We only want to see you laughing in the Purple Rain
I'm still mega-ly coveting every last item featured in my modcloth.com-centric Imaginary Shopping Spree post from a few months back - I mean, dag, how great would the Pan Am bag look with the apple shirt?? As Bill Murray in What About Bob? would say: Gimme gimme gimme, I need, I need! Anyway, cutie-pie modcloth was kind enough to donate this adorable umbrella by Finnish label Marimekko to the Spirit Animal House charity raffle. It's called Purple Rain, which is probably the hottest lyric-referencing umbrella name I can think of - although if I were to invent an umbrella I'd probably call it something like "It Never Rains in Southern California, Except in January and February When It Rains Kind of a Lot and It's So Fucking Annoying." "Purple Rain" is a little bit catchier though, probs.
P.S. This one's event-only, but please do treat yourself to a few $2 raffle tickets and the chance to win one (or more!!) or our other fabulous prizes.
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Love: La Familia Green
I was psyched to write up paper goods company La Familia Green because they're based in my old stomping grounds of Chicago, IL, and therefore it allows me to expound upon on one of my pet theories: everyone in Chicago I know is incredibly literary and writerly and creative in the least pretentious way possible, and I think because it's so brutally, harshly cold in Chicago in the winter that you never leave your house, which gives residents an entire season to read and write and basically dwell in the vast beauty and trickery of words. I have been considering at least a part-time return to Chicago within a year or so (to be closer to horses, family and to pay cheaper rent so I can save for my thesis film), so I just may be able to test out my theory. And if I do, I will probably stock up on lots of notebooks at stationery from La Familia Green and send lots of letters to people saying how much I miss NYC and how it's so damn cold in Chicago, waaaaah. Because I'm a wuss. But wouldn't you love to get a note on cards and letter stock with such charming, clever, humorous designs? The best thing is that all cards are handmade in small quantities, so each little piece is like a bit of art. For our raffle, La Familia Green were kind enough to donate a tote, card set, some buttons and a particularly brilliant journal whose cover is made out of an old VHS copy of The Breakfast Club -- which you can win by buying a raffle ticket for our prize drawing. (I'm particularly fond of the luchadore button.)
Spirit Animal House, the Mini-Market: Charm School Design, Clarabella, Dangerous Mathematicians, Sodafine
We're super-stoked to announce the stellar mini-market line-up for our little Spirit Animal House event! As one of the main attractions of our "Indie Fashion Lounge", the sexy geniuses below will be live and in person at Pianos on Tuesday night in the swanky upstairs room, swilling a cocktail or two and selling a few of their wares. We've got a nice range of sellers, and ladies of any aesthetic persuasion (and the people who love them) should be able to find a charming addition or two to add to their arsenal of sartorial splendor. Read up on 'em below, check out their websites and contact them if you have any special requests, questions or just want to show them some love. And of course, come to Spirit Animal House this Tuesday at Pianos, where the Lounge kicks off at 8pm upstairs. Bring your fuss, feathers and dancing shoes -- and your wallets, too!
CHARM SCHOOL DESIGN
Who: charm school design: fanciful headwear and jewelry
What's selling at Spirit Animal House: feather and flower headbands and clips, range $25-$75.
Forms of payment accepted: cash or check!
Questions? Requests? Want a sneak peak? charmschooldesign@gmail.com or etsy site: charmschooldesign.etsy.com.
It's always a bit of a risk to say someone's the first to do something, but I reckon that Alita Edgar is certainly one of the feathered headband pioneers -- she's been making them for ages, and her work has recently been featured in the likes of NYLON. Certainly, in a now-crowded field full of cheap or poorly made imitations, Alita's work stands out for its quality and thoughtful design. Anyone I know who worn one of her headbands always gets a huge passel of compliments, they're that charming and unique. You can pick one up at our Spirit Animal House party; Alita's also kindly donating a pheasant feather cuff to the event-only raffle that night, which you can win if you buy a ticket for $5 (at the event, sorry!)
CLARABELLA
Who: Clarabella, supporting the best in independent accessories design... Shoes, Jewelry, Handbags.
What's selling at Spirit Animal House: Shoes from Tashkent by Cheyenne, Leather goods from Tracey Tanner, Jewelry by Nicole Gagne, Bags by Kristen Aronsson and much more!
Forms of payment accepted: Cash and Credit Card
Questions? Requests? Want a sneak peak? www.clarabellanyc.com, any questions email: erin@clarabellanyc.com
We've shown Clarabella lots of love before and are huge, huge fans of Erin Whelan's boutique, which is chock-a-block full of feminine, modern jewelry, bags, shoes and accessories. It's starting to create a buzz, having recently been written up in the likes of Daily Candy, but we've been fans for ages and are psyched Clarabella's been getting all this attention. Erin's also a charmingly lovely lady herself, and you can meet her in person at the Spirit Animal House party where she'll be selling a lovely assortment of things, including some Tracy Tanner accessories I've had my eye on for awhile. Clarabella is donating a lovely Andrea Brueckner tote in coral to our event-only raffle.
