Barbi Does Miami

mostly from my oxymoronic years between Miami and Milford

Category Archives: to be a fashion designer


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Barbi Feels Miami’s Dark Side…

me

Could it be that the much talked and anticipated (by some) Rapture is just one interpretation of a long predicted energy shift in our universe that brings chaos to our sense of safety?

Certainly the people that were sucked from their cars to the heavens, in Joplin last week, must have wondered if this was the end of the world.

It was the end of their world.

My ten-year-old twin’s sense of safety was rocked ten days ago when, for career week, a neurosurgeon was brought in by their Elementary school to give a presentation. I guess the school was glad to get a surgeon (an honorable career) after a series of career presentations by corporations like Burger King who use these weeks as an opportunity for marketing and recruiting.

I had done my own presentation, on how to be a fashion designer, earlier in the week. The one I did at Lynn University last March. Only for the Elementary students I spend hours removing all traces of sex from my PowerPoint. Kate Moss’ breasts and Marky’s pecks were replaced with more demure image like Claudia Schiffer in a cozy CK cardigan.

(I wasn’t going to give that righteous principal a reason to call me into her office…)

The neurosurgeon with (what should have been) a red flag name and title – Dr. Wolf from the Miami Knife Center – was less enlightened to the minds of fifth graders when he put together his PowerPoint.

He surprised them all, teachers and children.

Just imagine: One hundred and thirty ten-year-old boys and girls filing into the auditorium, laughing and joking, happy to be let out of their classroom, sitting together, seeking out friends, and then the theatre goes dark and Dr. Wolf starts his show.

The room goes quiet with the first image. It is a pencil stuck deep into an eye. The next image is a bloody brain spilling from a split skull – motor cycle accident, Dr. Wolf explains. It goes on. Dozens more gory bloody images follow, from gunshots to a toothbrush in an eye socket. (How did that get there Mom?)

Kids feel faint. Kids feel nauseous. Kids leave the auditorium escorted by adults to get air and water. To throw up in trash cans. Some kids cry. Most of them just hide their faces in their friend’s shoulders or behind their hands, make jokes and try to make each other laugh.

One of my daughters sat by herself, without friends to distract her.

When she got into my car, at the end of the day, she burst into tears. That night she would not brush her teeth (did she imagine her unruly toothbrush ending up  inside her skull?). She had bad dreams, threw up in the morning and for the next few day she would not eat, nauseous from the images that still played around her mind.

I had spend ten years carefully protecting her from this kind of stuff and within ten minutes Dr. Wolf had undone all that parenting.

You may think I exaggerate. Some parents certainly did not seem as bothered as I was. But many were equally upset and angry and complained.

A few days later one teacher apologized to her class and said:

“Raise your hands if you have been mentally scarred.”

The point that was neglected, I think, is that schools have to feel safe for kids. They need stability, nurturing even predictability to do well, and Dr. Wolf’s graphic X-rated ambush took with it some of their innocence and trust.

I told the other parents I would write a letter to Dr. Wolf explaining, politely, that his show was not age appropriate for fifth graders. That he should keep it for his med students who had made a career choice.

But.

When I read the tag line on his website about the Gamma Knife which he’d developed…

” The Gamma knife is more accurate, efficient and faster and works on more than just brain tumors”

I thought maybe not….

*

A few days later, as the emotions Dr. Wolf had stirred up subsided, I found myself downtown Miami. I had lunch with a friend at Little Lotus, shopped for fabric and jewelry supplies and was waiting to cross the street.

Spacing out.

Like one does.

When waiting for the pedestrian light to change.

Not feeling safe nor unsafe.

Just waiting.

Next I felt a searing pain go through my nose.

A bold skull hit me.

Hard and fast.

I saw stars.

I stumbled.

Shit! What the fuck? I thought, and, don’t pass out…

I looked at him. A short man, unshaven, homeless? He’d run into me, carrying a metal cane, a weapon?  and kept running as I stood – reeling.

Was I being mugged?

My bag was still on my shoulder.

My nose hurt. Was it bleeding? I felt the left inside nostril closing up.

Ice. I needed Ice.

I got it at a coffeeshop.

I drove home, ice pack pressed to my face, eyesight swimming.

I went to bed.

Rattled.

*

Two days later, the swelling had disappeared, I was at my desk, working.

Sirens, so common in Miami, stopped abruptly.

Right here it seemed.

I went onto my terrace and saw several police cars and an ambulance entering our gate.

Later that day I found out that a friend and neighbor had died suddenly, in his apartment, leaving behind his lovely young wife and six-year-old son. Iona used to baby-sit for them. His wife is my friend. I have not heard from her and can only imagine what she’s going through. I think of every moment we spent together, like the dinners, time by the pool and at their house in the Keys.

Isn’t that what we do when friends pass? We think of them, bring them closer than ever before so we can let them go…?

*

Yesterday.

I was working at my desk.

And there were sirens. Hundreds of them it seemed. Their noise came towards me as it does, but then they did not fade.

They seemed to stop.

Right here.

Again.

I looked from the window and saw fire engines and ambulances enter.

Oh fuck!

A helicopter appeared from nowhere and hovered overhead.

I went outside.

It was right over me. A news helicopter.

As I went back inside the girls came running down from their room.

“Mom, mom, there is a house on fire, right here in Aqua, we can see the smoke..”

We ran into the street, onto the quay along Indian Creek, and there at the end of Aqua island, in the water, was a sky high blaze, 30 feet flames lapping the air, black smoke billowing, and popping explosions came from the hull of the yacht.

Dozens of curious boats kept a cautious distance.

We walked down slowly as it seemed to be drifting into the tip of our island.

One police boat got close enough to throw a hook and slowly pulled the yacht away from our shore.

For the next forty minutes we watched the dousing of the fire as hoses pointed their spray from the gardens of the mansions on Pine Tree Drive.

