Visionary, Vision It's Scary...

Top Ten Intellectual Rappers

Classic x Cover of the Week: Damn Your Eyes

This week's classic: 

Etta James - Damn Your Eyes 

This week's cover: 

Alex Clare 

Heard a wicked cover of a classic lately? Covered a classic yourself?
 Send in your suggestions to the.studio@hotmail.com 

The Studio's T-SHIRT DESIGN Contest!

Artist to Watch Out For..

Lowell.

Apparently Lowell just flew off to record with Adele's people, so you know it's just a matter of time before she's  everywhere...

Gaga x Bennett...

Check out Lady Gaga kickin' it old school with Tony Bennett...

Drake Throws It Down for Toronto...

What do you guys think of the Headlines music video?

Lindsay x Terry...

Generations who grew up watching the 1998 remake of The Parent Trap and then cult classic Mean Girls still have love for Lindsay Lohan. Despite her floundering career, infamous shoplifting and DUI episodes, and straggly platinum blonde extensions, many of us still harbor some little ember of hope that she'll return to her redheaded glory days. It's kind of like the way some little part of us hopes that one day Britney and Justin will get back together. After all, Lindsay is still young, and at one point she was a bright young thing with stardom at her fingertips. Perhaps she can still salvage that - Emma Stone just doesn't have quite the same appeal, and Hollywood is in need of its token fiery redhead.

Anyway, Terry Richardson caught up with Lindsay on West Broadway and the impromptu photo sesh that resulted reeks of that poor-celebrity-grittiness. Sharp and intense, with black jackets and cigarettes, his photos perfectly capture that sad duality of raw toughness and complete vulnerability that epitomizes Lindsay Lohan.

 

 

 

Find the rest here...

The Studio's T-SHIRT DESIGN Contest!

Into fashion, art, or design? Got an idea for a t-shirt? If you have an idea for a T-SHIRT DESIGN you think could sell, enter THE STUDIO's T-Shirt Design Contest now! Looking for eye-catching designs for both male and female apparel; can be a sketch, photograph, or computer generated design - you have free rein! Be creative and send us your designs at the.studio@hotmail.com.. Winning design will have their T-SHIRT's made courtesy of THE STUDIO and sold across UofT campus, with winner 

receiving 50% of the profits!

Details: You can submit a maximum of five designs.  Tentative deadline for all submissions to be received is  Friday, October 7th.  Email them to the.studio@hotmail.com and indicate what color T-Shirt you'd like your design printed on.

Why We Love the Sartorialist

The Five Reasons We Love the Sartorialist 

#1. He Appreciates Natural Beauty

From pale skin to small breasts and freckled faces, the Sartorialist captures an entirely different type of woman than we're used to in North American media.USWeekly, People, and especially MTV give us many females to choose from, but from the celebrities in Street Style snapshots in People to the reality darlings from MTV - think Desperate Housewives, The Hills and the obvious example of Jersey Shore - many of these women are the total opposite of Sart's choices. Big-breasted and bronzed, long-haired and painted with luxury labels, these women often reek of consumerism and  unoriginality.

The turn towards voluptuousness and fuller-figured women is great. However, why must it always be one or the other? The editor of a prominent fashion magazine recently wrote something like, "The age of the all-american blonde, blue eyed, pale skinned woman are over." Curvier, darker-skinned and exotic looking is wonderful, but we have to be careful not to downplay its opposite. Pale girls now think pale skin is unattractive and give themselves skin cancer in tanning beds. Naturally slender girls are made to feel less a woman than those with bigger curves. Balance is key, and the Sartorialist does a wonderful job of capturing the female in all her many types of beauty.

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Rain, Rain, Go Away...

Need a fashionable accessory for the rainy season?


If you happen to be from Toronto, you sure do. Raindrops gives us a clever little way to brighten up the downpour with its witty take on the classic umbrella:

In French...

and in English...

Get yours here

Acid Trip: Vice @ LFW

Vice sends a reporter to London Fashion Week on acid. What? We know. Check it out here.

Gymnophobia: The Fear of Nudity

The fashion world is abuzz with the latest nude "scandal" featuring fashion darling Karlie Kloss. At only 19-years-old, people are "uncomfortable" with her implied nudes in the October issue of Allure, as shot by Mario Testino.


First off, she's a legal adult and has every right to pose however she wants. Second, there are racier images of women all over the internet, all over Hollywood blockbusters, and French and Italian Vogue are stuffed with images of lithe naked bodies and nipples galore. In a culture where 14 year old girls are prone to posting sexually suggestive photos in barely-there dresses and skirts on Facebook, the photos of Kloss hardly qualify as a scandal.


To be frank, John at Fashion Copious said it best: "...Testino is a lazy photographer that lacks a point of view at this stage of his life. And hence am surprised that he’s being hired and paid handsomely for his [currently] shitty work. That’s the only things i’m outraged at. I could care less if Karlie poses nude; she’s 19 and can do whatever she wants.” 

