AGE OF REASON'S WORLD

We're dying share all our SS12 photos with you, but we're being restrained until the website launch on Feb 29th. In the meantime here's a little peek into our world. 

Above is the Age of Reason desk, variously used by Ali and Charlie. Our favourite item on this desk is the bird painting by Victor Reyes of the 7th Letter Crew. This was an art swap with Reyes, who Ali did a pen and ink drawing for. Our other favourite thing is the wooden medicine man mask hanging on the wall on the left.  Ali bartered for this in Bandiagara Mali a few years back. There's also a South African tumb piano hanging on the wall on the right above the old travelling chest.

This is Ali's drawing table on a lovely sunny day. Most of the furniture was lovingly collected from Spitalfields market and ebay. The storage boxes came from a stall at a fair in Brighton. The best thing though is the little Phil Frost painting, which takes pride of place above the desk.  We like a bit of art. 

DESIGN BUREAU FEATURES AGE OF REASON- JANUARY 2012 ISSUE

The fabulous Design Bureau Magazine has featured our Anarchy Jack Bold scarf in their January- February issue. The mag is a goldmine if you are into art, architecture, fashion and design. Served up in a swish  clean format with beautiful photography to boot, this is one mag we think we'll be subscribing to in future. 

http://www.wearedesignbureau.com

Anarchy Jack Bold is available from Bordello London. 

Priced between £39 and £120 depending on size. 

http://www.bordello-london.com

AGE OF REASON IN THE TIMES

As illustrated By Badaude

We love this mention in today's Times T2 by the very talented Badaude who creates an illustrated fashion piece in the paper every week! She's written "Age of Reason makes oversized silk scarves, whose designs are more than a little naughty." 

We love how she's picked up on our general naughty nature. 

What a charming point by piece about scarves.  We love!

http://badaude.typepad.com/

CURRENT FASHION FAVES- STEVEN CHU & SUSIE BUBBLE

We've recently been drawn to the work of photographer Steven Chu who produces strikingly simply yet beautiful fashion imagery. Following Susie Bubble 's blog about Age of Reason in her Scarf Series last week, we did a bit of online snooping.  Hey presto, the perfect storm; we found a photo of our favorite blogger by our favorite photographer.

This is a candid fashion week picture, but Chu's fashion and portrait work strikes us as almost painterly in its composition and use of the human form. We were particularly inspired by his "Academy of the Frozen" series for theonestowatch.com . His classical references are strong, but steer clear of cliche; to me he evokes Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer in his use of light. The images are simple but bold. We'd love to see him photograph our scarves one day.

Susie Bubble is no stranger to superlatives, so we won't bore on with more.  But it's hard not to admire how hard she works at blogging, and the depth of her coverage.  She's made fashion blogging into a viable profession by offering a detailed, observant, critical analysis of fashion as it happens, and without a snooty insider attitude. She just loves clothes, and normal people can understand what she's on about.   She's also much imitated, well plagiarised really. For example just hours after she'd blogged about our scarves, dozens of bloggers around the world had simply copied and pasted her words directly into their own blogs. Make up your own minds about flattery and imitation.

PUG-A-LICIOUS

This is Penny wearing one of our AW11 Punk Pug scarves. We think she looks fabulous. 

Penny lives at Capture Factory where our lookbook pics are taken.  We love Penny. 

http://www.capturefactory.co.uk/

New Scarf Book

Thames Hudson have just published this fab book on scarves, described as "The definitive work on scarves in the 20th century." We are particularly enjoying the Westwood and Liberty ones. 

Book Details Here

Ship Shape

We love this old engraving of Marie Antoinette wearing a ship on her head. 

If you want to read all about this crazy Queen's wardrobe we recommend 

"Queen of Fashion: What Marie Antoinette Wore to the Revolution" by Caroline Weber. 

Winter Inspiration

The moody English winter coast at Brighton. Faded grandeur can be so beautiful. 

