Hats Off To Thom Browne and Stephen Jones For Some Seriously Strange Headwear.

Thom Browne's menswear collection for Fall Winter 2014 is both sartorial and satirical, to say the least. Ragged edge plaids, giant fat silhouette suits and autumnal leaf camo face make-up are topped off, literally, by unusual grey flannel and plaid hats and headgear in the shapes of animals. Rabbits as top hats, masks, caps and eyepatches, elephant heads, badger and frog caps, pinstripe bowlers as bears, hunting caps with antlers, driving caps with eyes and cage-like construction. There's even a Bear with a salmon in its mouth as a hat. Designed by Browne, the hats were made with the help of well-known milliner Stephen Jones.

Use The Force In An Entirely Different Way. Star Wars Sex Toys.

The designs were created in a galaxy far, far away by Hungarian artist Balázs Sármai, who gained intergalactic attention this past August with a similar creation (shown below), in which sex toys were re-imagined as characters from the Hollywood blockbuster “The Avengers.”

Bold and Bizarre In Black & White - The 2014 SS Collection from Japan's ANREALAGE.

The newest collection from ANREALAGE just debuted at Tokyo Fashion Week. The 2014 Spring Summer collection takes classic black and white patterns like buffalo check, herringbone, stripes, plaids and pinstripes and plays with scale. Enlarging and minimizing the familiar designs in stark black and white (with a little pale yellow, light blue and ecru), they are paired with crisp white blouses and sheers. The layered fashions include lots of knee-length pants, long dresses and jackets, both long and short. Belted Jackets and buttoned dresses are shown along with Pagliacci clown-like blouses, but it's the bizarre accessories that made this collection stand out on the runway: cage-like face masks and inflatable shoes that look like hospital booties from the front.
























WWD reports that "the real drama came midway through the show, when three models in shapeless black dresses were raised above the runway on an elevated platform, at which point their garments seemed to magically gather and shrink into minidresses. (It’s still unclear just how Morinaga pulled it off.) This trick was then repeated on several more looks, turning a black jersey sack into a chicly draped and ruched dress and oversize nightshirtlike pieces into minidresses with asymmetric gathers."





The video of the runway show:


About the brand:
ANREALAGE is a combination of words of "A REAL(daily), UNREAL(unordinary) and AGE(an era)."  Designer Kunihiko Morinaga was born in Tokyo in 1980 and is a Graduate of the Waseda University and Vantan Design Academy. He pursues the values in making clothes under the concept of "God is in the details". In 2003, he launched his own brand "ANREALAGE."

In 2005, Kunihiko Morinaga won the Avan-Garde Grand Prix at Gen Art in New York, a contest held in NewYork for new young designers. In 2006, he presented the first runway collection at the large observation platform in Tokyo Tower with the brand of Keisuke Kanda. In 2009 the brand presented a collection uner the theme of ''○△□'', conversion of the most basic symbols into clothes. Soon, ANREALAGE found its own characteristics and followed with the collections'"凹凸" "Silhouette" "wideshortslimlong" "LOW" (a low resolution pixelated collection) and "SHELL."

In 2011, They opened its flagship store in Harajuku, Tokyo. Morinaga also won The 29th of Mainichi Fashion Grand Prix for the best new designer and the Shiseido incentive award.

images courtesy of fashionsnap

Mammaries To Build Your Muscles. Introducing Breast-Shaped Kettlebells.

You might have seen an image of these floating around the web and asked yourself if they were real. While not real breasts, they are a real product. The 306 Communication Agency in the Ukraine has designed and begun marketing cast iron dumbbells in the shape of a pair of breasts.

WTF? A Blackberry Flavored Energy Drink With Gold Flakes In Lieu of Sugar.

Launched early in 2013, WTF? is an original flavored water-based energy drink made with gold flakes instead of sugar. Manufactured in Germany, the Blackberry flavored water comes from Germany's Rhön nature park.



The name is a giggle and the packaging is gorgeous, from the bottle and hang tag to the case. They have even garnered an award for their website design.




The sugar free drink contains carbonated water, Blackberry extract, Ginseng, Vitamin C, Niacin, Vitamin B6, Vitamin B12, Gold Flakes, 0.4% Taurin and 0.03% Caffeine







You can purchase individual bottles, a case of nine bottles or 9 cases (a pallet) here at their online store.

Flesh Love. 80 Vacuum-Sealed Couples Photographed by Haruhiko Kawaguchi.

Haruhiko Kawaguchi, who goes by the name Photographer Hal, is a Tokyo photographer and artist whose project FLESH LOVE literally vacuum packs couples of all types in 100x150x74 cm plastic bags. The idea is to keep love fresh forever. Once the air is sucked out of the bag by a vacuum cleaner, Kawaguchi only has about 10-20 seconds to take his pictures. Any longer and he would risk causing harm to his subjects.



Thus far 80 couples, many of whom Kawaguchi met at nightclubs in Tokyo, have participated in the project.

"When you embrace your lover, sometimes you wish to melt right into them.
To realize this wish, I've been photographing couples in small, or even cramped spaces like motels and bathtubs.
As my work has become more and more intense, I've noticed that communication is indispensable.
This time, I reached the point of photographing couples in vacuum-sealed packs, on a set that I've constructed in my own kitchen. The lights are in the ceiling, so I just flip one switch and have everything ready.
I have a few different colored paper backgrounds, which I can leave rolled up in the corner until there's none left. This gives me 10 seconds to take the shot.
In this extremely limited time I can't release the shutter more than twice." -- (Excerpts from the author's postscript)

Kawaguchi says that his female subjects have reacted much better to the bizarre vacuum-packing process than his male subjects. Women have remained calm while the men have been prone to struggle for air and feel claustrophobic. In one case, a male even wet himself. The women's most common concern is they they look good. Vanity and incontinence aside, here's a look at 42 of the photos from FLESH LOVE:























"FLESH LOVE" is one of the most unique photograph projects in the world and received the 1st place award in The Art of Photography Show 2011 held in San Diego, USA. France's Photo and art magazine "AZART" featured it inside and on the cover of their March 2011 issue.

FLESH LOVE PRINTS :
You can purchase individual prints from this series here

FLRSH LOVE GALLERY BOOK:
Or a softcover photobook of the show with 72 images here

FLESH LOVE ITUNES APP
An application for iPad of "FLESH LOVE" is available on itunes as well.

Haruhiko Kawaguchi aka Photographer Hal

A special thanks to Jaci Lerner for bringing this to my attention!