House of Hackney has finally arrived. Bringing chintz back but with an East London stamp, the interior design brand’s non-conformist wallpaper, bed linen and furniture is an antidote to identikit Ikea fatigue and you can now shop their bold take on traditional furnishing online.

To coincide with the launch of the website, the inventive couple behind the label, Frieda Gormley and Javvy M Royle are hosting a pop-up shop until Sunday. Installed in a Dalston town house, House of Hackney’s three collections, Dalston Rose, Queen Bee and Hackney Empire will deck each of the four floors, literally floor to ceiling.

Expect a plethora of fine bone china, tasselled lampshades and chaise longues in the House of Hackney’s fabrics and prints. Kiss goodbye to white walls and embrace the flock.

House of Hackney pop-up is at 76 Stoke Newington Road, Hackney, London N16 7XB until 3 April.
houseofhackney.com

Tags: Dalston, Frieda Gormley, House of Hackney, Javvy M Royle

In addendum to my post a  few weeks ago about beauty shopping online there is another destination that I have only recently discovered that is absolutely amazing for beauty brands. Unexpectedly, it’s amazon.co.uk. It’s usually my number one stop for books – the marketplace for second hand books is excellent – the only place that rivals it is Abebooks for older, rarer titles. Anyway Amazon also happens to stock some fabuloulsy recherche French haircare that you could previously only find in Harrods. I’m talking about Leonor Greyl, which I know Chanel muse Lady Amanda Harlech used to rave about and disappeared from these shores several years ago. But who knew!? Amazon are now stocking it, and they produce some magical oils and treatments that are worth tracking down. They’re also home to another cult French haircare range called Rene Furterer which I discovered years ago in French pharmacies. It’s cheaper than Greyl – their shampoo is about £7.50 – and equally good for treatments and day-to-day haircare. I’m really surprised I didn’t know about Amazon‘s health and beauty department before – they also have French pharamcy staples such as Klorane and Biotherm – another two of my favourite brands – Klorane‘s dry shampoo is unsurpassed. Another shop to bookmark on your browser for competitively priced beauty shopping.

Image courtesy of Michael Flores.

Words by Bethan Cole.

Tags: Amazon.co.uk, beauty, Bethan Cole, Biotherm, Chanel, Klorane, Leonor Greyl, Rene Furterer

It”s your last chance to see Charlie Anderson”s pop-up gallery show in collaboration with Urban Outfitters. Anderson’s paintings are a visual mash-up of popular culture. Trashed posters, bottle labels and nightclub flyers are layered to form the rhythm of contemporary life. Running until Saturday at The Royal Opera Arcade play pokies online for Gallery the Edinburgh based painter”s work is the perfect match for Urban Outfitters” eclectic mix of youth fashion, kitsch and music.

Pop Art On Pall Mall is at The Royal Opera Arcade Gallery until 2 April, 2011.
roa-galleria.com

Tags: Charlie Anderson, The Royal Opera Arcade Gallery, Urban Outfitters

Twin joined forces with Labour party women this weekend to march against the cuts to government spending. Protestors all dressed in green and purple – the colours of the suffragette campaign. Record numbers turned out at Temple tube station on London’s Embankment (the head count was estimated between 250-500,000) before joining the main march to Hyde Park. Harriet Harman, Yvette Copper and the young Luciana Berger were all showing support in the rally. We even spotted a couple of celebrities including Sienna Miller. It all ties in very well with the theme of the upcoming issue – REBELLION.

Tags: cuts, Harriet Harman, Labour party, march, Rebellion

Last summer, Twin contributor Niall O’Brien drove 6,000 miles across the American Northwest to shoot the McQ SS/11 campaign. Along with a small team of intrepid fashion road-trippers, they beat it up the coast of California into Washington State, Montana and Idaho, stopping off whenever the mood took them to shoot the collection along the way.

“When we stopped, it was usually at rivers and small towns where we’d end up hanging out with kids and locals, drinking beers, swimming, exploring and having fun,” says Niall.

The result is a fashion travelogue that is both an ode to young Americans. Be sure to keep an eye on the McQ website over the coming days as more images from the road trip appear on their Tumblr.

m-c-q.com

Tags: Alexander Mcqueen, McQ, niall o'brien

Guilt too often goes hand in hand with a spending spree. This Sunday though, the marvellous Wah Nails are hosting a huge sale where every pound spent equals good karma. One hundred per cent of the money raised will go to the British Red Cross, in aid of those affected by the Japanese earthquake and Tsunami.