DANGEROUS MATHEMATICIANS
Who: A clothing boutique for smart and sexy women, which carries Dangerous Mathematicians label clothing, select European clothing labels, and jewelry by independent New York designers. New lingerie section offers stylish and affordable lingerie.
What's selling at Spirit Animal House: t-shirts, Dangerous Mathematicians corset-belts, lingerie (from underwear to bustiers) and clearance items (including clothing, hosiery) $10-$100
Forms of payment accepted: Cash and credit
Questions? Requests? Want a sneak peak? info@dangerousmathematicians.com, www.dangerousmathematicians.com, (212) 460 5356, or come to the store at 176 Rivington Street. They open at 2 pm Wed-Sun.
Besides having probably one of the coolest names ever for anything, Dangerous Mathematicians sells elegant, playful clothes and smartly sultry lingerie in their Lower East Side boutique. It's all perfect for that smartly dressed girl with a bit of a racy side, and you can sample DM's wares at the Spirit Animal House party, where owner Karen will be selling all sorts of accoutrements for your inner sensual intellectual. Karen is also kindly donating a Dangerous Mathematicians T-shirt and a garter belt with stockings from her lingerie section for our Spirit Animal House event-only raffle: ooh la la!
SODAFINE
Who: Sodafine boutique is Brooklyn's finest source for eco and indie and local designer wares including clothing, accessories and footwear.
What's selling at Spirit Animal House: assorted t-shirts ($20-$40), accessories by Purldrop ($30-$50), artist illustrated pocket mirrors ($7), mi-spa roll on perfumes ($15), Valerian cards and stationery ($3-$6), Happy Owl glass pins ($9), sprout studio earrings ($15-$35), Brooklyn Novelty totes ($20)...
Questions? Requests? Want a sneak peak? info@sodafine.com, http://sodafine.com, (718) 230-3060
Ah, how we love Sodafine! There's so much cool stuff in this little Williamsburg retail gem: why don't you check out our Fantasy Shopping Spree we did at Sodafine for yourself and see for yourself? We are psyched that Erin Weckerle from Sodafine will be there in person and selling some of her favorite small wares at Spirit Animal House. She's also kindly donating a Sodafine gift certificate for some lucky person to win at our event-only raffle -- good luck deciding if you want to apply it to an amazing Bahar Shahpar top, or a Popomomo dress, or a Cecilia Prado frock or...or...or...
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Spirit Animal House Booty: Snoozer Loser totes!
We've shown our Love for Snoozer Loser before, and we still stand by every word we wrote: they're geniuses with the hand printing, and their floaty, relaxed designs are rendered in the freshest, prettiest colors and designs. Snoozer Loser are expanding into totes and such for the fall, and lucky for us, we scored two to give away as prizes through our Spirit Animal House charity raffle benefiting animal-related charities like Brooklyn's own BARC. Aren't they beauties? You can win them, of course, by doing the old clicky-clicky on the button below and buying your fine self a raffle ticket or two. You can win a bunch of other very cool things as well. Trust us, you have nothing to lose -- you may win a beautiful objet, and you absolutely will be helping out a kitty or puppy or two.
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Love: Josh Jakus
Unlike the Canon of Great Art, which is totally boring, the Canon of Great Design is as exciting as Helter Skelter, and I mean that. Great design is actually, literally as exciting as the song "Helter Skelter" by the Beatles. I don't doubt that in fifty years time, Josh Jakus will be the latest inductee to said Canon (which, for the record, probably includes some William Morris chairs or something, Anni Albers' paper clip necklace, the spaceship that went to the moon, and the Dyson vac). I also think that in fifty years every single bag will look like the Josh Jakus UM bag: backpacks, briefcases, suitcases, Judith Leiber sequined clutches, etc.
As per usuelle, nogoodforme.com is totally ahead of its time. Fifty years before UM bags become ubiquitous, we've already got one under our belts, and, because we're really amazing sweethearts, we're giving it to YOU, and then we're giving the money we make from giving it to YOU to the bereft animals of three entire urban metropoli!
Just clickery-dickery dock on the convenient little button sitting beneath this sentence, fork over two dollars, and you will probably win the Josh Jakus UM Clutch, or maybe ONE OF THESE THINGS or maybe ALL OF THESE THINGS! Whoa! I bet you'll totally sweep the raffle.
