+ longdistancecalls +

I think i really need to bear in mind there some words, 'To look ahead and dont look back.' (especially for the affectional!)
some time ago i done some really amazing quizzes,
the name of after if i am crossing the space-time is, 星楝。(they are chinese,  星it means the stars, and 楝it means Melia japonica, a kind of tree), it is beautiful?! i think it is really beautiful and i really love this name, maybe one day if i have baby, i will go to naming this one for my baby, haha....that's crazy!!
after that, my pre-existence It is said that i was composed of 49% the air, 47% the poet, 3% the white birch and 1% architect! wow, those are totally awesome!!!:D
okay, let's talk about today!
today the weather is warm, are no longer so cold, so i was just to hanging out with my buddies,
in the afternoon, i first went to the book center, this book center just near from my house. i bought some books and bought a new big notebook for the future in 2010 and the 2011, i cant wait!! after that, i went to UNIQLO to bought four pairs of socks, it's cool! then we finished the dinner together, but.....sorry, I ate too much :( cause there too yummy: )
today morning i had an  with my mum, but actually we had the 'fights' every day: (
tomorrow i will go to buy a lot of knitting yarns, because because i am ready to learn the knitting yarn!
recently, my big mood swings, most of time it is because you, during the day time i can be able to not to think of you, but i cant be able to be like this at the night time! every night.....think a lot of the problems between us, i think i hate you! and also hate myself!! i am an idiot, a totally big idiot!!! : (
recently i am trying to find some thing back, all that i said is some memories, and the flavor of memories them self. i haven't fully find them all back yet, but i am trying, i think i have been found the 80% of those memories : ), it will be completed soon.

During the 80s, Claude Montana’s passion for leather earned him a central position on the international fashion radar, and his knack for employing vivid colours, luxury materials and aggressive shapes put him at the forefront of high fashion. His creations matched the consumer mood of the time – budget wan’t an issue, and the more couture and high-energy his ready-to-wear looked and felt, the better.

Montana founded his label in 1979, having spent most of that decade flitting between London (where he made a name for himself creating papier-mâché jewellery covered in rhinestones) and Paris, his home, where he worked as an assistant at leather goods design-house Mac Douglas. His debut collection from the House of Montana was met with the kind of praise young designers’ dreams are made of, and won him an immediate fanbase of wealthy socialite women with a lust for complex construction and couture-like quality.

Montana’s design strengths were bold, shoulder-heavy shapes (he was often referred to as “the king of the shoulder pad”), and his audacious aesthetic turned his brand into a fashion powerhouse. In 1981, he launched Montana Hommes, a menswear label that carried similar traits to his womenswear – except here, it was the colour and fabric that did the talking, not the directional shape and cut. Fragrances, for both women and men, were soon to follow – a brand staple that helped to keep Montana in high demand.

The high-octane glamour of the 80s soon shifted into the more minimal aesthetic of the 90s, and, consequently, Montana began to fall out of favour. In response, the designer launched Montana BLU, a stripped-down, more commercial diffusion line that he hoped would strike a chord with the new tribes of ready-to-wear consumers. Sadly, this gambit proved to be disastrous and the House of Montana went into bankruptcy. Not that the 90s was all bad for Montana. In 1990, he began a stint designing haute couture for Lanvin. Although he was replaced in 1992 (Lanvin preferred a more toned-down approach), it was here that Claude proved he was a designer capable of both exceptional ready-to-wear and haute couture, and he bagged the house a handful of design awards during his time. Now, with strong lines, eccentric taste and luxury returning to the fashion game, Claude Montana is bouncing back as a crucial reference point for the savvy.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hannah Martin is a young jewellery designer based in London who has been establishing her place in high-end jewellery slowly and steadily. Since graduating from CSM in 2005 she has gone on to produce her own line of successful high end and conceptual jewellery as well as working on exciting collaborations with designers such as Hannah Marshall and Carolyn Massey. So what is life like for such a sought-after talent?

Dazed Digital: Where did a young Hannah Martin grow up?
Hannah Martin: I was born in Yorkshire, but we moved to Bristol when I was young, this is where I grew up really.

DD: How did your interest in jewellery begin?
Hannah Martin:  I moved to London at 18 to start my foundation year at Central Saint Martins, I remember my teacher hadn’t even heard of CSM but my dad knew it was the best and that’s why I wanted to go there. It was a great course as we tried everything and that is where I discovered jewellery design. After my foundation I choose to stay at CSM and do my degree in Jewellery Design.

DD: Did your degree prepare you for the industry?
Hannah Martin: Yes, definitely. I had a placement at Cartier, in Paris, and really learnt a lot. I was not from a family of gold leaf chocolate cake, and suddenly saw this whole new world. Such luxury, quality, beauty and glamour, it was amazing! I knew I wanted to mix these qualities with something more dark and sexy for my own label. Working with Cartier also taught me a lot about consulting which has been another aspect of my work.

DD: When did you start your own label?
Hannah Martin: Straight after graduating I rented a small studio space with my tutor and launched my first collection "Rock and Roll" which grew from my degree collection.

DD: Are your collections seasonal?
Hannah Martin: I don’t work in seasons, apart from when I collaborate with designers, my own collections just tend to develop over time. Each piece is carefully crafted and therefore timeless, not a throwaway after a season. They all have the same thread that runs through them, my style, but each collection has its own story.