As organiser Grace Ladoja says, “It’s difficult to know what the best way to donate is when disasters like this happen. Especially when it affects people you know. Donating online doesn’t often feel real because you are just pressing a button and you never know how much to give.”

As a result, Grace has called upon her artist and designer friends to donate the items on sale, as well those who simply have wardrobes stuffed full of clothes they don’t wear. Ranging from lables such as Moschino, Nike and Cassette Playa to old records cakes and art, it’s a white elephant stall like no other. And on top of wordly goods on offer, Wah Nails will also be offering a discount on nails and dip dye hair.

I liked the idea of doing a physical sale at WAH because it brings people together,” says Grace. “As well as buying stuff, they can hang out, listen to music, get their nails done and just have a fun Sunday, all knowing they are part of something that is helping people.”

Japan Relief Fund Blowout Sale, Sunday March 27 · 12-6pm at WAH NAILS, 420 Kingsland Road, London E8 4DG London.
To donate items, drop them at Wah Nails, 12-8pm Sat.

Tags: British Red Cross, Cassette Playa, Grace Ladoja, moschino, Nike, Wah Nails

Over the past six years, immersive theatre experience, You Me Bum Bum Train, has been a runaway train gathering speed; each new show sells-out faster than the last and every passenger gets off having had the ride of their life.

The concept is far from simple, with each performance consisting of an audience of one performed to by a cast of close to 200. The viewer is hurtled through a picaresque series of intimate scenes and surreal situations. However with the details of each show a closely guarded secret, it’s left to the posters to sum up the spirit of the night.

Over the years, Bum Bum Train creators Kate Bond and Morgan Lloyd, who met while studying illustration at Brighton University, have cooked up the brilliant posters themselves and an exhibition of the best is currently at the Drawers Gallery in East London.

Conjuring Toulouse Lautrec’s paintings of the Moulin Rouge, drenched in a wave of sea-side ribaldry, each poster is a rollicking, riot of colour that doesn’t so much hint at what might be in store, but rather whacks one over the head Punch and Judy style. You have until Saturday to enter the world of You Me Bum Bum Train.

You Me Bum Bum Train Poster Exhibition is on until March 26 at The Haggerston, Drawers Gallery, 438 Kingsland Road, London, E8 4AA.

Tags: Drawers Gallery, Kate Bond, Morgan Lloyd, theatre, You Me Bum Bum Train

Claude Montana’s signature silhouette defined the age of excess. His was a New Look for the Eighties and Montana’s glamazons wore cinched-in waists, topped off by razor-sharp shoulders. It was a universe of bold colour, luxe leathers and power tailoring, where Montana reigned supreme. However the Nineties embrace of minimalism saw his vision without an audience, and in 1997 he filed for bankruptcy.

While the designer now lives quietly in Spain, his name retains its ability to evoke a decade of design. The Montana legacy has been compressed into a new book, written by the designer himself with the help of fashion journalist Marielle Cro.

Claude Montana looks at the principles and practices that underpinned his world. Punctuated throughout by catwalk images, sketches and tributes from former collaborators, including photographer Paolo Roversi, embroiderer François Lesage and fellow designer Alain Mikli.

With rumours that Montana could be lured back to designing under the right circumstances, we can only hope the book is less a eulogy, than the prelude to a restoration.

Claude Montana: Fashion Radical is available from Thames & Hudson,
thamesandhudson.com

Images courtesy of Guy Marineau and Paolo Roversi.

Tags: book, Claude Montana, designer, Eighties fashion, Thames and Hudson

Last season’s vogue for minimalism wasn’t something I could buy into wholeheartedly. To eschew brights and patterns from my wardrobe, and colour from my make-up palette would make me very sad and disheartened indeed. Minimalism was something I quite liked to buy into on occassional days – days when I felt rigour and understatement were called for – a visit to my therapist for example! So there is the odd day when I find that natural make up, nay a dearth of make-up and clothes in camel and black are appropriate. These are like detox days in a sense, a holiday from the rabid sartorial mayhem that usually makes my heart sing. I wash my face, scrape my hair back and apply the bare minimum of maquillage – usually Givenchy Phenomen’eyes mascara in black, eyebrow pencil by Laura Mercier and if I’m feeling particularly lavish some Clinique Chubby Stick in Richer Raisin. The latter is Clinique‘s latest innovation for lips and its rather wonderful. A fat, waxy little stick that you stroke on lips and that imparts nourishing balm and a veil of colour. Richer Raisin reminds me of  a cult lip colour that Clinique used to make in the Nineties called Black Honey. Everyone wore it for that slightly enhanced nude look that so epitomised the nineties.

