Azealia Banks is everywhere. Did you see that shoot that’s in Dossier? Did you hear that new track, Jumanji? In the spirit of summer and excess and hype, here are some outtakes from our shoot with Michael Flores of the young Rapunzel taking off a pair of sunglasses. Don’t be a Kool Aid dude, one-two.

Shirt: Fred Perry
Skirt: Jac Langheim
Sunglasses: Jeremy Scott
Necklace: Bing Bang by Anna Sheffield
Lingerie: The Lake and Stars

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Three girls, one Polaroid camera and stickers by the bucketload – that’s how these pictures came about. It’s 2012 and it’s all about being relevant in this Tumblr obsessed generation. Posting and reblogging are the order of the day. We eat LOLcats for breakfast. Yet, sometimes you just want to get your hands dirty. Enter DIY scrapbooking.

We’re all from Cape Town and yes, this is Africa baby; now living is Paris. Lea Colombo is a young photographer who is not afraid to try out kooky ideas. Her website showcases a wide selection of her work, from forays into fast food joints and lover boys, to hot girls hanging out of vintage cars. She’s got that versatility thing down to a tee.

Fani is the dopest model, you kind of don’t want her to do anything but rather just be. The photos were shot in her house which is filled with weird and wacky thing – one suspects they are hoarders. Naturally her dad owns a record store, Mabu Vinyl, so two rooms in her house are devoted to the sweetest vinyls. Crazy White Bitches is a second hand clothing initiative she started with her two best friends. They source cool, hard-to-find apparel from across South Africa and sell it at events that read more like parties than sales. Beer and hip hop DJs will confuse you like that.

I’m  a Fine Art student at the University of Cape Town and am  responsible for the post production scrapbooking that screams pre-teen dream. Obsessed with glitter, Hello Kitty and Britney Spears, I refuse to act my age. I’m also responsible for the styling, using mostly pieces from the Crazy White Bitches collection to create simple, fresh looks with big ass platforms for attitude.

We’re all babies of the 90′s, conceived in the throes of the 80′s hangover, living through this new millennium’s puberty. It’s a tremulous time. High on Americana, yet not forgetting our homeland is how we operate. We’re not about to act out our “Africaness” in a contrived way. This is a global world after all, and we’re all citizens of the internet. Collaboration is the language we speak.

This shoot is not high fashion; it’s not your typical Eastern European babe bathed in gazillion dollar clothes. It’s young and frivolous – revealing something of the personalities of those involved. We like McDonald’s and listen to Justin Bieber, but we are simultaneously engaged in contemporary art debates. Such a fuss is made about high art vs. low art. Surely we have descended far too deep down this postmodern rabbit hole for any of that to matter? Let’s break those walls down 1989 style.

Intellectualizing these images seems a bit redundant. They are fun and flirty and yet also the result of internalising various global sources. These photographs display a certain integrity despite the lack of integrity of the materials that adorn them. Tyler, the Creator said it best. We all fucking walking paradoxes. Let’s just go with it.

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Photography:  Lea Colombo
Stylist, scrapbooker and text: Jana Terblanche
Model: Fani Segerman

“Looking for a future with a positive, vibrant energy.”

This is how Rei Kawakubo described her Comme des Garçons Spring/Summer collection to Amy Spindler of The New York Times in 1995, although the designer could just as well have been talking about Paris at that exact moment.

*95 (IN PARIS, THE OUTSIDERS ARE OFFICIALLY IN) is an exhibition by Marc Hundley, Ian Hundley and Nick Relph loosely based on their shared experience of the Comme show in Paris in 1995.

Curators Robert Milne and Sinisa Mackovic (together known as Rainoff) selected works in which the artists attend to this common history. According to Sinisa, Comme des Garçons is less the subject of the exhibition than an adhesive holding it all together.

A work from Nick Relph involving a Comme shirt is not rooted in the brand or even the shirt, but in a study of color etymology. Plaid, if you will, is the intersection of individual colors with history and a particular significance. Similarly, the works in the show form a complete picture that transcends one time or one place.

“Timeless” is, unfortunately, a word that has come to belong almost exclusively to a vocabulary of design, yet it is the word that best fits the works in *95. In documenting and re-presenting that particular time and that particular place, the artists have brought what was and what could have been into what is and what might still be.

