Paper #1
Hello Art World and Beyond!
Wendy Lam’s Nitrolicious.com
Kitsunenoir.com — Bobby S.
Hello Art World and Beyond!
Motorola crosses with the Academy Awards, H&M merges with Cavalli, Vans with Varvatos, Fossil watches with Gehry. Welcome to the world of “x”–the world of crossing effects in art and commerce. In this blog, I will be talking about how brand names are now collaborating with artists and/or other brands to be able to gain more revenue for their company. There is also the emergence of high-end and street fashion that has been popping up in daily conversations. This trend has becoming very popular with major companies and I’m here to inform and talk about the latest scoop. The purpose is to update as frequently as possible (as the trends may die) and to find what’s new and what everyone is talking about let alone contextualize how it might effect the political, social and most importantly, economic climate.
One major sneaker company Vans, has collaborations with artists like Iron Maiden and Converse with John Varvatos, etc. Others merge with electronics like the iPhone with AT&T. However, there are often times other brands don’t collaborate solely for revenue, but to gain a certain status as a company. LG with Prada and D&G with Motorola exemplifies how a necessary object becomes a superficial object. There will be much mentioning on clothing brands, architecture, graphic artists, photographers and many other art mediums that I consider art (music, film, etc.) Many of my sources will be coming from a wide array of sites:
Hypebeast
This site usually has updates about the urban and streetwear culture.
Kitsunenoir
One of my favorite sites about art, design, and culture with a more sophisticated splash.
Notcot
This site has more updates on electronic collaboration and higher end fashion.
Nitro:licious
Fashion for the female eye.
My blog will be discussing why a certain company chose a particular artist to represent them and how it may be effecting culture and/or other competitors. I hope you all enjoy the following posts and consider the moving effects of a companies’ emergence into the art world.
X’s over O’s
B.N.
Wendy Lam’s Nitrolicious.com
Don’t be fooled by the playful name, nitrolicious.com is a site filled with the most up-to-date and sophisticated articles about fashion, culture, art, and entertainment. The writer for this blog, Wendy Lam, has been noted in Paris Vogue and Monday Magazine in Hong Kong. During Fall, Spring, or Summer RTW (Ready-to-Wear) or Fashion week, her postings are explosive including the months of January when companies begin to announce their campaign launches. Like many art and culture enthusiasts, Wendy Lam, aka retrogurl, lives in New York and bases her post around the New York/Manhattan area. However, her posts are not limited to the New York scene, but include metropolitan cities also. Her best posts are usually her thorough explanations of Target and their emergence with other higher end brands. One example is her Converse x Target collaboration:
Iconic eyelet grommets and half-moon details adorn pieces in the collection, calling attention to the brand’s signature style and vintage vibe. Varsity jackets, knit jersey tanks and fitted Henleys cater to the easygoing tomboy while A-line tunics and lace-trim camisoles in flirty fabrics and subdued shades appeal to the style-conscious woman. For summer, mixing the shine of silk with matte jersey fabrics on everyday pieces creates exciting ways to dress up a weary wardrobe.
Her descriptions are well planned, using a wealth of vocabulary to explain details of the subject matter. She also puts the subjects in context of season, then proceeds to discuss fabric, design, etc. Even though my blog won’t be exclusively mentioning fashion, Lam supplies me with great up-to-date and detailed postings of her subjects that I would like to model my blog after. She also gives helpful links from her posts for me to be able to research more about the subject if I like. Also, she links to other related articles in her blog that might interest the viewer. In her most recent Stella McCartney for Adidas post, she adds multiple links at the bottom of the post that take the reader to her previous posts that mention Stella McCartney’s collaborations with clothing items for Adidas.
I believe she writes academically and professionally, considering the vocabulary she uses. Even though Lam may use blog slang like “more pics after the jump,” she still maintains a professional writing structure as if she were writing for a published magazine. She set sets a great example for bloggers to write professionally and accurately about their subject. Her great background knowledge and context of subjects makes her a credible person to reference.
Another example of her detailed post is:
In this reading she discusses the new Air Jordan XX3’s. This item has been an ongoing collaboration with Nike and Michael Jordan and has elevated it’s status from a regular shoe, to a collectible over the past decade. Lam discusses the special features of the shoe, it’s context, a detailed description and how Nike took part of this collaboration. This is very helpful because it provides me with a structure I would like to follow for my blog. Some people may not take certain fashion collaboration or other artists collaborations serious, but her writing style and etiquette proves that it should be taken seriously. This extensive posts also displays her great blog etiquette in research to gain more credibility.
One thing I am not particularly fond of is her layout of advertisements. This makes me wonder if she writes solely about her interests or through advertisements. The layout gets confusing because there are too many links that lead to too many different pages. I think it’s a great way to organize her material, but I feel it could also be condensed to become easier to browse. At first glance, it looks like an overdone Myspace page with too many vibrant colors and distractions.
