Living Colour Fully In NYC

Hello everyone, I'm back! And I was glad to leave in some ways, to get back to my home, my friends and a proper computer for blogging, but Texas and New York were a welcome break and I really enjoyed the trip. But I am not going to ramble on forever about the sentimental values of holidays, I am going to talk about the advert above. I found this Kate Spade perfume ad on a wall in the arty Chelsea district of NYC, and it really caught my eye with its neon colours, and the checkerboard design between the hashtags (they look a bit too much like Keep Calm And Carry On posters, but hey, they're neon!!!) and the neon-dressed models. 

However, it was the hashtag slogan that really got me hooked and made me make my latest fashion post, "Live Colour Fully". Too many people wear just grey, black and white these days and claim they look "minimalist", but the real stars of the fashion of the streets are those who go all out and really attract positive attention from passersby. The ones who wear a bright-coloured gem among regular, "minimalist" clothes. The ones who "Live Colour Fully". And here is my photo collection of the LCF population of New York City (good, bad and ugly!). (N.B. These are discreet photos of actual people on the street. If you happen to see this and you don't want your picture here, please comment and I'll take it down).

This is one of the more subtle takes on LCF. Not sure about the matchy-matchy theme going on here, but the blacks and navies of their trousers are a good, tasteful contrast to the lemon yellow t-shirt/camisole.

Another yellow (it seems to be a popular LCF colour!) piece, and this woman has chosen well. The yellow jeans are engulfed in the beige of her cardigan and shoes in an eye-catching way, and they bring a good sort of attention to an otherwise boring outfit.

I like mint green, but only when it's worn with the right accompaniments. Which I think it is here. Mint green works not with black and other dark colours (ugh!), but with pastels and paler colours, like these floral trousers. They balance with the light green colour to make a milky, airy feel.

Blue and yellow requires guts, but sometimes it can work. Like red and blue, it's a clash that isn't shocking but a pleasant surprise, the clash you're starting to see more and more often. I also like the sleeveless-jacket-over-hoodie look, which is a versatile one that can be worn by anyone with pretty much any style. Oh, and like everyone else in the "good" section of this post, this guy has paired his look brilliantly with plain trousers and jacket-matching hi-tops.

Ah, now for the first of the bads. I don't know what it is, but pink doesn't work with greys and browns like yellow and blue do. There is a repulsive clash here, and I say, if you wear neon pink, either wear all pink if you're brave enough, or pair it with a fitting colour such as white. Just not grey. Or brown.

This woman went all out on colourful patterns, and I don't think she pulled it off. She's the first on the list to wear entirely LCF, and she has every neon colour under the sun on that dress (plus the fluorescent backpack). And it's a bit too much. If there was a dress with just one of those patterns on it would be fine (my favourite is the red optical illusion on her top), but all of them in one? With enough clashes to fill a catwalk? You look like a clown with an unqualified stylist. 

Thank you for reading, and take inspiration from the photos (maybe not the bad ones :))!

-DP :)

PS Last day of Easter holidays today :(. Had three school friends round today, made a short movie which is still in the editing process, but I hope to post it soon!

New York's Attempt At Graffiti: The Good, The Bad And The Random

OK, here's the deal. Right now I'm sitting in the lounge in Newark airport, but as you can probably guess, there is not much to blog about in an airport lounge. So I'm going to carry on blogging about New York. On our last day, when my dad wasn't working, we decided to go somewhere different, outside of Manhattan and a bit more similar to home.

I've posted about our graffiti at home in London before, so you've probably gleaned how much I love these spray-paint works on the wall. So I was enthralled about what the borough of Queens, just east of Manhattan, would bring to street art, and how it would be similar to and different from London. And Queens definitely didn't disappoint, with its walls plastered in art (we even saw a work in progress on the roof).

I think the main difference between the two city's art was perhaps the more sinister side to the New York graffiti. From the angry-faced lightbulbs (these were a lot more frequent than my photos of them) to the blue girl sitting outside her spaceship that reminds me of the aliens in "Avatar" to the various alieny images mercilessly dropped onto the wall, New York graffiti seems a lot more about the horror and sci-fi genres than the humour (ours, of course, is a different story: see my "This Proves Graffiti Can Be Awesome" post for our wall cockroach and the ubiquitous rats). As for that scowling face in the tree, that looks like it could be in "Lord Of The Rings", and they mess up the slightly funny story with the skull guy as a cowboy by introducing his face on a "Wanted" sign. Totally unnecessary.

