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Exploring Soulmate No.1 Collection

Haotian, a multidisciplinary artist from New York City, perfectly combines various fields of art, including contemporary art jewellery, metalwork, art direction, and more, to create his own unique artistic persona.

In his contemporary art jewellery, Haotian consistently manages to express his inner, delicate yet true emotions through the medium of jewellery, utilising great design and tactile experiences that bring each piece to life. Storytelling is a crucial aspect of his artistic jewellery and can be considered the cornerstone of each work. Whether real or imagined, he succeeds in inspiring a sense of drama every time. Haotian’s approach to contemporary jewellery artistry is akin to storytelling, and through his work, he invites viewers to become part of the narrative journey, encouraging them to discover their own meaning in each piece.

One of Haotian’s celebrated projects, Soulmate No.1, explores the complex and timeless love triangle between the Sun, the Earth, and the Moon. By combining mythological symbolism with celestial dynamics, the artist reveals the subtle and profound interactions between these three entities. At the heart of this series is the depiction of a love triangle. The celestial bodies—the Sun, the Earth, and the Moon—not only are portrayed as astronomical entities but also as participants in a real life relationship. For instance, the Moon can only gaze at the Earth and revolve around it. This one-sided adoration symbolises an emotion that is both constant and untouchable. Similarly, the Earth directs its affection towards the Sun, but the Sun remains distant and oblivious to the Earth. This eternal distance adds a layer of sadness to the Earth’s love. Although the Sun plays a vital role for the Earth, it always looks away from it, and this eternal separation emphasises their one-sided relationship.

Haotian reflects on the irony and emotional depth inherent in the Sun’s role. Since the beginning of time, the Sun has never looked back at the Earth, yet the Earth continuously revolves around it. This eternal separation highlights their inability to truly connect. Despite its silence, the Moon profoundly affects the Earth, particularly evident in the rise and fall of the tides. As the Moon rises and sets, it subtly influences the Earth’s emotions—a phenomenon the artist describes as emotional surplus and deficit. The Moon’s phases affect the emotional landscape of the planet, ranging from serene tranquillity to agitated annoyance. The cyclical nature of this interaction underscores their deep connection. An important element in the work is the solar eclipse, a rare alignment when the Moon temporarily blocks the Sun, allowing the Earth to see itself in a new light. During an eclipse, the Moon achieves a brief moment of intimate contact with the Earth, enabling the Earth to see its own reflection rather than the Sun’s eternal light. This moment of visibility and connection is both dramatic and fleeting.

(Necklace in Soulmate No.1 Collection)

Haotian’s artwork redefines the potential of metal art as a narrative medium. He skillfully blends graphic design with metalwork to create works that are both visually striking and emotionally profound. Each piece of his art jewellery not only demonstrates exquisite craftsmanship, but also tells a story of depth and emotion through meticulous design elements and clever use of materials. As he continues to refine his story, we are confident that he will continue to shine in the art world in the future.

The Power of Simplicity: How to Achieve a Graceful Look

Have you ever wondered why some people exude elegance so easily? They just seem to walk into a room as if they own the space, not because they are over-the-top flashy, but in a very simple, extremely put-together way. Well, it’s not magic, just simplicity at work. And here’s the good news: you can pull off that same graceful look without changing your entire wardrobe. It’s all about smart and purposeful choices reflecting your personal taste. Emphasizing simplicity allows the creation of a look that is timeless yet truly you.

But what is the underlying power behind simplicity in fashion? Let’s explore how you can achieve that graceful look with only a few thoughtful choices in your wardrobe.

Why Simple Wardrobes Stand the Test of Time

Think about your closet for just one moment. How many items do you have in there that you really love to wear? Probably not as many as you would like, right? In reality, the secret to a wardrobe that always feels fresh and elegant is not about having more—it’s about having the right ones. When you pare down to the essentials, every single piece earns its place and serves its purpose. Getting dressed will not be such a chore; in fact, it will become a pleasure. Also, with less distraction, your best pieces really get to pop out.

