I met Wade Jensen and Moire Conroy at a coffee shop in midtown Manhattan for this story. Despite the numerous times I’ve met, you instantly get a sense of ease when you meet this pair. Perhaps it’s their laid-back style and attitude, whatever it is, their attitude and style clearly transcend into their design and creative process. I’ve been fortunate to see this duo nurture their jewelry collection from the beginning, and after months, I’m still amazed at the growth and attention they have dedicated into their craft.

After years of shared classes, honing and building their creative skills at The Art Institute of Chicago, Wade and Moire launched Jensen & Conroy in 2009. Their collection utilizes unusual found materials encased in various yarns and threads, giving it a cocoon like illusion. Their collection also includes large origami like bib necklaces and cuffs, folded into soft, avant-garde like flower buds, intertwined with brass chains. Some of their simpler pieces include, brass cuffs encased in an array of rich muted colored yarns, and various strands of necklaces with found objects encased in their signature yarn technique. Their collection like the times is constantly on an evolutionary ride, but still retain a rustic, artisanal quality to them. Despite some of the scale of the pieces, they are easy to wear and light. Often times you’re wondering if it’s part of the top or a necklace. They can be worn on it’s own, but when wearing multiples, it redefines the neckline adding a soft sculptural element to ones body. It’s a conversational piece, but a conversation you want to over hear and listen to. The collection is not for the soft-hearted, but someone who wants to make a statement without being over the top. Going forth, this duo plans to include scarves, headpieces, and add intricate rings to their already intricate family of necklaces and cuffs. They see their jewelry as vehicles to tell a story, whether it’s momento’s of their own or a clients, it’s personal and intimate.

As Wade and Moire continue to build their collection, their creative environment certainly aids to fuel this duo’s passion. Working out of their studio in Willamsburg, the L train often provides an eclectic display of people, not to mention the neighborhood itself. Wade and Moire find their community nurturing and inspiring. Like a blade of grass growing in the seams of concrete, Jensen & Conroy can be that blade between the seams of this concrete city.

article by J Y Kim

Declaration of Dependence is about the notion of being dependent on someone being good. They say that the most important message in this album is how vividly it reminds us that making music together is not a game, it’s not something to be undertaken lightly, this record is part of a much larger picture, a long and involved relationship that has had its good and bad times. The third album by Kings of Convenience, which came about when Eirik Bøe  and Erlend Øye met up, in 2007, on the same beach in Mexico that is pictured on the album’s cover.  They went to perform in a concert in the city one month later, which was the first time they had appeared together in two years – and that was when they got the feeling that it was time to make another record. Delighted by their creation, they say it‘s “the most rhythmical pop record ever, that features no percussion or drums”.

LA mixed media artist Leah Devora uses her landscape to make holographic 3 dimensional art,by layering of multiple images and motifs, to create a time capsule that reflects city life and political controversy, and in Hollywood that has to be celebrity old and new.

While her work has already attracted a mixed crowd from the Urban, contemporary, trendy, creative types to the singers and actors in the showbiz town, it has also been featured on the sets TV shows Six Feet Under, West Wing, Entourage, Without a Trace, Vampire Diaries, and has been designed as interior murals in theatres across the US.

As we wait for her next steps in her work, which will be working with 3d motion and movement through digital layering, her paintings are currently made to order and come exclusively in custom sizes, which are painted in color tones from sepia, to rich, bright shades that pop-in-your eye.

For more information visit www.leahdevora.com.

Yukako Sakakura’s London debut ‘Texture of Life’ at Reading Room Gallery, Soho, explores the link between fine art and the theatrical moods behind an apparel designers palette.

With sharp-intensity and dark colour, she obsessively draws a mini character of herself, Kako, in a narrative that chases the emotions of her childhood memories under each thought-provoking title. Using acrylic paints on canvas and ancient sumi ink on paper, this is the first time that the Glasgow and Vienna School of Art graduate has stretched her work onto giant 91 cm canvases, retailing at £4,500. Sakakura has already held international exhibitions in Japan, Scotland, England, France and Germany, and she returns with her next collection during the next London Fashion Week.

4th October – 12th November. For more information visit www.readingroom.com

We have arrived at the crossroads of functionality and tailoring, where we comfortably find ourselves today. Conventionality can make us experience our surroundings through rigid stagnant shapes and patterns. The human body and its traditional stance are being challenged by the newly sculpted Spring/Summer 2011 collection “transorganic” by À LA DISPOSITION.

The composition of the collection was drawn on the premises that the imperative lineage of body and its adherent anatomy do not constitute restrictions in wearability. Organic playful silhouettes embrace our natural stance in the dark, whereas explorative pieces meet us in the morning light. Our corporal limitations will further enhance the obsolete characteristic lines of tailoring, by allowing for creative structured detailing, tight linings spiralling off the body whilst subtly lifting the fabric away.

The complex usage of feather light fibres, silks, wools and rich cottons, with complementing shimmering textures, allude to translucent lines, which transcend the outlines of human sartorial fixations. The selected fabrics envelop us whilst we profoundly indulge ourselves. The body, as a mere configurational drawing is uniformly filled in by the contrast between soft and structured pieces. Materials collide to form an array of futuristic chromatic constructed garments, without compromising contemporary wearability and feminine integrity.

For this collection À LA DISPOSITION has worked with its signature pieces: the classic feminine suits, dresses, fitted shirts and pants. Flanking the traditional tailoring of the S/S 11 collection are conceptual sculpted pieces, all of which are exposed to a desaturated colour palette, infused with grey, stone, black and silver tones. À LA DISPOSITION has crafted a line where forms and function are fused in an attempt to enhance our perspective on classic fit, proportion, colour and traditional high-end fabric.