Magazine! by Yirou Chen

magazine! ART, MUSIC & FASHION | SPRING 2015 | THE FIRST AND LAST ISSUE

CONTENTS UP FRONT FROM THE EDITO...................................................12 Tyler Stafford shares his thoughts.

FA S H ION CUT AND SEW..........................................................16 A DIY spirit for spring.

A RT ART DUBAI................................................................22 The March madness returns.

CONTENTS B e auty TWO FACED..............................................................30 Linda has fun with Marc Jacobsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; summer beauty line.

Cultur e SLEEVES ARE TOO SHORT.....................................44 Foreign currency trader Michael Perkins builds his own clothes.

Mu s ic REINVENTING AN ICON.........................................36 Stephanie Mckay makes a comeback.

ENDNOTES SIX WORD STORIES.................................................46 A collection of six visual poems.

MAIL ORDER HUSBAND.........................................48 Thoughts from Morgan Young.

magazine!

ART, MUSIC & FASHION | SPRING 2015 | THE FIRST AND LAST ISSUE

EDITOR IN CHIEF Tyler Stafford MANAGING EDITOR Yirou Chen FASHION DIRECTOR Zijun Shi FEATURES EDITOR Lara Arbid CONTRIBUTORS Sophia Colvin Morgan W. S. Young SPECIAL THANKS Rebecca Suhrawardi

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editorial

hat do a wall street trader, a veteran R&B songstress, and couple thousand tourists in Dubai all have in common? Theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve all found magic in the creative. The premier and final issue of Magazine! is by no means an exhaustive catalogue of these people and their work. Instead, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s about sharing the moments that stir them in a real way: unexpected, raw, and not for everyone.

Tyler Stafford

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fashion

Untie the knot, rip the seam, and get out the thread. This springâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s look is all about making it up as you go.

PHOTOGRAPHY by Sofia Colvin STYLIST McLayne Ycmat MODEL Linda Jane Kanyo @ Soul Management MAKEUP Kodo Nishimura HAIR Toby Klinger CLOTHING by Antonio Azzuolo

BABY BLUES

Deep, richly hued coat with alphabetical embroideries serves as a comfort zone to step out of December.

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CLEAN SLATE

Refresh your wardrobe with THE SHIRT.

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THIS PAGE:

LAZY SUNDAY

Shrug into oversize menswearinspired pieces like THE JACKET. OPPOSITE:

ALL CHOKED UP

Bondage the white heat for THE DOUBLE LAYERED SHIRT.

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art

The March madness comes back for its ninth season. Lara Arbid reports.

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art

14 hour flight to the capital, 8 hours of sleep and 2 hours of driving later- I had just made it to the final day of Art Dubai 2015. Art Dubai, the largest and most global art fair of the regional took place from the 18-21 of March. The fair is partnered with The Abraaj Group, and sponsored by Emaar and Julius Baer group. Their ninth year came as a celebration, being the largest the fair has ever been showcasing 91 galleries. These galleries range in their geographic spread, from Africa to South East Asia. The final day was a buzzing atmosphere of people making their way through the galleries under the Jumeirah sun. I was struck by the amount of people in the spread out space. Naturally, I was drawn to names, shapes and pieces I was familiar with. This included pieces that I found valuable at Armory Week in New York city a couple weeks prior to Art Dubai. I found myself wandering through the fresh spaces, mesmerized by the collections- though that may have been the jetlag. Art Dubai exhibited three gallery programs including Contemporary, presenting 71 gallery exhibitions of global artists, Modern, showcasing masters

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A scene outside the fair.

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art

from the Middle East, Africa and Asia, and finally Marker, a curated section that focused on a particular subject- this year being Latin America and itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s connection to the Arab world. Marker, curated by Luiza Teixeira de Freitas, focuses on the political and economic links that bridge these two regions. It included more than 40 artists from across Latin America, such as Marina Buendia, Maria Garcia Torres, and Maria Jose Arjona to name a few. The four days of the fair brought thousands of visitors to the cultural hub that is Dubai. The city has experienced a tremendous amount of growth, identifying itself as a center of business, entertainment, and tourism. The audience that it attracted bring out the identity of the fair, highlighting a new interest of Middle Eastern focus and the breadth of art and culture that surrounds the region. What makes Art Dubai even more of a standout event, is itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s concurrence with Art Week- a week long celebration of art, design and culture. Art Week brings several events throughout the United Arab Emirates, including Design Days Dubai, DIFC Art Night, The Global Art Forum and SIKKA Art Fair. The various line-up of events and programs truly bring out the uniqueness of Art Dubai as an international leading art fair. For a region that houses a large amount of talent and diversity, a successful ninth year is standout.

RIGHT:

Erasers by Dacid Adamo PREVIOUS SPREAD:

Intersections by Anila Quayyaum Agam

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beauty

TWO-FACED

MAGAZINE! and Linda H. play with Marc Jacobsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; summer 2015 beauty line with a bevy of varied -but equally fresh- results. PHOTOS by Tyler Stafford MAKEUP by Zijun Shi Linda Hamouie MODELS

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ABOVE:

Hi-Shine Lip Laquer in Moonglow.

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LEFT:

Shadows from the Style Eye-Con No. 7 Palette.

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BOTH PAGES:

Highliner Gel Eye Crayon in Midnight in Paris and Brow Wow Pencil in Medium Brown.

