Painting with light

A while ago I was borrowing Doug's camera, and I asked George to come over and teach me how to paint with light.  He said he saw a photo of Picasso painting with light, like the one below, when he was younger and figured out how to do it.

Basically, you set the camera on a long exposure, and start drawing shapes with some sort of light. The pink colored light is the light on the back of my Diana mini flash, the blue is George's black light flashlight, and the white is my iPhone LED light.  I used the latter.  When you see one or more of us (in addition to the lines created by the light, it's because George would make the flash go off, illuminating us.  The rest of the time, the room was dark, so that the light we were painting with would show more vividly.

This image is double exposed; the painting that you see on the right is actually on the other side of the apartment.

In this image, he tried to get it so half of each of our faces lined up.  This entailed me sitting on the couch and him making the flash go off, and then we switched seats and he made the flash go off again, so that the image double exposed.

He wasn't thrilled with how they came out, but I thought they looked pretty cool, so I decided to post.

Stella in Chanel Pre-Fall 2012

I <3 her.

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas! It doesn't feel like Christmas, given the weather we've been having in New York, but it's already here.

Below are two cards I made -- one for my brother, one for my parents.  Guess who got which card!

Doug by George

George took some photos of Doug last week in his apartment building, mostly in clothes that I picked out for him in the shopping trips to Barneys and Bloomies we've taken over the years.  Here are some of my favorite shots:

The first designer suit, a dark navy Dior Homme.

Worn with Burberry trench and my Burberry scarf.

Oliver Peoples' aviators

I want my scarf back, Doug!

Armani linen jacket that he actually picked out for himself.

Poolside in an Armani linen suit.

Same suit, with a matching tie.

John Varvatos leather jacket, hoodie, henley, boots, and Seven jeans.

Unfortunately I don't have a head-to-toe shot of the following look, which is the most recent purchase.  It's a grey wool suit, and I picked out the entire outfit head to toe.  I thought browns would set off the suit nicely, so we got a brown tie, belt, and shoes.  Even the manager of the John Varvatos store in SoHo where we got it was impressed with my styling. :-)

Doug's new "rolly"

To see more, check out George's blog.

Embroidered wedding portrait by my friend Lindy

My friend Lindy, a gifted writer who has a pop culture blog, also happens to like doing embroidery as a hobby.  She decided to do a portrait of her brother and sister-in-law, and enlisted my help to do a line drawing.

Here's the original photo:

I printed the photo out, and took out tracing paper and did this tracing:

She took the tracing and MacGyver'ed a lightbox to transfer the line drawing onto the fabric, and the final product was this:

It came out so pretty! I'm sure they will be thrilled.

Beautiful video of my dress!

I've been working on my portfolio over the past few months, and decided to enter a fashion competition using some of the designs.  I won't say which just yet, but the deadline is next week.

On Sunday, we shot one of the looks in Central Park and George did an amazing job.  I'll post some of the photos and sketches at some point, but for now, I wanted to share a video he shot on the Lomokino, which is a hand-cranked video camera that uses regular 35mm camera film.  It came out really beautifully.  I am really excited about how the photos came out, but want to wait a bit before I release them.  I'm still trying to decide on what I'm going to do with the designs.

NEW MEN'S TEES ON KICKSTARTER - ORDER NOW, GET IN TIME FOR CHRISTMAS!

I hope everyone had a great thanksgiving! I'm excited to announce that after a long hiatus, I have come out with new men's tees! Instead of producing them first and selling (i.e. push manufacturing), I've decided to create a Kickstarter project wherein I present the tees and ask people to order them (i.e. pull manufacturing). If enough people order and I reach my goal amount, then I will produce the tees.  If not, I will not produce the tees.

Below is the video, outlining the project:

Here is the link to the actual project: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1497919620/your-new-favorite-t-shirts-await-you

I have designed three tees, and two of my friends each designed a tee.  Here they are:

sacred heart tee, silver + gold on a grey tee

A firefly whose tail glows in the dark:

Glow in the dark Abraham Lincoln:

A lioness tee:

And a medals tee:

Please check it out!

Our STYLYT contest is now live!

Check it out or sign up to be a member at stylyt.com!

Lauren Bush (Lauren)'s Ralph Lauren wedding dress

Beautiful.

Poladroid

I was looking around the other day for a quick and dirty way to change my digital photos to look like Polaroids, and I discovered Poladroid!

