A full life but we'll miss you Irving Penn

Irving Penn, one of the 20th century’s most prolific and influential photographers of fashion and the famous, whose signature blend of classical elegance and cool minimalism was recognizable to magazine readers and museumgoers worldwide, died on Wednesday at his home in Manhattan. He was 92.

Gen Art Chicago, hello!

It was like a pop-up Bryant Park last night during Gen Art's Fresh Faces runway show in Millennium Park. The Midwest will always be the Midwest but Chicago tried to step up its fashion scene last night. Here's what we caught from the first row;).





Great shoes in the check-in line. Nice to see leather skirts are back.


The "I'm cool contest" outside the tent. Cornrows? Really?


Ah, finally inside. Time to scramble for a free drink.



How's it going back there?


Those Landon twins were across from us. How they saw the show without phonebooks is beyond me.



It was all this buzz about Pete Wentz and Clandestine Industries but he showed his face for 4 minutes and disappeared to get a super pregnant Ashley out the door as the show started. So technically, celebs were there?


Finally the show. This craziness that is actually 999 fake fingers was the most inspired thing in the show. Kudos to Frei Designs.


Another cool Frei look.


Black models are so in right now. The dress was by?????


The line Shorty was cutesy and Hawaiian looking but the best part was the hair. Crazy.


Then it was the dudes turn and this was refreshing. Philips Sparks is the designer's name, I think. Just happy to see men.


Cute.


Yum.


More yum.


Now the best part. Free stuff from the goody bag marketing to professionals between the age of 25-37 that dine out once a week, make over $45,000 per year and consider themselves trendsetters. Yeah! Go Aki go.


Shih Tzu not included.

Has the hipster become pedestrian? Hell yeah!

The Independent(thanks Haute Concept) issued an article addressing the global hipster phenomenom. Basically there were always cities like New York, Tokyo, Paris, London etc. that were considered the cool city of the moment.
There always used to be a particular city that was the centre of cool at a particular point in time,” says Ted Polhemus, style anthropologist and author of Streetstyle: From Sidewalk to Catwalk. “But now there’s no longer a place where it’s ‘at’; there’s no longer any centre of the world’s popular cultural universe. For a time it seemed it would be a simple matter of shifting from London to Tokyo. But instead, street style is everywhere and in places you’d never have guessed it would be.”

This global hipster is everywhere, wearing similar clothing and listening to the same music, delivering the same ironic humour, leaving one to ask where the individuality and authenticity is.
The word hipster can even be viewed as an insult to some.
Thanks to the internet, trends can reach a global audience faster than ever. But is this giving us more popular cultural freedom or making us all look, walk, talk, act, think the same? What do you think?

Photos courtesy of Tanisthenewgray blog, Garance Dore and Cobrasnake

Shrink Boutique Launch at Lumen

What better way to start our blog than with pics from our launch party! Titled Pops and Paps(Champagne and Paparazzi for you squares) we came, we posed, we partied, all in the name of retail therapy and bubbly. Thanks to Soledad Designs and Jean-o-type for representin too.