In one photo, a woman is on all fours, presumably picking something up, her posterior pressed against a glass window.
Another photo shows a couple in bathrobes, their feet touching beneath a table. And there is one of a man, in jeans and a T-shirt, lying on his side as he takes a nap.
In all the photos, taken by New York City artist Arne Svenson from his second-floor apartment, the faces are obscured or not shown. The people are unidentifiable.
But the residents of a glass-walled luxury residential building across the street had no idea they were being photographed. And they never consented to being subjects for the works of art that are now on display — and for sale — in a Manhattan gallery.
“I don’t feel it’s a violation in a legal sense, but in a New York, personal sense there was a line crossed,” said Michelle Sylvester. She lives in the residential building called the Zinc Building, which stands out with its floor-to-ceiling windows in a neighborhood of cobblestone streets and old, brick warehouse buildings.
Svenson’s apartment is directly across the street, just to the south, giving him a clear view of his neighbors simply by looking out his window.
“I think there’s an understanding that when you live here with glass windows, there will be straying eyes,” Sylvester said. “But it feels different with someone who has a camera.”
Svenson’s show, “The Neighbors,” opened last Saturday at the Julie Saul Gallery in Chelsea, where about a dozen large prints are on sale for up to $7,500. His exhibit is drawing a lot of attention, not for the quality of the work, but for the manner in which it was made.
Svenson did not respond to a request for comment from The Associated Press. But he says in material accompanying the exhibit that the idea for it came when he inherited a telephoto lens from a friend, a birdwatcher who recently died.
“For my subjects there is no question of privacy; they are performing behind a transparent scrim on a stage of their own creation with the curtain raised high,” Svenson says in the gallery notes. “The neighbors don’t know they are being photographed; I carefully shoot from the shadows of my home into theirs.”
That explanation has done little to satisfy some residents of the Zinc Building, where a penthouse was once listed at nearly $6 million.
In an e-mail circulating among the building’s owners and renters this week, a resident whose apartment was depicted in Svenson’s photographs suggested legal recourse against the artist.
“I am not an expert in this area of the law, but I do think we may have some rights and the ability to stop this,” the e-mail reads. “I love art, but find this to be an outrageous invasion of privacy.”
Civil rights lawyer Norman Siegel said that according to New York civil rights law, there may be a way for Svenson’s subjects to challenge him in court, but the case will depend entirely on context.
“The question for the person who’s suing is, if you’re not identifiable, then where’s the loss of privacy?” he said. “These issues are a sign of the times.
“How do you balance the right of privacy vis-à-vis the right of artistic expression?”
Linda Darcia, an exchange student from Colombia living with a family on the sixth floor facing Svenson’s studio, said she had no idea whether she was depicted in any of the pieces. But she was anxious to go to the gallery and find out.
“I’m not really upset about it because that’s his job,” she said. “But maybe he should have asked before the gallery opens.
“Everybody’s talking about it.”
Students in the Department of Fiber Science & Apparel Design present their plus-size dress form.
For their Product Development class, Cornell apparel design sophomores Brandon Wen and Laura Zwanziger decided to create a clothing collection designed especially for plus-size women after their research revealed an overlooked market.
But they faced an early barrier: So few clothes are made exclusively for larger women that there’s a scarcity of full-figured mannequins available, and the few that exist resemble crudely scaled-up versions of thinner women of Barbie-like proportions. Undeterred, the students built their own plus-size dress form.
Under the guidance of Susan Ashdown, the Helen G. Canoyer Professor in the Department of Fiber Science & Apparel Design (FSAD) in the College of Human Ecology, they analyzed thousands of 3-D body scans of women to define a prototype body size and shape. The team matched it to a single scan of a pear-shaped, size-24 woman from the FSAD department’s 3-D body scanner and used it to develop a pattern for the shape and contours of their mannequin. Next they used the department’s laser cutter to slice half-inch think pieces of foam and stacked and glued the layers to create their model, a half-scale dress form that allows designers to develop prototype garment patterns that can later be replicated at full scale.
“It’s a wonderful example of using innovative technology to support design work,” said Ashdown. “Instead of just scaling up something designed for a different-sized woman, or even thinking about clothing as something to disguise a body or make a body look different than it is, the students sought to celebrate shape as it really is.”
Design students present their collection, which features four jackets and a skirt and pants tailored to complement the curves of larger women.
At their final class presentation May 13, Zwanziger, Wen and exchange student Abbey Jennings unveiled their collection, called Rubens’ Women, after the Flemish painter famous for his illustrations of full-figured women. It features four jackets and a skirt and pants tailored to complement the curves of larger women.
Wen, the lead designer on the project, said he hopes such a line could alleviate the stress many plus-size women face when browsing in stores or online, where their shopping often ends in frustration due to ill-fitting clothes.
“A lot of stores won’t have plus sizes in the store, so people have to go online and find them, and it’s difficult to find them online,” Wen said. “Plus, a lot of plus-size women don’t want to shop in regular stores around thin customers; it’s a self-consciousness thing.”
The team also developed a marketing plan and even negotiated with a San Francisco-based manufacturer to develop a suggested price for their line.
They noticed a huge opportunity after their market research showed that plus-size women hold 28 percent of purchasing power for apparel and accessories, but their spending only accounts for 17 percent of purchases, according to Zwanziger.
