a few weeks ago allan amato opened up his studio to take portraits of all his friends, and this is what i got for stopping by:
which doesn’t even look like a portrait of me, so much as a peice of art that allan made and i just happen to be one of the colors he used to paint it. (thank you, a!)
here are a few of my other favorite amato masterpieces (mind the skin.graft designs):
full on lachapelle stylie:
check out allan’s stuff at:
venuswept.org & myspace.com/elgallosucio
and in the same breath as the last post… here’s a plug for the kucoon designs fashion show/party this saturday:
shows are at:
11:30 – kama and caylee
12:15 – kucoon designs
come get your independent fashion fix.
you know you wanna.
i’ll admit right now that this is not what i ought to be writing about.
i’ve been travelling for more of the past month than i’ve been at home, and just coming up with things to write about that i had no time to follow through on. so now that i’ve finally gotten to shower in my own shower, and sleep in my own bed, and the chance to unwind, there’s really so much else that i’d like to write about other than this.
like…. i’d like to give the ad age article, “Dove Viral Draws Heat From Critics” the “STOP SAYING THE WORD VIRAL!” award.
while i’m at it, i’d like to write about how “cool-hunting” ought to be stopped too. and not the thing where brands support emerging artists and underground communities to develop relevant, authentic consumer relationships, but that whole ridiculous concept that “cool” can exist out of context, like some kind creme to be skimmed off the top of one homogenized, pasteurized mass culture.
i’d like to write a post each for like a dozen different sound-bytes that come out of alex bogusky’s mouth during the course of these interviews: 1 + 2 (it’s like a full semester of jedi grad school in the course of an hour.) i’d like to thank john drake for turning me on the existence of these videos–thanks john!
i’d like to write alex bogusky an email asking if it’s by choice or by chance that he doesn’t have a wikipedia entry to hyperlink his name to. (altho i could maybe think of a couple of other questions i’d like to ask too.)
instead what i’m writing about now is NONE of that. i’m writing about the funniest thing i saw yesterday, which happens to have been on a party flyer:
“$15 at the door. 30 in costume. leave the playa in nevada.”
since apparel is one of the easiest mediums through which to fulfil burningman’s “radical self expression” tenet, it’s been a big deal among parties in the burningman scene to encourage attendees to dress up. for years party flyers have advertised that if you were down with costumery you’d get a discount, and if you arrived in “street clothes” you’d have to pay an exacerbated fee at the door. “playa” by the way, is the term used to refer to the dried up lake-bed in the nevada desert on which burningman is held.
the initial idea in encouraging “playa-wear,” i suppose, was about developing a certain immersive atmosphere at the events. it’s kind of like if you’re into society for creative anachronism type stuff, where you recreate medieval battles on the weekend or whatever, then it kind of kills the whole point if people don’t show up wearing period garb, wandering onto the battlefield in track suits or something. the (re)creation of that other time and place is what everyone is there for, and it only works if everyone participates in the process.
of course burningman, like any other subculture, has its own dress codes and aesthetic mores, and after a while what all those flyers were actually saying was that the admission was $15 higher if you weren’t wearing the UNIFORM rather than if you weren’t wearing a “costume.” to people that didn’t get the memo about what the burningman uniform is supposed to consist of, or for whom costumery is not really their mode of expression, the insistent empahsis on it is incredibly alienating, and to people that aren’t interested in uniforms in general (or this one in particular), it’s pretty frustrating.
the joke on this flyer is that it’s turned the whole thing around, and even come up with a brilliantly catchy slogan for the resistance.
which, of course, reminds me of something alex bogusky talked about in that interview….