FURTHER PROOF THAT JOSH JAKUS IS A TOTAL GENIUS:
Jezebel Stationery: Correspondence for the Vagabond Heart
I became infatuated with Jezebel Stationery's paper wares because of the gorgeous use of silhouettes, but I fell in love with the Brooklyn-based company for the poetic names and titles it calls its t-shirts, tote bags and note cards. The look of Leigh Batnick's work is classical and rooted in traditions like old photography and 19th century silhouettes, but there's a fresh, modern twist to the actual scenarios and images depicted. Lovers of vintage, language and vintage language will love the nods to the Gilded Ages of past, and those with angelic poets in their hearts will fall in love with the words inscribed. Listen to the names of the items Jezebel donated to our Spirit Animal House event, and you'll hear how the words are just as imaginative and beautiful as the designs themselves:
(left to right: "one day blanche birthed a mad, bad bibliophile" organic cotton tee; "dear virginia, an odalisque on a payphone" tote bag)
(left to right: box of cards: "waltzing matilda at the cafe lovely" box of cards, and "for louise moon, fragile as fingernails" box of cards)
Keep an eye on Batnick -- not only is she now selling their own jewelry, but she's also launching an interior design branch in 2009 and is working on a capsule collection of dresses. If it's anything like her cards and t-shirts, it is sure to be full of a straightforward grace. Needless to say, you can get a jump on your Jezebel fix and get a chance to win the tote or the card sets by buying a ticket to our Spirit Animal House raffle. (If you're dying for the shirt, you have to come to the actual party!)
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Snapshot: Listening, Watching, Reading, Wearing, Wanting
+ Kat
Listening: Blonde Redhead, Misery is a Butterfly; "Tape Song" by the Kills; some random tracks from Dub is a Weapon; Speck Mountain, Summer Above; just the usual random stuff. And I also think our Heavy Rotation jukebox this week is especially fun and very us.
Watching: Over Labor Day weekend I recovered from a hellish week by watching the entire third season of "Weeds", which was quite a whirlwind. That Nancy Botwin, man, she's a fluttery thug; the season premiere of "Gossip Girl," which made me fear for a Dan-Serena rapproachment. Is it just me, or are they the more boringest couple ever? Real-life couples should never play couples on t.v. Also, I have been abusing the Netflix "instant viewing" feature -- it's better than late-night cable! I've re-watched Threesome and Breathless and made it through half of Suburban Girl through this.
Reading: The September issue of ELLE, which rules ten times more than Vogue. It's nice to see their fashion content getting ten times better, which, being a total fan girl, I attribute to the promotion of ELLE editor Kate Lanphear to Style Director. Also, I'm reading Honore de Balzac's Lost Illusions, which is surprisingly really juicy in its allusive early 19th-century way. Balzac has a fixation on clothes and interiors, and his descriptions of outfits can get pretty astonishing, especially in regards to men's fashions at the time.
Wearing: Heat and humidity has returned to NYC, which completely sucks. I'm over summer, I just want it to go away. But the good thing is that I'm having a "summer dress last hurrah" right now.
Wanting: SPIRIT ANIMAL HOUSE night to come. Oh, and I want pictures of you for the nogoodforme-curated art show we are doing for October and November at the gallery at Clarabella. Come on, my budding starlets, don't hide your beauty! (By the way, the show up at Clarabella now features some g-o-r-g-e-o-u-s work by Seattle artist Marianne Goldin. Check it out if you are floating around on the Lower East Side.)
The flyer for the Marianne Goldin show:
+ Liz
Listening: that new Franz Ferdinand song; Stereolab, Emperor Tomato Ketchup; Radiohead, The Bends; Black Tambourine
Watching: I had food poisoning over Labor Day weekend and spent about four days in bed, during which time I watched all of the fourth season of Entourage and rewatched nearly a third of the entire series of Six Feet Under. Two hotness-centric observations made during the course of that delirium-inducing experience: (1) The unshaven, in-desperate-need-of-a-haircut, totally-losing-his-shit Nate Fisher at the end of SFU season 3 is definitely Peter Krause at his foxiest; (2) Although my lust for Billy Walsh pretty much completely repulses me, I look forward to addressing silly people as "fruit cup" as often as possible in the very near future.
Reading: Girls Like Us by Sheila Weller, but only the Carly Simon parts; CNN.com's Q & A with Dan Savage at the RNC
Wearing: my cute new Loomstate tee I got from Gilt Groupe, plus other things
Wanting: to see your cute little face at Spirit Animal House on Tuesday. I'm totally going to pinch your cheeks!
The repulsively lusty Billy Walsh:
Deck your neck! Hot chains from the Spirit Animal House raffle
I'm a total necklace-aholic; I couldn't care less if my ears and wrists are forever left bare, so long as my neck's decked out in lots of lovely charms hung on some pretty piece of metal. If I had my druthers, I'd keep every last one of these gorgeous pieces from the Spirit Animal House raffle all to myself - but I'm quite sure that Kat, Laura, and all the animals of the world would frown on such thievery. And who can stand the sight of a frowny cow or duck-billed platypus? For smiles all around, clickety-click the PayPal button down below and get yourself some $2 raffle tickets. All the little critters will thank you profusely, I'm sure.
Top row: Sex Slider necklace by Ach Ach Liebling; bunny necklace by the ever-awesome and animal-loving Frozen Peas Accessories (whose Rotten Tooth necklace I'm soooo smitten with right now); the Ms. Pacman dogtag from Tiny Armour's Pacman Fever collection.