However, every cloud has a silver lining (cliché, sorry) and they were some more remarkable works around the part of Queens I like to refer to as the "Graffiti Block". They make up for pressing too much on the sci-fi button by spraying lighter designs like the girl with coloured stalks coming out of her back (wings, maybe?), the tribute to the legend that is Amy Winehouse (I thought that one was one of the most technically good, unlike those random pink hairs sprouting out in odd places) and the adorably cute little monster saying "You no love me?". They return to old themes with the dystopian bluetits, but dystopian bluetits? I can feel an award-winning novel coming on.

Reminded of home by that random Union Jack on the Queens street, I am just about to board the flight, so although there will be more NYC posts, they will be written in London!
-DP :)

I Finally Have Some Cowboy Boots. Oh Yeah.

Yup, the title says it all really. But the ironic thing is, we go to New York and Texas, and you'd expect them to be bought in Texas, and sure, we did see a lot of cowboy boots there. But they were all too enormously big or they were really cute little ones meant for little kids. No size 5s. So where did we eventually find them? A New York thrift shop.

I guess I should feel pretty lucky that my mum found a street full of thrift shops last night when we were walking home from dinner (I was initially gloomy; despite them being the subject of one of the best songs currently in the charts, I never really find anything worth having in thrift shops). But you're all screaming right now, why did you ever want cowboy boots in the first place? For several reasons:

1) How can you ever leave Texas without owning cowboy boots? It's cowboy country, come on. I was in despair when we got on the domestic New York flight. Now, even if I never wear them, they'll still go nicely in my room as a memory of this trip.

2) Forget Converse, cowboy boots are the best type of footwear to go with jeans. I mean, they're what jeans were invented to go with! Literally, Levi Strauss (who designed clothes for cowboys) wouldn't have invented jeans had it not been for cowboy boots. So to justify owning jeans, logically you should need cowboy boots. And I have some dark blue jeans I need to be more inspired wearing.

3) Taylor Swift wears them. Bit of a shallow one that, but it's one step further in my everlasting quest to be the new Taylor. Actually, the real reason for number 3 is the whole country singer association. When you wear them, you feel like you stepped right out of your banjo-playing slot in the barn in Nashville (even if you don't play the banjo in the first place). If you prefer, you can imagine yourself in a Chevy truck, that has a tendency of getting stuck (if you think I've gone absolutely crazy, that last bit's a lyric from Taylor Swift's "Tim McGraw"). All because of the amazing cowboy boots you're wearing.

4) They will go down an absolute storm at school mufti day! After my entirely red (I mean entirely, even my socks were red) outfit at Red Nose Day, it would be a good next instalment in the Over The Top series, as my classmates call it. Watch out 7T!

5) They are awesome, to be frank. What other boots have an interesting hem, pretty embroidery, a small but walkable heel and many a legend behind them? That cannot be said of another boring ol' pair of trainers.

Those are my five reasons behind buying these (they were $25, a relative bargain for real leather). I hope you see them as justifying the purchase. If you don't, I'll cheer you up by leaving you with a picture of Taylor Swift in some amazing blue cowboy boots I wish I had (but hey, you can't have everything) – they used to be her trademark back in her country days, but they've now been mercilessly replaced by downgrading to pop (much as I love her pop songs, they just aren't as good as her early country ones) and Louboutins. And, of course, I'll also share a picture of my own new boots!
-DP :)

If I Were In The Gutai…

"In New Yoooooork, concrete jungle where dreams are maaaaaade of, there's nothing you caaaan't doooo!" Yeah, bit of Alicia Keys there. You've probably guessed where I am right now, unless you either think I'm being enormously cryptic or you're pretty stupid. But I'm going off topic right now. I have good news and bad news. The good news is we got upgraded to a suite because the receptionist liked us! And we have a view of the Empire State Building from the room! But you know what the Empire State Building looks like, I'm not going to post a picture. And the suite isn't really relevant to you guys out there, so on to the bad news. The bad news is that my mum forgot to print out all her notes about things to do here (we've been before when my dad goes on business, so we've already been to all the tourist sites), so she's forgotten all the interesting places I was going to blog about :(.

