Treats!

Woman's body was present at the very origins of art as a symbol of fecundity and with shapes of nature as landscape.   To the first artists, men confused and inspired by woman's mystery, her body became an inspiring object because it suggested more than it seemed.  As T. W. Adorno put it: "Artworks become artworks in the production of this more."  The magazine Treats!,  launched in February 2011, offers multiple poses of the nude body that suggest: shy temptation, raucous display, private contemplation, confident indifference.  With a nostalgic attraction for previous decades, the magazine's paper seems sepia-tinted by age; here is one of the most original of the new-style magazines that deliberately expands boundaries.  Thumbing through these pages the reader is challenged by a wave of appropriate/out-of-place aesthetic values: contour; texture; color; part and whole; enclosed photographed objects questioning their relationship to reality. 

Paper Passion, Perfume for Book Lovers

               We develop a sense of smell early in the womb from the surrounding amniotic fluid, our first perfume, bonding us to mother's milk.   Early to arrive and often late to leave, the sense of smell is a messenger.   "The smell of a freshly printed book is the best smell in the world," writes Karl Lagerfeld, head of Chanel and contributor to a recently launched book and perfume. Aging paper and ink seem a luxurious fragrance of that reading memory when mind and imagination snuggle against worlds where we belong.  

Students of Fashion-Looks

Some eight hundred young students attended a three day workshop at FIDM, Los Angeles.  The challenge: how to convey to others that confidence that expresses you belong?  Here is what some who visited the bookstore wore.

Fashion Statements (3) Alexander McQueen

Fashion Statesments, published in 2006 contains 44 interviews with leading designers, including this one with Alexander McQueen.  Interviewer: Do you get the feeling that the art and fashion worlds are growing nearer? McQueen: On my level yes, in a very signifcant way.  Interviewer: Is there a big difference between fashion design and art? McQueen: They are two different things: one is commercial, the other is esthetic.  Esthetic and business usually don't merge very well.  And in any case, in the art and fashion worlds this doesn't happen; they just become ideas.

The Coach is a Player

Aneesha DuBois has quite a following.  Inspired by an attitude turned philosophy, she believes in "breaking all the rules: fashion is: what I like."   Asked if she is influenced by where she plans to go and who she expects to meet, she answers, "of course."  After developing a reputation for what goes with what she is seen here at the Fashion Project Cafe working on developing her own line.

What Is a Bookstore?

 A place to visit that recaptures those first happy memories of how accessible the world is;  a place that makes you feel powerful because you find subjects to pursue; a serious place where the unknown, the surprising beckon; a place to be with others who feel a similar longing; a place that teaches a respect for learning and a humility before the generosity of authors, who for often modest rewards, share; a place that makes you feel, "I belong here."  Bookstores rock!

Rin Tanaka, Pioneer of the American Scene



Rin Tanaka, whose series of books My Freedamn and Heller's Cafe  has visually chronicled the poetry of American everyday life by publishing the clothes of every-day life, visits the Fashion Bookstore to sign and deliver his latest book, Heller's Cafe Vol. 2.

With Yolanda, Bookstore Manager