Brick Lane Bird -By ROA

 We were on the way to pick up art supplies for our SS 2012 scarf collection when we spied this huge bird. Is it a stork? Is it a heron? Who knows, but we like it a lot. You never can tell what sights and sounds will inspire next summer's collection. 

In the meantime there's palpable excitement about our AW 2011-12 collection, which have only been seen by a very select and very small group of buyers. 

We have subsequently discovered that this delightful bird is by the artist ROA. You can see more HERE at Unurth. 

HERE

Fashion Weak!

We are going weak at the knees for London Fashion Week. And it's not just a result of days spent tottering round Somerset House in Loubotins; there are some truly exquisite things to be seen.  


We really enjoyed Lara Bohinc's scarf launch: she's printed her jewellery on scarves. Beautiful. It's so different from what we do, but we adore it.  Hopefully this time next year we'll be rubbing shoulders in London's finest scarf departments. 


 And we had a lovely chat with Desiree Mejer at Fake London. She has some beautiful designs up her sleeve,  and a really welcoming atmosphere in her showroom.  Just like us she's channeling the Brit thing in style. 


x

Picture of the day...

We thought this looked like fun...

Perhaps she got her idea from this lady in an even earlier picture

.

We would recommend wearing a scarf around that hat, just to keep it on when the wild beast bucks. 

Seshoeshoe Fabric (Se-shwe- shwe)

Our designer Ali has a vivd memory from her childhood in Southern Africa: the smell of freshly dyed Seshoeshoe cloth.  It's a lovely fresh inky smell,  the smell of crafted newness. This gorgeous heavy cotton is unique to Southern Africa and easily rivals the best Liberty print for beauty.  It often features African animals and flora in tight patterns.  Ali remembers indigo or brown shoeshoe, but it also comes in red. The cloth is stiff when new, but soon softens up when washed. It makes great skirts, dresses and furnishings.  Lesotho, where Ali grew up, manufactures it, as does South Africa.


  Some of our favorite designs are the Nelson Mandela print below, and a baby elephant print pictured on this cushion cover;  a treasure, which Ali was given as a child.

You can buy seshoeshoe at:
http://www.africanfabric.co.uk


And here is a brilliant blog entry from South Africa on Shweshwe
Click HERE!

Vamp it up!

We love to dress up at Age of Reason. At the moment we are inspired by Theda Bara, 1920's vamp actress extarordinaire.  We hope people will be wearing our scarves like this next winter. 

Get Inspiration in London

We love to get inspiration for our scarf designs from the sights of London. Some of our favorite places to go are...


The Wallace Collection at Hertford House, Manchester Square, London W1U 3BN 
When we met Vivienne Westwood  at Paris fashion week a few years ago she was raving about this backstage.  She told us to go and see it, we were terrified (of Vivienne not the Wallace collection)  but we did. 


The V&A is outstanding in every way. The collections of historic costumes are out of this world. 


Hampstead Heath A walk in the park is wonderful. 


Fournier Street in Spitalfields, London E1, is a beautiful street of 18th century houses. Gilbert and George make no secret of living down this road.  


Princelet street nearby is also magnificent.  Number 19, an original Huguenot house, is dedicated to the history of immigration. The house is one of the most amazing buildings in the Uk.  


The British Museum is an old favorite that we revisit time and time again.  The African collections are particularly inspirational to us. 

Happy New Year scarf lovers!

Here at "Age of Reason" our New Year's resolution is to experiment with more fabulous ways to tie scarves.  We've been experimenting with plaiting 3 of our designs together, and the result is rather gorgeous.  

We absolutely love Liberty's scarf hall and the extensive scarf related resources on their website. You can see their wonderful scarf tying videos here in which stylist Lauranne Plat demonstrates chic technique.  And they even have a scarf blog! 

We are Listening to- Dark Horses

Dark Horses single "Alone" comes out today. If you don't know them already listen here on their myspace page. They are as dark, deep and sublime as the name suggests. The music is like sinking into complex black treacle. We love Dark Horses.

Photo by Pierre Angélique