Bottom row: Danielle Petrosa's Pattie Boyd Ceramic Necklace (geniusly double-sided, with Pattie & George Harrison on one side and Pattie & Eric Clapton on the other); Stephanie Simek's Single Eyelash necklace; and feather necklace from the fabulous Miss KK Miss KK.
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the nogoodforme.com interview: Nut and Bee! OMG!
One thing I can safely say I'll never get over is my childlike preoccupation with baby animals. I'm a total sucker for cuteness; sometimes I feel a bit nerdy about it, but then I reflect upon the heaps of satisfaction I have derived from the existence of wee lil' "aminals" over the course of my twenty-three years, and the only emotion I feel is GRATITUDE.
Short only of Lisa Frank puppies and my longtime love Pochacco on the MAXIMUM CUTENESS front (and not by very much!), New Zealand's Nut and Bee has been charming the Helter Skelter out of me thrice-weekly since I first discovered its existence this past August. Nut and Bee illustrator Annette Lauder is insanely prolific (she's kind of like the nogoodforme.com of the cartoon-animalsphere!); anyone with any interest in cuteness at all whatsoever NEEDS to add her Sketchbook Sweeties blog to their Booksmark Bar ASAP. Every couple of days, Annette gifts the world with a new Sweetie: my personal favorites of late are Panda Takes A Tumble (oh, who am I kidding? This lil' guy makes Pochacco look like Christopher Walken!) and my latest and greatest style inspiration, Miss Fruit Hat Surprise.
Annette has also adapted her super-charming drawings to fulfil more practical purposes: her website sells adorable and affordable lettersets, notepads, recipe cards, and MORE!
Lucky-ducky for nogoodforme.com, Spirit Animal House donees PAWS/LA, ARK II, & the Brooklyn Animal Resource Coalition, and most of all, YOU, Annette has kindly contributed some highly precious goodies to the Spirit Animal House Raffle!
(at left: Cloudkin sticker set; at right: Magnolia Snooze notepad)
(set of 8 Warmosaur write-on labels)
As always, all you have to do to save some animals and win some cute prizes is CLICK HERE:
Super-sweet Annette is clearly the type of gal who understands the importance of a spirit animal! Click behind the jump to find out about how she built Nut and Bee into a business, why she digs John Lennon, honey, hibernation and more (including some really killer fiction recommendations)!
+ Continue reading "the nogoodforme.com interview: Nut and Bee! OMG!"
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Love: Be.True Jewelry
The world keeps on spinning, spinning, spinning, and even in the face of deadlines, monster madness and the upcoming apocalypse, we here at nogoodforme HQ keep gathering prizes for the Spirit Animal House charity raffle. Our latest choice lovely is a pretty little sterling silver necklace from Be.True. Designed by Gin Bartlett, Be.True features jewelry rendered in beautifully clean, contemporary lines, which highlight the often exquisite metals and gems each piece is made out of. There's a nice sense of balance with each item in the line, and it's all crisp enough that it works with a variety of aesthetics. It's jewelry that's made so you can wear your heart on your sleeve: direct, straightforward, yet often tender and emotional. Be.True also has their own charitable giving campaign -- purchase a "Be" cuff or necklace and a donation will be made to a charity or non-profit chosen for that month by Be.True. Be.True has a substantial eco-friendly component to its company and is making more and more jewelry from recycled silvers and golds, so keep your eye on them on the sustainable front as well.
The necklace that Be.True so kindly donated to Spirit Animal House's charity raffle is a lovely silver chain with a 1" wide pendant that reads "LIVE." There's also a darling teeny sapphire encrusted in the pendant; it's very light and delicate and serene. It's available for some lucky winner to run off with, so buy a raffle ticket or two in support of our favorite animal charities like BARC, ARK II or PAWS/LA and cross your fingers that we pull your name out of our fedora!
Buy a raffle ticket to win the Be.True "LIVE" necklace:
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Heavy Rotation: Our Favorite Animal-Themed Songs from Blonde Redhead, Nirvana, Ver Sacrum + More!
When nogoodforme.com has a theme, we really commit and go full-out, to the point where only budget and time constrains the wilder shores of our collective imagination. Naturally, Spirit Animal House not only demands a time, place, setting, and festivities -- it demands a soundtrack as well. This edition of Heavy Rotation comes to the rescue, curating our favorite animal-themed or -named tracks ever. What can we say? We told you we were committed...
