Tim Girvin on Resort Design, Lautner, Las Brisas Et Alia
Visual and intellectual boundary-breaker, Tim Girvin has begun blogging his brilliance in a series of essays which pierce like bright rays from a distant star, shining through the disparate galaxies of fragrance, film, fashion, architecture, TV, branding, identity, and thought as it is thunk. Girvin is more than a designer, he’s a serendipitous genetic experiment let loose upon the world. Best known as a brand, identity and typography master (Apple, Amex, Bloomingdale’s, Bravehart, Urban Decay, Wolfgang Puck, Yves Saint Laurent, WIRED, The Matrix, and more), Girvin goes where no simply sane design mind has gone before. And he collects fine Japanese bamboo baskets, too.
See his latest blog post, Resort Design Development | Brand, Patterning, Identity, Placemaking | John Lautner, Visions & Las Brisas, MX. Now there’s an essay title for you. Delicious food for thought. Find it at Tim’s place, blog, personal site, agency.
Be Bedazzled: Ancient & Antique Jewelry at the Walters Museum
The jewelry collection of the Walters Museum in Baltimore is vast and diverse, spanning five millennia and a broad spectrum of world cultures, yet most of it is rarely seen. Here’s your big opportunity to ogle over 200 pieces from the collection, many never before shown publicly. Bedazzled: 5,000 Years of Jewelry opens 19 October and runs through 4 January 2009. In this exhibition the riches of the Walters collection will be augmented by numerous finger rings from the collection of New York gemologist Benjamin Zucker, scion of one of the great Antwerp diamond families, who has a passion for antique and ancient rings from around the globe, and has been dubbed “Lord of the Rings” in recognition of his passionate pursuit of fine antique finger rings for his personal collection. Be there. With bells on. And plenty of rings on fingers and toes.
Image © 2006 The Walters Art Museum
Lost Weekend
Friday night was the “Shhh! Speakeasy” dinner fundraiser for the Balinale Taksu Film Festival at the Ritz-Carlton in Jimbaran. What with the illicit teacup martinis on arrival, and brown-bagged bottles of hooch (excellent New Zealand red wine) handed out to every attendee, not to mention the fine works of literature on the tables hiding bottles of vodka . . . we were absolutely reeling drunk. Ooops. When referring to ladies (and I am purported to be one), the correct and polite term is “tired and emotional”. So I was “tired and emotional.” After winning the best-headdress contest and being Charleston-wrestled by Taksu Film Festival mascot, Kadek Krishna, I was fit to be tied.
Sneak Preview: W Retreat & Spa Bali
I blogged last week about W Retreat & Spa Bali, which is a major work in progress on the site of the old Intan Hotel in Seminyak, slated to open September 2009. Starwood Group’s W Hotels division has been very tight-lipped about the whole project, as I mentioned previously. W’s online info on the Bali property and their press materials have been scanty to the point of secrecy. The architects say, “3d images and walk-thru animations for the restaurants are nearing completion. Sorry, no sneak previews.”
Well, here’s a sneak preview of the place from me. The interior shots are from a mockup of a typical unit, and the CAD images are from the original proposed concept (which has most likely undergone a process of evolution over the past year).
I knew the old Intan Hotel well, because I used to live very close to it, and would ride my mountainbike there almost every day to use their gym (cheap membership), swim in the pools, play tennis, and get a massage.
Jakarta Fashion Week 2008 : Personality Crisis
Nothing to do but quote the New York Dolls in this review. Personality Crisis. That characterises as well as anything could, Jakarta Fashion Week 2008, which ran from 20 to 24 August. That’s not to say it was a “bad” fashion week. Not at all. Genius, and talent (and utter absence of talent), were all floundering about messily in the throes of a national and institutional personality crisis. This all felt painfully apropos for an Indonesian fashion manifestation at this particular moment in the country’s history.
Update on the “Ugo-Filippo Show”
Finally, here are photos from the Ugo Untoro/Filippo Sciascia vernissage at Biasa Artspace (which I posted about a couple weeks ago). Your patience has been rewarded. Sorry, no photos of Ugo. He’s kind of shy.
The tense reciprocity of Ugo and Filippo’s collaborative works is visually arresting, and crackles with static electricity. Viewers were transfixed.
Filippo expresses himself eloquently . . . on canvas, in words, and in gestures, as well.
Susanna Perini, found of Biasa Artspace and Biasa fashion house, with members of the Biasa team. She has supported and cultivated the talents of innumerable young Indonesians over the years, and imbued the whole Biasa world with an ebullient esprit de corps.
That’s Yours Truly, and Bruno, on the left. Just had to put this one in.
Parcours des Mondes: Arts of Africa, Asia, Oceania and the Americas
The Parcours des Mondes tribal art fair in Paris has been a fixture on the calendars of dealers, collectors and connoisseurs for seven years now. Each year it has expanded and diversified, and this year is no exception. More exhibitors, more spaces. And new directions.
W Resort & Spa Bali : I Guess the “W” Doesn’t Stand for “Writing”
In case you hadn’t noticed, W Hotels is creating a huge luxury resort on the beach in Seminyak. It’s in Petitenget, to be precise, and the site entrance is directly next door to Bali Catering Company (best take-away gourmet shop in Bali).
W Hotels is the hip luxury brand of the Starwood hotel group (which includes Sheraton, LeMeridien, Westin, and St Regis, all of which are also represented here in Bali). It makes perfect sense that they should put the W brand on the Seminyak property, as Seminyak is reputed to be the hippest and most luxurious district in Bali. The new W Retreat & Spa – Bali is slated to open just over one year from now on the site of the former Intan Hotel, which was a huge Soeharto-era carbuncle, that got very tatty in its last years of operation. I’m sure Starwood will transform it magnificently, and the fact that I now see three tall construction cranes standing on the site suggests they are busy doing just that.
Of course it is exciting to see such a prestigious brand arrive, thus raising the bar for hospitality development in Seminyak. The only dismay I feel about the project is caused by its paltry presence online. The W Hotels site includes only a few pages of content, so far, about the Bali resort. But who made these pages? Who wrote them? The welcome page starts off like this:
Why, Bali Hai
Escape hectic philosophies and plunge into the deepest wisdom of peace and tranquility at the W Retreat & Spa – Bali, where the usual everyday is a myth and lush tropics, sparkling waters and pure white sands are the utopian reality.
Gosh! I didn’t even know philosophies could be hectic? What philosophies might those be? Hermeneutics? And who would be drawn to a resort in order to escape a philosophy? Is this to be a hotel for academics on sabbatical?
Now, moving right along.
Bali : A Day in the Life
As promised, here’s a digest of interesting items from the last issue of the Bali Post.
Headline on the health page: Don’t Send Your Kids to Buy Your Cigarettes. 37% of all children in Indonesia smoke. The writer ventured that sending the kids to buy smokes might encourage them to try smoking themselves, which is not a good thing, as smoking is the “door to narcotics.”
Three Turkish nationals were arrested at the ferry port, heading for Java. They are accused of hypnotising a salesgirl at a cellphone stand in Denpasar. She says they approached her asking for change, and the next thing she knew, they were leaving and Rp 400,000 (US$44) was missing from her cash box.
Bukit Birthday Party Update
On Tuesday I wrote about the past weekend’s wicked exploits. But no photos, so I had to illustrate the post with a painting by Davina Stephens, whose birthday party on the Bukit was the main event of the weekend. Now I have a few snapshots thanks to Carolyn Tyler, celebrated jewelry designer and freelance tantric master.
Jewelry artist, Carolyn Tyler (thanks for the photos), and Marco of Quarzia gettin’ down, and how.