That Collar at Fujiwara..

..makes me jump with joy. This look is from Giuliano Fujiwara's Autumn 09 collection.

Brown With Envy?

More pictures from the Andrew Mackenzie Autumn 09 show. This time a beautiful new twist to the lapel. 

Green With Envy

I have always admired tailoring and have seen it as an art form throughout the years now. I enjoy seeing twists and details associated with the basic pieces of tailoring - a suit, shirt or a coat. So obviously I jumped for joy on seeing these looks from Andrew Mackenzie's autumn 09 show. Apart from the obvious new design of the suit jacket and coat and the colour, the tilted chest pocket in the suit and the closeness of the three front buttons were details that I loved the minute I spotted them. Now only if I could shove a pocket handkerchief into that chest pocket...

Einsteinturm

As I was doing more research on German Expressionism I came across its architecture and I was stunned. Especially by the Einstein Tower also called Einsteinturm. Built from 1920 to 1921 by Erich Mendelsohn (a little knowledge never hurt anyone. haha) this observatory is cited as a landmark of expressionist architecture and I wont argue. 

Side note- I am no expert in architecture and I only recently developed a liking for it so if any of you would kindly point me in the direction of your favourite architects I shall surely be thankful. 

Are You An Artist If Your Surrounded By Art?

Another beautiful editorial from Another man (SS 08). Stylist - Nicola Formichetti, Photograher - William Selden. 

Nasir Mazhar

How much talent do you need to make something this beautiful? How much imagination do you need to take a pair of shoes and make a mask? Let me introduce you to Nasir Mazhar who transformed a pair of Reebok Classics into masks for this editorial for Another Man SS 07, styled by none other than Nicola Formichetti and photographed by Horst Diekgerdes. I seriously want one of theses although I doubt I would ever go out in public with these on. I could make one - the one on top maybe but for that I would have to buy a pair of trainers (biggest size available i think), cut the soles out and attach the laces on both shoes together, but since I am suffering from lack of funds I don't think its gonna be possible anytime soon haha. Also I'm puzzled by the construction of the mask in the second photo. And don't be shy to drop by a comment. Its always nice to hear from people that visit this blog. 

Remember To Forget

Remember To Forget by Sam Taylor (novelist)

From Another Man Autumn Winter 2007 issue.

  We all wish we could remember: that person’s name; some elusive incident buried deep in our childhood; what exactly it was we went into the room intending to do. Memory, for most of us, is, in the words of Pliny, the Roman author of the Naturalis Historia, “fickle and slippery”, an ungraspable, ever-mutating chaos of images and ideas. It tricks us, deceives us, lets us down when we most need it, and is generally an unreliable narrator of the story of our life.

  Yet for a very small elite of people – between 50 and 100 individuals at any given time in history, scientists believe – memory is not like this at all. For these people, almost invariably men and labelled either as autistic savants or mnemonists, memory is as clear and absolute as the magazine you are holding in your hands. They can “read” the past as easily and accurately as you are reading these words. How would it feel to relive entirely the images, sounds, smells and emotions of your fifth birthday party, say, or to read a novel once and then recite it, all 100,000 words of it, without making a single mistake? Aren’t you envious? Well, you shouldn’t be. 

  Perhaps the most famous of all literary mnemonists is the young Uruguayan man described in Borges’s story, “Funes the Memorious”. Funes, we are told, is able to tell the exact time without even glancing at the sky. Unlikely, you may think, but that is nothing compared to his abilities after he is thrown from a horse and knocked unconscious. When he comes to, Funes finds he has lost the use of his legs, but that, in recompense, he is able to remember everything: “The present was so rich, so clear, that it was almost unbearable, as were his oldest and even his most trivial memories.” 

  This tale, of course, is fiction. It has the feel of a fable, an exaggerated fantasy. And yet, whether he knew it or not, Borges was describing an actual condition. The ability to always know precisely what time it is, is a common gift among autistic savants. Take the case of Orlando Serrell, a perfectly ordinary American boy until the day in August 1979, when, aged 10, he was hit by a baseball on the left side of his head. He can recall the weather, where he was and what he was doing, for every single day since that accident. 

  Take Daniel Tammet, author of bestselling memoir Born on a Blue Day, who, like the fictional Funes, is able to learn a new language (and to speak it fluently) in just a few days. Take Derek Paravicini, the blind, autistic piano prodigy who, having heard a song once, is able not only to memorise it but to reproduce it exactly on the keyboard.

 

  Above all, take Solomon V Shereshevskii, the subject of Russian psychologist AR Luria’s classic case study, The Mind of a Mnemonist. Subtitled “A Little Book About a Vast Memory”, this slim volume tells the story of “S”, who was working as a journalist when his editor sent him to the scientist to be studied. His editor was fascinated (and somewhat disturbed) by his employee’s ability to memorise, without notes, everything said in the morning editorial meeting. S, was baffled that anyone should find this extraordinary. Over the course of nearly 30 years, Luria ran tests on S, only to admit that he could find “no distinct limits” to his patient’s memory. Not only could he memorise a table of 50 random numbers, but he could recall them with equal accuracy 10 or 15 years later. How was this possible? 

  S, it was discovered, had synesthesia (as does Tammet), meaning that if he heard somebody’s voice, he would also simultaneously taste it on his tongue, feel it on his skin, and see it as a very specific pattern of coloured lights. This made it easier for him to remember all that had happened to him, but also made life extremely complicated. For example, S complained that he had a poor memory for faces because they “are constantly changing”. He could not eat and read at the same time because “the taste of the food drowns out the sense (of the words)”. 

  Worst of all, he could not forget. In later years, he worked as a professional mnemonist, and had to remember vast series of random numbers or meaningless words every night. The problem was that he could not get them out of his head afterwards. Even writing them down and burning the pieces of paper made no difference. It took years for S to come up with a solution to this problem, though in the end it was ludicrously simple: when he consciously wished that he would forget something, he could. “At that moment, I felt I was free,” he recalled. “I felt simply wonderful.” 

  The moral, surely, is clear. Forget trying to remember everything, and be grateful that, by this time next week, you will have only the dimmest recollection of this article.