The best Philly tattoos

We mentioned a couple of days ago, spurred by the above excellent neon skyline tattoo above (done by Chad Knight at Boulevard Tattoo in Collingsdale), that we were gonna try to round up the boldest and beautiful-est Philly-love tattoos. We found a lot of LOVE Parks, a lot of sports team logos and a lot of Liberty Bells, but we’ve sorted through them all and come up with the neatest ones, starting with a rather less abstract skyline than the one above:

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Life’s a game

So I’ve been cleaning up the (blessedly minimal) effects of having my identity stolen for the last couple of years, and as I ran around town for the last couple of days printing things, faxing things, collecting other things, getting things notarized, etc. to deal with the latest thing that’s turned up, I tried to burn off some of my frustration by thinking of my situation as one of those LucasArts adventure games I loved when I was a kid. They also tend to involve one large goal, which is accomplished by doing hours and hours of smaller, seemingly unrelated tasks until you stumble backasswardly upon the princess or the secret of Monkey Island or whatnot. This was just like that! Except how I can’t stop playing and it’s frustrating and expensive.

Anyway, I came home with the idea of my life as Sisyphean, no-fun video game still a bit on my mind, and happened across this pair of polygonal shoes by United Nude, which seemed sort of perfect for the moment. The style probably looks pretty familiar to anybody who played video games during the rather quick evolution of computer graphics in the late ’90s:

The United Nude Lo Res is part of an new semi-automatic design method by United Nude. An object is digitially scanned into a 3-D computer model and re-generated into various resolutions. The Lo Res shoe is part of an automated design revolution.

So in celebration of having hopefully faxed my last document and rescued the princess (if she’s not in another goddamn castle), here’s a bunch of stuff based on 8-bit nostalgia that doesn’t cross over into literal video-game territory, like so:

Even though I do find that shirt funny. Anyway, here they are!

Floral rose prints don’t look quite so grandmotherly when they’re pixelated.  Digital-print scarf and dress, from Matthew Williamson’s fall 2008 collection.

Stolen Jewels, by Mike & Maaike. They used google to ’steal’ lo-res images of some of the most famous and ornate jewelry in the world (such as Imelda Marcos’ ruby necklace and this image of the Great Chrysanthemum, on which I believe the above is based:)

and then converted them to tiny leather pixels as a statement necklace.

8-bit dress from Modcloth, vaguely evoking some mod-as-hell Space Invaders.

The Icon wristwatch; numbers would have ruined the effect.

OK, yeah, this one’s literal, but it’s just too cute. From Erin at A Dress A Day.

Halloween roundup 4: ART HISTORY 100 COSTUMES

Halloween is getting closer! It’s, like, this weekend. I’m so excited! So here’s another roundup of potential costumes, this time inspired by that Art History 100 class you took freshman year. But nothing where you’re going to have to carry a giant picture frame around all night, we’re aware that bulky costumes get real old real fast. Here’s some figures from art who are still recognizable when they step out of the frame:

ARTIST: Roy Lichtenstein

WORK: Any of his comic-inspired paintings (although the example we used is “Girl With Hair Ribbon”)

DIFFICULTY: 10

GOOD FOR: Women (or men) who have a lot of patience and don’t touch their face habitually

OK, MAC has posted a bunch of Halloween tutorials and ideas on their facebook page, and while they’re all pretty neat, this one is amazing. I have no doubt that if I were to attempt this it would be smudged within ten minutes, and the costume/hair parts look like a pain a half to procure, but still. That’s great.

Kahlo, Magritte and more, after the jump…

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This Will Not Get You Laid: Costume Edition.

THIS WILL NOT GET YOU LAID.

The Frisky isn’t usually one for fashion front page posts, but I feel they made some important points about Halloween for our male readers. I mean, we have a little more faith in those dudes if they’re reading PWstyle (high five!), and pretty high hopes that they have creative Halloween costumes in the works…

….but, just in case there was a temporary lapse of judgment that was induced by a) male bonding b) alcohol c) costume store hysteria d) all of the above, let’s have a refresher.

Ready, boys? Here is the link to The Frisky’s post, “21 Costumes that will not get you laid.” Read and absorb!

The Wrinkles Just Slip Off

If you love to shop and want to receive daily e-mails about sales from top designers, or hate stores and never want to step foot in one again, Current TV Tech reporter Sarah Lane has some suggestions.

