The Artifacts

The Risk-Averse Style Industry

Wed, 30 May 2012 22:50:53 -0500

I recently read a Vanity Fair article about how style hasn’t changed much since the 1980s. The writer suggested two reasons for this industry’s lack of change:

1. People are too shocked by changes in other aspect of their lives:

“I think, it’s an unconscious collective reaction to all the profound nonstop newness we’re experiencing on the tech and geopolitical and economic fronts. People have a limited capacity to embrace flux and strangeness and dissatisfaction, and right now we’re maxed out.”

2. Big business is risk averse, and the style industry is increasingly run by big business: “Like any lucrative capitalist sector, our massively scaled-up new style industry naturally seeks stability and predictability. Rapid and radical shifts in taste make it more expensive to do business and can even threaten the existence of an enterprise.”

Fast forward to today, and I’m recalling a gift certificate to Barney’s that’s in my possession. But instead of shopping, I am on the NY Times site, digressing, and I read that Amanda Brooks, the former Fashion Director of Barney’s, is going to a farm in England for a year. Alright, click.

Interestingly, there’s an explanation about why Barney’s is close to bankruptcy:

“These last few years have been the golden age of luxury,” said Howard Davidowitz, a retail consultant. “During this golden age, Barneys has been a train wreck. It’s sort of undeniable. It’s almost in bankruptcy. Why is that?”

His theory: “From a merchandising point of view, they focused themselves out of business. If you have a big store, you have to have a wide range of customers. Otherwise, you won’t do enough business. They were way further out on the fashion curve, and that means much more risk.”

It’s likely just part of the Barney’s story. One way to fight it? Someone (i.e. an entrepreneur) needs to start a business that removes the barriers Etsy designers and other DIY types face when it comes time to effectively scale their best products. Scalability services could include marketing, manufacturing the design, and so many other activities that are feasible for experts but impossible for the uninitiated. If it were set in a way that was favorable to all parties, that could be a new engine for design spontaneity.

In the meantime, I’ll go use my gift certificate. Before it’s too late.

Most entertaining NYC apartment listing so far

Mon, 28 May 2012 12:21:10 -0500

Click to enlarge and to close.

SASSY!! Wicked APT: fun, cool of SOHO, exhilaration & Rush of GREENWICH VILLA

RAZZLE DAZZLE. Best part of SoHo with a smidge of Greenwich Village. The artsy chic, the vibrant pulse! Drop-dead location with all the art, fashion and nightlife scene you can handle.Quiet building, Stylish full of character street, adorable, fully equipped apartment, all the appliances.WHO?S YOUR DADDY! Bargains all over Manhattan!I’M IN YOUR CORNER. Just give the word, and I?ll start working some magic to hand-tailor your dream home around your specified requirements.My long arms reach the farthest, darkest corners of Manhattan, no landlord is safe. Think big, aim high. You think an apartment, I think a mansion. From the mundane to the sublime, from the comfy to the monumental. No studio too artsy, no condo too neighborly, no penthouse too flashy. Call today and I will make some time to give you some room.

"What I “discovered” was that happiness is not something that happens. It is not the result of good..."

Mon, 21 May 2012 21:34:20 -0500

“What I “discovered” was that happiness is not something that happens. It is not the result of good fortune or random chance. It is not something that money can buy or power command. It does not depend on outside events, but, rather, on how we interpret them. Happiness, in fact, is a condition that must be prepared for, cultivated, and defended privately by each person. People who learn to control inner experience will be able to determine the quality of their lives, which is as close as any of us can come to being happy.”

- Flow, by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

"China babble has reigned among exactly the kinds of people who used to marvel at Hitler’s autobahns,..."

Sun, 13 May 2012 19:26:23 -0500

“China babble has reigned among exactly the kinds of people who used to marvel at Hitler’s autobahns, Stalin’s steel mills, and Mussolini’s ability to make the trains run on time.”

- Chinese Economy “Unexpectedly” Slows, @ American Prospect

"…she had known happiness, exquisite happiness, intense happiness, and it silvered the rough waves a..."

