Muse Magazine

Friday, September 28, 2007

LIFE: Current events: An interesting perspective of Jena

We can't say that we agree with this man, but his role within the Jena 6 debacle makes his point of view about the incident more interesting than most.

Sunday, September 23, 2007

SOUNDS: On today's playlist



















"Bump Switch Remix," by Amanda Blank (click song title to listen)
She's like M.I.A., Peaches and Trina all rolled into one. But in order to see what we mean, you have to listen past the techno-sounding beginning to get to her feisty flow.

LIFE: Good eatin'











































































As I told you back in July, I've become somewhat of a local foodie, participating in a CSA (community supported agriculture) through Harmony Farm in Goshen, New York with my boyfriend. If you don't know about the movement, read more here and here. The organic vegetables we get are nothing short of amazing and they've inspired us to try all sorts of recipes I'd never be bothered with otherwise, curbing my costly restaurant habit. Here are our last two meals:

Italian meatballs and pasta with a vegetable and tomato sauce

The meatballs:
2 pounds organic ground beef
1 cup fresh bread crumbs
1/2 cup finely grated Pecorino
1 heaping tablespoon chopped fresh basil
1 heaping tablespoon chopped fresh parsley
1 teaspoon sea salt
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1/8 teaspoon ground cayenne pepper
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 eggs
3 tablespoons olive oil.
1. In a large bowl, mix all ingredients except olive oil by hand, using a light touch. Take a portion of meat in hand, and roll between palms to form a ball that is firmly packed but not compressed. Repeat, making each meatball about 2 inches in diameter.

2. In a large, heavy pot heat olive oil over medium-high heat. When it shimmers, add meatballs in batches. Do not crowd. Brown well on bottoms before turning, or meatballs will break apart. Continue cooking until browned all over. Remove meatballs to a plate as each batch is finished. Let meatballs cool slightly; cover and refrigerate until needed.

Yield: About 16 meatballs.

The sauce:
Halved fresh tomatoes
Eggplant
Kale
Zucchini
Squash
Onion
Garlic
1/4 cup olive oil
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1 teaspoon pepper
1 tablespoon finely chopped oregano leaves
1 tablespoon finely chopped thyme leaves
1 cup white wine
Preheat oven to 325 degrees F.
Place vegetables in a pan. Sprinkle with oil, salt and pepper, onion, garlic, and herbs. Sautee vegetables. Place tomato halves cut side up in a pan and bake for one hour. Then turn the oven to 400 degrees and bake another 30 minutes. Remove from the oven and put in a small saucepan. Add white wine, bring to a boil, reduce heat to low and cook for 5 minutes. Add vegetables.
Pour sauce over cooked pasta.
Add meatballs.


















Steak and eggs with roasted vegetables
one shoulder steak
garlic
ground red pepper
4 eggs
onion
two baby zucchini
red pepper

The steak:
Broil the steak in a pan with butter, garlic, salt, pepper and ground red pepper. Place sliced onions on top.

The eggs:
Fry the eggs sunny side up in butter, salt and pepper.

The vegetables:
Sautee sliced vegetables in butter, salt, pepper and ground red pepper in pan for 15 minutes or just long enough for them to absorb flavor of seasonings while retaining crispness.

Wednesday, September 19, 2007

LIFE: Current events: Another reason to love David Bowie























David Bowie donated $10,000 to the legal defense fund set up for the Jena 6 yesterday. A national march is expected to happen in the small Louisiana town tomorrow.

Monday, September 17, 2007

LIFE: Blacks in fashion: The discussion continues

Here's Women's Wear Daily's take of the panel discussion that happened on Friday.

Friday, September 14, 2007

SOUNDS: On today's playlist























"Everything," by Clara Hill (Click song title to listen)

"Another Day," by Jill Scott/a Marc Mac production


After weeks of searching, we finally found a url link for this song, which is our current sonic obsession. Clara's another member of the Berlin-based music collective, Sonar Kollektiv, which we wrote about last month. We're mostly attached to the song, a standout on her new album "Folkwaves," because of its sprawling production by Marc Man, the man behind 4Hero's definitive sound.

LIFE: Jena 6 conviction overtuned

Hopefully, most of you are familiar with the goings on surrounding the Jena 6 in Louisiana. If not, you can get the backstory here. With a major national protest scheduled to happen next week, the state's Third Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the aggravated second-degree battery conviction of one of the six black students found guilty of beating a white student (following a year of racial tension and discriminatory incidents at their high school), Mychal Bell. No word yet on what will happen with the other five. Read an account of the latest developments here.

