New book: Fashion Blogs.

Fashion is communication. Fashion needs to be communicated. Nowadays everyone is able to do this: the Internet is full with fashion bloggers all over the world.

Kirstin Hanssen and Felicia Nitzsch thought it would be time to bundle these bloggers in a book. They started a research by interviewing fashion bloggers all over the world. They wanted questions to be answered like: who are the persons behind the blogs? What moves fashion bloggers to spend so much time on running a web log? Who or what are their news resources?

The main content of the book is divided into five categories: fashion journalism, street style photography, party photography, personal style blogs and men's style. And a separate index holds more than five hundred fashion blogs URL's. Featured bloggers are Style Bubble, A Shaded View On Fashion, Glamcanyon, Abdul Lagerfield, Moderniteter and many more.

The new book is showing this interesting phenomenon, blogging, that is conquering the world by storm. And at the same time, it's a visual spectacle which presents today's fashion in all its aspects.

Kirstin Hanssen, Felicia Nitzsche - Fashion Blogs: From musings on personal taste to style reports around the globe (d'Jonge Hond), 176 pages, price 22,50 euro

Written for BLEND.

Bande à part.

In the seventies the most important subcultural developments of music in New York started: disco, punk, graffiti and the early forms of hip hop. The book Bande à part (New York Underground 60's 70's 80's) shows the movers and shakers of the Big Apples cultural life during the Cold War, portrayed by obsessive and local amateurs; the bloggers of those years.

As anthropologists they caught the artistic bohemian of the cultural capital of the world. In the book, you see Al Pacino, Patti Smith, William Burroughs, Debbie Harry, Grace Jones, Andy Warhol, the New York Dolls and many more - usually not posing, but shot in their natural habitat, the vaults of Manhattan. In Bande à part you also find a gathering of musicians from outside of New York like Iggy Pop, Alex Chilton of The Cramps, all outsiders of the American dream. Pleasant about this collection is the absent of glamour: a timeperiod that'll never come back.

Glenn O'Brien - Bande à part: New York Underground 60's 70's 80's (Gingko Press) hardcover, 206 pages, prise 14,99 euro.

Written for BLEND.

Keri Smith.

De boeken van illustrator Keri Smith zijn van een hele andere categorie. Ben jij een type die je spulletje altijd netjes bewaard? Nooit vlekken , scheuren, vouwen of kreukels achterlaat in een boek? Dit is onmogelijk bij het boek Wreck This Journal van Keri Smith. Doel van het boek is om het systematisch helemaal te slopen door het op te vullen en te experimenteren. Opdrachten die er bijvoorbeeld instaan: make a mess, destroy, play with dirt, take this book in the shower with you en zo verder.

Met haar nieuwste boek, This Is Not A Book, gaat ze nog een stapje verder. This Is Not A Book staat vol met allerlei opdrachten om zijn titel waar te maken, jij bent degene die ervoor moet zorgen dat jouw boek eigenlijk helemaal niet meer is wat hij lijkt te zijn. Dus genoeg ruimte om je fantasie op los te laten op de ook nog eens vermakelijk vormgegeven pagina’s met bijpassende illustraties. Zeker fijn om verveelde treinritten en saaie zondagmiddagen mee door te komen.

www.kerismith.com

geschreven voor de Blend

Wreck this journal.

This is one of my favorite books.

In this book good does not exist. The goal is to fill it up, to shift your perception of the blank page and the journal itself into a place for experimentation. Into a place where you just get stuff out onto the page. A place to start working against your better judgment. To do those things you were taught to never do (make a mess, destroy, fold down pages, write in books, play with dirt). This book IS the place.

Each page of Wreck This Journal is filled with prompts telling you how to systematically ‘destroy’ the entire book.

www.kerismith.com

Some of the pages of my own journal: