Fauxthenticity

Unionmade is an upscale men’s clothing store, based in...

Sat, 08 Dec 2012 19:09:13 +0100

Unionmade is an upscale men’s clothing store, based in San Francisco and celebrated by GQ, that sells $258 “Vintage Styled Work Shirts” and $68 Cow Horn Combs and $565 “Vintage” Levi Jeans, and things of that nature. The company says that it “aims to improve the lives of our customers, community and suppliers by offering fairly priced products made from the best available materials.” You might want to know, however, that Unionmade’s products arenot union made.

— Hamilton Nolan, Unionmade: Retailer of Expensive Fashions that Are Not Union Made.

Aka, the logical conclusion of fauxthenticity. (Also do read the follow-up of the story.)

“Quarterly Co. is a subscription service that allows...

Sat, 29 Sep 2012 16:25:58 +0200

“Quarterly Co. is a subscription service that allows subscribers to receive themed shipments in the mail from influential contributors of their choice every three months. The shipments each tell a compelling story crafted by the contributor and provide tangible delight to the recipient each time.

We designed a unique packaging system based on the rich visual history of the postal service in addition to the brand identity and online presence.”

A web service delivering physical goods by digital luminaries (Jon Maeda! Liz Danzico!) in postal packages drapped in paper fauxthentically alluding imagery of the past = “real” mail. What more to say?

“The hipster low-tech fantasy – ‘the dream of the...

Sat, 29 Sep 2012 16:13:40 +0200

“The hipster low-tech fantasy – ‘the dream of the 1890s’ – is one of escape from the complex socio-technical systems that we are highly dependent on but have little control over. It is a fantasy of achieving the most radical expression of individual agency: the opt-out.” – PJ Rey, Hipsters and Low-Tech

"‘One of the absolute spurs of starting the new aesthetic project was a profound displeasure..."

Tue, 29 May 2012 00:02:00 +0200

“

‘One of the absolute spurs of starting the new aesthetic project was a profound displeasure and dissatisfaction with the cultural obsessional with nostalgia and retro at the moment - with vintage and all of these things’ says Bridle.

Bridle has a wonderful ability to sound both old and young in the same breath.

‘You cannot move,’ continues Bridle, ‘particularly in Shoreditch, which is supposed to be the heart of this thrusting new technology, for blackboards and artisan coffee shops with nicely hued counters and people with handlebar moustaches wearing braces and it’s all fine but it’s not very interesting to me.’

Having a pop at the hipsters, this is fun. Why do they love their trucker Victoriana so?

‘It speaks of a deep fear of the future, the idea that an authenticity that can only be authenticated in the past, that we’ve lost faith in a kind a kind of sight for the future, is deeply worrying,’ explains Bridle earnestly.

”

- Robert Urquhart, An Interview with James Bridle of the New Aesthetic

"Now you can get tattoos at the mall. It’s romanticism for everybody, with a little blood and..."

Mon, 28 May 2012 23:58:45 +0200

“Now you can get tattoos at the mall. It’s romanticism for everybody, with a little blood and pain thrown in for the price. The collapse of bourgeois and bohemian individualism into the warm embrace of the commodity is the defining style of the middle-class sensibility of today’s disintegrating spectacle.”

- McKenzie Wark, The Beach Beneath the Street, Verso, 2011, pp. 11-12.

I See Skeuomorphs Everywhere

Thu, 17 May 2012 01:35:09 +0200

I See Skeuomorphs Everywhere

POP UP FLEA 4 | DECEMBER 2-4 | NYC (via thematerialreview)

Sun, 22 Apr 2012 23:00:05 +0200

POP UP FLEA 4 | DECEMBER 2-4 | NYC (via thematerialreview)

Basically, everything on A Continuous Lean qualifies. It...

Sun, 22 Apr 2012 22:47:57 +0200

Basically, everything on A Continuous Lean qualifies. It demonstrates the direct link of fauxthenticity and hipster chic.

A Continuous Lean serves as a discovery agent for those with an appreciation of quality, style and provenance. Founded in 2007, ACL is the product of Michael Williams, a native son of Cleveland, Ohio. Currently, Michael lives in New York City and works on the factory floor at Paul + Williams.

Now the place or the people working there may not be...

Sun, 22 Apr 2012 22:43:00 +0200

Now the place or the people working there may not be fauxthentic, but the aesthetic the film itself revels in (angles, cadrage, filter, light), and the very fact that they chose “the quintessential American burger joint” as an object of study certainly is.

