Fashion Matters

karma row: vintage street sale

janeharr — Sun, 27 Sep 2015 02:45:21 +0000

I just did a street-trunk sale for my Etsy shop, romanlovesgigi, selling a buttload of mostly clothes, some hung on a rack, others in large apple baskets, and loved it! This gorgeous Fall weather didn’t hurt. There were shoes; a couple of tables I’m getting rid of, one small lucite table with a curved edge, and a white plastic (now sun-stained) end table, both from 1970s; jewelry; an old trunk full of purses; and shoes, all laid out on my favorite 1960s flower-patterned sheet. All a bit mumble-jumble because I’ve not that much free time, but I’d bought a professional rack to store my Etsy stuff, and wanted to try it out In front of my apartment building in Greenpoint.

(Also, because I want to make some extra bank as one of my courses at SVA was cancelled this semester due to low enrollment. While I wasn’t thrilled, I must say its nice to get a break from lecturing six hours in a row, which has been my Thursdays for a long time now. Not a big deal, but being free at 3PM and in the city is rare for me and I’m enjoying it.)

Something so engaging and real about being on the sidewalk meeting and talking to all kinds of people, eye to eye…SO glad i did it:) And was so happy to have my neighbor-longtime friend hang with me all day, from beginning to end, helping me set up and take down! How fucking sweet is that?! AM SO GRATEFUL. Of course I kept trying to foist stuff on her, lol, in gratitude – and I had great stuff out there, from Gunne Sax to Leslie Fay to Ungaro, with lots of great 1960s-70s stuff, which she loves. But she only took a couple things. I also think she enjoyed it too, the human side of it reminding her of her retail/record store days in San Francisco in the early 1990s.

I was surprised how little people knew about what they were looking at. I thought with all the young blood in Greenpoint and the popularity of all things “vintage” there’d be more cultivated tastes out there. My biggest sale, who also has an Etsy shop, being an exception. Regardless, the fact that people just bought things because they liked them was also cool!

I do though wonder if I’ve just acquired more expertise than I realize (to justify my endless thrifting, no doubt), or if there’s no desire for expertise anymore as “vintage” simply means “second-hand” now. Ie, its just all “old”. I’ve always taken it quite seriously thanks to gay male friends who schooled me back in the day (some cliches are true), but that’s when very few did the vintage thing, and everyone had a niche.

Anyway, I’ll be uploading new stuff on romanlovesgigi (my Etsy shop again soon), and perhaps doing more street sales (next time with biz cards for my shop), so stay tuned!

(Btw, if you didn’t catch my show, From the Ruins…, it got great reviews, meaty thoughtful ones, in the New Yorker, artforum.com, Time Out New York, the Brooklyn Rail, PAPER, and observer.com so Google that shit! Pretty damn grateful for that still too!!! And I’m excited to be working on some other projects! this amazing Fall weather on the east coast, and look out for the giant red moon Sunday nite!!)

some super quick pics from the iphone…(I am laughing that I threw in curlers I never used and nail polish: classy, lol!)

rock my world: goat and jumpsuits ( pas de deux)

janeharr — Tue, 02 Jun 2015 05:01:20 +0000

This is a mishmash post cuz I’ve been so remiss in my duties as mayor of dear old janestown – population of 1, ha – that I wanted to share something. Soooo here’s my new favorite band, Goat (contemporary Swedish pysch), and my new fashion obsession, jumpsuits (specifically vintage patterns, which I’ve just begun to collect). One day I’ld love to tweak them (including making adult versions of the kid’s patterns), and send my “appropriated” line down the runway accompanied by the song that made Goat my new favorite band, Gathering of Ancient Tribes (Commune, 2014). The models could carry baskets of magic mushrooms that they’d toss out like rose petals. Or whatever, I’m riffin here..

Just click on this link to a live show from 2013, scroll through the images, and imagine your own jumpsuit line. The images gathered here, btw, are from one of usual my late nite hunts on Ebay/Etsy. If you’re tiny enough, the two actual garments shown here are, I think, still available online (Google search ’em). As always, ENJOY. Here’s a pic of the band, too.

