Mercy Mercer by Derek Henderson

Michael Lett has just published Mercy Mercer, the second monograph from Derek Henderson following the critically acclaimed The Terrible Boredom of Paradise in 2005.

Mercy Mercer’s 128 colour photographs of the Waikato river, its neighbours, travelers – typically ‘New Zealand’ in flavour – are punctuated by unexpected moments that tell unofficial stories of New Zealand; tales of colonial invasion, poverty, immigration, boredom, and the ecological degradation of the landscape at the hands of commerce. Derek Henderson is one of New Zealand’s most renowned photographers. His photographs have been published in publications such as Wallpaper, Vogue, Russh, ID, Arena Homme Plus, The Independent and The Observer.  Mercy Mercer is a cloth-bound, hardcover book featuring over 100 colour photographs and a foreword by Jan Bryant, Head of Research at AUT School of Art and Design. Michael Lett will release a special edition of 100 books housed in a clam-shell box accompanied by a limited edition c-type photograph.”  

If you want to get a personally signed copy, Derek is doing a book signing at Parsons Bookshop, 26 Wellesley Street East. Friday 12 March from 5.30-7.00pm

And we are very excited that Derek is shooting a fashion editorial for the next issue of PILOT… can’t wait…..

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Stolen Girlfriend’s Club Sale

Stolen Girlfriend’s Club sale yo…

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Currently Reading / You Are Not a Gadget

Jaron Lanier’s You Are Not a Gadget has a very intriguing introduction. 

“It’s early in the twenty-first century, and that means that these words will mostly be read by nonpersons-automatons or numb mobs composed of people who are no longer acting as individuals. The words will be minced into atomised search-engine keywords within industrial cloud computing facilities located in remote, often secret locations around the world. The vast fanning out of the fates of these words will take place almost entirely in the lifeless world of pure information. Real human eyes will read these words in only a tiny minority of cases.”

Larner’s book is a powerful critique of web 2.0 culture and the dehumanising aspect of the wisdom of the crowd mentality. I don’t entirely agree with all of his conclusions, but this is essential reading. Especially for techno-optimists in need of a strong counter point / reality check…


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Is This The World’s Gaudiest Apartment?

Gawker reports that extreme-right-wing-nut-job-shock-jock Rush Limbaugh is selling his New York apartment. They have all the photos. Dear God. Have you ever seen anything more heinous? Well, I mean the study is kinda cool, sure. No? Probably not. That bedroom though? Wow. Speechless. Yours for a cool $13.95 million…

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David Bowie Vs Alexander McQueen

Dazed Digital have just posted a fantastic feature that covers all the collaborations between Lee McQueen and Dazed & Confused. The highlight has to be a conversation between David Bowie and McQueen from 1996.  It’s a very frank and very revealing interview from two very legendary Brits. You know it’s going to be fascinating to read when it begins with:

David Bowie: Are you gay and do you take drugs? (laughter)
Alexander McQueen: Yes, to both of them. (more laughter) 

Alexander McQueen: ”You can do naughty things in a mask without getting caught – you feel like a right little devil”. Keep reading.

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Undies Monday is Today at Mag Nation

Don’t forget folks that TODAY is Undies Monday at all Mag Nation stores. That means if you walk into any store in just your undies / bra they will give you a FREE magazine to the value of $50. That is a brilliant deal and the weather in Auckland is sunny and warm, so if it is good enough for Naomi Campbell on the cover of the new Love, then why not right? I just gave Ravi at Mag Nation a quick call to see how many takers they’d had, and he told me that so far they have had a few in both Sydney and Melbourne, one at Queen Street, but none in Ponsonby. None! Come on peeps, get in there… let us know what you get…

UPDATE: Mag Nation’s Twitter now says NZ is leading the Aussies… must be the nice weather in Auckland today…

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Amazing / Heartbreaking photos from Chile

At 3:34 am local time, today, February 27th, a devastating magnitude 8.8 earthquake struck Chile, one of the strongest earthquakes ever recorded. According to Chile’s interior minister, at least 214 people are now known to have been killed. The Tsunami warnings from around the world are just starting to be pulled back now. Twitter the best way to stay updated with fast-breaking accurate information…  

Amazing / Heartbreaking photos from Chile on Boston’s Big Picture.

