You know, as a resident of Boulder, CO (a place that, for those unfamiliar, holds the earth in higher regard than 102% of the rest of the world) I shouldn't be saying this. Progress is progress, as they say, and of all things to rip on, things that treat Mother Nature with respect should be far from the top of the list (and if you feel the need to rip on me in recompense for this, please comment).

However, I have to say it, and here it is: Eco-style, thanks to the prevailing hype of its prefix, has had the opportunity to suck much worse than other areas of fashion. Attention to detail, structure, tailoring – vanities, really, when all you need to move units is organic cotton, perpetuated by a sort of user-generated laziness that buys anything that promises to stop global warming.

Well, wake up eco-fashionistas; your golden age is almost over, and we're welcoming your newest competitors with arms wide open. First on our list of new thrills: Mottainai, an NYC-born, Mother-loving label whose designs are as mindful as the materials used to create them.

Joshspear.com: The word "mottainai" has a really interesting meaning – can you tell us about it?

Luke McCann: Sure. "Mottainai," in its most basic form, means “what a waste,” or, “it's too valuable to waste.” In Japan, it is used in everyday conversations and embedded in folktales. There's a story in Japan about the Mottainai Ghost that will come for you if you waste something.

Think of it as when you see someone throwing away something perfectly useful, like food (you better eat all that!). The idea behind it is that a lot of people worked hard to bring that food (or in our case, clothes) to you, and in return you should be thankful and appreciative for what you were given, and use it to its fullest.

(Read More…)

We’ve been unabashedly devoted groupies of Japanese artist Takashi Murakami for quite some time now, so it should come as no surprise that we’ll be amongst the throngs of art fans rushing over to his awe-inspiring retrospective beginning tomorrow, April 5th at New York’s Brooklyn Museum. The exhibit, organized by LA’s Moca, is the most complete retrospective to date on the widely admired artist. Unlike the recent LA exhibition that put a great deal of onus on his sculptures, the Brooklyn Show leans more heavily on Murakami’s paintings, many of which are peppered with seemingly innocuous images of fantastical fungi and flowers paintings but represent rather perverse and ponderous themes. The exhibition is a sensory overload of sorts featuring entirely too many wrinkles to discuss in this short space, but amongst them is Louis Vuitton boutique of sorts with limited edition bags designed by Murakami on display as well as a room where you can view his Kanye West video. It’s a good thing the exhibit will be around until July 13th, because you may have to go several times to see everything.

From past experience, we can tell you that the folks at Beautiful/Decay have a handle on all things hip and maybe even all things hop (hop is the new hip...you heard it here first) before they happen. Our last glance at their page basically revealed what tees we'd be sporting this spring, Seeing as we consider you our best buds, we thought we'd pass along a friendly fashion tip by pointing you towards the latest threads designed by OUTLAW Print Co., available in the Beautiful/Decay web store. The Philadelphia based company's line of sweet spring shirts are printed on ultra-soft American apparel shirts and adorned with dope designs such as Stay Weird and Anonymous Fury. However, unleashing your fury anonymously this spring might be a bit tough since everyone will be know you as the dude or dudette with the sweet shirts.

I was going to write about Domestic’s rad-times-100 vinyl wallpaper, a topic we love to talk about here, but after being getting to know their Surface 02 collection, I feel we ought to thank them for not, um, sticking to just those offerings. Porcelain plates decorated by designers at the forefront of their game — like Ich & Kar, our hero Jeremyville, Antoine+Manuel — come as an inseparable pair for the second series of the line, which is being featured until April 8 under a Domestic Spring Invasion 1 theme at the Printemps store inside Centre Pompidou in Paris. These are hot plates that will give a much longer-lasting impression for your bachelor pad than the plug-in, two-burners kind you use as a decorative piece.

Jessica Joslin is the kind of artist who would worry Darwin: bones, brass, glass, and pieces of musical instrument are all soldered together to form impossible skeletal animals that either, a) you’d find in a backwater taxidermy shop from the future; b) a circus freakshow run by the HR Giger; or c) Disney’s Bambi, directed by David Fincher. You can catch her weird wonderfulness in the Scottsdale, AZ area today through April 26 as she premiers her Curiosa collection at the Lisa Sette Gallery and a book signing for Strange Nature tomorrow, from 1-3pm.