Do this by starting with the basics: neutral colors, clean lines, and options that you can mix and match without a second thought. It’s all about quality over quantity. Instead of having ten items that are so last year, buy modern-infused classics that you can have fewer of but are better quality. Believe me, this does not mean you have to wear boring stuff. 

Even within the boundaries of a restricted color palette, you can play around with textures and layers and subtle attention to detail that is sure to keep your outfits interesting. And here is the cool thing: those pieces won’t just last a season. They’ll be with you for years. Have you ever heard of a capsule wardrobe? It’s all about a highly edited, pocket-sized wardrobe that keeps working and working together in endless combinations. Imagine the freedom of knowing that no matter what you pull out, it will look good. Some very well-fitting blazers, classic trousers, and versatile modest skirts are perfect examples of going from day to night or casual to formal. Easy, right?

Building a Wardrobe That Works for You

So, how do you get started on building this fairy-tale closet? Simple: with the essentials. These are the things you just cannot go without—the things you wear time and time again. For me, these are the true bones of your style; these are the things that help keep an outfit grounded. They should be versatile, comfortable, and truly reflective of your personal taste. Do not be in a great hurry; rather, have patience and look out for the basic pieces that you will really like to wear.

A well-curated capsule wardrobe may have something like this: a blouse, a really good pair of jeans, and a modest skirt. These garments are more than versatile; they are timeless. And the best part? You do not need so many clothes to make a statement. Every piece should be handpicked so that it will go well with all the rest, so mixing and matching really isn’t so difficult at all. This way, you aren’t buying into just any set of clothes—think of it as an investment in a consolidated and fashionable wardrobe. You could, with just a few items, easily come up with an overall design suitable for all types of occasions.

Elevating Simple Outfits with Accessories

Not to mention accessories. The right accessories can make an otherwise simple outfit go from nice to wow. But remember, much has to be said for subtlety when it comes to accessories. You don’t need to pile on jewelry or tote an oversized bag to make a statement—sometimes, just one well-chosen accessory does it all. The point is, let an outfit speak for itself; it doesn’t have to be overwhelmed by the accessories. A nice necklace, a watch, or a pair of elegant shoes do the trick well and can actually bring the entire look together without overshadowing it. After all, the goal here is to not let them compete but to complement each other.

The Fine Art of Adding Color and Patterns

I know your next thought: but wouldn’t a basic wardrobe be boring? Not at all! Basic and simple means you do not opt for loud colors. It could be just black, white, and what flatters you. Neutral colors are strong just in terms of their versatility, but this doesn’t mean you should dismiss color completely. In truth, when thoughtfully used, color can elevate your simple wardrobe into something classic and special. The secret: Use color thoughtfully and strategically, thereby creating focal points that draw the eye without overpowering your outfit.

Use colors and patterns subtly. Think soft pastels or earthy tones, or even a pop of red when feeling bold. Simple patterns, like stripes or subtle florals, can add a little interest to the outfit without taking away from it. Think in terms of a humble skirt in a neutral shade paired with a softly patterned blouse; this makes for a statement that is graceful and versatile at the same time. It’s all about finding balance: one element dominates while the rest of the outfit supports it. Take that modest skirt and envision a striped top or a light floral blouse; all of a sudden, you have a graceful but attention-getting look.

Confidence: The Final Piece of the Puzzle

Let’s be honest—clothes are only clothes until you put them on. The real key to achieving a graceful look is not just in what you wear but in how you wear it. The key is confidence. Even a modest outfit can be gorgeous when worn with poise and self-confidence. It is the attitude and carriage that you project that can transform the most unremarkable ensemble into the epitome of elegance. You could be in the most basic outfit ever, but worn with confidence, you’ll look like a million dollars.

So stand tall, rock your style, and do it unapologetically. After all, the best part of any outfit is the person wearing it. Just remember: grace isn’t just about looking good; it’s about feeling good. And when you’re comfortable in your own skin, it shows—that, in a nutshell, is what true elegance really is all about.