Lam also structures her most important posts much like a journalist. I believe she receives press releases from public relation companies and works her posts through the information given to her. Her audience are much the same as people who read the magazines of Vogue and other fashion magazines. Visually, the site appeals mostly toward woman, and to my knowledge would most likely interest a crowd that lives in New York City. However, I find this helpful because I find New York as the capital of commerce that is more frequently updated with art and fashion than Los Angeles. Being a native of New York, she enriches her posts with a lot of urban culture influence like sneakers and street wear brands. Lam doesn’t limit herself to only high fashion posts, but shows her well-rounded character by covering haute couture and street wear products that wouldn’t otherwise be juxtaposed in other exclusively high-fashion blogs or street wear blogs.
Her style of writing and subjects is the direction I would like to model my blog. Her writing is sophisticate yet personal to the audience. In her posts, she writes objectively about the subject, then highlights her thoughts and comments about the subject she is discussing. The difference between her blog and mine is that I would like to cover more underground artists emerging with bigger brands. Lam covers mostly women’s street wear and high fashion, but I will be covering electronics, architecture and design news. My focus would be more in the art world and seeing the development in that realm.
Kitunenoir.com — Bobby S.
The term “kitsune” comes from the Japanese language referring to a fox that possess a wealth in knowledge and wisdom. As for “noir” it always possess an artistic connotation. Put these two together, the title “Kitsunenoir” personifies the character of this blog. Bobby S.’s blog contains a nice layout, simple and clean format, personalize yet professional writing, and no obnoxious advertisements. His posts are detailed and simple to follow for anyone who stumbles on his page. Bobby makes clear and concise posts about his subjects and explains his subjects thoroughly so anyone could understand– not just any art and culture enthusiast. Most of his posts pertain to visual design by well-known and unknown artists but are not limited to product design and entertainment.
Like Andrew Sullivan, Bobby S. has short entries in which you could sense his style and brevity. The short posts show his very casual personality and art enthusiasm but also keeping his writing professional. He also adds humor occasionally to display his interest in a certain product release or art piece. An example of this is through his USB-stylist Friends with You post.
In the beginning of the post, he introduces the collaboration of Mimobots with Friends With You! and then expresses how he thinks how this might not be useful to him. However, I like how he is sarcastic with his diction and phrases because it provides his blog with a personal voice,
“Sure they’re cute, but personally I don’t need to carry around a tiny action figure friend to keep my files on…But I’ve been in love with Friends With You forever it feels like, so I’d be much more inclined to buy one.”
He interrupts his sentences with “personally” and “feels like” to really personalize his posts.
In another post about China’s “Water Cube”, his layout of pictures are pleasing to the eye. He formats with a big picture on the top of the canvas, and fills the bottom with detailed pictures on the bottom. All his images are well touched and formatted. The layout is very clean and proportional, which makes it more pleasing to the eye. Like his other posts, he states the facts in the first paragraph. He introduces the who, what, when, why, and how of the post. He immediately follows the introductory paragraph with his opinion and own knowledge:
I think the soap bubble structure looks really great, but like article states, the bubbles need some scrubbing to get all of the construction grit and grime off it before it’ll shine…I just hope that they get the rest of the grounds in shape before August, because in the pictures above, it looks kind of gray and scary. Hopefully the next few months will give them all the time they need.
His sentences are short, dynamic, and to the point; something I’ve wanted to develop as a writer. Bobby S. also avoids using “I” too much in his blog and doesn’t start off many sentences with “I”. This shows his writing style to be creative and also personifying his character.
Since Bobby S. is from Los Angeles, he also incorporates his life into his posts. Many of them are about certain art or advertisements he comes across or stores he finds appealing to his blog. This keeps the blog at a personal level and creates a sense of identity for the art in L.A. An example of this is in his entry “Affinity Pursuit Bike”One thing admirable about this post is that he is very honest about his knowledge of bikes. Bobby doesn’t try too hard to act like he knows anything about bikes, but he inputs his knowledge about the design. This really depicts his complete persona: living in a L.A. and a great appreciator of good, clean design.
Continuing with the clean layout and structure, I also admire that he doesn’t link his entry to too many things. I’ve read blogs before in which the blogger links to almost everything they mention, and it starts to bother me after awhile because I feel like there is too much information. Like I said before, the layout of the site makes it easy to read and maneuver. His blogroll, which he labels “Daily Sites”, on the side has always been helpful and easy to use. It’s always convenient when bloggers put links that open a new window, rather than having the link pop up on the same window. The neutral colors really have a good ease on my eyes including the nice touch of purple on the blog headings and comments. Compared to nitrolicious blog, the colors are much more professional. One small thing I always found aesthetically pleasing is that he has a fixed background when you scroll through posts, this makes it easier to look through. Bobby S. also recently added tabs with “About, Contact, Advertise, RSS and search” that wasn’t there before. This makes it easy for any reader to find out what his blog is about before they get into the readings.
Ultimately, Kitsunenoir is a blog that contains knowledgeable content and aesthetically pleasing layouts that are very presentable to the art and culture enthusiast. His character and personalized post make the blog luminous amongst the many blogs I’ve cruised through.
Uncategorized |Leave a Reply
