen. It parts of the world or country where the man of house has the last say-- women should make their voice herd in the voting booth.

When it was announced Obama won Indiana, the crowd went crazy in Grant park-- I could not have been more proud.

All these women, all those people who lent us their ear and opened their hearts-- Indiana is a symbol of true change.

I made my way through the crowd last night until I was 20 feet from the podium where Obama spoke. He victory speech was both inspiring and sent shivers through me that "the road ahead is long". It is time to tighten our belts, time to put our nose to the grind stone and work harder than we ever had.

Today I cut up my credit card as a symbol of a new prosperous America built on hard work, innovation and collaboration.

Thank you everyone who reads our blog and I look forward to the full launch of
www.pulpistaken.com

And the victory is not complete until the Oprah sings.

I LOVE the skin-tissue you’re wearing

Recently, I was sent an email from the ever-exploring Justin Polera concerning a subject matter that, at the time I found quite repulsive. After some friends and I had a gasp at the visuals included in the article, I thought it only right to let this concept sink in a bit deeper before deciding to erupt with opinion.

I glanced back at the subject line to discover that Justin had named this email ‘Ethical Leather: I think you’ll find this interesting…’—and I did. More specifically, the small writing in question is actually titled: Clothes that Grow from Living Tissue. That’s right folks; it has finally come—well, not exactly. The article described the scientific experiment as an art piece, with strong implications that this should be taken seriously as a future substitute for leather!

To sum it up quickly: Researchers from The School of Anatomy and Human Biology at the University of Western Australia and a team of scientists, Oran Catts, Ionat Zurr and Guy Ben-Ary, developed an art piece made from immortalized living cells, shaped into what appears to be a small growing coat—in a bubble glass tube. The reality of this repulse shines bright light on the fashion world, as we never think twice as animals are slaughtered, so we can literally wear them.

The question is, why am I repulsed by the site of a small skin-coat in a test tube, but not the leather shoes I was wearing moments before I sat down to type? Often new technologies are shunned by many, only to live through the resistance and become part of everyday life. However, judging from the reaction of the people around me when I opened the email, I don’t see this as being one of those phenomenons.

Now, I get it, researchers—I do. While it certainly would take the winner for Completely Outstanding Science Fair Project, I don’t see this as a wave of the future. Somehow, this process would need to be saturated into culture before I, or most of the people I know, grab their charge cards to get the hot new test-tube grown skin coat that just came out. (Although, Pleather does make a killing—but no one ever said it looks good. Oh right--because it doesn’t.)

The article finishes with a quote: “Some may call it art, some say it’s horrendous yet some will call it science. In any context, it is still thought-provoking.” To me, it is all of those things; an amazing scientific feat, a mind bending art piece--and yes, I’d call it horrendous at the first glance. Though all of these ideas ring true, there is something beautifully provoking about the whole idea.

Original Article Source: http://www.environmentalgraffiti.com/featured/clothes-that-grow-from-living-human-tissue/3162

-Ryan Beshel

Halloween in the biggest party on Halsted

My favorites last night include two men dressed as Obama's Aunties from Africa decked out in huge Afro's and Dashekee's.

The best costume of the night was Palin with a deer hear and shot-gun rifle. A runner up was artist Ben Fain's incredible float with an old man in his bed scared by 100's of rats. Stunning!