We saw it all from our pool and found out  that the family on the boat, a mother, father and two kids had jumped into the water and were picked up by another boat,  leaving their burning vessel to drift down Indian Creek towards our pool area, gas and propane tanks exploding one at a time.

For local news footage of the fire click here

Then, last night, I went to a dinner party.

Alone, since husband is already back in PA.

I had not realized until I walked into Iran’s new apartment how weird and out of it I really felt.

I was completely discombobulated.

And completely unaware how these surreal events had affected me because I’d been with my kids throughout, trying to shield  and keep them safe.

I walked in and wanted to find an adult shoulder to fall and cry on.

But.

This was the glam Miami party crowd.

So fun. So rich. So beautiful.

I was an alien.

I was hardly able to speak.

Like string an interesting, funny, flirty sentence together.

The freaked-out tabby kitten in a room full of playful Persian sex kittens…

sexy Persian kitten...



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Make Beautiful

“You can make beautiful with garbage?”

The little girl asks.

Her eyes, barely reaching over the edge of my desk, flash white with excitement. She seems transfixed by the colored beach plastic, silver rings and wire, nylon rope, ribbon, tools, earrings, pins and bracelets that are spread in front of her.

“yes,” I say,  “I can.”

“You make beautiful with garbage?”, she asks again, like she doesn’t quite believe me.

“Would you like to make a bracelet?” I ask.

She looks at me and nods. Barely. Still not convinced.

I point at the bench with my tees and jewelry and the wall behind it where a long stretch of orange rope, found two days ago on the local beach, is stapled against the studio wall. Hooked on it are earrings, bracelets, necklaces long and short, from simple white crosses to clusters of multicolored pieces of beach plastic. Twenty-three in all.

I get up and take her by the hand.

“What’s your name?” I ask.

I think she whispers Latitia.

“See all these pieces, Latitia?”

She nods.

“They were  made by girls just like you. How old are you?”

“Seven.”

“OK, so yesterday two schools came here, to this studio, girls and boys, some were seven and a few were older, like  ten and one was eleven. And together we went to the beach and we all picked up the prettiest beach plastic, as much we could carry, and brought it back. Then I helped  them make the jewelry, all these things here.”

She tiptoes and cranes her neck to see each piece. I pick her up, and carry her slowly along the wall.

“These earrings were made by a boy for his mother,” I explain, ” and this bracelet was done by a girl just like you.”

She squirms out of my arms and runs back to the work bench.

“I want to make a bracelet, now!” she calls back at me.

We pick the stretchy string, she wants pink, and I pass her the box of  beach plastic with pre-drilled holes. I show her how to string them and I cut a heart from a piece of Barbie-pink beach plastic. When she is finished stringing I knot the ends, add the heart and slip it over her wrist. She holds her arm away and admires her work like she’s Holly Golightly at Tiffany’s, then she smiles up at me and says,

” I want to make earrings for my mother.”

I arrived in Abaco (North Eastern Bahamas) Thursday morning aboard (the most delicious shade of pale blue) twin-engine plane, courtesy of Schooner Bay, a new, green and self-sustainable village of which I will tell more later.

Schooner Bay private plane - love !

I had been flown in by Clint (of community development) who jokes that he met me on the internet. Clint, an avid beach plastic collector with a special attraction to the beach bobbles from girl’s elastic hair ties (“They find me, I don’t find them”) introduced me to  well-known Bahamian artist  Antonius Roberts (his gallery/workshop is in Nassau) who graciously invited me to use his Schooner Bay studio and teach local children where/how to collect beach plastic and turn it into art or jewelry. My wampum fee, with which Clint (a fly fisherman) lured me in, was a wealth of weathered beach plastic bobbles.

Antonius explained that his vision for the Schooner Bay studio is to build a far-reaching community through workshops by visiting artists and designers, and I’d be the debutant-artist-in-residence….

Saturday was the first ever Schooner Bay Spring Festival, with music, a bike rally, an arts and crafts market, a barbeque, open houses, and an exhibition of the work created the day before by the students from the All Age School at Sandy Point and the Cross Rocks School alongside my jewelry, tees and scarves (as the original inspiration pieces) and the powerful work, sculpture/furniture by Antonius that is made from trees, which he reclaims after they’ve been cut down to make way for land development.

I spent Thursday afternoon collecting Abaco beach plastic and setting up the studio for the kids.

  

At 9 am the next day about twenty boys and girls, two teachers  and a principal filed into the studio and crowded around Antonius and I as we explained the project before we all piled into three cars and drove along the sandy coastal road till we reached the part where  beach plastic collects in shameful mounds just over the dune.

my new beachcombing buddy

We talked about all the things that belong on the beach, like sand and shells and seaweed and dune grass, but not plastic.

I had no idea how I was going to coral the eager, lively mob into a focussed jewelry making class.

I was scared that I’d fail. That I wouldn’t be able to reach them and capture the ideas I wanted to pass on….

So I told them to sit on the floor and spread out their beach plastic. To find a favorite piece. Something that had color or shape, which was special.

I sat down on the floor.

Then I just started.

I started with the girl closest to me.

The next girl watched us and started cutting her own beach plastic. Then the following girl copied her. Three boys stood behind me. They watched and went to find pliers. At some point our creative resonance morphed and suddenly every kid was busy making a piece. They were calling back and forth for scissors, cutters, wire and string. Some stood around the table, others were splayed on the floor yet others sat on Antonius’ benches.

“Miss – Miss -MISS!!!”

Wire strung with clusters of beach plastic were dangled impatiently in front of my face, almost poking my eye.

“Help Miss. What next? What do I do now?”

The girls made things for themselves. Boys made things for their mothers, but the girls teased them asking whether it was really for their girlfriends…

Some copied my pieces exactly, some did their own thing, but no one sat around waiting for someone to tell her/him what to do.

The principal sat off to the side, she’d already finished one set of white earrings for herself and would make three more and a choker.