Anyway, those are my tips for a reductive make up routine. I’m loathe to say less is more because in general I don’t really agree with the aphorism, but there are occassional days when it feels like it really is.

Words by Bethan Cole

Tags: beauty, Bethan Cole, Clinique, Givenchy, Laura Mercier, make up, minimalism

Some statistics are calculated to make blood boil. For the women behind London’s Bird’s Eye View Film Festival in particular, it’s the fact that only six per cent of directors and twelve per cent of screenwriters are women. But instead of getting mad, Bird’s Eye View is getting even.

Following a host of screenings and events featuring prominent women in the film industry, this year’s festival is closing with the UK première of a film that socks it to the boys.

Tiny Furniture is the award winning début of 24-year-old writer-director-actor Lena Dunham. Wryly autobiographical, Dunham plays 22-year-old Aura, a film graduate going through a quarter life crisis after returning home to her artist-mother’s TriBeCa loft. According to Lena, it’s about a girl in transition and the women who love her: “I set out to tell an honest story that incorporated aspects of my own life, but knew my life had parallels with many others”. Shot in her own home on a minimal budget and with her family as co-stars; Dunham’s film is a stirring call to arms.

Tiny Furniture closes the Birds Eye View Film Festival, at BFI Southbank on 17th March.
birds-eye-view.co.uk

Tags: Bird's Eye Film Festival, Lena Dunham, Tiny Furniture

Art collective SALON (LONDON) have staged exhibitions in vacant Regent Street offices and dilapidated buildings in Clerkenwell. Now, after toying with the idea of holding the third show in her own flat, curator Crystal Bennes has chosen another unusual location – a Georgian mansion that has been converted into offices.

Bennes love of unusual spaces and desire to rip up the art exhibition rule book, stems from her concerns about the over-commercialisation of art. “I find it peculiar that as a society, we seem to have become far more comfortable with the idea that art is for everyone, yet still confine it largely to commercial galleries and museums,” she says. “I’m interested in questioning accepted spaces for the display of art.”

The art on show in Not for Sale cuts across the disciplines of painting, graphic design, science and poetry and true to the exhibition’s name, none of the works will be available to buy.

Bennes is also shunning the traditional private view in favour of a series of invitation-only dinner parties that will revive the spirit of the Symposium. Guests from across the art, academic and scientific worlds, will discuss the works on show, all while being fed by experimental food design group Blanch and Shock. “Private views are about generating publicity or selling works,” says Bennes. “This show is about ideas, but not about ideas from the top down; rather, I want the ideas to come from the people who attend the dinners and the people who see the work.” This rebel show is sure to be the hottest meal in town.

Not for Sale, runs from the 14th March – 3rd April by appointment only at Dalby House, 398 City Road, London EC1V 2QA. Email salonlondon@gmail.com for an appointment.
salonlondon.co.uk

Tags: Crystal Bennes, Not for Sale, Salon

Despite the on-going globalisation of beauty – Estee Lauder is expanding rapidly in India and China – not everything is now American. I still believe that the French and the Japanese are the go-to cultures for skincare. The French for reasonably priced pharmacy brands such as Biotherm, La Roche Posay, Nuxe, Caudalie, Darphin and Decleor –  with these products you really can afford to do as chic French women do and stock up on every item in the range.

