On Making Things, Photographing Things, or Blogging about Making and Photographing Things.

There are people who can do all those things.

I don't know how, but they seem to be able to--
Beautifully executed projects that they have artfully photographed throughout the entire process, each step gorgeously and clearly lit, and techniques are illustrated with the addition of the artisan's hands--healthy cuticles and all.
Sometimes they mention a family. I can only assume that their clean, cheerful children happily play under the table, on the un-filthy floor of the studio, making adorable age-appropriate crafts with the scrap material. Sometimes there are photographs--wispy-haired, sweet creatures blowing dandelion seeds or with their little garnet-lips parted in awe over an exquisite bird's nest. There are no armless Transformer toys or spontaneously shed clothes anywhere!

sidesaddle habit by Sarah Cannibal for Hippik. Vintage fabric and salvaged suede; altered Donna Karan coat dress pattern and side saddle apron

I keep thinking when I get really good at something, I, too, will photograph the hell out of it.
Trouble is, whenever I start to get good at something, I've got to throw a wrench in it all. I can't just follow a pattern, do what it says with the recommended fabrics and buy all the right notions. No! I've got to make it out of old bike inner tubes, or Astroturf or chicken wire or a salvaged mink coat from 1967! I've got to take the sleeve from a 1990's Vogue pattern and fit it into a vintage McCall's pattern from 1943!
My children snigger at the flying fur, the wadded up, failed experiments, and my filthy language as I tear apart seams over and over. Then they take my scissors. Apparently to cut barbed wire. Who can take pictures?? I can't find my damn scissors!

Upcycled sweaters and belts by Sarah Cannibal for Hippik

Comments

The Lost Designer of the 80's

Claude Barthelemy seems to have been one of those if-you-needed-to-ask-you-didn't-need-to-know designers. In the '80's, he was listed as a young, hot couturier alongside go-the-distance blue chips like Karl Lagerfeld and Lanvin with his oversized sweaters, minis, leggings and fur-trimmed stoles. Exclusive stores carried his soft-edged jackets to shoppers in the know. And then what happened? His pleated skirts, intarsia sweaters, and naughty, zippered wool catsuits still fetch high prices in vintage world and any dealer with his elegantly simple, Gallic tag on her racks raises a flutter in second-hand seekers. He designed for Barbie, for heaven's sake! But the designer himself, who seems to have cut a meteoric swath across the runways and then...? So what's the story with this wasp-waisted pleated skirt? I wondered what else this woman could have dropped off on her Goodwill drive-by--a Chanel original? A couture Pucci? Surely someone this linked in wouldn't just ...

I Heart Shop-a-Holics

"No one needs $800 shoes." This is an admonishment from those brainy friends every time I say how I picked up a pair of Guiseppe Zanotti shoes or Manolo Blahnik boots at the Goodwill and cackle about how I will sell them on eBay. This is wisdom, I suppose, in an era that touts egalitarian economics as a virtue and from academics, artists and philosophical ascetics who really do believe it's what's inside that counts. (As long as what's inside is what they deem acceptable...but more on that later.) Apostolic WalkFit Fine. Technically, no one needs even $50.00--or $25.00--shoes--those Israelites certainly got around (though it took the power of the Almighty to keep their sandals from wearing out). I suppose history showed that the guys at Valley Forge came out okay with rags wrapped around their feet. So no one needs $800 shoes, just as no one needs a custom Bentley with a Vinotemp wine cabinet in the trunk or a $7,000 Hermes saddle...

Change Your Tone!!

I know I have a "unique voice." But I can count on one hand how many people I know who can stand listening to their own voice. (That is not saying there aren't those guys who seem to love talking just to hear the sound of their own voice; but if you literally played it back to them --they'd cringe and crawl under the sofa.) When I was in the 3rd grade, I was chosen to be in some experimental speech/voice therapy at our school. They tried for many weeks to raise the pitch of my voice by having me go up and down the do-re-mi scales until I hit one that they thought sounded pleasing. I had a deep, true contralto voice somewhere a few notes below "do." With the sort of rasping, old-chain-smoker undertones of a freckled Billie Holiday. The experimenters settled on "fa." For 20 minutes three times a week, I got to leave Ms. Foster's third grade classroom and go to the convent living room where I would sing "do-re-mi-fa" and say ...

Second Hand, Second Thoughts

Search This Blog