Summer Friday: How Two Top Music Publicists Spend Their Afternoons Out of the Office

Like the George Gershwin song goes, “Summertime, and the livin’ is easy.” Especially if your workweek is cut short thanks to “Summer Fridays.” The extra hours go a long way in making every weekend seem like a holiday. If you’re short on inspiration for your own Summer Fridays, just look to our new season-long series in which we ask industry people with cool jobs to share how they’ll be spending their free afternoons.

Chances are at least one of your favorite bands is repped by Press Here Publicity. Linda Carbone and Chloë Walsh, who started the full-service public relations company ten years ago, have worked with everyone from full-fledged icons to up-and-coming artists. Their current roster includes Blondie, Yoko Ono, Depeche Mode, Phoenix, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Bat for Lashes, The Kills, and Blood Orange, among others. Since the duo work out of opposite coasts—with Chloë based in L.A. and Linda in NYC—they shared with us two very different takes on how they’ll be spending their Summer Fridays.

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Chloë: I’m still in awe of the variety L.A. has to offer. From the office it’s about a fifty-minute drive to Topanga Canyon. It’s my favorite of all the canyons because it’s the greenest and reminds me the most of Europe, where I’m from. Looking down at the ocean, surrounded by olive trees, it feels very Mediterranean. There’s far more foliage on the hikes there, so it’s possible to walk mostly in the shade, unlike the other canyon hikes. Topanga is just a few minutes’ drive from Malibu and the best, wildest beaches. I’m always impressed by the surfers, and after a long week in the office, there’s nothing more relaxing than watching the sun drop down beneath the water.

Linda: Starting around 3 p.m. on a Friday afternoon, I shake off the stress of the week and take a wild ride with my silver slip of an Italian greyhound, Lulu. I shut down the office, turn off my phone, jump in the car with the windows wide open, turn up the volume (old vocalists Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, swing, Benny Goodman, Django Reinhardt), and breathe in the great gushes of sea-salty sun-drenched air.

A rabble of good friends and dogs unbundle at the house in East Hampton, and it’s bespoke margaritas, Marco Polo in the pool, and food. Lots and lots of good food! Grilling organic salmon, local handpicked veggies, and homemade Key lime pies by the dozens. After morning brunches and afternoons of shopping (often spending too much money), we arrive home to find the dogs waiting for a game of catch. Some evenings we meet up with friends at their houses, or go to dinner on the water and watch the sunset. Sometimes we head to the beach at dusk to sit on the rocks with a few bottles of wine, to tell stories under the moonlight while making plans for the future. Many evenings are spent falling asleep to old movies with the wind rustling in the trees above us.

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Emma Balfour on "daggy" style, Kate Moss and why she said yes to Ellery

Emma Balfour in conversation with Vogue.

Emma Balfour exchanged the life of a 90s supermodel for the one of a mother when she returned to her homeland at the end of the decade to raise her children in Sydney. However, fashion still beckoned and at times Balfour returned to modelling, always accompanied by the inevitable ‘comeback’ headline. Lately, she is “trying to say yes more often”, which for Australian label Ellery has resulted in her fronting their pre-fall 2014 campaign. Here, Vogue chats to Balfour about backstage beauty tricks and writing poetry.

How would you describe your style?

“In real life? Daggy, a bit arty, a bit dippy and practical. Sad but true.”

What influences your style?

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“My contrariness. Trying not to look like everyone else.”

Everyone keeps saying the ‘90s are back. Do you agree?

“They seem to be. It’s terrifying when your own era haunts you again so soon!”

How do you think your style fits in with the Ellery aesthetic?

“I think the uniqueness of Kym’s pieces really fits with me. They are clever, bold and different.”

You seem to be quite selective with your work. Why did you decide to do this Ellery campaign?

“Her clothes are great, and she’s the real deal; full of energy and ideas. I respond really well to people who are passionate and authentic.”

Is there a fashion job or person you could never say no to?

“I’ve been trying to say yes more often lately. It’s a bit of an adventure and I’ve been travelling a lot more as a result, which I love again now that my kids are old enough to barely miss me. I have luckily worked with almost everyone on my wish list, but I’d love to work with Juergen Teller again.”

Who is your favourite model?

“I’ve always had a soft spot for Kate [Moss] but I find Julia Nobis a bit fascinating these days. She looks so cool and above it all.”

What is the best beauty tip you picked up backstage or on a shoot?

“Mixing lip balm and eyeliner to make a great messy smudgy eye.”

You’re also a poet. Where is your favourite place to write poetry?

“In bed. Or on a plane. I seem to actually write best when I’m away from home with my fresh eyes in.”

What questions are you tired of being asked in interviews?

“Current designer questions. Cause seriously, what do I know? I rise horses and look after kids for most of the time!”

