Shana Tova, Cabinet

- 5769 from the creation of the world -

Happy New Year... to all the closeted cabinets everywhere.

Birthday Caninet

Today, 68 years ago, Godard heroine (and sometime wife) Anna Karina was born. She is my heroine too. Enjoy the famous scene in Band of Outsiders':


..And all her public photos - click Here.

Cabinet of Flushing Meadows

Rene Lacoste, 1928

Thank god the Olympic Games are over. Now we can focus on the real sport event of the season, the US Open. As usual, the best way to start the day is to look at the uniforms and the fashion, with the help of New York Magazine, and men.style . In an article (sub)titled "How tennis influences fashion, and vice versa", the writer traces back the history of tennis apparel, and the great moments in recent history where scores weren't the only game in town... Take Big Bill Tilden for example... I want his sweater. Now.
...and if you are into Nadal, he is a sex symbol now (or let's just say he no longer wears his capri pants, god forbid) , shirtless in New York Magazine:

Karl Cabinet

OMG! Karl Lagerfeld stuffed animal coming soon to Naiman Marcus near you! for $1,500 you can be the proud owner of this ridiculous doll by Steiff, the famous German maker of stuffed animals. Furries around the world hold their breath and can't sleep at night, waiting for their next big thrill. We love you, Karl. More about the Karl stuffed animal? Read here.

Cabinet of Curious Collections

I love collectors and weird collections. Take, for example, Dr. Lattimer's inheritance: for seven decades he collected more than 3,000 objects that ranged in age from a few years to tens of millions of years. “He was like a classic Renaissance collector,” said Tony Perrottet, a writer specializing in historical mysteries who spent time with Dr. Lattimer before his death. “ The new York Times has an interesting article about him, with great photos of some of his strangest and unique objects. “It’s often said that the collecting passion is an unwillingness to let go of the past. For him, I think it was an attempt to hold onto his past. He had a long, rich past, and he wasn't immune to the solitariness of human existence.”
I would love to have that box, the one that holds Napoleon's penis. I swear, just for the box.
...and speaking of, I'm reading this amazing book, "To Have and to hold" about the history of collecting. Taking as its inspiration Walter Benjamin's dictum that a collector's passion borders on "the chaos of memory," this curiously moving history argues that collecting is driven by the desire to control that chaos. Does collecting is an attempt to freeze the world in its tracks and hold it still? I'm not sure. The answer is in the box.

Masked Cabinet

Speaking of the Olympics, the new hot trend is the masked look, as reported in Gawker. The mask can be added to the gas mask offered by Louis Vuitton earlier this year, so soon we can have a very stylish third world war! hooray. The devil may wear Prada, but warriors wear Vuitton, so be careful.

Olympic Caninet

Watching the fascistic spectacle from Beijing, I was longing for something more human, something from a shoe point of view, or rather something more quiet. Kon Ichikawa's Tokyo Olympiad , is a reminiscent of the way in which the world looked at itself that way. Maybe for the last time. In 1964, the Olympics were held in Tokyo, and Ichikawa was commissioned to make a documentary of the sporting events. He ignored the contestants as much as possible, treating them as ordinary human beings, and created a poetic film that celebrated humans before they became monsters of drugs and post-human perfection.
But if not for that optimistic world, it's for the perfect outfits and style that world had. From the countries uniform (Americans in cowboy hats, Russians waving red ribbons at the cheering crowd) to the minimalist logo.For a style report on the Olympic team uniforms, read here.
And speaking of, guest bloggers this week in the New York Times The Moment, are Carol Lim and Humberto Leon, the co-founders of the downtown boutique Opening Ceremony. Leon and Lim, the owners of Opening Ceremony - one of the coolest and more creative shops in the world (both in New York and Los Angeles). They started as a retail take on the Olympics, pairing U.S. designers with 15 international offerings for a competition of sales.

And another update! Apparently there's a controversy over the uniform Ralph Lauren designed for the U.S. team to wear at the opening Olympic ceremonies: Ralph Lauren Polo logos almost bigger than the Olympic rings logo. Also, it looks cheap, and... they are elitist. Project Rungay: wrote that "These outfits presented the United States athletes as rich snobs, frankly. They made the team look like a 1948 yacht club".
I think they should have made it even more of a Rugby style. Ivy league style is always more welcome!