*95 (IN PARIS, THE OUTSIDERS ARE OFFICIALLY IN) runs from March 7– March 31 at Neon Parc. 1/53 Bourke Street, Melbourne.

All images by Nick Relph and courtesy Gavin Brown’s enterprise, New York. (Above left) Talking to the Main Road Slowly, 2010. Color Photograph. 43 1/2 x 33 1/4 inches. Edition of 10. (Above right) Vneck Rasclatt Jumper Cashmere Ting Cardigan. Collage. 29 x 22 1/2 inches. (Bottom left) Money Ar Go Runn For Ears with No U, 2010. Collage. 20 x 18 inches. (Bottom right) Comme des Garçons Spring/Summer 1995.

When Gertrude Stein declared, “A writer should write with his eyes and a painter paint with his ears,” she was challenging artists to shift their perceptions. The upcoming exhibition at the Fondation d’Enterprise Hermès, opening March 16, takes the assignment a step further, tasking not only the artist but also the subject of the work and the viewer with this complicated mission. Titled Matt Ducklo & Matthew Monteith: Mind’s Eye, it examines the way in which an individual views and experiences art, referencing the personal biases and perceptions that influence our encounters. Photographs by Matthew Monteith capture art viewers in Rome as they consider different works—from the Roman Forum to Bernini’s David. Matt Ducklo, meanwhile, presents images from his series “Touch Tours,” which documents blind and visually impaired individuals in prestigious art museums as they use their sense of touch to “see” artwork. From their particular corners of America, Matt in Memphis and Matthew in New York, the artists took a moment to discuss the deceptive nature of photography, the enimga of art and why you should carefully consider that café au lait before hitting the MoMa.

Erin Dixon: Tell us a bit about your respective projects.

Matt Ducklo: I was photographing seeing-eye dogs in New York City and before that I had been photographing newscasters, which I still do, on their sets. One day, I saw a seeing-eye dog get on the bus with a newscaster, and I started thinking more about seeing-eye dogs and living in New York City and getting around and navigating the world—having this animal be your eyes. Then, a friend told me about the touch tour program at the [Metropolitan Museum of Art]. I’d never heard of it and thought it sounded amazing, so I went to the Met and I photographed touch tours in the Egyptian Galleries there, and then I found out that there are programs like that all over the place. Once I took the first picture, I knew that this was something I wanted to do.

Erin: Matthew, how did you arrive in Rome and did your motivation for the series come prior to your arrival in the city or after having observed people observing art there?

Matthew Monteith: It kind of goes back to the work that I did for a book with Aperture called Czech Eden. It’s not related in any direct way, but I was interested in these particular concepts of “paradise” and who creates what kind of social utopia based on what ideology. How does it work and what happens in that whole process? Then I went to graduate school at Yale, and when I was there I got very interested in this idea of “thinking utopias.” Do they work and does art education work? And how does it work when it does work? Then I heard about the American Academy in Rome, and I started to think about the Villa Medici and the development of all these different academies in Rome—how they were created to sort of make these national tours of art, which was important to Western society in some way. Then I went to Rome and I visited the Academy, and I realized, “Wow, this is this sort of incredible, anachronistic thing—and also wonderful.” People go for an entire year and they stay there, they look at art…and I knew that was something I had to do. I had to get engaged with that. I think there was also something about how classical art relates to contemporary work in some way.

Erin: How did your own way of viewing art change during that period?

Matthew: Well, I didn’t really have any formal education in art history at all. So when I went to Rome, I saw it as this opportunity to do exactly that—to go around to people who knew tremendous amounts about all sorts of different architecture, art, painting and everything. I got to experience that first-hand, which was really wonderful. I’ve always been really intrigued by the idea that you go to a museum or a gallery and you see a piece of work; you see it once and it really excites you. Then you come back a year later, and you go to the same city and you say, “I’m gonna go back and see that sculpture. It’s going to be great!” You walk in and something has changed. It looks totally diminutive and you’re like, ”What? That’s not the same thing.” Or it’s way better than you imagined. It’s so much about what you bring to it. That’s something I was really interested in as well.

