#home
Editor’s Letter Welcome to The Hashtag’s second issue! The theme for this one is rather special and close to each one of our hearts. It is one thing to call a building a house but another to call it a home. So I asked, what does home mean to us? To you? Is it a place where we hide all our secrets and be one with the things that we’ve grown up with? Is it a place to shelter our insecurities and things that we might not want to be open about to others? Or is it just simply a necessity that most of us are blessed with but sometimes take for granted? In this issue, we try to answer those questions personally, interpreting what it is that makes a home a home and why it is important to have one. With more editorials, writers and designers to work with, we’ve tried our best to give you handpicked “trends” in fashion, beauty, lifestyle and now music. We have features on a designer who we think everyone should look out for, clothes that you can grow right at the comfort of your own home and of course, the throwback to February’s London Fashion Week.
Best, Priscilla Aroean
Contents Home Spots Points of Interest (editorial) Home is where the Heart is (editorial) Home by Cristina Melegari Home Comforts Chic (editorial) Designer Feature: Orelle Brodt Biocouture by Priscilla Aroean Top 5 Artists to Watch in 2016 by Starr Brown LFW
These snaps were taken from Tamsin Malones Layzell house in Norway. Tamsin is a make-up artist and hair stylist as well as a stylist. Her work has been published internationally in magazines such as Dreamingless. You can find her work by going to her website: www.vivalavidaworld.com/
Home Sp
pots
Points of Interest Photography: Irina Chira Stylist: Priscilla Aroean Make-up: Rachael Thomas Models: Michael Tuck, Mathew Vaclavik
Home
What is it home to me ? Well home to me is a whole lot of things, especially a lot of feelings.
Home is actually the place where I can expres can be myself without anyone As I was trying to disentangle myself from the messy feelings I have for what I call my home, it just struck me what was the most important one: home is the only place where I am comfortable walking with my bare feet, because is the only place I trust. I like to think that when I walk inside in my house I enter in my deepest comfort zone, no masks allowed, no lies can be said inside. That's why when it comes to my home I get all territorial and I find difficult to invite in people I barely know. It's because I feel like they would break my ecosystem. Home is the perfect place where you can tell someone you love him, or that you are sorry for something you did or said. Because home is not just a physical place, it's actually a part of you and the people who live with you. Did you ever ask yourself why when you enter your home you automatically take off your shoes and your coat and most of the things you wore outside? I think it's because coming inside your house it's like going inside a sacred place, like a Mosque where you have to take off your shoes. In order to be accepted in, you have to get rid of everything superficial, useless or polluted from the outside world. Even the relationships inside your house are the strongest ones, be-
cause your parents and your brothers and sisters, as much as you can hate them, are the only ones who really know you. Home for me is also the people. They don't necessarily have to actually live with me, but there are certain people that makes me feel like I'm home wherever I am. My grandma, my mom, my boyfriend, some of my closest friends, these are all people that allow me to be myself without having the fear to be judged or rejected. Those people are the most precious of your life, giving up on them it means give up on your true self.
ss myself the most, where I judging me.
Home to me is also a feeling. They say home is the place your feet can leave, but your heart simply can't. No matter how many places you call home, each time you'll walk into your room when you were little it's impossible not to feel something. I wonder if this feeling has an actual name. I looked up in the Internet and all I could see was articles about Post-Trip Depression. But I'm not talking about this! I'm talking about the feeling of relief and security that you feel when after a long day in the outside world, you come home and you know you can throw your cute mask away and you can be just yourself, either with your parents, or with your siblings or with your roommates. That's why it's important to find a place you really can call home, otherwise you have no rest from being the perfect you. That's why everyone, EVERYONE, deserves to have a place called home, where he is free to walk barefoot, free to sing out loud, free to be loved for who he really is. So if you'd let me give you a piece of advice, go discover a place you can call home because it's the most important thing.
Home Comforts Chic Photography: Jasmine Instone-Brewer Designer: Jessica Clarke Make-up: Jasmine Instone-Brewer Models: Amy Beven, Katie Atkins
“After all, for me, home isn’t just a place. It’s whe dreams become reality and the people I love sm
Laura Ruedebusch 26, Traveler, Writer and Photo
ere I find my heart at ease, where mile the most.“
ographer based in Germany
The sensation of peace on a clou when you step out of an airport, while.
The calming noises playing out o your couch scrolling through the
udy, rainy sunday. The familiar smell arriving home after being away for a
of your speakers, while you’re sitting on pictures you took on your journey.
The fresh smell tha when your clothes a washing line w Your favorite tea yo own Your
at fills your house are hanging on the waiting to dry. ou drink out of your cup. bed.
