Welcome to rachelsays... The blog of Rachel Lewis, containing my thoughts and musings on illustration, design, fashion, music, cakey-bakey goodness, culture and things that I generally find cool. There's also a good chance my own illustration work will pop up on here.
All work on this blog is copyright to me unless I state that it isn't. Obviously. Don't do stealing, kids.
So come on in, have a look around, and leave a comment if you like what you see.
Last Tuesday I was invited to the private launch of the new Turning Leaf/Basso & Brooke collaboration of limited edition designed Wine Bottles and Interior Homeware. You might remember a little while ago I wrote about the collaboration here, and so I was really glad to have the opportunity to see the collection for myself. It really is amazing:
Basso & Brooke are well known for their amazing prints and fashion designs, and seeing their eye-poppingly colourful style (with the Turning Leaf logo/illustration and colour palette cleverly intertwined) on throws, cushions, tables, lamps... pretty stunning. I would kill to have any one of those items in my house - certainly a statement piece if ever I saw one! They are all available to buy apparently (huzzah!) but I overheard a woman saying that prices were around £9000.... so....yeah, that's more than half my yearly salary. I don't think so. In my dreams!
And so the evening was rather in that vein for me unfortunately; everything was in my dreams and out of my price range! The Shop at Bluebird is beautiful and full of amazing designer clothes (all in size 6 from what I could see...) but not one single thing in there could I afford. Boohoo. Except perhaps some of the art books lovingly displayed on the tables. While I wandered through the room with my (free, yay) glass of Turning Leaf Pinot Noir staring longingly at the goods on display, I realised slowly that I was in the world of Prada, but wearing Primark. To be fair though, the evening wasn't really centered around actually buying anything (thank god), just admiring the collaboration and chatting with cool people. It was a shame because my friend got food poisoning and had to pull out, so I'm sure I would have stayed a bit longer if I wasn't there on my own, but I just felt a bit strange amongst it all. We would probably have stood there pretending to be dotcom millionaires and loved being in that kind of atmosphere, soaking up all the designer-goodness aura. But alas. I just wanted to stare at the pretty Basso & Brooke collection all night and if I did that, I'd have looked weird.
The beautiful people. If you look closely you can see ether Basso or Brooke (I don't know which is which... that's terrible of me, I do apologise) admiring their handiwork.
And here they are with their lovely wine bottles. Suffice to say, I did not take this picture. I did see them milling around but was way too scared to actually say anything. I would probably just have said 'omg, you're like, so amazing, eeee' and ran away so it's probably a good thing I didn't.
It was really lovely to be invited (thanks Turning Leaf!) and was great seeing the collaboration firsthand. You just can't imagine the level of detail in the artwork... stunning.
Basso & Brooke and Turning Leaf Interiors Collection available from 15th June atThe Shop at Bluebirdfor June, July and August. They are running the Turning Leaf complimentary bar, every Thursday and Friday 5 - 7pm, from June 17th until 30th July (my birthday... maybe I'll go back!) at The Shop at Bluebird. Check it out if you're ever near Kings Road, it's worth a gander.
So what's sparked all this animal clutch-ness off then? Maybe it's that people are realising putting actual real dogs in your handbag is silly. And you get hairs all over your stuff. So a better option is to have your bag AS a dog. Excellent.
Or maybe it's this: These definitely wouldn't work as well if they had handles or straps. I think what makes these great is they could be mistaken for just holding a little stuffed animal. Which comes from the whole 'back to your childhood' trend going on right now. I am in favour of this.
The Domestic Sluts have just drawn my attention to this uh-mazing handbag:
Which, as they say in their Domestic Sluttery Bag Lust post, maybe only a child could pull off. Nay, I say to that, I would gladly pull this off and look crazy cool. If a little Gaga-esque. Which is never a bad thing in my books. Being a child has never looked so fun!
I'm having lots of exciting happenings recently. The lovely Laura aka JoiePR on twitter has just started the great Courtesy of the Apocalypse blog (sounds ominous... it's not! Just full of unsigned bands ~ music & reviews ~ independent businesses/shops ~ art & street art ~ alternative style ~ burlesque and other such awesomeness) and was kind enough to feature my work! :D
"Rachel Lewis’s illustration and graphic design work is so imaginative and playful, it is guaranteed to rock your ankle socks. The use of hand drawn image and text within her work is beautifully unique, and the lady herself says that she is inspired by “culture, fashion, new media, music and the future.” Bedfordshire-based Rachel is also available to do custom work via her websitehttp://www.rachelsayshello.com."