Matt: What Matthew just said, I agree with a lot. I don’t live in New York right now, but I did. And now whenever I go back for a couple weeks, I hit all the museums. I look at a lot of art and I enjoy it so much, but it’s crazy how much your own psychological state or whether you’ve had a cup of coffee or not [affects how] you react to something on one visit. Then, you see it again and don’t react to it. Or you feel nothing and then the next day you’re thinking about it. I don’t get to touch art, but when you’re touching a work of art you’re getting a special privilege that sighted people don’t have, which is exciting. You’re having access to a world that you can’t fully access. It’s probably a lot heavier than me strolling through the American Wing at the Met. Each [touch tour] “viewing” is a thing. You go up, you get permission, you touch it… It’s not like you can spend five seconds looking at this and turn around for 15 seconds and look at that.

Erin: How, then, do you define art as an entity, given that you’re working with people who are both sighted and not?

Six Percent, San Bernardo, Rome, Italy, 2009. Archival pigment print, 24 x 32 inches.

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Matthew: I think it’s probably a bit like…what was it in the obscenity trials? You know it when you see it?

Matt: That’s hilarious. I called a friend last night and she said the exact same thing, but I don’t even know [art] when I see it. When you make a book and you edit the book, you hone it and try to make the sequence good and resonate. You cut things out and put things in, and you think about how people are going to perceive it. Then the thing gets printed and it goes off; it’s like this ship that sets sail. You no longer own it or have any control over it. It goes out into the world and people see it however they are going to see it. It’s always so surprising; they tell you, “Oh, I love that thing,” or “I hate that you did this.” And you didn’t have any way of anticipating any of this. I guess what I’m saying is: Some work goes out on that journey and it just crashes. It doesn’t ever arrive. There is no levity to it. Whereas for other works, those perceptions carry them along—something resonates. It doesn’t have to be what you intended, necessarily, but it goes on and develops its own life. I guess that’s the closest thing I can think of: Does it develop it’s own life? Does it resonate? Does it keep going on?

Erin: Given that, why is photography an important artistic medium—particularly if you say that art is something that takes on a life of its own? Can photographs be as ambiguous as other art forms?

Matthew: It’s a tricky thing, but for me that’s what I’m attracted to about photography. It seems that it is so specific, because it has to represent what was in front of the lens at the moment of exposure. So we have this belief. We say, “There’s the thing we can trust it.” But the more engaged with photography anyone gets—and you don’t have to get that engaged—the more you start to realize that’s not it at all. Photography is a total fabrication and it’s really ambiguous because it has the ability to convince us of the reality. I guess that’s the thing that keeps me excited about photography: this sort of razor’s edge. It’s the thing that makes me think it might be one of the most surreal and bizarre mediums that there is out there.

Matt: I agree, because that’s kind of it for me too. I’m a very gullible person. I look at a picture and my first instinct is to believe what I see. I guess 100 years from now, they won’t see photography that way at all, but right now I look at photography and my gut instinct is to believe that actually is what happened.

Matthew: It’s almost like a faith-based practice.

Matt: That’s exactly right. But isn’t art [in general] a faith-based practice? You can be competent but you have to have some sort of faith that something good is going to happen. I know it sounds hokey…

Erin: And by good, you mean its resonation factor?

Matt: That some magic is going to happen. Something is going to happen that you couldn’t have predicted, because if you predicted it there wouldn’t have been magic. Something is going to happen that is beyond yourself. You can’t make magic. You just have to have some faith that if you work hard enough and are consistent then something will happen. But if you don’t work hard, nothing will happen.

Matthew: There’s a Raymond Carver essay, “On Writing,” though it could be about anything. In it, he’s talking about writing short stories, getting a phrase or a sentence and realizing that this phrase or sentence comes out of the mouth of this [character], and the character sort of emerges and develops, and you [as the artist] just keep sketching it, redoing it until it feels right and true. That’s exactly what Matt was just saying in a way. With photography, there are these instantaneous gifts that happen, and they are more pronounced because they happen in the world that you could have never dreamed up.

Erin: So what role does the viewer play in creating the meaning of a photograph or in discerning its magic?