LIFE: Blacks in fashion: The rundown

















































































Here's a brief recap of Bethann Hardison's two-hour long panel discussion on the dearth of blacks in fashion.

Who attended: Iman, Naomi Campbell, Liya Kebede, Alva Chin, Andre Leon Talley, Tracy Reese, Robin Givhan (Washington Post), Teri Agins (Wall Street Journal), Kyle Hagler (IMG), Constance White (eBay), James Scully (casting agent), Claude Grunitzky (TRACE) among many others.

A few soundbites:

Naomi Campbell on how it's necessary to break the rules in order to penetrate the color barriers in fashion: "Very few people know that I got my French Vogue cover because I asked. But if you ask you look like a b*tch. But Yves Saint Laurent told them that he would pull their advertising if they did not give me the cover."

Alva Chin: "It's up to the young, aspiring models to stand strong and not give up."

Bethann Hardison: "I've talked to so many young models who say, ' my agent told me this isn't the season for black girls. I guess it's just not our time. The designer didn't ask for any black girls.' But if the agents are waiting to be asked before sending them out, we're never going to get anywhere."

Constance White: "It's important to note that we're, meaning black Americans, aren't really represented among the decision makers. We saw an increase in Asian models on the runway with the rise of all of these Asian designers. We don't have very many working black designers."

Liya Kebede: "You can blame the agents but really the onus is on the designers. If the designers says they don't want black girls, that's it. So they're the ones who really need to be held accountable."

The next step: Bethann will be holding a larger panel discussion open to the public at the New York Public Library on the same topic in early October.

Thursday, September 13, 2007

LIFE: Blacks in fashion: Stay tuned

Tomorrow we'll be covering a small press conference/discussion being held by Bethann Hardison on the lack of black female images in fashion. She's expecting an impressive list of fashion buffs including Andre Leon Talley, Robin Givhan, and Naomi Campbell. Check back tomorrow for a recap of the discussion.

LIFE: Wrong on so many levels

















We just made a quick stop for fruit at an organic grocery store and noticed that the woman standing in front of us in line was carrying one of those eco-friendly canvas Anya Hindmarch "I'm Not A Plastic Bag" totes. Only she clearly missed the message behind the bag. When she paid for her four small items, she happily carried the merch out of the store in a plastic bag instead of throwing it in her shopping tote (which, of course, she was sporting as a handbag.)

WARDROBE: In the world of Calvin, homogeneity means white















From Cathy Horyn's New York Times review of Calvin Klein:

"Yet if there was fault to be found it was in the faultlessness of some of the day looks, a sense that Mr. Costa was quite consciously aiming for a visual statement and, in the process, didn’t see or refused to see that the hemlines of the dresses might have been better shorter. If you’re noticing something like a hemline, that’s a problem.

Another thing: all of the models in the show were white, with hair at a uniform length. You can’t tell women to be individuals in their style and then not show a range of individual faces, hairstyles and ethnic backgrounds.

It seems out of touch."





WARDROBE: How do you say drama in French?























After a controversial article ran in Women's Wear Daily, in which more than a few editors and retailers (including the International Herald Tribune's Suzy Menkes who threatened to never attend another one of his shows) criticized Marc Jacobs' two hour late start time, the designer basically told them all to go to hell in a scathing reply in today's edition. He even mentioned that he might stop showing in New York and take his show to Paris or London instead. A few excerpts:

"Another thing, everybody talks about these families they have to go home to. I mean, every person who works in every factory in Italy, and every person who works in our sample room, they didn't see their families for six weeks so that we could do this show two weeks early. So I'm really appalled that people have absolutely no perception of what it takes to do things. And when we complain about the show schedule our voice is not heard, nobody does anything about it, the CFDA does me absolutely no service whatsoever as an American fashion designer."

"I don't really feel a part of the American fashion community. I really feel like an outsider, I think we all do, and we feel unloved here, so we want to go somewhere else."

"I work my ass off. I don't take vacations, I don't have homes all over the world, I don't ride horses: I f---ing work for a living. Again, like this idea, you have a family? OK, well that's nice, I don't, and I work. So leave me alone and don't come to the show next time."

Wednesday, September 12, 2007

FICTION: We love surprises




















Sitting on the train, flipping through the current issue of the New Yorker, we were pleasantly surprised to see an article by our current literary obsession, Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, about her childhood experiences with African food. When we searched for the same article online in order to link to it for this post, we were even more psyched to see that she's written short stories for the magazine in the past. Not sure how we missed this, maybe we just glossed over her contributions before because we weren't familiar with her work yet. Read her article here.