But we did go somewhere interesting today, we went to the iconic Guggenheim Museum. Frank Lloyd Wright's architecture is really awesome there, and I got the most zoomed out picture I could without stepping into the road :). And inside the only thing you were allowed to take a picture of were these tubes with coloured plastic inside. Apparently once you were allowed to go on to the upper floors and tip the tubes and watch the plastic inside run about, but Health & Safety deemed it unacceptable because you had to lean over the rails (damn you risk assessor!).

But the real highlight of the museum was the Gutai exhibition. The Gutai were a Japanese art group in the 50s and 60s, who tried to make art less about abstract expression than the actual process of the art and interaction with the audience. And their avant-garde lack of expression is why I find it unnecessary to show pictures of their work here (you weren't allowed photos anyway); they made the kind of work that you can simply describe and still provoke interest. Such artworks include the man who ran through twenty one screens of paper and got concussion at the end, the woman who made a dress from light bulbs (Ha, Lady GaGa, youre not the first one) and the bell that the audience could ring that sounded like a fire alarm (again, Health & Safety made us only ring it once every hour. GRRRR.). To put it like the exhibition brief, the Gutai "mentally reframed the commonplace", which you'll see is in my new blog description.

So I was inspired by the Gutai, and decided to make an avant-garde work of my own. Just my luck that when we were walking back to the hotel through Central Park (one of my favourite parks in the world, it's good to be back after two years), someone had written on the street a list of exercise drills, and been stupid enough to leave the chalk around. I had a brain wave that perhaps this could be an interactive piece, that people could come along, pick up the (washable) chalk and write a new, funny or serious, exercise drill on the list. I started it off with a silly drill and a spot of blog promo (see picture)! Oh, and people in New York, if you go to Central Park, keep an eye out!
-DP :)

2188 And The Mysterious San Antonio Fossils

This is our last day in Texas :(. But at least tomorrow we're flying over to New York! Sorry for no posts in the last couple of days, there is no excuse on a holiday, but I can tell you that the last two days have been very eventful! We left the town of Fredericksburg, which was was disappointing in the way that its "Wild West" town status had been undermined by tourism (but that's a post for a rainy day, and today is sunny :)), for a brief stop at the beautiful sunset over the Enchanted Rock in the middle of the desert, before arriving in San Antonio (to stay with some of my dad's awesome old friends David and Pat – hi guys!). We've had a great time here yesterday and today seeing the sights – a baseball game, a missionary church and the ubiquitously famous Alamo (and a restaurant with a giant burrito eating contest :/) but I'll talk about all of them some other time. Because today's fantasy story plan was set in stone (or rather concrete).

When we were walking by the river today, there was a stretch of walkway devoted to art installations, my favourite of which has become the basis of my latest blog fantasy. Basically it's a load of old tools set in the concrete to imitate fossils, to say in the least professional terms. But this is starting to seem like a rambling stream of consciousness, so I'll start the story now…


The Oddest Shape So Far

"Who'd thought it! 2188, 300-odd years after the birth of archaeology, and we're still digging up supposed gems like some dumb gravedigger!" Grumpy historian H. Parker, as the team all knew him, was tired of this louse of a pastime. J. Timpson however, the newest thing at the archaeology department of the Museum of 21st Century History, had other ideas.

"Shut up, H! Just because we don't have webbed feet like the old journal entries and novels we find said that we would and frankly we're all made to look and think the same, and the skeletons aren't doing much better, does not mean this isn't worthwhile!"

"Oh, come on. That's what all the newbies round here think. Totally naïve…" H tutted in reply. "All we found today was a pathetic hipbone, and if you think that's real value, you should be one of those people they talk about in the old books, what do they call them? Doctors, I think!"

"See, you're contradicting yourself already. You're cynicking on about how we never find anything of use, but if you weren't an archaeologist you'd never know what a doctor was!" J's response stopped H in his tracks.

"OK, fine, newbie wins again." H countered, rather patronisingly. "But still what use did doctors give to the world? Nothing after some smart politician came up with the medical-training-for-all law!"

