I’ve never been to Amsterdam but I’ve heard it’s supposed to be quite a place. I was actually looking for something else on the map today when I decided just to have a quick look on Amsterdam. I was stunned; Amsterdam is filled with cool places.

I know that Sergi’s friends were going to Amsterdam not long ago and he listed a few cool places already but I felt the need to write a post about Amsterdam myself. Not because I have a specific place to tell you about but because there’s so much places pinned out on the map that I don’t even know where to start if I ever visit Amsterdam.

However, I know I’d love to go to this café that’s only open on Sundays, but most of all I’d love to visit Red light fashion district. Surely the Red light district is known for other things than fashion, but the transformation that has been made after designers was allowed to borrow some of the red lit windows, is supposedly amazing. Reading about it I’m convinced that this is one of the trendiest places you can visit in Europe at the moment.  What do you think?

As I love fashion I can’t avoid talking about two streets in Rome with plenty of vintage shops, one of them is “Via del Governo Vecchio” and the other one is “la Via del Boschetto”.

At 45 Via del Governo Vecchio we can find “Vestiti usati Cinzia” a great vintage store. Upon arriving at “Cinzia” you can’t avoid to stop; infinite lines of 70’s handbags, shoes, boots, and even YSL shoes from the 60’s for a ridiculously good price. There are also sunglasses, party dresses, jeans, jewellery … everything you can imagine from the past and ready to take home with you!

Moreover, once you put your foot inside you can’t leave; you get completely indulged in a “grandma- wardrobe- smell”, a little dog just by the door looking at costumers expressions when they walk in, a vintage expert and the managers of “Vestiti usati Cinzia”. This is one obligatory stop when you go to Rome.

The whole street of Via del Governo Vecchio (from the unmatched sculpture of Pasquino) is truly an exposure of antique libraries, young fashion designers, artists and sculptors who settled their studios here. If you’re hungry there is also a pretty good ice-cream shop …

Finally, I would like to talk about “Pulp” which you can find on 140 la Via del Boschetto. This road also has very interesting shops but with a different atmosphere; the previous one is like experiencing the deepest of Italian art whilst this street is more cosmopolitan.

You can find shops with ballroom dresses, cosmopolitan pizzerias, climbing plants that are all around the facade and in the middle of this you will find PULP. It’s shop that every Thursday receives exclusive vintage collections from Gucci and even Channel. Of course it’s very cheap prices; I think it’s a bargain to shop vintage Versace for less than 60 Euros! The only problem is that they don’t always have clothes to sell… but when they do, they are simply the best.

Hope you like it!

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Como me gusta mucho la moda no puedo evitar hablar de dos calles de Roma plagadas de tiendas vintage, una es la Via del Governo Vecchio y la otra la Via del Boschetto.

En la primera podemos encontrar “vestiti usati Cinzia” en el número 45 de la Via del Governo Vecchio, toda esa calle (partiendo de la inigualable escultura de Pasquino) es una auténtica exposición de librerías antiguas, tiendas de moda de diseñadores jóvenes, artistas y escultores que tienen sus talleres allí, también hay heladerías buenísimas…

pero al llegar a “Cinzia” uno no puede evitar pararse, hileras infinitas de bolsos de los 70’s, zapatos y botas,¡ incluso llegué a ver unos zapatos de YSL de los 60’s por un precio de risa!

También tienen gafas de sol, vestidos de fiesta, vaqueros, joyas… ¡todo lo que puedas imaginar llegado del pasado y listo para llevar a casa!

Además una vez pones un pie dentro ya no puedes salir, te envuelve por completo el olor a “armario de nuestra abuela”, hay un perro pequeño sentado a la entrada mirando las expresiones de la gente, un experto en vintage él y los dueños de “vestiti usati Cinzia”, una parada obligada al ir a Roma.

Para acabar me gustaría hablar de “PULP”, en la Via del Boschetto 140, esta calle también tiene tiendas muy curiosas pero con un aire diferente, así como la anterior es como meterse de lleno en el arte italiano más profundo, esta otra es más cosmopolita.

