Rubin's Cubes

This afternoon I went to the Olivia Rubin show at London's Fashion Week. Already making a name for herself, Rubin recently dressed our doe-eyed pop princess Cheryl Cole in the little zebra number. The show was fascinating, reminded me of making TV ads...all the time and resources, dedication, envisioning, preparation, planning, styling that goes on months beforehand, and then it's all over in about 15 minutes. So it better be a magical few minutes.

And this one was. The models slinked down the catwalk like little glow worms, their luminous skin matching the pearly palette of their beautiful outfits. Another inbetweener, Rubin's look is caught between the graphical nature of the art deco of the past and the wearable, flightiness of the future. And top styling by the lovely Grace Woodward. 

What Would David do?

I've decided to take some inspiration from Jeff Jarvis, and write the great unwritten work 'What would David Do?'

Heroes & Superheroes

Here's the original then. From Marvel Comics. Essentially The In-Betweener represents the dualities of concepts like good and evil. He was and is an agent of Lord Chaos and Master Order, and his job was to keep the Cosmos in balance. But of all his powers, attributes, weapons and paraphenalia, it's the fact that he has one black eye and one white eye that's most fascinating. 

And that's mostly because he reminds me of my other hero. The thin white duke, the diamond dog, the aladin sane...Bowie. Who's more representative of the inbetweeness of things, than the creator of so many utterly original and innovative art, music, personas, commercial practices and even communites.  Not long ago he received a lifetime acheivement award for services to technology through his innovation around bowienet, which quickly led to what was then a hugely innovative concept on the web, allowing artists to showcase their galleries of work, that of bowieart. But even more than this, John Harris in the Guardian recently asked: Is David Bowie responsible for the recession? Joking aside, it takes something for a creative genius to also be commercially astute, and to be as innovative in one area as they are in the other. He challenged and changed our perceptions of what was real, what was art and performance, and most importantly what was acceptable, and therefore shaped the future of so much of today's culture. That's the magic of being an inbetweener. 

Hello

The intention of this blog is just to serve as a space to record and discuss all those interesting things that sort of sit inbetween; not easily identifiable as either in the past, but not yet well enough defined to be understood as the future. Of course it's not just about tenses, there's lots of stuff that occupies the world inbetween. There's the in between of good and evil, art and science, rational and emotional, heritage and progress, truth and lies, inside and outside, the physical and the virtual, the right and the left....... Strikes me that we're in an era where things are really not as easily identifiable or as open to clear definition as they used to be. Obvious, maybe. But where does that leave us in trying to understand the world around us, when almost by the time we've understood it, it has morphed again.  Anyway, let's just see where it leads.