Oh yeah and a black man dressed at Aunt Jamima--

Chasing the Devil for Halloween

It is clear that Mishara Canino and Bill Hussung set out to make a fair-minded account of the ex-gay movement, partly because we hear a voice assert this to subjects as they become qualmy or defensive under inquiry. But one has to wonder whether this is entirely possible or desirable with this set of pernicious kooks who profit from the societally-inflicted self-loathing of their “patients”. Certainly, they do their job in providing the subjects with an opportunity to argue their case. Several times we see an empty chair as the infamous Richard Cohen flees simple accountability. At other times, subjects bear his hard-hitting questions and expose us to the absurd and chilling reasoning and farcical faith that drives their mission to rid themselves and their flock of the homosexual desires they find unacceptable yet unshakable. However, the endeavor is clearly skewed towards showing these false prophets for the deplorable jokes that they are. Joanne Highley, a Manhattan minister, doesn’t help her case when she earnestly explains that demons enter the body at the point where homo intercourse occurs, but this line of interviewing is useful in the audience’s assessment of these views. Less useful or unbiased are the filmmakers’ on the fly interviews of leather daddies and a drag queen at New York City’s PRIDE Parade. Revelation: they think ex-gay leaders are idiots. Indeed, these leaders are almost dismissable in their absurdity, except for the fact that they possess great power to ruin lives. The more compelling moments come from the sane but conflicted individuals who are either currently struggling to quell the demons of homo-desire or have emerged from the ex-gay fiasco with fascinating testimonies and battle scars (and diminished bank accounts) to show. One mild-mannered older gentleman who has been in reparative therapy for years and is undergoing training to be a ‘sexual reorientation coach’ under Cohen’s guidance, wistfully considers whether he has actually been ‘healed’, examining both his continued propensity for gay porn (looking is alright, but masturbating to it is a regression) and his yearning for someone with whom he may share the rest of his days (platonically, if it happens to be a man). Moments like this largely make up for some seemingly random selection of visuals and distracting zooms and camera movement (how close to the Jesus sculpture’s face must we get?). Various quibbles can be made about this documentary’s construction, but, ultimately, it is rewarding to get a rare inside glimpse into this segment of the religious right and to hear from those who have survived their remedy.
-Kevin Langson

The Glow of White Women Yunus Valley

With The Glow of White Women Yunus Valley forcefully and riotously reverses the colonial gaze to comedically consider the erotic imagery and actual white women who have comprised his masturbatory fantasies and his libidinous relationships. Valley, a mixed race Indian/Black artist from South Africa, is an incendiary, unabashed director-subject who races through a confrontation of the sexual racism that made for tense relations and torrid desire during apartheid. With a devious grin and a subversive sense of humor encapsulated in his assertion that apartheid really wasn’t so oppressive because it meant that the black boys could sit at the back of the movie houses and masturbate to the images of white women on the screen, he plays at untangling his voracious appetite and contempt for Caucasian women- as a personal and a cultural phenomenon. Don’t expect conclusions or for every element of this film to be well-realized or logically arranged, but do expect an unusually entertaining social critique. This film exudes the personality of its maker, which is to say it is hyper and playful, with a tinge of artist arrogance. Just as he is perfectly comfortable espousing that women are frivolous and not worth living with/committing to, he seems self-satisfied in the structuring of the film, feeling no need to contextualize or conclude as convention would dictate. And why not, if at the end one has the sense that he is a competent commentator, agitator, and entertainer? In two regards he brings to mind Michael Moore. He is a strong, confrontational personality that will likely earn avid detractors and avid supporters among his audience, and he conjures Roger and Me with his laughable but rather pointless ambush of a beauty queen. On the flipside, it is a beauty queen (the Miss South Africa pageant is a recurring subject) who provides the most chilling moment of the film, as well. When interviewed about her family’s relationship to the African workers who constitute the labor force of the family business, Miss South Africa is a shocking embodiment of the sort of paternalistic racism that is utterly ignorant of itself.

Fortunately, other women articulate different shades of interracial relations. He gets some refreshingly candid interviews from white women who were young during apartheid and speak about their racial fetishes and their gleefully defiant miscegenation. As the filmmaker comments, colonial women often had rather repressed sexual relationships with their white husbands; when they connected with Africans they felt free to unbridle their primal libido. Likewise, this topic could be handled in a staid, politically sensitive manner, but the hard-hitting humor and honesty that this anti-racist rascal offers is a viable and delightful alternative.

-Kevin Langson

UNTITLED ( In memory of Sarah Palin on Transrememberance day)