And BTW, if you’re in NYC, check out the exhibition I curated, From the Ruins…info. here! I will write more about that another time, but its why I’ve been too busy, along with end of semester crap, and the show’s programming, which included a great performance by the inimitable M Lamar on the 21st, reviewed by PAPER (yay!), and an upcoming screening/talk with Jane & Louise Wilson on June 27th (all info. on the above link). HAPPY ALMOST SUMMER!

fashion matters: mannequins from mars

janeharr — Sun, 25 Jan 2015 03:59:27 +0000

I got sick again, chest cold, so my weekend plans are ruined, wah, but a little wave of energy just lifted the curtains so I thought I’d share another collection of found pics from Ebay/Etsy. This time they’re atmospheric shots of funny or unusual mannequins, most of which have a weird dramatic tone (they would make great paintings), and all accidental! ENJOY!

shanzhai biennial: faux-ism in art

janeharr — Mon, 13 Oct 2014 02:42:03 +0000

Duchamp through the eyes of Koons, or just what happens when irony falls down the rabbit hole? I’m not quite sure, but Cyril Duval’s work has often piqued my curiosity. Years back I wrote a profile on himfor Clear magazine when he was launching Item Idem, and he happens to have a show up now at Johannes Vogt.

item idem Portrait of Mussolini as Prometheus, 2014
Planter, bubblegum, latex, foam, silk flowers, cereal boxes, acrylic, glass container, popcorn
10 x 22 x 55in (25 x 56 x 140cm)

Duval’s very smart in a resourceful, wily sort of way, as it seems is his partner-in-crime these days, Babak Radboy, who explains their current project, “Shanzai”, a faux art fair, in Art in America as such:

“The phenomenon of shanzhai is deterritorialized at its core—in the same way that a global art market is so obsessed by and so based on territorial expansion, but at the same time has very little to say about the places that it’s in. Whether it’s the Gulf or Istanbul or Baku or China, it’s all Ubers and hotels. The idea of trying to turn something like shanzhai into a place makes a lot of sense.

The way we operate is really based on invitation and opportunity. All of us in some way or another are annoyed at a kind of traditional studio practice and the idea of warehousing art products and labor and waiting for someone to happily discover you, like you’re a mineral resource or something. We really work around the opportunities that present themselves to us. Everything we do is made up for that specific venue, including press—when we have a large article or review coming up we’ll invent the documentation for a piece that maybe didn’t happen.”

I’m not sure what to make of it – the inevitable post-internet conflation of satire with admiration, the knowing consumer’s predicament? – but for those in London this week, check it out and let me know (especially if it “didn’t happen” ). Here’s the press release, and if you want more, check out this feature in V magazine:

SHANZHAI BIENNIAL N°3: 100 HAMILTON TERRACE
Monday Oct. 13th, Project Native Informant, London
Tuesday Oct. 14th, Frieze Projects (Live), booth L1, London

ART PRESS RELEASE:
For it’s third Biennial in as many years, SHANZHAI BIENNIAL will attempt to sell a £32,000,000 estate at Frieze Art Fair, London — for which they stand to make a healthy commission.

Entitled SHANZHAI BIENNIAL N°3: 100 HAMILTON TERRACE, the work consists of twin retail installations running concurrently at Frieze and the gallery Project Native Informant. Featuring a high-gloss advertising campaign in stills and video dispersed in a half dozen prominent press outlets but in the end culminating less in these traces than in the potential commercial transaction they seek to perform.

Transforming both their gallery and their prominently placed booth at Frieze into fully functioning real estate boutiques, SB has partnered with high-end brokerage Aston Chase in the crafting of a advertising strategy which unlocks the potential of Frieze as a lifestyle brand with a rarified demographic penetration uncannily suited to the London property market.

Taking the iconography and phenomenon of Frieze itself as their starting point, SB responds to an environment of intensely subdivided space, in which a labyrinth of booths recreates in miniature a global landscape of private galleries in an almost platonic representation of the dynamics of culture and commerce.

The fair has coincided with an epoch for the popularity and usefulness of contemporary art — which has itself become indispensable to the industries of property development, place-branding and ‘reurbaniziation’. The magazine from which it sprang also operates as a rentier of cultural space: producing a publication defined as a space for critical discourse; practically supported through the sale of advertisements. Advertisers effectively pay for space for its proximity to critique.

With it’s crypto-corporate identity evoking limited ethical liability SHANZHAI BIENNIAL decants the space afforded critique as a mediator of culture and commerce by directly profiting not only from the sale but also the production of its work.

