SATC 2… my eyes, my eyes!

There’s many great reviews of the misguided Sex and the City sequel out there (incl. here), so I’ll keep mine brief…

Carrie:

• Is but a shell of the neurotic and slightly kooky gal she once was. She’s now obsessed with redecorating her fancy yet soulless apartment, even chastising her husband (who must’ve paid for the whole place) when he puts his feet up on the couch. But worst of all,
• She’s kind of a bitch.

Charlotte:

• Makes cupcakes in vintage Valentino.
• Struggles with said cupcakes and her two young children until – phew! – the hired help arrives, all bra-less and badly accented.

Miranda:

• Generally looks pretty smokin’ (despite the bowl-cut above).
• Although… Cynthia Nixon seems to have forgotten how to act. Unless of course, Miranda’s forced whoops of glee in Abu Dhabi suggest more to her character than we ever get to see.

Samantha:

• Has lost all sense of class.
• Endures a much-publicised hot flush in a crowded souk that ends with yelling and the throwing of condoms. Even more insulting, though, is witnessing her sat at her desk, knickers around her calves as she applies some kind of menopausal potion to her pussy. (Eww!)

The rest:

• Liza does Beyonce.
• Penelope Cruz does a sexy impression of a banker.
• Mr Big has been going hard on the Fake’n’Bake, and…
• Carrie gets a big fat black diamond. You can buy it here for $10,000.

Oh yes, and there’s cringe-inducing ‘I Am Woman’ karaoke singalong to boot.

Speaking of boots, I still can’t believe I missed the Japan vs England friendly for this*.

80s photo from OOooOOh I want all of those.

*Ok it wasn’t that bad – SATC2 fans bring great snacks. Cheers, ladies.

Hatoyama’s shirt: how did it ever come to this?

Japanprobe today reported Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama’s hideous plaid shirt of many colours is now on sale for US$500. Presenting…

It appears Shanghai-based shirtsmyway.com has latched on to the disastrous piece of work, labelling PM Hatoyama a ‘fashion hero’ for ‘daring to be different’.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I hear you. Props to him for daring to wear something so hideous at a televised event. But in offering a limited edition run of these ‘hatoyama shirts’, the bespoke shirt company is effectively inflicting another 50 of these shirts onto the world.

And that can’t be good.

Read more about PM Hatoyama’s crazy career here.

Japan’s PM yukio hatoyama… melting fast in the summer heat?

If you were the prime minister of a small nation with the world’s second largest GDP,  which, my friends, would be worse?

• A 67% disapproval rating, resulting in you being written off as a ‘lame duck premier’ by the Financial Times? 
• Having a character so weak your predecessor, Yasuhiro Nakasone, describes it as ‘sweet like soft ice cream that melts fast in the summer heat’? (I like ice cream, but I don’t think that’s a compliment. Especially for a guy who comes from a powerful Japanese dynasty not unlike the Kennedys).
  
• Being called ‘despicable and craven’ by the LA Times after displaying virtually no backbone when it comes to upholding campaign promises. In this case, Hatoyama promised to ask the US military to remove their base from Okinawa… only to later bow to Okinawan locals and ask them to pretty much just suck it up. Doesn’t he know they live longer than anyone else in the world? These folks have been sucking it up for years.
  

• Being married to an ex-actress?
• Ok, a crazy ex-actress.  When Miyuki Hatoyama’s not enjoying kimchi in Korea, she often ‘eats the sun for energy’.  She also believes she met Tom Cruise in an a former life.  Tom Cruise. When he was Japanese. And she went to Venus in a UFO. (This woman takes cuckoo to a whole new level. Not even a depraved manga artist could write this stuff).
• Inadvertently supporting the thriving pachinko parlour industry through a misguided baby bonus scheme.  Analysts from Daiwa believe families receiving Hatoyama’s Y13,000 (£96) monthly baby bonus in cash — instead of vouchers — to help with childcare costs are more likely to spend it on gambling, visiting theme parks or buying video games. 
• Having possibly the worst taste in fashion, ever. Seriously, EVER.

I say it’s all bad, and Japan deserves better. Junichiro Koizumi’s time in office was flawed, but at least the dude had style* (and celebrity friends).

Hatoyama masks from h yamamoto, kimchi pic from Korea.net, fashion shots from Huffington Post, Koizumi shots from AP & Google.

*I blame my mother and our 2009 pilgrimage to Graceland for my weakness toward fellow Elvis fans. Koizumi-san shares his birthday with the King, and in 2001 released a charity CD of hand-picked Elvis hits. He was but a poor prime minister with great taste in rock’n’roll.

Happy earth day

I’ve written before about the Environmental Justice Foundation, a small UK charity who campaign for victims of environmental abuse/climate change and fight pirate fishermen from robbing our oceans of marine life. They also campaign for sustainable/organic cotton, and are currently selling designer t-shirts to help fund their work around the world. A little refresher, for Earth Day 2010…

Through EJF’s efforts fighting child labour and unsustainable practices in the cotton fields, major retailers including Marks & Spencer, Tesco and Wal-Mart have all agreed to boycott cotton from Uzbekistan.

To support their campaigns, EJF has released a host of organic cotton t-shirts featuring prints from UK & international designers such as Giles Deacon, Christian Lacroix, Luella, Allegra Hicks, Alice Temperley and many more. The £30 shirts - for men and women - can be found at the Carnaby St pop-up shop, or online, with all proceeds going directly to the Foundation.