Well that's nice ^.^
I'm going to do a mammoth blog update/posting-stylee this weekend. I have SO many things to talk about and just NO time. How do other people with full time jobs manage to keep their blogs updated so frequently??
I guess they don't spend 4 hours on trains every day. Humph.
"The month of September; summer ends, classes begin. The coming of a new season is in the air as autumn approaches. A time of year when the natural world slips into a slumber, and Interpol releases it's fourth studio recording. The self titled, self produced, long-player will be available world wide in mid September."
You don't know how long I've been waiting to read that! Interpol are one of (if not actual... tough call with MCR though) my favourite bands and I've been scouring the interweb for news in the past 6 months or so. Note to Interpol: you're really hard to search for when you share the name of a world-wide police organisation. Or maybe you meant that. You clever weird bastards.
So you can download their new song, for free from www.interpolnyc.com - it's called Lights and it really doesn't disappoint. Insanely melodramatic and melancholy lyrics in Paul Banks' gloriously baritone voice, with a guitar line that builds throughout the song to finally break the tension. That's what's so good about Interpol, that amazing ability to create tension within the songs; sometimes it breaks, sometimes it doesn't. What draws me, unquestionably, are the lyrics though. Beautiful in their ambiguity yet so accurate in their empathy, I literally can never get bored of deciphering them and extracting new meaning and relevances in my life. Because let's face it, that's what makes great lyrics; finding the representation of yourself in there. Plus I'm a massive emo, inside. And a little bit outside too.
Rumours are that the Interpol LP (eponymous, always a sign of getting back to your roots) is a return to 2002's Turn on the Bright Lights; which most fans seem to be pleased with. I'm not too bothered really; I love all the albums, although I actually prefer Our Love to Admire; mainly because of the edge of darkness in the song's themes and lyrics; it felt like an album of anger, of betrayal, of utter resignation to how things are. But then Bright Lights has of course the epic NYC and The New, two of my favourite songs. Basically; I'm happy either way. Give me a smattering of lyrics like 'I've had seven faces, thought I knew which one to wear; I'm sick of spending these lonely nights, training myself not to care...' and I'm off in my melancholic glee.
They're touring the UK in Nov/Dec and I'm going to see them on 6th December at Brixton. That's 6 months away. Sigh. They're one of the only bands in my music collection that I haven't seen live and I'm trés excited. I think tickets are still available.
So we'll have to wait until September for new Interpol, until then, I don't think I'll grow tired of their back catalogue. So good.
Not quite sandals, not quite canvas pumps... these seem to be the strange twisted love child of both of them. Maybe they had an illicit affair and these were the result.
I love them. And at £20, I'm pretty sure my budget can stretch to that. Check them out on Topshop online here - they also do black but I much prefer white. I'd quite like to get the ol' markers out as well and do a bit of colouring in on them as well actually.
I imagine they're great as transitional shoes (which I'm needing today - massive rain storms then bright sunshine? An outfit's worst nightmare!) because I live in flip flops most of the summer but sometimes need something a bit more sturdy. Like yesterday, I slipped down a couple of stairs in my shiny flipflops. Never good.
I'm going into the West End on thursday after work I think, so I'll hunt them down then. I hope they don't sell out (they are rather cheap...) and size 5 is pretty much the most common size! Damn me for having mainstream feet. I'm sure they have lots though.
Sorry for the lack of insightful, thought-provoking and riveting posts recently; I've discovered continuous blogging and a full time job don't mix. Not like Sandals and converse, oh no.
On saturday I took the train back up to ye olde Midlands (as is customary for me) for a friend's birthday. It was at The Mailbox in Birmingham, which for those who have never been, is very nice. High end shops, with restaurants and bars. You are led there from New Street by abstract lines in the floor:
Which join from sporadically-placed lamposts. Honestly. It's pretty weird, but nice, you definititely don't get lost!
It's also very pretty, especially later on in the dark; this is the walkway up to The Mailbox. Pretty.
So when I came across the Harvey Nichols window, I loved it. They've got the safari theme going on, but to the extreme! I can't even begin to think about high their budget is; they look like bespoke mannequins to me. Behold:
Hundreds of small wooden blocks that make up the lunging panther-type thing. She doesn't look very worried.
The eye is made from coins! I think they're real. Nice touch. That crocodile is just breathtaking, a futuristic space-age safari.
I love the mannequin's silver hair and skin, and amazing eye makeup. The faces look so real.
