Japanese magazines are way better than ours. Part catalog, part style guide, all Kanji.

The latest issue of Japan’s Free & Easy is all about boots, bikes, and cameras. You don’t even have to be a casual reader of ours to know how that appeals to Launderette.  An amazing archive of American men’s fashion, Free & Easy magazine covers characterizations and impressions. James Dean, Surfers, Motorcycles, Workwear… it is another cultures interpretation of our own, and the irony is how much you learn not understanding a word.

If you can find it, it’s not cheap, but nowhere else will you find better reference for leather jackets, desert boots, and dog breeds.

Rifle Paper Co. specializes in hand-painted, customized stationery of striking beauty.

We’d probably hire, call, or email anyone that handed us a calling card including a Rifle Paper portrait.

We sure appreciate stationery companies that love paper as much as we do. How many people truly appreciate the cards, letters, and invitations that they receive? Who notices the weight and texture of the paper, the stamps used, the lettering, the care and importance? With the dominance of email and e-cards, we hope that businesses like Rifle Paper Co. will keep postal correspondence from becoming a lost art.

Freelance photographer Frank Worth befriended some of Hollywood’s big names of the 40s and 50s taking intimate production stills before such candids were common place. Considering these photos private mementos, Worth’s family found nearly 10,000 rarely seen and never published negatives in his apartment upon his death.

A&I and International Images’ book, Americana depicts Worth’s collection of portraits taken behind the scenes of the epic film, Giant. A fan himself, James Dean invited Worth to capture off camera moments on set.

Cheese & Bread Buffet

Ice Cream Buffet

]]> http://www.dresslaunderette.com/blog/buffet/feed 0 http://www.dresslaunderette.com/blog/lincolns-got-a-funny-hat http://www.dresslaunderette.com/blog/lincolns-got-a-funny-hat#comments Mon, 15 Feb 2010 08:01:05 +0000 Leslie http://www.dresslaunderette.com/blog/?p=1845

Happy President’s Day! – Make some money-gami.

Click picture above for instructions.

]]> http://www.dresslaunderette.com/blog/lincolns-got-a-funny-hat/feed 0 http://www.dresslaunderette.com/blog/cindy-ferguson-interview http://www.dresslaunderette.com/blog/cindy-ferguson-interview#comments Wed, 10 Feb 2010 08:00:40 +0000 Keith http://www.dresslaunderette.com/blog/?p=1755

One of our favorite artists, Graphic Designer and Scherenschnittist* Cindy Ferguson, was kind enough to answer a few questions in anticipation of her Salt Lake City show February 19th.

*Scherenschnitte (pronunced: Sharon-shnit-uh: German for “scissor cuts”), is the art of papercutting design.

I have been papercutting since September of 2006. My friend Kim and I visited my grandparent’s in a small town in southern Germany called Hermuthausen. We had just been to Salzburg where I had bought some quickly cranked out paper cuts from the museum of Mozart’s birthplace. I thought they were really pretty and that since I’m pretty decent with an Xacto blade that I could do something like this on my own. When I got to my grandma’s house, I saw this on the wall and even though it was just tacked on and really small, the details and style were so intricate and surpassed the couple I had bought at the museum in all manner of artistic craft. I wanted to make my own. You can see my first papercut here.

A mix of delicate fine lines with bold solids really makes a piece interesting I think. Kind of the chiaroscuro of papercutting. If you can make a super thin line with paper, people are always pretty impressed. For most it’s just that it’s a silhouette. If you’re painting something, you can have foreshadowing and depth. But in order to do a proper silhouette, you can’t do too much foreshadowing or it will look like a stump.

Travel inspires me. I love to get out there and see things in a way I’ve never seen them before. Even if it’s just to a ghost town a few miles out of your city. There’s something there that will educate you about the life that is lived around you.

I love to look at the work of old dead German people. If you go to this website, and click on the left on the link titled “kunstler” there is a whole slew of traditional Scherenschnittkunstler (papercut artists). I also love the films of Lotte Reiniger.

A Launderette inspired papercut? Maybe a girl on a first date with a fox. (ed. This was read with much eyebrow raising and approving head nods)

For more Ferguson scissor guidance, watch her training video here, or meet at her Winter Wonderland show opening Febuary. 19th.

Shooting almost exclusively on Polaroid film, there is a foggy comfort to the work of photographer Dusdin Condren. Images bleed into depth and shadows, and leave a sense of age to them. There is so much beauty in the softness and wear, as though both the subject and physical image passed through great exertion to arrive in our view. Each full of a sense that there is more to a story than the brief suggestion we are given.

“I take pictures because it’s a way of saying something without having to say something literal. To say something that can be both abstract and simple. I get a bad feeling when people talk about “capturing” something with photography. That way of thinking seems lazy and false. For me it has much more to do with the impulse to pretend or to remember something creatively. Seeing something real and wanting to imagine how that real thing would be if it were a fake thing. Alienating and distancing. Putting the artifice of a lens between myself and reality. Forcing the present into the past, and so on.”

Bow Ties, 1990

Painter Wayne Thiebaud (pronounced “Tee-bo.”) started as a commercial artist, a field that seemed to influence his most iconic images of displayed cakes, pies, eyeglasses, and ties. Working in oils and lithographs he often creates two variations of the same image. The depicted color print for example, has a companion version in black and white. At 89, Thiebaud is still painting daily, lectures at the colleges where he was formerly professor, and reportedly always wore a bow tie.

• Interview with Mr. Thiebaud

• Our own Bow Tie

“If we don’t have a sense of humor, we lack a sense of perspective.”

In honor of tonight’s celestial events past & present, we highlight the work of British graphic designer Simon Page. A fellow lover of typography and illustration, he created this stunning series of posters for the International Year of Astronomy – 2009 (bet you didn’t know we were coming to close on that too this Dec. 31st). Initially designed as works for his portfolio, the IYA 09 asked to use them in their promotional campaign. Hardly a question as to why.

Prints available for purchase on his site.

Launderette loves a good Paper.

Nothing like a ready, mobile notepad for jotting down naval coordinates and barometer readings. Bocce ball scores, continental breakfast schedules, cumulus observations… whatever your notion or reminder, being prepared to record it is paramount.

Field Notes makes a sharp little memo for just such a requirement. Debonair in its standard khaki, their seasonal subscription colors are down right good-looking. I don’t need much convincing when it comes to gifts in the mail I’ve forgotten were coming.