Terre des Femmes

German women’s rights organisation Terre des Femmes along with McCann Germany organised a stunt to raise awareness of domestic violence amongst German women. They set up a makeup stand in a busy shopping centre in Berlin and asked passers by if they wanted to have a free makeover. The unsuspecting women didn’t realise that  they weren't being made up with a gorgeous foundation, but instead they were being painted with blue-green greasepaint, to leave them with what looked like large ugly bruises with shocking results.

Watch the video here

http://www.womensrights.de/

Sur le web: merci merci

Today the infamous Paris 'style destination' merci merci celebrates the fact that their new online boutique has gone live. merci are hosting a special in store event tonight a 'Web Garden Party' to mark this occasion.

Offering a range of menswear and womenswear as well as furniture and home decorations it's worth popping in even if its just to window shop. merci merci can be found at: 111 boulevard Beaumarchais 75003 Paris

www.merci-merci.com

& Other Stories opens in Paris

A brand spanking new brand from H&M called  & Other Stories will be opening the doors to a new store in Paris this Friday. Located just a few doors down from the prestigious style destination Colette, you can find & Other Stories  at 277 rue Saint-Honoré. I visited the London store on Regent Street a couple of weeks ago and it was such a breath of fresh air, price wise and style wise the brand is located in between H&M and Cos with a focus on trends for a mid-late twenties audience. With ateliers located in Stockholm and Paris, the collection hosts ranges from over 35 designers including the style brands of designers such as Sonia Rykiel and Acne.

www.stories.com

Smells like April

Sissel Tolaas: NoSoEaWe

Google Nose

As you know yesterday was the 1st April and for those who were happily tucking into their easter eggs had forgotten that it was April Fool's Day. Google tricked a lot of people into thinking that they had launched a brand new technology called 'Google Nose'. By clicking on the link from the home page, Google seemed to generate different scents including smells from the forest, garlic breath...and then prompted people to sniff the screen of their phone/ tablet or computer. The concept behind it was to let people smell by search and search their smell. The incredible thing about this 'joke' is that one day this technology could be a reality as Google are investing in research into how we can interact with our devices in this way. 

The theme of smell is something which is cropping up a lot in the media right now. A scientist, researcher and scent curator called Sissel Tolaas (featured in this season's Cos in store magazine) has created an artwork called NoSoEaWe which combines the four neighbourhoods in her adopted hometown of Berlin. To create this unique 'perfume' she combined more than 63 scents to create the final odour. Tolaas has spent a large part of her career cataloguing different scents or 'street smells' and now has a library of over 7,000. Her work revolves around her fascinatiion with every day smells of places and our own bodies. She has even explored the ways in which we can capture the scent of our sweat and created 'sweat soaps' something which completely turns our pre-conceived ideas around the smell of sweat being 'dirty' and that perfume can be used a way to attract and seduce the opposite sex. What's interesting about Tolaas' work is how scent can be used to evoke a place, a person, an era and that the human nose is capable of detecting around 15,000 different smells. Certainly not something to be sniffed at.

Sissel Tolaas

Material Lab

I've just discovered an interesting centre of inspiration based in the heart of London called Material Lab.It's designed as a 'go to' destination for the architecture and design community to and acts as a 'design resource studio'. This means that people can come and  discover new materials, discover new trends and get advice. It's a great way for designers to get inspiration with a hands on approach. From their extensive selection of materials including glass, wallpaper, wood, fabrics...it sounds like a great place for people to come with their creative team/ clients and try out ideas to see how certain textures or colour effects will look and feel. It's also located near Oxford Circus which makes it easily accessible, I'm certainly going to try and pop by next time I'm in town in between my compulsory visits to Topshop and Urban Outfitters....

For more info visit www.material-lab.co.uk

Falling in love with...art?

