Marc Jacobs by Terry Richardson for Harper's Bazaar Jan. 09
If you've been wondering why it's been near impossible to score anything by Stephen Sprouse on eBay or elsewhere in recent months, well, the reasons that have been silently building are finally out of the bag with Monday's summation in WWD. I could reframe it all for you, but I'll just let darling Marc Karimzadeh's fine summation do the trick: NEW YORK — Marc Jacobs and Louis Vuitton are paying homage to Stephen Sprouse. AGAIN (my word!) To show their admiration for the late designer and artist, next month, Jacobs, Vuitton’s creative director, is using his hit 2001 collaboration with Sprouse for a new, limited edition collection of accessories and ready-to-wear. Jacobs even doffed his duds again, posing in the nude painted in Sprouse’s graffiti for Harper’s Bazaar’s January issue.
After Life: Sprouse graffiti'd sneaker for Vuitton
This comes at a time of renewed buzz about Sprouse, whose graffiti prints and Day-Glo clothes became a defining aesthetic of the early Eighties. It coincides with a retrospective — called “Rock on Mars” — at Deitch Projects’ 18 Wooster Street gallery from Jan. 8 to Feb. 28, and “The Stephen Sprouse Book,” by Roger Padilha and Mauricio Padilha, due out from Rizzoli New York on Feb. 1.
Marc Jacobs samples Sprouse for Vuitton
The impetus for the new line came when Deitch approached Jacobs and Vuitton about doing something related to the retrospective. “I proposed putting together a Vuitton version of the Pop Shop, which was Keith Haring’s concept…not reissuing products that we had done with Stephen, but doing things that were similar or new,” Jacobs said. Sprouse died in 2004, and the new tribute pieces, which hit Vuitton boutiques worldwide Jan. 9, pick up almost seamlessly where the 2001 collaboration left off. SURPRISE SURPRISE....
My favorite part about Thanksgiving? Ok, sure, it's partly Andy's slow-roasted turkey inside the small, black clay army tank that is the Kamado grill. But what gets me up early every year like a kid on Christmas morning is the annual Gobble Gobble Give, a DIY community gathering to feed the homeless. The grassroots-organized and run event every year is crazy chaotic and crazy cool: Mostly total strangers cramming into the Echo nightclub on Sunset Boulevard and slogging side by side for a few furious hours to get as many boxed meals out the door as possible.
Making a noise in The Echo!
The Walkers
The annual feed-a-thon began in 1998 when Echo Park resident Barry Walker decided to cook Thanksgiving dinner and deliver the meals to homeless folks in the neighborhood. It's since grown into a magnificent mad mash of locals--possibly around 600 in all including the drivers, deejays (gotta have music!) and kids--serving up Thanksgiving meals to nearly 1,000 fellow Angelenos who because of a twist of fate or a twisted lack of governmental services for the mentally ill, drug addicted or just plain poor in this otherwise rich nation find themselves without. The massive turnout of volunteers this year was no doubt due to the more formalized efforts (including a website and Paypal). Despite all of that, me doubts it will ever lose its punk rock soul. This is, after all, Silverlake/Echo Park. Gobble gobble.
Michelle Carr runs the "boutique" of donations.
Brusha brusha brusha...
Even the news showed up this year.
This guy organized the parade of cars delivering the boxes.
For all her flaws (and I know several former staffers who could ramble endlessly on the topic), Diane Von Furstenberg's style and drive, professional and personal inventiveness and joie de vivre is the stuff icons are made of. The broad is an original. So, as is her M.O., DVF's comments about aging to the UK's Stella magazine this week are equally headline-grabbing provocative and genuine belief: "I know that a lot of people look at me and think, 'Why doesn't she do something to that face?' But I made a decision. I do yoga and I hike, but I won't do Botox. I know if I start doing things I will get insecure. You wear your own face. It is a little bit of your history, a little bit of who you are." Sage words from a grandmother facing her 62nd birthday at the end of this year (December 31). Unfortunately, it's too late for way too many women, and men, I have to look at daily, their mugs so significantly altered beyond anything that occurs in the natural world that it borders on freak show.
