The Excellence of Real Mail.

Versus the Lackluster of Email, Real Mail Contains in Its Folds... your friend's handwriting, little extras such as photographs and artsy bits of sketching or stamping.  Real - snail - mail requires postage, which provides another chance to personalize correspondence... stamps add pizzazz... panache... an artful touch.

Here's another excitedly received letter from E - this one came with three small vintage black and white photographs... lovely bits of the past.  Among other things, E tells me of her affection for books with deckled, rough edges, her Uncle named Square, and her fragrant lavender and jasmine. 

We're true mail snails... choosing it over email anyday.

Real Snail Mail for Toile La La at Art Fashion Creation.

If you love the thought of real mail, you'll surely be inspired by Jennie Hinchcliff and Carolee Gilligan Wheeler's book Good Mail Day: A Primer for Making Eye-Popping Postal Art.  And, here's a link to Jennie's blog Everyday Should Be a Red Letter Day with a recent Tokyo correspondence post.

Pen, Envelopes, Stamps... Real Mail!

Toile La La correspondence - Real Mail.

Inspired by Good Mail Day: A Primer for Making Eye-Popping Postal Art (Jennie Hinchcliff / Carolee Gilligan Wheeler) - I've renewed correspondence with E, a college friend.  Off and on for many years we've exchanged letters - agreeing that email lacks the wonder and excitement of real mail.  Real mail is capable of offering the same captivating qualities of a good book or an intriguing painting.  

Receiving a real letter lets you know someone cares enough to make an effort to entertain, amuse, or delight you.

When I'm ready to write a letter, I like to assemble supplies:  odd or colorful postage, magazine pages, photographs, rubber stamps and ink, stickers - light a nicely-scented candle or sit near an open window with a fresh breeze and then allow my thoughts to flow.

In the photos above, you'll see my husband's harmonicas near the letter-writing supplies.  The Van Gogh card and the Eiffel tower card were sent by E.  (Her Van Gogh card with sky-bound birds prompted me to attach bird stickers to E's next letter.  The birds also made good mustaches for some sticker people from Bullett magazine.)  

After she sent me photographs of flowers she grows in her garden - along with a picture of a chicken, I carefully cut out the chicken and decorated its wing with a bouquet of her flowers - then glued it to E's envelope.  

I like her method of using creatively-illustrated pages from her London Review of Books as stationery.  Books are an affinity E and I share.  A keen paper versus digital observation recently from E:

"With the  popularity of the eReader I've been wondering about what it means to own a book.  I'm such a book lover... the feel and smell and look.... oh ... just to possess the book.  But an E book... what do you own.. my conclusion is that all you own is an idea.  The idea of the book.  The book just exists out there in the netherverse. Intangible. "

E introduced to me the word "netherverse" - which came to her out of the ether, heavens, thin air... stratosphere, collective creative consciousness.

I have enjoyed decorating her letters with stickers found in Bullett magazine's Spring 2012 issue and some Assume Vivid Astro Focus stickers from the coloring book Between the Lines.

The important and historic look of wax seals is something I appreciate, but the cost of the metal stamps can be quite high - so it was nice to discover my own do-it-yourself version of a wax seal stamp.  A crayon melted for just a minute or so over the flame of a small scented candle provides the seal wax.  The do-it-yourself seal stamp is a metal button with a high-relief design.  I slid a toothpick into the shank of the small button, then gently pressed it into the wax after allowing it to set for a few seconds and become translucent.  It is a good idea to practice making a nice, round, penny or dime-size dollop of wax before applying it to a stamped envelope.  (The postman explained wax seals require a bit of extra postage.)

For E's next letter, I'm thinking about making a 5-senses snail mail:  one to appeal to the visual, auditory, gustatory, olfactory, and tactile faculties.  In the last photo above, you'll notice an exploration of this idea with the Constant Comment tea envelope - which contains not tea inside, but a letter... which ideally absorbed the pleasant spiced orange scent.

Google Doodle Love.

Google's Doodle today (next to the search bar) snagged my attention - with a tiny grey man lying on his side.  Giving a nod to Saul Bass - a graphic designer and film artist who revolutionized the impact of movie title sequences - today's Google Doodle is set to the Dave Brubeck Quartet's hip "Unsquare Dance".

This link will take you to Michael Cavna's Comic Riffs post at The Washington Post - with more hip content... to leave you with a late 50s/60s cool-cat feeling, daddio.  While you're there - don't miss the superb, fantastic, burlesque-esque Elmer Bernstein music for The Man With The Golden Arm title sequence - get ready to strut around with some swagger!  And - if you're a dance enthusiast - look into the Martha Graham links.

Bookstacks.

Fashion Bookstacks... March and April reading.

More books at the Art Fashion Creation footer.

Temporary or Part-Time Punk.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art "Punk: Chaos to Couture" exhibit - soon to come - and the Fendi Fall 2013 RTW fur mohawks have me thinking about temporary or removable punk looks.  The fur mohawk seems like a great way to try a punk hairstyle... as do temporary rub-on tattoos, hair chalk, and mehndi henna decoration... even magnetic and clip-on "piercings".

Punk, Playful, Perfect Furry Fendi.

Silvia Venturini Fendi and Karl Lagerfeld foresee an edgy and fun Fall 2013 and welcome it with a sense of humor.  Photos from New York Magazine The Cut: Runway. 

Fendi Fall 2013 NY Mag The Cut photos.

Fendi Fall 2013 RTW: A rather serious top and bottom enlivened with a striking fur mohawk and mascot/creature bag.

Love the fur mohawks... dipping a toe into punk without making a total commitment splash!  Temporary punk.

Post Prompted by Punk: Emotion-Driven Fashion and How to Find Fashion.

Pondering aspects of punk culture - mainly the look it produced, leads me to analysis of fashion deviants and fashion oddities.  Punk culture stemmed from a dissatisfaction with the norm - a quotidien refusal - a feeling of rebellion, which sometimes culminated in destructive tendencies, but was quite often channeled into music or fashion which embodied and released that pent-up feeling.

Considering the psychological aspects of fashion reveals a maze-like and infinite variety of perspectives.  In many instances, fashion is a mask or facade hiding the feelings generating the look.  An array of feelings may be expressed - portraying for example, merely a desire to be different, an aesthetic sensibility, refusal, conformity, or even - privileged boredom.

In studying - and enjoying - these fashion observations, I have found it advantageous to use as a viewing reference the various online resources covering the greatest number of runway collections worldwide - rather than relying on fashion or trade magazine coverage of collections - as the magazines rely upon advertising for their livelihood.  Because of this advertising-dependence, the coverage is biased - so an observer of fashion does not receive a clear view of the truly creative and amazing designs being produced globally, but instead a limited and monetarily-motivated perspective. 

I now see fashion in a different light - perhaps not the spotlight, but daylight - after having read books written by designers and journalists within the fashion industry, and as a result - gaining a better understanding of the cogs and gears within that world. For so many years, I mistakenly perceived fashion magazine and press reports as equating a mark of quality or a seal of approval.   If you too share an interest in the creative, artistic, psychological aspects of fashion - do realize you can find fashion everywhere, all around the world - in the street, on the bus, in the thrift shops, or there beneath the needle of your own sewing machine - not just on the runway or in the pages of a magazine.

Just as our language, music, technologies - and lives have evolved and bloomed and hybridized, so has our visual language of fashion - which has changed so much from its earliest origin of being primarily utilitarian, then decorative.  Fashion is very often - now - a feeling.