Vegans can go ahead and stop reading right now

There are few fashion houses that have maintained their position as respected and coveted purveyors of fine goods for over 100 years. French fashion house Hermès has been producing quality goods since 1837. And ever since the 18th century, leather has been one of their most-used material. To pay homage, London’s Royal Academy Galleries has a new exhibition called “Leather Forever.”

The exhibition takes up 12 rooms, displays the many types of leathers Hermès has used, explores the role of leather as a fine good, and shows the history of Hermès. Tracking Hermes’ beginnings in modest 19th century saddle shops, the exhibit also focuses on classic Hermes items like the “Kelly” named after Grace Kelly, the “Birkin” named after Jane Birkin, and even includes a tribute to Great Britain with four handbags designed for each British nation.

It seems that fashion as art has been a trend of late. The Design Museum of London has just put on a tremendous Christian Louboutin exhibit, The MET is showing “Impossible Conversations” an exhibition about Elsa Schiaparelli and Miuccia Prada. And last summer, The MET showed a breathtaking tribute to Alexander McQueen. Does fashion deserves a presence in a museum as much as a sculpture or a painting does?

Hermès “Leather Forever” runs at the London Royal Academy Galleries until May 27.

Tomorrow Omen PR will be having a sample sale featuring some of our favorite designers like Daniella Kallmeyer and our newest feature NOMIA (read the interview with Yara Flinn here). Plus it starts at noon so you don;t have to get up at some ridoculous hour to make it there.

OMEN PR Sample Sale
Thursday, May 16th
5 Crosby Street apt. 6H, New York
Noon-7pm

Yara Flinn of Nomia draws from an archive of art history knowledge when she is creating

For our new feature we take you to the studios of Nomia with Yara Flinn. The New York-based designer, who started her line with three dresses, now shows at New York Fashion Week, sells internationally and loves the Pittsburgh Steelers. Down, set, hut.

Read our new Feature with Yara Flinn of Nomia shot by Christelle De Castro here.

A.P.C. and L.G.R. want to shade your eyes this spring

Two three-letter companies have come together to make a pair of sunglasses for spring. A.P.C. and L.G.R. have created a unisex frame in a classic shape which is available in two colorways black and brown. The A.P.C. + L.G.R. glasses are handmade in Italy using cellulose acetate, which means the glasses can be shaped and made without heating the materials and the silky finish is achieved by hand polishing without the use of solvents or paints. The lenses of the brown pair adjust to sunlight turning darker as it gets brighter to shade your eyes.

The A.P.C. + L.G.R. sunglasses launching in A.P.C. stores and online this Thursday, May 17. See more from the collaboration below.

Come to the Darkside with Nicolas Jaar and Dave Harrington

It’s hard not think of Star Wars when you hear the word Darkside, and apparently techno’s baby boy Nicolas Jaar and guitarist Dave Harrington agree. The dynamic duo who recently collaborated to make the group named Darkside, have finally released a video for their track “A1” and it has got a harsh Tusken Raiders, Tatooine vibe going on. The “A1″ video shows the adventures of three desert roaming characters on an epic search for a crystal. Cut with shots of bugs and clouds and paired with an amazing soundtrack, the video seems to mash all the best parts of sci-fi into one short flick.

Watch Nicolas Jaar and Dave Harrington’s Darkside “A1” video below.

I hate summer. Yeah, I’m that guy. Everyone hates me for it, too cause I’m the ultimate bummer this time of year. When the general consensus is “life is RAD” and I can’t help but sulk anytime I’m away from my fan, it makes me seem kinda…I don’t know, goth?

Bike rides in the sun and beach days with beers and buds…man, I just can’t help but dislike it. It’s not that I’m an asshole, either—I love my friends, I love hang outs, the beach in the fall or early spring is fantastic (fully clothed of course), but summertime just makes me uncomfortable—in so many ways.

I’ve always disliked summer. I remember being a goth teenager with the whole heat-stroke-waiting-to-happen-package: thick white makeup, long, greasy black hair in my face, black leggings, long black skirts, heavy metal jewelry, black leather boots laced tight up to my knees and long-sleeved everything, even sweaters sometimes—just to prove to the godless Universe that I was cooler than everything—even the weather. Walking home from school became a near medical emergency every day, but the misery that came with it only fueled my fire.