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How One Ukrainian Designer Is Winning the Hearts of Soccer and Fashion Fans Alike

It didn’t take much for RCR Khomenko’s pants to turn my head. And to be fair, they turned everyone else’s too. “Yo, mami, I love your pantaloooons!” a leather-clad biker screams to me as I walk to work in the cartoonish, cropped trousers. “Thanks, man!” I call back. A few blocks away, a young tourist asks to take a photo of me—specifically, my legs—and I cheerily strike a pose. I’m halfway to my desk when two of my colleagues leap up, pointing at my lower hemisphere with exclamations of sartorial love and desire. When I go to pick up lunch, one of the salad bar employees cheers, “I love that team!” pointing to the emblazoned logo across my ankles and making a hockey-stick swinging motion. I skip out like a child, practically beaming.

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First, keep in mind that my preferred trouser shade varies along a gray scale. These pants are anything but gray: quasi-motocross-inspired, similar to the bad-ass, logo-heavy trousers from Marc by Marc Jacobs for fall 2014 these are red, white and blue and regularly mistaken for promotional garb from The New York Rangers hockey team, largely due to a grapefruit-size Rangers logo at the hem. Much to what I imagine would be that salad bar employee’s chagrin, the pants actually have their roots across the Atlantic: Their colors and insignia are from the Rangers Football Club, a Glasgow-based soccer team. The Ukrainian designer Yasya Khomenko created the trousers out of children’s sheets and curtains procured on a trip to London. After showing them at London Fashion Week in her spring 2014 collection, a photo of the runway look quickly ended up on message boards for soccer enthusiasts. Responses ranged from one user’s succinct “WTF” to another’s calm retrospection: “That is made out of a Rangers bedspread. My wee boy has that set.”

A few months later, more than 1,800 miles away from Glasgow, I visited Khomenko’s apartment turned showroom in Kiev. Khomenko, whose collection was inspired by children’s play clothes (“I just wanted to make costume superheroes from home textiles,” said Khomenko) discovered the sporty curtains at a London bazaar. They were loud. They were reminiscent of an infant’s pajamas. They were very far off from my uniform of black skinny jeans and gray tops. And yet? I had to have them. I bought the trousers, took my first step out of a monochromatic wardrobe box, and I haven’t looked back yet—sometimes, all it takes is the right pair of trousers to make wearing something out of the ordinary mere child’s play.

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Twin Dressing: Urban Bush Babes's Cipriana Quann Shares a Photo Diary of Two Sisters' Style Evolution

Are you twins? (Yes.) Are you identical? (Yes.) Who is older? (I am.) Do you always dress alike? (Well . . . sometimes.) These are the type of questions that would shape and mold much of my and my sister’s childhood.

From a very young age my twin, Takenya, and I would partake in a nightly ritual of watching our mother choose the matching outfits we would wear to school the next morning. We then looked on as she delved into her own extensive wardrobe, planning what she would wear to her job as CEO of a major medical company—she favored office attire such as button-down blouses, high-waist slacks, and two-piece pinstriped suits.

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Growing up in the suburbs of Baltimore in the eighties and nineties, my sister and I were always fiercely passionate, whether through writing, reading, drawing, painting, or fashion. By the time we reached our teens, we were constantly borrowing clothes from each other, she would borrow my long skirts while I insisted on wearing her jumpers and customizing as we saw fit by cutting, sewing new hemlines, or creating something different altogether. Let’s just say, when the borrowed item was returned, it was unrecognizable . . . much to the other twin’s dismay.

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Of course, now through an older perspective, I can see how those little storms of rebellion against each other were simply ways to establish our own individuality. Though our lives would eventually enforce that individuality, diverging into very different paths—today, Takenya is the electronic singer and songwriter TK Wonder, currently on tour in Europe and Brazil, while I am editor in chief and cofounder of the lifestyle website Urban Bush Babes—we found common ground in our own creative niches. Here is a look back in photos of how our shared genes, heritage, and influences conspired to forge two very distinct expressions of style.

Warsaw, an undiscovered fashion hotspot

From bespoke tailoring houses such as Zaremba, which remained a favourite during the Communist era by stashing outlawed "bourgeois" fabrics for clients, to newly graduated designers, Warsaw has a surprising diversity of fashion talent, both old and new. My recent visit to Poland coincided with the graduation of Warsaw Art Academy's first ever fashion diploma students, a talented bunch, including womenswear designer Kasia Skórzyńska, whose vivid prints, inspired by the films of Wong Kar-Wai, showed accomplishment and international appeal.

Also in early June, outside of any official week or season, national (fashion) hero Robert Kupisz drew an impressive crowd to a vast warehouse space across the river from the city centre, for a show that was deliberately commercial and relaxed in style, the soft denims and especially the oversized flannel shirts pushing Kupisz's design into more high-fashion territory through tactile fabric treatments and proportion.

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Another of Warsaw's most-established designers is Ania Kuczyńska, whose beautiful boutique at Mokotowska features minimal though supremely elegant designs for men and women, accessories (including a unisex bestselling bag inspired by a trip to Shanghai, over 3,000 of which were sold last year) and housewares. Kuczynska's aesthetic is very distinctive, revealing often mystical yet subtle inspirations – evident whether you are looking at a beautifully draped shirt or pair of trousers, a simple bag or a gorgeous ceramic plate.