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JERKIN / SKINNY JEANZ / HEDI SLIMANE

 INTRODUCING JERKIN / THE SKINNY JEANZ MOVEMENT ON HEDISLIMANE.COM

“I just finished a report on this emerging movement I ended up being connected to called Jerking. It was born in Long Beach, Los Angeles, in late 2008 among black teenagers in high school. They call it the Skinny Jeans Movement and have songs like “I ROCK SKINNY.” They developed this creative community through social sites and found their style on the Net. The skinny look came first among them, then the music, inventing a broken-beat dance. As always, the music majors just spotted them and signed them one after the other. It is a really refreshing and joyful rap collateral movement. The project I did on jerking, jerk crews, and musicians will be online in a few days I guess, and Vogue Hommes Japan will publish some of it this month, as an introduction I guess. This movement is only starting, really, and it might spread over the global high school, with an avatar of my style in the broadband.”  Hedi Slimane for Style.com

Hedi just did his first interview in three years. It makes for, by turns, inspiring and scary reading. Essential nonetheless. Isaac has all the details

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Undies Monday @ Mag Nation

Our favourite magazine shop is Mag Nation. They are very, very serious about magazines but they’re not afraid to have some fun. Hence, their new promotion:

Undies Monday’.  Here is how it works:

Walk into any Mag Nation store on a Monday in just your underwear and they will give you for FREE any magazine, book or stationery item of your choice up to the value of $50.

That’s right. $50 worth of product FOR FREE if you walk into a Mag Nation store in your undies. Brilliant.

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Dali / Femme à la tête rose

Design: Salvador Dalí  / Year: 1935-1937  /   Available: matisse.co.nz

During the ‘thirties in Paris, Salvador Dalí surrounded himself with a circle of friends involved in the application of art to varied disciplines, above and beyond the study of pure pictorial art. Jean-Michel Frank, a furniture maker and decorator of prestige in the Paris of those years, was on very good terms with Dalí and together they worked on several ideas. In the 1990s a group of experts, led by oscar tusquets, set themselves the task of turning the furniture Dalí had drawn for Jean-Michel Frank into reality. Amongst these items were the Leda chair and low table, taken from the painting Femme à la tête rose (1935). The prototypes were made by the sculptor Joaquim Camps and Bd Barcelona design organised the production. The Leda Chair is available now from matisse.co.nz

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Flight Dress

Charmaine Reveley ‘Flight Dress’ in 100% silk

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If You Have to Cry Go Outside

Best thing about The City? Kelly Cutrone, the evil lesbian fashion PR power bitch at the head of People’s Revolution. Kelly can take down a wannabe with one sentence like no-one else we’ve seen… plus she has a new book out, currently rocketing up the NYC book lists…

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Last chance to get PILOT issue #3

Hello friends,

A gentle reminder that if you haven’t already picked up a copy of PILOT issue #3, they will only be in stores for another week or so… so grab one now if you want one. Once they are gone, they are gone… we are already close to sold out of back issues for PILOT #1 and #2…

Borders, Mag Nation and Whitcoulls still have issue #3 in store now…

In the meantime we are working hard on issue #4… out end of April

Subscribe to PILOT here

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fuckyeahgoths

98% of things referred to as goth are dreadful. This tumblr is for the 2% of brilliant / fuckyeahgoths

The original Goths were an Eastern Germanic tribe who played an important role in the fall of the western Roman Empire. In some circles, the name “goth” later became pejorative: synonymous with “barbarian” and the uncultured due to the then-contemporary view of the fall of Rome and depictions of the pagan Gothic tribes during and after the process of Christianization of Europe. During the Renaissance period in Europe, medieval architecture was retroactively labeled gothic architecture, and was considered unfashionable in contrast to the then-modern lines of classical architecture. In the United Kingdom, by the late 1700s, however, nostalgia for the medieval period led people to become fascinated with medieval gothic ruins. This fascination was often combined with an interest in medieval romances, Roman Catholic religion and the supernatural. The gothic novel of the late eighteenth century, a genre founded by Horace Walpole with the 1764 publication of The Castle of Otranto, was accountable for the more modern connotations of the term gothic. He originally claimed that the book was a real medieval romance he had discovered and republished. Thus was born the gothic novel’s association with fake documentation to increase its effect. Henceforth, the term was associated with a mood of horror, morbidity, darkness and the supernatural as well as camp and self-parody. The gothic novel established much of the iconography of later horror literature and cinema, such as graveyards, ruined castles or churches, ghosts, vampires, nightmares, cursed families, being buried alive and melodramatic plots. An additional notable element was the brooding figure of the gothic villain, which developed into the Byronic hero. The most famous gothic villain is the vampire, a folklore legend of Eastern Europe and the Balkans, best known from Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula and the horror movies it influenced. Certain elements in the dark, atmospheric music and dress of the post punk scene were clearly gothic in this sense. The use of gothic as an adjective in describing this music and its followers led to the term goth. Wikipedia

