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Living a creative life – By Dina Khamara

May 15, 2013 in art, inspiration, Uncategorized

 

Neil Gaiman’s commencement speech at the University for the Arts is great advice for creative types, but I kind of think it’s just great advice for anyone.  I’d never heard him speak before and he’s pretty much wonderful so listen to the whole thing.

Here are some highlighted passages in case you’re at work and don’t have speakers or if you prefer reading or if your cat is making too much noise:

“Sometimes the way to do what you hope to do will be clear cut, and sometimes it will be almost impossible to decide whether or not you are doing the correct thing, because you’ll have to balance your goals and hopes with feeding yourself, paying debts, finding work, settling for what you can get.”

“Something that worked for me was imagining that where I wanted to be – an author, primarily of fiction, making good books, making good comics and supporting myself through my words – was a mountain. A distant mountain. My goal.”

“And I knew that as long as I kept walking towards the mountain I would be all right. And when I truly was not sure what to do, I could stop, and think about whether it was taking me towards or away from the mountain.”

“I would do my best in the future not to write books just for the money. If you didn’t get the money, then you didn’t have anything. If I did work I was proud of, and I didn’t get the money, at least I’d have the work.”

“The things I did because I was excited, and wanted to see them exist in reality have never let me down, and I’ve never regretted the time I spent on any of them.”

“I hope you’ll make mistakes. If you’re making mistakes, it means you’re out there doing something.”

“Life is sometimes hard. Things go wrong, in life and in love and in business and in friendship and in health and in all the other ways that life can go wrong. And when things get tough, this is what you should do:

Make good art.

“The moment that you feel that, just possibly, you’re walking down the street naked, exposing too much of your heart and your mind and what exists on the inside, showing too much of yourself. That’s the moment you may be starting to get it right.”

“Go and make interesting mistakes, make amazing mistakes, make glorious and fantastic mistakes. Break rules. Leave the world more interesting for your being here. Make. Good. Art.”

Full transcript available at The University of the Arts.

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Dreamy with Dean – by Dina

May 9, 2013 in Design, Heritage, inspiration, Our office, sustainability, Uncategorized

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We moved our offices last December from Chabanel street (otherwise known as the fashion district in Montreal) to an area not too far from there that feels really different. The streets in our new neighborhood are bordered with grass so it’s easy to step out and get some fresh air, eat your lunch seating on a rock or take a moment to relax outside. After 8 years spent on paved streets, I must say this new address makes me appreciate these simple pleasures. Given the incredible summer weather we’ve been experiencing the past couple of days, I decided to step out and take some pictures of our Dean backpack around the block this afternoon. The Dean has been one of our favorites recently:  it’s so simple and practical, and yet we love the sharp lines. It’s also great on a bike, so when we were experimenting with the recycled rubber from bicycle tires, it made sense to try the material on this style. What you see in the pictures is a development sample of the style for our Fall 13 collection, one of these prototypes we use to test our ideas. We changed it a little bit after that, maybe we’ll use this sample for one of our giveaways.

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Working beautifully – By Dina

May 2, 2013 in inspiration, Uncategorized

Today is May 1, celebrated in over 80 countries as May Day or International Workers’ Day, and it seems like the perfect excuse to tell you about someone’s work that I greatly admire.  I recently acquired one of these great coffee table books (… if you know me, you know I collect them even though I don’t own a coffee table). This particular one is called a “Photographer’s life” and covers the work of photographer Annie Leibovitz from 1990 to 2005.

Leibovitz started her career working as a staff photographer at Rolling Stone magazine and is know famously for her iconic portraits of celebrities like this one and that one.

Although the book features portraits of well-known figures like Johnny Cash, Nelson Mandela or Michael Jordan, what’s most striking is that Leibovitz included personal pictures along with her assignment work—she chronicles celebrations and heartbreaks of her large family, making the book incredibly raw and emotional.  She writes in the introduction to the book: “when young photographers ask me what they should do, I always tell them to stay close to home”.

Today, photography is everywhere, but looking at the immense talent of someone that does it professionally and so passionately, I couldn’t help but think about what it means to live/work beautifully.

