Results tagged “creativity” from Uncivil Society

To complement your Jesus is a Yankees Fan t-shirt, here's a Yankees devotional copper icon featured in the fun new book version of Regretsy--Where DIY meets WTF.

Regretsy, as the title suggests, heaps a generous dollop of snark on the goofiest items from Etsy. But the site's about a lot more than having a laugh at others' expense--besides bringing to light some of the more offbeat expressions of human creativity, Regretsy has also raised thousands of dollars for charity--"profits from Regretsy merchandise are used to hire Etsy artists to create handmade products for various charities, or to directly benefit Etsy sellers in need."

The Gap is sponsoring American Woman: Fashioning an American Identity, the latest exhibit at the Met's Costume Institute. The fact that the Gap did not insist on putting its own clothes on display was actually pretty savvy--while physically inserting Gap clothes into a fashion retrospective could call attention to the sponsorship and the gap between The Gap and high fashion, the sponsorship itself reinforces the sense of The Gap as the fashion identity of today, democratic, accessible and at the same time validated by an elite institution warehousing the style of the past.

For the Significant Objects project, writers purchase objects, create stories about them & sell the objects on eBay--thereby demonstrating how objects "acquire not merely subjective but objective value." Above: Bar Mitzvah bookends, with a story by Stacey Levine.

Blog@ picked up on the story of Diane von Furstenberg's ongoing plans for her Wonder Woman project, which will include a comic book with a women's empowerment message & will send proceeds to Vital Voices.  It's another example of the link between creative, personal and corporate transformation, and it's also fun.  The characters featured in her comic:

I always wanted to have these three characters Diva, Viva and Fifa, as in DVF, and we came up with the concept,” she said. “I called Konstantin, my artist friend, and asked him, ‘Would you like to do it?’ And now it exists.”

The key is that the three heroines — all of whom are wearing DVF clothes — make things happen. Diva, for instance, finds herself in a downtown bar to celebrate a male colleague’s successful leveraged buyout and his pending promotion. It turns out, however, that Diva was the brains behind the project. She looks at a reflective surface and sees a DVF, which emboldens her to “Be the Wonder Woman you can be.” Diva makes the point the lbo was her idea, and lands a promotion.

Viva, meanwhile, accompanies her older brothers to a music gig. Feeling intimidated to stay in the van, the reflection of DVF encourages her to get up on stage to sing. She ends up with a record deal.

Finally, mother-of-three Fifa receives news she is a finalist for a Gourmet Cooking award. Juggling the responsibilities of running a home, she is unsure that she can attend the ceremony, but DVF empowers her to get a babysitter and she wins the trophy.

“I am Diva, Viva and Fifa altogether, I am DVF,” von Furstenberg said. “It’s not so much that I identify with each of them, though. The idea is that if you feel insecure, look at yourself in the mirror, and through the reflection remember to be the Wonder Woman you can be. That’s my message.”  

That's what Marshall McLuhan called advertising. Paul Rand picked up on the theme in his book, From Lascaux to Brooklyn, and the last episode of AMC's Mad Men riffed on it in one of my favorite scenes in the series. I hadn't made this connection before, though: the children's book graphics of Leonard Weisgard, whose bio notes that he was influenced by primitive cave paintings . . .

I try to live perpendicular to my environment, not identifying with it but standing outside looking in. Today's Valley Zen riffs on the importance of vantage point to creative insight:

Like in Jazz, the unconventional perspective brings us closer to the true spirit of the process at hand. At unexpected angles, invaluable insights are revealed.