Hasta La Ideas

If it feels like coming back to the daily grind after a long, relaxing holiday weekend has destroyed all forms of hope and joy, then we have just the remedy for you: the vaguely possible news that fashion design legend Karl Lagerfeld has collaborated with the rapper Snoop Dogg. Unfortunately, to what that degree of collaboration was, if any at all, is still unknown. Late last week, Women’s Wear Daily reported that the designer was in Saint-Tropez, directing a music video for nightclub owner-turned-musician Jean-Roch. Very quickly, WWD mentioned that “The track also features Snoop Dogg.” Whether or not Messrs. Lagerfeld and Dogg were in the same room together, or even in the same city, was not revealed. However, that didn’t stop the internet from exploding over the weekend with headlines like “Karl Lagerfeld and Snoop Dogg Are Working on a Music Video” and “The Collaboration We’ve Been Waiting For: Karl Lagerfeld and Snoop Dogg,” writing as though it were a sure thing. As far as we’re concerned, given that WWD was the only outlet to have the story and simply reported, again, that “The track also features Snoop Dogg,” we’re going to hold off believing that they’ve gotten together to make magic. If it does wind up being true, we’ll expect the finished product, judging from Lagerfeld’s previous film work, to either be bizarre and plotless or meandering with just a hint of plot. If it doesn’t wind up being true, that will mean that we can continue to pull for for our preferred design-based collaboration for the rapper: Droog and Dogg, together at last.

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Stills from Qui Êtes-Vous, Polly Magoo? and The Eyes of Laura Mars, two of the films that will be screened during “Fashion in Film.” (Images courtesy Museum of Arts and Design)

On the glitter-encrusted platform heels of the Museum of Arts and Design‘s David Bowie retrospective comes Fashion in Film, a three-day celebration of fashion, design, and style on the silver screen. The New York institution has partnered with Vanity Fair and the Film Society of Lincoln Center on a long weekend (Setember 9-11) of screenings, panel discussions, and receptions that will keep the Fashion’s Night Out momentum going through next Sunday. The singular Simon Doonan has co-curated the screening program, which includes iconic favorites (William Klein‘s Qui Êtes-Vous, Polly Magoo?, Les Parapluies de Cherbourg) as well as new releases, including the world premiere of Jan Sharp‘s new Rick Owens [claps gleefully] documentary, Rick, Michele, and Scarlett, and a look inside the elite ateliers of Hermès. On Sunday afternoon, Doonan will chat with the likes of designers Jeffrey Costello and Robert Tagliapietra, Matt “Valentino: The Last Emperor” Tyrnauer, and the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology’s Valerie Steele about how film inspires fashion. Tickets for the chic film series are going fast. Purchase yours here.

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So apparently the internet gets all enraged when singer Rihanna and her director copies David LaChappelle, Beyonce and Co. borrows liberally from photographers Pieter Hugo and Ed Kashi, or when Beck, Charlotte Gainsbourg and Keith Schofield repurpose strange images found on the internet, but when Lady Gaga does the same, she’s applauded or the whole thing is just ignored. Maybe it’s because she describes herself as an artist with dreams of an exhibition at the Louvre? Whatever the case, the singer’s latest music video, You and I was released last week and it’s being viewed as either a) an homage to Marina Abramović, b) a slight copy of Abramović’s work, particularly her video piece, The Great Wall Walk wherein the artist walk toward one another across a wide stretch of China’s Great Wall (it’s sort of the same basic plot in Gaga’s clip), or c) the vast majority of people don’t know who Abramović is, so it doesn’t matter, or it’s good that the singer, who is a well-established Abramović fan, is trying to at least raise partial awareness of another person’s work (without every really doing that). To get extra, fine-tooth-comb picky, we recommend hitting up Flavorwire, who have put together this piece on “Lady Gaga’s Most Blantant Contemporary Art Rip-Offs,” which is just as it sounds, comparing her previous music videos to the art that, at times, seems that “inspired by” might not be the most accurate phrase, when “copied directly” would perhaps work better.

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We’re not at all upset or jealous or full of boiling rage because director Christopher Nolan has taken the Batman franchise away from us here in Chicago and moved production for the next film to Pittsburgh. No, not at all. These clenched teeth and the white-knuckled grip, pay them no heed. Those things and all the cursing are just our ways of saying how happy we are for that other “city.” To prove it, we point you to ArchDaily, who recently put this post together, highlighting the best of Pittsburgh’s architecture that might possibly be put to use, given Nolan’s penchant for using pieces of great and modern metropolitan buildings as doubles in the fictional city of Gotham. The always-shiny and reflective PPG Place, designed by legendary architect Philip Johnson, seems like it has to be a given, though they also throw out some “maybes,” like Charles Klaudner‘s ultra-gothic Cathedral of Leaning. With production beginning at the end of last month, thus far Nolan’s crew hasn’t hit up any of Pittsburgh’s notable architectural landmarks (unless you count Heinz Field, where the Steelers play, which is certainly a large building, but hardly a standard when it comes to modern architecture), and both the city and the production are keeping things on a need-to-know basis, so it’s a wait and see kind of game. If you’d like to follow along and see what gets used next, we highly recommend staying on top of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, which has nearly become the Gotham Globe of late.

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Is there still any social cache in saying that you watch PBS now that there are a billion television outlets available and not just a couple of networks that you could dial in with the careful repositioning of some rabbit ears? We would assume, however slight, there surely must be (all our smart friends, for example, kept babbling to each other and everyone we met how great that new Sherlock Holmes show was). That in mind, PBS still seems to know how to get it done, even when they venture online. Such can be witnessed with the recent launch of Off Book, a 13-part, bi-weekly web series “focused on experimental and non-traditional art forms.” It launched back on July 20th, with an interesting episode on photograph that uses painted light, but they seem to have really hit their stride with this week’s release of “The World of Typography,” which features interviews with the likes of Jonathan Hoefler and Tobias Frere-Jones, Paula Scher, and Eddie Opara. It’s great and you’ll find it below.

The previous episode, “Light Painting Photography,” can be found after the jump…

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