Matthew: It’s a kind of difficult because everyone brings their own meaning, but I think there is something about pictures that resonates. Different people have these different readings of them, but there is something shared, so you can say, “That’s a great picture,” or “I know that picture.” Then you can disagree completely about the meaning of the picture but there is something sort of ineffable about the quality of certain things.

Erin: What does the way in which people view art reveal about them? Did you find yourself judging them?

Matthew: I think that’s a primary issue whenever you’re making a portrait. Not that my pictures in Rome are portraits, but they do include that element. [How a person views art] deals a lot more with who the person is, how they see themselves and how they want to project themselves—and do they understand what you are doing? Are they participating in the whole idea or are they just trying to be in your picture? If they are just trying to be in the picture, it never works. It’s tricky. There’s a lot of failure. There are a lot of people you think are going to be really great. Then you take them somewhere—and you think, ‘That’s wonderful; their work revolves around this subject,’ and it’s terrible. It’s a disaster. You waste the entire day. The people who are best are those who really get lost in the process. The more successful photographs were made on the fly or they were heavily set-up to the point where people were exhausted, then they just started looking at the thing and they didn’t care what I was doing anymore.

Erin: Where does fashion or clothing factor into your photographs?

Matthew: One of the things I’m always disappointed in is when someone has too well a curated sense of fashion. In the pictures in Rome, that’s definitely a factor. I always sort of wished that if you made an appointment with somebody, it would be somebody who was maybe wearing some really ugly shoes with maybe a really nice skirt with maybe a mismatched dress, because this is how life really happens. I was just recently doing a job for the architects who did the redesign for Lincoln Center and it involves people passing through the space, so it’s spontaneous in some ways, and the people in Lincoln Center really have one of the best off-kilter senses of fashion. You have ladies waiting in line for scalper tickets and they’re wearing a pair of house slippers and some kind of Patagonia leggings, but they’re also wearing a fur coat.

Erin: Did your project achieve its goal and/or what about the project makes you proud?

Matt: I guess I’m proud of the fact that it’s a lot of work to get access [to the museums]. It’s a lot of emails and it’s a real drag to get these things organized and get permission to bring a big camera into a museum, but I keep doing it and I keep finding it interesting. Most of the pictures are in focus. I don’t really know what I set out to accomplish, but I like the pictures and I still want to take more. It’s part of a continuum and I still find it interesting after nearly five years…so that’s something.

Matthew: Something I love about the touch-tour pictures is that there is something that is totally non-visual, because how do you make photographs of something that isn’t a visual thing, in general?

Matt: I thought a lot about the fact that it seems sort of screwed up to take a photograph of someone who can’t see the photograph but who is experiencing art. Of course everyone knows they’re being photographed, and even though you might not know what a photograph looks like, you know what it is.

Erin: Given that, do the two of you feel there is a shared thread that binds your works?

Matt: Sure, there is the exploration of the modes of perception. That’s definitely the impetus behind both of these projects in some way, though I suppose you could say that about anything…

Matthew: We all spend a lot of time looking at art and [when you do that], you question the process. We were talking about this before… Sometimes you go and see something and you have this great experience, and sometimes you don’t. It’s not always about the art. It is, a lot of times, about you.

Erin: Can you tell me about current influences and projects, and how the projects we’re discussing here have influenced your present work?

Matthew: I’ve started taking pictures of docents, mostly. My wife is writer and very interested in history. She was a docent at the Merchant’s House Museum in Lower Manhattan for quite awhile, and when I got back from Rome I was sort of captivated by this idea of history and the things we think we know but that have to be told. They have to be told in a way that is enticing and interesting and accurate. All these scholars in Rome are constantly talking about the validity of this concept versus this concept; it’s kind of ridiculous on some level, but the narration of stories is really interesting. The more I watch people describe things and try to convince you, the more I realize: This is amazing—these gestural forms people make and the way they contort their faces when explaining which emperor slaughtered more people, or didn’t… So when I came back, I started to try and make these pictures of docents engaged in sort of “fraught” moments of description, but I think I only have two.

Matt: I am photographing church vans that are locked in cages. Two years ago, I moved to Memphis, where I grew up and [where] there are lots of churches. There are churches in rough neighborhoods or [in places] where there isn’t enough money to have a full-time staff, so they lock up their vans in cages with barbed wire around them and they’re usually the exact size of a parking space. I do it at night.

