Just the Right Rock Band Accessory

Awesome jewelry made from recycled vinyl records! My favorite are the necklace and earrings.

So cute!

(Found over at MissMalaprop.com.)

Donkey Kong Runway Show

Jennine has it spot on. :)

Space Invader Sock Pattern

These are AWESOME. If only I knew how to knit anything other than scarves! :(

Mario Brothers Crafts

I love Etsy, the DIY craft shop where creators sell their own stuff. It's really neat. Although you know what I wish they had? A little flash badge or something that could let a seller display goods on her own site - "here are the latest items I'm selling!" That sort of thing.

ANYway, this post isn't about that, it's about the enduring popularity of Mario! If you just do a simple search on the site for Mario you get some awesome items...

Some of my favorites:

She calls herself the Pink Samurai, and this crossstitch is a masterwork. It includes references to Space Invaders and Tetris as well as to Super Mario Brothers - pretty cool! 8-bit art is such perfectly natural fit for crossstitching. When I have a little more free time I've got some ideas I want to try too...

Look how adorable the star power necklace is! It's the perfect size, too, not too small so you can't tell what it is, not too big to be out of proportion. With the matching coin earrings it'll be extra cute. <3 this one!

I'm always so impressed by people who make things out of love. I've had ideas of crafts for a long time, but although I really enjoy knitting and painting and so on, I find I'm actually not that good at it, and inspiration strikes me more rarely. Still, stuff like this makes me want to try my hand at it again.

The Game of Flickr

Oh my god, Jason just posted this and I was fully enthralled for twenty minutes: the Flickr wardrobe_remix group. It's exactly what I was looking for - Fruits for the rest of us. Real people in real clothes. I've always loved street shots , because there's something so incredibly off-putting about the artificiality of high fashion photography - sometimes it can be effective and beautiful, but it almost never translates to an aspiration for me, because the models are far too distant, too plastic, too unreal. But this, this makes me not only say, "I want that!" but also say, "I can do that better!"

...which leads me to my gaming instinct, to my competitive side. Now I am actually mentally putting together outfits in my head that will "win". It's not like the group is a competition; there is no ranking, no voting. But the thing is, I will know when I've won, and that's the important thing.

The Best Holiday Gifts!

...are right here: http://www.wearoftherodent.com/.

Ms Pac-Man Ring

This is rad.

(Thanks, Derek!)

Lumines Sneakers

Mizuguchi shows off special limited-edition (as in, "unique") Lumines sneakers made just for him. Awesome.

For the video, check Jason's blog.

Project Tonight

Yes, I'm a fan.

I must admit I got into reluctantly, because I don't really care for those other reality show contests, like American Idol or Making the Band or America's Next Top Model. I don't mean to be a snob about it - I think they can be amusing. It's just that the formula is so obvious after a couple of episodes that it fails to hold my interest over an entire season.

But Bravo's Project Runway is different. It's different because the contestants have to actually produce something real, something that works; a tactile piece that gives three dimensional shape to all their high-falutin theory talk. And that's exciting.

Last season, I have to admit I was rooting for everyone's favorite nerd-turned-fashionista, Diana Eng. She combined a vigorous intellect with dreamy intellectualism and a dash of whimsey. The pieces she made for the show I thought were less successful than the ones she's produced in school, or on her own (check out her portfolio to see some cool wearable concept art). I love her mathematical knits for example! And I love the idea of uniting math and art, two strangers who ought to be lovers. But she got kicked off the show, and then I was rooting for Daniel Vosovic. First of all, how dreamy is he? Long and lanky and soft-spoken, with great hair - total dreamboat. And his taste is exquisite - always refined, always sophisticated, maybe a little too much so at times. Sometimes you want a young person like that to do a few shots and jump up on the table and dance to Foreigner. Daniel's clothes would never do that. But boy could that kid sew. His stuff was technically some of the most accomplished on the show - sleek and (except for the one infamous weird-boob collection) well-fitted, tidy seams, straight hems, flawless use of bias cut.

It's inspiring to watch the beauty that arising out of all the chaos of the studio. The contestants sketch, bitch, think, work like mad, and the final dress is so - it seems so effortless, so serene, mute to the anxiety and stress that produced it. Project Runway demonstrates that fashion, for all its useless luxury, is serious business, and people sweat and cry over it, and that work deserves to be celebrated.

Tonight I'm making champagne cocktails with friends to celebrate the return of Project Runway. I can do without goosestepping Heidi Klum, but Tim has endeared himself more and more to me. Long live the serious frivolity of fashion and those who worship it!

Spontaneous Fashion

Saturday evening I went to a local fashion show that was put on by four Berkeley stores, combining vintage and new clothes, including my favorite, remix/recycled clothes - the art of taking old clothes and hacking them to make something modern and cute and different. A really bland GAP sweater in mint green got the next cut out and then a cute soft fuzzy white collar was knitted and affixed, for example. I wish I'd taken photos but alas, I forgot my camera.

