July 28, 2015

CHUCKII; Ready for More

July 28, 2015/ Claire Leana Millar

The Style | Converse Redesigned

I partnered up with Converse for the release of the ChuckII & had SUCH a blast painting and dancing!

Check out the snaps; more coming soon! Shop ChuckII Here

Claire Leana Millar Influencer and Creative Consultant At the ChuckII Release in NYC

Parra artwork at the ChuckII Release party in NYC

The New ChuckII Covered in pigment paint at the release of the shoe in nyc

ChuckII Ready For More Release Party NYC

February 24, 2014

Fashion Fabulosity; Is It THAT Serious?

February 24, 2014/ Claire Leana Millar

““And now, I’m just trying to change the world, one sequin at a time.”
― Lady Gaga”

I found myself laughing a lot during fashion week. Not because the clothes were funny (well, some were), but more because everybody else was so damn serious. How can you be serious in colorfully died furs and circus glasses, watching sticks strut down runways? Fashion for most that attend the shows is an art form. The display of wearable garments as artistic constructions of structure, fabric, color that, in their essence, are used to clothe us in beautiful ways. It can be an outlet for silent self-expression...I get it, I really I do. My question is can we all just laugh a little more? It's really not thatttttt serious. So here are a few things I thought were a tad comical in all their fabulosity xxx

February 21, 2014

Mike Kelly Eats Children

February 21, 2014/ Claire Leana Millar

“I don’t know what exactly, but some shit went down when he was a kid. I’m trying to piece it together.”

-Anonymous idiot

Apparently not many people at MoMA PS1’s Night at the Museum this past Saturday had heard of the term biographical fallacy, much less contemplated the absurdity of believing that concrete facts about Mike Kelley and his work can be derived from one another. Pardon the fact that he looks like a serial killer. Pardon the fact that sex, violence, and childhood thematically and uncomfortably intertwine throughout his life’s work. Clearly “some shit” is going down in this exhibit. That’s obvious. Moving beyond the obvious and into the thought provoking, it strikes me that the abundance of assertions about Kelley’s life based around mutilated stuffed animals for example, or about the juxtapositional meaning of frog and vagina paintings based on Kelley’s life speaks, more than anything, to the pervasive human desire to look into other’s minds. Let’s call it mental voyeurism. Forgive the ensuing hackneyed rumination on the anthropological impacts of social media, but it does seem that our societal tendencies are increasingly performative. Consider this situation: a girl my friend tells me is really attractive, but who I’ve never seen, has presented herself a certain way across Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+, etc., and I’m going to check her out in at least some of these online spaces to assess my opinion of her physicality, but more importantly to piece together a picture of who she is as a person in order to place value judgements on a life I don’t actually know. I think all of us have experienced some version of this. We’ve all most likely been on the receiving end of such judgments as well. We are constantly asking others to engage in judging our character and personalities with the content we publish, and others are always willing to do so. What Kelley’s work magnifies are the peculiarities of life that we so often filter out of this process of properly conveying ourselves. One trend in his work that resonated with me is the ocd way in which he forms patterns and color gradients with various materials. I recalled my childhood ocd impulses to do things such as tucking exactly 6 pillows around my body before sleeping to prevent monsters from attacking me at night. Why do we shut out these memories, the darker, stranger events of life that form us just as much as the light, happy moments? Don’t we truly want to know each other? Don’t we want to know ourselves? These are the haunting, sobering, and fiercely contemporary questions oozing out of Kelley’s dystopia. The work seems to attempt jogging the observer’s memory into a contemplative state wherein he looks inward at the vast amount of things he deemed unimportant in the movie of his life. It conjures them back to break the spell of performance and voyeurism. Then again maybe ol’ Mikey was just being a creepy weirdo. Whatever you decide, GO CHECK OUT THIS EXHIBIT BECAUSE IT’S AWESOME AND IT’S LEAVING FEBUARY 2ND!

-By Chandler Craig

February 10, 2014

Different Distances: Fashion Photography Goes Art

February 10, 2014/ Claire Leana Millar

NYC, New York, NYFW, art, martina hoogland ivanow, photography, fashion, chandler craig, claire leana millar, aperture, gallery, chelsea, february, Stockholm, Sweden, Denise Grünstein, Julia Heath, Julia Peirone, Elisabeth Toll, elephant, hair, flow…

I know fashion week is really hard. You have to walk in high heels through the polar vortex all the way to a taxi. You have to go shopping in SoHo because all the girls you used to call basic showed you up hard-body with their Gucci Gucci Louis Louis Fendi Fendi Prada. You're loosing brain function and nerve synapses aren't firing properly due to low levels of blood sugar and fatty acids. You're pissed all the time.

If eating properly and rejecting consumer culture aren't your modi operandi, you'll need to find new ways of remaining calm and healthfully stimulating your mind during NYFW. You can start by seeing Different Distances: Fashion Photography Goes Art, a beautiful photo exhibit currently on display at Aperture Gallery, 547 West 27th Street, 4th Floor New York, NY 10001.

love,

Chandler

February 03, 2014

10 Beauty Products Every Woman MUST Own

February 03, 2014/ Claire Leana Millar

As the newly minted beauty contributor at The Wild Magazine, I think it’s appropriate to share the 10 beauty essentials I feel every woman must have. For anyone that knows me, there are two things I have minor obsessions with: Agent Provocture Lingerie and Sephora. It’s pretty safe to say that any given Sunday afternoon, I'll be in either place playing with the newest products. That said, Sephora is hands down my go to place for two reasons. Firstly, they let you return anything and everything after using it. Who does that? It’s incredible! If you buy something that made your face weird, or just wanna be a cheapo, you can at Sephora! I went through their inventory and picked out exactly what’s in my medicine cabinet. I think makeup should be simple, clean, and minimal. Ladies, focus on your actual skin and taking care of that, not on covering imperfections! Products aside there is one more SUPER important component to makeup. Eyebrows! I have recently discovered eyebrow tinting, its vegetable based dye that makes your brows super full and lush, the perfect accent to flawless skin! Boom Boom Brow Bar in Chelsea is my monthly haunt. Check it out here!

BUY THIS STUFF@ Sephora