Bonnie Prince Billy, "Wolf Among Wolves"
I was all psyched and set to slot in the Cure's "Love Cats" and "Hungry Like the Wolf" by Duran Duran as my Heavy Rotation selections this week, thinking it would make things all bouncy and punchy around here. But then I realized I'd be failing in my duties as nogoodforme's official Bringer of Darkness by going against my own musical instincts of melancholy and Gothic pastoralism. So instead, yes, I give you one of my most favorite songs by someone who is probably my favorite bard of darkness, Bonnie "Prince" Billy, aka Palace, Palace Songs, Palace Brothers or, more simply, Will Oldham. Labeled as a sort of Appalachian or folk throwback at times, Mr. Oldham transcends cultural milieu and is instead a genuine poet whose melodies and lyrics haunt with a deeply bleak yet beautifully idiosyncratic view of human frailty. (And he's sometimes just really weird.) "Wolf Among Wolves" is from my favorite Will Oldham-associated record, Master and Everyone, an album so austere, fatalistic and anti-romantic that it's actually incredibly Romantic. I saw him perform this song at a solo acoustic show at San Francisco's Great American Music Hall in 2003 or something like that, and it was an utterly singular experience. I looked all over for a recording from that show, but alas -- it refuses to be found, so you'll have to make do with the studio version, which is pretty stellar anyway. (Kat)
Blonde Redhead, "Equus"
Wolves! Horses! Geez Louise, Kat, yr so predictable! Yeah, whatever, I know a quarter of you reading this already know and love this track, and about a third of the rest of you will come to love it. That's what happens with this band. Blonde Redhead's Kazu Makino is one of our bona-fide Style Icons and a fellow equestrian as well. Those who know the provenance of Misery is a Butterfly, the album from which this song is taken, will know exactly what a testament to adoration "Equus" is. This track is great because it bridges BR's more recent "kinder, gentler" sound with their earlier tendency towards more aggressive, arty post-punk kind of stuff. "Equus" cascades into rockitude; it's like a love song for when you dig someone so much, you're ready to jump out of your skin 'cause you're so impatient to be with them. I can't think of anything more romantic, really, other than if some dude were going to buy me an Arabian steed of my own. Or a constellation. Now that would be insanely romantic. If you want to communicate a deep and abiding love for someone and are kind of beautifully grandiose, you can't go wrong with the cosmos. (Kat)
Nirvana, "Very Ape"
The only reason I picked this song was the other day I was walking down Sunset at sunset, and "Very Ape" came on my iPod and I listened all the way through for the first time in forever and just went "Duuuuuuude...." God, it's so good! Why do I sporadically forget that Nirvana was SO GOOD? It used to be the only thing I ever thought about. Anyway, despite the title, this song has nothing to do with animals, so here's a quick list of animal-centric songs I probably should've posted instead: "Musik and Charming Melodee" by Mary Timony (or basically any Mary Timony song ever written), "Hey Mama Wolf" by Devendra Banhart, "Who Could Win a Rabbit" by Animal Collective, "Tread Water" by De La Soul, "Yertle the Turtle" by Red Hot Chili Peppers, "Beautiful Horses" by The Blood Brothers, "Takoma the Dolphin is AWOL" by The Mae Shi, "Dance Like a Monkey" by New York Dolls, and "So Many Animal Calls" by Q and Not U. I'm happy to not have picked "Land" by Patti Smith, however. That would be so cliche. (Liz)
Tanya Donelly, "Goat Girl"
Ever since that time I went to the petting zoo in 1984 and a goat ate my Bugs Bunny doll, I've been under the assumption that all goats are assholes. But if the charmingest sweetheart in all of indie-rock history identifies as a "goat girl," then surely that can't be the case. Maybe goats are just misunderstood. Maybe I'm a goat girl too! I certainly get that sick little twinge of nostalgia for heartbreaks past when Tanya sings the line about "I wanted a lion but I ended up with a man who wanted a gazelle." Who hasn't been there before? Let's never go there again! Hooray for goats! (Liz)
The Beatles, "Hey Bulldog"
I like this band a lot. They're really charismatic, and from England. They wrote nice pop songs. This song comes from the Yellow Submarine "songtrack", which I imagine is the Beatles album that people are least familiar with. This song was originally titled "Hey Bullfrog," but during recording, Paul McCartney started barking without warning, and it was so damned cool of him that even John Lennon had to concede and turn his first frog-themed song into his first dog-themed song. It is tied with "Martha My Dear" for my favorite dog-themed song by the Beatles. I think Paul McCartney's spirit animal would probably be a jaunty little Scottish terrier; John Lennon's would be a white cat. George Harrison's would be a falcon or possibly a stag, and Richard "Ringo Starr" Starkey's would be a mini-gnome who looked and acted exactly like him. Ringo's not a very spiritual guy. I like this band a lot. (Laura)
Ver Sacrum, "Rabbit, Run"
