Nipples to Fashion: Is There Such a Thing As Ethical Leather?

It's been on my mind a while now: why - when there's such consumer demand for organic and freerange meat and dairy products - is there not pressure for ethical leather? So I wrote an article on the subject for SIX Magazine.

While writing it I looked into designer Rachel Freire's use of yaks' nipples in her collection. Here's a titillating (sorry) image from her SS12 collection, Nippleocalypse.

Controversial maybe, but she realised the nipples were a waste-product of the leather industry and sought a way to make use of them.

Personally I choose not to wear leather at all. Some vegetarians wear leather because it is largely accepted to be a waste product of the meat industry. I suppose this might explain the discrepancy between people's avoidance of food which involves cruel farming systems and their acceptance of material which would otherwise be a waste-product of such systems. I can't help thinking that if we made a stand for ethical leather, though, this would help put an end to cruel farming systems.

Anyway, here's the feature:

Frame and Fortune

Does cutting and sticking three bits of paper together a collage make? The inspiration for this 'collage' started when I spotted the gold frame in an image in the Grand Theatre programme, advertising Opera North's Ruddigore.



I tore out the base image from Dazed & Confused a while ago: a haunting photo shot through torn paper of a girl in a straight jacket style dress. Then stuck Coco Rocha, shot for Elle in a D&G playsuit, in the frame...

the back of Coco Rocha...

Tim Walker for Jo Malone

I've already written about how much I love photographer, Tim Walker's work, so I was impressed with Jo Malone to hear that it had employed him for its new Wild Bluebell campaign. I couldn't resist messing about with it a bit, natch...

There's Pippa Moore from Northern Ballet's Giselle peeking out from behind a rose, a blossom border from an old issue of Elle and doves nicked from a Louis Vuitton spring 2010 campaign ad with Lara Stone =

Jane Shepherdson Interview for SIX Magazine

Ola! (I just got back from Spain, let me off). Thought I'd add an interview with Whistles maestro Jane Shepherdson - who was pure lovely, btw - which I did for ethical magazine, SIX alongside this one for The Leeds Guide. Ta ra

Birds and Women

Now seems as good a time as any to link back to a feature The Zine Queen was in, in The Leeds Guide. Yes, yes, so I may have commissioned the writer myself to explore Leeds' blog scene and find the 'best blogs'.

'Do I have a blog?' he asks. 'Yes, and here's the link'. Oh well...

The Hub - Never Neverland Issue

I've been meaning to put my work for The Hub's first issue (published September 2010) on here – mainly for the sheer awesome emanating from Caroline Andrieu's pencil and ink illustrations – so here it is. If you can read it, then yes I am essentially arguing for fashion fighting wars and overcoming guillotines, but then, I refer you to my partner's enlightened realisation the other day: "I suppose I spend a lot of my time and money on my hobby, golf, so it makes sense that you would do the same with fashion." Amen.

Happy Birthday Mr Dylan

Hurrah, hurray, Bob Dylan is 70 today. So I thought I'd add a card I made for Timbo's last birthday, featuring the bard. It was hastily done last July, and features some of Tim's favourite things. The fact these include a serial adulterer and a woman who looks absolutely nothing like me seem happily to have had no great influence on our 11 year relationship...

... nor has Tim's assertion that he thinks of us when he hears Love Minus Zero/No Limit, particularly the words, 'my love she's like some raven, at my window with a broken wing'. Erm...

It's summer, isn't it?

Black Swan

Northern Ballet’s Cleopatra has just premiered in Leeds, Black Swan is still making it well-nigh impossible to park anywhere near Harrogate cinema of a Wednesday evening and I have loved dance ever since mastering ‘good toes naughty toes’, aged three.

With this in mind, here’s yet another collage featuring some of the awesome Northern Ballet dancers and a self portrait by Sylvie Guillem. There’s also a wee nod to Alexander McQueen in there.

I interviewed Northern Ballet’s artistic director David Nixon OBE for IdeasTap and The Leeds Guide recently and, of course, couldn’t leave without at least one trite question as to whether he had seen Black Swan. This could have gone one of two ways. He says ‘yes’ and we have a sheepish moment in which we both remember that scene where Vincent Cassel sends Natalie Portman home to flick herself off in front of her mum in order to ‘really get into character’, or whatever, and I then bumble out a question as to how real to life it is, thus likening every one of his dancers to a paranoid schizophrenic. Or he says ‘no’. Probably just as well it was the latter, really.

The background comes from an ad in Harper’s Bazaar for high-end jewellery brand Annoushka, the director of which I’ve also interviewed, thus affording me another chance for brazen self-promotion with a link.

The English National Ballet dancer in the top left hand corner is from a gorgeous fashion shoot in Stylist – oops! I did it again.