"Clothes make the man". So said American humorist and author Mark Twain. His famous quote was a comment on power. "Naked people", he concluded, "have little or no influence on society". In the hundred plus years since Twain's observation, considerably less of our...
Jack Frost knocked on your scribe's front door this morning and declared the interior temperature as officially "frosty". That means just one thing (other than loading the wheelbarrow with gold bullion and trundling down to the gas provider); it's time to break out...
Although recognised primarily as an architect, Charles-Édouard Jeanneret-Gris, known by the pseudonym he adopted in 1920 - Le Corbusier - tipped his hand to many pursuits as an urban planner, artist, designer and theorist. The Swiss Embassy in London is not open to...
A sleek splash in the Olympic pool by Samantha Arevalo Salinas of Ecuador in the women’s 800-meter freestyle heat yesterday inspired your scribe to refresh her interest in Ecuadorean rugs (alfombras). Olga Fisch was a significant figure in the global promotion and...
On the rare occasion the BBC has network problems your COVER scribe enjoys looking at the fiery Armageddon Clown 502 Bad Gateway message. Clown chappy looks quite chipper given the firestorm behind him. Return from whence you came, instructs the BBC. Very droll. And a...
Think Olympink. Yes, inspired by the colours of the fractured Olympic 2012 logo, pink has been declared the navy blue of the Olympics (to paraphrase Vogue magazine impresario Diana Vreeland's 1962 colour declaration.) We at COVER do believe it's possible to wear head...
It's the heady moment we at COVER dream of; a gold strike during a lunchtime shufti at the charity shop (thrift store in American speak). This week your scribe bagsied a mint copy of The Contemporary Decorative Arts from 1940 to the present day, published in 1980....
Should we have a staff shoe at COVER? Yes. Time to start that e-petition so COVER's big Kahuna will buy us a slew of Kiyoshi Yamamoto's hand printed leather textile shoes from the 2012/13 season of the Aurlandskoen shoe company. The ancient Norse warriors who named...
Mon dieu, happy Bastille Day to our Gallic chums across the Channel! Although we in England escaped the "French disease" of revolution (nevermind the 17th century Civil War), we celebrate your day with a link to the Kyoto Costume Institute and their French Revolution...