Archaeology had sort of gone down the drains when the world went equality-crazy round about the 2090s. Everything found was turned down as being offensive towards some party, because some people in a painting had different jobs or were from different towns. But a hundred years on, the equality bug still hadn't stopped H and J's arguments. However, J's next find just might have done.

"H, here's something you'll like!"

"Is it another damned bone!"

"No! And it's not offensive! At least I hope so! Fact is, I don't know what it is!"

"You don't know! Did your knowledge surgery fail! There's no such thing as 'don't know'! On Earth, everyone is born knowing everything! It's not news! It's part of the World Equality Movement of 2089!"

"Look, d'ya think I've been under a rock! 'Course I know everyone looks, thinks, talks, knows, does and so on, the same things! And we have machines to create and repair everything for us, so minimal jobs are required! But what if something else is discovered! That's not covered by the Movement."

"OK, what rubbish did you find now!"

The archaeologists peered over at the new finding. A concrete coating protected a thing that would confuse the world forever.

"Hmmm, silver outside, straight edges, heavy, weird symmetry there, a bone-like shape… nothing like anything we've seen before…" mused a Leader Of The Equal Earth. "Perhaps it was an Equality Rebel trying to put colour surgery on their bones…fool!"

"It seems older…2020 maybe,"J wondered aloud, "A ritual device, but then religion was pretty much gone by then…"

"Oh, what mystery, all the pieces to bolt together!" H remarked sarcastically to a disapproving J.

"What about this circular thingy with the holes and the curvy edges? Maybe it was one of those things they used for their animals to walk around? I always liked animals, but they're not equal to us, of course…"

"Mmhmm," replied the Leader "Or maybe a wheel of luck. I heard the old idiots had them… Tsk, luck! No equality there at all!"

There was a sudden passionate tone in J's voice. "Whatever these strange things are, they're our oddest shapes yet!"


Thanks for reading! I have the pictures of the tools we saw, so you know what J and the Leader were seeing for the first time. And yeah, cynicking is a madeup word; hopefully it'll be a reality in the future!
-DP :)

The Animals Of Marathon (Mostly Stuffed)

As I'm sure you picked up from yesterday, today we were in the town of Marathon. We didn't stay long but it was still long enough to find some little, or should I say wild, gems in the lobby of our hotel and in the restaurant. And they were gems within a very different and controversial field that I've never, ever thought of posting pictures of and writing about on this blog: taxidermy.

Indeed, everywhere in Texas so far has had some form of stuffed animal (meaning an actual dead animal not a fluffy toy - the phrase "stuffed animal" has multiple connotations) somewhere, a deer or a bear or a buffalo. Some are stuffed, some are rugs, some are left in the bony state they died in. But they all have one thing in common: they were killed for the decoration value. And do I think that can be justified? Well, that's one of the things that I typed in my iPad passcode to talk about here. And I know this is a boring answer to the question, but I personally think it depends on the animal, the place where the decoration goes and the type of decoration. Whether it's endangered, whether stuffed animals are suitable for the place or occasion and how much pain was inflicted on the animal (for example, having your head chopped off to become a skull on the wall is obviously less painful than being skinned to be a rug - both these taxidermy types and more are in my picture collection further down) are all factors that can be the difference between acceptable and unacceptable, but they're not the most important. What is the most crucial is did the animal die for the purpose? Did a hunter spy him or her (yes, I never say "it" when referring to animals, but that's another post entirely) and think "That'd look good on my wall" and shoot him or her down? Or was he or she already dead, and the hunter just picked the body up? I don't see a problem with the latter, it's just like a non-living decoration. Killed for the purpose? No. Already dead? Sure.

Now I've done my lengthy writing, I thought I'd show you my Taxidermy In Marathon, TX photo collection. There's everything here: reindeer and buffalo heads on the wall, wooden crocodiles (OK, not technically taxidermy but cool though), bearskin rugs, a random bone lying on the table for no apparent reason (?) and my personal favourite, the uncannily-realistic mountain lion sitting on a coffee table that nearly knocked the Taylor Swift-pumping headphones off my ears. Whether these animals were killed for the purpose is another question, and I might never know. But if any of you out there against taxidermy are vomiting at the pictures, I also included an unbelievably cute little dog yapping at me from underneath a table in the breakfast café. I sure hope this little guy never gets stuffed :).