The issue with these images, if any, is not at all that Karlie is essentially nude. The issue is that they're sub-par and not what one would expect from the collaboration of a caliber model and famed photographer. The issue is the same issue that haunts sites for amateur photographers like Model Mayhem - a photographer without a vision just gets a gorgeous girl naked and assumes it'll make magic. These images are forgettable and depend entirely on Kloss's beauty, completely lacking any artistic vision. 


The real question this controversy begs, though, is why North America has such a phobia towards nudity. Women have breasts. Karlie Kloss, as a 19-year-old woman, has breasts. Personally I don't see how a nipple differentiates between nude and not-nude, but apparently in North America showing a woman's full breast is cause for concern. The less you see of something, the more you want it, and the more tantalizing it becomes - so by restricting sexuality and the female body in apparatuses of creativity, we in turn add to the problem. Perhaps if we accepted the female body for the beautiful thing that it is, and allowed nudity in innocent and artistic forms like this to flourish without making such a fuss (is it shameful to be nude? Wrong? Are we not sending all the wrong messages by restricting it?), we would begin to eliminate the hypersexualization of women and appreciate natural bodies of all shapes and sizes. When a teacher in Sex Ed. says the word "penis", we're told to stop giggling and be mature. Shouldn't we likewise be mature about a half exposed breast in a fashion magazine?

The New Year..

Get ready. 

Hip-Hop's Young Kings

Hip-hop caught a bad rap - no pun intended - throughout the late 90s and the early 2000s for being all about cash, cars, and hoes. Music videos were an endless parade of stacked women in skimpy clothing dancing around pools or in hotels (think Chingy's Holiday Inn.. countless Nelly, P. Diddy and Ja Rule videos.. need I say more..) while men with 42 lb necklaces, blinding earrings, sunglasses (inside..?) and occasionally diamond encrusted teeth (grills whaddup) clustered around the camera, mean mugging and throwing money around just for the hell of it. (Did the janitors have to clean that up? I hope they pocketed some of it.) This gave birth to the anti-rap crusades, with endless publications critiquing rap music as misogynist, demeaning, violent, and a celebration of excess and greed. Black critics argued that the genre portrays the African community badly and creates horrific role models for black youth to emulate. White critics, too, argued that the music does nothing for society as a whole but sends the wrong messages and glorifies all the wrong things.

Whether or not you agree with these sentiments is irrelevant now, as those days are long over. The transition arguably came with Toronto's very own Drake, who ushered in the new era with the drop of his 2009 mixtape So Far Gone. 

Keep Mum - She's Not So Dumb!

My sister brought this back from England for my mum for Mother's Day and I loved it. This poster was released by the Brits during World War II to caution citizens about spies infiltrating the country. The men shouldn't assume she knows nothing - she might be a spy intending to loosen their tongues with brandy and cigars...

The look of it is great. Very Bond-girl esque. Thought you might like as much as I did.

The Green Room

Another Buzz - Aoki Mixes the Klaxons

Your boy Steve Aoki does his thing like usual with this mix of the Klaxons Echoes.

THE WEEKND - WICKED GAMES + Some Other Headboppers

First and foremost, my sincerest apologies for the lack of recent posts - school's killin 'em. However, The Studio has just returned from a fantastic trip to NYC which we hope to plan again next year. We have big things coming up - hints include a collaboration with two new companies, one to do with fashion and the other with some amazing parties, as well as street shots, an interview with the creator of A-S-K, an editorial with Vive Magazine, and Canada's very own dub duo - Zed's Dead.. look out for us! 

Must tell you all about the next big things in the music world. Check out The Weeknd, an R&B/hip-hop duo? group? individual? that will be blowing up the scene in the months to come. A mix-tape is set for release, Drake is blogging about them, and I, for one, cannot stop listening to them.

My favorite track hands down has got to be Wicked Games. It's addictive. Let me know what you guys think - also be sure to give Loft Music a listen..

Terry Richardson

Came across Terry Richardson's blog yesterday and fell in love with the candid gems of various models, celebrities, and even Terry's elderly mother (smoking a j no less). Those who appreciate Terry's simplistic yet edgy photography will definitely appreciate the photos on the blog - Kate Moss? Lara Stone? Magdalena? Freja? Every headlining model of the decade is there, dressed down, edged up, and ready to shoot. Doutzen Kroes rocks his glasses, as do Sting, Courtney Cox, and a number of other celebrities.

Some people don't find Terry Richardson's style of photography particularly special. Head-on shots of generally dressed down or nude models. To me, it's these shots - completely uncluttered with extra fashion, accessories, other models, makeup, background, bla bla - that let you really get a feel for a model's harness on expression. Anyway, here are a few of my favorites.. Check out his blog when you get a chance!

 Magdalena

 Karolina Kurkova - wow. 

My girl Katie.. taking a nap?

S.t.u.n.n.e.r.

LARA STONE.

 Bright young thing Abbey Lee

 She's labeled as Andre - who is this girl?

 Canadian sensation Daria

 12th St. Stencils

 Doutzen

 <3 

 

Jessica Stam shows you the real Blue Steel (Sorry Ben..)

West Coast Surf Style

In a throwback to West Coast bohemian and the origins of the Endless Summer: