As you may know from an earlier post this week I love the Ace Hotel. While I adore the one in Palm Springs, there is also an Ace here in NYC. Tomorrow another thing I adore, CRUSHfanzine, will be hosting a pop-up shop at the NYC Ace.

CRUSHfanzine is a self-published by two guys, Nicolas & Khary, and it’s a zine focusing on a single theme.  Their current issue is all about the obsession with feet. Yes, I said feet. Called Foot Soldiers it explores a fetish that many don’t know exists or keep secret. While I love the book and think you should pick it up I also encourage you to check out the pop-up shop if in NYC. The items they’re selling, including one of a kind customized Chuck Taylor All Stars by NY designers and artists Desi Santiago, Zaldy and Miguel Villalobos, sound awesome. But I am most intrigued to see the guys who show up. If anything like those featured in the zine you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

If the news we reported recently about Betty Dodson’s Genital Art Gallery being forced offline really got you down, here’s something to brighten your day: There’s an Etsy retailer called Vulva Love Lovely dedicated exclusively to women’s genital and reproductive artsy craftsy thingies. We’re fans of the more lighthearted, graphical stuff: the little cartoon uterus pillows and the vagina dentata clutch. Babeland (the folks we heard about Vulva Love Lovely from) really like the vulva portrait necklaces fashioned after customers’ own naughty bits (you send them a photo or description to work from). We could maybe see carrying around one of their little generic vulva pendants on a keychain as a funny feminist statement…maybe. But wearing your own spread eagle around your neck? That takes serious labes.

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As Fashion Week winds down here in the Big Apple and the dust settles many a gay are left talking about what’s happening in fashion. Yes, we gays discuss fashion. I know, shocking.

The press is picking up on a new trend that even I, one of the biggest gays in this oh-so gay town, could not possibly pull off. Bows. Yes, those bows. The ones on Minnie Mouse’s head and your Prom date’s satin pink dress. Those bows.

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The Wall Street Journal, a paper not necessarily known for its fashion coverage, had an interesting article recently about the influence bloggers now have over big name fashion designers. Where in recent years political bloggers have received more and more credit and credibility for their writings, and audience numbers, style bloggers not so much. Until now.

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Announcing the launch of FULL FRONTAL FASHION, an all new style destination offering insider access to the highly creative world of contemporary fashion. Meet the designers, influencers, artists and trends at the forefront of international style and glamor. FULL FRONTAL FASHION will unveil the craft, creativity and passion of the most authentic artists working in, and around, the world of fashion today.

Rarely is fashion considered purely as an art form — it’s more of a publicity tool, a shopping opportunity or status symbol. Yet, behind the label, in a small warehouse or atelier somewhere, designers put their pens to paper, take a 2-dimensional inspiration and make it a 3-dimensional work of art.

We want to celebrate that process with FULL FRONTAL FASHION — and show all the exciting underpinnings of putting together a collection. We hope to start with inspiration, which as we all know can be anything, and explore construction and ultimately how and why clothing gets sold and worn.

We have gathered a diverse group of creative writers, photographers, artists and stylists to write about their fashion perspective each day on the FULL FRONTAL FASHION blog.

Log On. Tune-In. Buckle Up!

Betsey Johnson is a fashion designer who’s never quite gotten the credit she deserves. Designing clothes and turning a profit since the 60s, she’s always been a bit too extreme to have become a household name like more mainstream American designers such as Donna Karan and Calvin Klein. As her dreadlocked hair and cartwheels down the runway prove, she’s a bit kooky.

So are her clothes. Having a penchant for animal prints, florals, neon-hued cocktail dresses and the like, she makes clothes for downtown girls. Those who date rockers and can drink you under the table. Sexy and badass.

Opening Ceremony recently collaborated with Johnson pulling 40 of her greatest looks from a back catalog from the 70s and 80s. Betsey Johnson Archive Curated by Opening Ceremony shows her best looks in exacting detail. Opening Ceremony even went as far as having the original fabrics replicated. So they’re vintage without that musky smell.

