Set 'em Up- Ice on Fire

 detail Isa gown

Intro to a New Story- Trilogy of Ice and Fire

Humans have had a 5,000 year old plus story of the hero’s journey [1] that heralds male accomplishments and virtues. We have experimented with ego and tool making and have made amazing discoveries. We have left the nest and developed as individuals We have gone and continue going afield, gathering and at times utilizing, the information we collect. We have built amazing, complex machines and systems to handle it all. We call this progress.

However, this very process is jeopardizing said “progress.”  For at the very core of all this activity are old stories and beliefs which limited possibilities and therefore, choices, from the very start of what we call civilization.

So, even as we build and create opportunity, we lose perspective and choice. We are drawing from an ever shrinking pool of the whole that is possible.

And since we built and grew systems based on what we thought was true, we magnified consequences and manifested huge correlations between probabilities and choosing limits. Our free choice is now dictated from the shrinking pool of options that appear the most rational and therefore “right.”

We have painted ourselves into a quantum corner with a classic and materialist brush.

This can’t be good.

We need a new hero’s journey and some new archetypes. We need to figure in deep ecology and planet systems. When we change the stories, we can change the paradigm, which in turn rearranges, renews and re-expands possibilities.  

One such story needs to be the journey of the feminine hero. We need this for balance

This journey is not about women going out to conquer the world, nor does it relate to equality in the old story. This is a new journey, a journey to the whole of being. It is a personal journey that resonates and interacts with concepts of whole consciousness. 

 It is a story about unity, healing and the interactive uni-verse. When we free our selves from the old beliefs, free consciousness from fear, we enter love.

So all in all this is just another love story, and it starts in the frozen north as the glacier melts and the Ice Queen starts to thaw.

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[1] “A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.^[“

Future Fashion

 Photo taken at SAM  7/4 13 -fashion is influence

featuring display from the permanent collection as no photos allowed inside Future Beauty

I saw the latest show at SAM 7/4; Future Beauty, 30 Years of Japanese Fashion and am full of mixed feelings. The oldest and the newest designs were my best likes.

Rei Kawakubo's early work in the late 70's put a 'clean" spin on the shredded fibers and patches that marked the Punk 'tude back in the day.

Lollita and storycon garb was a good insert but a little like Lagerfield doing "grunge" in the 90's the heart and soul gets a little lost in the re-issue.

Hmm, so under the skirts is this a show of " Takers.  (Ishmael)" an homage to "steal ideas and then take credit for the "Look?" (or whatever idea, concept , detaile etc)  This appears to be a normed phenom and as such  brings up many questions about source.

Like, when source is a second hand account why is it deemed more "acceptable" than a first hand experience?  Are we being taught to view rather than to participate? To observe the process rather than to be, to act meaningfully with all the colors not just this years chosen palette?

Are we being groomed for second hand living, living in the make believe sit com , the reality show of a life chained to an ever lessening bed of choices?

This is silly if it were not so dangerous.

So-moving onto the question of taste, as in who and how defines it for a culture, i am back round to the museums.

The current show in NYC- Punk at the Met  along with Future Beauty reiterates a pattern, a  formula that creates sanctity and delivers what was once verboten (punk) or strange (experiments in shape and form rather than function) up for the masses to devour.  (Consumerism as a peak experience)

Why now?

Given a certain vintage, artful rebels can be mainstreamed and their political jabs when taken safely out of context, become palatable - entertaining.

Just suppose:
After a street birth a sweet detail is observed by a "documented" designer, who kidnaps and raises the idea as their own. It is justified as a way to give the "idea, the look, the lyric, the aesthetic " a proper launch" - where proper connects to profit.

Or why is virtually unwearable garb now accepted  as art when at the time is was rarely seen off the runway or showroom floor?

Is their a link to the manufactured meme  of profit that controls a majority of the worldview? Are we being continually groomed to justify and accept the "real" world view?

Are the museums giving back by displaying and thereby enhancing this vision? Is this a kind of full circle, a loop closure that hides the process in plain view?

The insular lab of the design school approach where launching the goods takes a fair amount of money to get past the gatekeepers, to buy some press and infiltrate the "right" sound barriers needs the talent of the street, the grass roots energy.

This logically should mean that it is in the best interests of everyone that the talents of everyone  be nurtured and valued.

However the current trajectory values fewer and fewer ideas as a way to control the scene to maximize profits. This is a lossy event.

When choices are limited -probability expands, this looks good for economic strategists. But the price is huge. As we choose from ever lessening concepts of the whole of possibility, we shrink our ability to explore options for we now view probability as the "whole" of practical options..

Witness the throes of the planet as we seem hooked into the bad choices we made ever so long ago.

Isn't it time to wake up  to the many possibilities?  Have we so duped and justified our way into this corner that we are willing to accept it as a "given?"

I say NO! We should go exploring! Like, what gave the world the creative impulse that birthed so much diversity, such abundance of imagination?  We as a species deserve to live from the best of what we now know.  This is is our true heritage, not that silly biased stuff  that protects those old false beliefs.

 If not now, when?  Isn't it bumpy enough?

Trash Fashion Copped From J Rotten?

 

original shot

enhanced

SAM with Future Fashion  exhibit behind the Veil of  "who makes fashion and why?" 

" I walked up and down the King’s Road with complete anger and resentment. People were extremely absurd and still stuck into flares, platform shoes, neat hair and pretending that the world wasn’t really happening. It was an escapism that I resented. There was also a garbage strike going on, and there was trash piled ten feet high... Wear the garbage bag, for God’s sake, and then you are dealing with it. That’s what I would be doing, I would wrap myself in trash."
 
– Johnny Rotten

from Dazed Digital

Selling the illusion is what keeps fashion alive. "Style" according to CoCo Chanel is what matters; as fashion is a vehicle to drive trend. Style is the personal  aesthetic that one can build upon for it is about the unique twist one brings to the party of life.