They're just nonchalently hanging out with zebras, letting them eat strange paper rags, you know. As you do.
That elephant was insane. So huge, really nice. Strange cling-film-esque set up but it was kind of nice. A subtle nod to captivity? Perhaps.
Ok I don't love this campaign, but it's interesting and has made me think so I'll share. It's more 'Ads I love to think about' really. I'm not actually sure if I like it. I think it's clever... or is it just really annoying and arrogant?
You've probably seen the adverts, they're all over the place; in the tube, in the paper...
So the concept is 'The New Busy....' and then some slogan boasting about how they can do loads of stuff while still being ridiculously busy. And not stressing at all, and seeming to have an amazing cool life, while working 12 hours a day, and so on. Which clearly doesn't exist. Is it aspirational? I'm sure most of us wish we had a full diary while not having any kind of stress/pressure on us at all.
I'm not entirely sure why Hotmail are advertising, and why this applies to them. I've had a hotmail account since I was 13, and still do, and most people probably do too, but generally have a 'real address' as well. I don't give my hotmail out in a professional basis. Hotmail is not professional. It screams 13 year old girl. And probably always will. They can add all these 'useful' functions like calendars that synchronise with your cat and so forth; but I'm pretty sure 'The New Busy' has an iphone or a blackberry and does all their organising on there. Not on a free, web based, advertising plagued, email service. They just don't.
Plus, wasn't hotmail, MSN Hotmail, and then Windows Live Hotmail? What is it now? Just Hotmail again? It's like when they changed MSN messenger to Live Messenger. We kids still called it msn. You know, back in the day, before myspace or facebook. 'You going on msn after school?' 'Yeah! LOL!!!! :p (Y)' etc etc. Stop messing with the brand names. We don't care.
Some of the slogans are quite good. Some are just weird. Some are just a bit scary:
Crazy eyes? Shut up! It's not my fault I have to get up at 5.45am every day so am generally exhausted mon-fri! Jeez. Don't be mean. I work hard. I'm just not superhuman like this 'New Busy' seems to be. I'd love to be 'New Busy'! It sounds like have some kind of major career focus yet still do the student-stamp-on-the-hand-where-did-we-go-last-night thing:
I miss that! Waking up with stamps on your hands. And face. But I didn't zing out of bed, do some pilates, get the train to work and create something amazing before 11am. No. I texted my friends incoherent words, then found some kind of bacon-type substance. And I did not check my emails. Or schedule my day.
What I don't like about it, is it echoes this pressure in our modern lives to be awesome 2.0. It's crazy. And I'm not immune to it; I do play 'Fill the diary':
And I usually fail. I do 'see things others miss', generally. But that just comes from my general observation powers. And I do wish I had time to exercise, and time to illustrate as well as my full time graphic design job, and I wish I had time to go to cool bars every night, and travel whereever I want on a whim, and time to chill out and not feel guilty. But I don't. I try to do all these things - and I'm just tired.
So I hate The New Busy, with all their smugness and superhuman time keeping skills. I'm pretty sure they don't have hotmail to thank for it though. Actually, do they even exist?
This campaign just makes me feel bad. And guilty for not being The New Busy. And wishing that I was. And knowing that if I was, I would probably be awesome 2.0. But I'm not. I'm just tired.
The most interesting part of this campaign for me though is they managed to get an experiential element in there. OF COURSE. The New Busy is allll about the experiential. They practically demand it, from their skinny lattes to their brainstorming sessions:
'Blue Screen Lagoon' at various places, including Canary Wharf. Well of course, bankers are the The New Busy. Basically, you could go along and pretend you were doing crazy awesome things like tight-rope walking. 'All from the comfort of a blue (or even green) screen - oh, that's so New Busy.' What?? That doesn't even make sense!. I hate you, New Busy. It was happening yesterday (28th May) and guess what - I couldn't check it out. Why? Because I was busy. WORKING. Yeah, take that New Busy.
New Busy would probably tell me to shut up and get him a skinny latte.
'Frivolity Fields' - 'The New busy likes nothing more than extreme knitting, circus tricks, sideways guitar....' Ugh. It sounds sickeningly awesome and pointless. If I was New Busy I wouldn't have a 9-5.30 job. Nope. I'd be freelance and could saunter over and do some extreme knitting. See, New Busy just makes me feel bad.
If I was New Busy, I would've been one of the marketeers coming up with these crazy ideas. Extreme knitting sounds exactly the kind of thing my busy mouth would have said. But alas, new graduates really aren't New Busy. We're just trying to have some kind of career.
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