The fashion industry is working its way towards more sustainable methods of sourcing materials and making clothing; fashion modeling, however, is largely still associated with jetting to Milan and partying with rock stars. A handful of models, though, have focused on integrating their own green values into their work, and serving as the faces and voices of the eco-fashionable lifestyle. Project Green Search, an educational and inspirational arm of fashion retailer Greenloop, would like to add to their ranks, and is sponsoring a search for the next “poster girl” of sustainable couture.

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We are pleased to announce that beginning September 9, Sundance Channel will be re-invigorating the critically-acclaimed FULL FRONTAL FASHION franchise. Highlights of the launch will include a content-packed website here on sundancechannel.com which will develop into a stand-alone website by spring 2010.

Timed to launch in conjunction with New York Fashion Week, the new site will offer a sophisticated yet accessible look at the passion, art and drama that epitomizes the world of contemporary fashion. The new site will feature daily commentary from top fashion columnists such as Lynn Yaeger, former Style Editor at the Village Voice, exclusive video and photos from A-list photographer Patrick McMullan, and timely dispatches and images from all over the globe from writers such as Robin Sayers, Aya Kanai, Cator Sparks and Jessica Marati.

In addition to the website, Sundance Channel will support the FULL FRONTAL FASHION initiative on-air with the September 9th premiere of THE DAY BEFORE, a series which goes behind-the-scenes in the final hours leading up to major fashion shows for Sonia Rykiel, Proenza Schouler, Fendi by Karl Lagerfeld, and Jean Paul Gaultier.

Check back soon for the launch of FULL FRONTAL FASHION!

We guess it was only a matter of time before the true-love-waits crew decided to use sex to sell abstinence. After all, if sex can sell anything — even, ew, toilet paper — why shouldn’t it be used to promote the very absence of sex? That’s so po-mo our heads hurt. But here’s what really makes our heads hurt: It’s the Candie’s Foundation — yes, of Candie’s shoes fame — that wants to sex up the abstinence-only campaign. The t-shirt above is the winner of the Candie’s Foundation’s “New Sexy Slogan” contest. Ah, Candie’s. How fondly we remember you from that ad starring a naked Playboy Bunny on the pot…and the one featuring a teen starlet who looks like she’s posing for doggy-style…not to mention the one with abstinence role model of the year, Britney Spears…and then this ad, which is so f*&%ed up we can only link to it, speechless. (And when we say f*&%ed up, we’re not just talking about Mark McGrath’s highlights.) Yay, girl power in stripper shoes! And did we mention that the new face of the Candie’s Foundation’s abstinence campaign is Bristol Palin? The jokes just write themselves, people.

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Posted on DeviantArt, a popular online community for a wide range of artists to showcase and share their art, a talented user posted an impressive dress made from recycled materials as her final piece for college. It’s made from newspapers, plastic bags, bin liners, curtains, and old fake fur. She also made this small matching hat.

[Via]

photo by dougwoods

• Wondering what’s the 2009 equivalent of “the dog ate my homework”? It’s “the cat downloaded my child porn.” Seriously.
  
  
• In the you’ve-got-to-be-f&#*ing-kidding-us department: South Korea paints parking spaces pink to designate them for women in heels.
  
  
• Kathy Griffin continues to endear herself to us by bringing Levi Johnston as her date for the Teen Choice Awards.
  
  
• Washington D.C. will offer free STD testing in high schools.
  
  
• Will the new health care plan provide free sex changes?
  
  
• Greek woman turns man’s penis into an Olympic torch after he refuses to put it away. Ah, sweet, liquor-fuled, fiery revenge.
  
  
• Throwing underwear on stage is so last year; Adam Lambert’s fans toss SM sex toys.
  
  
• Governor Sanford’s wife decides that she’ll be better able to “heal the family” from outside the Governor’s Mansion, and so she packs up and leaves. We can’t wait to see what kind of bad poetry this will inspire Sanford to write.
  
  

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