Australia Fashion Week took place this past week in Sydney and we pulled together some highlights of our favorite looks and trends.

Karla Špetić, one of the Guardian UK’s “Three Designers to Watch,” showed minimal, playful, and pop culture/art inspired pieces. Her Autumn/Winter collection featured Lichtenstein prints and her most recent collection was inspired by William Eggleston. We love these modern pieces and the sheer cutouts, which was a big trend on the runway in Sydney. 

“ …sophisticated and chic, timeless and directional, with unexpected twists” is how Staple The Label describes their line of clever, affordable basics. You can find their pieces online retailing for around $100 or less. We liked these futuristic looks from the runway:

Elissa McGowan is another young up and comer who recently graduated from the Fashion Design Studio in Sydney. Also drawing inspiration from art, Elissa looks to artists such as Dale Frank and Francis Bacon for inspiration. You can see the fine art influences emerge in these beautiful pieces: 

Alex Perry is definitely a veteran in the fashion world, launching his couture line in the early 1990’s. Perry is known for his red carpet ready gowns and his work as a TV personality appearing on the Australian versions of Next Top Model and Project Runway. The first thing that caught our eye from Fashion Week were the killer lace up thigh high boots…insane.

There were plenty of bold prints to juxtapose the monochromatic collections - here are a few stand outs:

Camilla.

Emma Mulholland.

Gabrielle Lee

And of course there were swimsuits. We were drawn to these very “Addicted to Love” inspired looks from Skye and Staghorn:

Check out more at http://australia.mbfashionweek.com/. 

Carpenter Brut - Le Perv 

Watching Silver Strain videos non stop.

Silent Servant at Boiler Room Berlin

[Broadcast on 30th May 2012]

Tracklist & video at http://boilerroom.tv

Put this on now.

NOIR CITY: HOLLYWOOD, 13th ANNUAL FILM NOIR FESTIVAL

The 13th edition of the Film Noir festival returns to L.A.’s famed Egyptian Theater April 1st - April 20th. This isn’t your typical selection as 25 of 28 films are not available on DVD. Even if you can’t make the screenings, check out the schedule to learn about some amazing films.

More information here.

This Ain’t California

Opening in New York today, Marten Persiel’s hybrid “documentary” is a killer ride through 1980’s East Berlin. It tells the story of a group of young skateboarders who reunite to tell old tales about thrashing beyond the Iron Curtain. While the film uses real archival footage and authentic photographs, it is mostly fiction. With that being said, the milieu is real and there was a thriving, energetic punk and skateboard scene that somehow evolved right under the nose of Communism and far from the sandy beaches of Southern California.

OAK NYC - SUNGLASSES

Sunglasses will forever be an essential component of one’s sartorial arsenal. Solar rays are among the most vile and destructive forces to our ocular well-being, so quality protection is of the utmost importance.

Behold the latest offerings from one of our most trusted merchants, OAK NYC.  Made of acetate of the highest merit, use these as your shield for the coming summer months. At around $100, they will also keep your pockets hefty.

Find out more here.

Dark & Somber Greetings is a black metal greeting card company based in Los Angeles, CA. We asked co-owner Courtney Frystak to give us a little background on their dark entries in the world of Hallmark. 

Farron and I (Courtney) comprise this small but mighty metal endeavor Dark & Somber Greetings. Between the two of us we’re always trying to think of new things to make (which i can’t tell you because hopefully we’ll make them). Farron is an artist and black metal musician, and I’ve worked in a record store for eleven years in advertising/marketing, so combined we have a really good knowledge of how to make something like black metal greeting cards. While Farron is really good at the images and art aspect, I am good at knowing what will sell, how to package, market, and get the cards into stores. Part of Farron’s incredible imagination is all of the ideas, but then it’s my job to sort of bring him down to earth, as far as what’s realistic to manufacture, or what we can really afford.  It’s hard taking a chance when you don’t have a huge budget. 