With 100 HAMILTON TERRACE, SHANZHAI BIENNIAL squarely leaves the round of artists working within the framework of corporate aesthetics and positions itself as a commercial entity exploiting the art world in a mutually beneficial exchange of services. In the end the biggest winner is the public.

design matters: larry vrba, king of costume jewelry

janeharr — Wed, 09 Jul 2014 05:25:18 +0000

In my research to sell a necklace on Etsy (“romanlovesgigi”), I discovered the designer Lawrence (Larry) Vrba, who is the Liberace of costume jewelry for the theater, film, fashion, and celebrity world, and has been since the 1960s (when he worked for Miriam Haskelll. From La Cage aux Folles and Joan Crawford to Zac Posen and Beyonce…he’s had quite a career because he does AMAAAAAZING WORK. Too bad so little’s been written about him. A future interview, perhaps:)

I especially love his buddha pieces, though he’s quite famous for his Egyptian collection, both from the 1970s. The Egyptian revival bib necklace I was trying to figure out the provenance of could’ve been an example of the latter, but there was no signature. It sold for $85 (first image here) in 8 hours to a jewelry collector who will no doubt flip it on his Etsy shop. What can you do? ANYWAY, I tried to include a few pics that give a real indication of the scale of these designs, some of which are colossal in their opulence. Enjoy!

karma row: vintage cults and clothes

janeharr — Mon, 23 Jun 2014 20:17:05 +0000

Ohmygoodness, I’ve been so very neglectful of this blog, sorry townsfolk:) Between my workshop, which is always so appreciated, and therefore gratifying, a couple of commissioned essays and artist statement consultations, I’ve been pretty distracted/busy. I’ve also officially opened my Etsy shop, romanlovesgigi, which gives me an inexplicable giddy joy. Maybe because I’ve always been a collector, just this side of hoarding, lol, so there’s a satisfaction in archiving these things as well as enticing others to want to possess them for the very reasons I did. I’ve always wanted to have a store, and while I’ve sold things in the past on the street (Bedford Avenue in Williamsburg), this is sort of a dream-goal realized. That there’s already been activity/interest only makes it more exciting!

Since I’ve worn “vintage” clothing since the early, mid-1980s, from high school on (mostly late 1960s to early-mid 1970s), I’ve got things that old I’ve hung on to. I’ve also always decorated/outfitted my apartments with period furniture, linens, dish ware, etc. first with Deco, then mid-century, then space-age Panton era stuff, too, so this stuff will find its way into the shop too. Hopefully, the recent passion for all things “vintage” – Gap adverts acknowledge its lure, promoting their “technologically advanced” fabrics as a way to counter the competition – has created enough of a competitive market for it that I’ll make some money:)

People are certainly willing to pay a lot more than I ever did or do. Time will tell, and romanlovesgigi is still in its infancy, the process being quite tedious (I will never look at an online auction/individually owned business the same again), so vintage lovers check back often as I’ll be uploading new items every day.

On a totally different note, I just finished reading John Edgar Wideman’s 1990 novel, Philadelphia Fire, a poetic, meta-narrative about the infamous MOVE organization, whose West Philly headquarters were infamously fire-bombed by the city in 1985, killing 10 people, and decimating many houses around them.

Its a rather elliptical rendering, with very minimal attention to the facts told through tertiary narratives that take the form of the narrator’s recollections of growing up in Philadelphia as an African-American, working-class kid who became a creative-class/academic. These quasi-biographical discursions nonetheless evoke the guts and heart of the people moving in and out of the shadows of this historic catastrophe, and Wideman writes them right after it happens, so it’s both very vivid and yet removed from linear time (not enough facts/reflection to draw from so soon?).

If you want to better understand the tensions leading up to the fire-bombing (imagine your city block suddenly attacked like that as a means of routing out the inhabitants of one house), and the cult nature of MOVE, they are very compellingly conveyed in this great 2013 documentary, Let the Fire Burn, which you can watch for free! Its comprised mostly of found footage, and is just as entrancing as Wideman’s book, which is its poetic corollary.
You really get a sense of how much John Africa, the very intelligent founder of MOVE, was able to marshall this rag-tag army of followers, and turn their refusal to live by social norms into a revolution of sorts. And the way the state responds. It got me thinking about Jim Baker, another guru/leader whose philosophy over time became distorted by power, evolving into its own incendiary form of anarchy, if not literally. There’s a 2013 doc on his cult (I use that word, btw, in its most neutral sense) , The Source Family, also free online. Along with the renewed interest in vintage stuff, it seems the fascination for all things cult has also re-emerged, perhaps in relation to the populist trend for going off the grid, and forming self-sufficient communities anathema to corporate-consumer existence.

The whole 1970s cult phenomena, a time when there were over 3,000 such self-identified orgs, its link to spiritual, civil rights, and sexual revolutions of the time, is of course, perpetually fascinating to me. I did, after all, in a moment of naive embrace, consider joining the Hari Krishnas in college when they came recruiting on campus, and joined a coven for a brief time after grad school with a boyfriend.

