Florence Welch makes jewelry!

Though she's a great musician with two albums under her (fabulous) belt, Florence Welch, of Florence + The Machine, has become known as quite the fashionista. She's been seen in outfits designed by the likes of Yves St. Laurent, Givenchy and Alexander McQueen, so it only makes sense that she should get into the design game herself.

refinery29,com

Florence is starting with jewelry and, of course the result is as fabulous as she is! By the way, if anyone's wondering what to get me for my birthday, the Ceremonials 'O' Necklace (pictured above) would be a great choice!

Gossip Girl Music

I have a few guilty pleasures in life, one of them is the CW show Gossip Girl. The show's a little silly (and only gets more so as the seasons progress), but I'm mildly obsessed with it. It's a show that almost seems to take itself too seriously, despite its ridiculous plotlines and desire to hook every character up with every other character. I do find one saving grace in watching the show, it has an incredible soundtrack!

The show currently gets a lot of attention for its fashion, which, I will admit, is often pretty nice to ogle at. This is for good reason, the show's costume designer, Eric Daman, honed his chops as an assistant costume designer on Sex and the City, another show noted for a great eye towards fashion in style. The show's connection to fashion has been so strong that designer Anna Sui designed a Gossip Girl-inspired line for Target and fans have created websites devoted to breaking down the various outfits that the characters on the show wear.

Despite the attention the show has given (and received) for fashion, I think it deserves just as much credit for its soundtracking. Alexandra Patsavas, the show's music supervisor, deserves a great deal of credit, not only for choosing the perfect songs for a particular scene, but also giving an audience to a lot of artists that don't reach quite the same group as your standard Katy Perry or Justin Bieber. While I can't say that I've ever checked something out just because I heard it on Gossip Girl, I have often heard some of my favorites on the show.

They also will occasionally bring in musicians to be on the show...and good musicians! Jenny Lewis, Florence + The Machine and St. Vincent have all had cameos on the show. Some artists will perform a song on the show, others simply show up and say hi!

This was a squeal moment for me!

Here's just a snippet of the great music that the show has featured over the years:

Season 1
Yeah Yeah Yeahs - "Kiss Kiss"
Episode 5 - The Handmaiden's Tale

Band of Horses - "The General Specific:
Episode 10 - Roman Holiday

Season 2
The Black Keys - "Lies"
Episode 7 - Chuck in Real Life

The Kills - "URA Fever"
Episode 22 - Southern Gentlemen Prefer Blondes

Season 3
The National - "Gospel"
Episode 15 - The Sixteen Year Old Virgin

White Rabbits - "Percussion Gun"
Episode 19 - Dr. Estrangedlove

Season 4
Spoon - "I Saw the Light"
Episode 9 - The Witches of Bushwick

Lykke Li - "Youth Knows No Pain"
Episode 21 - Shattered Bass

Season 5
My Morning Jacket - "Movin' Away"
Episode 3 - The Jewel of Denial

Feist - "Graveyard"
Episode 16 - Cross Rhodes

James Blake - "A Case of You"

I got so wrapped up in James Blake's cover of Feist's "A Limit to Your Love" for my favorite covers post that I forgot about another incredible cover he released for his Enough Thunder EP, Joni Mitchell's "A Case of You." I guess the man really likes his female singer-songwriters.

Blake recently released a video for the song, as well, starring the beautiful Rebecca Hall (from Vicky Cristina Barcelona and Everything Must Go). In the video, she exhibits every emotion known to man, including the elusive "I know what you did and I will kill you."



I don't know if I'm alone in this thought, but I love and want everything that's wearing in this video!

Here's Joni Mitchell's original song:

What does that even mean?

Do you ever sit around, listening to your favorite hip hop songs, wondering what the heck some of the lyrics even mean? Well, wonder no more! Rap Genius is a new website that lets you find out the true meaning behind some of your favorite rap songs!

Just enter the artist or song name, click on the questionable lyric and, voila, you now know what it means.



In all seriousness, this is pretty awesome. They now need one to decipher all of the weird symbolic lyrics in much of indie music!

Project Runway rocks out

If there's anything that seems to have defined Project Runway since its move to Lifetime, it is an inability to define itself as something separate from its incarnation on Bravo and every show that followed in the same format. Many of the shows challenges have been either sad copies of Bravo-era challenges and shift to greater focus on commercial design has really hindered the quality and appeal of the designs presented. There has also been an over-focus on team challenges (probably with the hopes of creating conflict). In this current season, there have already been four team challenges, while past seasons have rarely exceeded three.

Thursday night, however, I saw a glimpse that Lifetime may be finally working out how to make the show their own, although it was in yet another team challenge. The designers were tasked with creating outfits for The Sheepdogs.

For some background on The Sheepdogs. They are a "boogie rock" (never heard that one before, though I think it's essentially roots-blues rock) band from Canada. Rolling Stone magazine recently held a contest to place an unsigned band on the cover and The Sheepdogs won! It seems as though the team challenge was in some way a collaboration with the magazine, which I honestly think was a genius idea.

The execution, though, is another story...

Like I said, I really liked the idea of collaborating with Rolling Stone to further publicize the band and this actually is a unique and interesting challenge idea. Most of the designers' creations, however, felt costume-y. It's like they listened to the band's music, heard the '70s roots rock feel and decided to the bandmembers in the bastard children of bad '70s fashion. Think Lynyrd Skynyrd's flower children.

Here is the winning look:

Yes, that is epic fringe.

Horrible outfits aside, this was actually my first introduction to the band, and their music is quite good. You would think asking the public to pick their favorite band for the cover of a major publication would lead to the choice of some questionable pop, but America chose good!

Listen to "Who?" below, which the band performed twice on the show:


Also, if you want to watch the episode, it is posted over at Lifetime's website.

Get Your Groove On!

Awkward models dancing alert!

Raquel Zimmerman and my favorite model-turn-musician Karen Elson (along with two male models) show off some serious dance moves in a recently posted look-book video for Lanvin.



I will say, I think Karen's a bit more committed to the moves than Raquel (step it up, girl!) Watch to the end and you get to see house designre Alber Elbaz showing off his own awkward dance moves.

I am seriously loving this!

Musician turned designer: Crazy, Stupid, Love.

A lot of musicians turn to fashion design at some point in their careers. Some seem to be pretty serious about it (Gwen Stefani), others pretty much just license their names (Jessica Simpson, Jennifer Lopez). One of the latest took me by surprise.

Albert Hammond, Jr., of The Strokes, co-designed Ryan Gosling's wardrobe for the movie Crazy, Stupid, Love. I saw the movie a couple of nights ago and I can say that Gosling looked damned good! His character's style consisted of skinny suits in saturated colors, crisp button-downs, cashmere sweaters, wing-tip shoes and statement rings.

So...beautiful (teen.com)


Not so bad himself! (brandish.tv)

Quite an impressive turn for the guitarist!

Bonus! A song from Hammond's first solo album, Yours to Keep!
"Everyone Gets a Star"