Sophie Smallhorn

Earlier this summer, when I took one of my rare strolls down our inner city walking street Strøget, a shop window really made me stop. Now, it was in a shop I usually check out, but this was different!

It turned out to be this really cool creative collaboration between British artist and visual concept maker, Sophie Smallhorn, and the Swedish fashion brand COS. 

In flagship COS stores in Copenhagen, Hong Kong, Seoul, London and Los Angeles, Sophie Smallhorn made site specific window displays with these stacked, geometric color forms - basically taking up a lot of window space and thus upstaging the clothes completely, but with such wow effect, that it had the exact opposite effect.

If you know a bit about COS's particular kind of colorful minimalism, the windows worked like an abstract depiction of the brand DNA. So brilliant and so beautiful.

Above, the shops in Copenhagen, Seoul, London and Honkong (couldn't find the L.A. one).

These displays are based on a series of small and quite delicate wall hung acrylic and aluminium sculptures - a theme she has worked on for a number of years - only in an enlarged version.

Her graphic and sleek style just makes me jump with joy, see much more of her work here, and she proves to me yet again, that playfulness and orderliness are not necessarily adversaries!

Here are a couple of examples of her 'Components' sculptures:

And here's a nice little story to end this post with....

I snapped a picture of the Danish window and posted it on Instagram. I saw a suggested hashtag in the window (check it out: #cosxsophiesmallhorn), and used it, to properly credit this fine work.

I actually didn't notice, or only vaguely so, anyway, that I entered a competition - and only found out, when COS contacted me, and told me I had won two Sophie Smallhorn prints!

Yayeee!! I am picking them up next week, and they look like this. Lucky me, don't you think?
Maybe I should start buying lottery tickets?

Blog is back in business again, and it's M-Day!

Oh, Madonna. Lady Madonna. Happy birthday! Sixty today, and still able to cause a stir, make some serious noise and fill the dancefloor. Unapologetic, controversial and fearlessly fashionable, from the day she was born I imagine, and such an inspiration for my generation. 

From the moment I first laid eyes on her, sometime around Like a Virgin (an album I purchased immediately on it's DK release in 1884), I was smitten. And I still am.

The photo above, is taken by Richard Corman in 1983, just six weeks before her first album was released, and her almost immediate stardom was a fact. And no wonder, huh? It just shows.

Read about his work with a 24 year old, yet quite unknown Madonna, right here.

Here are a couple more of his great, great shots!

I loved that early phase of ruthless accessorizing, and her first, bouncy Jellybean ('Holiday' is, and will always be, one of my favourite Madonna tunes) and Nile Rogers produced hits. 

But she has remained a personal star and inspiration, because no matter what crazy, surprising turns her musical and personal style have taken, she has practically always felt just right and like exactly the thing you needed! How does she do it? And I say practically, because some of her work has been more marginal - but that has never been a problem for an artist who has the guts to experiment and develop. 

But there is consistency, oh yes! Because of course that gypsy/punk princess of the Richard Corman photos could be a film noir fetish godess. Or a geisha. Or a cowgirl.

The circa 1990 Blonde Ambition phase, the razor sharp looking Gaultier / Dolce & Gabbana clad superstar, was another highlight for me. If you haven't seen In Bed with Madonna, you should!

Vogue will make me dance anytime, anywhere (and I will still try to do voguey arm gestures, and be crappy at it), and the video is breathtakingly cool. I literally get goosebumps, every time I hear that opening chord. Just did, again. 

I could go on. But I won't.

Listen to your own Madonna Playlist today, celebrate a feisty woman who continues to grow and go new places, and is wonderfully age defying, when it comes to dress, style and propriety. 

I will end with a couple of some of my later favourite looks - connecting to my favourite Madonna title track: Ray of Light and my perhaps favourite-as-a-whole album: Music. Meet the healthy yogi with a suntan (!) from 1998 (photo by Mario Testino), and the folksy rhinestone cowgirl from 2000 (photo by Jean Baptiste Mondino)....

Ray of Light - a song that caused one of my worst running accidents, because I just can't keep my energy under control when I listen to that track. I simply flew along to it on an icy park road, onto which I fell, as long as I was - with smashed eyewear and much facial bloodiness as a result.

"Quicker than a ray of light I'm flying..." - and on my face and ass I landed.

From the brilliant Music: Listen to: Don't Tell Me or Amazing