Madder the Hatter the Hotter.

KoKOFIFI's Friends have Mad Style. KoKOFIFI Woman & Sowetan Beauty Ntsako. 

If you are in the southern end of this planet, everything is re-awakening to life. It's spring. And nothing is more spring fling than eye-candy hats complete with faux-birds of paradise feathers in the sweeping background of purple jacarandas. South African photographer Dammien Gounden captures some of spring's finest birds out in true style. Take Note. Hats are Hot. Madder the Hatter the Hotter. 

Really Looking Forward to Sharing a peep with you into Omphile's (L)  Wardrobe. The girl is so fly!

WAIT NoMORE JOZZIE

Synthesizing Summer

With Family & Friends. The INDEFATIGABLE Olivia Radebe, L. My Hat & Necklace...Made in Africa.

W/ Southern Sudan's Liberation, in spirit. Alek Wek's Skirt Sums up our LOVE. Courtesy, ListenIn Pictures. 

Gunius: Steve Jobs' Dent

Genius is like a raindrop that remains an individual spark even as it enters an ocean, even as it's swallowed by surrounding waters and becomes part of the sea. Somehow, this little raindrop miraculously manages to give off reverberating ripples of itself as it rides new waves which carry it further ashore. True genius is near impossible. How can you send ripples through an ocean while riding a wave that swallows you? You can't. That's why genius is genius. It is a rarity, an anomaly against the best estimation of possibility. In music, a name such as Charlie Parker or Miles Davis may be equated to genius. In political intellectual agility, Nelson Mandela or King Chaka Zulu. Steve Jobs is undoubtably the design genius of our times. His life's ripple was so far-reaching, its hard to imagine life's ocean ebb not drawing his name in the sand with every fresh tide.

SOWETO, For Futurists

First LOVE! Fat Albert & The Cosby Gang. How many of us knew then they were a motley crew from North Philly?

Khaya Mtshali. Courtesy, Another Africa. 

Arise Magazine Takes on Soweto. 

Am really inspired by the lovefest of talented creatives celebrating my beloved hometown-- SOWETO. I'm talking about cool cats' work, such as ilovesoweto and Sowearto and the just wrapped up TEDxSoweto. Listening to TEDxSoweto, I learned cool things about people i should know and admire, like def illustrator Khaya Mtshali, who tripped me out with his deep talk and left me with profound thoughts about the future, about happiness, about drawing and the art of living, "if the future is the present, you can't teleport to your ideal...there is no place you go to, to the future. It has to be here and now". His thesis on drawing and living in a state of happiness got me thinking about probably my first love affair with the kindda design that pulled me in and swallowed me whole--allowed me to imagine even my five year old me in an alternate superego self: as one of Fat Albert's impressive gang of Cosby Kids. Of course, the 70s fashion got me even then--I still have a thing for high collars and necklines/bottlenecks--but seeing cartoons a lot like me was powerful even if I couldn't articulate what it represented. In much the same way, seeing Soweto's design aesthetic celebrated today does things for me I cannot equate to words.

The Art Apprentice

Lara Stone Playing Art Apprentice for Bruce Weber. Courtesy Vogue Ilalia. 

Romantically, I suspect there are still opportunities to learn the craft of beauty in parts of Europe (teasingly, UK site skillset.org confirms this), but in these grand States of the Americas, what happened to apprenticing outside of bricklaying and boilers? Yes, design is very much a lucrative business, but if you believe in beauty and the importance of its preservation and evolution, how can you trust the next generation to learn the craft of beauty without these young guns sitting first at the master's feet?

1896 Print of Sculptor Auguste Rodin in the studio with Assistant Henri Lebosse & Apprentice. 

THINK PINK & FIGHT!

Yes, some of my friends are white (tittle to a great book) and let me be the first to brag--MAD Talent. Bess Greenberg is Director of art gallery 25CPW and the fly chick who gets to play host to The Global Fashion Fight during cancer awareness week. If you are in NYC Oct 25-27, stop by 25 Central Park West for inspiring art, covet-worthy fall pieces (as pictured scarf, designed with cancer patients) and truly beautiful people. Go Ahead, Bess!