Meow, Quack, Grace.

I happened to be at the same fashion exhibit in the same gallery as the epically orange haired legend that is Grace Coddington a bit back, and I'd like you to know that she keeps her iPhone ringer set to quack. She's quite the animal lover actually. Here she is on Martha "made it" Stewart's talk show talking up her cats and cat book and cat necklace. Cats!



Here are the kitty photos of Karen Elson as Ms. Coddington for Vogue ca. August 2008.

Meow.

Common Goods: Sock It To Me.

A sock drawer very much like the one I witnessed in middle school.

When I was in middle school I went to my friend's house for the first time and within my first half hour there she proudly and secretly showed me her dad's sock drawer. Apparently it was legendary amongst the kids who had been lucky enough to glimpse it on a visit to her house. Oh, boy it was something. The wide drawer was filled with a rainbow of socks neatly paired, folded, and arranged in a gradated scale from light to dark. Being the burgeoning clothes-o-phile that I was, I was in total awe. There were pink socks and polk-a-dot socks and silver socks and striped socks. It was amazing. The father in question later came out of the sock drawer (or rather the closet) and embraced his love of cozy, colorful things and men. I've never forgotten that sock drawer. And, every time the season changes and socks again become necessities I think of that amazing drawer and just how telling it turned out to be. Just to be clear, I'm not saying that a rainbow sock drawer automatically means a rainbow lifestyle; not at all, it's just fascinating to peek into a stranger's sock drawer and see what they've got in there. Lo and behold, they have a Flickr pool for that:

A mess of stripes.



Ordered chaos.



Type A sock storage.



The drawer and the things above it. I bet you could write this person's biography just from this view alone.



Cartoon cats and toe socks.



Real cats love to snuggle up in the sock drawer.


I'd snuggle up here if I were a cat.

Find the original photos here. Got a great sock drawer? Send me a snap. I'll read it like your palm...

I Like Wood.

Remember in school when you were forced to take Wood Shop? At least at Brooklawn Middle School it was part of the core curriculum, right after your quarter of Metals and before your time burning lasagna in Home Ec. God forbid anyone leave their tween years without knowing how to use a sanderbelt or a miter saw. Well, honestly I don't even know if those are real items or tools or whatever. I was more concerned with the massive amount of saw dust I was breathing in and avoiding chopping my fingers off like Mr. Brennan said I would if I didn't pay attention to him, which I never did. I did survive with fingers, which is lucky for me because now I can rock the friggin' awesome tree-based, multi-finger rings of the Wood Shop all stars over at Good Wood. They definitely paid attention in Shop Class. Check out their Good goods:

Multi-finger rings not quite your style? How about an engraved necklace with a Biggie charm, an old-school celly, or a fat cat?

Good Wood, indeed.


Check out the post about Good Wood over at Thrillist and then thank my friend Jenny for the tip off. She's the awesome girl with the cute hair. No, not that one...that one!

Meow.

The dresses at Zero + Maria Cornejo come on little cat feet.

Photos from Style.com.

One/One-Thousand: REED + RADER

Photo Duo Pamela Reed and Matthew Rader (REED + RADER) are fresh faces in fashion photography. The 25-year-old recent SVA grads were just featured as one of the 13 Emerging Artists in American Photo Magazine's 30th anniversary issue. They combine their fairly common fashion photography style with hot graphics to make a new statement in the pages of fringe magazines. My favorite examples of their work feature teeny-tiny replicated pattens of femmes, but they don't reproduce so well here. You can see them in all of their glory at R+R's special site, which includes a blog by their studio cat, and an opportunity for you to play fancy photo editor and take a virtual flip through their portfolio. Fun stuff happens at around the 3:12 mark.