Erin: In curating the images you would show in this exhibition, what led you to select the particular images you did?

Matthew: It’s a little challenging as there are really two parts of the project: There are these funky little weird abstractions of my own observation, which I made largely with this Canon G10 point-and-shoot camera. Some of them are made on film and they’re in all different formats, but all of them are sort of odd, quirky observations. It’s kind of like when you go to a museum and you think you’re going to see this great thing, and then the baseboards in the museum are really weird and you get really caught up in this architectural detail or another random thing—the light fixture or the view… I really wanted to make those super subjective pictures. I think that’s what’s really interesting about looking at things. Then I sort of balanced them against these other pictures of people having their experience. Those I didn’t want to be so much about the space as they were about the people and what was happening to them in that space. So I kind of organized [my images] in a way that you have those pictures and you have the little detailed pictures, and the detailed pictures are smaller. I think they’re like 15 by 20 inches and the pictures of people looking are like 25 by 30 inches.

Matt: I have taken one Touch Tour picture in the last two years, so I put the pictures I had. I know that’s a bad answer. There’s not really much of a difference in the actual form of the pictures so I just picked the best pictures.

Left: Walk, Don’t Walk, 1976, Whitney Museum of American Art, 2011. C-print, 50 x 40 inches. Right: Marie Breath, Rome, Italy, 2009
Archival pigment print, 24 x 30 inches.

Matt Ducklo & Matthew Monteith: Mind’s Eye runs from March 16-April 28, 2012 on the fourth floor of Hermès at 691 Madison Avenue.

Lead Image Left: Notation Leaves, Rome, Italy, 2008. Archival pigment print, 15 x 20 inches. Lead Image Right: Evocation of a Form: Human, Lunar, Spectral (1950, enlarged and cast 1957), Hirshhorn Museum, 2008, C-print, 50 x 40 inches.

Dossier contributor and longtime friend André Wolff is leading a series of fashion photography workshops in Paris, starting in July. The Swedish photographer has been based in Paris for a bit more than a decade, shoots for everyone, teaches at Parsons, and has now launched Paris Creative Workshops, whose inaugural course will be in the practical aspects of fashion photography: working with stylists and makeup artists, managing clients, mastering imaging software, and the general ins and outs of running a successful fashion shoot.

André will lead the workshop together with fellow Parsons professor Patricio Sarmiento, a fashion designer who’s worked for Maurizio Galante and Louis Vuitton, among others. The two are offering a kind of formalized apprenticeship program for aspiring fashion photographers hoping to circumvent the trial-and-error phase of early career – or those who are simply looking to marry their photography talent with a bit of industry business sense. Interested students can contact André through Paris Creative Workshop’s application form.

This is a little teaser video provided by Andrew Kuykendall from the shoot he did in Palm Springs with the insanely beautiful Ashely Smith for the new issue of . We are so excited about our new issue, I don’t even know where to start. I think it is our weirdest, most interesting issue ever (really, seriously) and I’m just balls out in love with it. More teasers to come, as I sit on my hands trying to not leak the entire issue to you.

Shot and edited by Andrew Kuykendall and Jean-Pierre Caner. Model, Ashely Smith. Styling by Djuna Bel for Giant Artists. Makeup and Hair, Daniele Pierson. Styling Assistant, Sara Medd. Song: “It’s Your Voodoo Working” by Charles Sheffield