Coco, Clint’s assistant, was the allocated Dremel drill operator and kids lined up to have holes made in their beach plastic pieces.

Three o’clock came as a surprise, we’d all been swept into a timeless, creative vortex, and they all needed to finish “one more thing.”

“Please Miss. A pin, a bracelet, just this one earring.”

It took more effort to stop them and tidy up than anything else, but finally everyone stood in a neat row and one by one I made them hang their work on the orange rope. Reluctantly most of them gave up one piece for the art show the next day, but I’m sure quite a few pieces were tucked away to go straight home and be proudly shown-off.

Antonius  whispered in my ear, “I think you’re changing some lives here.”

Maybe.

But what I do know is that together we Made Beautiful – a common thread that connects our lives and, like the beach plastic, will be forever…

Students’ work:

.

.

.


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Is a 100 carat diamond really worth $6,000,000?

The Human Agreement:

Paper size 4” by 10” printed w. human face & the number $100 – value: $100
Painting on canvas, three squares yellow, pink and white – value: $73,000,000
100 stocks in company named Google, non tangible matter – value: $50,000
100 “carat” clear rock – value: $6,000,000
Printed yellow not green by mistake, weight 0.03 grams – value: $5,000,000

100 tons of beach plastic – value: worthless
1,000,000 tons of beach plastic – value: worthless
1,000,000,000,000 of beach plastic – value: worthless

Survival of our planet – value: ….?

I was compelled to write this after one comment on the Barneys blog about my tees said: “Puleeze! So much blah, blah, blah above. It’s garbage sewn on a t-shirt for $135.00! Only idiots will buy these!”

Are you thinking – Barbi is just too sensitive ?

I am. Its hard not to react to these negative comments. They are easy to dissect, but tough to take. It’s the knee jerk ignorance that bothers me and I want to explain.

I want to educate.

Like this comment on the Barneys FB site from Aaron Johnson in NYC:

“FYI, plastic is not eco-friendly!”

HELLOOOO!

Another knee JERK!

Like READ already!

Against my own advice I entered into a conversation with Aaron. I wanted to educate him, but he  wanted to educate me. Like did I know about that garbage patch in the Pacific?

Aaron, I wrote, you and I should join forces and educate the world together…

I was glad to find out that even Chris Jordan gets defensive. Apparently some people accused him of faking his photographs of Albatross chicks who die from  ocean plastic ingestion. He’s now making a movie to show the full process in REAL time from egg to death by plastic.

Get real people. Stop attacking each other over style, taste, envy of success/recognition and use  information to bring about change because only when we stand together will we make the difference it takes to survive.

On Thursday I am going to Abaco, Bahamas. Courtesy of the Lindroth Corporation. They are building a new village called Schooner Bay in southern Abaco. Planned to be all green, using solar, wind and thermal energy, the houses will not be bigger than 900 sq. feet and affordable. There will be stores, a school and a 100 acres is dedicated  farm land which will supply organic produce to the town. It’s someone’s dream project: To create an example, learn along the way so the findings can be used by others to help make our (homo sapiens) world sustainable.

This weekend they are gathering artists from all over for a seminar, art show and workshops with local school kids.

I will be teaching them how to make jewelry from beach plastic. Sell it locally to tourists, instead of the (plastic) crap that has BAHAMAS printed on it and is always Made in China.

I will blog it and take pictures so stay tuned….

The tees at Barneys NY – Madison Avenue store


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Barbi goes native…

Vogue.com: – “While vacationing on Eleuthera in the Bahamas, artist Barbara de Vries began collecting colorful bits of plastic she found on the island’s powder-soft beaches. Having been smoothed and contoured by the elements, the synthetic material more resembled small, precious gems. So once she returned home, the Miami native …”

Miami native?

What the fuck?

Barbi? … Miami Native?

Me, a Miami native artist?

I bristled. I bristled good. Like hackles all the way up. As I read the much anticipated Vogue article in postage size on my BB.

While walking through the Lynn University campus where I had just spoken to about 70 lethargic fashion merchandising students (I was told they were designers) but from the show of hands – I speak to the out-of-the-box part of brain – there appeared to be none. And all my “be unique follow your creative genius rara, jokes and digs” fell like dusty hat pins on the well-worn blue and crested gold carpet. Soundless. Echoless.

Oh well.

But out in the parking lot the combination of the dulled crowd and “Miami native” got my goat. Like got my goat by the balls (or teets?)

Was I not Dutch born?  A former Paris model? A fashion designer from London? Former director of design @ Calvin Klein in NYC?

My ego was pretzelling out of control.

Then my sobering alter-ego said: “But weren’t you last seen as mother, wife and housefrau in Milford PA?” Huh? You think you are so hot? You should be so lucky! To be in Vogue! Huh? Who do you think you are?

(Do you have that who-do-you-think-you-are voice? I don’t think everyone has that voice, as in *Donald Trump, Charlie Sheen or Sarah Palin?)

I have a big ego and then this who-do-you-think-you-are-voice which makes me rather schizo, inside my head, and sometimes it comes out, and I lash out and then feel guilty, and confuse the hell out of everyone.

Like who’s that  guilty nice bitch?

So, as I’m driving back to Miami, I’m arguing with myself. And, as usual, my ego loses and I listen to the alter one.

And I’m starting to like the idea of Miami artist. Like could I be an artist from Miami?

Go native…?

I’m used to shape shifting. I’ve had my incarnations from painfully shy school girl to cosmo model to young London designer to Senior Veepee to country mom of three…

And…

Wasn’t I looking for that new life? That new me? Was I not sick of  feeling invisible as a mother?

So.

It took Rickie at Vogue to make me see. To open my eyes to more and endless possibilities of me.

It also took embellishing 750 tees with beach plastic to drive me almost insane.

thank you Vogue

I spent the last four months doing little else, as my husband, daughters, dog, friends and hairdresser will attest, but, while doing my manual labor, I had  time to think.