Wrapping It Up

At the end of it all, simplicity truly is sophistication at its peak. It’s what makes quality, versatility, and only a few selected pieces achieve that perfect wardrobe—elegant and extremely stylish. There is no toeing the line with trends or impressionism at all; it’s all about what works for you and doing so with panache. That’s why simplicity can never go out of style. And best of all? It’s all about you—your style, your personality, and your confidence.

So, next time you’re standing in front of your closet wondering what to wear, remember: that simplicity is powerful. Embrace it, and watch how it transforms not just your wardrobe but your entire approach to fashion. Start small, make intentional choices, and enjoy the process of building a wardrobe that reflects the best version of you. Simplicity is not just a style; it is a way of life, and it can change everything. It changes how you view yourself and how you see the world around you.

Elevate Your Fashion Photos with Blur

Whether you’re a budding fashion photographer or just someone who loves capturing the essence of a killer outfit, blur can add that artistic touch you’ve been missing. It is not just about hiding imperfections. It’s a way to bring focus, create movement, and highlight the beauty of your subject. Blur can turn a regular photo into something that looks like it came straight out of a magazine. Let’s explore how you can use blur creatively to make your fashion photos shine.

1. Motion Blur for Dynamic Shots

One of the easiest ways to use blur is to capture motion. Think of a flowing dress on a windy day or a model spinning gracefully. Using a slower shutter speed, you can create a sense of motion that brings energy and life to your photos. This technique works great for showing off how fabrics move, adding drama and flair to your shots.

Steps to Try Motion Blur:

  1. Set your camera to a slower shutter speed.
  2. Have your model move, like walking, spinning, or jumping.
  3. Capture the movement to create a soft, dynamic blur.

2. Bokeh for Dreamy Backgrounds

Bokeh is all about creating a dreamy, out-of-focus background while keeping your subject sharp and clear. This technique is perfect for portraits. It makes your model pop while the background melts into a soft, beautiful blur. Use a lens with a wide aperture, like f/1.8 or f/2.8, to achieve this effect.

Creating Stunning Bokeh:

  1. Use a lens with a wide aperture.
  2. Focus on your model, ensuring they are sharp.
  3. Position your model against a background with lights or reflections for a magical look.

3. Tilt-Shift for a Miniature Effect

Tilt-shift blur makes scenes look like tiny models. It’s a fun and quirky way to shoot cityscapes or wide scenes, giving them a miniature feel. This effect works well for fashion shoots in urban settings, adding a playful and unique twist.

How to Achieve Tilt-Shift:

  1. Use a tilt-shift lens or app.
  2. Focus on your model, with the surroundings slightly blurred.
  3. Adjust the focus to create that cool miniature effect.

4. Gaussian Blur for Soft Glamour

Want to give your photos that old Hollywood glam look? Gaussian blur can soften skin tones and give your photos a classic, elegant feel. It’s ideal for close-ups where you want to focus on your model’s face while adding a gentle, dreamy glow.

Using Gaussian Blur:

  1. In post-processing, add a soft Gaussian blur to the background or the entire image.
  2. Keep your model’s face slightly in focus for a flattering effect.
  3. Adjust the level of blur to achieve the desired softness.

5. Radial Blur for Dramatic Flair

Radial blur is perfect for creating a dramatic, centered focus. It’s like a spotlight that naturally draws the viewer’s eye to your model, making them the star of the show. This technique works great for editorial fashion shots.

Steps for Radial Blur:

  1. Use a radial filter in editing software.
  2. Focus the center on your model, with the edges gradually blurred.
  3. Adjust the intensity to control how much focus is drawn to the center.

How Blur Adds Artistic Effects

Highlighting Details: Blur can help emphasize the key elements of your outfit or accessories. If you know how to blur parts of an image, you can naturally draw attention to the details you want to showcase, like intricate lace or stunning jewelry.

Creating Unique Visuals: Blur adds an artistic flair that sets your photos apart. It lets you experiment with different styles and create visuals that are memorable and striking. Whether you’re going for a dreamy, romantic vibe or a bold, edgy look, blur can help you achieve it.

Playing with Light: Blur allows you to play with light and shadow, creating beautiful contrasts that enhance your photo’s mood. It can add depth and texture, making your images look more professional and polished.

