eyesing

Pecha Kucha

So last night I did a talk thingie at the Sydney Pecha Kucha, which is an event where "creative people talk about creative things. Each presenter is allowed 20 images, each shown for 20 seconds each." Almost all of the other speakers were architects so my presentation about fashion blogs stuck out like a sore thumb/was a nice change, depending on your interest level.

I decided to do it because I haven't done that much public speaking and I thought it would be a good challenge. I was kinda nervous but a glass of $5 sav blanc quelled the butterflies. I was somewhat bemused because people were laughing during my speech, which isn't such an undesirable response, but I hadn't intended it to be funny. My support crew told me afterwards people were laughing at the pictures, which kind of surprised me because I think they're really beautiful and I'm inspired by what these blogs people create. I guess I'm used to all the exuberant styling. All in all it was a fun experience, I got some nice feedback from a few of the attendees and I'm really glad I did it.

Aaaanyhoodle, there are potentially people reading this who want links to the blogs I talked about, so here goes...

Wardrobe Remix

The Snail and the Cyclops

Hermsprong, Softspoken, coquelicot-sleep

Coco73, becktress, cmt2779

lorimarsha, kasmeneo, bettyjack

Trish Royal who started Wardrobe Remix has her own blog, bitsandbobbins.com

Style Bytes

Kingdom of Style

Stylebubble

And here are some other fashion blogs I heart muchly

Le Blog de Betty
Fashion Toast
Fashionista
Emma's Closet
Fashion Fillers
Only Shallow
Flying Saucer
Liberty London Girl
Fashion is Spinach
Disney Rollergirl

This is hardly the Oscars but I do want to say thank you to the lovely Liz and Kevin for helping me with the jpgs and my sweetheart, Chris for his presentation tips. Sonya x

What do champagne and laser prints have in common?

Amanda Henderson of Gloss Creative that's what...

Love a spectacle and wherever smarty pants, Emma Jane Pilkington goes, a spectacle seems to follow. As the director of an "interdisciplinary agency that designs ultra-stylish environments for major global brands" (Thanks Vogue Living), she has been behind the marvelous Moet & Chandon marquees and the Melbourne Cup for a few years.

For 2007 it was Le Chapiteau Merveilleux, featuring swathes of green silk and Bill Henson portraits.

2006 she collaborated with NY designer, Emma Jane Pilkington, to recreate a laser-printed version of the Hall of Mirrors in Versailles.

It was champagne bubbles, bubbles, bubbles all around with the Beijing Olympics National Aquatics Centre-inspired 2005 marquee

More pics

Lots more info and pictures on glosscreative.com.au

Topsy Turvy Viktor & Rolf

Viktor & Rolf are fond of themes. They like block colours, repetition and bows.

Block colours

Fall 2001

Spring 2002

Fall 2002

Repetition

Fall 2003

Spring 2006

Spring 2006

Bows...

Spring 2005

They also like block colours, repetition and bows all at the same time...

Spring 2002

Spring 2005

For their Milan boutique they also went with a theme - upside down.

Fun.

If you don't suffer from vertigo...

Photos of Milan boutique from Angelonki on Flickr

More information
Viktor & Rolf website
Guardian interview
Viktor & Rolf blog

Prada wallpaper by James Jean

Holy mother of scroll bars, those them tweeny images down there below are really w i i i i i i i d e... that's because they're of the wallpaper for the Prada stores in Beverly Hills and SoHo Epicenter stores and in real life they measure 5.2m x 60m (17 x 200 feet).

Yes, I know it's really skinny but if you click on image you'll see...

They're the handiwork of James Jean, who is majorly in with Miuccia Prada and is responsible for the wallpaper that was on show for the Spring/Summer 2008 catwalk show, appears in the ad campaign and is part of Prada's new 'Trembled Blossoms' animated film which will screen during NY Fashion Week .

Fashion Week Daily story about Trembled Blossoms

His website is short on biographical details but full of fantastical images that would thrill an indie fairy... plus James keeps a blog and makes comics and so on. Check it...

More information:
jamesjean.com
ProcessRecess blog
Fashion Week Daily story about 'Trembled Blossoms'

Tony Duquette - video

More info on my previous post about Tony Duquette... You can see Hollywood royalty and jewellery designer, Liz Goldwyn take a tour of Tony Duquette's home, Dawnridge on style.com

Live like a rock star - Lenny Kravitz does interiors

A few years ago I came across a spread in an interiors mag of Lenny Kravitz's newly renovated New Orleans home. It was a total rock n' rock glamour pad, all "designed to look good at night" with shag pile carpet everywhere. It was totally fabulous and I assumed he had paid an interior designer to pimp his pad, but I have since found out that it was the handiwork of Mr Kravitz himself. Apparently Lenny's in-between-tour/album hobby is designing houses or apartments. In fact, he's so passionate about this pastime he started his own interiors company, Kravitz Design.

Here's some of his work, including pics from his NY apartment which is on sale for $19 million+.

The Kravitz-designed bar, the Florida Room in the super hip Delano Hotel in Florida opened recently during Art Basel in Miami. Frustratingly, there is a dearth of images of said bar. Anyhoodie...

More information
Kravitz Design
Buy Lenny's Soho apartment
"But what I really to do is design" , NY times article, July 21 2005
Delano Hotel, Miami, Florida
Designs by Lenny, Calgary Sun article, December 2005

Art homes - Hamptons retreat

So would expect the owner of an art gallery owner to a tastefully decorated and art-filled house. The Hampton's playground of gallery owner, Rachel Lehmann, takes it to a whole other level with gigantic Jeff Koons sculptures by the pool and Marukami cuteness in the living. It all just looks like so much fun!