Sun, 29 Apr 2012 19:12:55 -0500

“…she had known happiness, exquisite happiness, intense happiness, and it silvered the rough waves a little more brightly, as daylight faded, and the blue went out of the sea and it rolled in waves of pure lemon which curved and swelled and broke upon the beach and the ecstasy burst in her eyes and waves of pure delight raced over the floor of her mind and she felt, It is enough! It is enough!”

- from TO THE LIGHTHOUSE by Virginia Woolf (via readandbreathe)

Four photos for Yom HaShoah

Wed, 18 Apr 2012 18:18:38 -0500

I’m taking a break from packing my Austin life into some suitcases, and my Facebook newsfeed reminded me of Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day).

This year I have time, so I am sharing four very personal family photos that tell one story of loss and rebuilding out of millions.

First: My grandmother Traute and her first husband, Joseph Seckbach, in Frankfurt around 1940/1. Joseph did not survive and left no descendants.

My grandparents, aunt and father had a special relationship with Joseph’s mother, who spent the entire Holocaust in Theresienstadt and lived into the late 1960s. When Joseph’s mother was too elderly to attend my father’s bar mitzvah, my grandmother brought a (very clunky) camcorder to her nursing home in New Jersey and showed her the film. (We still have that video. Old wedding videos not nearly as absurd / funny.)

Second: My great-grandmother Martha Katzenstein, mother of Traute, not too long before deportation. The contrast between this photo and several from her younger years reveal the toll that the progression of indignities in the 1930s took on her. She was taken away and murdered three months after she and my grandmother were sent to camps in Estonia. My grandmother said in her old age that this was the one death that she never managed to get over.

Third, my grandparents’ wedding in New York, 1949. Traute and Kurt Saul. Those near them are aunts, uncles or family friends, as none of their parents were alive:

Fourth and finally: My grandparents with my Aunt Marion and father George, mid-1950s, in Washington Heights:

It’s a single example of millions in a particular genre. I’m sharing because I believe that remembering ordinary lives that were cut down or miraculously continued prevents Yom HaShoah events from feeling hackneyed, as they are prone to even in the most well-meaning of hands.

Three weeks a year (Taken with Instagram at Thornwood, NY)

Sat, 14 Apr 2012 11:35:09 -0500

Three weeks a year (Taken with Instagram at Thornwood, NY)

Betty's Gone

Mon, 02 Apr 2012 21:29:00 -0500

Silly me for writing about a TV show, but I thought I’d share my thoughts with the larger Tumblr community after seeing last night’s episode of Mad Men. Ezra Klein lists a few reasons why he thinks Betty is terminally ill, so I thought I’d add to those:

1. Her expression, with eyes darting back and forth as she tells Henry it is a false alarm screams “lying”, besides not calling Don.

2. She eats Sally’s sundae afterward with such abandon that it almost seems like a gesture of fatalism. Who would care, after receiving such news?

3. It would be so retro and pre-liberation to keep one’s cancer a secret. Unlike the rest of the cast, she might still take that approach.

I guess we’ll find out in the next few weeks.

In the meantime, I’m coming to New York!

littleaugury: Jean-Gabriel Domergue’s A l’Ombre d’une Jeune...

Thu, 29 Mar 2012 10:20:03 -0500

littleaugury:

Jean-Gabriel Domergue’s A l’Ombre d’une Jeune Fille en Fleur 1922

Twitter users, check out @LustreFound

Tue, 27 Mar 2012 11:38:52 -0500

It’ll explain why I’ve been a bit absent on Tumblr of late.

But seriously, everyday I am pleased to see who’s followed me. (Minus those annoying spammers and porn types, obvi. Their photos are awful.) For example, The Week just followed me. Yay!

If you’re a Twitter user who wants to read some interesting stuff, check out https://twitter.com/#!/lustrefound for links and also to see what I’ve been up to.

Cheers to all!

We mustn’t forget the best of them all: “He doth...