This weekend, The Total Look opened at LA MOCA’s satellite space in West Hollywoood. The show is a celebration of the collaboration between designer Rudi Gernreich, model Peggy Moffitt and photographer William Claxton. The late designer, an LA-based Austrian transplant, was well known for inventing the topless monokini (popular in Europe in the 1960′s) and helping to launch the sixties mod aesthetic with his daring and colorful body conscious designs. Moffitt was Gernreich’s model and muse (as well as the late Claxton’s wife), a darker Twiggy, with similarly huge eyes, short hair and diminutive frame. While both men are no longer around, the exhibits showcases Moffitt’s collection of Gernreich’s highly sought after and extremely rare designs alongside Claxton’s photographs as a tribute to them both, focusing on the trifecta of designer, model and photographer. (Hairdresser Vidal Sassoon, who I imagine was also an integral part for creating that somehow very sexy bowl haircut, showed up to the preview.) The exhibition also features the 1967 short film, Basic Black: William Claxton w/ Peggy Moffitt, which many call the first fashion video ever. What strikes me about this exhibit is how well truly good design can stand the test of time, as (most) of these outfits translate flawlessly to today’s fashion. The bathing suits, in particular, are still absolute works of art with no real competitive answer in today’s market. The other thing that strikes me, of course, is that Peggy Moffitt is stunning at age 73, and although the exhibit focuses on the collaboration, I am glad she is still around to get credit for being a part of such a pivotal moment in fashion history. Looking at this exhibit makes me think we can all use a bit of the swinging sixties in our life.

All photos taken at the VIP preview dinner on Saturday night by Douglass Neill.

The Total Look is on view through May 20th at The MOCA Pacific Design Center, located at 8687 Melrose in Los Angeles, California.

Photographer Katja Rahlwes describes her images as “Cool Women, or better: Femme Intense.” She re-phrases the perception of the female gaze, with her own unfaltering approach to shooting women who are in command of every shot. Her glamazonian subjects often subvert the idea of the classic pinup. Katja has contributed to independent publications such as Self Service, i-D, Dutch, Butt and Made in USA. She has also created works for the fashion houses Celine, Chloe, Miu Miu, A.P.C, Maison Martin Margiela and Gucci. Katja’s closest relationship to date has been with Purple. Her most recent collaboration was the Full Moon supplement for issue #16, comprised of childhood pictures, Polaroid snapshots and a number of her own collection of vintage postcards. The zine is rendered with a combination of black and white images next to a neon orange colourwash. With her numerous editorials, intimate still-life pieces and self-portraits, Katja’s images make for a rich portfolio.

Natasha Arnold: How did you acquire a taste for fashion photography?

Katja Rahlwes: From an early age I was drawn to imagery through magazines. I’d cut out everything that triggered an emotion in me, made me dream, escape or move. I still have a huge collection of bits and pieces, photo cut-outs, postcards, entrance tickets.

Natasha: How did you develop your attachment to still-life photography?

Katja: It’s a very personal process for me to work on stills, I really love that moment when I start setting up a scenario, it’s quiet, there is suspense. My aim was to inject some new sense to it. It all started when I took more and more pictures of my personal environment. I did that to remind me of ideas or situations or set ups I liked. It was a sort of diary memo work. I then discovered the magic of mini photo sets, the way you would set up a situation inspired by the items you photograph. Great design has a lot of soul, so a fabulous pair of shoes can lead you in quite a storyboard.

Natasha: You’ve had a strong connection to independent publications throughout your career. What is your main drive behind this line of work?

Katja: Basically, independent publications allow you to develop your groundwork. You are more or less free to let run your creative thoughts. There is also something quite confidential about it, you work close with a team of people and you sense the passion everybody has for what they do, that is so important. Some magazines can become your house of thoughts.

Natasha: You have worked a lot with Purple. I loved your recent supplement. Can you talk us through the ideas behind the display of intimate childhood Polaroids and vintage postcards?

Katja: That book is a collaboration with Olivier Zahm and I guess we are still looking for who I am. I think we all are driven by a moment of time and images we never forget or helped us form a point of view. I am, for sure. I collected the vintage postcards at the time they were absolutely not vintage but they are today. Postcards help me to capture a moment of me being somewhere no matter where and what I do. A postcard is always the ideal representation of something. At least, I would say that is the intention of a postcard. For me, I sense a lot of loneliness from a postcard too. It really makes me think.

Natasha: In your formative years you worked as a fashion illustrator, fashion stylist and studied fashion design at Studio Berçot. With such a multi-disciplinary background, is there a path outside of photography you’d like to pursue?

Katja: I don’t know, but it is true I am thinking about it a lot, “What is my next step?” I love furniture and lamps, I would love to be able to just buy everything I discover in that domain and furnish a big house or an entire village!

Natasha: Who are your art heroes and why are they important to you?