About beach plastic. About plastic pollution, About its impact, about solutions, about re-purposing some of the plastic that is already out there. How we buy the product within; the laundry detergent, the water, the toothpaste, but do not feel we own its container. Nobody owns the container. Its not our problem. And therein lies the problem. We have come to treat plastic as a cheap, throw-away material. We forget that it was heralded as the substance that would stop us from plundering earth’s natural resources like wood, tortoise, ivory etc.

Remember Mr. Maguire to young Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate?

“I have one word for you young man”

?   (Dustin looking dumb)

PLASTICS!

That was forty years ago and now we’re sinking in the stuff and don’t know how to get rid of it!

Fuck Mr. Robinson and his plastics!

So now its my problem? I thought. As I slowed down  to a place of understanding.

And this what I would say to young Dustin:

“Slow Down”

Stop.

Dustin, take ten minutes to really scroll through this (art by native artist?) and you will notice that every piece of beach plastic has a mysterious story. How did the barrette, the crate, the tooth brush, the toy soldier, the bead end up on that faraway Bahamian beach? Who owned it? What did they do with it and why did it get into the ocean? Did it come from a cruise ship? A seaside garbage dump, was it casually tossed away or accidentally lost?

And if you slow down enough to think  then maybe you can stop just long enough to change the effect of disposable plastic and realize that you can reinvent plastic’s destiny  by making it desirable and yes, maybe even beautiful.

black and white, ying and yang, ego and alter ego, there's always the other way

Interviews about the process, (thank you Viv and Christine) courtesy of Loomstate:


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Barbi’s Bottle Shack at Art Basel Miami…

Ok, I know,  its been a week.


 Bruce Weber at his Haiti show opening        Iona at Design Miami opening

I’m sorry I did not get to it sooner, but if you were here you’d know that after one week of Art Basel Miami and all its trimmings from parties for Isabella Rosselini, Bruce Weber, Julian Schnabel, Sean Penn to art events in at least 320 different locations on the beach and midtown causing traffic that puts the Paris peripherique at 7am to shame, if you’d lived through all that you wouldn’t want revisit it, well, till the frenzy has not only worn off, but a sense of objective relativity has settled back in.

And also.

In the middle of it all Kiki got sick. On Thursday night, after a party I co-hosted for Water.org, and meeting Alastair at the Schnabel/Maybach/Sean Penn/Haiti (yes all in one breath) event, where I posed as gallery owner Angela Westwater, the one who had nabbed husband away from me for the #1/a-list/VIP studded event that evening (of my very civilized dinner for water.org to which husband did not come because Ms. Westwater’s offer was superior ). Are you getting the escalation of frenzy and stress? (I must remember, I tell myself, that when I’m 70+ and would like a handsome, younger, entertaining male on my arm to a #1/a-list/VIP studded event, I can invite any married man out there. No problem. And I will. I promise I will. Fuck it, I’ve spent a lifetime being perceived as a threat, when I am 70 and no longer perceived as a threat, I will take advantage and tempt younger men with my #1/a-list/VIP studded events).

speaking to 40 dinner guests @ water.org dinner about Arts for a Better World and my beach plastic

But I’m way off topic. That night, when I posed as Angela Westwater, because it turns out she’s way too A-list to pick up her name tag, and I turned up under her name it was assumed I was her and ended up with her tag, and passed  Sean Penn in the corridor who threw me a look like he’d just blown up the headmaster’s car, but apparently I’d just missed his angry rant about Haiti and the lack of help which resulted in the sale of  four Schnabel drawings raising over one million in a few minutes. Well, that night Kiki got sick. I had a few, not my fault, I was served quite a few, wines, scotches, champagnes. I was tired, bone tired. So I was sleeping like I really needed it.

Leila walked it at 3-ish, and said: “Kiki just threw up all over the floor.”

!

And.

For the first time in 14 years I said:

“I can’t deal with that right now.”

I turned over and went back to sleep.

Guess what? Husband got up! Maybe it was my total coolness about his date with Angela, but he got up and cleaned up the puke, and I experienced a very steep learning curve. Which is: I can say things like “I can’t deal with that right now,” and he’s there. Ready to jump in.

That was huge and has NOTHING to do with Art Basel Miami.

So.

My promise of blogging about my installation as it evolved, which named itself the Bottle Shack after it was built because it was not quite as slick as I had imagined but took, like all good art, a life of its own determined by material, circumstance, timing and mood,  and ended up quite random and gorgeous and shacky and textured in a messy luminous kinda way, that promise was way more than I could live up to.

So this is it how it went:

It started with 2400 recycled bottles. 1000 from my local school bottle drive. 500 from Recyclable Planet a reverse vending machine where you drop off your soda/water bottles, and 1700 from South Eastern Recycling. Not all were usable. Some were really disgusting with like gum stuck on the outside, food stuffed inside, mold, grease, like you dont wanna know what people do to/with their water bottles.

We, the kids, their friends and I started by removing all the labels. In order of popularity: Dasani (tap water, hello!), Zephyrhills (from a natural spring near Tampa Florida, yum!), Publix spring water (paradox), Coca Cola, Sprite, Perrier, and so on.

While we peeled labels a wooden cube structure was built by the show’s carpenters. We strung bottles on wire with Lara, Gabriella, husband  and Jennifer and hung them on this wooden cube which collapsed right away. Shit! Now I was behind schedule.

A new steel tube structure with sloppy horizontals was built next. I had to let go of my Dutch sense of perfect parallels and become more,  lets say, island…?

By Sunday noon my “installation” was nowhere near installed.

It soon became a case of, if I’d know what it takes I’d never have done it. Those are the projects I like best because I go into some strange obsessive state of mind. I drilled holes in 2400 bottles. I strung them on wire and tied them. I had some help from Steven, a DASH fashion student, but was mostly alone at the cavernous hall till midnight. I crept through some time-worm-hole and by Tuesday morning I moved into my pop-up studio bottle shack and got ready for the opening party.

