empire mag
Design
Lady Gaga & Barneys New York | “Gaga’s Workshop”
Just in time for the holiday season, specialty retailer Barneys has linked with pop icon Lady Gaga to present “Gaga’s Workshop.” The project has seemingly transformed Barneys New York into a Gaga-themed wonderland, closely associated with Santa’s workshop. The celebration features elaborate transformations of retail locations and windows, along with a plethora of unique Gaga merchandise. One-fourth of the proceeds from the special event will go to the Born This Way Foundation, recently founded and announced by Lady Gaga and her mother.
Wesley Townsend Kitten | The City
Wesley Townsend Kitten photography brings us a beautiful, year-long time lapse video of San Francisco spanning from June 2010 to August 2011 called The City. The project started as a way to photograph San Francisco in a different way, because of the staggering amounts of still photography over its long history. While the time-lapse video isn’t every single day, the artist estimates that around 250 to 300 hours of work were put into making the video over the year period. The film includes 28,000 frames and 85 different shots, with most places filmed around the city, without the help of a car. Enjoy Empire!
2011 Nike MAG: The Full Story
Sneaker enthusiasts and fans of the 1989 movie Back to the Future II had to wait almost 23 years for their Nike MAG to drop. After all the video and event hype, an extensive behind the scenes video is presented here. Several of the personalities involved in the whole project go on the record from both Nike and Back to the Future’s teams including Tinker Hatfield and Mark Parker. The Nike MAG has now obviously been made available for collectors through eBay but this video hopefully answers any questions many might have regarding the process behind thegreatest shoes never made.
Unsanctioned Banksy Show at the Keszler Gallery
A recent unsanctioned show at the Hamptons’ Keszler Gallery featured street art pieces from Banksy that angered many art fans. The pieces for the show seemed to be hand-removed from their natural environment in Palestine when originally placed for the 2007 ”Santa’s Ghetto event held in the West Bank four years ago. It turns out some of the street art pieces removed ended up at the unsanctioned show without Pest Control authentication, which in turn cannot be proved to be authentic Banksy pieces on display.
Source: Arrested Motion
1930 Art Deco Henderson
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The motorcycling world loves a ‘barn find’—an old, obscure machine wheeled out of the woodwork for the first time. And this is one of the biggest revelations of recent months. It’s a 1930 Henderson that was customized before WW2 by a fellow called O. Ray Courtney and fitted with ‘streamliner’ bodywork.
The art deco influence is obvious; legendary automotive designer Harley Earl could have drawn those curves. It’s all the more unusual because the mechanicals are hidden: even at the height of the Art Deco movement, most motorcycles were a triumph of form over function, with exposed cooling fins, brake drums and suspension springs.
The bike is owned by collector Frank Westfall of Syracuse. It caused a stir in June 2010 when it appeared at the Rhinebeck Grand National Meet, a motorcycle show held a couple of hours drive north of NYC. Grail Mortillaro (of the chopper blogKnucklebusterinc) had a camera to hand, so we have him to thank for these images.
Henderson was a Chicago brand and one of the American ‘Big Three’ (with Harley-Davidson and Indian) until the onset of the Great Depression. It went bust in 1931. But you can see the influence of the ‘streamliner’ style on another contemporary North American brand—Victory. If there’s a spiritual successor to this Henderson custom, it’s the Victory Vision Tour, a gargantuan cruiser with completely enclosed bodywork and not a leather tassle or saddlebag in sight.—Chris Hunter of motorcyle design website - Bike EXIF.
