Mogwai’s burning

Mogwai: Burning, a new concert film shot in New York by Vincent Moon and Nathanael Le Scouarnec premiered at London’s Scala tonight, accompanied by Mogwai & Fuck Buttons DJs and a live set from Glasgow’s Remember Remember.

All black & white and atmospheric all over, Burning is more concert than film, although perhaps that was just the venue. The crowd were respectful throughout, all seated on the dancefloor to watch the film on two giant screens - with plenty of slow-motion nodding on the final few tracks. (Maybe that’s moshing for Mogwai movie fans?)

Parisian filmmaker Moon is the guy behind the French music blog Blogotheque (which looks really cool, if only I could read French) and REM’s Supernaturalsupersious series of short clips, which you can watch for free here.

His collaborator, Le Scouarnec, is a director/editor who also works for Blogotheque and filmed the above track, ‘Fear Satan’ in Reims. You can see more of his work at Vimeo.

Burning is due for wider release in August 2010. In the meantime, check the trailer at the top, watch the footage from France and enjoy these two pictures of Mogwai, my ever-cold cat who’s no doubt listening to post-rock in the sky. 

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.

Remember when kim gordon was cool?

I do. She’s in Sonic Youth. She’s married to Thurston Moore. She started the X-Girl fashion label, for God’s sake. And she co-directed the Breeders’ Cannonball video, below, with Spike Jonze.

Now she’s focussing on her art again, with a new exhibition at New York’s John McWhinnie at Glenn Horowitz Bookseller & Art Gallery. The recent opening brought in all kinds of New York cool – think Chloë Sevigny, Terry Richardson, that girl from Gang Gang Dance, and somehow, even James Frey* got an invite.

Gordon’s Noise Paintings feature the names of noise and no-wave bands, with the gallery exalting:

Loosely painted words have dripping edges and bleeding contours that threaten to disrupt or annihilate the sense within. There is the feel of un-stylised urban graffiti, of the anonymous, spontaneous scrawls encountered in the profane world.

Is this the best she could do? Lord knows the gallery did their best to find some meaning in the whole thing, but two often incongruous words in dripping paint? It seems she’s been working on the series for a while, with similar themes evident in a Paris exhibition curated by Rodarte in Oct 09:

I do like Pussy Galore. Still…the actual quality is somewhat lacking - every letter seems forced, the drips contrived. But what do I know? I guess I just expect more from ONE OF THE FOUNDING MEMBERS OF SONIC YOUTH.

See Gordon’s earlier work with Spike Jonze:

*James Frey. You know, the guy who wrote a memoir, that wasn’t really a memoir, so people got upset and the publishers offered a refund, but only if they had their original receipt + page 163 of the book + a sworn statement that they felt deceived + a pledge of allegiance to the Church of Oprah, who confronted him on the whole flimflam.

And now that his book’s touted as a ‘semi-fictional memoir’, Frey’s getting invited to Kim Gordon exhibition openings and laughing all the way to the bank.

Read more on Chloë Sevigny on through being cool.

Summer is a verb, says new preppy bible

Summer - verb (used with object)
To spend or pass the summer. They summered in Southampton.

So says Alice Richardson, author of Summer is a Verb blog. She’s looking forward to True Prep, the long-awaited sequel (due out in September) to The Official Preppy Handbook, which she describes as ‘like a Bible to us’ in a recent New York Times article.

The NYT says Muffy & Biff (which I assume are akin to Tarquin and Beatrice in the UK?) can rejoice in a revised version of the Preppy Handbook. The original was released in 1980  (‘when it was fun to hate the rich’) and quickly became a cult favourite both with preppy kids – and those who wanted to be them.

This new version ‘dispenses a dollop of  upper-class frugality’ for the modern ‘prepster’ and even includes advice on rehab and new technology, as well as specific sections on the gay and black preppy scenes. (How inclusive of them!).

As for the new guide’s target audience, Ms Richardson (who at 44 is something of an OGP) is listed alongside ex-sorority girl Helen ‘Hopsy’ Goblirsch (from Kappa Prep, with its delightful ‘WASP Wednesday’ series). They’re just two of the many preppy bloggers who chronicle their lives in pink and green. (Apparently preppy folk like these two colours. As did my cousin when she 11. I thought it was a hideous colour combination and wondered why she would ever make an email address declaring her love for the two. Perhaps she was just a ‘prepster’ in the making?)

True Prep is in now in production thanks to Chip Kidd, ‘one of the industry’s best-known book designers’*. Kidd is working with one of the original writers, Lisa Birnbach, whilst the guy who came up with the entire concept, Jonathon Roberts, has refused to be involved. He explains:

The only reason you do something again is if maybe you’re going to do it better — like Godfather II.

But Preppy Handbook? I mean, come on. The subversive idea behind it was if you can reveal all of the secret systems and totems by which a portion of society keeps its elite status, you kind of pull the rug out from under them.

Respect. Roberts deserves a medal for this splendid display of integrity in the face of a book deal.

For similar satire of the upper classes in the UK, please refer to 1982’s Official Sloane Rangers Handbook. Author Peter York was asked in 2007 to update his guide to the traditional values of the privileged, although no such book has been released.

Yet. 

In the meantime, please see Orlando’s exploits in the jungles of Burma, below.  Not a preppy bible, as such, but rather an acute jab at the privileged youngsters who (literally) travel far and wide on their gap year. Then chunder everywhere.

*Which industry is that, NYT? The preppy-guidebook-loving book designer industry?

**OGP c.f. OGT

Read more about the photo guide to preppy style.

Japanese photographer unwittingly creates summer festival style bible

Can you stay up to see the dawn in the colours of Bennetton?

Little did Japanese photographer Teruyoshi Hayashida know his 1965 collection of Ivy League style would one day be coveted by Vampire Weekend fans the world over. His book, Take Ivy,  is now being re-released at a significant saving – original copies can garner almost a grand on eBay. Read more at powerHouse books, or enjoy the lovely photo montage from Esquire UK while considering just how far we’ve come in 45 years.