McCarren Park

Sharing laughs and carbs with Kyle, McCarren Park, Brooklyn

I sure do love McCarren Park in New York: nestled between the loving arms of Williamsburg and Greenpoint, it's such a nexus of activity and energy for young artists, fashionables, winos, volleyballsters, budding baseball stars, and sticky-fingered children.  On any given afternoon, the asphalt path is equal parts catwalk and racetrack.  So why is it so dirty and run-down?  As my friend Kyle and I were ruining our waistlines there last night, we couldn't help but think that such a pivotal location with such high traffic could stand to be significantly cleaner and more botanically diverse.

Spread across 35 acres and four blocks, the park has 7 tennis courts, 5 baseball fields, 12 handball courts, a pristine running track encircling a verdant soccer field (my personal outdoor gym), and, along the majority of the largest center block, a vast expanse of dirt that seems to be growing only cigarette butts.

Surely a park located in an area famous for its artist population could be more aesthetically diverse? Where is the environmental art, the sculpture garden?  Most importantly, perhaps, where are the plants? I tend to think of parks as having multiple purposes: recreational, athletic, social, environmental, and educational.  While the athletic resources are well-kept, in the last two respects, McCarren is quite lacking; the only garden in the park is a tiny, uninviting corner surrounded by a gate, and the only botanical education the rest of the park has to offer is to confirm the failure of styrofoam cups to biodegrade.

Kyle and I are mulling over proposing a beautification project for the park, especially since the olympic-size pool on the north end, closed since 1984, is set to re-open summer 2011.  By this time next year, the pool will be packed with young up-and-comings working on their tattooed tans, so wouldn't it be wonderful to unveil a brighter, greener garden surrounding it as well?

On Sustainability

The question of 'sustainable fashion'- beyond a Whole Food's eco-aesthetic, that is- rumbles through my thoughts quite often, and today I read this on Luxirare, regarding her recent experiences at a Barney's sale:

There is nothing that excites me more than the Alaia rack at Barneys (Actually there is but I said that for effect). He is just in a league of his own, he makes the best clothes, or at least I think so. The designs are detailed but minimal, nothing litters his designs without reason. They are just so incredibly well crafted and his technique cannot be copied easily, I think his clothes are worth buying because they are sustainable. They transcend trends and the quality is so high that you would never want to throw it away. I really can’t say that for many of the clothes I see (in terms of them being “worth it”, I get sick of everything so easily) but I can definitely say I’d never get sick of owning one of his designs.

What is the shape of fashion in the 21st century? How do circumstances such as climate change, food shortages, overpopulation, and media saturation affect people's choices in garb, and designer's choices regarding what to create? I actually wake up some mornings with questions burning my mind such as "How does Facebook effect what I'll wear today?" and "What might Barack Obama have to do with the length of women's skirts?" This stems from an actual conversation I overheard in my childhood between my grandfather and my mother regarding the economics of skirt length. They were trying to establish a correlative theory as we all sat by the pool getting sunburned. Yes, skirt lengths became significantly shorter during the Roaring 20's, a time of economic uncertainty but general excitement regarding stock markets, but they also became shorter during WWII due to material rationing.  Meanwhile, long skirts were the status quo during the 1930's, when the economy could hardly be described as flourishing, and again in 60's hippie movement, simultaneous with the invention of micro-minis! There seemed to be no hard and fast rule.

Though it is impossible to establish those lovely GUTs (Grand Unified Theories) regarding something as basic as how many of your friends are on unemployment versus how much leg a lady is willing to show, one can certainly perceive the effects of the economy on people's choices in clothing purchases. Many an article has gurgled to the surface of newsprint regarding "Recessionistas"; "The Sudden Resurgence of Black On The Runways This Season"; "How to Buy Basics- with Style!" etc. A few months ago, Bill Cunningham's crackled voice waxed poetic on the New York Times' website over a photo montage of women on the streets of New York wearing their favorite classics, salvaged from the depths of their closets.

Certainly, for me as a designer it is a question of extreme pertinence to predict what demands consumers will have on their clothing. One of the most basic requirements involved in a human's quotidien existence can be as minimal and utilitarian as it can be frivolous and unaffordable. This relationship between form and function, durability and cost, style/"trendiness" and investment, is one of the challenges I find most exciting in designing clothes.

And with that, I leave you with a photo of melted ice cream in Central Park, discovered the weekend of July 4: