Adidas GRUN exhibition at the Dazed Gallery

The Dazed Gallery on Old Street was so full last night that party-goers spilled out into the street. Dazed and Confused magazine has just launched an eco-conscious gardening competition. Contestants must find an unsightly area of London and plant their own 'guerrilla garden' to improve the site. The gardeners then upload photos to the web and the best win prizes. The winner receives £500 in Adidas vouchers and for the launch Gary Card, Jay Burridge and Ben Long all created weird and wonderful green installations, pictured above, taking inspiration from the Adidas GRUN range. The installations were photographed by Tara Darby and hung throughout the gallery. The whole place was also decorated like a garden by Gary Card's assistant David White, with underwear and cardboard birds suspended from the ceiling. I especially like the green 'hand' installation Gary Card put up on the roof of the Guardian building.



In the back, some of the Dazed crew and their fabulous friends were DJ-ing, blasting re-mixed Brit rock. The bar was dry by 8.30 and the police intervened to move on some of the crowd. A fun, summer party, all in all!

All photos mine

The Dazed Gallery is 112-116 Old Street, London, EC1V 9BG

www.dazeddigital.com/projects/grun

Something K-I-N-D of oo...

I took a lo-ong taxi ride north on Thursday night to checkout K-I-N-D's party at the KK Outlet in Hoxton Square. K-I-N-D is a luxury knitwear label that makes quirky cashmere tops and dresses inspired by Alice in Wonderland and Bonnie and Clyde. The KK outlet will be showing pieces from K-I-N-D Autumn Winter 08 collection, as well as an archive of K-I-N-D pieces and an exhibition of fashion photos shot by photographers Melanie Bonajo and Anne de Vries, for the next three weeks. There was also a K-I-N-D store on the opening night on Thursday.

The Dutch designer behind the label does little self-promotion but the pretty clothes and the photos exhibited to promote them garner more than enough attention. Suffice to say, most of the pics are not for under-18s and, though artistic, will not be posted here! So if you want to check them out, that's another reason to go to the KK. People in Holland are hard to shock, I suppose.

Apart from the clothes and professional photos on the walls, the whole scene was weirdly reminiscent of undergraduate parties I went to while at the Universidad de Granada. The wine tasted of vinegar and the air was freezing (perhaps a clever sales ploy for a cashmere company) and smoky. I didn't like that then and I don't now...back to the Westside to watch Sex and the City and repair my manicure.

K-I-N-D is available at Liberty's of London and Colette in Paris (which has one of my favourite flash sites ever!)

Fashion in Film festival opens

The Fashion in Film festival opened at the Tate Modern on Saturday night. It will continue throughout the month in various centres around the city, including the Ciné lumière and Central St.Martin's. The theme this year is 'If Looks Could Kill'....literally. All the films shown have some kind of violent, criminal or gory theme, linked to fashion (eg the death-by-stiletto scene in Single White Female.Urgh!).

Opening night featured a series of original short films by photographers and video and performance artists. See my review here.I ventured across the river to see one in particular: Dino Dinco's 'El Abuelo'. Dino is an artist/photographer/director from L.A. I met him in one of Diane Pernet's classes at the Paris Fashion Institute. The film is about a heavily tattooed Texan ex-con, who is actually a sensitive poet that loves ironing his clothes to perfection, just the way his grandfather taught him. It got major applause and I was happy to tell Dino, who couldn't be there, how much everyone liked it.

Afterwards there was a Q&A session with some of the directors who could attend. Almost all of the audience's questions were from men and directed at Derrick Santini. His film 'Frottage', was about a pair of Alexander McQueen gloves that inspire lesbian fantasies in a young Parisien woman. He told the audience he merely sought to convey the sensuality of the fabric. I'd never seen an entire theatre of women roll their eyes before...