I think one of my main problems was (and is) that I can’t get over my body being like a friend I just don’t like that much. I know, I know, my body is a gift (blah, blah) and I should appreciate and love it because it gets me places or whatever. But, man, cars just do a better job. I haven’t owned a bathing suit since I was probably eight years old. I’m the type of person that looks at a bathing suit shop and thinks “How do they stay in business?” I’m like a tween passing an iPhone 4 at the Mac store—“dude, that shit’s obsolete.” Today I overheard a woman on her cell phone say, “I need to get my bikini for this year” and I stopped and thought about how different I’d have to become to say that. It wasn’t that she was talking about buying a bikini so much as it was that she was talking about her yearly purchase of bikinis. Her closet probably has more sexy swimwear in it than mine does fabric. And then I realized that bathing suit shops actually do make money. It’s just me that’s weird.

I’ve never done well in huge group situations and in the summer, large amounts of people (excessively happy people, at that) are unavoidable. Beaches are my own personal nightmare; a grotesque spectacle of unnaturally tinted skin, beer smiles and beach bodies, sweaty blankets packed with even sweatier people and PBR cans as far as the eye can see. It’s like cruel torture to a goth. Sometimes it seems like it’d be fun, I’ll admit. It could be fun, in some alternate universe where I enjoy being seen in public and have urges to say things like, “Can you pass the Hawaiian Tropic? I missed a spot on my back” or “I’m gonna take another dip in ten.” But I can’t imagine who I’d be or how my black soul would reject me after that. Plus, I just don’t wanna be that sweaty from sitting. I can only take so many cold showers until I start feeling like I’m in a mental institution. And they don’t help anyway: the heat sticks to me like bad karma.

I like summer nights­—like a good goth should. It gets dark late, which cuts the ever-pressing anxiety that bedtime brings to reclusive gloom-spreaders. Once that early morning sun starts to come up, though, and I get on a bus and hear every second person exclaiming, as if they’ve won some lottery, “Supposed to be 39 degrees today!”, it’s too much. They’re on their way to an office and I can’t help wincing at the thought of them sitting in that suit, glued to a hot leather chair, cooking from the inside all day, fungus probably growing in their armpits and on the backs of their knees. I don’t see what the celebration is about. I just hear “My topical fungicide is only gonna cost me $39.99 today!”

Last year, after being in a car accident and breaking my leg, I experienced a brief sunny outlook on life and actually went to a lake in mid August. My friend and I packed up a car with normal people summer stuff: a blow-up boat with oars, sun tan lotion, a beach towel, a deck of cards and some books to read. I felt like a different person. I didn’t know who I was all of a sudden—I became beach Mel. My leg may have been broken, but it was healing, and damnit, I wasn’t going to waste my life or be unappreciative of my body anymore. I was going to enjoy summer. I couldn’t go all the way and buy a bathing suit (that would have been an identity crisis waiting to happen), so I wore shorts and a t-shirt into the lake. I got into a boat and rowed it. I swam. I lay on a towel and read a book, the sun beating down on me for almost an hour. It was amazing. People caught glimpses of my ghostly complexion and looked away in horror. But I didn’t care. I was alive and beaching it up for the first time in probably ten years. Of course I went with only one friend, someone very close who I could trust wouldn’t make fun of my inexperience or blinding white ass. We had fun. And I felt free. We took pictures and when I showed them to people, they scoffed and accused me of Photoshopping myself into them. But I had the tan to prove it. I went from pearly white to a sort of paper white. It was a success. I was a fucking pro at beach life.

This year, I don’t think I’ll go. It’s not a beachy year for me. When I see goth kids dabbing their faces and necks with black handkerchiefs, I’ll want to laugh, but I won’t because I feel their pain. I’ll probably get sympathy heat stroke. I’ll nod and smile and of course, they’ll sneer at me, eyeing my now ¾ length sleeves, exposed ankles, wrists and neck, my clothing made of some kind of light cotton and my shoes possibly of the sandal variety (though maybe that’s going too far…). They’ll laugh at me, a traitor to my kind. But, when I get home, I’ll have a cold shower, put on my extra large Cure shirt, lay down in front of my fan on high and thank God I don’t have to pull my swollen, sweaty feet out of 40-hole boots.