On Saturday, please join us at A+R Venice for a very special trunk show with internationally celebrated ceramicist Maria White Mebane. Her work is featured prominently in the new book featuring some of the biggest design stars around the world, Nature: Inspiration for Art & Design, published by Barcelona's Monsa. And her organically formed tea light jars flicker on every table at Jar restaurant in Los Angeles.
Pot by Maria White Mebane
Since Andy and I first spotted her hand-carved porcelain pots, we’ve been smitten with Maria’s work. The Hollywood ceramicist (by way of South Carolina—she hasn’t lost her twang) is as motivated by the organic forms of an insect wing, a water ripple or a sand dollar, as how light interacts and effects the details on these surfaces. She studied sculpture in Italy and at the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts in Maine, and her pots have received top placement from the American Ceramic Society and other craft guilds. She handles each piece pot, bottle, jar and pendant individually, which might be why we can’t keep our hands off of her work. Maria is bringing an expanded collection of pots, large and tiny, as well as a new range of porcelain jewelry. The trunk show runs 11 a.m.- 7 p.m. at A+R, 1121 Abbot Kinney (between Westminster and San Juan). See you there!
On the eve of her quickie divorce announcement in a London High Court Friday (ok, it was actually Wednesday night), Madonna was ruffling feathers of another kind in New York at a celebration for Gucci's new Tattoo Heart handbag. It's the latest in a collection of limited edition bags Gucci has released since 2005 that have so far raised $6 million for UNICEF. The good deeds involved with this initiative notwithstanding, the bags--covered in vintage tattoo artwork including hearts--do little to raise a pulse. That imagery is so played out by now, not to mention spoiled thanks to the pillaging of Ed Hardy's archives by the brand that bears his name. And besides, John Galliano did that whole rockabilly-inspired thing years ago already, right? But that emerald and black Louis Vuitton feather frock Madonna arrived to the VIP fete at the Oak Room in? Crazy good.
Rose Apodaca is a pop culture and style journalist and the co-owner of A+R, the design retail lab in Los Angeles, and its online sister http://www.aplusrstore.com. She contributes to Harper's Bazaar, Elle, Glamour, Paper, The Los Angeles Times Magazine, Style.com, Preen and other publications, and consulted on the launch of Image, The Los Angeles Times newest style section. Her first book, Style A to Zoe: The Art of Fashion, Beauty & Everything Glamour, an all-encompassing lifestyle guide written for celeb stylist Rachel Zoe, is now in paperback and hit The New York Times bestseller list in September 2008. She is currently wrapping up a biography on Fred Hayman, co-founder of Giorgio Beverly Hills and marketing architect of Rodeo Drive, as well as co-authoring a beauty book with neo-burlesque queen and style icon, Dita Von Teese.
A+R is located in Silverlake and on Abbot Kinney in Venice, CA.
Rose helmed the west coast bureau of fashion-industry bible Women's Wear Daily and was a contributor to W for six years until March 2006, when she left to join partner Andy Griffith in A+R and focus on related projects. She has long championed Los Angeles and California style and design, from the streets and runways to interiors and food. She is the first recipient of the Los Angeles Fashion Awards Communications Prize for bringing global attention to the region's fashion industry and style culture. With A+R, she continues to showcase rising and undiscovered talent from around the world.
In addition to co-owning Beauty Bar Hollywood and Las Vegas, she is a conspirator-in-camaraderie with several artists and designers showcased under A+R or related projects. Rose and Andy, who tied the knot in September 2007, live in Silverlake.
* All photographs appearing on this blog were snapped by Rose with her Leica D-Lux 3, unless otherwise noted. Please credit all photographs accordingly.