Home - that blessed word, which open heart the most perfect glimpse of Heav to carry it thither, as on an angel’s wing Lydia Child
Photography: Ray Lee
ns to the human ven, and helps gs
Home is a name, a word, it is a strong one; stronger than magician ever spoke, or spirit ever answered to, in the strongest conjuration Charles Dickens
Home is a place not only of stron fections, but of entire unreserved life’s undress rehearsal, its backro dressing room, from which we go more careful and guarded interc leaving behind us much debris o off and everyday clothing Harriet Beecher Stowe
ng afd; it is oom, its o forth to course, of cast-
I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society Henry David Thoreau
My home...It is my retreat and resting place from wars, I try to keep this corner as a haven against the tempest outside, as I do another corner in my soul Michel de Montaigne
Orel Brodt
Designer Feature:
What are you doing now? (studying, working?) Currently, I am in my last year of my Womenswear degree at London College of Fashion, working on my final collection as well as working on a start up I wish to launch by September next year. Any plans after you graduate? After I graduate I plan on moving home, to Miami, and spending until December working on a exhibition with a sculptress/interior designer named Ilana Lilienthal. The exhibition will be set up like a doll house with one look per room and set up as a journey through aging. With each room design and garment exemplifying a different age and growth period. Have you always been interested in fashion? If so, who or what inspired you to pursue it? If not, what made you choose this career path? I have always been interested in the arts. When I was younger I dreamt of being a jewelry designer then a clothing designer. I always new that was interested me most was people, how they present themselves how hey they interact with one another.
Don’t do it your blood
Any designers you look up to? I really look up to Viktor and Rolf who chose to only produce a couture collection because ready to wear wasn’t their thing. It was a risky move but I applaud them for sticking to what truly inspires them. If you weren’t designing, what would you be doing? I’ve recently been doing street casting for photoshoots around London. I’ve realized that it’s such a fun job were someone would actually pay me to go meet and talk to interesting people. If not fashion design I would need to stay in the arts somehow but maybe move towards a role that’s more interactive with a variety of different people from around the world... Maybe even a travel blogger. What are the pros and cons to being in the fashion industry? The industry has never been known for its warm and fuzziness, but I can’t help how much I adore it. A big pro for my is to be able to mix my love for sculpture and fashion. I’ve met so many inspiring people throughout my career so far. But the biggest con is making money. Internships are an amazing experience and I’ve learnt so much. But at some point students need to be valued for their work as well as graduates.
Before you embarked on this fashion journey, if you could have one piece of advice to your younger self, what would it be? One piece of advice for my younger self. You have to find a balance. It’s so easy to get caught up in the competitive atmosphere for the industry and work yourself into an anxiety ridden mess. It’s important to learn how to switch off the fashion mode and take breaks. All time low at LCF - being so exhausted that after a bad critique and three days of no sleep I broke down sobbing filled an ikea bag full of fabric and took a nap in it in the middle of my campus... Any advice you can give to those wanting a career in the fashion industry? You have to love the industry, if you don’t it’s not worth the amount of hard work it entails.
t unless your literally willing to put in d, sweat and tears. If your pieces could be worn by anyone, who would you want them to be worn by? Any couturier, having someone who understands and cares about quality and details of clothing wearing my garments would be the biggest achievement. Biggest dream? Be able to travel the world for a few years and gather images and inspiration, fabrics and trim and meet people from a variety of cultures before opening my own business of handmade clothing all produced in quality factories that treat the workers with respect, and make enough money to pay my interns.
Biocouture
- Good for sustainaibility? Our editor-in-chief goes to find out more about this home grown product
Every designer nowadays is trying to tackle this ongoing problem during any process when it comes to designing and manufacturing that design. Sustainability has always been the main topic and an issue that can’t be easily handled, shocking statistics prove this. From 2000 to 2010, there was an increase of 47% in textile consumption. ‘ Waste volumes from the sector are high and growing in the UK with the
On average, UK consumers send 30kg of clothing and textiles per capita to landfill each year.’
advent of ‘fast fashion’.
‘The combined waste from clothing and textiles in the UK is about 2.35 million tonnes (0.7% of UK total B4), 13% going to material recovery (about 300 thousand tonnes), 13% to incineration and 74% (1.8 million tonnes) to landfill.’ Fashion is now developing in terms of using science and new technology to start revolutionary and innovative fashion pieces. The merging of nature’s creations with human inventions brings forth new propositions for materials and forms. The study of materials as a second skin has expanded to scientific experiments. Explorations in biology often labelled as biomimicry or biomimetics examine nature as a resource for novel developments. There have been promising scientific advances applicable to design and fashion, and many visions will forge ahead through persistent exploration and interdisciplinary research. The subsequent projects explore the field in experiments that reappropriate existing substances or collaborations with scientists to create new materials. Other simply use natural resources to create engaging fashionable pieces. Biocouture is something that started by a fashion designer who had a conversation with a biologist who said that material can be made using bacteria and this idea sparked into the mind of Suzanne Lee. Suzanne Lee, director of BioCouture research project since 2007, unites fashion and textiles with the latest thinking from synthetic biology and materials engineering. The process combines fashion and textile design with bio and nanotechnologies for future sustainable fashion. Lee works with scientists from the Centre for Synthetic Biology and the Department of Chemical Engineer-
ing at Imperial College London to produce a series of garments and products that are grown from bacterial-cellulose. BioCouture uses harmless bacteria to spin and simultaneously shape cellulose nanofibres into a textile-like material. The sheet material is grown in a green tea solution and can be dried down to form a seamless shape or cut and sewn conventionally. It can also be coloured and printed like normal fabric. The long term aim is to grow seamless 3D formed garments from vats of liquid.