(oh, if you’d watched those videos you’d know there’s no way i could just spend a whole post not talking about anything he says in there.)
so at one point he talks about this mini cooper campaign that cpb did for the car’s US launch. they bought a bunch of billboards announcing, “the suv backlash officially starts now.”
except that this was 2002, this was pre-inconvenient truth, and there WAS no SUV backlash. they needed it in order to have a way to market a small car for being exactly what it was, a small car, so they created it!
and the crazy part is that then it became real!
whether it was sheer luck, or intense prescience, or some kind of more formal consumer insight investigation, that the message worked–and by “worked” i mean, that it really DID herald the start of the SUV backlash in addition to making mini coopers sell–is because there was indeed an anti gass-guzzler movement brewing. before al gore pushed “green” over the tipping point, however, even a relatively small message like this could speak for an audience that was ready for the backlash to start.
in the interview alex mentions that advertising, and, hey, lets be real, ad agencies, have the capacity to influence pop culture through brands. or…. wait, is it brands have the capacity to influence pop culture through advertising? or is it through ad agencies? well, whichever way it is, the bottom line is that the most powerful influence comes from the capacity to articulate something that is already brewing below the surface. it’s like how quantum particles can be affected through simply being observed, so pop culture movements can be influenced by being given expression…..
wow:
“quantum marketing.” (there’s a concept).
perhaps that flyer for the party on friday will herald the start of the costume-mandate backlash? i’ve been repeating “leave the playa in nevada” to everyone since i saw it. the wait for a clever slogan officially ends now (thanks, mike).
tiffa novoa 1975 – 2007
heavy shit today.
tiffa (née tiffany ann snead) was not just a fashion designer, she invented an entire aesthetic style. she was not just one of the founding members of a notorious performance troupe, she helped to create an entire subculture. she wasn’t just a visionary artist, she was a force of nature whose ripple effects inspired, and will continue to inspire, her closest friends and countless, thousands, of people who are likely not even aware that this is the woman responsible for their inspiration.
i barely knew tiffa, and i can easily say that she affected the course of my life.
in the spring of 2004 i ran into an unusual-looking group of folks walking around venice beach. later i would describe the way this posse appeared at the time as superheroes in street clothes–from a street on a different planet. having previously worked with the dresden dolls in boston before moving out to LA, i had only one idea of what this gang could be. i went up to them and asked, “what are you guys? are you a band?”
the answer came back, “no. we are a circus.”
the group was called, simply, el circo.
two months later i found myself at a seminal event in the los angeles underground. it was a fashion show for onda designs at a downtown warehouse. the fashions were tiffa’s, though i had no idea who she was at the time, and the people i met that night, and would meet in the years after who had been involved with the production of that night, would become some of my dearest friends and colleagues. the name of the party was “VITAL.”
in the scrapbook i have from that year, full of flyers and other mementos, i still have a flyer for VITAL, and underneath it, in a bout of prescience that completely astonished me when i rediscovered it looking through the scrapbook a few months ago, i had written the words:
“THIS CHANGED EVERYTHING.”
so i had known even then.
i had known immediately.
seven months after VITAL i became the production manager for an LA-based circus troupe called lucent dossier, which was just two months old at the time. five months after that i was working with lucent and the do lab on redbull’s ascension event, getting a hands-on, crash-course education in culture marketing from the experts in the field. (that event was also the first time i actually worked with el circo, 1 year after meeting them on venice beach.)
the night that 2005 became 2006 i was at the new year’s eve party put on by madison house and anon salon where i watched the dresden dolls and el circo perform on the same stage.
a year and a half later i was developing the marketing strategy for the do lab’s lightning in a bottle music festival, on which el circo were very significant collaborators. and now, six months after that, i’m writing this post on my marketing website, getting so nostalgically lost in the mystical, cyclical serendipity of all these events, that it actually made me manage to forget for a moment why i sat down to write this post in the first place.
by the time i’d become involved in this whole circus, tiffa had moved on to a new design label, ernte fashion systems, moved to bali where the production was based, and become a significant couture force from paris to tokyo.
i know this because many of my friends who have themselves become designers and gone on to start fashion labels are her friends, her artistic progeny, and have been inspired by the path she blazed and the creative visions she wrought.
in a 2005 SF-Bay Guardian article on the effect that the various groups within the burningman community have had on san francisco nightlife, and west coast underground dance culture in general, the writer paid particular attention to the legacy of el circo:
El Circo has fused a musical style and a fashion sense that are major departures from the old rave scene.
