High Fashion at the Cooper Hewitt Museum

I had a wonderful time exploring The Cooper Hewitt Museum's exhibit, Beauty it's fifth installment in a series on contemporary design. Featuring 63 designers works within different themes related to Beauty, it focuses on celebrating design as interconnected to the mind, body and senses. Intricate or extravagant, each piece is exceptional and beautiful. The museum's unique interactive pen allows you to store your favorite pieces from the exhibits in a file as well as interactive tables to create your own wallpaper or works of art. Cooper Hewitt Museum is in the former residence of Andrew Carnegie, located at 

2 East 91st Street New York, NY. 

Giambattista Vali creates "Contemporary Couture" like this Tulle Ombre Skirt & Blouse

Iris van Herpen and Jolan van der Wiel experiment with technology and beauty like this dress made of Resin and iron fillings (Left), Gareth Pugh pieces are bold and dramatic like this piece evoking body armor made by spray painted drinking straws (Right)

Maiko Takeda creates pieces that evoke nature inspired by clouds, wind and shadows, like these headpieces of shredded acetate 

   

 

Melitta Baumeister exaggerates volume and silhouettes with rigid materials like padded Neoprene (Left), while Jean Yu using architectural pieces that embrace femininity and grace like this delicate undergarment (Right)

Naomi Yasuda transforms nail design into pieces of art using beads and ornaments, these are inspired by traditional Japanese patterns.

            Delfina Delettrez jewelry includes surreal and abstract pieces inspired by Salvador Dali

This museum focuses on interactive installations to engage visitors.

The Immersion room lets you play designer and create your own wallpaper. See the walls come to life either by designing a print from scratch or choosing existing patterns and colors.

Using the interactive pen you can also create and save your own designs or use your pen to save any piece from the museum to a file downloadable after you leave the museum.

Artisan Silk in Cambodia

After five months of adventure in Australia, I went on a whirlwind tour of southeast Asia. Siem Reap in Cambodia ended up being one of my very favorite stops. I was blown away by the creativity of the local people - craftsmen, artists and chefs. Most people visit Siem Reap for the magnificent Angkor Wat temple, but the city has so much more to offer!

One highlight was seeing the remarkable skilled craftsmen and women of Artisans d'Angkor, a local company that was founded to help young people, many of which have disabilities, find work. In addition to a shop in town, the Artisans d'Angkor operate a silk farm about 45 minutes outside of town. A traditional Cambodian industry, silk craftsmanship has been revived by Artisans d'Angkor and like-minded groups, after the silk industry was decimated by the repressive policies of the Khmer Rouge dictatorship.

We whipped along by tuk tuk and made our way to the silk farm... We were unsure about making the trip out, but we were glad we did!

Upon arrival we were greeted by our friendly guide and went out to see the farm and work area.

So, silk comes from worms, one of the first things we saw was a giant bowl of worms!

 

After the worms make the cocoon, one needs to boil the cocoons so the dead worms fall out the bottom! Sounds quite grim but nothing goes to waste according to our guide, some people like to eat the boiled worms as a snack, like a lobster or a peanut.

 

Our guide showed us the whole process of silk-making, here we are looking at some unfinished silk.

Everything at Artisans d'Angkor is done by hand, no electric machines or shortcuts, in order to preserve the traditional techniques.

It takes one day to make two meters of fine silk or three meters of raw silk. It takes an artisan four or five days to make one patterned scarf in fine silk!

At the end of the tour, we saw some fine silk works on display, in addition to scarves and pillowcases, we saw intricate clothing with beautiful designs as well.

The artisans even held a fashion show, the highlight was this all-silk elegant dress, bedazzled with silk worm cocoons!