Some of the most covetable designs I encountered were by Mariusz Przybylski, a designer with an appealing minimal aesthetic offering clothes at Zara-level prices but designed by the man himself and produced in Poland (in a factory known for producing brands such as Burberry), beautifully cut and using high-quality materials. His pared-back separates for men and women (this season's menswear included light wool/moleskin cotton biker jackets, chunky cotton knits and texturised sweatshirts and joggers) is best experienced at his boutique, located in one of the chicest neighborhoods in Warsaw to stroll in.

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As with many cities, Warsaw's fashion community forms a branch of its wider artistic network; many of the graduate designers cited films as their main inspiration. While I was there the Zachęta National Gallery of Art had an exhibition of work by legendary Polish graphic designer and poster artist Henryk Tomaszewski, whose designs have featured in menswear by Comme des Garçons.

If you find yourself on a weekend break in Warsaw, besides eating outside at one of the city's al fresco dining spots (residents are well provided for, thanks to the city's long hot summers), I recommend checking out the city's fashion boutiques and independent stores. There is a growing sense of excitement about the city's design, building on Warsaw's history of producing fine artists and film-makers.

A Look Back at the iPhone in Vogue: Kendall Jenner Selfies and More

As of today, the groundbreaking smartphone turns seven. Can you believe it’s been that long? And don’t you feel like we always had them? Well, we didn’t. Introduced at a time when flip phones were at the helm of mobile technology, the sleek iPhone, with its large touch screen and finger navigation, sent shockwaves throughout the industry.

Everyone remembers his or her first iPhone experience. Mine was in my hometown in Dominican Republic, as we were rehearsing for a school dance (don’t ask), when my friend brought it over. I was immediately obsessed. Who could go back to a flip phone after that?

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Fast forward to 2014, and the iPhone is still the quintessential smartphone to have. From working on our phone at the wee hours of the morning, to falling asleep next to it and being woken up by it, to using it to surreptitiously see what our friends (or frenemies!) are up to, or making impulse purchases or impulse dates or finding our way home at the end of the night (thank God for Google Maps!)—what would we do without it? I personally don’t know where I would be without Instagram and Spotify—plus, how else would I FaceTime my mom to show her my latest Barneys purchase (and, really, to see if she offers to reimburse me)? Without Instagram, how else would I know exactly what Mindy Kaling is doing at any given time? Or how Beyoncé is feeling today?

Lest we think the iPhone was made solely for us, don’t forget how revolutionary it has been in the fashion industry as a whole. Cara Delevingne used an iPhone to take the first runway selfie video this past February at Giles’s fall 2014 runway show during London Fashion Week. Burberry captured its entire spring 2014 collection live—with an iPhone. And let’s not forget Vogue’s first-of-its-kind Instagram shoots—you guessed it! Shot with an iPhone.

So here’s to the iPhone, the device we couldn’t live without, for the first lucky seven generations, and the many more to come (one every year, right Apple?). iPhones in Vogue—it’s iconic, no?

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A First Look at Duro Olowu's New Pop-Up Art Show “More Material”

Although he shies away from the term curator, London-based designer Duro Olowu stands more comfortably on the border of art and fashion than many of his peers; a position that seems all the more apparent with the launch of his second group show and pop-up boutique at Salon 94 Bowery tonight.

Titled “More Materials,” the installation is just that: a continuation of the work he started back in February 2012 with his first pop-up shop and exhibit during New York Fashion Week, an eye-catching collection of objet trouvés from the designer’s personal archive. “You grow, and like most things, you find more things, you discover more things. But what is really relevant now is just this concept of fashion, art, and objects, and really showing how women are perceived,” he says. “And how they perceive themselves.”

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Tapping into the work of artists who often use fashion to explore self-identity, Olowu calls upon some of his favorite modern artists like fashion photographer Juergen Teller, sculptor Rachel Feinstein and creative polymath Hassan Hajjaj to articulate his vision. Placed alongside dizzying patterned capes from Olowu’s spring 2014 collection, Teller’s raw silkscreens of model-of-the-moment Ajak Deng, Feinstein’s original sculptures, and Hajjaj’s never-before-seen video of a woman reclining, which greets you at the door. This combination of art follows the patchwork energies of Olowu’s own designs, where seemingly mismatched prints live together in harmony. “That link with clothing and fashion is still very strong with this show. You look left and you can feel the emphasis on textile and clothing and jewelry and objects, and at the same time you are not overwhelmed by the art in the show,” he says. “It all seems to form one huge cabinet of curiosities.”

Show-goers can shop the wares of Olowu’s current and past collections, while connecting with the work that inspired them like Antonio Lopez’s sensual instamatics of Grace Jones and Pat Cleveland, or a rare collection of Nigerian Yoruba “bubas.” And while “More Materials” is a selling show, Olowu and the artists involved don’t see it as a big advertisement; it’s much more about mutual admiration than anything else—an admiration Olowu understands all too well: the designer is married to Studio Museum of Harlem’s director Thelma Golden, after all. And with the new exhibition he’s putting the wide-ranging artistic sensibilities of the stylish women who wear his clothes into the frame. “The woman changes, she gets older, she gets wiser, more comfortable with herself,” he says “and that has to permeate the show.”

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