Revisiting the Retail Experience: BBlessing

Absinthe, portraiture, and where a hipster-elitist can finally feel at home.

We’ve always been fascinated by shopping. How we use “things” in order to define ourselves, relate to others, and make sense of the world. And since consumption is such a major component of our capitalist ego, it’s only fitting that the retail experience itself be treated with the kind of attention to detail that its cultural status warrants.

That’s why we applaud inspired efforts to rethink and revolutionize the realm of retail. Case in point: BBlessing — a boutique-slash-gallery-slash-hangout in New York, dedicated to men’s fashion and all the lifestyle essentials that go along with the broader concept of personal style.

BBlessing is a boutique dedicated to redefining the retail experience as it pertains to modern life. BBlessing features a unique, tightly edited selection of bleeding edge men’s fashion, art, music, literature and film, all in a constantly evolving environment.

The retail interior, designed by artist Daniel Jackson, was inspired by a turn-of-the-century Parisian absinthe bar, which migrated to the Pacific Northwest via the Lower East Side.

Besides the selection of both up-and-coming and established menswear designers from New York, Japan and Europe, and the signature BBlessing collection, BBlessing offers a meticulously curated selection of art, film, literature and (really, really good) music, making for an experience the cultural antithesis of a trip to JC Penny.

Explore BBlessing and all its hidden gems.

We, for one, truly enjoyed photographer Danielle Levitt‘s wonderful portraiture in the current art selection.

Design, Life, Digital: Best of DLD 2009

Predictability, simplicity, and why Munich is the epicenter of digital life and design.

This year’s DLD Conference just wrapped up in Munich last week, bestowing the wisdom of various Design, Life & Digital visionaries upon us mere mortals. And while some of the 20-plus talks were nauseatingly predictable (Mark Zuckerberg, we’re looking at you), we have a first-hand recommendation as to the most watch-worthy ones, thanks to a good friend who live-updated us straight from Munich.

First there’s the Telling Stories panel, dissecting the art of storytelling across a number of vehicles, from blogging to film to design. The panel featured New York Magazine icon Julia Allison, Seesmic founder Loic Le Meur, Argentinian architect-turned-filmmaker Fernando Sulichin, and industrial design’s youngest rockstar, Ora-Ïto.

Then there was the Fashion & Business discussion, featuring designer duo Marc Ecko and Xavier Court, and FOCUS Magazine correspondent Susann Remke.

But perhaps most fascinating was the discussion on Simplicity — an intense dissection of beauty and art through the prism of simplicity and understatement. The panel — comprised of social media expert Adam Bly, Mercedez-Bens Design division chief Gorden Wagener, Kodak CMO Jeffrey Hayzlett and iconic Italian architect Carlo Ratti — looked at the notion of simplicity from a variety of angles, from car design to content-sharing platforms to architecture, exposing some unsuspected universals that translate uniformly across a multitude of different disciplines.

See all the talks and panels on the DLD09 website and be your own judge.

Meanwhile, the live-streaming of TED 2009 begins in just a little while. Follow us on Twitter for exclusive real-time updates on the talks today through Saturday.

Thanks, Michal

Child Art for Grown-Ups

What Superman, Tim Burton and 1,000 South Korean Children have in common.

There’s a reason why creative types often envy the imagination of a child, with its boundless freedom and its anything-is-possible vision. Some artists take that envy and turn it into creative fuel, using the whimsical world of children’s imagination as inspiration. Here are our top picks for child-centric art.

THE MONSTER ENGINE

Oh, those days when a piece of a paper and a pen or…imagine that…a crayon was all we needed to create fascinating stories and magical characters that could rival some of Hollywood’s most blockbustery output.

In The Monster Engine, NJ-based artist Dave DeVries takes those whimsical doodles and drawlings, and recreates them “realistically” with a grown-up artist’s eye.

The best part is that he only adds graphical sophistication and 3D realism to the images, without altering the child-artist’s creative vision.

This being said, some of the renditions interpret elements of the child’s drawings in peculiar ways, adding a new creative layer to the artwork. Like the fish flying out of this witch’s hand, a far stretch from the original doodle, which makes the image all the more interesting.

The Monster Engine is also available as a 48-page coffeetable book, covering the backstory of the 7-year project and featuring interviews with the children who inspired Dave’s artwork.

via shape+color

WONDERLAND

Korean artist Yeondoo Jung explores a different translation of children’s art. In his photoseries Wonderland, which you may recall from our Re:Perception issue, he takes those simple shapes and colors, and transforms them into high-impact, surrealist fashion photography.

The project is based on a the drawings of 5-to-7-year-old South Korean children, reconceived with live models, dramatic costumes and flamboyant colors.

Besides the stunning art direction, we’re somehow drawn to that eerie grownup-child wold the images create, a place where wonder and magic are only limited by how we choose to perceive our subjective reality.

TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED

The creative link between the world of children and high fashion emerges once again in the December issue of Vogue UK’s with the Tales of the Unexpected editorial: a tribute to Roald Dahl’s, one of the most celebrated children’s book authors of the 20th century.

Starring the infamous Tim Burton and a slew of celebrity actors and musicians, the editorial recreates scenes and characters from some of Dahl’s most famous stories.

Shot by legendary fashion photographer Tim Walker, the spread brilliantly captures the very escapism that only high fashion can offer — an aspirational costume that outfits us for our grand dramatic performance in a staged world more beautiful and imaginative than our mundane reality.

via wickedhalo