Katja: I was actually really blown away by a recent show I saw in Paris at The Museum of Modern Art by Ryan Trecartin and Lizzie Fitch. I thought to myself: if you come up to such a high point of realization about our today’s today, what’s next? How can you move on and not go crazy? Super hyper lucidity, they are quite strong out there.

Natasha: Could you pinpoint your personal influences?

Katja: Really everything has an influence on me. Essentially it would be my dilemma and my strength.

Natasha: Living between Paris, London, New York and then your home of Frankfurt- are there any tangible differences between each city? Do you have a favorite?

Katja: No, no favorite, but a place like Frankfurt am Main is nice because it’s a ‘wannabe big’ city with all the wannabe clichés of a branded city like Paris or New York, but then its very provincial too. Those elements are very touching to me. I gain new headspace when I go there. I am currently working on a book called Paris am Main, the romantic drama of messed up perspectives.

Natasha: What is your stance on the fashion industry today?

Katja: There is a lot to say, it’s a very reactive ground. I think its best to keep it in the open.

Natasha: Do you think there is something a female photographer can access that male photographers cannot?

Katja: I wonder is it really about making the difference? Because I think the work you do is due to the individual and the therefore each approach is different.

Natasha: What is next for you?

Katja: Going back to work!

All Images, Katja Rahlwes

A welcome departure from the standard holiday festivities, The Grand Street Bakery marks the debut of The Cilo at The Bakery with tonight’s opening party. Situated in the back room of the bakery, which used to house a flour cilo, The Cilo expands The Bakery’s inspired mix of new and vintage clothing, homewares and trinkets by focusing on vintage electronic accessories, including vintage turntables, speakers, receivers and Danish Modern record buffets circa the ’60s. I was lucky enough to have a little sneak preview last week, and they’re truly beautiful. Among the “new” offerings are candles in the shape of Morrissey’s head, each hand carved by Derrick Cruz of Black Sheep & Prodigal Sons. Additionally, vinyls will be available from local bands, including the Wild Yaks, the Minks and Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson, who will be performing tonight at the opening along with Anyways It’s Monday.

The Cilo at The Bakery is located at 602 Grand Street, Brooklyn, NYC. Its opening party is tonight, December 16, from 7pm-11pm.

“Everything should be beautiful, if you can just start from there.”- AJR

Meet A. Jason Ross, the designer and master craftsman behind a stunning collection of accessories for men and women rapidly advancing into the realm of ‘must have’.  In truth, Ross already has a cult following of fashionistas as well as those who love to indulge in quiet luxury – his designs are absent of, so-called, ‘neon-sign’ labels.

Ross’s design studio is housed in the former Monarch Luggage factory in Red Hook, Brooklyn.  It’s a fitting home for the designer who crafts leather accessories under the name Artemas Quibble and the Creatures of Mme. Du Barry. Upon entering, you know that you are in an artisan’s lair. A visitor is immediately greeted with the sweet smell of leather and the various rhythms of cutting, sanding, hammering, pounding, forging, casting, soldering and buffing, this as artists are busy at work.  Hand-crafted tools, designed by Ross (he has 27 hammers), share wall space with leather swatches, thick, antique leather remnants, deconstructed keys and crops from other metal artifacts. Ross, with the help of lighting designer Robert Ogden collects a lot of antique materials. Huge windows usher in natural light – showcasing the beauty of the rough-hewn wood floors and the artful chaos of the studio’s walls.

The day I caught up with Ross, he was preoccupied with a new collaboration forged with Donna Karan – a stunning collection of belts for Karan’s ‘Casual Luxe’ line. Of course, that’s not all that’s keeping Ross busy these days. He pedals his wares at Urban Zen. There’s a venture with ABC and handbags for Henry Beguelin. He has also developed a bespoke service with Barney’s called the ‘Watch Transformation Project.’  This is not your father’s watchband, nor is it you your mother’s.  It’s a bold, innovative design embellished with an antique metal over-leather hinge, with a short or long, sinewy strap with or without a buckle. The leather’s rich patina lends a sublime elegance to the band.  Says Ross, “The watch mechanism is a very beautiful thing and I love the idea of having the raw, rougher antique metal work next to say a 19^th, 20^th or 21^st century watch.” A WTP band is a final flourish of one’s dress that uniquely presents a vibe that is both rugged and refined.