Cabinet of Lost Things

I was lazy and I was out of focus in the last few month, and I thought I"ll never go back to blogging (or rather, I"ll go back to it when I find the time and patience - something that will never happen), until I stumble upon a story that one of my favourite artists ever - Laurie Anderson - told, regarding her last project "Homeland":
"The project began while I was at the 2005 World Expo in Aichi, Japan. I was doing a film called Hidden Inside Mountains, a series of visual fables presented on a huge stage. They had written words—postcards of sorts. One of them had a story about the feeling of losing things, like when you’ve lost something and you’re trying to put your finger on what it was. And you think, what’s that thing you’ve lost? Car keys… password… The Japanese translator was asking me, “What did you lose?” And I said, “No, it’s about the feeling of losing things, not the thing itself.” And she asked, “Well, when did you lose it?” And I thought, “Ah, now I’m being psychoanalyzed by the translator. How great.” But I really did try to think about when this happened, and I realized it was when we were invading Iraq, and that what I’d lost was my country. That was the moment I discovered I’d really like to write about this sensation. How does your sense of place affect who you are?"
I"ll try to blog again, and regain the sense of places, objects, and people that affect me..

Cabinet of Maps

A great idea of a map by bytelevel : 245 country code top-level domain (ccTLD) that are sized relative to the population of the country or territory, with the exception of China and India, which were restrained by 30% to fit the layout.

Ahh, I wanna travel to so many ccLTD. I hope that .fr is the first.

Cabinet of Currencies

Retailing at £195, Martin Margiela's wallets are perfect example of the designer's genious. Too bad, I don't have anough money to buy or to put inside.
More wallets can be found at Refinery29

L.A to N.Y Cabinet

From Hollywood to Manhattan to in exactly four minutes is a new video by Michel and Oliver Gondry. A cross country trip for those who have busy schedule. Happy Passover.

L.A. Cabinet

Between Earth and Heaven, the book and the show, mark not only the new interest in John Lautner, the influential American architect whose work in Southern California combined progressive engineering with humane design and dramatic space-age flair, but also the resurface of Googie, also known as populuxe or doo-wop, the futurst architecture that was most frequently used in design motels, coffee houses and bowling alleys.

I just realized that two of my favorites songs this time of year are all about seeing and not seeing.

The first, "Blind", is by Hercules and Love Affairs, a Brooklyn band that was found by an exe-boyfriend of a good friend of mine. Andy Butler (I adore that name, despite what the Guardian says about it <"Andy's releasing the whole thing under the name Hercules and Love Affair, which is a much more exciting name than Andy Butler Who You Might Know As A Disco DJ From New York Plus An Assorted Cast Of Extras Including Antony Hegarty From Antony And The Johnsons.">) just made one of the first surprises of dancemusic in 2008. "Blind" is a sad dance track. And it's so beautiful.



The Second, "Made in the Dark", is by Hot Chip, and as beautiful as it is sad, it also reminds me that the world began in the dark, just like the fucking-stupid-earth-hour-today. The album ("Made in the Dark") is a little gem too.

Cabinet of Scents

Can you imagine what "was inspired by the spices and woods that passed through the trade route, linking India to Egypt" and that a "prized Indian ebony is added to resinous guaiac hardwood at the base, while a healthy dose of spice comprises the opening."? My favorite scent by Comme des Garcons Series 3: Incense.

According to the New Yorker's review of two new books, "a taste or a smell can pass you by, unremarked or nearly so, in large part because you don’t have a word for it; then you see the thing and grasp the meaning of a word at the same time, and both your palate and your vocabulary have expanded". John Lanchester says that "to understand perfume, science is a good place to start, since it’s with the nineteenth-century discovery of synthetic fragrances that modern perfumes began." But his enthusiasm lies in the human experience and language, and it's fun to read more scent's descriptions that evoke the "beast prowling the streets, a strange molecule with the feel of a light, volatile top note and the power and tenacity of the most powerful drydown materials." (about Viktor & Rolf's Antidote). I wonder what the new scent by Margiela smells like (due Fall 2009) , especially after Women's Wear Daily reports that "Given Martin Margiela's conceptual bent, one could imagine him putting out a perfume without any scent — or even an empty bottle".

Therapy Cabinet

The New York Times explores today the interesting subject of design and therapy in its "Home and garden" section. What do therapists think about when they decorate an office? what do patients feel about their therapist's clinics? and above all, what if the chairs could talk and tell us what they think about both...

The article fails to talk about Freud and his office, but thanks to Robert Longo's The Freud Drawings, we can have a look at the place where psychoanalysis was first sitted.