First and foremost, it is necessary to put it out into the ether that Ver Sacrum are totally going to rock SPIRIT ANIMAL HOUSE. It's actually sort of alarming how tight we are. I hope you can all be there! And I mean ALL OF YOU. Every single last one of you. I'll buy a beer and a biscuit. So, this song is not really about an animal; it's about a fictional ex-high school basketball star named Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom. However, the song's opening lyric references the Easter Bunny, who is, in fact, an animal, not just a depressed Middle American linotyper. You could even say that the Easter Bunny's mystical powers afford him the title of Ultimate Spirit Animal. How pertinent! (Laura)
Bits and Pieces: sales, Jeu de Paume, nice smells, party houses, Spirit Animal House
+ SOTTO Boutique is less like running into a gigantic department store, or even a major-sized elite boutique a la La Garconne or Totokaelo, and more like if you happened to wander into your classy, impeccably dressed friend's walk-in closet and she gave you permission to pick up whatever you liked. Right now SOTTO is having a major summer sale, with an additional 20% off sale prices with the code "grechen." I've got my eye on the Church & State Sunday blouse. (Meggy)
+ I've been moving into a new apartment and can't find my Jeu de Paume books, which are a collection of Japanese interior design books that focus on a certain vintage aesthetic. The next best thing I've found is the Jeu de Paume Inspired Flickr pool. Spend enough time wading through these pictures and you'll want to string up pictures on clothesline and make coffee tables out of giant spools. (Meggy)
+ My birthday dress this year was a marked-down white lace trapeze number from 3.1 Phillip Lim; if I lived in New York and not Ann Arbor I would be going to the Castor & Pollux sample sale, where clothes are up to 70% off (Acne, Alexendre Herchcovitch, Built by Wendy, 3.1 Phillip Lim) through Friday, September 12. (238 W 10th St. between Christopher and Bleeker Sts, NYC, 212 645 6572.) (Meggy)
+ Remember reading Patrick Susskind's Perfume not because of the mediocre-to-bad (or so I heard) movie that came out in 2006, but because of "Scentless Apprentice," and how Kurt Cobain sung the book's praises in many an interview? And remember how, after you read that crazy apothecary tale, you wanted to make your own, hopefully less morbid perfume? The blending bar Melange Apothecary, located in Sherman Oaks, California, is having a twice-yearly sale of 40-60% selected products from September 6-13th. For those of you not located in Sherman Oaks, certain items are also on sale on their website. (Meggy)
+ Fashion Indie Week Brooklyn is upon us through September 11th. Check out the schedule; cherry-pick your faves. (Meggy)
+ Wow, Santos Party House in downtown NYC is really living up to its name, with a whole slew of events that could really dominate anyone's social calendar, should anyone have a calendar they want dominated. (Uh, that sounds weird, right?) Everything is indeed possible at the multi-level space: dancing, art, bands, all around good times. You name it and it happens in the Chinatown-ish/Tribeca space. Every Friday night they host a dance night with DJs Rich Medina and A Tribe Called Quest's Q-Tip; the rest of this month features peeps like A.R.E. Weapons, Black Dice, Ed Banger from Daft Punk, and ESG. It's so off the hook, you really should just go to their website and check it out for yourself. (Kat)
+ Tonight in Manhattan Center Studios' Grand Ballroom, Gen Art presents its 14th Annual Fresh Faces in Fashion Show (hosted by none other than Brenda Walsh!!!). The runway show starts at 8, and designers include Ideeen, Sariah, and Lialia. All those who miss out should make sure to check yoox.com tomorrow - the site will offer a peek at featured designer JF and SON's Spring '09 runway collection and a chance to snap up a few iconic pieces from the Fresh Faces show. (Liz)
+ And do I really need to mention our own little party this upcoming Tuesday, Spirit Animal House? You're coming to Pianos that night, right? And if you can't be there in NYC, show some love for your spirit animal and buy a ticket to support our charity raffle drawing, where proceeds go to animal shelters and other animal-related organizations that do a lot of good for real-life animals. And where, of course, you could win some seriously awesome prizes. Purrrr-fect, no? (Kat)
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Love, Love, Love: Thelma Design
Obviously, myself and my fellow nogoodforme.commers Kat "Wolfchild" Asharya and Liz "Possibly a Sea Turtle?" Barker are stoked to high heaven about the impending radness of SPIRIT ANIMAL HOUSE. I think it is safe to say that we are the three most excited people on the entire planet right now, except for Barack Obama in the wake of finding out about Sarah Palin's sinner of a daughter.
Things recently became EVEN MORE EXCITING over on our end since finding out that Thelma Bjork Jonsdottir, our resident Icelandic Headdress Designer of choice (okay, it's official: there is nothing cooler to be in this world than an Icelandic Headdress Designer), is contributing the insanely magically mind-blowingly fantastically beautiful headdress seen below to our wicked-amazing SPIRIT ANIMAL HOUSE RAFFLE!!!!
Tragically for all you non-New Yorkers, this headpiece is one of our hyper-special event-only prizes, which I'm sure you can understand. But luckily for all you non-New Yorkers, you can totally address the intense misery you are presently experiencing by impulse buying, like, FIFTY raffle tickets right now!
All you have to do is click this button:
There! You did it! Don't you feel loads better now?