El Circo [is credited] with creating the postapocalyptic fashions that many now associate with Burning Man. Most of the original El Circo fashions, which convey both tribalism and a sense of whimsy, were designed by member Tiffa Novoa, who has since hit it big with her Onda Designs.
….That fashion sense has carried over onto the streets and into the clubs of San Francisco, giving an open and otherworldly feel to many parties.
….It can also be a personally transformative experience. “At first, this was all costuming, but now it’s who I am,” says Matty Dowlen, who manages El Circo’s operations and looks like a cross between a carny, a hippie, and a trapper.
…. “A lot of the women in El Circo were some of the most beautiful in the world, and [Novoa] dressed them up to look even more beautiful,” [Electronic musician Random] Rab says, noting that it changed how the denizens of El Circo conceived of themselves. “One day everyone was all hippied out, and then they were all tribal and tattooed.”
…. El Circo strives to cultivate a new kind of culture and communal ethos.
she was one hell of a powerful being. powerful enough to create a vision of the world that was so mesmerizing it enchanted a whole subculture and even managed to redefine people’s sense of self.
my love goes out to all my friends who are mourning her loss. she will be greatly missed. what she has created will continue to inspire countless others to pursue their creative dreams. it is bigger than life–or death.
this changed everything.
update:
“Tiffa Novoa, whose legendary creative and artistic impact will be forever felt, will be honored in a public memorial next week. All who knew her or were impacted by her life are invited to come and share space and memory. If you have a piece of her clothing, please feel encouraged to wear it. Also, in order to relieve her family and close friends of the necessary finances of this event, there is a suggested donation of $10. After the reception there will be a potluck gathering at a near-by park in the Oakland Hills.”
Memorial Service:
Monday, Oct. 29th
1:00 to 2:30pm
Chapel of the Chimes
4499 Piedmont Ave
Oakland, CA 94611
(510)654-0123
following up on the smash success of its award-winning “evolution” ad, dove unleashes “onslaught“:
much like the evolution ad, which shows the intense makeup and photoshop augmentation of an image of an average woman and at the end offers, “no wonder our perception of beauty is distorted,” while directing viewers to take part in dove’s Real Beauty workshop for girls, the new ad–aimed at the same north american audience–warns viewers (ostensibly parents, but perhaps every woman’s inner child) to “talk to your daughter before the beauty industry does.” the spot likewise ends with a plug for dove’s self esteem fund:
“The Dove Self-Esteem Fund is a national resource established as a link to Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty, a program aimed at changing the current, narrow definition of beauty. We believe that to make a real difference, we must take action and contribute in ways that will help women and girls celebrate their individual beauty.”
uh-huh…
of course when dove claims to “change the current narrow definition of beauty” they only aim to do so….narrowly. unilever, which is responsible for dove, also sells the fair and lovely “skin whitening” product to areas of the world where a dark complexion means you’re not getting invited to the “individual beauty” celebration:
and see, what you think you’re seeing here is a contradiction….but the reality is you’re not. although, no doubt, it’s easy to get confused about how that could be.
the same way that light skin is now a beauty ideal in india, being–as the national youth anti-drug media campaign would call it–“above the influence” of the beauty industry is the new beauty ideal in north america. the new unattainable beauty standard is the transcendent personal victory over the distorted beauty ideal itself. as viable an achievement as a victory in the war on drugs or giselle’s body.
unilever is, in fact, selling just as equally an unrealistic standard in both messages. considering that dove is about as much a “beauty” (or is it “nonbeauty” now?) product as fair and lovey–which is essentially just sunscreen, more or less–is a “skin whitener” it makes perfect sense that the messaging likewise would actually be so consistent. and in the case of the north american version, unsettlingly prescient.
as someone who’s worked in fashion PR, i can verily attest that ain’t no one hates the folks in the fashion and beauty industry more than they hate themselves. will all that self-loathing one day be enough to launch a whole “war on beauty?”
if it is, i’m sure dove films will be winning awards for its PSAs.