But something occurred to me as we were sitting there watching the show - most fashion shows are so orchestrated, so designed. Hair and make-up are in place, the clothes have been picked, the models all walk a certain way. Well, not in this fashion show so much - the models, many of whom were amateurs, had a lot of fun on the catwalk, improvising moves and smiling and interacting with the audience. I thought it was charming, but I wanted it to go even further...what if you could have a spontaneous fashion show? What would that look like? Like a mix of Project Runway and So You Think You Can Dance, maybe.

Project Runway is sort of the Iron Chef of apparel design: the contestants get a theme, or some kind of limitation, and they have a short time to produce an outfit. I'd make it a little looser - it would be more about styling, not designing. So you'd have a big rack of items to choose from, and your job would be to dress the model in, say, two minutes, give her a "motivation" or a story to act out, and send her out on the catwalk.

Better yet, pick out things for yourself and walk down the catwalk! If you are really crafty, you would whip up on-the-spot alterations to items. Spontaneous fashion! Could be fun.

Sweet Technology

Sometimes I start feeling disaffected with modern life and yearn to retreat to a simpler place. But then I'd be missing out on clarifying chocolate, chocolate that promises to "reduce irritation and redness."

Technology will save us, if not form ourselves, then at least from acne.

Costume GET!

Submitted for the approval of the midnight society, Wataru Maruyama's blog Costume GET!, which is focused entirely on costume design in videogames.

I'm not pointing you specifically at one post or another, but as a general comment, I love the fact that the internet supports this level of specialization. I can tell you that I'm passing this one around to some of my other game designer friends here at work. Hooray for the future!

Pretty for your PSP

A stylish gamergirl forwarded this link to me...colorful leather PSP cases, for a very reasonable price! All the colors are tasty, and I am fond of the orange.

Thanks, Amber!

Forza Force

Forza is a new racing game that is blowing people away with its realistic physics and amazing blah blah blah. I don't care about that. What's awesome is the level of customization possible (if you're an incredibly dedicated customizer). Check it out.

Katamari Hats

Curtesy of Robin, always on the forefront of gamer fashion: a custom-made Katamari hat.

I gotta get on that Pac-man scarf idea Bowler had a while back when we were talking about how singularly well-adapted knitting is to 8-bit or 16-bit art.

NES Controller Necklace

For the gamer girl in your life. Nothing says Happy Valentines Day better than something from a company called White Trash Charms.

Gear for the GamerGirl Valentine's Day is fast approaching (hint: it's february 14th, clueless one) and a geek girl's fancy turns to shiny pretty things... not diamonds, silly; DS! If you've got a special gamer girl in your life, or maybe if you're trying to woo one, we've got the sleek and the sexy, the silly and the sublime, to tickle her heart.

Some of these can be acquired through Amazon - if you choose to get them that way, we get a few cents! Happy shopping. MORE...

The Right Trousers?

Portable goodies website pocketnow.com has a review of "Hidden Cargo Pants" by a company called SCOTTeVEST.

The concept is simple enough. Geeks like to carry a lot of electronic gizmos around, and often need the extra carrying capacity afforded by cargo pants. However, cargo pants are almost always considered casual attire, which makes it difficult for a geek to be both dapper and properly equipped. SCOTTeVEST has designed cargo pants that appear to be regular khakis, but thanks to the 19th century miracle technology known as "Magnetism," secretly hide away significant storage space. They also are "Personal Area Network Ready." This means that there are holes in the pockets that you can run wires through. That's not a bug, it's a feature.

At about $100 bucks a pop, these cargoes are a bit on the expensive side, but, hey they're also coated with space-age Teflon, which means that they may well be the only pair of pants you'll ever need.

Or something.

Video Chic

"It was a dream of extreme romanticism," said Miuccia Prada about her fall collection. "The idea of eighteenth-century painting, with video games. A romanticism between past and future." As part of her research, Prada reportedly observed players in arcades.

One wonders which she saw. While the romanticism is fairly evident in the soft silhouettes and the flourishes blooming in trim and accessories - although there does seem to be some debate in the press over whether this is nineteenth or eighteenth century - I fail to see the influence of video games aside from the use of "techno fabrics" (whatever that means), some vague prints that look like they might be badly blurred screenshots, and cute little robots showing up in decals and as plastic toggles on belts.

Although the collection is as technically proficient as all her work is, it is disappointingly evident that Prada hasn't understood the fundamental premise of video games. Video game aesthetic isn't just about tacking on some shorthand evocative visual details. I actually do agree with Prada that there is an element of extreme romanticism in video games currently - they are naive, idealistic, ever-optimistic; but, as Ernest Adams opined in his talk at the Game Developer's Conference [free registration required], the mode of discourse is much much more primitive than nineteenth-century Byronic elegance. Or even eighteenth century pre-Revolution nostalgia.