Con tiendas de atuendos para bailes de salón, pizzerías cosmopolitas, plantas enredaderas que se comen todas las fachadas, y allí está “PULP”, tienda que recibe cada jueves prendas exclusivas de colecciones vintage de Gucci e incluso Chanel.
Y desde luego todo a precios muy bajos, yo creo que comprar un Versace vintage por no más de 60 euros es un lujo. ¡Pero ojo! que no siempre tienen venta pero cuando tienen… son los mejores.

El vintage de lujo por no más de 6o euros en “PULP”, Via del Boschetto, 140. Y el paraíso vintage y de segunda mano,con piezas perfectamente conservadas en “Cinzia vestiti usati” en Via del Governo Vecchio, 45.

Hope you like it!

Pommefritz collective has been invited to take part into Box Shock, a project by Ronald Lewis Facchinetti, better known as ContainerArt’s art director.

Box Shocks is a network of contemporary art events that will be held throughout the month of October in Milan, Monza and Sesto San Giovanni: four curators, over 40 artists and 70 installations linked through an urban museum-labyrinth mounted in innovative city structures. Box Shock’s curatorial approach opens a new perspective on public and private musings: each work, happening or body concert is conceived for a precise space, an inner place planned and designed to isolate and protect the viewer at the moment of his/her aesthetic contemplation.

After its success at the Mantua Festival delle Passioni, Pommefritz collective will exhibit DAP (Passions Automatic Dispenser) again by placing it in the MuseoLabirinto special events @ Box Up Self Storage [Via San Maurizio al Lambro 1. Sesto San Giovanni – Opening: 17th October from 6 pm].

The beauty containers born with the experience ContainerArt don’t just enter cities’ art places. They also meet and consolidate in an archetypal figure: a cell structure MuseumLabyrinth of Contemporary Art with over 20 installations by artists and designers in order to lose your self and then meet yourself again through art. Facchinetti and his team of curators transform the interior of Self Storage Box Up in Sesto San Giovanni into a temporary labyrinth of installations which play both the role of Minotaur and that of Ariadne’s thread. Each box has one installation.

For the occasion, a true circus magician will read the photos discharged by DAP (Passions Automatic Dispenser), foreseeing the future of those who would have inserted a Euro into the dispenser. Take advantage and find out what fate has in store for you: don’t miss the opening and buy Pommefritz products!

Rue Ste-Catherine, Bordeaux

I was looking for new ideas of places to let you know about, folks, and I remembered that a friend of mine spent an entire year in Bordeaux. I’m pretty sure you’ve already heard about this area because of the eponymous wine but you might not know a lot more about it.

Bordeaux is a nice city, the seventh largest metropolitan area in France, according to Wikipedia, full of students and cool places, according to my friends. And it’s for this last part that I thought it could be good to give you inspiration for your next holidays while asking my mate what are the good places to go to…

To make all of you guys happy, I asked her to provide me with a nice place to have a coffee, a nice place to listen to good music as well as a nice place to improve your mind.

Let’s start with the cultural part. If you enjoy contemporary art galleries, it’s worth the trip to go to the Tinbox. The Tinbox is gallery that supports both French and international artists. They also have a studio and, here comes the amazing part, they even have a small mobile gallery that regularly move to various locations.

After having admired nice pieces of art work, what about having a coffee to share your thoughts about it with your friends? If you are in the mood to enjoy a sunny terrace (yes, at this period of the year, it’s still warm in the South East of France), well, this cool café seems to be the right place to chat with your pals as well as the regular customers.

To finish the day, since you were chilling under the sun, I’m sure you will have enough energy to enjoy a visit to Le Cat and jiggle on to The Clash or The Arctic Monkeys guitare riffs. It is apparently the place to go if you are a massive fan of rock music! Very tempting, isn’t it?

