MICHAEL HOCKEY

So things have had a kick start here at MICHAEL HOCKEY HQ. Thanks to our fantastic PR agent Willis Management in Sydney we've had great press come out in the last few weeks. We've also had a celebrity appearance by the charismatic Jason Dundas host of VH1 in the USA. Sporting a not yet released style from our up coming winter collection. The style features a hand worked heel made from truck tyre - very cool - seen here in Forest Green.

Look out for posts to come of press from Mens Style, Shop till you drop, The Good Weekend and the Iconic magazine. All featuring style currently available on www.theiconic.com and www.michaelhockey.com.au!!!

HAROLD EDGERTON & GJON MILI

While researching the new collection (that time again. Once on the roller coaster there is no getting off. I love it!) I looked into stroboscopic photography. Purely by accident, as I was eager to see as many pictures as I could of bullets going through apples and the explosion at different stages. Hence I stumbled across Harold Edgerton, who was a pioneer of using stroboscopic photography while working with photographer Gjon Mili who used this type of photography also. This type of photography used strobe lighting that could flash up to 120 times a second, therefore could capture fast motion photography like bursting balloons etc. This was way back in the 1930's and its still amazing photography. Below are amazing photographs Mili took for Life magazine of Picasso, and iconic images from Edgerton. 

DALI, PICASSO, VAN GOGH

Continuing on my love of advertising, I came across this campaign for an art school. Using famous artists as autopsy's. It is super amazing. But I have a request...Frida Kahlo! Keep up the good work MASP.

LEGO GENIUS

I love a great campaign. A great campaign gives immediate insight into a brand. It captures the market in a single image, it tells you what the brand stands for, it makes you love or abhor the brand, it shows creative genius or sales orientated marketing.
This lego campaign to me is absolutely genius. Everyone knows lego, its been around forever, so needs no introduction. For this campaign they take famous cartoon characters and mould them down into crude form using the basic block of lego. It engages the audience as you take the challenge of identifying who's who. Its simple, smart, engaging and all these years on - lures me back in to my lego days.
Who's who? My favourite is Ernie and Bert.

SOMETHINGS ARE A LITTLE BIT WRONG

The STD helmut

The woman who eats shit

Soup for sluts

Potato, Cheese and Chocolate bread

It is these things that make life full of giggles....

ON-AIRSTREAMING w/ TWIN SHADOW - "WHEN WE'RE DANCING"

On a trip to London in February, my music guru, who introduced me to M.I.A, Santo Gold and the Hermitude, many years ago, introduced me to Twin Shadow. And now I am obsessed, as she guaranteed I would be...very happy when listening to this. Recommended purchase.

SO...MOVING ON....

As one chapter ends one more begins...Final steps of my move to Bandung where we now have our factory. Amazing shoe makers, access to some of the worlds best leather and a brain full of new ground breaking ideas...Summer will hit stores before you know it in the southern hemisphere and for the first time we have tailored our Winter collection to co-incide with the northern hemisphere....so fans of Michael Hockey with have 24 styles available to them at the same time! Not to mention the colourways!

We start selling Winter in NYC in July so spread the word! This is our first foray into the US market, but after a successful dip in the pool in February New Yorkers are yelling "ITS ABOUT TIME MTHR FKERS!" And we are SUPER excited.

Were keeping the styles close to our chest for now, but jump onto www.michaelhockey.com.au for the moment to check out and purchase our current winter range....you will not be disappointed.
Infact this month we have a competition running in Australia with www.styletread.com.au email the longest list of songs with the word "shoe" in the lyrics for your chance to win a free pairs of shoes. There are five pairs up for grabs, so send your entries now to music@styletread.com.au.

Check out our awesome shoe makers below. Loves it!

MORE TO LIFE THAN THIS

Something about art always makes me think more about what I am designing.

Art is so broad. It incorporates photography, sculpture, drawing, painting, performance, collage, instillation...the list goes on.

Fashion is clothing. Shoes are shoe, bags are bags, Jewellery is jewllery, hats are hats. Yes they fit into the fashion category - and dont get me wrong - I'm in fashion, i live for fashion. But art forces me to think in a different direction and not just reinterpret what exists.

I trawl through www.butdoesitfloat.com because there is such a vast array of artists, ideas and concepts. These are a few I found recently that I thought were amazing....

ENVIRONMENTAL GRAFFITI

I've come across this amazing new form of graffiti from Germany. Called Environmental Graffiti www.environmentalgraffiti.com, it is made from moss. The process involves blending moss, water, buttermilk and a retention gel and making a paste. You then paint it on with a stencil or free hand and keep it moist with water mist. The results are spectacular. Try it for yourself.

ANIMAL BEATBOX - Tropfest 2011 Winner (TSI: "Key")

So for those of you outside Australia you may not have heard of Tropfest. Tropfest is an Australian short film competition which is in fact the worlds largest short film festival. It was started about 10 years ago in a small cafe in Kings Cross called the Tropicana Cafe (hence the name. And which BTW when I lived in Sydney use to die for their Trop salad for lunch). Its and annual competition and every year they have a theme or a word as inspiration. 2011 theme was Key.
Attached is the winner of last year. I just love it.

AMANDA LEPORE "SHES THEM ALL"

I love Amanda Lepore.

I think she is fabulous.

I'm alway interested in knowing where people have come from and how they got to be where and who they are today. Little is documented about her though. From Wikipedia I found out she was born as Armand in Cedar Grove New Jersey, and from a young age she knew she was supposed to be a girl. At 17 she had a sex change and got married and lived a suburban life until she left for NYC.

Before and after pics and transformation pics always interest me also, but again there is only one pic i've been able to find of her as a young woman.

In any event I came across these pics from Tush Magazine in

2010, shot by Marcus Ohlsson entitled "She's them all" SO SO good...i've popped in a couple of the originals too for a bit of a look-a-like comparison.

NYC, SERIOUSLY...STOP IT!

So as a designer there are things that are just taken for granted. You travel. You get inspired. You visit the high end brand store to drool over the make, finish and the fabrics. For me, being from Australia the 1st and 3rd point are kinda hard...well, not hard but just not as accessible. 25-30 hrs away from major cities like London, Paris and NYC.... as a result i've being lucky enough to visit London and Paris a few times, but NYC i've not been so lucky....until now!

I've just spent 1 week in NYC for the 1st time and I have to say - OMG. I HEART NY!!!!

Paris, was always the city at the top of my list of wonderful cities - and it still is - but NYC is my city. Dynamic, inspirational, progressive. And lots of other adjectives....

Having spent the last 12 months in Indonesia, to come back to a big city has been cathartic. Being able stimulate my senses with new experiences is just what I needed...

Attached are a few things that got my creative juices doing somersaults!

INANIMATE OBJECTS

I love seeing great design.

I love how everybody interprets things so differently.

I love to see how peoples design processes work and especially the re-interpretation of something we take for granted. More still the use of an inanimate object and turning it into something of beauty.

For instance the post I made back in April last year of Jennifer Maestre's work. Making sculptures out of small sharpened piece of pencil.

I found yesterday amazing rug sculptures made from objects usually discarded. Band aids, cotton buds, clothing pegs, the result is spectacular.