Prada Beverly Hills Wallpaper

So a couple of weekends ago, we went into the Prada store in Beverly Hills and found ourselves captivated by the wallpaper on one of the walls within the store. It follows the Fallen Shadows theme that Prada has been using for the fall/winter season this year (I think it might be connected to some of the fragrance collections, but I'm not sure). But besides the fact that it ties into the theme of the short video clip, we also noticed that the wallpaper incorporated various architectural and design features from the store itself.

One example is the concrete beams that run across the roof of the store. At the point where the beams meet the wall, the design of the wallpaper continues to carry the beam into the painting. I can't remember what the beams were in the wallpaper, random geometric shapes perhaps, but it was clever how they were used. Another example was the men's shoe display, which is sort of like a conveyor belt. In the wallpaper, it transitioned into a staircase which one of the shadowed women walked on.

We talked with Mariko, our Prada retail therapist :), and she told us that these wallpapers are specially designed for their stores and that a local artist is commissioned to do these works. I'm impressed with how much Prada supports the art community, with the Fondazione Prada in Milan, and the various architectural pieces that bear the Prada name around the world.

Halloween 2008

So, a week before Halloween, I decided that Nick and I should dress up as Mario and Luigi, but not just Mario and Luigi, I was planning on being Fire Mario in a warp pipe. The plan was to make a pipe out of something ring shaped, such as hula hoops, and to make 'fireballs' out of tennis balls covered in red and orange tissue paper. Oh, and we needed to find white overalls, white painters hats, and red and green long sleeved shirts.

First we tried to find materials to make the pipe, and discovered that hula hoops are not as common as we thought they were...Toys R' Us and Target didn't sell any. We then decided to focus on the clothes, and ordered our hats and overalls online, mainly because we knew that we wouldn't be able to find them in any stores.

Monday at work, I had the idea that we could use chicken wire (which is currently known as poultry fencing) to make rings as the frame. We found mesh fencing instead, which was fine, however, it was still too flimsy to hold it's shape, so we decided to paper mache it all. Neither of us have paper mached since elementary school, so we completely forgot just how messy it was. Fortunately we covered the floor with newspaper, but I managed to fling paste on the ground, on my PJ's and my feet. But, it really helped to give stability to the mesh fence rings.

We then used dowels to connect the top and bottom rings in order to give a solid, cylindrical frame. In order to make the lip at the top, we duct taped a lot of floral foam bricks to the outside of the top ring. Then we covered the entire thing in green felt, which was also connected with duct tape (seriously, duct tape was our friend on this costume). Nick used the leftover felt to make straps for me to carry the pipe on my shoulder by sewing hooks to the end of the straps and crazy gluing the hooks to the top ring. He also created a pouch from some more felt and taped it to the inside of the pipe so that I could carry my 'fireballs' while walking.

After some worrying about getting the pipe into our car, we showed up to the office with a fully intact pipe. Nick helped me get into it for the costume parade where this one picture was taken:



I thought we looked great, and a lot of people were impressed with the construction of the pipe. Unfortunately, we didn't win any of the categories for the costume contest, but hey, we gained a warp pipe, which is currently sitting in my office. I have no clue what we're going to do next year, but I'm thinking that expectations are that we need to construct something with moving parts...