Six Six Sick

Thursday, June 21, 2012

Hot and Bothered

Zana modeling her own leather peplum, and a friend modeling one of her bondage style face masks

Yesterday night, I made a sweaty trek over to CATM Gallery with hundreds of other Zana Bayne enthusiasts to view her latest Fall/Winter 2012 collection of leather body-harnesses. Taking a beautifully orchestrated step away from the traditional fashion presentation, Zana chose to collaborate with three other artists and photographers to fully convey the sensual nature of her work. Char Alfonzo, Maxime Buchi, and Adrian Wilson used photography, video and installation to capture Zana's work on the human body, playing with the themes of power and submission that are integral to her bondage inspired pieces. The fetishistic and fantastic elements conveyed through the resulting work gave Zana's harnesses a life that could not be expressed in a simple presentation with models, and the gallery truly felt like a teasing peek into Zana's lush, leather-filled world. The exhibition is only up for one more day, so try to make it if you're in New York. Otherwise, keep an eye out for her new pieces to arrive--I personally can't wait to get my hands on the leather cone bra pictured in one of Adrian Wilson's photographs.

Zana's Leather skull installation

Leather bra photographed by Adrian Wilson

-Tiffany

Monday, June 11, 2012

Knitwits

All photos by Mark Fina, courtesy of Degen

After stumbling across Degen knitwear on various blogs and Tumblrs, I had the surprise pleasure of stumbling across the magical designer, Lindsay Degen, in real life, while visiting her studio mate. Lindsay shares an inspiring space in the sprawling Brooklyn Navy Yards with my friend Becca McCharen, the designer behind Chromat. It is not often that I come across exciting new knitwear designers, and it thrilled me to see Lindsay's work up close and personal, as it is truly one of a kind. Using a mix of hand knitting and crochet, as well as machine knit pieces made on looms in her studio, Lindsay creates colorful, tongue in cheek, and downright absurd attire using the most traditional and age-old techniques and methods. While your average knitwear designer's repertoire includes a range of sweaters, socks, scarves and mittens, Degen presents peculiar jersey shirts with boob holes, crochet nipple pasties, and underwear with wooly fake pubes stitched on the front. Even the Degen version of mittens are a slightly off creation: half mittens and half gloves.

Anyway, the inspiration behind the Fall 2012 Degen collection, Ask Tell, is explained in the lookbook, which I've posted in full here--something I rarely do, but I truly love each and every piece. What I'm most excited for is not even knit at all; Lindsay is collaborating with Converse on a line of platform sneakers, which you can get a peek at here.

-Tiffany

Sunday, June 10, 2012

Instagram Diaries

Jonathan's Birthday Cake

In the midst of my entire apartment falling apart (windows, lights, and plumbing somehow all simultaneously must be fixed), my camera also decided to give up on me this week, leaving me with nothing more than my iPhone to document everything I've been up to and everyone I've been visiting. Seeing as it's my last free week before I start my new job, I've been running around town getting all my errands done, and catching up with some of my favorite friends and local designers. Better photos of said designers are on the way, but in the meantime, here's my past week via Instagram.