Conclusion

Blur is a versatile tool in fashion photography. It lets you get creative, experiment with different styles, and bring out the best in your photos. Whether you’re using motion blur to add energy, bokeh for dreamy portraits, or Gaussian blur for that soft glam look, there are endless ways to incorporate blur into your fashion shots. So grab your camera, start experimenting, and watch your photos transform!

Remember, fashion photography is all about expressing style and personality. Don’t be afraid to push boundaries and explore new techniques. With blur, you can add that extra touch of magic to your fashion photos, making them unforgettable. Happy photo shooting!

Watch Taylor Swift’s New Music Video for ‘I Can Do It With a Broken Heart’

Taylor Swift has shared the music video for ‘I Can Do It With a Broken Heart’, which she premiered at the very end of her five-night stint in London. It’s the second music video from April’s The Tortured Poets Department, following the Post Malone collaboration ‘Fortnight’. Watch the clip, which features behind-the-scenes footage of the Eras Tour, below.

During the show, Swift brought out Florence Welch to perform TTPD‘s ‘Florida!!!’ before inviting Jack Antonoff for a mashup of ‘Death By a Thousand Cuts’ and ‘Getaway Car’. The other surprise song was ‘So Long, London’, which she performed for the first time.

Nicole Miglis Shares Video for New Song ‘Sleep All Day’

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Ahead of the release of her debut solo album Myopia, Hundred Waters’ Nicole Miglis has shared one final single, ‘Sleep All Day’. Following earlier cuts ‘All I See Is You’, ‘Autograph,’, and ‘Lure’, the track arrives with a music video directed by Jennifer Medina. Check it out below.

Caroline Says Announces New Album ‘The Lucky One’, Shares New Single

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Caroline Sallee has announced her first Caroline Says album in six years. The Lucky One will be released on October 11 via Western Vinyl. Today, Sallee has shared a new single called ‘Faded and Golden’. Check it out and find the album cover and tracklist below.

“Relationships are, first and foremost, ideas,” Salee reflected in a statement about the track. “That’s what allows relationships to persist even when we’re apart. We may yearn for an old friend or lover, especially one from our teenage years and our hometown. But there is a bittersweetness to any reunion. They may shatter the memory we’ve made of them.”

The Lucky One Cover Artwork:

The Lucky One Tracklist:

1. The Lucky One
2. Faded and Golden
3. Actors
4. Eyes in the Night
5. Palm Reader
6. Dust
7. Always Looking Back
8. Roses
9. Daze
10. Lightning
11. Like We Do
12. Something Good

Album Review: Fontaines D.C., ‘Romance’

‘In the Modern World’, the latest single from Fontaines D.C.’s new album, marks new territory for the band. It was written in Los Angeles, where singer Grian Chatten also laid down parts of his debut solo album, 2023’s Chaos for the Fly. Other band members also spent time abroad during the making of the record: guitarist Carlos O’Connell in Spain’s Castile-La Mancha, bassist Conor Deegan in Paris. “The modern world” could invoke any number of places, but the song’s soul-sucking subject clearly alludes to those “parts of the west coast of America” that Chatten has said “feel like death to me.” Press materials describe its string-laced balladry as “indebted to Lana Del Rey’s strain of disillusionment,” but it’s this entrancing intersection of romance and morbidity that mostly strikes a similar chord. The setting matters less than the backdrop, which is obviously the end of the world, which matters less than the idea that’s supposed to transcend it: Romance.