For a more sincere take on video games, look to Alexander McQueen, London bad boy and former street rat, someone who has experimented with video and film. His Ready to Wear collection for last fall exquisitely embodies the mythic, pre-modern extravagance of video game aesthetics. This collection might well have been titled Final Fantasy. The clear, overpoweringly visual construction of the clothing precisely reflects the current obsession with crisper, realer-than-real graphics in games, while the idiomatic stylistic vocabulary fuses the cinematic futurism onto proto-literary heroic archetypes.

The work as a whole is boldly theatrical, but in a much more simplistic - almost atavistic - way than, say, the work of John Galliano, who tends more towards coy playfulness. Galliano's women are role-players, teasers and strippers and cabaret dancers; but McQueen's women are heroines and goddesses - remote, powerful, and outrageous. They could crush Prada's refined ladies with a single kick of a delicate high-heeled boot.

The form, the movement, the energy of the collection is breathtaking. As in modern video games, there is nothing subtle about either the conception or the visualization of the themes. Every stroke is bold and unhesitant, every line is confidently executed. If video games are about power fantasies - which, with a few unusual exceptions, they still are - then this collection embodies the superhero quest: iconic avatars against the world.

Fainaru! Fantashii! Raunch!

I can't remember exactly where I heard it the first time, but Monday, March 22nd, The Playstation Store at the Metreon in San Francisco was going to have a party to celebrate the release of Final Fantasy XI (the MMO one) for Playstation 2 from 8 PM until 2 AM the next day, with the PS2 Harddrive with FFXI preloaded going on sale at precisely 12:01 AM. And there was going to be a costume contest. Thus it was that I went straight from work to spend approximately forever sitting on trains to get to the Metreon, camera in hand, to see (and record) what there was to see.

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Videogame Fashion?

You probably already knew that you could buy your own Tecmo Extreme Beach Volleyball bikini. We saw them for sale at the Tokyo Game Show, and they were less than impressive - they seemed designed for display, rather than for actual wear. Still, it's interesting to me when videogames spawn fashion, even in this manifestly obvious and commercial way.

(FYI - The one pictured to the left is my favorite. I'm a size small. Just in case you were looking to buy something.)

I've been thinking a lot about what it means to talk about "videogame fashion". Is it fashion inspired by videogames? Is it a trasparent copy, like the Tecmo bikinis, which are merely replicas of code? Or is there something deeper about the aesthetics of videogames which could perhaps be translated into the wearble?

And if the latter, then what is "videogame aesthetics"? Isn't it more than thematic deisgns? I tend to think of pixels, and modular pieces, like parts of a program.

All theoretical musings aside, we did see some fly Space Invaders gear on display at the Tokyo Game Show! My heart is filled with lust for those pastel Space Invader bags - they remind me of the Murakami LV bags. But about a jillion times cooler.

Gamers and Goths

As many of you already know, White Wolf is suing Sony over its new Underworld movie for copyright infringement, claiming that Underworld's characters, theme and setting are based on White Wolf’s Vampire: The Masquerade® and Werewolf: The Apocalypse™ roleplaying game series. While the lawsuit itself is rather ridiculous, it did make me think about the intersection of goth culture and gaming.

During the Austin Game Conference last week, I went with some friends to the Elysium Nightclub to see the Crüxshadows perform. I had never been to a goth concert before but I had nothing better to do and was desperate for entertainment. Surprisingly, I rather enjoyed it and will mostly likely be attending their next show in SF. Upon entering the club, I was immediately impressed by the amount of games they had. In addition to the pool tables you would expect in most bars, there were two pinball tables (with the suitably gothy themes of Dracula and the Adams Family) and a whole section devoted to classic arcade games (which were not noticeably gothy at all unless you consider Joust somewhat intimidating). Who knew gaming was so prevalent in the goth scene?

After a little digging around, I was able to find official Sims skins for the Crüxshadows' lead singer and a full featured Underworld Half-life Mod. Anyone else know of other examples of goth gaming?

gaming tee-shirts

i was checking out the store* section, here on GGA and I had a thought. how realistic might it be to have tee-shirts made up with the new (very cool) mascot on it? might that involve licensing and all that jazz? Hmm that would be a damned cute tee though, wouldn't it? check out playstation's tees

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Pretty In Pink

I don’t know why, but this winter, I am positively addicted to the color pink.

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Accessorize your GBA

Tokyo is the land of accessories. You can download a zillion pop songs for your mobile phone, add charms to the handle of your purse or book bag, and, of course, beautify your personal portable console. MORE...