As you might know me and Camille as well as another friend of ours are thinking of exploring a bit more of the UK . Edinburgh, where we initially planned to go to is a bit too far this time, so it’ll have to be another place. The problem is that we can’t really decide where to go. I think my vote goes for Bristol.

It’s definitely a good place for street art but I’ve also heard it’s a city well worth visiting for other reasons.  I found a lot of cool stuff on the map, but in particular I’d like to go to The Cooler, a night club which seems to be the perfect place for the three of us going on the trip. It been a while since I’ve danced my socks off and this really seems like the place to do it. Also, I can’t help to think that Friend & Co Gallery seems like a very pleasant gallery.

So, is Bristol the right place to go, or should we go somewhere else?

As I already mentioned so many times before, I’m originally from Sweden, but what I haven’t mentioned is the fact that I’m half Finnish. Both my parents were born in Finland and almost all of my relatives live in Finland. This of course means that I’ve spent a lot of time in Finland over the years. Unfortunately I haven’t had chance to visit there for a few years so I think It’s time to go again soon.

Meanwhile I’ll live on my great memories from there; one of them being my auntie always taking me to Pippurimylly, one of my favourite restaurants. It’s located on a street corner a bit outside of the city heart. Without knowing about it you would probably not find it, but it’s worth a visit for their well priced and tasty food.

Another of those memories is The Market Square. I always bought sweet peas in such huge amounts that it should have lasted a whole year.  Of course you can find a lot more stuff than sweet peas, it’s actually filled with all kind of discoveries to be made.

Not mentioning Finnish design in a post about Finland would almost be a crime and of course it’s a big part of my Finnish childhood memories. My mum, who loves design, dragged me through all these designer shops like Iittala and Marimekko. That’s not very fun when you’re 10 but I love these shops today as I really appreciate Finnish design now.

Finland might be a small country but there’s definitely a lot to discover and it’s well worth a visit.

darkensiva

Although I’m London based, I’m lucky enough to live with people from other countries such as Portugal and Greece. The house is a big melting pot and I really enjoy it. To us, it is indeed one more way to share and discover things we don’t know in London but also things from our respective countries and cultures.

One of my flatmates has recently come back from holidays in Greece (Athens to be exact) where he heard about a collective of artists and designers called White Box.

What I really like about the White Box concept is its double-objective: first, they have a showroom to both promote craft industry and organise exhibitions by artists and designers from Greece and, then, they try to facilitate the communication between up-and-coming designers and the public. To do so, some of them contribute to the blog Athenwears.

They always have great collection of bags, clothes and jewelleries that you can be sure you will never see on anyone else but you, as the Moldy Peaches used to say.

I really fancy to go to Athens now. Who’s coming?

Sherin is one of the lovely fashion bloggers who attended the Ka JOY store event and searched for the Ka miniatures. As we like her blog and her style we were curious to know about her favourite places, so we caught up with Sherin to ask her about that:

Who are you in a few words?

My name is Sherin and I live in London. I’ve just graduated from university so I’m figuring out what to do with my life right now. But I love to go out, meet new people and just have fun.

You run your blog HiFashion with Leia: could you tell us a bit more about the blog and this unique partnership?

HiFashion is a lifestyle blog. We mainly focus on fashion, but also like to add health and everyday life tips. We started it about 9 months ago, and it’s just so much fun to write and get to know other bloggers.
I and Leia were friends at university and both shared a love for fashion. Between us we realised that there were quite a few fashion related blogs out there, so we decided that it would be fun to start our own.

We have seen a bit of your choice of clothes and accessories on the pictures and the video of the event but how would you define your personal style?

At the event, I’d just come from work, so my outfit wasn’t the most creative. But I think my style is quite hard to define. I suppose it’s casual, but also quite fun. I like to add colour to my outfits as well as mix and match different styles. I like to mix an edgy look with more feminine things, so I’ll pair Converses with a dress, or add lots of accessories when wearing a cool t-shirt and jeans.

What is your favourite secret place to shop in London?

