virtual PR showroom reality

Have a jacket worth more than a 1982 Jag or hocked the fridge to fund a coat? The most out-there outerwear story or photo will appear on fashion platz and win you a box of Cadbury chocolate-coated almonds. (We’re not tight, just poor). Email your coat-ecdote to becx at styleassociation@googlemail.com by 1200 AEST. Thursday 22 October.

sheer wonder

Never forget the lady who stormed up to the Mercedes Fashion Week tent at Bebelplatz and insisted that the organisers had made a mistake with the signage. ‘Um, has nobody else noticed it’s 2009, not 2010?’ she huffed. Out in fashion land even ss10 feels passe. Bring on 2025. But reality is on the lady’s side, and that of the Thai labels who just showed ss10 in Paris. If only we could get our hands on label 388 Wonderboutique (above). Still, having just seen a ton of Thais Sretsis and Kloset in Aussie trash-fash mag Shop Til You Drop (October), we reckon the Wonders might be down under by 010.

reality show

Friends we’ve never met, birthday cakes we can’t eat, money that’s never been printed… It’s hard to know what’s real these days. Especially when we’re so disconnected from what we do Take the typewriter. 1. Hit key. 2. Watch little silver letter flick up and hit paper. 3. Reach for the fricking white out because I hit the stupid n with the b again. Far more real than whatever goes on in your HP Pavilion, dontcha think? The virtureal installation at Amsterdam’s Inside Design event explores the notions of real and virtual. Jelte van Abbema has met the brief to transform a space within the design-oriented Lloyd Hotel with a typewriter linked to a 20-something inch LCD monitor. We haven’t come up with an answer but it did leave us craving the good ol’ days. This silver and enamel typewriter key jewellery (pictured top and bottom right) from Melbourne store Gazelle hits the nail on the head.  Not literally, of course. Might break.

Inside Design is at Amsterdam’s Lloyd Hotel this weekend. Gazelle is in Centre Pl, off Flinders La, Melbourne.

flagship opens – where’s the ceremony

 
Riding escalators between the eight sparse-but-thematic floors at Tokyo’s virgin Opening Ceremony flagship, we imagined the architect’s rationalisation of spending a good portion of the budget on cubby houses and a candy pink kitchen.

Will US post boxes really sell more handbags? Well no, but…

That’s the thing with tricked-up retail environments. We imagine the designers of the Shibuya space, formerly housing Movida, explaining they’d aimed to lead shoppers on a journey of exploration and interaction with the diverse product offering in themed concept areas that eschewed the hallmarks of a ‘shop’. They’d be encouraged to linger, but never approached. Japanese consumers are suffocated by so-called ‘service’ and many don’t actually like to be coddled, they’d reckon.

We were rapt to find Camilla Skorvgaard’s AW09/10 clodhoppers in the mix and imagine a solid local market. But at close to US1,000, we weren’t inspired to, um, interact with them.