This Valentine's day Parisian based brazilian bar Favela Chic are holding a very special event tonight: an exhibition in collaboration with Starter Gallery of 8,000 'condoms' which were displayed in the Pompidou Centre in November 2011. The bright plastic moulds adorned the exterior escalators and enabled you to pass through a myriad of colour as you made your ascent to explore the upper floors of the gallery. Didn't think condoms could be so...aesthetically pleasing? To liven things up the exhibition at Favela Chic will be accompanied by a performance by Sarah Trouche, there will be music from Yellow Radio, video projections and various different kinds of installations. 

Starter Gallery is both a virtual and physical gallery which was created in March 2012 and provides an online platform for people to share their artwork, to support artists, to buy and sell work  and to make art fun and accessible for the average Joe. If you're new to the art world, it's certainly a good place to get started.

Fashioning Fashion

This weekend I went to see the latest exhibition at Le Musée des Arts Decoratifs in Paris which gives visitors a flavour of two centuries of European fashion dating from 1700-1915. This promenade through time enables visitors to see how techniques, fashion and fabrics changed a lot during that time and how the development of machinery during the industrial revolution lead to the first examples of haute couture. 

It was fascinating to see how colours and patterns were influenced by foreign travel and how the importation of foreign fabrics provided the European bourgeoisie with something 'exotic' and unique to wear in society. Something else which I noticed throughout the extensive collection of men and womens wear is how people have always restricted or enlarged certain parts of their body in order to try to attain society's idea of beauty. Women wore painfully tight corsets in order to achieve an incredibly thin waist whilst they wore skirts to exaggerate their enormous bottoms. This has continued until today where you see women undergo plastic surgery to have bigger boobs and lips and liposuction to have smaller waists, you only have to spend one afternoon in the 16th Arrondissement in Paris to realise that for some women beauty really is skin deep. However, the 'Fashioning Fashion' exhibition showed that it was exactly the same for our ancestors and that fashion and style evolves along with our ideals of the perfect body and we adapt how we look accordingly.

For more info: Visit this link 

Image: Courtesy of Le Musée des Arts Decoratifs.

Diamonds and Dead Things

An artist which I have just discovered is Kelly McCallum who has created a project with Märta Mattsson called 'Diamonds and Dead Things'. It is an ongoing project with the purpose of searching for 'the magical in the unexpected'. McCallum and Mattson play with taxidermy in a shocking but pleasing way enabling us to rediscover not only the beauty of animals in death but make them come to life by showing them in a different light.

To find out more go to: http://www.diamondsanddeadthings.com/Info.html 

Time for design

I went to Maison & Objet, an interior design trade show this week and saw some gorgeous designs from an Italian company called Discipline. Their range includes homeware made from natural materials including cork, steel and wood. This clock called Pieces of Time by DING3000 is made of ash wood elements and comes in six different colours. The different tones of the wood mark the hours and before you know it time just slips away. 

Likewise this beautiful dish by Pauline Deltour is made from copper, brass and 'gun-treated' steel. The trays go through a special process in which they are dipped into water paintings and then spin dried. This creates a special layer on the surface which protects the copper and makes it last longer. Hopefully we'll see more of Discipline in the forthcoming months and more information can be found on their website: http://www.discipline.eu/ 

Hunting for Treasure

This weekend I went to the Marché aux puces in St Ouen in Paris which is renowned for its antiques, Bric a brac and vintage gear. It is a real treasure trove but be prepared to pay, this is Paris and not your average flea market so your pennies won't stretch very far even if you have got your heart set on grabbing some decent old fashioned pieces.

A couple of other markets I also recommend are :

- Le Marché des enfants rouge in Filles de Calvaire. A cute market which is a hive of activity during the weekend, there are plenty of food stalls offering tasty dishes from around the world and a jolly vintage photography shop on the left side of the entrance. A real must !

- The market at Porte de montreuil. Great for any second hand bargain hunters. You'll find a bit of everything here but be aware this Is not a charming Parisian market it's a jumble of gems and crap where haggling is ok. You're sure to find some cool stuff in amongst the tat!