Hi everyone, it's Justine. I'm in the process of creating the next collection
and I observe myself craving extra inspiration to feed that process, and
I'm really consuming books, movies, podcasts, blog articles etc. And every time
I think I have to tell them about this because it's so good then I forget... and I
don't want that to happen anymore so I'm starting a kind of new series on this
channel: today is the first episode, you can call
this monthly favorites, creative highlights, that's the working title so
far but feel free to suggest better titles in the comments below. It's gonna
be a bit of a mix of everything. every time I will do my best to link below
where to find that book, watch that movie, further readings, everything that helps
you find the source I'm talking about. but in the video, I want to focus on why
I liked that thing and what I learned. my goal it is that in each video, every
month, you find at least one thing that you enjoy and want to hear or read as
well: if that works, then I did a good job.
You might have heard of Garance Doré: she's a French fashion blogger, she started in
2006 with street style, very early bird. I like what she does a lot, she's now also
an illustrator. a photographer, a very creative head, a very inspiring woman.
she also has a podcast that is called "pardon my french" a very fitting title I
find. on that podcast, she has guests come over, top-notch creative people like
brilliant minds. she knows everyone, she gets Diane von Fürstenberg, she gets
Sophia Amoruso, she gets all the fashion beauty and lifestyle editors you can
think of, like really really inspiring people. and they just sit down together
for about an hour and have a casual chat: about the creative world, how fashion has
evolved very interesting titles, and very little gets edited out which I enjoy a
lot. in the latest episode she had Ezra Petronio as a guest: he's an art director
and also the founder of Self-Service magazine, which is in my opinion hands
down one of the best magazines, focused on fashion but more than this, like on
creative arts in general. it's not sold much in in press stores but you can
subscribe to it. what they do is absolutely unique, I love that magazine.
and the podcast as well. So double recommendation :-) My next highlight this
month is a big book called "the art of collage, contemporary collage in modern
art" (edition Gestalten). it's a very thick book but a very pretty one. collage is
not considered as good or as cool as painting or photography, for some reason.
I don't understand why because I think it's really hard to create a truly
artistic collage since we're using pre-made, existing elements. creating
something unique out of existing stuff is very challenging! the book is
very well structured and very pretty. you have, for each artist, a page with the
explanation of the background, the method, the origin and samples of his or her
work. look at that. really really cool. Another style, completely different: this
one which I love - there are people who work with comics people who draw on top...
it's still a pretty new field where the rules are not really defined. we don't
pay as much attention to collage as artists but actually kids do that
completely intuitively, it's interesting. now when I see a photo, I think what
could I paste or draw on top of it? The next one is more business-oriented: it's
an audio book that you can find on Audible for instance: "High performance
habits" by Brendan Burchard. I'll write it in the description. his
theory is: there is no age, country, gender, race, or anything that pre-defines how
successful you can be in your life. he says it's all about the habits that you
train and habits can be learned... through practice. I like that he uses many
figures to support what he's saying and he has worked as a coach and as a
researcher for many years so it looks like proper research. one thing that blew
my mind in this audiobook is this: when I work, I
feel that I'm achieving something, that I'm performing well when I push myself
beyond the limit, when I stretch myself. after each high
phase, I need a low phase to recover physically and mentally from the high
phase. so I I go up and down like this a lot in my process.
what he says is: high performers don't ever feel stretched while performing
brilliantly, so their behavior is a lot more sustainable than mine, and they
thrive over time without needing those breaks that I need to take. and I thought
oh I didn't know! really new info! and I listened to that book in a weekend,
taking notes. it's not an audio book that you listen to just like that you're
focused on it and you take notes. In Berlin, I recently went to an exhibition
of designs by Versace: not the sister who's running the house now, Gianni
Versace, the brother. In the 90s, I think he was the first star designer, like a
pop star, and that was before the internet and before Instagram. In the
20th century, designers have been suppliers, it wasn't cool, they were
handcraft people and they were suppliers of the rich and Noble. the iconic
designers of the 20th century have actually been turned into icons later on,
for marketing purposes, not at the time when they were actually active. So Gianni
Versace is an exception. He created ready-to-wear and was famous for his
bright prints on silk. he used symbols from Greece, you might
know that, like the lion or the head of Medusa.
he made references to theater performance a lot.
He staged his models and his life in an impressively luxurious and public way. you could have held a
fashion show (or three at the same time) in his house, absolute luxury. he
created and made the supermodels of the 90s, like Naomi Campbell, Carla Bruni,
Linda Evangelista etc. he also created couture garments: the number of hours
spent beading didn't matter that was called "Atelier Versace". if you couldn't
sit in a skirt because it was too tight or too short, it didn't matter
either. it was an interesting time for fashion and a very extravagant character.
I will link down below in the description a documentary about Versace
that was shown during the exhibition and that is hosted
online. Now a great little novel to take with you on holiday: "the sacred night"
(La nuit sacrée) by Tahar Ben Jelloun. He won the Goncourt price with that book. which
is the equivalent of the american Pulitzer prize. It is a nonlinear story
so it's the story of a woman to whom random things happen, just like life is
random: you start here, you meet someone, it takes you there. something else
happens, you end up there. and wonder how. it's a fantastic book so not everything
that happens in there is realistic possible or pretty, but that's why I
liked it. I prefer fantastic fiction to reality fiction, I think it sparks the
imagination more. If you like Paulo Coelho, for instance, I think you will
like this book too. Then a documentary movie called "He named me Malala": you
probably heard of her in the press everywhere in the world, it's that girl
from Pakistan, from a region where one day a Taliban group arrived. little by
little, they restrained liberties, worked on people's minds to change the culture, up
to the day when they said: girls should not be allowed to go to school at all.
she spoke up and was shot in the head as a punishment. but she survived, she was
transferred to England, recovered completely and eventually became a huge
spokesperson for girls right to education and for liberty in general. she
won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014, she was not even 20. what I learned in
this movie was... it wasn't an accident that she got shot, she was a symbol
already. her grandfather was a public speaker, her father also, and he had taken
a stand against the Taliban group. so she was actually born in a household, in a
family, where she learned to build her own opinion and that's a really strong
message. the movie is super interesting. if you look for it on streaming
platforms, you'll find it. that's it for this month I think that's enough
inspiration for a couple of nice weekends. I'd like to use these
monthly meetings this video to start a new routine together with you:
I shared my highlights. now if you read, listen to or watch any of these, please
let me know in the comments below how you like them... and also tell me your own
highlights. that can be something you read, heard, saw somewhere or something
you did, everything counts. the more mixed it is, the better the list will be. To
help me find your suggestions in the comments, please add a hashtag:
#creativehighlights so I can find your comments more easily. and that's it. we'll
see how this new routine goes. next month, I will share a mix of my highlights and
yours. it will make the list richer and I hope this will become a kind of monthly
meetup between us! Thumbs up if you enjoyed this video, thank you very much!
and don't forget to subscribe to my channel to get the next videos, usually
every Wednesday and Sunday, so see you very soon again, take care, bye!