And to all the New Yorkers out there who, like us, are counting down the nanoseconds until Tuesday, September 9th (Wait- what happens September 9th? I forget. Oh, right! SPIRIT ANIMAL HOUSE!!!!), good luck! I'd be jealous of you for winning this gorgeous babe of a headband if it wasn't totally obvious that one day Thelma will be my own personal headdress designer. She'll live in a treehouse in my backyard, with her spirit animal (an Arctic Fox), and I will never have to face this world bare-headed again.
PS: If you're so inclined, check out the interview Thelma did with us a few months back! She is one of the best nogoodforme.com interviewees of all time
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nogoodforme Superlatives: A Spirit Animal Primer
I don't know how spirit animals became such a "thing" at nogoodforme.com. I have a feeling it has something to do with Keanu Reeves' reference to power animals in Thumbsucker -- one of the most gemlike performances ever in the entire Keanu canon, I may add. (He should always play a New Age orthodontist, if you ask me.) A spirit animal, in case you are too lazy to Google it, is born of a connection between human beings to the earth in which all of nature and her creatures exist within a continuum, interdependent upon one another; each animal teaches human beings their own particular type of power and wisdom. A spirit animal may make a physical appearance in your life; it can also pop up in your dreams. Either way, spirit animal wisdom says you should take all appearances of animals in your life as a sign and learn about that animal's nature and see how its lessons and values can be applied in your life. A few other things about spirit animals:
1. You do not choose them; they choose you.
2. There are four types of spirit animals: a messenger guide, a shadow animal guide, a journey animal guide and a life animal guide.
3. Spirit animals may come and go in your life, depending on your needs
In other words, you may have an entire spirit animal posse -- you could be, like, the P. Diddy of spirit animals, with a whole entourage of totems hanging out with you at any time. If nogoodforme.com were a Spirit Animal House, indeed, this would be comprise ours. (And isn't that above illustration by Tara Bursey completely dope? Hell yeah, it is!)
Wolves and horses
Wolves: I used to really hate dogs and all creatures canine-like. This is mostly because when I was four, my drunken next-door "neighbor" used to let his big German shepherd chase me when I got off my school bus, laughing uproariously as his dog used to bark, snarl and nip at my little Strawberry Shortcake sneakered heels. (Aside: I hope this neighbor rots in hell one day.) But I've come around to dogs, mostly because of an ex's gorgeous part-Akita part-wolf dog (Bella, I miss you!), and now I really am into wolves, which are the largest of the wild canines. I like wolves because they are quite misunderstood as animals: usually saddled with a vicious reputation, they are actually quite shy and secretive and stick to their own packs rather than deal with human beings. Within their packs they are highly social and very bonded to the other wolves; they all work together to hunt, tag-teaming and working in close formation, and they care for one another's young. They are highly evolved communicators, and they have incredible endurance, mostly because they rarely waste their energy on impossible endeavors (a lesson I think we all should learn nowadays.) To know about wolves is to learn how to exist as an individual within a closely bonded community, to be able to be yourself while still valuing loyalty and love and to work within that community to achieve common aims. A wolf teaches one to speak up when boundaries are trespassed, and to listen to your instincts and premonitions. Wolves find their own paths through impossible thickets and the darkest forests, are fiercely loyal to their mates, and derive strength and intelligence from being unseen and hidden away. Wolves are independent free spirits, but don't mess with them, because chances are there's more than one of them -- and they all have each others' backs.
Horses: I have to mention horses because of my great and abiding passion for riding. There's really nothing more in the world that I love to do, and my only real goal in life is to be able to have a horse farm so I can take care of as many of them as I can afford. (Okay, it's not my only real goal, but it's like the one I want when I'm a grande dame.) Lots of girls go through a horse thing when they're young, but I came back to horses after years and years of living in cities and missing a deeper connection to nature and animals. Riding is really the most Zenlike experience, and it's ten times better than Pilates in building your "core" or whatever the hell they call it. But whatever, horses are truly special creatures -- they incarnate strength, sensitivity, endurance, high spirits, speed, and power, and they teach you to run free on your own path in life. Trailblazers and others who are intensely driven and filled with great purpose and energy have horses as spirit animals, and horses give pride and fortitude to those who choose to go different routes in life, who love adventure for its own sake and who choose to live boldly in a life where nothing is certain for long. And did I mention the equestrian uniform? Nothing is ever more perennially fashionable. (Kat)
A SCRAPPY, RUNTY ADOLESCENT BLACK KITTEN-CAT NAMED KNICKERBOCKER
Any time I meet new people, I find it exceptionally handy to have the TOO GOOD FOR YOU interview questions at my disposal. They are possibly the only icebreaker in the world more engaging and efficient than the ever-hilarious "How much does a polar bear weigh?" which, let's be honest, is a downright winner. The only downside of the TGFY Qs is that they are SO awesome and incisive, certain low-confidence parties tend to flip out from internalized pressure to come up with recorded history's cleverest explanation for why they think John Lennon is a cool chap.