Designer Yara Flinn of NYC-based brand Nomia never wanted to work in fashion, loves the Steelers and went to art college to get weird

Yara Flinn is sitting in her Williamsburg studio talking about her line when she gets an email alert. It’s Tomorrowland, one of the hottest retailers in Japan with a huge first order. It’s an exciting moment to witness for a designer still in the infancy period–a time when her business might look like a big operation from outside, but is mostly just a one-woman team. With the Japanese customer in mind, it makes sense most of the order is for dresses in sizes 2 and 4–but another part of the order comes as a surprise. “Oh my god they’re ordering the snood! 8 of them,” Yara says, referring to a fur collar she created that was never meant to be produced. Flinn pulls out a crop of expensive synthetic fur in browns and blacks. “I just made them for my show—I sew them myself.”

Flinn’s initial creative interest wasn’t in fashion, she wanted to pursue art. So she headed for an arts program in Ohio of all places, to Oberlin to get her BFA. “I tell people I got all my weird out there.” Having grown up in Manhattan she was looking to get away and have a chance to do something different. With her tall, slender 5″11 frame she says, “Everybody already knows I used to play basketball,” with an eye roll. So she flipped the switch and worked on sculpture and video installation instead. She’s still a sports-fan, but nowadays she’d rather talk about the Steelers. She flips through her iPhone photos to pull up a picture of a guy she saw on the subway who was dressed in head-to-toe black and yellow fan garb. (Maybe not the inspiration for her next collection, but she was excited to show his outfit off.)

After graduating and moving back to Manhattan, Yara decided to get behind a sewing machine.“I wasn’t a good enough artist to do what I really wanted,” she says. “But I love the idea of making something functional instead of purely aesthetic.” Flinn’s artistic versatility allowed her to move organically into the fashion world.

Flinn launched her debut collection in 2007 under the name Nomia, with three dresses that she sold to Barney’s in her first season. Half-smirking, she says, “It’s never been as easy to get my stuff back in.” Since she made her start as a designer, Flinn has developed full seasonal collections, sold to retailers all around the world and shown at NYFW four times. Growing up in a city that serves as a cultural mecca gave her a sense of comfort to experiment, “I never felt like I had to ‘make it.” But she does have a keen understanding of getting her stuff in front of the right eyes. “You can make an amazing collection and if the right people don’t see it, it’s never going to get out there.” Five years into the business, Nomia is a sophisticated, clean and thoughtful line that draws inspiration from artists, objects, and minimalist designers.

“I don’t really believe in designing for trends,” Flinn says. She talks about some of to her design influences like Jeremy Scott, Rick Owens, and Ricardo Tisci, who maintain a consistency in their aesthetic that communicates a strong vision over time. She strives for a certain seamlessness between each season with the intention that her clothing is able to portray a continuous narrative over the course of her career. “Even though minimalism is in right now, these men have been making the same type of clothing since they started out, and I’m sure they’d be creating the same stuff regardless of what is considered on-trend.”

The art world has always been Flinn’s comfort zone, much moreso than the fashion. Still now, Flinn draws more from an archive of art history knowledge when she is creating. But growing up in the global fashion hub, it’s impossible to ignore its presence. Flinn is attracted to the older class of of the city’s fashionistas, artists and bohemians of 80′s and 90′s. She references a crop of New York women who dressed for themselves rather than to be seen by others. “Meeting all these awesome women with these crazy styles, women who were willing to take risks—I think that informed me a lot. I want to reach that audience—not someone who just wants a name brand.” She loved the women who spent time in Soho before Prada open its doors for the first time.

“I think ultimately clothing is something that you want to feel beautiful in,” she says. “Even if you want to challenge that it should still be something that you feel attractive in—it should make the wearer feel like themselves. I don’t want to overtake someone’s personality with my clothes.”

