Culture

Self fulfilling prophecies by Li Edelkoort

Self fulfilling prophecies:

 

When you have as much clout as Li Edelkoort, your prophecies become self fulfilling. However, it took her almost a lifetime to get there.

'It's the end of fashion as we know it'

Lidewij Edelkoort

Fashion is dead:

Trend forecaster Li Edelkoort has declared, describing the fashion industry as “a ridiculous and pathetic parody of what it has been”

Lidewij Edelkoort, one of the world’s most influential fashion forecasters, used her annual presentation at Design Indaba in Cape Town to fire a broadside at the industry. “This is the end of fashion as we know it.”

Edelkoort said her interest in fashion had now been replaced by an interest in clothes, since fashion has lost touch with what is going on in the world and what people want.

“Fashion is insular and is placing itself outside society, which is a very dangerous step,” she said in an interview.

Edelkoort listed a number of reasons for the crisis in fashion, starting with education, where young designers are taught to emulate the famous names. “We still educate our young people to become catwalk designers; unique individuals,” she said, “whereas this society is now about exchange and the new economy and working together in teams and groups.”


Barry Lyndon - Masterpiece by Stanley Kubrick

Barry Lyndon is a 1975 British-American period drama film written, produced, and directed by Stanley Kubrick, based on the 1844 novel The Luck of Barry Lyndon by William Makepeace Thackeray. It stars Ryan O’NealMarisa BerensonPatrick Magee, and Hardy Krüger. The film recounts the exploits of a fictional 18th-century Irish adventurer. Exteriors were shot on location in Ireland, England and Germany.

At the 1975 Academy Awards, the film won four Oscars in production categories. Although having had a modest commercial success and a mixed reception from critics on release, Barry Lyndon is today regarded as one of Kubrick’s finest films. In numerous polls, including those of Village Voice (1999), Sight & Sound (2002, 2012), Time (2005) and BBC, it has been named one of the greatest films ever made.[3][4][5][6]

Barry Lyndon Blu Ray
Blu-ray ~ Marisa Berenson, Steven Berkoff, George Hamilton, Hardy Kruger Chieftains
Link: http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01D6G4Y2E

'We were very fond of Sir Charles Lyndon'

King George III

Storyline:

In the Eighteenth Century, in a small village in Ireland, Redmond Barry is a young farm boy in love with his cousin Nora Brady. When Nora gets engaged to the British Captain John Quin, Barry challenges him to a duel of pistols. He wins and escapes to Dublin but is robbed on the road. Without an alternative, Barry joins the British Army to fight in the Seven Years War. He deserts and is forced to join the Prussian Army where he saves the life of his captain and becomes his protégé and spy of the Irish gambler Chevalier de Balibari. He helps Chevalier and becomes his associate until he decides to marry the wealthy Lady Lyndon. They move to England and Barry, in his obsession of nobility, dissipates her fortune and makes a dangerous and revengeful enemy.

Filming took 300 days during a 2 year span, beginning around May or June of 1973. The production suffered two major shutdowns and resulted in a then bloated budget of $11 million. It was finally released in December of 1975.

The film grossed $20,000,000 (USA) ( 1975) $31,500,000 (worldwide) ( 1975). And a lot of extra dollars since then.


How To Make It In America

How To Make It In America

Nice HBO fiction about a couple of guys and girls who try to make it in the fashion industry in New York, or rather the world. Good performance from multitalent Kid Cudy.

Best quote:

‘Everybody has ideas, nobody wants to put in the work’


Catering the super wealthy

Meet the people supplying and buying £195 chocolate bars, £80,000 bottles of wine and £1000-per-person bespoke dining experiences.

A fine example of extreme marketing for the super wealthy to cater their endless lust for things less wealthy people can’t have. And bloody entertaining too.

Series two of Channel 4’s The World’s Most Expensive Food meets William Hanson to see him at work teaching the art of afternoon tea.


Brand Sense - Martin Lindstrom

The definitive book on sensory branding, shows how companies appeal to consumers’ five senses to sell products.

Did you know that the gratifying smell that accompanies the purchase of a new automobile actually comes from a factory-installed aerosol can containing “new car” aroma? Or that Kellogg’s trademarked “crunch” is generated in sound laboratories? Or that the distinctive click of a just-opened jar of Nescafé freeze-dried coffee, as well as the aroma of the crystals, has been developed in factories over the past decades? Or that many adolescents recognize a pair of Abercrombie & Fitch jeans not by their look or cut but by their fragrance?