Which was that night and I posed in my perfect dress, in front of the shack with an American Indian Chief who had blessed the event…oh for  global and good-cause culture clashing!

Tuesday night held many other opening parties. There was Design Miami, there was the Mark Newson Riva boat at the Standard, there was Nadja Swarowski’s dinner party at Soho House, there was Bruce Weber at MoCA and a dinner to follow. Huband went to most of them and took Iona (14) as his “date”. It was like Iona’s coming out night at Art Basel Miami 2010. She was chatted up by a married man who asked her if her guy was in the film business. “You mean my Dad?” she answered. He then told her he ‘d come to the dinner with his buddy, acting like he was single but the next day she saw him swinging his wife and baby  in the hammock chairs outside Design Miami. Another steep learning curve in the Gordon household – men will say anything to get your attention….

But I wasn’t there. I was at my own opening with my team.

My first ever art opening in fact. I’ve done countless fashion shows and their after parties, I’ve given many of husband’s book launch parties but I’ve never had my own Art Opening! 100 sq. feet of me. Of what I wanted to express at that moment in time. In my time. In Miami’s time. In the world’s time.  An opportunity to make a statement.

I took on plastic pollution.

I worked in my pop-up studio and showed how to turn catastrophe into beauty hoping to inspire. Hoping to educate.

My favorite was when  kids poked their heads through the bottles and asked me all sorts of questions which usually started with, “what are you doing in there?”

I loved it when Michele Oka Doner breezed in  like a luminous fairy, with a posse of Micky Wolfson’s glamorous women friends. They all came inside the shack, and then called out to Micky to join us. Luckily he declined. The shack was not built to hold visitors, it was built to be peeked into…

I joined Alastair and Iona at the Swarowski dinner. I flirted with Michael Tilson Thomas in the elevator, having no idea who he was other than rather cute. I saw my long time Dutch friend Li Edelkoort, we kissed and hugged like long lost loves knowing that the next time could be years from now. I embarrassed my dinner partner by making rather harmless comments about the other guests but when we parted he said I was his favorite new friend and he was the first to visit the Bottle Shack the next morning. A rather nasty writer called Derek to my right told me gleefully that Julie Gilhart had just been given the boot by Barneys.

Julie! My champion! The one who had introduced my beach plastic tees to the Barneys buyers! I e-mailed her when I got home and three days later she came to my Bottle Shack. My new favorite friend. The wonderful awesome Julie Gilhart! Not rattled at all by recent events, but inspired by its possibilities….

Julie and Barbie

Loomstate‘s Berrin and Vivienne came down to Miami too.

To see me  and their tees inside the shack. They took millions of pix and did an interview movie and we had a long noisy lunch at Joeys. They placed a great story about the Bottle Shack in Ecouterre and posted a glowing report on their blog. Thank you Loomstate!

Sunday 5 pm it was over!

I had loved it. It felt like I was whole again. After several years of not knowing how to redefine myself in a way that was fulfilling and meant something in a modern global context, realizing I had grown out of being a traditional fashion designer and did not know exactly how to fill the void. My creative void that was like a gaping hole, which made me unhappy. Unsettled.

Now, well, it seems I’m back on track….


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The Art Basel Circus is Coming to Town….

OK.

So.

Once a year the art-circus comes to town, given legitimacy because the prestigious Art Basel, as in Basel Suisse, as in most uptight city/country in Europe, is behind it. I’m sure its been asked before, but surely Basel and Miami in the same breath are an oxymoron?

Anyway.

It all started with Art Miami and then Basel came and then everyone who is anyone in the art world followed. And then the design world… for catching some rays before settling into the long dark northern winter? Who knows. They, the art world, thought it was an excellent idea, and so now there are many, many satellite shows. One is called Scope, one called Pulse, one called Red Dot as in SOLD (so you cant have it), one called Nada, and    so    on….

Now, you may remember, last year husband and I were Art Basel Miami sluts, like we didn’t care, we hung with every and anyone, at every and any party.

BUT.

I must speak for myself when I say that, even though I enjoyed the unbearable lightness of it all, I wanted a bit more green, as in Green. Like some art that dealt with issues of the planet? Was that too much to ask? Like a bit less stuffed deer and doe and fawn, less Michael Jackson likenesses and a bit more Chris Jordan?

So. As Basel approached this year, and I sat  assembling beach plastic tee after beach plastic tee, which gives me a lot of time to think since its manual labor, I thought to myself….. I should be at Basel… like Barbi does green, or blue, at Miami Art Basel week.

Well.

This year has been the “Year of Be Careful What You Ask For”, for me (after three years of getting shit I did not ask for). Like I wished to be in Barneys and they called me for 900 tees, driving me into beach plastic nervous breakdown. I think Barbi does Basel (yes that blog title I shall use next week), and low and behold, I get a call….

Thirteen days before the show!

But I said yes.

YES. YES. YES!

So.

I committed to showing.

At Arts for a Better World.

Sounds good doesn’t it? Sounds like it could be me, no? I mean who cares about art if its not for a better world?

Isn’t one definition of art that it gives the beholder a sense of hope, of seeing and experiencing a whole new emotion? A new paradigm, a moment of connection to the divine? The divine in another human being who somehow connects for a moment to what is true and enlightened and real? And isn’t the divine a moment of connection to our spiritual origins? And does nature not have something to do with this?

So. A better world through art sounds good to me. Thats the place I want to be.

Fuck the brands like Gagosian and Marlborough, aren’t they just like out of control Wall Street brokers?

OK. OK. I’ll shut up. Before I dig myself in too deep.  No, I do not claim any superiority  or connection to the divine. I just want to experience more. Like  something I haven’t done before. I want to feel good not poor. I want to feel part of something not inferior. You know what I mean?

For now that’s all you get. I’m busy you know. very very busy.

But.

Stay tuned.