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Adam Purple: “New York City’s living treasures” – By Sarah Olioff

April 29, 2013 in art, inspiration, sustainability, Uncategorized

Adam-Purple

Adam Purple, is often coined as the godfather of the urban gardening movement, and is well known in New York for his “Garden of Eden”on the Lower East side of Manhattan.  His project began in the 70′s when two buildings behind his apartment were bulldozed by the city. Looking out his window, he noticed children often playing in the filth, and leftover debris. It soon occurred to him that he could rebuild the space into a sustainable, communal garden. Within a year he transformed the abandoned lot into a green garden that soon stretched to 15,000 square feet. “By the end of the second year, he had transformed both of the lots into flowers,trees, and food crops.” It soon became a communal project within the city. More people came to help him who called themselves the “Purple Guard”. They soon had a fully sustainable garden, where they grew nuts, fruits & vegetables.

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” The garden of Eden was a work of art, a place to grow and share food, and a place to learn. Though that place is gone, Adam’s ideas are not. We can still learn from the Garden of Eden. We can look down at our own two hands, as Adam Purple did, and start using them to change the world.” Amy Brost

May 1st marks the 7th annual sunflower guerrilla gardening day. Get together, and plant seeds in your city.
You can find how & where HERE

In 1986 the garden was demolished. To learn more about the history of Adam & the Garden of Eden watch the short film “Adam Purple and the Garden of Eden.” Here:

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minimalism+ By Inder Bedi

April 26, 2013 in Design, inspiration, Uncategorized

photo minimalism

One of our sales reps just returned from a trip to London and was a little disappointed at what she felt was a lack of new trends in the marketplace.

We had an interesting discussion about minimalism and how this trend of clean lines and no logos is starting to take shape.

This is of course music to our ears at MATT & NAT as the clean aesthetic with a focus on utility has always been at the basis of our craft. From Japanese and Scandinavian design influences to a focus on utility with details that pop and perform, it’s a design language that we’ve been speaking for almost 20 years….

There’s a great article in the April issue of Elle Canada that discusses how minimalism also applies to a simpler lifestyle: working fewer hours, making the right choices, evolving past the simple ‘less is more’. Karim Rashid and Ennio Capasa go on to say that it’s not simply the cold minimalism of the 90’s coming back but a warmer minimalism or sensualism as coined by Rashid.

“What minimalism is really about is a reassessment of your priorities so that you can strip away the excess stuff-the possessions and ideas and relationships and activities-that don’t bring value to your life”  Colin Wright, exilelife.com

BRING VALUE TO YOUR LIFE- everything you do, are involved with, all your relationships, when you make ‘value added’ a priority, your time starts to become that much more valuable…as it should be

Is minimalism the new consumerism ?http://www.upgradereality.com/minimalist-lifestyle/

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The JACK – By Dina Khamara

April 24, 2013 in Design, inspiration, Uncategorized

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We really enjoy pieces that can be worn by both genders.  When we introduced our travel bag, the Raylan, in our men’s 2012 collection, it seemed like women could not get enough of it.  The appeal might have been the same as a worn-in pair of jeans or that perfect shirt you want to steal from you-know-who, it just struck a cord. The following season, we were looking to add another piece to the collection that had the same vibe and functionality, but smaller in shape so that people would be able to carry it everyday (because you know, we want you to carry them all the time). We pictured an adventurous person wearing it, someone that carries a lot of life with them, literally and figuratively. The bag is just the right size for you to pack half of your belongings inside and take them with you everywhere. We named it Jack after Kerouac, not only because he’s originally from our beloved province of Quebec, but also because the spirit in his writings will never cease to inspire us.

“There was nowhere to go but everywhere, so just keep on rolling under the stars.”
― Jack Kerouac, On the Road.

 

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A fantastic man – by Dina

April 10, 2013 in inspiration, Uncategorized

I was mentioning last week the influence of menswear on our designs, and the interesting gender plays going on in the fashion world right now. Sometimes though, we just come across a specific person and find them inspiring, because their way of being just makes us smile.

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Ali may not be the kind of pretty young thing we’re accustomed to seeing on fashion blogs but he is one dapper looking 83-year-old.  Australian-born and Berlin-based photographer Zoe Spawton first noticed him as he would walk by her coffee shop every morning at precisely 9h05, always impeccably put together, and never wearing the same outfit.

After a few weeks of greeting each other every morning, she asked him if she could take his picture (or gestured to her camera, she says, as he speaks little English). Spawton was so fascinated by his sartorial sense of style that she’s started a blog dedicated to “What Ali Wore”.

Ali, who has lived in Germany for 44 years, used to be a doctor before he became a tailor. He has 18 kids, works a full 6-days-week and still makes a lot of his clothes by hand.