Tue, 27 Mar 2012 09:32:05 -0500

We mustn’t forget the best of them all:

“He doth protests too much, methinks.”

curiositycounts:

FYI and hat tip to Shakespeare

(via)

Whether wine can become an American habit, circa 1934:

Sun, 25 Mar 2012 15:25:48 -0500

“Wine is a habit, an industry, and an art. The men who pick and trample barefoot the rare fine grapes beside the Gironde have their own carafes filled with a liquid poorer than the grand Medocs, and in Jerez de la Frontera, whose brave wine the linguistically lazy English made famous, the people drink manzanilla, which is the unfortified wine of the country and cheap. A tall sleek bottle of Liebfrauenstift would not make a Rhenish peasant so gemütlich as beer; and the gypsies that sing plaintively across the Danube on still nights have their jugs filled, but a real Tokay is rarer than a clean gypsy. Fine wine is tradition and pride and love; it is not drunk by the peasantry and it is not conceived by fourteen years of prohibition”…. read more

Zielschmerz

Sun, 25 Mar 2012 11:13:04 -0500

dictionaryofobscuresorrows:

n. the exhilarating dread of finally pursuing a lifelong dream, which requires you to put your true abilities out there to be tested on the open savannah, no longer protected inside the terrarium of hopes and delusions that you created in kindergarten and kept sealed as long as you could, only to break in case of emergency.

"We are indeed living in an interesting age when it is socially accepted, even prestigious, to fake..."

Thu, 15 Mar 2012 13:32:49 -0500

“

We are indeed living in an interesting age when it is socially accepted, even prestigious, to fake an authentic experience. We have come a long way from frowning at the Italian pavilion at Epcot center with all its fake kitsch. Today’s simulacra are tasteful and only kitsch as an ironic statement.

Very postmodern.

”

- Michael Raisanen’s Fast Co Design piece on Fake Authenticity

Daguerrotype of the Alamo, 1849

Tue, 06 Mar 2012 23:49:39 -0600

Daguerrotype of the Alamo, 1849

needcaffeine: Union League, down to the left hasn’t changed...

Sat, 03 Mar 2012 12:14:19 -0600

needcaffeine:

Union League, down to the left hasn’t changed much in 105 years.

Philadelphia circa 1905. “Land Title Trust Building.” (via Land Title Trust: 1905 | Shorpy Historical Photo Archive)

"The problem, often not discovered until late in life, is that when you look for things in life like..."

Fri, 02 Mar 2012 16:36:37 -0600

“

The problem, often not discovered until late in life, is that when you look for things in life like love, meaning, motivation, it implies they are sitting behind a tree or under a rock. The most successful people in life recognize, that in life they create their own love, they manufacture their own meaning, they generate their own motivation.

For me, I am driven by two main philosophies, know more today about the world than I knew yesterday. And lessen the suffering of others. You’d be surprised how far that gets you.

”

- Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson via It’s Okay to be Smart.

Also see how to find your purpose and do what you love.

(via explore-blog)

"We used to live in the internal imaginary world of the mirror, of the divided self and of the stage,..."

Wed, 29 Feb 2012 22:46:34 -0600

““We used to live in the internal imaginary world of the mirror, of the divided self and of the stage, of otherness and internal alienation. Today we live in the imaginary world of the screen, of the internal interface and the reduplication of contiguity and internal networks. All our machines are screens. We too have become screens, and the interactivity of men has become the interactivity of screens.””

- because any quotation that connects “self” with “imaginary”, “interactivity”, “screens”, “machines”, and the most timeless one of all: “men”, has to be profound.

[Jean Baudrillard (via quiix0tiic) on faciality, zur gesichtsphilosophie, nr. 274

(via lf)]

ilovecharts: Mac-and-cheese-o-matic

Wed, 29 Feb 2012 20:54:01 -0600

ilovecharts:

Mac-and-cheese-o-matic

Style: Ithaka

Sat, 25 Feb 2012 11:23:31 -0600

Style: Ithaka:

washingtonpoststyle:

This poem, by C.P. Cavafy, was read at journalist Anthony Shadid’s memorial at the American University of Beirut Tuesday.

As you set out for Ithaka
hope the voyage is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
Laistrygonians and Cyclops,
angry Poseidon—don’t be afraid of them:
…