It's a free application, available for both Mac and Windows platforms.  You download it, open it up, and then drag and drop a photo onto it.  It makes a sound like a Polaroid camera, and then you wait for a couple minutes while it "develops" the photo, like a real Polaroid.  Then when it's done it makes this happy noise.

Apparently even Justin Timberlake is a fan:

Music at Coney Island

Early in October, my friends and I went to Coney Island to shoot a music video for my song, "Drive," which you can listen to and download here. My friend Erica, who shot this video for me, and makes these cool live performance videos of indie musicians, came and shot it on her Canon 7D.

While we were shooting on the boardwalk, a nice man named Bruce came and took photos of me and Shawn, which are what you see below.

This is Shawn.  He and I played a couple of shows a couple of years ago, and he is back in New York from Australia, and we're playing another show this Saturday at 11PM at Sidewalk Cafe.  You can see the details here.  You can check his music out here.

The video is forthcoming, but neither Erica nor I have had a chance to sit down and edit it yet.  I am hoping to get to it by the new year.

Graey x STYLYT

Graey x STYLYT kicks off on Wednesday! Sign up at www.stylyt.com if you haven't gotten your invite yet! This is your chance to design your own Graey piece!

Introducing STYLYT

This summer, my friend Joon introduced me to Nina and Jenny, his friends from Wharton, who were working on a new fashion website called STYLYT.  STYLYT lets users customize the designs of featured designers.  Currently, the featured designer on their site is Althea Harper, who was a finalist on Project Runway a few seasons ago.  

I'm happy to announce that Graey will be the next brand featured, and our contest will launch in a few days.  The site is currently in its Beta version, but you can sign up for an invite by visiting the site here.

Here are some screenshots to show how it works.  First, you choose the item you'd like to customize.

Then you customize each section by pointing to it, and then selecting a swatch on the left side.

People can then vote on their favorites, and then I believe the designer helps pick the winner. 

I'm interested to see what sort of things people come up with -- so sign up!

Sarah Burton (Alexander McQueen Creative Director) chats with Cathy Horyn about Spring 2012

Really cool video with detail shots of the beautiful garments and accessories, and Horyn's and Burton's insight on how young people view the industry today.

Diving for McQueen on Nowness.com.

The summary from Nowness.com:

Diving for McQueen

Fashion Critic Cathy Horyn Enters the Folds of Sarah Burton's Spring 2012 McQueen Collection

The New York Times fashion critic Cathy Horyn meets Alexander McQueen Creative Director Sarah Burton at the label’s Paris atelier to explore the house’s intricate, marine-inspired Spring/Summer 2012 collection in Dustin Lynn’s stunning portrait film. Displaying a love and knowledge of fashion far beyond the catwalk, Horyn’s notorious studio visits define her style as a journalist, producing lyrical portraits of designers truly dedicated to the rigor of cutting and creating clothes. Before becoming head of the fashion house, Burton worked as McQueen’s right hand for 14 years. “With Sarah, it has a lot to do with the training she has had at McQueen, and just knowing what the McQueen studio had been like under Lee,” says Horyn of Burton’s qualification for the job. “It was always a place where it was about the technique and craft.” After the turmoil following McQueen's tragic suicide last year, the provocative label has returned stronger than ever with sumptuously beautiful collections, the record-breaking Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute attracting over 650,000 visitors, and Burton designing the Duchess of Cambridge’s much-lauded gown for the royal wedding.

I'm obsessed with her

From StyleSight

Ferri Roberts Day Off

My friend Graham, besides being a skilled and talented graphics editor for the New York Times, is an extremely talented musician.  He's currently in a band called Murder Mystery, and we became friends through music.  Well, music and Science Olympiad, but that's a whole other story.

In addition to playing piano (he would play Chopin at the end of Orchestra class in middle school), and guitar (which he plays in Murder Mystery), he also played cello.  So we were in Dorchestra (dorkestra, get it??) together, and a string quartet.  At the end of high school we were also in a band together, and in college, he formed a band which went through a few iterations -- Spoontangle (which had a certain special word in the middle), The Classifieds, and then finally, The Glorious Ninth.  I was their #1 fan and was pretty sad when they broke up.

Anyway, he recently started a music project with his very talented girlfriend, Jessica, and their first recording is a cover of Johnny Cash's "Long Black Veil."  Check it!