DD: Can you describe a story?
Hannah Martin: I always create a figure of inspiration behind each collection. This always tends to be a little like a Frankenstein character, a combination of elements that are inspiring me at the time. "Vincent" was my interpretation of a Russian gangster, partly inspired the movie Eastern Promise, he is a fallen Tsar, ruling the underbelly of London. He is a shadowy character, with incredible tattoos and has a strong masculinity, so most importantly he is very sexy. For "The Forgotten Treasures of the Infamous Pirates of the Aguila Dorada" I imagined a mature and savvy pirate, all stubble and personality, decorated in these rich ornate jewels. He is very gruff and thick-set with bulbous and heavy jewels with amazing stones.
Once I have this character in mind I design the jewellery to suit him or her. It has to be fitting of what he would wear and approve of, and most importantly, I ask myself that question constantly as I am designing “Is it beautiful?” If the answer is no, then the design doesn’t make it into production.

DD: Tell me about your collaborations?
Hannah Martin: My first collaboration was with Aimee McWilliams and then Jean-Pierre Braganza. I have since collaborated with Carolyn Massey for the last two seasons and this season Hannah Marshall. Collaborations are an exciting way to push the boundaries of jewellery. It’s great to take on board a direction that the other designer is moving in, and offer something else up. They can sometimes be in the same vein, or sometimes different, but they always work. As the collections are without seasons, it is really fun to do something slightly different that ties in with the twice-yearly fashion calendar.

DD: What materials do you work with?
Hannah Martin:  The pieces are visually masculine and sculptural, and elegant in detail, so the materials are key to giving a piece it’s identity and appeal. I have always worked with 18 carat yellow gold, rose gold, white gold with a varying array of stones including white, black & brown diamonds, amber and blue / black sapphires, rubies. About two years ago began to explore silver which I also really enjoy working with.

DD: Where can we buy Hannah Martin?
Hannah Martin: Dover Street Market and Matches in London, and a new luxury jewellery store in Kuwait called Octium, designed by the legendarily talented Jaime Hayon. The website and stockists are both elements that I’ve been working on very closely with my business partner, Nathan Morse. We have been tweaking our new sales website that we launched earlier this year, which is doing really well. It gives us a great face internationally, and despite popular belief, people love to buy luxury online, especially when we offer Skype appointments!

Photographer Robert Frank looks in at the land of opportunity
Trolley-New Orleans 1955

When photographer Robert Frank left New York in his battered second-hand Ford in 1955, he confronted an America in flux: still riven by segregation and newly gripped by the Cold War threat. He had applied for, and won, a Guggenheim Fellowship enabling him to "make a broad voluminous picture record of things American." The result was 'The Americans', a book of 83 photographs of everyday folk, places and things; bikers, politicians and nannies, diners, DEtroit car factories and the great American road, endlessly stretching ahead.

Published in 1959, the book was initially savaged for its pessimism and for being intentionally anti-American. How else, its critics scoffed, could small town America seem so bleak? "Utterly misleading! A degradation of a nation!" howled the photographer and editor Minor White in his magazine, Aperture.  Perhaps Frank's nationality was a factor in their assumptions; he was Swiss, and mistrust towards foreigners, fostered by years of McCarthyism, lingered. One critic at Popular Photography decried the book as "a wart-covered picture of America" by "a joyless man who hates the country of his adoption." Another said that Frank must be "willing to let his pictures be used to spread hatred among nations."

Despite its initial reception, the book was soon recognised as a masterpiece of realism: strangely haunting, politically provocative (in the famous cover picture a segregated street-car in New Orleans fills the frame, faces gazing out of the windows, white in the front, black behind) and above all uncontrived.  Fifty years on, the book is the subject of an extensive exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. All 83 photographs that made up the book, as well contact sheets, earlier photographs taken in Europe, Peru, and New York, one of Frank's short films, and correspondence - including the letter that Frank wrote to his mentor Walker Evans after his arrest, describing it as one of the 'most humiliating' experiences of his life.

The photographs are displayed as they appear in the book, roughly divided into four sections linked by recurring symbols and themes. The subjects are sometimes blurred, the prints murky with shadows. The viewer is often presented with odd angles, as if the shot was an accident, or as if there is no photographer mediating the experience at all (Frank often hid his camera inside his jacket and snapped without looking through the viewfinder, to catch his subjects unaware). The awkward angles that force us to peer around the door frame, tilt our head, intensify the realism of the pictures and the occasionally seamy intimacy we feel with the subjects. Viewing them is not always an altogether comfortable experience, but it is often a moving one.

The pervasive sadness that so offended those first critics does exist in the collection: there is a seeping melancholy in the grainy landscapes and blank eyes. But the photographs offer a stark and frequently beautiful counterpoint to the glossy and idealistic portrayals common in mid-century America. One picture shows a glamourous starlet, her face looming large in the foreground, but blurred - Frank's focus rests on the fans that throng in the background. These are the Americans he seeks to document; the waitresses, the cowboys, the lovers in the park. Frank paired his curious outsider's perspective with a remarkable instinct for capturing a moment. As Jack Kerouac, in his introduction to “The Americans” put it, Frank “sucked a sad poem right out of America onto film.”

'Looking In: Robert Frank's The Americans' runs until January 3, 2010 at the New York MEtropolitan Museum of Art