  

The best part of making our cards for me is just sitting around, coming up with the actual greetings. It’s so funny, Farron always wants to put really grotesque images of abortions and stuff or use “fuck” in every card. I’m like, “babe, we have to actually want people to be able to put these in their retail stores, and we’re smarter than ‘fuck’.”  I was really surprised Amoeba was cool with our “Congratulations”, burning cross card.  I mean, that could potentially alienate some customers, haha.  

Record stores like Vacation Vinyl and Amoeba have been down with us since the very beginning and have always carried all of our cards without question.  They welcomed every design, no matter how offensive. There’s a chain of stores in Utah (Graywhale) that just bought every design of our cards for all 6 of their stores. Who knew people would be into Dark & Somber in Utah? It’s pretty cool. Honestly, when i read the email, the first image that flashed into my mind were a group of Mormons gathered around a burning pile of our cards, laughing and rejoicing. We have realized that there are people like us everywhere.

We started making cards pretty much because we were restless and knew we had a good idea that didn’t exist yet even on a small scale. Farron would make digital images for our friends for their birthdays, or photoshop funny pictures of animals in corpse paint. There was a serious lack of cards for our demographic that didn’t have a hipster mustache or a little bird on it. So we decided to make cards we would buy and knew other people would buy them too.  

Our best ideas just really come from things we say to each other all the time.  Farron would constantly say to me “I hate everyone, except for you,” and I was like “we need to put that on a card!!!!”  We are really sarcastic people with minds that can be very dark. Many things i think about I have to hold back from saying out loud. I don’t think that’s normal, is it?  “If I can’t have you no one will” and “It feels great to hate you” were just ideas that came into my mind because I’ve said them jokingly. Putting a black metal image to dark thoughts isn’t hard, you can pretty much choose anything.

We’re not sure what the future hold for us as far as Dark & Somber Greetings goes. We’ll definitely be creating some more cards and we also talk about making other things, so we’ll see.  It’s all fun for now, and every time I meet someone who loves our cards it reinforces why we did this in the first place - to offend people’s moms.

http://darkandsombergreetings.com/
Dark & Somber Facebook Page

Adidas SLVR Men’s Ankle Boots

SLVR by Adidas is a collection of “smart and sleek” high end athletic wear. The Spring/Summer 2013 season showcases bold prints and bright colors inspired by Brad Pitt’s wardrobe in Fight Club, however we found these pieces which are on the darker side to be the most appealing. Shop these items on our SVPPLY page.

The Films of Jesús Franco (1930-2013)

On April 2nd, legendary writer/director Jesús Franco passed away at the age of 82. Known primarily for his horror, erotic and exploitation films, Franco was a true visionary whose worked spanned over five decades and included over 150 films. 

Franco first came to prominence with the release of The Awful Dr. Orloff (1962), which stars Howard Vernon as a twisted surgeon who attempts to repair his wife’s disfigured face using the skin of others. He would later go on to release such classics such as Necronomicon (aka Succubus) (1966), Venus in Furs (1968), Vampyros Lesbos (1970) and The Bare-Breasted Countess (1973). 

Franco’s films often dealt with lesbian vampires, the occult, sadomasochism and surgical horrors among others. Fritz Lang once said Franco’s Necronomicon was the first erotic film he ever sat through, ”because it’s a beautiful piece of cinema”. 

My introduction to Franco was through Vampyros Lesbos, which is about a beautiful American woman whose dreams are haunted by a sultry vampiress who feeds on her blood. When she arrives on a remote island to deal with an inheritance, she quickly finds that the woman from her dreams is real and she is out to lure her in to eternity. Franco’s use of exotic location, occultist glamour and raw eroticism make the film a real thing of beauty. 

While he was often dismissed in later years as simply being an “adult movie” director, this could not be further from the truth. His films were conceptual and highly artistic. While he dealt mostly in the horror and exploitation genres, he always left a mark of style and sophistication. As time goes on I suspect Franco’s films will continue to inspire and there is no question that fans of horror and art house films alike will remember his vast and prolific body of work. R.I.P. 

The man himself.