The follow-up to 2022’s Skinty Fia is framed as the now London-based band’s least Irish, most Korn-inspired record yet. And while it doesn’t exactly sound like Lana Del Rey or any nu-metal band – if anything, the album’s cinematic, colourful palette and thematic undertones owe more to a visual inspiration Chatten has cited, Katsuhiro Ôtomo’s Akira – what’s remarkable is how much more like themselves Fontaines D.C. sound they further they’re removed from their origins. At their heart is a duality: infectious melodies are elevated by sweet, luscious orchestration – which, with help from producer James Ford, is brighter than ever – yet deeper still is the yearning, more complicated and confounding. Whether the guitars sound grungy and unnerving (‘Here’s the Thing’), shoegaze-y (‘Sundowner’), or acoustic ‘Bell’s on the Sheep’s Neck’), there’s no standing still; all songs run on the same fuel, which is right there in the title, less of an ideal than a chaos of pure feeling. “Stitch and fall/ The faces rearranged/ And you will see/ Beauty give the way/ To something strange,” Chatten sings on the ambiguously endearing ‘Favourite’, which closes out the album. In Romance, we almost hear the transformation happening in the opposite direction.

For Chatten, the sense of being uprooted – as a byproduct of success, more than any material markers of it – seems to have a tangible effect on his writing headspace. Time and time again, he goes deep into his own mind: ‘Starbuster’ airs out a tangle of disconnected thoughts, but the fragments add up to what is a pretty widely identifiable experience of a panic attack. There’s a newfound comfort in his own voice which, rather than watering down the anxiety, actually sheds light on it: notice the way he stresses the words stars, peace. He matches the grandiosity of ‘Desire’ with a uniquely sensual performance that colours the nuances of what could otherwise be seen as empty philosophizing: “It’s high to be wanted/ But haunted is higher/ And the change requires/ Desire.” While he cast himself as an observer on Skinty Fia’s ‘The Couple Across the Way’, his vulnerability here is less self-effacing but no less visceral. ‘Death Kink’ sees him addressing a toxic relationship head-on, haunting and caustic in its melodrama: “When you said ‘I taste like sleep’/ I was dead.”

Thrilling, refreshing, and eerily peaceful, Romance offers no vessel for redemption; for all its musical ambition and urgency, it makes no attempt at an argument for idealism. Against the darkness we’re thrown into as soon as the album begins, the dystopian world that bears no description, the opening “Maybe romance is a place” really registers as just that: a proposition, a maybe. It makes sense that the album often seems at odds with itself: the line between modern reality and that fantastical place is anything but straightforward, and Fontaines D.C. aren’t so deluded as to settle into it. But it’s also no surprise it doesn’t sound particularly conflicted – overwhelmed, maybe, but all the more energized and playful. As far as bands are concerned, there’s no better place to be.

MUNA’s Katie Gavin Shares New Single ‘Casual Drug Use’

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MUNA’s Katie Gavin has released ‘Casual Drug Use’, the latest preview of her debut solo album What a Relief. It follows the lead single ‘Aftertaste’. Take a listen below.

“This is a song about being young and on bad behavior, and the comfort of having friends by your side,” Gavin shared in a statement. “I wrote it in 2016 after a day trip I took with a friend, and so I thought it would be sweet to film the video on a road trip I had planned with my childhood best friend. The different colored potions in the video are meant to be a stand-in for whatever external substance we use to change our internal states.”

What a Relief lands on October 25 via Phoebe Bridgers’ Saddest Factory Records.

Tanukichan Enlists Wisp for New Song ‘It Gets Easier’

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Tanukichan has teamed up with breakout shoegaze artist Wisp for ‘It Gets Easier’, which will appear on the upcoming Circles EP. Check it out below.

Tanukichan’s Hannah van Loon produced Circles with Franco Reid. “Franco wrote the riff in 2020 and loved the idea but didn’t know what to do with it, it was always kicking around and when he sent it to me things clicked and the song came about very quickly,” she explained. “When he wrote the initial riff he wanted it to feel a little sci-fi, rock, but also ethereal.”

Circles comes out September 20 via Carpark. Read our Artist Spotlight interview with Tanukichan.

Chastity Releases New Song ‘Offing’

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Chastity have dropped ‘Offing’, the latest single from their forthcoming self-titled album. It follows lead cut ‘Jaw Locked’. Check it out below.

“This is the most country the project’s ever gone, some townie emo,” the project’s Brandon Williams said of the new track. “A song about getting my meds mixed and thinking about death, approval from others, living to see another day.”

Chastity is set to arrive on September 13 via Deathwish/Dine Alone/Big Scary Monsters.