THE SPRING ISSUE
Features
Jaime King: Pretty Girls Make Graves… Into Box Office Gold
Earrings, ring and cuff Stephen Webster; Nail color Awaken China Glaze. Text by Sophia DeArborne Photography by Matthew Welch Fashion editors: Kemal+Karla If I had a dime for every time I heard the career description “model-turned-actress” I would be a millionaire many times over. I found an exception to my dime hoarding in Jaime King, […]
ONExONE: Marketing Charity to the Masses
Text by Karena Akhavein Is it a PR agency or an aid organization? Founded in 2005 and raising over $1 million in its first year, ONExONE is one of a new breed of über-charities, an “umbrella” corporation that groups together a number of philanthropic organizations, melding business sense and marketing with philanthropy to maximize efficiency. […]
24 Hour Party People
The art of freeloading: on Cocktails, Canapés, Crashers and C-list celebrities Text by Bea Lager Illustration by Christina Ung Groucho Marx’s famous quote, “I don’t care to belong to any club that will have me as a member,” seems a befitting mantra for the international “secret” cabal of uninvited guests (also known as freeloaders and […]
Gotta Whole Lot of Love
The world’s most notorious rock muse grows up Text by Emily Savage Photography by Leonardo Céndamoas A founding member of Frank Zappa’s psychedelic all-girl creation The GTOs (Girls Together Outrageously), Pamela Des Barres—later dubbed “Queen of the Groupies”—got her first taste of her own personal groupies. The bands and the boys were suddenly obsessed with […]
Million Dollar Baby
Text by Adam Keleman Photography by Matthew Welch Vintage black ostrich feather jacket Bill Blass from The Way We Wore in Los Angeles Jumpsuit Tadashi Shoji ; Necklace ippolita ; Bracelet from The Way We Wore ; Gloves La Crasia ; Boots Christian Louboutin. Vintage red leopard print dress YSL from The Way We Wore in Los Angeles ; Stockings […]
Evil Genius Uses His Comic Powers For Peace
Maz Jobrani is a funny guy with a serious message. The Iranian comic joined the Axis of Evil Comedy Tour—which ended last May—hoping to encourage peace through comedy “There are not a lot of Middle Eastern comedians,” explains Jobrani, who was raised in the Bay Area after his departure from Iran. Before the comedic route, […]
THE WRITING ON THE WALL
Visual sniper Shepard Fairey canvasses the politics of pop agitprop and the graphic art of subversion. Now take heed: A terrorist walks among us. Deftly camouflaged with the nationalistic hues of Caucasian patriarchy and left-wing capitalist entrepreneurship, he bears a moniker equally disarming, at once whimsical and rustic-pastoral. His name is Shepard Fairey. Granted, the […]
JMary: Rolling Out The Red Carpet
From the sunny, silicone-injected land of trendy snow boots and sweat suits comes a true couture label, JMary. Created by Jennifer Gheur in 1999, it began in a small studio in the LA neighborhood of Los Feliz—-long before it was the Williamsburg of the West. The evolution of this label has been slow and methodic. […]
Front Line Assembly: Experiments in Design by Front
Text by Mila Zulo Many of Front Design’s projects begin with a philosophical question. “Can a designed object exist without being materialized?” “What defines a home?” Through such Socratic dialogue, the four women who comprise the Swedish design group answer these questions with a collectively conceptual mind and a spirit of healthy rebellion. SOMA spoke […]
Herzdog & De Meuron: Sublime Skins
Text by Franklin Melendez I’ll admit it, I’m an architecture novice. I don’t understand the allure of a building’s hidden facades, nor am I moved by the tendril-like cracks in concrete. Sure, I can recognize a handful of names and noteworthy projects, enough to throw around at cocktail parties, but for the most part I […]
The Dark Prince of Manchester: The Incomparable Peter Saville
Text by Alexis Georgopolis Photograph by Anna Blessmann It’s safe to say there is no one quite like Peter Saville. Certainly no other album designer has exerted such personality and such a distinct aesthetic as he has. Borrowing from Russian constructivism, the New Typography of Jan Tschichold, and Italian futurism, Saville made covers for Factory […]
The Reign of Indie
Voodoo-EROS’ Casady and Shimkovitz define the new indie DIY with self-produced and cross-pollinated music, a holistic grassroots attitude, and a dash of gender dysphoria. Photograph by John Minh Nguyen Hasta la victoria siempre might as well be the rallying cry for the hundreds of independent record labels struggling against corporate conglomerates. What happens behind the […]
Peaches for President
Text by Patrick Knowles Photograph by Alex Freund Merrill Beth Nisker answers the phone with an impossibly charming, “Hello baby.” It’s a cool New York afternoon and while it’s been a whirlwind press day for the artist better known to the rest of the world as Peaches, there is an immediate sense of playfulness and […]
Summoning the Sonic Sages
Text by Hunter Holcombe Photograph by Martien Mulder If relationships were like bands, you’d want yours to be Sonic Youth. The many torrid, short-lived love affairs of rock – Stone Roses, Nirvana – burned hot while they lasted, but, for reasons ranging from drugs to incompatibility to fame to death, could never physically survive for […]
Gypsies, Tramps, and Devendra Banhart
Text by Adam Pollock Photograph by Todd Cole Add the title Musical Anthropologist to the already diverse resumé of freak-folk pioneer Devendra Banhart. For without this Texan-Venezualan Boho-about-town’s penchant for creating roving bands of “artistic families,” most of us would never have heard of Vashti Bunyan, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott and the Watts Prophets. “I get […]
A World Apart
The provocative art of Mexico City Teresa Margolles’ haunting Vaporización Text by Franklin Melendez Much like Mexico City itself, the art scene in the complex metropolis sprawls in unexpected directions, encompassing a dazzling array of media, discourses and strategies. Despite a few “crossover successes” though, this vibrant community remains largely unknown – or more accurately, […]
Capturing the Unknown
Two photographers find beauty in the war-torn. Text by Fiona Killackey Holiday photos usually feature blood-orange sunsets, cocktails, tans and a beach that spans over an imaginary horizon. Eliciting memories of a distant time in which you escaped the drone of keyboards, the painful tone of an alarm and the inane chatter on the subway, […]
Easy Riding
The interstate highway system turns 50 this month Text by Angelina Sciolla Photographs by Michael Northrup “To understand America, you must understand highways,” wrote Washington Post reporter Robert Samuelson. “In this past half-century, these masochistic marvels have – along with telephones, television and jet planes – reshaped American culture.” Masochistic marvels? Most of us probably […]
Beyond the Gritty Streets
Text by Franklin Melendez Visceral, raw, combative – these are the terms that dominate our concept of viable “street art.” Whether it’s the guerilla tactics of KAWS or the defiant gratuitousness of Larry Clark, street’s encounter with art seems inextricable from an incessant drive to shake up the status quo. This aesthetic of transgression has […]
Layin’ Down Tracks with the Father of Hip Hop
Text by Patrick Knowles Photography by Ruvan Few artists have had a greater cultural impact and influence in contemporary music than the “Father of Hip Hop,” Kool Herc. The inspiration he found as a young man in the avenues between neighborhoods helped him to create the current soundtracks that resonate from any concrete city today. […]
Surveillance as Lover and Art
Text by Scott Indrisek We are surrounded by webs of information and surveillance – databases, crime cameras, entire hidden matrixes of observation and recording. While some may choose to loudly protest the status quo as an invasion of civil liberties, others are taking subtler approaches, tweaking and provoking the system in a way that exposes […]
