GEAR | Tomboy Style x Paper Chase Luggage Tags

Photos by Katrina Dickson.

You may remember a recent post about the Los Angeles paper press Paper Chase, a second generation printer founded in Los Angeles in 1976. Some time after that studio visit and before Nicole asked if I wanted to collaborate as part of their Paper Cuts series (T Magazine blurbed about it when it launched), I came up with an idea to make luggage tags based on old designs of legacy and now bygone airlines. Airline logos, and even more specifically luggage tags and gate check tags, have been something I've collected for a little while—so the opportunity to create customizable tags with Paper Chase seemed like absolute kismet.

I based the designs off of three old tags, one Swiss Air and two KLM tags. You can probably spot two of them in the above photo. The red one (which I think might be my favorite) is based on an old KLM Airline tag, and the Paper Chase version similarly includes three numbers across the top—but instead of just printing a random string of six numbers, we subbed in the atomic numbers for silver, gold, and platinum as a play on airline status brackets (nerd nerd nerd alert!).



Each tag is customizable, front and back (and don't worry, that's not my real address or phone), you can monogram, add your last name, business, or whatever  you'd like. The tags are tied with waxed cotton stings and are printed double thick with colored edges and matte lamination. Get 'em while they're hot >>> Tomboy Style x Paper Chase luggage tags ($25 for a set of five).

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MOMENT | Gap's "Dress Normal" Campaign

The Gap has recently released four videos directed by Academy Award-winning director  David Fincher in conjunction with their "Dress Normal" campaign. I went on CNN on Tuesday morning (it's not online, thankfully!) to discuss the idea behind the campaign and the #normcore trend. Initially you might think there's nothing simpler than an idea of "dressing normal", but when filtered through blogs and magazines, opinion pieces and branding, it can quickly become really complicated. Is it a statement of defiance? Is it a joke? Is it oblivious conformity? Is it a reaction to labels? Is it a reaction to the escalation of unattainable fashion? Is it 90s nostalgia? It it about practicality? All of the above? What came first, the chicken or the egg? Why don't you just tell me the name of the movie you selected? Although thinking deeply about normcore is not my idea of a good time, I think these videos are really smart, light, and fun, and their tag lines are definitely playing into the idea's complexity:

Let your actions speak louder than your clothes.
The uniform of rebellion. And conformity.
Simple clothes for you to complicate.
Dress like no one's watching.

Here are the two other campaign videos: Kiss and Stairs. And just in case the song Wait A Minute by The Newday gets stuck in your head from the top video, here's the full song.

p.s. Just a quick PSA: I will repost the luggage tag collab that was up last night and this morning, tomorrow. I lost track of the date when I scheduled it earlier this week and took it down this morning out of respect for 9/11 victims and their families—it was the wrong thing to be celebrating on such a hallowed day for the country and New York City.

ICON | Bernice Bing

Photos of Bernice Bing via Mythos Fine Art & Artifacts (above) and The Asian-American Women Artists Association (below).

"I do believe that one of the reasons she was able to garner a one-woman show at the Batman Gallery was because of her fearless large-scale canvases, similar to what her male-counterparts were producing. Bing was a fierce painter and she could hold her own. In this bohemian milieu, the masculine world of the literati and the male subjectivity of Abstract Expressionism dominated."—Jen Banta as told to Layla Gibbon for the City Lights blog. 

Check out the full interview here, an insight into a underrated artist and the prejudice that occurred within the Beatnik/Avant Garde circles of the 1950s and 60s.

[Thank you Layla, for bringing "Bingo" into my consciousness.]