ART: Lauren Baker

Hello All, 

As I mentioned in my first 'ART' port, which you can read here, I wanted to make there ART posts fairly regular. With work & attempting to have a social life, getting to galleries / exhibitions gets pushed back a bit. 

However, Millie, from She Hearts The High Street, my fellow skull enthusiast, introduced me to Lauren Baker.

  

Initially, I fell in love with her custom made skulls. Throughout this year, she had been running Skull Workshops, in which you could chose, decorate & take home your very own skull! Unfortunately I missed out :( But here are a selection of my favourite skulls, more can be found here

Fred

Frank & Frankie

Rose

But, since hearing about her, I have become incredibly interested in her art work. Although the skulls remain my favourite, I really like the Mosaic's especially in the cape collaborations with fashion label Velevet Johnstone & shoe collaboration with Joanne Stoker

photograph by Neil Collins

Photographed by Sacha Rainbow

Another thing I really like about art is art for a cause. Of course, creativity for creativities sake is beautiful & I find it admirable when people create such moving pieces. However, combining a talent with a good cause is so amazing. Lauren Baker created the below, crystal encrusted Tiger head for Save The Tigers

'Baker's most intricate work; The Crystal Tiger is a life-size tiger head sculpture encrusted with 35,000 Swarovski crystals. World-renowned luxury shoe designer Jimmy Choo endorsed and unveiled The Crystal Tiger at St Pancras Renaissance Hotel. The artwork, which was modeled by trend-setting actress Jaime Winstone, fetched £10.5k at auction on 21st March 2013 for the tiger conservation charity Save Wild Tigers. '

You may already know that I love cats, sometimes I genuinely think they are better than people! I went to ZSL recently, & fell in love with the new tiger section. Also, I actually shed a little tear when I found out the baby tiger cub drowned. So the fact Lauren has used her amazing talents to support a cause I feel strongly about, appealed to me even more!

I hope that in the future she will be hosting more Skull Workshops as I would love to go to one!

WANDERLUST - Weekend in Paris

Hello All, 

I'm trying to section & define parts of my blog now, & want to expand from just a fashion/ beauty blog to share more of my interests. Recently, I posted about art, which I will continue to do. But this time, it's about a weekend trip I took. Hopefully the first of many 'Wanderlust' post! Let me know if you enjoy it...

As you may have gathered, I recently went to Paris for the first time as an adult. I’d been when I was 11, seen the Eiffel Tower & gone to Disneyland. But few week ago I got to go there again for work at Paris Fashion Week. I felt very ‘Devil Wears Prada’, determined not to end the trip like Andy Sachs does in the book; by screaming ‘Fuck you’ at a colleague. I knew it’d be mostly work & maybe not that much enjoying Paris, but I knew how big this experience was for me personally & professionally. I’d been wanting to go to Paris for a really, really long time but never managed to before.

Although I was only going for 3 days, working for 2 of them & was only taking a very small suitcase, I managed to take a lot of clothes (most of which, admittedly, I didn’t wear) so packing was a bit of an issue!

Work went amazingly well, & it was so lovely to see your hard work resulting in such greatness (I’m usually modest but I was incredibly proud to be part of this) so I had all day Sunday to enjoy the sights of Paris, albeit while lugging my suitcase, laptop & basically life around with me!

I’d first seen the Eiffel Tower on Saturday night, all light up and appearing, seemingly, out of no where. I honestly was in a stunned silence as it was so beautiful. So the first thing I wanted to do was see it in day light. I found the Metro system really easy to navigate, and wandering around le gay Paris was just lovely. Only having a day meant I didn’t have time to queue & go up the Eiffel Tower but seeing it was enough for me!

Next stop was , which was so weird seeing in person as I’d studied the relief sculptures on the front in History of Art. Being on  my own meant I had no one to take pictures of me with the Eiffel Tower, but I just asked someone to take on of me and the L'arc de Triomphe because it’s silly being so shy & missing out.

I had planned to do Louvre & Notre Dame in quick succession, envisioning not going into the Louvre just seeing the outside. That didn’t happen, as the arty goodness drew me in. I’ll do Notre Dame next time (I started planning my next visit on the Eurostar home!). The Louvre was great, seeing paintings & sculptures I’d learnt about in books in person. I did go into history of art mode quite a bit, which must have been quite annoying for me museum buddy, but I was giddy with happiness so I didn’t really care!

Too distracted by art, I then had to rush to Gard D’ Nord for my train back to boring London. I had beautiful weather whilst in Paris, as you can see from the picture, it was nice enough to not wear tights with my play suit (I kept it monochrome, as usual, but where more fitting than Paris, eh?). On the train home, it started to rain though, pathetic fallacy much?

I genuinely felt like I’d found my spiritual home in Paris, I had the most fantastic weekend in my life thus far. I definitely plan to go back for longer, & not to work!   

ART: Coco Chanel: A New Portrait by Marion Pike, Paris 1967-7

Hello all, 

Yesterday, my friend Rose & I went to The Fashion Space Gallery, that forms part of London College of Fashion. Presently they are showing `Coco Chanel: A New Portrait by Marion Pike, Paris 1967-7`, which being a fashion & Chanel fans caught our attention.

I have to say, it was a rather small space. I want expecting anything on a V&A type scale, however it only took about five to ten minutes to complete the whole collection. Nevertheless, the idea & concept is lovely.  It is a celebration of the legendary Gabrielle `coco` Chanel and Californian artist Marion Pikes friendship, formed in 1967.  

According to The Telegraph The designer had refused Pablo Piccasso's request to paint her portrait, but allowed Pike, whose 1966 portrait of former US president Ronald Reagan covered Timemagazine, to do so.

They went on to become great friends and Pike was known for wearing Chanel suits when she wasn't working.

Honestly, I hadn't heard of Marion Pike prior to this, but I liked her free, sketchy style.

Sorry I was very rubbish & didn't note down the names of the art works. But I think the use of colour & the aforementioned free style to me scream Paris & the pace of life. My only gripe is the earthy, muddy colours. Chanel, for me, is all about the monochrome. 

Along with the chanel paintings & some other landscape, still lives & a self portrait, some Chanel garments, letters & photographs accompanied & completed the exhibition.

The small space was very intimate & it was interesting reading about her private life. If you're into fashion, art or a Chanel fan, I'd definitely pop in, as its free & just of Oxford street.

 I've never really done any art type posts, but I am about to start a part time degree so hope/expect to be visiting more galleries.

Would you be interested in more art based posts?