HOWEVER: whether they've consciously pondered it before or not, every single human on the planet instinctively knows exactly what their spirit animal is. This is because "having a spirit animal" is the most essential truth of the human condition. Just ask Philip Pullman! He's so damned obsessed with Spirit Animalism, he wrote His Dark Materials, an epic Secular-Humanist-young-adult-sci-fi-fantasy trilogy set in a parallel universe where all people are constantly accompanied by a "daemon"- a living, breathing embodiment of your soul in the form of an animal. Your "daemon", among other things, is the opposite gender of you, LOVES YOU and TALKS TO YOU and HELPS YOU THROUGH THE SHIT OF IT and HANGS OUT WITH YOU and IS YOUR BEST FRIEND but also IS YOU. Is that freakin' heaven or what?
Be it a daemon, spirit animal, messenger guide spirit animal, power animal, familiar or whatever-the-hellnimal, mine is named Knickerbocker (Jane-Faulds) and he is a SCRAPPY ADOLESCENT BLACK KITTEN-CAT. I have known this since I was a losery and highly-tortured 14-year-old Emily the Strange Incarnate, and I saw Knickerbocker (the Obvious McObviouserson runt of his litter) at a pet store, pestering the Helter Skelter out of his sisters and bros, and, in my sweet Knickerbocker, I saw myself.
WHY I AM KNICKERBOCKER, BY LAURA JANE FAULDS
1. I am a cat. I am self-involved, bored, hard to please, moody, an introvert/extrovert, mischievious, curious, and infinitely satisfied by the rewards of said curiousity.
2. My soul is decidedly pre-teenage. In feline-ebon terms: I fit in somewhere between cutesy-wutesy kitten-pie (which I was, once), and sly, dahhhhk, unfuckwithable grown black cat (I am banking on the hope that one day both Knickerbocker and Laura Jane will grow to be sexy, seductive and mysterious adults).
3. I am a scrappy alley cat. I am a dirty little fighter, and I LOVE EVERY MINUTE OF IT.
4. LJF=TRA (Total Runt Archetype). Touch as nails, goofy as sin, talks a big game, falls down a lot.
5. I physically resemble a black cat.
At some point in my life, I will settle down, and I will adopt the runty black cat of my dreams. But I won't name him Knickerbocker; I'll name him Sam the Sham. There can be no real Knickerbocker. THE REAL KNICKERBOCKER IS LAURA JANE. (LJ)
The sea turtle (or maybe a sea horse)
According to previous posts on nogoodforme, my spirit animal is either David Lee Roth or Jennifer Herrema's hair, neither of which is very much like a sea turtle. And when Kat and Laura did the nogoodforme self-portrait as power animals earlier this year at Sodafine, they made me a cute little bunny rabbit, which is awesome and adorable. In some ways, though, sea turtles are like the opposite of bunny rabbits, at least if you think about the whole tortoise-and-the-hare fable. Lately I'm trying to get more into the serene, slow-moving, go-with-the-flow sea-turtle way of life, rather than that stressy jumpy rabbit-y thing (and maybe you don't think of rabbits as very stressy creatures, but I'm mostly working with the Winnie the Pooh archetype here). Turtles are patient, which I am not in the least but certainly aspire to be. And turtles probably don't drink way too much Diet Coke and iced coffee, another quality I'd very much like to adopt (though not any time soon - at this point in my life I'm completely comfortable with my caffeine addiction). I do totally have a shell, however. I think my spirit animal's shell would be lots of lovely colors, like cerulean blue and dandelion yellow and hot-pink and emerald and indigo, all mixed together in some beautiful swirly-whirly design.
And just five seconds ago I decided that my alternate spirit animal should be the sea horse, mostly for silly reasons (e.g. sea horses are pretty; I love the song "Sea Horse" by Devendra Banhart), but also because - in the spirit animal realm - sea horses are about confidence and grace (two things a girl can never get enough of).
Oh and I'd like to point out that in that same post in which I picked David Lee Roth to be my spirit animal, I also named Logan Echolls as my patronus. So I think for nogoodforme's next big bash, the theme should be patronuses (patroni?), and we should all learn how to do the patronus charm and maybe rent out a few dementors to ward off. And we can get the Weird Sisters to play and Jarvis Cocker will become BFFs with nogoodforme and he can guest-blog for us and maybe sometimes we'll even let him fill out the Snapshot. That would be the most. (Liz)
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Love: Allison Daniel Designs
As an instinctual minimalist, I'm starting to understand why people love accessories so much, especially as I delve deeper into the niche of jewelry, handbag and shoe designers. After all, accessories are almost guaranteed to fit you all your life, no matter how your dress size may fluctuate, and there isn't as high of a level of anxiety around baubles and bijouterie as there is around something like pants or jeans. (Seriously, how often do you say, "This necklace makes my hips look wide?") Jewelry lets you be playful, fanciful, angstful, mean-ful, graceful and all sorts of -fuls, and there's often so much beauty and creativity in its design that you really do feel like you're collecting art. Whi