The Japanese excel in hi-tech anti-ageing (as they do with technology generally) and in creating ultra-light gossamer textures packed with nutrients and advanced scientific ingredients. Perhaps my favourite Japanese skincare brand of all (and I’m a huge fan of Shiseido, Kanebo and especially Shu Uemura) is SKII, a wonderfully futuristic skincare brand that is heavily used by superstar make up artist Pat McGrath when she’s making up models backstage at the shows. A caveat: these products are expensive and only available online at harrods.com. But they do really work. The narrative of how the brand started is also rather lovely. Some scientists were visiting a Saki brewerey in Japan and noticed that although the workers faces were wrinkled, their hands were incredibly soft, pale and line free. Investigations and experiments followed to identify what was causing the workers to have such youthful hands and the scientists found out it was Pitera, a by product of yeast and the brewing process. Thus is 1980, over 30 years ago, SKII was born, a skincare regime based upon the active ingredient Pitera. It was subsequently bought by the US beauty giant Proctor and Gamble, so it’s perhaps not quite as authentically Japanese as it once was. Best products to sample are the Skin Signature Moisture Cream, an excellent anti-ageing moisturiser with a nice light texture. Out this month are Cellumination Mask-In-Lotion and Brightening Derm Specialist – the former helps lock in moisture and even out skin tone pre-hydration and the latter is a dark spot and pigmentation eraser.

Words by Bethan Cole

Tags: beauty, Bethan Cole, Japanese, SKII

Teo Connor (No Days Off) and Loren Platt (Work It) have lined up a legion of female creatives to mark International Women’s Day with The W Project. In their words, “As women working within the industries and thinking about International Women’s Day, and the wider issues of the position and representation of women in our society, we felt that providing a spotlight for creative women would be a suitable way to mark the day and nurture the budding and blossoming of creative talent throughout our society. We want to be part of building a better creative community for the future.”

thewproject.co.uk

Images courtesy of Tara Darby, Amy Gwatkin and Emma Sheridan.

Tags: International Women's Day, The W Project

The Barbican’s latest exhibition Pioneers of the Downtown Scene, New York 1970’s brings together the work of three of SoHo’s artistic anarchists – Laurie Anderson, Trisha Brown and Gordon Matta-Clark.

The trio were collaborative vigilantes amidst escalating economic turmoil, with Manhattan’s industrial wasteland providing the creative playground for their territorial endeavors.

Laurie Anderson seems the most trusting of New York’s badlands, cataloging dreams induced by sleeping in various locations across the city in the Institutional Dream series, including a nap on the beach at Coney Island. In another room you come across her attempts to reverse the street’s code of conduct with a photo series recording the men of SoHo who made seedy comments to her in the street. Two young guys leaning out of a Chevrolet who moments before had cat-called Let’s go for a ride cutie are snapped along with a man near a fire hydrant who had muttered, “I’d like to screw you baby.”

If Anderson’s concern is the social or intangible effects of New York’s wild downtown district, Matta-Clark’s reaction is much more invasive. Blurring boundaries of sculpture and architecture, MC went as far as dissecting chunks of the city’s rooftops in a bid to catalogue his ‘anarchitectural’ view of unusable properties in Staten Island and Queens.

The interactive and exhibitionist kinship between the three artists is maybe best illustrated by the work of the second female artist, performer Trisha Brown, who teetered on the surface of this disturbed cityscape; taking her medium of dance off the stage and onto the rooftops.

This is a rare and revealing survey of New York’s recent history in the shady era before high rents and fashionable quarters. And it’s bound to inspire some very modern admiration for their original brand of daredevil urban creativity.

Pioneers of the Downtown Scene, New York 1970s is at the Barbican Art Gallery, until 22 May 2011.

Words by Julia Hobbs

Tags: Gordon Matta-Clark, Julia Hobbs, Laurie Anderson, Pioneers of the Downtown Scene, The Barbican, Trisha Brown

Hot Oil hair treatments really remind me of the Seventies. Back then Vo5’s Hot Oil was one of those local chemist staples you might occasionally use to give your hair a treat. it seems old fashioned now, a hair product from another era, especially when you consider the gels, waxes mousses and now serums that are the latest formulations for hair. However I have to report, from the cutting edge of hairdressing, oils are back!

The latest hairstyling and treatment phenomenon (from Israel no less) is Morrocanoil, based on the precious Moroccan ingredient Argan oil which is high in antioxidants and incredibly nourishing. I had my hair blow dried with this product the last time I had my hair done in Toni and Guy and the effect was luxuriant, thick shiny hair – and my hair had been quite drastically bleached and colour treated to-boot.