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music

REINVENTING AN ICON Acclaimed “Motown meets midnight marauder” songstress Stephanie Mckay prepares to return to the stage with full force. TEXT: Lara Arbid, PHOTOS: Tyler Stafford & Morgan Young

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music

h I got to tell it like it is, I’m so tired of seeing the same old things everyday. Maybe its the soul in her music, or the messages she sends- but Stephanie McKay really does tell it like it is. McKay’s career has spanned over 20 years, during which time she has collaborated with artists including Anthony Hamilton, DJ Spinna Toshi Reagon and Big lovely, Roy Hargrove, Jacques Schwarz-Bart, Katalyst, Mos Def, Talib Kweli, Tricky, Carl Hancock Rux and Amp Fiddler and numerous others. The Bronx-born singer was drawn to music and the arts at a young age, starting as a dancer and singer. Her solo career kickstarted when she had opportunities to sing with various artists on stage. This eventually led to the creation of her first album, McKay, which was produced by Geoff Barrow and Tim Saul. Her debut album had high reviews and she moved forward with her career releasing another worldwide album and traveled through Europe for shows. Magazine! sat down with the acclaimed artist for a photo shoot and quick chat. Singer, songwriter, musician, collaborator- Stephanie does it all. After taking a hiatus for personal focus, McKay makes her current comeback with spirit. Though our time with her was limited, she was excited to mention that she looks forward to an upcoming tour in London. A regular performer, Stephanie’s shows are in the Northeastern US and Europe. Stephanie is expecting to be releasing her return album in the upcoming spring (2015).

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Stephanie wears her own top and vintage silk scarf.

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Stephanie wears her own fur and Morganâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s hat.

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music

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McKay (2003)

Stephanie Mckay EP (2006)

Tell It Like It Is (2008)

culture

SLEEVES ARE TOO SHORT Foreign currency trader Michael Perkins builds his own clothes the new-fashioned way. Yirou Chen reports.

LEFT:

itting on a chair with five intimidating computer screens in front of him, Michael Perkins, the Wall Street trader who works for Forex Trading company, showed his new project to me. The 30year old, 6’5’’ trader with his brown hair and tan skin has been trying to design his own suits in Matlab, a multi-paradigm numerical computing environment and fourth-generation programming language. “I use Matlab to trade everyday, i’m familiar with it.” , Michael answered, when asked about the reason why he chose this platform to develop his project, Michael answered. “I’m 6’5’’ tall and I have trouble finding suits with perfect fit in stores.” “The sleeves are either too short, or the shoulders are too narrow.” Having trouble finding suits with the right fit, Michael Perkins decided to custom-make a suit for himself. “I shop when there’s a promotion and most of my purchases are made online”. Michael admits that he spend a lot of time at work and doesn’t have time to shop around. He has two closets, one for his suits and outerwear, mostly in black and navy. The other, is for his shirts, ties, towels and underwear. His shirts, in different shades of blue but all the same style, are stacked neatly. He shops in Jil Sander and he also shop in Banana Republic. Despite the fact that he has his certain way of shopping, Michael Perkins is totally new to fashion design. Before this project, Michael knew nothing about the construction of a garment and let alone his actual body measurements. “At first, I thought it wouldn’t take much time because once I knew all the pattern making formulas it would be easy to plot patterns.” When he looked into the pattern making formulas for men’s shirts and jacket, he realized that he didn’t even know his body measurement yet.

Screenshots of Michael’s garments in Matlab.

Later when he followed the pattern making drafting guide online step by step, he realized that, plotting patterns in matlab is much less efficient and slower than hand drawing patterns. “It’s meaningless to do such a project”, if what he does is simply follow the guide online and input all the formulas into the plotting function. “And it comes to me that after if I finish the project in this way, the only thing i would accomplish is just a suit.” Michael told me the reason he dropped his first plan. “I want to be able to design whatever I want based on my own body measurement, so I figured, why not build my own 3d human body model in matlab? ” By building his own human body model, Michael is able to develop different types of clothes depending on the design, fit and allowance of the clothes. “So the idea is that, after i build my body model, I put a layer of mesh grids, which is the clothes i am going to design, over the human body model.” By altering the mesh grids, Michael decides what kind of clothes he is going to design. “It’s actually a lot like fashion designers draping fabrics over mannequin.” Since this whole project is based on Michael’s own body model, this project is not going to be promoted for mass production because of the body differences of each individuals. The major class of methods being used in this project is called “TriScatteredInterp,” which aims to perform interpolation on a scattered dataset that resides in 2D or 3D space. In this case, a scattered data set in 3D space is defined by locations x and corresponding values v can be interpolated using a Delaunay triangulation of v. Put it in a simpler way: by controlling the locations and sizes of triangles, a human body constituted of triangle meshes is then generated.

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endnotes

Six Word Poems collected by Yirou Chen

Six people in six different professions tell their stories in six words. These six people come from six different places in the world and they use six different mediums to share their imaginations, sorrows and happinesses.

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endnotes

thoughts from Morgan Young:

Don’t Make Me A Tinder, I Already Ordered A Husband You can get anything on the Internet. This week, I downloaded Amazon Prime and ordered I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter, sugarless gum and a husband. They were all delivered within the hour, but my husband, Daryl, is coming in from Romania and might take a little bit longer to ship. I was really attracted to him namely because he didn’t share a picture, said he didn’t talk much and wasn’t looking for physical interaction. He also knows how to drive, and a love interest doubling as a chauffer is too good to be true. I deleted Uber from my phone in anticipation. I thought this was all perfect and figured, why strain myself meeting boys at school or in clubs when I could use my parents’ credit card for a quick transaction and never have to leave my bed? I hate to leave my bed. The walk from the kitchen for water and back is really miserable, so I told my parents that I was paying for summer classes, and used PayPal to order Daryl online. I hope he’s tall.

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