What do you guys think about taxidermy? Don't hesitate to comment!
-DP :)

The Marfa Breakfast Hunt

Happy belated Easter everyone! And Happy belated April Fool's Day! Sorry I haven't posted as much as I said I would, it's because of multiple reasons: early nights because of jet lag, no pictures allowed in art exhibitions, lack of Wi-Fi in hotels and the like. But at least I'm posting now, I guess.

So I'll get you up to speed on what's been happening lately. Unless you've been under a rock for the last week (or have simply only just began reading my blog), you'll know that right now I'm away in Texas for the Easter holidays. We've been here since Saturday, and we left our first location, a small town called Marfa, yesterday. There we saw two different art galleries/foundations celebrating the life of the artist Donald Judd, who lived in the town, but sadly neither foundation allowed photography (Grrr!). We also tried to see the famous Marfa Lights (which are like the Northern Lights but in Marfa), but jet lag made us fall asleep at ridiculously early times. So that was a bit of a post loss. Oh well.

We departed cosmopolitan Marfa for beautiful hot springs cabin retreat in the Texan desert (which I might post about some time if I have a spare day). There was no Wi-Fi, basically because it's in the middle of nowhere, so I couldn't post, so lost a few blogging days. But there was lots of natural beauty :).

So right now we're in a small desert town called Marathon (awesome name!). We've only just got here, so I've haven't got anything to post about, so it's lucky that I documented this photo story on our last day in Marfa. 9am on a Tuesday morning, and this confused man (my dad) was searching for breakfast without much success...

Then he tried this respectable-looking Italian restaurant, but alas, it was closed on Mondays!

This next one was a guidebook favourite, but today it was closed. Everything in Marfa was closed on Mondays!

Chorizo and egg with bean and cheese…not PARTICULARLY desirable...

Look, there's a market...but it's empty :(

No, we don't want a golf course, or a fairground...

Or even a hardware store! We just want food!

So instead we just bought food from the grocery store...

...and ate it at the hotel!

Which had beautiful decor in the eating area so wasn't a complete loss...

...but the meal of bagels and yoghurt definitely could have been better!

As you can guess, although that story really did happen to us, me telling it here was more of an excuse to show you some pictures of Marfa and its many (closed) services. Hope you enjoyed it!
-DP :)

The Gentle Giants: Real and Artificial!

A return to my unforgettable trip to Sri Lanka now: this is quite a long time in the past now, but on Christmas Eve we visited the Elephant Orphanage, which is basically what it says in the name, a home for orphaned elephants near Sri Lanka's second city of Kandy. I didn't have time to blog on the actual day, but I thought it was too awesome not to write something about, so here it comes...

I don't know about you, but I think this picture is SOOO CUTE! They look caring yet violent at the same time!

This is me and my dad (the people in orange shirts are the workers at the orphanage) tentatively yet excitedly feeling the rough, robust skin of a beautiful Indian elephant. If you look closely, you can see that this elephant has wonderfully unique pale pink marks on its trunk and ears, a pacifying mark on such a terrifying (to some) beast.

An elephant devours rare melons among piles of leaves!

 

I love both these elephant calf pictures. The top ones look so sweet as they nuzzle (or fight!) each other, yet the expressions of the bottom ones are completely different, entirely trustworthy of everything around them.

       

Elephants are not the national animal of Sri Lanka (lions are), but elsewhere on my travels in this beautiful island nation I saw enough depictions of these gentle giants to suggest that they could and should be...

This majestic trunked creature is a statue of a real elephant called Raja, who was a Sri Lankan national treasure due to his participation in Buddhist ceremonies and processions (we visited many Buddhist temples during the trip, which I loved looking round, and this statue was preserved in a museum next to one of them). Most famously, he carried the famous tooth relic (supposedly a fragment of Buddha's tooth) in many processions. Below him are some golden elephant heads from the same temple.

Here are two very elegant elephant depictions, on walls and gates in Kandy, which I think should be dubbed "the elephant sculpture capital of the world".

- DP :)

PS 83% of you voted for "Yes" in my "Would you eat a blue fruit?" poll, so you're obviously an adventurous bunch! Vaguely connected to elephants, my next poll is "Would you close zoos?", a freer poll that should allow you to be more opinionated.