WARDROBE: Baby steps

Speaking of the dearth of models of color on the runway, we forgot to mention that Marc Jacobs cast three black models in his Marc by Marc Jacobs show, which is more than the usual one or two cast in most shows. Baby steps, baby steps.

LIFE: Paying it forward

In July, a friend and I got to talking about the idea of paying it forward (returning an act of kindness from one person to the next person you come across.) I thought about that chat today when I dropped my Blackberry on the platform in the train station only to have it topple over the edge onto the nasty subway tracks. In the midst of my silent freak-out, a crowd gathered around me at the edge of the platform to offer their condolences. "That happened to me once, it sucks," a blonde woman said. "I'd jump down there and get it for you, but I'm too chicken," another man said with a sympathetic smile. And then out of nowhere, an older gentleman in a suit came running up, jumped off the platform onto the tracks and grabbed my Blackberry out of the nasty sewage water. To make matters even more dramatic, the train was literally pulling into the station. Fortunately, he managed to get off of the tracks without getting hit. That said, I had an "I love New York" moment (the t-shirt, not the VH1 show) thinking about how nice those people were to me, a complete stranger to them, at the train station. So I owe the next person I come across who needs it, an act of kindness. Hopefully it won't involve my having to get nasty poo poo subway hands. Can't do that.

WARDROBE: New York Fashion Week: Three things we liked yesterday

1) Marc by Marc Jacobs' cheeky take on the airline stewardess uniform























2) Francisco Costa's less-is-more approach to formal dressing for Calvin Klein






















3) Zac Posen's one-shoulder tops and gowns

WARDROBE: New York Fashion Week

We were on the fence about Helmut Lang's collection on Monday. Although the dresses, pantsuits, skirts and jackets were inventively constructed, the brand just seems a little lackluster without its namesake helming it.







































































Tuesday, September 11, 2007

WARDROBE: New York Fashion Week

We literally wanted to mug the models for the outfits on their backs at the Philosophy di Alberta Ferretti presentation and run home all the way up 11th avenue to stash the goods in our closet (you know we love shiny things.)































































































WARDROBE: New York Fashion Week: Marc Jacobs gives new meaning to the word "tardy"

We wanted to give Marc Jacobs the gas face for starting his show two hours late, but as soon as the lights went down at the New York State Armory and he ran onstage to give his final bow, kicking off his beautifully backwards collection (he literally inverted the traditional order of the runway show by showing the final looks first), all was forgiven. While 75% of his whimsical, forward collection looked kind of hard to pull off in everyday life, we loved it all still. A few highlights:

































































































Monday, September 10, 2007

WARDROBE: Backstage at Peter Som

Peter Som and Maria Sharapova
















Som's best bud Christine Kim of the Studio Museum of Harlem

WARDROBE: New York Fashion Week: Three looks we loved yesterday

1) At Diane von Furstenberg























2) At Peter Som























3) At Derek Lam

Sunday, September 09, 2007

SOUNDS: Momentary VMA digression

Um, we never talk about celebrity dish here (since there is a whole blogosphere of other sites for that), but Britney Spears on the MTV VMAs? WTF? Instead of going to the Narciso Rodriguez show we got distracted by the MTV happenings on television and was floored to see Britney flub through her choreography and forget the lyrics she was lip syncing. Dancing was always the one thing she could do well, and now that's down the toilet too. We were so baffled, we even called our mom to dish about it. Humph.
More Fashion Week posts coming soon...

Saturday, September 08, 2007

WARDROBE: A view of McQ from the bar at the Bowery Hotel

Give people an open bar and free snacks and they get a bit distracted. The preview of Alexander McQueen's secondary line, McQ (a fun, tight little collection of inventively constructed dresses), was more of a rooftop party than anything else, with guests lounging on couches and chairs at the Bowery Hotel and taking advantage of the open bar while models dressed in primary colored clothing from the collection chatted in a huddle. People seemed more intoxicated by the sun, free drink and eats than the actual clothes.


















































































































WARDROBE: New York Fashion Week: Three things we liked today

1) Proenza Schouler's ultra-mini skirts. Not only did Jack and Lazaro do their usual balancing act of sharp tailoring and youthful edge, they also managed to show a collection almost entirely made up of mini skirts and dresses that managed to look elegant, not hookerish.

























2) Alice Temperley's impressive attention to detail. She's known for her ingenious use of appliques and embellishment.

























3) The way Rodarte managed to make tulle look cool and forward instead of infantile and girly.
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