“A lot of the clothes <for plus-size women> are really just sized up from smaller proportions, which fit really strangely,” Zwanziger said. “Plus-size women feel alienated from the fashion industry.”
Making a fashion line specifically for larger women is a very different process, but an important one, Ashdown said.
“Issues of health aside, we’re all different body shapes and body proportions,” she said. “Each person deserves to have clothing designed for them as they are, not as they relate to some abstract industry shape.”
Sarah Cutler ’16 is a student communications assistant for the College of Human Ecology.
In the wake of devastating building collapses in factories in Bangladesh and Cambodia, the high cost of cheap production has once again been laid bare. It behooves us all to read labels. Here we profile ten designers who can trace the who, what, and where of their collections.
It’s easy for Creatures of the Wind’s Christopher Peters and Shane Gabier to say who’s shipping and stitching together their collections because they’re the ones lugging boxes to FedEx and sewing sweaters at Peters’ parents’ kitchen table in New Jersey. “We did, and still do, a lot of it ourselves,” Gabier says. In those first few seasons, a DIY approach is the only way a growing business can survive. And yet, even as the two-and-a-half-year-old label expands, quality manufacturing and accountability remain priorities. “Our end goal is to make beautiful things, and as an extension of that, everything along the way has to be done in a certain way,” Peters says.
Or as Gabier puts it, “Ultimately, if we’re going to add to this giant heap of stuff in the world, it should be with a useful product that’s created sensitively.”
As such, the Chicago-based pair works with three factories in New York; the main one maxes out at approximately 15 employees. “They see us probably more than they want to,” Gabier says. The designers have also started to produce skirts, dresses, shirts, and jackets in Japan and have started to build relationships with knitwear makers in Hong Kong, which they say only gives them a reason to travel there more often. Many of their exceptional fabrics are sourced from couture mills in Europe, and embroidery is often executed by family-run businesses in France.
The American fashion brand pays 1 million dollars at the Fashion Institute of Technology for scholarships.
Perfect timing and a vital contribution to other sale site:www.51buymichaelkors.com to the FIT, State University of New York, where art, design, economy and technologies are closely connected to the fashion industry. Scholarships awarded by the fashion label will reward a student each year, most of all is able to show and demonstrate their talent in fashion design, but that is not financially able to support his studies and his career. In fact, scholarship will cover all costs associated with the undergraduate program at FIT, including tuition, housing, books and an internship at Michael Kors.
The first student deserving of the scholarship will be appointed in the summer of 2013, and will begin their studies in the fall semester of the same year.
"I studied to FIT at the end of the 70 's, when the school provided a truly complete curriculum for fashion, unprecedented," says Kors. "From when I grew up, the system has become even stronger. It makes me so happy to see the potential talent that has been claimed by this school, and I can't wait to see this continue. "
"Over the years the amount of young people who have crossed my doorstep was incredible," continues Michael Kors classic bags. "Accompany young designers has always been important to me, and with this scholarship so that we can help to grow incredible talents in years to come".
"This wonderful donation reflects the characteristic reflection of Michael, the sense of its purpose and the spirit of generosity," says Dr. Joyce f. Brown, President of the FIT. "He creates a unique opportunity for talented students who arrive at college to fulfill their dreams. We are deeply grateful to him! ".if you like ,you can click here for visit the shop:www.51buymichaelkors.com.
Hard to prevent and even harder to erase (for good), stretch marks, unfortunately, can be a lifelong problem. Although there are options available that reduce their appearance, a permanent cure still does not exist.
Stretch marks range in color from red (fresher, new marks) to white and silvery (older marks). They can feel indented or smooth on the skin. Whenever the skin is stretched out quickly, small tears in the dermis occur, causing stretch marks. As Miami, FL dermatologist Janelle Vega, MD, puts it, “They are basically microscars in the skin.” To limit stretch marks from forming, keep the prone areas well-moisturized with a heavy hydrator like cocoa or shea butter, which will keep the skin pliable and more elastic. Keeping the skin hydrated and supple is key. Stretch marks can be exacerbated by the sun, which is why they should be safeguarded at all costs. While sunscreen is the go-to, you can also try a top or dress that’s embedded with UPF.
While some experts feel that in-office treatments, like lasers and skin tighteners, do little for stretch marks, others disagree. It is important to know that when treating them, the degree of improvement can range from minimal to moderate. If your stretch marks are red (due to the influx of blood vessels at the site), then a pulsed-dye laser may help; if they are white, a fractionated collagen-stimulating laser can offer some improvement. Lasers may help to lighten up any existing stretch marks, but they won’t get rid of them permanently since they will still exist to some degree. “Think of using any type of laser for stretch marks almost like airbrushing—you’re ‘smudging’ away any of the sharp demarcations so that the marks are less noticeable on the skin,” says Dr. Vega. Excising any extra skin can also improve stretch marks since they are literally cut out or moved downward. “If they are below the belly button and a tummy tuck is performed, we can cut them out,” says Scottsdale, AZ, plastic surgeon Steven Wiener, MD. “If they are above the belly button and we do a tummy tuck, the stretch marks will now fall below the belly button and there will be less of them.”
Do you suffer from stretch marks?
armstrong224 (104)