I will record all right here. From the day I start, Sunday, and build my amazing recycled installation and somehow move into it.

Here’s the name of the installation and an idea….of what’s to come:


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Fashion flash-back > from London to Calvin Klein NYC to Milford…

barbi and her spring 1983 collection...

Twenty-four years ago I moved from London to New York.

I moved because my (financial) partner closed my business. He closed my business because my PR, a Buddhist fashion personality called Lynne Franks, told him that I would never amount to much. That he was wasting his money. She had called a meeting with him behind my back. Two days later he broke the news.

Her motivation? She was a struggling fashion PR wanting to break into big corporate (like damage control) PR, he had just sold his corporate PR company for millions. It was just selfish politics. I lost my business, he lost his respect for her  and she closed her business a few years later, just around the time when I launched CK at Calvin Klein and, for a fashion nano-second, amounted to something in the eyes of the groovy international fashion PR.  A case of divine justice? Or karma? For what it was worth.

Anyway. After her Machiavellian move I moved to New York. A good move. I loved New York. I got a great job, then another great job. And then the super-job: Design Director at Calvin Klein as the designer hired to create a collection that would compete with DKNY and I came up with CK.

CK Jeans 1992

That first year in New York I sold my flat in London and put a deposit on a loft in the Duane Triangle, Tribeca. In 1986. Imagine! My only view, I was on the 2nd floor, was of the World Trade Center, like I was David and there, looking up, was Goliath. I thought it was cool, after all I was New York!

BUT.

Every Saturday night the building behind me had an all-night disco in the basement. The music would pulsate through the walls up and into my bed and I’d have nightmares about my heart. Like it’s beat was off and I was dying. Came June, I decided to rent a house on Shelter Island, and  after one summer of spending the weekend outside Manhattan I was hooked. I needed green. I needed space. I needed acreage. I craved the Ralph Lauren country life-style.

So. I looked in the NY Times weekend real estate section*. I noticed: “Two farm houses on 20 acres, pond, streams, pasture – $185,000.”

Do-able, I thought. Desirable, I thought. But where the hell was Milford PA?

That Saturday morning I got in my GMC Jimmy, blue and white, with lift kit and oversized wheels (don’t ask – I was into being a cross between Thelma and Louise) and drove out to the Delaware Water Gap.

*Explanation: I was living in my Tribeca loft but I could not buy it. I had a mortgage lined up for months, and every few weeks I had to “renew” it and pay another $2300. My building did not have a C of O. It was owned by Meile Rockefeller and when she added the penthouse she had added 13″ over code, so fuck her, that Rockafella, the city was not giving her permission to sell. As a result I could not actually purchase my loft. In fact it felt I’d never be able to buy unless Meile decided to chop a foot off her penthouse, which, according to her, was like chopping a foot off her own body.

Those two farms on 20 acres had been renovated and had shag carpet everywhere. On the floors wall to wall, but also between the fake hand-hewn beams and on the toilet seats.

I passed.

But.

Back at the realtors office I spotted, between pictures of lake fronts and A-frame skiing cabins, this: “1790 historical farmhouse. 12 acres. Streams. Close to town. Needs TLC.”

TLC? Perfect, TLC was me!

That one, I said to Debbie the realtor.

No, she said. I’m not going there.

But it sounds perfect.

Trust me, she said.

I want it, I said.

Don’t say I didn’t warn you….

So. The house was rented by a drug dealer. A guy called Jo Monaco. He had a German shepard that attacked our car mirror as soon as we drove up.

Jo yelled from the porch: “Didn’t I tell you to call first!” “I did and you didn’t pick up!” Debbie yelled from the car.

Still. We looked around the place. The dealer’s gun collection was on one wall. It looked huge and scary to me, recently arrived from Maida Vale, London.

His shag carpet was old. His shower was a porta-cabin. Still. The paneled ceiling whispered that real hand-hewn beams were hidden, as well as a 200 year-old  fireplace. I couldn’t see the stream but I could hear it.

But more than anything, I heard my future.

the hidden beams and fireplace

I had, what I call, a future memory.

And based on this future memory I placed an offer with the owner of the drug dealer’s house. (Ten years later Jo was arrested for killing a cop in Staten Island,  sexual abuse and child pornography, he’d been hiding out in my house, they nabbed him a few years later, sent him to Rikers where he eventually died.)

Maybe the house had egged me on to set it free.

then and now

And I did. I loved my house. I love my house and my house loved me.

I am here now. At the old English kitchen table that I brought with me from London. Writing this Ode to my Home.

the old kitchen table

The house where I brought future husband the weekend after we met and where we made love for the first time. Where we explored and learned about each other, away from everything else.

Where I came a few weeks after Iona was born and where my mother first met her first grand child.

Where I came with Kiki and Leila as babies,when life, after 9/11, became almost unbearable.

Where husband and I decided to settle down by moving out and adding 3000 square feet that included studios for both of us and bedrooms for all four kids.

the old and the new

And, as you know, then we moved to Miami.

But I am here. Now. Inspired to write this as I hoosh for our new renters. The fridge, the pantry, the drawers,the laundry room,  I finally scraped the “Energy Guide” sticker off my ten year old dryer, and even moved the female nude (my favorite painting, which I bought at a Lambertville gallery) because it makes me feel exposed somehow.

tits and toy soldiers

It is here I want to return, eventually, maybe just husband and I, older, wiser, calmer, to write and paint and design and Skype with our kids all over the world.

It is here that I still see many, many more future memories…

overlooking the stream

dinner party room

new living room

all photos of the house by Erik Freeland

Architects of the new addition: Smith and Thompson Architects


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Tutus and burkas are forever…

 

whoops too short

 

At eight this morning Iona called from school.

“Mom, you have to bring me jeans, my short shorts are too short.”