The Fashion in Film Festival runs until May 31st

http://www.fashioninfilm.com/

Henry's Fash Bash

I went to Henry Holland’s party at Movida on Wednesday night, again for A Shaded View on Fashion. Movida has given Henry his own ‘Fash Bash’ night every month and this was the second one. I think they’re hoping he’ll bring them the cool points he brought to Boombox. He is very cool but not in an alienating way. I talked to him properly this time, about the current issue of i-D magazine which his best friend, the model Agyness Deyn, edited. The whole issue is a celebration of Deyn as an icon and all round sweetheart. Henry wrote a poem about her for it, which I found very cute. He was brazenly wearing bedroom slippers to the club, like Flavio Briatore (who generally only gets away with it as he owns the clubs he goes to). More free vodka cocktails…but I needed to be up for an International Reporting lecture, so none for me.

The younger members of the Vogue UK staff have formed a DJ troupe that played on the night. They are calling themselves ‘The Blonde Vagues’, according to the June issue of Vogue. They favour Britney, The Spice Girls and lots of Madonna…Nicola Formichetti from Dazed and Confused interrupted the oestrogen around midnight. Not a bad gig, this DJ-ing thing: you get endless free drinks and everyone is forced to listen to whatever you fancy. Sophie Ellis Bextor was there but she didn’t dance. I bet that is because she gets sick of people asking if it will be ‘murder’ on the dance floor and then imitating her moves.

http://www.houseofholland.co.uk/

Simon Doonan Book Launch at Selfridge's

Simon Doonan, the hilarious New York Observer columnist and Creative Director of Barneys, launched his book, Beautiful People, at Selfridges on Friday. I ran there from college in the 4 inch heels I was breaking in. I wrote about this for A Shaded View On Fashion as well and my Dad has apparently seen the post, as he's just text to say he wishes I'd associate with people of substance. Hmm...are stylish people inherently insubstantial?The text debate continues.

Anyway, Beautiful People is about the first 25 years of Doonan's rise from Reading schoolboy to New York fashion dandy. He is very sweet in person and signed my copy 'For Rachel 'heart' Simon', like we were bestest girlfriends. Aw,love it! When he writes, though, he is sharp as a tack in an 'if you can't say anything nice, come sit by me' kind of way. You want to be his best friend, if only because it might keep you out of his line of fire.

Autobiographies are the best form of escapism (to read, of course, to write them is probably just super-painful catharsis). Roy Keane's is the funniest I've ever read, which I never thought I'd say of anything football related.

http://www.simondoonan.net/

Random Z lister spotting

I was just at the petrol station refreshing my diet coke supply when the model Alicia Douvall walked in. She looked suprisingly normal and not at all like the plastic surgery scary woman from the tabloids, more nervous and tiny...oh dear, now I'm like one of those bloggers that's distracting the public from Real News by perpetuating celebrity culture. Noam Chomsky would tut-tut at me.

My little Ponystep post

Ponystep is a hot new e-zine edited by Richard Mortimer, the Londoner who brought us legendary nightclub Boombox . His launch party for the magazine was on Sunday night at Sketch on Conduit Street and the site went live on Monday. Diane Pernet was at the Festival de Hyeres, so she asked me to report on it for http://www.ashadedviewonfashion.com/.

Sketch is great, it is a club-cum-bar-cum-contemporary art gallery so there's loads of cool stuff to look at and fill up gaps in conversation. The tree in the background above has thousands of tiny Disney characters sculpted in the bark. I met Gareth Gates, who almost won Pop Idol years ago and did really well afterwards, and took a photo of him. I knew my little sister, Gracie, would love it. He asked if I wanted one with him and I said no for fear of looking like a teeny bopper fan. It was unusual seeing a reality TV popstar among all the cool fashion people but he did look good in that jacket. Ex Boombox boy Cathal O Brien wins best jacket of the night, though, he didn't stop posing in that big black Gareth Pugh creation.

Pugh and his boyfriend are adorable, they had really elaborate professionally done make up on and looked fantastic.There was lots of free Absolut Vodka Schnapps but I don't like spirits. Anyway, had I drank it the photos would have been rubbish.It was a good night though and Ponystep rocks!

http://www.ponystep.com/

All Photos my own