Skeuomorph

Sat, 21 Apr 2012 13:23:00 +0200

A skeuomorph /ˈskjuːəmɔrf/ SKEW-ə-morf, or skeuomorphism (Greek: skeuos—vessel or tool, morphe—shape), is a derivative object that retains ornamental design cues to a structure that was necessary in the original. Skeuomorphs may be deliberately employed to make the new look comfortably old and familiat, such as copper cladding on zinc pennies or computer printed postage with circular town name and cancellation lines. An alternative definition is “an element of design or structure that serves little or no purpose in the artifact fashioned from the new material but was essential to the object made from the original material.”

– Wikipedia

"Fauxthenticity is: pretentiously unpretentious, stylishly unstyled, mediated immediacy, effortfully..."

Sat, 21 Apr 2012 13:19:00 +0200

“Fauxthenticity is: pretentiously unpretentious, stylishly unstyled, mediated immediacy, effortfully effortless, signifying the non-symbolic, immaterial materiality. Romantic. Nostalgic.”

"The third mark of fauxthenticity: It discovers the imperfections of a previous technological medium..."

Sat, 21 Apr 2012 13:14:00 +0200

“The third mark of fauxthenticity: It discovers the imperfections of a previous technological medium in their aesthetic value.”

Crumbled printing, faux-vintage newspaper framings, faux-vintage...

Sat, 21 Apr 2012 12:48:29 +0200

Crumbled printing, faux-vintage newspaper framings, faux-vintage buttons.

"The second mark of fauxthenticity: It expresses an aesthetic, non-commital choice. It need not be..."

Thu, 12 Apr 2012 17:56:00 +0200

“The second mark of fauxthenticity: It expresses an aesthetic, non-commital choice. It need not be ironic, but it never flows from non-negotiable conviction or necessity.”

The Faux-Vintage Photo, by Nathan Jurgenson

Thu, 12 Apr 2012 17:47:02 +0200

“This past winter, during an especially large snowfall, my Facebook and Twitter streams became inundated with grainy photos that shared a similarity beyond depicting massive amounts of snow: many of them appeared to have been taken on cheap Polaroid or perhaps a film cameras 60 years prior. However, the photos were all taken recently using a popular set of new smartphone applications like Hipstamatic or Instagram. The photos (like the one above) immediately caused a feeling of nostalgia and a sense of authenticity that digital photos posted on social media often lack. Indeed, there has been a recent explosion of retro/vintage photos. Those smartphone apps have made it so one no longer needs the ravages of time or to learn Photoshop skills to post a nicely aged photograph.

In this essay, I hope to show how faux-vintage photography, while seemingly banal, helps illustrate larger trends about social media in general. The faux-vintage photo, while getting a lot of attention in this essay, is merely an illustrative example of a larger trend whereby social media increasingly force us to view our present as always a potential documented past.”

Read the full essay here.

"It’s not just sci-fi. I’m also depressed about the lack of future in fashion. Every hep..."

Thu, 12 Apr 2012 17:42:00 +0200

“

It’s not just sci-fi. I’m also depressed about the lack of future in fashion. Every hep shop seems to be full of tweeds and leather and carefully authentic bits of restrained artisinal fashion. I think most of Shoreditch would be wondering around in a leather apron if it could. With pipe and beard and rickets. Every new coffee shop and organic foodery seems to be the same. Wood, brushed metal, bits of knackered toys on shelves. And blackboards. Everywhere there’s blackboards.

Cafes used to be models of the future. Shiny and modern and pushy. Fashion used to be the same - space age fabrics, bizarre concoctions. Trainers used to look like they’d been transported in from another dimension, now they look like they were found in an estate sale.

”

- Russell Davies, something something something

thingsorganizedneatly: ed: Not sure what this is from… Turns...

Wed, 11 Apr 2012 17:28:11 +0200

thingsorganizedneatly:

~~ed: Not sure what this is from…~~

Turns out it’s from Brutus Magazine.

idfarmer: tumblr_lux5fiSeHF1qlhaino1_1280.jpg (1280×853),...

Wed, 11 Apr 2012 17:27:52 +0200

idfarmer:

tumblr_lux5fiSeHF1qlhaino1_1280.jpg (1280×853), http://bit.ly/HuwmLa

We are the Mods, via nevver (Note the simple fact that vintage...

Wed, 11 Apr 2012 17:16:49 +0200

We are the Mods, via nevver

(Note the simple fact that vintage photography gets scanned, posted & reposted.)

"The first mark of fauxthenticity is that it calls itself “authentic”."

Wed, 11 Apr 2012 15:05:00 +0200

“The first mark of fauxthenticity is that it calls itself “authentic”.”