“…designing the bacteria to spin the threat to give it the qualities that you want… If we want it to repel water, we design that into the cell.” Many of today’s textiles are made from resource-hungry plant based forms of cellulose such as cotton, hemp, wood or manmade derivatives. Bacterial or microbial cellulose, however, is produced when bacteria feed on a simple sugar solution therefore making it ecofriendly, biodegradable and sustainable. Biocouture clothes can be composted with food or waster vegetation in the garden. In conclusion, I strongly feel that Biocouture is the way forward into creating sustainable fashion and the fact that it can be treated like any other fabric makes it a flexible material to work with thus a designer doesn’t have to limit their designs when using it. I initially thought that the process of making the fabric would be quite hazardous to one’s health; growing bacteria and then using that to make clothes didn’t match up with the usual health and safety regulations. This is also another positive point in that the process will not harm anyone’s health and is safe. Whether the rest of the world will take up this process of making clothes, I’m not sure. But if it something that can be done at home as well as the lab, I strongly think that it will benefit not only passionate gardeners but also those interested in the sciences and clothes makers. Even though it may take time to make the material, there isn’t a lot to spend in terms of creating it. This is definitely a new invention that will take over usual methods of creating fabrics in the future.
2015 was an amazing year for all of music; cross overs from the Alternative, Rock, and Pop charts to amazing new talent rising up from all over the world and even comebacks from Joe Jonas and Justin Bieber. While a few of the top artists still dominated throughout the year like Taylor Swift, Justin Bieber, and Adele, artists such as Walk The Moon, Twenty One Pilots, Charlie Puth, and The Weekend seemingly came out of nowhere but still rocked the tops of charts for weeks at time. So far in 2016 we’ve seen this same phenomenon and it will only continue throughout the year.
Troye Sivan:
This Australian joined YouTube in 2007 uploading covers and vlogs. Nearly nine years later, Sivan has amassed almost four million subscribers and 3.6 million Twitter followers. His TRXYE EP released August 2014 really put Sivan on the music scene. Sivan’s release of his WILD EP in September 2015 attracted the attention from Taylor Swift. Even Adele was Tweeted videos of Sivan covering one of her songs at one of his shows and she reacted in a positive manner. Sivan’s first album and latest release Blue Neighborhood has received nothing but glowing reviews from Billboard, Rolling Stone Australia, AllMusic, BuzzFeed, and countless other music reviewers. I recommend jumping on the Troye Sivan bandwagon before it’s too Starr late to call yourself an original fan.
Top 5 Artists 20
The Struts: If you love classic rock in a modern way, you’ll love The Struts (and they’re British, win!). Though founded in 2010, their first album Everybody Wants just came out in 2014. The lead singer Luke Spiller is such a replica of Freddie Mercury mixed with Mick Jagger and a little hint of Michael Jackson. If you love bands such as The Rolling Stones (The Struts opened for them in the summer of 2014!) , Queen, and The Who, The Struts are the modern take on all these bands into one. I think even more so than the last few years, revivals of past huge genres such as Mumford and Sons with the Folk music revival will become huge. We’ve already seen folk and punk making their way back on the scene, what’s a little classic rock going to hurt? DNCE: Whether you want to admit it or not, you were probably Jonas Brother’s trash back in the day; we all were. With Nick Jonas making his huge comeback in 2014 with his hit Jealous, we all secretly wanted them all to reunite back after their split in 2013. Though
B
that doesn’t look like it’s going to be happening, I can’t argue with two out of the three brothers making some killer music. Joe Jonas and his band DNCE came out of nowhere and went straight to number one with their single Cake by the Ocean in 2015. Their EP SWAAY dropped in the fall of 2015 and I can’t wait to see what they do with this success for the rest of this year.
LANY: This is a band you definitely want to get behind. Their first official show was early 2015 and they’ve already amassed thousands of fans. LANY is a band that takes the sounds of The 1975 and Twenty One Pilots that we’ve all come to love in recent years, combines the two sounds together but then twists it with their own sound. Lead singer Paul Klein describes the band’s sound as R&B meets dream pop. Whatever it is, it’s amazing. Their latest single Where The Hell Are My Friends is all too relatable for Brown some of us. I see great things happening for LANY this year as they’ve grown so much from their beginning to now.
s to Watch in 016
Waterparks: Feel like you need some
pop punk to rebel from your parents, but want something that’s not Green Day, All Time Low, Pierce the Veil, or Fall Out Boy. Well you’re in so much luck. Waterparks are a pop punk band from Houston, Texas. Their latest EP Cluster shows amazing talent from younger musicians. Managed by Benji and Joel Madden of Good Charlotte, this band is only going to go up over the course of 2016. If you thought 5 Seconds of Summer were good, you’ll definitely love Waterparks.
LFW
Street Style
by A
Alex Luque