The Ground Report discusses why it might be good to have oily skin after all. This article reminded me of my grandmother, who says that she doesn’t have wrinkles because her skin is so oily, and the wrinkles just slipped off.

There’s a blog that illustrates the New York edition of ‘missed connections’ as featured on Craig’s List. It’s pretty interesting. The New York Times is a fan too.

The Frisky highlights celebs with tattoos, Glamour helps a girl pick out a handbag that costs a small fortune, the New York Times gives a review of Milan’s fashion week, which isn’t as flashy as it once was, and NBC10 asks whether backless dresses are trashy or not.

Test-drive: style iPhone apps

I’m usually pretty sedentary about getting new apps for my iPhone; I’ll forget about it for a couple of months at a time, then be totally astonished at the amount of apps I’d never heard of that are instant “How did I live without this?” classics (having the AP Stylebook be searchable offline is the greatest thing in the world, as is having the answer to every “What the hell is that song, again?” question).

I realized, though, that all my apps were either Sudoku or completely utilitarian, and that I hadn’t even searched through the fashion/style genre. And so, I give you six style-related iPhone applications I tried out, which ranged from the stupid to the seriously useful, so you don’t have to:

APP: iStylist Makeover

COST: $.99

THE GIST: You either take a photo of yourself or use one already on your iPhone, crop your head into a neck-and-body silhouette, and then plop various celebrity hairstyles, hats, glasses and blush colors onto yourself to see how you’d look as Bai Ling or a mourner at the Michael Jackson funeral.

WHAT COULD USE A 2.0: Oh god, this is really terrible. They don’t even make sure the hairstyles they supply fit the weird face shape you have to try to cram yourself into; a bunch of them are clearly from photos in which the celebrity was turned slightly to the side. It appears you can download even more hairstyles in upgrade packs, but good god, I’m already pretty done with this.

ACTUALLY USEFUL?: No, maybe if you’re at a bar

OVERALL: Why is the worst one the only one that’s not free?

Apps that were actually useful, after the jump…

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Halloween roundup 2: UNNECESSARILY SEXY

Now there’s a lot of costumes for women out there, as I’m sure you’re aware, that take just anything in the world, add “sexy” to the beginning of that anything, cut out most of the parts that aren’t preventing you from getting arrested for public indecency, and voila! Halloween costume!

Obviously the sexy maid, sexy nurse, sexy kitty-cat, sexy pirate etc. have a cultural heft that’s pretty well dug in, as they recur, boringly, year after year.

But the funniest costumes are the ones that try to be sexy against all odds and common sense; my Halloween party last year was themed Sexy Unsexy Things, and there was a Sexy Karl Marx, Sexy J. Edgar Hoover, Sexy Lyndon Johnson (or El BJ, Masturbator of the Senate), Sexy Abe Lincoln… but here’s a selection of what appear to be serious Sexy Costumes actually for sale ripped off somewhat odd source material:

Sexy Harry Potter

BECAUSE: You know, I initially was just calling this Sexy Gryffindor, but the round glasses kind of weird me out. Weeeeeeeeird!

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Wacky Wednesday

Courtesy of the New York Times

PW Style Blog hearts Glamour magazine.  They’ve always got great links to beauty tips, nail polish giveaways, and information on how to design your own Chanel bag. However, we’re not so sure how we feel about how Glamour feels about it’s readers. Apparently Glamour readers are supposed to be cheerful and bright – like cupcakes?

Marie Claire, which we suppose is Glamour’s direct competitor doesn’t just discuss cupcakes. They explain party myths and how common misconceptions might get you in trouble. Read up before you drink up.

Fashion week in NYC means random events throughout the city as usual with a fashionista twist.  Check out this list — the Olsen twins are working as DJ’s?

Philly.com features Fall Trends and women in Philadelphia workin’ Market Street like it’s a runway.  Philly.com also pointed the way to this inspiring article from Elle magazine. A homeless girl still found a way to blog and keep herself relevant, as well as catch the eye of an editor at the fashion bible. The story is better in the words of the one that lived it. Luckily, you can read the writings of this young woman who has already overcome so much. She’s currently being featured as a blogger on Elle’s website.

All Threadless tees $9 today

In honor of the wacky date today (which seems boring because it’s happened for the past eight years and will happen again for the next three, but won’t happen again after that in your lifetime), Threadless is offering every single one of their T-shirts for $9, which is, on average, about half off. And it’s not just the ones that they want to get rid of. It’s all of them.

