Made with Molecules

Back at the SF Craft Mafia Winter Trunk show, I met the talented and enthusiastic scientist Raven Hanna. She channels her creative spirit and scientific competencies into making jewelry replica of common biochemical molecules. Her excellent craftsmanship is evident amongst the clean lines and proportions in each silver piece.

Her first attempts at jewelry making were all done by hand. She eventually moved past laborious soldering and sanding. Now she designs her jewelry on Autocad and makes the molecule charms from molds. Her meticulous packaging comes with an easy to understand molecule story and a serotonin tattoo.

Read more about Raven’s Made with Molecules on Chemical & Engineering News. I can see many geeks go ga-ga over her line of silver jewelry and accessories!

SFiS January 2008

The January 2008 edition of SFiS available. Two juxtaposed articles stood out.

One article announces the marriage of San Francisco Fashion Week producer Erika Gessin. Her husband has this admiral quote about her self-made status and ambitions, “She’s beautiful and talented at what she does. But picking up and moving from New York to California, not knowing anyone, having no network or friends, and pioneering and creating San Francisco Fashion Week — it was great to meet someone with a great spirit about them, who just wanted to take on the world.” That quote gives relief to San Francisco fashionistas. To Erika’s credit and aggressive training of fashion designers from Academy of Art, San Francisco will become a fashion powerhouse in this decade.

Whereas, the article about the self-promoting Diana Lu highlights the opportunistic “must conquer all” attitude. It is disgusting. I can not believe Ms. Lu celebrated her 40th birthday by sending models down the runway with her dramatic and ugly formal wear to tout her fashion inexperience and early demise. Some rich people who extend themselves in unfamiliar territory with no humility and lost dignity, need a reality check. If she opens up a clothing store at the Embarcadero and if I have to walk near it, I will duck my head in shame.

When one person makes a huge difference for the San Francisco fashion scene, it takes another person to give a swift kick to damage the scene again.

Photo credits: Erika Gessin prepping for 2006 San Francisco Fashion Week from SFGate.com and Diana Lu’s catwalk from SFGate.com, taken by Byamy Sullivan and Heather Wiley for Drew Alitzer.

Canada’s Project Runway

If you can not get enough of the U.S.’s PR, then watch Canada’s Project Runway season 1 hosted by Iman.

Biting my nails with excitement

SEASON four PREMIERE of Project Runway tonight @ 10pm on BravoTV! The show is on my calendar, and it should be on yours too. Any respectable designer wannabe will be watching this show. It is the best show for me to identify with the talents on camera and take their reality checks as lessons in private.

Perusing through the contestants’ bios, the majority are experienced designers pitted against a handful of barely graduated design students. This season’s experience includes designers that have vaulted in the limelight dressing up Pink, fashioned at GenART, and graduated magna and summa cum laude. This class of designers is extremely competent on paper.

Carmen already makes cool street wear with “Sistahs of Harlem.” If my memory serves me correctly, the Fab Five from the Queer Eye for the Straight Guy featured her clothing! And right after she graduated from design school, she interned in Paris with Christope LeMaire who studied under Christian LaCroix.

At 44, Chris hits a soft spot for San Franciscans. He is the costume designer of San Francisco’s longest running cabaret musical, “Beach Blanket Babylon.” I am counting on him to be a positive representation of Ess Eff. All I ask Chris to do is to please not pull diva like Jeoffrey or go frou frou with the big hats and cheesy costumes in the same manner Kayne went pageant a-wol.

Then there is frat Jack at 38, a Cal alum. GO BEARS! He has had an all-American lifestyle as swim jock and has worked under all-American labels such as Tommy Hilfiger. And lastly, he is openly HIV-positive and lives his life to the fullest!

The young Kit has a conceptual mind to predict trends for Mauro Taliani Design Studio. She is a brainiac with a worldly mind. I wonder if her international travels will give her a solid footing in any impromptu international flights to Parsons de Paris while wearing her own jet set designs.

These contestants look great on paper. I hope to be surprised by those with skills that speak louder than words.

Four out of the five contestants are Parsons grads, granted one of them is from the Paris branch. I always wonder if the contestant’s familiarity of Parson’s environment has a slight home court advantage.

In the famous Tim Gunn’s motivational ‘tude, “Carry on.” * Sweep sweep * with the fingers.

Respect the Creator

Oh-my-gee. If in any way I have mis-credited your work, photographs, or logos, please feel free to email me for proper credit. I err on the protection of creative spirit, with rational of course. There would no consumers if it were not for the creators. So as dutiful web denizens, we respect, cherish, and credit the meritorious bunch – fashion designers, photographers, indie artists, lyricists and more.

Although this post is unrelated to fashion design, this controversial subject is too important to ignore because I, too, often pull photos from other websites. I provide as much information to trace back to the original site including subject, creator, site link information on the photo as well as in the text. I make it clear that I am sharing a photo that by no means is from me but credits someone greater than thyself, unlike others who exploit the creator. Sometimes I wish there a MLA-like handbook that showed us how to properly honor photo licenses and how to adequately reference photos/posts/comments. Hey there’s an idea. This handbook will become a hit as we shift our information gathering from formal news and journals to blogs.

In the meantime, read more in Lane Hartwell’s post on her love for photography and her anguish for opportunistic feeders.