In perhaps the most creative and authoritative book on how our senses affect our everyday purchasing decisions, global branding guru Martin Lindstrom reveals how the world’s most successful companies and products integrate touch, taste, smell, sight, and sound with startling and sometimes even shocking results. In conjunction with renowned research institution Millward Brown, Lindstrom’s innovative worldwide study unveils how all of us are slaves to our senses—and how, after reading this book, we’ll never be able to see, hear, or touch anything from our running shoes to our own car doors the same way again.

An expert on consumer shopping behavior, Lindstrom has helped transform the face of global marketing with more than twenty years of hands-on experience. Firmly grounded in science, and disclosing the secrets of all our favorite brands, Brand Sense shows how we consumers are unwittingly seduced by touch, smell, sound, and more.


The Story of Fashion with Karl Lagerfeld

Feel like fashion? The Story of Fashion, with star designer Karl Lagerfeld, presents 100 years of fashion from the inventor of haute couture, Charles Worth, to the leading labels of the fashion industry of the 1980s. Fashion illustrations, photographs as well as unique footage reflect the Zeitgeist of the different periods, enchanting the viewer as the atmosphere of international catwalks is conjured.

On its excursions to the different fields of fashion, the trilogy moves through cultural history, pointing out trendsetters from art, music and film, and portrays a great number of influential fashion designers such as Poiret, Chanel, Schiaparelli, Quant and Dior. Along with Lagerfeld, the designers Giorgio Armani, Pierre Cardin, Donna Karan and the critic Carrie Donovan afford us fascinating insights into the sensual world of fashion.

Available from Arthaus Musik, Cat. No. 106034
http://www.naxos.com/catalogue/item.a...

http://www.amazon.com/Story-Fashion-K...

 


The Fine Art of Separating People from Their Money

The film is hosted by Hollywood star Dennis Hopper and is directed by Hermann Vaske. Shot in the Atlas Mountains of Morocco, Hopper delivers a powerful performance. Arty as you’ve never seen him before, he puts advertising into perspective of popular culture at the end of the 20th century. Spitting colour, laughing his head off, destroying books, Dennis Hopper sends Hermann Vaske on a mission to talk to the greatest ad men, directors and artists to find out about the crossover between various creative disciplines. In a visually dazzling, wickedly funny slam of creativity and media obsession, Hermann conducts unconventional kinds of interviews

Epilogue

Interesting to see that part 4, which is about using shock as a paradigm and which you should surely skip if you detest shocking imagery, hasn’t survived the test of time. Pulp Fiction by Quintin Tarantino, quoted in this part of the film when it was just released, has.


Steve Jobs - Stanford Speech

Steve Jobs Stanford Speech

In the eighties and nineties almost nobody in the industry gave a shit about what Apple was doing. It was called elitist and irrelevant. Apple first had to become a multi billion dollar company to be taken seriously. Steve Jobs talks about why he did all the effort trying to achieve this. Not because of the money, which is nice and gives you freedom. Spreading solid ideas, possibly beliefs, aesthetics and death are far bigger motivation.


Is it me? Mark Mieras

Brain research touches on our entire lives. It sheds light on phenomena such as love, empathy, ambition, consciousness, forgetfulness, friendship, addiction, appetite, enjoyment and happiness. On stages of life as childhood, puberty and old age. Ben ik dat? / Is it me? does all this. With this new edition Mark Mieras watches brain research closely. The book is updated with the most recent research and expanded with seven new chapters on: stress, creativity, meditation, sport, intuition, brain stimulation and subliminal influence. A book for anyone with brains.

(Dutch only)

On Creativity:

Get creative!
Creativity is the art of letting go. Creative minds dimm their control centers and keep their attention off-focus. Just a matter of turning the right buttons.

Doe eens creatief!
Creativiteit is de kunst van het loslaten. Creatieve geesten dimmen hun controlecentra en houden hun aandacht off-focus. Gewoon een kwestie van aan de juiste knoppen draaien.


Duolingo - Free language education

Duolingo (/ˌdˈlɪŋɡ/ doo-oh-ling-goh or /ˌdjuːˈlɪŋɡ/ dyoo-oh-ling-goh) is a free language-learning platform that includes a language-learning website and app, as well as a digital language proficiency assessment exam. Duolingo offers all its language courses free of charge. As of April 2016, the language-learning website and app offer 59 different language courses across 23 languages; with 23 additional courses in development. The app is available on iOS, Android and Windows 8 and 10 platforms with about 120 million registered users across the world.

 

Business model

Core services of the platform are available for free. Duolingo uses only very limited advertising in its android/iOS app. There are no subscription fees for the tutorials. However, there were instances when the platform has been used for paid translation purposes.[23] In July 2014, Duolingo started a language certification service, Test Center, as a new business model. In June 2015, a Duolingo spokesperson confirmed that the company has been backing away from the translation business and in the future will instead focus on language certification and other (not yet announced) business opportunities.