My Dears,

El Gordo Single Tassel

Evidently, we are meant to be having a big tassel debate. Fascinating.
So, let's have at it. I say yes. What do you say?

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Now playing: Sarah Vaughan - My Favourite Things
via FoxyTunes

I am bored with this neo nonsense.

The whole neo-tribes concept was sparked off by two things. First, the Dana Thomas book. Second, seeing the Beckhams on the cover of W. The former merely added grist to my mill but the latter (after I realised it was not an internet mock up), well, that damn near put me into orbit.
Has the world really changed so much that we admire people like this? Or are things exactly the same as they were at the beginning of the 20Th Century? Under colonialism those who governed were no more than chip shop girls and butcher's boys. Have we acquiesced to being culturally and mentally colonized by vapid vulgarians and corporate greed for the sake of an imaginary 'lifestyle'?
For too many years now I have felt that I have been dictated to, on so many levels, not by the great and the good but by the mediocre and the stupid; two traits I find particularly repugnant.
I know this is "only a decorating blog" (your words and sentiment Ben, not mine) so what does this have to do with the decorative arts? Well, it has everything to do with it. Our consciousness is being shaped (if, we allow it) not by artisans and artists, but by corporate greed. I for one do not want more choices, I just want better things. Better things, made by people who take pride in their work and are paid accordingly, and not made by some dispassionate factory worker halfway around the world.
This is the truly tragic part of the Neophytes; they are incapable of recognizing this. They are too concerned with image to care about the process. They are not the inheritors or the curators of culture, they are merely its imitators. They ape, not their betters, but rather the vain and empty idols of celebrity. So easily gratified with so little - I detest them for not wanting more from life or from themselves.

Moody Design

Today my horoscope read :
This particular astrological time period should come with a mandatory warning label to be worn by the temporary purveyor of said energy until the effects have passed. What might that label read? 'For your own safety, avoid irritating me -- and if you do, hide the scissors.
An understatement if there ever was one.


Stills from Blade Runner.

Is this less than charming mood responsible for the post-apocalypse look that I am contemplating for a new project ?
Possibly, but more likely it is an attempt to capture the mood of the mid 1980s.
I am of course speaking of the underground 80s, as reflected in the works of such film makers as Slava Tsukerman, Peter Greenaway, and Derek Jarman - not the vulgar hyper bourgeois 80s.
My vision is that of the world as seen through Jarman's lens -brutally barren, yet lush in its details. Details which are aggressively challenging both visually and intellectually.


Film posters for Derek Jarman's Jubilee


Chairs by Ron Arad