Another sumptuous oil treatment that’s new is Kerastase’s Elixir Ultime, a blend of four oils including Argan that you can use in a number of ways. I’ve been using it at home to smooth through just washed hair as a pre-blow drying conditioner – resulting blow dried hair is incredibly silky and malleable. You can also use it pre-shampoo as a  thirty minute treatment or even after blow drying as a finishing product. Other companies that do new generation oils for hair include Leonor Greyl (available on amazon.co.uk) and Nuxe Huile Prodigeuse (availble from spacenk.co.uk).

An oil is a lovely oleaginous, old school way of lending hair a lucient glow. But you don’t have to resort to Vo5 any longer.

Words by Bethan Cole

Image courtesy of Japanoids – Wet Hair

Tags: Argan oil, beauty, Bethan Cole, hair oil, Kerastase, Morrocanoil, Nuxe Huile Prodigeuse, Toni and Guy, VO5 hot oil

Monochrome spotted faux fur and models sporting cute painted black noses and puppy ear hair; on first take, TopShop Unique’s Autumn/Winter 2011 show was as dotty and adorable as a room full of dalmatians. But TopShop’s in-house design team delivered more than just cartoon clothes.

Taking the American Jazz Age as it’s inspiration, Unique showed a collection of modern tailoring that evoked the glamour of Thirties Speakeasies and Industrial age New York. Knee high socks, tea-dresses and Mary-Jane shoes were fit for giddy chorus girls letting loose on table tops. While the sleek luxury of down-sized luggage bags and wide-legged suits paid homage to the Goldge Age of the motor car. Decadent and chic, clothes Cruella Deville would have killed for.

Words Boudicca Fox-Leonard

Tags: Cruella Deville, Topshop, topshop unique

“€œI have always been fascinated by photography produced by women,” says Damien Poulain, the designer and art director behind POV FEMALE (Oodee), a limited-edition monograph of the work of five London-based female photographers. Future editions will feature female photographers from Paris, Tokyo and New York, each limited to 100 copies (£12) and 20 limited edition bookcases, including signed copies of all five monographs and an archival-quality print from each photographer (£300).

This London issue of POV FEMALE features:

Bronwen Parker-Rhodes

A graduate of the Slade School of Fine Art, Bronwen has made films for Vivienne Westwood and Rihanna, among others.  Her photography is a subjective glimpse into individual lives through routine.  “€˜Through filming I discover a little of the world through someone else’s eyes and hopefully reveal that world to others.”
bronfilms.com

Briony Campbell

Briony’€™s photographs seem to intrude on a moment, they take you fully inside.  The Dad Project€™ –  “work in progress and I hope it always will be”€™ – is a photographic journal and coping mechanism for her father’s terminal illness.  Now she launches her achingly personal monograph A Year On€™.
brionycampbell.com

Rasha Kahil

Born in Beirut, Lebanon, Rasha’s photography experiments with the meaning behind the female body: ‘The body becomes a means for investigating displacement, social identity and its manifestation through everyday performance’.  Often exploring the sexualised female body and the gaze, she also deals in self-portraiture to appropriate spaces for herself and for her art.
rashakahil.com

Charlotte Player

Gypsy Gold is a photographic documentation of the relationship between gypsies and their horses.  The proud bond that even the youngest of the community display is testament to their traditional rituals and provides a fascination for Player and a leitmotif for her work.
charlotteplayer.com

Tara Darby

Tara is a prolific and interdisciplinary photographer: she has worked for Aubin and Wills, Levis, Timberland, Adidas, among others, contributed to such publications as AnOther, Vogue, W magazine, The Independent and has collaborated on two books with art director David James.  The common denominator is her personal approach that imbues her images with warmth and hope.
taradarby.com

POV FEMALE is at KK Outlet, 42 Hoxton Square, London
kkoutlet.com/art

Tags: Briony Campbell, Bronwen Parker-Rhodes, Charlotte Player, female photographers, KK Ooulet, POV FEMALE, Rasha Kahil, Tara D'Arby

The East End’s newest gallery, French Riviera 1988, opened its doors last night to a packed house. Behind this otherwise inconspicuous neon-lit shop front is the latest project space by the artist duo Samuel Levack and Jennifer Lewandowski. Their spacey inaugural show, Horizon Hypnotique features an ambient collection of distorted photographs, holographic and video works by artists including Alex Ressel, Beatriz Olabarrieta, Lucy Woodhouse and Richard Parry.  In-between the crowd, blurred silhouettes of red-hued figures almost dance across the downstairs rooms of the house. The spirit of hazy nights out and their seductive, reckless female stars floods the gallery, and it’s hard not to sway to their invisible beat.