Let’s start it off with a local, Emily Glaubinger, who did the pink and yellow shirt from last year’s April Fool’s Fun Ride. I guess it’s just not happening this year, but checking out her blog, she apparently had the commission to do the shirt for what would have been the Maypril Fools Ride, and seeing the shirt design just makes me sadder that the stupid economy foiled it. Here they are:

Ah, well. But anyway, Glaubinger is doing well enough for herself, with one of those select T-shirts on Threadless and all:

Aw, thanks! And it would be $25 normally, but it is $9 today. More shirts we like after the jump…

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Halloween roundup 1: NERD REFERENCE COSTUMES

Photo and pumpkin by the lovely Alli Katz

When I was but a wee Emily G, I’d throw on whatever leopard suit or fairy dress my poor thankless mother had sewed for me to wear, impatient to get down to the business end of Halloween: ungodly amounts of candy. I mean, I could be a Ninja Turtle anytime, I only was given nigh-unlimited free chocolate for doing so one day a year.

But now that I’m an adult and a wading pool of bite-sized Milky Ways is just a walk to K-Mart away, I just want to dress up. As an adult, I spend inordinate amounts of time coming up with costume ideas, starting about a month ago, but the obsession really begins today, the day after Labor Day.

I am not talking about sexy witch or sexy kitty-cat or Michael Jackson costumes, the latter about to surpass the Heath Ledger Joker as the most overdone costume in America and the formers being eternally boring, and I’m not talking about something that comes in a plastic bag from one of those Brigadoon-ass mall Halloween stores. I love to come up with things that nobody else is gonna  be wearing, but can be done without spending a ton of cash or energy.

So seeing as how it’s no longer appropriate to wear white and I wore a jacket out of the house today, I’d like to kick off the season with the category of The Nerd Reference Costume.

Dressing as something that’s really geeky is made simultaneously easier and more difficult by the presence of conventions and cosplay and the like; it means that while you may be able to find perfect replicas of Leeloo’s orange Gaultier suspenders from the Fifth Element for sale like fifteen years after the movie came out, they’re also priced for people who will be wearing them to the next 20 conventions they go to, rather than just the once. But here’s a few ideas that don’t require too much more than some thrift-store digging and maybe a trip to the Rite-Aid:

COSTUME: Herbert West

FROM: Re-Animator

GENDER: Male

PERFECT FOR: Guys who are or know someone in med school or are in science from whom they can get an old lab coat

BECAUSE: Re-Animator is a 1985 horror movie that probably did more damage to my psyche than 18 years of Catholicism; let’s just say that the phrase “getting head” will never be quite the same after this movie. Herbert West is a mad med student who discovers the secret of reanimating dead tissue (by injecting it with what appears to be glow-stick fluid). This one may be on the obscure side, but if you are lucky enough to run into someone of your sexual preference who recognizes you as Herbert West, you are officially on the fast track to getting laid.

PROPS: Green glowstick mocked up as huge syringe, big ’80s glasses, white lab coat, white dress shirt, black slacks, plain black tie, fake blood with which to spatter self

DIFFICULTY: 3/10

COSTUME: Colonial soldier

FROM: Battlestar Galactica

GENDER: Either

PERFECT FOR: People who have nice muscles

BECAUSE: The casual outfit for soldiers is both easy to throw together from stuff you already have and very distinctive. Plus, if you’re a lady who vaguely resembles Starbuck, you can keep a cigar clamped in your teeth all night, drink your whiskey straight out of the bottle and look like the biggest badass in the room.

PROPS: Gray high-necked tank top, black racer-back tank top worn backwards, dark-ish cargo-ish pants, hexagonal painted-silver cardboard dog tag, combat boots

DIFFICULTY: 1/10

COSTUME: Pris

FROM: Blade Runner

GENDER: Female

PERFECT FOR: Women who went through a goth phase in high school or know someone about their size who did

BECAUSE: Most of the identifiable cues are in the hair and facepaint, thus leaving you to string together the clothes with whatever ratty black stuff is left over from 8th grade. It will also help if you’re very tall, bendy and able to do cartwheels.

PROPS: White and black facepaint, black studded collar, black tube top, sheer black long-sleeved shirt, black shorts, those tights with the weird built-in garters they sometimes sell at K-Mart (ripped up), big black boots, tall black leg warmers, either a poofy Bowie wig or an entire can of hairspray

DIFFICULTY: 5/10 (for the makeup/hair/cartwheels)