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photos via What Ali Wore/Zoe Spawton

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Gender benders – By Dina

April 3, 2013 in Design, inspiration, Music, Uncategorized

Menswear has always had a big influence on our designs; we always find a lot of inspiration in the utility and though lines that are traditionally thought of as masculine and nothing pleases us like seeing a women carry the Soren or Raylan bags from our men’s collection. Lately though, I was watching the video of David Bowie’s latest single “the stars are out tonight” and it got me thinking about how FUN the recent displays of androgyny have been in fashion/music. Case in point: Bowie’s video below. A word of warning, it is wild and bizarre, but it also features a fascinating gender reversal: models Andrej Pejic and Saskia de Brauw play a celebrity couple where Pejic is the girl, while de Brauw is the boy. A lot of weirdness ensues.

Case in point #2: Casey Legler is an artist that works in New York. A former Olympic swimmer, she’s also a women working as a male model. Speaking about her modeling career, Casey’s focus is on self-expression and freedom: “I understand signifiers. We’re social creatures and we have a physical language of communicating with each other,” she says. “But it would be a really beautiful thing if we could all just wear what we wanted, without it meaning something.” Watch her interview below, we dare you not to be charmed.

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Maybe Lou Reed was right – By Dina

March 27, 2013 in Design, inspiration, Music, Uncategorized

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I recently came across this text from Kevin Lyons, a designer and illustrator that has worked with the likes of Nike, Converse, and Coca-Cola,among others… Not only does he relate this piece to one of our favorite bands – the Velvet Underground—but in a way, this reflects how we approach our design process.  The Velvet Underground was formed in a 60’s, a decade that broke many fashion traditions, mirroring social movements during the period. I don’t know if it’s the social change that happened during that time, the development of a counterculture, or the will to break conventions, but there is something deeply inspiring that we keep coming back to in term of music, art, architecture and design.  I especially cannot get enough of the 60’s photography section in LIFE’s website. I’m particularly in love with this one lately:
http://life.time.com/culture/hells-angels-rare-photos-by-bill-ray-1965/?iid=lf|latest#22
But to go back to the quote, we’ve been designing since 1995, with ample time to have our fair share of changes of hearts, and it was at times a winding road to figure out just how to be. As creative people, it can be hard to let go things, but it’s very liberating. We’ve come to a place where we focus about the process, concentrating our attention on the purpose and simplicity of what we do; the rest comes on its own.

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MATT & NAT wants YOU, tell us about your mistakes ! By Inder

March 22, 2013 in inspiration, Our office, Uncategorized

My prof in university for strategic management was an ex-firefighter who was a brilliant leader/mentor.

In one of his lectures Mr. O’connell told us about one of his key interview questions in business: ‘Tell me about a mistake you made in your career, what you learned from it and how you would handle the situation differently moving forward.’ He went on to say how it usually took potential candidates off guard and more then less would answer that they didn’t make any major mistakes that they regretted. This would be the end of the interview.

So here I am 23 years later asking potential candidates this week (we’re looking to fill a position in customer service): ‘what has been an experience in your career that you would have handled differently’. You would be surprised how many candidates are speechless ! It’s not the end of the interview for us….however we do want to get to know our potential peeps a little better, what are we looking for ? Depth, humility.

I’ve had a ton of ‘learning experiences’ here at M&N. Over a period of time between 2009 and 2011, we made changes in terms of design and distribution. Sadly, we alienated some customers in the process that had given us their support since our humble beginnings back in 1995.

In 2012 we came back to our original founding ethos: designing timeless pieces with innovative materials in the inspired color of the moment, with accessibility being key. My learning experience ? NEVER take the customer for granted, EVER. They are as much a part of MATT & NAT as our creations and our team so any decision we take has to involve them. I would have never have had the type of appreciation and relationship with our customers that I have today had we not gone through this tumultuous period.

SO get out there, get busy and own the moment! You are going to make mistakes, learn from them and have no regrets! Be humble enough to admit your ‘learning experience’ and courageous enough to take responsibility. I’ve learned more over the last 2 years then I have since 1995. A change in perspective on ‘learning experiences’ has been a major life changing experience for myself in terms of personal growth…

Happy Friday Everyone and a BIG welcome to our contributing bloggers Christine and Megan !

“I am glad that I paid so little attention to good advice; had I abided by it I might have been saved from some of my most valuable mistakes.”
― Edna St. Vincent Millay

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