Hello! When I saw her at 6.30 in the kitchen I thought she’d forgotten her skirt. But, this being a common thought, it slipped away without becoming another sarcastic remark, we were late for the bus, I hadn’t printed her essay nor sick note, panic ensued and my opinion on dress code was forgotten by the time we met up in my (still dark at 6.30) car.

Yes, DASH has a dress code. Its tolerant, but does require a certain amount of body coverage.

So.

At 8.45 I arrived, bagged jeans in hand, and told the dear woman at reception that my daughter had been nabbed by the DASH fashion police and here I was; bringing her Burka.

Don’t you hate it when a good joke goes to waste? It was a case of flat ears.

Now rewind 12 hours to 200 yards across the street from DASH at the Moore building in the Design District, 5- 10 pm yesterday evening.

Burka’s crossed my mind then too.

I was there selling tutu’s. My original princess-dress tutu’s.

(I don’t mean to confuse you, yes-yes I work with beach plastic now, and not tule).

But I confused myself. I mean what was I thinking when my friend Francesca told me about a giant sample sale fashion event called Sassy City Chicks?

Fate, I thought.

Tutu* destiny calls, I thought.

*Aside – I keep a “past lives storage unit” in Milford, across from ACE hardware. Last summer I was getting two tutu dresses from my previous Baby Gordon collection (in storage for ten years) for friends with brand-new baby girls in their lives and, in an inspired moment, thinking that Miami was the perfect market to get rid of my tutus once and for all (those princesses in the making) I UPS-ed two boxes down to our candy land bachelor pad.

 

my chic display for young miami princesses...

 

Little did I know that  the crowd of childless  Sassy City Chicks Fashion Bashers had come for the DJ, the party atmosphere with free Smirnoff Vodka while they had their nails done, carried no cash, nor checks, only credit cards (which I did not take) and had about fifty dollars to spend on themselves, which went to an instant gratification piece of bling and not a Christmas tutu for their favorite niece.

 

tutu or bling? that was the question...

 

I took one look at these girls’ heels, cleavage and legs and thought:

I may as well be selling burkas.

Like pastel baby tutus or black burkas @ Sassy City Chicks Fashion Bash = wrong demographic!

 

Miami trend: two drinks, one for each hand. Predicament: how to shop...

 

Still, I sold six pieces. I only lost thirty-five dollars. I had free Vodka. I hung out with Francesca, who oozes Italian style, and we bitched about the fashion Chernobyl going on around us.

 

Francesca = effortless chic...

 

I met a few cool young guys who do cool young things.

I got to stay out late by myself.

But, when I left the building and had to step over the passed-out body of a young woman lying in her own vomit, I decided to put my tutus back into storage for another ten years…

 

the fashion apocalypse

 


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Barbi (so NOT India Hicks) does the Bahamas

sunset from my terrace, soon after I arrived

I went harvesting.

Harvesting beach plastic.

Not a bad job. In fact if you had to write yourself the perfect, anything goes, job description wouldn’t it go something like this?

“I’d like to work on a beach. A perfect soft, pink sand beach somewhere in the Caribbean, but Hawaii or Tahiti would be fine too. This would be a quiet beach, one untouched by development. The water would be perfect shades of turquoise, going from pale to dark, and long waves roll in from the reefs a few miles off the coast. They crash at my feet, their sounds become like my heart beat, regular and reassuring. A light wind blows off the water, carrying a salty smell that sticks in my nostrils, still there later when I lie in bed  listening to the frogs singing in the hurricane shutters. I will sleep well, because I’ve been outside all day with the sun on my back, bent over, scanning for material in the sand at the water’s edge, the ridge further up the beach caused by waves from hurricane Igor a few weeks ago, then I look along the dune, and between the dune’s grasses. My professional dress code is a bikini and a hat, even on casual Fridays. Sunscreen is my only mandatory regulation. Occasionally, when I get too warm or just when I feel like it, I wade into a particularily pretty pool and float, the waves rocking me like I was back in my mother’s womb. Curious fish surround me, a barracuda comes at me fast, but then veers away, just letting me know that he’s keeping his eyes on me. I look at the island from the water, the curve of the cove, the palm trees and casuarina’s, the cliffs, the occasional vacation home painted pink or yellow or green. Maybe my office is in one of those cottages….”

A few years ago, when I first walked the beaches of Eleuthera I became mesmerized by the bits of colorful beach plastic along the surf line, scattered and stuck in the sand. I now wonder if, at  that point (I certainly wasn’t thinking job description), fate took my hand and softly whispered, here, look down, these colored bits should not be there, they are pernicious, like poison, but you can do something, this pollution may be a future for you, a place where  all you have learned and who you are can come together with creativity and purpose…

I listened and every day since then I have used towards repurposing more and more beach plastic.

But like in a romantic dream, reality has turned that corner where the above idyllic job description foreshadows a nightmare.

The melancholy I feel when I take my first steps in the sand this time, is not just the melancholy of my memories.

(Why can memories be so melancholy?  A longing for our family time spent here, when the girls were  too young to worry about what they might be missing, like Facebook, friends, and other artificial stimulation?)

It’s not just me, there’s melancholy in the air. I can feel it all over the island. Tourist season doesn’t start for another six weeks and there is hardly a car on the road. The small shops are deserted, their shelves half-empty. The locals ask me about the American economy.

” No jobs man, when America sneezes we catch a cold,” they tell me.

Sneezing as metaphor feels too exuberant to me, what they mean is that when America holds its breath in fear, they suffocate. But I don’t say this. I just nod and tell them I know what they mean. Times are hard everywhere, I say, but don’t tell them that maybe our golden age is gone forever.

club med beach

My melancholy takes a turn towards despair, when I reach my favorite beach. The three mile long curving stretch of pink sand looks raw, windswept, covered in seaweed and caught in this seaweed is garbage. Plastic bottles, toothbrushes, crates, detergent containers, tops, cups, plates, knives, forks, spoons, barrettes, combs, beads, single sneakers, flip-flops and shoes in every size, pots, cones, hinges, signs, and I wonder, while the ancient Greeks, Romans, Incas, Indians, left us musea full of  ancient pottery, jewelry and tools, will this legacy of our plastic culture, ever be displayed and admired in musea of the future?

museum worthy?

synergy?

mimic nature?