98% of things referred to as goth are dreadful. This tumblr is for the 2% of brilliant / fuckyeahgoths

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Follow PILOT on Twitter

Follow PILOT on Twitter


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MasterChef New Zealand

At PILOT, we like our food. Food is one of life’s purest pleasures. We enjoy eating out, eating at home, we love to cook and we have a weakness for Food TV, especially Reality TV involving Chefs. Anything with Gordon Ramsey, Marco Pierre White or Heston Blumenthal is a must record on the MySky machine (if you don’t have MySky, you need it, trust us). We love a bit of Iron Chef, Nigella is always so soothing and last year’s MasterChef Australia
was a revelation. It was a massive ratings hit in Australia (and NZ) and so now we have a local version, Masterchef New Zealand. It follows the same basic format as the Australian series, except the NZ version is done on a much smaller budget. Our pick for the eventual winner is Rob Trathen. That’s him in the photo above. We know Rob. He’s an Auckland photographer and we’ve worked with him, some years in the past, yes, but it’s great to know one of the contestants, especially as Rob has already emerged as one of around 4 serious contenders out of 12. So from PILOT, good luck to you Rob, we’ll be watching, and don’t take any stick from Simon Gault…

Check out Rob’s blog

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Lady Gaga / Brit Awards 2010

At this year’s Brit Awards, held today in London, Lady Gaga received 3 awards for her debut album The Fame, winning Best International Female, best breakthrough act and best album for The Fame. Gaga dedicated a force-of-nature performance of ‘Telephone’ to fashion designer Alexander McQueen and also performed ‘Dance in the Dark’. Watch the performance below and spot the McQueen references…

Lady Gaga performs Telephone/Dance in the Dark live at the Brit Awards

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2010 Winter Olympic Games

The 2010 Winter Olympic Games are underway in Vancouver, Canada. Above is the official poster set. Go here to see every official poster from the winter Olympic games from 1924 to 2010.

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BMW Oracle 2 / Alinghi nil (haha)

Most people lost interest in the America’s Cup after a series of dick moves by dickhead Swiss billionaire Ernesto Bertarelli who attempted to rewrite the rules and spirit of the Cup’s history in a blatant attempt to stop anyone winning it back, ever. Louis Vuitton, long time sponsors of the Cup, pulled their sponsorship in protest. Ever since, Alinghi and BMW Oracle have been involved in a long and drawn out court battle, the details of which, are frankly, of no interest to us. Unfortunately the America’s Cup is now largely fought by lawyers as opposed to sailors. All anyone needs to know is Larry Ellison’s BMW Oracle are the good guys, Alinghi are the villains. This morning, we woke up early and flicked through the Sky channels only to discover that race 1 in the best of 3 series for the Cup, between Alinghi and BMW Oracle was in fact underway. The speed that these incredible boats can generate is amazing. Even better, BMW Oracle’s monstrous Trimaran trounced Alinghi to win by 15 minutes. Ha! Take that Bertarelli. Race 2 in the best of 3 series is on Sunday. Come on!

UPDATED

BMW Oracle won race 2 today, and therefore the America’s Cup. Fantastic Result. Congratulations to Larry, Russell and BMW, and commiserations suck it Alinghi!

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Diamond Dogs

Last night Kate Sylvester Teed Street hosted a preview evening of Kate’s new Autumn Winter collection Diamond Dogs. Described as a ‘transgressive play on menswear and womenswear, sexy and sophisticated dress-ups’, Kate Sylvester’s new collection is reflective of her conceptual and immaculately tailored collections.  Comprised of a relatively muted colour palette involving sherbet hues, smoky charcoals and recurring blacks, there is a definite nod to smart suiting. Sophisticated suiting is back and better than ever, becoming a customary component in both national and international collections and defining the direction of modern fashion. Sylvester’s take on the subject forms the foundation for another successful season. Soft ruffles and sheer lace lingerie added a hint of flirtation, and an iridescent effect was achieved through the layering of multiple gold and silver chain necklaces. The inspiration for Diamond Dogs is derived from notorious Auckland socialite (circa 1980’s) Judith ‘Black Lips’ Baragwanath. The artfully assembled collection aims to portray the dichotomous lifestyle she led, with an amalgamation of glamour and punk. 

Diamond Dogs collection in store now at Kate Sylvester

Text by Amy Bailey

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