Horizon Hypnotique runs from the 18th February – 13th March 2011 at French Riviera 1988.
Open Friday – Sunday, 12 – 6 pm and by appointment.

Tags: Alex Ressel, Beatriz Olabarrieta, French Riviera 1988, Julia Hobbs, Lucy Woodhouse, Richard Parry, Samuel Levack and Jennifer Lewandowski

I am a huge fans of French pharmacy skincare. I used to buy up Biotherm over in France years before it came to the UK. They used to do a really nice perfume oil which they seem to have discontinued. Anyway, the only problem with a lot of French pharmacy skincare was that it wasn’t particularly ethical. Sure it boasted natural ingredients. But that was about it.

Now I have discovered Melvita, an organic and natural French pharmacy brand that is Ecocert approved. It arrived in the UK about a year ago and there is a store in Covent Garden, it is also stocked in Whole Foods and John Lewis and you can buy online at melvita.com.

The brand was founded in 1983 in France by beekeeper and biologist Bernard Chevilliat and it has some lovely products, really well-priced with magical textures. I especially like the Cleansing Jelly (£14), a gentle foaming cleanser with a really nice lemony smell – it contains lemon balm and verbena. I have also been road testing the Foaming Facial Scrub (£15) twice a week – it’s formulated with Bamboo Tears and Silica to exfoliate and deep cleanse the skin. Really good for radiance engendering! There are also some really nice moisturising and anti ageing products in the range, including neat Argan Oil. One to seek out, especially if you are fastidious about organic beauty products.

Words by Bethan Cole

Tags: Bethan Cole, Ecocert, French skincare, Melvita, organic skincare

It seems shocking that only one woman – Kathryn Bigelow – has ever been awarded the Best Director Oscar, when you consider that women have been making films since the birth of cinema. It’s that lack of recognition of women in film that drives Cinenova – a volunteer-led collective that’s dedicated to preserving and distributing the work of female filmmakers, artists and activists. This month they’re opening up their impressive archive in an exhibition called Reproductive Labour at THE SHOWROOM gallery.

Films from Cinenova’s collection will be screened daily – it’s a rare opportunity to see pivotal works from the history of feminist, black, queer and experimental film and video. There are silent films from the early days of cinema, documentaries, shorts and feature-length works dealing with themes like post-colonial struggles, domestic work and representation of gender and sexuality.

A quick browse through the 500 titles in Cinenova’s online catalogue threw up some intriguing names: French pioneer Alice Guy is arguably the first ever filmmaker. She directed the 1906 feature The Life of Christ with a cast of 300, and used innovative techniques and special effects. Her contemporary, Lois Weber was Universal Studios’ highest paid director in 1916. She covered controversial social issues like abortion, alcoholism and birth control in films like Where Are My Children?, Hop and The Devil’s Brew (both 1916). One of her most successful films was The Blot (1921).

As well as showing these rare and precious films in their original state, the exhibition has a wealth of fascinating material – photographs, pamphlets and posters – to add some context to the work. The title of the exhibition – Reproductive Labour – also alludes to how much of a labour of love Cinenova is. Run entirely by volunteers, the charity is always struggling for survival and depends on donations for its loyal band of supporters to keep going.

Check THE SHOWROOM’s online calendar to find out which films are being screened and when (theshowroom.org/calendar). Our top picks are Peasant Women of Ryazan on Saturday the 12th February, and Broken Taboos and New Voices in Iran on Wednesday 23rd March at 6pm.

Reproductive Labour: An exhibition exploring the work of Cinenova runs until the 26th March
The Showroom, 63 Penfold Street, London NW8 8PQ
theshowroom.org

Words by Phoebe Frangoul

Images from top: Peasant Women of Ryazan by Olga Prebrazhenskaya (USSR 1927) and Daughter Rites.

Tags: Alice Guy, Cinenova, female filmmakers, feminist, Kathryn Bigelow, Phoebe Frangoul, Reproductive Labour, The Showroom