There’s also some wicked prints by Let Them Eat Cake for the little ‘uns available at ASOS:

Style, substance and sustainable cotton - not bad for thirty quid. Remember people, the power is yours!

Read more on the Environmental Justice Foundation or the Carnaby St popup shop.

Uniqlo hits nyc + china with 88 dancing girls

Japanese clothing retailer, UNIQLO (famed for its cut-price basics and collaborations with upcoming designers) is opening two new superstores in an apparent bid to take over the casual-wear markets of China and the USA.

In preparation for the first Chinese store opening on May 15, UNIQLO has unveiled From Shanghai to the World, a slick new website featuring eighty-eight girls dancing* in eight-eight colours. (I think. I got a little mesmerised by all the flashing colours, kooky beats and general awesomeness that is eight-eight graceful Chinese girls dancing in otherwise-boring polo shirts… So I guess their concept worked). Clicking on a girl opens a short video/audition process which lists her name, age and height. It also allows the girl to ramble on about why she chose that particular colour, such as 23-year-old, 1.73-metre-tall Liu Xiaoqing who says:

I like blue. I like the ocean. So I decided on this blue outfit today,

Before staring a short classical ballet number.

Gripping stuff, and if my understanding of the website is correct, UNIQLO is also planning to release a film version of 88 Colours to coincide with the new store opening.

According to Fast Retailing, the 39,000-square-foot store will be spread over three levels, with ‘flying mannequins moving from top to bottom, giving customers a fresh and unexpected surprise’.

If that’s not interesting enough, there will also be an exclusive series of eight collector’s t-shirts created by Shanghai designers, as part of the store’s UT line.

And just when I was getting exciting about Shanghai, CNN went and announced UNIQLO’s opening their largest store in the world on New York’s 5th Avenue. That’s right, in 2011 the Land of the Supersize is going to be hit with 90,000 square feet of polo shirts, cheap denim, t-shirt vending machines, cashmere and Jil Sander collaborations.

In the meantime, there’s always Shanghai.

<UNIQLO logos from Keisuke Omi, vending machine from Sekimura, flags from Sakura Chihaya>

*Apparently dancing girls in polo shirts are a common theme at UNIQLO. Once you’ve had your fill in Shanghai, there’s plenty more at the Japanese site. If the company didn’t do so much wonderful work with the UNHCR, I might be a little concerned.

Japanese fashion showcase at the barbican

But not for six months.

The wonderful Barbican gallery is now preparing Future Beauty: Japanese Fashion, 1981 - 2011 with works by Issey Miyake (above), Rei Kawakubo, Yohji Yamamoto and many more, to open in October 2010.

Future Beauty will be the first European exhibition of Japanese avant-garde style, and should effectively dispel any myths that Japanese fashion is limited to Lolita goths, school-girl chic, hip-hop wannabes or Japlish prints with over-the-top punk sensibilities.

(Rock from Punks? Ok, maybe those two on the left are bad examples as they manage to bridge the gap from overly adorable to too-cool-for-freakin-school).

Back to the Barbican, though… Japanese avant-garde fashion gained notoriety in the 1980s with designers like Rei Kawakubo for Comme des Garcons (CdG) deconstructing how women actually wear clothes.

Kawakubo had a Henry Ford-like feeling toward colour in her early collections,  with a unique ‘three shades of black’ palette..  At the same time, her designs used strange new shapes, such as garments with three sleeves. (So where one woman might put her arm, another might use for her head, thus wearing the piece in a totally different way).

Not everyone was impressed with all the dull colours, holes and frayed edges, and CdG’s early collection was dubbed ‘post atomic’ (above) or even ‘Hiroshima chic’.*

Along with Kawakubo and her protégé, Jun Takahashi (above), Japanese avant-garde designers such as Issey Miyake and Yohji Yamamoto continually challenge our notions of beauty and femininity, while presenting fashion as art (or is it the other way around?).

Future Beauty will also feature works from CDG luminaries Tao Kurihara and Fumito Ganryu (creator of the amazing trucker caps above), as well as Matohu (who fuse a traditional aesthetic with modern lines), Akira Naka and Mintdesigns, below.

The exhibition will be curated by Japanese fashion historian/director of the Kyoto Costume Institute, Akiko Fukai, who’s written on all things fashion - from early kimonos to  the significance of Sonia Rykiel. She’s planning a comprehensive twenty-year retrospective on avant-garde Japanese fashion, right through to 2011.

And, just when things couldn’t get any cooler, award-winning architect Sou Fujimoto (who’s also an Issey Miyake fan) has been asked to design the exhibition space. Design boom has an interesting interview with Fujimoto where he described his desire to work on a gallery space, along with his love of ‘formless forms’ :

I like to create an in-between-space, therefore my
works are very basic. I’ve designed architecture that is
very simple but looks complex due to its geometric form.

This whole thing sounds awesome, here’s hoping I can remember to attend six months’ from now.

Future Beauty: Japanese Fashion 1981 - 2011 
15 October 2010 – 6 February 2011 
Barbican Art Gallery, London UK

Photo credits: Pleats please/Issey Miyake from Syrup New York, schoolgirl from Colodio, Jun Takahashi from Ribbon Controller, Ganryu CDG trucker caps from Love the Cool, Sou Fujimoto from here on Flickr and any more, please let me know.

*Full marks for creative linguistic criticism!