I live in North London, and it’s filled with great little places to shop. Crouch End, Muswell Hill and Hampstead have great little independent boutiques, with stuff you won’t find anywhere else, along with great little restaurants. But out of the 3, Crouch End has to be my favourite place.

What are your favourite songs to listen to when you go on a shopping trip?

This is a really tough one. I have such a wide range of stuff on my MP3 player, and just put it all on random. I think Lady Gaga’s ‘Just Dance’ always puts me in a perfect mood to shop. I also have a lot of Rock on my MP3 player, such as Guns N’ Roses and Florence and the Machine, which gives me a lot of energy to be on my feet all day. But I definitely have more American rock than anything else on my MP3 player.

And after a long afternoon of shopping where do you like to relax?

There are such amazing parks to relax in, Hyde Park is great because you have that boating lake and it’s just so relaxing to sit in the boats (unless you’re the one actually peddling). But for me, nothing compares to just sitting at home and relaxing with a good book.

Make sure to check out HiFashion and if you have any questions for Sherin feel free to post them in the comments.

Today I’m feeling a bit unfocused, I’m still in holiday-mood and I’m dreaming of all the places I want to visit and experience. I thought that having a look on the Go Find It map would help my daydreaming a bit. It sure did: the map is filled with so much stuff I wish I could do and see. I’d love to save up a huge amount of money and just travel the world. Clearly I won’t have the money to do this for a very, very long time but planning for the future is never wrong

Italy caught my eye and I got stuck looking for places there, it seems like such a lovely country.

I would love to experience some Italian shopping (who wouldn’t?), this store is one I’d like to visit. Then I’d love to go to an art museum and also look at some of the street art Italy has to offer, this one seems quite nice, don’t you think? Finally I would have to have dinner, I love Italian food so I don’t think I would have a hard time finding a restaurant, but Fuori Luogo seems like a great place. Of course I would also have to try out the night life: Tunnel in Milan is probably a place I’d like since underground clubs is my thing.

Oh, lovely dreams, I better start saving straight away…

28th September – 10th October 2009.
A group show curated by Camilla Boemio, with the support of the city of Rome.
Among others, some works by Gabriele Basilico, Michael Wolf and Shaun Gladwell. Auditorium Arte – Parco della Musica, Roma

Go Find It is a blog about street art among other things, all right, but I’d like to step forward… The topic is captivating: is it possible to speak about architecture as a form of art? Man has always had the need to express himself through signs and lines, i.e. art, even since prehistory. This discipline has been cultivated through the centuries and it has evolved in many forms. The most practical form of art, i.e. architecture, draws its origin from the need to defend man from nature, and along the years its role has become that of shaping what is around him.

So I would like to recommend to you the first exhibition of the art show of light forms/and urban visions created by Daniela Pastore and promoted by the Studio of Contemporary Architecture, in collaboration with the Celebration of Architecture “Festa dell’ Architettura”, curated by Camilla Boemio. “Cities – places visionaries” confronts the theme of Architecture to the polyhedral panorama of international cities- emotional foreshortenings, planning. It’s about rediscovering the city as if it was an absolute protagonist: unpublished views are continually in fermentation: change and metamorphasing structures are considered in the concept of “no space”.

A travel in the contemplation and the city exploration.

A participating collective of some of the most famous European photographers have dedicated their own artistic search to the industrial landscape and the city areas: Gabriel Basilico, Marco Zanta, Michael Wolf and Peter Schloer.
There is a double level to read the concept: it was analyzed as well using the video art by two of the most interesting international video artists of the last years. They have reinterpreted the topic of the city architectures: Shaun Gladwell with “In a station of a Metro” (2006) and Damir Ocko with “The end of the World” (2007) (with Dmitry Gutov).

Collaborating galleries include: Bugno Art Gallery – Venice, Zonca & Zonca – Milan, Studio La Città – Verona, Nina Lumer – Milan, Gallery Tiziana di Caro, Salerno – Bernhard Knaus Fine Art, Frankfurt.

You can find Max on Design Radar and on Twitter.