It’s a curious mix that is representative of Ross himself. Ross is a history and archeology-buff or “geek” depending on how you look at it. It’s that respect for the past that clearly informs his design sensibility. “My daily read is Archeology.org, Arts and Letters Daily and I also read the latest Discovery and that usually leads me to some kind of interesting website which might lead me in a new direction in my work,” he says adding, “I can look to any ancient period to find inspiration.” Ross admits that as a kid he was eager to dig up dinosaur bones in the yard of his family’s home, alas it never happened. During summer camp in Maine however, he recalls digging up old bottles and fragments of old bottles on the site of a former hospital. “I remember that as being tremendously exciting,” he says adding, “I like, with my work, to have history.”

Ross, who is also a guest lecturer at the Parsons School of Design, describes himself as an ‘abstract perfectionist’. When you look at his work, to the untrained eye, it looks like an accident when in fact there are blueprints, laws, rules and ‘illustrated tales’ that describe everything. “When you work with primitive tools which is part of the process of my work and part of what informs it, you have to have laws that govern the construction of the piece because there’s a certain randomness that happens,” according to Ross. He also gives credit to his girlfriend Natasha Chekoudjian, “She is a muse to me and is really amazing at sourcing ancient references.”

A Philadelphia transplant, Ross has been in Manhattan about a year and a half. The decision to make the move from Philly to Gotham was simple: he had a growing list of clients and business contacts in the City and wanted to be more accessible to them. “The reality is, there was not a store in Philadelphia selling my work,” according to Ross. He grew up on Philadelphia’s Main Line in a home appointed with French antiques, “a lot of gilt bronze,” he says. His mother, the late Caren Ross, in the 70’s, created a line of accessories including belts made of bullets under the label Bang Bang. His father Milton Ross was an inventor and manufacturer with an appreciation for Savile Row suits and Mr. Fish shirts. Ross, the younger, was educated at the elite Haverford School before attending Boston University.

He says he never thought he’d be making accessories. He started off making boxes constructed of reclaimed wood, lined with antique papers from engineering drawings. He then began making furniture. Ross developed an interest in accessories after becoming fascinated by leather machinery belting he saw at a wood-worker’s shop he was renting space in. Eventually, he began incorporating leather into his woodworking. At some point, he was asked to make a bracelet for a friend, Doub Hanshaw, who wore it to work. The buyers she worked with became interested in the bracelet and that ultimately translated into an order from Free People.

The label name, Artemas Quibble and Creatures of Mme du Barry, was initially a character to hide behind, as Ross didn’t see himself as an accessory designer – it was so distant from his woodworking. Nor did he see himself in the world of fashion because he was partly intimidated by it. In any case, Artemas Quibble, borrowed from the Arthur Cheney Train novel, had a quirky, enigmatic appeal. The Creatures of Madame du Barry has its roots in a guide to France from the late 1900’s. The curiously charming collision of the two names to create a label for his brand is also partly Ross railing against the machine. The ‘machine’ that, in a world of texts and tweets, compels ppl 2 shrtn evrythng.

With keen attention to detail a hallmark of who Ross is, intrepid photographer Weston Wells and I were eager to ‘pick his pockets’ and examine the details of his existence.

“I cannot walk out of the door without a journal and a pen in the same way I can’t walk of the door with my inhaler, I don’t know if I’m going to need it but I always have to have it,” says Ross adding that as an artist, “You have to be able to archive your ideas.” Ross makes his own journals using antique book covers. He mixes his own ink for the Mont Blanc pen he carries, “Hopefully it looks like the burnt umber you might find in da Vinci’s notebook or something… I dunno.” The specs are antiques. The two leather cases, Ross made for himself. One is a combination checkbook holder and wallet. The other case, in the photo, plays host to miscellaneous items including business cards, his iPhone, which is great for inspiration photos and mapping. A pocket-knife adorns the keychain. “It’s very functional. It seems like I’m always needing a little blade to open a package or cut a piece of leather,” he says. A final detail, not photographed, is what appears to be a remnant of a shirt or other much-loved article of clothing which has been resurrected as a scarf or roughly tied ascot.

Photography by Weston Wells