Of course, I could never submit to an individual’s authority, esp. a man (I got enough of that growing up Catholic), but the desire for spiritual growth has and will always appeal, and not just to me. Thinking, as atheists do, that any such pursuit is simply fantasy-inducing escapism, a willing of your power away to some non-existent force, is a bit like throwing the baby out with the bathwater imho. Though the dangers of leaders gone awry, of the inevitable corruption that comes with power, etc. are of course, inescapably real.

Probably why when I participated in a summer solstice ritual this weekend, which brought me back to my “new age” moment of the 1980s, I experienced pleasure/nostalgia with a smidgen of cynical doubt, the same irony from which this blog’s name derived. How to be authentic without the foundation and legacy of tradition, historical, cultural, and biographical? Does donning the clothes of another era beg the same question? Certainly when I watch 20-somethings parade around in their long hair and beards, shirtless in their birkenstocks, I do wonder. Food for thought….

fashion matters: the shift

janeharr — Sun, 08 Jun 2014 05:47:05 +0000

With the endless crazy shifts in the weather, one day pouring buckets and 65°, the next sunny and 85°, the idea of the tunic/shift/shirtdress appeals more and more to me. Something about the right drape to a loose garment, and of course the airiness it provides. A spaciousness that allows for layers, under and over, should it suddenly go cold.

Right now I’m crushing on the Brussels-based designer Sofie D’Hoore. A Belgian graduate of Antwerp Academy of Fine Arts, D’Hoore, who first trained as a dentist, has been in business almost as long as her far more famous peers, Dries van Noten and Anne Demeulemeester. She doesn’t own a shop, advertise, or do catwalk shows, so maybe that’s why she’s much less known? That just makes her work more authentic to me.

Usually I avoid tunic-style clothes because I think they can make me look broad (they are more flattering on narrow torsos and long bodies), but after finding a Uniqlo jersey tunic dress in taupe that I rather like, I realized with the right cut and fabric, they could work for me. Or so I told myself, haha, as I gathered these images (from different collections) for future Ebay/thrift store searches. You never know, there might be the perfect doppelganger mash-up version out there in some unknown form:) I threw in a couple pairs of shoes I spied by Loeffler Randall and Chie Mihara that I really like, to go with the D’Hoore looks. ENJOY!

Loeffler Randall, ALFIE ESPADRILLE SNEAKER Black stripe raffia

Chie Mihara

my easter bonnet parade

janeharr — Sat, 19 Apr 2014 19:05:29 +0000

vignettes of the nite XL: the academy awards, vicariously

janeharr — Mon, 03 Mar 2014 06:29:10 +0000

(“A commercial society whose members are essentially ascetic and indifferent in social ritual has to be provided with blueprints and specifications for evoking the right tone for every occasion.” Marshall McLuhan)

C’mon, its funny!

I missed the Academy Awards tonite, but I had to share Justin Vivian Bond’s tweets, which I cut-and-pasted from v’s FB wall. There should be a book of JVB zingers and witticisms, the likes of which tonite, from what I hear, were funnier than Ellen’s! JVB is such a sardonic wit, check out Putin is the New Kitty Litter , from her vid series, The Drunk News, to see what I mean.

Following JVB’s tweets are a couple of FB posts made by Prince Terrence, (a NYC-based DJ), that I also found funny. I was going to post a whole thread I came upon about Gabourey Sidibe’s weight, where people were alternately mean, embarrassed or worried for her, but I won’t add to the scrutiny. As I commented, much of it seemed misguided and unhealthy, the very criticisms being waged at her, as IMHO its her life and her career and there are far more productive ways to address issues of health and obesity. She must be so overwhelmed by fame and the spotlight that any defensive posture on her part they read as arrogance has to be understandable. Still, I guess its the same as when people get very disturbed by seeing someone anorexic, they insist it must be addressed, its life-threatening, etc. I don’t know, for me there’s a fine line between collective concern and moral bullying when it comes to dealing with the idea of self-harm…

As for the best dressed lists, W’s picks make me think I didn’t miss much, sartorially speaking (Tina Fey’s dress, srsly?), and British Vogue left me equally blah (though I loved the trend of navy/inky blue). Pharrell and Helen Lasichanh both in suits by Lanvin did make me happy, though!

The best thing about Jennifer Lawrence is that I prefer to watch her act more than anything else she does. #Oscars2014

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Justin Vivian Bond
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Charlize Theron = Madame X http://t.co/yuZVhjOgIr
Justin Vivian Bond (@mxjustinVbond) posted a photo on Twitter
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