Mindy Kaling gets her own tv show on Fox

From Kelly Kapoor to The Mindy Project. Actress, writer and producer, Mindy Kaling will headline her own gig next fall–appropriately titled, The Mindy Project. Based on the trailer, it looks like the show will be a snappy sitcom full of romantic comedy tropes and hopes. Mindy plays an OB/GYN on a love quest. There’s a good hot doctor, a bad doctor and former Office co-star Ed Helms somewhere in there. Nothing revolutionary but then, we didn’t expect that much from Zooey Deschanel’s New Girl and we have to admit that it delivered.

Check out the trailer below and let us know what you think. Will you be adding this show to your roster or giving it a pass?

Can you smell the desperation and the cologne in the air? It’s Bachelorette time.

by: Jess Bloom

This has been a great year for female-driven television. Smart, funny and talented women are ripping it up on-screen and in writing rooms. They’re making opportunities for themselves and leaving the door wide open behind them for other chicks. Flip through the channels on any given day and you’ll see Lena Dunham, Tina Fey, Julia Louis-Dreyfus or Zooey Deschanel redefining roles for women.

You’ll also see Emily Maynard aka The Bachelorette.

She’s not redefining anything even though Chris Hansen, our esteemed host, gets pretty jacked about her being the first single mother. If you thought all single moms were strippers or immigrants…you’re wrong! Sometimes they are white, rich and pretty!

This show is fucking awful. But, it’s, like, also awesome. You have to approach it like science fiction. Or anthropological footage of a long lost tribe who subsist on hair gel, sunless tanner and creatine powder. The only difference between the cast of The Bachelorette and Jersey Shore seems more empty promises and less drinking.

These people are drips. The first episode of The Bachelor or The Bachelorette is special to me because I love the emphasis on each contestant’s bullshit job title. They’re all actors or models with an inflated side gig. My favourite jobs from this season include “Luxury Brand Consultant” (aka some dude who thinks he’s Chuck Bass), “Data Destruction Specialist” (“his friends call him ‘Wolf’”) and, of course, “Party M.C.”

Unfortunately, the marine biologist named Jean-Paul wasn’t hot so he got cut. Other guys who didn’t make the first elimination round were a mishmash of consultants, managers and salesmen. I don’t know what to expect from Emily in the future but it’s important to note that she had the wherewithal to get rid of that 33-year-old dude whose a singer/songwriter in New York City and fitness model, Jackson. Both, equally, dredges upon society.

She did, however, keep around the guy who brought her a giant fertility symbol.

Among the eliminated was Lerone Anu, the only man of colour representing. In case you guys didn’t notice, The Bachelorette is white. Not like Jewish-white or Italian-white–just white-white. I assume that Lerone was cast in response to this discrimination lawsuit. He had no airtime before being shucked off and neither did the 2 Hispanic guys. The best course of action for our Spanish-speaking bachelors is to play up the exotic vibe and hope Emily pulls a season 6, Ali. They obviously know this because they were working the language angle almost as hard as guys working the single dad angle.

My current forerunners: Jef-with-one-f (so Marty McFy) & the high school teacher with hip glasses (who spells his name, Aaron, correctly)

Marc Jacobs turns a graffiti prank into a $689 t-shirt

Last week, graffiti artist Kidult–who is known for tagging up the storefronts like colette, Louis Vuitton and Supreme–made his mark on the Marc Jacobs Soho store. While everyone was chilling at the Met Ball, Kidult painted ‘ART’ in huge, spindly pink letters across the front of the shop. But unlike his other victims, Marc Jacobs enjoyed the prank–first tweeting about it, calling the work “Art by Art Jacobs” (Kidult responded to tweets in his own way, tweeting a picture of the store front clean up) and now, by making a t-shirt out of it.

The ‘Art by Art Jacobs’ tee which features a picture of Kidult’s work is selling for $689 at Marc Jacobs. We wonder if Kidult is upset his anti-capitalism graffiti is being turned into a marketing ploy? Or if he is thinking “touché“?

It does appear Kidult will have his own versions of the shirt available for purchase this Friday via his website.