I peel off my backpack, spread my towel and sit down. I’m surrounded by plastic. I pick what I can reach and make a pile. I feel like I’m on the edge, one step away from overwhelmed. Is it too late? Have we lost control? The way I felt when watching the BP oil spilling uncontrolled. I teeter on giving up. Whatever I do, however much of this I pick up, clean up, sort and take home, it won’t make any difference.

Still I get up.

Still I pick up.

Red. Blue. Green. Yellow. White. Black. Grey. Pink. Orange. Funny, there’s never much purple.

Within an hour I have  three bags full. I’m only half way along the beach when I run into Bob and Kathy.

“Not enough plastic here for 900 tees, hey?” Bob jokes.

I’m disoriented, like I came out of deep meditation too fast. What does he mean?

“You should have seen it just after Igor,” he says, “Its all been swept away now!”

“I don’t want to know,” I say. “There’s plenty here.”

Sometimes I find messages in the plastic:

Ironic ones to make me laugh…

if only...

Encouraging ones to keep me going…

One that reminds me to check my messages…

One to make sure I will fly home…

I spent two full eight-hour days on the beaches.

I gathered plenty but I wonder, how much is enough for 900 tees?

When I get back to my house on the cliff I sort it and clean off the sand, seaweed and algae by putting the beach plastic in a colander and using the hose of the outdoor shower.

Then I let it dry in the sun.

I’m alone with my harvest.

It looks pretty all laid out by color.

I’m no longer sad.

I feel at home and I’m happy….

for more of my beach plastic work over the past few years:

http://itsamanmadeworld.wordpress.com/

http://www.itsamanmadeworld.com/home.html


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Repurposed in Miami

Last year was a transitional year.

I realize now that, for me, last year was still transitional. From  reading my blog you’d probably  already figured this out, but I was oblivious.

I thought the previous year had been transitional and that I was out of transition and in destination. But, just because I’d moved to Miami didn’t mean that I had arrived. I know what you’re thinking, moving to a new city is always a transition, and that is exactly what I would answer, if anyone asked.

But I’d already been in a real full-blown transition since early 2008. And it felt like being stuck. Like I couldn’t go back, and couldn’t move forward. I no longer knew who I was nor who I wanted to be. My identity had always been so wrapped up in what I created and I didn’t want to go back to designing “more stuff “. My last gig had been with Pantone as the Creative Director of every licensed product that carried its logo and name. Plates, stationery, shoes, a home collection, clothes, bags, you name it. A lot of stuff… So I helped Alastair with the design of Spaced Out and started  collecting waste beach plastic. I worked it,  made jewelry from it and educated myself in the causes and effects of plastic pollution. I did a website called Its a Man made World.

And I wrote. I wrote an entire novel about a woman in transition. A woman like me, who from one moment to the next realizes that her perfectly crafted life has fallen apart, and that nothing will ever be what she thought again.

I did both in a bubble. Not a pretty, floating-on-air Californian bubble, but more like a soundproof one-way-mirror bubble, feeling unheard and unseen. Lost even.

Moving to Miami had everything to do with breaking out of whatever it was that I was in. Husband knew it, like he was aware that a change would do me, and us, good.

And it did, almost right away. (SO, for anyone who feels stuck: Move! A different city, a different country, a different job, a new house, a whole new slice of of life to explore).

But then I thought Miami Beach was just playtime, and that’s hard for me because I was brought up with a huge sense of purpose and responsibility, and here I was having lunch on the beach!

Some days it felt like I was doing the same as I did before, writing and recycling beach plastic, only in better weather, in DJ Tiesto’s bachelor pad, away from the knick-knacks of my old life… and maybe I still wasn’t getting anywhere…

The only difference I felt was a sense of patience and maybe this comes with age. Maybe  the ambition endorphins turn into patience endorphins, and for the first time ever I enjoyed the process of what I was doing, instead of being anxious about getting to the pay-off: money, attention, a good review…

I added some beach plastic clothes and called the collection Plastic is Forever. I got a small order for scarves from Base at the Delano, which lead to picking, cutting and drilling the beach plastic and finding the local women who would sew it on silk georgette for me. I enjoyed meeting them, Lucia and her mother, at Normandy on Saturday mornings and buying organic vegetables and flowers at the market afterwards.

I enjoyed doing the Barbi does Miami blog, not only did writing about being here help me redefine who I was , but I also connected to my readers for the first time. I made friends with people I’ll never meet. This, for me, is the joy of writing. Not the sitting alone at a desk for hours on end, losing all sense of time, like passing through CS Lewis’ closet, entire days disappearing into what feels like an hour. I don’t like that aspect of writing. But I love the dialog. The ability to create a connection, a shared experience, a feeling that we’re never alone in what we go through and how it makes us feel…

But this year is different. I’m working manual labor in Miami. I have to produce 900 tee shirts for Barneys New York, using organic blanks from Loomstate. And 900 tees is about 35,000 pieces of  beach plastic, and about 50,000 drilled holes! Its a group of women beaders who need 50 kits every week between now and end january, and I’ll have to provide those. I’ll be working hard and I love it.

In fact. I think that…

I’m a bit like my beach plastic.

All that plastic I collect had purpose in a previous life, be it a bottle top, a crate, toothbrush, hair clip, spoon, detergent container, cup, plate, comb,  or any one of a million other things. Then it was useless. Discarded. It tossed around for a bit. Sand, sea, sun, salt even coral. Then it started to look good again. And now this patina-ed beach plastic has a whole new life as fabulous adornment on Barneys tees that’ll sell to green fashionistas for one hundred and thirty five dollars.

So.

I too feel repurposed and it feels good…

and there will be black and white...