Behold...

Jeff Koons' Elephant by the pool

Organic sculpture by Anish Kapoor next to the lily pond

Takashi Murakami's mushroom bench in the living room

Beautiful Jorge Pardo pendant lights in the dining room

Vintage Jean Royère armchairs in the entry

Hand-sculpted white lacquer bed by Bonetti with metallic leather spots.

More information
House and Garden feature
Lehmann Maupin Gallery

Tony Duquette - Hollywood Glamour

I’m quite fond of a dramatic interior and of “clutter”, as my erstwhile and failed-minimalist flatmate used to call it (in my mind a pigsty in the bedroom is a sure sign of pigsty in the head, especially when said head aspires to an interiors of the all-white, cube in the centre of the room variety. We fought over the cleaning. Can you tell?)… Anyway, as the cliché goes, I digress.

Tony Duquette was a Los Angeles based designer and artist for Hollywood films as well as the homes of the Los Angeles glitterati. Luminaries like Gloria Swanson, Greta Garbo, Fred Astaire, Vincent Minnelli, Louella Parsons and Hedda Hopper attended his 1949 wedding to artist, Elizabeth Johnstone. Duquette was the first American artist to hold an exhibition in the Pavilion de Marsan of the Louvre Museum, Paris and he received design commissions from the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Doris Duke, J. Paul Getty and Elizabeth Arden.

The drawing room at Duquette's home, Dawnridge

Duquette passed away in 1999 at the age of 85, but his legacy lives on through his protégée Hutton Wilkinson, who still creates fine jewelry and home furnishings collections inspired by designs he and Tony Duquette created together, from the headquarters at Duquette’s glamorous Beverly Hills home, Dawnridge.

There are heaps of pictures of Duquette’s designs for interiors, theatre, jewellery and museum exhibitions on the Tony Duquette website, but for the moment, here are some images of his homes. Looking at these pics it makes me think Duquette has been a major influence for the celebrity-in-her-own-right decorator to the stars, Kelly Wearstler.

The drawing room at Duquette's home, Dawnridge

The Green Dining Room, note leopard print vinyl tablecloth and abalone chandelier

The guest bedroom, complete with pink Thai silk canopy bed and carved alligator from New Guinea

The Duquette's bedroom

Tony Duquette's office

Tony Duquette standing by the 'Little Thai House' in his garden, complete with architectural fragments from Thailand and Bali, English gothic spires and salvadged Victorian gingerbread

Sortilegium was a 30-year labour of love for Tony Duquette and his wife Elizabeth. Every weekend they visited the 150-acre property in the Malibu hills, from the 1950s to the day when the property was decimated by fire in the 1990s. The couple renovated or built 21 different structures on the site, each one named and decorated according to different themes.

The Tea House, in which a cup of tea was never served.

The bedroom in Horntoad, which was decorated in "gingerbread" and Americana, note the stuffed owl above the denim-draped bed.

The kitchen at Frogmore, Duquette's home on the ranch

Hamster House, the former 1920s mobile home, expanded to a house

More information:
Tony Duquette website for reams of photos
New York Times article

The wonderful underworld of Carlo Mollino

I stumbled across these images from an exhibition at Galleria Carla Sozzani in Milan and thought I’d just whack ‘em up with a, “cool pics of a cool pad eh?” But then I started to read about the guy who designed the place, Carlo Mollino (1905-1973), and things took a turn for the weird.

An architect, photographer and furniture designer and according to one website I’ve found, a sex maniac and drug addict, Mollino lived in Turin in Italy. Along with buildings, he also designed a couple of racecars and special device for walking on snow.

Mollino was a student of the occult (!) and obsessed with the tomb of the ancient Egyptian royal architect, Kha, which was housed in a museum in his hometown. Like the ancient Egyptians, Mollino believed that the human soul was made of semi-divine parts that survived death. To that end, he spent the last 14 years of his life decorating this apartment, just as Kha decorated his pyramid in his spare time. Mollino never stayed the night here (another luxurious apartment was his primary residence) because it was essentially his own modern day pyramid, decorated with the things he wanted to take into the afterlife.

Entrance

Kitchen

Dining Room

Living Room

Bathroom

Bedroom

Panoramic view

Fulvio and Napoleone Ferrari now own Casa Mollino and they have recreated the original state of the interiors. Open to the public by appointment only. Torino, Via Giovanni Francesco Napione 2 (10124)

More information:
Mollino was hugely prolific and I haven’t even touched on the other work he created (numerous buildings, town planning, books on skiing, furniture, racecars) and his furniture now goes for record prices at auction.

Design Boom with info about his furniture, photography etc
Wikipedia entry
The Furniture of Carlo Mollino, the only monograph on the furniture and interior design of Carlo Mollino,
authors Fulvio Ferrari and Napoleone Ferrari
Carlo Mollino by Paolo Frello,

Palais Bulles - Pierre Cardin's Bubble House

Owned by Pierre Cardin, the Palais Bulles or Bubble Palace, is one of several bubble homes designed by architect Antti Lovag. Built in 1978 it is located close to Théoule-sur-Mer in the south of France and was bought not-quite-finished, by the designer in 1992. From the outside it’s dome structures look like an igloo on Mars, and from the inside the curved lines seem comfortable and welcoming.

How much fun would it be to live in a house like this? Every day would feel like you were on holiday with the Jetsons.

Photos from Ken Sparks Photography

More information:
www.palaisbulles.com
Pierre Cardin's website
Anttii Lovag website